Tools to Optimize a Vacation Rental Website
Over the next several posts we’ll cover 8 areas that are often overlooked when developing a vacation rental website.
What we’re talking about are issues most people aren’t aware of.
You may not realize these issues exist, and how they could be costing you bookings. They can also affect other areas of your business.
In this post, I’ll share the # 1 most common website problem we face and the exact tools you can use to fix the issues yourself. Today!
This material is a bit “advanced”, nevertheless they’re all things you need to know if you own or are developing a vacation rental website.
These are areas you’ll need to evaluate and improve, if you want to get the maximum inquiries from Google, Bing and Yahoo.
Being fully informed on these issues, before there is a problem, will save you a ton of time and aggravation.
If you’ve already developed your vacation rental website and you’re experiencing these issues, I’m here to help you get you to the other side!
Let’s get started…
Step 1 To Fixing Your Vacation Rental Website Speed
In the series of posts I’ve been blogging about lately, I’ve explained why you should be tracking your vacation rental website’s performance statistics.
I shared why your website speed is such an important factor to Google AND your guests.
No one likes to wait!
Did you test your VR website with the free tool I gave you?
What was your score? Not so great?
No worries, I’ve got your solution 🙂
Below are some more tools you can use to cross reference the speed of your website. The tools are free or offer a free trial. Check them out.
The speed and load times of your website affect your marketing, SEO results and your customer’s experience, so this is really important.
You can read more about the importance of optimizing the speed of your website here.
On to the tools!
4 Tools To Check Your Vacation Rental Website Speed
GTMetrix – This is the tool I shared and demonstrated in the link above. Check out that post to learn more about the topic and GTMetrix.com.
Pingdom Tools – Pingdom Tools is a favorite among website owners. They provide a dashboard with an intuitive user interface. They offer a 14 day trial so you can take it for a test drive.
Monitis –The Monitis Page free website diagnostic tool is different than the other tools. Monitis provides you with a comprehensive report similar to the other tools with a twist.
The major difference is that it tests your vacation rental website in Europe, Asia and the US. Did you know your website performs differently around the globe?
If you want to attract international guests, you need to optimize your website in their geographic location.
In one of my next posts, I’ll share a tool that will help you with drawing in more guests from around the world. If you’re not subscribed to our vacation rental marketing newsletter join with us now and don’t miss out.
Google’s Pagespeed Insights– Using Google’s very own website testing tools makes perfect sense especially since one of our major goals of optimizing our website is to show up higher in Google’s search results.
The Biggest Reason Your Website Is Slow…
Optimizing Images
The biggest problems why your website is slow are likely your photos and images.
You may have heard of optimizing your website with targeted keywords to improve your vacation rental SEO results, but there are other areas of your website that you can tweak to achieve super high performance and better results on Google.
There’s a bigger picture we have to look at when using great photography.
The truth is there’s a downside to having those beautiful high resolution images. They’re heavy and bog down a website’s server.
The more images you have on your website, the slower your website will be. That is, if you don’t optimize your images.
Optimizing the photos on your website will reduce how long it takes to open and display those photos to travelers.
I have some resources below for you.
WordPress Image Optimization Plugin Tools
WP Smush– WP Smush is a top WordPress plugin. They’ve also created a video that helps explain how the image optimization tool works.
EWW Image Optimizer– EWW Image Optimizer is similar to WP Smush. It’s a WordPress plugin that once installed, you can optimize or shrink all of your website images in one shot. Above you will see their “bulk optimize” option. It’s a huge timesaver.
Imsanity– You can easily compress images using this quick, neat tool that automatically resizes images for you. The plugin is configurable with a max width, height and quality so if you upload an image that is larger than the configured size, Imsanity will automatically scale it down to the configured size and replace the original image for you.
If you don’t have a WordPress website that allows you to easily compress images loaded onto your VR website, you can still optimize your images. Here are 3 tools you can use for optimizing images.
Image Optimization Tools For Other Websites
TinyPNG is an image optimization tool that you can use if your website is built on another platform other than WordPress. The tool uses a technique called “quantisation” allowing a large 24 bit PNG image to be reduced to just 8 bits. Additionally, it removes unnecessary metadata while maintaining your image’s integrity.
JPEGmini is a great solution for any website. The image tool minimizes your images by up to 5X’s. It’s very straightforward. You simply upload your image and download the compressed image. Easy!
A benefit of using the other image optimization tools within WordPress is the ability to use ‘bulk image optimization.” This allows you to save time without having to optimize each image one by one.
You now have the tools to help you improve your website starting right now! If you would like someone to optimize your website speed, I offer the service as well.
Contact me here if you need help.
Hope you enjoyed today’s post. Let me know if you have any questions!
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