Website and SEO for estate agents: more instructions to sell.

Why an estate agent website has to win over property owners

You reach buyers and tenants through the big property portals. But without properties, there is nothing to show there. The bottleneck is owners who want to sell or let, and they are exactly who your own website is looking for.

Then there is the law: since 23 December 2020, when a flat or single-family house is sold to a private buyer, the seller pays at least half of the commission (§§ 656c and 656d BGB, the German Civil Code). For rented flats, since 1 June 2015 the landlord who instructs the agent pays as a rule (Bestellerprinzip, the “orderer pays” principle). Owners are therefore almost always the client too, and they compare agents more closely before they sign.

What an estate agent website needs

The valuation as the first step. Hardly any owner gets in touch with “Please sell my house”. A free valuation is the smaller first step. At Hansen & Hansen, Stark Immobilien and Kampmann Immobilien, the button for it is right at the top, on every page.

A page for every district. Owners look for an agent who knows their area. Stark Immobilien has 40 pages for individual districts and towns, from Blankenese to Norderstedt. Kampmann Immobilien in Essen has dedicated pages for Ratingen, Velbert and Mülheim an der Ruhr. Each page needs its own content: prices, typical properties, sold references from the neighbourhood.

References of sold properties. Nothing convinces an owner more than a sold house two streets away. Stark Immobilien shows 41 references, Kampmann Immobilien 18, each on its own page.

The people behind the office. Anyone selling their property trusts a person, not a logo. Hansen & Hansen introduces every agent on the team on their own profile page.

Guides for the questions before a sale. Owners google before they call: what does an agent cost, which taxes are due, which documents do I need? For Hansen & Hansen, 15 guide articles answer exactly these questions, from estate agent commission in Hamburg to Grunderwerbsteuer (real estate transfer tax).

Listings without double entry. Properties for sale and to rent belong on the website, but nobody wants to type them in twice. Most estate agency programs export properties in the OpenImmo format, which brings them onto the website automatically. If an Energieausweis (energy performance certificate) is available, details from it belong in every listing, such as the energy performance value and the efficiency class. We provide the fields for this on every property page.

Getting found in your own area

When an owner searches for “estate agent” and their district, Google usually shows a map with three agents first, with the normal results below. For the map, what counts is your Google Business Profile, the reviews and the distance to the searcher. How to build the profile is covered in the guide Optimising your Google Business Profile.

For the normal results, your district pages and guides count. This is where the difference lies between a website that simply exists and one that brings in instructions to sell. That is why, for Hansen & Hansen, we took on search engine optimisation as well as the website. How we go about it is described under Local SEO.

What it costs

Service	Our price
Website	from €2,500 for a simple site
Website in a Day with up to five pages	from €2,500
Google Business Profile management	from €500 per month
Local SEO with district pages and guides	from €1,500 per month
Maintenance and hosting	from €129 per month

We work out which building blocks you need in the free intro call. If you first want to know where your website stands today: the initial analysis is free.