Reviews and SEO: How to improve your ranking on Google

Can reviews boost the web positioning of my vacation rentals on search engines such as Google? The answer is yes, absolutely they can! They can also allow you to gain credibility and prestige. You couldn’t ask for more!

However, for reviews to be able to help you improve the SEO of your vacation rental’s website, they need to be managed well.

In this blog, we will explain why it is beneficial for you to include ratings and reviews on your website. They should be used not only to improve the booking conversion rate and the number of direct reservations, but also to improve your visibility on search engines. We will also provide you with some useful advice on how to achieve this.

The importance of situating my vacation rentals at the top of search engine results

Many property managers often wonder: Why doesn’t my webpage appear at the top of search engine results, but my competition, who offer a worse service to their guests, do appear? Or, why are the top ranking positions exclusively occupied by OTAs like AirBnB, Booking or VRBO?

First of all, you need to understand that OTAs spend millions every single year in order to monopolise these top positions for “generic searches” in your corner of the market. For this reason, it’s very unlikely or even impossible for you to position yourself with searches such as “vacation homes in your location” or “vacation apartment in your location”.

However, you do have the opportunity to position yourself within other, slightly more niche, search results. Searches focussed on your specific guests, or on the type of rentals you offer, for example “vacation rentals with pets allowed” or “affordable vacation rentals in your location” or “winter vacation rentals in your location”. These types of searches, in Marketing-speak, are called “Long Tail”. They represent a series of more specific searches that, despite being lower in volume, have a higher conversion rate and in our case: higher direct reservations.

Everyone knows that the difference between appearing on the first page of these search results and not appearing is the same as attracting a large number of guests “for free” and not attracting them. We all consult the first results of a search and if the listing is appealing to us, we look no further. Therefore, the worst positioned webpages receive much less traffic.

The importance of situating a vacation rental website at the top of the search results is self-explanatory

I’m sure that you’ve already heard that the reason why this happens is the famous algorithm that Google employs to rank its search results. When Google analyses a webpage, it looks for a series of parameters and it puts them in order, essentially, according to what it considers will provide the best answers to its users´ searches.

Usually, the websites that are best situated at the top of the search results are those that manage to, through their content and expertise, amongst other criteria, convince Google that they are the most appropriate option for the consumer. The job of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) experts is precisely to utilise diverse techniques to improve webpages with the objective of boosting their positioning against that of the competition. One of these techniques employed is the use of ratings and reviews from guests.

Keys to success in the improvement of webpage positioning for vacation rentals

For quite a long time now, Google’s algorithm has meant that one of the factors that lends authority and credibility to a website is the presence of ratings and reviews of people who have used its services. Ratings, according to some experts (reference), account for more than 17% of the criteria that Google has in mind when ranking local search results. Put differently, a vacation rental website that includes reviews has a better chance of appearing higher up on a list of search engine results than another website that doesn’t include them. The first key to success is making use of reviews.

Another key is embracing technology. If you embed in your website “Rich Snippets”, fragments of enhanced information in HTML, you will have a greater impact on Google search results. This is because it shows Google that the content featured is based on opinions and, as we have already explained, in the context of search engines this is relevant and interesting information. Revyoos includes Rich Snippets in its widgets and these are what will result in your ratings and reviews appearing higher up on the list of google search results, as shown in this example:

A further key to improve positioning is to maintain interaction with the ratings and reviews of our clients. Responding to the reviews shows that the property manager values its customers and their comments. Customers also like this, as well as Google.

What else is beneficial for you to improve on your vacation rental website, in addition to its positioning?

Web positioning of a vacation rental website is essential in attracting visitors for them to see what we offer and so that some of them become future guests in our houses or apartments.

However, appearing in the top search results isn’t the only important thing. Other factors are also important, such as the number of stars that the guests give their stay in your vacation rental.

A recent study showed that the stars awarded to you by your guests, when featuring in a list of Google search results, can lead to a substantial increase in the number of visitors to a webpage. To be precise, they can lead to an increase of up to 35% in the click rate (CTR), according to CLX (reference).

Those that are awarded 5 stars receive the highest click rate with 19%, 4 stars with 16% and 3 starts receive 11%. When a listing only has 1 star the click rate is almost negligible at 3%. Curiously, those with zero stars, presumably due to their novelty, receive 12% of clicks.

To summarize, Google likes quality reviews and even rewards them!