Best Rental Listing Sites for Ski Bookings

[Mountain Goat]

Still a lot of info to drag out of them - there's not really enough there to commit even a small budget. Will report back.

MG

[Hells Bells]

But there seems to be an error on the site at the minute.

[Mountain Goat]

That's me blocking it up. Only one user at a time I think. Be patient.

How do you find a resort for instance? I stick it in their search engine, get an error message saying they don't know it, but then in the l/h margin you get Ski forecasts in the menu, and you go through that. Seems nuts to me (sure, I know you can bookmark it, but what about punters?).

That cost is monthly by the way.....so not peanuts.

And how will they rotate ads? Randomly?

What is the advertising season? From now? Just Winter? Why not now if not now? Now would make sense, not later.

And why should summer in the ski resorts be a hidden mystery?

etc.

MG

[Hells Bells]

The weather forecast is always hidden away under ski forecasts. I'll have another go.

[Mountain Goat]

We've signed up for 11 resorts on Metcheck, and experimenting with their daily stats, which are a bit misleading (not intentional, I hope).

In our opinion: 'Visitors who have viewed our advert' = Anyone who has looked up the weather for that resort on that day but absolutely nothing to prove they've seen our ad, although, of course, they may have done. Depending on which view of the weather they are looking at, the actual ads are way below the fold.

Click-throughs, I assume, are what they mean, but no time on our site or where they went afterwards.

It's interesting to look at stats out-of-the-snow-season - we use Metcheck daily (both in the UK and in Switzerland), and we're curious to see how others use it.

I think Metcheck's ski resort ads will take off, if they can sort out there server overload probs, so it's also instructive to be in at the beginning befoe everyone else lists their properties (and other businesses). Strategy could also be important: which resorts to seduce punters to yours?

And can I seriously suggest that you have a couple of domain names up your sleeve?

resort-name@biz, info, com, net, co.uk
resortname@ etc
resortnameapartment@ etc

are all available for you lot above, and in terms of SEO they are invaluable, besides costing peanuts. Infinitely better than a unique and interesting geographical or chalet/apartment name IMHO.

GoDaddy is good value if you've got the patience to navigate their added-value shopping cart.

MG

[Hells Bells]

MG, I can add some extra domain names to my existing account FOC if they are co.uk ones. I bought the .com one already.

[Hells Bells]

MG, I was told fairly recently, that my domain name is the main reason I have a reasonable rate of detection on Google. Simple and unique. I see no point in altering it.

[Hells Bells]

And what do I do with them all?

[Mountain Goat]

my domain name is the main reason I have a reasonable rate of detection on Google. Simple and unique. I see no point in altering it.

I'm not a guru in any shape or form, and you need to grab one for an informed answer. But in my opinion unless someone knows the name of your apartment/chalet/property I can see no advantage in a simple and unique name having any effect at all regarding SEO.

Our website(s) are in a very early stage of putting together, but within 5 weeks we were #1 on Google for 'Leysin chalet' (one of our domain names is leysinchalet.com ). This is for anyone wanting a place in our resort and it works.

The name of our property is Chalet Damami, but being a made-up name by the previous owner, and 'unique' doing a Google search for it produces hundreds of results, but so what? Chocolate Kettle useless. Why should anyone search for it?

So, in your case, I would put a Serre-Che domain name at least attached to your blog to suck in those who already know about your resort but not your property.

If you get bored, then why not a one-page history of your village? Or a list of village businesses? Or a village photo-gallery winter and summer? With at least an image link type ad to your property on each one.

We're putting one together for the local guy who photographed our chalet - he's got hundreds of village images doing nothing and going mouldy on his hard-disk (and it would great to have some feedback, but I've only spent an evening on it so far, and one could pull it to pieces - it's embarrassing. Also many of his images have French accented file names [his damn Mac being clever] and won't work yet on the site - but he's pleased and I can direct punters to it to get a flavour of our village. £35/year template with Clikpic by the way and a choice of dozens of templates if you can't stand the dreaded black background - we're using another one for our chalet name-change site, but that's another story. Clikpic is aimed at photographers, but a dozen or so property owners have discovered it).

MG

[Hells Bells]

Point taken, but surely content matters just as much for SEO?
The guy who told me has written a book on the subject, so I guess he knows what he is talking about. Serre chevalier chalet already has me on page 1, although further up the page would be good, maybe a bit of a rewrite of the text would help. However I have taken your advice, and registered monetierchalet.co.uk and serrechevalierchalet.co.uk . I also have Haute-alpes.co.uk. already, which I was planning on doing something with.

[Rosbif]

MG I agree that its all very well having a nice name for your chalet and website, but you are correct, who would search for it if they don't know the name.

That's why I decided to try and go for something with some relevant words in and came up with skistudioalps. However, I am not really being found yet by Google so I need to have a think what else might be better.

MG your site seems to link to the HR page, do you have your own site as well? I also noticed your phone number, do you live in or near to Brighton???

I like the photos website you are working on, it looks very classy!

Carole

[Hells Bells]

Well, I seem to get found OK,most of my bookings and enquiries are through the website, and my stats show they aren't clicking through from other listing sites to any real extent, so it just goes to show, there is no easy answer.

[Rosbif]

Yes its weird Helen isn't it, you do come up well on searches, I need to read this thread again in a sec to see what your search terms were again when you come up well, as I can't rem.

Anyway I just registered myself a stack of domain names but god knows what the hell i do with them now! I was surprised some of them were still available. Will have to ask Rick my webguru friend for some help in doing something with them!

RB

[Mountain Goat]

Helen
I think you're right about content, it has to be the answer.

Carole, yes, near Brighton (PMing....)

Our start on one website is leysinchalet.com but it really is just a start while I untangle some WordPress/calendar/gallery probs. It does pull in enquiries even in that state.

I know the whole question of domain extensions and where the site is hosted could fill a book, but I'm not sure about co.uk as opposed to the non-territorial domains.

If I'm searching for something abroad I wouldn't narrow my search to Google UK....but maybe that's me (and I realise co.uk comes up on all search engines).

MG

[Rosbif]

I've just registered .com domains

SERRECHEVALIERAPARTMENT.COM
SERRECHEVALIERCHALET.COM (sorry Helen but you didn't take it so I did!! )
SERRECHEVALIERHOLIDAY.COM
SERRECHEVALIERSKIING.COM
SERRECHEVALIERSNOWBOARDING.COM
SNOWBOARDINFRANCE.COM
SNOWBOARDTHEALPS.COM

I've emailed my friend to see if he wants to do something mutually beneficial with them!

I see what you mean about Go Daddy MG, I got mightily confused by all the options, so I hope I took off and kept the right things! I didn't buy any hosting or anything just literally registered the names for now. I see now that there is a page of adverts up on each of them saying the domain is parked

RB