The way prospective residents are searching for apartments is going to shift drastically over the next few years. Welcome to The Rise of Visual Searching for Apartments. Users will focus more on real-world or 3d rendered images, including photographs, videos, PDFs, screenshots, and other web images. Today’s visual search tech generally uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) machine learning to understand these images and supply related results, to drive more activity on the given platform. I’ll share some of the top visual search platforms for apartments and insights on how your communities can utilize them to drive qualified traffic to your websites for more leases.
Google Images
Google is a Universal Search Engine that indexes websites, images, videos, PDFs, and more. People search in different ways depending on what type of search purpose they have. Apartments being a visual product would cause many users to click the images tab on Google’s Search Engine. Once there, you will find a wide variety of images for your given search term. The example used here was “Luxury Apartments in Downtown Long Beach, CA.” With well-optimized image file names and image alt text, you will give your images the best shot at being shown here.
Bing – Visual Search
Bing Visual Search is a newer product by Bing. For example, a downloaded image of a local community in Downtown Long Beach, CA, uploaded to the platform. Once processed, similar images of apartments in different areas across the USA will appear identical to the uploaded photo. Fascinating concept. However, it is not an exact way to generate more qualified traffic to your communities yet!
Bing Images
However, when it comes to Bing Images, there’s more potential. Even though Bing’s Search Engine may not be as well known as Google, you can still benefit from well-optimized images here.
Instagram is a visual search engine when you get right down to it. People are searching for high-volume hashtags and can tag Products like Apartments on their IG Pages. Having your residents take photos within the community and tag the building creates brand ambassadors and helps drive more qualified traffic to your community.
TikTok
TikTok is probably the most underutilized platform when it comes to Visual Searching for Apartments. If done correctly could drive more social and web activity to your communities. This platform is highly addictive and keeps its users scrolling for hours on end. One viral TikTok could potentially lease up your community and have more potential residents coming through the doors.
Pinterest is a great social platform to show off your interior design skills. If you have modeled apartments, why not share them on Pinterest? Link back to specific floor plans and Pin each Gallery photo on your sites. By doing this, you’re sending more social signals to Google to increase your Local SEO value.
Youtube
Youtube offers one of the best platforms for ranking video content on Google. Since Google owns Youtube, it gives it an edge up on the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages) overall. The trick is to create a micro-video for each keyword you wish to target. These can include floor plans, amenities, and other attributes you want to highlight. Each video should have a solid SEO-friendly Title and Brief Description. Include a website at the top of the description to get more referral traffic from Youtube. Use Animoto.com to create slideshow-style videos on a budget.
High-quality images and cinematic/creative videos will be vital in receiving prospective residents when they’re searching visually. Ensure to include all your core NAP (Name, Address & Phone) information, including name, address, phone number, and website for all of the above platforms on each published post.
If you have any questions or want a Free Marketing Analysis, don’t hesitate to get in touch with ApartmentSEO® for a Free Consultation for campaign recommendations for your unique communities.
