All guides
Twenty-four practical guides for vacation rental owners who handle their own marketing, grouped by what they help with — getting found in search, copywriting that converts, independent website basics, staying in touch with past guests, and measuring what actually works.
Getting found in search
Writing title tags that actually rankThe title tag is the single line search engines rely on most to understand what a page is Meta descriptions that get clickedYour meta description is the short paragraph under your title in search results. It has noChoosing the right search terms for your rentalYou don't need keyword software to find the terms that matter. You need to think like the Structuring a small rental website for search enginesA one-page site that tries to say everything at once is harder for both visitors and searcImage alt text: what it's for and how to write itAlt text is the written description attached to an image, read aloud by screen readers andInternal linking on a small rental websiteLinks from one of your own pages to another are one of the cheapest, most overlooked ways Submitting your sitemap to search enginesA sitemap is a plain list of your site's pages, in a format search engines can read directLocal search basics for a vacation rentalA lot of the searches that matter to a vacation rental are tied to a place, not just a typ
Copywriting that converts
Writing a listing description that convertsMost listing descriptions are written in the order the owner thinks of things. Guests readHeadlines that get clickedOn a results page full of thumbnails, the headline is doing almost all the work of gettingPhotos that sell your rentalThe gear matters far less than most owners think. Light, order and what you choose to showBuilding trust on your own rental websiteA marketplace listing comes with built-in trust signals — reviews, buyer protection, a knoWriting an about page guests actually trustAn about page that just repeats the listing description wastes the one page a hesitant gueCalls to action that get direct bookingsA visitor who's read this far and is interested will still leave if the next step isn't ob
Independent website basics
Should you build an independent website for your rental?An independent website isn't required to succeed, and it isn't free. Here's a plain way toChoosing a domain name for your rental websiteThe domain name matters less for search ranking than most owners assume, and more for whetWebsite speed and why it matters for a small rental siteA visitor who's waiting for your home page to load is making a decision about your propertMobile-friendly design basics for a rental websiteOpen your own site on your own phone, right now, and try to do what a guest would do. MostSSL and basic website security for a rental siteA website address starting with https, shown with a padlock in the browser bar, is the min
Staying in touch with guests
Building an email list of past guestsA past guest who had a good stay is one of the easiest direct bookings you'll ever get — iWriting a welcome message sequence for guestsMarketplaces handle a lot of this automatically. Booking directly means you need to send iUsing guest reviews as website contentA review a stranger already wrote, in their own words, is usually more convincing than any