RV HowtoCategory Archives

Simple Steps to Optimize an Individual RV Park’s chance of being found on the web

One thing I’ve noticed is that most RV Park owners are not really all that web savvy. They may (or may not) have a web site, but they aren’t really sure exactly how to get the web site to be a very effective marketing tool for them. That is ok because my hat is off to them – putting in an RV park is a gargantuan activity. I know because I’ve been working with raw land recently and it is just down right painful.

Regarding the web, I’ve been cutting my teeth on the web with “rv52.com” and over the last few years or so have made tremendous progress in increasing RV52.com’s traffic, lowering bounce rate (something that Google measures that you’d better be careful to keep low), and just making my site a more and more valuable information source for the web. I know the pain of working your tail off for no results too. I don’t want to go through that again and wouldn’t want anyone else to do so either.

Because I’ve “done it” AND I’ve been making good progress (check it out on compete.com), I feel I can pass on a little wisdom to the rv park owners that might help them. Some of this will look somewhat self serving (you’ll see), but with a careful analysis of what I’m saying, any reasonable reader hopefully will see that my advice is sound. The basic principle is that a rising tide will float all boats.

Before I go on, I get questions/statements like this from rv park owners. Maybe your question is similar?:

• How do I get on the first page of Google ( or Bing or Yahoo )?
• How do I make it so people find my rv park on the web?
• How do I make my rv park rank better on the web?
• How do people search for my rv park?
• How do I make my video #1 on youtube?
• How do I make Google put me #1 on the web when people search for rv parks in my area (yes I was asked this)?
• How do I advertise using Google Adwords?
• How do I raise awareness about my rv park?
• How do I advertise my rv park?
• and on and on…

Here are my tips for helping your park get more traffic on the internet. None of these tips are necessarily in any particular order EXCEPT to say that it is probably wisest to do the easiest things first.

Enjoy :

1. Get easy links to your site.
1. Example : Use RV52.com’s search capability or go to my “big directory of RV parks and navigate to your park“. Find your park. If you can’t find your park, then add it. Get your information to me and I’ll put it in. In particular, make sure there is a URL on your park’s entry that is your web site’s URL.
2. Sign up to Google Plus, Linkedin, Facebook, and other sites and figure out how to get a link in your profiles or in articles back to your site. Remember, get people to your site, don’t try to keep them hanging around in Facebook – use it to vector them to your site.
2. In ANY articles that talk about your site, make sure you “approve” of them using the social media. For example, in RV52.com, you can Facebook “Like” your article, and Google +1 your article. Also every time you share the article it will make that article rate much higher. Remember, there is a link to your rv park web site so by raising the rv52.com page rank, you’ll also raise your page rank along with it. If you do this with several rv park directories, the chances are that when someone searches for a park in your vicinity, they’ll find your park in the directories or your web site or both.
3. Link to RV park directories and other articles that talk about your park OR destinations that are very close to your park.
4. If your actual ADDRESS, particularly the city is the name of a less well known suburb, make sure that in rv directory pages and your site that you mention that your park is “near Chicago” (for example). People are more likely to search for something like “RV parks Chicago” than they are some obscure area like “RV parks mundelein”. You need both.
5. If you are close to attractions, make sure in articles about your park and on your web site you also say that your park is close to Sea World (for example). Again, people are likely to search for “RV parks sea world san antonio”.
6. Video is really great. If you park videos well, make sure you have several videos of your park on Youtube. I still consistently get more views per video than I do for my content on rv52.com. If you put your URL (with http://) in the first characters of the description, you also get a good link back to your site.
7. I have many friends that swear pictures work well for them. Make sure you have pictures of your park with keyword rich descriptions (park name, term rv, recreational vehicle, nearby cities, attractions) and then a link in the picture back to your site. Personally, pictures haven’t helped me, but I haven’t really spent much time with pictures. I prefer video.
8. Having some “live” or “dynamic” content does give people (and Google which tries to help people) something that makes your site more interesting. You could write a weekly or monthly article about the area or about interesting people that have visited your park.
9. Register your site with Google Local where you make sure that when people are searching in your vicinity and Google knows their location, that you are registered as a local business with Google. That is really easy to do!
10. Try Google Adwords. For RV parks the math really works out to your advantage since a months stay at an RV park is very valuable. The math works like this : you’ll pay $1 (maybe less, maybe more) for specific leads in your area and perhaps you’ll pay $20 in leads before you get someone that will stay a month. But typically a months time at an RV park can range from $200-$1000/month. So it seems to me that if you have capacity Adwords is a good deal. As people learn about your park and have a good experience, then you can spend less on Adwords, but it could be a great way to quickly grow your park. Don’t buy your park name keywords for goodness sake – they won’t be searching for that anyway.

Well that is a good set of 10 easy tips. Feel free to contact me (see my about page for contact info) and I can help out. If I’m not busy, I might do it for free. If I’m slogged and super busy, you might have to “get my attention”!

Good luck. Try things. Don’t be shy.

Marlan

Just because your jacks can make it level doesn’t mean you should!

I had the RV parked on an incline once before… and it never bothered me. But the FRONT of the RV was very close to the ground and the front jacks were only extended about 6-7 inches. In other words, the wheels and the front jacks carried the weight. There was no real chance that the front jacks would give out and even if they did, the distance to the ground was not very far at all. Sure – I’m rationalizing, but I think I’m not that unreasonable here. The only real safety issue was “Are my wheels properly chocked?” Now I’m not saying I was right – any incline is bad incline, but I’m just saying…

But this time was a little different. Read on.

I got the RV backed into where I wanted on my 5 acre piece of land I bought.

I got the sucker disconnected and proceeded to level the unit – more mechanically or robotically than thinking deeply about it. I mean my land LOOKED level with the naked eye (side note, my land is completely on the side of a hill and looks level, but everything is on an incline and you really can’t tell by looking!).

Everything was going fine and then something happened that should have told me something right then, but it didn’t’ hit me until later. The cinder block I usually use to block up the RV landing gear crushed.

Yes the cinder block crushed.

First words of wisdom for the RV’er. Never put much weight on cinder blocks. They crush and I can prove it. I did have the cinder block oriented incorrectly, but I’ll still never use them again. I know too much for comfort now. Again, I admit I had the cinder block oriented incorrectly. But still…

Cinder blocks bad choice for 5th wheel landing gear blocks

Luckily I was able to get the RV back on the truck and from now until I die, I’ll use solid wood blocks to put my RV upon.  Send me your ideas for good blocks.

But I kept on going and that is the embarrassing part. It should have sent a message that the way the RV was parked and the pressures on the unit were not normal. But it didn’t sink in. Not yet at least.

I’m going to put a picture up now that describes what I did. I’m being honest ok so be easy on me :

unsafe fifth wheel leveling showing issues

Why is this different than my original leveling where the front is lower to the ground? It has to do with the center of gravity and the fact that my wheels (see #1) were on a dual incline (unlevel front to back AND side to side). The next fact is that the front landing gear – supporting lots of weight were extended a long ways. Much longer than the picture lets you appreciate.

Here is how I see the problem in sequence and I never noticed until my truck was gone and unavailable until the next day. Numbers correspond to points on the picture above :

1. If rain or vibration causes these wheels to slide, even an inch or two to the right, then the landing gear will have pressure applied in a bad way.
2. Front landing gear is caused to bend ever so slightly causing a buckling and the center of gravity pushes the unit forward.
3. Forward push from buckling landing gear is enough to pull the unit OVER THE CHOCKS.
4. Extremely expensive RV crashes a considerable distance into the ground, potentially even smashing basement, front cap, destroying landing gear, and having a really exciting ride inside for everyone involved.
5. Panic ensues and a 14,000 pound floor jack  support was put in to help keep it from moving in the next 24 hours.
6. I didn’t sleep a wink. Not one. I was so tired. Yet I was IN THE RV the entire evening. I guess I wasn’t that worried about that night, but I still didn’t sleep.
7. RV was moved to completely different and level spot by noon the next day.
8. What a great nights sleep I had the next night!
9. I’ll never do this again.

Send in your stories of things you’ll never do again. I’d love to hear then. But I hope this helps. Ironically,  the only real leveling story on safety I found was one of those stories that got copied 5000 times on the internet and had no real “meat on the bones”. There isn’t very much out there other than to say “be level – level is good”. I’m hoping that this concrete example with some real concepts helps you know why you shouldn’t do this.

I don’t think you should trust the front landing gear too much or put them in a situation where they could buckle easily.