Pep Talk

In the first of our series of articles we looked at how to choose which sites to use through the use of search traffic statistic provided by the major search engines. Search traffic represents the volume of visitors that are searching the internet for specific keywords and phrases as is an indicator of how many visitor a particular site may attract because of their positioning on the first page of the results for a given term.

Keywords are only an indicator. To fully benefit from a websites traffic it is also important that the page you create has as much information formatted in the most optimized manner so that your ‘advert’ has the best chance of being listed independently on the search engines. This will help drive traffic not just to the website you have advertised with but also send traffic directly to the page showing the advert of your holiday home.

The premise is, that if the page you create is properly formatted and contains the correct information you are able with a little work to make it visible for some of the most targeted keyword searches, sending visitors who are specifically looking for your type of property in your resort location, straight to your villa.This is much more preferable than hoping they click on your villa as one of many in a database search from the websites homepage. This type of search will send traffic to your page but the ratio of enquiries will be much higher in the former scenario than the latter.

The first thing to look for having chosen a number of sites to consider is the landing page. This is the page on the website that you land on when clicking on the link in Google. This should be a page specific to your resort or property type. This being well search for a villa such as yours and click onto one or two of the properties. There are several things to look out for on the ‘advert page’.

First, compare the title of the page between two or more properties. The title is the description you will find in the blue bar at the top of your screen. Check to see if the title is the same or different for each property. The title of any page on a website should be specific to that page. It is one of the most important things that the search engines look at when they index a page. If the website you are looking at has the same title on every page of the site, forget it and move onto the next website in your list for consideration.

If the title are different they should contain some specific information. This includes, The name of the resort, the property type and the rental status. By this I mean for example, a villa for rent in Moraira, Costa Blanca, Spain should have the minimum included phrases of Moraira, Villa, and rental or holiday rental in the title. You can check the actual title against the list of most popular keywords that you have made from the Google keywords tool. If the page title matches up well with a well search phrase then you can look further.

You should also then look to see if the page has a headline. Usually in bold at the top of the page. If the site is doing its job properly, this headline will be whats known as a h1 tag. You can check this by going to the menu bar at the top of your browser. If you are viewing in Internet Explorer, go to ‘View’ and click on the link in the drop down menu for ‘page source’. In Firefox this say just ’source’. A page will appear with the code used to create the page. It looks confusing, but do not be alarmed. Just slowly scan the top third of the page looking for the text used in the headline. Once you have found it, check to see if at either end of the text there is a <h1 symbol. If there is, good, if not, just make a note, a negative point if you will for this site.

Slowly you will be able to build a picture of which sites are most suited to bringing you the most traffic for your villa or apartment advertisement.

About the Author

Neil Ebsworth is the founder of AMLASpain, the Spanish Property MLS for property for sale in Spain and Villa Rentals Spain

There are literally millions of holiday home owners now advertising on the internet. Some people set up their own website and just sit back and hope that they will be found by prospective holidaymakers looking for their vacation property. After a while they start to realize that there is a little more to getting seen on the internet than just creating a website.

The next step for most is using one of the myriad of advertising sites to create a listing. With many of these they are attractive to look at and after about an hour of work you have a respectable listing showing your vacation property or villa in its best light. Once again they sit back and wait for the inquiries to pour in. Once again they are disappointed.

The fact is there are several things you should do if you are a villa or apartment owner if you want your property to be seen on the internet. One of the things not to do, is to sit back and think that things will happen all by themselves.

As a quick guide to getting your property seen on the internet, we will fore-go the setting up of your own website. If you are a novice at things such as SEO, (if you dont know what SEO stands for then your a novice!) and move straight onto where to list your property and how to get your listing seen by the most people.

The first thing is to choose the site to advertise your rental with. There are many ways to do this but I recommend two fairly standard procedures to follow.First make a list of all the keyword search phrases that you would use if you were looking for a villa to rent in its location. A keyword phrase is the words or phrases that you would type into the search box if you were a holidaymaker looking to book a rental.

For example if I had a villa in Moraira, Costa Blanca, Spain I might come up with a list that included the search terms, Moraira, Moraira villa to rent, holiday villa in Moraira, Moraira villa rentals etc. Make the list as long as you can and even ask a friend or two to repeat the exercise. Remember to include general terms as well. Sometimes these can be the most search phrases that actually get the most traffic. For the example above, the top searched terms include, villa rentals spain and villa rental Spain, Spain rentals and rentals Spain. Once you have made your list, put it to one side because you will need it later.

Now you will need to use some tools that will show you where people actually search and in what volume. The key to successful advertising is getting the maximum number of visitors to your listing page. This is best done by first using a site that receives a lot of traffic for the type of property and the area you are renting in. The best single tool to use is the Google Keyword tool. To find it just type ‘Google keyword tool’ into your Google search.

here you will be able to type in some keyword search phrases from your list to find out where people actually search. The tool will give you the terms with the most volume on average and the volume for the previous month. Start working through your list of general and more specific terms ranking them in terms of actual search volume. You should then end up with a list for the most searched terms by volume for the highest traffic general terms as well as your localized search terms.

Now go to Google and type in the highest traffic terms. make a note of the websites that appear on the first page results for each term. What you are ideally looking for are the websites that cover not only the high volume general terms, but also rank well for your local keyword searches. Once you have been down the list you should start to see a pattern of which sites rank well in all areas. If not, then look to split your advertising between a mixture of sites that provide high traffic and those that provide more localized result rankings. Remember to avoid the Pay per click sites that advertise at the top and bottom of the page and down the right hand margin. These sites pay a fee to advertise on Page 1 of the results page. If their advertising budget runs out then so does the traffic to the site. The organic results are most likely to give you stable traffic in the long term.

You should now have a list of maybe half a dozen potential websites to choose from. To decide which ones to choose will depend on a number of different factors that will be covered later.

About the Author

Neil Ebsworth is the founder of AMLASpain, the Spanish MLS for property Spain and holiday rentals Spain

The Euro which has been gaining strength not only against the pound, but against a weakening US currency, has come under increasing pressure to follow the US lead and cut interest rates to ease pressure on property markets world-wide as well as the spiraling cost of crude oil.

Problems for the ECB lie in the fact that the Euro zone economy has not seen economic indicators as strong as those in the US that a serious slowdown is on the way and have been retiscent to cut interest rates until more definitive signs are reported. Part of this problem could lie in the fact that the Euro zone economies are not yet homogeneous enough to warrant the single picture scenario. It could be seen that any interest rate cut would be more of a political move which may end up hurting some member countries economy at the expense of others. This was always going to be a problem with the Euro zone, where mobility of labour has been an issue.

With so many languages involved, it is much more difficult for the Euro zone workforce to cross borders and language divide to find jobs in another geographical area of the Euro zone. This means that pockets of unemployment appear next to areas of near full employment in a given industry or sector. Normally, as you would find in the US, a worker would be able to move from the East to West coasts to fill job shortages. In the Euro zone this does not happen leaving divergent economies being governed by one central banking policy.

As far as it affects property markets, the 10% depreciation of the pound against the Euro has all but wiped out any correction in Euro based property prices in Spanish coastal areas, which have been suffering from a correctional downturn for nearly three years. Popular resort towns such as Javea, Moraira and Calpe had seen some increased interest in property for the first time in more than a year. Since January though, the appreciating Euro has meant that prices for British residents, who make up the majority of purchasers, have effectively risen in real terms.

Hope now rests with the European Central Bank cutting interest rates to bring the exchange rates more into line with historical norms. Otherwise the market will continue to drive agents out of business at a rate never before seen. The lack of business in the sector is not only in the Costa regions of Spain. The domestic economy has seen share prices in construction company stocks plummet over recent months. Fears of over supply in the industry have driven stocks lower on the back off the weakened demand.

About the Author

Hot Property Spain are a local specialist agent dealing in Moraira Property. Also specialist in Javea Property & New Development properties in  the Costa Blanca.