How to Optimize an Apartment Website For SEO [With Examples]

Did you know that more than 53% of traffic comes from organic searches?

That’s more than half of the potential searches you’re missing by not optimizing your apartment SEO properly.

Everyone goes online nowadays if they’re looking for the perfect apartment. Long gone are the days of using directories and yellow pages to find the ideal apartment. Now people can check for apartments wherever they are with their phones.

This means that focusing on your apartment SEO has never been more important. You want potential customers to find you organically when looking for apartments like the ones you have.

But how can you fix and optimize your apartment SEO in a way that drives buyers to your website consistently?

Well, that’s what this article is all about. Here are effective tips to enhance your apartment website’s SEO. We’ll provide some of the best SEO practices along with easy examples.

Want to improve your SEO strategy but don’t know where to start? We can help.

Apartment SEO: Does It Really Matter?

We should quickly go over why SEO is important and what it means for your apartment website.

This way, you can get a clearer understanding of its importance and how much of a difference it can make when used correctly.

Technically, you don’t need to focus on SEO to attract buyers. However, not doing so makes it tough for renters to discover your apartments. It also drives up costs for them to find you.

With no SEO strategy in play, you’re forced to use PPC strategies and ad strategies on social media to get buyers. This costs a considerable amount of money every day and doesn’t guarantee that someone will go and rent or buy any of your apartments.

With SEO, people can find your website in an organic way when searching for apartments near them or in the state they’re looking to move to.

Best of all? Using an SEO strategy takes no money at all to start if you do it all yourself compared to PPC.

1. Pick the Correct Keywords

It’s nearly impossible for you to create any sort of SEO optimization if you don’t do your keyword research first.

You can have a perfect SEO strategy ready, but without the right keywords to implement it, the strategy is practically useless.

There are a few websites you can use to research keywords and find out different metrics for each one of them. The two most popular ones are SEMRush and Ahrefs.

So what keywords should you be looking for?

The best keywords you should be searching for are ones potential tenants would search for on Google when trying to find an apartment. That’s not all though; when looking for SEO, you have to take into consideration the difficulty of each keyword.

Anything over 60 in difficulty will be difficult to rank due to popularity and the big websites ranking for them. You want to find keywords that you can realistically rank on without having to compete with big companies for attention.

We recommend finding keywords that are below 40 in difficulty if you want to have a better time ranking.

When searching for keywords, make sure to target long-tail keywords over short-tail keywords. These are not only more specific, but they are easier to rank on too.

“Studio apartment with car parking for sale in Chicago” is a long-tail keyword with less competition than something like “studio apartment Chicago.”

Big companies will always target short-tail keywords due to the traffic they drive, which is why something like “Chicago Apartment” is difficult to rank for.

2. Work on Your Listings

Every rental listing you have an account on should be optimized as well as possible. We assume that you have listings on the most popular websites like Apartments.com, Yelp, and Zillow.

If you don’t have an account on those websites, make sure to create one as soon as possible. Don’t forget to include all the information you can in your account. The more information the better when it comes to SEO.

Important note: make sure that all your information is the same on every single listing. While it might seem like changing “street” to “st” wouldn’t do any harm, it confuses the search engine and might make it harder for you to rank as a consequence.

Double-check every single piece of information and compare it to all your listings.

Once you’re certain everything is the same, we can move to the biggest listing to take care of.

The biggest and by far the most important listing for your rental company is your Google Business Profile. A strong GBP with complete listings and information increases the chance that Google will show your company to people searching for apartments nearby.

But how do you set up a GBP? Let’s walk you through the important steps you need to be careful about.

Setting up your GBP

We’re assuming you haven’t created a GBP account before, so we’ll be going from step 1. Don’t worry, setting up a GBP is simple and can be done in an hour.

• First thing you need to do is sign into your company’s business account and head to the Google Business Profile page. Once there, make sure to sign in and add all of the information it asks.

• Next, go and search your business to make sure there is no listing of any kind. If there is and you are sure you didn’t make it, report it. If there isn’t any created, you can create one yourself by following all the steps they provide.

• Once you have your listing set up, you will want to start adding all of the necessary information to your GBP.

Don’t try to do this quickly. Take your time to add absolutely all of the information you can to your GBP. Add images, descriptions, and videos if possible. Just make sure that you add only high-quality content.

Make use of all the keywords you researched in the previous step here. Don’t try to force them into your descriptions, though. Ensure that you add them with intent and that they flow well with the rest of the paragraph.

From now on, when you add a new listing or change any details about your business, make sure to update every listing page you use.

Now that we’ve covered key external factors for your apartment website SEO, let’s focus on optimizing your site.

3. Fix Your Website Load Times

Having a slow-loading website is just as bad as not having any website at all. People won’t wait for websites to finish loading anymore.

In fact, if your website takes more than 3 seconds to load, more than 53% of visitors will leave.

This means that having a fast-loading website is necessary if you want potential renters to check your site.

Not only that, Google’s search engine also considers website load times in its ranking factors. This means that having a fast-loading website is beneficial if you want to improve your apartment SEO.

But how are you supposed to know if your website is loading slowly or not?

Google is a great speed tester you can use whenever you need, called PageSpeed Insights. It will show you your website’s speed and point out your slowest pages.

If your website is over 3 seconds in load time, don’t worry; we have some tips you can use to optimize your website’s speed.

1. Compress Your Images: We know that having high-resolution images of your apartment interiors seems logical, but high-resolution images severely slow down pages. Instead of using them at full resolution, use a compressed format such as WebP, which will lower the time a page takes to load while still looking good.

2. Get Better Hosting: Never try to save money by getting a cheaper hosting service. Not only can it be unreliable, it also tends to offer slower load times if your website is under stress due to traffic. Ensure this doesn’t happen by using good hosting services from popular hosting providers such as Bluehost.

3. Fix Your Redirects: Having too many redirects can slow down your website as a whole if you’re not careful. Double-check that the redirects you’re using on your website are essential. If they aren’t, make sure to remove them entirely.

4. Organize Your Code: Sometimes, load times might be a case of bad coding on the backend of your website. If you have coding knowledge, make sure to keep your code as clean and minimal as possible to ensure your website is as fast as possible.

5. Excessive Use of Plugins: Just like everyone else, we love to use plugins that help websites improve and work better, but there comes a point where we can add too many plugins. Make sure you’re only using plugins that your website needs and delete any you don’t use consistently.

By focusing on these 5 solutions, you will be able to see a noticeable difference in your website load times.

Check out how we improved HPI Real Estate Services and Investment’s SEO in this detailed case study.

4. Don’t Forget to Make Content

Having a website isn’t just for following and adding web design trends to make it look better. You should also create content for it.

Having a blog and creating content isn’t just to inform and entertain potential renters; it’s also a fantastic way to build your apartment website SEO.

Creating content for your rental company is something you should do every week. You have complete control over the type of content you create, but you should create it with a specific keyword in mind.

You also don’t have to only talk about your apartments in your blog. Make content based on the places nearby or in the city that people should check out. Or you could give a thoughtful and in-depth guide on how to find an apartment.

This not only benefits readers who want to find an easier way to find the apartment they’re looking for, but it helps you build authority in the real estate industry.

Try to keep your content interesting and relevant. There’s no use creating content if it’s boring and uninteresting. There are thousands of ideas you can use, so don’t be afraid to experiment and see what works best.

5. Have a Responsive and Intuitive Website Design

Having a good website design with proper SEO doesn’t just benefit visitors anymore. Having a responsive website that is mobile-friendly is now a ranking factor for Google as well.

This means that your website should be easy to navigate and use regardless of the device it is viewed on.

Make sure to test how your website looks on different devices, ranging from phones to tablets. Test every button and open every dropdown menu. Ensure that everything is easy to navigate and use.

If you want to make sure your apartment website looks good in Google’s eyes, you can check with their popular mobile-friendly test called Lighthouse.

If you’re thinking about redesigning your website or starting a new one, we strongly suggest creating it with a mobile-first approach.

This way, you make sure that the website will look great no matter what.

Not only that, it will also make it so that anyone can go to your website, regardless of screen size or operating system.

6. Have a Local Approach to Your Apartment SEO Strategy

Local SEO is by far the most important aspect of your apartment SEO strategy and it should be focused on the most. By targeting the state your rental business is in, potential tenants will be able to find you faster when using “near me” searches.

Double-check that all your listings are up to date and have the correct information. This is especially important for GBP since it can appear like this on search result pages when people are searching for apartments:

Ensure that you use location keywords such as the state where your business is located, as well as popular landmarks that will help Google searches connect your business to a specific location.

For example, instead of only saying “we’re renting a studio apartment perfect for you,” you can say “we’re renting a studio apartment within walking distance to the Chicago Theatre.”

7. Don’t Forget About Reviews

It’s easy to forget the importance of reviews when thinking about SEO, but checking and asking for reviews from tenants is a fantastic way to get more traffic.

Remember, people who are searching for apartments will always be skeptical about renting from a business without any reviews whatsoever.

Online reviews help them learn more about your business and the apartment you’re selling/renting. It’s a lot more likely that they will call and ask for a tour if they see positive reviews from previous tenants.

Having good reviews is vital for GBP as well since reviews tell Google that your services are high-quality. This in turn pushes your GBP over other rental businesses that might not have any reviews at all.

Remember to reply to all of your reviews. Make sure to thank reviewers who leave good reviews and feedback.

Now, what do you do if you receive a negative review?

The first step is to not lash out or respond in a negative way.

While it might feel like the correct answer at the time, it only hurts your business.

Instead, what you want to do is answer and ask how you can help them resolve the issue or if there is anything you can do for them. This will show visitors who might be interested in your apartments that you care about your tenants, even if something went wrong.

Want to know even more about SEO? These SEO statistics are worth knowing if you want to be in the know this year.

Get an Apartment SEO Strategy That Converts With Blacksmith

With these 7 different apartment SEO optimizations, you will see improvements in your organic reach in a matter of weeks. But creating a good apartment SEO strategy takes a lot of time and work.

This is time you can use to focus on other aspects of your business or time you might not have at all. So what now?

That’s where we come in. Here at Blacksmith, we’re apartment SEO experts ready to help you get the organic traffic growth through SEO that your business deserves.

As an experienced SEO agency, we have a team of SEO professionals ready to create the perfect apartment SEO strategy for your business and location. We will use modern SEO techniques and ensure that the keywords used for your business are the best.

Still unsure if investing in an SEO strategy is the right call for your rental business? Click here to schedule a call with us and we’ll audit your website and show you all the areas that are making you lose tenants.