A web site is absolutely useless unless search engines can find it.
Search engine optimization is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” or “organic” search results for targeted keywords. Usually, the earlier the site is presented in the search results, or the higher it “ranks”, the more searchers will visit that site.
As a marketing strategy for increasing a site’s relevance, SEO considers how search algorithms work and what people search for; SEO efforts should involve a site’s coding, overall design, content, and structure; as well as fixing problems that could prevent search engines from indexing and fully spidering a site.
More noticeable efforts may include adding unique content to a site, such as the HMC searchable photo galleries, quick facts pages, travel resources, etc. and ensuring that content is easily indexed by search robots, and designing the site to have the necessary sales elements to generate online reservations.
Search engine optimization actually begins with the initial conceptual design of a web site. A search engine friendly web site incorporates the necessary elements into the design and content on the site. Applying SEO to a poorly designed and dysfunctional web site is futile. The site’s design, navigation scheme, and keyword richness of its content are essential to SEO success.
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We define goals for reservation production because we never lose sight of the fact that the purpose of your web site is to produce room business.
Search engine optimization is a methodical process which continues long after your site is published.
In 2011, HospitalityEducators.com lost Guest Columnist Neil Salerno, The Marketing Coach, to illness. We are pleased to recognize his contributions to the industry with this BEST OF series .
Neil Salerno, CHME, CHA from 1996-2011 was known as the Hotel Marketing Coach™ as he worked with many independent and branded hotel properties in establishing and maintaining their hotel web sites, internet marketing strategies and overall technology marketing. Neil agreed in early October 2010 to share his thoughts as a guest columnist for HospitalityEducators.com with an emphasis on revenue management, and we had a number of interesting phone conversations as I began to prepare a column featuring him. Neil became hard to reach by email or phone beginning in December and I was saddened to learn he passed away in mid February of 2011. John Hogan
His good friend and my co-author of LESSONS FROM THE FIELD: A COMMON SENSE APPROACH TO EFFECTIVE HOTEL SALES, Howard Feiertag, a faculty member at the hospitality program @ Virginia Tech wrote a tribute to Neil that was posted globally in online publications and here @ HospitalityEducators.com with this tribute .