Do you have a blog for your holiday rental website?
If not, there’s never been a better time to start, for three reasons (there are others, but we’ll start with these):
- Shareable content – writing about your newly landscaped garden, or a recent local event will give you something to add to social media channels, that will hopefully get liked and shared.
- SEO – Google loves websites that continually add new, valuable content and repays those sites with better ranking in relevant searches.
- Trust – You’ve probably got quite a bit of competition – holiday rentals similar to yours, in the same area, etc. How do you stand out? One way is through a blog. And by blogging, people get to know you. Forming Trust. Building relationships. Widening your marketing reach.
So let’s say you agree – you’ve decided to start a blog, or you’re already a seasoned pro …
… with a blog article, there needs to be a headline.
An accurate headline.
For instance, your holiday rental has five great attractions nearby. Therefore you could write a blog post with a title like this:
“5 great attractions within 10 minutes of [your holiday rental]”
That sounds pretty good. I can’t wait to find out what they are!
But what if, after reading the article, getting excited about them and then actually holidaying at the holiday rental in question, you discovered that two of the attractions were over 30 minutes away?
You’d be annoyed right?
I know I would be. And I’d probably make my feelings known in the blog comments section and on social media channels.
If you’re going to write an article about five great attractions within 10 minutes of your property, make sure they really are within 10 minutes of your property.
Oh and you should probably specify very early on in the post – i.e. in the first paragraph – whether you’re talking about 10 minutes on foot or by car, just to manage expectations even more.
So, assuming the ‘great attractions’ are within 10 minutes of your holiday let, the above example – “5 great attractions within 10 minutes of [your holiday rental]” is very accurate.
Good job!
But here’s the thing – supposing that title isn’t very accurate (as in your ‘discovery’ above)?
If you’re going to specify details of this kind, you’d better make sure each attraction is within the 10 minutes you’ve given.
Drive it or walk it yourself to make sure you’ve got it right. And if one is 15 minutes away, or even 12 minutes away, change the title to reflect that and remain accurate.
“5 great attractions within 15 minutes of [your holiday rental]”
Accuracy in blog headlines is super-important. Well in anything really …
Without it people will read a post and wonder why it didn’t relate to the headline they read initially. That headline may well have pulled them in and got them reading. But if the main content doesn’t follow on from that with 100% accuracy, they’ll stop reading and move on to another site.
Because if you’re not being accurate with your blog articles, what else aren’t you being accurate about on the rest of your website?
You know you’ve been accurate about the description of your holiday let, but the reader doesn’t know that. As such you could end up getting lots of people to you website, but losing credibility once there.
The best way to avoid all this is by following this simple formula:
- Come up with a topic you’d like to write about
- Spend time crafting the headline – something accurate that will also pull readers in
- Start writing the rest of the article based on that headline
Once you’re done, read over the content and make sure the headline still relates to the article, and that it’s 100% accurate.
For example, if you were to write our original example blog post …
“5 great attractions within 10 minutes of [your holiday rental]”
… check the distances of each.
If one happens to be 15 minutes away, change the headline.
Now check out your blog posts and content today. Are your articles delivering on their headlines each and every time?
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