HomeHostSEO & GEO Audit + Foundation Fixes
In March we audited HomeHost’s AI visibility and found a foundational gap. Two months on, with fresh Ahrefs and Search Console data in hand, the gap hasn’t closed — because audits don’t close gaps, implementations do. This proposal is the implementation: a six-week engagement to fix the technical, schema, and AI-visibility foundation underneath HomeHost, benchmarked against the four Sydney STR managers actually winning search today.
Nick Rowe
CEO & Co-Founder / Saigon Digital
“Saigon Digital transformed how Ski.com shows up online. Beyond rebuilding our platform, they helped us rethink our entire search and AI visibility strategy. We saw a significant uplift in organic traffic, our content started appearing in AI-generated travel recommendations, and the quality of inbound leads improved dramatically. They understand where digital discovery is heading and how to turn visibility into real commercial results.”
SEO and AI-visibility engagements across travel, hospitality, healthcare, enterprise and education — built on the same foundation-first discipline.
View Case Studies →The Asset Under the Hood
The brand, the moat, and the search performance behind it
You are the original. The market knows it. Search doesn’t always.
HomeHost is, on paper, the strongest brand in this category — Australia’s first ever Airbnb property management company, founded by Gabriel in 2015 from a Bondi apartment that turned into a Sydney institution. You’ve got a decade of operating equity, the highest Google ratings among Sydney hosts, official Airbnb co-host status, and an all-in-house team that competitors outsource. That story is your moat.
But search engines and the new generation of AI answer engines don’t read brand stories. They read structured signals. And right now, when a Sydney property owner asks ChatGPT or Google’s AI Overviews "who’s the best Airbnb manager in Sydney?", the answers are dominated by global rollups (Houst), multi-city competitors (MadeComfy, KozyGuru, Hometime) and aggregator listicles — not by the company that invented the category in this country.
That gap is fixable. It is also the highest-leverage piece of work HomeHost can do this year — because every other growth investment (paid, content, partnerships) compounds against a healthier foundation, or fights against a broken one.
Search Console access already secured — we begin with data, not assumptions
We have Google Search Console access for sc-domain:homehost.com.au and a full Ahrefs Site Explorer benchmark pulled this week. Below is what the data actually says — not directional commentary, real numbers. This is also where we now sit two months on from the March 2026 AI visibility audit, which flagged the same foundational gap and has barely moved in the meantime.
What the Data Actually Says
Live Ahrefs & Search Console pulls · May 2026 · vs the Sydney STR competitive set
HomeHost is the strongest brand — and the weakest SEO performer
Pulled from Ahrefs Site Explorer this week. The picture is uncomfortable but clear: on every search metric that matters, HomeHost ranks at the bottom of the Sydney STR competitive set — below KozyGuru in domain rating, well below Hometime, Houst and MadeComfy in keyword coverage, top-3 rankings and traffic value. The brand outperforms the website. The website underperforms the brand.
| Competitor | Domain Rating | Organic Keywords | Top-3 Rankings | Monthly Traffic | Traffic Value (USD/mo) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| houst.com | 56 | 1,315 | 334 | 9,604 | $13,317 |
| hometime.io | 51 | 965 | 337 | 7,201 | $21,952 |
| madecomfy.com.au | 42 | 438 | 94 | 3,730 | $10,343 |
| airkeeper.com.au | 34 | 213 | 66 | 2,345 | $6,511 |
| homehost.com.au | 16 | 54 | 19 | 485 | $1,782 |
| kozyguru.com | 7 | 64 | 4 | 775 | $2,346 |
The gap is structural, not behavioural
HomeHost is doing the operational work to the highest standard in the category — 5-star Google ratings prove that. The shortfall is purely on the search infrastructure layer: lighter authority signals, thinner schema coverage, shallower content depth, fewer citable assets. None of that is fixed by trying harder on the operations side. It’s fixed by foundation work, which is exactly what this engagement delivers.
Where HomeHost sits in the share of voice
Using monthly traffic value as a proxy for share-of-voice across the Sydney STR competitive set (the six domains above, excluding boutique players with DR < 5), HomeHost holds ~3.1% of the visible search share today — against ~38% for Hometime and ~24% for Houst. That number is the single most useful benchmark we’ll track through the engagement: the goal isn’t to take #1 in twelve weeks, it’s to close the gap with KozyGuru and Airkeeper first, then push past MadeComfy within the first six months of the retainer that follows.
Hometime — 38%
Sydney market leader by traffic value. $21.9K/mo equivalent. 337 top-3 rankings.
Houst — 24%
Global rollup. $13.3K/mo. Ranks #1 for "Best Airbnb Management Companies Sydney" via a listicle.
MadeComfy — 18%
Multi-city, deep content. $10.3K/mo. Awards prominently surfaced.
Airkeeper — 11%
Australian-owned mid-market. $6.5K/mo. Steady local content programme.
KozyGuru — 4%
Low DR but moderate traffic. $2.3K/mo. Volume-led content.
HomeHost — 3%
Strongest brand, weakest search asset. $1.8K/mo. Foundation gap.
The "before / after" tracker we’ll instrument
Part of the foundation engagement is freezing today’s baseline as the "before" snapshot. The exact same six metrics — DR, organic keywords, top-3 rankings, monthly traffic, traffic value and share-of-voice — are tracked monthly going forward, so every engagement decision past week 6 is anchored to a measurable starting line. No vanity dashboards. One scoreboard.
Why Foundation First
The five reasons an audit + fixes belongs in front of any growth programme
Why we’re proposing audit + fixes before any retainer
We could’ve led with a monthly retainer. We didn’t — on purpose. Here’s why we believe foundation work has to come first.
01 · Growth retainers built on broken foundations underperform
The most common reason an SEO or AI-visibility retainer fails to compound is simple: the team is pushing content and links into a site that has technical, schema and indexation issues underneath. You burn six months of monthly fees patching foundation problems that should have been a one-off project. We’d rather do the foundation work upfront, properly, then let the retainer do what retainers are good at.
02 · AI answer engines are rewarding structure, not effort
ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini and Google’s AI Overviews don’t reward the company that publishes the most — they reward the company whose content is the easiest to extract, cite and trust. That means schema.org markup, llms.txt, citable passage formatting, AI-bot crawl access and entity signals. Most STR competitors haven’t done any of this. HomeHost can leapfrog them with a focused foundation push.
03 · You are competing against global rollups with bigger SEO budgets
Houst (UK-based, multi-market), MadeComfy and KozyGuru are running well-resourced content programmes. HomeHost can’t out-volume them, but it doesn’t need to. Outranking them at the suburb level (Bondi, Manly, Surry Hills, Byron Bay) and outranking them on AI citation queries (where intent is highest) is a foundation-and-positioning game, not a content-volume game.
04 · The category is regulatory-loaded — and that’s an opportunity
NSW’s STRA rules, 180-day caps, registration requirements, council-by-council bylaws — property owners search this heavily and ask AI assistants about it constantly. Building HomeHost as the authoritative entity around STRA compliance creates a moat no global rollup can easily cross, because they don’t know the NSW Planning Portal inside-out the way you do.
05 · Foundation issues are time-decay risks
Every month without proper schema, AI bot access and structured entity signals is a month where competitors with weaker brands but better foundations widen the gap in citation share. The earlier this work happens, the smaller the gap gets to close later.
What this engagement is — and isn’t
It is: a 6-week audit + foundation fixes engagement that leaves HomeHost with a properly diagnosed search asset, a fixed-up technical and AI-visibility foundation, a measurable baseline, and a clear roadmap. It isn’t: a long-term retainer, a content production programme, or a paid-media play. Those are the next conversation — better had with a foundation under them.
Eight Audit Pillars
What we diagnose in the first three weeks
Eight pillars, one diagnostic report
Each pillar produces a section in the final audit report — with findings, severity rating, fix recommendation, and a clear "what we’ll do in Phase 2" callout. No vague observations. Each finding is actionable.
Technical SEO Foundation
The crawl, index and architecture layer that every other signal sits on top of.
- Crawlability, indexation & canonical health
- Robots.txt, sitemap, broken links, redirect chains
- Site architecture & URL structure review
- Core Web Vitals (LCP / INP / CLS) per template
- Mobile usability & responsive QA
Schema & Structured Data
The single biggest signal Google and AI engines use to understand what HomeHost actually is.
- LocalBusiness, Service, Review, FAQ coverage
- Organization & brand entity markup
- Breadcrumb, sitelink & search-action schema
- Validation against schema.org + Google guidelines
GEO & AI-Search Visibility
Where the brand actually appears (or doesn’t) when Sydney property owners ask AI.
- Citation testing across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini
- Google AI Overviews coverage on category queries
- AI bot crawl-access audit (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, etc.)
- llms.txt presence & entity signal review
Local SEO & Suburb Coverage
Sydney isn’t one market — it’s 20+ suburb markets, and each one is a search opportunity.
- Google Business Profile health & review velocity
- Per-suburb landing-page audit (Bondi, Manly, Byron…)
- NAP consistency across directories & citation gaps
- Local link & partnership opportunities
Content & On-Page
The pages already on the site — what’s earning, what’s thin, what should be merged or killed.
- Top-pages-by-clicks analysis from GSC
- Thin / duplicate / cannibalising page audit
- Title, meta & H1 review across critical pages
- STRA / regulatory content gap analysis
Backlinks & Authority
The off-site signals that decide how seriously search engines and AI engines take HomeHost as an entity.
- Referring domains audit (Ahrefs + Majestic cross-check)
- Toxic link review & disavow recommendation
- Competitor link-gap analysis (Houst, MadeComfy)
- Digital PR & press citation baseline
Search Console Deep-Dive
Using the access already in hand — the real performance picture, queries, pages, devices, countries.
- 16-month query trend & top-page analysis
- Indexation status & coverage errors
- Mobile usability & CWV diagnostics
- Hidden-opportunity queries (impressions, low CTR)
Competitive Benchmark
How HomeHost stacks up against the four Sydney STR managers that matter most — today and in AI search.
- Keyword overlap vs MadeComfy, Hometime, KozyGuru, Houst
- Content depth, freshness & topical breadth comparison
- AI citation share-of-voice on category queries
- Where HomeHost outranks — and where it shouldn’t be losing
One deliverable, one source of truth
The audit produces a single live document (Notion / Google Docs / PDF on request) with an executive summary, the eight pillar deep-dives, a prioritised findings register (P1 / P2 / P3), and a ranked fix roadmap. We walk through it with the team in a 90-minute findings session before Phase 2 starts.
The Discovery Layer Nobody’s Auditing
Where HomeHost shows up when property owners ask AI — and where it doesn’t
What we already see at first glance
Before this proposal was written, we ran a handful of high-intent Sydney STR queries against the major AI answer engines to see what currently surfaces. The pattern is consistent across every platform: HomeHost is conspicuously under-cited for a brand that originated the category in this country. Below is a directional snapshot — the full audit measures share-of-voice across 30+ queries.
Currently citing
MadeComfy · Hometime · KozyGuru · Houst · L’Abode · HomeHost (rarely — positional, not lead)
Currently citing
Houst blog · Hometime · KozyGuru · comparison aggregators
⚠ HomeHost’s 15% + $250 model is not cited despite being public — foundation issue, not a pricing one.
Currently citing
Generic property-management blogs · Airbnb’s own help docs · Houst
⚠ HomeHost is literally based on Bondi Airbnb experience — this query should be a citation lock.
Currently citing
NSW Planning Portal · Strata Choice · lawyer blogs
⚠ HomeHost helps owners with STRA compliance directly — should be one of the answers.
The pattern
HomeHost’s under-citation is not a content problem — the company has plenty of relevant material. It’s a structure problem: AI engines need machine-readable signals (schema, llms.txt, entity markup, citable passages) to surface a brand as an answer rather than as a brand. That’s the foundation gap. And it’s closeable in weeks, not quarters.
How we measure GEO visibility
Citation share-of-voice
30+ high-intent Sydney STR queries tested against ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, AI Overviews. Citation frequency tracked per platform per query.
Crawl-access audit
Verify GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended have access (or are blocked). llms.txt presence and structure.
Passage-level citability
Score each top-page’s content for AI-extractability: definitions, lists, tables, FAQ, numeric facts. The structural side of being "quotable" to a language model.
Entity strength
How well HomeHost is recognised as an entity by search and AI engines — founder bio, Wikipedia, knowledge graph, sameAs links, brand SERP coherence.
Schema medical & FAQ coverage
Audit every commercial page for the schema types AI engines reward most: LocalBusiness, Service, FAQPage, Review, BreadcrumbList, HowTo.
Brand-mention sentiment
What AI engines say about HomeHost when asked directly. Sentiment, accuracy, source attribution, comparison framing vs competitors.
What We Actually Build
The implementation phase — weeks 3 to 6
Fixes shipped, not just recommended
Every audit you’ve ever paid for ends the same way: a PDF, a list of recommendations, and the question of who’s actually going to implement them. We collapse those two phases into one engagement. By week six, the foundation isn’t a document — it’s live in production.
The plumbing fixed first
- Robots.txt + XML sitemap correction & submission
- Redirect-chain cleanup & broken-link remediation
- Core Web Vitals quick wins (LCP, INP, CLS) on the templates that move the needle
- Indexation cleanup — noindex thin/duplicate pages, canonical fixes
- Mobile-usability fixes flagged in GSC
The single-biggest AI-visibility lever
- LocalBusiness schema across HQ + suburb-coverage pages
- Service schema for the management offering, pricing, and inclusions
- FAQ schema on the top-questions HomeHost gets from owners
- Review & AggregateRating schema (5-star Google rating proof)
- Organization & Person (founder) schema for entity strengthening
- BreadcrumbList + sitelinks search-action markup
The work that makes AI engines cite you
- llms.txt scaffold — brand-summary, sitemap, key resources for LLM ingestion
- AI bot crawl-access verified (GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended)
- Citable passage restructuring on top 10 commercial pages — definitions, lists, tables
- FAQ blocks reformatted for AI extraction (Q&A schema + clean copy)
- Founder entity strengthening — bio, sameAs, schema:Person
20+ Sydney suburb opportunities, properly captured
- Google Business Profile optimisation & review-velocity protocol
- Per-suburb landing page template — depth, schema, internal linking, intent
- NAP consistency push across 20+ Australian directories
- STRA / NSW Planning Portal authoritative content block
You can’t improve what you don’t measure
- GA4 + GTM event-tracking hygiene — enquiries, calls, WhatsApp, form fills
- GSC dashboard configured — queries, pages, devices, CWV trends
- AI citation-share dashboard — monthly snapshot tracker
- Baseline snapshot frozen — "this is where we started"
What’s explicitly out of scope (for this engagement)
New website design or development · New content production / copywriting · Backlink acquisition / digital PR · Paid media management · Email marketing · Conversion-rate optimisation. These are the natural next phases — quoted as a separate retainer once the foundation is in place. See section 09 below.
What They Do. What You Don’t.
The specific moves Sydney STR competitors have made — and the gaps left on HomeHost’s side
Eleven things your competitors do that HomeHost doesn’t
Every row below is a real, public, observable move by one or more competitors. We’re not flagging "what they might do" — we’re flagging what their site already ships, and the equivalent slot on HomeHost that’s empty or thin. The full audit deepens this into a 30-row teardown.
| Asset / Tactic | What competitors are doing | HomeHost today |
|---|---|---|
| Per-market landing pages | Hometime · MadeComfy: Dedicated, deeply optimised pages for Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Gold Coast, Perth — each ~1,500–3,000 words with schema, FAQ, local proof points. | One Sydney-wide page. No per-city / per-market depth, even though HomeHost is Sydney-only. |
| Per-suburb landing pages | MadeComfy · Hometime: Suburb-level depth (Bondi, Manly, Surry Hills) — local search-volume capture, internal linking, schema. | 20+ suburbs listed but no dedicated suburb landing pages. Local SEO leak. |
| "Best Sydney Airbnb manager" listicle | Houst: Ranks #1 with a comparison listicle that mentions itself first. Pure SERP capture play. | Not ranking on category listicles. Not running its own. |
| Earnings / ROI calculator | Hometime · MadeComfy · Houst: Free interactive tool — "how much could your property earn?" Captures email + intent. | None. High-intent traffic that lands on the site has no calculator-style conversion path. |
| Deep blog & content hub | Houst: 1,315 ranking keywords from blog content. Hometime: 965 keywords. MadeComfy: 438 keywords. All publish weekly. | 54 organic keywords total. No active blog cadence. |
| Top-3 SERP rankings | Hometime: 337 keywords in top 3. Houst: 334 keywords in top 3. MadeComfy: 94. | 19 keywords in top 3 — mostly brand and near-brand. |
| STRA / regulatory authority hub | Hometime · MadeComfy: NSW STRA compliance guides, 180-day cap explainers, council bylaw articles — ranks for every regulatory query. | None. This is HomeHost’s biggest moat opportunity — structurally closed to overseas rollups. |
| Host case studies / proof | MadeComfy · Hometime: Named host stories, revenue numbers, before/after performance examples. | Generic testimonials. No structured case-study assets. |
| Schema & structured data | Houst · Hometime: LocalBusiness, Service, FAQ, Review, BreadcrumbList all validated. | Minimal schema coverage. Major lift for AI citation eligibility. |
| llms.txt & AI-bot access | Houst: llms.txt present. AI bot access permitted. AI-friendly content structure. | No llms.txt. AI-extraction friendliness untested. |
| Founder authority & press | Houst: Founder/leadership press citations (Forbes, BBC). MadeComfy: Award visibility (AFR Fast 100). | Strongest founder story in the category (literally invented it in 2015) — under-told in press & entity signals. |
The pattern: every gap is a foundation-or-content gap — not an operations gap
Read the right-hand column carefully. None of these gaps say "HomeHost runs a worse operation." Every single one is a search-infrastructure or content-asset gap. Which is exactly the work this engagement closes — the schema, llms.txt, suburb templates, STRA hub scaffolding and entity strengthening land in the foundation phase. The deeper assets (full blog cadence, calculators, full case studies) are what the optional retainer that follows is built around.
Where the wedge sits
HomeHost can’t out-content MadeComfy or out-budget Houst in twelve weeks. But it doesn’t need to. Three structural moats are uniquely available right now — closeable in the foundation engagement, compounded by the retainer that follows:
Moat 01 · The Original Entity
"Australia’s first Airbnb management company" is a clean, citable, machine-readable claim — if schema, llms.txt and entity signals tell AI engines that story properly. Right now they don’t.
Moat 02 · Per-Suburb Local Authority
HomeHost services 20+ Sydney suburbs directly — multi-city rollups can’t match suburb-level operational knowledge. Depth, not breadth, is the local SEO play.
Moat 03 · NSW STRA Regulatory Authority
Sydney’s STRA rules, 180-day caps, NSW Planning Portal — this is regulatory knowledge global rollups structurally can’t match. Authority content here is the highest-margin SEO real estate available.
Six Weeks, Two Phases
From kickoff to live foundation
Phase 1 (audit) + Phase 2 (fixes), with overlap
- Kickoff & stakeholder session
- GSC + GA4 access verified
- Crawl, technical & CWV scans
- Competitor benchmark begins
- Schema & structured-data audit
- GEO / AI citation testing (30+ queries)
- Backlink & authority audit
- Content + on-page diagnostics
- Audit report drafted
- Prioritised findings (P1/P2/P3)
- 90-min findings walkthrough
- Fix-track sequencing locked
- Technical & indexation fixes
- Schema deployment begins
- llms.txt + AI bot access
- GBP optimisation
- Schema rollout completes
- FAQ + citable-passage restructure
- Suburb template upgrade
- STRA authoritative content block
- Validation & QA across all fixes
- Measurement dashboard live
- Baseline frozen
- Handover & roadmap session
Key dates & gates
Week 1, day 1: Kickoff + access verification · End of week 3: Audit findings session (gate 1) · End of week 5: Foundation fixes complete in staging · End of week 6: Production deploy + handover session (gate 2). Total elapsed time: 6 weeks from kickoff. Total Saigon Digital input: ~80 hours across audit + implementation.
Commercial Proposal
Fixed-fee, two-phase, no surprises
A clear, fixed-fee engagement
Pricing is fixed for the deliverables in sections 03 and 05. All figures in Australian Dollars (AUD), ex-GST. Excludes paid tool licenses (Ahrefs, etc.) which we run from our existing stack at no cost to HomeHost.
| Phase | What’s included | Investment (AUD) |
|---|---|---|
| Phase 1 · Audit Weeks 1–3 |
Eight audit pillars (technical, schema, GEO, local, content, backlinks, GSC, competitive). Live audit report with prioritised findings. 90-minute walkthrough session. | $7,500 |
| Phase 2 · Foundation Fixes Weeks 3–6 |
Five fix tracks (technical, schema, GEO/AI, local SEO, measurement). All fixes deployed in production. Measurement dashboard live. Baseline snapshot. | $12,500 |
| TOTAL ENGAGEMENT | Six weeks, end-to-end, fixed fee | $20,000 AUD |
Why we’re comfortable with a fixed fee — and you should be too
Most agencies hourly-bill SEO audits because the scope is fuzzy. We’ve scoped this one tightly: eight audit pillars, five fix tracks, six weeks, two gate sessions. Fixed-fee removes the "are we paying for thinking or paying for outcomes?" question and aligns us on shipping. If we go over our internal hour budget, that’s ours to absorb.
Payment terms: 50% on kickoff · 50% on Phase 2 production deploy. Invoiced in AUD ex-GST (GST added if invoicing to an Australian-registered entity).
Foundation First. Then Growth.
The optional next chapter — only the right shape once the foundation lands
Where a rolling growth retainer makes sense
Once the foundation is in production, the natural next chapter is a rolling monthly programme to compound visibility, citations and qualified enquiry volume. We’d expect that conversation to start at the end of week 6 — after you’ve seen the audit, lived through the fixes, and decided whether SD is the right long-term partner. No commitment from this engagement.
🏛 SEO & GEO Growth Retainer
Rolling monthly programme covering technical maintenance, content production, AI citation building, digital PR, reporting. Built on the foundation we’re shipping in this engagement.
✍ Content & Authority Programme
STRA authority hub, per-suburb investor guides, owner education content, founder-led thought leadership. Designed to compound entity authority over 6–12 months.
📈 Website Rebuild (optional)
If the foundation audit surfaces structural site issues that fixes alone can’t resolve, a focused rebuild scope can be quoted — typically design-led, SEO-preserving, on the same platform.
No lock-in. No commitment. No catch.
This is a project, not a retainer Trojan horse. The audit and fixes are valuable on their own — they leave HomeHost with a measurably better foundation regardless of whether we work together again. If the retainer makes sense at week 6, we’ll talk about it. If it doesn’t, you’ve still got a clean foundation and a clear roadmap to give to any other agency.
The Right Partner for Foundation Work
Travel, hospitality and AI-search depth — the right pattern library for HomeHost
A senior, foundation-first SEO & AI-visibility team
Travel & hospitality SEO
Ski.com, multi-resort travel platforms, hotel groups — deep experience with the search behaviour of high-intent travel and accommodation customers.
AI visibility & GEO discipline
Among the first agencies in APAC running structured AI-citation programmes. The Ski.com lift in AI-generated travel recommendations came from this exact playbook.
Foundation-first methodology
We don’t take retainer money on top of broken foundations. The audit → fixes → retainer sequence is how SD prefers to work with new clients.
Schema & structured-data depth
Schema.org and llms.txt implementation across healthcare, e-commerce, travel and hospitality. The signal layer AI engines reward most.
Local-SEO operator experience
Multi-location and per-suburb SEO across Australia, the UK, the US and Southeast Asia. We know how to compound local authority at scale.
Senior-led, no agency layers
You work directly with the leads doing the work. No account-manager filter between you and the engineer or strategist on your account.
Why we’d be a particularly strong fit for HomeHost
Sydney STR sits inside the travel + hospitality space we’ve worked deeply in — the search and AI-visibility playbook that lifted Ski.com is structurally the same playbook HomeHost needs. Add to that: founder-led brand (we’re founder-led too), the "original" entity story (we know how to tell that to AI engines), and a regulatory layer that benefits from authority content (STRA). The pattern library is already on the shelf.
Foundation first. Then growth.
Six weeks from now, HomeHost has a properly diagnosed search asset, a fixed-up technical and AI-visibility foundation, a measurable baseline, and a clear path to a growth retainer — if and when that makes sense.
Brief alignment call · this week
Engagement letter & kickoff · next week
Live foundation · six weeks later
or email nick@saigon.digital