Here is an article on the importance of good SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and good Local website Marketing)

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I see many hotel and business websites looking very good, but performing so badly or they not perform at all. The owners of those websites must have thought “This site design looks stunning and fancy! Let’s upload the website right now! Our guest, clients or customers will love this side and us! They will buy our services and products! After all it’s a fancy site isn’t it?.”

An unfortunate but all too common situation!

A web designer who designed and created a website without any clue or idea what SEO and  Search engine Marketing means, and this designer couldn’t care less if the website will be popular and a profitable business! After all, the web-designer wants to build and show the most fancy website site to others for his/her own adverting and benefit! The designer couldn’t care less if your side will ever be a high-ranking site, if your site does  have visitors or if your site generates any business at all… Trust me, they don’t care or they don’t know that they should care about how the site can be seen by Google and all the other search entities.

Note: Honestly, you can’t blame them entirely – long gone are the days when you can have one person who is a specialist in both website creation and search engine optimization! These activities are worlds apart and both take massive amount sof training, leave the SEO to your local search engine optimization experts and let your website designer create the look and functionality of the site, better yet- thave them work together!

Let’s talk about some simple SEO facts:

• It’s a fact that most website designers don’t know much about SEO as the skills and knowledge needed for SEO and E-Marketing are very different. (Would you trust your local contractor to do important Sales and Marketing work for you?)
• It’s a fact that most website designers like to create the most beautiful site to be included into his/her portfolio as a reference and don’t care at all how many people will visit your site… or even better, how much business you create with your site!
• It’s a fact that many websites I check look really impressive and good! However with wrong keywords, without back links, without listings in web directories, without proper title tags, descriptions, proper architecture, HTML, XHTML or CSS, and with those mentioned, your site will never rank very high in Google.
• It’s a fact that using too much “Flash” will make  customer angry and your SEO efforts very difficult.
• You have heard that “Content” is King so don’t copy from other sites, write good content and write a lot of it! Use videos , audio and other methods to keep the content relevant and fresh. Make sure to include your keywords in the content on the page, and in the title tags too.
• It’s a fact that your visitors come to your site first and foremost for INFORMATION! Give them the option to view relevant articles, cusotmer reviews, pictures and optimized videos, but focus on INFORMATION and CONTENT.
• It’s a fact that your site must be USER-FRIENDLY as your visitors might leave the site less than 10 seconds after landing, especially if they cannot figure out what your offer or how to navigate your site.
• It’s a fact that you must keep on writing articles, press and news releases and submit them to all the leading sites and on social media sides.
• It’s a fact that you should always include social media links such as Face book, my space and Twitter etc.
• It’s a fact that by adding a Blog (where you post at least one (1) article a week on) can give your customers a way to interact, learn about new products and features as well as provide your employees with an easy way to share up to date info.
• It’s a fact that you might want to consider also posting on other blogs related to your business to create good exposure and back links, plus it makes you feel good!
• It’s a fact that SEO and E-Marketing is not a one-time effort.  This work never stops even after your site ranks well for several keywords. Search engine optimization is always changing and so is the competition, a regular approach to SEO will pay for itself with new and better traffic!

If a web designer offer to make you one of these sites- RUN!

It is not unusual to see some hotel and other business websites which are over 5 years old and still does not have a decent  page-rank, very limited or even no back-links and absolutely NO link-popularity at all. An Alexa rank of 15 million  or higher and very limited page view and visitors a day means even less business transactions.

Most of the time those websites are without relevant, updated content, only fancy flash and pictures and ‘blinking’ gadgets, and the focus on how pretty and wonder that company is.

Obviously no one asked the consumer what they wanted to know before they created the website. Vreate your website for your visitors – not for your ego! No wonder these websites do nothing to help thier businesses become more profitable. So – how does your website help you to get more business?

Many Small and medium sized business Directors and Mangers don’t like Internet Marketing, SEM  or SEO! (and why should they?) It’s a BIG pain in their side and a huge source of worry.

• They worry that they will spend all this money and not get real life results ( and be held accountable for it)
• They think that their customers are not really using the internet to shop, investigate or contact suppliers.
• They don’t really know how to justify the expense to higher ups because they work in a brick and morter setting and do not grasp how significantly marketing has changed because of the internet.

They better adjust their mind-set and learn new techniques or they will really have something to worry big-time, since well over 90% of all B2B managers serach online for product info BEFORE they decide who to buy from.

We know that especially here in Atlanta, the owners of many successful businesses don’t know much about Search engine marketing and even less about optimizing for Local search terms.

Those owners and managers trust their IT Manager- whose job involves making machines talk to each other, Search marketing is about having your website talk to REAL PEOPLE.  Sometimes these same owner and mangers,(who don’t have a clue what the IT Manager is trying to say) will trust this person with thier online marketing.

Many business owners and managers are simply too overwhelmed to learn a whole new system, like IT or SEO, so they  ask the next logical person to attempt this ( even if they are unqualified to do so) So, what I want to say here is:

As an owner or manager especially in a small to medium size, you have to learn about what  Information technology is, what social media is, what SEO means, what internet marketing is all about.  It is very important to understand these terms and how they apply to your business because it will help to SUCCESSFULLY compete in todays tough economic times.

Think about this example: Hotel Statistics:

90% of your sales and marketing budget produces in average only 42% of the result (Tour Operators and Travel Agents)  whereby 10% of the budget (E-Marketing) and SEO) does produce up to 60% of the business.

Most people and managers don’t know that it is NOT the IT Managers’ responsibility to do Search engine optimization OR internet marketing.  Almost all business websites could benefit form having a dedicated SEO or local serach engine optimizaton company to attract website traffic. This way you can rest easy knowing your bsuiness is not getting buried somewhere out on the web, plus you can see results with  monthly report on Local SEO marketing actives, search engine ranking and competitive search engine terms.

Klaus Rauter Managing Director Mai-BS (Thailand) Co., Ltd. info@mai-bs.com http://mai-bs.com