Why All Hotel Web Sites Look Alike and Why That Is a Bad Marketing Move

Did you ever go online to try to find a nice guesthouse in Marrakech? Or in Fiji for that matter, because the problem is not just a Moroccan one. It is not the fault of the country or guesthouse, but just an intrinsic characteristic of all locations that have a strong cultural identity. It is only normal that a guesthouse in Marrakech would wish to present itself in brown or sepia colours. That it likes to add fairy tale like traditional music of the region, or have a flash element unfolding one beautiful photo of the interior decoration after the other.

It goes without saying: that is what Morocco or the life in a riad or guesthouse are about. So a hotel is only right in wishing to transmit that feel or atmosphere. For a traveler however this makes the process of finding the right hotel a rather difficult one. You can click and click and click... but every hotel looks exactly like the last one. Just about every website welcomes you to true authenticity or a haven of peace and calm in the same sepia or burgundy and refined graphical touches and... With as a result that, should you happen to suddenly stumble over something that is completely different... your index finger is much more eager to stop for a moment. And that is a very important moment.

If a hotel website is able to make a visitor stop, if only for a few seconds, the chances are that this visitor will also have read the first titles, or have truly concentrated on a photo, or map, or perhaps even have 'skimmingly' gone through the whole text.

In my experience, standing out in design, feel and look, is a very important element in both the time any visitor stays on a website as well as in the forthcoming results in the search engine listings. We are only human, and it does not apply to hotels only: in every market and industry we like to compare ourselves with the competition, and sometimes we are far too eager to amend our own tastes to what we think the market demands. But does the market really demands one single trend? Is it not so that we all wish to be surprised too, to be really interested in what a website has to tell, or what it transmits?

Already in Marrakech alone there are 800 guesthouses. True, that does make online competition very hard. But if all guesthouses go for the same website style and feel, nobody really stands out, and nobody really advances. In a very first instance, the hotel is not the product you sell online. It is a website. In the very first place it is important that your website is sold, that many of the literally thousands and thousands of 'Internauts' clicking the day away can suddenly withdraw their index finger from the key board and think... something is happening here! Make your website visitor stop. And then you can start selling your hotel.

Bernardus Geurts SEO Advisor http://www.bernardus.biz Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Bernardus_Geurts

By Bernardus Geurts

Key Success Factors For Hotel Web Sites

By Ileana Gatti

When you are designing a business web site there are some aspects you must take into account. Here you will find an explanation on key success factors for hotel web sites.

As you may be awarded, people search for hotels and flights online more than by other channels.
The most important of the key success factors for hotel web sites is being search engine friendly so to be found when a customer performs a search online.

Search engines have particular formulas to qualify the relevance of the sites and assign a number called Page Rank (some how like the stars classification system for rating hotels) to determine who gets top placement in search results.

Once you are indexed, some of the bots (search engines programs) will periodically revisit your site looking for changes and updates. How high you rank depends largely on how well your web site is optimized, along with other proactive marketing activities such as links strategy development.

To master the first of the key success factors for hotel web sites you must understand what a keyword is.

When a person type in her browser a search term, the spiders of the search engine check the databases of sites and display the ones that are relevant to that term. The most relevant go first, and if they are equally relevant, the one with higher Page Rank goes first.

So, your site must be optimized around a set of commonly used terms or keywords to be found.

How you choose these keywords is the question to master these key success factors for hotel web sites.

In hotel websites, unless you have a well known branded name, it is good idea to optimize your site around the geographical region you are in rather than your hotels name. You will have better chances to be found, as it is more likely that a person search for "hotels in someplace" rather than your name.

These keywords must be used in the header of the page (portion of the webpage between and) mainly in the title of the document, and in metatags as keyword and description. In the web copy (portion of the website between and) you should use your keywords in headings (h1, h2, etc.), the "alt" text of images and sprayed in the text (in bold or italics if possible).

There are many factors affecting web sites success. Find out what other key success factors for hotel web sites are!

I visit travel web sites regularly just for fun. This is the site I like the most: Caribbean islands lodging Enjoy!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ileana_Gatti