Monday 3 August 2009

SEO

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Social Media for Tourism Operators!


I got the idea of social media aiding in promoting our technology blogs but I had a hard time translating that into marketing for hotels and tourism operators. Necessity became the mother of invention when one of our most loyal clients got a call from a SEO operator saying that their resort was not on Google for important keywords.

We had missed something important - Poinsettia Apartments, was not listed on Google page 1 for Apartment Rental St. Lucia. A year ago we discovered that the traffic for apartments was not all that great - using "Google suggests" and a few other tools we decided to re-brand them as villa apartments, villa being a much bigger tourism work than apartments.

SEO is a very precise art. Its a little like cooking. You can make a great pea soup, but add rice, ginger and carrots and its no longer a pea soup. Google understands pea soup, but pea soup with rice, ginger and carrots, well that is another matter. You cant get your ginger, rice and carrot pea soup on top of a Google listing for pea soup, forget it, its just not focused enough for Google. So it was with Villa Apartments, We got on top for villa apartments even Caribbean resort villa apartments - but apartment rentals St. Lucia got lost in the mix.

Normally it takes months to get a site linked on Google page 1, but we did not have a month. We had to fix the problem now. trying to make the accommodation page work for Apartment rentals would have been self defeating as we had made a pea soup of it, and it was working OK for several keywords - But not St. lucia apartment rentals.

So we created a new page- optimised it for apartment rentals St. Lucia etc and launched it with links from http://www.poinsettiaapartments.com/accommodation.htm.

Now to get backward links. Ie links from other, not related sites, which would give it a higher Page Ranking (PR) and get it on top of Google search results.

I did a search for St. lucia long term rentals etc, looking for social sites that would accept my comments. Up came zimbio.com A popular celebrity site with excellent PR. There was a social comment about Amy Winehouse moving to St. Lucia: I signed up and wrote "St Lucia is a great place to relocate to. You dont have to be a star to love it, its simply beautiful, and a great place for a star and the sort of place where you are like to just bump into a star at your favourite beach or bar.  St. Lucia is mountains, waterfalls, rain forests and beaches fit for the stars. If you are coming to check out opportunities, the perfect place to stay is in a townhouse close to all the action yet away from the crowd. see http://poinsettiaapartments.com/apartment-rentals-stlucia.htm. Poinsettia does long term rentals so its is very affordable and of course beautiful, up on a hill overlooking Vigie Beach and Bay - You might even spot Amy!".

Simple! I did a few more - added links from our http://Travelwatchnews.com and blog and two days later we were on page 1 of Google.

So it works folks! it takes time and know-how, but once you create a well optimised page the rest is really common sense and a bit of the gift of the gab. Try it and let me know.

By the way we did OK for Poinsettia with many links established and Page One on Google For sevaeral search words and phrases.

stlucia romantic apartment holidays 1.1
long term apartment rentals st lucia 1.1
caribbean resort villa apartments 1.2
st lucia villa apartments 1.3
stlucia romantic apartments 1.3
stlucia caribbean apartments 1.3
apartment rentals st lucia 1.8
stlucia apartments rentals 1.9
stlucia holidays apartments 1.9
caribbean villa apartments 1.6
caribbean resort villa apartments 1.2
st lucia resort villas 2.2


To find where you are use Googles Browser "CROME" and enter link:yourwebsiteurl


For More on SEO for Tourism see our website on Search Engine Optimisation For Travel and Tourism Marketing

Contact AXSES sales@axses.net for a tourism and travel marketing