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