How to Optimize Your Vacation Rental Website for SEO — a step beyond the basics
Hey there hosts!
If you own a vacation rental property, and have a direct booking website, you know how important it is to attract first time guests to your website. One effective way to do this is by optimizing your website for search engines, or SEO. By following some simple tips and tricks, you can improve your website's visibility and attract more potential guests to your vacation rental without having to rely on Airbnb or other OTAs.
If you prefer to optimize your SEO for Airbnb and direct guests back to your direct site for repeat bookings, that can be a great strategy too. Follow this guide for tips and tricks on the Airbnb to Direct Booking site conversion funnel.
If you want to lead guests to your website for first time bookings, keep reading. You may want to grab a pen and paper for this excersize.
Step 1: Conduct Keyword Research 👇
One of the first steps in optimizing your vacation rental website for SEO is to conduct keyword research. This involves identifying the words and phrases that potential guests are using to search for vacation rentals in your area. Get in the mind of a traveler. What are they searching for online? What would you search for to find your own listing?
Use tools like Google Keyword Planner or SEMrush to find relevant keywords as well as expected traffic for each word.
Stuck on keywords? Here are a few examples:
Vacation rentals on beach in Miami
Romantic getaway ideas in North Carolina
Homes for Ski Trip in Denver
ProTip: You don’t have to use local terms like your city or state, but it helps. People usually have a good idea of where they want to go and there is less competition in your local region.
Write your keywords down along with the expected monthly search volume. For example:
Vacation rentals on beach in Miami (500)
Think about your differentiators 👇
Remember, you are standing out against Airbnb, VRBO, and the Expedia group who all have robust SEO online. That’s your competition. Think about what makes you different.
If you have a direct booking site, you’re probably saving your guest lofty Airbnb fees by sending them to your direct site. You want to highlight that! Do you offer something unique that guests may not know about? Bring it up front. Did you win an award? Share that!
Using your differentiator and what you know about the competition, append your keywords. For example:
Vacation rentals on beach in Miami — the only 5 star review of 500 options
Romantic getaway ideas in North Carolina — Save 10% by booking direct instead of Airbnb
Homes for Ski Trip in Denver — 2 Jacuzzis with Mountain views
Incorporate your keywords and differentiators on your website 👇
Refer to the list you've created above to create page titles and meta descriptions. This will help your website rank higher in search engine results and attract more organic traffic.
Curious about how it works? Search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo utilize complex algorithms to crawl, index, and rank websites based on numerous factors. One key component of these algorithms is the analysis of keywords within your content, page titles, and meta descriptions. These keywords help search engines understand the context of your website and determine how well it matches a user's search query.
By strategically incorporating relevant keywords into your website's content, titles, and meta descriptions, you signal to search engines that your site is a valuable resource for users searching for information related to your niche. This, in turn, increases the likelihood that your website will rank higher in search engine results, making it more visible to potential guests and driving more organic traffic to your direct booking site.
Optimize Your Website Structure👇
In addition to incorporating relevant keywords into your website's content, it's important to optimize its structure for SEO. This includes creating a clear and organized navigation menu, using descriptive URLs for each page, and including internal links between related pages. A well-structured website not only helps search engines understand the content on your site, but also makes it easier for users to navigate and find what they're looking for.
Create High Quality Content👇
One of the most important aspects of optimizing your vacation rental website for SEO is creating high-quality content. This includes well-written descriptions of your rental properties, engaging blog posts about local attractions and events, and informative guides for guests. By providing valuable content that is relevant to your target audience, you can attract more visitors to your site and improve your search engine rankings. Additionally, high-quality content can help establish your brand as an authority in the vacation rental industry, which can lead to more bookings and repeat business.
Think of blog posts that can incorporate these keyword phrases as well. Did you tout 5 star reviews? Make a blog post that copies some of your favorite guest reviews and title it: “One reason why we are the only 5 star review out of 500 options for Vacation Rentals on the Beach in Miami.”
ProTip: Don’t worry about putting all your keywords in the exact order for blogs.
Build High-Quality Backlinks👇
Building high-quality backlinks is an important part of optimizing your vacation rental website for SEO. Backlinks are links from other websites that point to your site, and they can help improve your site’s authority and visibility in search engine results. This is probably one of the most important things you can do on Google to build authority. It tells the machine: “hey, other websites think this site is relevant so I should too.”
You may want to reach out to local businesses and ask them to link your direct booking site.
Fortunately, the48dots provides a backlink to your direct booking site as well. Add your listing to our directory, and we will link to any page you’d like for guests to complete their booking.