The following are requirements for BBAV MEMBER Web Sites:
We also STRONGLY encourage the use of ONLINE AVAILABLITY as a minimum for the convenience of your potential guests. On line reservations should strongly be considered. Properties of an Well Optimized B&B Web Page A web page should be focused on a few keywords or a search phrase that people are likely to type into a search engine. A fair amount of research should go into planning what phrases you want your site to target. Once you decide on the phrases for your site, then you should assign one unique phrase or combination per page. Once you pick a phrase for a particular page, you need to make sure it shows up on the page in the following ways: Search phrase in the title of the page : The title of the page is currently the most powerful words you can put on a web page to optimize it for a specific set of words. The words actually appear in the top section of the web browser, not on the web page itself. Search phrase in the Headings of the page using H1 and H2 tags: Headings actually appear on the page. They are words that are surrounded by heading tags which give the words more weight, both visually and in the eyes of the search engine. Search phrase in the main body text of your page: It should appear a least 2 times word for word and should appear some other times as variations of the same text. Don't sacrifice readability though. If you read it and it sounds slimy, spam-like, or is just annoying to read, you should remove some. You want to attract guests with a search engine, but you don't want to scare them off as soon as they see or read your web site. Search phrase in the words of the links that point to that page: The words that are used as links carry quite a bit of value in the eyes of the search engine. If you create a link to your page that is targeting the phrase "XXXs B&B" the link should contain those same words. So the link might look like "reserve a room at our xxx B&B." Not all links can afford to always have a full phrase in them, but they should be used whenever it is possible to do so without annoying the people that have to use your web site. Search phrase in the meta-description and meta-keywords of the page: Meta-descriptions and meta-keywords are technical talk for a place in the code of the page where a description and collection of keywords can be placed where people can't read them, but search engines can. This is the only place where search engines allow text that the visitors can't see directly. You want to make sure that your search phrase appears in both. You should have a different set of meta-keywords and meta-description for each page. Many companies take the easy way out and use the same words for all pages in a site, and that is of little help because it means your pages are competing with each other. Meta Description should have no more than two sentences and the first one should contain your targetted phrase. It should be promotional in nature as the description is often what search engines use as the snippet they show to a searcher when they list your page in the results. Example: <meta name="description" content="Come stay with us at the xxx Inn, your XXX B&B. The XXX mountains are beautiful and best seen from our B&B."> Meta Keywords carry only a small amount of weight with the major search engines but are still worth including. They should contain no more than 25 words and should not be repetitive in nature. The meta-keywords section is also a great place for common misspellings. People often misspell or mis-type words when they are searching, so it is good practice to think about what common misspellings could be. For instance, common misspellings and typos might include: thousnd, iland, ilands, tousand or htousand. You wouldn't want them to actually be spelled that way on your page, but if you could show up #1 for a common misspelling, that can send a lot of traffic to your web site. Search phrase in the alt tags of images: Search engines can't read pictures (avoid pictures of words) but there is a way to place some text that is meant to take the place of the picture if a person can't see pictures for one reason or another. This is called alt text, or alternate text. This text carries a little weight with the search engines so it is worth taking a few minutes to use it on your page to support your key phrase. You can read the alt text used for an image if you pause or hover your mouse over the image for a second or two. The alt text will appear next to the mouse pointer. If no alt text was used, nothing will appear. An Good Example: If you have a shared bath, be sure to say that clearly. If it is a modest bath with just the essentials, don't throw in the word "luxurious" just because your competition does. The problem with stooping to the level of your competition is that once they fail or get a bad reputation, you are still hunched over with a reputation problem yourself. There is a fine line between over-hyping and under-hyping what you have to offer. This is also why good photos can be an asset. Good photos draw people in, but they also help assure potential guests that what they see is what they get. If the words say luxurious and the photos tell a different story, you'll likely scare potential guests off. We hope these few tips will help you as you begin your process of building a web site for your new inn. |
