Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of getting your website to show up in a top result on search engines like Google and Bing. We will cover some advice and suggestions for beginners that will help you improve your vacation rental websites SEO to show up on Google, Bing, and other search engines. If you are new to SEO, Moz.com has a great overview on SEO and it is a good jumping off point.
SEO Basics
In the world of SEO, you often hear the phrase that "content is king." That means if you want people to find your website on Google, you need to have lots of words on your website, and those words should be the keywords you think people would be looking for on Google.
Keywords are the terms that people use to search for things on the web. You want to know exactly what keywords your guests are using so that you can target them. For example, lets say you own a vacation rental in Lake Tahoe. You need to consider all the keywords that guests may type into their search engine "Lake Tahoe vacation rental," "Tahoe cabin," or "luxury Tahoe home for rent."
OneRooftop includes powerful SEO features in all plans, including:
- Editable title tags, meta descriptions and URLs for your pages
- Editable ALT tags for all images
- Automatically generated sitemap.xml file
What is a Page Title?
It could be said that the title is one of the most important factors for successfully optimizing your website for search engines. It provides summarized information about your website pages. Besides that, the title is what appears on search engines result page (SERP).
Search engines use title tags as one of the main factors in determining what your page is all about. It is like a trailer for a movie. You will want your target keywords in your page titles. 70 characters is the maximum number of characters most search engines will display. If you want to include your websites name, its a good idea to do it at the end of the title, unless people do search for your brand. Lastly, make sure your title tag is actually readable; you dont want it appearing as a jumble of search engine optimized keywords; potential guests wont click on pages like that.
What is a Meta Description?
A meta description is the brief bit of text that shows up on a search engine like Google after your title tag. The meta description should be well written as a good description will cause people to click on it. Note: Meta descriptions should only be about 150 characters.
What are meta keywords?
A meta keywords tag is supposed to be a brief and concise list of the most important themes of your page. Separate your keywords and keyword phrases with commas.
What content should I add to my vacation rental website?
The more content you write in your property description, Local info pages, or About Us page, the better chance your page will be found on Google and other search engines. Try to write a few paragraphs of text with some of the keywords youd like to show up for included.
Make sure you dont just copy and paste text from somewhere elsechances are that same description is already on hundreds of other websites. Google and other search engines will know when you are using duplicate content
Can I measure traffic to my website?
We recommend setting up an account with Google Analytics to track your website traffic.
Sign up at Google Analytics (its free with your google account!).
Your Google Analytics ID is in the format UA-xxxx-xx. The name can be found in the middle of the javascript.
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