For Vacation Rentals, Hotels, Guest Houses, and Self Caterers – you Can Do your Own Website and Keep your Webmaster Too. Much Better

Many vacation property and hotel owners around the world would like to try doing their own web site. But they already have an existing site, it brings good business, and they use an outside webmaster to run it for them. Sometimes the webmaster is a smart amateur, or else an expensive professional. I have a lot of friends in the Scottish Highlands who are worried about doing their own sites, but bit by bit they have come around to it. We started our own site in Glencoe for our holiday cottage and now it has the biggest traffic in the area, and top spot in searches. No one else to help.

Here is the owners problem
They don’t want to upset the specialist. These advisers maintain the site and do the updates and earn money from the owner. But it is awkward, time-consuming and costly working with them, compared to instantly doing it for yourself.

Sometimes owners are uncertain of their own computer skills, it sounds fearsomely difficult. It isn’t, but they need convincing.

Sometimes they think of taking back their site from their webmaster, but they then think that that it needs an understanding of code. It doesn't, and don’t go there is my advice. There are software programmes which will do the code for you. If you can cut and paste you can do your own website

Wait a minute, it is all possible.
You can stay friends with your web specialist, tell them what you propose and ask them to help when you need it – for a fee.

Keep your existing web site going is my advice. At least for a while. But you can do a new web site yourself which you can devote to the most difficult part of your business – selling the short breaks in the off-season.

Now there is a challenge, which could pay handsome dividends. It does not cost much to host the site – your webmaster might help. Nothing much to maintain it, and the software costs you little. Don’t go for the big Dreamweaver package, unless you enjoy staying awake at night solving the problems. You can also take your time in a leisurely fashion to get to grip with it. No need to hurry, your existing site is still working

New web sites need a bit of time to build up. It takes time to build up your knowledge, and to build visitors to the site. Google takes her time to put you up the rankings. There is a lot of fun learning to do the marketing of your site. The results may not be quick, but they'll be there.

Warning. Use different content.
You must not use the same content for each site. Google will not like it. Not a bit. A bit of the same copy is ok, but not whole pages. You can always link from your new site to the existing one if you want. You could link to your availability, for example, and this saves you doing two pages. You can link to prices as well. No need to create those pages afresh.

You can give your new site its own identity, you can go after specialised market sectors – you do this with keywords – and you can have a lot of fun.

To be effective, a web site for a hotel, guest house or holiday home does not need a great deal of content – not unless you want to build very high traffic, then it does. Google will like that, rich content, but it is not vital.

Don’t go for one of these simple web do-it-yourself packages, it will not give you the options you will want. Quite quickly you will want to do a bit more and run a proper web site

I use Serif Webplus9 for all my websites, and the software is brilliant. Very very easy to use. You can do all you wish with it. Have a look at our site; this software did it from scratch. www.bayviewkentallen.co.uk.

They’ve upgraded WebPlus to 10 now, and it can be bought from their site. Very good technical support, they don’t mind how long they spend with you, and answer quickly. The best online tech support I’ve come across. Webplus10 has features I don’t need that’s all. (I've got no connection at all with them, in case you are wondering.) http://www.serif.com/webplus/webplus10/index.asp

If you want to get a series of short articles on how to prepare your vacation rental website then here is a blog I do for Scottish vacation rental owners. http://holidayhomewebsupport.blogspot.com

Good luck,

John