Houzz is the place over 35 million people find and save beautiful home and garden photos, compiling the features, styles, colors, and patterns they want to create for their perfect home.
When making one of their biggest purchases of their lives, customers of home builders and contractors do a ton of research. And more and more of that research is being done on sites like Houzz. Whether they are looking to build, remodel, redecorate, or are just thinking about building their dream house, Houzz is helping people make decisions on not only what they want, but who they want to do it.
Houzz has an impressive 35 million users, and a crazy 800,000 local professionals already vying for those users attention. 72% of users are that prime age of 25-54, and the most important fact, 90% of users on Houzz are homeowners and looking to buy or build again.
Who is using Houzz?
Houzz is made up of companies offering home and property design, custom home building, remodeling, and general home improvements.
But seriously, do I need to be on Houzz?
It turns out there are some pretty clear benefits for being on Houzz. For one, decision-making, even in large and luxury purchases has moved online. According to Realtor.org, 90% of home buyers searched online as a part of their decision-making process. Consumers search online for everything, and with that the trust is coming from customer testimonials and reviews. With Houzz you showcase projects, reviews, and conversations with real homeowners to improve your rankings, build awareness and elevate trust with your brand.
So you know people are searching online for decisions. In fact, Google says real estate related searches have grown 253% over the past 4 years. Another benefit of having an active profile on Houzz is that it helps with your SEO. Categories and profiles are indexed by Google, so when people search for home builders in Indianapolis, Houzz is always one of the first results that show up.
Ok, I get it. How do I set up my Houzz profile?
Houzz is a social media platform, even if it has a more niche purpose than your other social media favorites. With that comes the normal profile information such as name of company, address, website link and the very mundane but essential information every profile needs to have on it. From here, let’s get more specific on best practices for setting up the rest of your profile.
You need to add some seriously good project photos.
People want to see your work, and they want to see completed renovations and projects. Visitors to your Houzz profile can add their favorite images to their “ideabook.” They can ask questions and add comments about project images. They can also email and print images to save and share ideas with their friends and families. So it’s most definitely an integral part of your profile to have professional photographs on your profile. After you have your images, you can start categorizing the project, add keywords, branding, and location to each of the image’s information.
Keywords matter on Houzz.
Homeowners will find your profile, projects, ideabooks and images by searching keywords or terms that are based on what they are looking for. So be sure to do your keyword research and spend plenty of time writing great descriptions for everything you add to Houzz. The keywords you choose will help determine if your images will show up in search results on Houzz. Adding keywords is a two-step process. The first step takes place when uploading images. When uploading pictures in the “Project Description”, pay close attention to the box located at the bottom of the form that’s dedicated to adding comma-separated keywords. Make certain the keywords you add apply to all of the photographs you’re uploading. When choosing keywords, use precise and general terms such as “Neutral Living Room”, as well as “Mid-Century Modern Living Room”. Use all of the space allocated to keyword phrases but do not excessively repeat keywords, or you will be penalized in search results.
Don’t be shy, talk to people!
Houzz wants people to interact with other people, so much so that they reward users that interact more by ranking them higher in search on Houzz. To make sure you are getting all the benefits of the platform make sure you login daily and interact with people. It is after all called social media for a reason! One trick to doing this is to look at competitors in your area and the people interacting with them. Try reaching out to those people on the platform. You never know what opportunities might come from it.
