Google dominates 87.6% of the search engine market share worldwide, so it goes it without saying that optimising your resort’s website to rank highly in Google search results is essential. And where better to find out how to improve your ranking than from the search giant themselves?
Google recently posted a video on its developer blog to help new businesses get to grips with the basics of search engine optimisation. Some of the tips covered are obvious, such as registering your site with a Google Webmaster Tools account to monitor any access problems, and some you might not have thought of, such as carrying out a domain background check to make sure your web address is not tainted with spam or scams from a previous owner.
Graeme McLaughlin from SEO experts Optamo added a few of his own suggestions in response to Google’s video. He recommends conducting test searches for your brand to check for close alternative search terms - usually thrown up by Google auto-suggestions - because this “can often take clicks away from your site in the early days.”
McLaughlin also points out that Bing provides webmaster tools too, so it makes sense to register your site there as well as with Google.
One of Google’s main suggestions is to keep your content unique, not only to ensure a better, more interesting user experience for your visitors, but to help Google recognise when to bring up one of your site’s pages in response to a search query.
When it comes to site speed, it seems you can never have enough. Google reference an Akamai study that revealed customers expect a load speed of two seconds on e-commerce sites, which means you need reliable hosting if you want to make the grade.
On the subject of social media marketing, Google advised that to start with at least, less is more. The key suggestion is to forge on identity on the most important sites, and focus your efforts on where your audience prefers to hang out.
Lastly, Google warned businesses to resist the temptation of unethical black hat SEO tactics. Sites that participate in unrelated link exchanges are red flags to the search engine’s ranking algorithms, and your search results standing could suffer if you use them.
Here’s the video from Google:
