Writing an effective real estate ad is more important now than ever. Not only do you need to display enough information in the ad to give Dispatch readers all they need to now, but you also need to include enough information in the ad to optimize its success online.

1. Begin each ad with a community name followed by a hyphen .
   1. For example, REYNOLDSBURG - 3BR, 2BA, new kitchen etc., etc., etc.
   By including the community name and hyphen in the beginning of the ad, the ad will be searchable by the community name (in this case Reynoldsburg) on ColumbusRealEstate.com. If you do not start out with a community name followed by a hyphen, the ad will will display as a Columbus listing and could affect your results.
2. Include the street address of the property in the ad. By including the street address in your ad, home buyers searching on ColumbusRealEstate.com will be able to map out your property, determine if it’s an area they want to live and get driving directions to the property. In addition, some people choose to display all of their search results on a map, rather than in a listing format. If you don’t include your street address in the ad, your home will not show up in the mapped search results.
3. Use standard 2-letter abbreviations for bedroom (BR) and bath (BA). The search engine on ColumbusRealEstate.com will pull the number of bedrooms and baths from the text of the ad, but only if you use the standard abbreviations BR for bedroom and BA for baths.
4. Include a price. By including a price in your ad, home buyers searching on ColumbusRealEstate.com will be able to find your listing more effectively. If you do not include a price in your ad, it will not be searchable when buyers are looking for a particular price range. And, adding a price, will help filter out the callers who may not be capable or willing to pay your asking price. Important – if a price range is listed in the ad, the first price is what will be used for the search ($200,000-$250,000 will display as $200,000). Also, do not use a “k” for prices. The search engine will read $190K as $190, instead use $190,000.