SEO BOOST FOR YOUR HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY WEBSITE

This is your establishment as listed on the TripAdvisor website. The word "business" is in fact not emphasized (hint hint): Bear in mind that ANYONE can start a listing about your hotel, restaurant, or tourist attraction.

To make this your actual "business listing", you as an individual must "claim ownership" of that listing. This is done either using your personal Facebook account (not the Facebook page for your business!), or using a credit card in your name. De facto, ownership can be claimed by any individual who claims to be affiliated with your business.

There is no evidence that TripAdvisor, by design, intent, and in each and every case, verifies that the person claiming ownership of a "business listing", which they sometimes call "property listing" is in fact the legal representative empowered to act on behalf of that business. So, good TripAdvisor hotel reviews are good, but the management responses ... not necessarily.

A question asked by many business owners, who assume there must be a net benefit of being on TripAdvisor. Unfortunately, one actually has little real choice to not be on TripAdvisor, benefit or not. It is very simple to start "a" listing for your business on TripAdvisor.

As explained above, and elsewhere on this site, if that listing will ever and always be "your" listing remains highly questionable.

Since anyone can start a TripAdvisor listing, it is indeed possible that multiple listings refer to one and the same hotel, restaurant, or tourist attraction. One would think the folks at TripAdvisor try to avoid this, but you have to alert them to the issue and hope for the best after you verify your ID (using your personal Facebook account or your credit card) when claiming ownership of a listing.

This will not prevent potential duplicate listings in the future. These may use your name, or a slightly different name - never mind the address! A situation might arise where you simply get tired of dealing with the issue of renewed duplicate listings appearing for your property. In that case it makes sense to ...

• Display the exact name of your TripAdvisor listing on your own website, either as simple text, or as a screenshot image.
• Insert a list of those listings not under your control, but claiming to represent your business - disavow the exact names of those listings!
• Install a link from your site to your TripAdvisor listing, thereby authenticating the only TripAdvisor listing you consider to be valid.
• Don't forget to make that link a "nofollow" link, as explained below under SEO advice (widget-embedded link). You need to make that link a "nofollow" link in order to prevent losing any "link juice" from your site.

Before you get all excited about using social media to promote your own website, or simply your business ... please consider the following:

• Almost all social media platforms in fact also serve a dual function as a "review platform". Posting your business e.g. on Facebook or Google+ will simply open up another can of worms with respect to a reviews situation having to be mitigated.
• People will not actively search for your business on social media, there is no targeting effect.
• People who already know the name of your establishment are likely to find your social media page, but online promotion should be about trying to get new customers, who do not yet know your name!
• On average, people who spend so much time on social media to come across your business profile by accident are not likely to be able to afford hotel or restaurant bills that allow your business to survive, and thrive.
• Social media generally creates a time vacuum, also for you, the busy business owner, as you publish more and more posts on social media sites!
• One wrong word or glitch on social media can send your entire online reputation down a viral slippery slope ... don't allow unqualified people to decide on the wording of your posts!
• Any links you install on social media sites are automatically "nofollow" links, your site cannot increase its search engine ranking by link-building with inbound links from any social media site (and not from TripAdvisor either). The only benefit might be actual inbound traffic, but never any inbound "link juice".
• SEO experts know that organic traffic from social media sites such as Facebook, or Twitter will amount to a maximum of 10% share of overall incoming traffic to any normal business website. Any higher share is unrealistic, and even if that traffic might be generated, conversion into actual customers remains less likely. Because of this, the amount of time you have to invest to generate traffic from social media is not worth the return you can expect.
• Even the recognized hotel consultant Anthony Melchiorri has stated on numerous occasions on his reality television show "Hotel Impossible" that Facebook is not a viable tool for filling hotel rooms with paying customers.

Ask yourself: Do you really want to further feed the monster of "online reality", when in fact you have to fight that same monster every day, as it shows its ugly face in malicious TripAdvisor reviews?

Still not convinced? In the following paragraphs, let's work our way through each of the well-known social media sites one by one, and analyse the feasibility of promoting your business through social media:

Dto. as mentioned above. Managing a Facebook account sucks so much time out of your schedule, it's pathetic. And, think about it: Do you really want to advertise on the same platform used by religious extremists as a recruitment tool to get young people excited about committing wholesale slaughter? The venerable Mr. Suckerberg wants to bring free internet to the entire Third World, all the while completely neglecting basic editorial duties, such as hiring web-police staff and installing image search algorithms to detect a certain white on black flag with Arabic writing. One might be excused to ponder whether so much incompetence can actually be an accident, whether such "oversight" (rather, the lack of it!) is not intentional, whether it could be happening as it is by design!

By all accounts, Facebook has become a breeding ground for pure evil. Not the proper neighborhood for your business! Stay away, far, far away! Just think if some responsible officials finally man up, and decide to send an auditor of accounts to Facebook headquarters, or decide to pull their business license for aiding and abetting terrorism. When they close down Facebook, all the countless hours of work you will have invested into the Facebook profile, timelines, and posts for your business will have been in vain, lost forever.

Twitter is a glorified newsfeed. The focus is on individuals, and what they do, and think. Why would people who visit your hotel maybe once in a year, eat in your restaurant maybe once a month, be interested in new developments in your establishment, every hour of every day? Would it not be better to leave your customers with an impression that things are stable, and predictable at your place, and they can accept the same quality service at your hotel, or restaurant, again, and again? Twitter is a great tool, but not suitable for promotion in the tourism & hospitality industry.

This platform, similar to Instagram, and many others, has a limited user base and pictures posted here are only visible to users that are logged in. Placing those beautiful pictures of your hotel or restaurant on your own website is much more worthwhile! You could even have a different image slider for each season of the year, and for holidays, too!

Youtube, owned by Google, is indeed the only viable social media platform which truly provides value for your own web presence - and very high value at that:

• You can create youtube videos very easily, using still pictures, and slides with text
• You can add audio of your own choice to these "slideshows"
• You can list youtube videos for specific keywords, and these videos will also appear for these keywords (e.g. the name, or location, of your hotel !!!) in a general Google text search. The big bonus for you: IF google finds a youtube video for a keyword entered into google search, they will post this video as a Google search result, usually on page 1, ABOVE any other text listings ... this is the best strategy to get your hotel listed on Google, before/above any other business listings, yellow pages sites, or hotel booking websites operated by third parties, which are routinely known to hog the first 3 pages on Google for any given hotel name.
• You are allowed to install a link to your own website from your youtube page.
• Of course you can also write your own website's url (web address, e.g. www.hotel-domain.com) on a slide or still image in your videos, which you can display long enough for visitors to copy or memorize that exact url, or enter it into their browser address field ... even while the video is still playing!
• You can embed any youtube video on your own website. Because a youtube video is embedded using a piece of code called "iframe", there is no "link bleed" effect, much in contrast to the TripAdvisor widget noted above (which begs the question why TripAdvisor does not use iframes?!).
• You can set your Youtube video to not display any third party ads when this video is played back from the embedded position on your website. After you execute this setting in your Youtube account, ads will only appear when the video is played back on the Youtube website, which happens only after your visitors click on the little button on the lower right of the video frame featuring the tooltip text "Watch on Youtube".
• You control the dimensions of the video, so it can be adapted to the layout of your website.
• You are not sacrificing any bandwidth from your own website hosting, as videos are streamed directly from Youtube servers.
• You can set your video to start playback automatically when site visitors hit your welcome page, or you may decide to start the video (and it's audio!) with a set delay.
• People love to watch TV, rather than read a book. This translates into: People prefer to watch videos, rather than read text on a website. Once your visitors start watching a video, they are likely to spend a longer time on your site - often until the video is finished! This fact alone already helps your website's SEO performance, specifically with respect to the parameter which measures average time spent on your site by a unique visitor. If this parameter exceeds a certain threshold it tells Google that your visitors find your website to be very interesting. This will automatically yield higher search rankings for your own website. It's a fair business deal: You promote Google's Youtube on your site, Google promotes your website on their search engine.
• Nothing converts your website visitors into booking, paying customers in a more eloquent and efficient manner than a video on the homepage of your site, presenting a friendly, personal welcome message, communicated by you, and your staff!

It used to be somewhat common knowledge that buying "backlinks" was a good way to get to the top of page 1 in Google search results. What are "backlinks"? These are simple links placed on another website, which point to your own. Link-building is at the core of the Google algorithm and was indeed the main theme of the doctorate thesis, which made the Google founders successful and allowed them to secure their start-up capital. But that was a long time ago.

It used to be that you could buy backlinks in 2 major ways:

• from "link farms"... entire websites which consist only of outbound links
• as embedded links, for example as embedded footer links in "free" website templates

This does not work anymore. Google has deleted all link farms from their search results. And backlinks from contextually unrelated pages may actually harm your ranking, not increase it. Example: a backlink from a webshop for shoes linking to your hotel website. Google knows that shoes have absolutely nothing to do with hotels, so their algorithm will consider this backlink as a deliberate manipulation ... at the very least, you will have spent money on a backlink with zero positive effect.

However, link-building remains the backbone of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and if you have a net balance of VALID inbound links to your site then this will always help your search engine ranking. The validity of these links arises from the contextual relationship between the website which your site is linked from, and yours. So if a travel blog has a link to your hotel website, then this is definitely a proper match of context! And, the TripAdvisor website, specifically the TripAdvisor user forum, is indeed one huge travel blog.

In this respect, it is important to understand the different types of links: "dofollow" and "nofollow" links. Links classified as "dofollow" pass what is known as "link juice". The passing of "link juice" means de facto that Google is asked to recognize the contextual relationship between the two pages, i.e. between the site with the outbound (back)link, and the site that this link is pointing to (e.g. your site). All links are "dofollow", unless they have specifically been set to "nofollow".

"Nofollowing" a link can be done using an html tag ( see explanation on nofollow links below ), or using a script which converts all outbound links from a website into "nofollow" links. And here comes the big disappointment for all those people who thought they can improve the search engine ranking of their own website by link-building, i.e. placing links to their site on Facebook, Twitter, or TripAdvisor: All outbound links from social media pages, or other review sites are automatically set to "nofollow" by hidden code functionality on those site!

Social media links to your site will direct actual traffic to your site, but they disavow the target page (in this case: your website). Google will thus not recognize any contextual relationship between the two sites, and no improvement of your website's search engine ranking is accomplished by using links inbound from social media.

Making best use of this situation, the "Travelwriters" and their programmer friends have 2 types of links on offer for you:

1. Backlinks from our own travelblog:

• FREE WITH ANY OTHER ORDER: publish a picture, and an introduction of your establishment (nofollow link to your website)
• PAID, ALSO AVAILABLE SEPARATELY: publish a picture, and an introduction of your establishment (dofollow link to your website)

2. Inbound links from the TripAdvisor forum. These will always be "nofollow" links, but they will direct traffic from the highly frequented TripAdvisor user forums (not the same as listings/reviews) to your site:

• A user starts a forum thread
• Other users respond
• Links to your own website are quoted in the thread, and/or in responses

These forum entries are ideally suited to highlight specific features, benefits, and advantages your establishment has to offer. You can even motion readers to engage in a google search for a specific keyword string, which your own website ranks highly for.

Are you unhappy with the performance of your own website?

Are you struggling to get to page 1 on Google?

Would you like to be found at all when someone types the name of your hotel or restaurant into the Google search window?

Would you like people to find you, who do not know your business name, but who search by category & location instead. Example: "good restaurant Houston Texas"?

Do you have concerns about your website helping TripAdvisor more than being any good for you?

TripAdvisor, most of social media (except videos), and similar "review" sites are a dying breed. Make sure that your online presence will stay afloat when all these other sites - which business owners now rely on so heavily - sink to the bottom, or have their stock crash, their bubble burst, their bank accounts raided, their business license revoked ...

Give the "Travelwriters" a shout, they can put you in touch with their programmer friends for a FREE CONSULTATION to move things forward, for you and your business!

In a cunning move designed to help TripAdvisor's SEO, but definitely not the SEO on your website, TripAdvisor is now encouraging website owners of businesses represented by properties listed on TripAdvisor to install a "widget" on their own websites (SEO = Search Engine Optimization).

What is a widget? This is a functional bit of code associated with a layout feature on your CMS-based website (CMS = Content Management System, e.g. WordPress, Joomla, Drupal). TripAdvisor will give you that bit of code to insert on your own site. This code must contain a link, linking from your site to the listing representing you on the TripAdvisor website. The idea is to encourage your website visitors to hop over to TripAdvisor in order to read all those rave reviews published about you there. In terms of SEO, however, this will inflict the following damage on your website:

• cause "link bleed" from your website to TripAdvisor
• send organic traffic to TripAdvisor
• improve the search engine ranking of TripAdvisor

It is fair to say that your own website's performance in all of these SEO factors is decreased by the same measure that TripAdvisor's performance is increased. The NET difference, i.e. damage for you will however be much more severe, because by comparison your website will be much smaller / have less visitors overall.

So you help TripAdvisor ...

• by supplying free basic content for their website (your property listing)
• by helping to generate free content updates for their website (new user reviews + management responses)
• by driving traffic from your own website to TripAdvisor through that widget, when your site visitors click on it.
• by providing "site authority", and directing "link juice" to TripAdvisor through the link embedded in the widget code.

Heavens, have you not already done enough for them ... even without that widget on your site? Programmers/web designers managing hotel and restaurant websites have wised up to this. In reaction to the boycott of such traffic redirection, TripAdvisor has now devised a new type of widget which plays back all recent five star reviews, visible to visitors browsing your own website. However, this type widget of course still links to TripAdvisor using a "dofollow" link, thus causing the much dreaded "link bleed" from your site.

Here is an example of the widget code TripAdvisor provides:

The website code quoted above looks like this when installed on your site:

If you would like to keep this widget "as is" but simply want to eliminate the "link bleed" issue to the TripAdvisor root domain, proceed as follows:

On line 5 of the widget code quoted above, replace the first part of the link code ...

with this exact segment expanded to "nofollow" the link (applies to any type of html link) ...

IMPORTANT: Reports of VIRUSES, MALWARE & PHISHING CODE injected into the downloadable widget have been registered, such code being designed to deploy phishing links on hotel websites where these widgets are being embedded.

By embedding the widget code you would thus facilitate theft of credit card details and personal data from visitors of your own website (your customers) via this TripAdvisor widget.

Surprisingly, TripAdvisor has apparently not installed an effective virus and malware scanner into the download feature for this code snippet from their website - instead, they disavow any code available for download from their website by way of their T & C. You are free to undertake this virus and malware scan yourself.

Proceed as follows:

• Download the code to an empty text file (.txt), placed on an empty USB stick
• Rename the .txt file to a .html file, i.e. change the file ending
• Select that USB stick as the drive to be scanned by your virus scanner
• Scan the USB stick, i.e. this text file
• If your anti-virus clears the file with this code, and you feel comfortable using it, you can embed this code on your site. Make sure your server is protected by features such as HackAlert, and check your website's server space routinely for any contamination.

And if you want to go "all in" on this widget issue, and avoid installing a malware catapult on your site, there is indeed another option. This will only work with static widgets, however:

1. Download the widget, and install it on your site, or another sample site
2. Take a screenshot of the widget, showing the five "bubbles"
3. Clip the screenshot to size, the same size as the widget, and save it as a .PNG or .GIF image
4. Remove any temporary installation of the widget, and install the image file in its place
5. Feel free to insert a "nofollow" link to the exact url (web address) of your property listing on TripAdvisor. This way, anyone clicking the image file will in fact reach your TripAdvisor listing, but the "link bleed" effect on your own site is eliminated
6. Worthy of note: The original widget supposedly displays the most recent five bubble reviews on your listing. But who keeps track of that? Should it not be you, who is in control? You are empowered to take control of that process, and produce the exact wording of review texts you like(d) most. It is a simple process to insert this text into screenshot images!
7. The good thing is that installing your own version of a "widget" does not necessitate acceptance of TripAdvisor's Terms & Conditions specific to their widget downloads. You have every right to create the design, and layout of your site freely when referencing the TripAdvisor listing for your business. In any case, if you post TripAdvisor graphics on your site, do remember to quote ownership credits of the TripAdvisor logo, and trademark, in your legal/disclaimer notice.

The good thing is that installing your own version of a "widget" does not necessitate acceptance of TripAdvisor's Terms & Conditions specific to their widget downloads. You have every right to create the design, and layout of your site freely when referencing the TripAdvisor listing for your business. In any case, if you post TripAdvisor graphics on your site, do remember to quote ownership credits of the TripAdvisor logo, and trademark in your legal/disclaimer notice.

If this whole widget issue sounds too complicated ... feel free to get in touch! The "Travelwriters" have some web designer and programmer friends, who are really good at this stuff!

On a reasonable 4-digit budget they can even design a whole new mobile-friendly website for you, complete with booking engine, payment terminal, live chat, and an inviting presentation of your hotel, restaurant, or tourist attraction to all website visitors ... including those visitors which the "Travelwriters" are happy to help you divert FROM the TripAdvisor website TO your own online presence! But irrespective of such reversal of fortunes, the main aim should be for prospective customers to find you using a Google or Bing search, even without knowing your name!

The folks at TripAdvisor have taken it upon themselves to provide you, the business owner in the tourism & hospitality industry, with SEO advice. One must wonder, will this advice help their website as well?

Just consider item 6 on this page

... "Because search engines can't read text in ... PDFs"

... and compare it with what is said here, on Google's official webmaster blog:

"Google first started indexing PDF files in 2001 and currently has hundreds of millions of PDF files indexed".

Indeed SEO-savvy webmasters know:

• For the same keyword search, a PDF file with the valuable, relevant content will likely appear ABOVE any website in Google search results
• PDF files with relevant, unique text content serve to vastly improve the "authority" of the website where these PDFs are embedded

So if you operate a hotel or restaurant, placing a PDF version of your hotel brochure, or restaurant menu on your website is definitely a good idea - assuming the text in the PDF is unique and not the same as the website text (thereby avoiding a duplicate content penalty for your site). The Google search engine can, and happily will read the text inside PDFs ... so make sure that plenty of interesting information is written there!

The SEO advice provided by TripAdvisor on the above-referenced page is otherwise rather run-of-the-mill stuff, hearsay, and information available for cut & paste in many places online. Some of it is contrary to established expert opinion.

It is not like TripAdvisor would not know how to use SEO very effectively, as exemplified by this article, quoted here in an excerpt:

"Thousands of hotels are now paying TripAdvisor to list their phone number, email address and website homepage on TripAdvisor domains, but the source code uses a no-follow rule, meaning the link can't be indexed by search engines. So, if some hotels assumed there would be some SEO benefit, then they were wrong."

Think twice, before you trust an online portal with potential conflict of interest on SEO advice!