By; Eric Brown from The Urbane Way, an Innovative Apartment Marketing Laboratory

A White Paper Series on How to Break From the Pack of Apartment Commodity

Google Needle, Google Juice, Google Page Rankings

What does all of this noise really mean, and moreover, what does it have to do with Renting More Apartments? At the Urbane Lab, we have put a lot of effort and resources into figuring out how to get our apartment listings to rank high on a Google search.  High, as in Page One, Number One!

Consider this from Channel Advisor, their newest White Paper, How Consumers Shop Online, has some really terrific data. Here are some highlights:

1. Eighty one percent of consumers begin their product searches with Google and 11 percent begin with Yahoo. This represents an increase of five percentage points for Google, with a six percent decrease for Yahoo usage. (This should convince you how important it is for your site to be listed on Google Local, as well as appear high in the Google search engine results.)
2. Peer ratings/reviews hold more influence over shoppers’ buying decisions than they did one year ago. (As we know, ratings sites like Yelp and AptRatings are carrying more and more weight in prospective renters’ decisions.)
3. Consumers are spending approximately the same amount of time online but are spending less money. They are searching the internet for deals that yield higher savings and offer extra value. (Make sure your advertisements indicate your *value* proposition to your prospective renters.)

Who Is Paying Attention
Are apartment executives paying any attention to the manor in which folks shop on line? 81% is a staggering number. Conservative Financial Folks and Fair Housing Folks mostly run the multifamily business. We LOVE numbers and percentages in our business, but are we really paying any attention to THESE Numbers?

Testing Is Easy
Testing has never been easier, you don't need any fancy report or outside agency or consultant to find out, Just simply Google Your Company Name. Just Google (Your City) Apartments. Do you see your company when you do that; it only takes a few seconds to try it.

If you are like most property management firms, you may have had a few entries when you Googled your company name, and you didn’t show up at all when you Googled (Your City) Apartments. Now what? Well for starters, get involved, and start placing an importance on Marketing and Branding On Line, and extending your Digital Footprint, and don’t assume your troops are doing it right or very well.

Experience, Not Theory
This isn't theory; it is what we did at Urbane Apartments.  Our Google Page Ranking is Number One to Number Three on Page One Google of a Google Search consistently when the search is Apartments (your city) And according to the recent white paper by Rent.com Apartment (Your City) is one of the most used search terms for folks looking for an apartment. Further, if you Google Urbane Apartments, we own the first half dozen pages. If your search results weren’t so stellar when you searched for your company name, read on, we are here to help.

What Is The Value of Clicking Your Web Site First
If you push your Apartment Community Web Site to a Page One Google Ranking, does that provide more value than your prospect getting lost ILS Land, meaning Will the prospect click that community before going into the maze of ILS Listings? And, what value is that to the Apartment Community?

I have put most of our marketing chips on that square, thinking that if the prospect clicked on the Urbane Apartment Web Site before getting tangled up in the ILS Maze our opportunity for conversion increased dramatically.

Based on Results, that theory is working well. Our Traffic, Tours and Rentals continue to climb. We posted our 400th post at the Urbane Life Blog recently, pretty cool, but what does that mean? Well, for starters, we have increased our Digital Foot Print by Four Hundred Times for the Urbane Brand.

But it is more than (400) posts, in addition, Google has indexed our pages (749) times, and we have been linked to (649) times?

Does Anyone Care?
Apparently Prospects and Renters care, as The Proof is in the Numbers;

* Web Site Traffic UP 108%
* Physical Traffic/Tours UP 54%
* Rentals UP 69%

But How To Do It
Most property management companies have web sites for each of their apartment communities. However, they stop there, with static, never changing web presence. When is the last time you changed, edited or added new content to your web site? Has it been days, months or years?

Anything less than days, and you are missing huge marketing benefits. Google responds favorably to new, fresh, relevant content. Not changing, editing or adding to your web site content puts Google to sleep.

Admittedly, unless you have a Content Management System, changing content on your web site is a challenge, even with products such as Adobe Contribute. But, with a blog you can change content easily. Is a blog the same thing as your apartment community web site, well no, BUT it can and will help your apartment community web site with some Google Juice, by creating links and rich keyword tags.

Where To Start
As with most things, On Line Marketing really isn’t all that complicated, however if you know and apply a few “basics” you will get an enhanced result, and start to Move The Google Needle.

I have purchased four or five apartment web sites from marketing studios, and there is generally disconnect between them all. For example;
·    Not One Marketing Studio ever asked me about what I thought our Keywords are.
·    Not One Marketing Studio ever asked me about what I thought the Title Tag descriptions should be.
·    Not One Marketing Studio ever asked me what I thought the Meta tags should be
Would I have known what they were talking about, no, however, had they taken the time to go through the sheer importance of those three items we would have had a much different result. The best thing that ever happened was when our Marketing Studio Fired me as a Client, we then began to learn and apply the required principles to Move the Google Needle.

Google Real Estate
So if the Entrance to our physical apartment community is such an important and valuable piece of real estate, what is the most important piece of Google Real Estate for your On Line Community and Apartment Community Web Site. Perhaps you haven't thought about that, but you should. And, it is pretty silly to not take advantage of it.

Title Tags
Direct from Corey Perlman's  eBootCamp
Your Title Tags are a Search Engine's first impression of your web site. Make It a Good One. If you are like a lot of folks, you may well not even know about Title Tags. A Title Tag is the headline of a web site. It appears at the top of your browser on every web page you visit. If you use Internet Explorer, it resides in the upper right hand corner. And I bet you've never even noticed it before.

When search engines evaluate your web site, they use your title tags. They simply take the headline from your web site and place it directly on their engine as the link to your web site.

Your Title Tag Makes Up 50% of Your Google Real Estate
Based on that, isn't it a pretty important conversation to have as to exactly what your Title Tags should be? In our experience, we had several web sites built and revised and no one even ever mentioned Title Tags.
When we changed our Title Tags to be more in alignment with our Keywords, our Ranking on Google soared to Page One, Number One.

Five to Ten Words
You get between five to ten words per Title Tag. Your marketing group must be involved in the process and take advantage of this Most Valuable Google Real Estate

Low Hanging Fruit
Here are a few tips from the Urbane Lab on how to create or improve your web site. If you're creating your first apartment website, or just looking for a refresher course on how to get started, follow these Top 10 Tips for creating, maintaining, and improving your website.

Simple navigation is essential to effective website design.
Is your Web site navigation easy for users to understand? If not, a simple update to your site's navigation design can help users better access your site's content and information. But remember, too many navigation items can be challenging for users to follow. It is often better to group common pages together into a sub-navigation model.

Don't overrun your pages with text.
It is important to limit the number of words on a Web page as pages with 10,000+ words tend to overwhelm the reader. Instead, analyze your existing content and create a structure that best organizes the information.

Keep your keywords in mind.
Identify three to five keywords phrases relevant to your business and incorporate them into your website content . This helps search engines identify your website when consumers are searching for relevant content. Ensure your keywords are focused on your type of business, target audience, and local niche (if applicable).

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a great way to increase your site's exposure.
Continuous review of the keywords and descriptions used on each page of your website is essential when optimizing your website for better placement in major search engines. Proper page titles are also of major importance and are frequently overlooked. Meaningful page titles allow for better indexing by search engines and quicker content review by visitors.

Images really are worth a thousand words – when used correctly.
Decrease page load times by optimizing images for use on your site. Shaving off a few 100kbs from your images will save visitors' bandwidth and speed up your image load times. Adding text descriptions (known as "alt tags") to your images will also help search engines index your site.

Analyze your Web traffic.
Dissect the source of your Web traffic using Web analytics tools such as Google Analytics. This free utility features a variety of built-in reports and allows you to customize your own reports by filtering on a variety of variables. Use the information gleaned from your results to strategize future website improvements.

Ensure your website is XHTML/CSS 2.0 compliant.
Designing or redesigning your website to be Web 2.0 compliant will ensure it is viewable across all Web browser platforms. The Web design industry has come a long way in the last decade and the Internet's most successful websites stay on the cutting-edge of design. Web 2.0 standards separate your website's content from its layout, making it easier for search engines to index your site's content.

Use a blog to open the lines of communication.
A blog is a Web journal designed to help you or your business communicate with your visitors. Easily share your latest news, opinions, products and services, and so much more. As search engines index blogs more frequently than other sites, maximize the power of your blog by providing interesting and thought-generating information; asking your readers for comments, questions, and opinions; and comment on readers' feedback.

Keep in contact with your prospects and residents with an email newsletter.
Provide your readers and customers with an expert e-mail newsletter that offers interesting, timely, and entertaining information relevant to their interests. Newsletters that feature tips and advice are especially helpful. Giving your consumers the ability to register for your newsletter via your website provides an effective way of obtaining valuable contact and marketing information that can lead to future sales.

User-friendly sites ensure maximum use and profit.
Design your site to help visitors find key information. It is important to clearly identify ways for customers to contact you for more information, share ideas, obtain customer support, and buy products. If your site offers direct sales, you should feature an easy to use commerce system that makes it simple for customers to purchase your products and services.

Join Eric at the Optimization Summits where he is leading a full day workshop on Moving the Google Needle.

Moving the Google Needle-Workshop Leader Eric Brown Wednesday-Four, Two Hour Workshops

This workshop reveals the secrets behind Search Engine Optimization. You’ll learn how search engines work; how and why a site ranks highly (or doesn’t); how to target your site’s design and content for more traffic and higher search rankings; the ins and outs of SEO including keywords, meta tags, internal linking, external linking, and more. You’ll walk away with the knowledge you need to optimize your site’s search ranking now! What does all of this Social Media noise really mean, and moreover, what does it have to do with driving your income? At the Urbane Lab, we have put a lot of effort and resources into figuring out how to get our listings to rank high on a Google search.  High, as in Page One, Number One!

Happy Friday, everyone!  To end our week with a little food for thought, I wanted to share a quick exchange that’s kicking up this morning on Twitter about our upcoming Dallas Optimization Summits because it opened the door to a conversation that I want to have with every single one of you!

The conversation started while we were tweeting on another subject entirely @Multifamilypro, and one of our followers chimed in with “A Disruptive Post about what conferences that claim to be apartment internet marketing are verses what you are offering” followed by “One is about Socializing, Yours is About Doing, backed with Internet Marketing folks, NOT Apartment Mktg Consultants.”

My immediate response?  ROCK ON! That’s exactly what I’ve so wanted to say for so many weeks now!  Yes, we’ve created a ROCK STAR event about social media, and it’s absolutely NOT about socializing.  It’s about DOING!   One of our Optimization Summits Workshop Leaders said it the best:  “2009 was about learning social media. 2010 will be about figuring out how to use it well.” Jason Falls .  Now that we know what social media can do for us, it’s time for our industry to get a huge kick in the proverbial butt, get the skills we need, and get moving!  We have a lot of guiding principles around here, but one of our favorites is that a little revolution now and then is a necessary thing.  Revolutions aren’t about sitting back on the sidelines.  They’re about putting ideas into ACTION.

Folks, there are other industry events that address technology, and we all know that our business can be a small world when it comes to bringing together the talent.  After all, our industry is rife with incredible, amazing talent… we are fortunate in never having to look that far. But that’s terribly UNFORTUNATE, too, because too much of that causes us to turn in on ourselves while huge changes are happening in the world outside.  We need to go outside of the comfortable boundaries of our community (to use an apt metaphor) and get kicked in the seat of our collective pants by the huge world of incredible know-how that’s available outside this home we call multifamily.  I invented the Optimization Summits with the mission for us to learn how to DO, and to learn from the very top social marketing experts not in our industry, but in the United States.

If you don’t know about the Optimization Summits yet, please visit www.OptimizationSummits.com and learn more; but first, you need to know that we’re totally blown away by the people who have agreed to present this event for us. Unless you spend a lot of time reading around outside our industry like I do, you might not know that these guys are Rock Stars in the social marketing world at large, but they absolutely are, and I’m devoting the next couple of weeks to helping you get to know them through our own blogs and other social networking efforts so you’ll come to know what others already agree will be THE breakthrough learning and DOING opportunity of 2010!  Thanks for your time, and for keeping the conversation going!!!

Tami

“If You want to improve your marketing and Operations this is THE Multifamily Event you need to attend in 2010. I think you are going to get more out of this event than any other!” – Jamie Gorski, Sr. VP of Corporate Marketing, The Bozzuto Group