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How Hotels Can Build Links by Leveraging their USP, PR, and Organic Growth;
an O’Rourke Video Interview






O’Rourke Hospitality Marketing
attended the SEOmoz PRO Training Seminar 2009 and interviewed guest speaker, Tom Critchlow, after his talk, “The Pacman Chunk of the Piechart: Getting Links”.
 
O’Rourke specializes in the hospitality industry, and we aim to provide your hotel with useful tips on how you can improve your website optimization. Link building plays a major part in increasing your website’s visibility and page rank, and can help your hotel listing rise to the top of the search engine results pages.
 
We enjoyed Critchlow’s talk on link building, and wanted to share some of his insights with you, so we asked him his thoughts on how the hotel industry in particular could increase their page rank with link building.
 
Tom O’Rourke, founder/president of O’Rourke Hospitality Marketing, interviewed Critchlow and asked him to expand upon the following question that many hotels are asking, “What advice would you give today to a hotel who is ranking somewhere between 3-4 in Google right now and have finished out all their on-page SEO? What do you think they should do moving forward?”
 
“Link building is the Key!” said Critchlow.
 
We agree with Critchlow in that hotels need to identify their USP (Unique Selling Proposition). As he states in the video, “If you haven’t got a USP – figure one out!” Perhaps your USP is that you are a boutique hotel, or an eco-friendly hotel, or conference-focused. Establish your USP and promote it through creative public relations.
 
Once you have your angle you can start leveraging it. You can get recommended links from people you know or have partnered with. For example if you host a conference, ask the conference organizers to post your hotel link on their website and give them instructions on how to do it.
 
Another point that Critchlow mentioned is that a lot of hotels and travel-related companies spend too much on paid links. Hotels should take that money and spend it in a more intelligent way which can result in building better links. He suggests growing your organic PR side of things rather than paying for links.
 
As Critchlow says, “The real key when you are talking about link-building is to embed it in your whole business. Don’t consider SEO separate to other activities in your business but consider SEO as a part of everything. Whatever you are doing; PR, marketing, business development, embed SEO in all those processes.”
O’Rourke suggests that your hotel experiment with new ideas, and brainstorm some of your own, on ways you can attract great links to your site. There may be many opportunities available to build links that you may have overlooked. Remember, you can also create your own opportunities!
 
O’Rourke Hospitality Marketing can help your hotel develop an effective link building strategy. For more information on link building call us at 978-465-5955 or send an email to [email protected].


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Contact:

O’Rourke Hospitality Marketing
44 Merrimac Street
Newburyport
MA 01950

http://www.orourkehospitality.com

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Also See: Will Google Caffeine Affect my Hotel SEO? / August 2009

Don’t Hide From Trip Advisor Reviews! / August 2009

5 Ways Hotels can Improve and Track Return on Investment from Twitter – Oh wait, there is no investment! / August 2009

Leverage Blended Search and Boost your Hotel’s Search Ranking Position / August 2009

How to Optimize Your Hotel Website for Natural Search / August 2009
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