Mohan | Digital Marketing Consultant

Let's be honest - search engine optimization (SEO) is time consuming and you're often competing against companies who employ teams of experts trying to beat the competition. The good news is, there are ways to level the playing field. If you're willing to put in the time and effort, there are long-term rewards to be had because search optimization has a longer lasting effect than paid advertising. When you stop paying for ads, your listing is removed and all of the traffic and bookings that went along with it are gone too. With organic search, while it's not as easy to earn a first page ranking (vs. buying it), once you do, it's harder for your competition to bump you out of your position. But first, you need to have your own vacation rental website. And while you may not become an SEO expert overnight, there's a bunch of things you can do to improve your organic search rankings. First, I suggest you check out a few resources to get you up-to-speed on the basics...

First, congratulations! Setting up a website for your vacation rental is one of the best things you can do to market your property. A recent survey of vacation rental owners shows that those who utilize listing sites and a have a personal website for marketing their vacation rental have a 13% higher occupancy rate than those who solely use listing sites.Unfortunately, the saying "if you build it, they will come" doesn't hold much weight in the world of online marketing. Here's a few tips to help you start generating traffic to your new vacation rental website. Add a link on your paid listings If you're already advertising on HomeAway or FlipKey, add the link to your listing. It allows you to showcase additional photos and information not featured in your paid listing and adds credibility to your ad. Add a link in your auto-responder Auto-responders or auto-reply messages are triggered when a new inquiry is received on your listing. Because it's important to re...

You know you should have a website for your vacation rental. What that means, however, is a little vague. What kind of content do you actually need to pull your website together? Your website is, in most cases, your first and only chance to make a good impression. It's also a critical way to communicate essential information to both potential guests and those who've already made reservations. Try to get inside your guests' heads and anticipate what they will want to know by considering the following content checklists. It will likely take at least a few hours to pull this information together, but ultimately this investment of effort is worth it; if you don't make it easy to find essential information through your website, travelers will turn to a competitor who does. There are three main areas people will have questions about:     -Your vacation rental property,     -The community they're visiting, and     -The business details of the proper...

There are many free website creators and builders out there which you can register with free of charge. You can be up and running within no time and you can then tell the world about who you are and where you are. Creating your own website has never been so easy and it is possible to create something very simple but incredibly effective. Once you have the hang of your new website, you will want to amend it at regular intervals to keep it fresh. You should consider using search engine optimization techniques (SEO) which will drive traffic to your site - these could include the use of keywords in your site content, writing and posting short articles elsewhere on the web which are keyword rich and generic but point towards what your company is offering, and so on. SEO is quite a specialist field these days and so you should do your homework about it when building your site, although a lot of website builder packages come with the offer of SEO assistance. It's not difficult - it just n...

Some Owners are reluctant to create their own website for lack of technical ability or cost if they choose to use a web designer. I've previously written here about the importance of your own website, and here and here on how using WordPress and the thousand's of free or premium templates available allows non-techie Owners to create a low-cost site - and to be in simple point-and-click control of editing it. But if you still aren't convinced here's another alternative, and it's Facebook: don't think Facebook friends, think Facebook pages. Facebook has a huge audience, and according to industry data has now almost reached the popularity of Google in the number of searches being made on it by web users. And designing a website is a big deal, even if WordPress's simplicity puts creation in the hands of non-techies. It takes time - it's hard to get something up and running in, say, just 2 weeks Facebook pages saves that time. If you want a site that can enga...

Today, marketing is at an entirely different place than it was even 5 years ago. Whether your rental business is new, or well established, to stay competitive you have to use all the new trends in brand building. You don't (and won't) get as well known as McDonald's of Apple - and that's not the objective - it's about an identity. You don't want to build something around your product, either: there's nothing in your product that somebody else can't duplicate, copy, and reuse, and therefore it can't be 'the difference'. Brand is about personality and trust. Brand is about you being in front of mind when a holidaymaker who has connected with you in some way eventually makes a decision to rent somewhere. Eschew social media branding at your peril. Social Media isn't about sending messages to your friends about what you ate for breakfast. It's about grabbing access to thousands of potential customers that you couldn't dream to reach o...

Craigslist is the 8th most trafficked website in the US right now, trumping Twitter, LinkedIn, and Bing. Needless to say, that's a lot of visitors to the website made famous by offering free classified posts to the masses. What's clear is that owners have a pretty mixed view of Craigslist as a marketing channel - citing spam and fraud as reasons not to use it. But, there are plenty of owners that have been actively using the site with great success. If you're ready to give it a shot, these are the 7 steps to get you started. Step 1: Create an account While you don't need an account to create a free classified post, it's helpful to have one for renewing and re-posting. Sign up for a free account. Step 2: Select your location Because Craigslist is designed as a local service, only post to the region closest to your vacation rental. It is a violation of their terms of use to post to multiple geographic regions and may get your account blocked from the system. Depending...

  Do you own a travel company website? Are you getting frustrated because trying to rank your site highly on Google is very difficult? There is already too much competition from mega companies like world-class hotels, global airliners, and rental companies. To overcome these hurdles, and move your website to the top, you need to implement the widely used online strategy of search engine optimization (SEO). This refers to the practice of adding or modifying content on your site to make your web pages more inviting to Google and other search engines. SEO for travel websites is a particularly competitive field, and therefore, requires unique solutions that are not commonly found in normal search engine optimization plans. So, just what exactly are these unique search engine optimization strategies for travel websites? Let's find out. One of the most effective tips for improving any travel website's ranking on search engines is by narrowing down the focus of any particular webpage ...

These days the internet business is booming and many vacationing families and business travelers are looking for their accommodations online. So how do you attract these visitors to your website? Well it takes marketing and dedication. When advertising a business online you're mainly advertising your website and coming up with different strategies to get people to your website. There are a number of ways of driving traffic to your vacation rental website. The mistake many vacation home owners make is that they build a website and standby for the flood gates to open and make lots of money as soon as their website is up and running. I know it sounds ridiculous but it is the truth, if that were the case we would have billions of billionaires. So how do you get the traffic that is very important to make even building a website for your vacation home worth it? Not everyone has still heard of it but it is called SEO which stands for search engine optimization. To keep this post from goin...