Doubling Non-Branded Traffic for a Luxury Villa Marketplace in Bali

Niche	Luxury villa rental in Bali (marketplace, commission-based model)
Target regions	International English-speaking audience (US, UK, Australia, EU)
Services	Comprehensive SEO promotion plus custom development
Goals	Grow non-branded organic traffic without losing the existing branded traffic
Timeframe	March to August 2026 (6 months)

Villa rental in Bali is not a mass tourism market. It is a narrow, expensive, and demanding segment. Decisions to book for several thousand dollars a week are made after hours of comparison, browsing photos, and reading reviews, not with one click from search results. A mistake in villa availability data or an outdated price costs a lot here. 

TheYoungVillas came to Luxeo with a task that sounded classic to us, though with an untypical development component: increase organic traffic and help with the transition from Motopress to Ownerez. But there was a nuance: growth had to happen selectively, through non-branded demand, and a comparable software solution to use as a reference simply did not exist on the market.

About the Client

TheYoungVillas is a marketplace: the client’s team negotiates with villa owners in Bali and lists their properties on the site, and the site earns a commission from each booking. The listings come from different sources, so data about each villa, such as prices, availability, and photos, is updated differently and requires separate synchronization. The SEO strategy here does not work with a uniform catalog, but with a living, constantly changing pool of listings, where data accuracy on the page directly affects conversion and the marketplace’s reputation.

Screenshot of the TheYoungVillas homepage

Results Achieved Over Six Months, in Brief

• The number of keywords in the top 3 search results grew from 33 to 76.
• The total number of keywords in the top 50 grew from 126 to 186.
• Clicks on non-branded queries grew by 89.9% (from 2.76K to 5.24K).
• Impressions on non-branded queries grew by 47% (from 270K to 398K).
• Total site impressions in search grew by 132% (from 328K to 762K), and average position improved from 22 to 8.8.
• Sessions from Google organic search grew by 110.4%.

Client’s Challenge

TheYoungVillas already had a healthy amount of branded traffic: direct visits, repeat bookings, referrals. The typical travel-niche problem of building awareness from scratch was not the issue here. The real challenge was less obvious: how to grow non-branded demand without diluting what was already converting, and to do it in a segment where users do not search “villa bali” in general terms but often for a very specific combination: the number of bedrooms, the area, the purpose of the trip (wedding, honeymoon, family vacation). Each such query can act as its own micro-niche, with its own competition and its own difficulty to break into.

The scale of competition added further complexity. In the Bali villa rental niche, TheYoungVillas competes not only with local platforms but also with giants like Airbnb and Booking.

Another complication was a technical migration: the client had started with the Motopress booking system but moved to Ownerez. Without full integration between the two systems, part of the pages risked showing outdated prices and inaccurate villa availability, and for an audience that makes expensive purchase decisions deliberately, a mistake like that can destroy trust.

Our Approach

SEO and Technical Audit

We started with the basics: a full technical and SEO audit of the site. We found and fixed errors that were hurting indexing and rankings. Alongside the technical work, we wrote content for additional service pages (poolside breakfast, villa massage, villa yoga), the same touchpoints that help the target audience make the final decision to book this particular villa rather than a similar one next door. We also worked on the catalog structure. Instead of generic “villas in Bali” pages, we worked with segmentation by number of bedrooms (1 to 4+), by area (Canggu, Uluwatu, and others), and by trip purpose (weddings, honeymoon, family). This matched how the target audience actually searches: not with a general query, but with a narrow, almost personal combination of filters.

Screenshot of the ranking table for the “2-bedroom villa bali” keyword cluster

Content for the Quiet-Luxury Audience

Here the “more pages, more traffic” approach did not work. Each new page had to be justified, not added just to increase page count and artificially inflate the site. Separately, an audience planning to book for several thousand dollars reads any templated text as a sign of distrust. So content for new pages was written without tourism clichés, with a focus on specific amenities, location, and unique services (poolside breakfast, villa yoga, villa massage). Each page was designed around a specific search intent rather than a general query.

Custom Development: Motopress to Ownerez

This was the standout task we had to deliver on. Instead of simply waiting for the client to complete the transition from Motopress to Ownerez on their own, we built our own plugin for full integration between the two systems: real-time data exchange via API, with caching and built-in testing tools. On top of this plugin, we built an additional layer: villa availability calendars, booking widgets, and price-check widgets that recalculate dynamically based on dates and number of guests.

No comparable ready-made solution exists on the market. Its main value was making the client’s own workflow more convenient.

Partial screenshot of the booking widget and availability calendar

Link Building for the Travel-Luxury Segment

Over 6 months, we placed 60 outreach links and 50 crowd links. As always, we focused on the site’s target audience and the topical relevance of donors: travel and lifestyle media, resources about travel and interior design, publications covering destinations for affluent travelers, and similar sources. Links from resources that contradicted the client’s positioning were not a fit for us.

Results

From March to August 2026, the metrics showed steady, consistent growth across all key directions.

• Ahrefs: the total number of ranking keywords grew from 126 to 186. In the top 3, from 33 to 76 keywords (+130%); in the top 4 to 10, from 59 to 97. No keywords remained outside the top 50: there were 8 before, now there are 0.

Ahrefs: ranking dynamics (126 to 186 keywords, from 8 to 0 positions outside the top 50)

• SeRanking position tracker (213 tracked keywords): top 10 grew from 5 to 46 keywords, top 30 grew from 5 to 80. Examples from individual clusters: “1 bedroom villa bali” rose from position 89 to 21, “4 bedroom villa bali” from 84 to 15, “uluwatu bali villas for rent” from 100 to 5.

• Clicks grew from 11K to 19.4K (+76%), impressions from 328K to 762K (+132%), and average position improved from 22 to 8.8.

• Non-branded queries only (quarter before/after): clicks grew from 2.76K to 5.24K (+89.9%), impressions from 270K to 398K (+47%).

• Sessions from Google organic search grew by 110.4% (to 38K), while direct visits also grew by 52.5% (to 37K), meaning the growth in non-branded demand did not “eat into” the brand; it added to it.

Conclusion

Working on TheYoungVillas became, for the Luxeo team, an example of how we work on a full-service basis: SEO, copywriting, link building, and custom development were all handled by one team, without the client needing to coordinate multiple contractors or explain the task twice. The client only had to state the goal; we determined which tools were needed to reach it, right down to building a plugin that did not exist on the market. This kind of collaboration, where there is no need to bridge an SEO agency with developers separately, is exactly what most niche business owners are looking for.

Combining technical audit, segmented content, custom development, and precisely targeted link building made it possible to nearly double non-branded traffic while preserving the existing branded base.

The client is satisfied with the results and has decided to continue working with us, building on the current pace. It is worth noting: the numbers above are the minimum the client wanted to achieve, not the final point. The project continues, and the Luxeo team keeps working on further scaling non-branded traffic.