As a host, you may have heard a lot of terms like “SEO,” “keywords,” and “optimization” thrown around. While these may seem like fancy corporate phrases, they’re actually all part of a valuable part of marketing that can benefit your short-term rental business: vacation rental keyword research. This blog post explains what vacation rental keyword research means, why you need to pay attention to it, and how it can help your business.
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What is vacation rental keyword research?
Keyword research is the process you go through to find and understand which words or phrases are being typed into search engines. When a guest types in a question such as “best Airbnbs near Orlando, Florida,” a search engine, like Google, is going to scour the internet to find results that best answer this question. You want your website to be one of those answers. As a result, you need to research and understand what those popular keyword searches are, and optimize your listing to be favored by Google.
Why does this matter?
When your direct booking website and listing are optimized for vacation rental keyword research, you get more eyes on your property. The more eyes on your property, the more guests who are going to book it. It’s a simple numbers game. The more folks who see your listing, the more folks who are going to book it. Understanding how to use keywords is just another puzzle piece of this marketing game.
What are the different types of keywords?
For beginners, there are two types of keywords you want to understand. They are as follows:
- Short-tail: These are typically one to three words long and are pretty broad. These words are typically searched a lot, but that means it can be very competitive to “rank” for them. A simple example would be “Chicago loop apartments.
- Long-tail: As expected, these keyword phrases are longer and more specific. This means they have a lower search volume. However, because they’re more specific, it can be easier to rank with them. An example would be something along the lines of “A kid-friendly A-frame rental near Yosemite National Park.”
As a new website or listing, working on ranking for long-tail keywords is a good starting point. This is because the people searching these longer phrases already have a specific vision of what they’re searching for, and you can tailor your listing to match those phrases. Think about the specifics of your property, and how you would search for it as a guest, plugging words into Google or Bing.
Tips for using vacation rental keywords
Let’s break down how you can and should be using these keywords to benefit your business.
1. Think like a guest
What is unique about your property? Does it have a sauna? Is it a treehouse? Are you located 5 miles from a national park? How would you Google your home if you were looking to stay somewhere similar? In this day and age, we’re writing for the robots. We need to be honest about that. Think about what you would type into Google and how Google would pull up suggestions based on what you’ve written.
2. Invest in keyword research tools
There are both free and paid platforms out there that can help you figure out which keywords are performing the best. These tools also demonstrate how much competition you’ll have for those words. Some popular paid and free resources include:
3. Use ChatGPT
Say what you will about the rise of ChatGPT, but hosts are using it daily to help them find new keywords. Simply describe your property to the tool, and it will spit out some popular and often quite effective keyword inspiration.
4. See what other hosts are doing
Look at your competitors and see what types of keywords they’re using. Once you get an eye for vacation rental keywords, it can be easy to spot. One easy way to spot keywords is to look at the “slug” of a URL. Particularly popular on blog posts, you’ll notice a phrase after the “/” in a URL that contains a specific phrase. This is often the keyword. Additionally, look for themes in the title and headings of a post to see what phrases are being targeted.
5. Add keywords throughout your post
You want to incorporate keywords throughout your website, but don’t just stuff them in for the sake of stuffing them in. Find natural, human-like ways to incorporate these words. Be sure to add them to your slug, title, headings, and scatter them in a natural way throughout the web page.
Final thoughts
As a host in an ever-changing industry, it’s more important than ever to understand vacation rental keyword research. With a little bit of effort and practice, you’ll be able to identify the terms that resonate most with your audience and improve your search engine rankings. Remember, the ultimate goal of keyword research is to connect with potential guests.
Host Tools provides an automated, unified calendar for short-term rental hosts, allowing you to seamlessly list on all major channels. Start your free trial today!
