Now that you’ve thought more about your accommodation and gathered quality photos to help showcase it, you can move on to creating a website that allows you to market it online with you in control.
Step 2: Creating a website
Why do you need a website?
A dedicated website portrays a more professional image and can help boost the credibility of your accommodation.
Not to mention over time, it will start to appear naturally in search engine results – which means not having to rely so heavily on listing sites to achieve bookings.
But there’s a difference between getting a website, and having one that works hard to generate those bookings.
Not sure how to go about creating an effective website? The next few articles should help straighten things out.
1) Choosing a domain name for your website can feel like a daunting task – after all, you’re probably going to have it for several years, and it’s better to get it right in the beginning, rather than have to change it later.
How to Choose the Perfect Domain Name for Your Holiday Rental Website provides a few essential tips to help you decide.
2) With so many options available, it can be difficult to make a decision as to the best platform to create your website on.
The Benefits of Using a Holiday-Let-Specific Website Builder explains the features that make the creation and management of your site so much easier.
3) Stop thinking of your website creation as an insurmountable task. It’s not. Just getting a few key elements online is a start, and you can build from there.
3 Tips for Creating a Professional Holiday Let Website breaks it down by giving you just three initial tasks to focus on.
4) Once you’ve reached a decision on how you’re going to build your website, and you may even have the basic structure in place, it’s time to make it as appealing as possible.
How to Create the Perfect Holiday Let Website that Encourages Visitors to Make a Booking is the one article you must read for maximum impact.
5) Think of your website’s homepage as the hotel lobby. First impressions count. You need it to entice them further in and make them want to stick around.
How to Create an Effective Homepage for Your Holiday Let Website walks you through the process in just three steps.
6) There are a few tricks of the trade when it comes to writing online content. Mainly, writing for people with busy lives and short attention spans.
How to Hold Attention with Your Website Content explains how to write your website content so that it gets read.
7) Appealing to people’s emotions is known to be much more effective in marketing than talking practicalities.
Are You Promoting Features or Benefits of Your Holiday Let tells you how to do this to benefit your holiday let business.
8) It’s advantageous to place well researched keywords in your website text for SEO purposes. But don’t overstep the mark by writing for the search engines as opposed to your website visitors.
Write Naturally for Better Search Optimisation explains how to do this without incurring any potential penalties.
9) There’s one way to ensure that your text is easy to read and scan for those time-precious website visitors.
Top Tip to Create Easy-To-Read Content tells you exactly what it is.
10) It’s all very well giving people great content, but don’t expect all of them to take action without being given a little nudge.
The Importance of a Call to Action on Your Rental Website explains how to get your website visitors doing exactly what you want them to.
11) Projecting a professional image plays an important role in the success of your holiday let business.
How to Get an Email Address for your Website Domain Name helps create more professionalism when communicating with potential guests.
12) It can take several weeks for search engines to index new websites. That can feel like an eternity when you’re trying to generate new bookings.
How to Submit a Sitemap to Google & Bing lets you know that there is a way to speed up the process, and how to go about it.
Creating a professional website that attracts people with high quality images and holds their attention with enticing and informative text, ensures you have an effective tool for the rest of your online marketing efforts.
Keep an eye out for the next post in the series which is all about optimising your website for search engines.
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