How to Write Optimized Content for Real Estate Websites

Writing content for your real estate website Content writing for your website should be approached with the intention of presenting your community or area in a manner that would appeal to potential homebuyers. Expressing your knowledge and conveying community highlights is an excellent way to capture the attention of your audience but remember that although you may be a fascinating person with tons of expertise in real estate, the primary intent of those that visit your site is to look for real estate, so save the biography and testimonials for the appropriate pages.

Creating good content for your site will help do a number of things like distinguish the pages of your website from any other websites that may make listings visible to the search engines and offer unique, value-laden content for the search engines to index.

Each page of your Dynamic Page Solutions website is optimized for different keywords, so when writing for any one page, check for the page title and include at least one usage of the primary keyword and secondary keyword in the body of the content. Here, you want to pay special attention to keyword prominence, this means that when developing your content or changing page titles or writing introduction paragraphs for any web page, you'll want to put the keywords first, then embellish with detail.

For anyone with a real estate website, remember that page titles are one of the most important factors for onsite page optimization, so if you're ready to improve your rankings and make changes to your page titles, do so slowly over time unless you're website is brand new or you do not rank for any keywords that your trying to win on, then a comprehensive change to your website will have little impact on placement initially but you'll have taken steps to improve ranking.

Most agents do not know what their content should include so let's start with the index page otherwise known as the homepage. I'm going to give you some ideas and resources to use while you create your website content. ' Depending on how many areas your website covers, you may want to focus this content on the neighborhood, city or area that you service. For example, if your site is solely focused on a neighborhood, here is where you want to include all of the neighborhood highlights. If the site targets a city, then write something broader that encompasses aspects of that city. If you have a multi-city website, detail some of the reasons a person might enjoy living in that general area but don't forget to highlight specifics as well to each of the cities.

Your index page should include names of popular school districts within the area along with zip codes, desirable employers and of course attractions. It's important to use exact names and identifiers when you're writing because you want the content to capture search engine traffic and generalities such as "families love spending a day at the lake" is too broad, you would want to say "families love spending a day at St. Hughes Memorial Lake". This captures specific traffic and also helps to define the geo-specific target of the website with the search engines by including content that is broadly associated with the area.

A side note about keyword stuffing. When it comes to repeating the same keywords on a web page, more is not better; in fact including the same keyword, say "city real estate for sale" over and over can actually get you penalized by the search engines so consider using variations of the phrase "real estate" like "homes for sale, properties, MLS listings and houses". But even with variations, use keywords conservatively.

If you're having trouble coming up with ideas, use the web to learn more about your community. Sources like the Chamber of Commerce, Wikipedia, Parks and Recs and .gov sites can be a great resource for material. While referencing these sites, be sure to write in your own words, never copy and paste content from someone else's websites and claim the content as your own. Search engines have a record in their database of content and their original sources, so you're not helping your rankings by copying others work. Plus there is the issue of copyright infringement and legal actions the original author can take to protect their content, so even if you're not a superstar when it comes to writing, original, unique content is always best.

Now, let's talk about writing content for the specific niches you've chosen to target. These are what we at Dynamic Page Solutions call topic pages and they are the pages that are dedicated to property features such as 4 bedrooms, gated, golf, equestrian, luxury or a specific master planned community for example. Let's take a look at a golf topic page. To make the most of a topic page that is focused on golf properties, you could start by researching all of the golf courses within the city or area that your website focuses on. You can mention golf clubs by name and support the content with golf related verbiage including PGA, golf lessons, views of the golf course, golf communities and more.

Now let's go over some ideas for the content for a gated topic page. You can use variations of the gated keyword including private real estate, gated neighborhoods and gated community. The specific names of the gated subdivisions should also used within the body of the content along with other attractions of the area. If you have trouble coming up with variations, an old-fashioned thesauruses may provide you with some help. There is also Internet resources that can help you to come up with keywords and variations. The first is at yippy.com which is a meta search engine. Just type in the phrase that you want variations for and click search, then go to all clouds and review the results on the left for keyword variation ideas. Another resource is of course Google Adwords. Go to get keyword ideas for the target keyword you're going after.

Let's go over one more example for property feature specific content. A foreclosed topic page's content should include many variations of the theme "foreclosure" including real estate foreclosures, foreclosed properties, homes in foreclosure and foreclosed homes. When you're writing for a topic page on a community themed site, it's not necessary to repeat the name of the community over and over again; this could be seen as keyword stuffing, so just mention the name as it seems natural over the course of the content.

So now that you have an idea of how to write for your index and topic pages, let's go over writing content for a topic or theme that's not necessarily covered within MLS or Googlebase databases such as Homeowner Association details or Community Information. Creating pages such as these serve a twofold purpose. You show your client that you are in tune with details about the area and the search engines have more community specific content to index and attribute to your website, thus you show that your site has valuable information and can be considered a resource for people searching for real estate in your chosen area.

Again, mentioning features and attractions by name is very important, that way the search engine bots or spiders that crawl your web pages understand what it is you're trying to convey and your primary content is supported with related and relevant keywords and phrases.

Now that you've learned how to write and why to write content for your website, you will be able to increase the ranking of your web pages and also provide unique content for the search engines which will help differentiate your pages from any other web pages that may be optimized for keywords for which you're trying to win traffic. Remember search engines like updated content so don't be shy about adding or changing your content from time to time.

About The Author Dynamic Page Solutions is an innovative technology leader in the real estate market. Their products are specifically geared towards capturing search engine traffic using long tail and competitive keywords. Home buyer leads are generated through real estate websites and their revolutionary MLS IDX Solutions. Beyond offering the best real estate technology available, the free Realtor marketing, ongoing Web 2.0 training and updates set this company above and beyond the competition. Their website is: http://www.dynamicpagesolutions.com