Why do yellow pages and other big sites always rank well?

SEO Tip.
Ever noticed that when doing a search for your own website or business name, that if you spend money on advertising in the yellow pages, or in any online business directory's, that the listing to your business name always shows up on their website before your website in a search.

You would think that if it's your business, you would rank the best... unfortunately this is not so.

I'll always talk about Google, since thats the grand-daddy of all searches.

Google has a way of ranking a web page it sees as more important than another page on the same subject, it's called PR or Page Rank, and although the exact way it is worked out is top secret, it is obvious, that the more links you have to your website, from other website that have this PR, the better your PR will be, and the better your PR is, the higher you rank.

Why doesn't your website rank First
Places like yellow pages, will often say, that if they link to your website, you must put a link button on the front page of your website,(the best page for a link to another website) to verify you are listed in their directory.

Sounds fair enough huh, the thing is, is that many directory's like yellow pages, have special code written into the links from their website out to your site, so Google doesn't see it as a link it's called a no-follow link.
People can still click on it, and it will take them to your site, the link just means nothing in search engines, as showing your site as popular.

Now consider that these big directory's have thousands even 10 of thousands of places listed, just like yours, and each place is sending a link to that directory site, and the directory site aren't returning the favor with a link back, so Google sees this directory site as being very popular, and give it a higher PR. And in turn your site will drop lower in the search engines, so you are paying them to make your ranking worse.

What can be done
As an SEO I find the oddest thing of all, is many businesses pay a lot of money to be listed in the yellow pages, or udb or other directory's, right along with all their competitors, yet when i suggest a link campaign, finding and swapping links with other people in the same line of business, my clients often get all defensive, and say they don't want to link to their competitors.

Think about it though, you have a lovely restored villa, and your rental villa and you rent out the rooms for $750 a night, and again you live in Timbuktu, you pay to be in the yellow pages say $2500 to be in the printed book and online with other accommodation places right in your own town for 1 year.
And your website will rank lower in search engines because of that ad you paid for.

Yet a good SEO, will organize to set up link exchanges with other places just like your's, that are situated worldwide, no completion there. If someone wants a villa in Timbuktu, they are hardly going to decide they like the look of the of this villa in New Zealand better. If someone is looking for a villa in Timbuktu, then they want to visit Timbuktu, Not New Zealand.

If the SEO does their job well, your website will start to ranking highly in say google.
for things like luxury villa in Timbuktu, villa near Timbuktu, and many many other relevant search phrases.

The other website you have swapped links with in other parts of the world will be doing well for searches with luxury accommodation, luxury villa, in searches that are local to their area, so it's a win win situation. Sounds so easy huh.

Well unfortunately not everyone has seen this blog, and few understand this concept, and in the past links have always looked so ugly on a website, that this very simple idea doesn't work.
Things are changing, and I intend to lead the way. No ugly banners, know wordy ad's, just a nice neat, well positioned links page, to the accommodations like yours.

Solutions we'll be offering.
Once we have finished building the main part of the New Rainbow Tourism website, website (around the end of Oct 07) and after seeing so many badly built and sadly optimized accommodation website, we(Canz Design Ltd) have decided to get together with Mark, and offer his members and interested people from the tourist accommodation sector various package deals, which will include a professionally designed website, that will have all the important information where it should be, basic, intermediate or advanced SEO package, with a secure payment booking system already integrated. And a few other goodies.

You or someone you know will get complete accommodation website package.

These packages will have a written guarantee's by me, Lynny, the head of SEO, that if your site isn't ranking on the 1st page of Google, within a year, that you will receive free SEO worth double the value of your initial SEO package within the next year.

There will be heaps of other features and benefits, so Rainbow Tourism, who already offer their a unique service of a secure booking service, to members in their directory, and have a listing directory that does have proper links back to sites that want their website listed, will soon be offering their members yet more services of a professional looking, well SEO'ed, website as well.

No other directory to my knowledge has ever offered such a service, it truly is unique.

Cheers Lynny
NZ's best SEO

Address of your Accommodation Rental

One thing that many people forget to add to their website is an address to their Hotel, Motel, Lodge, or rental property.

I can understand if your are renting out a small cabin in the backwoods, that only get's rented in the Summer, and you are concerned about vandalism or security.

However no address, to a hotel where you live in, and hopefully has people staying every night.

When people are browsing your website, they really do want to know where your accommodations are situated, even if they don't know they town or place at all, they will often want to know.

On the page you have your contact information, it's a very good idea, to make a list of places that are nearby, this is great for the SEO of your website, and often will help someone find your place as the one to stay at.

Have you contact details at the top of the page, easy for everyone to see, and write out your full country address, including postal code. Then underneath write a neat list of places around your accommodation.

You may wonder how this will help with SEO. I'll make up the details, but you will get the idea.

Well imagine you motel is 5 miles from a Hospital called, St Mary's Hospital, Timbuktu. And you have that listed on your contact page.

I have an Aunty Mary who is in St Mary's Hospital, and I need to visit her, so I do a search, I try
accommodation near St Mary's Hospital, Timbuktu.
no results, so I try a search
Motel near St Mary's Hospital, Timbuktu
And what do you know, your motel website is the only one that says it's near that hospital, in that place, so guess whose website will rank #1 for my search...... see you in a couple of days.....

This is getting away from putting your address for you rental accommodation on your website, but you can see other ways having your actual address would be useful....

eg. I am making a google map of all the places that are listed on the Rainbow Tourism directory website.
Well at least the ones in New Zealand today, I haven't quite finished, but I'm going to try adding that map to this post. I hope you can see it, I plan to make one of these maps for each place in the world.
And see if your address was listed on your website, and I could make a link exactly your business, then whenever anyone was searching in google maps for anything near where you are, in your part of the world, they would see your motel listed.
Cheers Lynn



View Larger Map

SEO KnowAll Lynny from Canz Design.

My name is Lynny, I’ve been employed by DownUnder Mark recently, to among other things, manage the new Rainbow Tourism website, that my business Canz Design Ltd, is building for him.
I’m taking care of entering new properties into both the directory site, and the booking system, that everyone listed on his site is invited to try out free.
I will also manage the whole back end of the website, leaving Mark free to market the Accommodation/Tourism directory site.
Once the new site is up and running, in about a week from now, I will also be doing the SEO of his sites.
I specialise in SEO (search engine optimisation) which very basically means making specific changes to a website, to make that website, rank well in search engines like Google, for keyphrases or search strings that are the sort of things people looking for your business would search for.
I will talk about SEO extensively in my posts, since it is of little use having a website, advertising your motel or B and B, if that website cannot be found, by someone looking for a place to stay, in your area.
Combining these two jobs is extremely interesting, since over the past month, I have visited just over 200 accommodation websites. I have seen some very nice looking websites, that when I did a search in Google, for the name of the business, which is a very specific search, that website did not appear in the first 2 pages of the search results.
I have definitely seen the good, the bad and the ugly accommodation websites, and will discuss with you some of the issues faced by the owners of the sites.
I’ll take a look at several ways of advertising an accommodation business, and show you how SEO can fit into your marketing budget.
Lynny