Tag Archives: keywords
Hotel-Owned Website Receive Limited Exposure on Major Search Engines
Before hotel proprietary Websites can begin to significantly make an impact on reducing the slide in market share of online room sales from third party travel sites they must identify and understand e-consumer search behavior. Windham and Orton (2000) found that 80 percent of respondents or Internet users in their study expected to turn to the Internet more often than current practice for making online purchases. More importantly, sixty-five percent regularly visited a search engine to begin their Internet search activities with travel purchases among the tenth most popular product purchased online. However, there has been mixed messages as to how e-consumers and e-businesses can maximize their efforts and expand their capture rate in the online market respectively. Greenspan (2003a) found that 56% of Internet users give up their search before going past the second page of search engine results. Moreover, over a quarter will move onto another search engine site before refining their keywords. Even with the potential of creating a competitive advantage through the development of proprietary brand Website, hotel companies have missed opportunities to generate traffic on their branded Websites by not considering a strategy to improve their Website visibility in search engines (CyberAtlas, 2001b).
To further examine this concept this author conducted an exploration of finding proprietary lodging brand Websites through search engines using intuitive keywords. After identifying the top seven search engines being used by e-eonsumers in 2003, this researcher ran a search using keywords to identify how e-consumers can easily locate hotels for booking rooms online. The seven most popular search engines used today in order of their popularity are Google, AlltheWeb, Teoma, Yahoo, Alta-Vista, MSN, and Lycos (CybcrAtlas, 2001a).
For each search engine, a common keyword was used to identify the results of hotel proprietary Websites returned from the search. Four keywords were used and included “hotel,” “hotels,” “lodging” and “travel.” When using “hotel” as the keyword Yahoo returned the most proprietary lodging Websites in the first two pages with 15 out of 40 links. All the Web and MSN returned only four and six proprietary lodging Website links respectively within the first two pages. Similar results occurred when using the keyword “hotels.” Surprisingly, when the keyword used was “lodging” only Teoma (12) and MSN (6) returned any links to proprietary Websites. The results were even more discouraging for proprietary lodging Websites when using the keyword “travel” which resulted in no hotel-owned Websites found in the search results within the first two pages. It seems clear that one pan of the Internet strategy that lodging brands need to address to overcome the lack of market share in online room bookings is to get more exposure with the popular search engines when using intuitive keywords.
When searching under the keyword “travel,” Expedia and Travelocity came up within the first two non-sponsored listings in each of the seven most popular search engines. Given the current state of affairs, e-consumers in search of hotel rooms on the Internet may very well find that using third party travel agents represents the most efficient search strategy in terms of time and cost. Hotel-owned Websites must begin developing a better strategy to position their Websites on Internet search engines to drive customers to their Websites. Conventional wisdom seems to contend that a large section of the e-commercial marketplace gravitates toward the sites that listed in their searches and ultimately purchase rooms online based on price alone (Starkov, 2002).
5 Powerful Tools for Keyword Suggestions and Ideas
Many of you experienced keyword-junkies out there may already know about these tools, but nonetheless these are some very important tools that can be used to create the most powerful use of keywords for your website or blog. Heres what we start out with (keep in mind, these are tools for keyword building and research and dont delve into issues such as keyword density, page flow etc,). These are used primarily for Suggestions.
This tool can be called the “big brother” of keyword drilling based on generic ideas.Its both a great tool for figuring out potential keyword combinations based both on ideas presented and semantic terms.
It also doubles up by showing search traffic for these terms according to Google. (Even though I believe most of the data is skewed to an extent).
OUR REVIEW SCORE
Usage 3/5
Finding New Keywords 4/5 Finding Search Traffic 3/5
Total 10/15
CREDIT: PPC HERO
Keyword Discovery is yet another service which tries to replicate the function of Word tracker. But, Keyword Discovery scores a separates itself from the rest when it comes to usability as well as finding regional search data. If youre trying to figure out the search data for regional terms or optimizing for google.co.uk or .com.au, this is one awesome tool.
OUR REVIEW SCORE
Usage 4/5
Finding New Keywords 3/5
Finding Search Traffic 2/5
Total 9/15
I included Word tracker in this list after much resistance, not because the tool is not perfectly a keyword research tool, but because its more of an antique tool. Word tracker hasnt evolved one bit over the years and still sticks to its basic function of suggesting keywords based on a thesaurus type model and displaying the search data based on meta-crawlers like Dogpile.
The only thing I like with Word tracker is its keyword basketing system ( almost like an e commerce site checkout ) and its massive KEI functions.
OUR REVIEW SCORE
Usage 2/5
Finding New Keywords 3/5
Finding Search Traffic 2/5
Total 7/15
Google Suggest is NOT EXACTLY a typical keyword research tool, its more of an attempt by Google to tweak their search quality. But, this tool is awesome for finding our long keywords phrases! I had to include this in the list for the amazing arrays of search phrases you can optimize your website with the help of this tool. After all, keyword search phrases are gold!
OUR REVIEW SCORE
Usage 4/5
Finding New Keywords 5/5
Finding Search Traffic 0/5
Total 9/15
This feature is similar to Google Suggest. After all, Yahoo is the second largest search engine on the net.
OUR REVIEW SCORE
Usage 4/5
Finding New Keywords 3/5
Finding Search Traffic 0/5
Total 7/15
Although search results can never be guaranteed, I can promise you that these tools are some of the best youll find out there and the most important objective is these tools can help you create that foundation for a very successful search engine marketing strategy.
5 Powerful Tools for Keyword Suggestions and Ideas
Many of you experienced keyword-junkies out there may already know about these tools, but nonetheless these are some very important tools that can be used to create the most powerful use of keywords for your website or blog. Heres what we start out with (keep in mind, these are tools for keyword building and research and dont delve into issues such as keyword density, page flow etc,). These are used primarily for Suggestions.
This tool can be called the “big brother” of keyword drilling based on generic ideas.Its both a great tool for figuring out potential keyword combinations based both on ideas presented and semantic terms.
It also doubles up by showing search traffic for these terms according to Google. (Even though I believe most of the data is skewed to an extent).
OUR REVIEW SCORE
Usage 3/5
Finding New Keywords 4/5 Finding Search Traffic 3/5
Total 10/15
CREDIT: PPC HERO
Keyword Discovery is yet another service which tries to replicate the function of Word tracker. But, Keyword Discovery scores a separates itself from the rest when it comes to usability as well as finding regional search data. If youre trying to figure out the search data for regional terms or optimizing for google.co.uk or .com.au, this is one awesome tool.
OUR REVIEW SCORE
Usage 4/5
Finding New Keywords 3/5
Finding Search Traffic 2/5
Total 9/15
I included Word tracker in this list after much resistance, not because the tool is not perfectly a keyword research tool, but because its more of an antique tool. Word tracker hasnt evolved one bit over the years and still sticks to its basic function of suggesting keywords based on a thesaurus type model and displaying the search data based on meta-crawlers like Dogpile.
The only thing I like with Word tracker is its keyword basketing system ( almost like an e commerce site checkout ) and its massive KEI functions.
OUR REVIEW SCORE
Usage 2/5
Finding New Keywords 3/5
Finding Search Traffic 2/5
Total 7/15
Google Suggest is NOT EXACTLY a typical keyword research tool, its more of an attempt by Google to tweak their search quality. But, this tool is awesome for finding our long keywords phrases! I had to include this in the list for the amazing arrays of search phrases you can optimize your website with the help of this tool. After all, keyword search phrases are gold!
OUR REVIEW SCORE
Usage 4/5
Finding New Keywords 5/5
Finding Search Traffic 0/5
Total 9/15
This feature is similar to Google Suggest. After all, Yahoo is the second largest search engine on the net.
OUR REVIEW SCORE
Usage 4/5
Finding New Keywords 3/5
Finding Search Traffic 0/5
Total 7/15
Although search results can never be guaranteed, I can promise you that these tools are some of the best youll find out there and the most important objective is these tools can help you create that foundation for a very successful search engine marketing strategy.