The following post was originally authored by former Apartments.com Director of Sales, Lisa McQueeney. We wish her the best of luck with her most recent endeavor!

I was so excited to be chosen as a speaker for the 2010 NAA Educational Sessions in New Orleans.  Although I have been speaking to management companies around the country for years, I knew this was would become an unforgettable experience.  I was right! Read More

As we approach one of the biggest moving days of the year—October 1st—Apartments.com will appear in a series of TV and radio interviews broadcast around the country.  Today, Apartments.com’s Chris Brown will provide insights on finding the perfect place to live while the 2010 Roommate of the Year contest winner, Andrew Prestler, will give advice on finding—and being—the best roommate.

Tune in locally to see Apartments.com in action driving renter awareness, ultimately resulting in traffic to your leasing offices!  All times noted are Eastern time zone.  Read More

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

Unless you’ve been living in a non-WiFi-enabled cave for the past few weeks you have heard about Google Instant, the latest “innovation” from Google. (I say “innovation” because Yahoo actually tried to do this in 2005 but couldn’t pull the trigger on their main site).

I just wanted to scratch the surface of what Google Instant is and how it could impact how you choose what keywords to use  for your site. Read More

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

If you’ve been following search engine optimization at all in the past year, you’ll have undoubtedly heard the term “real-time search.” One aspect of real-time search refers to search engines using the social media pipeline, including channels like Facebook and Twitter, to provide up-to-the-minute results. There is a growing contingent of bloggers out there who believe that real-time is the “next big thing” for SEO. I decided to run a few experiments to help illustrate how this all works. Read More

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

We’re all busy people and time is short, right? We need to be out there filling vacancies, so time to spend on the website and SEO is limited. Let’s see if we can help you by debunking a few myths that could be eating up valuable time and resources.

Myth 1:  Keywords in your Description Tag can affect your rankings Read More

In July, Apartments.com conducted a survey to apartment hunters across the country to find out if they protect themselves with renters insurance.  Despite the fact that renters are 50 percent more likely to experience theft than those who own homes, nearly 70 percent of survey respondents said they do not carry renters insurance.  The top reason apartment seekers gave for not getting insured was that they thought it was too expensive followed by many who did not know it existed.

While nearly a quarter of apartment hunters are under the assumption that renters insurance is too rich for their blood, the average premium is less than $200 a year and even the majority of survey respondents who are insured said they pay an average of $12.50 a month or less.  Most Americans spend more than that on their morning coffee. Read More

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

A web page’s Title Tag can be an important signal, telling search engines what a page is all about. It’s one of the most powerful on-page SEO elements you have at your disposal. Also, it’s one of the first things people will see about your site when it appears on a search engine results page (SERP). If you’re unfamiliar with the Title Tag, you can see it in a couple of places. Read More