Michael Gray - Graywolf's SEO Blog
Michael Gray - Graywolf's SEO Blog |
| How David Hotels Can SEO Vs Goliath Hotels Posted: 18 Aug 2010 06:59 AM PDT
In my first post on hotel SEO, I explained how big hotels with conference facilities have an advantage over small hotels. But small hotels need not despair, because they have ample link building opportunities too. In the interest of keeping things short, here are some link sources I’ve seen in the hotel SEO scene, which sources are accessible to small hotels. I’m [mostly] skipping the commentary. 1. Local universities and colleges – If out of town students have friends or family helping them move in to dorms, where do those friends or family stay? Local hotels that are affordably-priced, naturally. Not those mega-chains with mega-prices! 2. Music, film, food and other cultural festivals – Festivals usually are ongoing for a few weeks, which means that they’re not tied to a single hotel. The organizers can and do mention places they’ve stayed at before or hotels in the vicinity. Bonus tip: You or your SEO can find these by Googling keywords like ‘festival’ + ‘city name’ + date in the future. I emphasize the date in the future point because you’ll usually find a lot of past festivals crowding the top rankings, since they’ve had more time to accumulate links. A quick google on ‘Montreal cheese festival’ confirms that Google has yet to realize that these queries deserve freshness – that is, more recent results should be ranked ahead of more frequently cited (linked to) pages. 3. Startpages – These are pages that feature a collection of links a particular user happens to find useful. In other words, they’re pretty strong editorial votes by users as to sites they care about – exactly the kind of link Google loves. Ironically, hotel SEO specialists obsessed with Pagerank will often find these links useless because (i) Startpages usually have dozens and dozens of links, such that each link would just get a little bit of Pagerank. (ii) Other times, all these links are nofollowed. So none of them pass any Pagerank at all. However, there’s an element of trust to links, too – Startpages are hubs, and Google trusts hubs according to various patents they’ve filed. (Find out more about hub finders here – and especially how to fake them out.) So it’s worth testing whether nofollow links from carefully curated startpages can still help other pages rank, or whether they’re useless. 4. Escort reviews – Yes, reviews have gotten so widespread online as to include prostitutes. People talk about their favourite escort agencies and experiences with various ladies (I’ve yet to see it for male prostitutes, but it probably exists too). Unsurprisingly, a fair number of these encounters take place in hotels, which enables you to have your small hotel mentioned and linked to. (Perhaps you could integrate a Groupon deal here? Siesta special: 30% off for you and your hired lady friend, if we get 50 people take up this deal. Imagine the scene in the lobby haha!) Liked this post? You’ll likely enjoy a free chapter from my SEO book for experienced pros, too. p.s. FYI: Back when I worked with a small Montreal hotel, these links propelled them ahead of giants like Hilton and Marriott, to rank #3 on core keywords like Montreal hotel and similar rankings on other terms. The marketing director for that hotel told me that I tripled year-over-year online sales, which brought total sales numbers up 15%. That’s why I say guys like Eric Ward, who focus on these sorts of hub links, can charge $500 – $1000 link… This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis WordPress Theme review.  Related posts:
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| How To Silo Your Website: The Breadcrumb Trail Posted: 17 Aug 2010 08:07 AM PDT
In Part 1 we looked at How To Silo Your Website: The Masthead. In this article, we’ll be taking the next step and looking at the breadcrumb. Adding extra layers to crawl through never works to your advantage … ever … For those of you who don’t know, the breadcrumb is the small text usually found under the title on the page (not the HTML title). The breadcrumb shows where you are in the website hierarchy AND (this is the important part) it is hyperlinked to pass internal anchor text. I can’t stress enough how important it is that the words be linked. With the exception of things like your customer service, privacy, and contact us pages, all of the pages should be under the main sections of the masthead we talked about previously. Unless you are going to have more than 150 pages in each section, don’t add an extra level. Yes, I know Google says 100 links, but you can easily stretch to 150 without much need for concern. As an example: hotels in Disney World are divided up by which park they are closest to. So there are Magic Kingdom Hotels, Epcot Hotels, and so on. Resist the temptation to add an extra layer or crawling point (at least in the architecture–we’ll talk about the bread crumb in a minute). Users are going to be likely to look at hotels based on which park they are associated with, so you will need a “Magic Kingdom Hotels” page. From an information architecture standpoint, however, you don’t need the extra layer. This really requires that you understand the topic. You want break things up for usability, but you want to design your architecture as flat as possible for the search engines to crawl. Adding extra layers to crawl through never works to your advantage … ever. When linking to the home page many websites use the word “home” as a link to the homepage. You can do that but, if you do, you are missing the opportunity to focus a little more internal anchor text. Instead use an icon of a “home” and do an image replacement using the site name as anchor text. I have seen people use their primary keyword: use this with caution as it is a risky technique. The more the anchor text differs from the site name, the greater the risk. When you are building the breadcrumb use the exact anchor text you are using in the masthead. The more it varies the less effective the technique will be. So ideally this is what you would want: > Disney World Hotel Reviews > Magic Kingdom Hotels > Contemporary Resort Review > Disney Vacations > Disney Vacation Promotional Codes > Disney Information > Best Time to Visit Disney World So what are the the takeaways here:
That’s it. Once this is in place, you are telling Google what the important parts of your site are and using your internal anchor text to tell them what it’s about. Next in this series: How To Silo Your Website: The Content. This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis WordPress Theme review. Related posts:
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