How to Sell More in 2008 - February Edition
Everyone knows search engines are key to driving qualified travelers to your site, but not everyone knows how to get the top of the listings. I hate to admit it, but there is no magic answer to consistently achieving high search engine rankings - but there are a variety of resources to help educate you on what search engines care about and how to make your site not only user-friendly, but search-engine-friendly as well. Here's a quick primer on how to get started with search engine optimization, as well as a few sites to visit regularly for more tips and tricks.
Getting Started
Step 1: Research relevant keywords
Do you know what language your customers and prospects use when looking for your activities? Be sure to include relevant locations and destinations as well as types of activities you offer. Remember, travelers use 4 - 6 keywords on average when searching for things to do and you may be more successful with high rankings for phrases like "Colorado skiing" than "Colorado" or "skiing" alone.
SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool
More on How to Choose Keywords
Step 2: “Tag” your keywords
Once you've determined the most relevant keywords for your customers and prospects, the next step is to thread them into key HTML tags on your site - especially PAGE TITLE and META tags. Be sure that tags on key pages are unique and best reflect the content on each page.
More on How to Use HTML Meta Tags
Step 3: Create relevant content
For your website:
Your website should describe what your company does and it should pertain to the keywords you already have tagged for your site. The keywords should be threaded throughout your site to ensure relevance to the tags you've created. Be sure to use a variety of keywords throughout your content so you rank higher on several different terms, not just one.
You'll also want to analyze your keyword density to make sure you aren't using desired keywords too little or too much.
Another great way to drive traffic to your site is by doing "top" lists. Not only does it create more relevant search engine content, but customers love lists, whether they are of myths about adventure travel or the top 10 reasons why customers should take a trip with you.
No matter what kind of list you have on your website, customers will be drawn to it.
For your activity listings:
For any activity you want to sell online, it's very important to describe it well for both customers and search engines. Adventure Central Connect and Adventure Central Office provide you with tools to manage your activity content as effectively as possible. Critical fields include Activity Name, Descriptions and Search Categories.
We recommend that your activity name and descriptions be as detailed and relevant as possible to the keywords you have selected for your site. For example, the activity name "Bike Rental Day Rate" may be entirely accurate, but does nothing to describe where the biking activity takes place or what makes it so unique. "Colorado Extreme Bike Rental" is more likely to rank higher and will draw more qualified visitors.
Clicking on the image to the left, you'll see an example of detailed descriptions for a fictitious activity, "Costa Rican Bird Watching". Notice that both descriptions use not only general birdwatching terminology, but also specific regions and types of birds that are likely to be encountered along the way.
The Search Categories you pick for your activities are used by our system to create landing pages. Landing pages are important because they not only narrow down the search results for your users, but they also serve as important entry pages for search engines. Our system allows you to specify up to 3 activity types and themes, so be sure to use them as long as they are relevant to your activities and corresponding keywords.
By specifying destination, activity type and theme categories for our Costa Rican Bird Watching adventure, for example, we've created 8 additional landing pages that can be ranked by search engines. Be sure to include the categories as keywords in your descriptions to achieve higher rankings.
Remember to preview your activity through your Adventure Web links and make sure it looks good!
Step 4: Build inbound links
Unfortunately, having great keywords and content on your site is not enough! Search engines also consider how popular your site is - measured by how many sites link to it. The pages we host link to your site, so that helps. You can see what other sites are linking to you by doing a quick Google search for: “link: www.yoursite.com”. Also know that it is better to be linked to from one popular site like Microsoft or Wikipedia rather than a bunch of sites that don't create traffic like a family web page. Simple tips like joining the Better Business Bureau or submitting your site to a paid directory can help.
101 Link Building Tips
Step 5: Avoid search engine obstacles
Many search engines, including Google, use a crawler to navigate your website. It's important to know that crawlers can't navigate complex coding - things like forms and frames can trip up a search engine crawler, preventing content behind them from getting listed. So if you're going to use them, always remember to provide alternative HTML links to your content, either in the pages directly or in your Sitemap.
Search Engines and Frames
Step 6: Submit and verify
There are many ways to have your site submitted to search engines but it is important that you do it manually rather than through an automated system. By doing it manually you can limit your submissions to the top search engine sites like Google, Yahoo! and MSN and you can make sure your site isn't being over submitted which has penalties. It can take up to a month or more before your web page appears, but there are ways to speed up the process including creating XML sitemaps.
Submission Tips
More on XML Sitemaps
Step 7: Rinse and repeat
Always remember that you are never finished with search engine optimization - because search engines change their algorithms to improve the relevancy of their results, your competitors make changes, customer behaviors change, etc. You must continuously measure your results, learn what's working and what's not, and refine your approach. In addition to reviewing your web usage logs with tools like WebTrends or Google Analytics, you can submit your information to sites like SiteTrafficStats to see how many people go to your site, how frequently they return, and what keywords they type in to find your website. It's an easy way to see what people are doing to get to your site and it helps you find additional ways to optimize your site for search engines and customers.
Feel free to share your insights and ideas on search engine optimization - what's worked, what hasn't, what tools you find useful, etc by commenting on this post. Happy SEO'ing!
Additional Resources
Search Engine Optimization: Step by Step
SearchEngineWatch.com
SEOChat.com
SiteTrafficStats.com
SEO Today
Search Engine Guide