We’ve been talking a lot about how October 1, along with May 1, are traditionally the biggest moving days of the year, and naturally got a lot of folks asking why that is. Our assumption was that it was pegged to the seasons: That no one in his or her right mind would choose to move in the extremes of winter or summer. But we decided to do a little digging – internet-style – into the origins of the fall and spring moving rituals, and found we were not too far off. According to Wikipedia, the May 1 tradition got its start in New York:

Moving Day was a tradition in New York City dating back to colonial times and lasting until after World War II. On February 1, sometimes known as “Rent Day”, landlords would give notice to their tenants what the new rent would be after the end of the quarter, the tenants would spend good-weather days in the early spring searching for new houses and the best deals and on May 1 all leases in the city expired simultaneously at 9:00 AM, causing thousands of people to change their residences, all at the same time. Read More

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

Read on for six short-description writing tips that will improve your listing performance on Apartments.com and any listing service.

 “Great location… close to the bus stop.”  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 week, Tami Siewruk and her team at Multifamily Pro are hosting a terrific event in Dallas – the Social Media Optimization Summits (#OptSum to those Twitter-hashtag-savvy folks).  A companion to the first iteration back in March, Optimization Summits is a great two-day immersion into the nuts and bolts of how to market your brand online.  Having gone in March, I was witness to the terrific array of speakers who covered topics ranging from word-of-mouth marketing to search engine optimization, from tips on crafting emails that deliver results to an eight-hour crash course on understanding and engaging consumers via Facebook.  Though the message during these sessions was universal to all marketers, the multifamily industry was well represented and, as a result, the speakers paid special attention to how apartment marketers could apply these insights. 

Now Multifamily Pro is at it again, bringing back some of the best speakers from March for OptSum, fall edition.  Personally, I’m really excited to hear Brian Solis discuss the principles of the Conversation Prism and Lauren Fernandez detail how social can help us communicate more effectively across generations, in addition to my friends Mike Whaling and Duncan Alney dropping knowledge on Facebook and online reputation management, respectively. 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 Brandon Hollembeak, Product Manager – Advertising Products & Services

Part 3 of 3  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