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swirt

Forum founder. Former Owner.
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Enough already. Some industry designers are getting innkeepers all whipped up into a panic about posting new content to their websites EVERY day. They are citing that Caffeine requires it. I suggest they switched to some nice decaf tea for a while because the panic they are creating is misguided.
Caffeine was an update back in June 2010 of the method in which google INDEXES new content. It was a way for Google to more rapidly add blog posts and tweets and other rapidly occurring content growth into their index. It was not a major shift in the way Google RANKS sites. It was not a major shift toward favoring the freshest of sites. Yes Google has made a few changes to the ranking algorythm to make it so it may weave in a news item or some other rapidly occuring info into search results but those rarely impact the major searches for our industry.
Google is not looking at all your home pages and lining them up in order of freshness date. If you were at #3 and the #4 B&B made a change to their website, it will not cause them to jump to number 3 just because of the date. If they jump to #3 it is because they made a change that made their content a better match for the search.
People are being whipped into a panic and they are making daily changes to their home pages and in the process ruining some of the great content they already had in place and are actually sliding down rather than jumping up.
There was a shift a few months ago that gave a slight edge to directories, but that has recently been dialed back a bit and has nothing to do with Caffeine.
Misguided attempts at fresh content
  1. Adding syndicated weather updates from weather.com to your home page. This is content from a secondary source and Google will see it as such. It is not "fresh content."
  2. Adding blog feeds or tweet feeds to your home page. Again this is secondary source content and either will not be seen by google, or may water down the things you are already ranking well for.
  3. Updating the menu daily. Will only alter your chanced of showing up for pear cobbler one day and dutch babies the next. Not a lasting content change to help you.
  4. Poetry quotes of the day - again may help you show up for Robert Frost one day and Walt Whitman the next
Don't get me wrong, fresh content can be good from a potential guests point of view. So I am not advocating people avoid fresh content. Just use it when it makes sense for your guests or potential guests. Caffeine does not demand it.
 
I believe I have been in one of the workshops that may have led to that conclusion - in defense of the company, she didn't exactly say 'post every day and you'll be #1 on google.' This was mostly in a discussion about adding your blog feed to your homepage in such a way that google looks at it as fresh content (meaning not just as a feed but having the text show up), and they recommend blogging once a week. But there was a story told about someone who TYPED the daily weather on his homepage for about six months and shot up in the google ranks. Which is why I think that whole mishegos evolved into your posting. Unless there's been more said since then.
But thanks for clarifying all of that - the details were not particularly clear during the workshop. We recently did add a blog feed (with the first lines of the post showing on the website) to our home page to get more traffic to the blog, which we hope to write with a better eye towards SEO (although that still is very hard for me). I did a special countdown to V-day on shopping in our town with a daily blog post, but boy I am looking forward to going back to once a week after Saturday. The daily one is too much for me. I am not nearly as creative as I would have hoped.
 
I believe I have been in one of the workshops that may have led to that conclusion - in defense of the company, she didn't exactly say 'post every day and you'll be #1 on google.' This was mostly in a discussion about adding your blog feed to your homepage in such a way that google looks at it as fresh content (meaning not just as a feed but having the text show up), and they recommend blogging once a week. But there was a story told about someone who TYPED the daily weather on his homepage for about six months and shot up in the google ranks. Which is why I think that whole mishegos evolved into your posting. Unless there's been more said since then.
But thanks for clarifying all of that - the details were not particularly clear during the workshop. We recently did add a blog feed (with the first lines of the post showing on the website) to our home page to get more traffic to the blog, which we hope to write with a better eye towards SEO (although that still is very hard for me). I did a special countdown to V-day on shopping in our town with a daily blog post, but boy I am looking forward to going back to once a week after Saturday. The daily one is too much for me. I am not nearly as creative as I would have hoped..
Thanks Jeanne, that context helps a bit. The responses that follow are not directed at you, just having a general bit of fun with the overal concepts and try to illustrate a few points along the way ;)
But there was a story told about someone who TYPED the daily weather on his homepage for about six months and shot up in the google ranks.
Cute anecdote. Here is another one. Two months ago my carpal tunnel started flairing up in my right hand, so I switched to brushing my teeth with my left hand. After 2 months, my site moved up two places in google. This must be proof that Google rewards left handed tooth brushers.
poke.gif

There is so much info missing from the weather typing story that it is absurd to leap to attributing the jump to it. How old was the site? What other changes had been made? How long ago prior were other changes made? What off-site marketing had been changed during that 6 months and the 6 months prior? What are the answers to these exact same questions for the other sites that fell during this one site's rise? (If one site goes up 2 positions, 2 others must have fallen)
The general point is you can't assume a causal relationship here. It may be that the site rose simply because 2 other sites had changes to them that were bad: They fell, which gave the impression that the other jumped. Those 2 that fell could have been content changes or simply some inbound links disappeared. It may be that an inbound link that was created 9 months ago has finally aged enough to start carrying some weight. It may be that Google finally got around to indexing the inn's listing on a deep page in a major directory. It may have been that some blogger said, "hey look at this guy typing the weather everyday by hand" and provided a link.
I've used this analogy before. Many people think of the inner workings of google like a wrapped Christmas present. Simply shake it a bit, poke it, prod it, make changes and by careful observation and listening, you can guess at what it is. The reality is that as you poke it and prod it, it makes no noise, then you get discouraged and put it back on the shelf. Three months later it makes a "crumple", at 6 months it "skronks" and at 9 months it "snorks". Was it the poke that caused the skronk or did the pro cause it? AND what caused the silence? What caused the four sounds you never heard because you weren't there listening every single minute?
This was mostly in a discussion about adding your blog feed to your homepage in such a way that google looks at it as fresh content (meaning not just as a feed but having the text show up)
From the point of getting people to tune into a blog, this may have some merit. However, from the point of view of SEO and having it appear as content and not a seconary source feed, I would argue that it is a crap shoot. I would caution that sometime it may help, an some times it may not. I' even go so far as to say most of the time it will not.
The reason I say this is that even if you are writing your blog titles with SEO in mind, they are going to be titles that are not your main target phrase(s) for your home page. They are going to be fringe target phrases (long tail) will not be stong enough to influence your home page position for major searches. It is entirely possible that including them on your home page is more likely to muddy up the content focus than it is to make it more clear.
I've seen a lot of innkeeper blogs. Most are not so great from an SEO point of view. Some are fantastic. Ballparking it, I would say that for every fantastic blog there are 9 horrible ones (again from an SEO point of view). If I recommende to all 10 innkeepers that they should feed their blog to their home page, only one might see an increase. Others may see a drop. The odds are not in favor of an increase. There is also the issue of disrupting up the distribution of pagerank by adding 10 deep links on your home page (assuming the blog feed goes 10 posts deep). Remember, all the pagerank that a homepage has gets distribute equally among the links on the page. If you have 5 links on your home page (essentially your main navigation) then each page gets a 5th of the pagerank attributed to the home page. If you add 10 blog links to that, then each page only gets 1/15th of it. A site ought to be structured to feed the strongest pages, which you do by not spreading it too thin.
If it were me, and I wanted my blog posts to appear on my home page for guest and potential guest reasons, then I would want them set up as a feed, so that google did not attribute the content to the page.
 
Great point. Also, as a user, when someone has that kind of obviously meaningless "fresh content" (like the weather stuff, or even constant inane blog articles) it is obnoxious. It doesn't add any value to the content of your site that I'm trying to use, and if it's in my way (to get to bookings, or room details) I will be clicking off your site never to return. As usual, you have to take all this stuff into context before leaping in on ANYONE's advice.
 
I believe I have been in one of the workshops that may have led to that conclusion - in defense of the company, she didn't exactly say 'post every day and you'll be #1 on google.' This was mostly in a discussion about adding your blog feed to your homepage in such a way that google looks at it as fresh content (meaning not just as a feed but having the text show up), and they recommend blogging once a week. But there was a story told about someone who TYPED the daily weather on his homepage for about six months and shot up in the google ranks. Which is why I think that whole mishegos evolved into your posting. Unless there's been more said since then.
But thanks for clarifying all of that - the details were not particularly clear during the workshop. We recently did add a blog feed (with the first lines of the post showing on the website) to our home page to get more traffic to the blog, which we hope to write with a better eye towards SEO (although that still is very hard for me). I did a special countdown to V-day on shopping in our town with a daily blog post, but boy I am looking forward to going back to once a week after Saturday. The daily one is too much for me. I am not nearly as creative as I would have hoped..
Thanks Jeanne, that context helps a bit. The responses that follow are not directed at you, just having a general bit of fun with the overal concepts and try to illustrate a few points along the way ;)
But there was a story told about someone who TYPED the daily weather on his homepage for about six months and shot up in the google ranks.
Cute anecdote. Here is another one. Two months ago my carpal tunnel started flairing up in my right hand, so I switched to brushing my teeth with my left hand. After 2 months, my site moved up two places in google. This must be proof that Google rewards left handed tooth brushers.
poke.gif

There is so much info missing from the weather typing story that it is absurd to leap to attributing the jump to it. How old was the site? What other changes had been made? How long ago prior were other changes made? What off-site marketing had been changed during that 6 months and the 6 months prior? What are the answers to these exact same questions for the other sites that fell during this one site's rise? (If one site goes up 2 positions, 2 others must have fallen)
The general point is you can't assume a causal relationship here. It may be that the site rose simply because 2 other sites had changes to them that were bad: They fell, which gave the impression that the other jumped. Those 2 that fell could have been content changes or simply some inbound links disappeared. It may be that an inbound link that was created 9 months ago has finally aged enough to start carrying some weight. It may be that Google finally got around to indexing the inn's listing on a deep page in a major directory. It may have been that some blogger said, "hey look at this guy typing the weather everyday by hand" and provided a link.
I've used this analogy before. Many people think of the inner workings of google like a wrapped Christmas present. Simply shake it a bit, poke it, prod it, make changes and by careful observation and listening, you can guess at what it is. The reality is that as you poke it and prod it, it makes no noise, then you get discouraged and put it back on the shelf. Three months later it makes a "crumple", at 6 months it "skronks" and at 9 months it "snorks". Was it the poke that caused the skronk or did the pro cause it? AND what caused the silence? What caused the four sounds you never heard because you weren't there listening every single minute?
This was mostly in a discussion about adding your blog feed to your homepage in such a way that google looks at it as fresh content (meaning not just as a feed but having the text show up)
From the point of getting people to tune into a blog, this may have some merit. However, from the point of view of SEO and having it appear as content and not a seconary source feed, I would argue that it is a crap shoot. I would caution that sometime it may help, an some times it may not. I' even go so far as to say most of the time it will not.
The reason I say this is that even if you are writing your blog titles with SEO in mind, they are going to be titles that are not your main target phrase(s) for your home page. They are going to be fringe target phrases (long tail) will not be stong enough to influence your home page position for major searches. It is entirely possible that including them on your home page is more likely to muddy up the content focus than it is to make it more clear.
I've seen a lot of innkeeper blogs. Most are not so great from an SEO point of view. Some are fantastic. Ballparking it, I would say that for every fantastic blog there are 9 horrible ones (again from an SEO point of view). If I recommende to all 10 innkeepers that they should feed their blog to their home page, only one might see an increase. Others may see a drop. The odds are not in favor of an increase. There is also the issue of disrupting up the distribution of pagerank by adding 10 deep links on your home page (assuming the blog feed goes 10 posts deep). Remember, all the pagerank that a homepage has gets distribute equally among the links on the page. If you have 5 links on your home page (essentially your main navigation) then each page gets a 5th of the pagerank attributed to the home page. If you add 10 blog links to that, then each page only gets 1/15th of it. A site ought to be structured to feed the strongest pages, which you do by not spreading it too thin.
If it were me, and I wanted my blog posts to appear on my home page for guest and potential guest reasons, then I would want them set up as a feed, so that google did not attribute the content to the page.
.
Thanks for sharing. I can't tell you how many innkeepers have emailed me about Facebook and Twitter and putting new stuff like recipes on their sites in the past few days.
The problem as I see it, they go to a conference, hear the "expert" for an hour who most likely is telling them things that only a web master undertands and then they start freaking out that they are going to be left behind in the search engines if they don't do this stuff.
Unfortunately most of my clients wouldn't have a clue what a good blog is nor how to even use Facebook or Twitter. And, most of them are already showing up on the first page of Google and have been for years.
Someone is just looking for more clients.
 
I believe I have been in one of the workshops that may have led to that conclusion - in defense of the company, she didn't exactly say 'post every day and you'll be #1 on google.' This was mostly in a discussion about adding your blog feed to your homepage in such a way that google looks at it as fresh content (meaning not just as a feed but having the text show up), and they recommend blogging once a week. But there was a story told about someone who TYPED the daily weather on his homepage for about six months and shot up in the google ranks. Which is why I think that whole mishegos evolved into your posting. Unless there's been more said since then.
But thanks for clarifying all of that - the details were not particularly clear during the workshop. We recently did add a blog feed (with the first lines of the post showing on the website) to our home page to get more traffic to the blog, which we hope to write with a better eye towards SEO (although that still is very hard for me). I did a special countdown to V-day on shopping in our town with a daily blog post, but boy I am looking forward to going back to once a week after Saturday. The daily one is too much for me. I am not nearly as creative as I would have hoped..
Thanks Jeanne, that context helps a bit. The responses that follow are not directed at you, just having a general bit of fun with the overal concepts and try to illustrate a few points along the way ;)
But there was a story told about someone who TYPED the daily weather on his homepage for about six months and shot up in the google ranks.
Cute anecdote. Here is another one. Two months ago my carpal tunnel started flairing up in my right hand, so I switched to brushing my teeth with my left hand. After 2 months, my site moved up two places in google. This must be proof that Google rewards left handed tooth brushers.
poke.gif

There is so much info missing from the weather typing story that it is absurd to leap to attributing the jump to it. How old was the site? What other changes had been made? How long ago prior were other changes made? What off-site marketing had been changed during that 6 months and the 6 months prior? What are the answers to these exact same questions for the other sites that fell during this one site's rise? (If one site goes up 2 positions, 2 others must have fallen)
The general point is you can't assume a causal relationship here. It may be that the site rose simply because 2 other sites had changes to them that were bad: They fell, which gave the impression that the other jumped. Those 2 that fell could have been content changes or simply some inbound links disappeared. It may be that an inbound link that was created 9 months ago has finally aged enough to start carrying some weight. It may be that Google finally got around to indexing the inn's listing on a deep page in a major directory. It may have been that some blogger said, "hey look at this guy typing the weather everyday by hand" and provided a link.
I've used this analogy before. Many people think of the inner workings of google like a wrapped Christmas present. Simply shake it a bit, poke it, prod it, make changes and by careful observation and listening, you can guess at what it is. The reality is that as you poke it and prod it, it makes no noise, then you get discouraged and put it back on the shelf. Three months later it makes a "crumple", at 6 months it "skronks" and at 9 months it "snorks". Was it the poke that caused the skronk or did the pro cause it? AND what caused the silence? What caused the four sounds you never heard because you weren't there listening every single minute?
This was mostly in a discussion about adding your blog feed to your homepage in such a way that google looks at it as fresh content (meaning not just as a feed but having the text show up)
From the point of getting people to tune into a blog, this may have some merit. However, from the point of view of SEO and having it appear as content and not a seconary source feed, I would argue that it is a crap shoot. I would caution that sometime it may help, an some times it may not. I' even go so far as to say most of the time it will not.
The reason I say this is that even if you are writing your blog titles with SEO in mind, they are going to be titles that are not your main target phrase(s) for your home page. They are going to be fringe target phrases (long tail) will not be stong enough to influence your home page position for major searches. It is entirely possible that including them on your home page is more likely to muddy up the content focus than it is to make it more clear.
I've seen a lot of innkeeper blogs. Most are not so great from an SEO point of view. Some are fantastic. Ballparking it, I would say that for every fantastic blog there are 9 horrible ones (again from an SEO point of view). If I recommende to all 10 innkeepers that they should feed their blog to their home page, only one might see an increase. Others may see a drop. The odds are not in favor of an increase. There is also the issue of disrupting up the distribution of pagerank by adding 10 deep links on your home page (assuming the blog feed goes 10 posts deep). Remember, all the pagerank that a homepage has gets distribute equally among the links on the page. If you have 5 links on your home page (essentially your main navigation) then each page gets a 5th of the pagerank attributed to the home page. If you add 10 blog links to that, then each page only gets 1/15th of it. A site ought to be structured to feed the strongest pages, which you do by not spreading it too thin.
If it were me, and I wanted my blog posts to appear on my home page for guest and potential guest reasons, then I would want them set up as a feed, so that google did not attribute the content to the page.
.
swirt said:
There is so much info missing from the weather typing story that it is absurd to leap to attributing the jump to it.
Even when the story was being told, it was clear (to me, at least) it didn't really have anything to do with Caffeine - it happened more than a year ago. But that was not made a clear by the speaker.
swirt said:
This was mostly in a discussion about adding your blog feed to your homepage in such a way that google looks at it as fresh content (meaning not just as a feed but having the text show up)
From the point of getting people to tune into a blog, this may have some merit. However, from the point of view of SEO and having it appear as content and not a seconary source feed, I would argue that it is a crap shoot. I would caution that sometime it may help, an some times it may not. I' even go so far as to say most of the time it will not.
Now, that information and the rest of your post is not something that was taken into consideration during the workshop discussion. We have only added the most recent blog post as a feed - mostly because I don't want to throw off the whole homepage and make it look like the blog. I don't think that looks very attractive, in general. Thanks for sharing, and we'll take that all into consideration, too.
It's no wonder there's so much confusion about this topic among innkeepers about what to do with websites and social media.
 
Cyclically the scaremongers come out, they are also the ones who want you to hire them. It is like clockwork, they are hammering it really hard right now.
Last years fear wa focused on "Reviews" get them or else no one will stay with you, and I will say I have a new email from TA every single day, even though I told them no more emails. I have ten emails every day from webmasters who say no one can find my website, and bless their hearts after 8 years still getting BnBstar knocking on my door and the rest of the "unknown" directories, who tell me they hold the golden ticket!
People who want to crap up their homepage and make it unattractive and irritating go right ahead, you are only shooting yourself in the foot. Like the article the other day said "once you get me to your website I wanna puke."
 
I believe I have been in one of the workshops that may have led to that conclusion - in defense of the company, she didn't exactly say 'post every day and you'll be #1 on google.' This was mostly in a discussion about adding your blog feed to your homepage in such a way that google looks at it as fresh content (meaning not just as a feed but having the text show up), and they recommend blogging once a week. But there was a story told about someone who TYPED the daily weather on his homepage for about six months and shot up in the google ranks. Which is why I think that whole mishegos evolved into your posting. Unless there's been more said since then.
But thanks for clarifying all of that - the details were not particularly clear during the workshop. We recently did add a blog feed (with the first lines of the post showing on the website) to our home page to get more traffic to the blog, which we hope to write with a better eye towards SEO (although that still is very hard for me). I did a special countdown to V-day on shopping in our town with a daily blog post, but boy I am looking forward to going back to once a week after Saturday. The daily one is too much for me. I am not nearly as creative as I would have hoped..
Thanks Jeanne, that context helps a bit. The responses that follow are not directed at you, just having a general bit of fun with the overal concepts and try to illustrate a few points along the way ;)
But there was a story told about someone who TYPED the daily weather on his homepage for about six months and shot up in the google ranks.
Cute anecdote. Here is another one. Two months ago my carpal tunnel started flairing up in my right hand, so I switched to brushing my teeth with my left hand. After 2 months, my site moved up two places in google. This must be proof that Google rewards left handed tooth brushers.
poke.gif

There is so much info missing from the weather typing story that it is absurd to leap to attributing the jump to it. How old was the site? What other changes had been made? How long ago prior were other changes made? What off-site marketing had been changed during that 6 months and the 6 months prior? What are the answers to these exact same questions for the other sites that fell during this one site's rise? (If one site goes up 2 positions, 2 others must have fallen)
The general point is you can't assume a causal relationship here. It may be that the site rose simply because 2 other sites had changes to them that were bad: They fell, which gave the impression that the other jumped. Those 2 that fell could have been content changes or simply some inbound links disappeared. It may be that an inbound link that was created 9 months ago has finally aged enough to start carrying some weight. It may be that Google finally got around to indexing the inn's listing on a deep page in a major directory. It may have been that some blogger said, "hey look at this guy typing the weather everyday by hand" and provided a link.
I've used this analogy before. Many people think of the inner workings of google like a wrapped Christmas present. Simply shake it a bit, poke it, prod it, make changes and by careful observation and listening, you can guess at what it is. The reality is that as you poke it and prod it, it makes no noise, then you get discouraged and put it back on the shelf. Three months later it makes a "crumple", at 6 months it "skronks" and at 9 months it "snorks". Was it the poke that caused the skronk or did the pro cause it? AND what caused the silence? What caused the four sounds you never heard because you weren't there listening every single minute?
This was mostly in a discussion about adding your blog feed to your homepage in such a way that google looks at it as fresh content (meaning not just as a feed but having the text show up)
From the point of getting people to tune into a blog, this may have some merit. However, from the point of view of SEO and having it appear as content and not a seconary source feed, I would argue that it is a crap shoot. I would caution that sometime it may help, an some times it may not. I' even go so far as to say most of the time it will not.
The reason I say this is that even if you are writing your blog titles with SEO in mind, they are going to be titles that are not your main target phrase(s) for your home page. They are going to be fringe target phrases (long tail) will not be stong enough to influence your home page position for major searches. It is entirely possible that including them on your home page is more likely to muddy up the content focus than it is to make it more clear.
I've seen a lot of innkeeper blogs. Most are not so great from an SEO point of view. Some are fantastic. Ballparking it, I would say that for every fantastic blog there are 9 horrible ones (again from an SEO point of view). If I recommende to all 10 innkeepers that they should feed their blog to their home page, only one might see an increase. Others may see a drop. The odds are not in favor of an increase. There is also the issue of disrupting up the distribution of pagerank by adding 10 deep links on your home page (assuming the blog feed goes 10 posts deep). Remember, all the pagerank that a homepage has gets distribute equally among the links on the page. If you have 5 links on your home page (essentially your main navigation) then each page gets a 5th of the pagerank attributed to the home page. If you add 10 blog links to that, then each page only gets 1/15th of it. A site ought to be structured to feed the strongest pages, which you do by not spreading it too thin.
If it were me, and I wanted my blog posts to appear on my home page for guest and potential guest reasons, then I would want them set up as a feed, so that google did not attribute the content to the page.
.
Thanks for sharing. I can't tell you how many innkeepers have emailed me about Facebook and Twitter and putting new stuff like recipes on their sites in the past few days.
The problem as I see it, they go to a conference, hear the "expert" for an hour who most likely is telling them things that only a web master undertands and then they start freaking out that they are going to be left behind in the search engines if they don't do this stuff.
Unfortunately most of my clients wouldn't have a clue what a good blog is nor how to even use Facebook or Twitter. And, most of them are already showing up on the first page of Google and have been for years.
Someone is just looking for more clients.
.
catlady said:
Thanks for sharing. I can't tell you how many innkeepers have emailed me about Facebook and Twitter and putting new stuff like recipes on their sites in the past few days.
The problem as I see it, they go to a conference, hear the "expert" for an hour who most likely is telling them things that only a web master undertands and then they start freaking out that they are going to be left behind in the search engines if they don't do this stuff.
Unfortunately most of my clients wouldn't have a clue what a good blog is nor how to even use Facebook or Twitter. And, most of them are already showing up on the first page of Google and have been for years.
Someone is just looking for more clients.
And I know there is more than one way to create a website and make it work well. It's not a simple medium in which to work and nobody is absolutely sure how all is ranked. And I consider this when I go to the conferences.
But I have to say I'm tired and really turned off when vendors telli me that the session I just went to was full of baloney and not true yada yada yada. It's very unprofessional. I prefer the way other vendors explain the reason they do it their way rather than saying the other company is full of &*&^%$. I think they all have their various strenghts or they would not be in business. I want to hear how they all work, their prices, and will go with who makes the most sense, is affordable, and has a good reputation
Dont' they see what they look like when they do this? This is what happened to us several times at PAII.
RIki
 
I believe I have been in one of the workshops that may have led to that conclusion - in defense of the company, she didn't exactly say 'post every day and you'll be #1 on google.' This was mostly in a discussion about adding your blog feed to your homepage in such a way that google looks at it as fresh content (meaning not just as a feed but having the text show up), and they recommend blogging once a week. But there was a story told about someone who TYPED the daily weather on his homepage for about six months and shot up in the google ranks. Which is why I think that whole mishegos evolved into your posting. Unless there's been more said since then.
But thanks for clarifying all of that - the details were not particularly clear during the workshop. We recently did add a blog feed (with the first lines of the post showing on the website) to our home page to get more traffic to the blog, which we hope to write with a better eye towards SEO (although that still is very hard for me). I did a special countdown to V-day on shopping in our town with a daily blog post, but boy I am looking forward to going back to once a week after Saturday. The daily one is too much for me. I am not nearly as creative as I would have hoped..
Thanks Jeanne, that context helps a bit. The responses that follow are not directed at you, just having a general bit of fun with the overal concepts and try to illustrate a few points along the way ;)
But there was a story told about someone who TYPED the daily weather on his homepage for about six months and shot up in the google ranks.
Cute anecdote. Here is another one. Two months ago my carpal tunnel started flairing up in my right hand, so I switched to brushing my teeth with my left hand. After 2 months, my site moved up two places in google. This must be proof that Google rewards left handed tooth brushers.
poke.gif

There is so much info missing from the weather typing story that it is absurd to leap to attributing the jump to it. How old was the site? What other changes had been made? How long ago prior were other changes made? What off-site marketing had been changed during that 6 months and the 6 months prior? What are the answers to these exact same questions for the other sites that fell during this one site's rise? (If one site goes up 2 positions, 2 others must have fallen)
The general point is you can't assume a causal relationship here. It may be that the site rose simply because 2 other sites had changes to them that were bad: They fell, which gave the impression that the other jumped. Those 2 that fell could have been content changes or simply some inbound links disappeared. It may be that an inbound link that was created 9 months ago has finally aged enough to start carrying some weight. It may be that Google finally got around to indexing the inn's listing on a deep page in a major directory. It may have been that some blogger said, "hey look at this guy typing the weather everyday by hand" and provided a link.
I've used this analogy before. Many people think of the inner workings of google like a wrapped Christmas present. Simply shake it a bit, poke it, prod it, make changes and by careful observation and listening, you can guess at what it is. The reality is that as you poke it and prod it, it makes no noise, then you get discouraged and put it back on the shelf. Three months later it makes a "crumple", at 6 months it "skronks" and at 9 months it "snorks". Was it the poke that caused the skronk or did the pro cause it? AND what caused the silence? What caused the four sounds you never heard because you weren't there listening every single minute?
This was mostly in a discussion about adding your blog feed to your homepage in such a way that google looks at it as fresh content (meaning not just as a feed but having the text show up)
From the point of getting people to tune into a blog, this may have some merit. However, from the point of view of SEO and having it appear as content and not a seconary source feed, I would argue that it is a crap shoot. I would caution that sometime it may help, an some times it may not. I' even go so far as to say most of the time it will not.
The reason I say this is that even if you are writing your blog titles with SEO in mind, they are going to be titles that are not your main target phrase(s) for your home page. They are going to be fringe target phrases (long tail) will not be stong enough to influence your home page position for major searches. It is entirely possible that including them on your home page is more likely to muddy up the content focus than it is to make it more clear.
I've seen a lot of innkeeper blogs. Most are not so great from an SEO point of view. Some are fantastic. Ballparking it, I would say that for every fantastic blog there are 9 horrible ones (again from an SEO point of view). If I recommende to all 10 innkeepers that they should feed their blog to their home page, only one might see an increase. Others may see a drop. The odds are not in favor of an increase. There is also the issue of disrupting up the distribution of pagerank by adding 10 deep links on your home page (assuming the blog feed goes 10 posts deep). Remember, all the pagerank that a homepage has gets distribute equally among the links on the page. If you have 5 links on your home page (essentially your main navigation) then each page gets a 5th of the pagerank attributed to the home page. If you add 10 blog links to that, then each page only gets 1/15th of it. A site ought to be structured to feed the strongest pages, which you do by not spreading it too thin.
If it were me, and I wanted my blog posts to appear on my home page for guest and potential guest reasons, then I would want them set up as a feed, so that google did not attribute the content to the page.
.
swirt said:
There is so much info missing from the weather typing story that it is absurd to leap to attributing the jump to it.
Even when the story was being told, it was clear (to me, at least) it didn't really have anything to do with Caffeine - it happened more than a year ago. But that was not made a clear by the speaker.
swirt said:
This was mostly in a discussion about adding your blog feed to your homepage in such a way that google looks at it as fresh content (meaning not just as a feed but having the text show up)
From the point of getting people to tune into a blog, this may have some merit. However, from the point of view of SEO and having it appear as content and not a seconary source feed, I would argue that it is a crap shoot. I would caution that sometime it may help, an some times it may not. I' even go so far as to say most of the time it will not.
Now, that information and the rest of your post is not something that was taken into consideration during the workshop discussion. We have only added the most recent blog post as a feed - mostly because I don't want to throw off the whole homepage and make it look like the blog. I don't think that looks very attractive, in general. Thanks for sharing, and we'll take that all into consideration, too.
It's no wonder there's so much confusion about this topic among innkeepers about what to do with websites and social media.
.
See that is the one thing that REALLY BOTHERS ME...having that blog stuff stuck at the bottom of the home page....all their new sites have it...I just don't find it appealing on the home page.
 
I believe I have been in one of the workshops that may have led to that conclusion - in defense of the company, she didn't exactly say 'post every day and you'll be #1 on google.' This was mostly in a discussion about adding your blog feed to your homepage in such a way that google looks at it as fresh content (meaning not just as a feed but having the text show up), and they recommend blogging once a week. But there was a story told about someone who TYPED the daily weather on his homepage for about six months and shot up in the google ranks. Which is why I think that whole mishegos evolved into your posting. Unless there's been more said since then.
But thanks for clarifying all of that - the details were not particularly clear during the workshop. We recently did add a blog feed (with the first lines of the post showing on the website) to our home page to get more traffic to the blog, which we hope to write with a better eye towards SEO (although that still is very hard for me). I did a special countdown to V-day on shopping in our town with a daily blog post, but boy I am looking forward to going back to once a week after Saturday. The daily one is too much for me. I am not nearly as creative as I would have hoped..
Thanks Jeanne, that context helps a bit. The responses that follow are not directed at you, just having a general bit of fun with the overal concepts and try to illustrate a few points along the way ;)
But there was a story told about someone who TYPED the daily weather on his homepage for about six months and shot up in the google ranks.
Cute anecdote. Here is another one. Two months ago my carpal tunnel started flairing up in my right hand, so I switched to brushing my teeth with my left hand. After 2 months, my site moved up two places in google. This must be proof that Google rewards left handed tooth brushers.
poke.gif

There is so much info missing from the weather typing story that it is absurd to leap to attributing the jump to it. How old was the site? What other changes had been made? How long ago prior were other changes made? What off-site marketing had been changed during that 6 months and the 6 months prior? What are the answers to these exact same questions for the other sites that fell during this one site's rise? (If one site goes up 2 positions, 2 others must have fallen)
The general point is you can't assume a causal relationship here. It may be that the site rose simply because 2 other sites had changes to them that were bad: They fell, which gave the impression that the other jumped. Those 2 that fell could have been content changes or simply some inbound links disappeared. It may be that an inbound link that was created 9 months ago has finally aged enough to start carrying some weight. It may be that Google finally got around to indexing the inn's listing on a deep page in a major directory. It may have been that some blogger said, "hey look at this guy typing the weather everyday by hand" and provided a link.
I've used this analogy before. Many people think of the inner workings of google like a wrapped Christmas present. Simply shake it a bit, poke it, prod it, make changes and by careful observation and listening, you can guess at what it is. The reality is that as you poke it and prod it, it makes no noise, then you get discouraged and put it back on the shelf. Three months later it makes a "crumple", at 6 months it "skronks" and at 9 months it "snorks". Was it the poke that caused the skronk or did the pro cause it? AND what caused the silence? What caused the four sounds you never heard because you weren't there listening every single minute?
This was mostly in a discussion about adding your blog feed to your homepage in such a way that google looks at it as fresh content (meaning not just as a feed but having the text show up)
From the point of getting people to tune into a blog, this may have some merit. However, from the point of view of SEO and having it appear as content and not a seconary source feed, I would argue that it is a crap shoot. I would caution that sometime it may help, an some times it may not. I' even go so far as to say most of the time it will not.
The reason I say this is that even if you are writing your blog titles with SEO in mind, they are going to be titles that are not your main target phrase(s) for your home page. They are going to be fringe target phrases (long tail) will not be stong enough to influence your home page position for major searches. It is entirely possible that including them on your home page is more likely to muddy up the content focus than it is to make it more clear.
I've seen a lot of innkeeper blogs. Most are not so great from an SEO point of view. Some are fantastic. Ballparking it, I would say that for every fantastic blog there are 9 horrible ones (again from an SEO point of view). If I recommende to all 10 innkeepers that they should feed their blog to their home page, only one might see an increase. Others may see a drop. The odds are not in favor of an increase. There is also the issue of disrupting up the distribution of pagerank by adding 10 deep links on your home page (assuming the blog feed goes 10 posts deep). Remember, all the pagerank that a homepage has gets distribute equally among the links on the page. If you have 5 links on your home page (essentially your main navigation) then each page gets a 5th of the pagerank attributed to the home page. If you add 10 blog links to that, then each page only gets 1/15th of it. A site ought to be structured to feed the strongest pages, which you do by not spreading it too thin.
If it were me, and I wanted my blog posts to appear on my home page for guest and potential guest reasons, then I would want them set up as a feed, so that google did not attribute the content to the page.
.
swirt said:
There is so much info missing from the weather typing story that it is absurd to leap to attributing the jump to it.
Even when the story was being told, it was clear (to me, at least) it didn't really have anything to do with Caffeine - it happened more than a year ago. But that was not made a clear by the speaker.
swirt said:
This was mostly in a discussion about adding your blog feed to your homepage in such a way that google looks at it as fresh content (meaning not just as a feed but having the text show up)
From the point of getting people to tune into a blog, this may have some merit. However, from the point of view of SEO and having it appear as content and not a seconary source feed, I would argue that it is a crap shoot. I would caution that sometime it may help, an some times it may not. I' even go so far as to say most of the time it will not.
Now, that information and the rest of your post is not something that was taken into consideration during the workshop discussion. We have only added the most recent blog post as a feed - mostly because I don't want to throw off the whole homepage and make it look like the blog. I don't think that looks very attractive, in general. Thanks for sharing, and we'll take that all into consideration, too.
It's no wonder there's so much confusion about this topic among innkeepers about what to do with websites and social media.
.
See that is the one thing that REALLY BOTHERS ME...having that blog stuff stuck at the bottom of the home page....all their new sites have it...I just don't find it appealing on the home page.
.
catlady said:
See that is the one thing that REALLY BOTHERS ME...having that blog stuff stuck at the bottom of the home page....all their new sites have it...I just don't find it appealing on the home page.
Having one feed from the blog doesn't bother me at all (and I'm just saying this as my own opinion as both an innkeeper and a potential guest). I like to read blogs, so I would be more likely to click over to it and be happy to find more info if I were going to consider staying there. I don't like a laundry list of blog posts, and I'm not crazy about not having original content on the homepage - like a reviews feed, or calendar of events, or a google map. It's too hard to make them look like a part of the page and as a guest looking for a place to stay, it feels cobbled together. Again, that's just me personally, but I do a lot more research maybe than the average person when I'm trying to decide where to stay.
 
I believe I have been in one of the workshops that may have led to that conclusion - in defense of the company, she didn't exactly say 'post every day and you'll be #1 on google.' This was mostly in a discussion about adding your blog feed to your homepage in such a way that google looks at it as fresh content (meaning not just as a feed but having the text show up), and they recommend blogging once a week. But there was a story told about someone who TYPED the daily weather on his homepage for about six months and shot up in the google ranks. Which is why I think that whole mishegos evolved into your posting. Unless there's been more said since then.
But thanks for clarifying all of that - the details were not particularly clear during the workshop. We recently did add a blog feed (with the first lines of the post showing on the website) to our home page to get more traffic to the blog, which we hope to write with a better eye towards SEO (although that still is very hard for me). I did a special countdown to V-day on shopping in our town with a daily blog post, but boy I am looking forward to going back to once a week after Saturday. The daily one is too much for me. I am not nearly as creative as I would have hoped..
Thanks Jeanne, that context helps a bit. The responses that follow are not directed at you, just having a general bit of fun with the overal concepts and try to illustrate a few points along the way ;)
But there was a story told about someone who TYPED the daily weather on his homepage for about six months and shot up in the google ranks.
Cute anecdote. Here is another one. Two months ago my carpal tunnel started flairing up in my right hand, so I switched to brushing my teeth with my left hand. After 2 months, my site moved up two places in google. This must be proof that Google rewards left handed tooth brushers.
poke.gif

There is so much info missing from the weather typing story that it is absurd to leap to attributing the jump to it. How old was the site? What other changes had been made? How long ago prior were other changes made? What off-site marketing had been changed during that 6 months and the 6 months prior? What are the answers to these exact same questions for the other sites that fell during this one site's rise? (If one site goes up 2 positions, 2 others must have fallen)
The general point is you can't assume a causal relationship here. It may be that the site rose simply because 2 other sites had changes to them that were bad: They fell, which gave the impression that the other jumped. Those 2 that fell could have been content changes or simply some inbound links disappeared. It may be that an inbound link that was created 9 months ago has finally aged enough to start carrying some weight. It may be that Google finally got around to indexing the inn's listing on a deep page in a major directory. It may have been that some blogger said, "hey look at this guy typing the weather everyday by hand" and provided a link.
I've used this analogy before. Many people think of the inner workings of google like a wrapped Christmas present. Simply shake it a bit, poke it, prod it, make changes and by careful observation and listening, you can guess at what it is. The reality is that as you poke it and prod it, it makes no noise, then you get discouraged and put it back on the shelf. Three months later it makes a "crumple", at 6 months it "skronks" and at 9 months it "snorks". Was it the poke that caused the skronk or did the pro cause it? AND what caused the silence? What caused the four sounds you never heard because you weren't there listening every single minute?
This was mostly in a discussion about adding your blog feed to your homepage in such a way that google looks at it as fresh content (meaning not just as a feed but having the text show up)
From the point of getting people to tune into a blog, this may have some merit. However, from the point of view of SEO and having it appear as content and not a seconary source feed, I would argue that it is a crap shoot. I would caution that sometime it may help, an some times it may not. I' even go so far as to say most of the time it will not.
The reason I say this is that even if you are writing your blog titles with SEO in mind, they are going to be titles that are not your main target phrase(s) for your home page. They are going to be fringe target phrases (long tail) will not be stong enough to influence your home page position for major searches. It is entirely possible that including them on your home page is more likely to muddy up the content focus than it is to make it more clear.
I've seen a lot of innkeeper blogs. Most are not so great from an SEO point of view. Some are fantastic. Ballparking it, I would say that for every fantastic blog there are 9 horrible ones (again from an SEO point of view). If I recommende to all 10 innkeepers that they should feed their blog to their home page, only one might see an increase. Others may see a drop. The odds are not in favor of an increase. There is also the issue of disrupting up the distribution of pagerank by adding 10 deep links on your home page (assuming the blog feed goes 10 posts deep). Remember, all the pagerank that a homepage has gets distribute equally among the links on the page. If you have 5 links on your home page (essentially your main navigation) then each page gets a 5th of the pagerank attributed to the home page. If you add 10 blog links to that, then each page only gets 1/15th of it. A site ought to be structured to feed the strongest pages, which you do by not spreading it too thin.
If it were me, and I wanted my blog posts to appear on my home page for guest and potential guest reasons, then I would want them set up as a feed, so that google did not attribute the content to the page.
.
swirt said:
There is so much info missing from the weather typing story that it is absurd to leap to attributing the jump to it.
Even when the story was being told, it was clear (to me, at least) it didn't really have anything to do with Caffeine - it happened more than a year ago. But that was not made a clear by the speaker.
swirt said:
This was mostly in a discussion about adding your blog feed to your homepage in such a way that google looks at it as fresh content (meaning not just as a feed but having the text show up)
From the point of getting people to tune into a blog, this may have some merit. However, from the point of view of SEO and having it appear as content and not a seconary source feed, I would argue that it is a crap shoot. I would caution that sometime it may help, an some times it may not. I' even go so far as to say most of the time it will not.
Now, that information and the rest of your post is not something that was taken into consideration during the workshop discussion. We have only added the most recent blog post as a feed - mostly because I don't want to throw off the whole homepage and make it look like the blog. I don't think that looks very attractive, in general. Thanks for sharing, and we'll take that all into consideration, too.
It's no wonder there's so much confusion about this topic among innkeepers about what to do with websites and social media.
.
See that is the one thing that REALLY BOTHERS ME...having that blog stuff stuck at the bottom of the home page....all their new sites have it...I just don't find it appealing on the home page.
.
catlady said:
See that is the one thing that REALLY BOTHERS ME...having that blog stuff stuck at the bottom of the home page....all their new sites have it...I just don't find it appealing on the home page.
I'm with you. I like a clean, appealing knock my socks off home page. From there I can go and see what all I want to read. But then it's probably just my personal likes. I find a lot of websites way too busy. But maybe all that selection on the home page pulls people in?
RIki
RIki
 
Let's go back to the websites overseas. Sorry and no offence just hashing this out here...but they have always been at least 5 years behind the USA and we mention this and they get ticked off, instead of listening and looking at the websites in the USA and being ahead of the curve.
Most of the B&B sites in Europe are not eye candy, they are little logos all over the place trying to raise their page rank. Finding information is a bear! They annoy people.
They will argue that this is what the guests want in Europe, which is contrary to what any guest wants, they want a nice clean page with clear neat photos to look at the B&B and what is on offer, and easy to navigate for more information or booking online.
And btw if you have giant in your face photos on the home page or headers and treat me like a blind idiot stuffing them into my face, again I will close the browser after saying "I wanna puke" to quote that article again.
Large photos are nice - GIANT PHOTOS ARE ABSURD.
 
I believe I have been in one of the workshops that may have led to that conclusion - in defense of the company, she didn't exactly say 'post every day and you'll be #1 on google.' This was mostly in a discussion about adding your blog feed to your homepage in such a way that google looks at it as fresh content (meaning not just as a feed but having the text show up), and they recommend blogging once a week. But there was a story told about someone who TYPED the daily weather on his homepage for about six months and shot up in the google ranks. Which is why I think that whole mishegos evolved into your posting. Unless there's been more said since then.
But thanks for clarifying all of that - the details were not particularly clear during the workshop. We recently did add a blog feed (with the first lines of the post showing on the website) to our home page to get more traffic to the blog, which we hope to write with a better eye towards SEO (although that still is very hard for me). I did a special countdown to V-day on shopping in our town with a daily blog post, but boy I am looking forward to going back to once a week after Saturday. The daily one is too much for me. I am not nearly as creative as I would have hoped..
Thanks Jeanne, that context helps a bit. The responses that follow are not directed at you, just having a general bit of fun with the overal concepts and try to illustrate a few points along the way ;)
But there was a story told about someone who TYPED the daily weather on his homepage for about six months and shot up in the google ranks.
Cute anecdote. Here is another one. Two months ago my carpal tunnel started flairing up in my right hand, so I switched to brushing my teeth with my left hand. After 2 months, my site moved up two places in google. This must be proof that Google rewards left handed tooth brushers.
poke.gif

There is so much info missing from the weather typing story that it is absurd to leap to attributing the jump to it. How old was the site? What other changes had been made? How long ago prior were other changes made? What off-site marketing had been changed during that 6 months and the 6 months prior? What are the answers to these exact same questions for the other sites that fell during this one site's rise? (If one site goes up 2 positions, 2 others must have fallen)
The general point is you can't assume a causal relationship here. It may be that the site rose simply because 2 other sites had changes to them that were bad: They fell, which gave the impression that the other jumped. Those 2 that fell could have been content changes or simply some inbound links disappeared. It may be that an inbound link that was created 9 months ago has finally aged enough to start carrying some weight. It may be that Google finally got around to indexing the inn's listing on a deep page in a major directory. It may have been that some blogger said, "hey look at this guy typing the weather everyday by hand" and provided a link.
I've used this analogy before. Many people think of the inner workings of google like a wrapped Christmas present. Simply shake it a bit, poke it, prod it, make changes and by careful observation and listening, you can guess at what it is. The reality is that as you poke it and prod it, it makes no noise, then you get discouraged and put it back on the shelf. Three months later it makes a "crumple", at 6 months it "skronks" and at 9 months it "snorks". Was it the poke that caused the skronk or did the pro cause it? AND what caused the silence? What caused the four sounds you never heard because you weren't there listening every single minute?
This was mostly in a discussion about adding your blog feed to your homepage in such a way that google looks at it as fresh content (meaning not just as a feed but having the text show up)
From the point of getting people to tune into a blog, this may have some merit. However, from the point of view of SEO and having it appear as content and not a seconary source feed, I would argue that it is a crap shoot. I would caution that sometime it may help, an some times it may not. I' even go so far as to say most of the time it will not.
The reason I say this is that even if you are writing your blog titles with SEO in mind, they are going to be titles that are not your main target phrase(s) for your home page. They are going to be fringe target phrases (long tail) will not be stong enough to influence your home page position for major searches. It is entirely possible that including them on your home page is more likely to muddy up the content focus than it is to make it more clear.
I've seen a lot of innkeeper blogs. Most are not so great from an SEO point of view. Some are fantastic. Ballparking it, I would say that for every fantastic blog there are 9 horrible ones (again from an SEO point of view). If I recommende to all 10 innkeepers that they should feed their blog to their home page, only one might see an increase. Others may see a drop. The odds are not in favor of an increase. There is also the issue of disrupting up the distribution of pagerank by adding 10 deep links on your home page (assuming the blog feed goes 10 posts deep). Remember, all the pagerank that a homepage has gets distribute equally among the links on the page. If you have 5 links on your home page (essentially your main navigation) then each page gets a 5th of the pagerank attributed to the home page. If you add 10 blog links to that, then each page only gets 1/15th of it. A site ought to be structured to feed the strongest pages, which you do by not spreading it too thin.
If it were me, and I wanted my blog posts to appear on my home page for guest and potential guest reasons, then I would want them set up as a feed, so that google did not attribute the content to the page.
.
Thanks for sharing. I can't tell you how many innkeepers have emailed me about Facebook and Twitter and putting new stuff like recipes on their sites in the past few days.
The problem as I see it, they go to a conference, hear the "expert" for an hour who most likely is telling them things that only a web master undertands and then they start freaking out that they are going to be left behind in the search engines if they don't do this stuff.
Unfortunately most of my clients wouldn't have a clue what a good blog is nor how to even use Facebook or Twitter. And, most of them are already showing up on the first page of Google and have been for years.
Someone is just looking for more clients.
.
catlady said:
Thanks for sharing. I can't tell you how many innkeepers have emailed me about Facebook and Twitter and putting new stuff like recipes on their sites in the past few days.
The problem as I see it, they go to a conference, hear the "expert" for an hour who most likely is telling them things that only a web master undertands and then they start freaking out that they are going to be left behind in the search engines if they don't do this stuff.
Unfortunately most of my clients wouldn't have a clue what a good blog is nor how to even use Facebook or Twitter. And, most of them are already showing up on the first page of Google and have been for years.
Someone is just looking for more clients.
And I know there is more than one way to create a website and make it work well. It's not a simple medium in which to work and nobody is absolutely sure how all is ranked. And I consider this when I go to the conferences.
But I have to say I'm tired and really turned off when vendors telli me that the session I just went to was full of baloney and not true yada yada yada. It's very unprofessional. I prefer the way other vendors explain the reason they do it their way rather than saying the other company is full of &*&^%$. I think they all have their various strenghts or they would not be in business. I want to hear how they all work, their prices, and will go with who makes the most sense, is affordable, and has a good reputation
Dont' they see what they look like when they do this? This is what happened to us several times at PAII.
RIki
.
My eyes and ears started glazing over at PAII from so many workshops saying the same things in different and sometimes conflicting ways. Techies know who is full of bull but the average joe just keeps hearing "You NEED to do this" without any real understanding of HOW to "do this". Or why.
 
It's very upsetting to hear Swirt and Catlady pounce on a speaker and neither one of them were present at the workshop. Obviously alot was taken out of context. Thank you Muirford for putting things said in the right context. The point getting across is that It's not just one thing for Google placement it's everything put together. Freshness, obtaining quality in-bound links, blog feed, blogging with SEO, done once a week DOES help. FaceBook, Twitter, Digg etc.used every other day or so keeps your name out there and is picked up by Google. It's helped me and many others stay on that first page in a very competitive area. Catlady, its possible that your clients are not in an area where there are a lot of bed and breakfasts and at this point they don't need to do this.
 
It's very upsetting to hear Swirt and Catlady pounce on a speaker and neither one of them were present at the workshop. Obviously alot was taken out of context. Thank you Muirford for putting things said in the right context. The point getting across is that It's not just one thing for Google placement it's everything put together. Freshness, obtaining quality in-bound links, blog feed, blogging with SEO, done once a week DOES help. FaceBook, Twitter, Digg etc.used every other day or so keeps your name out there and is picked up by Google. It's helped me and many others stay on that first page in a very competitive area. Catlady, its possible that your clients are not in an area where there are a lot of bed and breakfasts and at this point they don't need to do this..
I am not referring to something said a year ago. It was just last week.
No I wasn't there, but very good friends were and that is what they told me. Personally I have always liked hearing what they had to say and then used what fit in my particular situation. However, as someon else who attended PAII conference just said....all talking and some conflicting..so who do you believe
And no...my friends/ clients are in popular tourist areas. There are loads of B & B's near them. They have always been right at the top of Google searches so obviously we are doing something right :)
 
It's very upsetting to hear Swirt and Catlady pounce on a speaker and neither one of them were present at the workshop. Obviously alot was taken out of context. Thank you Muirford for putting things said in the right context. The point getting across is that It's not just one thing for Google placement it's everything put together. Freshness, obtaining quality in-bound links, blog feed, blogging with SEO, done once a week DOES help. FaceBook, Twitter, Digg etc.used every other day or so keeps your name out there and is picked up by Google. It's helped me and many others stay on that first page in a very competitive area. Catlady, its possible that your clients are not in an area where there are a lot of bed and breakfasts and at this point they don't need to do this..
andonreidinn said:
It's very upsetting to hear Swirt and Catlady pounce on a speaker...
Come on, here we go again. We are just DISCUSSING people!
Nobody is "pouncing" on anyone else. Can't we just DISCUSS for cryin' out loud? Since when can others not voice their opinion? Both Swirt and Catlady are in the business of designing websites. Neither one is saying they are the absolute authority.
I for one continue to read their opinions with great interest. Let it go.
RIki
 
where do I click there are dozens of things vying for my attention and plenty of links to send me away from the inns website...as professional and expensive as the site is.
 
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