+2,600% organic traffic growth: from 150 to over 4,000 monthly visits through strategic SEO, starting from informational keywords.
272 qualified leads generated via Meta and Google Ads campaigns with an average Cost per Lead of €17.38.
17 high-end apartments sold in 6 months with less than €5,000 in ad spend.
Read about the full strategy in this Real Estate Lead Generation Case Study.
In this article, I present two case studies of Digital Marketing for Real Estate, where we applied integrated SEO and Ads strategies to generate leads supporting rentals and sales.
These case studies demonstrate how a mindset that is both analytical and creative can deliver excellent results, even in a highly competitive niche such as the Property Market.
Positioning a website in the real estate sector is what I call an SEO nightmare. The first page of Google results is dominated by large portals and real estate listing aggregators with extremely high Domain Authority, which also rank very well at the local level.
Try searching for “houses for sale” or “houses for rent” along with your city’s name: chances are you’ll see results from major listing websites and national franchise networks that consistently occupy top positions in the SERP.
The only keywords for which these portals don’t rank are those related to real estate agencies, since in that case the user intent is clearly defined: looking for an agency in the area, not a listing platform. Positioning for this keyword cluster is more achievable, but in locations with many competing agencies—some with strong domain authority—improving local visibility requires linkbuilding campaigns (often costly) and a significant number of genuine positive reviews on the Google Business Profile (fake reviews are infact periodically removed by Google).
One of our long-standing clients is a Real Estate Company investing in short-term rental apartments, for students and professionals relocating for work.
A few years ago, when they contacted us to redesign their website with the goal of ranking on Google. I told them it wasn’t realistic: competing with the Gargantuas of real estate right where they dominate was almost impossible.
However, I proposed an alternative approach.
I reasoned that students and professionals often search online for information about the university and the city they’re moving to. So, within the new website, we built a city guide including detailed information about the local university, public transport, tourist attractions, local food, nightlife, and more.
Not long after publication, the website started ranking on the first page for keywords searched hundreds to thousands of times per month.
By gaining greater exposure, engaged traffic, and a higher Click-Through Rate (another ranking factor), the site gradually achieved good rankings even for highly competitive rental-related keywords—just below the industry giants.
The website’s traffic grew from 150 to 4,000 visits per month, generating a large volume of inquiries and enabling the agency to rent out most of the apartments across the 10 buildings it manages.
To fill the last available spots, we launched a small lead generation campaign on Facebook and Instagram, targeting university-age users who had shown interest in the city of Trieste along with one of the faculties of the local university.
Once again, creativity and the ability to step into the users’ shoes led to the best possible outcome.
Trend of keyword rankings measured with Semrush’s position tracking tool.
The yellow line also shows the short Google Ads campaign launched to support sales.
The audience acquired through Ads is much smaller than those searching for informational content, but far more targeted.
Some time later, the client expanded their business, starting to sell apartments in a newly renovated building.
In this case, all the SEO positioning challenges mentioned earlier resurfaced.
During a dedicated keyword research phase, however, I noticed that keywords related to new developments and first occupancy were less competitive than general property sale terms.
We therefore created a content-rich page aimed at both homebuyers and investors. Considering that Trieste often attracts investors from Central and Eastern Europe, we also published optimized landing pages in English, German, Slovenian, and Serbo-Croatian.
To push results in the short term, we launched Lead Generation campaigns on Google Ads, Facebook, and Instagram, running regular tests to optimize targeting for both Italian regions and the foreign countries that generated the highest conversions, maximizing budget efficiency and performance.
Within the first six months, 17 out of 24 high-end apartments were sold, resulting in an excellent return on investment.
