How to Rank #1 on Airbnb Search

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What's up guys, it's James here and in today's video, I'm going to be talking to you about how to rank number one on Airbnb search. In other words, how to get your properties to show up at the absolute top of the search results on Airbnb, so you can get more bookings for better rates and make more money in Airbnb and short term rentals. So before we dive right into that, I just want to remind you that whether you are looking to invest in properties and actually purchase short term rental properties as a means of building nice cash flow and long term wealth, or you're looking to manage other people's properties on Airbnb help deliver great returns to them. And in exchange, make a nice percentage management fee for you and build a full time income, earn six figures managing other people's properties on Airbnb, either one of those routes is available to you, depending on which one is the best fit for your current situation. And the links are in the description down below for our free trains to get you started with either one. So as a rule of thumb, if you have some money that you're looking to invest, and you actually want to go and purchase properties, then check out the link in the description down below for that free training, we're going to give you a total, you know complete step by step guide for exactly how to do that successfully and a couple tools to help you get started. If you are brand new to Airbnb, you don't have money to get started with you don't want to buy rent or own or furnish any properties. You just want to manage other people's properties and earn a full time six figure income doing that and actually build that business then there's a link in the description down below that's going to teach you how to do that. I've been working in the Airbnb space managing properties, investing in properties, consulting on properties for people for six and a half years now, I've worked with 1000s of hosts all over the world, and hundreds of property managers all over the world bunch of investors all over the world. So whatever you need there down in the description down below, those trainings are going to really help you to avoid a lot of the mistakes that I made along the way, and really propel yourself to success as quickly as possible. So make sure you use those resources. They are available just to you guys for being here on this video on this channel. So make sure you leverage those tools. That being said, let's jump in. And let's talk about how to reach number one in Airbnb search results. Now in order to do this, I first want to kind of paint you a picture. This is what I like to talk about with my students when I explained to them how Airbnb search algorithm works is basically imagine getting to the top of Airbnb search results as kind of climbing up a hill. Now if you're imagine just trying to paint a picture in your mind of a mountain and there's a kind of a ravine at the at the bottom, you've got to cross over a ravine and then kind of go through the woods and start scaling up this really jagged mountain, and then get all the way to the top where it then gets it then gets, you know, icy and cold. And it's just challenging. There's a whole bunch of challenges all the way, right. And that's all the competition that you need to be out. Now, the reason I paint that picture is because when you first launch a listing on Airbnb, Airbnb does this really cool thing where they kind of give you an opportunity to jump into a little helicopter that is sitting at the base of that mountain, and just take a helicopter up to right around the top, just shy of the top, and then just climb the last few steps up to the very top. But so many hosts, I see look at that helicopter, see the opportunity the helicopter, and then just start tracking their way through the ravine, right, that's the wrong way to go about it. And so I'm going to tell you exactly what that little helicopter is, and how you can leverage it to get most of the way up the mountain. So it's gonna be a lot easier and you can shortcut your path to success. So the the fundamental principle here is that Airbnb as a company in order for them to succeed, they need new hosts to be able to come onto the platform, right. That's how their business grows, their business grows in two ways, more guests coming onto the platform and booking listings, which then every time more guests book more listings that helps Airbnb to make more money right. Now the other way for Airbnb to grow is for more hosts to come onto the platform, because when there are more hosts, there are more available listings. So that means that there are more options for guests when they choose to have to book the place on Airbnb. And they're more likely to actually select a place because they're more likely to find something that they actually really like. And so Airbnb in order to continue growing as a company needs to make their marketplace welcoming to new hosts. If you can imagine when there's a new host versus an experienced host on the platform, the experienced host with their listing has a pretty decent leg up right, they've got a track record, they've already had months, if not years to gain experience and know how they probably priced the place a little bit better. They've already got bookings into their calendar, you know, the next few days and few months. So they're not starting with a completely fresh slate. One of the big ones is they've already got consistent reviews that hopefully are really positive. So they've got a really big advantage. And if you didn't do anything to help out the new guy, then it would be really challenging for that new guy to succeed the new host whatever really hard time competing against these experienced ones with all these other advantages that are working in their favor. And so what Airbnb does to counteract this is they give initial brand new listings, they give them this initial boost of traffic so they basically just funnel a bunch of traffic to new listings by
promoting them up higher in the search results when they're brand new. And so this way, when a new host comes onto the platform, they have an opportunity to really succeed. Now Airbnb is not going to keep them up there for an indefinite period of time, they just want to give them that opportunity. Because otherwise, if hosts weren't given an opportunity, then you would launch your property on Airbnb, there'll be crickets, you would get no bookings. And then you would just leave the platform, whereas the opposite tends to happen. If you've ever launched a listing on Airbnb, then you know that when you first launch a listing, you tend to get a bit of a flood of new bookings. If you didn't, then I hate to say it, but you did a really awful job. And you basically just took that helicopter and you know, just decide to crash it off in the wilderness and then trek your way back up the hill. So what happens here is that basically aremy gives you a bunch of initial traffic. But that's only for a short period of time, couple weeks, maybe two to three weeks, sometimes a little bit longer, sometimes a little bit shorter. Basically, what happens there is that you get this traffic, and if your listing is set up really, really well you know, your photos are dialed in, your headline is dialed dialed in your descriptions dialed in, your pricing is dialed in, then you're going to get a lot of conversions on that traffic, meaning that for every 10 people that see your listing, maybe one or two of them is actually going to book that play period of time to stay at your property. And that's great, because what that tells Airbnb algorithm is that when they show people this listing, the listing ends up getting booked. And you got to remember Airbnb doesn't charge hosts to list on the platform. So Airbnb only makes money when guests actually book a property. So you're giving really strong signals to Airbnb, if when they give you that initial traffic, you convert a lot of it because that means that when they give traffic to your listing, they make money. Ultimately, Airbnb is a for profit company, they want to make money, just like the rest of us do. And so they need to promote listings that actually get booked. Now on the other hand, if your listing is not properly optimized when you first listed meaning that maybe you shot the photos yourself, I know, I know you did. I know some of you watching this video, you went in there with your iPhone, and you shot the photos yourself. And you thought, wow, these are great, these are good enough, I'm just gonna list it because I'd rather list it with these photos, as opposed to wait an extra few days to get a professional photographer and, and miss out on those bookings. That is a perfect example of stepping over dollars to pick up pennies, because what happens when your listing isn't properly optimized, and this could be your listing headline wasn't quite dialed and you didn't take enough time to really consider what you should put there, your photos were not properly done or weren't properly ordered, or you didn't add all the captions you shipped to them. Or maybe your description isn't good enough or you didn't complete the listing entirely and check off all the different little things about the different amenities that your listing has any of those one things or maybe your pricing is set way too high. You know, any of these things that don't mean your listing is not dialed in means that Airbnb gives a whole bunch of initial traffic to you and then gets nothing in return. They don't get any bookings mean Airbnb doesn't make any money. So what that tells Airbnb is algorithm is the opposite of what you want to be hearing that tells Airbnb is algorithm that, hey, we give a bunch of traffic, this listing and it does nothing for us, we don't make any money. So let's go and give traffic to the other listings that do make us money. So what that means is that now long term, your listing is going to drop back to the lower portion of the search results. And you're going to have a really hard time getting back up higher up in the search results. And it really is is awful negative feedback loop when you get there because when you didn't optimize your listing now Airbnb algorithm realize, Oh, if we give traffic to this listing, then we don't get a return on it. We don't make money because no one books the property. So what are we going to do, we're gonna give less traffic to this listing. And then with less traffic on this listing, what happens? Well, you get less bookings. And because you get less bookings, what happens you get less traffic, because you get less traffic, you then get less bookings again. And because you get less bookings now you don't have any reviews, you've got really few reviews, and you get less bookings, and you get less bookings, so you get less views and so it's just it's just as awful negative cycle where you fall lower and lower into the search results. And now it is really challenging climb where you're trudging through the forest through the ravine up the icy Hill to try to get back up to the top of the search results. Trust me I've been there it is terrible. I've made that mistake learn from it. Do not make that yourself. Instead what you want to do is get the feedback we're working for you in the opposite direction. So you list that property Airbnb gives you an initial flood of traffic and you convert it like crazy so your listing is really dialed in. It's optimized you convert that traffic like crazy and not tells Airbnbs algorithm Holy smokes. When we give traffic to this listing, it converts and it makes us money for every person we show this listing to we make X number of dollars and that's essentially how Airbnb is algorithm is going to sort out to make sure that they're that your listing is on top. Whatever listing is on top is the one they think the guest is most likely to want obviously, because they want guests to book properties. That's great guest satisfaction when they find a property they want to book and helps Airbnb win and helps the host win.
Because the host gets bookings, everybody wins. So they want to share your property, more people because it's getting booked. So when they show your property and more people, that means more people then book it. So you get more bookings, more bookings means more reviews. And then the more reviews you get, the more people that have another reason to book your property because they were already booking before you have reviews. Now you do have reviews, so they're booking even more so then you go you and higher up in the search results. And those next couple last little steps to get to the very top to number one position are really easy, because you're already getting bookings booked without reviews. Now you're getting reviews, and you're getting more bookings, wherever you may shows you're listening to more people, because they're your shows you're listening to more people, you get more bookings, because you get more bookings, you get more reviews, because you get more views, you go even higher up in the search results. And then your number one spot and your listing is performing like crazy. I've done several videos on this channel explaining how in the very first year of launching a property that honestly I expected on the best, the best case scenario I ran the numbers on and I expected the property to do about $120,000 in revenue and bookings in its first year. And we're on track to do over 150,000 now. And that's largely because we spent the time we took an extra week with the property. And this is in pretty high season, this is beginning of June, the beginning of the high season for us. So that extra week probably cost us about seven $8,000, if you can believe it, and we left it vacant for that week, because we didn't have the photographer in there yet. We didn't the photographer wasn't able to come by so we left it for an extra week got those professional photos. And so we left money on the table there we left about seven or $8,000 on the table. But I was stepping over those pennies to pick up dollars because I knew the property would perform a lot better. And I have no doubt that we picked up that extra 30,000 in large part to the fact that we launched listing properly, to give you context. So we launched this property within the first 72 hours, we had over $40,000 in bookings just in 72 hours alone. And that was unbelievable. To me, that was probably the most successful launch I've ever had. And it's gone to lead on to that property doing incredibly well over its first year. So again, you really want to be mindful of the fact that when you're making those short term decisions, it's really going to impact you negatively in the long run, avoid the temptation to fall into this trap of thinking that people fall into where they think, Well, I'd rather just list it sooner and have it be imperfect, then try to strive for perfection. I'm not saying you have to have every single little detail down to the way that every single tag is fold in every photo, absolutely perfect. But as close to it as possible, you really want to put your best foot forward, because this is a once in a listing chance that you get with this property to really put a good impression and help you know really shortcut your path to success and help the property perform a lot better in the long term. So sacrifice short term in favor of long term. Now I hope this video is valuable to you whether you want to use strategies like this to manage other people's properties or to buy properties and dominate the market. There are trainings for you in the description down below. So whether you want to go and actually invest in properties, hey, we've got a train down there, we've got an analysis spreadsheet we're going to give to you for free. All that stuff is for free LinkedIn description, if you want to start investing in build cashflow, and build long term wealth investing in short term rental properties. And do it with someone like myself that can really teach you the right strategies to avoid mistakes, then check out training out right there in the description. Or if you want to manage other people's properties and earn a full time six figure income managing other people's properties without having to buy rent or furnish any properties at all of your own. So you get started with no money upfront. Then there's another training that's linked in description that is for exactly that shows a step by step process for how I built that business myself, and how you can do the same we're gonna give you some tools along with that as well. All that being said links are in the description. I hope you liked this video. If you did, give it a thumbs up hit the like button it really does help me out a lot with growing this channel and helping more people to succeed with short term rentals. So I would love it if you would take a quick second out of your day and just hit that like button. Also, if you haven't yet subscribed to the channel, what are you waiting for, we post two new videos every single week and I try to deliver as much value as possible. I'm really focusing on making these videos tactical things you can actually use and apply it to get better results. So if you want more of that content if you want to stay up to date with the channel then make sure you hit the subscribe button so you can stay up to date. All that being said I hope you enjoyed this video. Hope you have a great rest of your day and I will see you in the next video.