The biggest tech companies in the world are in an arms race over voice technology. Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft, have all made an investment in voice assistant software and products. The rise in voice search technology has stirred interest and excitement in the apartment industry. As smart home tech continues to grow, strategies for how communities can take advantage of this technology to reach prospects have been top-of-mind for marketers this year. So what do you need to know about voice search and the role it plays in apartment marketing?
Continue reading…Category: Search Engine Marketing
Blog posts, resources, and tips related to marketing in search engines.
Drive Local Traffic to Your Business With Google My Business Posts
Google My Business listings are one of the most effective ways for businesses to be discovered and engaged with on Google. We’ve marketed thousands of clients nationwide from apartment communities, senior living communities, auto dealerships, hotels and hospitals, and have seen first-hand how effective GMB listings are for local businesses.
Across a sample of 409 clients, we found that 28% of their website sessions came from GMB listings. These listings don’t only deliver more traffic than the typical organic search listings, they also deliver higher quality traffic. Website sessions coming from Google My Business listings convert 29% more than the average traffic source.
Google gives businesses plenty of opportunities to promote their company and improve their Google Business profile, but most local businesses don’t take advantage of them or don’t know they exist. In this blog post, we’ll explain how Google determines which listing to show to searchers, how you can use GMB posts to drive local search traffic to your website, and how you can use GMB to convert searchers into leads.
Continue reading…Google is Sunsetting Average Position
Google is removing average position as a performance metric in Google Ads at the end of September. What does this mean for advertisers?
Continue reading…Top Announcements from Google’s Marketing Live Event
At Google’s annual Marketing Live conference, they announced big updates in 2019 with changes to Search, YouTube, Shopping and their new Discovery ad units.
Continue reading…How to Protect Your Apartment Community From Brandjacking
Is your brand working against you in the search engine? When your prospects search for you by name, are you the first brand they see? If you aren’t the number one listing for your community’s brand you might just have a brandjacking problem. You wouldn’t be the first community to experience this, even marketing agencies like us experience brandjacking attempts. We know being brand jacked can be a frustrating experience, but rest assured, it’s a battle you can win. By the end of this article, you’ll know how to overcome brand jackers and reclaim your rightful place in the search engine.
Continue reading…Google Ads Now Tracks Store Visits
If you own or operate a location-based business, you’ve likely dreamed of the day you can attribute marketing dollars to real-life foot traffic. Google started working on making this dream a reality in 2014, but the feature only rolled out to a limited group of high traffic companies. Over the last few months, Google started making a larger feature roll out to small businesses and enterprises. Advertisers can now track the campaigns, keywords, and devices that lead to store visits in Google’s ad platform. Up until this point, advertisers have been able to attribute ad campaign success in Google Ads through website traffic, website events, online purchases, and phone calls. While these metrics do a great job of measuring the intent of searchers to visit a location, store visits allow businesses to see how this online intent actually translates to foot traffic.
Continue reading…Search Marketing Strategies for Student Housing
Do you know what students type into Google when they search for an apartment? Do you know why some student housing ads get more clicks and impressions than others?
Most multifamily professionals know search marketing is an important component of a student housing marketing campaign, but they don’t know how student housing search marketing campaigns differ from general apartment search marketing campaigns, or what communities can do to stand out from others in the search engine.
By the end of this article, you won’t be like most multifamily housing professionals. You will have a better idea of how students search for apartments and what types of search ads they click on. You will know why some student housing search campaigns perform better than others and how your student housing community can use paid search campaigns to generate more traffic.
Continue reading…Apartment SEO vs. SEM in 2019
If you took a sneak peek into thousands of apartment websites’ analytics accounts you might find that they tell a similar story. Most of their website traffic is coming from Google. Google is arguably the most important marketing channel for apartment marketers today, but it’s also one of the most difficult to compete in.
New Google & YouTube Ad Features
We know it can be difficult to keep track of the growing list of changes Google makes to its ad platform. One of the greatest benefits we provide our clients is our ability to stay on top of every new change and opportunity that emerges within the ad space. Out of all the changes that Google made in 2018 these are the four we think you will find interesting and impactful going into the new year.
Continue reading…Should I use AMP to Improve My Google Ranking?
If you aren’t keeping up with mobile optimization trends, you won’t rank as well in search engines or ad platforms. You’ve likely heard by now that Google penalizes site designs that aren’t responsive to mobile. As a result, many companies have adapted their websites in the last few years to become mobile responsive. But what many companies don’t realize is a mobile-first experience has come to mean more than, “does it work on mobile?”. What mobile first really means is, “does your site work better on mobile?”. In an attempt to stay ahead of the mobile movement, some companies have gone as far as restructuring their site to prioritize mobile page speeds above all else. What are these companies doing to beat out their competition? “AMP”