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I have a client who owns a small B&B and has asked me to see if I can market it but I am a total novice at SEO though have read a fair bit about it in theory now.
It has only 3 pages of text with about 500 words in the whole site at the moment with a contact page and a page with an email form on it.
I have been banging my head for hours reading up on SEO to see if I think I could successfully increase the amount of business they get.
They are listed in most of the search engines serviced by the Inktomi and FAST paid inclusion programs but have very low page rank at 2 for the home page and 1 for the others in Google.
They have no links to them but are unlikley to be able to afford to make it worth my while to hunt for them myself so link exchange is probably out of the question (they don't have the time to do it either).
I am considering Google Adwords and maybe Overture.
Does anyone have any advice for marketing such a small site with so little content and a budget of about £400 for the year?
Could someone confirm that trying to get it into the high SE positions is a waste of time without a massive increase in content or links?
Any advice would be very much appreciated.
They have no links to them but are unlikley to be able to afford to make it worth my while to hunt for them myself so link exchange is probably out of the question...
Run away.
You can make more money per hour wearing a panda suit and dancing to show tunes downtown than you can pandering to empty pockets.
As for getting them traffic, search on their townname statecode and look for small homegrown sites pushing travel. Look for chheeeeap adspace that might have a fair amount of traffic, there are some usually --particularly in more rural areas. Ask for a 1-month trial run.
Look for established quality directory sites as well and pay to list in those.
In highly competative industries like B&B / Accommodation don't waste your money on pay per click bid systems unless you can afford to pay for higher rankings - and have a really really good product / service...
Look for those bargain paid directory / local portal listings / free link sites that come up when you search online for the same industry... the "go find better clients" is a cop out... you can find good advertising for cheap if you look hard enough...
Would anyone have any advice on using software for assisting in reciprocal linking campaigns or be able to recommend a good reciprocal linking company to so this for me or is it really best to do it all by hand?
Do it all by hand.
I'm UK based so this is how I would go about it.
I would definatley need to search out the local directories, UK directories, regional directories, B&B directories, UK Travel directories, Business directories, etc, etc and submit to them if they don't want to spend on any advertising. I would get listed with the local phone company directories (over here is 192 directory and Thompson directory). They offer free service but they are allowed to phone you once in a while to (a) either check up on you to see if your still trading, or (b) to try to sell you promotional material (which I hate).
You don't even have to do this for them. If they have an Internet connection at their B&B there are a handful of directories out there that offer free listings. Just show them what to search for and how to submit to them and voila, they have learned one (of many) marketing techniques.
A lot of directories use outside paid listings, like Espotting results and earn commission from each click from their site. I notice this everywhere, specifically in Shopping Directories. Also, with the smaller based Search Engines a lot of them use DMOZ, so get them listed there too, keep mithering them until they are there.
Relevancy is the key to all that exchange links :)
Terry
Maybe you could make money including the other B&Bs too. Say a small amount of 10 dollars a year.
Lot of work for a small site though.
With little traffic you need to maximise ROI.
Basically use any other marketing means you can think of that are free:
Always include the URL in any advertising, attach the url to the bottom of all your emails, add a book mark-us link, create an referral program of your users.
The beauty of B&Bs is that each has unique selling points and their target market are most likely looking for something more than "just a bed for the night". I would get them to tell you more about WHY anyone would want to stay with them and help them to develop content based on their offer, facilities, services, meals, accommodation packages and attractions of their locality.
Putting up some basic tourism information on their site and having links out from it to other services (like restaurants, activities etc etc) will help to *place* them within local search terms. Look for the possibility of gaining links back to them from other small tour operators within their region.
Marketing a small business is no great mystery - it's all about effective communication between the business offer and their target market.
Doing this effectively will give a wider range of targeted search terms and raise the chances of them being found.
If the site is made to be the best it can be in the way of informing the visitor then the search engine positioning will look after itself reducing the need for further ongoing advertising, PPC and the like.
As others have said, seek out free listings on appropriate directories and regional portals.
