If you’re a regular visitor to, or long-time customer of Apartments.com, you may have noticed the significant transformation of  our site that has taken place in the last week or so.  After years of research, hard work and testing, we launched a redesigned version of our home page and search path!  Needless to say, I’m very  proud of the resulting effort.

What’s important to note is that this is not only a front-end re-skinning of our site, but a complete re-build of our underlying architecture.  The goal, therefore, was not just to improve the user experience, but create a robust foundation for future growth and innovation.  Mission accomplished! That said, the freshest new features are the ones you see on the front-end, the ones that help prospective renters find a place to live, and I’ll enumerate a few of them now: Read More

This post was originally written by Brandon Hollembeak, Product Manager – Advertising Products & Services

Ok, so it’s not such a shocker, but it’s definitely true that the more you’re online and available with Live Chat, the more renters will start chatting with you to get their questions answered, and hopefully set an appointment to take a tour! Read More

This post was originally written by Kerry Sugrue, former Social Media Specialist at Apartments.com. 

The busiest rental season is quickly approaching, which means spring cleaning, softball leagues, daydreaming about college trips to Panama City Beach and touching base with your potential and current residents!  With MyMedia you can keep in touch year round.  Our ongoing updates and slick designs provide you with countless creative options to choose from so you can effortlessly send relevant communications customized to prospects or residents.  While, I could just list all our features, I’d rather give you an idea of how MyMedia plays an important role through the lifecycle of a resident.  So, without further ado, I’d like to introduce John Doe Properties… Read More

This post was originally written by Kerry Sugrue, former Social Media Specialist at Apartments.com. 

Two weeks ago we discussed Google’s algorithm change and how it could potentially affect your website’s traffic.  After having some time to review their web analytics and traffic reports, Larry Cotter, VP of Apartments.com and General Manager of Apartment Home Living (AHL), saw positive effects from the change!  I had the opportunity to chat with Larry about the jump in traffic AHL is seeing and asked if he would share his findings as a blog post. Read More

We have recently come across several conversations online about the value of an Internet Listing Service (ILS), like Apartments.com.  While trying to decide the best way to approach this question, I thought of a popular saying; “you never really know what you had until it’s gone.”  So, that made me think, what would a world be like without ILS’s…?

Let’s say that, for whatever reason, tomorrow all ILSs ceased to exist and no longer appeared in Google’s search results.  Consumers using “long-tail” search terms – i.e. “two bedroom apartments in Chicago” – would probably do alright, because they’d at least get back property websites or Google Place listings for communities in Chicago, even if the quality of the experience varies widely from there.  Consumers using more general terms, like “apartments for rent” (there are about 2.25 million of those per month on Google) would have a harder time, having to go through several individual property management company sites to find a handful of listings that might suit their needs.  It would be frustrating and arduous experience, and only the management companies with the very largest national footprint would have any success in that world. Read More

This post was originally written by Kerry Sugrue, former Social Media Specialist at Apartments.com. 

Top of the mornin’ to ya!  With St. Patrick’s Day right around the corner, this is a great time to create a fun atmosphere in your apartment community and engage with your residents.  As they say, everyone’s Irish on St. Paddy’s Day, so here are some ideas for activities, surprises, and Facebook posts that you can use this year in your community: Read More

This post was originally written by Ken Shafer, past SEO Manager for Apartments.com.

Following their announcement about social search, Google rolled-out an update to their algorithm aimed at cleaning out some of the clutter in their search results:

“Many of the changes we make are so subtle that very few people notice them. But in the last day or so we launched a pretty big algorithmic improvement to our ranking—a change that noticeably impacts 11.8% of our queries—and we wanted to let people know what’s going on. This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.” Read More

This post was originally written by Ken Shafer, past SEO Manager for Apartments.com.

Still doubting the importance of social media signals in search results? After Google’s latest announcement you should probably reconsider. Their statement saying “But relevance isn’t just about pages—it’s also about relationships” is a wake-up call to all site owners that it’s time to pull our collective heads out of the sand and get to work cultivating a social network and encouraging interactions with your content.

The nuts and bolts Read More