It seems customer reviews are going to take a much larger role in search engine results and rankings than they have in the past. Look at this recent Google search I conducted for “eyeglasses” in San Francisco:

Local businesses dominate the top results, and reviews seem to feature very prominently in how the businesses rank.

How are you encouraging more customer reviews? How are you making sure they’re positive?

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Also see: 2011 trends in online reputation management (Tnooz) and ReviewPro – the customer intelligence tool for hotels.

I recently wrote about 3 things your website must do in 3 seconds: the importance of quickly grabbing a first-time visitor’s attention and engaging them instantly. This remains true, but Google’s new Instant Preview functionality  takes the importance of first impressions to another level.

Introduced gradually last month, Google Instant Previews is a natural continuation of their instant search results. It’s all about delivering information faster. But what does this mean for our web design strategy?

First impressions play a more important role

In the past, first impressions may have determined if someone stays on your site or leaves. Now, it will determine if someone even clicks through to your site at all.

Design matters more

As people skim through search results, they will have a split second to see which sites to look most visually appealing. It’s important to remember that the new preview only shows a window about 300 pixels wide, see you need to make that layout looks good in a small thumbnail.

Here’s a very helpful design tutorial from creativebits on how to deal with this.

Relevance matters

You can no longer trick people into stumbling across your website. People will find the most helpful site faster.

Work towards being the most valuable resource of useful information, and this will benefit you regardless of how Google displays your content.

The “One Big Thing”

Clear the clutter off your pages and make One Big Thing very obvious through large images and text. This has long been an important part of website optimization, and Instant Previews makes it all the more important.

Ask yourself: What is the one thing I want people to get from this page?

Simplicity leads to clarity – which is the hallmark of effective web pages.

More resources on Google Instant Previews

Here are a few other good posts where you can get more information on this:

• Google blog announcement of Instant Previews
• FastCompany: Google Instant Preview may shake up web design forever
• How to design for Google Instant Preview (very good illustration and design checklist from creativebits)
• Copyblogger: Will your site survive the Google shrink ray?

Alright, I know Hotel Marketing Strategies isn’t exactly a unique name. But I think it’s safe to say that within the online hotel community, I’ve built it into the #1 source of original hotel marketing content over the past few years.

Since HotelMarketingStrategies.com has a top-2 ranking in Google for the ultra-competitive phrase Hotel Marketing (~34 million results), I know there are dozens of other websites gunning for my position. A lot of “gurus” and agencies are pissed off that they can’t walk the talk and use their great SEO strategies for their own websites.

But competition is good. I like it. May the best websites win.

What makes me angry is when someone tries to cheat and hijack the brand I’ve built here to accomplish this.

Which is what 99HotelMarketingStrategies.com appears to be doing.

Published by an Italian company, Futura Hospitality, it promises to include hotel marketing tips. “The first guide of its type ever” Not true. My own guide – 1001 Hotel Marketing Ideas – came out at least 5 months earlier – and I know there were other digital guides before mine.

My team is evaluating legal action on this, but for obvious reasons I’m not going to discuss that here.

Even if Futura is not doing this intentionally, it’s still a big issue. Negligence in doing research to avoid trademark infringement before launch of a website like this is a fault.

I’m fully aware that writing this post may send a lot of traffic their way. They’ll probably make a bunch of sales too.

But this is a reputation issue. So to clarify: I am not in any way affiliated with 99 Hotel Marketing Strategies or 99HotelMarketingStrategies.com.

I know this post may come off as a rant. And it is. But you know my goal here: to keep it real and walk through everyday, real-world scenarios.

So what are the lessons for you?

Be aware of other websites and organizations trying to steal traffic off the brand you have established.

Be vocal in clarifying the (non)relationship. I’ve seen several hotels face impersonators in social media and elsewhere – being silent about this isn’t the solution. Make sure people know you’re not affiliated to minimize brand damage.

Google Instant was released Wednesday, September 8th -with the intention of delivering “search results faster than the speed of type.”

What is Google Instant?

In short, it’s predictive search combined with real-time results.

Watch Google explain:

How does it affect my search marketing campaigns?

Not a whole lot. This is an evolutionary change, not a revolutionary one.

However, there are some things you need to be aware of….

Search optimization in Google Instant

Google execs have said “rankings remain the same.” This is not the same as personalized search suggestions that Google introduced a while back.

Yet while the rankings remain the same, the way people use Google will change – and that affects our marketing campaigns.

The stakes have been raised. Less visible screen real estate makes top rankings even more important than in the past. Some estimate than only 20% of searchers will see the #4 result.

Additionally, predictive search could lead to more people using long-tail – 3-8+ word phrases – to find what they’re looking for. Not having to type all those words is easier for the searcher, and could train people to use very specific queries in their search. It helps them find what they’re looking for much faster.

Many of us have understood the value of optimizing for these very specific keyword phrases in the past, but the introduction of Google Instant confirms the importance of this.

(Read this article on Search Engine Watch: 7 reasons why Google Instant makes SEO dead-on relevant)

Paid search advertising (PPC) in Google Instant

Since I actively manage Google advertising campaigns, I’ve seen some interesting things happen over the past few days.

Compared to before Google Instant, the number of ad impressions for your keywords can vary widely. If a user pauses their search for more than 3 seconds, that counts as an impression. So it’s not uncommon for your clickthrough rates (CTR) to fluctuate as a result.

Also, per-click prices are significantly higher in many of the campaigns I’m involved with. Because top placement becomes more valuable, companies will pay a premium to be on top. I recommend you make an effort to add even more long-tail keywords to your campaign than you have in the past.

My advice with Google Instant

Play the search marketing game smarter. You have to be on your toes now.

But that’s what I’ve been saying all along.

Unsuccessful search marketers think this is just something you set up once and then leave. Not true.

Successful search marketing requires constant evaluation of the market. Continually adjust your strategy to stay on top.

Keyword research is the process of finding which search terms are most popular for users of sites like Google. Before, it was something used exclusively by search engine marketers as they optimized websites for higher rankings.

Now, smart bloggers and content publishers include keyword research in their writing. Little things like the words you choose for an article title or video make a difference in how many people will find it.

So how does keyword research work? This video shows how:

Vanessa asked me on Twitter if TripAdvisor’s Business Listings links provide any search optimization value:

The link she is referring to is TripAdvisor’s advertising program that allows businesses to place a direct link to their website, along with their phone number and email address. Visitors can then book directly through your property instead of one of TripAdvisor’s partner OTAs:

If you get a little geeky and look at the source code of these links, you can see that they are using Javascript “onclick” links – which do not pass “link juice” or provide any link building benefit.

That’s not to say that you should not use this program. I have anecdotal evidence that hotels make quite a bit of money by placing a direct link to their site. This is especially true if you’re doing well on TripAdvisor – like the Library Hotel above – and the majority of your reviews are positive.

But to answer the original question: no, the links do not currently benefit your website from a search optimization standpoint.

I hope TripAdvisor changes this soon, because SEO-friendly links would be an attractive benefit to have.

Have a hotel marketing question? Send it to me on Twitter: @HmarketingHelp

Google’s latest web indexing system, Caffeine, was built to index (include) web content 50% faster than before. In their own words:

Content on the web is blossoming. It’s growing not just in size and numbers but with the advent of video, images, news and real-time updates, the average webpage is richer and more complex. In addition, people’s expectations for search are higher than they used to be. Searchers want to find the latest relevant content and publishers expect to be found the instant they publish.

I like their little illustration:

What does this mean for you?

Ranking algorithms will remain the same under this new system, it’s just much faster.  It’s a move to embrace the real-time web environment we now operate in.

If you’re blogging or tweeting or uploading media, people will find it quickly.

And this makes search optimization more important than ever.

Real-time communication and search visibility are not two separate things.

I was looking over my notes from a session on local search at ad:tech San Francisco, and wanted to share some of the key points with you today:

> The goal of local search is about driving people to a point of sale…and a transaction

> 20% of Google searches are related to location (eg, ‘hotel’ + ‘city name’)

> Most of internet use is about researching something to do offline (obviously true for hotels)

> According to MarketingSherpa, geo-targeted advertising provides highest ROI (more than demographics, contests, etc)

> If you’re advertising in Google, you now have the option to target specific mobile carriers and devices (like the iPad).

This is a guest article from Ran, an SEO specialist and Hotel Marketing Strategies reader in the UK.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving your site to increase the volume of traffic from search engines such as Google, Yahoo, AOL and Bing via natural search results. Fundamentally, the higher your site is ranking for a particular search term, the more traffic you’ll get. Therefore your goal is to increase your ranking within the search engine guidelines as it will directly influence your revenue.

Here are 10 SEO tips to get a new site off to a great start:

1. Save On the Site’s Development – Whether you will own your SEO work or hire a 3rd party agency to manage it, optimizing your site will cost you time and money. Consider launching with the absolute basic of features in order to keep a decent budget for marketing and later on for site tweaks.

2. Don’t Save on Hosting – While saving on the initial development cost could work well, investing in quality and reliable hosting is where you should not save. Ensuring your website loads quickly is crucial for your optimization success and for user experience.

3. Get the Domain Name Right – Buying the right domain name is one of the most important decisions you’ll need to make at the very start. I would suggest buying a descriptive name which unlike a generic name can make life just a little easier when optimizing the site. An example for a descriptive name will be hotelmarketingstrategies.com, while Google.com is an example of a generic domain name.

4. List the Keywords You’d Like to Rank for – Normally optimizing your site means shortlisting the keywords which you’d like to rank for and optimizing each page around one key term. You should pick the keywords which describe your product or service and most importantly pick the keywords which are likely to convert well for the business.

5. Use the Metadata Tags Correctly – Once you have shortlisted your keywords you would need to insert them into your pages using the metadata tag location. Don’t stuff all those key terms into each page, but rather insert one term per page together with descriptive information. To optimize your site for Google, limit the page title to 70 characters and the page description to 140 characters. Here’s how the metadata comes into view when users search for a specific term:

6. Invest in Content – Original content in the form of articles, reviews, guest testimonials and even elaborate FAQs are very important for your optimization success. While not to underestimate other factors, the search engines place huge weight on the level of content on your site. By adding high quality original content closely related to your keywords the search engines will associate your site with the search term and over time it will become an authority site. The best example to demonstrate this point is probably Wikipedia.

7. Consolidate Homepage Versions – Some websites have multiple versions of their homepage which will result in poorer performance as your authority will be spread across a few homepage versions. The most common issue is having non www and www versions. To test how many versions of your page exist use a content duplication checker and fix the issues found.

8. Leverage Your Image – Traffic from users searching for images such as hotel locations could benefit your site. To optimize your images for Google Image Search, make sure you use a descriptive file name so park-hotel-ca.jpg is better than 9h80.jpg, images are hosted on your site on a folder /images/park-hotel-ca.jpg and always use alt text to describe the image.

9. Find and Fix Error Pages – Ensuring that all the site’s pages are working and loading quickly will increase their chances of getting indexed. If you have Google Analytics installed you can find this information under the content tab -> contact by title. Otherwise, try the free utility xenulink. This software will verify your internal link types such as normal links, images, etc and will highlight any issues found.

10. Add Privacy Policy or Terms and Conditions – It is important for the engines to send traffic to reputable websites. Adding privacy information and terms & conditions (when applicable) can help your ranking and it won’t cost anything if you use of the free privacy policy generator.

Now you’ll be off to a great start!

- – -
Ran is the online marketing manager of hardwood flooring seller Wood and Beyond.

Presentations by the following executives…with a lot of good research data to follow:

• Krista Pappas, Microsoft Bing Travel
• Gary Jackson, Google Travel
• Anne Payne, BeDynamic
• Yen Lee, Uptake

Yen Lee of Uptake – “The Long, Fat Tail of Search”

Numbers that really matter

• 73% of consumers search before they make a booking
• They search an average of 10 times
• 86% of leads are generated by organic search (there IS a free lunch)
• Typical travel search is 3.1 keywords
  • It’s becoming more specific: was ‘chicago’…then ‘chicago hotels’…now it may be ‘chicago family hotels’
  • (this means they give us more context now)
  • Always tailor unique content to consumer preferences

Krista Pappas of Microsoft – “Maximizing SEM In a Tough Travel Economy”

• Read more…