What is the Average SEO Cost for Multifamily Apartments?
One of the biggest misconceptions about SEO is that it is free. Or, at least, cheap. While SEO generates traffic to your website without the click costs associated with paid advertisements, the actual service requires an investment similar to that of any other marketing initiative. As search engines become increasingly saturated, top-positions on results pages are harder to capture. The more competitive the digital landscape, the more you will likely have to invest in your own online sphere to simply keep up.
For multifamily communities, the growing influence of local search intent on a website’s rankability provides additional opportunities for smaller properties to compete alongside major listing sites. This is great news for apartments looking to boost their organic positioning. Overall, your current position compared to your competitors as well as the desired outcome of your SEO endeavors will play significant roles in determining your budget.
Average Monthly SEO Cost for Multifamily Apartments
A professional apartment SEO service will charge a minimum of about $500 a month. There are plenty of online scammers who promise enticing, first-page results for much less; however, it is important to understand the methods that accompany cheap SEO. Unethical link-building schemes and content heavily concentrated with keywords run the risk of decreasing your website’s visibility from search engines. When hiring an SEO expert, you should make a point to inquire about the specific steps that will be taken to optimize your online presence and maintain that transparency throughout the working relationship.
Calculating Apartment SEO Cost
As previously mentioned, how you currently rank on search engines against your competitors provides a baseline for the work that needs to be done. The actual scope of the work will vary, though, based on factors such as:
- Local competition
- Size of your website
- Existing content
- Technical components like site speed, internal linking, and crawlability
From there, it depends on what you hope to achieve and how you intend to measure the success of your SEO efforts. Here are some examples of measurable and actionable goals to set:
- Increasing the number of new users to your website
- Increasing the number of prospects from your website
Together, your existing site structure and rankability along with your goals will determine how much you should spend on SEO per month. SEO is a long-term marketing strategy that requires ongoing audits and maintenance of your website. Keep in mind, the less you pay per month, especially in the beginning, the longer it will take to start seeing results. Data will go a long way in calculating the ROI of your SEO marketing to ensure you stay on track to hit your predetermined goals.
Why Invest in Apartment SEO
Search engines purposely designate space for organic postings to better serve users’ relevant results. SEO for apartments allows you to take advantage of this free space by strategically updating your website to cater to the search intent of a specific audience. The more accessible and navigable your website, the more likely you are to rank higher on search engines.
SEO and web development work in tandem to improve your website’s rankability and performance in gaining prospect leads. If your multifamily website was built from the ground up with SEO best practices in mind, you are most likely in a good place technically and can focus more so on content creation. At Prelude, we offer a one-stop shop for apartment website design and multifamily marketing. For a free marketing evaluation of your digital assets, contact us today!