SEO Hints, What's happening in your district,

When planning your website or looking at updating it, think carefully about who your target market is, what does your area have to offer them, think about what they might like to do, and what might encourage them to stay a day or two extra or just enjoy their stay more.

Then add a page to your website, or ask your web designer to incorporate information about these activities or local attractions into your website design.

You may think, oh I'm not paying for another page on my website, what am I made of money? But think about it a bit from your website visitors point of view. Ok, they may have decided to stay in your area for some specific reason, but chances are they won't know places to eat, or know what else is available in your area apart from the reason they are visiting.
So looking at a what's nearby type page, may make them think hey, I would love to go horseriding, or fishing, kayaking, take that nature walk, visit Stills Valley Skifield whatever it maybe. And they may decide to stay at your place for another night becuase of it.

That isn't the only reason to have this information on your website though. Again think of it from your customers point of view.
Say they already know a bit about Stills Valley Skifield, and want to find a place to stay so they could go sking for the weekend, so they go to a search engine, if your website is optimised correctly, a search for say "Luxury Accommodation near Stills Valley Skifield" will find your website ranking highly. If your website doesn't mention Stills Valley Skifield, there is no way that a search like that would find your website at all.

So giving a push to the local activities can have many benefits, and is well worth doing.

Lynny
SEO Hints and Tips

Interesting Facts about Backpackers - Americans

I was just doing some reasearch for SEO for Rainbow Tourism website, and found out some interesting facts about Americans and how they are searching for Backpackers.

When speaking about Backpackers to a couple of Amercians that have been in NZ and Aussy for a while, they said Amercians don't have a similar thing in the States and the closest thing to it were hostels.

However when doing some research just now I see that Backpackers started being searched for by Americans in about July of 2004, then again in high numbers in about march 2005, still hostels are searched for mostly by Americans looking for cheap accommodation, but they are becoming aware of backpackers, bad news is that the number of searches for backpackers has remained the same since the early 2005 fluatation; while searches for hostels rises in the middle months of the year, which makes sence since it's their summertime.

Doing a few searches for backpackers in the US I find that many hostels are now calling themselves backpacker hostels, so the Americans must like the idea of backpackers, as I believe hostel's don't have such a good name, probably like they were here in NZ a few years ago, places that people especially young ones, or people that were down on their luck, stayed at longterm rather than just a night or two.

Looking at searches for
backpackers australia or hostels australia to see which one search for most, Americans just scrap in at 10th place for doing the search at all.

If you are interested the search I mentioned these are the top 10 countries in the world that do that search are....
1. Australia
2. New Zealand
3. Ireland
4. United Kingdom
5. Switzerland
6. Netherlands
7. Canada
8. Germany
9. France
10. United States

Then from that search, the cities the searchers came from...
Cities
1. Perth, Australia
2. Brisbane, Australia
3. Adelaide, Australia
4. Sydney, Australia
5. Auckland, New Zealand
6. Melbourne, Australia
7. North Shore, New Zealand
8. Canberra, Australia
9. Dublin, Ireland
10. Birmingham, United Kingdom

So knowing that Americans do know about backpackers, if you own one, and belong to the BBH I'd suggest you start getting together and encouraging the BBH to do an advertising campaign in Amercia educating them about what a backpackers is and why they are great places to stay!!!!
Amercians especially young ones or ones with families apparently love to get a campervan and travel around staying at tralior parks, so they are used to sharing facilities, so all they need is the education that high quality cheap accommodation is avaialable here in New Zealand and Australia.

Cheers Lynny
New Zealands Best SEO