Airbnb Hosting Tips: SEO Strategy Walkthrough

Part 1: Airbnb Keyword Research

In the first part we discussed the SEO factors that affect your Airbnb listing views in general terms. Now I’m going to share some free tools with you to help figure out what your Airbnb keyword strategy is going to be.

What is an Airbnb Keyword?

Airbnb keywords are the foundation of your Airbnb SEO strategy for your listing. Unlike the name suggests, keywords can be more than one word. For example “Airbnb Vancouver Yaletown” would all be considered just one single keyword. Keywords are separated by a comma. Airbnb keywords are essential information that helps the Airbnb algorithm prioritize listings, based on a searcher’s enquiry.

How To Find Your Perfect Airbnb Keywords

We want to build an SEO strategy around the highest volume and most relevant search terms people use who are looking for listings like yours. 

There are a couple of ways to do this:

1. Recall what the purpose of previous guest visits are. 

This is gold. I live close to a hospital and guests have chosen my listing specifically for this reason. So I’ll make sure to include the hospital name in my listing SEO. Similarly, I live close to a desirable neighbourhood and may include that keyword in my Airbnb SEO strategy. If you find you get many visitors because you’re close to a conference center, sports area or other high traffic special event venue, those are great choices to build your keyword strategy around too.

2. Consider important sites and tourist attractions you live close to. 

Do you live near special tourist attractions, famous parks, buildings of interest that your city’s tourism board promotes? Then include those keywords for the next part!

Now we’re going to use some free research tools to identify your best Airbnb SEO strategy.

Keyword Suggestions For Your Airbnb SEO Strategy

Visit https://smallseotools.com/keywords-suggestions-tool/ and type in the following but fill it with your listing’s information:

Airbnb [your city] [your state/province]

Now you’ll see a list of suggested keywords that are generated. These are other more specific keyword combinations that people typing in the phrase above are using. Choose up to 5 of the most relevant keywords because we’re then going to see their monthly search volumes. We’re looking for the highest search volumes that are most relevant to your listing.

Part 2: Airbnb Keyword Volume

With your 5 keywords, now check the monthly search volume at the link below:

https://smallseotools.com/keyword-research/

Don’t forget to include any special locations or tourist sites if they’re close to your listing.

Airbnb [your city] [your state/province] [tourist site/hospital/university/etc]

This will give you an idea of the regular monthly search volumes by people specifically looking for short-term rentals near your listing, playing on your location’s advantage.

Part 3: Choosing Your Airbnb Keywords

The “airbnb [your city] [your state]” keyword should be the highest volume and will likely be the primary keyword you’ll be building a strategy around. You’ll also have some useful listing variations that will come in handy later. Be sure to write them down, along with monthly search volume.

You should now have the following keywords:

1. A Primary keyword that is very general. 

ex: airbnb victoria bc canada

2. Secondary keywords more specific to your location. Try not to make them too long. The length in the examples below work well.

ex: airbnb victoria oak bay, airbnb royal jubilee hospital, airbnb university of victoria,

Congratulations! You now have Airbnb keywords that can be applied to make an Airbnb SEO strategy.

Part 4: How To Apply Keywords To Your Airbnb SEO Strategy

The Airbnb keywords you researched in the previous section can finally get applied to your listing. When placed correctly as instructed below, your new Airbnb keywords will direct the Airbnb algorithm to start favouring your listing when potential guests search. 

We’ll use the previous keyword “airbnb victoria oak bay” as an example.

1. Airbnb Title. Ex: OAK BAY! Bright, Spacious & Stylish 2 Bedroom
2. Airbnb Description. Ex: Just outside of Oak Bay at the bottom of a quaint Victorian street….
3. Airbnb Image SEO. You may need to re-upload the same images again but this is important. When you save the image on your computer this time, do the following. No capital letters, no spaces (use hyphens), no special characters. All your image file names should look like this before you re-upload to the listing. ex: oak-bay-2-bedroom-victoria-bc.png You don’t need to include airbnb in the file names. Use the other keywords in your image SEO naming to improve the chances of showing up for those more specific searches too! If you’d like to learn more about SEO file naming for image and video, you can go here.
4. Airbnb Custom URL SEO. This is still relatively new from Airbnb so not many people have done this yet. Within the manage your listing page, you’ll find the option below the title and description edit section. Here’s an examples I used with my keywords “oak-bay-victoria”. You can learn more about Airbnb custom URLs here.
5. Duplicate your listing and apply your secondary keywords. Since trying this nearly 6 months ago, I can confirm it has doubled the number of times my listing has been seen. As mentioned earlier, I know many of my guests are looking for accommodations near the hospital, so I created a listing geared toward that traveller group and always show up at the top. I kept much of the descriptions the same because they included the primary and secondary seo keywords. It helps me to rank all my listings multiple times. Be sure to change the image file names, titles and descriptions, and make sure the calendars are all synched. Do this, go to the hosting dashboard, manage-your-space/availability and then go to synch calendars.

Now that you’ve applied your Airbnb SEO terms to your listings, we’re ready to get into growth hacking tips for Airbnb hosts that will make your short-term rental more profitable, gain more positive reviews and greatly reduce the chance of problem guests.

Click here to learn the 7 part message sequence that will automate your Airbnb hosting!