Holiday rental SEO before high season
In this guide
It happens every year: once high season hits, there's no room left for anything major, so whatever you get right now is what'll be working for you when the searches pick up. The guide starts with what tends to make a difference soonest.
Timing
There's no magic date, but changes to your listing or your site usually take weeks, not days, to show up in search. If your high season starts in June, March is usually a reasonable time to get moving on this. If your area or type of property runs on a different calendar, shift the timing, not the logic.
Who can (and can't) have a Google Business Profile
This one surprises a lot of people: an individual owner renting out their own holiday home usually can't open a Google Business Profile under their own name for that property. Management companies and agents handling multiple properties can. If you own one property and manage it yourself, you'll lean more on ranking well on the portals and on your own site than on a business profile; if you run several properties as a company, a profile is a real tool for you.
Your own listing page versus portals
Portals (Booking, Airbnb and the like) bring volume, but you're competing inside their rules and their own search engine, not Google's. A dedicated page for each property on your own site gives you something a portal listing doesn't: control over the content, over which price you show first, and over who you're speaking to. It's not really either-or: have your own page to catch direct searches, and use the portals for what they're good at, bringing in people who don't know you yet.
Languages
If your typical guest is German, Dutch or British, a properly translated page (not machine translation slapped on top) usually performs better than a Spanish page with a language switcher nobody uses. You don't need to translate the whole site at once: start with each property's own page and the FAQ, since those are what people actually read before booking.
Schema
Marking up each property with the right schema (LodgingBusiness, for example) helps Google understand the page is a specific place to stay, with its own price and location, not just another blog post. It doesn't guarantee a better ranking, but it's one of the things a crawler genuinely appreciates having done properly.
Photos
Generic agency-style photos (the stock pool, a sunset that could be anywhere) don't pull their weight the way real photos of the actual property do, shot in natural light, without ten near-identical shots of the same living room. If you're refreshing photos before the season, prioritise the cover shot, the main bedroom, and whatever genuinely sets the place apart: a terrace, a view, a private pool.
Seasonal content
A page, or even a couple of paragraphs, on "what to do near Estepona in September" catches searches a guest makes before deciding, not just after booking. You don’t need a whole blog: updating one page per season with real, local suggestions already gives you something plenty of rental listings don’t have.
If you want a second opinion on your property before the season kicks off, get in touch with some time to spare.