This Little Box – The Death of Hotel SEO? Dream On

The basis of these claims is that by squeezing in the Google Hotel Finder paid search box into the initial results page, Google has pushed all organic hotel or OTA listings ‘below the fold’: ie everything the consumer immediately sees, has to be paid for by advertisers.

But Georg Ruebensal, Managing Director of Expedia Australia, said: “We have not seen an impact on SEO at this stage, either for domestic or international searches. Travel SEO has been pronounced dead a couple of times before but it hasn’t happened. There’s still a lot of opportunity to invest in SEO.”

Mr Ruebensal says the most likely impact will be to increase paid search rates because Google has reduced the number of paid ads at the top of the page from three or four to just two to make room for Hotel Finder.

“The top spots are the place to be from an SEM perspective and (reducing inventory) simply increases competition and drives up the cost per click,” he says.

Kate Gamble, Kate Gamble, Director of SEO, Social Media and Digital Content Strategy at Bruce Clay Australia, which oversees search for the Toga Hospitality and Best Western accommodation brands, says has seen no impact on SEO conversion at this early stage of the Google Hotel Finder rollout.

“It’s not really going to change SEO,” she says. “I think evidence from previous Google changes tells us that, for a period of time, some users get distracted but then revert back to their original behavior.” By that she means scrolling down the first page of results to find a natural result that suits their search.

And the reality is that the days when natural results appeared well above the fold are ancient history in web terms. In fact, there are now more natural results on the first Google results page than ever before – up to 29 or 30 for some searches, with paid accounting for roughly 60% and paid 40% – plus a map.

In the golden olden days, it was all text and there may have been 10 organic listings. But it was easier to get seen because there was so much less competition. Search was only being seriously deployed by a savvy few. The rest were yet to catch on.

Now everyone is doing and the competition is cut-throat. The web isn’t fun anymore – just a very expensive necessity.

SEO in 2013, the Importance of AuthorRank

One of the biggest trends we are going to see changing SEO for this coming year is AuthorRank. If you have heard of Pagerank, you have an idea of what sort of tool this is. AuthorRank won’t be a replacement for Pagerank, rather used to inform Pagerank, in the hopes of enabling Google to rank quality content more appropriately. The most important changes are;

1) AuthorRank uses Google Plus profiles

2) Content quality will no longer be based solely on domain or Web page, it will now be reputation based and take into consideration the “authority” of the individual that authored the content. So what can we do to meet AuthorRank’s SEO standards?

Authors
In the AuthorRank world, we need to have an author who is an “authority”, meaning he or she has a lot of “natural” links and he/she is optimized for their blogs on Google Plus. If no one in your organization holds a strong online reputation, start building up the AuthorRank of your chosen “agent” within the organization to leverage in the long term. To leverage this author, here are 3 key steps;

1. Add a Rel=Author code to your wordpress website. Here are the detailed instructions from Google.
2. It is suggested that your author should interact as often as possible with Google Plus (authors are ranked on the number of Google Plus circles they are included in).
3. Stick to one topic. If the author writes about a whole host of subjects it is assumed that the content will be weaker. Google ranks honed authors higher.

Google Plus
The interesting part about this new algorithm is that it requires you use Google Plus. So bloggers are now going to be encouraged to use Google Plus to boost SEO. Here is how: At the bottom of your Google Plus profile page (in edit mode) you will see a contributor section; this is where you can enter in which blogs you are contributing to. By doing this, you create a relationship that increases your SEO. This action will also make your listing more prominent in a search because it causes your profile picture to show up.

Measure
Once you set up Google Authorship, go and track down all the (quality) content you have created in your specific area of expertise. How do you see if you are measuring well? Use the Rich Snippet Testing Tool. You will verify authorship and then see your results.

Huge change?
The normal SEO criteria will still be highly valued; don’t walk away from reading this thinking all you need to do now is become active on Google Plus! The biggest change we are going to see is more and more bloggers on Google Plus. It’s very sneaky of Google making their social networking site essential for SEO, but just as most bloggers will submit to this requirement and start using Google Plus, Google is doing what they have to do to gain more customers

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Taking the Snake Oil out of SEO

In website design meetings, as soon as a discussion moves to search engine optimisation (SEO) I see disengagement from the technical staff. I don’t know if it is from lack of interest or scepticism of the benefits, but there is a tangible shift in attitude.

Search engine optimisation is primarily concerned with making your website content as discoverable and understandable to search engine crawlers (software that visits your site and indexes it) as possible. Google has the largest share of search traffic in Australia, so the more indexable your site is to the Google search engine, the more chance you have to appear in relevant searches which means more page views and exposure.

Part of the problem with SEO is that there is a lot of snake oil practitioners out there who make outraging and unsubstantiated claims about how they can get your site at the top of the search rankings. Most developers have probably had a friend or relation ask them how get to the number one spot on Google search without wanting to spend any time and effort. I can understand the jaded opinion towards the topic.

Secondly, much of the SEO push is driven by the marketing functions of the business. SEO seems to be pigeonholed as the concern of marketers. There is a tendency for marketing to include developers after the fact in their SEO strategy and for technology to see SEO as a problem for marketing to solve.

I asked Ron Erdos, an ex-colleague and once a Fairfax Media SEO specialist and now audience optimisation strategist at Yahoo!7, for his take on how SEO can be seen more holistically in the organisation.

“If you see SEO as some kind of trick, it's easy to treat it with disdain … However, if you learn the principles of SEO, you'll be able to make design decisions which not only meet your brief, but put a smile on the face of senior management, when they learn that you've brought them extra traffic.” Erdos says.

The first thing to keep in mind is while Google doesn’t publish the secrets of their PageRank algorithms, that doesn’t mean they are unknowable. SEO is knowable by testing hypothesis and observing outcomes.

There is no magic one-size-fits-all solution to SEO but there are parts that need to work together to achieve a good search outcome.

Site architecture matters

According to Erdos, "One URL per asset is the golden rule of SEO-friendly web development. If you have multiple URLs for the same asset, you are almost definitely diluting the SEO value of that asset.”

This is why technical talent needs to be involved from the beginning of the SEO journey. Site structure and the way that the URLs are constructed materially affect how you are ranked.
As you build your online software execution, how the URLs are presented and linked to each other need to be consistent to gain maximum advantage.

Erdos recommends the “universal URL” approach, which Yahoo!7 have just implemented for their own assets. The universal URL is a reversal of the once fashionable subdomain approach - where a new subdomain for each channel such as m.example.com for mobile sites. “This is because the SEO strength of each url is determined, to a large degree, by the number of links pointing at that URL.”

Keyword choice

If site architecture is the domain of the technical team, equally important is choice of keywords which naturally fits with marketing. You have to use words to describe your products and content that your audience is going to use to search for it.

“Keyword research - learning which words and phrases people are using to find content. You then use these words and phrases in the title and/or description of your app or web page, and in other strategic places.” says Erdos.

For example, if you name your site or describe it using the word “laptop” but most of your target audience refers to them as “notebooks” then when they search for the notebook term and you haven’t used it in your content and links, then you are leaving it up to Google Search to know that the terms are equivalent.

Google Search will try its best to recognise similar terms such as “laptop” and “notebook” depending on how interchangeably they have been used by search users.

Engaging content

Even if you have a perfect system for serving SEO friendly URLs and have done your homework for naming and describing the content, you need to produce content that is relevant to the terms you promised in your keywords and URL names. If the SEO description of your site is for the terms “Sex, Drugs and Rock’n’Roll” but the content is about insurance then your relevance will be low and your ranking sub-optimal. Erdos says that you still “need to prove that your content is engaging”.

“In SEO, this is expressed as links pointing to your content, especially from authoritative sources such as news and government websites. It's also expressed by low bounce rates - users staying on your site for a decent amount of time instead of hurrying back to the Google search results page. Those are just two of the engagement metrics search engines use.”

A good SEO approach combines the systems knowledge and analytical powers of your IT team with the audience understanding of marketing and disciplined content producers that keep site content current and engaging to their readers. SEO is not magic, it is hard work and good business.