
Realtor.com Organic Growth Opportunities
1. Readiness Assessment
1. Readiness Assessment
2. Competitive Analysis
2. Competitive Analysis
3. Opportunity Kickstarters
3. Opportunity Kickstarters
4. Appendix
4. Appendix
Readiness Assessment
Current Performance
- You drive 31.1m monthly organic visits, with an estimated traffic value of $13.7m.
- Your domain has a very high Authority Score of 89 and ranks for over 10m keywords, demonstrating significant market trust and search visibility.
- Your brand is a primary asset, with searches for "realtor" and "realtor.com" driving a substantial portion of traffic and making the homepage your most valuable organic page.
Growth Opportunity
- You rank for extremely high-volume keywords like "mortgage calculator" (SV 2.7m) but capture only a small fraction of the traffic (0.21%), indicating a major opportunity to improve top rankings.
- Your location-specific search pages for states and cities (e.g., Florida, San Antonio) are already strong traffic drivers, providing a proven template to expand and deepen your reach in other local markets.
- Your
/news/section attracts significant traffic with celebrity and trend-based content, which could be better leveraged to guide users toward transactional pages for home buying, selling, and renting.
Assessment
You have a dominant foundation built on immense brand authority and traffic volume. The data reveals a clear path to capturing a much larger share of the market by focusing on high-intent, non-branded search terms. Airops can help systematically scale your content creation to target these valuable keywords and convert your domain authority into greater transactional traffic.
Competition at a Glance
An analysis of 2 direct competitors shows that realtor.com currently ranks 2nd in organic search performance. The site generates approximately 31.1 million monthly organic visits from 10 million ranking keywords, placing it firmly in the top tier of the real estate market.
The market leader, Zillow, generates more than double this traffic, with approximately 69.1 million monthly organic visits from a base of 12.1 million keywords. This demonstrates a significant gap in market visibility and search engine performance between the top two competitors.
While realtor.com has a substantial keyword footprint, it is not capturing traffic as effectively as the market leader. This gap between the number of keywords ranked for and the resulting traffic volume indicates a major opportunity to close the performance gap and capture a larger share of the available market.
Opportunity Kickstarters
Here are your content opportunities, tailored to your domain's strengths. These are starting points for strategic plays that can grow into major traffic drivers in your market. Connect with our team to see the full traffic potential and activate these plays.
Create ZIP-level dashboards detailing local property tax rates, average payments, appeal processes, and available homestead or senior exemptions. This play captures high-intent homeowners and prospective buyers researching the total cost of ownership.
Example Keywords
- “property tax rate {zip}”
- “homestead exemption {county}”
- “how to appeal property taxes in {city}”
- “average property tax bill {county} {state}”
Rationale
High-intent homeowners searching these terms often contemplate selling, refinancing, or protesting assessments—perfect for nurturing seller leads and mortgage refis. Current SERPs are dominated by confusing government sites and low-authority blogs, creating a significant opportunity for a high-authority domain like Realtor.com to provide clarity and capture traffic.
Topical Authority
With a Domain Authority of 89 and existing tools like the mortgage calculator, Realtor.com is well-positioned to be a trusted source for complex financial topics related to homeownership. Providing this granular tax data builds authority and user trust, differentiating it from competitors who focus primarily on listings.
Internal Data Sources
AirOps can integrate with CoreLogic or ATTOM tax assessor feeds for rates and billing data. This can be combined with Realtor.com's own property record database to show discrepancies between assessed and market values, and the 'MyHome' estimator can be used to project potential savings from claimed exemptions.
Estimated Number of Pages
~25,000 (Covering every U.S. ZIP code with over 1,000 households)
Develop city-level guides that demystify local regulations for Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs), short-term rentals, lot sizes, and permitting. This strategy targets the growing market of investors and multi-generational families looking to maximize property value.
Example Keywords
- “ADU regulations {city}”
- “build a granny flat in {city}”
- “{city} short term rental ordinance 2025”
- “zoning laws for {neighborhood} {city}”
Rationale
A national surge in demand for multi-generational living and rental income has left homeowners and buyers struggling to find clear, localized zoning information, which is often buried in complex municipal PDFs. By creating easy-to-understand guides, Realtor.com can capture this high-intent traffic and connect users to relevant listings and agents.
Topical Authority
Realtor.com's existing listing inventory already includes properties tagged with 'ADU potential.' Creating content that explains the rules and processes behind realizing that potential is a natural extension of its authority. This closes an informational loop that competitors like Zillow and Redfin have not addressed at scale.
Internal Data Sources
An AirOps workflow can ingest and process municipal zoning code PDFs into a structured knowledge base. This can be combined with Realtor.com's own listings metadata (e.g., lots flagged as 'ADU possible') and live Google SERP data to pull in recent ordinance updates, ensuring the content is always current and differentiated.
Estimated Number of Pages
~4,000 (Covering the top 4,000 U.S. municipalities with populations over 10,000)
Build dedicated pages for every funded or proposed transit station (rail, light-rail, BRT) opening in the next 15 years. These pages will detail timelines, projected price growth, and available listings within a walkable radius, capturing investor and early-mover demand.
Example Keywords
- “homes near future {station name} station”
- “property values after {line name} opens”
- “buy before the {city} light rail extension”
- “{future station} walk score”
Rationale
Search demand for housing near new transit spikes years before a station opens, but SERPs are filled with PDFs and local news, not user-friendly real estate portals. This play allows Realtor.com to capture highly motivated buyers and investors at the earliest stage of their research, establishing a long-term relationship.
Topical Authority
Realtor.com has deep authority in property listings and value estimation. By layering future-looking infrastructure data on top of its existing sold-price and listing databases, it can create a unique and powerful predictive tool that no competitor offers, cementing its status as an expert in real estate market dynamics.
Internal Data Sources
AirOps can integrate data from the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) grants database and future GTFS route files. This would be combined with Realtor.com's historical sold comps to model pre- vs. post-announcement price appreciation and the Google Distance Matrix API to calculate 'door-to-door' commute times once the line is operational.
Estimated Number of Pages
~4,500 (Based on the pipeline of stations from the FTA, State DOTs, and Amtrak)
Create city-level resource hubs for seniors and their families focused on aging in place. Pages would cover local contractors, permit rules for accessibility mods, property tax freezes, and a curated list of accessible homes for sale.
Example Keywords
- “aging in place resources {city}”
- “wheelchair friendly homes {state}”
- “accessible housing grants {county}”
- “universal design remodelers {city}”
Rationale
Baby Boomers control over half of U.S. housing wealth, and searches for accessibility solutions are surging. This traffic is currently captured by health and contractor sites, not real estate portals. This play allows Realtor.com to engage a wealthy demographic at a key life transition, driving leads for sellers, buyers, and mortgage partners (HELOCs for renovations).
Topical Authority
While competitors focus on first-time buyers, serving the 'last-time buyer' or 'stay-in-place seller' is a massive, underserved niche. By providing expert content on this topic, Realtor.com can build immense trust and authority with a valuable audience that has complex real estate needs.
Internal Data Sources
This strategy would leverage AirOps to combine data from HUD and VA grant databases with Realtor.com's own MLS data, filtering for accessibility tags like 'wider doorways' or 'no-step entry.' It can also use sold comps to quantify the resale ROI of accessibility upgrades and integrate Getty Images to visually showcase features like grab bars and ramps.
Estimated Number of Pages
~7,000 (Covering major cities and counties)
Generate ZIP-level scorecards that rank risks for floods, wildfires, heat, and storms, including historical data and insurance cost implications. This content directly addresses a top-of-mind concern for modern home buyers and provides actionable, location-specific insights.
Example Keywords
- “flood risk {zip}”
- “wildfire danger {city}”
- “climate risk score {state abbreviation}”
- “homes in low-flood-risk zones {city}”
Rationale
Soaring insurance premiums and climate events have made risk assessment a critical part of the home-buying process. Current SERPs are dominated by niche startups; Realtor.com can leverage its high domain authority (89) to outrank them and integrate this vital information directly with property listings, creating a superior user experience.
Topical Authority
Providing data-driven risk analysis elevates Realtor.com from a listing portal to an essential due-diligence tool. This builds topical authority in the crucial intersection of real estate, finance, and environmental science, demonstrating a commitment to the long-term viability of a home investment.
Internal Data Sources
AirOps can integrate and process complex geospatial data from sources like NOAA, FEMA (NFHL shapefiles), and USFS wildfire layers. This data can be cross-referenced with Realtor.com's insurance partner rates to provide real-world premium examples and used to highlight listings located in demonstrably lower-risk neighborhoods.
Estimated Number of Pages
~35,000 (Covering every residential ZIP code in the U.S.)
Improvements Summary
Implement a repeatable on-page SEO template for high-potential location-based listing pages, adding unique content blocks, FAQ schema, and internal linking. Expand with neighborhood guides, market reports, and property-type blurbs to support primary and secondary keywords.
Improvements Details
Key tasks include optimizing title tags, meta descriptions, H1s, and adding 250-400 word SEO blocks with fresh market stats and local value points. Add FAQ components with schema, improve image alt text, and build a three-level internal link silo using 'Nearby Cities' widgets and cross-links from county and state pages. Target keywords like 'homes for sale <location>' and '<location> real estate' for each page, and support with new content such as neighborhood guides and market reports.
Improvements Rationale
These improvements address the lack of unique, relevant content on dynamic listing pages, which is preventing them from ranking on page 1 despite strong domain authority and search volume. Adding unique copy, structured data, and internal links increases on-page relevance and click-through rates, while regular content updates and freshness signals help secure and maintain higher rankings for high-value local keywords.
Appendix
| Keyword | Volume | Traffic % |
|---|---|---|
| best seo tools | 5.0k | 3 |
| seo strategy | 4.0k | 5 |
| keyword research | 3.5k | 2 |
| backlink analysis | 3.0k | 4 |
| on-page optimization | 2.5k | 1 |
| local seo | 2.0k | 6 |
| Page | Traffic | Traffic % |
|---|---|---|
| /seo-tools | 5.0k | 100 |
| /keyword-research | 4.0k | 100 |
| /backlink-checker | 3.5k | 80 |
| /site-audit | 3.0k | 60 |
| /rank-tracker | 2.5k | 50 |
| /content-optimization | 2.0k | 40 |
Ready to Get Growing?
Request access to the best–in–class growth strategies and workflows with AirOps