Julian Sage:                         00:00                     In this episode, we’re talking about how to stay at the top of the Airbnb search so you can get more bookings. So stay tuned.

Julian Sage:                         00:06                     Vacation rental machine helps. So suggests like you learn how to start, grow and scale your short term rental business. The show’s all about creating systems that help you automate your business, give any more time and money freedom. If you’re ready to start living the vacation rental life, then subscribe to this podcast today, come and join us on our Facebook group, the host nation, where we’ll be talking about starting automating and scaling a short term rental business. Now onto the show.

Julian Sage:                         00:33                     Hey, welcome back, host nation to another episode of vacation rental machine. I’m Julian Sage and I’m with Jon Bell and we’re talking about how to optimize your listing so that you are staying on top of the Airbnb search results. So there are a few ways that you can actually boost your listing so that you can start getting more bookings. And this is especially important when you are coming into that slower seasons where we’re having to strategically do things to be able to boost your listing. So Jon, Airbnb, it is a search tool, it’s a marketing tool and it has a certain criteria for you to be able to stay at the top of search. What’s that criteria and what are you doing to be able to stay on top?

Jon Bell:                               01:04                     First off, Airbnb has over 90 points that they actually rate and list different listings over top of others.

Jon Bell:                               01:14                     It’s actually an AI that actually presents certain properties to certain people. So it is really smart, right? So I’m just going to only talk about the key points that you could really control to try to stay on top. And one of the very first ones is reviews. You got to have good reviews. If you don’t have good reviews, you’re already pushed to the third, fourth, sixth, 10th, 15th page. So having that great five star rated property, that 4.9, 4.8, that puts you on top of some of the other listings and you want those in volumes. So if you have 60 reviews over somebody that only has three reviews, you will rank higher than those people. One of the other things that I figured out is pricing does have some rank in that whole scenario too. For instance, if you got 60 reviews and your price is $100 a night versus another person that has maybe 15 reviews and then their price is $50 a night, that person will show higher than you because the rating is still a five star.

Jon Bell:                               02:26                     You just have a higher price so it ranks. Think of it like reviews and price is how Airbnb ranks the properties. If it’s presented to the guest or potential person that’s willing to book. What I know about that piece in the AI is typically what Airbnb does is if somebody has browsed Airbnb before, it kind of puts the algorithm on, Hey, what do they like? Are they looking at the rustic places, the traditional places? Are they looking at those experience-based like the tree houses and stuff like that. Airbnb will then present those properties first so that guests can see that stuff right up front. We really got to think of it on Airbnb side. Airbnb is a booking platform. They make their money when people book. So it behooves them to put whatever information that person wants to see upfront. So that’s what they do.

Jon Bell:                               03:23                     All right, so number one is reviews, right? Number two would be your price. What’s number three? Number three is having an updated listing. This means like either changing your title every so often or you use a tool like Smartbnb that can go in and modify little things on your page to make sure that your page is very current. If you got a stale page that you haven’t changed the descriptions or titles or anything, Airbnb thinks, “Hey, you’re not active, so I don’t want to give you those bookings right away.” But the professional hosts have something that either does that for them or they constantly go in and tinker a bit. All right, so what is the number four thing that you should do to try to get your page to show up over others? That really is asking your guests after they check out to wishlist your listing.

Jon Bell:                               04:17                     The more people that are looking at your listing and they wishlisted, Airbnb knows, “Hey, this is a desirable place to go, so we want to make sure that it’s front and center.” Maybe this other person that looked the exact same way as this other guest, they’re looking for the exact same thing. Maybe they’ll like it too, so you want to ask your guests upon checkout that they wishlist your place. That way they can easily go back and book it again at the same time, it helps you on the search rankings.

Julian Sage:                         04:44                     So Jon, just to summarize, the first thing that we’re supposed to be doing is making sure that we have good reviews. Airbnb really prioritizes good reviews. Next is going to be price. A third thing is going to be having an updated listing and then last is going to be a wishlist thing.

Julian Sage:                         04:59                     Now again, these aren’t the four definitive things there. Like Jon said in the beginning, there’s over 90 points that Airbnb uses to be able to identify how they’re going to be boosting your listing and putting it in front of the right people. Because this is a booking platform and there are lots of listings out there. It’s just how is your listing going to be targeted to the specific type of person. But Jon, I’m sure that there’s some things that people are doing or some things that maybe think that would actually help them, ah, that might actually be hurting them. What are some of those things?

Jon Bell:                               05:28                     Oh, Julian, we see it even in our own group, the host nation, right? People are paying people to do Airbnb search optimization. That is like crazy to me because there’s really no way that they can do it unless they are booking the place for them.

Jon Bell:                               05:48                     Right. And unless there’s somebody going in and clicking and saying, I’m booking your place. I can only wishlist it from probably two accounts unless maybe this person has some bad accounts that they just wishlist all these people’s listings. That’s the only way to really jump. So don’t pay somebody that says, “Hey, I could help you jump inside of the Airbnb platform.” What you might be able to do is do some SEO things to help you book on things like Google or something like that based off of your booking website that you have independently, but don’t pay these people that are saying, “Hey, I can boost your ranking for $400 a month.” You might as well just give me $100 a month. So the only way to really truly optimize your listing is to clean up the words. Make sure that it says everything that it needs to say.

Jon Bell:                               06:39                     It’s descriptive enough or just as to the point enough that somebody knows, “Hey, this is what I’m looking for,” to entice them to book. So the best thing that you can do is have your conversion rate very high. This is when I tell people, don’t share your Airbnb link out to everybody who’s going to go look and just click and not book because then your conversion rate tanks, right. If you got a million people looking at one listing and not one person is going to actually book the place, what is your book rate? Again, Airbnb and most all of the other platforms, they make their money on bookings. If you are not converting and booking people, you’re not a value to them showing on the front page, so please, please, please don’t share your listing or links out to everybody just to just browse and just, “Hey, check my photos.” That’s not really doing you any good.

Julian Sage:                         07:35                     Jon, I think we hit on something really big because I see this just so much in all of the Facebook groups all over the place. People are like, “Hey, check out my listing, review my listing.” “Hey, do this thing. Can you look at my photos?” And then they’re just posting their link and like you said, Airbnb prioritizes listings that are getting books and if you’re not booking that listing when you’re clicking on that, there’s this thing called a CTR or a click through rate and when you’re clicking on the link and then you’re just backing out of it, Airbnb is going to look at that and say, “Well, nobody wants to stay here. They’re just leaving.” So they’re not going to prioritize you, but if people are clicking on that and then they’re hitting the book now, then obviously that’s a place that people want to stay at. So again, don’t be sharing your links all over Facebook asking for people to review them. If you want someone to review it, ask. Pay for a professional who can optimize your listing if you’re going to be doing it that way, but don’t just ask the community like, “Hey, review my listing because you’re going to get a lot of eyeballs on that and then you’re going to lower your click through rate.”

Jon Bell:                               08:42                     All right, host question of the day. Who wants to share their listing? Please add your links down below.

Julian Sage:                         08:46                     Well, we’ll be sure to make sure that everybody clicks on them. So until next time, host nation, keep on hosting. Hope you hosts found value in this episode. If you did, please go on over to iTunes and leave us a review that would greatly support the show. If you’d like to connect with Jon, the community, and I then go on over to our Facebook group, the host nation,

Julian Sage:                         09:05                     Talk to you hosts in the next episode. Keep on hosting.