Get feedback on how to improve your vacation rental website

From domain name to hosting, web development, marketing, etc... get expert advice on how to improve your vacation rental website.

My vacation rental:

 

www.njshorerental.net 

Your website is nicely done.  Regarding your URL, it redirects to http://njshorerental.net/default.aspx and this may be a problem with search engines if it is not redirected in a search engine friendly way.

Also, the website seems to freeze when I click on the 'Links' tab.  The hosting seems also to be a little slower than usual (you may want to try to ping it and compare it to some other similar websites).  You may also want to make the metatags titles on your subpages a little longer to maximize your search engine optimization (however, it may not be possible if you are using a template). 

You should try to avoid publishing your email on the site to avoid your mailbox from beeing flooded with spam.  Your contact form could also use a captcha verification system that allows only humans and not robots to submit your form.

Another suggestion would be to place some alt tags on the images to improve search engine optimization.

But again, overall the site is great because you have balanced very well functionality with visuals and content!  Nice job!

I seem to agree with John. One thing I could reccomend as a low budget investor is Traffic Blazer by GoDaddy. One of the best features is that it will analyze your site to fix broken links and whatnot. One thing also that will help with your pages loading faster is decrease the size of the photo. Make sure also that you tag the photo so search engines will pick up on them as well. The page name of default should be index.

 Visit us anytime at Advantage Vacation Homes in Orlando, FL for a strong example of a professional website.

 Our new website is up and I would love some feedback on what we can do.

 www.pelicanhillsresort.com

Any and all suggestions are appreciated

First of all, congratulations for a well built website.  Your site is already better than 99% of vacation rental websites out there.   However, even for the most successful sites, there is always possibility for improvement.    I think you have covered very well the visual and functionality parts of your website (I would just place a redirect from http://pelicanhillsresort.com to http://www.pelicanhillsresort.com  so that when people type your domain without the 'www' they don't get the current error "There is a problem with this website's security certificate") . 

I could suggest a few improvements from a search engine optimization prospective:

- Your current pages are being redirected from 'http://' to 'https://'  ...it is not necessary to make all pages (that don't require confidential information) 'secure'...this sometimes causes broken pages when people browse through your site.
- Also, it is better if you can make the urls more search engine friendly (I would do a mod-rewrite to end the the urls with .html instead of .aspx)
- Change the 'Home' link from https://www.pelicanhillsresort.com/Index.aspx to www.pelicanhillsresort.com (so you avoid duplicate index pages that can penalize your site on some search engines)
- I would include the populare search term 'vacation rentals' in your metatags tile, description and keywords.
- You should also make sure all pages have different metatags
- You should consider obtaining some quality related links from other vacation rental sites and vacation rental directories.

These are just some quick ways to make your site even better!

 

 

 

I would suggest doing something with all of your dead space on the site. Upon looking midway to the bottom it appears to be a ghost. Strategic banner placement or specials could be used here.

For an example of a landing page we are using this summer for Orlando Vacation Rental Homes can be seen at: Summer Deal 08.

 You could use your dead space to also redirect to landing pages such as above. We would even welcome placing a button on your site to help as well.

hey John guess your kinda the expert around this community, just wondering if you can check out my site and give me some pointers,on the looks changing things..moving things..i dont do html code so that is why i have it on a free web host site..my site is: www.prvacationrental.com it gets masked and transfered to http://freewebs.com/prvacationrental I bought the domain from godaddy, I set up key words and title and permenent redirect...now that i am on freewebs they also let me set keywords and title etc.. so the code for www.prvacationrental.com is different than http://freewebs.com/prvacationrental would this make a diff..oh im so confused...i just started this thing on freewebs on Oct 17, thanks for anyones input on this matter...thanks Joe if you want send me an email.. prvacationrental@aol.com or rinconrentals@gmail.com

John,

I appreciate the input.  I have made all the changes you suggested with the exception of converting .aspx to html.  I have my web developers now working on that now.

If there are any other suggestion they would be highly appreciated.  We have redesigned the site since you were last on.  Check it out and tell me what you think.

www.pelicanhillsresort.com

Again I appreciate your help

 

Brett

pelicanhills:

John,

I appreciate the input.  I have made all the changes you suggested with the exception of converting .aspx to html.  I have my web developers now working on that now.

If there are any other suggestion they would be highly appreciated.  We have redesigned the site since you were last on.  Check it out and tell me what you think.

www.pelicanhillsresort.com

Again I appreciate your help

 

Brett

Looks great now - Congratulations!

Any advice on my website welcome , its a project thats gradually evolved as I'm learning (could barely send an e-mail 2 years ago),.

Paricuarly interested in getting away from my reliance on only British customers (there all very depressed at the moment and Stirling has taken a dive against the Euro), I've added a translation script which I found on a previous post on this forum which according to google webmaster is showing results for top searh queries.

Have just purchased the domain name Sophiashouse.com. Thought that might have a wider appeal than sophiashouse.co.uk but would appreciate expert opinions on this , if it is a good move how do I go about changing it without loosing all the inbound links etc or is it not worth the effort.

If the domain name is worth changing should I have a complete change, how much influence does the domain name have on SEO ( is "the-best-villa-in-the-world.com" available)

 

Thanks for your expert opinions

 

 

 

Nice url name! If your looking for a example of optimized sites look at the following

http://www.mousehouseguy.com

http://www.freebydisney.com

If you need help with web optimization or search engine marketing call me up at 321-228-5917 lets talk!

What I found was the most productive was to  have people in india actually make it.  They charged me like $13 hr to do it which was well worth the time.  The guy I use is tariktalaka@gmail.com if you want to shoot him an email.  Just tell him you got the resort from pelicanhillsresort.com  - he'll know who I am.  Check out our webpage and see what you think.

Thanks for both replies, I was keen to try and do the website myself as a learning experience but will look at your websites for inspiration. I see what you mean about the optimisation on freebydisney.com ref the phrase PRINT AND FIND DISCOUNT ORLANDO COUPONS. starting with the H1 at the beginning and then repeated very frequently with bold and underlining.