What do guests search for in a Belgian holiday home?

Region first, then the number of people

Across ninety days we drew 43,576 impressions at Google, good for 754 clicks. Of those impressions, 24,871 are visible per search term, spread across 2,494 different terms. That is fifty-seven per cent; Google suppresses the rest because the term is too rare, so we cannot classify those. Everything on this page covers our Dutch language domain; the other three domains count separately and appear on the page about our four languages.

Within what is visible, region wins. Searches about the coast account for 6,196 impressions and those about the Ardennes for 5,580. Together that is close to half of all visible demand, and it involves words like by the sea, Ardennes, Semois, Durbuy and High Fens.

Next comes the number of people, at 4,339 impressions. Those are searches like ten person holiday house, home for six, or holiday rental fifteen people. A guest searching for a group simply types that number, and it is one of the few searches in which someone describes themselves completely straight away.

Flemish regions together reach 480 impressions, far below the Ardennes and the coast. That is not a judgement on Flanders but on where people look for a holiday home; for a Flemish property the municipality name and the number of people therefore matter more than the word Flanders.

Features only come third

Pool, sauna and hot tub together reach 1,768 impressions. The type of property, with words like chalet, tiny house, farmhouse and castle, comes to 900. Pets sit at 641 and an occasion such as a weekend away or new year at 185. Children account for twenty-two.

Set that against what our listings can answer. A hundred and two of our two hundred and twenty-two properties online allow pets, eighty-three have a sauna or hot tub, thirty a pool. Eighty-three take ten guests or more and fifteen are meant for two people.

There is not a single property with us that has no features ticked, and the median sits at twenty-two features per property. The problem is therefore not that hosts neglect that list. It is that the list serves the smallest of the three blocks, while region and capacity are the big two.

For you that sets an order. Make sure your location and your maximum number of guests are right first, because those are the two fields through which most of the demand arrives. Only after that is it worth expanding your features, however tempting it is to start with that list.

Where we rank poorly, and where we do not

Our average position across everything is twenty-eight. On the two biggest blocks we sit deeper still: 36.2 on average for coastal searches and 41.7 for the Ardennes. On searches with a pool in them we sit at fifty-two. Those are positions almost nobody clicks on.

On our own name we sit at 3.2, and that is where 127 of the 754 clicks come from. That term carries only 223 of the 24,871 visible impressions, so not even one per cent, and still delivers roughly one click in six. That is the same mechanism working against us on every other term.

There is one non-brand term where we do rank well: searches about booking directly with the owner, at position 6.6. It involves 86 impressions, so a small volume, but it is the only place where our position is comparable to the one on our own name.

What all of that says together is not pleasant but it is useful. Generic regional terms are not ones we win today, and a better listing changes little there, because that is authority. Specific combinations are within reach, and there your listing genuinely decides whether you take part.

What to do with those words on your own listing

Use the words guests type rather than the ones from your own brochure. Holiday house by the sea and ten people are search terms; uniquely situated property is not. That applies to your title, your first sentence and your meta description, and turning it around costs you nothing.

Enter your location and your themes as fields rather than only as text. Those fields determine which region and theme page you land on, and that is precisely where most of our search traffic arrives. A property whose location is not filled in appears on no region page at all.

Look at the tail as well. Outside our classification sit another 4,451 impressions across 520 terms, including luxury holiday home belgium at 248 and the two spellings of east cantons holiday house at 394 combined. Those are exactly the questions where a specific listing beats a general one.

And keep the ratio in mind: 754 clicks on 43,576 impressions is 1.7 per cent. We sit at position twenty-eight on average, and no listing can make up for that. What your listing does do is take part where we sit close, and there are more of those places than the big terms suggest.

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