Beating Realestate.com.au (and other portals) with Real Estate SEO

You’re a real estate agency, and you’re keen to rank higher than realestate.com.au in Google.

Or maybe you’re looking to compete with the big global players – Zillow, Realtor.com, Rightmove, idealista, immobilienscout24, immobiliare – or any of the dozens of real estate portals around the world.

Here’s the truth: you’re not going to beat them head-on for the big keywords. It’s next to impossible. They’ve got more content, more authority, and bigger teams than you’ll ever have.

But that doesn’t mean you’re out of the race.

There are ways you can compete, and even outrank them, for specific, high-value searches. You just need to know where to look.

Below, we’ll run through a quick SEO breakdown, then show you exactly how your agency can beat realestate.com.au where it matters.

The different aspects of real estate SEO

Before you start trying to outrank REA Group, you need to understand the key parts of real estate SEO, and how each one works.

1. Property Listings

These are the backbone of your site. They show up when someone Googles the address of a property.

Usually, it’s one of two people searching:

• Someone who’s found a property online and wants more info.
• Someone who’s walked past a place and wants to look it up.

So this is a critical touchpoint, it’s often your first (and sometimes only) chance to capture that person’s attention.

You’ll see portals targeting these with property profile pages, which they have for the large majority of profiles in Australia. Similar pages are created on international portals too.

2. Search

Search is just the aggregation of listing content, the suburb and property type pages on your site.

They cover buy, rent and sold for residential, and sale & lease for commercial.

These are the ones that target broad search terms like:

• Location
• Property Type
• Bedroom Count
• Price Range

This is where the portals dominate. They’ve got more listings than you ever will, and probably your listings too. That gives them more content, more combinations, and a better user experience.

If you were looking to buy, would you rather see 10 results from a single agency or 100 results from the whole market?

Exactly.

3. Building / Development / Estate

These are keyword sets tied to specific apartment buildings, townhouse complexes, land estates, or developments, often with multiple addresses within the one location.

They show up at different stages:

• When a project is first announced
• When pre-sales start
• When people want to track progress
• Long after completion, when buyers are keeping an eye out for listings

They’re consistently searched, and surprisingly underserved, even by the portals.

Missed out on an apartment, but loved the building? People want to find another one there without having to sift through hundreds of other listings in the same suburb.

This is my favourite type of real estate SEO. The search intent is strong, the content can drive leads for years, and the competition isn’t as strong.

4. Real Estate Agency Keywords

These are searches for your brand, both the agency as a whole and individual office locations (usually “brand + suburb”).

You should be the one ranking #1 here, no question. These are people looking specifically for you.

The portals will show up, but with the right setup – good on-site content and properly optimised external profiles – you can stay ahead of them.

5. Real Estate Agent Searches

People Google agents. A lot.

Vendors do it when they’re deciding who to list with. Buyers do it after meeting them at opens. And agents themselves do it, because of course they do.

This is a much bigger search category than most agencies realise, and the portals have flooded it with agent profile pages.

You need to cover this properly on your own site if you want to compete.

6. Suburb Profiles

These target keyword sets like:

• “[Suburb] house prices”
• “[Suburb] property market”
• “What’s it like living in [Suburb]?”

They’re especially popular with investors, but also used by buyers who are early in the process, still figuring out which areas they’re interested in.

These people may not even be looking at properties yet. But if your content helps them get to know the suburb, you’re planting the seed early, and building trust.

7. Auction Results

This is the weekly spike.

Every Monday morning, buyers, sellers, and nosy neighbours are Googling to find out what sold on the weekend.

They want to know:

• What a property they watched went for
• What the highest sale in the area was
• What homes around them sold for (and what that might mean for their own property)

Portals cover this, sure. But most do it at scale. If you can localise it and get the results out early, there’s an opportunity here to own that traffic.

How to Beat realestate.com.au (and Other Portals) in Google

You’re not going to beat them at everything, but you don’t need to.

You just need to be better than them where it matters most – when someone Googles a listing you have, when they’re looking up a building you’ve sold in, or when they’re trying to find a good local agent.

Let’s break it down by the same sections above, and look at what your agency can do to compete, and in some cases, outrank, the big players.

1. Make Every Property Listing the Best Version Online

This is the low-hanging fruit. You’re the source of truth for the property. The portals are just syndicating your info.

Your goal is to make your version of the listing better than theirs, and not just slightly better, but clearly more useful.

That means:

• Write actual descriptions – not just the templated stuff from your CMS. Add context. Talk about the street, the neighbours, what kind of buyer the place suits.
• Use the best images, floorplans, and any extras like video walkthroughs or 3D tours. If you’ve got a drone shot, use it.
• Add a small FAQ section under the listing. It doesn’t have to be long, just answer a few common buyer questions that might not be in the main copy.
• Include a “Word from the Agent” – a short, natural paragraph in the agent’s voice. This isn’t the place for sales copy; it’s a personal take. Why they love the home. What the current owners will miss. Who the home is perfect for. Just a few lines, but it adds real personality, and it’s something portals can’t replicate.
• Keep the listing live, even after the property is sold – these pages can and will drive traffic for years to come.

Don’t syndicate the FAQ & ‘Word from the agent’ to the portals. This should only exist on your website.

This added unique content will help set you apart from the portals that are just syndicating your content.

They will help you bypass any duplicate filter Google puts you in, and they will help you rank higher.

This unique content could be the difference for you.

If someone Googles the address of your listing, your site should be the one they land on. Not the portal. Not a competitor.

2. Target Long-Tail Search Pages

Don’t chase “Houses for Sale in Melbourne”.

You’re not going to win the big suburb-level searches. If someone types “houses for sale in Melbourne”, realestate.com.au and Domain have that covered – and always will.

But there’s a heap of long-tail demand out there that they don’t cover well, or that you can improve on.

This includes covering keywords like:

• “3 bedroom townhouses in Yarraville under $900k”
• “Pet-friendly apartments in Seddon”
• “Heritage homes for sale in Williamstown”

These are the kinds of keywords that only get a handful of searches a month, but they’re high intent, and if you build the right pages, they’ll rank well and convert better.

Set up landing pages for these combinations and keep them live, even if you’ve only got one matching property. Add extra content, talk about the lifestyle, and link to related suburb guides or agent profiles.

You don’t need to win big. You just need to show up in the places the portals don’t.

3. Create Pages for Buildings, Estates, and Developments – and Own Them Forever

This is hands-down my favourite area of real estate SEO, and one that’s almost completely ignored by everyone, including the big portals.

These are the buildings, land estates, and developments in your local area. The towers. The off-the-plan projects. The townhouse estates.

They’re constantly searched for.

People Google them before they buy. They look them up after they’ve missed out on a property there. They watch the construction, check for rentals, and come back years later when they want to buy in.

The portals cover these projects during sales, and then many of the pages are removed. They don’t live forever. There’s only a small handful of sites that cover these correctly.

You can own this space.

Make a dedicated page for each building or estate. Even if you’ve only sold there once. Include:

• The name of the building or estate
• Its location and what’s nearby
• Photos, floorplans, and building amenities
• What properties have sold there in the past
• Any current listings
• A bit about the developer, architect, or builder
• Links to nearby suburb profiles or schools

These pages stay relevant for years. Unlike listings, they don’t expire. They just build up traffic over time.

The best part? These pages aren’t just good for consumers, but may well drive you new leads from people seeing you as an active agent in their building.

4. Dominate Your Agency Name in Search

This should be non-negotiable.

When someone Googles your agency, or your ‘brand + suburb’, your site should be the first thing they see. Not a portal. Not RateMyAgent. Not your competitor bidding on your name.

You need proper “Agency Profile” pages on your site. One for your brand as a whole, and one for each individual office.

These pages should include:

• The full office name
• Address, phone, trading hours
• The areas you service (include the name of each suburb)
• Team members
• Office photos and Google Maps embed

Link them from your footer. Use structured data (LocalBusiness schema). Set up your Google Business Profile to point to them, and ensure you’re asking for reviews on your profile – both by vendors and buyers.

And finally, get some backlinks from local partners, even a footy club or local café will help. Reach out to any business you’ve supported and ask them for a link back to the office.

This is an easy win. Don’t let the portals take it from you.

5. Build Strong Agent Profile Pages

This is another sneaky big area – agent name searches.

Lots of people search for agents directly. Sometimes it’s a vendor doing research. Sometimes it’s a buyer who met them at an open. Sometimes it’s the agent themselves, checking how they appear online.

Portals know this. That’s why they make agent profiles so visible.

So you need to fight back.

Every agent in your team should have a proper profile on your site. Not just a photo and a phone number – a full page that covers:

• Full name and title
• Profile picture and short bio
• Areas serviced and specialty property types
• Current listings
• Past sales
• Reviews or testimonials

Encourage your agents to link to their profile page from LinkedIn, email signatures, anywhere they can.

Ensure any external profile that the agent has, points back to either their profile or office page on your site.

You should be the source Google trusts most for your agent’s name. Not realestate.com.au. Not domain.com.au. You.

6. Build Suburb Profiles That Are Actually Useful

Most suburb pages on portals are generic. Data pulled in from CoreLogic, a few stock photos, and maybe a quote from an agent if you’re lucky.

You can do better.

Build suburb pages that answer the kinds of questions buyers and renters have:

• What’s the vibe of the suburb?
• What are prices doing?
• Where are the good schools?
• What’s public transport like?
• What’s it like to live there?

Add in data too – median prices, listings on the market, recent sales, days on market.

Link to listings in that suburb, and to any buildings or estates that sit within it. Add commentary from your team, especially if you’ve been operating in the area for years.

These pages rank well, build trust, and can drive new vendor leads from people researching their own suburb.

They will take time to rank, and probably won’t generate the traffic or leads the other pages will, but they will still help you get a foot hold in search.

Bonus Tips

Make Sure Your Website is Server-Side Rendered (SSR)

If your site runs on JavaScript and everything loads client-side, you’re putting yourself at a major disadvantage.

Some search engines can technically crawl & index client-side rendered (CSR) sites, but it’s patchy, delayed, and way less reliable. And now that AI tools are parsing your site too, it’s even more important that your content is available in the source code immediately.

Server-side rendering (SSR) means the full HTML is sent to the browser (and Googlebot) straight away. No waiting for scripts to run. No risking blank pages in the crawl.

SSR gives you:

• Faster first paint and better crawler experience
• Guaranteed visibility of your content to Google
• Faster & more efficient crawling for search engine bots and AI models

Portals like REA are lightning fast, server-rendered, and optimised to the teeth. If your site is CSR-only, you’re making Google work harder than it needs to – and it won’t reward you for it.

If you’re not sure what you’re using, talk to your web developer or platform provider and ask them directly.

Use Structured Data Across the Whole Site

Structured data helps Google make sense of your content, and improves how your pages appear in the search results, often with star ratings, pricing info, or extra links.

It’s not just a technical thing. It’s a visibility tool.

At minimum, you should be adding:

• Residence or RealEstateListing schema on every property page
• LocalBusiness schema for your agency and office pages
• Person schema for every agent profile
• Breadcrumb schema across all major pages

It makes your pages clearer, easier to index, and gives you a shot at rich results. More importantly, it signals to Google that you’ve got your act together.

Own Your Brand Across the Entire Web

You want to outrank the portals? You need to control every result you possibly can – not just your website.

Here’s how you do that:

• Optimise your Google Business Profiles – one per office, kept up to date, with the right categories, reviews, photos, and a link to the matching office page on your site.
• List your offices in local directories – Yellow Pages, Yelp, LocalSearch, TrueLocal, StartLocal, etc. Even if they don’t drive much traffic, they help build trust and citations.
• Claim and optimise all your social profiles – Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, even TikTok if it suits your brand. Link them all back to your site.
• Encourage agents to use consistent branding across their own social channels and links.

The goal is simple: push the portals further down the page.

If someone Googles your agency or one of your offices, you want every link on page one to be something you control – not a third-party site trying to poach the lead.

This not only protects your brand, but improves your overall visibility and conversion rates.

Final Thoughts

You’re probably not going to outrank realestate.com.au across the board – but you don’t need to.

You just need to pick your battles.

Focus on the areas where you have an edge: your listings, your people, your local knowledge, and your reputation in the community. That’s what the portals can’t replicate, and that’s exactly where you can win.

If you do it properly, you’ll not only take back traffic from the big sites, but start building long-term SEO assets that generate leads well after the campaign ends.

Need help figuring out what’s worth doing, and what you need to prioritise?

I’ve worked with real estate agencies across Australia to build SEO strategies that cut through the noise, and drive results.

Get in touch and let’s chat about how we can make SEO work for your agency.