Does anyone write their MLS "Remarks" for the web?

[coastal]

When you enter a new listing in your MLS do you think SEO when you write your property descriptions?

I was wondering if it would make any difference for how the individual listing would rank on the serps?

[GreggRio]

Mike, I don't think so, but you might want to re do your detail IDX meta descriptions. I think that would have more impact. That is of course globally and not listing specific.

[SLP-NYCT]

We have very limited space for writing and can barley fit a description with abbreviated words let alone writing for serps. I have yet to see an MLS listing pop up even on Realtor if I tried searching for it.

Try it yourself, search the specific address of one of your listings, bet it won't come up.

[OCTeam]

Try it yourself, search the specific address of one of your listings, bet it won't come up.

Not sure what you mean by a listing address won't show up. When you search for a listing by address in our area, many times our IDX listing page is in the top 5 results (with Trulia, MoveTo, Refin, etc.) whether it is our listing or not.
One of the nice advantages of a custom IDX.

[Mark Z]

When you enter a new listing in your MLS do you think SEO when you write your property descriptions?

I was wondering if it would make any difference for how the individual listing would rank on the serps?

Don't do it, write the description that best suites a true description of the house. The point of the remarks is to engage a buyer into wanting to get more information or want to see the house. You would be doing your sellers a real injustice if you didn't write the remarks with the intention of just trying to best describe their home.

If you want to write remarks for SEO, write a blog on Activerain or REW blogs, or on your own personal blog. Just my opinion.

[SLP-NYCT]

Not sure what you mean by a listing address won't show up. When you search for a listing by address in our area, many times our IDX listing page is in the top 5 results (with Trulia, MoveTo, Refin, etc.) whether it is our listing or not.
One of the nice advantages of a custom IDX.

I am not following how IDX (I have IDX too) , even custom (I think mine is custom) is capable of having a spider crawl it for every address on your MLS.

Most MLS systems are not public so their data is not in search results. IDX just allows someone to enter specific data and get those results from the private database. Unless the spider is somehow filling out your IDX search page, how is this possible?

I totally understand Featured Listings as they are on your web pages, but not another brokers listings.

[OCTeam]

Larry,
Not sure that you have a custom IDX. However, you do have a close to 200 of your IDX pages indexed on Google.

Guess I need to clarify my response about the address showing up for my site's IDX listings and not yours.

Basically, my detailed IDX pages are custom and each page is set up so the property address, city, MLS# is the page title. That is why someone searching for an address can find many of my pages.

Each IDX detail page is a separate URL and is spiderable (as are all REW's). Your IDX detail page appears to have the area or city (Boulder Brook for example) as the title of the page. So, that is how your page may be found for long tails. Your site will not get crawled for addresses as they are not there. On my site, they are. Maybe you do not want to be found for addresses. It just depends how your IDX pages are set up and for what terms you want your IDX pages to be found for.

Does that help explain it a bit?

Check your source code out on an IDX detail page to see.

[GreggRio]

I just did mine details page of my idx about 3 weeks ago and don't get found yet. Mike, just as with a meta description for a page you create, you can have( if you have an REW IDX) customize the details that are findable by G of the page. So you can have for every property listing you have available in your MLS, be found with several search criteria.Maybe mine is slow in getting indexed as we just did a lot of work an my pr dropped from a 3 to a 2, right now I cannot see to get much to come up.

Here is what I have for a property that displays.
<meta name="description" content="80830471, 2210 DERBY AV, Capitola, California, 95010, real estate listings and homes for sale by www.PropertyInSantaCruz.com, 80830471, Santa Cruz Real Estate, ocean view beach homes, Capitola short sales, Capitola reo's, Capitola foreclosures, Capitola school information" />
<meta name="keywords" content="Capitola homes, Capitola condominiums, Capitola land, ocean view real estate in Santa Cruz county, Capitola view beach homes nearby CapitolaCapitola reo's, Capitola foreclosures" />

Do a view source on lots of listings that come in the searches of g. Look at redfin, trulia, etc and see what they display, it is interesting.

I am not sure if Drew's is different, I put in 26926 Calle Dolores, Dana Point CA 92624 and did not find him listed. I find for me I am not listed in my area all the time, but sometimes I am found. Could be he is indexing or I just picked a bad example.

Call or PM if this is not clear. You do need a custom IDX, it is not something many or any other IDX provider can or will do.

[coastal]

My individual mls listings have been coming up for years in the google serps. I've been using the remarks section as the meta description and wondered if I packed a keyword or two into the beginning of the mls "remarks section" if it would not rank better. It only makes sence that it would. But will it also rank better on my competitors sites if they are using the remarks section as a description as well?