A quick update to Jane’s post about getting onto page 1 in Google Search through Google Local search results.
If local leads are important to your business, then listings in Google Local Search can help you appear above the #1 ranked organic search results in the Google OneBox.
I’ve written a new article on the topic of Improving Your Rankings for Google Local Search.
Get listed. Get reviewed. Get cited.
Going live this month is Captains by the Bay in Broome WA, who achieved a page 1 ranking in Google search results almost immediately. How did they do it?
After optimising and indexing their website with Google, they registered with Google’s Local Business Centre. This means when someone searches Google Australia for “Broome accommodation”, Captains appears on page 1 under Local Business Results.
As a destination-focused business, you can’t afford not to be registered with Google’s Local Business Centre - it costs nothing and also gives you a listing in Google Maps.
This is useful for your own site - once you have a Google Maps listing, you can capture a link that enables you to place the interactive Google map in your own site at no cost. It also makes it easier for people searching Google Maps for your accommodation or tour outlet.
Go to Glenn’s article on Google Local Search to find out how to register.
Cost-effectiveness is a top priority for small operators when it comes to marketing.
If the experience of Elizabeth Fleetwood is anything to go by, online marketing seems to offer the best solution.
Elizabeth runs Hobart Historic Tours, and is relatively new to online marketing. The path that led her there is probably familiar to many small tourism businesses.
“I had made some efforts to join in Tourism Tasmania’s international marketing efforts,” she told me. “But I find it too expensive and cumbersome for my operation. For example, it would simply not be worth my while to go to ATE [the Australian Tourism Exchange], as the minimum cost would be about $10,000.”
Another avenue to reach international visitors is through the magazines that go into hotels that attract overseas visitors. But again, advertising in these publications is prohibitively expensive for a small operation like Elizabeth’s.
“I think the future is more likely to be on the web,” she concluded. “And I am more likely to look at marketing opportunities in that medium.”
So far, Elizabeth has concentrated on links, including Discover Tasmania, which brings most of her online enquiries, and the Tasmanian Travel & Information Centre, with brochures in the Centre’s physical office in Hobart, which still brings the majority of her bookings, thanks to a great staff who know her product well.
She has recently signed up with BookTasmania, an interface that places her product on travel distribution sites at her discretion on a commission-only basis, while allowing a booking system directly linked to her own site.
Linking out to other relevant sites to encourage back links is a good strategy for achieving higher search ranking, and you can read more about how Elizabeth is doing this in my blog post.
With the percentage of international visitors booking her tours now at 40%, Elizabeth’s attention is focusing on the quality of her product and marketing online. Getting these two things right will take her a long way towards building her business cost-effectively.
Here’s a tourism business that’s poised for success with an international market.
A River Bed is a self-contained retreat at Airey’s Inlet on the Great Ocean Road.
Already doing well domestically, Wendy Deighton is looking at ways to get the message out to potential visitors from overseas.
Given that the Great Ocean Road is a highly popular destination, we believe Wendy’s best bet is to have a presence on dynamic destination-focused sites, and this reflects her own plans to forge strong online links.
She is already listed on OzStayz, GreatOceanRoadHolidays.com.au and we have just put her in touch with Tim Kottek and Yvonne Hunter at GreatOceanRoad-Torquay.com.au.
These sites will certainly help to bring her attention from an overseas audience.
She is also keenly aware of the need for thorough keyword research to attract more visitors, and recognises something that we have also recently discovered - ‘kangaroo’ is one of the most highly searched wildlife terms!
Kangaroos have been seen on the front lawn and often on the other side of the river which guests can view from the studio - something that will definitely help her to get the attention of overseas visitors wanting a truly Australian experience.
Wendy also points to the difficulty some small operators face when clients want them to arrange every aspect of their trip for them.
Tourism operators aren’t travel agents, and you don’t want to spend time organising a complete holiday when you only benefit from one small part of the package.
Creative packaging with other tour operators in the same region can give overseas visitors exactly what they’re looking for though. Then all they have to do is book transport - very easy to do online.
In addition, each operator involved in the package promotes the whole deal, which brings more attention to you.
Beyond this, linking into the best destination sites and relevant online travel agencies means even if you get a direct enquiry from a high-maintenance client who wants more than you are able to offer, you can refer them to your affiliate site.
By funnelling destination searches into an effective site with recommended tours and accommodation neatly packaged - we believe operators such as Tim, Yvonne and Wendy could be onto a winner.
Targeting your market is a much more precise process online, because you can find out exactly what people are searching for, what search terms bring them to your site, and which ones keep them there the longest.
Interestingly, as this article explains, online searchers are looking for more and more specialised information. And this is where niche businesses like yours can benefit enormously.
But how do you capture the searchers who are looking for the services, products or experiences you offer?
The answer is through intelligent keyword research - I say ‘intelligent’, because it isn’t just a matter of looking at the most popular search terms. You need to find terms that are more precisely associated with your business, with fewer actual searchers.
For example, a business that offers dolphin encounters will be competing for attention on the search term ‘dolphins’, which attracts over 7,000 searches a day. But ’swim with dolphins’ and ’swimming with dolphins’ are each keyed in 96 times a day.
Here’s an opportunity not only to publish content that attracts a niche, but to attract a more precise search audience. You know from the search term exactly what they’re looking for.
It’s important to note here that ‘dolphin swimming’ gets 22 searches and ‘dolphin encounters’ just 4 a day. Knowing this is vital to your success. You could guess which phrases are being keyed in, but if you know, then you have a much better chance of matching your content to those phrases.
Remember too that the number of people visiting your site is less significant than the number of site visitors who find what they’re looking for on your site. Even more important is the number who book. So attracting people who are clearly looking for precisely what you offer is more important than attracting thousands looking for all sorts of other experiences and information.
How do you find out what searchers are looking for? I used Wordtracker’s free service for the figures given above. You can also take out a Wordtracker subscription to get access to more detailed keyword analysis.
Once you have keywords that are significant but not huge, you have a real opportunity to use them in your content, remembering to apply good search engine optimisation (SEO) techniques to attract people searching on those terms.
Glenn explains keyword analysis further in this article.
Last night we officially launched OM4Tourism’s unique model for website marketing to a select gathering from the tourism industry.
The enthusiastic support we received in response to Glenn’s captivating presentation was mixed with concern that perhaps we needed to be taken away by men in white coats!
Take a look at our new home page and you’ll see why. We are giving away websites and charging no hosting fees - and there’s no catch.
Instead, our revenue comes from the online marketing services we offer to clients who want us to help them with keyword analysis, writing web pages and blog posts, establishing e-newsletters and booking services, or running search marketing campaigns.
Our sites are designed to be self-managed by businesspeople, not technicians. The editing facilities at the ‘back end’ of the sites are user-friendly, and anyone who is used to word-processing will be able to pick up the basics very quickly.
What this means for tourism operators is you can have a fully self-managed website at absolutely no cost, with free tutorials from us to help you market your business online, using the built-in tools that come with your site.
Or you can hire our web designers and writers to do some or all of your online marketing for you.
For example, Goat Rock Texas is a site that we set up and are now hosting at absolutely no cost to the site owners.
The Croft family are managing the site themselves, happily uploading content and images, publishing blog posts and setting up their own banner artwork.
Periodically they receive an email tutorial from us explaining how to use the tools available to them within the site.
We are delighted to see watch the site develop naturally, infused with the family’s unique energy. It has lots of appeal for its target market and will no doubt draw plenty of attention.
Notice that the url contains ‘om4tourism’ - once the site is ready to cut over, this will disappear and the site owners will have their own domain name.
At the other end of the continuum is K2O, who also received a free site and hosting, but have purchased our online marketing services to carry out keyword analysis, establish the look they want for their site, populate the site with optimised content, and set up links and images.
We will also support K2O in monitoring Google Analytics for their site to measure its performance over time.
Given the excellent results we are seeing with other OM4Tourism sites, we are very confident.
You don’t have to create a whole new website to get better at online marketing.
Live History is an example of a site that we have converted to our platform, giving the business owners, Judith and Chris Cornish, more opportunities to get their story out to their target audience.
The new site has the same look and feel of the old one, and the content has been transferred to the new structure. So why is this one better?
Because it has all the online marketing tools that are vital for positioning the business, bringing in traffic, encouraging conversation, increasing conversion and boosting bookings. For example:
In addition, Judith and Chris now have access to Google Analytics to help them track where their site visitors are coming from and what terms they key into Google to get to the site. They can then incorporate these search terms into their content to attract even more attention.
Here’s Judith’s response to the site set-up process:
Thank you so much to both you and Glenn for getting us set up with this new site. I know that it won’t be long before I am blogging with the best of them and our testimonials are flowing in from satisfied clients!
As Live History develops, Judith and Chris will be blogging their news regularly and uploading more images and testimonials. As they develop new performances, they can add new pages to the site very easily - if you can manage Word, you can create a page in an OM4Tourism website. And as the content builds over time, so will the authority and PageRank of the site, turning it into an online magnet for Hobart visitors.
And what on earth does this mean anyway?
If a web developer has assessed your site and told you that it isn’t search engine friendly, have they explained what they mean?
The mystery of search engine optimisation (SEO) is a common frustration for small business operators. You end up paying a lot of money for someone to ‘fix’ your problems when in fact there’s a lot you could do yourself if you only knew what.
It’s a bit like running a car. Those who aren’t versed in the workings of car engines are forced to rely on others to fix the problem - and your mechanic is unlikely to take the time to explain how you can do it yourself and save yourself hundreds of dollars into the bargain. After all, they’d be doing themselves out of a job.
We are often asked by tourism operators to assess their sites and tell them why they’re not getting the attention they deserve from online searchers.
Glenn has written several articles on SEO and attracted the attention of SEO guru, Mike Moran, by publishing a post recently that explains exactly how to assess your own search engine friendliness.
Once you have assessed your site by following Glenn’s advice, consider your use of keywords, because accurate use of keywords in the right places will help to attract not just more visitors, but more qualified visitors.
Getting 100 visitors to your site and converting 10 is better than getting 100 and converting 1. By ensuring that you are providing exactly what your searchers are looking for when they key in their search words, you are significantly increasing your chance of conversion.
Even when a tourism business is either new or relatively unknown, it can benefit greatly from being in a well-known and sought-after destination.
Seppeltsfield Vineyard Cottage - the second in my series of tourism profiles - has become very popular thanks partly to its location in the Barossa region of South Australia.
Seppeltsfield’s Sharyn Rogers describes this as a “huge plus”, since many visitors are already searching for the Barossa and naturally come across the cottage in their search.
Nevertheless, there’s no time to sit back on their laurels and wait for bookings to roll in. Sharyn pays a lot of attention to their site content in order to keep it alive and lively.
As a small business - the cottage sleeps two - Seppeltsfield is well positioned to benefit from online marketing, where there is no battle for space. Sharyn also finds that, at little over $300 a night, paying 30% commissions to intermediaries isn’t worth their while.
So Sharyn and her partner Peter choose to market their accommodation directly via their site and with a presence on destination and accommodation sites such as SouthAustralia.com, Barossa.com and the B&B and Farmstay Association.
Seppeltsfield also markets through the Barossa Regional Guide which helps to capture last-minute bookings and encourages word-of-mouth recommendations to friends and relatives overseas.
Sharyn and Peter do a great job of packaging their accommodation with other tour operators, so that visitors can get the best from the region as a whole. They are finding that one in five of their guests will book a package rather than just accommodation.
“Packages are especially popular with overseas visitors,” Sharyn told me. “And over 90% of our internationals are now booking directly online.”
Sharyn recognises the benefit of having a self-managed site: “We are updating our site contantly,” she said. “And I insist on having good images on there to help people see the experience.”
By posting regular news with a subscription facility on the site, they are able to express a personality and maintain interest in Seppeltsfield as an ideal base for a Barossa holiday. This is also a great SEO (search engine optimisation) strategy.
And Sharyn has included a link to TripAdvisor, encouraging guests to write up their experience on this social media site as a fantastic way to attract links back to the Seppeltsfield website.
Keep an eye on the Seppeltsfield site, because Sharyn and Peter are in the throes of revamping it to give it a more contemporary feel.
Revamping and refreshing their web presence is reflected in their approach to the product itself. As a 19th century cottage, Sharyn recognises the demands of their market and keeps the cottage fresh with contemporary facilities, including free wireless broadband internet access (and free use of a laptop computer if required), a Bose iPod Docking Station and “Wave” sound system, and, soon to be installed, a Bose entertainment system.
Congratulations to Seppeltsfield for being declared winner in the Hosted Accommodation category at the South Australia Tourism Awards this year for the third time running, taking them into the Hall of Fame.
Over the next few weeks I will be writing profiles on a dozen small tourism operators dotted around the country - all of whom have contributed valuable information to OM4Tourism on international marketing issues.
The operators featured have all agreed to share their marketing experiences, and you are equally free to comment, add advice or ask questions.
The first operator is attracting an international clientele to its small-group customised tours with some impressive online marketing.
Rich + Lingering offers luxury food & wine tours and customised tours, all for very small groups (no more than six), in South Australia’s Barossa Valley, Adelaide Hills and McLaren Vale premium wine regions.
After less than two years in operation, the business has just become the SA Great 2007 Regional Award Winner for Tourism Services, and taken home the SA Tourism Commission New Business bronze medal.
According to Rich + Lingering’s Jason Miller, the business depends on clear and targeted branding to overcome the general perception that wine tours involve large buses and little specialist knowledge.
“There are a number of low to mid-priced mass market operators who basically provide a transport service for which there is a big market,” he told me.
“We are at the other end of the scale – private, small group, high levels of international wine knowledge, personalised service. It does take time to break these misconceptions, which is mainly done by developing relationships and having a strong brand.”
International guests make up 35% of Rich + Lingering’s total visitation. They are aged 30-60, professional/white collar, high net worth individuals, looking to develop themselves with food and wine activities and education. Most come from the UK and northern Europe, North America, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore.
Jason reaches this market online (his website and others), as well as via agents, ITOs and magazine advertising - all carefully chosen for synergy with the business’s brand. To capture unplanned visits after arrival, he also works with Visitor Information Centres and has a presence in regional guides.
Jason puts great emphasis on web content, as 43% of guests find Rich + Lingering online, with most coming directly to the R+L website. He shared some valuable insights:
“Our key online strategy is to drive traffic to our site by achieving high Google rankings for specific searches (e.g. ‘private/luxury wine tour south australia’), but also a broad range of links and other good relevant content, such as travel tips, on other sites.
“Having good content on your website which isn’t too sales focused shows you ‘know your stuff’, is of value to the reader, and helps SEO [search engine optimisation].
“We also produce a seasonal newsletter which people subscribe to and can distribute themselves to their friends etc. This has been a great way to broaden the net. A number of our newsletter articles are further used in blogs.”
All great strategies. Interestingly, Jason finds that most guests use the site for research rather than bookings, and only a small proportion are booked completely online.
He believes this is due to the nature of the business. Offering customised, high-end tours means personal communication with guests to ensure all their needs are met. This is hard to do via a booking engine, so guests are encouraged to contact Rich + Lingering directly with their requirements.
