While the challenges of COVID-19 are reshaping how the vacation rental industry operates, we here at RealTech are striving to find opportunities to help our clients with their websites. If you are looking for ways to improve your rental website we have some suggestions!
To start with, we recommend that you spend time optimizing your property descriptions to improve your search engine rankings.
Whether you are an RNS, Barefoot, Escapia, or other reservation software user, you are very familiar with rental data. Data is critical to your operations, but not all data is created equal. As a data point, property descriptions may not seem as important when compared to rate tables and availability dates, but they represent an opportunity to improve your website.
According to RealTech’s marketing experts, property descriptions serve a critical function for your website by providing written copy that both search engines and users can understand.
Benefits of optimizing your property descriptions
Visuals may set the expectation, but words seal the deal. In only a few hundred words, property descriptions can communicate to both users and search engines everything, they need to know about your properties. The better you optimize a property description, the better the user experience, and the higher your website’s keyword rankings will be.
By spending more time on your property descriptions, you can expect the following results:
- Capture more bookings from the OTAs by optimizing your property detail pages for both property titles and location keywords.
- Support your website’s overall SEO strategy and get more return on your investment.
- Customize and personalize your descriptions to appeal to both guests and owners.
How to update your descriptions
Making updates to your descriptions can be done within your property management software. We recommend the following steps when preparing your optimizations.
Keyword research
To find out which keywords to include in your optimization, use keyword research tools. You can use tools like SEMrush, SpyFu, Moz, and Google Search Console to discover which keywords best fit your brand and rental inventory. Develop a list of keywords from your research to add to your descriptions. You should look for keywords that align with the type of rentals you manage. This includes categories like oceanfront, 2 bedrooms, pet-friendly. Need help determining which keywords will work best? Contact RealTech’s marketing team for support.
Optimizations
Using the list from your keyword research, add 3 to 5 optimizations to your descriptions. Additions can include items like your location destination, the type of rental featured (single-family house/condo apartment), and well-known attractions in your area.
Here are a few best practices to follow when updating your property descriptions.
1) Include a rental category keyword:
Rental descriptions should reflect the category they belong to. For example, beachfront category rentals should include “beachfront rental,” and 2 bedroom category rentals should include “2 bedroom rental”.
2) Include a location Keyword:
Rentals should include the destination location in the description. This keyword is easily incorporated using high volume long-tail keywords such as “vacation rentals on Anna Maria” or “Siesta Key rentals.”
3) Other Keywords:
These keywords represent opportunities based on where rentals are located and nearby activities.
- shopping
- beaches
- activities
- restaurants
- golf courses
- birdwatching
4) Tone
When making your updates, make sure to utilize a conversational tone. Similar to how one of your reservation agents would describe a property over the phone.
Publish
Do you want to see your optimizations published immediately? Ask RealTech support to run a manual update on your website through our support system, and just like that, your changes will be made live on your website. You can also wait for the regularly scheduled nightly update to process.
RealTech Support
Need help with optimizing your property detail descriptions? RealTech is here to help. Contact our marketing services team today.
