Get yourself hit
YOU have a Web site, but how do you get customers seeking accommodation to access your site? Your page is but one of millions - nobody will find your Web site unless you let them know it is there.
Luckily, promoting your site on the Web is easy, but many Web sites suffer because nobody has bothered to index them with the software search engines.
Last week, I showed how the browser software uses a search engine to find a hotel. You should therefore:
lknow which search engines people use
lregister your site with those search engines
lmake sure that your site is programmed to have the right key words.
The eight most popular search engines account for about 95% of all Internet enquiries. Make sure that you are registered on all of these. They are: Yahoo, Alta Vista, Hot Bot, Webcrawler, Excite, InfoSeek, Lycos and Magellan. Each works slightly differently and has varying strengths and weaknesses but, however they work, the site must first be registered in order to be found. Furthermore, the site must have the necessary keywords written into the front page, so that the search engine can find your site whenever someone types in those keywords.
To check out your own hotel site, go to each of the search engines and check it out with the "Cornwall hotel" test (discussed last week), adapted for your part of the country. If that does not find your hotel, then be more specific and try the "Corisande Manor" test (also described last week), adapted for your hotel. This will at least show you if your site is registered with that search engine.
If your site passes the "Corisande Manor" test, it is registered. If it then fails the "Cornwall hotel" test, you have a visibility problem. Complain to your site provider. Something may be wrong with the programming or copy writing that means something vital is missing.
If it fails the "Corisande Manor" test, then your hotel is not even registered with that search engine. You can cure this yourself by adding your site yourself to the search engine's data base. On that search engine's front page, you will find a button that says "add URL". Click on it and follow the simple instructions.
If you do this with each of these search engines, you will start to see a marked improvement in the number of visitors to your hotel's Web site. Remember it takes time - even a month or more.
Check your programming
Make a list of all the possible keywords that someone might use to find your site. My list, for example, contains words and phrases such as Newquay, Cornwall, West Country, seaside, good food and sea views. Then look at the front pages of potential competitor hotels that do well on search engine results, and see what keywords they are using. Add them to your list.
Make sure that your front page has all these obvious words on it. In particular, make sure that the name of your business includes the word "hotel". Our hotel is called "Corisande Manor", but we use "Corisande Manor Hotel" in all our Web material. Also ensure that your postal address is written in full - for example, "Newquay, Cornwall, West Country" and not just "Newquay" or "Cornwall". If yours is a luxury hotel, or you are beside the sea, or handy for the Tower of London, include these facts so that the words are there for the computer to index.
Remember that your Web site is useless unless people can find it. It is no good for it merely to win awards for great creativity - if it does not show up in the first 20 hits on a search engine, then you may as well not have bothered.
promote your site
Letterhead and brochure: Make sure everyone knows your site address ande-mail address. It sounds simple but many hotels forget. My site is http:// www.cornwall-calling.co.uk and my e-mail address is david@cornwall-calling.co.uk. I put both on my letter heading and on my brochure.
Telephone enquiries: If you get a request for a brochure, certainly send one out, but assuming your Web site contains more information than your brochure (remember cyberspace is cheap, and gives you more space than a brochure), always ask anyone making an inquiry if they use the Internet. If they do, then tell them your Web site address for extra information.
Free sites: There are lots of free Internet sites that will register your site for you. Try http://www.broadcaster.co.uk for easy signing on, with 200 free sites. It's painless - you just input your data once, and it does the rest.
Mail shot to your mailing list: Let all your existing customers know that you are on the Web. You can even include a special offer for those looking up the site. It is not difficult to have a page specially for them, featuring a special incentive for making a reservation via the Internet. n
