Is your website making its voice heard to Google?
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Amanda Greenwood reports back from Fresh Egg’s first Travel Babble event
Digital marketing firm Fresh Egg held its first Travel Babble event last week to share the latest trends and developments in content and online marketing. What became really apparent during the session was that website development in line with Google’s algorithms is becoming much like the travel industry itself. Quality, specialism and relevance will lead the way for both in the future.
With an attempt to avoid as much technical jargon as possible, here are just some of the snippets from the event. Those on the panel included Martin MacDonald, director of inbound marketing at Expedia Affiliate Network; Sam Bird, head of SEO at lowcostholidays; Adriano Comegna from TUI and Mark Fleming, SEO & affiliate specialist at Kuoni.
- Google is moving more towards seeing websites as a trusted, authoritative voice. It is no longer just about SEO (although still important) and instead businesses should focus on the content of their website.
- Build your voice through offering niche content (and/or product) that no-one else is doing. Think of yourself as an expert in the field and become a respected source of information and eventual booking. You have to be specialist to be a truly authoritative voice. Build relationships and be on those platforms you deserve to be in.
- Copying and pasting content from other sites is not great but if you must pull content from somewhere else, be courteous enough to say where it came from the link to their website.
- People do not want brochure-style copy to read on websites. Make it more conversational or what you really think about the accommodation/tour etc.
- Linking your website to other trusted, related sites is key but make sure they match your company profile. Build around what users are searching, but do not over-programme your site either.
- Video is the future of website content, but make sure you put a transcript underneath it so Google picks up the words too.
- Custom imagery is a commodity, so use tools to help track who is downloading images. Pinterest still has the potential to link more to travel than any other social media, with Destinology cited out by the panel as one of the best on the site so far.
- Use foursquare to pull together location-based data. Although still in its infancy amongst the travel industry, this data could be crucial to obtaining in-destination bookings for excursions, car hire or other products.