Hiring A Real Estate Writer
If you've spent any time looking for quality real estate SEO services, you'll know that content development strategies are an important theme.
Today, publishing valuable content on your website is still the cornerstone of a successful SEO strategy. But not just any content will do. It needs to be valuable, informative, and enjoyable to read. Even in real estate, understanding the fundamentals of what makes good content will inform how you understand real estate SEO as a whole.
Unfortunately, finding content writers for real estate with industry knowledge, expertise, and great writing skills can be like finding a needle in a haystack.
So, here are some important qualities to look for in an SEO writer for real estate:
A Good Understanding of SEO
The term "copywriter" encompasses all forms of content, from newspaper ads to press releases. Writing for the web is vastly different than a newspaper article or ad copy and your writer should be well aware of these differences. Having a good foundation in the basics of real estate SEO is useful too.
When writing for the web, you want a writer who can produce content that is:
- Concise and easy to understand
- Informative, unique and authoritative
- Engaging and scannable
- Well-optimized, using best practices for titles, headings, and so on.
In short, a content writer doesn't need to be a complete technical SEO wizard, but they should have some idea of how to craft content that is engaging to users and also has the best chances of showing up in search results.
On top of this, the content should always align with your business goals and use the appropriate voice for your brand and the type of content.
Research Skills
Real estate content typically includes a lot of local information, so why not hire someone who knows and understands real estate and how to research your area and market. A good content writer should also know how to ask the right questions. What is your business niche? What is your service area? Who are your ideal clients?
"Research skills" also includes keyword research for real estate. A good SEO writer should be skilled in identifying relevant keywords that are commonly searched for by users and incorporating them strategically into their content to optimize for search engines.
The best SEO writers will have access to the right tools and data to optimize their content. Tools such as Google Analytics and Google Search Console can be beneficial in analyzing data, identifying opportunities, and making data-driven decisions to ensure locally relevant content.
Basic Web Design Ability
Writing is one thing. Publishing online is another. To save time and avoid missteps, a good real estate writer should have the skills and access required to take their content and publish it online.
This ensures that the content comes out well-optimized and looking polished.
So, here are some additional things that an SEO writer should know:
- Image optimization - This includes compressing and saving image files in next-gen formats, using descriptive file names and alt tags, and optimizing image sizes for faster page load times. Design skills are also a plus, knowing how to edit and layout high-resolution images so they look their best.
- Basic HTML - Knowing HTML is useful for improving appearance and making content responsive on multiple devices. It's also required for inputting required meta tags, internal links, and correctly formatting images.
- Site structure - Implementation correct navigation techniques, including linking between pages and nested page structures, requires an understanding of optimized site structure for real estate websites.
Search engine optimization is a multi-faceted practice involving overlapping sets of skills and knowledge. Effective SEO involves integrating these overlapping areas of expertise into a cohesive strategy, and an SEO writing services that combines them all into one package is invaluable.
Great Writing
Great SEO writers should also be great writers. However, being a great writer for web content isn't just about having a mastery of the language. No one is going to stick around to read the real estate equivalent of Shakespeare.
Great content writing for real estate websites requires a few key characteristics. It should be concise yet comprehensive, engaging and action-oriented, it should also be relevant, credible, accessible, and SEO friendly.
Combining all these elements together takes time, skill, patience, and experience, as well as a learner's mindset, as the requirements and best-practices for SEO are constantly evolving.
Conversely, here's what to look for to identify bad SEO writing:
- Content doesn't answer the question being posed or address the problem or topic of the page
- Text is presented in uniform blocks without adequate sign-posting or visual breaks
- Headlines don't adequately sum-up the topic or direction of the content
- The information is vague and generic
- Introductory paragraphs have excessive pre-ambles
- Content is short on specific examples, case studies, or actionable information
- Excessive use of jargon
- Language errors, including poor spelling and grammar
Can AI Replace Human SEO Writers?
Using AI for writing content is an idea that has gained a lot of traction recently, and it's not hard to understand why.
AI writing tools offer benefits such as increased efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and scalability. However, there are also potential pitfalls, such as concerns about originality, quality, and potential hits to search ranking if the AI content goes against Google's guidelines.
So it's important to use AI-generated content judiciously, ensuring that it is supplemented with human oversight and always produced for people first.
Check out this article for a more in-depth exploration of AI and SEO, or head to the forums for the latest on human-assisted AI for real estate marketing.
To maximize your digital marketing efforts, your content should be reflective of your brand in every way possible.
With the right SEO services, you can maximize your real estate marketing efforts, so contact Real Estate Webmasters today for industry-leading real estate SEO.