Improving Occupancy with Analytics, Part 1: Apartment Marketing with Google Search Console

Hi again. This is Alex Wolf, lead analyst at Tessera. If you're serious about boosting occupancy at your multifamily properties, you're going to need more than a few nice photos and a catchy headline. You need a system. A marketing ecosystem. And every ecosystem needs a way to measure what’s working and what isn’t.

Enter: Google Search Console—one of the most underutilized (and completely free) tools in the property marketing toolbox.

Google Search Console Performance Report: Visualizing key metrics such as total clicks, impressions, average click-through rate (CTR), and average position to assess website performance in search results.

Why Search Console Is Essential to Your Keyword Strategy for Apartment Marketing

Let’s start with what Search Console isn’t: it’s not a silver bullet. It won’t tell you how to fix your website, and it won’t magically increase your leads. But what it will do is tell you whether the keyword strategy you’ve worked hard to build is actually showing up in search results—and where you stand in the rankings.

This is foundational. If you’ve taken the time to bake a solid keyword scheme into your website—targeting phrases like “pet-friendly apartments in Boise” or “modern apartment amenities”—you want to know if Google is giving you any credit for that. You want to see if the search engine recognizes your content as relevant, and more importantly, whether people are actually clicking.

That’s where the Performance page in Search Console comes in for apartment marketing.

How Google Determines What You’re Ranking For

Google doesn’t just show you what you want to see—it shows you what you actually rank for. That’s a subtle but important difference.

When you open the Performance report in Search Console, you’ll see a list of queries, which are actual search terms that people typed into Google, and for which your site appeared in the results. These aren’t necessarily the keywords you’re targeting—they’re the ones Google thinks you’re relevant for based on your content, backlinks, user behavior, and a secret sauce of machine learning signals we’ll never fully know.

If your site’s ranking for terms you didn’t intend, that’s a problem (or an opportunity). If it’s not ranking for your core keywords, that’s a red flag. Either way, you now have data to work with.

Look at Position Over Time—Not in a Vacuum

One of the most common mistakes we see is checking keyword rankings over too short a time frame. You log in, see a dip in position, panic, and start rewriting your homepage. Don’t.

SEO is seasonal, competitive, and algorithmically volatile. If you’re looking at 7-day trends, you’re seeing noise. Look at 90 days minimum, and better yet, compare date ranges—month over month or year over year. The goal is to see trends, not twitches.

Ask:

• Is my average position for “modern apartment amenities” improving over time?

• Are we getting more clicks on “apartments near [target location]” than last quarter?

• Did that new floor plan page move the needle?

Data First. Then Adjust.

Here’s the truth: Google Search Console won’t tell you why your rankings went up or down. It’ll just tell you that they did. It’s a diagnostic tool, not a strategist. That part’s still on you.

But once you see the signals—declining click-through rates, queries with lots of impressions but low rankings—you can make informed decisions. Maybe your content needs to be restructured. Maybe your keyword usage is too shallow. Maybe your meta descriptions are boring, or your load times are killing your engagement.

Whatever the case, the flow looks like this:

1. Build your keyword scheme based on user intent and search volume.

2. Integrate it naturally into your site’s structure and content.

3. Use Search Console to see how you're performing.

4. Analyze trends, not snapshots.

5. Refine and optimize.

That’s the loop. It’s not sexy, but it works.

The SEO Feedback Loop: A continuous cycle of keyword strategy, content integration, performance monitoring via Google Search Console, and trend analysis to drive ongoing content refinement and occupancy growth.

Wrapping Up

Ready for your weekend? Me too. Okay, then: Search Console isn’t optional. It’s not extra credit. If you’re not using it, you’re flying blind. And in the race to full occupancy, that’s a luxury you can’t afford. Or, maybe your are going to use this weekend to focus up on putting some Console data behind your marketing decisions.

In the next part of this series, we’ll dig into how to structure your content to better align with keyword intent—and how site architecture influences your ranking outcomes. Spoiler: it’s not about stuffing more keywords into your homepage footer and then change the text color so its invisible.

Want to see where your site stands? [Request a free SEO audit →]