Scaling 250,000 Neighborhoods: Enterprise SEO at Apartments.com w/ Zach Chahalis

Описание: Zach Chahalis, VP of SEO at Apartments.com, joins Ross Hudgens for a deep dive into the high-stakes world of real estate SEO—where listings change daily, pages balloon into the hundreds of thousands, and competition is cutthroat across every SERP.

They explore how Zach’s team manages SEO at scale, including 75+ site migrations, advanced internal linking via entity modeling, and custom AI agents built to streamline content operations. From avoiding redirect chains to handling rental “orphan pages,” this episode is packed with hard-earned lessons for SEOs working at enterprise scale.

Plus: duplicate content, the future of AI search in real estate, and why your site should never go through a migration before Black Friday.

Show Notes
0:08 – Zach’s role at Apartments.com and SEO in high-competition markets
1:00 – Biggest pitfalls in site migrations: communication and redirect logic
2:00 – Why bad redirect chains are like sending mail to your old address
3:39 – What to expect from traffic drops post-migration
5:06 – The difference between redesigns, CMS moves, and full migrations
7:42 – How entity linking models boost internal linking and relevance
9:55 – The user and SEO value of cross-linking neighborhood/location pages
11:51 – How Zach’s team measures and improves internal page authority
13:17 – Their in-house SEO testing program and what they’ve learned
15:01 – When they ignore positive SEO test results to preserve UX
16:41 – Managing orphaned rental pages and lifecycle SEO logic
19:05 – What they show users when listings go offline
21:24 – When to 404 vs. redirect in real estate or e-commerce
23:37 – Competing in a duplicate content world: data + experience wins
25:56 – Using proprietary data (e.g., 3D tours) to differentiate listings
27:28 – Real estate’s slower exposure to AI Overviews
28:19 – AI as productivity booster: writing, research, and landlord tools
30:46 – How internal teams use AI to speed up editorial content creation
33:50 – Why real estate is less impacted by AI than other verticals
35:59 – Indexing the long tail: 250K+ neighborhoods, 40K city pages
37:55 – Agentic workflows: surfacing internal data to speed up content
40:58 – How AI flags Fair Housing violations before content goes live
42:48 – Building secure, proprietary pipelines for real estate data
44:03 – Where to find Zach online

Show Links
Zach Chahalis on LinkedIn:   / zacharychahalis  
Zach’s website: https://www.zacharychahalis.com
Hyperlocal Content from a National Lens deck: https://speakerdeck.com/zjchahalis/hy...
Apartments.com: https://www.apartments.com/

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Directed by Cara Brown:   / cararbrown  

Email Ross: [email protected]

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