SEO in Action: Optimising An Airbnb Book Review Article
Recently I have been working with Danny Rusteen of OptimizeMyAirbnb.comĀ who runs his own business helping Airbnb operators to improve their listings on the famous accommodation website. We have been working to improve his site operations and Search Engine Optimisation.
Danny Rusteen & How OptimizeMyAirbnb.com helps operators to maximise their Airbnb income.
Formerly an Airbnb employee and enthusiast about traveling the world using the service, Danny Rusteen is helping his clients and customers to improve their listings to maximise their revenue. Looking at how the listing operates, including making the best use of images, improving the commerciality of the listing and ensuring that targetted information is included, Danny is proving his expertise as an Airbnb specialist. As part of his promotion, as well to inform the general public about Airbnb and the issues surrounding it, Danny operates a blog on the site. He covers a wide range of different topics, including recommendations of different places to visit, examples of great listings, and reviews of books which approach the subject of Airbnb and general accommodation services. His insights into the Airbnb industry, both as a former employee, but also as an entrepreneur who now specialises in the sector, are incredibly interesting and informative. His content is definitely worth a close inspection. https://optimizemyairbnb.com/blog/
Improving The SEO of a cornerstone article.
One of the major pieces of work that I have done for OptimiseMyAirbnb.com is looking at the structure of the blog articles that are produced on the website. How you structure your blog articles has a massive influence on how they appear in Search Engine Results Pages (SERP as it is known in the SEO industry). https://optimizemyairbnb.com/book-review-airbnb-story-leigh-gallagher/
On-Page Headlines, Search Engine Titles & Informing The Reader.
First of all, whenever you are writing a blog post, the importance of the article title cannot be underestimated. This vital part of on-page SEO is often overlooked by content creators, especially when they are busy trying to run other areas of their businesses - content creation takes time to learn. You have to put in effort to acquire the skills and finesse to quickly produce great content that will promote your business - it is always a learning journey in progress. When Google (although other search engines are available) indexes your page, it gives certain elements of your page a heavier weighting as an indicator of what the web page is about. This is the same process people use as well - the Google ranking algorithms are built to try and simulate human When Google (although other search engines are available) indexes your page, it gives certain elements of your page a heavier weighting as an indicator of what the web page is about. This is the same process people use when digesting content - the Google ranking algorithms are built to try and simulate human behaviour. When you are looking through a book for a piece of information, you don't read every page in detail to find the information that you are after - you start by skimming the page titles to find the relevant part of the book. If the page titles are badly written then they do not give an indication of what is on that page - online content is no different. It is the responsibility of the page creator to ensure that the page title tells the user exactly what they are going to be reading. This means having the relevant keywords in the title - if the user does not have an indication of what they are going to read, why would they bother reading it? Therefore, the Google algorithm places a great deal of importance on the on-page title or headline of an article (in coding terms, the H1 title). It also places equivalent importance on the SEO title of the page (the page title that isn't shown on the page but is included in the code between tags). Incidentally, this is the part of the website code that determines what is shown in the title bar or tab title of your browser. Search engines also use this title to determine the title of the page that they show in their SERP. Your headlines, both visible on the page, and visible on the Search Engine Results Page, need to reflect what is going to be in the article. One word page titles are a waste unless the page serves a specific function and does not inform the user - an example of this is an eCommerce checkout page that you don't need to shop up on search engines (note: don't label your homepage with the "home" title - it's the front page of your site - be creative).
The Importance Of Subtitles
As a reader, you will also scan a page to find the information quickly. This is why subtitles are important to include in your text. If you are looking for a specific piece of information, you often skip quickly to the relevant section. Subtitles are also important to highlight where one section starts and another ends. Using subtitles to introduce a new section is important when keeping the reader interested in your article. It is like a teaser for what comes next. The Google algorithms place a great deal of importance on your subtitles as they are a crucial aspect of improving the user experience of your content - subtitles help your user navigate your article. In web design / SEO industries, these are known as
titles, although we can call them subtitles or second-level headings. Because Google pays particular attention to the content within your titles and subtitles, making sure that they have relevant keywords within them is important. Assuming the reader understands your subtitles can be a huge mistake. Make sure it is clear what you want your subtitle to say. Make sure it is full of keywords that will direct the reader about the direction or subject of the upcoming paragraphs. If a user comes in halfway through an article, or don't pay attention to the main page title, will the subtitle help the understand exactly what they are reading.
Adding Functionality To Match Your Content Type.
This article that Danny wrote was a really good example of an informed and balanced review. However, by simply including text, sometimes we rely on the reader to process a lot of information. With WordPress, there a number of plugins that allow you to include key information, especially when writing a review of a product. From a user experience standpoint, it allows the user to find key information that summarises what they have read or are about to read. Using figures or graphical indicators to summarise this information not only looks attractive but also means the user can process the information without having to utilise their language processing skills. There is an additional benefit when using product review plugins for product reviews on WordPress. Google can recognise schema markup as a form of structured data. This means Google doesn't have to guess what your web page is trying to communicate, but we can actually tell the Googlebots directly what a piece of information actually means. While a user can be informed using effective UX design, we can also incorporate tags that tell the Search Engine Crawlers exactly what they are looking at. In terms of SERP display (how your page shows up on the search results page), this can also mean that Google activates information such as star ratings, search boxes or other forms of rich snippet data or rich cards. This makes your web page stand out. It is also suggested that by ensuring Google knows what it is looking at can result in improved page-ranking, possibly moving your site up two or three places in the SERP (this is a speculative figure).
When You Have Great Content, Make Sure It Is Well Formatted To Help The Reader & Google
Danny wrote a fantastic article when he produced this post. With just a few small tweaks we improved it from a good review to a great review. It meant his readers and users could understand what they were looking at quickly and meant that the page was designed to keep the user interested in the insights that Danny had produced. Sometimes, you can write the best piece of content on a subject, but if the user can't access it on a basic level through effective design of the user experience, and the search bots don't explicitly have the information laid out, the article can fail to reach its potential. Clickbait is a word that people despise on the internet, especially on social media. The problem with Clickbait is that we get dragged into an article that lacks great information that we crave as readers. However, the reason that we get dragged into reading it is that they write excellent headlines, are great at SEO and create great subtitles. These articles aren't about providing great information, they are about keeping the reader engaged for long enough to serve up a decent amount of targetted adverts for the web site to make a profit. The content isn't great, but the article structure and SEO are awesome!!! Ā As web designers and content creators, we can learn from their techniques. When we produce informative and useful content for our users to absorb, we need to make sure that they want to engage with it.
Why I Like Working With OptimizeMyAirbnb.com and Danny Rusteen.
https://optimizemyairbnb.com/about/ Ā Working with people who have great insights into their industry, have unique perspectives and have opinions, understand facts that are genuinely useful and helpful to readers, is one of the reasons I love the work I do: It is one of the reasons that I really enjoy working with Danny on OptimizeMyAirbnb.com. He knows what he is talking about and is passionate about the subject. Creating informative content is difficult unless you are an expert on an industry - Danny shows, through skills and his content on OptimizeMyAirbnb.com, that he is truly an expert on Airbnb and the industry sector of short-term accommodation. Having seen how he has improved the listings of different Airbnb listings, you can see how he is truly a professional when it comes to maximising the potential of your online listing and it's performance. Danny understands marketing. He understands promotion. I imagine that as an Airbnb accomodation provider, having a professional supporting you, especially with the great range of products and services that OptimizeMyAirbnb.com offer, gives you a great advantage when running your online business. I would really recommend taking a look at the services that Danny offers, as well as having a read of some of his great articles, tips and advice that every person who advertises on Airbnb would find useful. https://optimizemyairbnb.com/ Click to Post
