Search engine optimization (SEO) is more important now than ever.
With the rising costs of running paid ads, property management companies that have an organic presence have a huge competitive advantage.
By utilizing SEO for your property management company, you can take advantage of the thousands of people searching for your services every month.
In other words, if your property management company captures more Google searches, you’ll get more customers.
Keep on reading to get a general overview of SEO and how you should approach it for long-term benefits to your company.
Transcript
If you’re going to be investing in SEO for your property management company, it’s very important that you at least have a general understanding of how everything works.
In order to help you acquire that, we put together this video. It will provide you with a clear overview of Search Engine Optimization.
Overview of SEO
To start off, it’s really important that you understand that SEO is composed of multiple parts.
There are two main components to SEO, there’s what we call onsite optimization and offsite optimization.
Onsite optimization is everything that has to do with your actual website. Whereas, your offsite optimization is everything that has to do with your company on other areas of the internet (not actually happening on your website).
At Upkeep media, we equate this to a car and gas analogy.
If you’re trying to win a car race, and you have a really old, beat-up, 1990 Honda Civic and you put premium gas into that car, there’s only so fast that car can go.
It’s not going to win the race.
Whereas, if you have a brand new 2019 Mercedes Benz and you put premium gas into it, the car’s really going to rip. There’s a good chance you’re going to win that car race.
Well, SEO is kind of similar in the sense that the car is your website and the premium gas that you put into the car are the links that you build to your website.
Onsite Optimization
Onsite optimization, which is what we will call your car, consists of multiple different components.
It consists of the content that’s actually on your website. You need to make sure that you have a good quality website that rental property owners are actually going to read.
A good quality website consists of your website’s loading speed (the page load times), it consists of the keywords on your website and where they’re placed, and so on.
There’s something called The Three Kings. At least, we call it The Three Kings at Upkeep Media. And essentially, it consists of your page title, your H1 tag, and your URL.
You want to make sure that you have your keywords strategically placed in all three of these areas because they are the three areas that best communicate to search engines regarding the content on your website.
Then, another component of onsite optimization is the actual internal linking of your website’s pages. The only way for Google’s bots to actually crawl through your website and discover all its pages is if they are linked to and from other pages on your website.
So, it’s very important that you send internal links throughout your website so that Google can see all the pages that you actually have on your site.
Offsite Optimization
The second component, what we call offsite optimization (or the gasoline in the car-gas analogy) consists of business directory submissions.
You have probably heard of something called ‘citations; in the past. This is just a fancy way of saying business directory submissions.
You want to make sure that the information that is in business directories is consistent with the information that you have in your Google My Business Listing.
It’s important that you make sure that your business’ name, address and phone number is consistent throughout all these directories where your company’s listed online and also consistent on your website.
Then, another part of what we call offsite optimization, and is probably the most important factor, is getting good quality links to point back to your website.
You want to build links from other real estate related websites to your website. The reason why is because Google looks at links like a sign of authority.
It’s kind of like a vote from another site. If all these other websites out there are willing to link to your website, then this website must be credible.
Another part of what we call Off-site Optimization is your company’s online reviews.
Online reviews are definitely a ranking factor in getting you to show up higher on Google. It’s important not only from a search engine standpoint but also from a conversion standpoint.
When someone looks up your company and finds reviews, they’re going to reach out to you only if they find favorable information.
The fourth area of what we could consider offsite optimization would be your social media profiles.
That refers to the Facebook profile that you have, your Twitter accounts, any type of social media presence that you have is another sign of trust when it comes to Google.
Google knows that only an established company is going to go out there and create social media profiles.
I’m not saying that just having a social media profile alone is going to rank your website but if you don’t have one, it’s nearly impossible to get your website to actually rank high in Google.
Starting Point
If you’re just getting started with SEO, where should you actually start?
What should you focus on?
We put together this small blueprint, giving you an idea of where to focus your efforts.
SEO Blueprint
The first area that you should focus on is optimizing your website for search engines.
- You want to fix your page titles, fix any H1 tags you have, and the URL structure of the pages on your website.
- You want to use short URL structures
- You want to make sure that you have your main keywords are included in the page title, the H1 tag and the URL structure of the page you’re trying to rank for that keyword.
Once you have that set-up, the next step to focus on is creating high-quality content.
At the end of the day, there’s no way for your website to rank if Google doesn’t understand what your website is talking about. How they do that is by reading through the content that’s actually on your website.
The more articles you have on your website that is relevant to Property Management and can actually help rental property owners and address their concerns, the better indication you’re giving to Google regarding the topic of your website. And, the better understanding that Google has of your website, the higher up they’ll likely rank you in search engines.
While you’re creating content, you can simultaneously work on acquiring reviews for your property management company.
Like I just mentioned, this is extremely important, not just from an SEO standpoint but from a business standpoint and getting people to actually reach out to you.
And then, once you’ve focused on these three areas, that’s when you’re ready to start acquiring links from industry-related websites to your website.
Meaning, you want to start doing outreach to other companies out there that are relevant to your business and asking them essentially if you can acquire a link from their website.
Often how you can do that is by offering something of value. So, maybe offering to write up a really high-quality piece of content for their website in exchange for a link back to your company’s website.
Conclusion
I hope this has helped you get a general understanding of SEO.
There’s obviously a lot more that goes into it but if you’re trying to familiarize yourself, this is a good building block. It’ll help you at least understand what goes into the process of optimizing your website for search engines.
I really appreciate you watching this video.
My name is Stephen Fox. I am one of the co-founders at Upkeep Media. We specialize in helping Property Management companies grow.
Want Help Growing Your Property Management Company?
We offer something called a Growth Marketing session. It’s absolutely free.
You can go to our website at https://www.upkeepmedia.com/growth/, you’ll find more information about that Growth Marketing session.
If you enjoy this video, please hit the subscribe button so that we can continue producing really relevant content to help you grow your property management company.
And don’t hesitate to check out our blog at https://www.upkeepmedia.com/our-blog/.
Thanks, and I’ll see you in the next video!
