By now, most of us have heard the term SEO. You might even know it stands for Search Engine Optimization. But, what exactly does that mean? If your response is along the lines of something about showing up in Google, you’re on the right track, but there is so much more! SEO helps your website be found, read and favored by search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing. Many of us shy away from SEO because it sounds confusing and hard to manage, but it’s not. With a few tips, you can take control of your SEO!
To prove our point, we asked Amado Candelario, SEO Manager of Apartments.com, to host the Apartments.com Training Series Live! webinar on search engine optimization. In this 30 minute session, Amado covered a lot of ground, explaining why SEO is crucial for small business web design, how to implement an SEO strategy and what to avoid. The recorded webinar is available for you to view here. A few of the highlights from the Q&A session are:
Q: My management company changed. How do I avoid traffic loss to my website?
A: Your efforts are not wasted! Simply swap out the old information with the new to maintain consistency on the web. Be sure to issue a 301 redirect for the old domain name or management company name. This will tell search engines to automatically send users—typing in the old URL—to the new website or domain. The best part is the user won’t even notice! Also, be sure to remind your friends on social websites of any changes.
Q: Do larger font sizes on my page ever look spammy, or can it hurt SEO?
A: Nope. As long as the font makes sense to the layout and design of your website, larger and smaller fonts can even be more appealing! However, adding text that is manipulative in nature can hurt your SEO. Let’s say a visitor enters your website and sees a clean backdrop, but you’ve placed invisible text in the background. While users on the front end cannot see the text, search engines can. Beware as that copy can be considered black hat SEO, which hurts your search rankings.
Q: If I have only pictures on a webpage and no copy or text, how can I optimize my SEO?
A: Search engines love images and video as they are considered rich media! What they don’t love, however, is Flash. Flash is produced in such a way that it is hidden behind a video file. As a result, search engines may have a difficult time decoding it, potentially lowering your SEO.
If you have any questions or comments about the webinar, tweet them to @Apartmentscom, using the hashtag #AptsTraining, or leave them in the comments section below.
Stay tuned for our next free webinar on September 13th on the importance of online video with Patrick Grandinetti, Head of Real Estate for Google!
Thank you, Apartments.com for these webinars! Fantastic way to keep up with the latest trends in advertising, social media, and to hear from other communites. About time someone did something like this!
Learned so much! Looking forward to utilizing all the new learned info. Keep up the good work Apartments.com