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Landlords: Using the Internet to find tenants: A Checklist for a Successful Website.

In today's housing market, landlords and housing seekers face two realities: the availability of quality housing is in short supply and finding affordable housing can be challenging. In recent years, the number of families relocating to cities and suburban areas has been on the rise, creating an increased demand for apartment finding and relocation services. Landlords may choose to subscribe to these services, or they may choose to establish an Internet website in an attempt to attract new tenants. Whichever method of advertising is selected, the important thing to remember is that useful information is the key to successful advertising and finding tenants.

Establishing your http://www.myapartments.com site can be a daunting task if the landlord or management staff are not technically inclined and should be contracted to a web design company. These companies are usually inexpensive and do a good job of securing a domain name, establishing the necessary e-mail accounts, and constructing an attractive website. Fees are usually low and the service should include a maintenance fee for updating the web pages as changes are made.

Here is a checklist for landlords to use as a guideline when considering what to include. This is only meant to be a guide, as you should consider local and state laws and any other issue which would be considered important to prospective tenants.

Basic Webpage Construction. The basic webpage, sometimes referred to as the "Landing Page" is the first page on a website that an apartment seeker will see after clicking on the link they found on their respective search engine list, such as Google, Alta-Vista, Yahoo, or Craigslist, http://www.craigslist.com, which provides local classifieds and forums for 450 cities worldwide,

Your webpage begins with a banner followed by a headline, a carefully-composed information article about the property, links to sub-pages that provide detailed information and a few photographs featuring views of the property from the inside and the outside. Photograph size should be kept small and in a .jpg format for faster downloading. The page is also sprinkled with keywords and include Meta tags, which are embedded words, formatting, and phrases that search engines would look for in order to describe your website. The page should end with your contact information with telephone and fax numbers, names of management personnel, e-mail address.

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