Redesigning Your Property Management Website for SEO

Maintaining your online presence is far from a "set-it-and-forget-it" choice. Perhaps your website was cutting-edge ten or more years ago—but if you haven't touched it since then, we hate to break the bad news to you: it's out of date now. 

As the web becomes more and more advanced, customers start to recognize dated web design when they see them—and it's not pretty. Your property management website is your digital storefront! Keeping it current with an eye on growth is a critical part of your property management marketing strategy.

However, when business owners choose to undertake the project of revamping their property management websites, it requires more than merely adding a new look to the home page. Your choice to redesign your website is more than likely the first step toward a new era of growth for your property management company! 

If you're not sure what it means to bring your website up to date, here are some points to consider during your transition to a "modernized" website.

Steps to Redesigning Your Site For SEO

1. Form Supports Function

While most people couldn't claim that they consciously make this decision, the truth is that we give much credit to a slick, beautiful website. If a site looks professional, it must mean that the company is also an expert in how they operate, right?

Not always! A polished website is critical to maintaining the kind of professionalism you want to build your brand identity in the marketplace, but your site needs to be much more than a pretty face. Companies with beautiful websites can be terrible property managers. You need to conquer both: an attractive, functional website that aligns with the expertise you provide as property managers.

Design Must Convert New Leads

A significant website redesign is going to not only improve your website's look; ultimately, it will also become increasingly functional. If you prioritize function over "looks," you'll find your website doing more for you—and your clients—as you move forward. 

That's not to minimize the importance of design! Property management websites should be pleasing to view and support your brand colors. Why not make it a pleasant experience for visitors to browse your content? However, when tackling a website upgrade, don't stop at a surface-level look. Dig deep and upgrade the functionality, too. 

If you had a clunky contact form and no potential content offers before, a website redesign can give you more sophisticated tools for gathering, converting, and delighting potential leads. 

Gather Insights to Drive Your Site's Redesign

Sometimes it's difficult to see what needs to improve on your website. It's challenging to be impartial about what's working (or isn't working) to make the hard decisions that will boost your site's effectiveness.

Don't rely only on your own perspective! One way to evaluate the current functionality of your website involves an outside view; ask those who haven't visited your site before to take a look at it.

1. Have them imagine themselves as landlords who are considering whether or not to work with a property management company. 
2. Get their detailed feedback on the performance of specific buttons or CTAs (Calls to Action). Were they directed quickly to the information they sought? Were there any surprising broken links or misrouted pages?
3. Combine this information with the goals you already have for a website redesign.

With outside input, you get all the positive benefits of a new website. You'll also get some practical troubleshooting tips. You can click on every link on your page, but one of the fastest ways to find what's broken is for an outside set of eyes to find their way to a dysfunctional link that you missed. Better to have someone you trust help you find those issues than to lose potential property management leads who get frustrated with your site!

A site can have the best resources—but it's wasted effort without the ability for visitors and potential new clients to find them first!

2. Your Property Management Website Design Affects Your SEO

If you've put effort into ranking for local and national keywords, you may fear that a website redesign will undo your hard work. However, if you use SEO optimized content and layouts for your new website, you are likely to retain and improve your SEO efforts. This is enhanced when you continue to produce high-quality inbound marketing content for your blog!

Conduct An Audit

How is your property management SEO, anyway? Is it still driving the traffic you need to develop the volume of qualified leads necessary to maintain (or grow) your property management business?

Search Engine Optimization isn't a static tactic; it changes as online user behavior changes. Property management websites built with an effective SEO website a year (or longer) ago are due for a review! It's time to update your SEO best practices. One excellent way to ensure you have a good grasp of your SEO after a website redesign is to conduct a content audit. This includes evaluating all pages throughout your website to determine whether they are gaining page views, or are unused.

Your audit should help you determine:

• Successful content: What's generating the most organic traffic? If the keywords and SEO metrics are still effective, this content can remain on the site as-is.
• "Repurposeful" content: We just made up the word "repurposeful," but it has a purpose! Don't ditch content that isn't pulling enough interest on your site. Content that hasn't found its audience can be repurposed through video or audio.
• Rework-worthy content: Content that is still relevant—but needs an SEO boost—should be rewritten to optimize for current keywords. You might also need to restructure blogs for current best practices to enhance readability and engage your audience. 

Your content audit is an excellent way to ensure that you make the most of every paragraph on your site! A "pretty" site is nice to view, but your site's first priority should be a design optimized for its lead-magnet qualities.

Check the Metrics

How do you know if your content is "SEO optimized?" It's not about your most popular pages or your favorite blog articles. You'll need to understand the metrics. SEO metrics tell you exactly where visitors land, what they view, and if your links convert leads. Don't trust your gut; let the numbers be your guide! 

We understand if we're getting into details that can be frustrating or outside of your areas of expertise! Property management websites require a lot of attention to detail to help you grow your business. Geekly Media is here to help with these crucial metrics! If you're frustrated or overwhelmed at the thought of going through everything on your website to find what needs improvement, we can help. 

Curious about more SEO best practices? Read these SEO blogs. 

3. Your Relaunch Should Generate Some "Buzz!"

A new website won't generate significant attention if no one realizes you've made the upgrade. A website redesign is exciting! You're giving your digital storefront a facelift and improving customer management through your site. This is big news to shout from the rooftops! 

Consider your new website relaunch a digital "grand reopening!" Give your new website a headstart on fueling new growth by making an event of it. It's an excellent way to generate new traffic and enhance your property management marketing strategy. Try these hype ideas:

• Figure out which new features of your website design will be most helpful to your clients and drum up excitement on social media. 
• Share little snippets but not the entire plan for the website redesign, so everyone will be intrigued to go and check it out. 
• Share a video announcement about your new site and offer incentives to check it out. Make sure your contest or incentives aren't tied to purchase. Follow all social media rules for contests or giveaways when promoting on social media. 

It never hurts to have a viral first day after the redesign launches, and "buzz" tends to be a good thing! This is especially true for the online reputation of property management websites and further fueling your SEO. Make the relaunch of your website into something to like, share, and tweet about!

4. More Content + Informed Clients = Growth

SEO helps drive traffic to your website, but you need the content property owners want for them to make their way to your site. If your redesign doesn't include a significant effort to boost your digital content, you're missing an essential way to develop more qualified leads through your website. 

• As you relaunch, your new design should give you opportunities for new places or ways to offer content. Perhaps you've never had a pop-up content offer on your website before.
• These content offers are more than just a way to collect email addresses from interested leads! The crafting of the content offer gives you a chance to educate, as well as shape the thinking of your leads.
• You benefit every time a lead gets to know how your services fit into their landlord experience, so consistent and fresh blog content also plays an important role.
• Your website redesign should be a time to make more space for inbound content and to keep it front-and-center in the design. After all, each time someone learns more about your company, more doors open!

Geekly Media Redesigns With SEO in Mind

It's not an "oh, and your website is also SEO-friendly" approach. Geekly Media builds new property management websites and redesigns outdated websites, starting with only the best SEO strategies as our focus and priority.

A great website to a property management company is just as crucial as professional photography to a listing—but you probably already have enough on your plate with managing properties. You don't have to handle a website redesign on top of that! 

Geekly Media is giving away free websites right now. You'll be able to tap into our expertise in website redesign with a focus on content marketing! Geekly Media is here to help you discover how an excellent website design can be worth a thousand words and help you grow your business. It's time to discover more of what your property management website can do for you!

Updated and republished 7/20/20.