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If you own a rental property, you know how challenging it can be to advertise your apartment, Airbnb or vacation rental. Perhaps you already have an online marketing strategy in place, or maybe you have tried a few tactics that need some refinement. The pillar of every rental and Airbnb SEO strategy is a targeted approach. Our emphasis here is on the word ‘targeted.’ We’re going to discuss the importance of local SEO to help your property be found more easily in search results.
What Vacation Rental SEO Challenges Do Property Owners Face?
If you’ve ever searched for a local area + a property type, such as “Vancouver apartments for rent,” or “Lake Ontario cabin rentals,” you know how hard it is to compete against aggregator websites that take up the majority of search results. But if you have an Airbnb listing and their site shows up for a relevant search, isn’t that good? Yes, but you also want your own website to be visible for your main searches. You want people to visit your site to learn about you and so you can build relationships with them.
Local SEO Tips for Vacation Rental Listings
The first step to being competitive, is to have your Google Business Profile fully optimized, complete with a current property description, clear, attractive photographs, and contact information.
How to Effectively Target Consumers
The deeper you go with what is called “long-tail key phrases,” meaning phrases containing several words, the closer you can target your ideal rental audience. For example, if you build off that “Lake Ontario cabin rentals” phrase, and create pages, blogs, FAQs and more resources on phrases such as “Lake Ontario cabin rentals pet friendly,” or “Lake Ontario cabin rentals long-term,” you can zero in on exactly who you’re trying to reach.
How to Stay Competitive Online
Local SEO, including specialized long-tail key phrase strategies and mobile-local focused SEO, is an ongoing process. Your competitors are constantly building their online visibility. Aggregator websites push all the time for more organic (free listings) and paid listings in search engines. You can build authority in a variety of ways. One is through focused and consistent content production and publishing.
How Content Builds Your Authority
We have established that local SEO is essential to build online visibility for rental owners. Content marketing features SEO and more online elements. It is an ongoing effort that builds on itself to develop trust. It demonstrates to your target audience why they should choose your property versus another property.
As you continually post content that provides solutions to people’s questions (examples: ‘why rent a vacation home in Vancouver’; ‘three steps to renting the ultimate British Columbia Airbnb’), renters will learn to look to you as the authority.
People buy from those they trust. Content that aligns with local search keywords and answers user questions best, drives traffic to your website, helping you attract your ideal rental audience.
Seasonality is a big driver of rental revenue for many property owners. Local SEO, including long-tail targeted seasonal key phrases, can help you break through the grip large websites have in search results. You can become the authority on answering specific questions, and rise above sites that feature fluff blogs and other thin content.
Example: You own an Airbnb in Whistler, or a hotel or vacation rental in Gatlinburg. There are thousands of competitor listings for these types of rentals. How do you break through the noise?
Ensure your Google Profile is built out, detailing all the features you offer. Build resource pages and articles for your website aligned to top searches, such as: “Whistler house rentals long term,” “Gatlinburg vacation rentals with pool.” Don’t stop there–create your content to really delve into those topics–you want to be the authority people trust.
How to focus your content: Okay, so your vacation rental has a pool; so do lots of other rentals. If your pool is specially made, or is open at unusual hours, or you offer several pools that meet a variety of needs, create content around these features. Show people why your rental is the one they should book.
Example: In the case of Whistler, answer questions new vacationers to the area have. Also go deep with content for frequent visitors, such as “Off the Beaten Path Places to Visit Just Outside Whistler.” Work to be the authority with all the content you create. Include first-hand travel diaries, user generated content, audio, video and photos to turn your content from average to must-see.
Your superior content shows you care about your target audience. You want people to have a great time in your rental, so you learn about what they want and create content around those desires. Then tell them how great your property is and why it’s the perfect rental for that area, to encourage them to book with you. People can easily spot disingenuous salesmanship. You need to create genuinely helpful content to instill trust. Trust helps build goodwill and revenue.
Trek Marketing Provides the Visibility You Need to Connect with Rental Customers
Airbnb SEO tips, and overall SEO tips for vacation rental listings, can help you stand out from the crowd online and drive bookings. The challenge is consistently applying these techniques over time. So, whether you need SEO for apartment listings, hotel SEO, or a local SEO campaign for any rental property, you need Trek Marketing.
We’ll not only provide the latest digital strategy to help you increase visibility, we’ll audit your website to ensure no barriers to search engine indexing exist. Plus, we’ll find relevant locally-themed sites and directories where your site needs to be listed, and get you included, to further build your authority in searchers’ and search engines’ estimation.
You’re busy running your rental business. You need a knowledgeable and experienced digital marketing agency to build your online visibility. Get your phone ringing and your reservation forms pouring in. Contact Trek Marketing now!
