listing optimisation Archives

Where to List Your London Apartment: Top 5 Sites

Posted on 5 October 2023 - 10:24 am

London, with its grandeur and bustling life, remains a prime location for real estate. For property owners, the city offers a golden opportunity to lease out their apartments to a diverse set of clientele – be it tourists, professionals, or students. But where exactly should you list your London apartment to attract potential renters? With a multitude of rental platforms available, it becomes essential to cherry-pick the best ones. This blog will unveil the top five sites where you can list your London apartment for maximum visibility and returns.

1. Rightmove

The UK’s Number One Property Website

Rightmove stands tall as one of the UK’s most dominant property listing sites. With its user-friendly interface, extensive database, and innovative features like ‘Draw-a-Search’, it caters to millions of monthly visitors. Property owners can benefit from the site’s vast reach and credibility. Rightmove offers comprehensive analytics, enabling landlords to track the performance of their listings and adjust accordingly. Moreover, its mobile app ensures potential tenants can view your apartment even on-the-go.

2. Zoopla

Delivering Smarter Property Choices

Zoopla has carved its niche in the property listing world, not just by its vast collection of properties but also through its unique tools. The site’s ‘SmartMaps’ feature provides a visual exploration of a neighbourhood, allowing renters to understand the local amenities, schools, and transport links. For landlords, Zoopla’s ‘Property Valuation Tool’ can be a game-changer, helping to set competitive prices. Additionally, its engaging blog section offers insights into the latest real estate trends, keeping both landlords and tenants informed.

3. Spareroom

Transforming the Room Rental Scene

If you’re looking to rent out a single room or a shared space in your London apartment, Spareroom is your go-to platform. As the UK’s leading flatshare website, it connects landlords with potential roommates, ensuring compatibility. With features like ‘Buddy Up’, tenants can even team up with others to find a shared space, ensuring your apartment is always in demand. For those concerned about security, Spareroom offers an ‘Advanced Member Verification’ feature, giving an added layer of trust.

4. Gumtree

The Classic Choice for Direct Listings

Gumtree, although a classified ads platform, has a robust property listings section. Being one of the UK’s largest digital brands, it offers landlords a wide audience without getting confined to just property-seekers. The platform allows direct interaction between landlords and potential tenants, eliminating the need for middlemen. With its easy-to-use listing procedure and the option to highlight ads for better visibility, Gumtree remains a favourite for many London apartment owners.

5. OpenRent

Empowering Landlords with Flexibility

OpenRent is more than just a listing site; it’s a comprehensive rental platform. It integrates property advertising with tenancy creation and rent collection. Landlords have the flexibility to choose the services they need, making the entire rental process seamless. OpenRent also lists your property on major platforms like Rightmove and Zoopla, ensuring maximum exposure. Its transparent fee structure and landlord-friendly tools make it a top choice for many apartment owners in London.

Conclusion:

Listing your London apartment on the right platform is crucial in today’s competitive rental market. Whether you’re aiming for broad exposure, unique features, or flexibility, the platforms mentioned above cater to varied needs. By strategically choosing where to list, landlords can ensure their property not only reaches a vast audience but also finds the right tenant. After all, in the world of property rentals, it’s not just about finding a tenant, but the right tenant.

If you feel you could benefit from Keey’s services, take a look at what we can do for you at Keey!

How to Optimise Your Airbnb Listings

Posted on 19 July 2021 - 11:00 am

When it comes to property listings on booking platforms, potential guests will see first a title, preview photo and review rating. If they’re interested, they’ll read the description for your listing to find out more information.

While we have articles that go over how to take the best photos for your Airbnb listing and how to get positive reviews on Airbnb, in this article, we will focus on creating an engaging title and description for your short-term rental listing.

With so many listings to browse through, it’s important to create a catchy title and snappy description that promotes your property as the best place to stay for potential guests.

Creating an enticing title for your property listing:

Type of words

In your title, try to include catchy words that illustrate what your listing is. According to Transparent, these are some of the most frequently used words in the top 10% of listings:

Location: beach, downtown, lake, ocean, park
Space: cosy, private, luxury, spacious, retreat
Unique features: view, pool, walk
Appearance: modern, beautiful

Not only are these high-performing words incredibly positive, but they also give an insight into that the experience guests will have if they stay at your property.

On the other hand, words such as beautiful and luxury tend to be overused, so it’s best to avoid generic terms like these and find alternatives that grab the reader’s attention.

In addition, the type of words you use in your title depends on the core demographic you’re trying to market towards – while couples will resonate with a romantic getaway, families will be more interested in a kid-friendly place.

Title length

With certain booking platforms having a character limit for titles – e.g. up to 50 characters for an Airbnb title – use emojis, symbols and abbreviations to save a few characters without having to convey less information. Here are some common abbreviations to use in your title:

With (w/)
Air conditioning (AC)
Apartment (APT)
Bedroom (BR)
Bathroom (BA)

For booking platforms that haven’t got a strict length for titles, keep the overall length around 40 characters (or 7-9 words). Highlighting unique amenities or mentioning the location of your property in a longer title is also a good way to boost traffic to your listing.

Using capital letters for the first letter of every word has worked well for many Airbnb listings. While using capital letters in your title will get clicked on more, don’t capitalise everything in the entire title!

A catchy title will inspire more people to click on your listing, resulting in a higher click-through rate. With more people looking at your listing, this can lead to a higher conversion rate from leads to customers.

Examples of top titles picked out by iGMS:

Rustic Private Cottage w/ King Bed + Oceanside View
Spacious 4 BR Near Eiffel Tour – 7 Min Walk
Luxury Beach House Perfect for Romantic Weekend Getaway
Enjoy Sunsets at Fully Equipped 2BR Condo at the Beach

Creating an engaging description for your property listing:

Length of description

On average, the best performing descriptions for short-term rental listings are around 450 words long.

Rather than providing information in one large chunk of text, Beyond Pricing recommends breaking up blocks of text longer than four lines. The whitespace that’s created will help a listing appear light on the webpage and digestible to the reader.

And as people tend to scan listing descriptions for unique features, breaking up text into subheadings can help people find the information they’re looking for.

Ideally, you’d want to create a simple description that is brief and succinct, increasing engagement towards your listing.

Style of writing

The description for your listing should help secure bookings as well as set guests’ expectations. While you should talk about the experience being offered to guests, in terms of the property and its selling points, remember to be authentic, honest and clear.

This can be done by using concise yet compelling language, considering what the traveller would want to know before they decide to book a reservation at your property.

By being thoughtful and specific, you will inject warmth and personality into your writing. A conversational style of writing also allows guests to learn more about you as a host, and why you think your property is the best place for them to stay.

Key information

As your description is not long, you should focus on providing key information – the space itself and its unique features – that informs and sets the right expectations for guests looking to book the property.

The description you create should provide answers to questions guests might have, which will help determine whether your property fits with their needs.

How many people can accommodate this property?
What are the accessibility features to your property?
What are the house rules?
Are pets allowed?
What public transport works in this area?
How far away is the public transport (bus/tube)?
What grocery stores are nearby?
What are the best nearby dining options?

Through your description, you might want to briefly mention yourself as a host/property manager, in terms of when and how guests should contact you if they would like more information.

Unique selling points (USP)

As well as key information, you should mention the unique selling points (USP) of your property throughout your description to increase the quality of your listing.

By showcasing unique features – such as a swimming pool, 24-hour check-in or AC – this distinguishes your property against others in a similar location. An amenities checklist can help your listing appear to guests filtering for those amenities.

Much like the keywords in the title, USPs in your description will have to cater to your target audience. Depending on their needs, certain USPs will be more appealing than others – a games room for families, fireplace for couples, reliable Wi-Fi for business travellers – so it’s worth mentioning those in your description.

If you have space to write more, it is worth highlighting places and activities close by to your rental. Is it peaceful or bustling with life? Nearby a national park? Next to bars and pubs? Whichever it is, your description should help guests pin down what type of experience the surrounding area has to offer.

Our final say

To optimise your listing, you need to have a catchy title and snappy description, alongside great quality photos and good reviews.

If you’re struggling with ideas, it is worth looking at other listings for inspiration. See what words they use in their title, the USPs they include in their description, and so on. Even your own reviews or feedback from previous guests, about things they loved, can help update your title and description.

A 2018 Guesty Seasonality Survey revealed that only 22% of respondents update their descriptions all year round. Updating often will boost your SEO, as more visibility pushes your listing higher in search results, and lets guests know why they should book your short-term rental.

All in all, set the right expectations as you explain to guests what makes your space unique. Your title and description will help your listing stand out from the rest and help bring more potential guests to your property!

Ready to work on the title and description for your property listing? With an online management package that includes listing creation at Keey, speak to one of our team members to get started!

Tag: listing optimisation