Local SEO for real estate agents: a practical playbook
How to be found for your suburbs, not just your name. Useful suburb pages, sold results, your Business Profile, consistent details, reviews and real timelines.
When someone searches your name, Google can show a panel with your photo, your reviews, your phone number and a link to your website. That panel comes from a Google Business Profile. It’s free, and for many agents it’s the first thing a vendor sees.
Google has specific rules about who can have one. Here’s what they say, how to set one up, and what to avoid.
Can an individual agent have their own profile?
Yes, in many cases. Google’s guidelines for representing your business name real estate agents as an example of an “individual practitioner”: a public-facing professional, typically with their own clients.
According to those guidelines, a practitioner should have their own profile if:
- they work in a public-facing role. Support staff shouldn’t have their own profiles.
- they can be contacted directly at the verified location during the stated hours.
The guidelines also say a practitioner shouldn’t have several profiles to cover different specialisations. One profile, one you.
How it fits with your agency’s profile
| Your situation | What Google’s guidelines say |
|---|---|
| One of several agents at an office | The agency has its own profile for the office, separate from yours. Your profile’s name should be your name only, without the agency’s name. |
| The only public-facing agent at a branded office | It’s best to share one profile with the agency, named in the format “Agency: Your name”. |
| No office, working from home | You’d be a service-area business: you hide your address and set the areas you serve instead. |
| A rented mailing address you don’t work from | Not eligible. Google treats this as a virtual office. |
Where the rules are unclear
The guidelines cover every kind of practitioner, from dentists to insurance agents, so they don’t fit real estate perfectly.
“Contactable at the location” is open to interpretation. Agents spend much of the week at appraisals and open homes, not at a desk. The guidelines don’t say how strictly this applies when you work from the agency office but are often out. If you have a desk there and can be reached on your listed number during your listed hours, you’re likely on safer ground than if you’re rarely there.
The guidelines don’t cover changing agencies. They don’t say what happens to a practitioner’s profile, or its reviews, when the practitioner moves to a different office. If you change agencies, you’ll need to update your address and details, and Google may ask you to verify again.
Before you start, check your agency’s policy. Some prefer to manage agent profiles centrally.
How to set it up
Google’s help pages cover each step in detail. In short:
- Check you don’t already have a profile. Search your name in Google Maps. If a profile exists and isn’t verified, you can claim it.
- Create the profile at business.google.com/add, following Google’s instructions.
- Use your real name as the profile name. Just your name, as you use it on your cards and signboards. No suburb, no tagline.
- Choose your category. More on this below.
- Set your location or service area. If clients can meet you at an office, use that address. If not, set up a service area and remove your address. Google allows up to 20 service areas.
- Add your phone number and website. Use a number that reaches you directly, and your own website address.
- Verify it. Google will offer one or more verification methods, such as a phone or text code, email, video or a postcard. You can’t choose which ones you’re offered.
- Make sure you’re an owner. If someone else sets the profile up for you, ask them to add you as an owner, not just a manager. Owners have full control, including over who else has access.
Then fill in everything else: your hours, a description of up to 750 characters (no links allowed), and your photos.
Choosing your category
Google asks you to pick a primary category that describes what your business is, as specifically as possible, and to use as few additional categories as you need. See Google’s category guidance.
For most individual agents, the primary category is Real estate agent. Your agency’s office profile will usually use Real estate agency, which keeps the two clearly distinct.
Only add extra categories for things you genuinely do. If you also manage rentals, a property management category may fit. If you don’t, leave it off.
Reviews
- Ask after a good result. Send your review link or show a QR code. Google explains how in its tips to get more reviews.
- Never offer anything in return. Google strictly prohibits incentives, such as discounts or gifts, in exchange for reviews, or for changing or removing a negative one.
- Reply to every review. A short, genuine thank-you or a calm response to criticism shows future clients how you treat people. You need a verified profile to reply.
- Only ask real clients. Google says reviews must reflect a genuine experience.
On our Pro plan, your Google reviews appear on your own website, word for word, exactly as they were written.
Photos
Start with a clear, recent headshot and your logo if you’re self-branded. Google recommends 720 by 720 pixels (250 by 250 at minimum), in JPG or PNG, between 10 KB and 5 MB, and says images should be in focus, well lit and not heavily filtered. See Google’s photo guidance.
If you add property photos, make sure you have the right to use them. Campaign photography is usually licensed to the agency or the photographer, not to you personally.
Posts
Business Profile posts let you share updates, offers and events. For an agent, that might be a new listing, a recent sale or an upcoming open home.
A few things to know:
- posts older than six months are archived, unless you set a date range
- posts with a phone number Google can’t connect to your business may be rejected
- posts only go live on a verified profile
Link it to your own website
Your Business Profile has a website field. Use it for your own site, at your own domain, rather than your agency profile page or a portal profile.
Your site then carries the same name, number and suburbs as your profile, and anyone who clicks through lands on a page that’s entirely about you. If you’ve verified your website in Google Search Console, Google says that can also make verifying your Business Profile quicker.
Keep your details consistent
Search engines connect your profiles by matching your details. Use the same name, address (or service area) and phone number everywhere you appear:
- your Google Business Profile
- your own website
- your Domain and realestate.com.au profiles
- your agency profile page
- your review platform and social profiles
“Jordan Reyes” in one place and “Jordie Reyes” in another, each with a different number, makes that harder.
Common mistakes
- Adding keywords to your name. “Jordan Reyes Best Agent Paddington” breaks Google’s rules, which say a profile name can’t include marketing taglines or location information.
- Making more than one profile. Google says a practitioner shouldn’t have separate profiles for different specialisations, such as sales and leasing.
- Using a virtual office or someone else’s address. If you don’t work there, it isn’t eligible.
- Using a number you don’t control. Google’s guidelines say the phone number must be under the business’s direct control. If your profile lists the office switchboard, calls meant for you go through someone else first.
- Not being an owner. If someone else holds the only ownership, you may lose access when you move on.
- Setting and forgetting. Old hours, an old photo and unanswered reviews tell vendors you’re not paying attention.
Where to go from here
A Business Profile works best when it points to a website that’s yours, on a domain in your name. Our online marketing service includes help setting up your Business Profile and Google Search Console alongside your site. And if you haven’t got your own site yet, start with the website.
For more on being found, read how to come up first when vendors search your name and do real estate agents need their own website?
Based on Google’s Business Profile guidelines at the time of writing. Google updates them from time to time, so check the linked help pages before you act.
