You may be thinking: It’s hard to improve SEO for vacation rentals! The reality is, it’s not that hard, but you have to do things that search engines care about and have a little patience as engines scour the web to discover what you’re doing.

Don’t worry, the48dots has you covered with tips, tricks, and backlinks to make your listings discoverable online.

While we recommend hacks, the reality is that SEO does take time, so be patient. Starting now gets you ahead.

Whether you have a direct booking site, or just want to improve SEO for Airbnb, this trick applies.

The Trick?

Ask guests to leave you a Google Review!

Sure, you have reviews on Airbnb, VRBO, and other sites, but if you are starting a direct booking site, positive guest reviews on Google not only provide valuable social proof but also contribute to higher rankings in search results. It gives you credibility, and search engines like that.

Think that Google Reviews don’t help your search ranking within popular platforms like Airbnb? Wrong. Google reviews also help increase how you get places in other algorithms outside Google.

We’ll explain…

Why Google Reviews Work To Improve SEO For Vacation Rentals

Google, Airbnb, and virtually any robust search engine use algorithms to determine search rankings. The algorithm is constantly taking in various factors to give users the most relevant and high-quality search results.

One method every algorithm values is fresh, genuine, and diverse content, and user-generated reviews provide exactly that. Sometimes this can be content created on the site that the algorithm is optimizing. For example, reviews created on Airbnb are considered fresh content for the Airbnb algorithm. But, sometimes, fresh content can be external to the site. This means, fresh content from Google pointing to your Airbnb listing can be used by the Airbnb algorithm. Of course, this applies to fresh content pointing to any source you’d like, be it your direct booking site or another platform.

Positive reviews can contribute to a higher search ranking by signaling to algorithms that the property is reputable and provides a positive guest experience. Remember, algorithms are just trying to make search results more relevant to the next user. They don’t have much information unless new users provide it to them. So, the quantity and quality of reviews, including the overall rating and specific keywords mentioned in reviews, can influence a property's visibility in search results.

Multiple rating streams, such a Google Reviews, are valuable for any site’s algorithm. They don’t just want to depend on their audience’s experience…they want to see what a broader network is saying about each individual property for the most accurate results.

No reviews rank lower than bad reviews. No reviews tell the algorithms that people in external networks just aren’t interested in your property. And good reviews rank higher than no reviews or bad reviews. A bad review can say that people are interested, but there’s still work to be done for making the property better so the algorithm will try to give you more chances to improve your ratings. But, a good reviews top all and tell the algorithm to prioritize your property while other hosts with bad or no reviews work out their kinks. This means that if you know you have at least one or two happy guests, ask them to review you on Google. It will make a difference in how your properties are displayed and give you a head start on the competition.

How To Set Up Google Reviews

In order to set up Google Reviews, you’ll need to set up your business on Google to be reviewed. Doing this also helps you show up on the map in many cases. You can do this yourself with the Google My Business setup, or you can have the team at the48dots do it for you when you sign up to list on our directory — simply reach out to us and ask us to do it on your behalf. We will happily set up your Vacation Rental profile on Google for FREE!

How to ask for a Google Review…and make sure you get the results you want

Asking guests to leave more than one review can be daunting, so here’s a few ways you can do it:

• Offer to reward a few extra points when the guest leaves a Google Review — people love points and will go the extra mile for it!

• Remind them they can copy and paste their Airbnb reviews into Google — people love easy!

• Tell them why it’s important — most guests will want to support hosts that provided them with a good experience; if they know it matters to you, it will matter to them!