Today, we describe 5 common SEO mistakes that rob your property management website of high search rankings. At Fourandhalf, we work on improving the digital presence of property management companies and these common areas for improvement are just a few items that any non-technical person can fix with a little help.

1. Who Are You? Where Are You?

The first mistake is not being clear about what you do and where you are. Although search algorithms are more robust than in years past, you still have to make sure you do not leave anything open to interpretation. For example, are you a property manager in Portland, Maine or Portland, Oregon? Things like this can be helped by implementing schema.org markup on your website. Just remember that this is not a magic bullet that will fix everything and bring you to page one on Google. However, schema.org does specify to search engines some of the most important details about your business, helping them categorize and rank your website correctly.

2. Social Media + Your Website

You have social pages, but they are not linked to your website. We recommend having links to those sites in your footer or header, but the most important thing you need is a link to your Google My Business profile because that backlink will help you rank higher in your local maps search results. These are the listings that come up when people search online for services like yours and they are highly visible.

3. Don’t Take a Nap on your N.A.P.

N.A.P. stands for name, address, and phone number. An inconsistent N.A.P. across web listings will be a problem for you during searches. Think about it from a search engine’s perspective; would you rank a local service business high if you are not confident in the business’s phone number, address or name?

For your address, go to USPS and see how they suggest you format your address. The devil is in the details – on your website and on Yelp, Google My business, etc., is Boulevard spelled out or abbreviated? Take the address USPS gives you, and use the same exact formatting and abbreviations on your website and across the web to ensure you are being consistent, and in line with the Post Office’s standard formatting rules.

4. Creating an Interactive Experience with Videos

Another big mistake is not using videos on your website. If you already have a couple of videos, we highly recommend that you put them on your home page. You want to have that hook that keeps visitors on your site for a longer period of time. A YouTube video is a great strategy to get people to stay engaged on your site, and the longer your visitor stays there, the higher you rank, because Google tracks the time spent watching YouTube videos. A person viewing most or all of a video on your site shows Google that you have the answers that they were searching for.

5. Optimize for the Small Screen

The final mistake, and potentially the most damaging one, is not having a fully mobile-responsive website. Most online searches are done on mobile devices these days. It’s just how the world works. Google has implemented a mobile-first indexing strategy. Their algorithm prioritizes mobile site content when ranking pages. So, if your desktop site is different from what comes up on mobile devices, have your webmaster take a look at it to be sure your content takes Google’s new standards into account, because the content on the mobile version of your site will be used to determine your ranking – not your desktop site. Again, this is only a problem when your mobile site has different content than your main site.

If you have any questions about these five mistakes and would like one of our experts to take a look at your website, please contact us at Fourandhalf.