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How to Write Your Ads for the Search Engines, too!
When writing your advertisements, use search engine optimization (SEO) to attract more renters.
| There are many ways a prospective renter finds your vacation home. They go directly to a website that they've used before, such as VRBO.com or HomeAway.com, or they go into a search engine such as Google, Yahoo!, or MSN. Because there are various ways a renter can find your vacation rental property, it's important to write your ad to attract renters who might be coming from a search engine, in addition to those who come in directly to a vacation rental website. |
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Search engine overview:
First let's give a little overview on how search engines work without getting too terribly technical. Think about it like this: Remember the old library category cards before we had computers or the internet? You would go to the library and search for a book through the category cards, either by title or by author of the book. When you found the book you were looking for, the card would have a number, and it would have information on which section and/or shelf of the library to find that particular book.
• Think of the search engine in a similar way as the old library catalogue system.
• Think of keywords as the way you found the book: “title or author.”
• An algorithm is similar to the Dewey Decimal System number (something the general population didn't understand how it was derived and quite honestly, it didn't matter).
• Search Results are like the shelf where you would find the book.
• And the webpage or website is like the book itself.
Think of each search engine, such as Yahoo! Google or MSN as the category cards… but on steroids—way more powerful. Unlike the old card systems that limited you to searching by title or author, the search engines allow innumerable ways to search. Each different search engine has unique algorithms, comprised of various factors, which ranks the significance and importance of the keywords. Basically these factors determine which web pages to display for a particular search. While the search engines purposefully do not reveal all of the factors of their ranking algorithm, they do acknowledge that an extremely important part of the ranking formula is based the keywords on a given webpage.
Keywords are the words that a renter uses to tell the search engines what they are looking for. For example, when a person searches for “Saratoga springs 3 bedroom vacation rental” a web page with that precise text in the property title and/or description is far more likely to appear on the first page of search results than a page with a less descriptive title (such as “Mary's Saratoga House.”) Using popular keywords and keyword phrases in your property title and in your description will attract the highest levels of traffic and potential renters.
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To choose keywords for your advertisements, put yourself in your renter's shoes; what would they search for to find your vacation home to rent? You can even do a little market research and ask the travelers who book your home if they can remember the words they entered into the search engine when they began the search process.
Now that you have a clearer understanding of the search engines and how they work, let's move onto the most important issue. “How can YOU make your advertisement come up in a lot of search results?”
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A few simple guidelines:
NEVER copy anyone else's wording. Imitation is the highest form of flattery—so the other owner that has a great description won't care if you copy their property description right? Maybe not, however the search engines do care! If Google looks at the other owner's ad and at your ad and notes all the similarities, then your property may not show up in the search results (search engines may give preference to the original version of a webpage).
Be specific in your headline. Your headline, or property title, is one of the most important pieces of your listing. The information you enter for your headline is used on the webpage, in the links to the webpage and in meta data about your webpage. Since these pieces are all important to search engines, it's important to have different headlines on all of your websites and to make sure you choose words people are using to find properties like yours.
The most common types of words used in searches that bring traffic to the vacation rentals websites are location words, rental words, property types and some other important attributes. Here are some examples:
- Location words – Wherever your property is located, even the neighborhood if it has a formal name. Some examples are:
- Orlando
- Breckenridge
- Paris
- Rental words – Words that indicate you are renting the property. Some examples are:
- Rental
- Rentals
- For rent
- To rent
- Rent by owner
- Holiday rental
- Property types – Whatever type of structure your property is, even castles or barns. Some examples are:
- House
- Vacation home
- Condo
- Villa
- Cabin
- Cottage
- Important attributes – These are things that might be especially important to someone searching for the right vacation home. Some examples are:
- Whether you allow pets, dogs in specific
- Whether there is a pool
- Whether the property is handicap accessible
- Whether the property is near a major attraction, such as a theme park, museum, golf course or ski resort – and be specific about the names of such attractions
And it's beneficial if you use specific key words or phrases in your title. For example, a general phrase like “Gulf Shores condo rental,” yields 458,000 results on Google. Often when a renter sees an overwhelming number of results, they type in more keywords to narrow the search. A more specific search phrase like “Gulf Shores condo rental HDTV allows dogs” produces a much more manageable 17,100 results. Or how about this one? “Gulf Shores 2 bedroom condo rental HDTV allows dogs” which returns 778 search results.
Use different wording on each listing website. It's extremely important for you to have different wording on all the different websites that you advertise your second home on (such as VRBO, the HomeAway Network, or even your personal websites). The reason is Google (and other search engines) has strict policies against duplicate content. Google will look at your listing on VRBO and HomeAway. If the wording is exactly the same on both webpages, they will assume they are the same exact page. So the downside for you is they'll only index one of your listings. This means you're not maximizing the full benefits of having listings on multiple websites. (You may be wondering then, how do I still get a lot of inquiries from all the different websites? That's because the majority of the renters who come to websites like HomeAway.com and VRBO.com, find your property via the landing page for your area or the homepage.) Note: If you list your property on the HomeAway Network, you do not have to write a different description for each site-- we make sure that your listing on each of the four sites appears unique to the search engines.
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Provide complete location information. Think for a moment about the factors you look for when booking a property. Does specific location come to mind? It's important to include (at the very least) the distance from your property to local attractions, landmarks, and highways. The more information you provide, such as information about nearby beaches, ski resorts, golf courses, shopping, etc., the greater the possibility a search engine will show your property page for a particular search term.
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For example, if your property is located near popular attractions such as Walt Disney World, Six Flags, or Dollywood, it's important for you to mention those attractions in your ads, even including your exact proximity to the attractions, such as “30 minutes from Walt Disney World.” Here's another example: type into Google “vacation rentals near outlet mall” and it yields over 850,000 results. However if you type in “vacation rentals near Silver Sands outlet mall in Destin, Florida” it brings down the number to around 55,000 results. And get even more specific, by searching “condo rentals near Silver Sands outlet mall in Destin, Florida” and the results go down to around 38,000. So with this example, if you have a property in Destin, Florida, you should have “Silver Sands Outlet Mall” written somewhere on your ads.
Describe your home and amenities in detail. It's important to fully describe every aspect of your property. You never know what people will search on. For instance, if I put into Google, “condo rental in Panama City Beach Egyptian cotton sheets”, the results would bring the renter to individual properties. And if your property fits that description, then your ad will show up in the search results!
Think about what your renters repeatedly ask when they email or call you. Include the answers in your description if possible. For instance, in some locations beachfront is extremely important to some renters. If you are lucky enough to have a beachfront property, make sure renters know by using “beachfront” in the title and or description.
Write descriptive captions for your photos. Believe it or not, search engines will search on the photo captions from your ads. Go ahead and try it, put your photo caption into a search engine and see if your property comes up. If your ad does not come up, chances are your photo caption is too vague. For example if your caption reads “Great Views from the balcony, ” (which on Google has over 6 million search results), you may consider changing it to something more keyword rich such as “Watch the Dolphins Jump from our Large Balcony,” which yields a mere 9000 results (and many are vacation rental listings). Furthermore, the image search functions on Google and Yahoo! use the text on the page to determine a photo's relevance to a query.
Use all of the description fields. The various description fields on vacation rental websites give you the opportunity to sprinkle keywords and keyword phrases throughout your ads. The more keyword-rich text that you have on a page, the more chances you have of appearing in the search results.
| Additional opportunities. Many vacation areas have events, festivals, and tournaments or are popular destinations for holidays such as Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Years, etc. If your property is available for a holiday or festival and you're looking to rent it, in the weeks leading up to the festival or holiday, make sure you mention the name of the festival or holiday in your description and maybe even in your title. If your area hosts multiple annual festivals, it would help potential renters find your property if you included a few sentences about each festival, the time of year they occur and how far your property is to the festival. |
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Cast a large net or a smaller one? Should you try to sprinkle in words that hit a vast majority of potential renters or people who are looking for a home which your property fits best? It is nearly impossible for you, a single property owner to optimize your advertisement for a very general search term such as “vacation rental.” Frankly that's what you pay the websites like HomeAway.com and VRBO.com to do—optimize your ads the largest group of potential renters. Within each page, they will have keywords embedded into the template that your property is displayed in. It's your job to make sure that your property is fully described at a granular level. So it's best for you to sprinkle your ads with the information that is relevant specifically to your property's location, amenities and best features.
Update often. It is very important for you to update your information often. We suggest at bare minimum for you to update your property title or headline. While this is a good practice to keep current and up-to-date information on your advertisements, some search engines may even reward you for it (some search engine algorithms weigh newer information higher in their search results).
All of this may seem a bit overwhelming, so let's just summarize what you should do right now!
- Log into HomeAway.com or VRBO.com.
- Change your property headline to make it unique and keyword rich.
- Analyze and change your descriptions.
- Do you have keyword rich descriptions for your property?
- Do you have all of your amenities and property's selling points described in detail?
- Do you have specific location information, including names of cities and nearby cities?
- Do you have the names of popular local attractions, landmarks, restaurants, shopping areas, and festivals?
- Are the captions on your photos keyword rich?
- Log into any/all other listing sites to make sure your wording is different on each listing.
- Update all of your advertisements (or at least your headline) often.
I assure you—if you take some of the advice from the guidelines above, they may help your property listing be found in the search engines, but they also provide valuable information for your renters. Your best bet for creating an ad that appeals both to renters and to the search engines is to be specific, descriptive, and complete.
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What are some keywords you use in your title?
"I use specific words like 'Breckenridge mountain cabin rental'."- Scott K., Breckenridge, CO
"I use 'antique' and 'refuge'."- Ruth, Salem, MA (HomeAway #181558)
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