4 Airbnb Listing Tips To Optimize Your Rental: From A Team of Superhosts

Creating a new listing on Airbnb is one thing, making it actually come up in search results and get more bookings is another. Most hosts struggle with finding a listing that works for them. Unoptimized Airbnb listings can result in less visibility, lower attractiveness, and overall fewer guests. Let’s be real, even when you’re booking a rental yourself, you’d always pick a listing with a captivating title and high-quality images, right?

Airbnb listings can go a long way. We know some cases where the hosts have an amazing rental property but their occupancy rate is lower than nearby comparables, mainly because of their bad listing. We don’t want you to fall into that same rabbit hole.

So, today, we’re sharing with you our own personal tips and tricks when creating a listing. Here are 5 insider Airbnb listing tips from our team of Superhosts at BNBCalc.

Images, Images, and More Images!

Whenever you’re planning a vacation and are skimming through potential options to stay at, what’s the first thing that you look at? Photos. We as humans are very visual creatures, especially with the rise of social media.

We prefer seeing rather than hearing and reading. Yes, it’s important to have an inviting title, but it’s even more important to have captivating images.

Airbnb only requires you to add 5 photos to be able to publish a listing. However, we’ve found that more is often better when it comes to showcasing your Airbnb property. This doesn’t mean that you should go ahead and add 100 images of your short-term rental; nobody is going through all of those. For us, our space typically has around 15 to 30 high-quality photos.

Here are a few tips you can follow when it comes to the photos of your Airbnb rental:

• High-Quality Photos: A DSLR camera often provides the highest quality photos, but most top-of-the-line phones can deliver great results as well. You might even want to consider hiring a professional photographer.
• Showcase all rooms, amenities, and interior design: The main purpose of photos is to show off your property. You’ll want to cover each area and provide enough images from different angles, featuring your furnishing and, setting the stage nicely.
• Give Some Thought To Your Photo Arrangement: Your listing has to be coordinated. Don’t make it harder for guests to browse the images, make sure that they are in the right order and places. You might also want to create sections dividing each area. Try to not only capture the ambiance of your home, but also show off everything you can offer to a potential guest.
• Choose The Right Profile Photo: The profile picture is one of the main things that most Airbnb hosts can forget about. Use one that shows your entire face and makes you seem inviting and trustworthy. It’s one of those factors that you might not always consider. We’ve seen plenty of hosts with profile pictures of their kids or their furry friends. It’s honestly one of the worst things you can do. Leave that stuff on other social media sites.

Pro Tip: Review all of your photos and double-check for any repeat images, errors, or bad angles.

Optimize Your Airbnb Listing SEO

When we say we want our Airbnb listing to stand out, it means we want to get noticed. The key to this is to make our perfect vacation rental listing as visible as possible. However, you can’t achieve that unless you show up in Airbnb search results.

We can’t cover everything about Airbnb SEO here, as it could easily fill an article on its own. However, it revolves around what guests are searching for and which room types or listings appear in those searches. It also includes understanding which listings show up first in results and which don’t appear at all.

From that basic explanation, you can probably see how important Airbnb SEO is to your listing visibility. Here are three simple tips and tricks to help you improve and optimize your listing page effectively.

1. Use Relevant Keywords

It all starts with researching popular search terms relevant to your property and the amenities you have. Using relevant keywords in your listing title and description helps signal to Airbnb's algorithm what your property offers and allows the platform to understand when to make it appear in searches.

Most keywords that you’d want to use include local attractions, amenities, and specific features that potential guests might search for. Here are a few examples of descriptive titles with seamless keywords that can help you achieve better rankings:

• Pet-Friendly Rental Near Disneyland
• Beach-side Villa With Pool
• Cozy Studio Apt in Historic District
• Secluded Mountain Cabin with Hot Tub
• Modern 3BR/2BA Condo Near Staples Center
• Stylish Downtown Loft w/ Rooftop Pool & City Views

You can even add extra terms like “5-minute walk to the beach,” or “with Karaoke room” to be more descriptive and add additional highlights. By integrating keywords naturally into your title and description, it’s easier for guests to find your listing.

However, there’s a fine line to walk here. You don’t want to keyword stuff, as that makes your listing difficult to read and off-putting. What we’re looking for instead is a description that flows while also being keyword-rich.

Pro Tip: It’s smart to refresh your keywords periodically based on market trends and guest feedback. This keeps your listing fresh and in line with what the Airbnb community is searching for.

2. Leverage Traditional SEO Techniques

Beyond Airbnb searches, your new listing can also appear in Google searches. This exposure can connect you to a wider range of users and significantly boost your occupancy if you can rank effectively for those searches. Most of the strategies we’ve mentioned about using keywords and smoothly integrating them throughout your title and description still apply. However, you’ll need to elevate your efforts if you want to be noticed by Google.

Most of the things we’ve mentioned above about using keywords and smoothly implementing them throughout your title and description still apply here. However, you’d need to take your efforts up a notch if you want to be picked up by Google.

A ton of different factors are at play here and there’s really no shortcut or “trick” to getting your listing to appear in Google searches. However, here are a few things you should try:

• Take Your Efforts Outside of Airbnb: Create different social media pages for your rental and add links of them to each other. This helps the Google algorithm learn more about your listing and your business, and know when it’s relevant to different searches. At the same time, this also extends your reach to different platforms, so it’s definitely worth it in our opinion.
• Get Backlinks: If you have a blog write an article about your rental and link it there. If there are content creators or blog writers who visit your rental, it can also be beneficial to have them tag or link your business in their posts. You can also contact local tourism websites and ask them to feature your vacation rental if possible.
• Maintain High Reviews: Reviews are a reflection of your rental’s quality and it’s essential to keep them high. It tells both Google and Airbnb’s algorithm that you provide a high level of service and can recommend you more to future guests.

It’s really a matter of seeing what works and making adjustments as you see fit. Again, it’s hard to master all of these SEO techniques to help you appear in search results. Remember, you’re fighting against hundreds if not thousands of listings here, so we recommend being patient and doing your own research to improve your chances.

3. Update Regularly for Freshness

Another important step is keeping your listing fresh. This means updating our listing content on a regular basis.

This can mean that you’ll have to change your description to show that you are better at something now, that there is something new to do nearby, or to highlight new amenities. Even if none of these apply, we still recommend updating your description every now and then to keep up with the changes.

It's also important to regularly update photos, particularly if you’ve made upgrades or changes to your space. Additionally, it’s a smart move to adjust pricing and availability based on trends and demand. For this, we highly recommend using a dynamic pricing tool. It just makes your life so much easier while optimizing your revenue.

Pro Tip: interacting with guest reviews not only adds to your credibility but also gives you ideas for what needs to be updated. Their insights provide a valuable glimpse into what future guests can be looking for.

Highlight Your Rental’s Amenities

We think it goes without saying that most guests that are still looking for rentals to book, will put a heavy focus on the amenities that come with it. It’s one of the first things you look at when choosing between different rentals.

This is why it’s incredibly important to properly label and choose all of the amenities when creating a new listing. Some obvious must-haves are Wi-Fi, toiletries and towels, parking spaces, air conditioning or heating, and entertainment appliances like TVs or gaming systems.

However, to set your listing apart, consider amenities that aren’t available in competitor listings that would make a noticeable difference. It doesn’t always have to be pools, hot tubs, and pool tables, sometimes you can think a bit more outside the box to help you stand out even more.

Make it homey with local art, and have bicycles available for guests to cruise the neighborhood. Maybe you can add garage amenities like a karaoke or gaming room. If you have a larger backyard, you might consider adding a mini golf course as an extra attraction.

We personally have rentals with a giant Connect Four and chess board, which helps add that “wow” factor, that highlights your rentals from others.

These unique touches stick appeal with the guests and earns your listing more clicks. The best part is that the amenities that you provide can justify the prices you ask for. You create a value proposition through an unprecedented collection of must-have and one-of-a-kind amenities.

Don’t forget to add high-quality photos showcasing your different amenities and adding them down in your rental’s description.

Look at Similar Comps

The final tip we have for you today is to simply look at similar Airbnbs. Why you might ask? Well, by default these are going to give you the most information.

Search for rentals that fit your specifications and price range, and study them. Find out what they do best, how they compose their titles, and which keywords are they using. You can also check out their descriptions, and see how they are setting them up. You can also use their photos as a basis to improve yours.

The point of this is to discover what works. Find the top similar rentals, analyze them, and compare them to what you are currently doing. We’ve honestly done this for some underperforming rentals and the difference can be night and day. We’re not saying that you should copy everything they do down to the dot, but you can use them as a guide to assist you in determining what you’re doing wrong.

One of the best ways to find similar Airbnb listings is to use our BNBCalc property analysis tool. Enter your address, input the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, how many guests you can accommodate, and the purchase price. Wait a few seconds, and you’ll have a list of up to 40 nearby Airbnb listings that are most similar to your property. From there, you can just click on each one to browse their rentals.