Let’s get right to the point: We need to talk about your real estate agency’s website. More to the point, we need to have a frank discussion about the words on your website’s pages – how they are helping or hindering you from selling more properties. If you manage your website with the same level of care as most of your competition, odds are good we’re looking more at the latter than the former.
This, of course, presents an opportunity: Are you ready to have your agency show up first in local searches? While we can never guarantee those kinds of results, we can almost guarantee capturing a lot more leads by simply considering how you manage and present your site copy. Do any of these things sound familiar? If so, your site could probably use some help. More on that later. For now, here are five common mistakes many agencies make with their real estate website copy:
1. You’re Not Auditing for SEO
To me, this is the most important piece of your real estate content marketing strategy. Visibility, user experience, and the ability to attract new site visitors are crucial to closing property sales. At least every six months (every quarter is better), your site should go through at least an automatic audit.
The article in the above link by Neil Patel is one of the best out there for explaining the what and the why of site auditing. I highly recommend reading it if you don’t know what a site audit is or why you should spend the money on it (always go for the premium option on these – the free versions are a clear lesson in “you get what you pay for”).
From a written content standpoint, a site audit will tell you where you are using antiquated keywords, where your page formatting needs a tweak, and much, much more. If your content has grown stale, a site audit will show it.
2. You’re Relying Too Heavily on Evergreen Content
Some of your competitors haven’t updated their site content in years. Their sites are probably getting very little traffic these days (unless they’re being told to go there through ads, emails, and other calls to action). The biggest reason for this is that too many people – even in your company’s marketing and media departments – operate under the impression that evergreen content means ever-good SEO. This is simply not the case.
Some topics lend themselves to evergreen content. You can link to that content in your blogs, emails, and social media accounts, but there will always be the need to regularly create new written content to showcase it and attract new attention to it. This is how you attract new buyers: by proving that your agency is the most knowledgeable and most relevant. It is difficult to show relevance when the language of your brand messaging never changes.
3. You Don’t Produce Enough Fresh Content
This one follows on the heels of the last. If you’re relying too heavily on evergreen content, chances are you’ve gotten lax with new content creation. This is where working with a reputable copywriting company like Beez is beneficial.
There are plenty of excuses that you can make for not producing new content in-house, but none of them will get people to your site or convert them to homebuyers. What will is getting serious about your blog, your email lists, and your social media audiences. All of these things help increase site traffic. Stagnate websites are treated as such by the search engines. Sites that constantly produce new, relevant content will always be favored in the SERPs.
4. You’ve Been Recycling Keywords for Years
If you click the link above about evergreen content, you will get a clearer idea of how to do it right. You need to couple evergreen content with evergreen keywords – those that show up so often in keyword research that they have perpetual relevance within an industry or niche. In other words, there are some keywords that people will almost always use when searching for a specific thing. These are the keywords you should be using in evergreen content.
For new content, research keywords before writing every piece of copy. For an established site, new copy typically means your blog. Other site pages should be seeded with evergreen keywords and meta descriptions. The latter can, and should, be reassessed to meet current market keyword trends, which brings us back to auditing. Assess the results of the site audit and determine where your keyword game is lacking. Some of the easiest tweaks involve changing small details, like page meta descriptions to attract more potential buyers.
If you simply don’t have the time to research keywords, delegate the duty. Any good copywriter does keyword research as part of his or her rate. If you work with an agency, be sure it’s part of your brief and insist on a list of keywords used in the article. Our writers at Beez take relevant keywords research seriously and know how to use keywords in an organic way. Whether you work with us, put this directive in your content creation brief and verify that it’s being done on every single piece of copy you buy.
5. Your Blog Game Is Weak
Again, this jumped into my head on the heels of the previous comment. What makes a blog game weak? There are a number of things:
You’re not using it in the first place – This needs to change, and the sooner it does, the better for your sales record. Blogging is the easiest way to add fresh content to your site and seed with the keywords needed to attract the attention of the search engines. No time to write it? We get that. Contact us and let’s see about removing that obstacle from the equation.
You aren’t blogging consistently – Good rankings involve providing that all-important steady stream of content, not a couple new posts a year. Even if they’re optimized perfectly for SEO, single blog posts rarely increase rankings and that means they aren’t attracting new site visitors. That means you’re losing out on working with people who want to buy real estate.
The writing is just plain bad – No brand can posture itself with authority through deplorable content. Don’t put poor copy in front of readers and expect them to respect you as an authority.
I’ll make one last pitch before I let you go on this one: either get a professional perspective on your copy or just hire an expert team like the one at Beez to write your blog (and any and all other site copy) from scratch. It will save time and other valuable resources in the long run, and it will help you close more sales.
