Three writing tricks for property platforms to boost lead generation

Gone are the days when checking out home options by reading newspapers or visiting real estate agent’s office were the only ways to find a good property

According to the latest research of the National Association of Realtors, the Internet is now the indisputable leader in helping people to find and purchase, with 50 percent of buyers admitting buying homes online. 

The online competition in the real estate market has been rapidly increasing in recent years. With so many people looking at websites with home listings, property buying guides, and photos of homes, many agents and real estate businesses are investing big in content production. 

Fortunately, there’s a wide variety of content types to create to attract people looking for real estate advice, so if you’d like to know more about them, this article will help you. We’ll start with what makes a great real estate website and then talk about specific types of content for you to try.  

What is “The Best Real Estate Website”?

Could you think about your last meeting with a home buyer? How did it go? In fact, how does your typical meeting with a potential client go? Without a doubt, you’re listening to them, putting the needs of your client front and center and focus on helping them with finding the perfect home in every way you can.

Also, chances are that you don’t interrupt them with irrelevant questions about what their email address is or whether they’d like to receive updates from you by email. The obvious reason for that is the irrelevance of the information as well as bad timing to ask the person to provide their contact details. 

In this sense, selling your services online and generating leads via a website is a lot like meeting with a potential client in person. 

The best real estate websites that have the potential to generate leads meet the following criteria:

• Provide quality, relevant, and helpful advice that people can’t get anywhere else
• Have fresh and relevant listings of various property types in different areas
• Have an easy-to-use and intuitive search function
• Provide access to professional advice from a human real estate agent

While some of these requirements are relatively easy to implement - and some depend on the functionality of your website - availability of quality, relevant, and helpful content is undoubtedly one of the most important ones. 

Why? Because content lets Google know that your website is great and should be ranked high. Without quality content, it doesn’t have a good chance to appear in the top 10 results. That’s why every successful real estate website has a blog. 

In addition to the blog, writing descriptions of homes as well as user-friendly and intuitive website copy is also critical to the success of your website. 

So how to meet “the content” requirement?

3 Writing Tips for Property Websites to Improve Lead Generation

1. Blogging Tip: Write Evergreen Content

All right, this may sound like I’m using industry jargon here, but the term “evergreen” actually makes perfect sense here. 

“Evergreen content” means that the content stays relevant in the long-term. This is great for your website because it tackles a core issue that most of your leads face.” 

—  Nick Sherman, a content expert from Studicus

In this case, it would be a purchase of a home. The way people search for real estate has changed, but the topics they’re interested in remain mostly the same. For example, here are some ideas for writing evergreen content for your property website:

• How to begin home search
• How to arrange the furniture so your home looks more spacious
• Things to do to sell your house quicker
• Tips and tricks for moving
• How to get home mortgage in [city, state, etc.]
• List of restaurants in [city, area, etc.]
• Local activities for kids in [city, area, etc.].

See what I’m talking about here? These topics are relevant today and will be looked for years from now. By having evergreen content on your website, you’re increasing the chance that it’ll pop up in search results when your potential clients search for them. 

Don’t forget to share each article on social media, too. A lot of people might be following your Facebook or LinkedIn profiles, so this way you can let them know about a new piece of content. Besides, using social media to promote a business makes perfect sense, as many of your potential clients prefer to get updates via this channel.  

2. Blogging Tip: Optimize Content for SEO

Before you begin your blogging effort by writing evergreen content, you need to know how to optimize it for SEO. While the ultimate purpose of SEO is to optimize for target readers, keyword research and optimization are still a must. 

Here’s how to optimize your blog content for SEO to improve lead generation:

• Conduct keyword research. Keywords are the phrases that your potential clients use to search for real estate businesses on Google. By employing a tool like Google Analytics or simply looking for headwords on Google (see the image below), you can define a collection of keywords to include in your articles. 

• Utilize keywords throughout your articles in the natural way. Keyword stuffing isn’t something we’re after, because this technique results in penalties from Google, so they only way to insert keywords in your articles is the natural way. 

• Make your content as useful as possible. To keep visitors on your website for longer, the blog must be helpful. There’s no other way. To meet this requirement, you should include as many practical tips as possible for your target customers (this is where your experience meeting and talking with thousands of clients will come in handy, so you’ll have to work closely with content creators to help them - if you’re using them, of course).

Meeting all these points can be hard, so many real estate companies outsource content writing or specific tasks like editing. If you don’t have in-house writers, feel free to check out the following tools providing on-demand SEO-optimized writing services or proofreading: Trust My Paper, Grammarly, and Grab My Essay.

A tip for you: try to search for a local writer with a good knowledge of your target area to ensure better content. 

3. Website Content Tip: Optimize for SEO

In addition to the blog, your website copy also plays a huge role in attracting leads through Google. For example, if you’re a real estate agent who works in a certain area, the “About Me” page or something like that is a perfect opportunity for driving more website traffic with relevant keywords.

It’s a known fact that many home buyers begin their online research with local keyword phrases such as the following:

• [city, area] real estate agent
• [city, area] property agent
• [city, area] realtor
• [city, area] real estate listings.

For example, here’s an SEO-optimized bio of Kelly Jones, an Arizona-based real estate agent. Note how she has the keyword combination right below the name.

There are plenty of other great opportunities to include keywords throughout your real estate website, obviously - and you should look for them - but the most important thing to remember that they should be placed in a natural way that doesn’t make people - and search engines - cringe. 

The descriptions of listings should also be written in a way that engages readers. For example, in addition to keywords, you can include the names of local sights and other details as well as be as descriptive as possible.

For example, the description below also comes from Kelly Jones’s website and beautifully illustrates these points. The writer goes over the most important local points - the name of the neighborhood, the proximity of the restaurant, the elementary school, and the airport. Each of these may appeal to various readers, so including them is a good way to keep them reading. 

^{Credit: Screenshot, Kelly Jones}

So the main thing to keep in mind here is to be as rich in detail as possible - while also being concise - to attract people with different lifestyles, hobbies, interests, and choices. 

If there are simply too many details, feel free to use a table or a bullet list to ensure the readability. For example, Scottsdale Real Estate presents listing information this way.

^{Credit: Scottsdale Real Estate}

With this format, you can squeeze a lot of relevant information on one page while keeping it reader-friendly, which is exactly what your potential customers want. 

What Else Should You Pay Attention to When Writing Content?

As a real estate professional, you should decide whether to localize your content strategy to a city, area, or state (or even go beyond the national borders, the choice is yours). The ultimate goal is to keep content locally relevant and quality, as it entices other people to link to your website, which, in turn, improves search engine ranking. 

And one more thing: you’re not just targeting buyers and sellers to get more leads. You’re also building your image and credibility with future clients, and the content you publish can serve you for many years. Hopefully, this article has given you some ideas about where to start, so good luck and happy content writing!

Join us November 12-15 for the Property Portal Watch Conference Madrid 2019.