What Most Marketers Get Wrong About Apartment SEO

Many properties fail to get results from their SEO campaigns. Often, it’s because they are making grave mistakes that are all too common in multifamily real estate.

In this article, we’ll share the four most critical apartment SEO blunders, so you can maximize your search results in 2021 and beyond.

Choosing a generic keyword strategy 

If you had to choose between competing with a website that has a million dollar budget, or a website with a thousand dollar monthly budget, which would you choose?

The latter, right?

This may seem obvious, yet this is a mistake we see marketers make every day trying to rank property websites using the wrong keywords.

One of the most important concepts to understand in Apartment SEO is the local map pack. It looks like this:

The map pack is important because it allows you to level the playing field.

Instead of competing with an ILS (Internet Listing Service) giant (i.e., Apartments.com) that spends millions on SEO, you can limit your competition to properties whose resources are more proportionate to yours by focusing on keywords that trigger the local map pack.

Without the right keyword strategy, your SEO campaign will never be successful. (Remember, the best place to bury a body is on the second page of Google.)

Optimizing a website that will never rank

It’s imperative to understand that Google doesn’t care about you—it wants to provide the best results to its customers.

Google knows which websites visitors like, and which they don’t. If your website is clean and engaging, search engines will notice that your visitors love you, and you’ll be rewarded with higher rankings.

If your website looks like it’s from 2001, it won’t matter how good your SEO strategy is. You’ve failed already.

Newsflash—if your website requires Adobe Flash Player, you might want to hold off on that SEO campaign and get a redesign first.

Neglecting Google My Business

Back to the local map pack. If you have a good keyword strategy, your Google My Business (GMB) listing will be the first thing potential renters see when they find your property in their apartment search.

Make sure to fill it out completely and correctly. Having an accurate profile communicates that you care about your customers, which makes it easier to get your desired rankings.

This is also important because there are many direct actions visitors can take using your GMB listing, such as calling you directly, messaging you, scheduling a tour, or even going straight to your floorplans page.

To ensure your GMB listing is fully optimized, take a look at our Google My Business Checklist.

Not having a review-generation strategy

One of the biggest ranking factors for getting your GMB listing to that No. 1 spot is how many positive reviews you have.

Remember, Google wants to please its customers, so when Google’s own customers are singing your praises with 5-star reviews, you’ll hit that No. 1 spot in no time.

Bottom line: Having a review-generation strategy is the key to winning at local SEO.

While getting up to speed on the intricacies of multifamily SEO takes some work, the long-term success makes it all worth it. A property with strong SEO will have more flexibility with its budget and can easily avoid being at the mercy of apartment listing sites.

Read this article for a more extensive list of multifamily best practices in SEO.