How to Start & Run a B&B BandBED2eBook-1 | Page 101

• • • • • • • • Work out what words and phrases your potential customers are most likely to be searching on (try asking a few!) – these “keywords” are the basis of your Google success. They might include “St Mawes B&Bs”, “St Mawes accommodation”, “hotels St Mawes”, “Cornwall B&B”, etc. Title every page of your website clearly, including with these search keywords Make sure the content of your homepage – the text - contains as many relevant words and phrases as possible, including alternative combinations of your location and “B&B”, “accommodation”, “bed and breakfast” etc., and lots of relevant description, and including your top keywords Make sure every picture has a relevant caption as “alternative text” (this is part of HTML code), and that at least one has your B&B name and location as its caption – eg “Rose Cottage B&B, St Mawes, Cornwall, UK” Use the “meta-tag” descriptions within the HTML code for each web page (apologies for all this jargon, and this is getting too detailed and technical for this book, but the help from your hosting company or website template will explain) Submit your homepage to Google manually at www.google.com/addurl Get as many other websites as possible (and ideally, popular and relevant ones) to add a link to your website Make your domain name relevant to searches where possible (that is a reason for including the resort name within the domain name) This is not always an exact science, and submitting your website can take several days to take effect, but keep doing searches and seeing where you come in the listings, and try to work out how you can improve your ranking. Google “AdWords” advertising The above was all about getting better rankings in Google’s free search listings. As we said at the start, though, you also have another bite at the cherry, and this one is in your control – but it costs money! This is paid-for “cost per click” advertising, or what Google calls its “AdWords” programme. Basically, this is very simple: you pay a set amount for every “click” – ie every time an internet user sees your Google “sponsored link” (ad) and “clicks through” to your website. Which internet users are shown your ads is determined by “keywords” you set and how closely these correspond to the search word or phrase that internet user has “Googled”, and also by the budget you have set. For example, you could pay for the keywords “St Mawes B&B”; every time an internet user anywhere in the world (you can limit it to certain countries if you want) types “St Mawes B&B” into Google, your ad should be shown alongside the search results – provided your budget is sufficient.