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SEO Guide for Multi Family and Local SMBs

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In order to see growth in organic results as part of your digital marketing strategy, you need a full solution for SEO. SEO is a component of our local SEO services package and can see significant benefits for your website as a whole when following best practices.

We’ve put together a helpful guide to walk through the core components of SEO that we can control and a behind the curtain view into Boxley Marketing’s approach for local SEO services for multifamily and local small businesses.

What is Search Engine Optimization?

If you Google this, you will get a variety of results. This is my personal definition and I’ve borrowed from multiple sources

Search Engine Optimization (def) – an ongoing and ever-evolving strategy and methodology for being found in search engines in an organic or natural way by providing relevant content that is easily indexable and accessible for web users and the phrases that these users are searching for.

There are multiple things going on here, two perspectives to consider:

  • Search engine’s perspective: how do I make sure what is on the web is being found correctly and is relevant to what the user is looking for?
  • Users perspective: how do I find what I want when I search for it as easily and as quickly as possible?

Two key terms to understanding SEO:

  • Indexability – structure of your site content (think of a book’s index)
  • Accessibility – how easy is it for users to use your site and get the information they are looking for

We are going to discuss a lot of technical aspects in this SEO guide. We need to remember that the main point of SEO is to provide relevant content. Keep that as your main focus when thinking about SEO.

How Search Works?

When you do a search in a search engine, like Google, you’re searching Google’s index of the web. Or, what Google can find through its accessible and indexable means.

Google uses spiders to fetch pages that point to other pages. These pages are found by links. SEO is therefore made up of pages and links. The web is essentially a complex matrix of pages linking to each other that the search engines, like Google, uses to validate or invalidate pages as useful to share with end users based on your search query.

Google asks questions of the content in order to determine which ones to show in their results and to improve the quality of content. Questions like: is this a quality website or a spammy one? Are the words in the title tag, headings, on page content? Are similar words on the page? So, if you understand where I’m going, you should not only have the copy itself relevant, but the coding of the page should be in-line with best practices.

Why Is SEO Important?

SEO is the information super highway. Much like you used to go to a library to find your favorite books and check them out, we go to the search engines to find useful information based on the search query.

Search engines can help you, as a multi-family property owner or retirement community, get found. Traditional search engines are Google, Bing and Yahoo. But search engines can also include platforms with a large audience where visitors are looking for different types of information such as YouTube (video) or Amazon (everything).

Main SEO Components To Keep In Mind

Search engines are algorithmically based that are, first, constantly changing and second, there are many ranking factors to why keywords do or don’t appear in the search results.

Google is constantly making updates, some major and some minor. The average is one update a day. But regardless, there is a lot of opportunity to be gained when being found in category and brand related terms.

The best approach for SEO is to be a good citizen of the internet and provide good text-based content. The catch is that you want to be a good citizen by following best practices in order to give every opportunity for ranking organically.

This does not mean we cannot influence the search results for our good, we can. But we do not want to try nefarious tactics like doing “spammy linkbacks” to your website or stuffing a bunch of keywords on one page.

We need everything to be “natural”.

Important SEO algorithm factors

If I was to whittle down the top SEO algorithm factors, some for all websites, but in particular for apartments and retirement, it would be the following:

  • Title Tags
  • On-Page Content
  • Internal Linking
  • URL Architecture & Taxonomy
  • Header Tags
  • Image Alt Tags
  • Sitemaps
  • Backlinks
  • NAP Consistency
  • Schema Markup

There are a WHOLE lot more SEO factors but these are the ones we have the most control over and that can have a BIG impact in the search results.

We must remember that Google is constantly changing the algorithm. Hundreds of algorithm updates happen every year and the average is once a day so SEO is never really static. We only hear about the major algorithm updates several times a year but they are constantly making tweaks to continue improving the results and making sure people are finding what they are looking for.

It’s practically impossible to keep up with every minor change. Google doesn’t provide details on most of the updates. We like to remind our clients to keep your focus on being a good citizen and providing good content. If we do what a good citizen does by providing content that communicates what the page is supposed to be about and we stay away from black hat SEO tactics like spammy backlinks or duplicate content across the web, we won’t get caught having to do a major rehaul of your site for SEO purposes.

Because of this, it is a good reason why coming up with an effective keyword strategy is very important and doing it at the outset of a website build to help define the page structure and the hierarchy of page content. This is very important. Your website cannot rank for every term, you have to pick and choose which ones are the priority and build a strategy around that. 

Search Engine Functionality and the SERPs

SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) are historically a list of 10 organic links per page in which the search engines (Google, Bing, & Yahoo) try to return the most relevant results based on a number of factors. There is one slight change in that now the results are one expansive scroll rather than multiple pages. It is essentially the same in that 10 organic links show up for a search and if you scroll to the bottom, 10 more show up, and so on.

Factors for what shows up in the search result includes:

  • past history – what have you and other people searched for in the past and clicked on
  • location – what area are you in and are there location based results that should be factored into the SERPs
  • device – what device are you using and based on the type of environment that you are viewing it in, either your mobile phone, tablet, or desktop, how should the information be served to you
  • There are a large amount of factors for how search engines chose to display information in their search results.

Non-Brand Search Results

In the image, you can see an example of non-brand search results. For example, “houston heights apartments” doesn’t reference a property. It just references apartments with a residential neighborhood. Two types of results in the search engines for non-brand search results include:

  • Paid ads – a quick way to be found for specific terms but not a function of the SEO algorithm
  • Organic Search results – this is what we are affecting when talking about the SEO algorithm

Brand Search Results

A brand search means that the brand’s name is the search.

The example is “Elan Heights Apartments” and as a result, we’ll see a different set of results in the search engines.

For the paid ads, if the brand is running ads, they will often own more real estate with assets below the results. And then ideally they will also see their property present in the organic search results.

Additionally, an optimized result will include the Google Business Profile listings “Knowledge graph” which includes the main elements about that property such as the map location, reviews, photos, hours of operation, and more.

Note that different searches show different things on the right side. Google is constantly testing what should go there. We go into more depth about the knowledge graph later.

The main thing to know is that Google is always experimenting and beta testing what to show in the search engines in order to provide a better user experience for the web user. Just know that historically the two that have been the mainstays and that traditionally have more impact in the results are first the organic search results and also paid ads.

So when we talk about SEO or Search Engine Optimization we are specifically referring to the organic search results highlighted below the paid ads and elements that might appear on the right side that we will refer to in more detail later.

Users perspective

The basic process for a search engine is:

  • Type in a search query into Google
  • See the search result listings. Find the one most relevant. You will see two things that are optimized:
    • Title Tags
    • Meta Description
  • Click through on the Title Tag to see the content of the website.

Primary factors for relevant search results include:

  • SEO:
    • Title tags – tells the user what the page is about
    • Unique content and headers for every page – the on page website experience is critical
    • URL architecture – this is evidenced by not just its presence on the search results, but also how the site is structured
  • User Experience – these are things that matter for user experience but are not a factor of the SEO algorithm
    • Meta Descriptions – these are short descriptions of what will show up in the search results.
    • Calls-to-Action on Each Page – when people understand what you want them to do next on each page, it makes for more engagement

On-Site SEO and Off-Site SEO

There are two main categories of SEO:

  • on-site SEO – what is on your site and crawlable by search engines
  • off-site SEO – any factors not on your actual property website that could be affecting your search engine results.

On-site SEO Considerations when starting out

On-site SEO considerations when building a site:

  • Content Management system
  • Developers and the languages they prefer to write code in.

These can both help or hinder your sites SEO efforts depending on how they are built and whether they the site can be maintained according to Google’s standards for indexing and ranking.

Also, you should remember the first priority of any good developer is to write code that is structurally sound, to improve the site speed to serve pages faster, and writing the code in languages that fit current requirements and expectations for serving content online.

A content management system is intended to make it easy for non-techy people to post content online.

Not to say either of those can’t help you implement SEO but it is always best to lean on a digital marketing agency to ensure that the site is set up to help you market the business. That is the reason why you need a digital marketer’s help. A good one can analyze the site and make sure that your site’s SEO foundation is set up for success so you can get the maximum benefit out of the site.

So, the main point, you have Boxley Marketing to help support the marketing efforts and confirm that best practices are happening when updates to your website are made. Feel free to reach out for us to do a quick check on anything that might influence SEO.

The Importance of the Source Code vs Just What You See on the Front End

When you look at a website, it has two views. It has:

  • the design view which is what you see on the front end
  • the backend view which is the code base itself.

Google is primarily looking at the code base. So it is important that your code is structured in a way that it can be read and that Google can categorize the content through proper HTML tagging.

Title Tags

Tags define the title of a page and should explain simply and succinctly what the content on the page is.

Important standards for creating an optimized title tag are:

  • each page should have a unique title tag
  • the title tag should be <= 60 characters so that it can show up in the search engine results pages accurately (and not get cut off)
  • An ideal structure for title tags is something like this:
    • Home Page: Keyword City St | Brand | Keyword
    • Inner Page: Keyword City St | Page Theme | Brand

This is a rule of thumb but this often depends on the length of the keyword, of the brand name, and other factors. So, hopefully you’re getting the general idea of the fact that location terms are important and specifying the page theme as well.

The goal is not to stuff a bunch of keywords into a title tag. If anything we’re wanting these to seem as natural as possible. Anytime something feels forced it probably is. Google is always trying to monitor and correct spammy practices so you want to be careful. You don’t want to have negative impacts on your site as a result.

Meta Descriptions

Meta descriptions are brief HTML attributes that offer concise insights into the content of web pages. They typically range from 150 to 160 characters and should be unique for each page. Incorporating calls to action can enhance their effectiveness. It’s important to note that while meta descriptions are not a direct Google ranking factor, they still play a crucial role in enticing users to click through to your site from search engine results pages.

On-page Content

On-page content serves as the textual foundation of your website, offering valuable information for visitors to consume and engage with. It’s the written material on your site that users read and absorb. Each page of your website should adhere to several key guidelines to ensure its effectiveness.

Each page should include:

  • Unique content is content that is customized for a specific page and not duplicated anywhere else (more on duplicate content later)
  • Header tags (h1-h6 tags) play a crucial role in organizing and structuring your content with a clear hierarchy. This helps break up the copy for search engines to understand priorities on the page and gives more SEO value when the page headers are tagged correctly.
  • Content length is another important aspect to consider. Each page should be at least 300 words or 2 to 3 paragraphs. More content to crawl is better than not enough and this minimum amount of copy is sufficient depth and context for your page topic. But then alternatively you don’t want to write too much either. It depends on the type of page what is appropriate, but at a minimum, you need more than 300 words to justify a page’s existence.
  • Strategic placement of targeted keywords within your content helps improve visibility and search engine rankings. By including 2 to 3 relevant keywords per page, you increase the likelihood of your content being discovered by users searching for related topics. Alternatively, you don’t want to keyword stuff a page. Additionally, content must flow well and be clear. ake sure the terms are prioritized and they make sense where you have them.
  • Adding content or making edits are positive and considered essential for keeping your website fresh and relevant. By updating your content you demonstrate your commitment to providing the best experience for your audience.
  • Internal linking is a powerful technique for improving navigation and promoting engagement within your website. By including 2 to 3 internal links per page, you guide users to related content and encourage them to explore further, ultimately enhancing their overall experience. Consider links as important sidenotes to a page’s content. For example, if you reference services on the photos page, link to the services page and vice versa.
  • No duplicate content. This is crucial for maintaining the integrity and credibility of your website from Google’s eyes. Duplicate content can harm your search engine rankings and confuse users, so it’s essential to create original content for each page.

We want quality over quantity in considering on page content for the site. By doing this you can ensure a meaningful experience for visitors and for Google to index us and give us greater opportunity to rank.

Duplicate content 

Duplicate content is content that appears on the internet in more than one place. It is detrimental to your site in several ways, including:

  • Causes indexing issues
  • Hinders page authority
  • Inhibits ranking opportunities

There are a few instances where duplicate content cannot be avoided. In this case, Boxley Marketing can help you avoid having indexing or ranking problems by implementing the following:

  • Canonical tags for search engines – When there is duplicate content that cannot be avoided, for example if you have a blog post that someone else picks up and wants to run it, you would use a canonical tag to reference back to the original site as the primary owner of the content.
  • 301 redirects – with a site redesign and new pages to a site or when moving a site from an old hosting location to a new one, you want to give credit to your site for its previous value in Google’s eyes

Duplicate content would apply to apartment complexes in that you want to differentiate your property website information from a directory site like apartment.com. Each instance of content should be unique. This also applies to copying a paragraph from the home page of your site to the photos page. Just don’t do it. Write a custom page of content, Google will thank you for it by better indexing and potentially ranking you higher.

URL architecture

An optimized URL structure is extremely important to ensure search engines can effectively crawl your site and property index it within their own databases. Here’s some things you should take into consideration:

  • Clear Taxonomy: Taxonomy is the process of creating classification and systems used to provide clarity to your site’s URL structure subdirectories and subdomains. This is necessary so that the pages can be organized and provide clear site structure.
  • Directory Paths: Offering clear directory paths within your URLs communicates the site’s structure and content organization. Additionally, it improves user experience by providing intuitive navigation paths for visitors exploring your site.
  • Hyphens Over Underscores: In creating URL structure, consider the white space in between the words of your URL. If you don’t specify anything you will find random special characters that are translated in the browser. When considering how to address this whitespace, hyphens are preferred over underscores. Search engines interpret hyphens as word separators, whereas underscores are often treated as part of a single word.
  • Relevant Keywords: Furthermore, Incorporate relevant keywords into your URLs. This can boost your SEO value. Additionally, including keywords that accurately reflect the content of a page helps signal its relevance to search engines, increasing the likelihood of ranking for relevant search queries. As always, maintain balance and avoid keyword stuffing. We would rather have a shorter URL string than a long, drawn out URL.

Optimizing URL architecture is integral to maximizing your website’s visibility and performance in search engine results. These are some starting points for best practices when creating a URL structure for your property’s website.

What Not to Do With Header tags

Header tags are sometimes hard to implement correctly based on the structure of the content management system or the complexity of the coding language. When implementing header tags, do not:

  • Use More Than One H1 Tag Per Page
  • Repeat H1 Tags – like, don’t copy the H1 tag on another page
  • Keyword Stuff

Also, hierarchy of header tags are important.

  • H1 tags are only used once per page
  • H2 – H6 tags are like nested lists on a matrix underneath the H1 tag. H1 has the highest authority all the way down to H6 being the lowest authority. Most sites only have between H1 to H3 on a page. Anything after this is rarely used.

Important side note: One of the quickest ways to improve paid search quality scores is to improve the header tags on the landing page to make sure that they correlate with the ad copy. This will help communicate to Google that when users click on your paid ad they are receiving relevant content.

This side note is one example as to why it helps to have an integrated digital marketing team like Boxley Marketing that can do both SEO and paid search for you, to make sure they are working together.

Image Alt Tags

Image alt tags are an attribute to website images that provide context for each image on your website.

Most images by default are some cryptic code like 001122 followed by image 001123.jpg. This does nothing for the search results to be aware of what the image is. Descriptive images can equally help. But sometimes you don’t have the ability to edit the image name.

Regardless, image alt tags can:

  • Add Relevancy To The Website
  • Communicate With Search Engines in supporting your on-page content authority
  • Represent The Brand In Image Search Results when people search for your property or industry related terms
  • Include Keyword Consistency – always good to consider the keywords in relationship to the image itself

Sitemaps

There are two types of sitemaps:

  • An HTML sitemap is a visual representation of the site’s page structure. These are going to show up in the front-end of the site, visible as a specific page. An HTML sitemap is for user experience, not a direct SEO factor, but it can help them find what they want when done well. As a result, it can help SEO indirectly.
  • An XML sitemap are a file dropped into the root folder with all of your website files. These are for search engines crawling your website to know which pages should be indexed and in what priority. An XML sitemap is for search engines crawling your website to be able to match the content of your page with a specific page designation.

HTTPS

Secure Socket Layers (SSL) gives an added level of security to your website. When you do this, your website URL will show https://. HTTPS adds an extra level of security to your site by encrypting your site information and could give a slight ranking boost. This is important to be done for all websites as Google gives credibility to SSL secured sites.

It offers:

  • Secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol
  • Extra Layer Of Verification
  • Increased Ranking Opportunity

Primarily for those collecting personal information from website users, it can be especially if your site is large and has a whole lot of traffic and e-commerce.

Schema Markup

Schema markup is a specific language to tell the search engines exactly what is on the page.

A starting point for any local business website:

  • Business Type
  • Address
  • Phone Number
  • Hours
  • Logo

There are a lot of different types of schema markup that provide enhanced search visibility via rich snippets and featured snippets and Knowledge Graph results.

The idea behind schema is, there could be multiple phone numbers on a page or a site. If you don’t designate the one you want Google to pick, Google may choose one for you. Pick the one you want to feature in search results for specific situations.

How this is relevant for property management groups, at a minimum you want to make sure that you follow the organization schema markup for a corporate website and local business schema markup for specific property websites as well.

The local business schema includes the business type, address, phone number, hours, and logo. This way, if Google decides to add this information as relevant in the search result, then it is correctly matching what you intend it to be. 

Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools

The Search Console and Bing Webmaster tools are used to see how the search engines are engaging with a website. It tells you about:

  1. Indexing Issues can be highlighted, those that may hinder your website’s visibility on search engine results pages (SERPs). By identifying and addressing these issues promptly, you can ensure that your site’s pages are properly indexed and accessible to users.
  2. Crawl Status is crucial for ensuring that search engine bots can efficiently explore and index your content with detailed reports on crawl activity, including any errors encountered during the process, allowing you to rectify them and optimize crawlability.
  3. These tools offer insights into the organic keywords driving traffic to your website. By analyzing this data, you can identify high-performing keywords, as well as opportunities to optimize your content for additional relevant terms, ultimately improving your search visibility and traffic.
  4. In-Depth Data filtering allows you to dive deeper into your website’s performance data. Whether you’re analyzing traffic trends, assessing the impact of site changes, or evaluating the effectiveness of your SEO strategies, these tools provide the necessary granularity to make informed decisions.

These tools need to be connected to your website through a tag like Google Tag Manager.

Off Site SEO 

Now we are going to review how we can affect SEO from how your property is being displayed and portrayed on sites other than your property website (off-site).

Backlinks are when another website links back to your website. Things like:

  • Partner websites – local, neighborhood partnerships, recommended vendors/services
  • Blogs
  • Social media sites

Backlinks could help or hinder you depending on their authority in Google’s eyes so you want to know what your backlinks consist of and in competitive markets it can be helpful to be more aggressive here.

Our strategy as an agency is not to go look for directory sites to link to but to find partner sites that make sense to associate with your company, like real estate home owners associations, preferred employers like those that might have a special offer to tenants, community based connections or blogs covering the apartment complex. This is one place where we want to think about being a good citizen, we don’t want to force things that are unnatural.

UNAP and Citations

UNAP is information that can be found in Google Knowledge Graphs on the side of the SERPS and can be controlled through Google My Business listings.

Citations are placed on other websites and list the same as NAP.

  • Directory Sites – top Internet Listing Service – rent.com, apartments.com, or apartmentguide.com
  • Search Sites – like Yahoo’s Business page
  • Partner Websites – local, neighborhood partnerships, recommended vendors/services

Local citations is an important element for a large number of sites and show the URL, Name, Address, and Phone Number across the web. Ideally you want them all to have the correct information. Most of these sites are user generated, so there are constantly errors popping up. It is something you have to continue to monitor on these sites

It is also important to have a Google Business Profile set up and consistent with your local citations. Your Google Business Profile directly impacts the Google Knowledge Graph. The Google Knowledge graph also has some elements of schema markup that can pull in.

Summary Highlights

In summary, SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is crucial for enhancing your website’s visibility and ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs).

Here are some top highlights to keep in mind from our SEO outline:

  1. Optimize Title Tags, Header Tags, & Alt Tags: Use relevant and descriptive tags to improve search engine understanding of your content structure.
  2. Utilize Relevant URL Architecture & Taxonomy: Ensure your website’s URL structure is logical and user-friendly, aiding navigation and comprehension for both search engines and visitors. Make sure your domain paths are consumable and makes sense for a user.
  3. Consider Website Structure & Development: How your website is coded and built out is important. It can impact your organic rankings negatively or positively.
  4. Content Reigns Supreme: High-quality, relevant content remains the cornerstone of SEO success. Focus on creating valuable content for your user base. When in doubt, just write good content.
  5. Leverage Link Building, Schema Markup, & UNAP: Off-site SEO tactics such as these make sur your property information is listed accurately across all platforms so people can find you and Google can boost your website’s authority and visibility.

By implementing these key tactics, you can improve your website’s SEO performance and attract more organic traffic, ultimately achieving more revenue and filling your occupancy levels.

Please contact Boxley Marketing directly for us to review your SEO performance and/or provide competitive and keyword research with our insights.