Posts Tagged ‘SEO’
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
Are links from Facebook and Twitter valued by Google
Matt Cuts (Google’s spokesman) has provided a pretty good explanation about how Google values inbound links from Twitter and Facebook.
It’s a natural question. If you have inbound links that is good. If you have inbound links from highly ranked websites that is better. Facebook and Twitter are obviously very highly ranked although you must consider the value of the page and not just the value of the website, i.e., a link from Facebook’s Home page would be more valuable than a link from a fan page.
I actually start to think that a well crafted Facebook listing for an accommodation is a good thing, but not for links. I think it’s possible to create a fan page that would allow guests to make comments on what they think of the property and area and use that to make recommendations to their friend – a classic social networking model.
But for inbound links…. doesn’t look like it will have much effect.
Tags: accommodation, SEO
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
Using Wordle to Make Keyword Word Clouds
I went to the ‘Search Engine Boot Camp‘ last week to see what I could learn and picked up a few good tips and reconfirmed a few things I already knew. One item that seems like fun and perhaps will also be useful is creating ‘Word Clouds’ using Wordle.
A Word Cloud would be a jumble of words where the more frequently repeated words are emphasized with size. Naturally, when you review the text of your web pages, you would like to see the most important keywords are the largest words in the cloud.
Using Wordle is very easy – I like that! Just copy the text from a page and paste it into the box and click create. With web pages, Search Engines see everything, so I would suggest you use the ctrl+a command to select all. Then, you’ll get the whole page. One very important thing Wordle does not see is your Meta Page Title. That’s a shame because that is very important for Keywords – perhaps add it to the words manually.
Here’s an example for Australian Holiday Guide for Motel and Hotel Accommodation.
Here’s another example for Great Ocean Road Holiday Guide for Motel and Hotel Accommodation.
With the Great Ocean Road, it is easier to target keywords as the subject is narrower, but there is still a lot of important keywords to consider. Most motel websites have fewer important keyword topics and you’ll see they can be easily covered with a few pages. Remember, you may not get the best result putting all your Keywords on one page. Instead, use a couple of pages to target specific keyword themes.
Naturally, if you have a hotel or motel website, then your most important keywords would be
- Business Name
- Location: Town, Region and State
- Product Type: Accommodation, Motel, etc.
When you see the cloud misses these major keywords, you’ll need to go back to your page and update the text. I can see that Australian Holiday Guide should have more emphasis on Product Type words.
Hope you enjoy this new toy.
Tags: keywords, SEO, websites, Wordle
Setting up a New Website for Accommodation in Robe SA
My good friend Bruce Henderson rang me today to share ideas on how to improve ranking for regional travel websites. Bruce runs a very successful website about Warrnambool on Victoria’s Great Ocean Road.
We could have discussed for hours the ways to optomize around how people mis-spell ‘Warnambol‘, but this time we were scratching our heads over how to plan new website for Robe Australia. Bruce has just started a new website called Robe Accommodation Guide. Here, you have to ask the classic question, is it better to extend the Warrnambol website to include Robe or to build 2 websites?
Physically, Robe is 6 hours drive from Warrnambool. It’s in another state and another travel region. It has a different type of visitor.
So, does it make sense to build a new website or build upon an existing website? The jury is still out. For now, Bruce has done both. It will be interesting to see what happens.
Tags: reciprocal links, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, websites