Building Links - No real easy solution

Over the years Google has been improving it's algorithms to make sure they get the best results for it's surfers. Much of their new algorithm is based on how many links you have to your site. The reason for this, is Google figures that if you have a good content on your site people will naturally link to it.

This is an absolute nightmare for self catering owners as your website will probably be quite small and won't attract many links. Also many owners don't want to link to someone else's website as they may loose valuable bookings.

Many website owners have resorted to reciprocal linking, which is when two websites swap links. Again Google is aware of this and discounts how much a reciprocal link is worth. So how do you then compete against agents and directories, well in short, it's difficult to battle with them head on. The trick is to work with good local sites first and then work your way out.

Good local sites in your area maybe a golf courses, outdoor activity centres, castles etc. These types are sites are happy to promote local accommodation as it helps sell their services if accommodation close by.

Things to avoid:

• Avoid just linking with just any website. Google likes links from sites that are related in some fashion. For example you are much better getting a local golf course to link to you than a car hire company in Florida.
• Use the keywords in your Anchor text. Try not to use just your website e.g. www.selfcatering-scotland.net much better to link from Self Catering Scotland This helps tell Google what your site is about.
  
• Don't join these link buying schemes, or at least be very careful. I have learnt this the hard way, Google has caught onto these types of schemes and has been known to penalise websites that take part in it.
• Page Rank (PR) can also be a bit of a myth, don't just link from a site because the page has a high PR. Many directories have been concentrating on this try to increase their PR so they can charge people to be on their site. If the site has little to do with self catering, Scotland or travel you are better of putting your hard earned cash somewhere else.
• Sneaky tactics - many Self catering directories don't allow you to link direct to your website through HREF. Many use frames or Java Scripts which can stop search engines following the links hence stopping any value reaching your site. (Don't get me wrong directories still play a part in generating business, but don't rely on them improving your site's ranking).
• Another couple reasons directories can be a pain in the rear end, if you write content for the directory you are in fact helping them move up the search engines. To compound the effect, if the directory is not link out properly to your website then they are keeping all the value of their site to themselves. This is where the 2nd issue may occur, if you have just copied and pasted the content from your site into the directory this can cause a duplicate content issue. Google will not show two pages with the same content, it will only show one, Google will decide which page is more likely to be better. 9 times out of 10 the directory will have more authority than your site because it probably has 1000's of pages. So the danger is your site could suffer and the directory does better and starts to appear in Google for search terms you would expect your site to appear for.
  

Will continue...

Keywords Choosing the Right Ones

I did a search this morning on Google for "Self catering Scotland" and there was about 2,350,000 websites found. This makes it quite difficult to appear on the first page of Google for that search term. However don't despair, there is the long tail theory which I have been using for years.Most of the traffic that comes off Google's natural searches are not from the main keywords but the 1000's of other keywords people use to search. Here are some of the keywords people use who have found my site:

Aviemore Things to do
Pet Friendly Cottages Scotland
Kid Friendly Cottages Scotland
Skiing Scotland
Glenlivet whisky

These are just a few examples, so the long tail theory works if you target pages to more specific keywords relevant to your self catering cottage and the area it is located in.

My advice is to start targeting your local area first and going after those keywords. If your cottage is in Fort William then optimise your pages for "self catering in Fort William" to begin with. The more pages you have with good content about the area your cottage is located the more chance of people finding it. The bigger your site the bigger net you will be throwing. One thing to bear in mind though you still want to keep the main target keywords flowing through all the pages.

So an example of putting more effective keywords in you content:

• Click here for more info
• here you will find more in on our Cottage in Glenlivet

The second link is much more effective for two reasons. Number one we have use the keywords Cottage and Glenlivet, the second reason is because we are also telling the search engines about the page we are linking to using the keywords.

Another very useful tool to help you research your keywords http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword/

When also thinking of keywords think like a customer, you will find many surfers will us 4, 5 or more keywords to find what they are looking for. Here are some examples "Self catering cottage west coast" , "Last minute deals for cottage Scotland".

Building a Good Cottage Site - Navigation and Basic Design

Here I have put just a few valuable lessons I have learnt when designing websites.

The theory behind all good sites is the 3 click rule, in other words you should be able get to any part of the site with in 3 clicks. Generally it's not difficult for Self catering websites to achieve this as they tend to be quite small sites.

Two reasons for having a well designed site:

1. Easy for customers to navigate your site
2. Easy for spiders to navigate your site (Spiders or Bots or what the search engines use to crawl websites).

There are billions of websites now on the net, these robots have a massive job of crawling through them, the easier you make it for them to crawl your site the deeper it will go in and hopefully index them (Index being showing on search engine results).

So the trick to a well designed site is for it to be easy to navigate, have well written content and good pictures.

Having a good clean lay out is important, if you get cousin IT to design in from their bedroom please make sure it doesn't look like it. There are many sites out there which you can by nice templates from like www.allwebcodesign.com and easily change with basic html skills or at least get cousin IT to do it for you.

So here are some basic tips for a well designed cottage site:

• Try and keep all content in HTML search engines have a tough time reading text embedded in Flash and Java scripts.
• Try and use text links for your menus, try not to use java scripts or flash for menus. Search engines will not be able to follow these links. Therefore it won't find your internal pages. If you do have them make sure you also have text links in your content or at the footer of your pages.
• Avoid using frames, better alternatives or CSS designed sites. These sites have very little code on the actual page, which means lots of good content.
• Make sure your site has a robots.txt file, this tells the bots where they can and cannot go.
  

Next I will cover keywords and optimising pages

Welcome Self Catering Owners

I have started this blog as I've been asked by other cottage owners how to rank their site high in Google. Anyone will know that relying on agents to sell your property can be an expensive way to run your property. It always amazes me when I speak to other cottage owners, who will spend 1000's on doing a property up yet only be prepared to spend a few hundred quid on marketing.

I will start my blogger focused on good internet practices and how to help your site do better on the net. Why focus on getting your site up the search engines? Well over the last 10 years more and more people surf the net and have got used to dealing with companies direct and missing out on the agents.

Sure agents are useful but never rely on one channel to market your cottages. Over the years I have learnt how to promote my own cottages so I don't end up paying big commissions to agents. I think this year I have saved my self about £7000 in commissions.

Please get in touch if you have any questions, I will try and answer them, I have also set up a Face Book group http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2360554000 Here we can start to create link partners and help each other promote our cottages.