Best regards,

Gordon

Gordon Barker
Sales and Marketing Manager
Danesfield House Hotel and Spa

In 2010 we will be looking to help and improve the performance of our clients throughout the industry. In 2009, the hoteliers sacrificed average room rate for volume, which led to a fall in the industry’s overall profitability.

In 2010, social media marketing will be high on the agenda for many businesses including hoteliers, but you have to incorporate this into a strategy and not as and when you remember. Step Online will be delighted to help you with this as this is what we do. Our results make the difference and have made the difference to many businesses in 2009.

After more than a year in development Reservation Highway are pleased to launch their bespoke website incorporating a new booking system and information service. Many thanks go to the development team at Step online for their hard work throughout the project providing the new look graphics for the website.

Susan Manton

Managing Director

Reservation Highway Ltd

If your website isn’t a core component of your business, with actionable and measurable website goals, then you may find that you get left behind – the competition may already be ahead of you, capitalising on high search engine results and increased revenue streams.

Forward thinking hoteliers and business managers are increasingly looking to the Internet to ensure that their business is performing well on the search engines. With our help, they’re seeing huge increases in traffic, conversion rates and online business growth. By optimising our clients websites, they see a measurable increase through their direct online booking channel thereby reducing their reliance on third parties, expensive commission payments and pay-pay-click advertising (such as Google AdWords).

Empowering Websites

Step Online specialises in making websites perform. We work with new and existing sites to increase search engine rankings, and conversion rates. We provide measurable results and monthly progress reports, and are methodologies are completely transparent.

Who is your target market, what are your website goals, what are your key feeder areas etc? Are you looking to increase your share of leisure bookings, conference and events business or to boost your hotel’s position on the search engine? Smart hoteliers in 2009 will shift more of their marketing budget towards their hotel internet marketing strategy and why not? It makes perfect business sense to reduce your reliance on paying out hefty commission payments to online booking agents or expensive Pay per click campaigns. At Step Online we share this philosophy and all of our hotel web design work and search engine optimisation is geared towards being found naturally on the search engines and thus your dependence on other more costly distribution channels, as long as rate parity across all booking channels is maintained – then it’s a win-win situation!

The Solution

What is the difference between Natural Search engine optimisation and PPC?  This one is easy, if the site is built correctly, easy for the end user to navigate their way around, has good content incorporating the right key phrases, plus has great inbound links coming in, then there is no reason why your site shouldn’t be climbing the rankings effectively! As for PPC, this tends to be a long term financial commitment with no end in site, with a lower percentage of overall search volume click on the paid for listings!

Step Online provide you with full service Internet Marketing solutions, we specialise in the hotel and leisure industry. We provide effective online solutions to the travel industry, independent hotels and hotel groups such as Best Western, Crowne Plaza, Rezidor Park Inns and Holiday Inn. We have an extensive background in the hotel and leisure industry so we know what works from the hotels point of view and also the end users.

Improve your website’s visibility and get better search engine rankings by gaining links to your pages.

Do not underestimate the importance of link building in terms of search engine optimisation and getting your hotel website found. The process involved is building more Inbound Links to your web site from other web sites. A Search Engine views a link to your web site as a vote of confidence in your web site. Search Engines believe that if other websites are linking/referring traffic to your web pages, you must have something good to link to and that will naturally start to push you up the search engines for your chosen keyword – also called organic optimisation.

Overnight (usually) the search engines send robots or spiders (not literally) out and they travel virally from web site to web site tracing links like an enormous spider’s web. This is one of the main reasons why your website doesn’t have to be manually submitted to the Search Engines, as they initially discover your web site via a link from another web site. Once your hotel web site has been found, each page of your site is then indexed and ranked accordingly which is based on a complex set of criteria known as an algorithm. An algorithm is a piece of computer code that takes into consideration on-site and off-site factors collected by the robots or spiders. The date that they collect and collate is then assembled, and evaluated in order to come up with a Page Score or Rank. The end result and the aim is to be found when someone types into the search engines a search term like “Hotel SEO”.

Beware of web companies that guarantee you a position on the first page of Google for example, as they could guarantee your competitors the exact same thing!. When you have two hotel websites competing and on the face of it they are equal in terms of what they offer and how they were constructed etc then the criteria that are used to determine ranking will simply come down to the site with the best quality of links should rank higher then the one without. It’s all about quality and not quantity, the higher the page rank of a site that is linking to you, then the more weight is put on that particular vote. In the past, the site with the “most links” would have been ranked higher – not anymore!

A search engines function is to deliver highly relevant results, not some search engine optimisation company when you are searching for “hotel in centre of York”. So what is important to search Engines today when they rate your link? Well there are several additional factors when rating Inbound Links to your site and they are: The reputation or “Trust” value of sites linking to your hotel web site, i.e. is the link from a relevant site, how long the site has been online etc… The “Anchor Text” (the words that the link is embedded within the hyperlink) i.e. instead of putting your web address www.simplystep.co.uk you actually have your keywords linked in e.g. hotel websites. Theme or Relevance – a link from a destination guide web site that may also list other hotels in your region is “on theme”; a link from your local pizza takeaway is of little value – that’s little and not no value. Anchor Text – this is now so critical in maximising your online profile i.e. your hotel website being found at the top of the Search Engines Results Pages, so in every link that you attempt to get make sure you include your keywords in your hyperlink domain e.g. hotel website, York Hotels etc. Getting this work right is an essential part of any Search Engine Optimised campaign where the end result is to be found on the search engines.

Four steps to gaining more links/votes for your site:

• Ask your suppliers to add a link on their site to yours, they should be more than happy to add the link text exactly the way you want – just send them an email (once agreed) with what you want to say in your link – you may need to keep this brief
• Get your Sales Manager, Conference and Events team to ask their clients who use your hotel on a regular basis, if they do this this will also help them as they will be able to make bookings direct from their website. Or the one off larger conferences etc if they are using your venue for a conference, event, wedding or meeting…if you supply them with the link and anchor text, there’s a pretty good chance that they will simply add the link which will make it easier for their guests to book.
• Ask local attractions, bars, restaurants, universities, councils, tourist offices etc to link to you.
• Finally, and this will save you lots of precious time – speak to us and we will do it for you.

As a hotelier you understand the importance of making the direct online hotel booking channel the focus of your online marketing strategy. For a hotel competing in either the hotel leisure or hotel conference market, or both leisure and conference, you know that by having a hotel website which is able to take bookings direct, there is no need to pay out expensive commissions to booking agents. In this difficult economic climate a direct online hotel booking channel can expect to achieve around a 76:24 direct vs. Indirect online distribution ratio, and direct online channel sales should exceed 61% for the industry as a whole in 2009.

The important thing to remember is that not to cut out other online partners as they are still vital in generating new revenue. Strict rate parity needs to be adhered to across all marketing channels including a best rate guarantee, however, in order to encourage more bookings direct through your hotel website then you need to add more value by offering unique product offerings and unique added value. So the goal of your website may be to significantly increase your direct online sales and shift bookings away from more expensive online distribution channels to the least expensive channel i.e. your hotel website!

When a visitor logs onto a hotel website they do so for a number of reasons, goals and intentions. Their need to visit your destination, for business or leisure, and stay at the best location, best value/budget and best ‘experience’ hotel that they can find. When a visitor lands on your site they do so for a number of reasons and our job is simple when designing and building a website for you with the end user in mind and that is to capture, connect with and convert online visiotrs into high-yielding online revenues. In order to fully maximise on this you need to consider the following in this order:

• Capture – produce qualified, quality targeted visitor traffic through a Search Engine-friendly and fully Search Engine Optimised hotel website.
• Connect – Encourage and motivate website visitors to conduct a full online hotel show round, by exploring deeper into you hotel website. We can help you guide your visitors around the best features of your hotel and really highlight the benefits to the end user of why they should choose you.
• Convert – Return on investment – Turn your online visitors into high yielding direct hotel revenues.

When thinking about how you want your hotel website to look bear in mind the end user experience and how you will convert them into visitors. That’s where we can help, we specialise in getting websites found and converting them from a browsing visitor into a revenue paying client/guest. The design process is not just about the way the site looks, but the ways in which the end user will interact with the site and give their full seal of approval by returning again and or spending money with you. You could have the best website in the world, paid a fortune for it and have the design that you have always wanted – but if nobody finds it or uses it – then what’s the point?

With the emergence of all types of venues for leisure guests, conference venues for “out of the ordinary” meetings, civil ceremonies and high profile leisure clubs – coupled with the economic slowdown – hotels can not afford to be complacent in their choice for getting them the best possible platform to showcase their hotel website. Step Online will help you and guide you through the hotel website design and development with proven, effective marketing methods that work for our clients. The cosmetic appearance of your website is crucial in motivating visitors to explore your online hotel products. You have to guide them to buy or search for the relevant information to which they require. In order to do this it is fundamentally important that the following is done correctly:

1. The site is built correctly in the first place all our sites pass the online web validation test and you should use this link to check any potential website design company, after all if they can’t build their own site correctly, then what chance have they of building yours right. http://validator.w3.org/

2. The content needs to be done correctly, you need a minimum of 250 words per keyword or key phrase – e.g. for the term “Glasgow Hotel” in order for that to stand any chance of being found then the more text you can write the better. But beware, do not make the mistake and cram it full of keywords as this will not help you and the keywords have to make sense.

3. The site navigation should be clean and uncluttered i.e. the end user can find what they want and when they want in a matter of a few clicks – that’s where we can help you.

4. A good link building strategy or campaign is essential to any website – each link you get from another website which points directly into your site acts as a vote for your site. The more votes you receive the higher your site will naturally climb up the search engines. Try not to do reciprocal links i.e. I’ll put a link on my site if you put one on yours! This only dilutes the process. We can help you with your link strategy.

This process is all about generating you a return on investment!