* Keyword/market research is crucial in heavy competition areas
There are many articles online which attempt to answer how to best advertise your own small lodging business. Online advertising advice takes on many forms and there is quite a bit of it. There is great advice focused just on your website's appearance. Then there is a social media perspective. And the technical, search optimization point of view. I even came across an SEO expert who did not understand how to profit from an optimized website for rural bnbs, concluding that it was a waste of money.
As another marketer for Bed and Breakfasts, we also have an opinion. To be honest, I'm sorry, but choosing the most important point to address in your online marketing efforts just depends on your situation. There is not a single most important thing to do despite my assertion to the contrary. You may well not have a private website, nor even intend to use one, so a secure website may not be the right fix for you. It just depends.
Having popped that balloon, let me hasten to make this intelligible with a list of best and most likely repairs to heal your online appeal. I break it down into appearance, social and SEO optimization.
It only takes a few searches of your competition to clearly understand how important a beautiful website is. Beyond any words or meaning, gorgeous is still eye-catching. And eye-catching undoubtedly leads to time on your website. Also a projection of trustworthiness, desirability and value are communicated through your site appears. Bed and Breakfast.com has a nice article with good ideas, most of which you can do on your wordpress website.
We, as admitted SEO nerds, focus more on the 'behind' rather than the 'in front' of your website so we also find much to appreciate in the above article. Here are a few of the things they point out as important.
What may not be immediately apparent is just how visible your title and description tags are. Yet they are your first introduction to anyone finding you through online searching. In fact, everyone clicking onto to your website, did so - or did not do so - because of how your title and description tags appear. Okay, also because of your ranking, but watch your own behavior, the wording can easily get you to move down to the next listing.
There are many successful companies which get all of their business from facebook or twitter. It has proven to be highly effective for some. There is also considerable difference between being 'fully engaged' and 'occasional visitor' levels of involvement on these platforms. A large quantity of users half-way setup their account, walk away and never come back; while others setup up constant interactivity with their phones so they can instantly respond to messages and inquiries.
So, unfortunately, it depends. Do you already facebook daily or do you already hate it? Do you already have a big following or do you have to plan on creating it? What is your competition doing? This may be a wide open avenue in your area. Is a professional social media promotion company appropriate?
The company 'RevFine' has put together a very helpful article to help you consider this question with 7 tips for social media marketing. Here are some of their points to consider:
If you start to work with your online appearance by optimizing your title and description tags, you soon run into the question of which keywords to use and how to use them? When you setup your social media profiles and optimize your directory accounts, you are going to need words and phrases to describe your services. How do you find and use the 'best' words? And how do you optimize for them all over the internet?
The rule of thumb for keywords is this service or industry like 'bed and breakfast'. To this you add your location and something else that makes is appropriate and attractive about the page or company. If you look at your competition in the search results you will see how important these words and order actually are. If your competition is already being artistic and sophisticated in their keywording you will probably be happy to hired someone to work up a keyword plan for your website. You will need a list of well thought out details about your company when optimizing any topic above as well as in these places.
The search Engine Journal has written up a helpful article which explains website optimization in another light as well.
I hope I have made an impression of the seriousness of your keywords and how you use them. It is just plain unwise to assume you know them without any research. If you have a competitive business situation then I feel confident that you will be really happy you got profession research on this matter. The words you decide to focus on, how you use them in all over the internet will have a huge impact on your overall business health. So think on this carefully before doing much on any other aspect of your online health.
Your website's ranking, as you know, is partially based on the links leading to your website. Major directory listings are a significant source of very important information which Google clearly places great importance upon. Let us help you take advantage of the great, affordable SEO boost to your business that a good directory listing can provide. The big ones will lead customers directly to your phone or website. It is kind of shocking how often a business is not listed in Google maps, or has not been claimed by the owner. It is way better to claim or list your business, even if not done perfectly, then to just leave it missing or misleading.
If you resubmit your site repeatedly, as a shocking amount of "SEO" sell as a service, you are literally asking to be blacklisted. Submitting your business to a real directory requires that an actual person do a cross check of at least some data. Doing this repeatedly not only cannot help (if you are already listed how can it improve anything by retrying?) but is likely to incur some negative response.
When exploited fully, directories are great for affordable seo, providing high quality attention to your business at no direct cost to you. Don't miss this easy way to boost your search engine ranking.
Search engine positioning within Google Maps depends on a number of factors that do not always reflect the rank of a website in the organic search results. By far the most important of all is completeness. Something that every business should have the power to change and be responsible for. Yet, it is completeness of the listing which ends up being a heavy ranking factor as so many companies just never finish or even claim their listing.
Google My Business says here: "Local results favor the most relevant results for each search, and businesses with complete and accurate information are easier to match with the right searches. Make sure that you’ve entered all of your business information in Google My Business, so customers know more about what you do, where you are, and when they can visit you..."
Having these listings as perfect as you can manage is really imperative for any business as a major chunk of your business can, or at least could, come from this source. Of course there are many other factors beyond just filling in the blanks. Consider us to make your listing shine above any remaining competition.
It can look as if a link from a directory will qualify as a link from another website. In fact there are thousands of people and websites working diligently on the assumption that these links do actually help a website's search ranking. Google has a thing about solicited links to a website. They think of them as spam that just clouds the SEO waters for the most part, and they work to devalue them in their algorithms. This holds true on directories of articles too, if it is an easy link to acquire, then Google frowns on the value of that link to internet users.
BnBSeo believes in a smoothly running internet; happy customers easily finding what they are searching for; and web pages with clear messages describing them. Deception and subterfuge really have no place in this expanding world of easy information across the web.
