# Website: SEO basics for agents

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<Lead>
For a real-estate agency, Google visibility drives enquiries: anyone searching for "real estate agent plus your town" should find you. The Website tool handles the technical search engine work automatically; this page explains what you should know about it and where you can fine-tune yourself.
</Lead>

## What happens automatically

- **Page titles:** Without a custom entry, the tool builds sensible titles from your office data, e.g. "Real estate agent Augsburg · Muster Immobilien" for the home page. The title is the blue line in a Google result.
- **Structured data:** Google receives machine-readable details about your office (name, address, contact), every listing (price, area, location) and your FAQ. This improves how your results are displayed.
- **Sitemap:** An automatically maintained list of all published pages and current listings helps Google miss nothing. Sold listings drop out on their own.
- **Sharing images:** Share a page on WhatsApp, Facebook or LinkedIn and a branded preview image appears. Exposés show the property photo.
- **Only your domain counts:** Only your verified custom domain gets indexed. Preview links and draft views stay invisible to search engines, so no duplicate content is created.

## What you can influence

- **Title and description per page:** In the page settings (the gear icon under Pages) you can override the automatic title and add a description. The tool shows guide values: about 60 characters for the title, about 155 for the description. Write for people, not machines: your town plus your service plus one reason to choose you.
- **Hide a page:** The "exclude page from search engines" switch removes individual pages from the index without taking them offline.
- **Local content:** Google rewards pages that name your town and service area specifically. Use the service area and FAQ blocks with real, local content.

## Migrating without losing rankings

Moving from an existing website, your old addresses are an asset: Google knows them, other sites link to them. The **redirect manager** in the SEO area makes sure every old address permanently leads to the matching new page:

1. Collect your most important old addresses (home, service pages, about, contact). Lists exported from WordPress redirect plugins can be imported directly as CSV.
2. Create one redirect per old address to the new page. The tool automatically prevents chains and loops.
3. After switching the domain, the hit counter shows which old addresses still bring visitors. Addresses without hits can be removed after a few months.

If you later change the path of a published page, the tool creates the redirect automatically.

## Patience is part of it

After going live, Google takes days to weeks to fully pick up a new website. You can speed things up by registering your domain in the free Google Search Console and submitting your sitemap there (`your-domain.com/sitemap.xml`).