More and more property management companies are making concerted efforts to drive direct bookings. In fact, 2020 saw a 150% increase in use of Guesty’s booking website builder.
As a direct route to commission-free bookings, promoting your listings on a branded channel has plenty of benefits, but it isn’t without its challenges, the most prevalent of which is attracting potential consumers to your site.
Here are 7 ways to get more eyes on your vacation rental website and execute a traffic generation strategy geared toward your target audienc
1. Search Engine Optimization
One of the best ways to get the right kind of traffic to your vacation rental website is to feature a blog where you can create content that earns you free organic traffic from search engines with search engine optimization (SEO) best practices.
Some SEO best practices to implement include:
Researching keywords
Keyword research is the foundation of SEO. Identifying words and phrases your target audience uses to search for accommodations and incorporating them into your website content is essential to creating content that ranks.
Using a link-building strategy
Links play a crucial role in SEO. To boost your SEO and drive traffic to your website, you must develop a linking strategy that incorporates three types of links.
- Internal Links: These are links between content on your site and must be built purposefully, not randomly.
- Outbound links: Also called external links, these point to other websites you’re referencing. Make sure to link to trusted sites.
- Backlinks. Backlinks are a vote of confidence from other websites and show that your content is good. Building backlinks also helps you tap into the traffic that visits the website linking to you.
Creating a positive user experience
Google announced that “page experience” will be a crucial ranking factor starting from 2021.
Page experience is the sum total of many elements of your website that impact the kind of experience your visitors have on your platform, whether you have a one-page website or a more intricate site structure.
Some of the elements of page experience include:
- Content
- Navigation
- Visuals
- Page load speed
Seeing as SEO is quite a demanding discipline, you may want to hire a freelance SEO expert to handle this aspect of your traffic generation
2. Social Media
With close to 4 billion active users, social media is a huge source of website traffic. In order to tap into that traffic, you must:
- Choose the right platform. With so many social media platforms available, it’s next to impossible to leverage all of them. Focus on the ones that are popular among your target audience.
- Optimize your profile. Use your profile to let people know what you do. Make sure to include a link back to your website.
- Focus on sharing visual content. Posts that do well on social media feature engaging visuals. Create high-quality visuals to accompany the content you share.
- Optimize your CTAs. Each post you share must have a call-to-action (CTA) directing readers to your website.
- Work efficiently. Use software to schedule your posts. Make sure to use a social media tool to create content and batch your posts at once to save time.
For your social media marketing to be more effective, be proactive in growing your following.
3. Paid Ads
Paid ads are another great way to drive traffic to your website. You can use Google Ads, Facebook Ads, or other paid promotion channels to promote your website or a popular post.
A major advantage of paid ads is that they bring you visibility even if the competition to rank is high.
4. Email Marketing
Email is a powerful tool for building relationships with your audience. That’s why building an email list should be one of your priorities when running a vacation rental website.
Email is also a great tool for driving traffic to your website. All you have to do is sign up with an email marketing provider and email your subscribers a link to your latest blog post.
5. Influencer Marketing
Collaborate with an influencer that has a following that would be interested in your content. Having others with a large platform share your content will earn you lots of exposure and, of course, lead to a boost in traffic to your site.
6. Guest Posting
Guest posting is the practice of creating content to be published on other sites. These must be sites with an audience that would be interested in what you have to say. Create valuable content that will impress readers so much they’ll follow you back to your website.
7. Hold Contests
Another way to drive traffic to your website is by holding contests, particularly on social media. Contests are a great way to generate buzz and drive brand awareness. Both result in more traffic to your website.Haven’t built your own branded website yet? Learn about how Guesty’s booking site builder makes it easy.