Who this case is for
If you own a holiday home development, a pool villa project or a small housing estate in a tourist town, and you wonder whether a website can really help sell high-value homes, this case covers everything from the day the developer came to talk to us, to what we found on the old site, what we built and the targets we set.
At the end there is a checklist you can use to compare against your own project website right away.
We do not name the project or its exact location, to protect the client’s privacy.
1. The developer asked us to build a new website
The project is a set of two-storey detached houses, each with its own private pool. There are fewer than 20 homes, all high-value, in a mountain tourist area where people from Bangkok drive up for weekends and holidays.
The developer gave us two requirements:
- The homepage must look the same as before
- They wanted a “booking” system on the website
In the holiday home business, “booking” can mean two things: booking a stay by the night, or reserving a home to buy. So we confirmed the brief before starting. The business that was actually running was home sales, so the booking system meant reserving a unit the buyer is interested in and booking a date to visit the project.
Asking this one question saved us from building a room booking system the project would never use.
The information we used
- The project’s existing website. We read every page and set a rule: anything the old site did not say, we would not add ourselves, such as rental rates, awards or construction progress
- The project’s Sale Kit, a 16-page online brochure with the site plan, land size for each plot, house specs and payment terms
- Ahrefs, to check search volume, keyword difficulty and traffic to the old site
- Lighthouse, to measure page speed and quality before and after
2. What we found and what we did
An overview of the old site from Ahrefs
People search for terms about buying a holiday home in this area around 4,000 times a month, yet the old site got only 1–3 visitors a month from search.
That gap does not mean the market is fiercely competitive. Almost every keyword in this group has a difficulty (KD) of 0, which means the pages that rank do not have many links from other sites. A page that answers the search directly has a real chance to rise.
What we found on the old site
The biggest opportunity: the whole site was one page The “Project / House Designs / Location / About Us” menu just scrolled down the same page, so Google had only one page to rank. Someone searching “แบบบ้านพักตากอากาศ” (holiday home designs) or “ที่ดิน[location]” (land in [location]) had no page that answered them directly.
Technical issues to fix
- The homepage had a main heading (H1) hidden with CSS and stuffed with keywords. This goes against Google’s spam policies
- The page title was just three keywords strung together and did not say what the project was
- The robots.txt file blocked many bots, including the ones Facebook, X and LinkedIn use to fetch link previews, so shared links on social media showed no image
- There was a button to switch to English, but no English pages. Clicking it just showed the Thai page again
- The homepage loaded more than 30 MB across 108 files. The first slider image alone was a 9.1 MB PNG, so on mobile the main image took a long time to appear
- The first slider image had advertising text and a phone number baked into the picture, so a heading placed over it would be unreadable
What already worked, and we kept The old registration form asked for both budget and decision timeframe. These are exactly what property sales teams use to decide whom to call first. So we kept the whole form and made it easier to fill in on mobile.
Good information in the brochure, but not on the website The site plan, land size for each plot, pool size, number of parking spaces, payment terms and what comes with the house were all in the Sale Kit, which was a small link at the bottom of the site. People arriving from Google had no way to see any of it.
What people really search for, grouped by what they want
While researching keywords, we found a trap that many holiday home projects fall into: the most-searched terms come from people looking for a nightly stay, not from people who want to buy a home.
| Keyword | Monthly searches | KD | Intent | Where to use it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ที่พัก[location] (accommodation in [location]) | 23,000 | 1 | Nightly stay | Articles only |
| พูลวิลล่า[location] (pool villa [location]) | 3,000 | 0 | Mixed rent and buy | Pool villa page, clearly stating “for sale” |
| บ้านพักตากอากาศ (holiday home) | 1,600 | 0 | Buy | Holiday home page |
| บ้าน[location] (house in [location]) | 600 | 0 | Buy | House designs page |
| ที่ดิน[location] (land in [location]) | 500 | 0 | Buy | Project page |
| ต่างชาติซื้อบ้านในไทยได้ไหม (can foreigners buy a house in Thailand) | 450 | 0 | Buy (foreigners) | Permanent page in 2 languages |
| ภาษีบ้านหลังที่สอง (second home tax) | 150 | 0 | Buy | Article |
The rule we set was: never make a sales page compete for “ที่พัก” (accommodation). It might bring lots of visitors, but those people want a room for tonight. When they land on a high-value home listing, they close the page. We reach this group through travel articles instead, then lead people who like the area on to view the homes.
Another angle nobody was using yet is the new motorway that makes the trip from Bangkok faster. People search for it around 1,350 times a month, and it is a direct reason that makes buying a second home in this area an easier decision.
English: the data turned out differently than expected
At first we planned to make the English pages rank for “[location] property for sale”, but the data showed almost nobody searches for it.
| English keyword | Thailand | Global | KD |
|---|---|---|---|
| [location] house for sale | 20 | 50 | – |
| [location] property for sale | 10 | 30 | – |
| [location] villa for sale | 0 | 10 | – |
| can foreigners buy property in thailand | 300 | 1,800 | 8 |
| buying property in thailand | 150 | 600 | 8 |
| usufruct thailand | 150 | 200 | 1 |
Most foreigners buying property in Thailand search for beach locations. But the question every one of them must ask before buying, wherever the location, is “can foreigners buy property in Thailand?” This project sells houses with land, and foreigners cannot hold land title in their own name. If the website does not answer this question, foreign buyers cannot go any further.
So we built a permanent page in both languages on foreigners’ rights. It explains the legal options, such as a registered long-term lease, usufruct and superficies, and states clearly that holding property through a nominee is illegal. Every section recommends consulting an independent lawyer, and we suggested the project’s own lawyer review it before it goes live.
What we delivered
1. Real pages built around search terms From one page to 15 core pages: project information, a page for each house design, location with a distance table, gallery, pool villa page, holiday home page, visit booking, registration, about us, contact, FAQ and articles. Every page has its own main keyword, title, description and heading structure.
2. The homepage looks the same, but the code is all new The order of sections, colours and text on the homepage stayed as the developer asked. What Google reads, we rewrote: we removed the hidden heading, gave the page a new title, fixed the heading order, added descriptions to every image and added structured data (Schema). The slider image with the baked-in phone number moved to the gallery.
3. An interactive site plan, plot by plot The plan from the Sale Kit became a site plan on the website. Tap any plot to see its house design and land size, then tap “Interested in this plot” to open a form with the plot number already filled in. The system can show whether each plot is available, reserved or sold, but this is switched off until the project agrees to show it publicly.
4. A visit booking page Homes in this price range are usually sold at the project itself, not on the website. So the website’s job is to get people to decide to drive out and see it. The main button on every page leads to the visit booking page, past dates cannot be selected, and on mobile there is a bottom bar with three buttons: Call, LINE and Book a Visit.
5. English on every page The text for each language is stored in separate files, but all figures, such as prices, sizes and distances, come from a single data file, so Thai and English prices can never disagree. The code’s type checking flags any Thai text that has not yet been translated.
6. Brochure details moved onto the website Land size for each plot, ground and upper floor areas, pool size, parking, payment terms, what comes with the house and the project’s facilities. Questions that used to get the answer “please ask our staff” now have real answers on the site.
7. Sample articles and a 30-article plan Five sample articles, covering topics such as getting there by motorway, places to stay and cafes in the area. Each one links to the house design pages and the visit booking page. There is also a plan for 30 articles over 6 months, grouped into travel, accommodation, buying and investing, and real life in the area.
8. Automatic checks before every release A script checks every page before deployment. If it finds a missing main heading, hidden text, images without descriptions, broken links, pages with no internal links pointing to them, or language pairs pointing to pages that do not exist, it blocks the release.
Speed before and after
The biggest savings came from converting images to WebP in several sizes so phones load smaller images, loading the next slider image only when it is about to appear, making YouTube videos load only when someone taps play, and hosting fonts on the site’s own server.
The new site scores 100 for Accessibility and Best Practices on every page. It also scores 100 for SEO on every page in the production build (the staging version is set so Google does not index it, to avoid duplicating the project’s live site).
3. Expected results
This table shows the targets set in the plan. They are not results that have happened yet. At the time of writing, the new site has passed its checks on the staging domain and is waiting for the final data from the project, such as per-plot prices and high-resolution original photos, before moving to the real domain. We will come back and update this once we have Search Console data.
| Metric | 6-month target | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Project visits that actually happen | 5–10 per month | The main metric, because sales close at the project |
| Registrations with a budget and a decision within 6 months | 15–25 per month | The form already asks for budget and timeframe |
| Keywords in the top 10 | 15–25 keywords | Starting with KD 0 home-buying keywords |
| Visitors from search | 1,000–2,500 per month | Mostly from travel articles |
We also set a rule: visitor numbers must not be the main metric. For high-value homes, ten thousand visitors with nobody booking a visit still counts as not yet successful.
Checklist for holiday home project websites
Open your project website and answer each point.
Content
- Project information, each house design and the location have their own pages, not all on one page
- House design pages show usable area, number of rooms, pool size, parking and price range
- Information from your brochure or Sale Kit is also on the web pages, not only in a PDF
- Prices match everywhere: brochure, ads and website
- There is a distance table to hospitals, shopping centres, schools and attractions
- Pages that use the term “pool villa” clearly say “for sale”, not for rent
- If you want foreign buyers, there is a lawyer-reviewed page explaining ownership rights
Technical
- No headings or text are hidden for Google to read only
- Links shared on Facebook or LINE show a preview image
- The language switch button really leads to a page in that language
- On mobile, visitors can tap to call, open LINE or book a visit immediately
- The form asks for budget and decision timeframe
If you cannot tick more than half, your site is probably still missing a fair number of buyers.
Questions developers often ask us
The project has only a few dozen homes. Is SEO worth it? It depends on how many units are left. If only a few remain and you want to sell them quickly, ads such as Google Ads are a better fit. If many homes remain or there is a next phase, SEO lowers the cost of each visit booking over the long term, because a single home is worth many times more than the cost of the website.
“ที่พัก” (accommodation) gets huge search volume. Why not make the sales page rank for it? People searching this term want a room for the night, not a home to buy. If your sales page ranks for it, you get plenty of visitors but almost no enquiries. Use travel articles to attract this group, then lead them on to view the homes.
Should the website show which homes are already sold? Either way works. Some projects show it to encourage buyers to decide quickly; others prefer not to reveal how many remain. The website should let you switch this on or off without editing pages. The developer decides.
Do we need English? If your location is not a beach area popular with foreigners, English searches about buying a home there are usually very low. English is still worth having for foreign buyers who hear about the project through other channels. But if you seriously want foreign customers, advertising to foreigners living in Thailand pays off better than waiting for search results.
We have built websites and SEO plans for projects like this
If you own a holiday home or pool villa project and want to know which buyers your website is missing, start with a free website audit, or see our web development services and SEO services. To read more about the features a real estate website should have, see our article on real estate website development (in Thai).