An Austin, Texas real estate brokerage losing nearly all its listing search traffic to Zillow and Redfin, despite having the exact same inventory.
Last updated: July 2026Harlow & Voss Realty lists residential properties across greater Austin. Every listing also appeared on Zillow and Redfin, and those aggregator listings consistently outranked the brokerage's own site, even for searches including the agent's name.
Zillow and Redfin held 8 of the top 10 positions for branded listing searches.
No content built around specific Austin neighborhoods, where actual buyer search volume concentrated.
No RealEstateListing or LocalBusiness schema anywhere on the site.
Property pages shared near-identical boilerplate copy across dozens of listings.
"We were paying to generate leads that Zillow was capturing first. Samar rebuilt our neighborhood pages and for the first time we're outranking the portals on our own listings."
Not head-on for generic terms, but by owning hyper-local neighborhood content the aggregators don't bother building.
Yes, the same neighborhood-page approach scales down to a solo agent's site.
A content refresh workflow updates or redirects sold listings so their SEO value carries to related active properties.
Yes, using local market data, school ratings, and amenities specific to each area, not generic filler.
Typically 8-12 weeks for meaningful ranking movement on new local content.
Start with a free audit call.
Technical & local SEO consultant, 5+ years working with UK, US, and Canadian clients. More about Samar →