It used to be that renters looking for a new apartment would jump in their car and drive around town looking for their next place. Or, they pulled out the big yellow phone book to find their next place. Not anymore. Today, 94% of apartment searchers reach for their tablet, smart phone, or laptop and they Google exactly what they are looking for.

This drives home the fact that marketing isn’t just billboards and TV ads anymore. The Internet is a primary source for gathering information. So, search engine optimization (SEO) has to be part of your marketing strategy in order for you to stay relevant.

Despite the known fact that online is the way people search for everything from TVs to shoes, property owners, managers, and developers are neglecting the need for a well-crafted apartment website complete with on-page SEO optimizations. If your apartment’s website is not SEO optimized, it’s as if you are hiding your apartment community in the weeds.

So what is SEO?

By now most of us have at least heard of SEO. It’s a term that is thrown around in pretty much every conversation about a website’s visibility. As property managers, it may not be in your job description to learn about websites and SEO but it certainly would make your job easier if you did.

SEO is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or webpage in a search engine’s natural or unpaid organic search results.

Here are some of the basics about SEO and why it’s crucial to property managers getting more prospects:

There are two main types of SEO tactics–black-hat and white-hat.

An SEO technique is considered white-hat if it conforms to the search engine guidelines and involves no deception. White-hat is generally summed up as creating content for users, not for search engines, and then making that content easily accessible.

White-hat SEO is the tactic that you want to use, so if you hire an outside source for SEO implantation, ask them what method they will be using. As SEO expert Matt Cutts says, “The objective is not to make your links appear natural, the objective is that your links are natural.”

Black-hat SEO tactics attempts to improve rankings in ways that are disapproved of by the search engines, or involve deceptions. One black-hat technique is to use text that is hidden either as text color similar to the background, or positioned off screen. This tactic is considered dishonest and a website using this method could end up being banned by some or all search engines.

“Spiders” and why links to a property’s website are important

A “spider” is a piece of software that follows links throughout the Internet, grabbing content from sites and adding it to search engine databases. Spiders follow links from one page to another and from one site to another. Getting your site linked from other relevant sites helps with establishing page rank authority and aids tremendously in SEO.

Have text content on your pages

Images are great, they really are. They can help convert prospects quickly and simply. But search engines love text. So, get a professional copywriter to write content about you’reproperty. It doesn’t need to be a lot, but a well-written paragraph or two on each page with unique content is essential to ranking well.

Re-optimize to change it up

SEO should be re-examined at least once a year, and preferably more often, to ensure it is staying current with new search engine algorithm changes. For example, Google just recently announced SSL (the lock symbol indicating your site is secure) is a new factor in page rank.

How Rentbot can help your SEO

Rentbot, the apartment website solution, can optimizes your property’s website so that it’s highly searchable and will rank well in organic search engine results.

We do this in two ways. First, we build your apartment/community website with SEO architecture. This involves several factors such as ensuring search-friendly URLs with meaningful names. Our team uses HTML5 to semantically emphasize the import parts of the page content to search engines. The architecture has clear and consistent header and footer navigation to assist with intra-site links. All this means that Rentbot sites are optimized to load quickly and securely via SSL.

Next, we provide on-page SEO optimizations, which is the text or copy that is on each page. This includes the page title, search description, headlines (or H tags), and body copy. These elements work together to tell search engines what the page is about. The combined effects of on-page SEO optimization and SEO architecture will put your community in the online spotlight and prospects will be flocking to your community.

For more information or to get started with a Rentbot apartment website call us today: 1.844.473.6826

About the author

Jacquelyn Trimper joined the Rentbot team in 2014 after surviving 4 years in property management and marketing. She loves marketing, sales, and writing to help apartment owners and property managers.