One New Way to Miss the Real Estate Boat!
Many in the Baja real estate business, including agents, landlords, and developers, all have the same challenge of getting their properties noticed online.  Of course, to tackle this challenge, you need good property photos, and an understanding as to who you are really communicating too.  So in today’s computer based real estate market, you should be focusing your written property descriptions to not only the potential buyer or seller, but also to the machine, that is Google, and other search engines.

Now since an astonishing 90%, up from 80% according to sources, of all Baja real estate customers start their property search online, a potential client may never find the property you are offering if a search engine such as Google, or a directory such as Yahoo, doesn’t deliver your property or website to the reader.  This is especially true here in Baja, where there is no one stop shop, online MLS.

Therefore today, you have to write to both the search engine, and well as the searcher.  Here is a 2-part approach that you will want to consider to get your property noticed.

You would want to decide on about 3 to 10 keywords.  Before you write the property text, check to see if your keywords are being typed into search engines boxes by potential clients, and then keep testing until you find good keywords.  There are several free tools online to help you find out how often keywords are typed into a search box so you can validate your keywords.

According to experts, keywords should make up no more then 10% of your text.  After you write the article, and the article is online, check the keyword density with a keyword density checker to confirm you are near that 10%.

Here in Baja, when writing real estate text for the human, it is no longer enough to just write a short property description for your property advertisement in the local newspaper, or for one of the several online listing sites.  The real estate market has become so sophisticated and accomplished that readers now expect great property information without the wordiness. 

Here are suggestions to keep your reader's attention once your property was found online.  Stay away from highly opinionated descriptions such as ‘magnificent,’ ‘darling,’ and ‘luxurious.’  Avoid superlatives such as the ‘biggest’, the ‘best’, the ‘most comfortable.’  And stay away from over-used real estate words such as ‘spacious,’ and ‘cozy.’  You Should assume that buyers are tired of these overused real estate words.  Besides, these are words of opinion, and your opinion may not have impact on a savvy buyer who doesn’t know you. 

Instead, create a credible property description, with quantitative text that includes user benefits.  And remember to also address the four personality types in your writing to ensure that you include benefits for all your potential customers.  There is plenty of information online about these four personality types.

Now, let’s take some of these concepts to paper.  Point2 is a popular real estate listing site here in Baja, California.  In Point2, you only get 2000 space characters of text to describe a property.  And it is amazing how few agents can actually fill it up!  Here is one possible format on how to write and organize text for real estate for sale using Point2 that will help you reach out to Google, buyers, and sellers:

Firstly, start your writing with one or two keyword rich sentences that describe the property with an exclamation point!  This opening statement should be impactful to the human reader, and should be keyword rich for search engines too.

In the next paragraph, include the numbers.  For example: 2 bedroom, 2 bath, 1 car garage, condo with 2200 square feet, on the 3rd floor, north tower, etc.

If the property you are marketing is an investment property, then the next paragraph should describe the investment details.

With the next paragraphs, begin to describe the most important rooms or areas.  For example, describe the living room with its features and benefits.  Then in the next paragraphs write about the other rooms or areas such as the kitchen, den, patio, garden, yard, and the garage.  Your goal is to walk through the house with words, satisfying both the buyer and search engines.

After, add a paragraph that includes all the amenities of the community, such as the ocean, the neighbors, tennis, walkways, and that you might be only 5 minutes away from shopping and restaurants.

If you are short on words, give directions to property.  Not all buyers will know how to get to the property.  It may even help other real estate agents find the property if they don’t know where it is. Also, directions give you another opportunity to provide rich text with keywords for the search engines.

Another consideration when writing real estate text is to use new paragraphs as much as possible.  You want a lot of white space on the screen.  You run the risk of loosing a potential reader if there are too many words clustered together.  Starting new paragraphs with an empty line in between the paragraphs is very helpful to readers, just as I am doing in this article.

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