SPECIAL REPORT: New Social Media and SEO Strategies

By Jessica Fiur, News Editor

Boston—At the recent National Apartment Association Education Conference and Exposition in Boston, panelists at the session “Analyzing and Optimizing Your Online Marketing Strategies” discussed tips to get the most out of social media and make property websites the most effective in terms of search. Panelists included John Kerrigan and Tyler Holmes from Catalyst; Katy Smerko and Madison Meier from Campus Advantage; and Grant Chambers from Workhouse Digital.

Social media has become very important in the real estate industry. Many businesses, especially multifamily  properties, currently use Facebook to communicate with their residents and potential residents.

“Some people feel more comfortable contacting us through Facebook than email!” one of the panelists said.

The analytics on the Facebook page could provide critical insight to property managers. Looking on the insight page will show who’s talking about a page. It can even be broken down by gender and age, so property managers can see who’s interested in the property and who they should market to. The speakers also suggested paying attention to friends of fans of the page, to reach an even bigger audience.

“Friends of fans in the timeline analytics are your potential customers,” a speaker said. “On average, Facebook users have 100 fans, so if you have 100 fans you could easily reach 10,000 people.”

Another topic covered by the panel was SEO (search engine optimization) of a property or company website. According to the speakers, SEO should generate about 50 to 60 percent of web traffic.

“Ultimately, SEO becomes the process of taking the information from your website and making sure it’s the message you want,” a panelist said.

The panelists said that old SEO techniques that people once put a lot of effort into are no longer valid. Instead, Google ranks pages higher if they’re found to provide a solid user experience.

According to the panelists, the following tips will ensure a page is properly optimized for search:

• Provide fresh and relevant content and proper code optimization
• Design for a positive user experience
• Make frequent updates with quality keyword-rich content
• Avoid duplicate content or “spammy” use of keywords
• Ensure high-quality, semantic code
• Install keyword-rich page titles
• Create a relevant reciprocal-link resource directory

It is very important to keep an updated Internet presence.

As one panelist remarked, “All roads lead back to your website.”