Posts Tagged ‘motel’
Central Motel in Port Fairy gets a Website Makeover
Peter and Linda from the Central Motel in Port Fairy recently engaged us to give their old website a makeover. The usual goals:
- Make a Good Presentation of their Accommodation, Central Motel is an attractive accommodation with a great location in Port Fairy. It was easy to make improvements to the old website simply using new images and layout.
- Improve Search Engine Results, keywords like Great Ocean Road and Port Fairy have been emphasized along with basic terms like accommodation and motel.
- A Flexible Website that can be easily Managed, we’ve used BurgundySky again to make this website as it consistently provides great results. We’ve used Google Maps, embedded video hosted on YouTube and Online Booking to simplify sales.
At the same time we updated their website, we also looked at inbound links, additional sales channels and opportunities to improve online bookings.
Tags: accommodation, BurgundySky CMS, Google Maps, motel, SEO, websites, YouTube
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
Driftwood Strahan Villas gets a New website
We’ve just set up a new website for Driftwood Strahan Villas on the West Coast of Tasmania. I find it interesting to build websites for places like Strahan because the more you learn about what to see and do, the more you realize Australia is an amazing place.
Strahan is located on Macquarie Harbour, which turned out to be 6 times bigger than Sydney Harbor. The area is World Heritage Listed with amazing cruises on the Gordon River, Old Railway lines with Steam Engines, wild stretches of beach, and islands with wild tales from the convict days when they were building great ships from the Huon Pine. Strahan looks like a very cool place to go.
The website follows a pattern that we’ve found to work well. One item we added for this was an embedded like to a Live Webcam Overlooking Strahan. That seems to have worked well. The camera is a project funded by the local tourism organization and it gives the website visitor a great feeling for being in Strahan.
This website is built using BurgundySky. It will give the owners a website they can self-manage as their motel changes. The property is very new and has been winning a lot of awards for being Environmentally Friendly. They also have an interest in promoting Tours and Activities in the area, so they may be adding new pages to help their neighbor businesses.
One of the challenges with this website was finding the right keywords: is it a Motel, or Holiday Units, or Self-contained Apartments, or Self catering Cottages, New Affordable Accommodation in Strahan Tasmania – well I guess it is all of the above. Hopefully, people looking for a great place to stay will find the website.
Tags: accommodation, BurgundySky CMS, motel, Strahan, Tasmania, villa rentals
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
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
Using YouTube to Make a Big Impression
YouTube is really an interesting way to extend the marketing of a website. On the one hand, video can make a website stand out and it delivers really interesting impressions of your accommodation or surrounding area. On the other hand, it creates new ways for customers to find you.
When you use Google, you can search for websites, maps, images and videos. You may also find your video linked in Google Earth. You can also link videos to your Local Listing in Google, which in theory could boost the ranking you get with maps. YouTube also seems to show up as a website with an inbound link to where videos are embedded.
No matter how you look at it, uploading video to YouTube is a winner.
Making a good video may not be easy, but the actual part of uploading and linking a video is easy. YouTube takes out all the hassles of hosting and bandwidth. They also provide simple steps to embed the video in your web pages.
Here’s an excellent example from Lamplighter Motels in Melbourne’s Oakleigh suburb. We’ve linked it on the main website as well as on their Golden Chain Melbourne Motels listing.
Here’s the embedded video.
Tags: accommodation, Embedded Video, Lamplighter Motel, Melbourne, motel, Oakleigh, Video, YouTube
Should Albury Motels use Reciprical links for SEO?
Interesting question came up today where Janice from Australia Park Motel in Albury NSWasked how to add a link to her home page for a local Albury Wodonga website.
Adding links is pretty easy. The main question is Why? The website requested it, or required it, because they want to develop their inbound links. Of course, the same is true for Australia Park Motel. Inbound links are very important to every websites success with search engine ranking.
But, these are reciprocal links (I link to you and you link to me). Having reciprocal links is not bad, but Google no longer gives them much value. The real sticky point for me is when a website is a paid listing and then they also ask for a reciprocated link. I don’t think you should give it IMHO.
Also, assuming Google valued this style of reciprocated link highly, would there be any consequence to adding a link? I would always be wary of links to a website that generally advertises the area – including competitive businesses? In some cases they are really valuable references for our customers.
Links are good. We need to help our visitors find good information. A good website always links to good information because that is part of giving service.
We also did a website for Commodore Motor Inn in Albury. Should we link this motel in Alburyto Australia Park’s website? Here you are going to say, these guys are direct competitors – the answer is no. Maybe. But they are also members of Golden Chain Motels. Perhaps as a group they like to work together and help each other? Then, links make good sense.
So, if the links make sense because you just want to have them and you think they add value – then do it. Reciprocated Links won’t hurt your website. Well, that’s not totally true. Links to ’bad websites’ may hurt you because Google would see links to porn or other negative websites in a bad light. But Hey, that’s pretty obvious anyway.
Tags: accommodation, Albury, Australia Park Motel, Commodore Motor Inn, motel, nsw, reciprocal links, websites, Wodonga
Cootamundra Motel Website for Southern Comfort Motor Inn
We’ve just added a new website for Southern Comfort Motor Inn in Cootamundra NSW. This one uses a black background which seems to make the image pop off the screen.
Again, we were able to get this one up and indexed by Google for generic terms like ‘motel in Cootamundra’ within a week. It is hard to know whether that is just because the accommodation websites in Cootamundra are not well organized or that we just did a really good job. I like to think we did good!
Tags: accommodation, cootamundra, golden chain, motel, nsw, southern comfort motor inn
Country Roads Motor Inn Narrandera NSW
Recently added a new website for Country Roads Motor Inn Narrandera, which has done very well with search engines. It looks like adding a new website to Google Local Business listing for a small town in Australia will place the website very quickly towards the top of search results.
Mick provided some good images from the visitor info centre in Narrandera as well as some pictures he has taken and they seem to bring together a good snapshot of what the property and town has to offer. So far so good!
Any comments on this website would be welcome. If you’re looking for clean and friendly accommodation in Narrandera, please visit their website.
Tags: accommodation, motel, narrandera, nsw