Today Krista Pappas of Microsoft Bing Travel said they will be using a lot more visual-style search like this:

Once you click a destination (right now), you’re led to a page that offers traditional links in sections: General, Map, Hotels, Travel, Tours, Attractions & Images

What do you think? Game changer or not?

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…

Are you paying more commissions to online travel agents (OTAs) than you should?

Many hotels are. In fact, increasing direct bookings is the #1 request I get from hotel owners and operators. It’s why the mission of this site is to “show hotels how to use the internet to increase direct bookings.”

If travel websites are helping fill rooms with guests that wouldn’t have booked otherwise, that’s one thing. It’s quite another if you’re paying unneeded commissions for bookings that could have been made through your own website.

Here are three common ways I see 3rd-party sites stealing direct bookings from hotels:

1) They bid on your hotel name for cheap clicks

On search engine PPC networks, your hotel name is often just a few cents per click. At prices this low, I’m amazed when hotels pass up this opportunity and allow OTAs to bid on their own name.

How you can beat them: Include your hotel name as a keyword in your PPC campaign

2) They outrank sloppy search optimization

Some hotels have websites that are so poorly optimized, that they don’t even appear at the top of search results for their own name!

Savvy OTAs can come in and rob hotels of all these easy pickings and get lots of free traffic.

How you can beat them: Implement a smart search optimization strategy for your website

3) They attract searches for ‘reviews’

Keyword research reveals one of the most common search query structures is: keyword + “review.”

The reason is simple: people want other opinions before making a purchase. Based on this logic, sites like TripAdvisor nearly always outrank a hotel’s website for review searches.

How you can beat them: Publish your own page of 3rd-party reviews…and promote it.

Sometimes, they’re just a lot more savvy about online marketing

Recent industry studies revealed that Expedia, Travelocity, Priceline and Orbitz rely heavily on the hotel industry for the bulk of their profits. Since airlines do not pay commissions on tickets sold, the hotel industry contributes more than 60% to booking fees collected by OTAs.

So these companies will fight hard with every trick available to encourage bookings through them.

What if you budgeted the current amount you spend on OTA commissions to build an online marketing campaign that drove direct bookings? This strategy would quickly pay for itself, and reap dividends over the long term.

Are OTAs stealing bookings from your hotel website?

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the process of making your hotel’s website easier to find in search engines. With the majority of people beginning their travel planning process with a web search, SEO has become an increasingly important discipline for hotel marketers.

However, there is some misinformation floating around the web, being propagated by quack “gurus.” Some of these myths are outright lies, but they are more likely to be tactics that no longer work: constantly-changing search algorithms make SEO a rapidly changing science. I want to debunk some of these myths before they hurt your optimization efforts.

Basic Tactical Myths

Myth: Adding a lot of keywords to your page’s title will help rankings

Fact: Stuffing the title with keywords will give the appearance you are a spam site. Since Google will only display up to 68 characters in the title tag (cropping to complete words), I recommend you write a short, people-friendly title that contains one or two of your most important keywords.

Myth: HTML META tags such as keywords and description are very important, and should be stuffed with as many keywords as possible

Fact: Meta tags don’t play that big of a role, and again you definitely don’t want to stuff your tags with keywords if you want to avoid being penalized as a spammer. You do, however, want to write a compelling Description tag. That’s what people see when they perform a web search, so you want to encourage clickthroughs with a strong benefits statement.

Myth: Adding every keyword to every page is good

Fact: Doing this confuses search engines – and your guests – about the purpose for each page on your site. Instead, group your target keyword list into themes – and use one theme per page. (More on this in SEO for Hotel Websites)

Myth: Trading links is a good idea

Fact: Exchanging links may be a good idea for referral business, but don’t do it for SEO purposes. Google’s Matt Cutts has explained they don’t reward reciprocal links like they do one-way links. Instead, create great content that naturally attracts links.

Myth: You should submit your site to search engines

Fact: That may have helped 10 years ago, but today search engines can find you. If your website has existed for more than a week, there is a strong chance Google has already found you. A better strategy is to get links from existing websites. I’ve taken several brand-new websites to Google PR4 (a ranking importance measure) in less than 3 weeks.

Myth: Submitting your links to directories is the best way to improve your ranking.

Fact: Google frequently penalizes sites that get listed in shady directories. Since it can be hard to determine the legitimacy of a site, pursue a better way and create some great content. If you’re publishing great stuff and interacting with other people online, getting backlinks is only a matter of time.

Many of the above myths have been debunked by others, and thankfully are becoming less common. But every few weeks I still hear someone asking about these tactics, so I wanted to put them to rest. Let’s move on to more high-level misconceptions.

Dangerous Strategic Errors

Myth: SEO is a hoax

Fact: As we see success stories from companies of all sizes, this is less common than it used to be. When done correctly, natural search engine optimization can be your most effective method of bringing new visitors to your website.

Myth: SEO is a one-time event

Fact: The notion that you can improve your search ranking by just changing a few website components is false. Today, search engines look at dozens of factors to determine how relevant and useful your content is. Yes, I wrote the 15-Minute SEO Tuneup – but the reality is that it needs to be part of an ongoing process.

Myth: Your goal is #1 ranking for your top keyword

Fact: While you should aim for the top position for a popular keyword, your real goal should be to rank near the top of results for dozens (if not hundreds) if different keyword combinations. A quick review of your website analytics will reveal that people find you through hundreds of different search queries. For this reason, you need to build your internet presence to be as large as possible.

Myth: Search optimization is a job for the web designer

Fact: Optimization is a strategic marketing function, and has nothing to do with design. It requires comprehensive keyword research, a knowledge of branding, and careful targeting of guest personas.

Myth: It’s all about the rankings

Fact: It’s actually all about how many qualified potential guests you bring to your website, and how many of them book a room. Rankings and overall traffic are meaningless unless you can convert that into sales.

To make smart marketing decisions, you need solid information. Of course, this is true in any economic climate, but with a possible slowdown ahead in the travel industry, the stakes are even higher.  All marketing expenditures must be justified by results.

If you’ve been marketing for a while, you undoubtedly know some metrics that work for traditional marketing and advertising campaigns.  However, the rules of the game change once you begin marketing online and encounter a wide variety of new media options.

What metrics should you use to measure the effectiveness of your digital hotel marketing campaign?  Let’s start off by putting aside a couple web marketing metrics that have been used in the past, but aren’t really that helpful anymore.

• Number of ad views – in the early days of the web, it was common to purchase advertising based on the number of ad impressions or views.  Now, there are other more effective ways (such as pay-per-click).
• Website visitors – the number of people that visit your website might have little correlation to the effectiveness of your marketing campaign.

Should you track these?  Absolutely.  They just don’t provide enough insight.  So let’s move on to some more helpful metrics.

1. Conversion rate – what percentage of website visitors are booking a room?
2. Cost per booking – actually, you should be tracking a wide variety of “cost-per” actions for any advertising campaign. How much does each click, visitor, and lead cost? Spending must be tied to revenue gains.
3. Referral source type – knowing the type of websites that provide the most visitors can help you decide the direction of your marketing campaign
4. Search engine rank – How high do you rank in search results for each important keyword phrases?  Search is still the #1 way people find websites, so you need to list high for key phrases.
5. Social media mentions – How many bloggers and social travel networking websites are talking about your hotel?

Those are the core metrics that are important for anyone doing hospitality marketing.  Other metrics that could be useful in your situation include:

• Percentage of positive mentions in social media – this statistic is a little harder to generate, but the results are more insightful.  What is the overall consensus on your facility?
• Average time on site – how long do people stay on your site?
• Bounce rate – how many people leave your website without visiting any other pages (the lower this number, the better)
• Reservation abandonment rates – you need to know when and where potential guests are giving up in your booking system
• Top referral keywords – which phrases do people use to find your website?
• Number of inbound links – your goal should be to increase the quantity and quality of inbound links each month
• Google Pagerank – Google’s measure of website authority

Whatever combination of indicators you plan to use, the important thing is that you track and save this information.  You can only make efficient marketing decisions by looking at historical data, and then focusing your marketing resources on what works.

Let me ask you this: What metrics do you use for digital marketing?

The snowball effect of organic search marketing works like this: The higher your hotel’s website ranks in search engines for relevant phrases, the more people will find you.  These people include prospective guests, reviewers, and journalists.  The more people find you, the more coverage and attention you’ll receive on other websites.   This in turn brings you even more links and a higher search ranking.

Once started, search optimization is a virtuous cycle providing long-term benefits to your hotel.

Still not convinced of the benefits of natural search marketing?  Here’s a few more reasons you need to start now:

1) It’s affordable.  You may choose to hire a specialist to optimize your website, but you won’t pay an ongoing monthly expenditure for advertising.

2) There’s no risk.  With other forms of promotion, you could make a wrong decision and find out (months later) that you’ve wasted thousands of dollars.  This doesn’t happen when you invest in search engine optimization (SEO).  Making the proper adjustments now will benefit you for years to come.

3) It provides the best quality of prospective guests – more than any other marketing or advertising medium.  People will come to your website are actively looking for you and what you have to provide.  Since the visit is guest-initiated, they will be more engaged with the message on your hotel website.

Industry studies show that search engines account for the large majority of traffic to most hotel websites.  Of course, this is hardly surprising.  Search engines are the most popular way for internet users to find information.

With this in mind, how can you position your hotel to capture a larger share of search engine traffic?  There are two broad approaches to search engine marketing (SEM), which I’ll explain in this post.

1. Natural (Organic) Optimization

All search engines will include your hotel website somewhere in their results pages – it’s just a question of how far from the top.  The natural approach to ranking high involves optimizing your website, and getting other popular sites to link to you.

The advantages of organic optimization:

• Getting visitors from natural searches is totally free for you
• The people coming from search engines will be actively looking for you
• A higher placement conveys authority for the term searched for

The disadvantages of organic optimization:

• It can take a while to reach the top for your core keywords
• In some markets, the competition can be very intense (lengthening this time even more)

2. Paid Placement

It is possible to pay to appear in search engine result pages.  Usually, this is accomplished by using pay-per-click services such as Google AdWords.

The advantages of paid placement:

• It’s possible to instantly appear at the top of search results
• It can potentially be a very cost-effective way to attract guests (usually under $1 for each visitor)
• The ability to measure campaign success (more than any other advertising medium)

The disadvantages of paid placement:

• Your campaign can cost a relatively large amount (depending on the strategy you use)
• Ongoing management of your campaign is needed

In future posts, I’ll discuss in greater detail how to design and launch a campaign using both of these types of search engine marketing.  Stay tuned!

Let me ask you this: Which search marketing strategy does your hotel focus on?