Tips on creating Vacation Rental Listings and Websites to Market Vacation Rental Homes Online
July 19th, 2011 by Henry, under Vacations. No Comments
Tips on creating Vacation Rental Listings and Websites to Market Vacation Rental Homes Online
To successfully market your vacation rental online, you should consider adding your property to one or more Vacation Rentals Directories. In addition you can build your own website that will feature your vacation home.
If you want to build your own site, and don’t know much about designing websites, you can find many free templates to choose from online. Do a quick search for “Free Website Templates” on Google (or other search engines) and choose one that fits your needs.
Here are some basic tips on how to build a successful vacation rental listing or website to market your property.
- Quality Photos.
Pictures sell. Always include quality photos of your property on your website or listing. Photos should be clear, accurate and up to date. Take some time with your photos, double look to see if everything looks neat and clean. No one wants to look at a living room photo that has clothes and magazines laying around.
Consider adding photos of the outside view of your Vacation Rental Home taken in different seasons. For example, if you offer rentals year round, add photos of how your Vacation Rental Home looks not just in the Summer, but also in the Spring, Winter and Fall. This helps your potential renters envision what to expect when they get there.
- Videos featuring your Vacation Rental Property.
If you have a video featuring your Vacation Rental Home, add it to your website or your listing. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video is a worth a million!
- Keywords, Meta Tags and Titles.
If you do now know how to add keyword or Meta Tags, do a quick search on Google on “How to add Meta Tags to your Website” and read few articles about good SEO (Search Engine Optimization) practices.
SEO plays a very important part of having a successful Vacation Rental Website, and it’s not hard to learn.
When adding keywords, they should relate to your vacation rental home and it’s location, such as “Vacation Rental in Orlando” or “Luxury Catskills Cabin” etc.
Titles of your pages (or your Vacation Rental Listing) should include keywords and location. In general, your title should be a short, few words sentence (or two, if they are very shot). For Example: “Cozy Vacation Rental in Orlando Florida. Affordable getaway”.
- Detailed, Honest Description.
When writing about your rental, include keywords that you added to your Meta Tags. For example “Our Vacation Rental in Orlando Florida offers …” or “If you are looking for a Luxury cabin in the Catskills…” etc.
Always tell the truth about your property. Misrepresenting your Vacation Rental home will only lead to angry guests. You should be very clear as to what your Vacation Rental Home has to offer. This way the renters are not surprised (in a negative way) when they get there. Try to cover anything that you can think of to describe your vacation home in details. Not only will this help you avoid getting unnecessary phone calls, or emails with questions that could have been explained on your website or listing, but it will also help you in case you run into unhappy guests.
We recommend that you have a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page on your website. This page should have typical questions and short answers to them.
Think from the potential guests perspective… what would be useful to add to the description or FAQ page?
With time, as you rent your Vacation Rental Home, you will add more to your FAQ page as visitors will keep asking questions that were not covered.
When creating your Vacation Rental listing or website, let’s not forget that you should use standard capitalization. Do not use all capital letters for titles or description. In Internet etiquette, this is the equivalent of shouting.
- Add a link to your Vacation Rental Listing on your website. Also, if the Vacation Rental Directory site allows it, link to your website from your listing page. This will help search engines find your Vacation Home on both, your website and your listings.
- Consider changing your description on your listings.
Search engines don’t like duplicate content. Include all that’s important about your Vacation Rental Home on your listings, but try to write it again, instead of just simply copy/pasting your description from your website.
- Invite your prior guests to leave a review on your Vacation Rental Listing.
Travelers do read reviews. Some are more interested in them than others. In general, reviews from prior guests add trust in a view of potential new renters. According to TripAdvisor nearly 80% of travelers say they are significantly more likely to book a property if they can read reviews from past guests.
Write even more about your Vacation Home, update on recent changes and news – Blog.
Search engines love Blogs, and potential guests will like more personal and updated information about your Vacation Home.
Last but certainly not least, update your website AND your Vacation Rental listings from time to time. Updated content leads to better search engine traffic. If you don’t update your site, it will slowly get down the list on search results.
Tony writes articles for VR Referrals ( www.vacationrentalreferrals.com ), a Vacation Rental Directory website that connects Vacation Rental Property Owners / Managers together to share ideas, tips and refer their extra bookings.
Oklahoma Economy
September 14th, 2009 by Ian Kleine, under Travel and Leisure. No Comments
Oklahoma’s economy is based upon the industry of food manufacturing and production, aircraft development and natural gas extraction. Natural gas is abundant in Oklahoma, ranking the entire state second in the national standings. As for agriculture, Oklahoma competes with a 27th-ranking place, with 5th in rankings for wheat production. Oklahoma has also been rated as one of the most business-friendly states in North America, with tax burdens ranking as the nation’s 7th lowest. Oil accounts for at least seventeen percent of Oklahoma’s major economic shifters, but the industry was outpaced at the start of 2007 due to a collapse in the energy industry.
Oklahoma’s main industry lies in the sectors of aviation, energy production, transportation equipment assembly, food processing, electronics and communication, not mentioning the three previous main industries of the state. With a civilian work force of over 1.7 million. The government had at least provided jobs in the state for over three hundred thousand people in 2007, transportation and utility sector providing at least two hundred ninety thousand jobs and education, business, and manufacturing industries providing one hundred ninety thousand, one hundred eight thousand and one hundred fifty jobs respectively.
Among the industries, aerospace generates the most with at least eleven billion dollars per annum. Tulsa is home to the largest maintenance base for airlines in the whole world, serving at least a good number of international and national clients.
The state is also known as the top manufacturer and distributor of tires and also a rapidly-growing biotechnology industry. Other industries like meat packaging, oil and gas equipment manufacturing, and air conditioner production comprise the states largest manufacturers.
Oklahoma has a large consumption of energy per capita, with the number of industries running around the area. The state has at least eighty three thousand commercial oil wells with seven fifty thousand over all, producing one hundred seventy thousand barrels of liquid gold per day. An estimated one trillion six billion cubic feet of natural gas is found in Oklahoma’s underground reserves.
Taking a vacation in Oklahoma? Why not make it worth the trip? Oklahoma craft shows. Visit Oklahoma craft fairs, that’s what I use to check up on mine.