Airbnb Host Tips For SEO
Ever wonder how to improve your Airbnb's visibility and make your listings rank higher?
Airbnb SEO (search engine optimization) determines how prominently your listing appears in Airbnb searches as well as in the online ads Airbnb promotes to potential guests.
Airbnb SEO isn’t a skill hosts are ever taught, and it makes a huge difference to your bottom lines.
I’m an Airbnb host, and my professional background in online marketing and digital strategy helps me to get my listings noticed and to increase my occupancy rate. I enjoy teaching people how to get an unfair advantage on platforms including Airbnb. But to get an advantage on these platforms, you’ve got to understand how their algorithms work before you can game them.
Airbnb’s algorithm relies on internal and external SEO to determine the quality of a listing and its relevance to the searcher’s requirements.
But first, a quick background lesson:
What is SEO?
Search engine optimization is the science of getting your website and content as close as possible to the top of a search engine’s result page (SERP). Search engines use algorithms that use several different factors to decide the relevance and–ultimately–the ranking of each web page.
Search engines like Google usually make their ranking factors publicly available.
What is Airbnb SEO?
Airbnb SEO is the study and application of factors that improve your search results within the Airbnb platform. We can safely assume Google’s algorithm is a model for most other search engines with minor variations.
In order to improve your Airbnb listing’s SEO, you’ll need to understand the Airbnb algorithm that takes all the factors into consideration.
Airbnb Algorithm SEO Factors
The Airbnb algorithm takes into consideration the on-page and off-page Airbnb SEO together. One-page SEO refers to the the SEO factors within the Airbnb platform, and off-page SEO are the factors outside of the platform. Let’s do a quick overview of both.
**WARNING: We highly recommend you read the Airbnb SEO Strategy section before making any changes to your Airbnb listing’s SEO.**
On-Page Factors that affect your Airbnb SEO rankingsAirbnb
- listing title & description. The keywords used in your listing title and description help the algorithm decide if your property is relevant to the searcher.
- Guest reviews and ratings. The more 5-star reviews you have, the better internal ranking you get.
- Amenities associated with your listing. Include as much detail as possible in terms of amenities for your listing. The more information you can provide about the extras, the more of an edge you’re going to have over other competing rentals in your area.
- Message response rate and cancellation rates. The faster your response rate, the more comfortable Airbnb is sending you its customer traffic.
- Instant Booking. Airbnb gives an internal advantage to Instant bookings. You can learn how we have reduced problem guests while using instant booking.
- Super Host status. It’s difficult to say how much this actually helps boost your listing, but the research appears to say it’s pretty minimal. Don’t sweat this if you have recently lost the status or haven’t earned it yet.
- Custom URL link. This is an underrated and relatively new SEO element Airbnb introduced. You’ll want to complete the Airbnb SEO strategy before creating a custom URL link.
- Image file names. The names of the images you upload are commonly overlooked, but they help Airbnb’s algorithm when the images are named correctly and include your Airbnb keyword strategy like your custom URL.
- Number of people that have your listing saved. The number of people who have favourited or hearted your listing. It’s not a major factor but also not to be overlooked in your Airbnb listing SEO.
- How often you update your listing. The Airbnb algorithm rates this factor more heavily because it wants to encourage hosts to keep their listings up-to-date. We have an Airbnb growth hack that automates your updates with great results.
- 1st Page Click-Through-Rates (CTR). The amount of times a person searching on Airbnb clicked your listing as it appeared on page 1. The more people that click your listing found in their search query, the higher the CTR.
- Enquiry Contact Rates. The amount of times people have enquired about your listing directly to you.
- Booking Rates. The number of people who looked at your listing divided by the number of reservations made. If for every 100 views you get one booking, then the booking rate is 1%.
- Pricing competitiveness. The listing’s price as it relates to your amenities, space and location compared to other similar listings in your area.
- Search demand. The number of people searching through Airbnb for the dates and number of guests for their reservation.
- Invite rejections (pre-approvals). The number of people you rejected that enquired about your listing. Airbnb doesn’t like when hosts reject potential guests.
- Booking requests. The total number of bookings you’ve completed.
- Availability. Whether or not your listing is available on the dates the search enquiry is looking for.
- Your competition. Their availability, amenities, locations, pricing etc. compared to yours.
Off-Page Airbnb Factors that affect your Airbnb SEO rankings
- Backlinks. Links directed your listing from other websites.
- Backlink Quality. The quality of the websites linking to your airbnb listing.
- Anchor text. The hyperlink text from the other website to your website.
*The Off-page SEO factors for Airbnb become more important once the on-page elements of your listing’s SEO are nailed down. We’ll revisit off-page SEO near the end of this Airbnb host tips SEO guide.
There’s a bit of research we have to do first before increasing our listing views and ranking. Click Airbnb SEO Strategy Walkthrough for next steps!
(Disclaimer: The author provides digital marketing Airbnb services and is affiliated with www.thisonemarketing.com)