Marketing and Promoting your Bed and Breakfast
If you have read the previous areas on this site regarding bed and breakfast websites you now have pretty good indication of what is necessary to maximize your marketing and promotion efforts.
By now you have a clean coded W3C validated website which is thoroughly optimized for accessibility, visitors, and search engines. If you do not have a site that meets this criteria your priority should be getting your site in order first.
You have researched your bed and breakfast competition and have a thorough understanding of their positions in the search engines results. Every regional location and local competitors are different and takes research of your individual competitors and locality. Without the knowledge of why your competitors are positioned in the search engine results where they are - you will be trying to blindly promote your bed and breakfast website without any idea of what is actually required to surpass them. Those of you who use Strategic Web Ventures services have already been provided with the information needed to achieve this.
Every search engine is different and uses it's own algorithms for determining relevance to the search phrase used. Some items are more important in Google than MSN Search (Inktomi results) and visa versa. Information below is to be used for a general guide only and will NOT get into details of how to rise above your competition. Equal consideration and information is given on what NOT to do for long-term success.
What is Important
- Title and Description meta data
- Links from other sites to yours
- Anchor/Link text of the hyperlinks pointing to your site
- Surrounding text of those links
- On-page content
- Overall authority and content of the site and subject matter
- Links to other sites from yours
- Size of the site
- Age of the site
- Domain Name of the site
- Layout of the content
- Proper use of h/Heading Tags
- Site submission to search engines and "good" directories
- Good visitor traffic statistics package
What Not to Do
- Sign up for "Guaranteed" results
- Create doorway pages (pages created only for search engines)
- Use Hidden text
- Use JavaScript for site navigation
- Keyword stuffed content
- Dynamic Links from other sites (click2go??site%%ID=428?%http://www.yoursite.com)
- Email Spam campaigns
- Create mirror domains
- Duplicate content
- Free-for-all link pages
- Cloaking
- Site Framing Links (apply their page header when someone clicks your link)
- Purchase browser address bar "keywords"
Many of the terms used above can be found in our website glossary of internet terms. If you have questions use our contact form and we'll get back to you promptly.
Stay away from those companies pushing "guaranteed" results, cheap link packages, search engine submission packages (submit to 500 search engines for $9.95), and other items mentioned above. Your bed and breakfast is a "real" investment - trying to short-cut your way into good positioning in the search engine results will end up with your site being banned from the search engines.
Marketing and promoting your bed and breakfast online is not magic - it takes research of your competitors, content, page/site optimization, hard work, and a thorough understanding of individual search engines algorithms. Armed with a properly optimized site, correct guidance, and hard work - the bed and breakfast owner can position their site above their competition.
|
