- URL : https://www.vaanyc.com/
- Business Type : Business to Business, Business to Consumer
- Focus : Lead Generation
- Client Industry : Hospitality & Travel, Real Estate
- Platform : WordPress
- Services Provided : AI SEO, SEO, Web Design, Web Development
Overview
Villas & Apartments Abroad (VAA), a luxury villa rental company with a global portfolio, contacted us to design and build a new website and grow its digital presence. Despite offering unique and expanded travel services from personalized itineraries, private chefs, villa staff, and other concierge services, travellers were not finding www.vaanyc.com. Operating in a highly competitive travel industry, a user-friendly website that converts visitors was essential to the brand.
We created a new luxury travel WordPress website that is easy to navigate. By implementing our SEO for real estate strategy, we grew Villas and Apartments Abroad’s overall conversions from organic traffic by 300%.
Problem
Although VAA had a loyal client base, the client noticed that the luxury travel landscape was shifting. New competitors, including mainstream rental platforms and other villa agencies, had modernized websites and captured emerging markets more quickly. VAA’s existing website had broken features, missing photographs, unclear rates, and an outdated search experience. The client wanted a website to communicate its biggest strengths: intimate knowledge of each villa, relationships with villa owners, concierge-level service, and curated nature of every trip.
For the new site, website users should be able to imagine themselves inside each destination and find a villa that suited their needs effortlessly. The booking process should be simplified. Long-term, the brand wanted a platform that can grow with new technology, attract high-income travelers, and support partnerships with other luxury travel services, all while maintaining the family-owned, relationship-driven ethos.
Solution
Web Design and Development
As part of our WordPress web design & development services, we redesigned VAA’s website to mirror their brand. We used large, immersive photography for villa listings to attract visitors. The new layout communicates VAA as a global villa expert with a complete arrival to departure experience.
The user journey was rebuilt to allow clients to envision their destinations, review detailed property information, and easily submit booking requests. The booking process was simplified into a clear flow: guests inquire through the site, receive a confirmation email, VAA confirms availability directly with villa owners, and then personally guides clients toward securing the ideal experience. For travelers who do not immediately find what they want, we reinforced VAA’s “we’ll find it for you” approach.
We created destination pages, redesigned the logo, added custom amenities icons, and implemented a complete taxonomy structure. The website has destination cards, rich page tags for recommendations, videos, images, and carousels, for which we provided training videos on how to upload.
Our team added a mega menu using Max Mega Menu to support VAA’s extensive geographic catalog. We also integrated Google Maps API to display the location of each villa and redirected 2,000 pages to preserve SEO value and maintain site integrity.
Our developers also updated the search functionality on the website. We customized the FacetWP plugin, allowing travelers to search for villas by price, amenities, location, and any other custom criteria. The new search features provide instant results and help with navigating VAA’s portfolio.
Search Engine Optimization
To improve crawl efficiency and strengthen how search engines interpret site structure, our SEO team fixed errors such as 404s, redirects, and canonical issues. We added optimized content throughout the website. We also created and uploaded the Bing IndexNow text file which actively enables the indexing of new or updated website content on Bing.
Our link building team pursued article submission and PR outreach opportunities across luxury travel, lifestyle, vacation rental, destination wedding, hospitality, and event-planning spaces. We added new landing pages, and our copywriters optimized copy to better reflect user intent, improve rankings, and communicate the brand’s expertise.
Our developers also updated the search functionality on the website. We customized the FacetWP plugin, allowing travelers to search for villas by price, amenities, location, and any other custom criteria. The new search features provide instant results and help with navigating VAA’s portfolio.
AI SEO
With travelers increasingly turning to AI platforms such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, and Grok for trip planning, we implemented an AI SEO strategy designed to promote VAA within AI-generated search results. We added llms.txt files to help large language models interpret the website’s content more effectively, and added to the pages natural, conversational phrasing aligned with how users ask questions inside AI tools.
Our copy was structured for chunk-level retrieval, allowing LLMs to extract accurate information and cite VAA pages more easily. We enhanced content already appearing in AI Overviews to improve ranking position and relevance. Additionally, we added AI-share buttons such as “Summarize in ChatGPT” and “Explore in Perplexity” so users can share VAA content directly into AI chat environments.
Final Product
Results
The new website successfully aligns with VAA’s luxury identity and global expertise by featuring enticing photography, fast, intuitive search, and a simplified, personalized booking journey. The client is happy, and the site now provides a flexible foundation for future growth and partnerships as global villa travel experts.
Period over period, contact from submissions from organic traffic increased by 250% and overall conversions from organic traffic grew by 300%. Within the first eight months, VAA saw improvement in its overall keyword ranking positions. The number of ranking keywords grew by more than 950% within the first few months. Shortly after launching, the website ranked for just 40 keywords. Eight months later, the brand ranked for 426 keywords.
250%
Increase
in Organic Traffic
300%
Growth
In Conversions from Organic Traffic
426
Keywords
Ranked