SEO for Property Management
Are you a property management company wondering if you need better website SEO, but aren’t sure what exactly SEO is? Why it matters for property managers? Or how can it improve your property management website?
We want to explain what property management SEO really is, what it isn’t, and what it means to you as a property manager.
What Is Search Engine Optimization?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It’s the process of improving your website so that it will rank higher and get more organic traffic from search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing.
You could have the best property management company in the country, but it doesn’t matter much if no one is able to find you online. SEO is the process of adding relevant information to your property management website so that the search engine algorithms are able to put your site in front of the right people.
For example, if a searcher is looking for “San Francisco property management,” the search engine is looking for the most qualified, trustworthy, and reputable property management companies to list first.
But it can’t talk to you directly, so it uses clues on your website to make search engine algorithms determine how high your website or page should rank. Property management SEO clues can include things like:
- How closely the content on your website matches the searcher’s particular keyword
- How highly your company is rated/reviewed
- Your page speed
- How many other websites/pages have linked to your website
- If your company has supportive pages on social media
- How recently your website was updated with the most relevant information
SEO Ranking Factors to Pay Attention to For Your Property Management Company
Like we said in the beginning, SEO is a process, not a product, so no one can guarantee moving your website to #1 on Google. But, you do have control over many factors that influence SEO, and through careful research and effort, you can improve your search engine rankings over time. Let’s briefly break down some of the important factors of search engine optimization for a property manager.
Keywords
Think of the way that Google reads your website now as a newspaper. Google bots scan the headings of your content first, to get the gist of what the page is about. And then Google scans your paragraphs for keywords and phrases to make sure that it supports those headers.
Keyword Research
It’s important to sprinkle in relevant keywords to your content – so that the search engines know what your page is about and your target audience is able to find you. This will really help your website’s SEO rankings and boost online visibility.
After deciding on a topic, but before you start writing, do some keyword research to figure out how people are searching for the topic you want to write about. You want to make sure you’re using proper keywords that potential leads are actually searching for. As naturally as possible, write those keywords into your content’s headers, title tags, body copy, meta description, and anywhere else on the page that you can.
On Page SEO
Keywords are one important aspect of on page SEO, which is anything done to the page itself to support ranking high in Google search results. Other aspects include content, page speed, meta description, header tags, images, and basically anything else physically on your website.
Keyword Variations
When doing your keyword research, pay special attention to any long tail keywords or local keywords that are relevant to your business and/or blog topic.
- A long tail keyword is any highly specific, longer keyword. Example: “property management services for property owners”
- Local keywords include the name of your location or something like “near me”. Local SEO is particularly important to include for any location specific, service
based business, like a property management company. Example: “property management company in Portland, OR”.
These two types of keywords will really help your target audience find you in the search engine results.
A Note On Keyword Stuffing
However, you want to be careful that the page still reads naturally. In the old days of property management SEO, there was a practice called “keyword stuffing”, where website builders would add a particular keyword that they wanted the website to rank for as many times as possible onto a page.
The result was a webpage that was difficult to read for website visitors, but favorable to search engines like Google. As the search engine algorithm improves, “keyword stuffing” has become a thing of the past, and has even started hurting website ranking.
Content and Blogs
Search engines want to present the most relevant, recent information to its searchers.
They are on the lookout for websites the consistently post new, relevant content. A great way to do this is with consistent blog posts about centered around popular keywords that your clients are searching for — for example, “What Does a Property Management Company Do?”, or for your tenants, “How to Pay Your Rent Online.”
This is a great marketing strategy for any property management company because it will build trust with your local community, establish you as industry experts, bring in potential clients, and continuously improve your property management SEO.
Check out our blog on creating a great property management website and rich content for more on this topic.
Backlinks, Internal links and Social Media
If you are shouting your content into the void, but no one is backing you up as a legitimate business, you’re much less likely to appear in a top spot in the search results. Backlinks, internal linking, and social media are all vital components of a successful SEO marketing strategy for property management companies and help your business stand out as an authoritative voice.
Backlinks
Backlinks, or links from other websites to your company’s website, signals to the search engine results page that your website is trustworthy and that other sites agree with what you’re saying. Be careful – there are many company who will try to sell you scammy backlinks to drive more traffic. Google search engine is advanced enough to know the difference. Make sure that your property management business is only getting high quality backlinks from legitimate sources.
Internal Linking
Internal linking, or linking to other rich content within your website, helps to establish a better website structure and improve the overall user experience. Search engines also look at how long users stay on your website — if users are jumping on, but immediately jumping off, that’s a red flag. Internal linking helps to minimize this issue and keep potential clients on your site for longer.
Social Media
Social media is another important factor, as it provides an additional platform to share content and drive traffic back to your website. By creating original and engaging content and sharing it on all your social media accounts, property management companies can build a following and gain increased visibility within their target audience.
Overall, incorporating these tactics into an SEO marketing strategy can help property management companies increase their search engine rankings and attract more qualified leads.
Reviews & Online Reputation
A property management company’s online reputation and reviews can have a significant impact on their SEO. Search engines evaluate the quantity and quality of a company’s reviews to determine its ranking and including online reviews as website content is crucial for improving their SEO.
Property managers should strive to maintain a positive online reputation and encourage satisfied clients to leave reviews. By prioritizing their online reputation, property management companies can enhance their visibility and attract more potential clients. For more information on this topic, check out our blog post on online reviews and SEO.
Image Tags & Titles
“Reading” an image, for a search engine, is tricky — so they rely on image alt tags and titles with the keywords you’re hoping to rank for to determine whether the image is relevant to the content you’ve posted around it.
Image Optimization
Image optimization includes adding alt tags or links to image files to ease loading. Using alt text on images makes search engines more easily accessible. Alt text ensures that search engines are able to understand images and determine the relevance of them. You can use image resize tools for the purpose of reducing loading times on the website. You may even use compression programs like Optimizilla or ImageOptim.
Adding image tags and titles as website content also improves your website accessibility, which can’t hurt your ranking.
How Long a Property Management Website Has Been Live
One of the crucial factors for SEO rankings is time. How long a particular URL has been around to be crawled by search engines can play a role in how you are ranked. This doesn’t necessarily mean that brand-new URLs won’t rank as well as older URLs – remember, this is just one factor of many – but it’s important to keep time as a ranking factor in mind when you are making decisions about updating your website.
Need Leads Now? Support SEO with Paid Strategy
SEO efforts are often a long term project. If you’re looking for more of an instant lead generation strategy, pay-per-click advertising can be a nice supplement to your organic digital marketing plan.
We go into further detail about SEO, time, and property management websites in this blog.
Why Does SEO Matter for Property Managers?
For property managers, SEO is crucial. Your searchers are typically looking for property management websites based on their location (remember local SEO is important for service based companies!). This means that it’s very important that your website is optimized for the area, or areas, that you are targeting in order for targeted traffic to be able to find you in their search results.
For example, imagine Google has a user looking for “Santa Cruz property management”. One website has great content, excellent reviews, but hardly mentions “Santa Cruz” at all. Another website might have comparable content and reviews, but is very clearly placed in Santa Cruz. It’s much more likely that this website will be ranking higher when compared to the other.
Have Patience When Improving Property Management SEO
Improving your own property management site SEO takes time and patience. There are actions you can take to improve your SEO right now, but because one of the crucial SEO factors is time, it can take a while — 6 months, or longer — for the results of your labor to be seen.
This is why SEO is an ongoing task that you should be dedicating time to on a consistent basis.
Final Property Management SEO Tips
If you remember nothing else from today’s blog, remember that property management SEO is a process, not a product.
It’s the process of improving your website so it will rank higher in search engine rankings by using property management keywords, linking strategies, online reviews, and more.
SEO is not an end goal. It is a means to an end, not the end itself. Your goal should be related to growing your business, like having more tenants paying rent online, getting more prospects visiting your website, increasing your lead generation, etc.
Keep Your Goals In Mind
What is your main goal with your property management marketing? In our opinion, the most important function of property management SEO strategy is to attract more leads and contracts to your business. It doesn’t begin and end with being ranked Number 1 in property management search results. Many property managers get stuck trying their hardest to get to the number 1 spot. But being number 1 doesn’t automatically mean you’ll get more contracts than Number 2 or 3, etc.
A lot of the property managers that show up on the first page do not have websites that engage property owners, so they have trouble attracting and closing new business, despite their search position. Keep your eyes on the prize, and don’t get distracted by SEO companies’ promises of higher ranking.
Got questions about SEO for property managers? Want more SEO tips? Send us an email, or give us a call.
