Marketing for Residential Agents & Teams
Real Estate SEO for Agents
Who Want Their Own Name to Rank.
Zillow, Realtor.com and Redfin own the generic searches, and they sell your leads back to you. We build the part of search you can actually own: your name, your neighborhoods, your sellers, and the reviews that make a buyer pick you.
49,500
Monthly searches for “real estate agents near me”
27,100
Monthly searches for “realtor near me”
8,100
Monthly searches for “how much is my home worth”
Source: Semrush US database, monthly searches and keyword difficulty, October 2026
Why Agent Marketing Stalls
Most Agents Rent Their Pipeline From a Portal.
An agent’s website usually comes from the brokerage, the listings come from IDX, and the leads come from a portal at a referral fee. None of it builds anything the agent keeps when they change offices.
Your site has 4,000 listings and not one sentence of your own.
The IDX feed that fills your site fills every other agent’s site in the same MLS with the same homes. Google has no reason to rank yours, and a buyer has no reason to remember it.
You are trying to outrank Zillow for “homes for sale.”
In our October 2026 pull of the top 10 results for “real estate agents near me,” 9 went to portals and national brands. The organic head terms are not a realistic goal. The map pack, your name and your neighborhoods are.
Your reviews live on someone else’s profile.
Agents who work out of a brokerage office often share its address and its Google listing. Every review a client leaves for you can end up building the office instead of you.
Your ads were built before the housing rules changed.
Google has barred age, gender, parental status, marital status and ZIP code targeting on US housing ads since October 2020. Old campaigns that leaned on those settings stopped serving, and many were never rebuilt properly.
Buyers now sign before they tour, and your site never explains why.
Since August 2024, buyers working with an MLS agent sign a written agreement before touring a home. If your site does not explain what you do and how you get paid, the first conversation starts on defense.
Every lead is counted the same.
A seller with equity in your farm area and a portal buyer with no preapproval are not worth the same amount. Reporting that lumps them together hides which channel actually produces closings.
What We Do
Agent Marketing That Builds Something You Keep
Six disciplines, each aimed at the part of the market a single agent or team can actually own.
How Real Estate Search Works
What Makes Real Estate Agent Marketing Different
Agents face portals with enormous budgets, rules on every ad they run, and a settlement that changed how buyer agents get paid. These are the specifics we plan around.
SERP
The Portals Own the Head Terms
For “real estate agents near me,” the top 10 organic results in our October 2026 Semrush pull were Realtor.com, RE/MAX, Zillow twice, Redfin, Homes.com, Yelp, HomeSmart, one independent agent directory and Compass. An individual agent competes in the map pack, on name searches and on neighborhood pages, not in that list.
Settlement
Buyer Agents Have to Sell Their Value First
Under the NAR settlement, from August 17, 2024 MLS participants working with buyers need a written agreement before touring a home, and offers of buyer agent compensation no longer appear on the MLS. Buyers now ask what an agent does and what it costs before the first showing, and that question belongs on your site.
Google Ads
Housing Ads Have Fewer Targeting Options
Since October 2020, Google’s personalized advertising policy bars US housing ads, including ads from real estate agents and brokers, from targeting by gender, age, parental status, marital status or ZIP code. Campaigns have to win on search intent, location radius and creative instead.
Fair Housing
Ad Copy Is Covered by Federal Law
Section 804(c) of the Fair Housing Act makes it unlawful to publish a housing ad that indicates a preference based on race, color, religion, sex, disability, familial status or national origin, and liability reaches the person who placed the ad. Neighborhood copy has to describe the property and the area, never the ideal buyer.
License Rules
Your Broker’s Name Goes on Every Ad
State license laws set what an agent ad must show. In Texas, for example, TREC rules require the broker’s name in every ad, at least half the size of the largest agent or team contact details, and hold the sponsoring broker responsible for the agent’s compliance. We build sites and ads to your state’s version of that rule.
AI Search
The Portals Moved Into ChatGPT
Zillow launched an app inside ChatGPT in October 2025 that shows listings and connects users with an agent. An agent cannot outspend that, but AI tools still need somewhere to learn who works a neighborhood well, and reviews and profiles that name you, separate from your office, are what they read.
Buyer and Seller Search Demand
What Buyers and Sellers Search Before They Call
National monthly searches and keyword difficulty for queries an agent or team can build a page or campaign around. Seller searches usually carry less portal competition than buyer searches.
Finding an Agent
- real estate agent near me49,500/mo · KD 55
- realtor near me27,100/mo · KD 24
- best real estate agent near me6,600/mo · KD 68
Sellers
- sell my house18,100/mo · KD 52
- how much is my home worth8,100/mo · KD 69
- how to sell my house2,900/mo · KD 30
Specialty Agents
- listing agent near me320/mo · KD 65
- buyers agent near me210/mo · KD 47
Source: Semrush US database, monthly searches and keyword difficulty, October 2026
How We Work
How an Agent Engagement Runs
- 01
Pick the farm, not the whole metro
We start with the neighborhoods, price bands and client types you want more of, then check who holds the map pack and page one for each. A team can own a few neighborhoods in a year. Nobody owns a whole metro against the portals.
- 02
Separate you from your office
Your own Business Profile where you qualify, consistent profiles on the portals, a domain you own, and reviews that name you and the area. This is the work that keeps paying if you ever switch brokerages.
- 03
Publish the neighborhood and seller pages
Area pages with your commentary on recent sales, seller guides for pricing and prep, and a plain explanation of buyer agreements. Paid search covers seller intent while those pages earn rankings.
- 04
Report on appointments and closings
Listing appointments, buyer consults and closings tied back to the search, ad or referral that started them, so you know which channel pays for itself and which only fills the CRM.
Working with Bryan Passanisi
“Bryan makes things happen and has an incredible attention to detail on all of the small SEO tweaks that add up to big results.”
Jean Kim Hahn, Senior Director Global Marketing, MiniMed
“Bryan takes the time to educate other business partners on SEO. Because of that, more integrated branded ideas were able to be executed.”
David Nielsen, Lead SEO, Genentech
“Bryan has an unbelievable drive to excel at everything he does. He thinks through all the approaches, identifies those most likely to yield the most impressive results, executes quickly, analyzes the results, communicates the insights and builds upon them.”
Mike Berry, Ex Adobe, eBay, PayPal
The Expert
Bryan Passanisi
Founder, Brown Bear Digital
Bryan Passanisi is establishing himself as one of the sharpest emerging voices at the intersection of SEO and AI search. With 15 years of hands-on experience building and scaling search programs, he brings a depth of knowledge most agencies simply can't match — and a relentless focus on what's actually moving results right now.
As search evolves around AI Overviews, generative engines, and large language models, Bryan is at the front of it — testing, building, and translating what's changing into strategy that compounds. He understands the full search landscape, from technical SEO and entity optimization to GEO and LLM visibility, and he founded Brown Bear to give businesses direct access to that expertise without the agency overhead.
- 15 years across SEO, AI search, and paid strategy
- Deep expertise in GEO, entity SEO, and AI Overviews
- Direct access — no account managers, no hand-offs
Awards
- 2025Semrush AI/GEO Award Winner
- 2022Digiday Awards, Best Search Campaign Winner
Common Questions
Real Estate Agents, Answered
Real estate SEO is the work of getting an agent or team found in Google and AI search by people buying or selling in their area. Because portals dominate the broad searches, it focuses on what an agent can own: their name, a Business Profile, neighborhood pages with local commentary, seller guides and reviews.
Not for broad searches like homes for sale near me, and it is not worth trying. In our October 2026 pull, portals and national brands held 9 of the top 10 results for real estate agents near me. Agents do win the map pack, searches for their own name, specific neighborhood and building searches, and many seller questions the portals answer only in general terms.
Usually yes, if you plan to stay in the business. A brokerage site is useful, but its rankings, reviews and email list stay with the brokerage when you leave. A site on your own domain, set up with your broker’s required details, builds value you keep.
Not on Google for US housing ads. Since October 2020, Google’s policy bars targeting by gender, age, parental status, marital status or ZIP code for housing ads, including agent and broker ads. Meta runs a similar special ad category for housing. Campaigns need to rely on search intent, location radius and strong creative instead.
Since August 17, 2024, MLS participants working with buyers need a written agreement before touring a home, and buyer agent compensation offers are no longer on the MLS. That moves the question of what a buyer agent does, and how they are paid, to the very start of the relationship. Agents who explain it clearly on their site start that conversation ahead.
Often yes. Google’s guidelines treat real estate agents, like doctors and lawyers, as individual practitioners who can have their own profile if they are public facing and reachable at the verified location. If you share an office address, using a suite number and your own phone number helps Google and AI tools tell you apart from the brokerage.
Not as clients. Our client work has centered on plastic surgery and medical practices, where we run SEO, AI search and paid search for local, review driven businesses. Much of that work carries over to agents, and we will show you what your own market looks like in search before you commit to anything.
Further Reading
Local and AI Search Research
- GEO for Small Businesses: Fix the Entity First→Why businesses that share an address with a host get skipped by AI tools, and the free fix.
- How to Track Brand Mentions in AI Search→A free system for checking what ChatGPT and AI Overviews say about you.
- How to Choose an SEO and AI Search Agency→The questions to ask before you hire anyone, us included.
See Who Owns Your Neighborhoods in Search
Tell us your farm area and the clients you want more of. We will show you who holds the map pack and page one there today, and where an agent can realistically break in.