Natural Search &
Online Tourism Consultant

Google today announced a new feature designed to give people greater control over the results they see. Do you think a lower ranked result is more useful? It’s easy to promote it to the top, delete a result you’re not interested in, or comment on results.

This is the logical next step in the evolution of Google as far as I’m concerned. Their algorithm has been tweaked until it can’t be tweaked any more without getting dynamic, on the fly, user interaction to help it be even more targeted and to develop further. And here it is…Google SearchWiki.

Now you can customise your search results by re-ranking, deleting, adding, and commenting on search results. You can also see how other other searchers have customised any given result.

You’ll see the changes you make whenever you do the same searches while signed in to your Google Account, or until you decide to undo them. The changes you make only affect your own search results , and your changes will be included on a public comments page where you can also view how the community has edited or commented on a set of results.

Will this go to impacting on the natural search listings long term…in my opinion yes!

What importance should be put on the category that Google defines your website in? If you take the Google Ad Planner it categorises a website in a given category related to your sector. Are you unlikely to rank against what you perceive to be a close competitor but to what Google sees as although industry related, unrelated to the niche you would ideally like to be in?

These categories are not only used in Google’s Ad Planner but surface in Google Analytics under benchmarking and also surface in Google Insight in exactly the same format. I recently interviewed a candidate for an SEO role who had worked for Google in India…she stated that she manually vetted sites before they went into the index…I wish I had asked her if some kind of categorisation was taking place or if this was her primary role in the entry process.

There is inevitably going to be websites which straddle categories and see competitors outranking them on a term they feel strongly on. Does this categorisation have an impact on what you can realistically rank for in the SERPS?

I always find it useful to give visual examples when giving SEO training so I built a tool to display what effect the key fields that editors fill in will represent when they are surfaced in the search engines. This is a very basic version of a tool i created for an in house CMS. Try the SEO Tool here. I hope to add a few more to the list which are currently in development.

I have been receiving a lot of traffic recently related to people asking about free 301 redirects for their related domain names in their 123-Reg account. The redirect which 123-Reg actually implements is in fact a 302. The only way to implement a 301 on a domain name is to change the name servers to point at someone who does support 301 redirects, however, there will be a cost associated with this. If you have a Plesk Control panel you could set up an account and configure the .htaccess to conduct the redirect but this will result in a waste of account space for such a trivial task. Depending on the importance of the domain name will generally decide upon the best strategy.

Although documented in the press with large corporations, the domain highjacking issue is not of top priority when it comes to small to medium size online enterprises when it really should be. Recently I’ve been involved with closing ranks on many outstanding domain names that have either lapsed and been registered by third parties or never registered at all and the problem is a big one! Although not tried and tested yet Nominet offer a dispute resolution service where you can aim to retake control of what in your opinion is an abusive registration. In my opinion the service is priced wrongly and plays into the hands of the current registrant who will usually ask for a figure just below the DRS fee of £750 which for a domain name that cost at most £18, is not a bad return on investment and for large organisations is a quick resolution to their problem. I’ve seen situations where the domain was only 2 months old and the company paid out £500 for it’s return, although they would have had no problems in taking the domain through the DRS due to the nature in which the domain was being used and having sole trade mark, it was a critical part of their branding…the first question I asked myself was why had the .com been registered and not the .co.uk!

For any online or offline UK company it’s imperative to get both domain extensions (if you’re UK focussed I’d always 301 redirect the .co.uk to the .com it’s amazing how many companes run a duplicate site on both…this will be seen as duplicate content and will effect your natural search performance.)

1.Until domain syntax is learnt by an entire generation there will always been a 50/50 split about what is entered into the address bar.

2. Search engines will give preferential treatment to a .co.uk with a UK IP in their country specific listings.

3. If your brand is a generic one then you don’t want anyone else being able to register a powerful top level domain which could impede your brand marketing.

There are many tools out there which can help you to manage your domain names and most are free if you register your domain with your host, goDaddy and 123-Reg are two I’d recommend although 123-Reg do regularly have performance issues (so why I stay with them is a mystery) however their domain management tool is one of the easiest I have seen. If you’re on an enterprise scale then your going to need to put someone in charge or monitoring your domains unless you get a third party in like netNames or similar, however cost is going to be 3-4 times more than doing it yourself. The main concern I hear is what if it lapses…123-Reg will regularly remind you 60,30,15,3,2, and 1 day before expiry and will renew automatically unless you choose not too. I’d set the email address for the accounts to domains@mycompany.com and on the outlook exchange server have it forwarding to at least 3 chosen parties. If you choose to go for a third party to manage your domains they will usually guarantee you won’t loose a domain name but will charge you accordingly; around £5000/year for a mixture of 150 .com and .co.uk so it’s not cheap but what would be the cost if you lost one?

Domain strategy and management like reputation management is crucial in any organisation for brand longevity.

Having taken some interest in the launch of the new Cuil search engine it appears that the snippet and headline in the examples i have seen are being generated using the Wikipedia entry. It doesn’t appear to respect the <meta name=”robots” content=”noodp”> tag either…I know this is a reference to Open source directory but not that means web masters are going to have to go and enter another tag and in a company with over 30 titles this is time consuming! The snippet is longer than most meta description tags at around 325-350 characters. Does that mean we need to write a new description tag to accommodate Cuil to maximise our click through rate? Time will tell…

Having read the Lyndon Antcliff creation about the two US kids who hired the hookers on Money.co.uk it confirmed for me the power of the generic domain name and the benefits that come with it. There’s little debate that your choice of domain name doesn’t play some part in your hunt for good SERP listings for your chosen keywords…but that’s not what confirmed it for me; it was the speed and uptake of the story by some of the major news corporations around the world and I think a big factor in their running of the story was their belief in the domain name.

Here is an Alexa report for the traffic spike as a result of his story:

Owning a few generic domains in the online tourism sector, I’m always looking for domains that I know visitors will have confidence in, city names are a firm favourite of mine; the instant connection you get with visitors is priceless, provide a good service to your city and you’ll often become the first port of call for other services whether hotel web design or SEO services.

I remember cold calling a potential client back in 2004 to try and sell them a hotel subscription and she said “Why would someone choose Mumbles.co.uk over my own web site. I said “There’s possibly a trust issue…” that was my first and last mistake. She responded by saying she had been in business for 30 years and how dare i make such a statement. What I actually wanted to say was that being a city guide we are often preferred to over individual accommodation websites as the user thinks we offer an impartial service on their accommodation decision.

The benefits

• Instant brand awareness
• Better click through rates (CTR) in the SERPS for competitive terms
• Customer retention
• More effective PPC campaigns if required (Getting the search term in the display URL if you’re fortunate to have it, it will increase CTR and improve quality score thus lowering costs in the short and long term)

The downsides

• They’re notoriously expensive but that cost might be offset by your savings in marketing costs and customer loyalty down the line.
• Domain owners often become personally attached even if they’re not doing anything with name. It’s like their sending off their pet dog to a new home and want it to be loved, which at the price you’re paying your new dog will be in bed with the other half and you’ll be the one in the kennel.
• They are few and far between. On any given keyword/phrase there are 2/3 domain names which have what it takes.

If you’re looking for a “brand out of the box solution” and you’re confident in your copy maybe the generic domain is for you…but it’ll cost you in the short term.

Being a tourist information webmaster I’ve visited hundreds of hotel and guest house websites, seeing everything from professionally designed sites right through to Microsoft Word creations. Considering the levels of revenue achievable through their websites I wonder how many accommodation providers could improve their results by looking at their sites from the users perspective to help their hotel internet marketing perform better. I’ve come up with 11 steps that you can do to improve your conversion rates you get through your site.

• Good quality high resolution photos are my number one, not only will other tourist portal sites use them to showcase your property, but users will enjoy browsing through to see what you have to offer. Don’t be afraid to pay for a good photographer you’ll reap the rewards very quickly.

• Stick with a simple email address for booking enquiries like book@yourhotel.com or stay@yourhotel.com using an email address like enquiries@ or reservations@ is asking for trouble, the frequency with which these two terms are misspelt is very high.

• During the users enquiry process around 5% will enter their own email address wrongly so you won’t be able to respond by email. An easy solution to this problem is to ask for the users email address twice similar to a password validation. If you do manage to contact them by phone or fax ask them again for their email address so you can add them to your mailing list for future offers and events, you’ll be impressed at the levels of repeat visitors this can generate.

• Don’t try and rank for terms that are very generic to your city like “hotel accommodation in Swansea” your very unlikely to achieve it, better still look at your unique selling point as a hotel. Maybe you are located on the sea front, next to a museum or a sporting venue. Go with those terms instead and you’re far more likely to be successful.

• Make sure you’re listed in the Google Local Business directory, it offers an excellent way for you to be found when people use it to browse results. If you’re fortunate to be located in or in close proximity to a city centre your listing will appear at the top as a natural listing. This position is absolutely priceless! So with zero marketing spend you could be ranking for the keyword “hotels in {your city}”. Ive seen this feature work with 2 of my hotels and its incredible the amount of traffic that it drives to their websites.

• In your copy talk about the things that are in close proximity to the hotel but be wary of linking out to other sites at this stage, this is after all a site that you want to result in conversions so keep it simple with the end goal always to try and sell. Once you have your conversion why not generate an email to the user with a local guide attached or on a subsequent thank you page once you have a confirmed booking.

• Try and embed a Google map of where your property is located and a text box so users can enter their postcode and get directions. All this can be embedded in your website free with Google Maps

• Keep a call to action in plain site all the time like Book or an Enquire button on every page of your website.

• When your asking for the users details keep the enquiry form short, you don want to overwhelm the user at this stage, let’s keep pushing hard for the conversion.

• If you have a restaurant provide a menu, this saves them phoning you and asking you to send one. It also saves you postage costs.

• Find free tourism portals to list your site; you’d be amazed how many free high quality ones are out there.

• Have a late deals section where you can showcase offers that you might have and keep it updated. One of the most proactive hotels I have come across is Fairyhill in South Wales. They stay in tune with all the local tourism sites and always have their late deals updated. In a future article i’d like to talk about how you can maximise the return from your reception/front of house staff.

This isn’t a definitive list and i’d love to hear what experiences you have had with achieving those high conversion rates.