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: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zacharychahalis

Zach’s website: https://www.zacharychahalis.com

Hyperlocal Content from a National Lens deck: https://speakerdeck.com/zjchahalis/hyperlocal-content-from-a-national-lens

Apartments.com: https://www.apartments.com/ Subscribe today for weekly tips: https://bit.ly/3dBM61f Listen on

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