Are you missing out on free traffic to your website from Google Local Search? It’s an area that is often overlooked, but one that can generate a lot of bookings for your holiday rental website.
Recently Google started showing local business search results at the top of some search queries (although working out which queries they DO show for is tricky… compare these two searches on Google:
google search for loire atlantique accommodation
google search for Normandy accommodation... no local results!
Go figure.
Either way, you should create listings for your business / properties and give them the best chance of turning up in the search results, as they can generate a lot of targetted traffic… remember this is people searching for your type of business in your local area. And it’s free. We like free.
Something to bear in mind when you create your listing is potentially including some search keywords in your business name and description. I’m not sure it will make a difference, but it won’t hurt to try to optimise your listing! Making the copy as compelling as possible will obviously encourage more visitors to click through.
Once you’re listed (following automated telephone verification) you’ll show up in the results in a few hours. Additional features of the service include a ‘reviews’ facility where visitors can add reviews to your listing, and a coupons function enabling you to offer printable coupons to people viewing your listing. Most excitingly though is the ability to see how many search results your listing appeared in, and how many clicks came through to your site.
Sign up for your free local business listing here.
Go on... click it... you know you want to!
5 Comments
Hi Dave
I fiddled with Google Local Search a couple of months ago as I figure’d it would be a good additional way of people finding our Holiday Gite.
Unfortunately in the end I couldn’t register my French property because Google either wanted to verify our identity via a telephone call (and the number I supplied had to be a +33 French number), or they wanted to verify my location by sending a postcard (and I didn’t want to use this option as that would mean registering the precise address for the Gite. I’ve deliberately never put the full address on my website as I don’t want to put up a big advert effectively saying “here we are, lots of good things to burgle, and here is a calendar of when the property is empty”).
In the end I gave up.
Did you have these problems when registering?
Geoffrey
Hi Geoffrey,
on the latter option, I don’t think they’ll actually put your physical address on your listing, it will be purely for administration purposes I’d have thought? Is there anyone who could take a call for you on a +33 number, as all that happens is that you receive an automated call with a pin number. if you can get someone to note that down for you, you’re off.
good luck!
Dave
Well fancy meeting you here Geoffrey! I have often wondered about Gite privacy. It does seem that many gite owners put their full address on their websites, to me this is a big concern. What happens if you blog that you are away and your full address is available to anyone?
I could be just being over cautious and I have not yet heard of any robberies from the about situation. Still, you could be giving away too much personal information in an age where online privacy is becoming a big concern.
Bob
It all sounds a bit dubious to me, I had a friend that had their home address programmed into their cars GPS, the car was broken into at a big football game and the bad guy’s used the GPS to go and ramsack their house. Sounds like the same thing could happen with this system.
Brad
Hi Brad,
most property rental owners provide an address (and google map!) on their website, so if a thief is that keen, they could always get the location from that address?
I’m personally of the opinion that the media over-hypes the risks involved in this type of thing. How many burglars have REALLY used Google Street View to rob people’s homes since launch?