By Greg Guillen (Esquire Property Management in Ventura County)

Last week, Chris Thorman from SoftwareAdvice.com, wrote a blog post entitled Property Management Software Sure is SaaSY.  Chris cited five major reasons why web-based software for managing rental properties is gaining traction in the industry:

• Moving tenant services online;
• Offering web site creation and integration;
• Eliminating the need for extensive software training and maintenance;
• Enhancing communication between owners and managers; and,
• Improving record keeping and security

We at Esquire Property Management Company in Ventura County, California have based our business on a platform of technology offering online tenant services from applying online, paying rent online, viewing property images and videos online, maintenance requests online, electronic signatures on lease contracts via Docusign, we have a company intranet system via Central Desktop, etc.  But if we changed our property management software platform and adopted the provided website creation and integration via a SaaSY property management package, we could unleash a search engine marketing disaster for our company.

Search Engine Optimization remains an important part of any online property management platform-especially in a competitive market like Southern California.  An integrated Saasy software package would be great for communicating and managing current tenants and owners.  But Chris doesn’t mention whether or not these available websites are designed to be search engine power houses or if they offer additional SEO plug-ins.   If the goal is to attract new owners and tenants—property managers should put a huge emphasis on getting ranked number one on search engines rather than simply being online.