SEO On Airbnb: How Does It Affect Your Business

If your direct competitors enjoy consistent bookings on Airbnb, and you have just a few deals once in a blue moon while offering seemingly the same conditions and rates, it is not a matter of luck, but a smart SEO strategy.

Your success on Airbnb starts not with having a super-duper apartment with all modern bells and whistles and all possible home comforts nestling in the heart of the world’s best tourist destination.

Indeed, it starts with good visibility of your proposal in Airbnb search results.

Airbnb SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is all about making your listing appear on the first search result page. Not all Airbnb hosts can boast of excellent SEO skills. To get an advantage in this short-term rental marketplace, you first need to learn how its search algorithms work and use this knowledge for your own benefit.

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization is the art of pushing your website to the very top of a search engine result page (SERP). In the core of a search engine lies an algorithm that assesses the relevance of a website and eventually determines its appearance in search results. For instance, Google’s search algorithm exploits over 200 factors to esteem website content and locate its position.

What is Airbnb SEO?

Similar to Google, Airbnb’s search engine displays the best and most relevant listings on the first search pages. With over 6 million listings published, Airbnb has designed a proprietary algorithm that evaluates properties and determines their visibility in search results. This algorithm relies on predefined rules to analyze all actions that happen on a listing (both positive and negative ones) and gives your property a total internal score.

A formula to calculate a listing’s score is simple: one positive event gives +1 point, while a negative event deducts 1 point from the total internal score. The higher the internal score, the better will be the listing’s position in Airbnb search results.

Airbnb is unceasingly monitoring your listing and meticulously registers all events that occur within it. Every single action that takes place on your listing affects its internal SEO score, either positively or negatively. When your listing is clicked and scrolled through, when your rate is updated, when there are no actions at all for a long time – Airbnb records everything and brings it into play.

Internal factors are all about the attractiveness of your proposal to guests, while external factors take into consideration user behavior, meaning what people do when they see your listing.

External factors (aka registered user behavior) include:

• Clicking through This criterion counts the number of users who clicked on your listing when it appears in search results along with other similar proposals.
• Conversion This criterion compares the number of users who end up booking your longing and the number of users who just viewed your listing but concluded a deal with another host in the same area.
• Bounce rate This metric reflects the number of visitors who only quickly viewed your listing and left it without performing any actions.
• Exit event This indicator registers how prospects move through your page before leaving it such as whether they read reviews, click on photos, adding your page to their wishlist, etc.
• Average book time is an indicator calculating how much time on average a user spends on your page before placing a booking.
• Direct linking This index evaluates the percentage of users who directly land on your Airbnb listing through URLs provided in Instagram, emails, messengers, and other external websites.

 Internal factors that have an impact on your Airbnb ranking:

• The age of your listing The longer you publish on Airbnb, the more credible you seem to its search machine.
• Response rate You will relish in increased customer traffic on Airbnb if you reply to inquiries ASAP. To ensure none of the inquiries slips the attention, many Airbnb hosts implement professional property management software. Learn more about possibilities of such software here https://www.hostyapp.com/airbnb-listing-management/.
• Listing head and description The algorithm analyzes keywords in the title and the description of your listing to weigh its relevance to the inquirer.
• Positive reviews and ratings The cherished five stars and lots of good reviews lead to a higher ranking position.
• Available amenities The more comforts your property features, the higher it will appear in Airbnb SERP. Think of adding some add-ons like free breakfast, gym access, or guided tours as a part of a deal as well as stuff your property with safety equipment to boost your ranking.
• Price per night Airbnb is entirely guest-focused and favors owners with affordable rates and solid discounts for prolonged and low-season stays.
• Cancellation rate Airbnb engine will not love you if you cancel reservations without a good reason.
• Approval rate While Airbnb generously rewards hosts who allow instant bookings, it also punishes those who often decline booking requests.
• Verified host Providing a Government ID to Airbnb can make wonders to your visibility in search results, too, as the platform strives to exclude fraudsters from the business and gives an edge to those owners who prove their IDs and connect their Airbnb profiles with major social media networks like Facebook or LinkedIn.
• Keywords in photo descriptions While vacationers will hardly read the names of your vivid photos, the Airbnb algorithm is very sensitive to all keywords used in your listing.
• Updated calendar A regularly updated calendar is a telltale sign for Airbnb that your availability is very accurate, and you will hardly reject or cancel a booking. Sophisticated Airbnb property management software automatically updates your calendar, saving you from the headache to do everything manually with lots of considerations in mind.
• Self-check-in The platform prioritizes those hosts who allow their guests to check-in independently through Smart Lock, Lock Box, or Airbnb key exchange service.

A clever SEO strategy will turn your Airbnb listing into a profitable business and help you stay ahead of the competition as your lodgings will consistently hit the best position in a search query. Still, mastering the craft of smart search engine optimization is time and effort-consuming.

If you want your Airbnb listing to start generating income right now and do not want to tinker with SEO, consider a professional SEO team who knows how to propel your offering to the very top of SERP.