Heads In Beds Show - Generating Content Ideas To Build Direct Traffic For Your Vacation Rental Website

Episode Date: June 24, 2021

See how you can find hundreds of content ideas by focusing on the core audience you're targeting, your properties and more! Focus on long-tail search traffic and high-intent guest keywords to build website traffic and direct bookings. ResourcesBuildUp BookingsGenerating content ideasAhrefs Content Explorer 

Hello there and welcome to this episode of the Heads and Beds show. I'm your host Conrad O'Connell. Today we're going to be talking about content ideas. So we work with a lot of different clients, small and large, and one of the best ways that they drive traffic organically to their websites is through building out content. This may take different forms. It could be video content, but today we're mostly going to focus on written content. This could be something like a blog, or it just could be resource pages on the site, or naturally a mix of both. So in today's episode, we're going to go over different content ideas that may have a little bit less competition. If you're new or starting out, you don't have

a lot of already built authority established. This might be something that you look at first. And we're also going to talk about just the main content pillars that you can explore as a vacation rental manager or host trying to build more traffic to your website. So let's dive into it. As you're starting to build out content for your site, you might first start to assume the natural question might be, what do I want to focus on? Who's my target guest? What are they searching for?

What are they looking for? And part of this research could be more qualitative, and part of it could be a little bit more quantitative. So for example, if you're in a drive-to market, you may find yourself writing or focused on different pieces of content that someone that's in a fly-to market where the guest doesn't exactly know what they want to do. So when we're putting together a content strategy, we have a list of ideas. And again, we're going to give you all those ideas as we progress in today's show.

But we also need to think about those ideas a little bit. We can't just have a list of keywords or a list of topics and just assume that those are going to be a good fit for everyone. Because even people within the same destination or market may have different types of rentals. Or they may be trying to attract different types of visitors to their properties that they have. We work with a client who has, for example, the largest properties in a particular destination. These are 15, 20, 30 people can sleep inside these properties. Very different focus than someone that might have a condo, even in the same destination. So your content strategy should map a little bit back to the type of guests that you're hoping to attract. And of course,

whatever properties you're looking to promote and market and get more visibility to. So we have a few different categories of ideas that we start with. And our line of thinking is usually we have a list of, let's say, 30 or 40 ideas. Then we can start to refine and prioritize which pieces of content may make the most sense. So let's get started. The top list that I have here really just talks about what are the things that you want to focus on that are in your destination that should be fairly universal. So I think these ideas are probably applicable to just about anyone listening. So first up on the list is restaurants. Our line of thinking is twofold on doing a restaurant guide.

Number one, it's a common question that your guest is probably going to ask as soon as they get there. If they're new to the market, new to the destination, they haven't been there before, where is there to eat? What restaurants would you recommend? And it's usually something fairly easy for a local property manager, vacation rental manager, or host to do because when you're in that market, of course, you're thinking about the great places that you like to eat. So restaurants is always a great starting place as a resource page. It could be something where you do a full-on guide. Like here's all the restaurants that are in this particular market. Maybe a little more feasible or easy to do in a smaller destination that just doesn't

have as much options available to you. For example, we have a client in a remote island in the Bahamas where there's two restaurants on the whole island. So that was a pretty quick page to put together. You could also focus more on hitting the best angle. So for example, like the best restaurants in the destination name, instead of focusing on a list of 100, you narrow it down and say, hey, these are the best 10, the best seven, the ones that I go to, the ones that I recommend. So that's an angle. You could also do it by type. For example, you may

build out a main restaurants page as more of a directory or a long form resource page. And then you could dial it back a little bit more specifically and say, these are the best pizza restaurants. These are the best Italian food restaurants. These are the best sushi restaurants, and so on. So there's a lot of angles that you can go down when you go into the restaurant kind of content topic. But it works out well, because, again, that's something that your guest probably is going to ask you about. And of course, it maps back to what you actually want to share with your guest when they arrive. So we love restaurants. We often start with that as one of

the main content pillars. The next idea is more specific to the type of travel that you might be focused on. So again, it goes back to the earlier comments around what type of trip is someone actually planning when they arrive at your destination. So we've done this before. Family friendly things to do in the destination. So family friendly things to do in Destin, Florida, for example. And here you can write maybe more of a listicle style

piece of content or blog that's focused a little bit more specifically on things that are family friendly or kid friendly or something like that. Depending on the market, this may be some the reason that someone's coming. Let's say you're in central Florida or Orlando, they're probably coming for the parks. That's probably the primary reason of their visit. But you can also take this a step further. If you're in a beach market or a ski market, like here's the ski trails that we recommend you bring kids down because they're more friendly to kids. In a beach market, maybe it's, here's an indoor activity for a day that it rains.

Here's a trampoline park or something like that, or a museum that your child could explore as you're visiting the market. So there's a lot of different angles there. Family friendly is one. We also have done things like girl's trip guide or guy's trip guide. We've also done bachelorette or bachelor party guides to specific markets. And these work really well in Google because people search for very specific things. And normally someone searching something along the lines of family friendly or bachelor or bachelorette party guide is looking for lodging as well. So you can pitch

your properties inside of that piece of content. And it can be very useful as a way to build up that specific type of traffic primarily from Google. So depending on how urban your destination is, if you have, for example, live music or live sports, we've also done pieces of content to that effect. So for example, sporting events or a calendar of events for a specific venue, let's say you were in Atlanta, you may highlight all the live music that's happening in the Mercedes-Benz Stadium, for example. So that's another angle. If you're in a destination where that occurs, if you're in a market where sporting events aren't really happening in your area that maybe you want to skip, but it's something that we've had success with, if you can put it in a clear, easy-to-understand format inside

of an events page. The next category of things worth exploring is a slew of ideas all around the angle of outdoor activities. So we've done pages, content pages, resource pages, blog posts on hiking trails, biking trails, walking tours. These are all things that we've had success with as well, because we can highlight a specific activity. There are some like vertical specific sites, particularly in hiking. I think AllTrails is one that comes to mind that does a really good job with creating that content. So it's a little

bit tough to outrank them, I will say. But again, it's an activity that guests are probably going to ask about. Oh, I'm coming to this destination. We'd like to do something outside that's not too crowded. What do you recommend? Maybe you can recommend one of those things, bike tours or walking tours, hiking trails, etc. So that kind of outdoor piece of content that you create can also be interlinked heavily. If you're busy with this, you may be interested in this, that sort of thing. Another angle is to go down the

things to do path. We haven't really talked too much about things to do yet, but as an overall page structure, creating something around best things to do in the market or in the destination is sometimes a solid path to get more kind of attraction and visibility that way. So when you have a main things to do page, so things to do in a destination, you can then do offshoots along some of the same lines that we've talked about a few minutes ago. So for example, things to do with kids in the destination, things to do solo in the destination. And those other angles sometimes can be very fruitful because some of those long tail things to do keyword concepts are not overly competitive. There's not a lot of pieces of content going after things to do with kids in a given destination,

something like that. So we have a lot of success with those offshoots of that main things to do keyword. The main things to do keyword is often extremely competitive, depending on the market or destination. So for example, if you were in New York City, the things to do in New York City

is a very competitive keyword. It might be very tough for you to rank for that in Google at least. Now it could still be a good resource page. And one thing that I want to impress when we talk about all these ideas here today on the show is that just because you have a specific content piece that doesn't rank in Google, it doesn't mean that it's a failure. One, that's a resource for guests coming on the site, people coming, looking at your website, deciding if they want to book with you. If they see all this well-built out informative content,

their trust is going to be higher because they see that you're actually creating specific resources for them. You're tailoring your website to their experience that they might have when they stay with you. So I think that provides value. And there's also more than one way to get traffic. You could promote those posts perhaps through social media. You could put them up as Facebook posts and then promote them that way. You could put content like that on Pinterest, which doesn't require so much like kind of authority built in like Google looks for. So that's another angle to explore there too, is knowing that whatever content you create here, just because someone has already done it doesn't mean you can't put your own spin on it, your own flavor on it. And it also doesn't mean that you can't see value in it,

even if it never gets traffic from Google. Other kind of angles to go down here to clean up the restaurants piece from earlier, we've done like the type of day that you might be interested in dining. So for example, instead of doing a general restaurants piece, we've also done, here's the best places for lunch, here's the best places for dinner, here's the best places for breakfast, and so on. Those content pieces do well. We've also broken down content by season. So for example, if things to do is too competitive, you can do like the spring activities guide or things to do in spring in the name of the destination, or things to do in summer, things to do in fall, things to do in winter, and so on. We have a client in each market where we have a piece called things to do in winter in that beach market name. And it's doing phenomenally well during the

winter months, that piece of content gets well over000 to 10,000 page views every single month because there's not a lot of people that have gone into that topic. But it's of high interest to the visitors who might be coming during the off-season. They're interested in what is there to do. The rest of the beach may shut down and there may be less things available, but there's still things to do. So we've highlighted that into the seasonal content as well. Again, things to do in spring, summer, fall, etc. So those different content ideas, there's a bunch of other kind of grab bag ideas here that we could

share. Things to do on a budget or how to visit an area inexpensively, depending on your rental type and the type of guest you're looking for. That can be a successful piece of content. We've also done things around specific activities. So I have a list here like wine tasting, spa, like here's where to go to the spa. Here's where to get a massage. Here's where to go shopping. We've done guides on like downtown shopping areas, things like that. All these different keyword ideas really help build your authority and build your specific path to building content or building traffic, I should say, from Google. And the way that you can focus on that and improve upon it is by continually publishing great content. So I know that's an

overused word, great content. It's very subjective. But what we look for when we're actually putting together this strategy is how can we make our resource better than what's out there? And better doesn't always necessarily mean, for example, a TripAdvisor page that ranks for things to do query might have 5,000 words on it because there's a lot of user generated content on that page. You don't necessarily have to provide more words than TripAdvisor. That may not actually be successful. Instead, what you have to do is make that page a better experience. Maybe you can make it load quicker.

Maybe you can include a map of these things to do. Maybe you can include resources that they don't have. Maybe your photography can be better. Maybe you can do videos about these attractions or things like that, things that maybe the big sites don't have. So when you're creating that content, it's hard, it's difficult out there to compete with everyone else that's going after the same keywords. So you have to find some of these other ones like shopping or things to do with kids, etc, that not as many people are going after if you want to see success with. So once you have those content ideas, we move more into the production side of things. So let's say you had a half a dozen ideas that you'd like to execute upon. If you're working

with an agency, of course, they're the ones setting that strategy and deciding what pieces of content that you should focus on and publish. If you're doing it on your own, you may want to do a little bit of additional keyword research. Ahrefs, A-H-R-E-F-S, is our keyword research tool of choice. It lets you know what the volume is, what the search results are for that particular keyword, lets you see how competitive that keyword may be as well. So we might tend to focus more initially on keywords that have lower competition if we're trying to focus just on traffic generation. If we're trying just to build out a comprehensive list of resources or list of content on the website, we may not pay a lot of attention to the competition angle of it. We just want to build out the site so that it has all that content on there. So you have to tailor your

strategy to what you're hoping to accomplish. But Ahrefs is our SEO tool of choice to accomplish that sort of research. And it can be incredibly useful in giving you data and giving you context into all these ideas and giving you a specific path for what you might want to take for content strategy. But once you have the list of ideas ready to go, that's kind of more when you're moving into the production side of it. So you're actually writing the post, you're actually creating the content, writing the words, etc. ClearScope is our tool of choice for creating specific content briefs, whether that's just an internal piece that's not going out to a writer, or if we have clients who are actually doing the writing, we use ClearScope to send them a specific content brief that lets them know exactly what they should be writing, what they should be producing when they're doing that

Things to Do guide in the destination. So we love ClearScope because it gives very specific feedback on what terms you should be using, and there's just a lot less guesswork that needs to occur. So we find it actually speeds up the process of content production tremendously. Once you have that content actually complete though, it's gone through edits, it's gone through revisions, you're talking about all the right things, then we move more into formatting. So once the content piece is complete and approved, we have a team that will help format the content. So if you're doing this on your own, you may have to focus a little bit on what images you're going to use, where you're going to get those images from. This can be a little bit difficult with the world of copyrighted images. You can't just rip

off images from sites for the most part. So you have to focus a little bit more specifically where you can get those images. We've leveraged like stock sites like Shutterstock that can work well at times. Obviously, it's not going to have a photo for every single thing to do. So you might have to lean a little bit on asking for permission. So we've gone into Facebook pages, for example, and just said, hey, can we use your photo and we'll link back to you. If you're promoting a local business, 99% of the time, they're going to say yes, we rarely have an issue with that. Or you can also rely on like user generated content. So for example, we've leveraged things like Instagram, ask the photo, the person who took that photo, if we could publish or repost that photo with credit, and we get a yes a lot of the

time there. So sometimes you can have a post that was written very well and has all the right text information inside of it. It's a great piece of content from an informational standpoint. And then you have to make it come to life with a good design, a good post layout, and of course, great images to make it very scannable and easy for people to understand. So as you go through this process of coming up with the ideas, producing the content, formatting it, making it look great on the site, you then want to take a look at the performance of the content. So once the content is published, you can index that piece of that article, I should say. You can index that article through Google Search Console. If you haven't yet verified Google Search Console, we highly recommend you do

that so that you have that content ready to go. And then once that piece of content is published, you can monitor the performance of it through analytics and through search console. Sometimes you'll see new pieces of content that you put on your site get an initial spike. Let's say you published it on Monday. By Wednesday or Thursday, it may start to be getting decent traction, decent traffic from Google. And then things may slow down a little bit. You may think something went wrong. What we find is that Google is just constantly testing.

So if you put out a new article, here's the best restaurants in the destination name that you're focused on, you may see that it initially gets a little bit of visibility and then falls off, but it may come back later. So don't be discouraged if that happens. That's something that we've seen a lot this year as we've published new content and looked at the performance of it, especially in that initial like a seven to 30 day period after it's been indexed and published by Google. So really, again, the key

in all this process is finding the right ideas, creating the right piece of information, the right piece of content that works well. And then it all comes back to focusing on the production side of it, making sure that article is written well, it has all the right information, it looks great on your website. And then you build a strategy around constantly publishing great articles on your website. Over time, we have clients that are getting 20, 30, 40, 50,000 page views a month just from this content. And that people who come in and view this content, of course, click over and they look at their rentals. So if you feel like it's a tough uphill climb on the SEO side of things to rank for vacation rentals in the name of your destination, and you want a great

supporting kind of strategy to build out your direct booking strategy and your content, we highly recommend, you know, you focus on this idea, the ability to publish content on your site. And we find that over time, it will reward you, it will reward you with more traffic and more visibility to your website. So that's all I have for today. Let me know if you have any questions. We appreciate all the feedback on the show. So if you have any thoughts or anything like that, feel free to email me, conrad at buildupbookings.com. And if you have a moment to leave a review, we would greatly appreciate it. Thanks so much, and we'll see you next time.