Building a Real Estate Online Presence Strategy to Get Found in LLMs (like ChatGPT)
When it comes to building an effective marketing strategy, being found online at the right time and for the right reasons should be at the top of how you define success. After all, if no one can find you or your brand online, it’s almost as if you don’t exist.
That’s especially true if someone is looking for you and your brand directly. If they can’t find you when they’re intentionally searching for you, there’s a good chance they’ll go looking for someone else.
And while there are a lot of places online someone can search for you, there’s an increasing chance they’re going to be looking for you, or for someone like you, in AI platform results. ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, and other AI platforms are changing the way people discover and research real estate agents, and your online presence strategy plays a direct role in whether you show up in those results.
A successful online presence strategy, built for AI search, has two main components: Direct Brand Visibility and Indirect Brand Visibility. Your online presence strategy needs to cover both.
Direct Brand Visibility
Direct brand visibility is about being found when people are looking for you and your brand specifically and intentionally.
For example, searches like “Is Bob Smith a good real estate agent?” or “Do people recommend working with Mark Simons?” are direct brand searches. In both cases, someone is in the early research phase, looking for information about you to help them decide whether to reach out. And increasingly, they’re turning to AI platforms for those searches.
A strong direct brand visibility strategy means working toward clearly identifying everything about you, your brand, and your business, including what you do, who you do it for, where you operate, and how long you’ve been doing it.
Success in direct brand visibility starts with your own personal website. Without one, you won’t be able to create enough of a digital footprint, where you control all of the information, to be found in AI results even for something as straightforward as a direct brand search. When someone asks an AI platform about you, the results are often pulled directly from your personal website, so the more you can control that information and make it clear, comprehensive, and current, the better your brand will be represented.
Your online reviews also play a critical role in direct brand visibility. When AI platforms evaluate whether to endorse you in a direct brand search, they look at what other people have said about you. A strong review presence on Google and other platforms gives the AI confidence to recommend you.
★ Want to learn more about building for AI search? Have a look at these posts:
- Why You Can’t Build an AI Visibility Strategy Without a Website
- How to Build an Online Review Strategy That AI Search Can’t Ignore
- How and Why to Prove Your Experience to AI, LLMs, and Search Engines
Indirect Brand Visibility
Indirect brand visibility is where people aren’t looking for you specifically, but rather, for something related to what you do, and your brand shows up in the AI results.
For example, searches like “who is the top real estate agent in DC?” or “most trustworthy agents in Toronto” are indirect brand searches. In both cases, the AI platform provides results that call out specific agents, teams, and brands that it believes fit the criteria of what someone is looking for. And much like traditional search results, the AI platform just wants to provide the best possible answer.
To show up in indirect brand searches, your online presence strategy needs to work toward associating your brand with whatever is being searched. That means building a presence across multiple channels that all reinforce the same message about who you are and what you’re an authority on.
The key components that AI platforms look at when deciding who to include in indirect brand results include:
- A modern personal website that clearly outlines your experience, your location, and the services you offer. This is the primary source that AI platforms pull from.
- A strong online review strategy, with reviews across multiple platforms, that demonstrates a consistent track record of positive client experiences.
- A solid backlink strategy, with links to and from authoritative sources that reinforce your credibility.
- An established content strategy that demonstrates genuine expertise and meets EEAT standards across the topics you want to be known for.
Brand mentions are also a significant factor in indirect brand visibility. When your brand is mentioned on other websites, blogs, and online platforms, it creates signals that AI platforms use to determine who to recommend. Agent ranking sites, local publications, and industry directories all contribute to this, and having your brand mentioned on those sources strengthens your position in indirect AI searches.
★ Want to learn more about building your online presence? Have a look at these posts:
- How Unlinked Brand Mentions Help Your AI Visibility Strategy
- The AI Visibility Clean-Up: How to Straighten Out Pre-AI Citations That Are Confusing LLMs
- How to Effectively Monitor Your Brand’s Online Presence
Keeping Your AI Visibility Accurate
One often overlooked part of an online presence strategy for AI is making sure the information that AI platforms have about you is accurate and up to date. AI platforms build their understanding of you from multiple sources across the web, and if those sources contain outdated, inconsistent, or incorrect information, the AI’s representation of you will reflect that.
For example, if your website says you specialize in one area but a directory listing from several years ago says something different, the AI platform may present conflicting information when someone asks about you. That inconsistency can undermine the trust you’ve worked to build.
Regularly checking what AI platforms say about you, and cleaning up any outdated or inaccurate information across the web, is an important part of maintaining your AI visibility over time.
That includes making sure your website content is current, your business information is consistent across every platform where your brand appears, and any pre-existing citations or mentions from before AI search became a factor have been reviewed and corrected where needed.
Your Online Presence Powers Your AI Visibility
Your online presence strategy, your search strategy, and your success in AI search results all go hand-in-hand. Without a strong, modern online presence strategy that accounts for how people are searching right now, the chances of being found at the right time, by the right people, will decrease over time as AI search continues to grow.
The good news is that the same investments that build a strong online presence for traditional search also build the foundation for AI visibility. A well-built website, a strong content strategy, a consistent review presence, and a credible brand footprint across the web are the building blocks for both.
Want to integrate AI into your long-term marketing strategy? Download our Artificial Intelligence in Marketing Planning Guide for Real Estate Agents. It has key insights into how you can plan for using AI in your marketing strategy to better set you and your business up for long-term digital success.
