May 2012
Welcome to the May 2012 Newsletter from My Favourite Holiday Cottages

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We hope everyone has a good May Day bank holiday and we'd like to say a big welcome to all the cottages which have recently signed up over the last couple of weeks. We've got some excellent news in terms of our achievements on My Favourite Holiday Cottages, so please have a look below to read on to see what we've been up to:

My Favourites is Number 1, Page 1 on Google!

The My Favourite Holiday Cottages team is very proud to announce that our website is now on the Number 1 Position on Page one of Google for it's key search term 'Holiday Cottages UK' and on page 1 for two others. Our increase in the rankings has massively increased the amount of traffic the website has been seeing. The number of unique visits we are getting now exceeds 12,000 a month generating far more click throughs and enquiries than ever before.

We're not resting on our laurels though, as we continue to improve the amount of traffic the website receives through our investment in SEO, Social Media and our Festival Cottages section (see below) as well as many other features which we have planned coming up in 2012.

Festival Cottages

As well as updating the general design of each Festival cottage page, our Festival Cottages section continues to expand with more festivals from up and down the country signing up. Our most recent signups are: Three festivals in Norfolk:

• COAST, the Cromer and Sheringham Art and Literary Festival
• Wells Pirate Festival
• Sheringham Carnival

In Derbyshire we welcomed Stainsby Festival and in Dorset, the fantastic 'Maritime Mix: The London 2012 Cultural Olympiad by the Sea' has also signed up.

We're also in the process of finalising details with some more festivals to be announced next month. If you know of any cottages in these areas mentioned who would like to take advantage of increased bookings then please recommend us to them. Let us know who you’ve recommended and for everyone that signs up we will give you a free month on our Featured Favourites section to attract even more visitors to your website.

Also, if you also know of any of festivals in your local area then let us know! Every extra festival that we can promote brings in more traffic to your listings, and can result in more bookings for whenever the festival runs. Properties in the Cheltenham area for example, will soon have 6 festivals outside the peak season to attract visitors for week or weekend breaks. If you know of a local festival that would like to be involved then please email us at info@myfavouriteholidaycottages.co.uk– we’ll follow up all suggestions on your behalf.

We’ve changed our Search Function

One of the biggest changes to the site has been the way our search results are now displayed. Previously each time an owner updated their listing this would automatically move their cottage to the top of the search results. This is no longer the case, and from now on all results have been randomly ordered. This is to make it fairer to owners who may not update their listings as frequently as others which will ensure that a potential booker can find the perfect holiday cottage for them.

Get more bookings from your website.

On various searches around the internet we often find nice looking websites which, on closer inspection, lack the necessary tools or content to ensure they appeal to search engines and site visitors – or keep such visitors on their site sufficiently to attract an enquiry. Such sites are the equivalent to owning a very nice Mercedes without an engine under the bonnet: it looks stunning – but goes nowhere. It’s not only looks – the functionality of your site is vital to getting bookings.

We’ve spent years researching and designing websites exclusively for holiday property owners, (using our own properties as guinea-pigs!) and offer this service to subscribers. If you’re considering a new website – we’d be happy to take a look at your existing site, offer feedback and suggest ways a new design would help to improve your bookings. We’ve got plenty of examples and testimonials from past clients if required! Just e-mail Rick on rick@myholidaymarketing.co.uk

Our designs include – and forgive the jargon - a comprehensive Search Engine Optimisation package. Optimising your website is crucial. For the uninitiated, this ensures a site is designed to encourage search engines to rank it more highly and be found by your target customers.

There are a variety of technical things you can do to improve your websites SEO and we will be writing blog posts in the coming months on the basic top tips for making your website more appealing to search engines. We are happy to offer our comprehensive SEO service to improve a website’s rankings so if you'd like to know more please email rick@myholidaymarketing.co.uk

Top marketing tips: Blog Posts

Our recent blog posts are two excellent pieces from our resident holiday cottage expert Rick – and enhanced by some very constructive comments and advice from subscribers. The first is a good summary on what makes a cottage truly baby and toddler friendly, so have a look here for further details. Our second article covers the "Little things in a Holiday Cottage which really mean a lot". By making a holiday go from good to great guests are even more likely to return in the future. You can look at the full article here.

We are creating regular blog posts to discuss the importance of all things marketing online when it comes to holiday cottages, so if you'd like to know more about topics such as SEO, the top tips for using Facebook, or any other subject, then get in touch and we'll create something for you. Just e-mail Dan on dan@myholidaymarketing.co.uk

Finally,

As always if you'd like to know anything else about our services or how we can help you to get more bookings from your website, or just want to chat feel free to get in touch with us by emailing info@myfavouriteholidaycottages.co.uk phoning us on 0845 68054313, or take advantage of our new online live chat facility which can be found on the My Favourite Holiday Cottages website.