How to Create Better Real Estate Content for Your Website or Blog

In this article: How to create high-quality real estate content for your blog or website, based on my 17 years of lessons learned!

When it comes to real estate blogging, there’s content … and then there’s great content. In this article, you’ll learn how to create the latter in order to stand out from the crowd.

It takes a lot of time and effort to create great content for a real estate blog or website. But the results are worth it. Over time, you’ll be rewarded with better search engine results, more traffic, and more leads from potential clients.

How to Create Real Estate Blog or Website Content

The truth is, anyone can create real estate blog content. If you can string together complete sentences, organize them into logical paragraphs, and convey ideas to a specific audience, you have the skills needed to create content for your website or blog.

But those are just the basics—and you want to go beyond the basics.

You want to create superior real estate blog content, the kind that helps you stand out in a crowded field. You want to create articles, blog posts, or news reports that are better than anything else being published by other agents in your area. You want to excel.

Here’s how to accomplish this worthwhile goal:

1. Identify your target audience and what they need.

You can’t write useful real estate blog content until you know who your audience is. Are you writing for home buyers or sellers? If you’re writing for buyers, what kind of information do they need in order to succeed in the market? The same question applies for sellers.

Maybe your audience includes first-time buyers … or homeowners who are thinking about selling in the near future … or people who are relocating from elsewhere.

The point is, you have to know exactly who you’re talking to and what kind of information they need. Only then can you create the kind of real estate content that addresses those needs and earns their attention.

I recommend creating an audience “persona” for this purpose. In the marketing world, a persona is a fictional profile that represents a specific group of consumers, shoppers or customers. You can apply the same concept to your real estate blogging efforts.

Personas serve as a constant reminder of who your audience is and what kind of information they need. This kind of insight will help you create purposeful real estate content that truly helps you intended audience.

2. Create an objective statement for your blog post.

Before you start writing your next blog post or article, make sure you know what purpose it serves. Ask yourself, what is the point of this blog post? What am I trying to accomplish here?

(You can combine this with your reader persona from step #1 for even better results.)

For example, when writing real estate content for my website, I might decide that my purpose is to bring local home buyers up to speed on current market conditions, with an emphasis on the inventory shortage. Notice this is a very specific goal with a specific audience in mind.

3. Create an outline to keep yourself on track.

Take it from someone who has written thousands of real estate articles and blog posts over the years. An outline will save you time and energy, while producing a better finished product. It will help you get from the starting point to the finish line, without getting lost along the way.

And don’t worry. I’m not talking about those complicated essay outlines you had to create for high school English class. For real estate blog content, your outline can simply include a title, an objective, and the key points you want to cover.

4. Do some keyword research.

Keyword research tools can help you identify the specific words and phrases people are searching online, as it relates to your real estate blog content strategy. You can also use these tools to generate additional topic ideas to support your long-term blogging efforts.

Some of these tools are free, while others charge a monthly or annual fee.

For example, Google offers a free keyword research tool known as Keyword Planner. To access it, you only need to have a Google account. Tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush offer more advanced features, but charge a fee for them.

You could also start typing some keywords or topics into Google, to trigger the “auto suggestion” feature. You’ve probably seen this in action. You start typing some words into Google, and it makes suggestions based on those words.

These suggestions represent actual search trends. So it’s a great way to identify keywords for real estate content creation.

5. Write like you’re explaining a topic to a friend.

When it comes to writing for the web, a casual and conversational tone typically works better than an academic or professorial tone. Don’t obsess about sentence structure and word choice. Just write in a clear, concise manner using your natural voice.

A long time ago, a senior copywriter told me to “write like I’m explaining something to a curious friend.” Those are words of wisdom, and they can help you create better real estate content.

6. Incorporate real estate data and statistics.

This is one of those things that distinguish great real estate blog content from mediocre material. If you really want to make your articles and reports more useful for the reader, include specifics to support the topic.

For instance, instead of just saying that the market is “hot” right now, provide some statistics to back it up. You could incorporate data relating to home price trends, sales activity, the supply situation, etc. Most of this data is easily accessible online, so why not use it?

Here are some of my favorite sources for real estate data:

• Realtor.com monthly housing reports (available here)
• RE/MAX monthly real estate reports (available here)
• Redfin’s interactive data center (available here)
• Freddie Mac’s weekly mortgage rate surveys (available here)
• Home price data from Zillow, available for most U.S. cities

Remember, you’re creating real estate content with a specific audience in mind. You’re trying to educate your readers and make them better informed. You can’t do that by providing generalities. You have to dig deep and incorporate data, statistics, quotes from experts, etc.

It’s more work, but that’s the cost of creating great content on a real estate blog.

7. Provide comprehensive, in-depth information.

Don’t let anyone tell you that “people don’t read online,” or that they only “skim” content. This might be true for celebrity gossip on people.com. But when it comes to serious financial matters like real estate and mortgage loans, people will read lengthy content.

(As long as it’s worth reading.)

A real estate blog post should be as long as needed to cover the topic thoroughly. It might end up being 700 words long, or more than 2,000. The ideal length can vary depending on the complexity of the subject. But don’t feel like you have to “keep it short” just because you’re writing for the web.

Longer articles often perform better in search engines, as well. That’s because they tend to be more informative, authoritative and useful. Just be sure to format your blog content for easy reading, which brings us to tip #8…

8. Format web content with short paragraphs, bullets and headers.

Have you ever stumbled across an article online, only to discover that it was one big, dense block of text with no paragraphs? It wasn’t easy to read, was it?

When creating real estate blog or website content, try to apply the best practices of online formatting. This includes the following:

• Break up your content into short paragraphs for easier consumption.
• Use descriptive sub-headers, like the ones used throughout this article.
• Use bullet points when creating a list or a series of steps.

These efforts will help your readers consume your content, which is exactly what you want.

9. Proofread and optimize before publishing.

No one can write with 100% accuracy all the time. Typos happen. Even so, you should at least strive for perfection when writing content for your website.

Publishing a real estate blog post full of typos and grammatical errors probably won’t help you win any new clients. Well-written content, on the other hand, shows that you have good attention to detail. And that’s an important trait for a real estate professional.

So, before you click the publish button, do a thorough round of proofreading. You’re looking for typos and grammatical errors, obviously. But you also want to make sure your content reads well. And the best way to do that is by reading it out loud. If something sounds clumsy or convoluted, revise until it sounds better.

During the proofreading phase, you can also optimize your real estate content with the keywords you identified earlier. Incorporate keywords in a natural way, without repeating them ad nauseam. This will increase the chance that your content comes up in relevant search results.

10. Use website analytics to monitor performance.

Website analytics tools can help you figure out how your real estate blog content is performing over time. They can show how many visitors you’re receiving, how long they’re staying on the site, and other useful insights. You can also see how you rank within the search engines, on a page-by-page basis.

Armed with this information, you can expand your real estate content efforts over time. You can figure out what kinds of topics resonate with your audience and generate the most traffic.

Without a basic analytics program installed, you wouldn’t have any of these insights.

Pre-Publication Checklist

The following checklist will help you create real estate website content that serves your audience while also helping you increase your traffic and visibility.

Before publishing a blog post or article, ask yourself the following:

• Is it more useful than similar articles that already exist online?
• Have I fully explored this topic from every possible angle?
• Will this article help my readers grasp a concept or complete a task?
• Is it optimized with relevant keywords in all the right places?
• Will people be glad they found this article online?
• Is it the kind of content they would bookmark and share with others?
• Have I supported my article with relevant statistics or data?
• Is it easy to ready, with short paragraphs, bullets and sub-headers?

If you can answer yes to all of these questions, you have created high-quality real estate content. Now make it a habit going forward!