When building a listing website most companies go for one large site which covers all areas of the planet.
We chose a different option of having multiple websites focused on specific countries.
The four countries we started with were Portugal, Greece, Malta, and Bulgaria.
Here's why we went down the multiple website route and why we selected those countries.
Why Have Multiple Websites?
Having one large listing site which covers every area has its benefits, you have just one website to manage, one website to promote, and almost unlimited scope in accepting properties to list due to the fact they can be based in any country.
The downsides of one large listing site are that you are inevitably going to end up with large sections of it with hardly any properties available, especially when you first start up.
I think you could easily get distracted and overwhelmed trying to promote so many different areas at once too. You'd need a lot of website content creating initially and then there is a massive amount to maintain on an ongoing basis.
If you're looking to take advantage of good search engine placements for traffic then good luck trying to promote such a global website, that would be a very expensive endeavour.
Going down the multiple website route with each being focused on a different country has some significant benefits.
It allows you to really tailor a website to a specific locale, this leads to a more highly focused and targeted site which is great both for people looking to rent out their holiday home and for people looking to visit that country.
It also has the side benefit of being great for search engines like Bing and Google as you are showing them exactly what your website is about and why they should rank it higher.
The downsides of multiple listing sites are a few.
Creating and managing multiple websites is a lot more complex than just managing one. Technically you have a different code base for each website and as you tailor the sites for each area they cover they will inevitably start diverging from each other making rolling out updates more challenging.
You also have added costs in terms of web domains and hosting servers, you can't publish the websites on any old web hosting if you want to be able to share things between them easily.
The biggest issue though is the promotion of the sites. Essentially if you have four listing websites then you need to do four times the amount of promotion to attract visitors to them, be that search engine, social media, or any other type of advertising.
Still The Right Decision?
Now that our initial websites have been live for well over 14 years do I regret the decision to go with multiple websites over one global one?
Not at all.
I'm pleased that we can be ultra focused on the areas we serve, and our great search engine rankings and traffic levels shows that the initial plan has paid off.
Two Busy Websites Ready For Your Listings
Out of the four initial websites we setup, two are now ready to accept your listings, these are our Portugal and Greece websites.
Villas in Greece // Launched October 2009 →
Villas in Portugal // Launched December 2009 →
These two are our most highly visited sites and they regularly generate enquiries and bookings for our own advertisers and our affiliate property listings.
Our Malta and Bulgaria focused websites will soon be ready to accept listings too and we will update this page once that is complete.
Future Plans
We do have some other website domain names targeting other countries and may decide to roll them out a little bit further down the line.
Our team is small though and we've made the decision to focus our efforts on the sites we already have to ensure all current and future advertisers get the best possible experience and service from them.
Would we ever roll out a globally focused website?
I can see a future scenario where that may be an option but there are still a few steps on the list to go through first before that becomes a decision we need to think on.