No matter how visually stunning your website is (or isn't), if it can't be found by the major search engines then you may as well not have bothered...this is the equivalent of printing 10,000 stunning brochures, and then leaving them in the storeroom. So often companies spend their scarce marketing resources on the "front end" of a website, totally ignoring the "back end" which drives visitors to your website, and from there encourages them to buy.
Search Engine Optimisation is the term used to describe the marketing technique of preparing a website to enhance its chances of being ranked in the top results of a search engine once a relevant search is undertaken. A number of factors are important when optimizing a website, including the content and structure of the website's copy and page layout, the HTML meta-tags and the submission process.
And in plain English? Building and adjusting the components of a web page so that it turns up in the natural search results (those in the middle of the page - to see more about the ads on the page go to Hotel Search Engine Marketing for Pay-per-click advice) on the first couple of pages when a keyword phrase is entered into Google, Yahoo and MSN (and other search engines although these three make up the majority of search traffic).
A web page is made up of a range of components, some of which you can see on the page, others are behind the scenes written into the HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) code and other elements are completely off the page or site. Here are just some of the things that an effective Search Engine Optimisation program can amend to influence where your hotel website appears on the natural (ie non-paid, yes, free!) page results of search engines:
Page title - look at the very top of this page in the blue bar on the browser where you can see the words in white text...see how it is phrased and where in the phrasing the key words occur?
Page headlines - the text at the top of this page is coded with tags (if you right click on this page and click view source on the menu, up will pop Notepad showing the HTML coding for this page)
On-page text - see how frequently the terms Search Engine Optimisation appear on this page and where on the page? At the beginning and at the end of the page is the best place for the keywords you want to be found by
Bold, italic and underlines - help emphasise how search engines see keywords
Anchor text in links - the words that are underlined in any links that are created to and from this page
Inbound links - the volume and quality of incoming links to a website - this is as important as all the other components combined
...and about 20 other changeable elements, which must be kept in a certain balance and density ratio so as not to "overcook" the pages which can result in a search engine penalising a website.
With the right keyword selection, analysis, Search Engine Optimisation techniques, some effort and a little patience you too can grow your internet revenues to two, three or even ten times their current level...
