Vacation Rental Blogging: How to Optimize Posts

https://www.paveya.com/vacation-rental-blogging-optimize-posts/

Attract Leads with Vacation Rental Blogging

Every vacation rental company has a website. So, to keep up with your competition, your website must include a blog that contains content that your ideal customer is searching for. Daily vacation rental blogging—or at least bi-weekly—is essential.

This article will give you ideas about blog topics and how to optimize each blog post both for the reader and for search engines.

Optimize Blog Posts for Vacationers

Subject Matter

So what information is your potential customer searching for? It is always smart to write articles that answer frequently asked questions. It is also important to blog about area entertainment, kids’ activities, historical landmarks, sporting competitions, fairs, exhibitions, and businesses that offer services that will appeal to your target audience. For example, highlight a business such as

a restaurant that features local musical talent;
a golf course hosting a tournament; a boutique planning a sale;
a spa offering wedding packages;
a theater promoting a new play; or
a professional sports instructor offering a discount for large groups.

Remember to post unique content. Never rob text from another source and call it your own—this might damage your reputation and credibility. Site your sources when it is necessary.

Image Selection

Post relevant, high-quality imagery with each post. Whether it’s a photograph or a graphic, use original images that help the reader relate to the general message of the blog post. Throw out blurry, out-of-focus images. These will likely compromise the impression that you are hoping to convey to your web reader.

Optimize Blog Posts for Search Engines (SEO)

Content Management Websites

Your WordPress website is the perfect tool to optimize your blog posts for search engines. However, it requires an understanding of how search engines “crawl” and rank your content; how to use your WordPress on-page editor; and how to name image files.

Content Crawlers

After a user types in their search terms (keywords), the search engine sorts through thousands upon thousands of web pages to find relevant content. The stronger the keyword placement is in your blog, the better your ranking will be.

Keywords

Choose keywords that an information-seeking user might type to find your blog post. For example, “Laguna Beach Vacation Rentals” are keywords that you could use within different, focused topics.

Use these keywords in your post’s

blog title;
blog URL (pictured);
topic sentence and/or introductory heading;
image “alt” tags; and
“meta data”.

This screenshot shows you where to edit the blog post URL, if necessary. Use keywords and always separate the keyword terms with dashes. Keep in mind that if your post has already been published and shared on social media networks, it is best not to change this address, even for SEO purposes.

Put your On-page Text Editor to Use

Your WordPress site has been set up with pre-defined text styles. Use them! These tags are important for visual consistency and, more importantly, for search engine ranking. Inside the drop-down menu under “paragraph” (or it might be labeled “format”, depending on your site’s theme) you will see a list of headings 1 through 6. Search engines place more importance or relevancy on text that uses heading tags.

Highlight your topic sentence and change it from a “paragraph” to a “Heading 2”. This topic sentence should include your keywords.
Use headings 3 and 4 for subsections of your main topic.
Use bulleted or numbered lists, blockquotes, and bolded text as search engines give more SEO credence to text within these tags.

Text formatting improves SEO and breaks up long pages of text with subtle visual accents.

Name Image Files with Keywords

Title your graphics and photos with relevant keywords and phrases, not your company name. For example, name your image “laguna-beach-vacation-rental.jpg.” Do not post images with the default title that your camera creates. Search engines cannot give you SEO credit for a photo named “CMI234566.jpg.” It also is important to use dashes to separate your keywords—never spaces—and limit the file name to about 24 characters.

Supply an Alternate (alt) Image Tag

Alternate tags on images “tell” visually-impaired web visitors what the image is about, plus these tags improve SEO. Your WordPress editor includes an image uploader that will instantly give you an opportunity to assign alt text to the image. Use your keywords if they are relevant to the imagery.

Use your On-Page SEO Generator

At the bottom of every post, your WordPress website should include a SEO editor where you can insert a SEO title and a “meta” description, which both display on a search results page. In the screenshot below, the SEO title and meta description are shown in the “Snippet Preview.” This screenshot illustrates where to insert your keywords within this SEO generator:

SEO Title
Meta Description

Never populate the “Focus Keyword” field—Google discourages the use of these “meta keywords.”

To many WordPress users, this is tons of work but if you make a habit of creating blog posts that are optimized for your potential customers and for search engines, you will see results with time.