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

This is the first edition of our Got a Minute video series.  We are going to be tackling topics in about a minute with videos from experts at Apartments.com.  Today I am going to show you how to get reporting for groups of keywords in Google Analytics.

Let’s say you’ve been focusing your recent SEO or SEM efforts on the city in which your property is located, so you may be buying Chicago-related keywords.  Or perhaps you’re focusing on the property name itself, so you buy keywords like “ABC Apartments.”  I personally know that phrases containing the word “goddady” have driven traffic to my site in the past, so I used that term as our example in the video below.  You are going to want to know how these SEO and SEM efforts have impacted traffic to your site.  By following the steps in our video you can highlight traffic driven by a particular keyword or phrase. Read More

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

We have talked a lot about tracking, analytics, SEO and reporting on our blog, which has prompted customers to ask questions about what all this means (We love questions! Keep them coming!). So I thought, who better to ask, than the experts? There are many different resources available for website tracking, both free and paid services. A well-known tool, which also happens to be free, is Google Analytics and I had the pleasure to talk with Jesse Nichols, the Partner Program Manager for Google Analytics & Website Optimizer at Google. We discussed the basics of analytics and how to get what you need to know from all those reports. Below is our interview for you to learn from. If you have any questions, please write them in the comments below. A big thank you to Jesse and everyone at Google from the Apartments.com team! Make sure you follow @GoogleAnalytics on Twitter for updates, and view this product tour for more information. 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 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

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

If you haven’t already heard about this site, let me introduce you to Quora. What’s it all about? Well, I’ll let their “about us” page do the talking:

“…One way you can think of it is as a cache for the research that people do looking things up on the web and asking other people. Eventually, when you see a link to a question page on Quora, your feeling should be: “Oh, great! That’s going to have all the information I want about that.” It’s also a place where new stuff–that no one has written about yet–can get pulled onto the web.” Read More

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

So you’re considering adding a blog to your website. That’s great! But hold on a second. Where you put that blog can have an impact on search engines and how they view all that great, new content you’re providing them. When you or your developers are building the blog, more often than not, this question comes up:

“Should we put the blog on www.companyname.com/blog or blog.companyname.com?” Read More

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

Everyone’s heard of finding a keyword and trying to rank for it. Next thing someone does is put that keyword in their Title Tag, Description Tag and throughout the copy someplace like their homepage.  As far as on-page keyword optimization, what else can you do? Turns out, there’s more you can do on the page to let the search engines know that your page is about a specific keyword or phrase.

Allow me introduce you to latent semantics. Latent semantics is just the technical term for using surrounding words to gain or provide meaning and context.  Placing relevant and related words and phrases in close proximity to the keyword you are targeting can actually be a stronger signal to search engines than simply repeating the targeted keyword over and over again. Let’s take a look at an example of how to research and implement latent semantics. 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