If you have a new property management business, your main concern is getting as many potential customers as possible. Although retaining clients is relatively easy in this industry, at least compared to some other professions, you still need the initial base to build your operations.
Like other modern businesses, property management companies are heavily dependent on digital marketing for promotion. Methods and channels like search engine optimization, social media marketing, and pay-per-click advertising are considered the best ways of reaching users.
In this article, we want to focus on various tactics for getting more organic traffic via search engines. To be specific, the MiroMind team wants to share a few tricks that will maximize your property management SEO strategy.
10 Steps for a perfect property management SEO strategy
Property management SEO is a structured process that involves numerous tasks and procedures. Besides implementing the best search engine optimization practices, a property management company should also use email marketing and social media for promotional purposes.
To get the most out of this promotional activity, you should create an actionable strategy tailored for property management clients. Here’s a list of everything you need to do to optimize your web pages for Google and other search engines:
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Consider your business goals
Before starting the optimization process, property management websites should first consider their end goals. In most cases, companies use their site as a lead generation vehicle and are interested in maximizing their organic traffic. Then again, there are brands that use their site as a simple, digital business card.
The most common goals for a property management website include:
- Increasing total organic traffic
- Increasing brand awareness
- Generating visitors for a few highly converting pages
- Using it as a landing page for PPC and SMM campaigns
- Focusing on local SEO
- Building connections and partnerships with other brands
No matter your business goals, you’ll need to have a highly-functioning platform. For example, even if you don’t care about organic traffic and search engine results, you’ll still need a website with fast page speed and architecture. In other words, you’ll always need assistance from MiroMind or another reputable SEO service provider.
For example, even if you manage to drive lots of traffic from your social media accounts, you still need to convert these visitors into paying customers. If your pages aren’t working properly or if you have lousy content, the users will likely abandon your property management website before finishing a purchase.
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Formulate KPIs
Given that SEO is a data-driven process, you’ll need to decide on your most important metrics. For example, if you’re looking to maximize visits and brand awareness, organic traffic will be your main consideration. If you’re just looking to sell property management services, you’ll have to pay close attention to user engagement and conversion stats.
Here are some of the main metrics that “explain” your performance in Google search results:
- Organic traffic
- Website content rankings
- Online visibility
- Click-through rate
- Pages per session
- Time spent on page
- Bounce rate
- Sales
All these metrics, except for sales, are available in Google Search Console and Google Analytics, and you can access them as soon as you create respective accounts. Some of them are more focused on your overall performance, while others show you how your content marketing team is doing.
SEO metrics rarely work in a vacuum, which is why professionals in this field commonly use several KPIs in conjunction. For example, having high SEO rankings for a specific keyword won’t help you if the traffic numbers are too low. Similarly, high organic traffic is meaningless if you can’t keep visitors on your pages for a longer time.
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Analyze competitors
Before starting a new web company, savvy entrepreneurs usually do competitive analysis. With this process, you can determine whether SEO is a viable strategy within this field. In the worst-case scenario, you might even decide to abandon the business idea altogether.
Smart property managers also use this strategy to assess their closest opponents. Among others, they analyze the following:
- Domain authority, domain rating, and trust flow
- Website age
- The number and quality of articles
- The number of ranking keywords
- Link profile
- Website interface and usability
- Reputation within the industry
- Local SEO keywords and online reviews
As mentioned, competitive analysis tells you whether or not it’s even worth competing in a specific field. Based on MiroMind’s previous projects, we found that this niche doesn’t have overwhelming competition, making it easy to rank even a new property management website.
However, competitive analysis also provides other valuable insights. For example, it shows you which property management keywords you should pursue and how many links you’d need to optimize these pages. Basically, the analytical process helps you find market gaps that you can exploit during your campaign.
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Improve technical aspects
If you’ve decided to commit to search engine optimization, it’s time to make your first actual move. Technical audit or technical SEO is a process during which you improve various aspects of your site. By doing so, you’ll make it better for your visitors and also Google crawlers.
During this step, property management businesses need to address the following:
- Improve website structure and page categorization
- Improve indexability (allows Google robots can find your pages)
- Fix errors and penalties
- Implement the best content practices
- Remove duplicate content
- Remove potentially harmful links
- Add schema markup (allows you to gain featured snippets in Google)
- Increase page speed
- Improve mobile-friendliness
While improving technical aspects is crucial for optimization, it shouldn’t come at the cost of your property management marketing. For example, while reducing image size can be good for speed, it shouldn’t affect image quality. Similarly, you should pay attention to your branding and how the target audience might be affected.
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Perform keyword research
If you haven’t done keyword research during competitor’s analysis, it’s time to do it now. During the process, property management companies should focus on several different keyword components, such as:
- Relevancy
- Search volume
- Competition
- Intent
Relevancy
You should always focus on phrases that are relevant to your property management company. These terms usually correlate with sales and are commonly used by your target audience. By creating content that revolves around relevant keywords, you can also increase your topical relevance for property management business.
Search volume
In theory, property management websites should only create articles for keywords that yield high traffic. Unfortunately, given that everyone’s trying to reach the top of search engine rankings for these phrases, you’ll need to find a balance between search volume and competition.
Competition
To analyze competition, property managers should visit the first page in the Google search engine and assess the ranking pages. First off, you need to check the power of each website ranking in the top 10. After that, you need to check the content quality and the number of links each page receives.
Intent
Intent shows you the main purpose of a keyword. We can differentiate informational, navigational, commercial, and transactional phrases. The best keywords to optimize are transactional, as they commonly lead to sales. Informational phrases, on the other hand, provide general info about property management, aren’t that lucrative, but are also easier to rank.
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Create funnels and clusters
Even if you’re the best property management company on the market, you won’t get far without content classification. In other words, before you start creating posts, it’s advisable to plan your pieces into funnels and clusters. Here’s an explanation for both of these terms!
Content clusters
Clusters are sets of articles that are interconnected into a bigger, logical structure. First, you need to determine your “pillar page.” This is a larger, more comprehensive article that covers one of the bigger areas of property management. The post will consist of numerous subheadings that mention smaller topics.
Once you create the pillar page, you need to write satellite articles that will break down each of the subheadings’ topics. Although these won’t be as in-depth as the pillar page, they will explain relevant concepts that were mentioned in the original post.
The main purpose of clusters is to increase the relevancy of your pillar pages. All these pieces work in cohesion, pushing each other in the search rankings. While satellite pages probably won’t reach the first page of Google, they can be crucial for boosting the pillar page, which commonly has a high search volume.
Content funnels
The focus on content funnels isn’t necessarily on rankings but instead on conversion. Nevertheless, they might still boost your placement in search engines.
Funnels are meant to guide property owners from their first interactions with a site to the final sales. Property managers use them to create a structured customer journey. Besides articles, this content strategy might also include emails, social media posts, and other formats.
Funnels work by educating and closing the website visitors through four distinct phases:
- Awareness (property owners become aware of their problem)
- Interest (the users show interest in property management services and start researching the topic)
- Consideration (the users analyze different solutions on the market, including your brand)
- Action (an owner purchases your service)
Unlike clusters, where you prioritize one page in favor of several others, funnels work as a sequence of posts that bring your brand closer to the consumer.
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Create and optimize content
Content marketing is a vital part of property management SEO, and its success will determine the outcome of your campaign. When creating a new article for your blog, you need to consider everything that was mentioned in the previous section:
- Prioritize relevant keywords with high traffic and low competition
- Customize style and tone for your target audience
- Group articles so they can help each other
- Use a format suitable for funnels, clusters, or individual posts
- Copy the best content practices from your competitors
Besides quality information, your pieces should provide users with answers to all their questions. They need to be packaged in a way that makes them easy to read. You can learn a lot from your competitors but don’t be afraid to use creative solutions and visuals if they make sense.
Once you create your posts, make sure to interlink them in a strategic manner. The emphasis is usually on titles and meta descriptions as they can ensure a high click-through rate. Lastly, run your content through popular keyword optimization software like SurferSEO to add phrases missing from your pieces.
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Perform local SEO
When talking about SEO for property management, we can’t avoid local optimization. Any property manager worth his salt knows how important local searches are for conversions. Ultimately, brands make the majority of their sales from companies, hotels, and rental property owners in the home city.
When optimizing your site for local search engine algorithms, you need to pay attention to the following:
- Add your brand to Google My Business and other, relevant property management directories
- Use the same information across the board
- Create posts revolving around local keywords
- Start gathering positive online reviews from your clients
When it comes to local optimization, the quantity and quality of client feedback are crucial for reaching the top of search engine rankings. You can also generate lots of leads with relevant local content, which follows the same optimization rules as other articles.
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Build links
Like other industries, property management SEO is virtually impossible to execute without quality external backlinks. During this phase, your main task is to gain as much exposure as possible for your previously optimized content. The MiroMind team suggests that you always focus on pieces that have strategic value for your brand, such as pillar pages.
Besides boosting rankings, link-building allows your property managers to create relationships with other professionals from the field. It can be a fantastic opportunity to build a company from the ground up, as these connections might work in the long run.
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Measure and modify
Search engine optimization is heavily dependent on analytical tools and A/B testing. Experts use several tools to asses placement and performance within search engines, user engagement, link-building efforts, and a few other things.
As property management SEO isn’t a static category, the success of your campaign is often predicated on how quickly you can modify your campaign. So, make sure to track your performance over time, and make adjustments when necessary.
And if you struggle to make an impact, you can call MiroMind’s team for assistance!