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Top Rental Sites SEO Rankings Report

Top Rental Sites SEO Rankings Report

Search engine optimization is one of the things we’re passionate about, and periodically we like to do a deep dive and get a handle on what is happening in related industries. Recently we ran across Andrew Shotlands’s post “IYP SEO Rankings Report 2009” ranking the different internet yellow pages sites by their share of competitive search engine rankings, and decided to apply a similar methodology to see how the different rental sites stacked up against each other.

Since many of you use these sites to publish your rental listings, we thought you’d be interested in seeing which of these sites perform the best for the most important rental keywords in the search engines.

In brief, here is the methodology we followed:

  • Identified the top 20 rental keywords using Google Suggest and the Adwords Keyword tool (see below)
  • Performed Google searches for these keywords in the top 20 U.S. cities, with personalization turned off (for a total of 400 geotargeted queries).
  • Each time a site appeared in the serps, we awarded it 1 point for each position, starting at the bottom. (On a page with 10 results, the first result got 10 points, the second 9 points, etc.)
  • Weighted each search by the U.S. monthly search volume for that keyword reported by Google.
  • Summed up the points for each domain to determine its final score.

So, in theory, this data should tell us which rental sites dominate the search engine rankings for the most important and competitive rental keywords.

And here are the results:

Top 25 Rental Sites by Search Engine Market Share

Top rental sites share of search engine rankings

Regional Rankings - Top 10 Rental Sites by City

Those were the nationwide rankings, but we noticed quite a bit of diversity in the rankings for each city. For example, regional websites like AllAustin.com frequently claimed top spots, even though they didn't make the nationwide list. Property managers and investors operating in these markets might be interested in the following regional rankings:

Austin

  1. apartments.com
  2. allaustin.com
  3. apartmentguide.com
  4. rentals.com
  5. smallplanetguide.com
  6. austinapartmentstore.com
  7. rent.com
  8. statesman.com
  9. apartmentfinder.com
  10. rentalhomesplus.com

Baltimore

  1. apartments.com
  2. rent.com
  3. rentals.com
  4. sublet.com
  5. baltimoreapartments.com
  6. apartmentguide.com
  7. rentalhomesplus.com
  8. mynewplace.com
  9. apartmentratings.com
  10. craigslist.org

Charlotte

  1. apartments.com
  2. rentalhouses.com
  3. rent.com
  4. rentals.com
  5. apartmentfinder.com
  6. apartmentguide.com
  7. apartmentratings.com
  8. mynewplace.com
  9. craigslist.org
  10. 4rentcharlotte.com

Chicago

  1. apartments.com
  2. apartmentpeople.com
  3. chicagotribune.com
  4. chicagoapartmentfinders.com
  5. rent.com
  6. rentals.com
  7. apartmentguide.com
  8. mynewplace.com
  9. rentsmartchicago.com
  10. craigslist.org

Columbus

  1. apartments.com
  2. rentalhouses.com
  3. move.com
  4. rent.com
  5. rentals.com
  6. apartmentguide.com
  7. apartmentfinder.com
  8. craigslist.org
  9. columbusbestrentals.com
  10. columbusrent.com

Dallas

  1. apartments.com
  2. rent.com
  3. rentalhouses.com
  4. apartmentguide.com
  5. apartmentfinder.com
  6. rentals.com
  7. rentalhomesplus.com
  8. apartmentratings.com
  9. forrent.com
  10. move.com

Detroit

  1. apartments.com
  2. craigslist.org
  3. rentals.com
  4. rent.com
  5. move.com
  6. mynewplace.com
  7. apartmentratings.com
  8. rentalhomesplus.com
  9. sublet.com
  10. rentlinx.com

Fort Worth

  1. rentals.com
  2. apartments.com
  3. apartmentratings.com
  4. rent.com
  5. craigslist.org
  6. rentalhouses.com
  7. move.com
  8. rentalhomesplus.com
  9. apartmentguide.com
  10. apartmentwiz.com

Houston

  1. apartments.com
  2. rentals.com
  3. rent.com
  4. houston1apartments.com
  5. apartmentguide.com
  6. har.com
  7. apartmentfinder.com
  8. houstonapartments.com
  9. rentalhomesplus.com
  10. apartmentratings.com

Indianapolis

  1. apartmentguide.com
  2. apartments.com
  3. rent.com
  4. rentalhouses.com
  5. rentals.com
  6. mynewplace.com
  7. apartmentratings.com
  8. dorfmanpropertymanagement.com
  9. placetoliverentals.com
  10. craigslist.org

Jacksonville

  1. rentals.com
  2. apartments.com
  3. rent.com
  4. mynewplace.com
  5. rentalhouses.com
  6. apartmentguide.com
  7. jaxguide.com
  8. firstcoastrentalads.com
  9. apartmentratings.com
  10. rentalhomesplus.com

Los Angeles

  1. apartments.com
  2. latimes.com
  3. craigslist.org
  4. apartmentguide.com
  5. rent.com
  6. westsiderentals.com
  7. 4rentinla.com
  8. forrent.com
  9. apartmentfinder.com
  10. rentals.com

Memphis

  1. rent.com
  2. apartments.com
  3. rentals.com
  4. apartmentguide.com
  5. rentalhouses.com
  6. apartmentratings.com
  7. craigslist.org
  8. apartmentfinder.com
  9. forrent.com
  10. move.com

New York

  1. apartments.com
  2. citi-habitats.com
  3. rentals.com
  4. nycdwellers.com
  5. rent.com
  6. markdavidny.com
  7. elikaassociates.com
  8. rentalhouses.com
  9. nytimes.com
  10. anchornyc.com

Philadelphia

  1. apartments.com
  2. craigslist.org
  3. apartmentguide.com
  4. sublet.com
  5. 4wallsinphilly.com
  6. rentals.com
  7. phillyapartmentco.com
  8. rentinphilly.com
  9. reinholdresidential.com
  10. apartmentratings.com

Phoenix

  1. apartmentguide.com
  2. apartments.com
  3. rentals.com
  4. azcentral.com
  5. rent.com
  6. rentvine.com
  7. rentalhouses.com
  8. apartmentratings.com
  9. mynewplace.com
  10. craigslist.org

San Antonio

  1. apartments.com
  2. rentals.com
  3. mysanantonio.com
  4. apartmentratings.com
  5. rent.com
  6. apartmentguide.com
  7. forrent.com
  8. rentalhomesplus.com
  9. apartmentfinder.com
  10. sanantonioapartmentstore.com

San Diego

  1. forrent.com
  2. apartments.com
  3. craigslist.org
  4. rent.com
  5. rentals.com
  6. signonsandiego.com
  7. apartmentguide.com
  8. sandiegoapartments.com
  9. apartmentratings.com
  10. move.com

San Francisco

  1. craigslist.org
  2. apartments.com
  3. rentalguide.com
  4. rentinsanfrancisco.com
  5. mynewplace.com
  6. apartmentratings.com
  7. sfgate.com
  8. apartmentfinder.com
  9. apartmentguide.com
  10. rentals.com

San Jose

  1. apartments.com
  2. rent.com
  3. rentals.com
  4. mynewplace.com
  5. apartmentratings.com
  6. sublet.com
  7. apartmentguide.com
  8. move.com
  9. craigslist.org
  10. house.info

Anticipated questions

  • Why did you only use Google rankings? We realized that results would vary by search engine, but collecting data for multiple search engines would have been tricky, and given that Google still commands 65.5% of the market, they were the logical first pick.
  • Why only the top 20 keywords? From a data collection standpoint, this was the only approach that made sense. There are simply too many “long tail” keywords, and we weren’t confident that we could develop a representative sample set. So we decided to focus on performance for the highest traffic “head” terms.
  • What about site traffic? It is hard to make an apples-to-apples comparison based on traffic numbers. Some sites get a lot of traffic from non-organic sources, and some cover a wide range of topics, like Craigslist.org, so Compete.com numbers aren’t very helpful when trying to determine search engine dominance.
  • Were the searches conducted from an IP address located in the searched city? Nope, that would have been helpful but our branch offices in these 20 cities were all tied up while we performing the research ;-) , so to quote Andrew Shotland on this point “c’est la seach”.

If you have any other specific questions about our methodology or the data we collected, let us know in the comments.

Footnotes

Here are the keywords we used, with search volume data from Google Adwords:

Keyword Search Share US Monthly Searches
apartments 28% 37,200,000
rentals 23% 30,400,000
apartment 10% 13,600,000
apartments for rent 6% 7,480,000
vacation rentals 6% 7,480,000
homes for rent 5% 6,120,000
homes rent 5% 6,120,000
rent houses 3% 4,090,000
apartments rent 3% 4,090,000
houses for rent 3% 3,350,000
vacation rental 1% 1,830,000
apartment rental 1% 1,500,000
rent house 1% 1,500,000
apartment rent 1% 1,220,000
rental homes 1% 1,220,000
house for rent 1% 1,000,000
apartment rentals 1% 1,000,000
rental home 1% 1,000,000
house rentals 1% 1,000,000
rental house 1% 823,000

So, that’s it. Thoughts?

Update: There’s more! See our followup post.

Originally posted on managemyproperty.com under, "Top Rental Sites SEO Rankings Report"

 
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site

This is a great analysis, and is extremely helpful!

  Brent Williams
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site

Mike: comScore is a sampling which definitely tends to under-estimate the actual traffic to a site. That's why most of the larger classified Internet sites in this and other industries have moved away from utilizing that information.

And don't you think counting Homes.com like ApartmentGuide.com counts Rentals.com, is just to overinflate your numbers? I mean exposure is great but isn't it a detriment to multi-family properties, to have their listings appear next to single family homes that rent for the same if not less than their units? Shouldn't APARTMENT rental sites just be comparing themselves to OTHER APARTMENT rental sites? In theory it's a nice tactic, but where do you draw the line in telling the truth?

  Multi-Family Mogul
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site

Hi Jordan, just curious ... how do you think the results would differ if you were able to take personalized and localized search results into account? As local and social search becomes more prevalent, I'm not sure how we can say for sure that these results are black and white in these markets. Universal search will skew these results as well, with maps and multimedia thrown in that certainly impact what the user will select.

Ultimately, I think regionally is the only way for apartment marketers to look at these numbers. Thanks for the breakdown!

  Mike Whaling
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site

@Mike - Things are changing everyday and SERPs personalization has become more prevalent even since this report was created. I get your point and I totally agree.

The bottom line is that the regional stats are what is relevant for the apartment marketers using these services. That said when you add all these regional rankings up you get a pretty strong picture of how these sites compare on the national level.

Thanks for your comments.

  Jordan Muela
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site

Thank you for this post! I have been ripping my hair out looking for rent to own homes in my area! I am going to try some of these links and see if I have any better luck!

  Shyloh
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site

I think it's very important that sites have an online ranking that will help them increase their traffic. Everyone works off the web now so it's necessary that companies are listed on there. It's really a great way to get more business and be more successful.

  Shelly Slader

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