[website built in 2004 Italy Vacation Rentals ] Italy Dream Vacation started when I was searching for places to rent in Italy and noticed on craigslist several post for medival home rentals in Calitri. Calitri is a small little medieval town in Southern Italy about an hour away from Naples.

I contacted the person who was posting the ads and offered to design, develop and optimize a website for all her rental properties. She agreed. The arrangement was that I was to keep a percentage of the rentals. And so we embarked in a project that lasted 4 months to put live.

I built the wireframe for the site, manage all the content (did lots of re writes), I designed the site trying to reflect the beauty and uniqueness of the place. Calitri is not an easy place to promote, although located in one of the preferred destinations for Americans, the fact that Calitri is embedded into central southern Italy was a challenge to promote.

I contacted restaurants, local shops, local artists, local bed and breakfast to gather information to make the destination more attractive. I focus on “traditional” Italy and market the website with that in mind. It was a great challenge to contact all these people as many do not speak English (which added to the idea of a place being traditional). Not only I needed to built and designed activities once I got people there, but also needed to provide transportation. I had the same arrangement with a local transportation company, I deliver the customer, I keep a percentage, and they agreed.

I managed to place the website under highly competitive keywords, and all niche keywords. Of course anything related to Calitri, the site is ranking #1 even tho I have not worked on the site for the last two years.

The site is still ranking (again, note, I have not worked on this site for the last 2 years) under competitve keywords. I worked really hard on this site for 8 months.

We got people coming into the site and renting the properties. I was able to communicate effectively that even Calitri being a small town not conviniently located, it is a place to meet the real “southern Italy” where people are friendly, where food is exceptional, where local artists will open their studios for you, where you can take a cooking class at the local Palazzo, go truffle hunting, etc.

I also created “supportive websites” not only for link building strategies but to increase awareness. I created a forum called