Are you visible on Page 1 of Google and Yahoo...

If not… then you should be. We are an impatient world and nowhere can this be truer than on the internet. As our fingers race across the keyboard and our eyes scan multiple pages simultaneously, we wish for the information retrieval to be even faster. Who has the patience or inclination to visit page 3 or further for information retrieved by a search engine. Say I would like to book a holiday to Seychelles, I might try and search for ‘holiday options in Seychelles’ or ‘hotels in Seychelles’ as a starting point. At this stage, serious hotels and travel agents should try and appear on page 1 of this keyword search option in Google and Yahoo at least if not all search engines. Page 3 or thereafter is no good for no one would venture that far.

Most businesses are satisfied with being on page 1 for their company name search (if that at all) but this means that the searcher should already be aware of the company's existence. A short sighted approach, which leaves no scope for incremental new business coming your way. This is the year of artificial intelligence where the search engines are supposed to analyze our requirements and deliver the goods on page 1. Yet how many of us really appear on page 1 of Google or Yahoo search engines for our business. All search engines, no matter how good at indexing, need a bit of help from us.

How is it possible to appear on Page 1 of search engines for relevant keyword options. One way is to pay mega bucks for each keyword or click. The results for this wary. Another, more total, solution lies in the ability to use numerous good practices together. These could be getting your set of keywords correct, ensuring anchor text to the website url is appropriate, the website content optimises links and back links, web page titles are interesting and to the point. Another good best practice is to ensure relevant information about the company on websites other than the branded website with sufficient links to the branded website.

It is no longer enough to upload the company brochure onto the website as content. Content should be written from the eyes of the guest who will be looking for information online. Can all this be achieved overnight. No, never mind what people may promise you, but it is possible to have definite successes over a short period of time.

Market analysts reveal that 2008 will see over 50% of all hotel bookings being generated from the internet. At least another third will be influenced by the internet, but booked offline. By the end of 2010, over 70% of all hotel bookings will be completed online. It is no longer possible to step-treat this growing channel of business. Your website is only as good as the business it manages to convert and the first step to this is being visible on the internet.

Understanding the markets source for your business…

As a hotel, do you know if the majority of revenue generated is from conferences or corporate houses. As a travel Agent do you understand if your major clients are domestic or international. If International, is there a particular country that patronises your business. If you are a shoe company, are the majority of clients male or female, what age groups? These are key questions and form the base of any marketing strategy. For you can only strategise if you know where your business is coming from or where the competitions strengths lie. Yes, it is not enough to know your own business model, it is imperiative to understand your competitors models as well.

Which markets / which countries to advertise in. Which areas to concentrate sales forces in for maximum results. Which are lucrative areas and which markets are lost causes. History market segmentation data can help analyse and answer these crucial questions. And how do you collate the information required for all this analysis. By painstakingly logging the market source at the time of sale. Ideally a company should divide its business into relevant pre-fixed market segments. These could by geographic or revenue source to name some. Once the market segments have been identified, all that is required is for the sales people to be able to correctly log the market source for each sale generated. Month end analysis could help analyse strong markets for the month, success of any promotions taken on, etc. Year on year comparisions could further help understand market trends and startegise.

Coming back to the question of understanding our competition, information though limited must be logged as often as possible to form the required pattern. A typical example would be a hotel where the main market segments could be retail, corporate travel, conferences, incentives, leisure travel and crew movements. Within each of these, it might be prudent to have further sub-sections divided up either geographically or based on some other relevant parameter. For example, it might be interesting to know which countries contribute to the leisure travel or the different corporate industries which comprise of the corporate travel segment. Which is why it is imperiative that the market segments and sub-sections are predecided dependent on the information required for an analysis is only as good as the data that goes into it.