Maybe you’ve finally started creating blogs and putting everything on your website. Now you’re ready to conquer the world with all that great content marketing!
Not so fast.
You can create all the content you want, but if the search engines can’t find you – how will owner leads find you?
The answer is Search Engine Optimization.
If you haven’t read our blog about How to Generate A Year’s Worth of Property Management Blog Topics, we highly encourage you to do so. After coming up with topics, the next important step is to make sure your blog is easily discoverable by your target audience. This is where SEO comes in.
By implementing SEO blogging best practices for your property management company, you can ensure that your blog content ranks higher in search results, driving more search traffic to your website. In this blog, we’ll walk you through six key SEO tips that will help your blog get found by people who are actively searching for the services you offer for their rental properties.
If you already have blogs on your site and you want to learn how to get those found, this blog is for you. Lead people to your content with these 6 SEO blogging tips for property managers:
Blogging Tip #1: Identify a Focus Keyword and Use It in Your Blog
The first property management SEO strategy on our list is not as simple as it sounds. Do some keyword research and choose a “focus keyword” to help Google and other search engines easily determine the main point of your blog post. The focus keyword is a word or phrase you want to be found for. Put your keyword in the URL, the title, and the body of your blog.
When choosing keywords for your blogs, don’t forget about local SEO! For property management companies, local SEO is often very important for search engine rankings and attracting local property owners.
Most blog sites automatically create a URL for your blog post when you enter your title, but they’ll give you the option to modify it. When creating your blog post URL, put your keyword in the beginning and don’t use any spaces between words; use dashes between words instead. URL’s don’t have spaces.
In the title and the body, try your best to place your keyword near the beginning. More importantly, please be sure it makes sense. There’s nothing worse than keywords shoved into sentences where they don’t belong. (This is called keyword stuffing!) If search engines get a whiff of this, they will penalize you for it. Keep it natural and be sure it sounds right to both search engine algorithms AND humans.
Blogging Tip #2: Blog Videos and Images
Remember that your audience accesses the internet from a variety of devices and under a variety of circumstances. That means some people will want to enjoy your content via video while others will desire a readable option. For example, you don’t want to turn off leads because your content is only available on video, and a person discovers your blog while browsing in a public place where playing audio was not an option. Some people prefer to read and skim. Others would rather watch videos. The best way to capture the most attention is to have both text and video. If you do create a video to complement the text, make sure to put that at the top of your post. You’ll attract a much wider audience with a video than if you just posted a text blog on your website.
If you absolutely cannot have video (which is a tragedy), make sure you at least have images with titles or descriptions. These are called “alt tags,” and it helps search engine bots “read” images. Alt tags are also useful to humans when a webpage cannot display images correctly or when a visually-impaired person uses software to read out contents of a webpage.
Using the focus keyword in your alt tag is a fantastic idea. But don’t force it if the keyword doesn’t really describe the image.
Blogging Tip #3: Link Your Property Management Blog Post to Previous Content
Look for opportunities to link your blog post to other content on your site. Make sure you are linking to content you want people to find, and make sure it’s what you’d expect to find if you followed that link. Pick out the key phrases in your copy that describe the topic of the content you want to link back to, and then hyperlink the phrase. Here at Fourandhalf, when we post blogs for our clients we like to link back to the client’s property management services page when the opportunity arises. This helps with ranking for the services page, which is one of the most important pages on your website.
That’s important. Backlinks from other sites are important in the eyes of a search engine, but internal links are good, too.
Links will also create pathways that encourage your web visitors to stay on your site longer. They make it easy for a reader to find other content you’ve written that they will also enjoy, and this creates lasting exposure for blog posts you published in the past. If you are about to publish a post that’s all about running background checks on prospective tenants, throw in a link to that post you published a year ago about tenant screening or avoiding evictions. If your readers enjoy your new post about background checks, they will appreciate the suggestion to continue reading about related topics, and you’ve already done the legwork on producing that content. Hold onto your readers longer and gain traffic on old posts.
Blogging Tip #4: Look at Headers, Tags, and Categories to Boost Your Search Engine Optimization
Take a look at headers, tags, and categories. Divide up all those great paragraphs in your written blog with headers. This gives readers the opportunity to skim your content easily, and Google will be able to decipher the different portions of your blog. Note that creating a header is different than simply making your title bold or increasing the font size. You’ll want to use the H1 and H2 tags on your blog site as a best practice. Use the keywords in headers if you can, but remember – don’t force it when it doesn’t make sense.
Tags and categories can be used to indicate underlying themes in your content. For example, blogs about handling difficult tenants or tenant screening could have an underlying theme of landlord education. Using tags and categories make it easier to group related content and display certain groups of blogs on relevant pages.
Blogging Tip #5: Don’t Forget the Call To Action
This is one of the most important items on our list of SEO blogging tips. Don’t skip the Call To Action, or the CTA. A CTA is something that inspires readers to do something, like fill out a form or call. It should be all over your property management website, but especially at the end of each blog post.
Instead of a form button that says “submit,” a good Call To Action could be, “Get my Free Rental Analysis.” It needs to be enticing. It should get people to pick up the phone and want to learn more about your property management business and services. This step may be short and sweet, but it is critical. You need to guide your readers toward their next steps after reading your blog, or they might bounce. No need to be fancy. It can be as simple as “Call Fourandhalf to learn more or if you have questions about property management marketing.”
Blogging Tip #6: Promote Your Content
You can promote your content in several ways. Start with social media. Take your SEO-friendly link for Tip 1 and share it on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and anywhere else you can. This will drive more traffic to your website. It will keep your current customers thinking about you and provide you the opportunity to get found by the audiences those platforms have already attracted.
Check out your email list, too. When’s the last time you sent some educational content to prospects? They’re waiting for it. This builds trust and allows you to keep that line of communication open without making a hard sell.
Stretch the content any way you can. Use these blogs for an eBook or turn them into a property management podcast. People will love it, and search engines will pick up on the additional engagement you’re able to stir up.
If you want to brainstorm with us or learn more about how to get your blog the attention it deserves, contact us at Fourandhalf – Internet Marketing for Property Managers.
(Psssst: That last sentence? Our Call To Action.)
