Edmonton and Calgary Rental Rankings – Winter 2010

At long last, here is the Winter 2010 Edition of the Rental Website Ranking Reports for Edmonton and Calgary. Like the Ontario ranking report and the original rental website report, it helps you understand which rental advertising websites are dominating Google and why that’s an important thing if you have vacancies to fill.

The top websites for each category were:
Edmonton
Condos – www.rentfaster.ca
Houses – www.rentedmonton.com
Apartments – www.rentedmonton.com
Rooms for Rent – www.kijiji.ca

Calgary
Condos – www.rentspot.com
Houses – www.rentspot.com
Apartments – www.rentspot.com
Rooms for Rent – www.kijiji.ca

You can download the Edmonton, Calgary and Ontario reports below, and be sure to signup for email updates and subscribe to updates from my blog.

(PDF format, ~3MB each – Right click and ‘save-as’)

The struggle to find tenants to fill vacancies is a problem known to every investor and property manager. As the Internet has grown to become a pervasive part of our lives, the choices for advertising media have grown exponentially.

This report seeks to help narrow the field, and educate investors and managers about the role search engines play in our lives.

What this report gives you is a guide to which websites dominate Google, Yahoo and Bing (Microsoft) for Alberta’s two major rental markets. For transactions like buying cars and houses, nearly 80% of people start their search online. While not all of your marketing should be online, it should be a significant part of it.

The stronger a site is, the more traffic it gets from Google and other search engines, and the more likely it is to play a role in your tenants’ search. This is only a guide to how sites rank. We strongly encourage you to adopt a culture of testing and change in your real estate business. Track the responses so you know which sites consistently refer quality leads and tenants. Use different phone numbers and email addresses, tracking where your marketing time and money is having the greatest impact.

We’ve done the hard part here; determining which phrases people use and which websites rank the best. Now it’s up to you to take the lessons from our experience, create good ads and measure the results.

You can signup below to get updated releases of the ranking reports.