What Am I Paying For? SEO and Apartment Marketing
Search Engine Optimization (or SEO) may seem like a new, flashy digital marketing strategy, it’s one of the oldest tricks in the book, digitally speaking. According to Search Engine Journal SEO, it started in the mid-’90s, making it one of the original digital marketing tactics.
Many Multifamily marketers may know they need SEO but don’t truly understand the work involved and what they are paying for. There is no “pay-to-perform” system for SEO like there is for Google Ads, which makes it harder to understand and analyze.
Let’s dig into Apartment Marketing SEO to figure out what exactly you’re paying for and how it can help your website be the best answer for your apartment shoppers.
What do you get with SEO?
The Oxford Dictionary definition of SEO is “the process of maximizing the number of visitors to a particular website by ensuring that the site appears high on the list of results returned by a search engine.”
It’s important to note the word “process.” Because SEO is a process, that means there is no real endpoint. Email and PPC campaigns or apartment specials require a start and end date, SEO remains constant. By continuously optimizing, you are building the groundwork for a high-ranking website that supports all of your other marketing efforts.
At 30 Lines, we distill our SEO work down into “deliverables” that are easy to understand and get results. These deliverables use tactics made for the apartment shopper and their journey.
We call this journey the Look, Learn, Lease, Love funnel.
We use these tactics in conjunction with your marketing tech stack to determine the most effective SEO strategy for your property. Additionally, we look at tactics we can implement specifically on the different website platforms in the multifamily industry.
For example, when creating website content, we create custom copy focused on a specific keyword to help your site rank higher for that keyword. We frequently add keyword-rich content to local listings like Google My Business. We also love creating even more usability on Google My Business by adding floor plan options, compelling call-to-actions, and more.
Learn the Best Google My Business Practices for the Multifamily Industry
30 Lines pioneered the use of Neighborhood Leasing as part of an effective SEO strategy. We know that Google narrows search queries without a city based on the location set in a shopper’s profile. By creating location-based content and pages on your website, you can harness the power of the shopper’s journey and boost your website’s ranking.
Both on your website and off, these deliverables are meant to perform the core function of SEO. Maximize “the number of visitors to a particular website by ensuring that the site appears high on the list of results returned by a search engine.”
How does SEO help your apartment marketing website?
Deliverables are all well and good, but what exactly do they do for you? Tracking and reporting on SEO can be almost as tough as conceptualizing what it is. When doing your own tracking, it’s vital to set concrete KPIs that remain consistent so that you can see your progress over time.
Let’s look at the basics. Organic traffic and local listings traffic account for about 40% of all website traffic to 30 Lines websites. Not only that, but this traffic accounts for over half the leads that come through our websites. This alone emphasizes the importance of maintaining your SEO. We can dig a little deeper and discover even more value.
In a recent case study, we found that organic leads (leads from a search engine or local listing) were 75% higher on websites that were using 30 Lines for SEO compared to websites that didn’t. Clients using 30 Lines’ SEO also saw a 126% increase in their organic leads in Q2 of 2020, from the beginning to the end of the quarter. This also occurred during the COVID-19 Pandemic, where most organic KPIs for businesses across the country saw a significant drop.
Although it takes some time and effort to get there, once your website has built up enough optimization for search, it can help drive even more leads for your property for the times and lets you reduce your PPC, and other traffic driving spend.
In another recent study, we found that all 10 of our top-performing client websites used some kind of SEO tool or service. This type of strategy’s cost benefits is incredibly significant since the average SEO package is $500-$700 per month, where a typical PPC budget can sit around $1500 per month or more. Where PPC is useful for acquiring traffic immediately, SEO provides a long-term base for your website.
Apartment SEO That Works
There’s a reason why marketers continue to talk about SEO, even though it’s one of the oldest tactics out there. It works! Once you build a solid foundation and have the resources to keep optimizing, SEO transforms your website into your top traffic driver and lead generation source. That’s why at 30 Lines, we love providing our clients with concrete deliverables that they can visualize and reporting that reflects its excellent results.
Have questions? We have answers. Let us know how we can help today!