Do you Like your property?

We do hope you all enjoyed the Christmas break, especially since the first week back is feeling like a rollercoaster! Our websites are humming, proving that despite economic gloom January is still an amazingly popular time for people to book holidays.

Enquiries are coming thick and fast. There’s also something new happening following an update we made to España Breaks in December: an explosion of sharing.

All our property listings are now plastered with social buttons allowing visitors to easily share your property details with their friends and family. And boy are they using them… Since updating the page layout we’ve seen sharing activity double.

Facebook, Tumblr and email seem to be the most popular ways people are passing our holiday pages around, with social bookmarking services (Reddit, Stumbleupon) and also Twitter increasing too.

Our web analytics tell us what you probably already know: Visitors derived from these social networks (the web’s word-of-mouth) are much more engaged and more likely to turn into paid holidaymakers.

It’s an incredibly good way to raise enquiry levels.

But wait, it gets better…

The search engines are playing an unending game of trying to figure out which web pages are most relevant to users. They use a myriad of methods (called ‘ranking signals’) and it is no surprise they now watch social networks very carefully: Web chatter by real people is an important indicator of a page’s relevance.

This gives us a double whammy effect: The first is an immediate increase in the number of people looking at your property page when it gets shared.

But secondly, the search engines believe sharing activity is a ranking signal - giving you higher prominence in the search engines and more long term traffic. It truly is the gift that keeps giving.

Start sharing!

To make the most of the effect, ensure you start sharing your property pages on your own social networks (a Facebook “Like” is the most popular method) and wherever else it makes sense to do so.

One small note of warning: Don’t turn into a sleazy salesman!

Social networks are generally a conversation with friends; choose your wording carefully and use a natural tone. Screaming “PLEASE RENT MY VILLA” will probably just annoy people; be more subtle perhaps by talking about improvements you’ve had made, how bookings are going, etc.

In short, be conversational.

Happy renting!