When building a real estate website, it is easy to get carried away with the way it looks rather than the information that it provides. While it is important to have an attractive website it is more important to have good content that is well written and to the point. The information your website provides is not only important to your real estate customers, it is instrumental in getting your website ranked in the search engines.
Those real estate agents that understand the importance of content will sometimes go overboard writing page after page of keyword stuffed content. While at one time effective, keyword stuffing no longer works (and hasn’t for quite some time). The best way to write website copy is to write on topic but be conversational and appealing to your real estate customers. If you have researched your topic and are prepared, the keywords will flow into the writing in a way that sounds natural and not forced. If after the writing is complete you find that that are areas of the writing that can be changed to support your keywords than go back and make the edit as long as it doesn’t disrupt the flow.
Here are a couple things to remember when writing:
- Bad grammar is bad! I am the worst when it comes to this. A lot of times, I get so lost in my ideas and concepts that I am trying to convey that the focus on grammar just flies out the window. If you are like me, you should probably hire a professional copywriter to do your editing.
- Going off on a tangent. I am also famous for spending too much time writing (what I believe to be) supporting content that I completely go off topic. It is vitally important to get your point across quickly and add supporting content only when absolutely necessary. If the content doesn’t relate directly to the customer’s needs, they’re gone! Simple as that.
- Write in chunks using brief paragraphs. The page content should be scannable and be able to be read quickly. Numbered lists and bulleted items work well to get information across fast as to not lose your reader.
- Direct the reader with a strong call to action. Just like with many e-commerce websites each page should act as a funnel directing your user towards the listings. This is important because the listings are where the user is converted to a lead via the registration process
All in all try to have fun. Writing website content can be daunting and time consuming. Hiring a writer can be one way to go but is expensive and almost as time consuming given the amount of direction needed to get the writer to use the correct tone, voice and subject matter. You’ll find that after you get going it isn’t that bad.
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