If you build up your content on your site it may lead to many more visitors. But it does not necessarily lead to more sales. You won't go higher up the Google rankings either.
You can add pages of news, pages covering the latest stories, all sorts of content which is only marginally connected to your main page keywords but the important thing - more customers, are not there.
If your vacation rental guests are really determined to find you and no one else then they will, however bad is your web site. You’ll get enquiries, but if your web site suffers from these mistakes then for every good prospect who finds you, then there are 6 others who will move on without bothering with your site in detail.
One click and they’re off. You’d better get them on that click. There are many internet tarts who hit and run. They find you, have a quick look and if they don’t see what they want they move on to some else.
Here are six basic web site problems.
1) Not showing a link to your prices on every page. That is what they look for
2) Not showing a link to your availability on every page. That is what they look for
3) Not showing them how to contact you on every page
4) Having links from one page to another which do not open
5) Showing old out of date prices
6) Showing the site has not been updated
7) Showing poor photographs
If you are a vacation rental owner then you ought to show your availability, because many visitors will not fill in a form and wait for a reply. They want to book somewhere now.
A few facts
Most of your web site visitors only look at three or four pages – even if you have 30 or more in your site.
About half move on immediately they open your index page. Your site may not be what they are searching for. But it may be just what they want and you are not giving them the information
The movers spend less than 10 seconds on your site. The ones who stay will note your site and come back for a second visit later if they like what they see.
About 20% of your site visitors will come back for a second look. You can attract visitors with interesting pages which give them what they want. For example, have you thought about putting up a page about the weather in your area throughout the year? You’ll get visitors to your site directly into it, and it is not too difficult to get up the top of the weather search pages.
But they do not necessarily turn into buyers, that is the problem.
We know from the Google analysis for every page, where the visitors come from and where they go to. Serious prospects visit our cottage details page, and the availability page, and the prices page. The other pages get far fewer visitors.
We deliberately set out to test the fact that more visitors do not necessarily lead to more sales.
I wrote a page called Avoid Speeding cameras, Fines and Points on your Licence, and I made this a subsidiary page of a main page called Touring Scotland from Glencoe.
We had hundreds of extra visitors to the site immediately it was published. But not a single extra booking. See it at http://www.bayviewkentallen.co.uk/touringscotland.html
It is fairly easy to build traffic - much more difficult to build "qualified" traffic who are in the market for what you sell
John