How does an apartment website get higher natural placement in the search engines? It is the same battle that companies fight in just about any type of business. There are many important steps to effective search engine optimization, but there is one simple rule that is described in detail recently in SeachEngineWatch. As the article mentions: “The answer to long-lasting results in the search engines comes back to one simple truth: search engines like content.”

A website with more content is considered more relevant to searchers and search engine spiders and thus, the result will be higher rankings in the results. For example, an apartment website with a paragraph of descriptive information, photos, floor plans and contact information provides the basic information for a website visitor to research their apartment, but that limited content is unlikely to be ranked high by Google or MSN. Additional content that includes keywords relevant to the metro area that the apartment is located in, such as a local directory of businesses, will add pages of new content within the area, and the search engines will place higher value on the website.

Post by Greg Starr.

Movers in the rental realm are getting slammed with higher moving costs in 2008 and being advised to shop around and negotiate for extras. As much as apartment dwellers are encouraged to take advantage of move-in specials and amenities in rental communities, they are also pushing for incentives with professional movers, truck rentals and storage facilities, to name a few. It can be worthwhile to look past the big brands and consider some local alternatives. On the East Coast for example, Safeguard Self Storage boasts impressive package deals, modern facilities and high-end security to protect your belongings. Smaller brands like this accommodate local movers and those from afar, but sometimes you have to do an extra layer of digging to discover them. Niche local search engines like WeAreNetwork are a great way to find these gems of local establishments, because their content is more specific to a metro and its neighborhoods, rather than being more franchise and national based as the major engines typically are.

Post by Stephanie Santoro.

With today in increasingly sketchy economic times, how could companies not be more likely to seek out better values in their marketing efforts? I might sound overly optimistic (to the point of possibly being laughed off the internet), but I am excited that marketers are going to have to get more resourceful and creative. Since marketing budgets in companies everywhere are plunging, it’s likely that business owners and executives will begin employing less expensive and more free methods for keeping their name on the map.

Small business owners can start by increasing their visibility with the free search listing tools available at Google’s Local Business Center and Yahoo’s Add a Business page. By ensuring their information is visible and fresh, they become more accessible, therefore increasing their rank and visibility in search results with every curious click. And how could any local business go wrong by making sure they appear in various local engines such as WeAreNetwork where you can add a free listing at any of their U.S. and Canadian city sites? TrueLocal offers a similar service.

While niche search companies are typically confident in their specialty and highly value their own services over others, they still know they are fresh on the scene and might have the flexibility to cut you better deals to join your campaign.

Post by Stephanie Santoro.

Is it far-fetched to say that businesses offering products or services that are remotely connected to the Olympic games are missing out if they aren’t advertising online right now? I don’t think it’s a stretch because of people who behave like me. I was watching the table tennis competition and became so inspired, I searched for “ping pong tables” online. As I browsed some product sites, I wondered how many actual impulse transactions like this might actually have real follow-through during some of these events? I quickly came to my senses before reaching the “Add to cart” stage, but there could conceivably be others following a similar behavior patterns who actually do have the space and disposable income to buy what they want, when they want it. There is just something so motivating about the Olympics and the desire to relive that energy. The same could happen during a volleyball tournament or women’s fencing. Why not buy keywords or rich media that lets customers buy a gift card in one click and get a free volleyball with the purchase? How about capturing the thrill of fencing and advertising for fencing classes? Or a link to the private sports instructor’s website? Not everyone has an Adidas size budget to directly sponsor the Olympics but why not ride the coattails of $200 million campaigns with the same powerful concept on a smaller scale?

Post by Stephanie Santoro.

The social media hype continues and is enticing companies of every shape and size to dabble in creating new networks. To facilitate the craze, dozens of open source social networking platforms have launched. Jeremiah Owyyang’s blog lists over 60 brandable software platforms that can plug into your existing domain, allowing you to create your very own social network.  But does every company really need to have a social network?

In a Deloitte study of 100 businesses with online communities, Ed Moran found that 35% of these communities have less than 100 members and less than 25% have 1000 members. 6% of the businesses studied spent over $1 million on their social networks. Sadly, all too many fail at their attempts to connect customers to their brand because instead of focusing on the community itself, businesses are focusing on the value that social community could provide for their business.

Despite the failures, there are definitely industries that DO have ready-made communities with well-established brand alliance, and have a greater chance of building successful online communities. The multifamily is definitely well-positioned for this. Other verticals include: local television networks (daily news watchers), radio (listening audiences), niche local communities (customized hyperlocal search) and education (school districts, private schools, universities).

Most multifamily companies have a couple clear-cut missions in life (e.g. collecting rents and driving occupancy rates), but a newer mandate is to establish and promote your brand for a longer-term connection with an increasingly transient population.  Before signing a rental contract, an individual needs to identify with what that apartment provides – far deeper than price points, the rental market is now driven by amenities. “Lifestyle” is the buzzword for providing more than a roof over people’s heads. Now, apartment companies need to provide easy to use services ranging from online rent pay to pet sitting to VIP concierge services and customized local search while hosting real live community pool parties, golf instruction classes and more. While it may sound exhausting (and it is), apartment companies are finally optimizing their built-in community of residents and finding creative ways to connect the residents together, along with meaningful lifestyle amenities that cement the value of their brand, while gaining loyalty in the minds of renters.

Riverstone Residential, the nation’s third largest apartment management company, offers a moving program, Riverstone-to-Riverstone which helps transfer residents to another Riverstone community sans application process and deposit fees. Combined with their Living Made Easy features, including “Your Neighborhood Directory,” a local search engine launched in three metros, where users can find “just down the street” local businesses via a true search results format (e.g. not just Yellow Page data), residents benefit from buying into Riverstone’s “community” and the value it provides to their daily lives.

Morals of the story:

• If you don’t have a pre-existing community, don’t assume that you can create one (and don’t spend a lot of money trying to create one).
• If you do have a pre-existing community (and they already visit your website regularly), focus on the value that your social network will provide to your users.

Post by David Gosse.

A major distinction between online search advertising and traditional advertising is that an online searcher is looking for choices and recommendations while a television user may not be. Both users are bombarded with offers, though the online user is more likely to accept irrelevant offers as a self-inflicted experience they simply expect to endure. This is an age where digital recording services are coming standard with cable services after all. Ignoring a television commercial is as easy as flipping to the next page in a magazine. 

Some may argue this contrast alone elevates a viewer’s intolerance and increases their likelihood of flipping off the tube. They can easily switch to the laptop instead or often simultaneously. But whether they turn it off or keep it on, consumers are likely to follow up what interests them on TV with research or shopping online. Events like the Super Bowl pull in a tremendous amount of pre-kickoff and post kickoff searching. Recently Bob Parsons, CEO and Founder of GoDaddy.com delivered a keynote address at AIM 2008 (Apartment Internet Marketing Conference) in April about how he catapulted his business from small to world leader in domain names and web hosting by reinforcing Go Daddy commercials with online branding and direct marketing. The point is that people are advertising online more than ever, whether it’s to reinforce more traditional campaigns (or not).  Either is good for search sites that offer relevant content and either is good for the actual advertiser.

Post by Stephanie Santoro.

Do you ever log into an online community, see an ad and think, “Nice try but no cigar” and go about your business? I don’t think I’m alone in feeling superior these days to some of the irrelevant online advertising attempts that I’m hit with daily. For example, Myspace thinks they’re going to “reel me in” with giant electric blue hyperlinks to buy “Frank Lloyd Wright Gifts” just because this world famous architect is listed in my interests? I might read about his work and appreciate his style, but I doubt I will ever be shopping online to get all my friends an FLW keychain. I suppose if I cared to be more liberal in exposing my personal likes and dislikes, the ads generated for me might make more sense?
 
In a recent Online Media Daily Commentary entry called Shopping 3.0 In A Web 2.0 World by Gordon Gould, a refreshing concept is posed, “The question should be: how can consumers discover products (or brands/companies) that fit their unique tastes? And not how can data be used to tell consumers what products they want/need?” Facebook, though not super discreet in some ways, practices this concept well with a small rotating ad space within a permanent left panel of their site navigation.

Once logged in from the ad-free homepage you are greeted by a newsfeed of your friend’s recent activity, complete with icons and descriptions. Occasionally I’ll become consumed by the sometimes enticing feeds and perhaps click one. After all friends share interests, right? But in the more traditional sense of plain ‘ol ads, the permanent ads in the left panel are almost always more relevant to me than the marketing from other online communities.

Today I experienced an ad offering a photo booth rental. Perfect for someone with quirky tastes and who cites their status as being engaged in their profile, right? Well, let’s just say my fingers did the clicking and I was on their site and having a phone conversation about their services within minutes. Even though I’d been suckered, I didn’t care. I was too busy imagining how cool it would be to have a photo booth at my reception. 

How do they know my quirky tastes you ask? Well for one, they know which feeds interest me and then they proceed to track my activity. But even if an individual barely utilizes them or ever at all, enough of your online friends are likely to use them and likely have similar tastes which are also linked to your profile. Secondly, the groups you join and other movement within the site tell even more about you.

So it’s all about the clues the user leaves behind and how intelligently a site uses those clues to market to a specific user. The trick is not to bombard the user but rather provide a sense of ease in finding unique new products and services.

Post by Stephanie Santoro.

More and more these days the web has become my all-in-one tool for managing just about everything. I live a virtually paperless lifestyle with the exception of stubborn vendors who have yet to adopt online billing. Personally I can attest to about 80% of my waking hours being spent online. Like a growing number of professionals, I communicate with co-workers primarily via email and instant messenger, complete most projects with online software and manage professional and personal schedules through various web-based systems. Regretfully, I am also guilty of maintaining friendships via every popular social network out there. Being the self-professed “online junkie” that I am, it is no secret to me that I am exposed to a lot of target marketing online. As it becomes easier and easier to track one’s online activity, user-specific, strategically placed ads become easier to spot.

Blushes aside, unlike the small percentage of users that actually notice this, I could care less that a profile for marketing directly to me is being updated every time I visit a site. Heck it’s more thoughtful than some of the interactions I engage in, given the decline in customer service I experience in the average dining or shopping establishment. It’s no wonder online buying is on a steady rise as claimed in this eMarketer article on retail eCommerce.

Most of the time ads are discreet enough not to bother me and probably just burn themselves into my memory for intentional future exploitation. Surely this could be a sort of trigger system which is all worked out in advance during campaign conception, but we need not concern ourselves with all of that. Since my priority is usually to meet a deadline or carry out a more meaningful task, the occasional fumble en route to my “tool of convenience” is worth the unsolicited pop up or blinking banner. I’ll take that any day over obnoxious paper trails and extra notes in my head that take away from life’s big picture focuses. More often than not, these online tools are free or cheap.  In exchange, we tolerate a peripheral collage of seemingly meaningless images with vague potential for future recall or for capturing my attention at the exact moment in time when the meaningless becomes relevant.

Post by Stephanie Santoro.

So I just discovered that I’m not a slacker because I’m almost 30 and still renting. According to Jack Hough for SmartMoney in Why Rent? To Get Richer, I’m saving money - money that I could be putting in stocks actually, which he says will provide better return on investment over the long haul than a home. Well, good to know! Because I’ve been putting off buying a home for a few reasons.

First off, I’m inexperienced with purchasing real estate and it’s a little intimidating for a newbie. Second, I’m newly engaged and we just began thinking about purchasing a home – for “us.” Third, I’ve never had the nerve to ante up the large up-front down payment, of which I’m told by lenders lately, is not always necessary (whether you have the funds or not).

Yes, it seems odd to betray the American Dream of owning a home. Yet, I’m relieved that I’m not financially responsible for the myriad malfunctions, such as a broken water heater, roof leak or dishwasher meltdown. These are projects that I have no time to manage, let alone the desire to open my pocket book to solve.

Maybe the article is right and I should think about investing my money in the stock market. Perhaps other informed renters are thinking about ROI also and are beating the current housing slump to boot.  Now, that’s being a savvy renter instead of a homebuying procrastinator.

Post by Stephanie Santoro.

Is making online marketing mainstream the answer to helping small businesses increase their exposure and profits? Sam’s Club seems to think so. But does that make it so?

Sam’s Club’s LeadConnect offers online services packages starting at $25/month that include adding a local business’ profile to search engines and Yellow Page directories.

Those in the search industry know that good search engine optimization and marketing techniques include a substantial education cycle and far more action than “hand submissions” to the major search engines and directories. While we’re all for local businesses giving online a chance, it probably isn’t in their best interest to market this type of service without educating on what will really drive results.

Even pay-per-click advertising isn’t the end of a dedicated SEO campaign. Your website has to feature relevant, well-organized content that speaks your customer’s language and provides a 2-way feedback loop between business and customer. Being found because you submitted to the search engines is a long shot, and even if searchers do find you, you still have to engage and support their discovery process.

What local businesses need is education – not a laborious SEO university education – but some cursory knowledge of what constitutes a results-driven online initiative. Then, they need help in taking the appropriate actions for their budget and specialty.

It’s not just about submitting listings or buying placement – it’s about how you represent online and whether your online presence is as worthwhile to visit as your offline location. And if SMBs don’t understand this, they’ll spend that $25 or $100 a month and not see adequate results. They could become bitter about the Internet and search marketing in general.

Making SEO mainstream sends a message that brands are built by hands-off methods. Truth is, it’s going to take more than $25/month and a one-time web form to make it online. Education and a little manageable action are the keys to using the power of the online community to a small business’ advantage.

Post by David Gosse.