My Favourites is Number 1, Page 1 on Google!

The My Favourite Holiday Cottages team is proud to announce that our website is now ranked Number One on Google for the key search term’ Holiday Cottages UK’ and on page one for two others. Our increase in rankings has massively increased the website’s traffic. The number of unique visits we receive now exceeds 12,000 a month, generating far more click-throughs and enquiries than ever before.

We’re not resting on our laurels, though. We continue improving the website’s traffic through our investment in SEO, Social Media, and our Festival Cottages section (see below), and many other features we plan to introduce in 2012.

Festival Cottages

In addition to updating the general design of each festival cottage page, our Festival Cottages section continues to expand, with more festivals from up and down the country signing up. Our most recent signups are from Two festivals in Norfolk:

1. Wells Pirate Festival
2. Sheringham Carnival In Derbyshire. We also welcomed Stainsby Festival. We’re also in the process of finalising details with some more festivals to be announced next month. If you know of any cottages in these areas mentioned who would like to take advantage of increased bookings, then please recommend us to them. Let us know who you’ve recommended, and for everyone who signs up, we will give you a free month on our Featured Favourites section to attract even more visitors to your website.

Also, if you know of any local festivals, let us know! Every extra festival we can promote brings more traffic to your listings and can result in more bookings whenever the festival runs. For example, properties in the Cheltenham area will soon have six festivals outside the peak season to attract visitors for a week or weekend break. If you know of a local festival that would like to be involved, please e-mail us at info@mfhc.co.uk. We’ll follow up on all suggestions on your behalf.

We’ve changed our Search Function.

One of the biggest changes to the site has been how our search results are displayed. Previously, when an owner updated their listing, their cottage would automatically move their cottage to the top of the search results. This is no longer the case; from now on, all results have been randomly ordered. This makes it fairer to owners who may not update their listings as frequently as others, ensuring that potential bookers can find the perfect holiday cottage for them.

Get more bookings from your website.

On various searches around the internet, we often find nice-looking websites which, on closer inspection, lack the necessary tools or content to ensure they appeal to search engines and site visitors – or keep such visitors on their site sufficiently to attract an enquiry. Such sites are the equivalent of owning a friendly Mercedes without an engine under the bonnet: it looks stunning – but goes nowhere. It does not only look – the functionality of your site is vital to getting bookings.

We’ve spent years researching and designing websites exclusively for holiday property owners (using our own properties as guinea pigs!) and offer this service to subscribers. If you’re considering a new website – we’d be happy to look at your existing site, offer feedback and suggest ways a new design would help improve your bookings. We’ve got plenty of examples and testimonials from past clients if required! Just e-mail Rick on info@mfhc.co.uk

Our designs include – and forgive the jargon - a comprehensive Search Engine Optimisation package. Optimising your website is crucial. For the uninitiated, this ensures a site is designed to encourage search engines to rank it more highly and be found by your target customers.

There are a variety of technical things you can do to improve your website’s SEO, and we will be writing blog posts in the info@mfhc.co.uk

Top marketing tips: Blog Posts

Our recent blog posts are two excellent pieces from our resident holiday cottage expert, Rick – and enhanced by some constructive comments and advice from subscribers. The first summarises what makes a cottage truly baby- and toddler-friendly. Our second article covers the “Little things in a Holiday Cottage, which mean a lot”. By making a holiday go from good to great, guests are even more likely to return in the future.

We are creating regular blog posts to discuss the importance of online marketing for holiday cottages. If you’d like to know more about topics such as SEO, the top tips for using Facebook, or any other subject, then get in touch, and we’ll create something for you. Just e-mail Rick at info@mfhc.co.uk with your suggestions. We’ll endeavour to include a link to your listing in subsequent articles.

Finally,

As always, if you’d like to know anything else about our services or how we can help you increase bookings from your website, or if you just want to chat, feel free to contact us by e-mailing info@mfhc.co.uk, calling us on 01598 710631, or taking advantage of our new online live chat facility, which can be found on the My Favourite Holiday Cottages website.