Four Keys: Enhancing Search Engine Optimization

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1 Four Keys: Enhancing Search Engine Optimization A Quick Guide for Vacation Rental Property Managers Driving Website Traffic Presented by LiveRez

2 Introduction In the past few years, the utilization of search engines by ecommerce shoppers has catapulted Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to the forefront of every marketing and sales departments priorities. This Quickstart Guide attempts to cover the basics of SEO for vacation home rentals. Since vacation rental shoppers learn their shopping behavior and expectations through their other online shopping experiences, we can look at online shopping trends for guidance on online vacation shopping and booking trends. The following data from a study by icrossing in 2007 shows that most adults who buy online rely on search engines to research their purchases. 88% of adults who purchase items online conduct some sort of online research at least some time prior to completing their purchase 67% of U.S. adults research online before making a purchase decision use search engines as a research tool. 54% of online shoppers use search engines to find a web site from which to buy 53% of online shoppers use search engines to investigate where to purchase their desired product SEO vs. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising Surprisingly, many shoppers still confuse natural search traffic with paid search traffic. Paid or sponsored listings are purchased through an auction format on the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, and MSN) and cost the listing party whenever someone clicks on their ad. Besides the Big 3 (Google, Yahoo, MSN), which is dominated by Google, there are smaller niche search engines available that can provide good value for targeted audiences.

3 PPC and SEO should be used in conjunction to take advantage of the strengths of both. Being #1 is not as critical as being part of the Top 7 results which are generally results tat see substantially more clicks than other ads. Four Keys to SEO 1. Site Structure Defines the ability of search engines to understand the context of your content. What is important to you? 2. Content Defines the ability of search engines to read your content. Are you an expert? 3. Links How your are linked to the online community and how others link to you. What do others think of? 4. Trust Defines your trustworthiness to the search engines. Are you a fly by night? Site Structure Site structure comes down to your HTML code and areas of your code. Search engines use spiders to crawl websites and define the content of that site. Sites with heavy Flash or image content have little in their code to let the search engine s spiders know what they are about. Sites with a lot of written content leave spider food, or areas that are spiderable, for the search engines to read. Location is also important, where your keywords show in the HTML gives hints to the spiders on how important they are. Key elements of the site structure: + HTML + Meta + Alt Tags + Headers + Titles + Sitemaps + Page Architecture + Internal Linking HTML HTML is what spiders see. They don t see images or colors or all of the things that are created for the benefit if people, they see the code and through this must determine what the site is about. The sooner Content shows up in the code the better. If it is too far down the code, the search engine spiders deem in not very important. Sites built in Frames do not have all of their code

4 read due to the frame structure, so recognition is compromised. Code should be kept as clean and simple as possible. Unnecessary code or code bloat can cause confusion to the spiders or get them stuck ( spider traps ) where they spin their wheels and never index the rest of the code. Spiders read from top to bottom Content as near to the top as possible Do not use frames Too much javascript can be bad Keep code clean <html> <head>  <TITLE>Welcome to buydazzle.com</title>  <meta name="description" content="thousands of bargains and discounts on Mens Jewelry,Rings,Earrings,Bridal,Bracelets,Pendants,Engagement Rings,Journey,Diamond,Three Piece Wedding Sets,Wedding Bands,Drop/Dangle,Solitaire,Gemstone Rings,Gemstone,3-Stone,Diamond Bands,Anniversary,Wedding Sets,temp,Fashion,Crosses,Hearts,Hoops,Circles,Diamond Fashion,Promise / Friendship,Birthstone,Bracelets,Diamond Rings,Three Stone - Past, Present & Future, "> <meta name="keywords" content="mens Jewelry,Rings,Earrings,Bridal,Bracelets,Pendants,Engagement Rings,Journey,Diamond,Three Piece Wedding Sets,Wedding Bands,Drop/Dangle,Solitaire,Gemstone Rings,Gemstone,3-Stone,Diamond Bands,Anniversary,Wedding Sets,temp,Fashion,Crosses,Hearts,Hoops,Circles,Diamond Fashion,Promise / Friendship,Birthstone,Bracelets,Diamond Rings,Three Stone - Past, Present & Future,"> <meta name="classification" content="shopping, online shopping"> <meta name="robots" content="index,follow"> Meta Descriptions and Alt Tags Meta descriptions is the information that describes the data on your website. It is easy to do, but does not influence the rankings of a site much anymore. Google and other big search engines use the meta descriptions to display on the results pages, but not in determining ranking. Spamming the meta area can hurt and may get you penalized by the search engines since it affects the trustworthiness of your site. Alt Tags are the little yellow windows that show up when you mouse over an image. By themselves they do not make an enormous impact, but they are another area where you can add keyword descriptions. The importance of describing pictures, videos, and other media is rising.

5 Meta description and keywords o Easy to do, not used by main search engines in determining ranking. o Still used in description on results page. o Do not keyword spam Alt Tags o Small area to have additional keywords o Do not keyword spam Headers and Titles Headers express the importance of information in the HTML and show up as bigger text on the page. Keywords inside headers reflect to the search engine spiders that this in an important area or important text. H1 and H2 headers are the important ones and ranked very highly by the search engines. Make sure you put the most important keywords first and do not keyword spam. Page titles are the titles that appear at the top of your browser when your page loads. Ensure unique page titles for every one of your pages. Duplicate page titles are seen as seen as a sign of duplicate data and therefore lack of content quality. Again, put the important keywords first. H1-H6 Tags o Put keywords in Headers o Most important keywords first Page Title o One of the most influential SEO factors on a page

6 o Put important keywords first o Keep to characters o Don t keyword spam! Sitemaps Sitemaps are the index page of your website. Their purpose is to provide the search engine spiders an easy reference to all the site pages. It is critical to follow the official sitemap protocol set up by the search engines, which includes keeping the sitemap to 100 links of less. It is not necessary to include landing pages or other pages not accessible through site navigation in the site map. The sitemap is usually placed in the footer on every page fo the website. Necessary Follow protocol, links per page Purpose is for search engines not visitors

7 Page Architecture & Internal Linking Page architecture determines how important pages appear to be within a site. If a page is buried deep within the architecture, it s deemed not as important to the search engine spiders. Internal linking can be used as an indication as to the importance of a page depending on how often a page is linked to by other pages within the site. More links, means more important. Text links are best because they give something for the spiders to see about the page they are going to. Broad to narrow architecture Text Navigation Internal links pointing to important pages Beware links pointing to non-important pages Use text links

8 Content Keyword Research The long tail refers to the fact that more specific keywords and keyword phrases will solicit less traffic, but the traffic they do solicit is more qualified. Many of these smaller and specific long tail keywords together can produce more than a few big keywords with a larger volume of searches. The average search length is 4 words. So start thnking in Keyphrases, not Keywords. Example: Utah (most searches, but not qualified shoppers could be looking for Utah Beach) Utah Vacation Utah Vacation Home Rental Southern Utah Vacation Home Rental (fewest searches, but very qualified shoppers) Decide how people are looking for your products and match your keywords or keyword phrases to the combination of words people put into the search engines to get their desired results. This will bring you qualified visitor, shoppers who are in a purchasing frame of mind for what you have to offer. Some tools help you by giving you your keyword phrases and any other possible combination of searches on the internet that include your keyword. o Google Adwords Keywords o Wordtracker

9 Understand your target market and people in your niche use as keywords. This requires a deep understanding of the types of vacationers coming to your area and what attractions, events, and other experiences are drawing them there. Example: Vacation rentals in Coeur d Alene know that they target customers in June are coming because of the Ironman race and searching for information associated with the race. Content is King The search engines, especially Google, want you to write for the visitor. They want to return the results to the keyword search that are most relevant. Therefore, the content, above all else is what the search engines are looking for. Sites large in content tend to do well. Sites such as.edu s or.org s sites which have a lot of content often get ranked well. Content needs to be of value and can t be fluff! Unique, Authoritative content Topical Analysis

10 Keyword usage Duplicate Content Authoritative Content Not all content is created equal. Fluff or spammy content doesn t help anyone. The content needs to be relevant to the keyword search and important or useful to the visitor. If it s good, people will link to it and bookmark it. Both helps your SEO Be the expert in your industry Write for the visitor, not the search engine Good for links (link bait) Helps visitors to return

11 Topical Analysis and Keyword Usage Google is sophisticated enough that they not only look for the keyword, but any other words or phrases that are naturally associated with the keyword. This is a sign of good content and fluff (blah, blah, blah keyword, blah, blah, blah) can be spotted easily. Authoritative content which has a natural occurrence of words and phrases associated with the keyword converts better and works best with the search engines. Keywords and their derivatives are important, so is supporting content. Example: Keyword discount tickets or vacation Related keywords ( Ontology ) o o Do not keyword spam It is not natural or helpful to the visitor. Duplicate Content Duplicate content within your site is bad. Search engines will only value one page that has the content and they will try and guess or determine what page is the source of the content. Duplicate content across multiple domains is even worse. The search engines will try to determine who the author of the content is and all the other duplicate content will be devalued. Keep content unique & fresh Check to make sure that no-one is using the same copy.

12 Beware of articles submission sites, that content gets pass around, which can be both good and bad. DON T use standard descriptions and adcopy. Re-written descriptions convert better anyway.

13 Links Links are important and the search engines are doing whatever they can to keep people from manipulating this part of the search ranking algorithm. It is not wise to trade links or purchase links with unrelated sites anymore. Reciprocal links that provide no value to site visitors are worthless and may actually hurt site rankings in some circumstances. A Little Science Page Ranks are heavily influenced by Links based on a mathematical equation. This equation (more complicated than I care, or can, go into here) is based upon the links pointing to a site. Therefore increasing the perceived value of the site. Example: Simple network below Page C has a higher PageRank than Page E C has fewer links to it, but the link it has is of higher valued Link Value The value of links related to your site are based on the following: Quality- Topical relevancy of their site and how popular is their site. Inbound links- Bad links from sketchy sites can hurt your trust and reputation o Find out who links to you by typing the following into the Google Search Box: Link: Outbound Links- Showing that you link to others who are also relevant to your industry shows that you are a team player and a good neighbor in the community. Text links- The best kind of link, a link that says mountain bike rental as the link is better than one that says

14 Link Baiting- The idea of offering content that is so good, people feel that they have to link to it as a source of great value. Top 10 lists, tools, articles, etc. are often used as link bait. Link Building The web has empowered users with the ability to recognize and reward good content by how prominently they share this content with others. If your content is share aggressively, you will suddenly have links from all over the web pointing to you. Social Bookmarking-helps people gather their bookmarks or favorite sites online without being tied to a computer. This generates a list of popular sites and pages. If you can get on a social bookmarking sites, it could be a good link. Blog Trackers- People track their favorite blogs, make sure you have a lot of fresh articles and that your blog s RSS feed is added to all of the blog search engines. Social search sites- On these sites, people vote on good articles. Interesting, compelling articles can get you listed in these sites and get a good link

15 Quality is better than quantity Beware who links to you o Bad links, even unsolicited can hurt Beware who you link to Text Links are best Reciprocal Links & Link Partners Keeping in mind the rules about the importance of helpful and relevant links, it can be very beneficial to have a Reciprocal Link program where you provide a link on your site for a related business, and the partner provides a link to your site from their site. Basics of a Reciprocal Links Program: Partner with similar sites by trading reciprocal links o Find similar sites o Contact & make agreement o Update and modify pages o Monitor sites & links Exchanges are organization that exchange links

16 Trust Factor New sites struggle with trustworthiness. In addition to all the items discussed above, the age of the site. Google has a penalty, often called the sandbox for sites that are new. They also have a supplemental index for pages that they think may dilute search results. The only way around this is to prove that your site is a community player and an important part of the your industry. Proper SEO will build that trust with the search engines as well as your visitors. Good site structure, good content, good links all help prove that you are here to stay and you are relevant and important. This is what SE s want in their index. Be a good neighbor in the community o Inbound links o Outbound links Credibility Factors o Age of site is important o Authoritative content o Links

17 Performance The performance of your site is considered an indicator of the quality of your overall site and business. The load times for your pages are tracked by the search engine spiders and considered in the ranking of your site. Slow load times, even if intermittent, will decrease your ranking. Things you can do to improve site performance: Caching & Expires Headers Reducing the number of HTTP requests Reference to external files and images Compression of large files on site pages

18 Conclusion Search marketing is not optional, it is an essential part of your online vacation rental marketing efforts. Although there are many hidden assumptions and algorithms within the search engines, there are also many actions you can take today to enhance SEO. It is important to realize SEO is not an event, it is an ongoing activity. The Four Keys to SEO: 1. Site Structure 2. Content 3. Links 4. Trust Factor Follow the advice in this Quickstart Guide and watch you rankings improve. For more information on how to improve your website conversions, please contact LiveRez at or call About LiveRez LiveRez creates more online vacation rental bookings. LiveRez provides the most complete online vacation rental property management solution available, enabling property managers to fully utilize the power of the internet in driving guest bookings, guest satisfaction, and the management of their properties. LiveRez takes a unique online-centric approach through its partnership with property managers, and is focused on making the online shopping experience pleasant, trustworthy, and complete. Successful customers include ALL STAR Vacation Properties (allstarvacationhomes.com) and High Country Properties (highcountry-rentals.com). LiveRez is headquartered in Boise, ID. For more information, visit