Posts Tagged ‘Google Local Business Centre’
Alice Springs Airport Motel Gets New Website
Airport Motel in Alice Springs recently engaged Web Reservation Systems to set up a new website and develop Internet Marketing strategies that would help to attract more bookings. Gary and Karen wanted a website that was fresh and fun looking to reflect their business and the work they’ve done to renovate and improve. At the same time we’ve been working on websites, we’ve been updating their Local Business Listing in Google, developing Global Distribution options to attract inbound tourists and travel agents and working with local agents to develop new sales channels.
Alice Springs Airport Motel offers affordable accommodation in the heart of the Northern Territory. Whether you’re flying in to Alice Springs to tour Uluru (Ayers Rock) or driving through Australia’s Red Centre for business or pleasure – the Alice Springs Airport Motel has the well appointed accommodation conveniently located 5 minutes from the town centre.
All rooms are fully air-conditioned with all the amenities. Our Standard first floor rooms with balcony views of the MacDonnell Ranges and we offer interconnecting rooms for families and friends. Premier rooms have courtyard gardens. Relax by the pool and barbeque area after a day of exploring the many natural wonders of ‘The Alice’.
Airport Motel has a Tour Desk staffed by locals happy to share their knowledge of the local area and major attractions such as Uluru (Ayers Rock), Kings Canyon, Historic Hermannsburg with one of Australia’s oldest missions, Alice Springs Desert Park and the Alice Springs School of the Air. We can provide transfers to town, the railway station and airport.
Airport Motel in Alice Springs: phone +61 8 8952 6611 for international calls or Toll Free 1800 896 124 for calls inside Australia.
Tags: accommodation, Airport Motel, Alice Springs, Google Local Business Centre, motel
Google Favourite Places and User Reviews
Google…. these guys never stop coming up with new stuff. Now, they have something new called Google Favourite Places. In fact, this could have a really big impact on business as it places easy to reach user reviews at the door step of every business.
It ties together being in a physical location, smart mobile phones and user reviews. Naturally, it loops into Google Maps and Local Business Centre as well with a liberal does on general net-connectivity in your pocket.
The video does a pretty good job of explaining. You’ll apply for a placard through Google Local Business Centre. The placard will have a barcode and manual code to make it fast and simple for the smart phone to bring up your reviews. You will (hopefully) read favourable things about the business and want to enter.
One could also assume that Coupons that can be added to your Local Business Listing would also be accessible. Therefore, someone standing on a corn with 4 restaurants would not only be able to see reviews, menus, pricing – they would also be able to access a coupon that would offer them special advantages such as discounts or extra services.
TripAdvisor and other Reviews:
At the moment, it would appear that Google likes a few review services. For Accommodation, they always include TripAdvisor reviews. ATDW has also created a document called ‘Tutorial 29 – Customer Reviews And TripAdvisor‘. So, more than ever – we need to start following what people are saying about us. It’s not always easy and it’s not always fair, but like it or not User Reviews will begin to affect your business.
How will Google Favourite Places affect Australian Accommodation?
Clearly Google is not moving as fast locally here in Australia as they are in California. Do we have the smart phones and connectivity to do all that – I would say yes. The number of Smart Phone users will only increase (dramatically).
Still, we need to get the Placards and we might find that Google does not issue them outside of select regions.
Are you safe from bad reviews if you don’t display a placard??? Of course not. Anyone can make reviews now. Anyone can find these reviews now. The placard just makes it easy and by logically assumption the confidence to display a placard must also mean the business is confident that their customers are getting good value.
Hmmm…. Good Service is important.
Tags: Google Favourite Places, Google Local Business Centre, Google Maps, internet enabled mobile phones, Mobile Search, TripAdvisor
How to create a “My Map” in Google Maps
I came across this today while looking for something else – How to create a “My Map” in Google Maps. The purpose of MyMaps is to make it easy to create personal content related to Google Maps. In the video, they show examples of making a walking tour of San Francisco.
In the accommodation industry there would be a lot of ways a map could be useful – walking trails, tourism features, pictures of the area, recommended restaurants, etc. The possibilities are limitless.
But, what’s the point? Why bother doing that when you could do other things? Is it better to create things that are made public, or keep them private for our own personal use?
- Better Ranking in Regular Google Maps – Recently, I uploaded a MyMap for Golden Chain Motels. I uploaded the location of every Member with some images, links to the Member’s Page on Golden Chain Motels website and a link to make a booking with a source id to tell us when the booking came from Google Maps. The result was surprising. We started getting bookings and we noticed the Motels seemed to show up higher in ranking for their individual search results.
- Interesting User Content – it seems pretty clear that we can upload some interesting material that can later be linked to our websites. That’s always good. While we want to rank high and sell more – we also want to create a good impression.
Have a look at the video to see how easy it is>
Let me know if you make anything with this because it would be interesting to highlight examples.
Tags: Google Local Business Centre, Google Maps, SEO
Do Google Links Help your Page Rank?
I thought this question, ”Do links in Google websites are actually provide in-bound link value to your website” was a very interesting subject. Unfortunately, the answer comes from Matt Cutts who is the Google spokesman about the mystery of how to build websites that are favourably ranked in Google Search Results.
Unfortunately because Matt sort of answers questions like, “If I told you I would have to kill you, because that’s a State secret”. Google tries to hide what works because they think our attempts to rank well are a perversion of the result.
Anyway, as you start using all things Google: Analytics, YouTube, WebMaster Tools, Google Profiles and most certainly Local Business Centre – you also start to add links to your websites. Why wouldn’t these links effect results?
My opinion (everyone has one you know) is that they have an effect, but it may not be obvious. If nothing else, they deliver traffic indirectly. Certainly, Local Business Centre is huge. My jury is still out on YouTube.
Matt suggests they don’t, but then if he told you he would have to kill you. 
Tags: Google Local Business Centre, Inbound Links, Matt Cutts, Search Engine Optomization
Zero Inn Motel in Nhill Victoria
We’ve recently added a new website for the Zero Inn Motel in Nhill. It uses a simple template system with links to check availability.
The Zero Inn is a Comfort Inn and they want to build up their direct branding so that guests can book direct. We’ve found the same need for many chain motels. Both Best Western and Comfort Inn have good website marketing, but they tend to drag all guests in through their corporate systems which can delay cashflow as payments go through the group. Costs can also be higher for bookings processed by the Groups.
Previously, Zero Inn had no website at all. After the website was turned live, we updated their Local Business Centre in Google and found generic searches like motel in Nhill displayed them immediately at the top of results based on maps…. Got to love that!
It will be interesting to see how the website goes. They have already received bookings. Accommodation in Nhill Victoria is not the most competitive term.
Tags: accommodation, BurgundySky CMS, Comfort Inn, Google Local Business Centre, motel, Nhill Victoria, Victoria, Website, Zero Inn
Google Maps and Google Real Estate
I recently came across a new development in Local Search from Google to highlight Real Estate Searches where you can see both Houses for Sale and Houses for Rent. It is a very powerful tool and it has the potential to change the way people look for Real Estate.
Google has something called Google Base where they are developing general and vertical search markets to sell products. They have a vertical called Google Base for Real Estate. Thru Google Base, you can upload listings to their maps. Many big databases like HomeHound and RealEstate.com are already uploading content to Google now; so many Real Estate agents are displayed in results today and probably don’t even realize it.
What’s this got to do with Accommodation?
Well, I would guess that there are a number of vertical markets that Google will target and Travel is very obviously of interest. Microsoft’s search engine Bing targets travel with suggestions for flights and accommodation – all linked to their travel services and others that pay for placement in results.
Access to sell through Bing will probably go through channels that many small accommodation providers won’t typically use such as Expedia. Perhaps Wotif or others will also make deals to display their content.
Will Google maintain it’s unbiased results? Are search results meant to display the most relevant content or the content that makes the search engine money? I suspect Google will not blatantly get into sales – at least I hope not.
Google Base and Google’s Local Business Center give small businesses tools add their content to results. So they won’t be excluded if they don’t use listing services, but naturally this means business owners need to stay on top of what is happening.
There are options now to add Travel Packages to Google Base. Packages are different than a general accommodation listing because they have an expiry date and must be constantly updated. There are a number of ways to maintain updates. I haven’t seen them show up in general search results, but it will happen. For now, I’m waiting to see results.
I’ll keep a look out for anything new with Google Base. It is a sleeper that may pop up with new challenges that we should watch carefully.
Tags: Google Base, Google Local Business Centre, Google Maps, Real Estate
Motels in Portland, Portarlinton and Horsham
Location, Location, Location
The old saying holds true for website optimization. Accommodation is always very location specific, but what do you do when a location shares a common name with other popular destinations around the world? How does this affect our websites ranking when people do a generic search to find us?
Example:
- Victoria Lodge Motor Inn – motel in Portland Victoria
- Swansea Motor Inn – motel in Swansea Tasmania
- El Toro Motor Inn – accommodation in Liverpool NSW
- Portarlington Beach Motel – motel in Portarlington Victoria
- Stephanies – Bed and Breakfast in Williamstown, Victoria
- Mid City Court Motel – motel in Horsham Victoria
In all these cases, searches with the city name lead to other locations. In some lucky examples, the websites still come up on top, but when you are up against cities with hundreds of accommodation suppliers it makes it all the harder to get top search ranking.
To combat that problem, you need to realize it’s also apparent to the person searching that all the results are for the wrong place. So, they are going to refine their search result by adding the state or country to qualify their query. Now, you need to make sure you’ve optomized your location because Google will start showing results for the qualified search.
How Do You Qualify Your Location?
There are some basic steps everyone should take to assure Google knows your location.
- Use it in Page Titles,
- Put your address at the base of every page,
- Use Google Webmaster Tools to set your location,
- Use Google Local Business Centre to manage your map location,
- Try to get a domain that identifies your country. For Australia, our domains end in .au
- Host your website in your own country
- Use inbound links, like the ones above, to communicate your location through keywords. Google uses the anchor text from those links to determine what those websites are about.
If you’re the Countryman Motel in Biloela you probably don’t have to worry about people finding the wrong Biloela, but you certainly won’t go wrong doing good optomization.
Tags: El Toro Motor Inn, Google Local Business Centre, Horsham Victoria, Liverpool NSW, Mid City Court Motel, motel, Portarlington Beach Motel, Portland, Stephanies Bed and Breakfast, Swansea Motor Inn, Tasmania, Victoria Lodge Motor Inn, Williamstown
Accommodation Search on a BlackBerry Mobile Phone
More and more, our customers carry phones with powerful Internet capability with Google Search, Google Maps and the ability to view websites. Match that with GPS and you have the ability to quickly and easily find services around you, or at any specified destination, in the palm of your hand.
Accommodation Search on my BlackBerry phone
In my case, I have a BlackBerry, but you’ll get the same capability with an IPhone, and many other web enabled mobile phones. I would expect you’ll see the same linkage from car navigation systems soon, but to my knowledge it’s not available in Australia yet.
With my BlackBerry, I open a Google Maps application and set it to ‘my location’. Then, I see a blinking dot that shows my position to within a couple of metres. My Location moves as I move.
Next, I Search for “Motel”, or “Pizza”, and all businesses normally found in Google Maps are displayed with red dots on my phone screen. Like any Google Locality Search, there are 10 dots displayed; each has an info bubble with address, phone number, reviews, links to website. I can zoom in and out and I can click to view the next 10 results. In this case, I’ve searched generally for ‘Motels in Murwillumbah‘ and found Poinciana Motel in Murwillumbah.
Mobile Phones have an added feature because any phone number is like a hyper link – just click it and the phone rings the business.
So, you can quickly find what you want, see the location, read a review and then click to call.
How Can You Optomize Your Website to Display on Mobile Search Results?
Google gives businesses powerful tools to manage their listing on Google Maps via the Local Business Centre. If you have a locality based business, you should immediately update your listing in Google’s Local Business Centre. It is a very powerful tool to improve search results.
-
- Accommodation Search on my BlackBerry phone
-
- Display Phone Numbers, Website Links and More
-
- Google Maps Search for “Motels in Murwillumbah”
Tags: BlackBerry, Google Local Business Centre, Google Maps, internet enabled mobile phones, Iphones, Mobile Search