Blogging Tips and Inspiration For Real Estate Websites – Part 3
These fine details can dramatically improve the quality of your blog posts.
The meta title and description of a blog post, along with other data that is less visible to humans, can significantly impact Google ranking and traffic.
In part 3, we will show you the technical finesse on blog posts that give you that winning edge.
Meta Data to Summarize The Blog Post Content
These may be less visible on the blog post itself, but just as critical as the content in order to improve the ranking potential of the content you worked so hard on.
What is a Meta Title? How Is It Different From The Post Title?
The large titles you see on Google search results are (in most cases) the meta title. The meta title also appears on the browser title bar, helping humans switch between tabs/windows with more clarity.
While it defaults to the post title, you can have an attention-grabbing post title (intriguing info, shock, or humour as the hook) while the meta title can remain focused on relevant keywords. It’s recommended that the meta title closely matches the post title (in the H1 tag) and accurately summarises the content.
Example of a Meta Title That is Different From The Post Title
Post Title:
North Shore Real Estate Market Update (November 2024) – Steady Prices, Higher Sales Ratio (89 characters)
Meta Title:
North Shore Real Estate Price/Sales Trends – November 2024 (58 characters)
Google displays up to about 60 characters and truncates the rest. If the meta title entered is too long, or deemed irrelevant compared to the content (keyword stuffing being a key culprit of this), Google may shorten/ignore it.
Where Do The Meta Description and Excerpt Show Up?
The two lines under the search result is the meta description affecting people’s decision on which link to click on. Meta descriptions can also show up when a post is shared on social media, and determines click-through rates. Excerpts on the other hand show up when browsing blog posts to choose from (blog top page, or when searching within the blog).
Meta Descriptions Have Limited Impact on Search Ranking
Meta descriptions are not used to determine ranking according to Google, and are only used to understand the content of your page. However, Google does track which search results were more popular by measuring click-through and bounce rates, so the quality of the meta description can have an indirect (but significant) impact on website traffic.
Writing Tips and Ideas for Effective Meta Descriptions
Just like your blog post itself, this is for the human audience first and foremost.
- Entice them with what they can gain from clicking on the link. New market insights and numbers? Photos and details of a property?
- Don’t repeat what’s on the meta title, nor keyword stuff it. Remember they will see the meta description right under the meta title.
- Describe the actual content without deviation. Google penalizes pages that attempt to “trick” bots into thinking it’s relevant to a certain keyword.
Examples of meta descriptions improved using the above tips
Mediocre Meta Description: North Shore houses, townhomes and condo market report for November 2024
Better Meta Description: See which property types (detached or attached) sold faster than others in the North Shore. Is the buyers market over now? Depends on who you ask.
We use MRS Digital’s Meta Title & Description Length Checker for all of our blog posts. The Brixwork platform has a built-in meta data length checker and preview module when editing listings and regular pages.
Set a Specific Excerpt, And Do Not Fall Back To The Default
If you don’t set a specific excerpt, most WordPress installations will take the first couple of sentences of your post, which is not ideal. Using the meta description as the excerpt is a great way to save time. Note that the length of an excerpt is much more flexible than the meta description, so you can get creative with a more descriptive teaser, or go ultra-short for shock value.
What is a URL slug, And Why Does It Matter?
The trailing text in the address (URL) of the blog post is the URL slug, and this has both human readability and Google™ ranking implications.
Well-written slugs help human users quickly see which link leads when the raw URLs are shared in an email or other messaging channels that do not show a link preview. Ensuring each blog post has a unique and descriptive URL helps Google™ crawl these new pages with ease.
Examples of poor and great URL slugs on blog posts
For a blog post titled “North Shore Real Estate Shifts: Market Update November 2024”, here are the possible ranges of URL slugs from bad to great.
- Bad: https://yourdomain.com/blog/?p=783
No website should have a URL structure like this, unless you entirely depend on clicks within the website only. - Good: https://www.nestpresales.com/blog/north-shore-real-estate-shifts-market-update-november-2024/
The blog post title has been converted into the URL slug with spaces replaced by dashes (-). URLs cannot contain spaces nor special characters.
While putting relevant keywords into the URL is helpful, do not keyword stuff it. Repeating “toronto-realtor-real-estate” in the slug over and over won’t help with ranking at all. Keep it relevant and descriptive to the actual article content.
Categories and Tags – Organizing Your Posts Better
This may be one of the most misunderstood and misused tools on WordPress blogs. Using categories and tags properly can help organize your blog post links better, which helps both humans and Googlebots navigate and discover your content with ease.
Categories Are Broad Groups for Your Articles
Think of categories as courses on a restaurant menu. Appetizer, Sandwiches, Plates, Desserts, and Wine/Beer would be typical. Yet, many real estate blogs make the mistake of creating too many minute categories like this:
- Vancouver Real Estate Trends
- Vancouver Real Estate Market Reports
- Vancouver Condo Listings
- Real Estate in Vancouver
- … and 10+ more! ❌
We’ve seen blog posts that are placed in over 5 categories at a time, many being very redundant. This is a complete waste of time, and your blog navigation becomes an absolute mess.
Using Categories Properly On Your Real Estate Blog
5~6 broad categories is enough, and don’t add more impulsively
Name each category to be very broad and all-encompassing so you don’t have to segment too much. In most cases, you just need “Real Estate Market Update”, without the need for “Toronto Market Update” and “York Market Update” added on a whim. Tags are better for identifying different regions (more on this below). Other category examples to consider:
- Selling a Home
- Buying a Home
- Local Events and News
- Moving Guides
- Presales and New Builds
Put each blog post under 1 category, 2 maximum in rare cases
A market report post does not need “Sellers’ Tips” as the second category, and with broad enough categories you will rarely use more than 1 category per post. If you’re posting about a great presale opportunity, it could go under both “Presale Launches” and “Buying a Home” categories. Post across different categories regularly. This will also keep you committed to a regular posting frequency as we recommended in part 1 of this series.
Tags Are All The Minute Concepts Related to Each Article
Think of tags as ingredient indexes in the back of a cookbook. Each tag is a singular entity, not a compound. The “Chicken Caesar Salad” recipe would be searchable from the following ingredients in the back of the book:
- Chicken
- Lettuce
- Romaine Lettuce
- Anchovy
- Bread
- .. and more.
Each tag must remain a single entity, not a combination of things
What you would NOT find in the index is a compound concept such as “Grilled Chicken”, “Salads” or “Creamy Dressing”. Nor would you see “Appetizer” or “Main Course” in the indexes – those are more like, you guessed it, categories. Too many real estate blogs make the mistake of using tags like categories:
- North Vancouver Condos
- North Vancouver Houses
- North Vancouver Townhome Sales
- North Vancouver Market Update
- West Vancouver Home Sales
- .. and many more! ❌
A proper set of tags for the blog post titled “North Shore Real Estate Shifts: Market Update November 2024” would be:
- North Vancouver
- West Vancouver
- North Shore
- Houses
- Single Family Homes
- Detached Houses
- Condos
- Apartments
- Townhomes
- Townhouses
- Real Estate
- Market
- Sales
- Listings
These are all singular concepts that are relevant to the content (sales reports of all property segments across both West Vancouver and North Vancouver) of this blog post. This post will show in the results when a user opens any of the tag pages, and are visible to Googlebots in the same fashion too.
Each post has many tags, and more specific tags are great
Unlike categories, every single post will have many tags, often reaching over a dozen tags for long and complex articles, the same way some recipes can easily have a dozen or more ingredients.
Note it’s OK to tag different words/phrases that refer to the same thing (note usage of both “Single Family Homes” and “Detached Houses” tags), so that this article is visible under either of the tags.
If the above market update post highlights certain areas where activities were notable, tagging the neighbourhoods is helpful (i.e. if Dundarave had an exceptionally high sales ratio while Lions Bay had very low activity, add the tags “Dundarave” and “Lions Bay” to the article).
Mastering These How-Tos Is Critical to Long Term SEO Success
Anybody can toss up a poorly written (or plagiarised), haphazardly formatted, and lazily engineered blog post. By implementing lessons learned from this Blogging Tips and Inspiration series, you have a much higher chance of securing a higher position on Google for profitable search queries.
More Useful SEO Tips and Tricks For Realtors®
- Part 1 Of Blogging Tips and Inspiration (prequel to this article)
- Part 2 Of Blogging Tips and Inspiration (prequel to this article)
- No time to learn and do all this? Our SEO is the solution you need
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