What’s in a Name?
Posted on 26 September 2008 by Eric Northam
The name of a property is the first thing a potential client sees when searching on most property listing websites. When you assign a name to a property in EasyBroker it’s very important to think about how your potential clients will see the name when compared to other listed properties and how the name might impact search engine optimization.
When you give a property a boring name such as “Apartment #1″ or “Apartment #2″ it won’t stand out in a long list of properties. Give each of your listings a name that helps distinguish it from other listings and encourages your visitors to want to know more about it. Include the most important feature of the property, where it’s located, or the propertytype. Here are some examples:
- Beautiful open loft in Palermo with excellent terrace view
- Three bedroom row house in the heart of Canton w/ parking
- Luxury penthouse apartment with private pool in Recoleta
Keep in mind that the words in a property name significantly influence search engine results. For example if someone were to search for “palermo loft terrace”, the first property above is likely to appear in the search engine results. It’s not a perfect science, but the names of your listings are generally considered important by search engines due to how they are used in each web page. However, don’t expect properties you just listed to show up in search engine results immediately. It can sometimes take a week or two before they are picked up by search engines.
One other naming convention that you might want to consider when naming properties in a major city is to include the cross streets or block that the property is on. For example
- Cordoba and Thames: Beautiful open loft in Palermo with excellent terrace view
- Cordoba 5100: Beautiful open loft in Palermo with excellent terrace view
This convention helps visitors clearly and quickly know where a property is located without knowing the exact address. If you have multiple listings on the same cross streets you may want to add a number to distinguish them and also provide an easy way for your clients to refer to apartments without having to know the property code.
- Cordoba and Thames #1: Beautiful open loft in Palermo with excellent terrace view
- Cordoba and Thames #2: Quiet inside French style apartment with patio
If you name your properties using relevant and descriptive words you will not only set your properties apart from others listings but also help drive more visitors to your listings from search engines.
January 12th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
[...] How important is the name of your property? Well, let’s put it this way. You can look at the property’s name like a newspaper headline. On average, you have 5 to 7 seconds to attract someone’s attention and this is done with the headline. After that, 2 of every 10 readers will continue reading past your headline. Therefore it is important to choose a name that will convert readers into potential buyers or renters. And it can be done. Writer John Wesley experimented with this by posting an article on the online called “Two Types of Cognition.” Over the next few days, he generated a hundred hits. Not bad, but not impressive either. Then he changed the name of his title to “Learn to Understand Your Own Intelligence” and in the next couple of days it generated over 5000 hits. That’s a 50 times increase simply because of a name change. The name of your property is no different and can dramatically change the results when using online listing sites. Thus, the name of your property is very important. Visit our previous post for more ideas about how to name your property. [...]