CHAPTER 3
Vacation Rental Content
CHAPTER SECTIONS
Content for Vacation Rental Companies
You have your properties listed on your website. You have your online booking system all set up. Your vacation rental website has everything it needs, right?
Not exactly. If you don’t have high-quality content on your vacation rental website, you are missing out on countless potential search rankings and clients.
Don’t just take our word for it — more than 72% of professional marketers say content is the most important part of your SEO strategy. And simply having an active blog on your vacation rental website could increase your traffic by 55% compared to your competitors who don’t blog.
However, you can’t just blog about your day or whatever comes into your head. Endless amounts of vacation rental content is published on the internet every single day. To compete with all of that and increase relevant traffic and leads, you need to invest heavily in great content.
To be great, content for vacation rental companies needs to be search engine-friendly and highly relevant to your clients. In this chapter, we will learn how to produce perfect content for your vacation rental company.
Vacation Rental Content Overview
This chapter in our Vacation Rental SEO guide will cover all aspects of content for vacation rental managers (VRMs). The following are the key topics we will discuss:
- Why content is important for vacation rental sites
- Different types of vacation rental content
- Why you should focus on quality over quantity
- How to bring your content to life
- How to build SEO-friendly vacation rental content
- Content strategy for VRMs
- Putting it all together for great content
Does Content Matter for Vacation Rental Websites?
Yes. Content matters for vacation rental websites — a lot. Let’s take a look at some of the reasons why.
Through Content, Show Visitors You Are the Local Travel Authority
Travelers are spending a lot of money to visit your area. They want to be sure they are spending their money on the right things. That’s why they look to local travel authorities to get expert tips and advice.
With great content on your website, you can be that travel authority.
Without local, relevant content on your website, you are just another site that lists short-term rental properties. When you are competing with online travel agencies (OTAs) and major review sites, that’s not good enough.
By publishing highly localized content on your vacation rental website, you are setting yourself up to show up in the Google search engine results pages (SERPs) when travelers search, for example, “best beachside condos for rent” or “things to do in Miami.”
And if you are the information authority about travel in your area, you are an obvious first choice for a traveler’s place to stay when they arrive.
Benefits of Vacation Rental Content
Becoming an authority on travel in your area is a benefit of content for vacation rentals that is hard to compete with. But there are plenty of other benefits of publishing high-quality content on your site:
- You can rank for longtail keywords like questions and how-to phrases that the big OTAs and listing sites are not targeting, putting your site in front of more potential customers.
- You can use your site to build a local area guide that keeps travelers coming back to you.
- You can increase your online reach by bringing in new, relevant traffic.
How VRMs Can Boost Their Content Investments
Creating content for vacation rental sites requires a big time investment. And, if you’re paying writers to create the content, the investment can be a financial one, too.
But you can easily increase the value of your investment by using your vacation rental content for more than just your website.
Here are few ways you can do that:
- You can use all the content you have recently published on your site to create a monthly email newsletter that you send to your email subscribers.
- You can combine useful blog posts to create printable guidebooks that you hand out to guests.
- You can use your website content to anchor your display and pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns
Types of Vacation Rental Content
There’s more to content than blog posts. Below, we discuss all the types of content VRMs need to consider.
Page and Post Types for VRM Sites
In terms of text content, you have a few options to choose from for your site:
- Property page descriptions. These pages should describe the rental property, the surrounding area, amenities and things to do.
- Local area guides or destination guides. Be specific when you create a local guide. Instead of targeting the general city guides that all the OTAs are already ranking for, think about more specific ideas, such as “Five Best Sunset Kayaking Tours on Captiva Island” or “The Insider’s Guide to One-Day Hikes Near Blue Ridge, Georgia.”
- Blog posts. Your vacation rental blog posts need to cover specific topics in depth. Make sure they are evergreen, meaning they will make sense to readers in the future — not just for a short time.
- Services and concierge pages. If your vacation rental business offers tour booking or similar services, you need pages on your site dedicated to each of these services. Describe the offer, the price, things to know and any other relevant information.
- About page. You only need one about page for your vacation rental site. Make sure it captures the characteristics of your business that set you apart from the competition.
Not All Vacation Rental Content Is Text
Those are all important types of text content, but there is more to content for vacation rentals than just text. You can also create videos, images and PDF guides to publish on your site.
Keep in mind that different types of content will work best in certain situations. For example, more visual topics might benefit from a video or some photos.
And an in-depth, detailed guide might work best as a PDF so travelers can print it out and bring it with them.
Check out the drone video below. This is a great way to feature your properties in a way that isn’t text.
Vacation Rental Website Content: Quality First
If you’re eager to start posting new content on your vacation rental site, that’s great.
But make sure you devote the necessary time to create truly helpful, undeniably great content.
Why? Because Google puts a premium on great content, and it’s the only way you’re going to compete with OTAs in the search rankings.
But what does great content look like in the vacation rental industry?
Longer Content
First, focus on longform content. Instead of one short blog post that fails to cover the topic in depth each week, try one long, detailed blog post each month.
Longer content tends to rank for more keywords and provide more value to readers.
Your definition of “long” will vary, but this typically means longer than 1,000 words.
Whatever word count you settle on, make sure you have covered every relevant detail of your chosen topic.
According to a survey by Orbitz Media, the average length of content keeps increasing.
Be Better Than the OTAs and Your Competitors
Your content needs to be excellent. But it also needs to be better than the competition. So if your competitors are also putting out great content, you need to make yours even better.
How do you do that? Do a Google search for the topic you are writing about. Read the corresponding content on the OTA websites and your competitors’ sites.
Make your content better. More thoroughly researched. Better visuals.
Notice any gaps in their content? Make sure your content fills that gap.
Are the OTAs using video to create visual destination guides? You’re a local — you can do it better. And you should.
Try to reverse-engineer the vacation rental content strategies your competitors are using. Then, improve upon those strategies on your own site.
How to Bring Your Vacation Rental Content Ideas to Life
So far, this guide has covered a lot of the “why” aspects of creating vacation rental content but not so much of the “how.”
Your content creation process will be your own, but here are a few pointers:
- Use an editorial calendar to schedule blog posts and other content so you can keep track of production and make sure it is timely.
- Find writers and editors you like to work with and stick with them. Their knowledge of the subject and your business will mature over time.
- Track the performance of all vacation rental content you publish. Use tools like Google Search Console, Google Analytics and SEMrush to see what terms your pages are ranking for, how much traffic they’re bringing in and how many times they are converting website visitors into clients. Make adjustments based on your data.
The Importance of SEO Content for Vacation Rental Companies
We have touched on some aspects of SEO in content for vacation rentals so far, but there is a lot more to say on this subject. From keyword research to internal linking, SEO considerations for your vacation rental website can make or break your content efforts.
Learn more in the following guide:
HOW-TO GUIDE
Content Relevance and Topical Authority
Although we already touched on the importance of links to your vacation rental site appearing in relevant places around the web, it is important to have an understanding of what exactly makes for good vacation rental SEO content in today’s market.
What Makes a Vacation Rental Manager’s SEO Content ‘Good’?
Good SEO content is, first and foremost, interesting content that resonates with your demographic!
Long gone are the days of keyword stuffing.
When Google’s algorithm ranks pages, it can now differentiate between highly useful, engaging content and content that merely contains a large number of keywords in irrelevant places.
Good SEO content also focuses on why viewers are searching — your vacation rental guests may not have the same search intent as another property manager’s audience.
The sooner you understand this, the sooner you can begin creating content that is uniquely tailored to the people who want to book your properties.
Search Intent for Vacation Rental Content
Search intent is the reason your clients are looking for a vacation rental property — what are they wanting to find when they type their search query into Google?
This is an essential part of creating content your audience will relate to, but it isn’t talked about as frequently as some other aspects of creating good SEO content.
In the age of the COVID-19 pandemic, some property managers find that their clients are looking for staycation rentals to safely get away from home for a while.
Others find themselves still catering to families who are looking to escape to the tropics and practice social distancing in their own vacation homes, as opposed to a traditional hotel.
Your customers’ needs must be taken into consideration when you create content for every page of your website!
E-A-T: SEO Metrics for Your Website
In SEO, E-A-T stands for expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. According to Google, “the amount of expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-A-T) is very important,” to a website’s ability to rank well.
Remember that E-A-T not only matters for your own website — where it can help you build authority and increase the legitimacy of your brand online — but for the websites your link appears on.
If your property rental company site’s URL is only linked to from low-authority webpages, you are significantly less likely to draw legitimate potential clients. And Google is likely to associate you with those low-authority sites.
Vacation Rental Content Strategy: What You Need to Know
Strategy is everything when it comes to getting your content in front of people who can turn into customers for your vacation rental business.
But content strategy includes more than content creation and SEO.
Learn more in our Vacation Rental Content Strategy guide.
HOW-TO GUIDE
Putting It All Together to Make Perfect Vacation Rental Content
Content is the cornerstone of your marketing efforts for your vacation rental business. It brings in web traffic, convinces visitors to book with you and opens up various other marketing channels like PPC.
Creating perfect content for vacation rentals involves selecting the right format and medium, focusing on quality, implementing on-page SEO considerations and building a solid content marketing strategy.
For answers to your questions about marketing your vacation rental company, use the button below to schedule a call.
