2008-06-30

Web sites beyond Borders

Where does your web site end? Not just with the pages listed on your dotcom. The words and phrases that are associated with your dotcom, away from your web site, have a big influence on where your web site shows up in search results. This 30 minute activity will help you get a grasp of how others, outside your Web site, see you and your business and help you get better search engine listings for your business.

5 Minutes: Make a list of the keyword combinations, words and phrases that accurately describe your tourism business. Think about the questions a searcher might use to look for your service. For keyword combination ideas, view the tutorial on keywords for tourism/travel web sites.
10 Minutes: Use your favourite search engines and search for your business name - in Quotation Marks like this: Google: “your business name”. Record the number of Web pages that include this text. Visit the first 10 links that are not on your dotcom. Make a list of these web sites and record the keywords or phrases that are most prominent in connection with your business.
10 Minutes: Next do a search for all the businesses that link to your web site. Use a tool like http://www.linkpopularity.com to get started. Again, list the top 10 results and the keywords that are connected with the hyperlink.
5 Minutes: Think about these results. How well does your expanded web presence match the words and phrases that you want people to associate with your business?

Improve your search engine positioning.

Use your preferred keyword combinations and see what can be done to include these words and phrases in the listings and hyperlinks from other web sites to yours.
Next, do some searches for your preferred keyword combinations. Make note of where your Web site shows up in the search results. Record the top search result web sites that are not on your dotcom. Ask these web sites for hyperlinks to your dotcom.
Over the next few weeks and months, you should see some improvements in the visibility of your dotcom within the search results pages

This post was inspired by a recent corporate retreat we hosted for Doctors without Borders, a not-for-profit organization that transports medical doctors around the world to locations experiencing social/environmental crises where medical intervention is an important tool in alleviating human suffering.

This post was originally posted by toddles @ Internet Marketing for Tourism.
> Read the original post here