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How an AI-Powered Real Estate Site Grew Traffic by 10,737% in 3 Months

https://flyhomes.com/

Stats

18.7K to 2M Monthly Visits

Industry

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Niche

Real Estate

Reporting Date

July 2024

Flyhomes is an AI-powered home search platform revolutionizing how U.S. buyers and sellers navigate the real estate market.

By consolidating over 950 data points into a single, intuitive platform, Flyhomes simplifies the home research process.

But the platform’s impact extends far beyond user experience.

In just 3 months, Flyhomes executed a strategic SEO campaign that propelled monthly website visits from a modest 18.7K to a staggering 2 million.

This SEO case study delves into the innovative strategies that fueled this unprecedented growth.

The Catalyst: How Flyhomes Reached 2M Monthly Visits

1. Migrating From ZeroDown to FlyHomes

In June 2024, Flyhomes announced its acquisition of ZeroDown, a real estate AI startup.

This marked a turning point in their approach to the real estate market, opening new AI-driven opportunities.

It also triggered the start of a website migration.

Flyhomes started redirecting ZeroDown's traffic from its original domain (zerodown.com) to its new home at (flyhomes.com) the month of the acquisition.

Now, it’s important to note that ZeroDown already had impressive search engine rankings and organic traffic for its site.

For example, in March 2024 (pre-acquisition), ZeroDown had 804.2K keyword rankings and received 504.5K monthly visits.

To preserve these rankings and traffic, Flyhomes implemented a robust 301 redirect strategy.

A 301 redirect is an HTTP status code that tells search engines that a page has moved permanently and directs them to serve a new URL instead of the original one.

And more importantly, it transfers the SEO value from the original page to the new URL.

Here’s an example of a 301 redirect from the ZeroDown homepage to the Flyhomes homepage:

By implementing a permanent redirect strategy, Flyhomes successfully migrated ZeroDown's SEO equity to its platform.

This ensured a smooth user experience for former ZeroDown visitors (and search engines) and improved Flyhomes' search rankings by the next month.

In July, Flyhomes ranked for 1.2M keywords, which was more than double June’s performance.

Why this matters:

Flyhomes' experience demonstrates the power of a well-executed website migration.

If you're considering merging websites or changing your domain, proper 301 redirects are crucial to ensure you don't lose the SEO gains you've worked hard for (or acquired).

By following in their footsteps, you can benefit from a seamless transition, preserve your traffic, and potentially improve your search rankings—all contributing to a stronger online presence.

How to perform a domain migration for a WordPress site:

This beginner-friendly tutorial shows you how to move your WordPress website to a new domain.

Here’s a (very) quick overview of the process:

1. Backup the old domain.
2. Create a new MySQL database for your new domain.
3. Unpack your WordPress site on the new domain.
4. Set up 301 redirects on the old domain.
5. Test your site and notify your audience.

Tools for permanent (301) redirects:

All in One SEO (AIOSEO) makes it easy to perform a full site redirect. (No coding required.)

When you’re in the Redirection Manager, you can relocate an entire website simply by entering the old and new domains.

Once you’re done, click Save Changes.

The tool will automatically implement permanent redirects, ensuring search engines and users reach the right page each and every time.

Now, even though the ZeroDown acquisition triggered a boost in keyword rankings, Flyhomes was already working on another element of its SEO strategy: content creation.

Let’s see how they grew their content portfolio next.

2. Fueling Organic Traffic With Fresh Content

Between April and July, Flyhomes was busy creating new content for its website.

Here’s a breakdown of estimated pages live on the site each month and the total organic traffic:

May to June brought the first wave of unprecedented growth for Flyhomes.

During this time, Flyhomes added several new resources to its website, including:

• Neighborhood Guides
• Cost of Living Guides
• Quality of Life Guides
• Housing Market Analyses

Each resource lives within its own subfolder and has thousands of landing pages for that specific topic.

Of this new content, one subfolder outshined the rest: Cost of Living Guides.

Users can search for a city on the main landing page to reveal valuable insights about the cost of living.

Here’s an example of the start of this guide for Encinitas, California:

Flyhomes answers several popular questions about cities, such as:

• Is [city] expensive to live in?
• How do [city] prices compare to other US cities?
• What is a liveable salary in [city]?
• What is the median home price in [city]?

It’s a comprehensive approach to home research, informing home buyers of key insights regarding a specific city.

In addition to providing a positive user experience, these pages have become fundamental to Flyhomes’ recent organic success.

In July, Cost of Living Guides generated 55.5% of all site traffic. That’s equivalent to roughly 1.1M monthly visits.

Why this matters:

Search engines love fresh content.

By rapidly expanding its content library with hyperlocal resources like Neighborhood and Cost of Living Guides, Flyhomes demonstrated a deep understanding of its target audience's needs.

Search engines reward this new content with quick rankings and organic traffic.

For your website, it's important to consider how you can identify high-demand topics within your industry. Then, you'll need to create informative content around them.

By fulfilling search intent and providing genuine value to your audience, you can improve search engine rankings and drive more traffic to your site.

How to identify ranking opportunities:

Keyword research is at the core of understanding your audiences’ needs and building a content strategy that gets results.

Here’s an overview of how to do keyword research:

1. Pick a keyword research tool. (If you’re a small business owner, I highly recommend LowFruits. This tool helps you identify low-competition keywords that are easy to rank for.)
2. Search a specific keyword.
3. Investigate the keyword difficulty.
4. Decipher search intent.
5. Create content. (Here’s a guide on how to optimize your content.)

Tools for keyword research:

Did you know that you can do keyword research in WordPress?

AIOSEO connects with your Semrush account to generate keyword ideas directly in the WordPress editor.

First, set your focus keyword in the post or page you’re working on.

Then, click Get Additional Keyphrases.

The plugin will fetch related keywords from Semrush and present them in the WordPress editor.

This tool streamlines the keyword research process, allowing you to find additional keyword ideas and increase your content’s reach.

Now, let’s see how Flyhomes created all this content so quickly.

3. Scaling Content With Programmatic SEO

As we just saw, Flyhomes generated a quick outpouring of content in the summer of 2024.

Their first wave of fresh content increased the page count from 12.4K to 237.6K in June, and by July, they had 425.3K URLs.

Producing that much content in that short of time, even for a large company, is practically impossible when done by hand.

Instead, Flyhomes likely leveraged programmatic SEO to scale its content efforts.

Programmatic SEO uses automated tools, databases, and software to generate high volumes of unique content. This approach involves creating a content template, which acts like a blueprint for the page.

A tell-tale sign of programmatic SEO is when landing pages follow similar formats because of this template.

And in the case of Flyhomes, many of its new content does this.

For example, if you compare the Atlanta,GA housing market page to the Denver, CO housing market page, you’ll see that their format is identical.

Here’s a comparison of just the intro.

Atlanta’s page:

And Denver’s:

This structured format is true for all of Flyhomes’ new resource content (Cost of Living, Quality of Life, etc.), making it likely that programmatic SEO was behind its creation.

Why this matters:

Programmatic SEO is a game-changer for businesses looking to rapidly scale their content production.

By automating the creation process, Flyhomes was able to generate hundreds of thousands of pages in a matter of weeks.

This approach saved time and resources while pursuing other elements of their SEO campaign, like the domain migration.

How to automate SEO workflows:

This article shows you how to do programmatic SEO.

However, it’s important to note that programmatic SEO isn’t the best solution for every business, especially if you’re limited on resources.

Instead, you may want to consider how you can automate specific processes without foregoing handwritten content altogether.

Here are a few examples:

• Use AI to write meta titles and meta descriptions.
• Customize image smart tags to generate image alt text and title tags automatically.
• Set up automatic redirects for 404 pages to your homepage (or any custom page).
• Install an SEO plugin to get internal linking suggestions in WordPress.

Tools for automating SEO workflows:

You can streamline key tasks with AIOSEO.

Here are some of our most popular tools for saving time:

• AI Generator crafts unique and click-worthy meta titles and descriptions in 1 click.
• Image SEO allows you to use smart tags to generate image attributes automatically.
• Redirection Manager helps users and search engines navigate your site and avoid “page not found” errors. This provides a seamless user experience even when you move or delete content.
• Link Assistant suggests internal linking opportunities directly in the WordPress editor. No more scouring your site for the right link; we’ll bring them to you. (Pictured below.)

For our last strategy highlight, let’s see how Flyhomes content optimizations helped them stand out on the SERP.

4. Dominating People Also Ask: 147K Rankings and Counting

In July, Flyhomes experienced a dramatic increase in People Also Ask (PAA) rankings.

The Google PAA section of the SERP presents users with related questions to their original query.

Users can expand the questions to reveal the answers, as shown below.

For Flyhomes, PAA rankings were typically around 500 per month in the first half of 2024.

However, July skyrocketed to 147.2K.

The content responsible for this increase?

The new Cost of Living pages, which generated 70.9% of all PAA rankings.

And another new resource, City Ranking pages, which contributed an additional 27.1% of results in Google’s PAA box.

As for how they got them, Flyhomes used a few SEO best practices, such as:

• Question subheadings with concise answers in the body copy
• Clear, organized content structures
• Strong on-page SEO

These optimizations made it easier for search engines to understand and serve their content in the PAA box.

Why this matters:

Dominating the People Also Ask section is a powerful way to increase your website's visibility.

SEO statistics also reveal that SERP features (including PAA results) have one of the highest clickthrough rates.

This means they can generate significant organic traffic for your website.

How to optimize for Google’s People Also Ask:

1. Identify question-based and/or long-tail keywords.
2. Create high-quality content that aligns with search intent.
3. Implement FAQ schema markup.
4. Analyze competitor’ ranking in the PAA box.

For a detailed explanation of each step, visit this article on winning PAA rankings.

Tools for Google’s People Also Ask:

Including FAQs in your content is one of the most effective ways to rank in Google’s PAA box.

And with AIOSEO, they’re super easy to create.

Just add an FAQ block in the WordPress editor, and the plugin will add FAQ schema markup for you.

Standout SEO Wins

Before we wrap up, there's an additional SEO technique worth highlighting at Flyhomes.

Breadcrumbs Support Clear Site Navigation

Flyhomes uses breadcrumbs to help users and search engines situate themselves within the website.

Breadcrumbs tell you where you are in relation to the homepage.

They look like a breadcrumb trail, showing the path you took to get to that specific page.

Here’s an example:

By providing clear navigational cues, breadcrumbs enhance user experience and improve website usability.

Additionally, they help search engines understand the website's structure, potentially leading to better indexing and ranking.

Tool: You can add breadcrumbs to your WordPress site using a breadcrumbs plugin. I like how the AIOSEO’s Breadcrumbs give you full control over how they’re displayed and adds the schema markup for you. (This means you don’t have to touch the HTML code.)

Takeaways

In our analysis of Flyhome’s recent organic growth, we’ve uncovered the strategies driving its more than 2M monthly visits.

Now, let’s see how you can use these strategies on your website and others to reconsider.

Top 3 Strategies to Emulate

1. Preserve SEO value when moving content with 301 redirects. Whether you're migrating an entire domain, like Flyhomes, or just moving content to a new page, permanent redirects ensure search engines and users find the content they're looking for. Implementing 301 redirects will redirect traffic to the correct URL and preserve search rankings. This strategy prevents users and bots from encountering ‘page not found ‘errors, which are a negative user experience.
2. Identify new ranking opportunities through keyword research. Keyword research is the first step in learning about your audience and what type of content to create. It also helps you identify the specific keywords and phrases to use when optimizing your content. Unfortunately, many business owners skip keyword research, leaving them to create content aimlessly. This leads to an unorganized content strategy and poor results. Instead, focus on keyword research before you start producing content.
3. Leverage automated tools to streamline your SEO efforts. Technology and AI are making workflows faster and more efficient across many industries, including SEO. Think of time-consuming, repetitive tasks that could benefit from automation. For example, writing image titles or meta descriptions are key SEO tasks, but they take time. SEO plugins, like AIOSEO, can streamline these processes and generate unique metadata and image elements for you.

Bottom 3 Strategies to Reconsider

1. Making blog posts non-indexable. Some of Flyhomes’ blog posts are not indexable. This means search engines can't serve them in search results. While noindex tags have a place and purpose, blog posts are rarely the best use of them. After all, these pages typically provide real value to users and should be generating traffic to your site. You can use AIOSEO to easily manage your noindex meta tags and ensure they're on the right pages.
2. Neglecting image title tags. Image titles appear when users click or hover over an image. They provide users and search engines with additional context about your image. And since search engines rely on text elements to understand your image, this can lead to a better understanding of its content. This can ultimately lead to higher rankings in search results and Google Images. To add image titles automatically to your content, you can use the image SEO feature from AIOSEO.
3. Exceeding metadata character limits. The space on the SERP is limited. This means that when you go over character limits, search engines cut off your text. This results in a less-than-ideal user experience and incomplete information. Instead, run your metadata through a SERP snippet tool before publishing. This will allow you to see how it looks and make edits before your content goes live.

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Accelerate Your SEO Success With AIOSEO

What if you could skip the guesswork and enjoy a direct route to replicating Flyhomes' winning formula?

AIOSEO can help you do just that.

By providing a comprehensive suite of SEO tools, we empower you to execute the strategies outlined in this case study.

From crafting compelling content to optimizing for search engines, AIOSEO is your all-in-one solution. Our intuitive platform simplifies complex SEO tasks, allowing you to focus on creating exceptional content.

Here are some of our favorite features:

• Redirection Manager: Prevent humans and bots from getting lost when you move content or domains. Our Redirection Manager helps you easily choose and implement the best redirect type that preserves SEO.
• Semrush Keyphrase Suggestions: Perform keyword research directly in the WordPress editor. AIOSEO connects with your Semrush account to generate keyword ideas for your content.
• AI Title & Description Generator: Save time writing SEO titles and meta descriptions with the help of AI. With just a click of a button, you can generate unique metadata for any page on your website.
• Link Assistant: Get link suggestions, edit anchor text, and add internal links to your content in just 1 click. Link Assistant helps you effortlessly build a better linking strategy.
• FAQ Blocks: Add FAQs to your content to increase the likelihood of appearing in Google’s People Also Ask box. These results help boost brand awareness and increase clickthrough rates.
• Breadcrumbs: Create a breadcrumb trail that shows users where they are on your site in relation to the homepage. You can customize the look and show them exactly where you want on your site.

Gabriela Jhean SEO Specialist

Gabriela is a creative and results-driven SEO specialist dedicated to helping small businesses stand out online. She contributes in-depth SEO case studies at AIOSEO Trends to reveal the winning strategies of top-ranking websites. In her downtime, Gabriela enjoys treasure hunting for antique jewelry.

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