Vacation Rental University
Guest Marketing: Choosing Keywords that Drive Direct Bookings
Vacation Rental University
Guest Marketing: Choosing Keywords that Drive Direct Bookings
December 19, 2018

You can have the perfect website filled with interesting relevant content, but if you can’t get found online, it’s useless. This week, we’ll see how choosing the right keywords and building your content around those words can help to drive website traffic and power direct bookings.

Let’s look at what keywords are, and how property managers can determine the words and phrases that attract the experience-driven traveler.

What Are Keywords?

Keywords are words and short phrases that are relevant to your property management business. If you’re trying to reach experience-driven travelers, you need to research the words that they might use when searching for properties like yours.

As we all know, experience is one of the new leading drivers in travel. An experience-driven traveler is not only making a decision based on accommodations, but they’re also researching what to do when they arrive. This is a key element for driving traffic and it functions across all marketing channels, from your social media and blog posts to your business listings and website.

In order to generate direct bookings for your properties, you need to create content that speaks to and resonates with travelers who are seeking travel experiences. So how do you determine what words and phrases resonate with your audience?

Researching Keywords That Speak To The Experience-Driven Traveler

When it comes to keyword research, you have a number of free and paid options. For example, if you’re using Google AdWords (and if you’re not you should be) there is a built-in keyword tool. This keyword tool allows you to see search volumes for keywords you’re researching.

Search terms like “things to do in your location” or “Top 10 outdoor activities in your location.” These types of searches will return relevant keywords for activities in your market. You can then take those words and build SEO optimized content and ads utilizing those keywords.

Another great option is conducting a simple Google search. Thanks to “autocomplete” as you begin to type in a phrase like “what are the best vacation activities in my location,” Your inquiry will return viable keywords. Once you’ve compiled a list, you can then create content that uses those specific terms.

The bottom line is, with minimal research you’ll be able to understand what your market is looking for, develop a list of strong keywords, and then target your advertising and content to speak to those terms.

Other Effective Strategies…

If your business is smaller, you can emulate strategies that larger companies adopt. For example, if during your research you find content on travel sites like TripAdvisor, or Yelp that are trending, you can “recreate” content with a fresh perspective that’s geared towards your properties. Say TripAdvisor has an article on the top-10 surf destination on the East Coast. You can repurpose this and write an article on the “Top 5 Surf Destination in Panama City.” which should rank highly in local searches for “best surfing.”

Finally, if you have a minimal budget there are some excellent paid SEO tools to choose from like MOZ or SEMRUSH. These are low-cost monthly subscription services that can help you to build keyword lists around search terms that are currently getting traffic. You can also use them to research your competitors and find out what search terms are working for them.

Content is king! Creativity is queen! Creating solid, unique content around the right keywords can help your organic search rank. Researching search terms using free tools like Google AdWords, or paid tools like MOZ can give you an edge when it comes to creating optimized content that drives traffic and generates direct bookings.

December 19, 2018

You can have the perfect website filled with interesting relevant content, but if you can’t get found online, it’s useless. This week, we’ll see how choosing the right keywords and building your content around those words can help to drive website traffic and power direct bookings.

Let’s look at what keywords are, and how property managers can determine the words and phrases that attract the experience-driven traveler.

What Are Keywords?

Keywords are words and short phrases that are relevant to your property management business. If you’re trying to reach experience-driven travelers, you need to research the words that they might use when searching for properties like yours.

As we all know, experience is one of the new leading drivers in travel. An experience-driven traveler is not only making a decision based on accommodations, but they’re also researching what to do when they arrive. This is a key element for driving traffic and it functions across all marketing channels, from your social media and blog posts to your business listings and website.

In order to generate direct bookings for your properties, you need to create content that speaks to and resonates with travelers who are seeking travel experiences. So how do you determine what words and phrases resonate with your audience?

Researching Keywords That Speak To The Experience-Driven Traveler

When it comes to keyword research, you have a number of free and paid options. For example, if you’re using Google AdWords (and if you’re not you should be) there is a built-in keyword tool. This keyword tool allows you to see search volumes for keywords you’re researching.

Search terms like “things to do in your location” or “Top 10 outdoor activities in your location.” These types of searches will return relevant keywords for activities in your market. You can then take those words and build SEO optimized content and ads utilizing those keywords.

Another great option is conducting a simple Google search. Thanks to “autocomplete” as you begin to type in a phrase like “what are the best vacation activities in my location,” Your inquiry will return viable keywords. Once you’ve compiled a list, you can then create content that uses those specific terms.

The bottom line is, with minimal research you’ll be able to understand what your market is looking for, develop a list of strong keywords, and then target your advertising and content to speak to those terms.

Other Effective Strategies…

If your business is smaller, you can emulate strategies that larger companies adopt. For example, if during your research you find content on travel sites like TripAdvisor, or Yelp that are trending, you can “recreate” content with a fresh perspective that’s geared towards your properties. Say TripAdvisor has an article on the top-10 surf destination on the East Coast. You can repurpose this and write an article on the “Top 5 Surf Destination in Panama City.” which should rank highly in local searches for “best surfing.”

Finally, if you have a minimal budget there are some excellent paid SEO tools to choose from like MOZ or SEMRUSH. These are low-cost monthly subscription services that can help you to build keyword lists around search terms that are currently getting traffic. You can also use them to research your competitors and find out what search terms are working for them.

Content is king! Creating solid, unique content around the right keywords can help your organic search rank. Researching search terms using free tools like Google AdWords, or paid tools like MOZ can give you an edge when it comes to creating optimized content that drives traffic and generates direct bookings.