Ok, so you’ve built a great looking website to showcase your holiday rental, you’ve chosen the best keywords to target and you’ve included them in the relevant areas of your website, so that Google knows what your site is about. Now what?
You need to get some links pointing to your website from other high quality, relevant websites. Why would you want to do that?
Two reasons:
- Each link back to your site counts as a vote in the eyes of Google. Simply put, the more relevant votes you have, the better your site will rank;
- Each link has the potential to send direct traffic to your website.
So how do you attract links?
The first step in encouraging people to link to your website is to create interesting and unique content that they will want to link to. This will allow you to pick up a few links naturally over time, but in order to stay ahead of the competition you’ll probably need to use a few of the techniques below to give your link prospects a nudge.
Warning: Never pay for links by signing up to packages that offer a set number of links for a price. This is against Google’s terms and conditions and using techniques like these will get you penalised by Google and potentially end in your website being removed from the search engine results entirely.
Link building techniques
There are literally hundreds of different ways to build links back to your holiday rental website. Our advice is to pick 3 or 4 of the techniques below and use those for a few months, then as you become more adept and comfortable, mix things up and try some of the others.
There are some ground rules to bear in mind when using any of the techniques:
- It’s important that the links you build come from high quality sites.
- Links should be built gradually, over time. This is not a one-time activity.
- Link text should be varied i.e. don’t use the same phrase for all your links.
- Links need to come from a variety of linking techniques.
- Link building needs to look natural – don’t automate or buy links.
Ask owners of related websites
Use Google to find websites related to your holiday properties destination, such as tourist information websites and websites for local attractions. Send them an email asking if they would be willing to link to your website. Often these types of websites are happy to list holiday rental accommodation in the local area.
Check out the competition
Sites that rank highly for the same keywords you want to appear for will have been building links for a while. You can get a feel for the types and number of links they have using the Yahoo! Site Explorer service:
- Visit http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com
- Type in their web address and hit explore URL
Hit the button labelled ‘inlinks’ and you’ll see all the links from other websites. You can use this to get an idea of who is linking to your competition so you can approach those sites and get them to link to you as well.
Sadly, since writing this article Yahoo! Site Explorer has been shut down. A couple of good alternatives are as follows:
- MajesticSEO- http://www.majesticseo.com/
- OpenSiteExplorer – http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/
Directories/Listing Sites
Use Google to search for relevant directories and listing sites in the country or region that your holiday rental property is located. Use your chosen keywords, but add the word “directory” on the end and have a look at some of the sites that come up. Any free sites within the first 3 pages that allow you to add a link to your website could be worth joining, providing it is relatively quick to add the details of your holiday rental.
Forum Participation
Participate in Holiday Rental Forums and any forums related to the country/ region your holiday property is located. Most forums allow you to post a link on your profile and in your signature. Participation is the key here. Just signing up and creating profile links is not going to get you very far. Besides, you’ll probably find a lot of useful information on other aspects of renting your holiday property, so you’ll get a lot more out of it than a few links.
Some of the more popular Holiday Rental Forums include:
Article Syndication
Content writing is a great way to get good quality, relevant links back to your website. Writing and submitting useful and informative articles to external article websites is one of the best ways to:
- increase links;
- increase traffic;
- boost your credibility as an expert.
Write 300 – 500 words of content around a given topic, theme or keyword. These might be:
- tips for other holiday rental owners
- a list of things to do in the local area
- a review of a local attraction
- a location guide
Once written, you can share them on article sites. You’ll be allowed to add in an “About the Author” section and it is here you can add in links to your website.
Here is an example ‘About the author’ section:
“Joan Smith is the owner of Valderama – a spanish villa with pool that is available year round for rentals. Aimed specifically at golfing tours, we are only 2 minutes from the major PGA golf course. Visit the site to find out more http://www.mygolfvillawebsite.com
The bits in bold should be links back to your website. You’ll need to add in some HTML code to make the links work, but you can use the sample code at the bottom of this article.
Aim to submit one or two articles a week. You can add articles to sites such as:
Only submit one article to each website.
Blogging
If you are prepared to commit the time to updating a blog on a regular basis, starting a blog about the area where your holiday rental is situated is a great way to attract links. It can also be very enjoyable! People are far more likely to link to a specific article on your blog than the home page of your website (assuming they find what you have written of interest). Google also loves fresh content and therefore loves blogs, since they are generally updated on a regular basis.
You could also consider guest blogging. In the same way you can submit articles to article directories, you can also find relevant blogs that will allow you to share your articles. This is another great way to get links back to your holiday rental website from other relevant websites. Use the same kind of topics listed in the ‘Article Syndication’ section above.
Make sure all content you write is unique – it takes a bit of time and effort – but if you don’t do this your efforts will be wasted.
To find places to add blog content or guest blog posts:
- Use Google to search for relevant blogs e.g. “spain” ,”spanish”, “spanish holidays”, adding the words “guest blog post” e.g. “Spain guest blog post” – and remember to include the quotation marks;
- You can also join a guest blog community such as myblogguest.com and “advertise” that you are willing to write content around your topic for other sites.
You’ll be able to add in keyword links in any published content.
Blog commenting
Use Google to find holiday rental blogs and blogs related to your holiday rental destination and get involved by commenting on the posts. Don’t simply post comments saying “thanks for the great content” in the hope that the comment will be included with your link. Add value where possible and try to build a relationship with the blogger, so that they may eventually add a link to your website of their own accord.
Twitter/Facebook
Setup a Facebook page and Twitter profile for your holiday rental, including a link to your website in the profiles. Post ‘status updates’ and ‘tweets’ on a regular basis, with information related to your destination or the holiday rentals industry in general, whilst at the same time building your follower numbers. Gradually more and more people will be notified about your content and some of those people will share it with others. If you have a blog, make sure you share your blog posts on Twitter and Facebook too.
Online Videos
Use a site like Animoto to create a professional looking video showcasing your holiday rental. Add it to video sharing sites such as YouTube and Vimeo. This will get you a few links, especially if people find your video interesting enough to share. Don’t forget to add it to your website too, to showcase your holiday rental to potential guests.
Keyword Text Link Code
There will be times when you’ll be asked to provide some link code and this will need to be in HTML format. Sometimes you’ll get a form to complete and it will build the code for you, others times not. Below is a template to help you out. You can use this where ever you need to add in an HTML link:
<a href=”http://WWW.MYWEBSITEADDRESS.COM” title=” KEYWORD TEXT “>KEYWORD TEXT</a>
Replace WWW.MYWEBSITEADDRESS.COM with your website address
Replace both sets of KEYWORD TEXT with your chosen keyword(s)
Summary
As you can see, there are many ways to continually attract links to your website. It takes a fair bit of time and effort to see results and you really need to make this part of your monthly activity. Over time you’ll see that you are getting more traffic to your holiday rental website, which should result in more enquiries and bookings. Eventually you will become less reliant on listing sites for your bookings (although we would always recommend advertising on one or two of the better listing sites for your area, as part of a well balanced marketing strategy).
In the next article, we will show you how you can measure the success of your marketing efforts to see what’s working and what’s not.
Hello,
Thank you for the post. Many people have websites for their rental properties but do not understand the importance and need of building the websites up. The guide you have created focuses on natural link building methods which is important for people to understand.
Quality link building is very important but don’t allow poor links to devalue your site. Quality is always the key.