Getting Listed: A Search Engine Jump Start
I need help getting my web page on the search engines. I have a Condo at Port Aransas,Texas. It is a two bedroom with a fully furnished kitchen overlooking the ocean. There is a Gambling Ship that has its home port there and of course fishing, surfing and boating.
Garrett:
So let's see... first let's imagine your ideal customer. S/he is ready for a vacation and sits down at the computer and visits Google. What terms do you think this person will search for? Probably: condo rental, Port Aransas, Texas, vacation... what else?
Bennie:
Ok, Condo Rental, Port Aransas, Texas, Texas Treasure, Gambling Ship, Surfing, Deep sea fishing, Beach resort, wind surfing, Beach rentals, sand & sun, fishing pier, swimming pool, Port Aransas shopping.
Garrett:
My next suggestion would be to write some text on your front page that somehow involves these keywords. Right now, there's not much there for the search engines to look at. The text on your front page is directly related to your rankings in Google.
Bennie:
I just put some more words on my front page. Please tell me what you think. http://www.coastalaccommodations.net
Garrett (cc:Dan Thies):
I'm including Dan Thies on the conversation... we're beginning to get out of my depth.
As text on the front page is concerned, Google's not even going to notice for up to a month, so you won't see any changes in your ranking for awhile.
One thing I'm not sure about is whether or not you should add links in the text to those places on your website... i.e., link the word "Accommodations" to the Accommodations page... I will check with Dan Thies on that.
Here's some more homework for you: brainstorm about which sites should link to you, which local sites especially who are not competitors, but might be interesting for your visitors to see. Then you build your self a "local links" page. It would also be great to have visitors write about how great their experience is and begin to build a small archive of "articles..."
Perhaps you could offer them a rebate at the end of their stay if they write about their visit...
Dan, do you have any other ideas?
Thanks,
Garrett
Dan:
You're hired, Garrett - when can you start? ;-D
The keyword strategy is okay for a start, but there need to be optimized web pages built to target these search terms. To target all these search terms, they'll need several pages. I have a basic tutorial on that here:
http://www.insideoutmarketing.com/index.php?p=pages&pid=4
I would focus my keyword strategy on what people are going to search for. Specifically, combinations of "what" and "where." For example, "wind surfing" combined with "gulf coast, gulf of mexico, texas, corpus christi, port aransas," etc. A single web page with wind surfing and those location words worked into the title, headings and body text.
In terms of the offering itself, "lodging, accomodations, cabin, cabins, hotel, hotels," etc. - I'm not sure exactly what's applicable but I'd search for a "cabin" before I'd search for "accomodations." Again, combined with location words. All in all, you probably will need 10 pages or so to cover your bases on a minimal set of keywords.
The link building is very important to this - set a keyword strategy, build the pages you need, then it's all about how many links you can put together. Swapping links with other local websites is a good way to go, and if done the right way, will actually make this website a better tool for selling the accomodations. It doesn't take a whole lot of links before you start getting found in the search engines, but you do have to start somewhere.
Thanks!
Dan Thies
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About the Author:
Dan Thies is a well-known writer and teacher on search engine marketing. He offers consulting, training, and coaching for webmasters, business owners, SEO/SEM consultants, and other marketing professionals through his company, SEO Research Labs. His next online class will be a link building clinic beginning March 22
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