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Casago’s private podcast helping our patners with educational information that can help everyone find success.
David Ngati is a seasoned expert in SEO
and a pivotal figure at Guesty, where he
serves as the chief evangelist officer.
David's journey began in 2009 and since
then he's worn every hat in the industry
from vacationer to property owner.
and even an OTA company that he
sold to Guesty named Staysense,
beyond his professional achievements,
he's a pilot land developer.
And an ultramarathoner in
which he has ran some of the
hardest races in North America.
.
Today we'll be talking about a few of
the fields inside the streamline that
are something of a mystery to all of us.
I'm Steve Schwab, and this is Kazakast.
It's the KasaCast, created by KasaGo.
It's time for the show, let's go!
Hey, David.
Hey, Steve.
How you doing, brother?
Pretty good.
Thanks for jumping on.
Man, happy to do it.
So David, with your background in SEO
you were the first person I turned
to when the franchisees started
asking questions about, the different
SEO fields inside of Streamline.
And I didn't know how to answer them.
And I'm really thankful that you're
helping us, sort through these
different fields that they have.
And in speaking with Carlos he said
specifically that the additional SEO
text and the mobile SEO text aren't
even connected to the websites anymore.
So we can just forget those.
Those are legacy fields that
Streamline hasn't taken out yet.
. That's good news, Steve.
Because when I saw those in the
screenshot, I didn't know what they were.
And I'm like, man, maybe
I'm getting rusty here.
So thank you, Carlos, for that, ? I think
those were back in the days when they
were trying to do different keywords
for mobile as opposed to, desktop.
Okay.
But days gone by.
Inside of the system, it talks
about the meta tag title.
Can you tell us what that is?
Yeah.
On the meta tag title, if you want to
see an example of this, basically go
over to Google, search anything, and
you're going to see titles show up.
So the titles are the blue links.
And if you, when you perform a
search, that becomes the blue link.
However, I do want to say.
As a general rule of thumb, we
want to be careful about stuffing
keywords into these, or doing a
keyword first approach, and rather
we want to do a user first approach.
So basically these links that we
see on Google, the blue links,
Those are the MetaTag titles.
So whatever you put in there, in
theory, should become what for that
page if you were to search that URL.
Now there's a couple
caveats on that statement.
The first being that Google does not have
to use your title or your description.
They're going to rewrite descriptions
more often than titles, but
they don't have to use either.
The other one is.
They don't have to use the whole title.
So you'll see a title get truncated if
it's too long which normally then leads
to the question how long is too long?
And so I typically go with a
mobile link for everything when it
comes to titles and descriptions.
And so that's 60 characters on the title.
And about 120 characters
on the description.
Now, if you get out there and
Google it, you're going to see
different answers out there.
And I'm not even saying that
those answers, for example,
that say 65 characters are wrong
or 70 characters are wrong.
However, the thing to understand
here is what Google's actually
looking at is pixel width.
And so not every letter is the same width.
And so that's why I say go 60 characters.
If you give 60 characters, you
cannot exceed the pixel width.
And that's easier for most
people to count than pixel width.
And so go with 60 characters
on a meta tag title.
You're going to be good.
As you write this, try to include
a keyword, but in a way that
would entice somebody to click.
You can think of this as
the headline for the story.
This is the headline if
it was a news article.
This should make somebody,
as they're scrolling down
Google, Stop and want to click.
And that's the title in a nutshell.
So the meta tag title , that we're talking
about today on these fields are going
to be on a specific property, right?
So say somebody's searching for, Sonoran
sky, four bedrooms, and suddenly, Sonoran
sky 801 happens to be in the search
rankings, , do you have any sort of
maybe suggestions of what a good meta
tag title would be , or a suggestion,
like what kind of description yeah,
so if the property has a compelling
name, for example, I think one of
the ones you shared with me was like
relaxing Casa or, if it was in the Smoky
Mountain Sunrise, a name like that.
I would definitely include the
name because somebody that has
stayed there before is looking
for that property potentially.
And so that's a good idea to do.
If it's random building unit number
710 C, I don't think that I would
actually typically include that.
Rather, I'd try to get into the,
maybe the building name with some
of the selling points or even facts.
Building name, two bedroom condo
with pool access or beach access.
Something like that would
actually answer the questions.
for that end user.
Now, if you're managing a hundred
units in that building and they're
all named with that naming convention,
you really have two options.
You either go through and name them
all, which is a pretty heavy lift.
The other option would be to go ahead and
just put the unit numbers in there because
you aren't going to be able to come
up with a hundred different compelling
two bedroom descriptions that don't
overlap and you don't want these to be
exactly the same from one to the other.
Really what we need to think about is If
an end user were to get 10 of these, why
would an end user pick one over the other?
If they were to come across your
listing and and another listing,
what is it that drives them into
your listing versus something else?
And in an ideal scenario with our
non homogenized inventory, that's
much easier to do than when we
have a hundred of the two bedroom
condos, which is much more difficult.
So it's not that it's in that instance
super compelling to have unit 110 C or
whatever the name is, but at least it
keeps them all separate and they aren't
all duplicated and exactly the same.
When it comes to
Differentiating properties.
I know that when I first started off,
back in 2001, I was still doing the
reservations and this guy calls me
up, he's Hey, I want to stay in the
same property I stayed in last year.
I'm like, okay, which one is it?
He's I don't know.
It was almost conscious.
I was like, okay, we have 130 properties.
It was conscious.
He goes it was a white house.
I'm like, okay, every house
on this conscious white.
So the second row was like,
okay, we're down to 20 of them.
And he said, two stories.
I'm like, okay, we're down to 10 of them.
And he said, it had a bunch
of seahorses everywhere.
I'm like Casa de Caballos is that's it.
And when it came to a theme and what,
the psychologist called place attachment.
The fact that he can remember something
about the property, and then there was a
name for it that was tied to it, , even
as he got into his describing what
the, the nuances were, that owner had
only had a chance of 1 in 10 of that,
, guess coming back through just those
descriptions, I could have put them in
any of those and could have been wrong.
So having the theme and having a name is
a great way to get guests to come back
to properties that they actually love..
And there's names.
Again, it's hard if you have 100 units
that are the same so I'm not sitting
here saying, hey, go rewrite every
property with a brand new name tomorrow.
That's not necessarily practical.
However, maybe we can reference
a theme like the seahorse
theme or something around that.
And so then it might be.
Building name 110 C, seahorse themed
condo, and then calling out something that
somebody could remember in that instance.
So there is there's some potential
there on things we can do, even on a
homogenized or commoditized building.
Yeah.
So now the next field that we're talking
about is the meta tag description.
So again, just to let people know what
this is, when you go to Google and you
search anything, it literally could be
anything you're searching for, you're
going to see the blue link first, that's
the title, that's the one we're going
to keep it about 60 characters, or
60 characters, roughly and then below
that, we're going to see some black
text, the black text, not the blue
link's the title, the black text is
the description, So the description,
it's even less important to have the
keyword in the description, unless it
makes perfect sense for an end user.
Do not feel compelled to stick it
right there and have the keyword
three times or anything like that.
This is expanding on the headline
above to convince somebody to click in.
So it's the subtext.
You can think of this like when you get
an email on your mobile device and you
see the subject line, that's the title.
The little line up below that's what
we're talking about with the description
here in terms of psychology with how an
end user is going to interact with this.
Again, you're going to see
different character links.
If you want the character link,
that's going to work for mobile.
That's going to work for desktop,
everything, and all of your different
character combinations, because again,
some letters are wider than other
letters, and the most of the numbers
you're seeing out there are basically
taking into averages, and I'm going to
give you a number that's always safe.
120 characters will
always be safe for mobile.
And for desktop and then takes
into account that there's different
widths and we'll make sure that
you're within the character limits
that you have to work or the pixel
width that you have to work with.
So that's the description.
Now there is Something
that's worth calling out.
People will get aggravated
because they'll rewrite their
titles or their descriptions.
And first off, they're looking
for an immediate update.
Sometimes that's not the case.
It's not immediate.
Google's going to have
to recrawl your site.
And then a week from now
is a good time to check.
Not today.
And then there may be other
delays, even potentially with your
software, it may be a job that has
to process on that side as well.
So just give it a week and that's
when you should be able to see it.
The other thing to know, and a
company called AHREPS did a study
of 30, 000 search results this was
back in 2020, give or take, and they
found about 68 percent of all desktop
descriptions were rewritten and 71%.
Of all mobile get a rewrite and that's
Google taking your description, your
page content and saying, huh, yeah,
your marketer may have decided that
description should be this, but we're
going to change it to that thing.
That increase, there hasn't been
another study at larger scale that
I can quote since then, but it sure
seems like it's actually increased
with AI and in some of the recent
developments of the past year and a half.
So just be aware of that.
Don't let that frustrate you., I can
imagine like an owner saying, you know
what I really need, I needed to say this.
You're like, okay, Mr.
Owner I'll put that in there.
And then a week later, you're
like, what is going on?
The owner's mad.
Yeah, it's a good, it's a, that's good
information to maybe explain to people
why it's not what you put into the system.
So it's important to note if that
question comes up, we should advise
the owner we can control our website.
We cannot control.
Other websites such as Google.
And we put certain things in
our website that other websites
can choose in some instances to
respect or not respect an example.
This would be Verbo not too long
ago saying, Hey, we're going to
decide the image order, not you,
not your owners, not anybody else.
And this is just another version of that.
And I believe it's Verbo or Expedia one,
that they attempt to answer questions
about a property using machine learning.
We aren't feeding that information over.
That's their machine model.
That's creating that content.
Now, if you had a stubborn owner,
that's prove to me that you
put in the description, right?
Because the description
doesn't show up anywhere.
That's as simple as in Chrome.
Right click, view page source, and then
command F or control F, depending on
if you're Apple or PC, and just type
description in, and you're going to
find the title description section in
the source code, and you can see that
it's actually populated correctly there.
David, what are some of the big mistakes
with the meta tag descriptions and titles?
Too much emphasis put on it.
Slamming keywords in there.
Really think about this.
If I'm writing this for my
mom, how would I write this?
Knowing I have these limits on how
much copy space I have to work with.
How would I write this
to resonate with my mom?
Forget about a search engine, make
it make sense for the end user.
Don't stress it too much.
It's going to get rewritten almost three
fourths of the time on the description.
Make it make sense.
Don't use the meta tag keyword tag.
That hasn't been around
for a very long time.
So at 2009 is when Google
quit respecting that.
2014 is when Microsoft and Bing
, quit considering that a factor.
So it's a waste of time
to put keywords in.
So the third field is actually
meta tag keywords in Streamline.
We should just completely
forget that exists.
It does not help at all.
Every major U.
S.
search engine has said
that it does not help.
And to date, there's only one search
engine that I know of that has not said
this is a completely deprecated idea.
And that's Yandex.
So if you, if you look at your Google
analytics and you have half your
traffic coming from Yandex or something,
I have other questions for you.
But if you did, then that would be
one reason to leave a man, even that
everything that I've seen study wise
indicates that they aren't really
respecting it or doing anything with it.
I've seen this used for some fun stuff
internally, because again, the search
engines are ignoring it and so you can
use these almost as an internal field
to tag certain pages or as a heads up
to an SEO person that has SEO tools.
So if you have a technical department,
you could use these, for example, to,
to call out certain like maybe the ones
that you have rewritten the descriptions
on and the titles on you could put
like a rewrite, like I rewrote this
right there in the, in that when you
hit save that way if you go back in.
A month later when you're through
season and you're trying to remember
which ones you rewrote are already,
you can see it really easily.
So you can use it almost like an
internal tag, but it doesn't do
anything from an SES standpoint.
. So David, we should be writing this more
for conversion when somebody's seeing your
unit on Google, this isn't about ranking,
this is about once they found you, what's
motivating them to click on your page
instead of somebody else's by what they're
reading as an introduction to what they'll
possibly get when they get to your page.
Is that correct?
Yeah, so on the Google search
results, Title becomes exactly as
it's described your title over here.
What, how do you get somebody
to click descriptions?
Just a little bit of subtext underneath
that, that again, emphasizes getting
somebody to click, helping them
find what they're looking for.
You aren't going to rewrite your titles.
And rank for crazy keywords
magically just does not happen.
If it were that easy, I'd go rewrite
a bunch of page titles right now
about credit cards, mortgages, student
loans, all this high dollar products.
It's way more complicated to rank for
anything than titles and descriptions.
We aren't going to get into all of that
today, but suffice it to say, that's
not going to be what pushes your side
over the edge and gets you to rank.
For Destin condos or
Smoky Mountain cabins.
It just does not work that way.
This is about helping an end user.
That's looking for what's called a long
tail keyword or a specific keyword,
maybe the property name, helping
them find what they're looking for.
It's not going to be a high
volume keyword that has thousands
of people searching it a month.
This is something that may only have
10 people searching it a month, but
it has a large amount of search intent
behind it, meaning it will convert
higher if you can help them find it.
Then another just unsolicited advice
for anybody that's a property manager
on the SEO side, but really not so much
the SEO side is the user side of the
equation is how I think about this when
we're building content, it needs to
serve the needs of end users, that unit
description on your page that this isn't
like where we need to be super flowery
with our text and not answer questions.
This needs to be.
Factual, it can definitely include selling
points, emotional triggers, all of that.
But running OTAs, I received these from
all kinds of property managers, and I can
tell you the ones that convert best follow
a certain formula where they're clearly
answering, not just how many people
this property sleeps, but what level.
And where it sleeps those people
answering questions around in
some markets, how difficult it is.
Is it to get to the property?
Do you need 4 wheel drive?
For example, in ski markets
or mountain markets, how close
you are to certain things.
But basically imagine as you're a
reservationist on the phone, the
questions you receive over and over
again, how many parking passes do I get?
Or, is it pet friendly?
Those same exact questions
are copy should answer those.
And a way that, that
resonates with an end user.
And instead you see people trying
to again, work in Cabo Villa
over and over again in the copy.
That's not what that page isn't
going to rank for Cabo Villa.
That page is going to rank for something
with much higher intent or it's going
to be the page that people navigate to
after they found your website through
another another medium and then now
they see that on your own website.
So it's again, it's just ranking in
your own search results, not on Google.
So make sure the page itself
answers the questions of the
end user and does that well.
And we see that as much as double the
conversion rate on individual pages
that do this and follow it properly.
. I feel like we could do a whole
nother episode on just descriptions
yeah, this is like at the end of
the the television season where
you think the show's sober and then
they give you one more cliffhanger.
Yeah.
Stay tuned for season two to be continued.
That, that drives a whole nother
question that I have, but we'll save it
for another time in which does it make
sense to have a different description
on the OTAs than your own website,
David.
Thanks for coming on.
I really appreciate it.
This is going to help our partners a lot.
It's the Casa cast we're so luxury.
The Casa cast, they don't want to be us.
The Casa cast just don't call
it in their being B Casa cast.
We got Orange credo, the Casa cast, our
company's nato, the Casa cast created by.