A strategy that some hosts use to attract more guests is to set up a simple website for their Airbnb listing, and often a Twitter account as well. I don’t myself have one (yet!), but I’ve heard that the results can be highly beneficial. If you’re considering going the extra mile, here’s my best advice.
The first thing I recommend—which will help you whether you’ve got a website or not—is creating a 2-3 word title and exact phrase that you always use to reference your wonderful listing (and you’ve learned why you should do that from my free guide, yes?).
For example, if you continually refer to your place as your “cozy Asheville abode,” you can go over to Bluehost, purchase the domain “cozyashevilleabode.com” and hosting, and easily set up a simple WordPress page.
What are the benefits of setting up a site for your listing?
- It will gain you more traffic from people searching for a place to stay outside of Airbnb
- It will give you more authority and placement in Google (my three word search alone, not even in quotation marks, lands me as the first result!)
- You can take advantage of linking your personal “$25 off” Airbnb code on your site as well, thereby earning you $25 in travel credit each time on Airbnb (to see how I make this work, take a look at the righthand column on The Abundant Host home page).
Building a website might sound like a lot of work, and it can be—but it’s super simple with the hosting provider I use (and adore). If you decide to go with Bluehost, this link will get your hosting discounted down to $3.49/month. They’re what I use for all my sites, require no coding knowledge, and they have extremely responsive customer service. It’s also super easy to set up WordPress through them in a few clicks.
For a detailed description on exactly how to get your site up and running on WordPress through Bluehost, this is a great step-by-step article (with screenshots).
I talked to Jing and Wayana over at Bukit Vista, and they say their website helps aggregate their multiple listings. They also agree that it helps people searching on Google and social media find them.
“Our website acts like a business card on the Internet,” they told me. “It’s much easier to pass the website than our hosting account number.”
Matt Landau over at the Vacation Rental Marketing Blog writes:
A website is arguably the most critical component of an independent vacation rental’s marketing portfolio.
Matt and I have slightly different perspectives, but I agree that it definitely can’t hurt to have a website for your Airbnb listing (unless you post undesirable photos of your place, but that’s neither here nor there). :)
Then again, a ton of people don’t have websites for their listing and do just fine. Others have websites for the many things they do, and Airbnb is just one of them.
It’s up to you. You’ll have to invest a little bit of time into it, but once you get it up and running, you could see awesome results (and you’ll be able to track them even on Airbnb, as the Airbnb dashboard now shows you how many people view your listing per day).
I’d love to hear about it if you set up a site! Find me over on Twitter and let me know. Until then, happy hosting!
Thanks for reading! Have a question that wasn't answered here? If you'd like more specific help, I'd love to work one-on-one with you. Or, if you want to work collaboratively in a group with fellow motivated hosts, find out if the next Abundant Hosting Mastermind group is open. I also wrote a book, Cleaning Up, where I give you the nuts and bolts (and so much more) of finding your perfect turnover assistant, thereby upleveling your profit and success on Airbnb. Have a beautiful day!