The first thing you need you consider is how many back links you have to your website. This is very easy to find out and can be done by using Yahoo. If you type link: followed by your domain name into the search box you will be able to see how many links you have to your home page. By using their drop down boxes you will also be able to find out the number of links to your entire site.
We all know that the more links the better but should these all be pointing to your homepage? We think it is an advantage to spread your links across your site partly to help with an even distribution of PageRank.
What are Deep Links?
Quite simply a deep link is a back link to your website that goes to any page other than your home page. You may have an interesting piece of information on your website that is not on your home page and so you may want to link to this in order that people arrive in the right place.
How to Create Deep Links
There can be a lot of problems creating deep links. Part of the problem is that many webmasters that link to you will automatically link to your home page. In addition many directories insist that you only give your home page and that no deep linking is allowed. Some of them will allow deep linking but usually to only about 3 pages which might not be enough for you.
There are ways in which to get deep links and we would say the best is by using article writing. If you are writing about a topic that is on a deep page in your site then it is a good idea to place a link to that page at the bottom of your article. Then when you submit that article you will acquire a large number of links to that page. Using this tactic also allows you to select the anchor text for the deep links to your site which is great for SEO.
Why use Deep Linking?
Well there are a number of reasons to use deep linking and one is to do with your search engine rankings. If a lot of your pages have links to them then it will encourage the search engines to rank some of your internal pages. This will give you more opportunities to get high up and generate traffic to your website.
If someone is searching for a particular service and they are directed to your page that deals with that particular service then they will feel happy that they are getting the information they need. It is important to remember that it does not matter where people arrive to your website, just that they do. If you ensure that all of your website pages are well written then you will be of interest to your visitors and they will likely visit other pages on your website including your home page.
It is also worth mentioning that Google will spread your PageRank across all your pages, so if you have more deep links your will keep the PageRank of your home page high. Considering all of the above, deep linking cannot be ignored.
Search Engine Optimisation Course
Imagine if you printed 1,000 beautiful, four colour, ten page brochures that stunningly captured the unique nature of your hotel at ten bucks a piece…and then locked them away in a cupboard…how effective would they be? Or how about creating a masterful piece of direct mail that is riveting, stimulating and worth a Pulitzer Prize…and then never sending it out? About now you should be feeling very, very guilty…not about those 500 brochures still left in your cupboard (oops!), but about not driving your website hard enough…
Building a great website without Search Engine Optimisation is the same as those brochures or that direct mail piece; no matter how captivating the text or how breathtaking the dynamic imagery, if no-one can find your website when they are searching online for that “luxury San Diego hotel”, that “romantic B&B outside Paris” or that “adventure scuba holiday in the Maldives”, then you have wasted your money. Not only that, but the smart competition has already optimised their site and are reaping the rewards; and you are missing those rewards.
What rewards I hear you ask? My last article received an extraordinary response from the industry (well, over 100 emails anyway…I've just finished answering the last few today)…some genuinely asking for help, which I am always happy to try to provide, but more than a few were saying “Show me the money!”.
And it's a fair call. So, this week we polished up a couple of Case Studies on Hotel Search Engine Optimisation projects that we have recently completed and posted these on our website for everyone to see.
To be honest, we picked a couple of the best ones for the Case Studies but when we looked at a range of sites that we have worked with over the last year, the results have been very pleasing overall…and these hotels are still our clients which, when invoicing time comes around each month, is the ultimate test of client loyalty.
In Case Study One, we picked a mature four star inner city hotel with over 400 rooms, extensive conference and events facilities and multiple food and beverage outlets. They had a “mature” website that had been upgraded to include a Content Management system five months earlier but they hadn't done much with it. Through applying sensible Hotel Search Engine Optimisation techniques, direct online revenues more than tripled in three months…conference and events online enquiries quadrupled with sales conversions occurring at a staggering 75.0%...apparently, when conference planners enquire online, they are ready to book!
The hotel invested $9,000 over three months and has since increased annualised online revenues by a conservative $420,000 and still climbing…you wanted ROI? At a conservative 3.8% of incremental revenues, this is a remarkable result.
For Case Study Two, we looked at a recently refurbished, five star coastal resort hotel with approximately ninety rooms and serviced apartments; they also offer meeting space and breakout rooms to suit small to medium upscale conferences and corporate training. The budget here was a little tighter so we focussed on boosting their premium “romantic weekend escape” market. Through our preliminary research, we also learned that they had welcomed some great, premium corporate clients during the prior year that had also bought team building and bonding packages from local suppliers (What is it that makes the entire executive panel of a company want to jump out of a perfectly good plane with just a piece of cloth packed in a bag in the interests of team bonding?). We sought to capitalise on this knowledge, creating dedicated pages on the website to show off local suppliers for adventure/team building activities and featured these on the hotel website home page.
You want measurability in your marketing? Every day the owner of this hotel logs in to see his website statistics and is now able to equate changes in Unique Visits and online enquiries to future sales trends. Unique Visits to their website grew from 1,000 to over 4,000 per month, conference leads have tripled and “value added” team building sales quadrupled…and premium “weekend escape” packages doubled even after a 30% price increase! Ah, the wonders of yield management and dynamic pricing!
So, does Hotel Search Engine Optimisation really work? Yes…and no. SEO will deliver traffic, leads and sales prospects…but it still requires the hotel to be responsive, attractive and priced to meet (or slightly exceed) the market. If you and your team can respond to online enquiries same day, deliver a memorable experience in reality that matches the consumers experience online and at a price that offers genuine value for money, then Hotel Search Engine Optimisation is for you.
And please understand…this channel is no longer the place to dump cheap, last minute inventory; it is the place to wisely invest your scarce marketing dollars for maximum ROI. In both these Case Studies, the online channel is now their highest yielding source of business.
My next article will be on the “5 Essentials For Effective Online Marketing” which will provide you with some simple but effective tips to start you on your way…plus, apparently this kind of headline really grabs attention…and I always promised myself that, one day, I would write a headline like that! Oh, and keep an eye out for our “Hotel emarketing 101” workshops coming up in May…pre-register now or register online from 1 March 2006.
Both Mercedes Aspland & Keith Paulin are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
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