This article provides a list of common questions and answers about Hosted Websites that are not covered elsewhere.
- Can I use an OwnerRez Hosted Website without using any other OwnerRez features?
- Can I set a favicon for my Hosted Website, that's visible in browser tabs?
- How do I optimize my Hosted Website for SEO?
- How do I generate a sitemap for my website?
- How do I control the property name that shows on the property page of a multi-property site?
- I'm adding another property to OwnerRez but I don't want it to appear on my Hosted Website just yet.
- How can I "hide" the rates range on my Hosted Website?
- How do I change the order of the properties listed on my website?
Can I use an OwnerRez Hosted Website without using any other OwnerRez features?
OwnerRez Hosted Websites are driven directly from the database that contains your OwnerRez account. It is not possible to keep the website without having an active OwnerRez account. Since the website is integrated with your calendars, Book Now, property descriptions, etc., it's not clear what the purpose would be of a Hosted Website that didn't have an underlying operational OwnerRez account.
Can I set a favicon for my Hosted Website, that's visible in browser tabs?
Yes! That's under the Settings of your Hosted Website entry:
As noted, favicons must be square, png or ico format, and no more than 500 Kb in size
How do I optimize my Hosted Website for SEO?
Our OwnerRez Hosted Websites are highly optimized for speed and performance in several different ways. All images and webpages are served over thousands of global Content Delivery Network (CDNs) edge locations on every continent and are optimized for long caching. And our Hosted Website pages are minified and designed to display beautifully on mobile, tablet or desktop environments.
There will naturally be some slowness over slow networks, but by using aggressive caching and reducing document sizes to bare minimums (as OwnerRez has done) the impact of such latency is mitigated, especially for requests after the first request.
It is not normally possible to compete in the search engines against the vast advertising power of vacation rental listing channels such as Vrbo and Airbnb - your website normally builds repeat business from guests who first find you via the channels, and then book directly for later visits. Ordinarily, you will rarely if ever have guests who find you via a simple Google search.
So what can OwnerRez users do to optimize their Hosted Website for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
All OwnerRez Hosted Websites are designed automatically to be able to be effectively discovered and indexed by major search engines, such as Google. While not usually necessary to perform any special SEO optimization, there are commonly available tools that can assist in that process, such as the following.
Other important suggestions include the following.
- Be sure that the Title and Lead fields for each page are populated for your Hosted Website.
- Meta descriptions are the short summaries of text you see on the results page in Google so really make those words count.
- Headlines in the body of your property description should be descriptive, not just a property name. This is your opportunity to sell your property to guests.
- Be sure to include all property amenities.
- Run the OwnerRez Listing Quality Analyzer to check for errors and recommendations for improvement.
- Some OwnerRez users have had search engine success in smaller markets, by creating unique and relevant local content on a Custom page or Blog on their Hosted Website. This might be a regularly-updated calendar of local events; an index of local attractions with links out to their own websites and links back to your site from theirs; reviews of local restaurants; or many other possible ideas. Google places a high value on this.
- Establishing a business profile presence on Google is helpful and they may email you monthly Business Profile reports that include the top Google search terms. Be sure to include those top search terms on your website.
- If possible, optimize property images to a smaller total size for improved load times.
- Include captions for all images to sell your property's experience.
- Avoid additional scripts and custom fonts if possible as these can slow load times.
We have not found any commercially-available SEO services to provide any useful value, but, if you do desire to engage such a service, they generally want to place entries in the HEAD area of your website. This is accessible on the Head tab under the Theme & Layout button in your Hosted Website settings.
How do I generate a sitemap for my website?
No need - OwnerRez generates that for you automatically! It's also automatically included in the robots.txt used by all the standard search engines, so they'll know where to find it.
If you need the direct sitemap link, add /sitemap.xml to the end of your domain. So if your site is acmevacations.com, the sitemap link is:
https://www.acmevacations.com/sitemap.xml
How do I control the property name that shows on the property page of a multi-property site?
In most places, the hosted website will show the public name of the property configured on the Info tab of each property (or the name if no public name is configured).
On the individual property page, the title will be the public name of the property. If there is a headline set on the Description tab of the property AND that headline is different than the public name, that page will also show a subtitle with the property headline.
I'm adding another property to OwnerRez but I don't want it to appear on my Hosted Website just yet.
You can easily do this under your Hosted Website settings. Click 'Change Settings' and scroll to the bottom of the page. The default is 'All' so you can change it to 'Everything but' or 'Only' and select which property or properties you need to show/hide.
How can I "hide" the rates range on my Hosted Website?
Don't like how the rates range is displayed on your Hosted Website?
Users that feel confident in their HTML skills can use our CSS snippets to remove rates site-wide. The rest of us should follow the instructions below.
Users can change that by navigating to Settings > My Website > Hosted Website > their specific Website > Change Settings.
From the Rate Display drop-down list in the Display section, users can select None to hide the rates range site-wide on their Hosted Website.
Be sure to hit Save.
How do I change the order of the properties listed on my website?
OwnerRez properties automatically display in alphabetical order however users can change that by navigating to Properties > Display Order.
Select the External tab and drag and drop the properties into the desired order. Click Save.