Search Updates Hurt St. Lucia Apartment Owners and Local Tourism Companies

LATEST SEARCH UPDATES CUT  LOCAL TOURISM COMPANIES OUT OF LISTINGS



Google has dropped every small, local apartment complex from the first page listing. In their place are: Direct By Owner, HomeAway, TripAdvisor and major consolidators and directories. Oddly, even the Government and the St. Lucia Hotel and Tourism Association sites are not showing up on the first page for searches like "St. Lucia apartments for rent."

The change is dramatic. Local apartment rentals that were listed on page one have gone. Just evaporated overnight. Check it out with a search for the phrase above or variation of it.  It is a long tail term that is one of the most searched terms used by travelers looking for self-catering accommodation for their St. Lucia holidays.

THE BIG CLEANUP

It's part of the big clean up and the new effort to list only credible authority sites. Also, someone searching for apartments will often want a list of apartments. From the search engines' point of view,  listing directories is a simple solution to the problem of too much content of suspect quality.  Google is on the war path with shabby content and by playing it safe with known name directories, it is cutting out the small, local property owners who provide the product that these Saint Lucia vacationers are looking for.

MARKETING OPTIONS

So what can the small apartment owners do in the face of declining occupancy when they can't get their properties listed on the first page of search results? Not being on “page one results” leads to a drop in leads of about 80% and that is very bad for business.

Villa and apartment owners can of course advertise on Google and with these big name sites. For a lot of them, it's too expensive.  The apartment market in St. Lucia is struggling with small marketing budgets and big hurdles. They are reluctant to pay for advertising that is expensive and has a short life span. Once the ads have run their course, they disappear.  The cost of a Google ad (adwords)  can be several dollars a lead and as travelers are very fickle, shopping around at an average of 20 or so sites before they buy, the close rate is low.

On average, 95% of travel shoppers do not buy on sites like Expedia and destination sites while shopping around. On the other hand, it makes sense to build authority and create quality, lasting content. That is a sustainable marketing option; good content and authority last. Before the latest search updates, they were also what got you to the top of search results. Now it seems International Companies with massive lists are winning out over local property owners with rooms, flats, villas and apartments to rent.

BUILDING AUTHORITY


The good news is that you can still build authority that will influence ranking. It's a long process and cannot be done overnight; but done right, we are seeing a gradual increase in ranking. It's a matter of time before this turns into a page one listing, more leads and more direct bookings.

For a St. Lucia apartment owner client, we have been developing content and links which are finally beginning to show some results. The site is moving up and we expect it will be on page 1. Why? Because Google is looking for authority sites with excellent content and visibility and this is what property owners need to do.

You build authority with good content and by letting people know about it. Building authority is not about promotion. It's about content that travelers are looking for. One strategy is to find a new perspective on a major attraction and do your own story and video on it. See Ladera - stay in comfort and holiday in style.


VIDEO CONTENT



It used to be that one could influence ranking with just a couple of good videos. Now we need a campaign with not less than a dozen videos. The videos need to be strategic, released over several months, with a carefully crafted message that reinforces itself without overdoing the keywords and links.  Variety in tags, keywords and links is now the essence. So the campaign will include using a closely related set of words with links that are not over-optimized.

OVER OPTIMIZED LINKING

Not long ago “G” told us to use keywords in our links (anchor text) so they would know what we are promoting. Today they are telling marketers that it is not natural to link back with the exact keywords we are targeting. One needs to vary the link words and use the raw URL as well as words like "Click Here" and "Visit" etc.  Also vary the words using related words like vacation, holiday, travel, getaways etc. Use words like flat, room, house, suite, studio, villa, apartment interchangeably where they make sense. This is part of what is called Latent Semantic Indexing. See more at http://lsikeywords.com/
So if you find you have fallen off the search results, it could be that your back-links (sites linking back to you) are too optimized and now look unnatural. You need to change these links and add more random words so that they will now look natural.

CASE STUDY: POINSETTIA  ST. LUCIA

Our campaign for PoinsettiaApartments.com is progressing slowly. We have published several videos, written many blogs, added content to the site and issued several press releases. The site has moved to the third page results. We will be publishing and promoting 8 more videos in this campaign.

Here is some of the Video collateral.

Villa Interiors: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NzTD7knt40
Stay in Comfort, Holiday in Style http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSmUncZZkqY
Long Term St. Lucia Living http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pF4iu9ocbFo
Overview of Poinsettia  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gv7xeWXmjBo

Resources: Organic Search results for "apartments for rent in St. Lucia"

Contact support (at) axses.com for more on these tourism video marketing campaigns
Tel: 246 429 2653


 

St. Lucia Holiday Apartments: Marketing Case Study

Video Marketing Case Study: St. Lucia Holidays & Apartment Rentals


http://youtu.be/pK_xout8F1Y


In a recent AXSES tourism marketing campaign we were faced with the task of helping a small apartment rental company in St. Lucia to get back its position on the Internet for searches. 

Their listing for “apartments for rent in St. Lucia”, “St. Lucia Holidays” "St. Lucia Villa Apartments" and other key phrases had simply fallen off the radar in Google search results.

Google Algorithm Changes Hurting Local Travel Business.

Google had adjusted its search systems to give more credit for onsite content. The sites that were showing up were the big Online Travel Agents (OTAs), representing all the major hotels in St. Lucia, adding huge "relevant content" for the different accommodation searches. Also tour companies, major brands and sites with massive content where ranking. Very few small hotels and lodging companies made it to page one of the search results.
A small hotel, villa complex or holiday apartment rented by owners can’t compete with OTA's for content. They can’t build hundreds of pages of this sort of content.

So what are they to do to avoid becoming irrelevant in the online market? They can’t ignore it. Most travelers search online to find options and make booking decisions. In fact, 57% of all travel reservations are made on the internet(i).

What Can be Done

The answer is that they can build quality and very specific content for their very special market. This means of course being clear about the USP and creating multimedia content in articles, blogs, videos and on the site; making sure that it is available everywhere.

This used to be very expensive, but with new tools and services the cost of media has dramatically decreased. Today a quality multimedia campaign can be affordable even to a small hotel and have a significant ROI if done right.

Our Case study is for a small apartment complex in St. Lucia. It has been seeing a slide in occupancy and has noted that St. Lucia tourism has moved to more all inclusive, beach holidays, and resort lifestyle vacations. Fewer people appear to be looking for apartments and the word apartment conjures up different images and expectations that are hard to manage.

This is the first in a series we will do as we tackle this case and find the solution.

The Property


The property has several units, a pool, gardens laden with fruit trees and tropical plants and a panoramic roof top terrace with a stunning view. It is up on a hill looking down on the Caribbean Sea, the harbour, the local cove and the shallow draft marina.

The apartments are more like townhouses or modest villas. All have a front door and some have a back terrace and garden.

It’s a good location; not on the beach which is about 2 mins away by car. One needs to have a car to take full advantage of their St. Lucia Holidays, while sating here

Objective

Regain search ranking for target keywords, increase business and build clientele.

Challenge #1

St. Lucia is big in "all Inclusive" and beach resorts. The property is a distinctive villa and townhouse style apartment complex that is not on the beach.

Not many St. Lucia tourists are searching for apartments. An apartment complex has a connotation of elevators and corridors which most St. Lucia tourists do not want.

The first obstacle is to overcome the misconceptions about apartments and to clearly communicate what the complex really is. It is not an apartment building in the traditional sense.

Solution

We decided to tackle this perception of apartment living straight on as you will see in the video.

We also defined the target client carefully and spoke directly to ideal client.

We focused on the prime location and created the tag line "A Great Place to Come Home To" which we registered for the client.

In addition to the video, we built a series of blog posts, a press release and quality flyers(ii) that were all distributed strategically on the Internet. 

See the video #1 and let us know if you think this will work. We plan several more videos to build on this theme. 

All of this is collateral for the clients website(iii) and the video which in terms of Internet Marketing creates authority and tells the story.

See the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gv7xeWXmjBo

Let us know what you think. Comments are always welcome on the YouTube video.

Keep tuned as we move forward and share the hurdles and success…

The next video takes us inside the rooms, villas and apartment townhouses

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Sources:
(i) Stats from statisticbrain
(ii)  Poinsettia Apartments Flyer on Slideshare
(iii) Case Study on: http://poinsettiaapartments.com

Marketing by AXSES SocialindexEngine.com