Driving new bookings post era of OD/HA!!!!!!

Up, down, could be better? How to get more bookings is our number one obsession. Talk shop here.
seaturtle
Posts: 95
Joined: Tue Jun 23, 2015 9:26 am

Driving new bookings post era of OD/HA!!!!!!

Post by seaturtle »

Dear LMHers
We are wishing to get more bookings through our website (but struggle technologically) can anyone recommend a good SEO service provider?

Manythanks

Seaturtle
e-richard
Posts: 5008
Joined: Sun Oct 17, 2004 11:33 am
Location: Algarve, Portugal
Contact:

Post by e-richard »

Its not just a technological problem.

HomeAway have an annual budget for SEO, including staff, experts, travel, Google ad spend etc of something around $10m - $12m

I suggest you may not want to compete with that :cry:
** Richard
PIMS: Holiday Rental Management system
They say we learn from our mistakes. That makes me a genius !
seaturtle
Posts: 95
Joined: Tue Jun 23, 2015 9:26 am

Post by seaturtle »

Im looking for SEO help to compliment the business’ social media etc & I’d be grateful if someone had good experience/contact details
e-richard
Posts: 5008
Joined: Sun Oct 17, 2004 11:33 am
Location: Algarve, Portugal
Contact:

Post by e-richard »

Apologies. I did not mean to come across so unhelpful. I have been looking into the same issue myself - but have been very frustrated so far. There are a lot of charletons out there and also pseudo experts.

I wish you well though
** Richard
PIMS: Holiday Rental Management system
They say we learn from our mistakes. That makes me a genius !
seaturtle
Posts: 95
Joined: Tue Jun 23, 2015 9:26 am

Post by seaturtle »

You’re quite right Richard there’s a lot of SEO conmen out there.

I’m quite prepared to now spend a fair chunk of the money I formally paid to OD/HA (€2800 per annum for two units for platinum Membership Global bundle Blah)- for a multi pronged approach to net presence.

(I’m encouraged by some LMHers who said that around 50% of bookings came through their website - though perhaps this figure may take a knock now that Villa names are being weeded out of the big sites & travellers are being obstructed in their side stepping of service fees?)
Igor
Posts: 61
Joined: Sat Jun 10, 2017 4:27 pm

Post by Igor »

As Richard says, plain SEO is expensive.

It can be worse than that because there are sharks out there who will take your money and provide remarkably little in exchange. I suggest that you don't spend anything on a bought-in SEO service.

If you have money to throw at it, you can use Adwords. It's relatively easy to set up an Adwords account and to design one or two ad layouts, and select keywords and attach bid amounts to your keywords. Using Adwords with Analytics makes it all measurable so you can know how your paid-for clicks behave once they reach your page. However, getting it to be profitable is the difficult bit. It's easy to spend the money and get the clicks. It's more of a challenge to get those clicking people to book your property enough to make Adwords pay for itself.

The danger with Adwords is that you just leave it running and forget. That can get expensive. You need to monitor it, tweak it and monitor it again.

Using your head rather than your wallet, you can probably do better than that: The way I see it is that Homeaway have screwed the business and we are justified in gaming them to our advantage. That's not difficult and it does get results.
  • Put a Pay-Per-Booking entry on one of the Homeaway sites.
    Give your property a unique name.
    Make sure that googling that unique name returns your own website as the #1 result.
    Make sure that your price on HA is high enough so that if anyone does book through HA, the cost of the commission, servitude fee and booking fee are all covered so your net income is at least what you would charge to a direct booker.
    When you receive an enquiry through HA, you reply with wording like: "Your enquiry was made through a 3rd party and this complicates things. Our house is called "Wicker Lodge" and it is easily found if you would care to g**gle for it. I suggest that you follow that trail to enquire again that way for a lower quote"
Now, at least 50% of your HA enquiries will repeat directly via your own website. And this is how your website really earns its keep.

The only downsides I can see are that your raised pricing on HA may deter some enquirers. You can mitigate this by hinting in your description or headline that you offer a discounts on low occupancy or midweek or full week stays. The other is that HA may eventually notice what you are doing. But unless you are particularly careless (e.g. using words that they filter for such as "google", "direct", "directly" or "email" etc) it will take them a long long time. If it happens and they throw you off, you just start again with a new email address.
Igor lives in Fort StaySavr, a secret location high in the mountains
seaturtle
Posts: 95
Joined: Tue Jun 23, 2015 9:26 am

Post by seaturtle »

Gentlemen... Richard & Igor I thank you both for the time you’ve given. I too tinkered with rigging it with OD/HA & got my fingers toasted.

Big lunch now & a big bucket of strong coffee to aid planning an attack this afternoon!
seaturtle
Posts: 95
Joined: Tue Jun 23, 2015 9:26 am

Post by seaturtle »

Gentlemen... Richard & Igor I thank you both for the time you’ve given. I too tinkered with rigging it with OD/HA & got my fingers toasted.

Big lunch now & a big bucket of strong coffee to aid planning an attack this afternoon!
Post Reply