SEO for Property Managers: A Primer, Part I: What is SEO?
Synthetic Engine Oil! No, no, it’s Self-Employment Opportunity! Wait, it’s, ah, it’s — Seasoned Equity Offering! Just kidding, it’s Search Engine Optimization, of course.
Marketing in the modern world is vastly different than it was even just a decade ago. Untargeted advertising spread over the widest possible area — radio commercials, TV spots, and newspaper advertisements – are becoming less and less efficient. Modern marketing focuses much more on targeted advertising, because it’s far more cost-effective to only advertise to people who may be interested in what you’re offering. One of the most cost-effective forms of targeted advertising is Search Engine Optimization, or SEO for Property Managers.
SEO is the science of manipulating websites — yours and other people’s — so that the major search engines (Google and Bing make up 94% of the marketplace) will put your website high up on the results when someone makes a relevant search. The higher up you are, the more visits you’ll get, and the more visits you get, the more chances you have to make a sale.
We’re going to devote the next five weeks to talking about SEO for property managers — and this includes DIY landlords. Our goal is to give you the knowledge you need to get eyes on your content, whether that’s a professionally-created website or a Facebook page that is your only online presence.
The Broad Strokes of SEO
SEO is divided into three basic categories:
- On-Page SEO, which involves the content and construction of your business website(s),
- Off-Page SEO, which involves building links to your business website(s) from external websites,
- And Social Media, which might not technically be SEO, but is so closely related that it needs to be addressed at the same time. Social Media is kind of like “short-term high-yield SEO”.
Next week we’ll cover the basics of on-page SEO for Property Managers. The week after will be off-page SEO, then we’ll talk about social media strategies. Finally, in week five, we’re going to bring it all together to show you how these many parts turn into a solid plan for creating ranking web pages and driving up your customer count.
The Most Important Thing to Know about SEO for Property Managers
SEO for Property Managers is a world that is always changing, and if you’re reading this article in 2020 or beyond, you can rest assured that at least one thing you read here is outdated. The reason why is that search engine optimization is effectively a kind of war between webmasters and search engines. Let me explain.
According to Google (and all of its competitors), any attempt to take a shortcut to ‘optimize’ a website to get higher up on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) is cheating. They are, after all, in the business of making sure the best results — not the most optimized results — get to the top of their SERPS. (They do kind of make that claim a little fishy by taking money directly in exchange for top SERP placement in the form of pay-per-click marketing.)
This results in an ongoing battle wherein every time a specific SEO ‘tactic’ gets too popular, Google changes its algorithm to make that tactic backfire on the people who use it. Which means that any SEO advice other than “make a page people love to visit” will potentially end up being wrong in the long run — so be careful!
Next Time: Part 2: On-Page SEO