Driving traffic to a holiday rental site

Ive had this site up since mid feb but i've not had anyone join it, tho i haven't really advertised it that much i would of thought i could of gotten a hand full of listings up on the site.

The site is www.rent-that-home.com

So I'm wondering if anyone has ideas on how to promote this better in the holiday rental/real estate sector of the internet.

Thanks
Steve

 

Instead of just offering one copy and pasted article, why don't you take some time to create some pieces of flagship content for your readers?

 

best way is get links from social bookmarking websites

 

I think the best thing you could do is to get some people into the door so you have some actual listings up. Nobody wants to be the first to sign up. Put up your own house on the site!

After that you might want to get a blog or articles on your site because purely commercial sites do not always have the best of luck bringing people in the door. This will also help out your search engine results.

One question to ask is why they would sign up on your site when they can post their listings on bigger sites with more traffic? What differentiates you from all the others sites. Then use that to guide your marketing.

Good luck.

 

Yeah you really need to start putting the website in various relevant directories and after that you need to use article marketing and even if you have a small budget you should go with some ppc advertising with long tail keywords.

If you are completely new to internet marketing I would also suggest you read throughout this blog for some tips as well as find a few blogs.

 

Get your link post to following directories

www.azipzap.com
www.dmozwebdirectory.com
www.d96p.com

Thanks

 

thanks guys i'm gonna start getting them in loads of directories and try and write some articles hopefully get some people to post there houses up.

 

This is the type of website that you will probably have to take time to kickdrive yourself. One thing you could do is target a local area. Look through the newspaper and put the newspaper listings on your website. Generally I wouldn't copy it word for word, but I don't think it would necessarily hurt. Then you might put out some signs in the area about your website and see if the traffic roles in that way. Eventually, people will include the listings for you, but they won't do it if they think it is a waste of time and/or money.

 

Look at it from the customer's point of view. Why would they want to list on your site for a fee?

Offer a reason why. Traffic & Testimonials are good here

 

In addition to looking in your local area, find a few rentals or renters in your area and offer them a free listing or several free listings.

Additionally, once you have some local rentals listed, run a geo-targeted Google Adwords campaign to drive traffic to those listings.

And a note for you: I wasn't able to get your page to load today (10/8/2008, 11:45 AM EST)

 

Look at other sites where people list. Internet is all about trust. If you have nothing then how can they trust you. Contacting people who advertise on other sites and offering free submissions to get started would be a good place to start.

 

At the moment i offer free listings so all they need to waste is time to sign up and post there listing at the moment. I am going to put in some fees at a later stage to make listings stand out more and become featured.

 

Are you contacting people directly? Or are you waiting for them to come to you? To get the ball rolling you will probably have to contact people directly.

Look at some listings in local papers and similar places, and call some advertisers, and make them an offer, but do the work of applying and filling out the form for them. After you get about 10 listing entered this way you should start seeing some people signing on for themselves.

A friend of mine started a restaurant listing service, www.reelmenu.com, but to get it off the ground he had to do the legwork himself. He had to go to the restaurants, talk with the owners, and then things started to happen. Once those original contacts saw a real listing, in 3 days or less, they started telling other restaurant owners they knew about the service.

 

I'd highlight the 'list with us for free' above the fold - I couldn't see that it was for free til I scrolled down to bottom left of website...

...in addition to above suggestions - how about a press release for your area, submit it to online sites (like prweb, webwire, etc.) and also send to local newsreporters in your town with title of subject in the email "local (insert your city here) sets up 'rent-that-home' business to take the stress out of searching for your next vacation rental" ...or something like that...

..and i'd use craigslist as well -

cheers, m

 

One of the ways of marketing is to do classified submission. I am sure you will get some positive response.

 

I would advice ppc. Really stress the need for them to use your site