The term “search engine optimisation” often strikes fear into the hearts of hoteliers and can be especially daunting for the independent hotel that has no marketing or PR department to charge these activities with. But SEO doesn’t need to be scary or costly if you break it down into segments and allocate time to each. This article will focus on 3 areas of search engine optimisation; content, link building and social media. Each plays a vital role in increasing your hotel’s website positioning in Google for your chosen keywords.

In order to understand the purpose of these activities, it is first crucial that you understand the fundamental reason the search engines reward websites with higher positions in the way they do. As an avid user of Google, I know I can rely on it. It doesn’t let me down. If I type in a keyword, Google returns relevant results for me. But Google has to do better than that – millions of websites competing for the 'top spots’ are relevant to my search. Google’s reputation as the ‘search engine of choice’ rests firmly in the hands of measuring criteria, otherwise known as “algorithms” and if it fails, the risk is that searchers go to an alternative engine. But, how does Google choose which websites to reward with page 1 search results for a given search term?

A student request - we encourage hoteliers to participate and help out...thank you!

Dear all, My name is Iro Depasta and i am a postgraduate student on Tourism Management and Marketing at Bournemouth University.

I am now conducting my dissertation on "The Implementation of Online Advertising in Hotel Industry" and i have prepared a questionnaire in order to study the area of online advertising tools. You would be really appreciated if you could answer the below questionnaire which aims to investigate the existing and emerging online advertising tools utilized in the hotel industry.

I would be really grateful if you could dedicate a few minutes of your time participating in my research and enhancing the quality of my research results. Thank you in advance. Yours Sincerely, Iro Depasta

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