My first SEO client was penalized by Google's Panda update for creating duplicate websites prior to hiring me. They had/still have 80 apartment websites for each neighborhood around Boston. These duplicate websites had previously ranked within the top 3 in most neighborhoods in the early 2000s, but all had dropped off on account of using the same content on all them. At the time of hiring, he was also seeing an increase in larger national competitors like Zillow and Apartments.com.

My primary goal was to restore page 1 rankings for his top website, bostonpads.com, for his main keyword 'boston apartments'. My secondary goal was to restore page 1 rankings for more local apartment search keywords such as 'cambridge apartments' and 'back bay apartments'.

My job was to create a keyword strategy, write content, and rebuild all 80 apartment websites so that they have unique local content. Each site containing roughly 20 pages, this process took roughly 2 years. This helped remediate the penalties suffered from Google's Panda update, but not enough to make up the ground lost to the growing pool of national apartment portals.

Once the websites' content were differentiated, we then took aim at his apartment database. I knew if we could begin recording historical data points on vacancy rates, apartment availability, and average rent prices, the national portals could not match us at scale. I worked with the database admin collate, organize, calculate, and store these data points.

I used this data to create comprehensive rental market reports to post to his websites. I also amassed a list of over 200 local Boston media contacts and began sending newsworthy market reports to them with the intent of earning valuable media coverage for the client.