| Parsippany,
NJ – January 2012 / Hospitality 1ST / If visitors to your website
are receiving stale information from random search engines, Google’s new
“Freshness
Update” (which effects how the popular search engine brings up results
for searches) may be your hotel’s new best friend. Lodging Interactive,
an award
winning interactive and social media marketing agency exclusively servicing
the hospitality industry, is offering five simple strategies that hotels
can incorporate into their online marketing plan that will make it easier
to obtain or maintain a high Google status. By using these strategies and
publishing accurate and entertaining date-stamped material, hotels will
increase their Google ranking and be at the top of a user’s search results.
“Just because a hotel updates or makes corrections to its webpage doesn’t automatically increase its freshness value,” said D.J. Vallauri, Lodging Interactive President and CEO. “Google determines the freshness the first time it crawled the page. The goal of Freshness Update is to deliver the most recent or current information to users when they enter a query. It does this by searching for web pages that are time stamped, which indicates when the information or webpage was created. Sometimes web pages can be time stamped in days or even in minutes. This is crucial for businesses in the hospitality industry that covet the top spots in Google’s search results because it underlines the importance of presenting and maintaining up-to-date information on their websites.” To take advantage of Google’s Freshness Update, Lodging Interactive offers the following five strategies to incorporate into an online marketing plan: As hoteliers implement these strategies to improve their property’s freshness status, they also need to make sure they are using time-stamps correctly and using the following dating format Google recommends: YYYY-MM-DD, or 2011-12-31. It’s also imperative that hoteliers update XML sitemaps regularly every time they publish new information on the website.
“Think of your website like a cup of coffee,” Vallauri said. “Topping-off your cup (adding new photos only to your webpage) may make it more satisfying (visually appealing), but if the joe isn’t fresh (adding proper time stamps/dating formats), you could end up with a bitter taste in your mouth (turning off visitors because your site doesn’t appear in top search listings due to old content, thereby sending them to your competition). Remember, adding a little sugar (press releases and blogs) goes a long way (customers will talk you up via Facebook, Twitter, Google +1, and Google News will pick you up). If you’re not sure what kind of coffee suits your taste or that of your customers, ask a Barista (CoMMingle). For more ways to more effectively market your hotel, call Richard Walsh, Lodging Interactive VP of Business Development at 877-291-4411 or visit www.LodgingInteractive.com. About Lodging Interactive
Through its CoMMingle Social Media Marketing Agency operating division, the Company offers hospitality focused and fully managed outsourced hotel social media marketing customized solutions. Lodging Interactive is an award winning interactive marketing agency and has been recognized as a leader by the International Academy of Visual Arts, Interactive Media Awards, Web Marketing Association and Travel Weekly’s Magellan Awards. Lodging Interactive is a
proud supporter of the Hotel Sales & Marketing Association International
(HSMAI) and a proud member of the Asian American Hotel Owners Assn. (AAHOA).
For more information contact Richard Walsh, Vice President of Business
Development at sales@lodginginteractive.com
or at 877-291-4411. The company’s website is located at www.LodgingInteractive.com.
|
|
|
