WRITING TEXT FOR YOUR WEBSITE
One of the most important jobs you have no matter if you build your own site, have it built professionally, or are just creating a listing in a directory is writing good text, and the proper amount of it. One thing I see too often is vacation rental sites with very little text on the Home Page, and almost none in the others. Or, often I see sites where there is plenty of text, but it is not written with search engines in mind. These will never make it up high enough in search results to be found unless you have very little competition from other vacation rentals in your area.
Your text is important for two reasons ....
1) To interest the people who come to your site.
2) To encourage the search engines to list your site and place it high enough in the search results to be found.
You need to write your text with BOTH of these things in mind. How you write for each is a bit different, so you need a good compromise for best results. For people, you need first of all an easy to see short description of exactly what your rental is all about and where it is located, and then more verbose glowing descriptions of what makes it and the area it's in so special and unique. For search engines, you need carefully thought out "keyword phrases".
The more relelvant text you have on the Home page and the inner pages the more highly ranked you could possibly get. The Home Page is the most important one as far as the search engines are concerned, so you would want your most important keyword phrases there, and ideally optimize your other pages for other related keyword phrases.
What exactly are keyword phrases and why are they more important than just keywords, you ask? The individual keywords are important, but the keyword phrases are most important by far. If you have the exact text in your page that matches what people put into the search engine to look for a site like yours, you have a better chance of coming up higher for that search phrase. People don't just put in "Maui" or "Hawaii" or "rental" to find a Maui vacation rental (for instance) ...... they put in a phrase like "Maui vacation rental" or "vacation rental on Maui" or "Maui beachside condo" etc. The individual keywords have some importance, but these keyword phrases are much much more important. You Must have some of these in your text and in your headings (you need to divide the text up with headings, since the search engines consider them to be the most important words in your text). Having a few individual keywords sprinkled around and maybe one keyword phrase is not enough. Think of what people will put into a search engine to find rentals like yours, and be sure to have those exact phrases (or as close as possible) in your text. That often means saying the same thing in different ways to cover the words and word order people might use in doing a search. Be sure you include your location in the phrases when possible.
Now, how much text should you have? You should try and have several paragraphs on the Home Page, and have at least a couple more pages each containing at least a couple of paragraphs containing your keyword phrases More is better. It's good to go after different keyword phrases on different pages..
As I've said, this is a compromise between what you need for people and search engines, so even though you want plenty of your keyword phrases in the text, keep it as natural sounding as possible, and don't try to cram too many keywords and keyword phrases in.
The style you write in is important too. Studies have shown that people relate differently to written material on the internet than in printed advertisements. For your website, you'll develop more interest if you make what you say more personal sounding .... like as if explaining to a friend how great your vacation rental is instead of just listing it's features. Don't get too carried away though, keep things to the point especially on the Home Page, and then you can add extra fluff on the inner pages. Do a little bit of both writing styles - lists of features and longer descriptions.
The search engines don't see your photos, so having lots of nice photos is great for people visiting your site, but does nothing for your search engine ranking. If you have lots of photos (and you should) be sure and have plenty of comments with each one with good keywords and keyword phrases.
If you have your rental listed in several directories and also have a web site, try to keep the text a bit different in each, especially your web site. The reason for this is that the search engines penalize for 'duplicate content' by dropping all but one of the 'duplicate' entries. They do this because in the past people have spammed the search engines by creating duplicate websites under different domain names. Having the same text in your website as you have in a vacation rental directory could mean your website might never get into the search results because the search engines could consider it 'duplicate content'. Do NOT use the same text on your website as in any vacation rental directory. Try and make it considerably different.
Having good text is only the first step in getting listed in the search engines and being found. I'll write more about what else needs to be done later.
