Real Estate Schema Markup - SEO for Property Listings

By Erik Bonsaksen on 2023-01-06

Real Estate Schema Markup - SEO for Property Listings

What is Real Estate Schema Markup?

It's structured data on your pages for property listings on sale or to rent, as well as broker and agency details.

Add real estate schema markup types to your site's HTML to help search engines:

  • Understand your property listing content
  • Display it more effectively through rich snippets such as photos and prices
  • Make it easier for people to find while using real estate-related search terms
  • Improve search engine rankings for real estate queries

Take for instance this bad boy of a real estate collection page:

real estate collection page

Which has all these types of structured data:

real estate structured data

And they are doing pretty good in the SERP:

real estate SERP

They are at least doing something right.

Importance of SEO for Real Estate

Digitalization of the real estate industry is striking. Buying a home was once an in-person experience. Now it's all about virtual 3D tours and online open house confirmation. Everything from house hunting to contract signing is done digitally, so naturally real estate SEO is crucial.

You need to get your listings in front of potential buyers during the research and decision phase - all while online competition is more competitive than ever. Real estate schema markup is therefore an easy, valuable way to gain search visibility, to stand out from the crowd and close the sale.

Schemas for Real Estate Sites

Luckily for real estate agents or SEOers under their payroll, Schema.org has specific schema markup types specifically for the real estate industry.

RealEstateListing

The RealEstateListing schema is applicable to page content that describe one or more real-estates, with function to either sell or lease out. This schema has append a lot information, but has only two unique RealEstateListing properties:

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "RealEstateListing",
  "url": "https://vganchoice.com/super-property/",
  "name": "VGAN Super Property",
  "description": "VGAN supports Super Property",
  "datePosted": "	2022-12-19T11:33:41+01:00",
  "leaseLength": {
    "@type": "QuantitativeValue",
    "value": 6,
    "unitText": "months"
  }
}

SingleFamilyResidence

The SingleFamilyResidence schema specifies information on a single-family home, such as number of rooms and number of allowed occupancy. It owns the following properties:

  • numberOfRooms
  • Occupancy

Other properties are inherited from the markup types of House, Accommodation, Place, and Thing elements.

Example JSON-LD code from schema.org:

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "SingleFamilyResidence",
  "name": "1331 St George Street - Family House",
  "description": "Great opportunity to own this 2500 sqft built in 1988.",
  "numberOfRooms": 5,
  "occupancy": {
    "@type": "QuantitativeValue",
    "minValue": 1,
    "maxValue": 5
  },
  "floorSize": {
    "@type": "QuantitativeValue",
    "value": 2500,
    "unitCode": "FTK"
  },
  "leaseLength": {
    "@type": "QuantitativeValue",
    "value": 6,
    "unitText": "months"
  },
  "numberOfBathroomsTotal": 3,
  "numberOfBedrooms": 4,
  "permittedUsage": "Perfectly suitable for a family with two kids.",
  "petsAllowed": "Only cats are allowed",
  "yearBuilt": 1988,
  "address": {
    "@type": "PostalAddress",
    "addressCountry": "CA",
    "addressLocality": "Vancouver",
    "addressRegion": "British Columbia",
    "postalCode": "V5T 1Z7",
    "streetAddress": "1331 St George Street"
  },
  "telephone": "+1-604-829-6070"
}

Additional Schema Markups for Real Estate SEO

There are additional schema types relevant for the real estate industry, despite not being exclusively made for it. They are valuable on a general level for highlighting information from listings visually in the SERPs.

Video Schema for Real Estate

If you have videos of the property, add Video schema to highlight your content through thumbnail, key moments or virtual tour links in the SERP. This looks helluva professional to display in-depth information from the property listing.

Video Schema Markup

Event Schema for Real Estate

Add Event schema to display when the home viewing takes place, either with specific dates or open house hours. You could even add event action and link to a booking page.

Event Schema Markup

Product Schema for Real Estate

Try the Product Schema Markup, or just the Offer schema to enable rich results for prices in the SERP. It's something about showing the numbers right there and then that attracts us on a certain level.

Product Schema Markup

Organization Schema for Real Estate

The Organization Schema Markup highlights your business information such as the address, logo, telephone number, social media and reviews. It's one of the most spacious Google Knowledge Panel on the side of the SERPs.

Organization Schema Markup

FAQ Schema for Real Estate

The powerful FAQ schema for frequently asked questions is an authoritative question and answer box directly in the search result page. It takes a lot of real estate(!) in the SERP, and gives you the opportunity to answer key questions related to the query. Read more about how to add it FAQ implementation guide

FAQ Schema Markup

How to Real Estate Schema Markups to Your Website

There's 3 ways to do it:

  1. Add structured data directly to your site's HTML (require coding skills)
  2. If you have a CMS: Use a plugin (little customization)
  3. Deploy through metamanager (flexible, published within minutes)

You're welcome to get a schema markup audit and/or try our solution.

Conclusion

Digitalization of the housing industry is making real estate SEO more important, and to keep an edge beyond your competitors there's an opportunity to use real estate schema markups. These are:

  • RealEstateListing
  • LeaseLength
  • SingleFamilyResidence
  • Video
  • Event
  • Product
  • Organization
  • FAQ