Create adverts that search
engines love

There are many ways that a prospective golfer finds your holiday home. The two most common roots are to go directly to a website they’ve used before, such as FairwayBreaks.com, or to use a search engine such as Google. It’s important to attract golfers that are using search engines, in addition to those who come to FairwayBreaks.com directly.

Search engine basics

Search engines work by storing information about web pages. These pages are retrieved by Web Crawlers (often referred to as Spiders) – automated web browsers that crawl the internet and analyze the content of each web page it comes across to determine how it should be indexed. Where a web page is indexed is dependant on the words that it contains, if someone enters the search term 'Luxury Golf Villa' into Google the results returned will be web pages containing those words. However, the position in which a web page will appear in the search results is determined by a number of other aspects, by applying the concepts in this guide to your advert it will have a much greater chance of ranking well.

Write specific headlines

Your advert headline and property title are two of the most important parts of your advert as far as search engines are concerned. As well as being displayed on the webpage itself the information you enter into your headline is used to link to your webpage throughout FairwayBreaks.com, in metadata about your webpage and in the title of your webpage. These elements are amongst the most important to search engines so it's important to be specific and use keywords that you think people will use to find a property like yours.

Make use of the descriptive fields

Search engines love content… that is, text – and are biased to ranking content-heavy web pages well. The reason for this, aside from the fact that search engines were originally academic research tools, is that search engines need something to base their judgements on. When you type a search term into a search engine, the search engine looks for the words provided among its millions of indexed web pages. So a webpage with few words is at a disadvantage right from the start. A FairwayBreaks advert includes a number of descriptive fields with room for hundreds of words, we know that content is important so be sure to make use of them all.

Advertisers often elect to leave the location and golf descriptions blank, these can be the two most useful fields. Try to put yourself in the shoes of a search engine user looking for a golf holiday. Many people will have a destination or golf course in mind, so it's reasonable to assume that the name of their desired destination, golf course or both will appear in their search term. People who come to FairwayBreaks directly will find your property with no problem but if you choose to leave your location or golf description blank it’s much less likely that search engine users will find it. When writing your location description try to include names of well known areas and attractions in your region you think people might search for. The same applies to your golf description – include the names of all your nearest golf courses.

Make good use of photograph captions

Photograph captions are a great place to squeeze in some extra content. The caption you enter is displayed beneath your photograph and, if you are using Internet Explorer, you will notice the caption also appears when you hold your mouse over the photograph – this is called the ‘image ALT attribute’, which means alternative text. Search engines use this ALT text to get an idea of what is displayed in the photograph. Try to be more specific when writing photograph captions, for example if your caption reads 'View of course from the balcony', which on Google produces over 2 million results, you may want to consider changing to something like ‘Relax on our balcony overlooking the fairways’, which has a mere 10,000 results. Aside from this the image search functionality of the major search engines like Google, Yahoo! and MSN use the ALT text to determine an images’ relevance to a query.

Use original text and never copy

You may have multiple properties advertised with us or have your property advertised on a number of different websites and perhaps your own. Google (and other search engines) has a strict policy against duplicate content, mainly because it doesn’t want to end up with a page of search results that all contain the same information, so it’s important to use different wording in each instance of your property. For the same reason it’s never a good idea to copy someone else’s content with the idea that it works for them so it’ll work for me. The owner of the content may not mind you using it but Google could recognise the duplicate content and only index the original.

Choose the right keywords for your property

You may think that the best keywords are the most obvious ones but remember that you’re up against some stiff competition and it’s virtually impossible for a single property owner to optimise an advertisement to rank well for a term like 'Europe golf holiday', frankly that's why you pay us. Instead try to recognise your properties unique selling points, make a list of all the features, facilities and attractions in and around your property and be sure to mention each one at least once in your advertisement. This way when someone searches for a property with specific features, for example: 'Luxury Spanish Golf Villa with Pool Table', your property will have a much greater chance of been found.

Keep your advert updated and relevant

While it is good practice to update your advertisement from time to time to keep your information current and your availability and rates up-to-date, some search engines give precedence to new content which means that making a few changes every now and then can help keep your advertisement ranked well – this may seem like a lot of effort but it does help. We recommend at least changing your advert headline every month or so, remember the headline is used in search results throughout FairwayBreaks.com so it's a good idea to try out different combinations to see what kind of response you get.

As you may find it difficult to come up with new ways of describing the same property a great tip is to write about current events in your area. Many holiday destinations are host to festivals, tournaments and other events, if your property is available for the event in the weeks leading up to it, make sure you include the name of the event in your advert. The same applies to annual holidays such as Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Years etc.

Summary

Follow these guidelines and your property will stand a far greater chance of success amongst the search engines but be sure that you don't over do it. Trying to be cleaver and cram your advert with the same keyword over and over will have a negative effect and search engines will refuse to index it. Besides – the most important thing is that your advert makes sense and gives potential renters all the information they need about your property. The key to creating an advert that appeals to both renters and search engines is to be specific, descriptive, complete and up-to-date.