Paid Advertising For Vacation Rentals: Vacation Rental Success Podcast
I was lucky enough to be featured on Heather Bayer’s Vacation Rental Success Podcast for a second time (first episode here). This time, we dove into paid advertising (Google AdWords, Facebook Ads & more) and how to perform detailed research on search terms. We covered the following topics in-depth. Google AdWords And How To Begin Targeting […]
HomeAway April 2016 Announcements: Everything You Need To Know
HomeAway is changing things up. Again. Here’s everything you need to know about the April 2016 updates from HomeAway, which impact every single listing on the platform and may change how you run your rental business. I’m breaking down HomeAway’s new changes (and inserting my opinion) into how these changes may change the landscape […]
VRBO Only Pays For Traffic To “Book It Now” Properties
VRBO and HomeAway want you to use instant online bookings – and now they’re putting their money into properties that support the “Book It Now” button. While searching today I discovered that VRBO is using Google AdWords to drive traffic to their various landing pages with a filter already applied: online bookable properties only. […]
How Much Competitive Research Is Enough?
We all do it. Competitive research. Keeping an eye on your competitors is important — you want to know what the landscape of what your rental market is like. But, with some clients I’ve worked with, the need to research the competition ranges from an unhealthy obsession to an apathetic indifference. In this post, I’d like […]
Google Adds In-Depth Travel Information To Search Results
Google has announced a landmark change to their search results for the travel vertical: Destinations On Google. This new feature is a change to the search results for area names allows for a traveler to search for places and get rich information. When a query like `Europe destinations` is entered in Google on mobile, […]
FlipKey May Be Dealing With A Google Penalty
What a difference a week makes. Last week I wrote a post about HomeAway dropping in Google’s organic search results called “No, HomeAway Didn’t Get A Google Penalty“. Today, I’m here to tell you that the competition has: FlipKey.com. Based on my research and data, FlipKey may be dealing with a partial Penguin penalty […]
Small Budget Advertising For Vacation Rental Owners
As a marketing consultant, I love having clients with big advertising budgets. Besides the obvious facts of that typically meaning higher retainers and revenue for me, it also lets me work with one of my most favorite techniques: testing. Big budgets let you allocate 75-85% of your marketing budget to the high-value advertising tactics. For many […]
No, HomeAway Didn’t Get A Google Penalty
Chatter recently came my way both from a few clients and on Twitter from Matt Landau that a big listing site may be facing a Google penalty. Is it possible that a HomeAway Google penalty is happening? Searches in many of my clients’ main areas indicate that HomeAway has dropped out of the search results in lots […]
