In the fiercely competitive world of vacation rentals, one U.S.-based cabin rental company faced significant challenges in outperforming behemoths like Airbnb and Booking. Armed with a high-quality service but lacking in online visibility, the company sought to make a meaningful change. This comprehensive case study details how ScaledOn, a leading digital marketing firm, deployed a carefully crafted SEO strategy to increase the company’s organic conversions by 42.16% year-over-year (YoY). The approach focused on Google’s best practices, including creating helpful, reliable, people-first content and efficient website hierarchy optimization.
- Client: Vacation Cabin Rental Company 🏡
- Industry: Vacation Homes 🏘️
- ScaledOn Department/s Involved: SEO 🔍
- Key Tactics: Website hierarchy, content, and structure improvement 💻
- Key results: 42.16% increase in organic conversions and 29% organic traffic growth 📈
The Competitive Landscape of Vacation Rentals 🏘️
According to an in-depth analysis by Statista, the revenue in the ‘Vacation Rentals’ segment within the U.S. travel and tourism market is poised for robust growth from 2023 to 2027. The forecast suggests a cumulative increase of 1.2 billion U.S. dollars, marking a growth rate of +6.19 percent over this period. After seven consecutive years of revenue increases, the sector is projected to reach a record high of 20.57 billion U.S. dollars by 2027.
This data underscores the tremendous growth potential within the vacation rental market, making it all the more essential for businesses in this sector to optimize their strategies for capturing a significant share of this burgeoning revenue.
Key Competitors 👀
Fierce competition comes from established players like Airbnb and Booking.com, which have substantial market shares and global reach. These giants benefit from economies of scale, technology infrastructure, and multi-million-dollar marketing campaigns, posing an almost insurmountable barrier for smaller businesses.
The Challenge 🤔
Navigating the increasingly congested waters of the U.S. vacation cabin rental market, our client specializes in offering unique and cozy cabins nestled in picturesque mountain locales. While these offerings represent a distinct alternative to the standardized options often provided by industry juggernauts like Airbnb and Booking.com, the company faced a daunting challenge: achieving the level of online visibility required to drive organic growth and sustain profitability.
Despite their niche focus on delivering high-quality, intimate experiences in natural settings, they found themselves overshadowed in search engine results by their larger competitors’ expansive digital footprints and multimillion-dollar marketing budgets. This deficiency in online visibility not only undermined their brand but also led to stagnated growth rates and diminishing returns. With limited organic traffic, the company was missing out on the lucrative opportunities offered by the booming vacation rental market, thereby inhibiting its potential for both market share expansion and profitability.
The Goals 🚩
In a market saturated by dominant forces, our client had clear and pressing objectives. First, they aspired to elevate their presence in organic search rankings, aiming not just for visibility but for a prominent position that would make them a go-to choice for cabin rentals in coveted mountain destinations. Second, they aimed to significantly boost conversion rates, transforming casual browsers into confirmed bookings and, ideally, long-term customers.
To actualize these ambitions, it was evident that a piecemeal approach would not suffice. What was needed was a comprehensive, meticulously planned Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy. This strategy had to be robust enough to compete head-to-head with industry giants, who benefit from significantly larger marketing budgets and technological resources. Moreover, it had to be precisely tailored to resonate with the client’s unique brand proposition, effectively converting the increased organic reach into tangible business results.
The ScaledOn Approach ✅
ScaledOn’s strategy revolved around Google’s guidelines for creating helpful, reliable, people-first content and Search Essentials. The focus was to generate value-driven content that resonated with the target audience while ensuring that the content was in line with Google’s algorithmic considerations.
Adhering to SEO Best Practices for Transformative Results ⭐
In alignment with Google’s recommendations, the core practices deployed included:
- Creation of helpful, reliable, people-first content.
- Improving the website hierarchy
- Improving internal linking
- Effective keyword optimization in prominent locations on the website.
- Active community engagement to bolster the brand’s online presence.
Creating Helpful, Reliable, People-First Content 👨👩👧👦
One of the cornerstone principles Google advocates is the need to create helpful, reliable, people-first content. According to Google’s automated ranking systems, the search engine is designed to prioritize information that benefits people over content optimized solely for improving search engine rankings. Aligning with this principle, ScaledOn adopted a human-centric approach to content creation for our client. We crafted rich, authentic, and insightful articles and site content that not only resonated with the client’s target audience but also met Google’s strict criteria for quality and relevance.
Adhering to Search Essentials 🔍
The Google Search Essentials lay out the core tenets that make web-based content eligible to perform well on Google Search. We paid close attention to these guidelines, ensuring that all web assets, including images, videos, structured data, and JavaScript elements, were optimized to Google’s specifications.
Implementing Key Best Practices 🙌
By strictly adhering to these foundational practices, ScaledOn devised a comprehensive SEO strategy that was not only aligned with Google’s rigorous standards but was also tailored specifically to meet the unique challenges and opportunities presented by the client’s niche market.
- Strategic Keyword Placement: Beyond just including relevant keywords, we placed them in prominent areas like the title and main headings, as well as in alt text and link text to improve the page’s SEO.
- Crawlable Link Structures: Internal links were meticulously organized to be crawlable, enabling Google to discover other relevant pages on the client’s website.
- Community Engagement: As part of our holistic strategy, we encouraged clients to be active in online communities relevant to their business. This approach allowed them to inform like-minded individuals about their unique offerings, thereby driving more qualified traffic to their site.
- Multi-Media Best Practices: We also focused on optimizing other types of content like images and videos, adhering to specific best practices to ensure that Google could understand these elements.
- Enhanced Site Features: Special features were enabled on the client’s site to improve its appearance on Google Search, thereby elevating user experience and enhancing visibility.
- Content Visibility Controls: For content that the client preferred not to appear in search results, we employed the appropriate methods to control its visibility, as per Google’s guidelines.
SEO Cluster Strategy 👩💻
SEO clusters group relevant content together, making it easier for both users and search engines to find related topics. By fully covering a topic, it’s possible to build topical relevance and authority, thereby improving SEO.
ScaledOn recommended improving the website’s hierarchy by adding regional pages and activity pages. Regional and activity pages were linked with related blog articles and property listings to form content clusters. This effective internal linking helped in enhancing the website’s topical authority.
Link Strategy 🔗
To further support the SEO cluster approach, a robust internal linking strategy was developed. This involved connecting related blogs with regional and activity pages and interlinking them with available properties. The intent was to guide users through a seamless informational and transactional journey, simultaneously aiding Google in understanding the context and relevance of each page.
Organic Results 📊
The ultimate barometer of any SEO campaign’s success lies in the measurable outcomes it produces. For our client, the indicators were nothing short of transformative. After integrating the strategic recommendations provided by ScaledOn, they didn’t just see incremental improvements; they experienced a meteoric rise in key performance indicators that matter the most: organic traffic and conversions. Below, we delve into the specifics of these outstanding results, demonstrating not only the potency of a well-crafted SEO strategy but also the immense value that ScaledOn brings to the table.
Organic Traffic Growth 📈
After implementing ScaledOn’s strategic recommendations, the company experienced a noticeable upswing in organic traffic, increasing by 29% from 13,000 visitors in 2022 to 17,000 visitors in 2023. This surge validated the efficacy of the implemented SEO strategies.
| Users | New Users | Sessions | |
| Organic Search Growth from 2022 to 2023 | 24.02% 🔼 | 25.42% 🔼 | 29.02% 🔼 |
Organic Conversion Increase 🏆
Most impressively, the company recorded a remarkable 42.16% YoY increase in organic conversions. The figures jumped from 350,000 conversions in 2022 to nearly 500,000 in 2023, providing conclusive evidence of the successful optimization efforts.
| Organic Traffic Data | Revenue | Conversion Rate | Transactions |
| 2022 Data | ~$350,000 | 1.04% | 137 |
| 2023 Data | ~$497,000 | 1.21% | 206 |
| Change and Growth | 42.16% 🔼 | 16.55% 🔼 | 50.36% 🔼 |
Conclusion 🎯
Scaling the summits of SEO success in a market saturated with giants like Airbnb and Booking.com is no small feat. Yet, this U.S.-based cabin rental company managed to do just that by partnering with ScaledOn. The tailored SEO strategy yielded an increase of 29% in organic traffic and a striking 42.16% YoY increase in organic conversions, clearly substantiating the power of an effective, people-first SEO strategy.
🌟 Are you looking to propel your business to unprecedented
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