When we first moved to France, we ran a holiday home in Languedoc-Roussillon and shortly after purchased a second. I quickly learned SEO strategies to help the two travel websites rank high with search engines. This led us to start a digital marketing agency called Indigoextra. That was twenty years ago. Since then, we’ve sold both properties, and Indigoextra has become a multilingual SEO and web design agency that helps clients rank high on Google in a dozen countries, including France.

In this article, I dive deep into strategies to market your own holiday home, as well as provide useful SEO tips for travel agencies with more complex websites.

Do I Need my Own Travel Website?

If you have a small holiday home, you may be surprised that my answer is ‘don’t make it your priority.

Ask yourself what kind of search terms visitors are likely to enter into Google. Now enter a few of those keywords and look at the search results.

Let’s say you enter ‘Paris vacation rentals.’ On the first page of the results, you will see the major international sites like Airbnb, Booking.com, and TripAdvisor. You will also see several property portals that are specific to Paris, like Paris Perfect. What you won’t see, except occasionally in the Google Maps section, are individual websites promoting just one rental.

Why is this?

Google tries and shows the search results that most people will be interested in. They choose websites that have vast amounts of unique content visitors spend a long time on and that have a lot of backlinks from high-authority blog posts. Travel companies have multiple landing pages for different search terms, run active content marketing and link-building campaigns and invest a lot of money in their long-term digital marketing.

To compete with them, you will need a complex website with advanced SEO for travel agency websites. If you own a hotel or are fortunate enough to own something truly unique – like a treehouse or castle, then it’s also worth investing in your own site. This allows you to target specific keywords that aren’t too competitive.

So, How do You Market a Holiday Home in France?

If you have an apartment or house to rent, your best solution is to create an exemplary advert and post it on the leading holiday portals like those mentioned above – AirBNB, Booking.com, et al. Spend your time and money on this, rather than creating your own site, at least in your first year.

To identify which the most important platforms are, simply search for your city/region and add ‘apartment to let’ or another relevant term. The sites that appear highest in Google are the ones you need to appear on.

When deciding on a price, charge more on the websites that add a commission so that you receive the same income regardless of where they book. Some people will hunt around for a bargain deal, and you want to encourage them to book via your own site if you have one or another site that doesn’t charge you extra per booking.

What to Include in the Advert?

When writing your advert, see if you can paint a picture with your words of how enjoyable and relaxing it is to be on holiday there. If visitors can imagine themselves having fun in your house or apartment, this is a real motivator.

Here are some ideas to help create a successful advert that converts casual browsers into future visitors who click the ‘Book Now’ button:

  • Consider naming your property. It’s easier to remember ‘The Waystation’ (the name of one of our holiday homes back in the day) than it is to remember a property with no name.
  • Mention poetic terms for local attractions, like referring to Paris as the ‘City of Lights’ or the ‘City of Love. Expand on local folklore or other points that captivate the imagination.
  • Include plenty of photos and make them as professional as possible.
  • Mention what makes your home unique at the top of the advert. This might be a swimming pool, a garden, a sea view, walking distance from ski slopes, 4 bedrooms, original art on the walls, freshly renovated, etc.
  • List the essentials – For AirBnB, this means ticking all the boxes that apply; for other websites, it means specifying all the positives. If you supply free bedding and towels, mention it. If you have a well-equipped kitchen, list the main equipment in it. Also include details of parking, particularly in Paris.
  • Mention what you supply to make coffee. My wife will pack our French press coffee maker if we’re going on a local vacation.
  • Repeat two or three positive reviews when you write the main body of text, even if they also appear in the reviews section.

SEO Ranking Factors

Writing content that readers read and enjoy will help your user experience, SEO, and conversions. Here are some advanced marketing strategies to help you appear high with Google:

  • Include one or two unique selling points in the title, plus the name of the town or region.
  • Use ‘holiday’ more than ‘vacation’. Keyword research reveals that five times as many people search for ‘holiday’.
  • Visit competing websites that rank high and look for common elements in terms of what they say and what their website design is like.
  • If you have your own site, write different text for it. Google values unique content, and your website is more likely to appear first if you don’t copy an advert that you’ve used everywhere else.
  • Mention the nearest city, the name of your department, the region, and the word ‘France’ once or twice on your page. It’s better if this is woven in naturally, so instead of:

‘This holiday home is in Montpellier, Occitanie, Hérault, South France’

Scatter geographic words throughout the page:

‘The holiday home is in the center of Montpellier, South France, close to a delightful array of shops and restaurants.’

‘Hérault has two airports, one in Montpellier (MPL) itself, the other in Beziers (BZR).’

‘Whether you’re looking for beautiful mountain walks or a gorgeous trip to the beach, Occitanie has it all….’

In case this tickles your fancy, here are some reasons to visit Montpellier.

French Translations

If you’re creating a French translation, either for your own site or for a holiday advert, here are a few extra travel SEO tips:

  • It’s far better if French content and English content are on separate pages. Google will only index a page once, so it will appear in search engine results with either an English or French Meta Title and Description, not both.
  • Use a professional translator to translate your content, or ask a native French speaker to check it. Google translate and other automated translation tools tend to create embarrassing mistakes. If your French is fairly good but not perfect, you’re also bound to overlook important grammatical or cultural references.
  • If you translate content into French, don’t use ‘Vacances de dernière minute’ or similar translations. ‘Last minute holidays aren’t a thing in France; instead, simply say something is cheap (‘pas cher’ or ‘moins cher’).

SEO for travel agencies

If you have a travel agency, marketing gets more complicated. The travel industry is already a competitive market, and unless you have a huge budget, trying to rank for all possible keywords will result in failure. Even Amazon started by just selling books. Start by specializing in a particular region (e.g., Paris), language (e.g., English speakers), and/or type of vacation (e.g., adventure holidays).

Here are some essential travel agency SEO and web design tips:

  • Create a web design with plenty of white space. You don’t want to detract from the photos of individual homes.
  • Ensure your site is mobile-friendly.
  • Include internal links and search forms allowing visitors to filter by region, type of activity, number of rooms, and, ideally, availability on certain dates.
  • Encourage travel bloggers to link back to your site. Link building is a core part of SEO, so ensure you’ve budgeted for this, not just the website creation.
  • Don’t limit how many words someone can type in the main body of text. Google tends to like longer content, so if someone wants to write 2,000 words describing their property, let them.

When your website’s live, spend more on your marketing just before the holiday season. 

Travel marketing spend increases by 50% in the run-up to summer, but clicks increase by 100%, making it the ideal time to up your marketing campaign.

Be Honest and Encourage Honest Feedback

Many vacation websites, including Airbnb, allow visitors to leave reviews. Therefore, don’t be tempted to paint a deceptively positive picture. If you’re honest, potential visitors will feel they can trust you, and it also avoids bad reviews further down the line.

Honesty is a two-way street. Leave paper feedback forms and include a question on ‘Was there anything we could do to have improved your stay?’ Someone’s less likely to complain online if you give them the opportunity to feel heard in person. If you’re receiving primarily positive comments, consider switching to a guest book that invites visitors to write their thoughts down. When you have some great feedback, take a photo of the page and include it in your accommodation’s photos.

Final Words

We hope you’ve found this article helpful and wish you every success in your endeavor. For a free consultation to help with your marketing in France or to find out more about our English and French SEO services, visit us at Indigoextra.