How to Optimize the SEO of Your Accommodations in the VRMS?
1. Choose a keyword for your accommodation.
Things to consider when choosing the keyword:
Look for “long tail keywords”. These are longer phrases derived from our main keywords. Example: “apartment Barcelona” would be a main keyword, “apartment with terrace at Bogatell beach” would be a long tail keyword.
Specificity. While main keywords are more generic, long tail keywords aim to be very specific, to attract specific traffic niches that are easier to rank for.
Relevance and coherence with the accommodation. Use the most specific features or location of the accommodation to create a meaningful long tail keyword. “Villa with pool by the sea Nerea 2”
The general idea is to have a unique long tail keyword for each accommodation to cover all possible searches by our users.
2. Edit images and texts to optimize the accommodation.
In the left menu: select Accommodations > Short-term Rentals > Photos and descriptions and choose the accommodation you want to edit.
Here we will find three tabs: content, description, and SEO. Let's see how to edit each one to optimize the accommodation.
Content (images)
In this section, we can see all the images uploaded for this accommodation. Clicking on an image will bring up a window with its details. Next, we click on <EDIT> which allows us to modify both the title and the alternative text (Alt) of the image.
Alternative text (Alt): The content of this section helps us rank the image. Here we will use our keyword and variations of the same “long tail keyword”.
Example: “apartment with terrace at Bogatell beach Barcelona”, some variations could be: “apartment beach Barcelona”, “apartment near Bogatell beach” or “apartment with terrace in Barcelona”
Our goal is to cover all possible variations of our keyword with the images of our accommodation. With 3 or 4 images, it should be enough to cover them.
Title (Title): This section is not very relevant for ranking, you can write a representative title of the image or it can even match the alternative text.
Description
In this section, we can edit the description of the accommodation (not to be confused with the description of the images). We can include relevant information about the area such as the proximity of a supermarket, restaurant, or tourist attraction.
Here we will also try to include our keyword two or three times naturally:
Example: In the title of the accommodation, we see that the keywords “apartment”, “terrace”, “beach” and “Calella de Palafrugell” are being targeted. In the description, we should repeat these keywords several times naturally.
SEO (Meta Title + Meta Description)
The content of this section is what appears in the Google search engine and is the most important for the SEO of a page or accommodation.
Meta Title. It should be 55-60 characters long and include the previously selected long tail keyword.
Meta Description. It should contain between 140-160 characters and include the keyword naturally. Although it is not a key ranking factor, a good meta description should:
Clearly convey at a glance the general features of the accommodation.
Attract users' attention to click on the accommodation.
Use the keyword once.
Include a small call to action. “Call us” “Come visit us” “Learn more” to finish.
We recommend the same process for each of the languages in which we are interested in attracting customers or have active on the web.
With all these details, which may seem insignificant individually, we ensure that over time these accommodations become more visible in Google rankings, and we attract direct users to the accommodation with the highest possible conversion probability.