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

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.

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.