The Effect of Google’s Latest Core Update on Apartment Marketing Websites

[00:00:05] Welcome to the Multifamily Tech Gurus podcast series. I'm Kerry Kirby, the founder and CEO of 3605 Connect

[00:00:14] Along with my esteemed co-host Jimmy Lancaster software engineer extraordinaire and chief product officer here at 3605 Connect

[00:00:24] Today we're talking about Google's latest core update in how it is affecting SEO for property level websites

[00:00:34] Jimmy, you and I have been through what feels like I don't know a zillion of these Google updates

[00:00:41] And actually we don't even have to follow these anymore because you know for some insane reason

[00:00:48] Property management firms tend to hire SEO firms to kind of dictate what we should be doing right

[00:00:55] So then we get these list of their interpretations

[00:01:00] of what these updates are going to do and all these different things and

[00:01:06] And they basically come up with anything they can dream of and as we get down this rabbit hole

[00:01:14] I'd like to read some of those yeah, well

[00:01:17] I think we've defined it before I think SEO stands for Snake Engineered Oil

[00:01:22] So you know that's one unfortunately that's one of the things that most of these

[00:01:28] Marketing firms or SEO firms have to do is they have to come up with something and demonstrate value on their part and that

[00:01:35] Generally involves

[00:01:37] Coming up with things that you should change about your website right if you they had nothing for you to change about your website

[00:01:43] They aren't worth you paying the money and then you'll stop paying the money

[00:01:47] And then they won't have a business so of course they're gonna come up with something

[00:01:52] They're they're livelihood depends on it, but

[00:01:55] One of the things that you know you just kind of mentioned is that

[00:02:00] SEO a lot of times as

[00:02:01] People's opinions are people's interpretations of how Google works and and so

[00:02:07] Obviously when it comes to opinions

[00:02:09] There's a lot of them out there

[00:02:11] They don't always align and how do you know who's right and I think that's one of the cool things that we get to dig in today

[00:02:18] Is how do you know who has the right opinions?

[00:02:21] And and obviously outside of what Google tells you

[00:02:27] It's hard to say for certain what they're doing

[00:02:30] But but if they tell you something you can at least take that as it as it is yeah, and

[00:02:37] You know to kind of jump in there a couple of things that that you and I had the unfortunate

[00:02:46] You know pleasure of having the answer

[00:02:51] You know again some of these are interpretations so no secret our SEO is

[00:02:58] Content production and not let me go rewrite a couple of words on your site and I'm gonna track five key words

[00:03:05] I don't don't understand how people can sell that but they do

[00:03:10] But we produce content lifestyle content

[00:03:14] Things that people that live in homes be departments or whatever would want to read about and it creates a digital footprint

[00:03:22] It's just so

[00:03:25] Some SEO firms sent this and they said you know

[00:03:29] The this contents to broaden it doesn't align with their

[00:03:34] Thing of leasing that everything should say leasing which I think's cut keywords stuffing, but I you know

[00:03:40] What do I know?

[00:03:41] Right, I don't know anything

[00:03:44] Um

[00:03:44] And their suggestion was to de-index

[00:03:48] All the blog pages that that don't have leasing written in them right now de-indexing

[00:03:54] Not deleting it from the website, but I'm deleting it out of all the search engines which is

[00:03:59] I was well deleted. You're telling the search engine ignored this. Yeah. Yeah. This is nothing here to see nothing here to see don't don't

[00:04:08] do this

[00:04:12] So I didn't really have to stretch into this because obviously they didn't read Google's release notes on this update

[00:04:19] quote deleting this is from Google deleting contents a last resort

[00:04:24] And only should be considered if you think content can't be salvaged

[00:04:29] In fact, if you're considering deleting entire sections of your site which we were asked to do

[00:04:37] That's likely a sign that sections were created for search engines first and not people

[00:04:46] It goes on, but basically

[00:04:51] My answer was our contents created four people by people

[00:04:56] It's a form of lifestyle content relevant to people that live in apartment homes or put roofs over there had let's forget

[00:05:03] You know everything doesn't need to be like apartment apartment apartment apartment where mean what are we what are we selling we're selling

[00:05:12] roof personal space a place you call home and that's the message but that that's

[00:05:22] Extreme and then let me just give you a couple more not because I have to throw these in

[00:05:28] Um

[00:05:30] Not none of your blog posts have met a descriptions

[00:05:35] All of our blog posts have distinct meta descriptions answer one line and they do

[00:05:42] I'll

[00:05:43] Blog posts have same title tag

[00:05:45] Answer

[00:05:46] These blog posts have distinct title tags and they're not knock-ups and bold

[00:05:51] The same and they're not you know you've had your hands and building some of these things

[00:05:58] My favorite Jimmy is

[00:06:01] Uncompress CSS and JavaScript

[00:06:05] Yeah, you know we we don't have any of that right

[00:06:10] Well

[00:06:15] All of our

[00:06:17] All of our files from our system

[00:06:20] Our modified and compressed

[00:06:23] Except for one which is four kilobytes very small from some custom stuff you wanted

[00:06:30] You do have a

[00:06:32] bot who will I won't name another vendor

[00:06:38] That's notorious for bad page loads

[00:06:42] However, don't delete that because you want to seem to delete everything else because

[00:06:47] Google wrote the following avoid doing quick fixes

[00:06:51] Like removing some page element you heard as bad for SEO

[00:06:55] Instead focus on making changes that it makes sense for your users and are sustainable for the long term

[00:07:05] You know this is painful. It's a lot of time and you got to go right this and you get to copy all the things

[00:07:13] Google put in there. This is hours of work of a knee jerk reaction

[00:07:18] Answering somebody stuff and and I have more, but I don't want to eat up the because I could

[00:07:24] The whole podcast on it

[00:07:27] But your opinion Jimmy where where does this what planet does this walk off of?

[00:07:32] I mean this is insanity that we're answering yeah well first thing that immediately comes to mind is that

[00:07:40] You have somebody that probably doesn't really know what they're doing

[00:07:44] But they obviously claim to be an SEO expert and you know just going down the path that to prove this is

[00:07:52] A they they said some things that weren't true like the the meta descriptions in title tags

[00:07:57] It's like are you running through machine is that machine just wrong? Are you do or are you just completely misinterpreting

[00:08:04] What it's trying to tell you

[00:08:07] Obviously points to somebody that doesn't know what they're doing. Wait Jimmy did they even run the

[00:08:11] Correct website this is meant for somebody else

[00:08:14] But it's you know the other thing is like the the uncompressed files and or modified files

[00:08:23] It's like well those are all this third party bought on the website and that's not something that we provide

[00:08:31] You obviously don't know enough to look at that and say oh look at the domain name

[00:08:37] All these files are located that's blah blah blah blah blah blah or whatever it is right

[00:08:43] So obviously again somebody that doesn't know how to dig into what actually is happening and then again with the content you know there

[00:08:52] There all

[00:08:54] They're looking saying oh must you know content you know you got to change all the stuff up and it's like well

[00:08:58] You were already wrong up into this point. Obviously don't know enough to to make any real decisions here

[00:09:05] Why all the sudden would you know what you're doing with the content you've already you've already lost your credibility from my standpoint

[00:09:13] So you know we I look at those things, but the funny thing is that in that update that you just read that came from Google

[00:09:22] There's a contradicting I

[00:09:24] Guess contradicting desire that we have here right

[00:09:28] It says don't change content if you think it's unsalvable

[00:09:32] Be weary of deleting

[00:09:35] Because if you do that and you do for SEO optimization purposes

[00:09:41] Google will likely interpret that as

[00:09:44] You're just doing this for SEO purposes right and instead of creating things that appeal to your audience

[00:09:51] Which I think is the key here is appealing you know creating content for your audience and so

[00:09:58] But everything they're saying to do and they're like go change all the stuff

[00:10:03] Why do you want me to change it because of SEO? Well that's exactly what Google is trying to

[00:10:09] De-rank you for doing so it's like your reaction in your desire and the reasons for doing that

[00:10:15] Google explicitly states in their update don't do these things if that's why you're doing it because

[00:10:20] They will effectively catch on to that and de-rank you for that. So

[00:10:28] How did they even come up with these

[00:10:33] things because again I Google has released notes

[00:10:38] Went to release notes copied parts out of it to go with the answers and this thing's extensive that went back and like I say

[00:10:46] It's

[00:10:47] Invasive because it's hours and hours of work and research and like here

[00:10:52] Here's everything you said that's wrong

[00:10:55] There's one thing here which isn't your your interpretation which is hey less

[00:11:00] De-index all this stuff which they said not to do yeah, that's an interpretation. I'll give you that

[00:11:07] the compressed files and the title tags

[00:11:10] is completely not true right but

[00:11:15] In here I think we should have wrote like the things you're asking for is like taking a chain saw to cut a ham sandwich in half

[00:11:23] You know

[00:11:25] Your asked us to do

[00:11:28] My question Jimmy that has run through my mind for

[00:11:33] You know we we've been doing this for 21 years this company's been in existence 21 years

[00:11:39] I don't think you've survived 21 years but not know what you're doing

[00:11:42] A

[00:11:46] Why I feel like this is a recurring theme

[00:11:50] Why are our customers like anything we say is not believable or we just like

[00:11:58] Do we say something wrong? Do we not attack things well enough or you know I try to

[00:12:04] Be open and friendly with everyone including other vendors but

[00:12:09] What are we doing role? I can't figure it out. I obviously this is all speculation but um

[00:12:17] I think a lot of people probably have

[00:12:21] Products that aren't performing obviously when I say products I'm talking about communities that aren't leasing

[00:12:28] Like they want and and so it's easy to point the finger in every direction other than

[00:12:34] Maybe you you have a

[00:12:36] Product that's just price wrong like maybe your communities not as nice as you're trying to price it at

[00:12:43] You know

[00:12:43] Maybe you're $100 200 dollars a month over what you need to be selling at because this places and that nice

[00:12:50] You know and I think so so what do you do you go and you say well

[00:12:55] It's not that I

[00:12:56] You know, I must have an SEO problem because I'm not getting enough

[00:13:01] Leases and so what do I what's the answer to that?

[00:13:06] Higher an SEO firm because they specialize in SEO

[00:13:09] So therefore they must be really good at SEO instead of this tech company that's been doing this a long time and

[00:13:17] And you know, but does more than just SEO right

[00:13:21] Um and so you you're not becoming desperate you start grasping at straws

[00:13:26] Trying to figure out what your problem is and you and you go to people that

[00:13:32] Like we just sell themselves really good

[00:13:35] That's that's my full loss

[00:13:38] We probably don't sell ourselves good enough but you know, we do a lot of different things and we and we're really good at a lot of different things

[00:13:45] And I think because of that it's not like we say we only do SEO and we're the best at it

[00:13:50] If we did that people might might take our word for it

[00:13:53] The truth is we probably know more about SEO than the vast majority of people that claim to be SEO

[00:13:59] And I think we do things that are

[00:14:03] Different like we we're the pioneers of content marketing and the multi-family space and

[00:14:11] I know you have

[00:14:13] This is spark some things where you hear you're doing some deep

[00:14:18] Data research, but I think

[00:14:20] You went and looked at some stuff that was sparked by the sea mail because it's like you know

[00:14:27] Do we bring or do we think in the right direction like

[00:14:32] Content I think I told you you know, and if you know you say and we don't sell ourselves right well

[00:14:38] Let me go ahead and release a little secret so

[00:14:43] We own the largest media site and a multi-family housing industry

[00:14:49] Built that in 2017 because I was not out there in any way it evolved into that right 2017 or

[00:14:57] I'm sorry 2007. That's about to say I know it's been around a lot longer than that

[00:15:01] 2007, I'm sorry right and

[00:15:05] More than 15 17 years yeah, wow yeah

[00:15:09] Have a direct feed to Google not back when they just went and crawled your content this is back when you got a

[00:15:18] And you created a feed with certain things in it to give them content right

[00:15:24] I kind of took that theory right a feeds which nobody else is doing and brought it into property level websites and created content

[00:15:34] and and start to get into it and

[00:15:38] Obviously things evolved along the way and I think we've evolved with all those things

[00:15:43] But just your desktop research and I know you're doing something big and we're probably gonna release a case study on it

[00:15:51] But what's your opinion on what we're doing on SEO with producing

[00:15:55] Content and building out a site

[00:15:58] So we have customers that have four and five hundred page

[00:16:01] Websites because we've pumped content and I'm unheard of in our industry yeah media concept

[00:16:08] What's your what's your research showing?

[00:16:11] Well, I got to be honest, you know when we get these things sometimes I start doubting myself because sometimes it does feel like

[00:16:16] It's our opinion versus their opinion and they're just opinions but but really where that leads me is

[00:16:23] We don't we don't have to rely on opinions everything can be backed up in data right and

[00:16:30] Results and so

[00:16:31] That let me down a little quest. So let me start real quick by just talking a little bit about some of the updates that Google has done

[00:16:39] Based on their release notes so obviously at you know this customer came because they were worried about August

[00:16:45] The big update in August and it was a big update

[00:16:50] But when you read it there there isn't critical stuff

[00:16:53] Beyond what you mentioned earlier mostly around content one of the things that they mentioned is that

[00:17:00] You know, they're putting a bigger emphasis on creating quality content

[00:17:05] That that is that they deemed to be less SEO geared a more geared towards you know your target audience

[00:17:13] Which to me lines up with what we have so here I have my opinion

[00:17:18] How I read this and how I interpret this well

[00:17:22] As I as I look at that, you know

[00:17:25] I also went and looked they had some other updates back in March that's some another update

[00:17:31] Back in June and so the things that they that those updates had I think are probably bigger and effect

[00:17:40] Communities and properties more so than the August update and

[00:17:45] So back in June. They put a bigger emphasis on keyword stuffing this person wanted us to go add leasing to every page and only pages that mentioned leasing

[00:17:55] Get indexed

[00:17:56] I mean that's that's classic keyword stuffing and and of course what did the last update in June do?

[00:18:03] It de incentivized keyword stuffing. They went broader content

[00:18:09] Some other things that they don't like is

[00:18:13] That that I think is big for our industry was in the March update they actually have a piece that talks about

[00:18:21] um

[00:18:25] Site reputation abuses is how it was described and that's where you're hosting third party content within your site

[00:18:33] Little to no editorial oversight

[00:18:37] And so you know that's something a lot of people do is they frame in content

[00:18:42] And while you may say that does have oversight

[00:18:45] I think that the key here is is you're using other people's content and and that's really detectable and obvious when

[00:18:52] It's all coming through an eye frame that that has a very different domain name on the other end

[00:18:57] It's not a subdomain or anything like that and so they're de incentivizing these things that our industry does a lot of

[00:19:04] But anyway, all of that led me down a path of doing some research and say okay well we have this

[00:19:11] You know what is arguably an opinion but you know what we can back it up we can compare apples to apples and

[00:19:18] How can we do that we can go see how do properties actually rank and

[00:19:23] It led me down a fun exercise where I went into a place that we have lots of properties

[00:19:29] And I picked San Antonio hornon rent.com. There's like I'm gonna say 2300 apartment complex is in that area

[00:19:39] Well

[00:19:40] Number five and number six in the search results Google search results. It'd be typing apartments in whatever

[00:19:47] Results five and six are both properties on our platform and guess what both those properties had in common

[00:19:53] blocking

[00:19:55] Yeah, and not only bugging but they have been blogging for two or more years

[00:19:59] So they have really extensive footprint so it's like when you go talk to people. It's like you know the

[00:20:05] The results don't lie so they have an opinion we have an opinion

[00:20:10] But the differences is we have tangible results. We have you know if there's 15 or more communities on our that use our platform in various ways

[00:20:20] in that area

[00:20:22] And there's a own a few of them use in blogging and they

[00:20:27] Show up in Google before all the ones not use in blogging. I think that's pretty concrete evidence

[00:20:32] That that type of strategy works and so we're doing some more research and we're gonna get some more defined data

[00:20:39] And and put together some research there, but you know one of the key takeaways that I have to this is

[00:20:46] Don't just trust people's opinions find

[00:20:49] Find data that supports that opinion and make sure that you're comparing apples to apples and not apples don't oranges

[00:20:56] You know

[00:20:58] You can't compare how a property website works to how and e-commerce website sounds shoes works

[00:21:05] You need to compare

[00:21:07] a property to another property

[00:21:10] And we're lucky enough that we have

[00:21:13] More properties than you can shake a stick at to use for our current houses

[00:21:18] the other thing

[00:21:20] obviously we're huge believers in

[00:21:24] Content production unique content production which we produce internally and it is unique

[00:21:29] It's not copied. It's not you know, it's it's built ground zero

[00:21:35] By people for people as I said in my response on this SEO thing

[00:21:41] But the other thing too is just pure technical stuff

[00:21:46] You know, we do all the all the title tags were we're

[00:21:50] Keyed in on uniqueness. We have a whole SEO dashboard built

[00:21:55] Where if it's a built to rent community and we need to to rank under a different term like rental housing or you know

[00:22:02] Single family rentals. We can do that versus senior housing versus

[00:22:07] Partments or whatever so so our platform is built versatile. It's built to bring

[00:22:13] You know schema. It's got schema tags so a lot of this is infrastructure and then we have some

[00:22:20] unique things we do like content production

[00:22:23] RSS feeds

[00:22:26] Syncing in the social media weaponizing social media and using it to build

[00:22:30] Backlings and social signals back out in the search engines

[00:22:34] So so we're into this so just because we're a pretty wide product tech firm

[00:22:42] Does not mean we don't know

[00:22:45] What's going on in and and and

[00:22:48] Besides marketing space it's one of our products and one thing about our products and anybody that

[00:22:55] Nose

[00:22:58] Deeply knows we we really really care more problems all vers and and that's what we're built for so we're built to drive leads and take that lead all the way

[00:23:10] To absolutely signing

[00:23:13] Portals work orders you name it we've got all that all that stack because we've been in there from

[00:23:19] Back in the day as I call it so it's so it's a little frustrating

[00:23:24] You know, I'm sure everybody can tell the my feelings on this

[00:23:28] Because it's like I feel like all of a sudden it's like I don't you know

[00:23:33] Let me go hire somebody to check your work. I don't believe what you're doing

[00:23:37] Yeah, you must be you might be lying to me right?

[00:23:40] Well, I don't even get asked to do have the ability to lie it's just all over get a SEO firm

[00:23:46] You know because

[00:23:47] You know because I don't know the because that's the problem nobody calls and says

[00:23:52] Hey, I'm thinking harness a eu firm. Can you tell me your opinion on that can you tell me?

[00:23:57] Why why I would need one or why I don't need one? I think of it a little bit like

[00:24:01] If you were gonna get a custom house built

[00:24:05] You know, it's like people don't trust the builders right into the like I need somebody that can help make sure my builders not

[00:24:11] Screw me over when I build my house. It's like why don't you just go find a builder you trust

[00:24:16] And they got you know go look at the work go see their history and if you don't trust them

[00:24:22] Maybe you shouldn't be building with them. You know and that's like one of the things that this whole

[00:24:27] scenario reminds me of

[00:24:29] Is how people treat custom home builders

[00:24:32] Yeah, and one other thing before we hit the jack button on this podcast is

[00:24:40] You know

[00:24:42] Google has

[00:24:44] Some tools right and those tools give you

[00:24:48] You know kind of the speed of your website which is subjective right because there's some things

[00:24:53] Everybody's in a bigger home page isn't if you got some bot hangin on there whatever

[00:24:58] It's gonna it's gonna load or it's gonna tell you're not you know

[00:25:01] Maybe a little slower

[00:25:03] Still in seconds

[00:25:06] But one of the things that

[00:25:08] Popped in there if you go look at one

[00:25:11] Is what your score and accessibility?

[00:25:14] In years ago I

[00:25:17] Said and numerous

[00:25:21] podcast and in writing

[00:25:23] That Google was gonna start looking at accessibility on websites for rank

[00:25:31] And it is at an accident that that just happens to be in their tools now where they are looking and ranking

[00:25:38] Masuals say your accessibility

[00:25:41] score

[00:25:43] Coincidence, I don't think so

[00:25:46] So so that's that's in there and and that's one thing

[00:25:51] We have our heart and soul and we made a commitment to do it

[00:25:59] We

[00:26:00] Um

[00:26:04] Firm that's all they do is is accessibility that that

[00:26:08] Resort of files a third party firm. What is it? I what is it? I mean it's IAA

[00:26:14] um

[00:26:14] You know

[00:26:16] Certified auditors that that do our thing and

[00:26:21] So we're really into it and I think I think that helps right because if if a machine can read your or a

[00:26:28] Reem reader can read your website and read your images. It's SEO to the max in my my humble opinion

[00:26:35] But what do I know? I only have

[00:26:39] 98 technology awards and 13 of those awards offer accessibility, but I don't know anything

[00:26:46] yeah

[00:26:49] Yeah, and I would say just to reiterate you know since this is our this

[00:26:55] podcast was mostly around google the new google updates

[00:27:00] I just want to reiterate that you know content is king

[00:27:04] It remains king if you go read those google updates if you want to

[00:27:10] One of the key things it talks about though is quality content and so we're firm believers and quality content is

[00:27:18] Content that provides value to your users and who are your users people that are searching for somewhere

[00:27:25] to live and

[00:27:26] So the things to keep in mind are quality content and then even with some of the other updates this year

[00:27:34] The big ones are

[00:27:36] They've they've enhanced how they analyze key word stuffing so be careful

[00:27:40] I mean it's very tempting to go try to use the same words over and over and over again

[00:27:47] And you can do that up to an extent

[00:27:49] But you got to do it tastefully and strategically

[00:27:53] You can't just sit there and say won't every page needs to have the word leasing

[00:27:59] That's that's going to be picked up and and that June update

[00:28:03] They're gonna penalize you for that and then again the last one that I know that our industry is really guilty of is

[00:28:11] Embedding their body content

[00:28:14] They they apparently don't

[00:28:16] Want to give you credit for that type of stuff so

[00:28:19] Look at your providers look at what you're doing

[00:28:22] Obviously we think you should come here and use our products, but if you're not that's okay

[00:28:28] But keeping eye out on those things and make sure that you're

[00:28:32] That these are things that you're not bone guilty to yeah well

[00:28:38] Jeremy well said

[00:28:41] definitely a

[00:28:43] You know evolving topic because this is the last update Google

[00:28:48] We'll have you know they do them quite often it seems like we got June August

[00:28:55] You know 60 90 day cycles yeah, so I don't know why this one is

[00:29:01] Triggered the

[00:29:03] SEO firm wish list or

[00:29:05] Doomsday list will call it. It's not even a wish list. I think they were just they saw some revenue

[00:29:11] Drying up in there looking for some ways to get some more bill-bought hours, but yeah, that's probably

[00:29:17] Sounds like a law firm. I know all right with Jimmy less let's

[00:29:23] Kick this one to the curb here and and and

[00:29:26] I'm sure we'll be back

[00:29:28] numerous times with this

[00:29:30] Topic and next time maybe I'll read all these things we were sent

[00:29:34] I just brushed on a few of them

[00:29:36] So anyway, I want to thank everyone for joining us today

[00:29:39] You can find us streaming everywhere and be sure to visit online at

[00:29:44] Multi-family techgoerers.com and until next time I'm Kerry Kirby along with Jimmy Lancaster and we are the multi-family techgoerers