Admittedly the vacation rental market is a competitive environment especially when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO). Many of the big companies out there have already build established SEO trust with the major search engines. Even for local searches, the big-name sites such as Agoda and Airbnb will come top of the organic search results. Despite the competition, SEO is always worth optimizing on any website.
Local SEO Map Rankings
If you own a vacation rental in a local area, then you can always brand your business and make sure that it is present on Google and Bing Maps. This gives your vacation rental every chance of showing up on a local search. Remember there are plenty of people that live near your vacation rental that will have friends or family visiting – they may want to arrange accommodation for their visitors.
Global SEO Rankings Will Focused on Branding
As far global rankings are concerned, you will mostly be using SEO to build up your brand name. This is where a good website such as vacation rental websites from Lodgify come in handy. You will need a website that allows you to brand your vacation rental website easily, but also comes with a booking system and ways to manage other channels where your property is listed.
Once people hear your brand name or get to know your name, then they can search for your brand directly on any of the search engines.
Choose Your Brand Name Wisely
As long as you have chosen a brand name that stands out, your site will come top of the search results. For example, if you name your company luxury villa Mallorca, then you are unlikely to be found because this is a common search term used by many of the top hotel and vacation rental booking companies.
Instead, you will need to come up with a unique but memorable brand name. Make a list of names and search on Google to make sure the term is not competitive.
Another mistake people make with SEO branding is using their second name such as Thomson vacation rentals if your second name happens to be Thomson. The issue here is that you will then come up against anyone targeting vacation rentals in Thomson in the USA.
You can see how branding your vacation rental business takes some thought and time. You don’t want to spend money on graphic design for a logo and other branding designs only to find out that when people search your brand name, it is not considered at the top of Google or Bing search engines.
On-Page SEO Configuration
Making sure your website has no broken links (so all links should lead to a page), links to social media, and has all the meta titles and meta descriptions updated is a must for SEO. It may seem like an arduous task to perform, but if you want your brand name to show up or want your website to stand any chance of ranking on any of the search engines, on-page SEO is a must. There are plenty of free tools out there to help you make sure your on-page SEO is configured correctly. Try SEO Quake. It is free and very easy to use.
Overall, SEO is worth configuring for your vacation rental websites. Local SEO is great because not only can your guests easily find your place, you also stand a good chance at showing up on local rankings. Also, branding your website with a name that is memorable but not a common name used another company or a town/city where vacation rentals are on offer. Make sure you do your research. Lastly, just as a ‘to be sure’ – make sure you configure your website’s on-page SEO.