Marketing my website...

[Mark Atkinson]

A note to IMHO - I get a comment often when guests arrive that my place is exactly like the pictures they have seen. If they arrive at a place where realty does not look like the demo then you have an unhappy guest from the start.

While this is true, the frame is almost as important as the picture itself when it comes to web design. A good designer can take a photo and put it in an appealing environment, accompanied by good copy and see a huge amount more success than the same photo would see on its own with no aesthetic appeal around it.

If you're in the hospitality industry, I would always recommend professional photography to accompany all your venue listings as well as to go on your website. Imagery is crucial in your industry and you will know that many decisions are swung by the images alone.

[IMHO]

A note to IMHO - I get a comment often when guests arrive that my place is exactly like the pictures they have seen. If they arrive at a place where realty does not look like the demo then you have an unhappy guest from the start. No amount of service and good looking hosts can save you from that. They will not return and that is one of the keys to this business - returning guests. If you do not have that type of business then a bad review can also ruin your potential.

I agree with you all the way. Why I mentioned the looking different to the actual, because so many places do it. But I refuse. My place needs an urgent facelift as well, especially the front, facing the street. But capital outlay in this economy is just plain irresponsible. That being said, I still take the lion share of the cake. If I can get this website thing sorted, I am sure it is going to be even better and then there will be money to do something to the outside looks.

Returning guests is like you say very important and that is why I concentrate on the inside.

[Marq]

Yesterday some new Guests arrived thankful to have found a place that was, well in their opinion, 6 stars, compared to where they had been booked by the Secretary. Sold by the photos and demo again, close to the venue they were visiting.

But a new item was mentioned which I thought could be a challenge for the webmasters of this world.
The guy said, "If only they had a smell swatch attached to the site so that we could have a complete experience up front...maybe some folk wouldn't mind the old musty, sewerage type stench".

So there you go webweavers - see if you can add that to the demo.

[Mark Atkinson]

So there you go webweavers - see if you can add that to the demo.

It wouldn't only be up to the "webweavers" - the adequate hardware would need to be in place before we could make use of it. Can't play music if there ain't any speakers.

For now, though, it is the job of the copy to appeal to the senses of the visitor. It is quite possible to invoke a sense of smell with great wordplay. The best marketers will appeal to all your senses and a lot of it is done just through your copy.

[Upstairs]

Go joomla. You have full control over your site and with free extentions it will cost you nothing. If you have the ability to do your own graphics even better.

[KirstenB]

The on thing very important when it comes to internet marketing is content. The more content you have on your site, whether it's relevant or not you will stand a better chance of being found on search engines. Search engines lso dont always scan sites automatically and therefore it's important to submit your site directly to the search engine. Another tip is to add your business to as many directories as possible, this increases content and your name grows within the online community.

[SilverNodashi]

Let me first address why I would be interested to buy Dreamweaver if I can get a good deal.

1. I love programming and working with professional software.
2. I have the time.
3. I wrote my own booking program in Delphi, self taught. It employs an Interbase database with clients on all my LAN PC's.
4. I wrote my own e-mail responder to inquiries in Visual Studio, self taught.
5. I like to work with a legal tool.
6. I like to know that I work with the leading software in its category and that time spend on the learning curve is well spend.
7. If I use leading, legal software I can always recoup some of the costs from doing things for friends and family. R100 here and there over time goes a long way to pay for the software.
8. I get enormous satisfaction from doing it myself. Even more than a night out at the casino, which I do not do anymore. So I see it as money spend on entertainment!

I could go on, but I am sure you get the idea.

Dreamweaver is overrated, IMO

You can do all of the above, and much more in other applications like Netbeans, Eclipse, etc. If you need graphics done, get Abode CS or one of the others. Rather spend the money for Dreamweaver on tutorials if you have to, or Adsense or SEO, etc

[nostresswebsites]

Hi IMHO,

I just joined this forum. I see this discussion is a couple of weeks old. Hope I could still add some value here.

This conversation generated a lot of interest. And yes, here are some really great advice.

My business coach's partner once said that you cannot play a round of golf with only a putter, you need 9 clubs.

So I use various ways to market my business (which is complete based in my website).

I'm using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Entrepreneur Magazine, JV partners, SEO, my own newsletter, cold calling, a free local business directory (which I created to get local business's permission to contact them), and forums like this one, advertisements in our local newspaper. None of these create enormous traffic, but they all work together to provide a steady stream of visitors to my site.

Once they're on my site, I want to capture their contact details. This I do by giving them a free gift and a subscription them to my newsletter.

Now it's my target to convert these people to become clients.

I'm trained as a direct response copywriter - I rely on words to sell. But in my industry is perfect to sell with words. Pictures are almost worthless. Yours might be different, where you might need a combination of words an pictures.

I'm also a web developer. Previous post said you should try Wordpress or Joomla. I use exclusively Joomla. Both are legit (as one of your concerns were) and both are free. And with your level of technical knowledge, both would be very easy to learn.

Here's some SEO tips.
Generate quality content about your topic. Write about your town, tourist attractions, business happenings, anything of possible interest to some of your clients. Publish these articles on your own website as well as outside websites. Share the link to these articles on LinkedIn, Facebook and other social media sites.
Do some keyword research. You're familiar with Google's Adwords Keyword tool. Use it to get alternative search terms. Use these terms while writing your content.
Here's a secret (that's not widely known even in my industry). With your list of keywords, see what the competition is on those keywords. Start writing content around the keywords with the highest search volume and lowest competition volume. My mentor dr. Hannes Dreyer perfected this secret. He taught it to me in a course called Control Centre marketing.

Here's how to determine the high search volume and low competition:
In the keyword tool, do your search, using the broad search. Click on local search traffic. Now your keywords are sorted from highest search volume to the lowest.
Save the keyword ideas on your pc.
Go to Google.co.za. Lets say the top keyword is 'guesthouse in north west'. In the search bar put your keyword in quotation marks - "guesthouse in north west". Now you get results with only that keyword or keyword phrase in it. Make sure you are only getting pages from South Africa. Copy the number of results and paste it in your spreadsheet next to the keyword phrase. (This number is found relatively close to the top of the page and looks like this 'About 54,200,000 results (0.21 seconds)')
When you populated your keyword ideas spreadsheet, start to evaluate it. Categorize it in the following order:
SV = Search Volume; CR = Competition Results
0. SV > 1000 searches/ month. CR 0 - 9999
1. SV > 1000 searches/m. CR 10 000 - 19 999. And SV 500 - 1000; CR 0 - 9999
2. SV > 1000; CR 20 000 - 49 999. And SV 500 - 1000; CR 10 000 - 19 999. And SV 0 - 499; CR 0 - 9999
3. SV 50 000 +; CR >1000. And SV 500 - 1000; CR 20 000 - 49 999. And SV 0 - 499; CR 10 000 - 19 999.
Keywords that fall outside of these criteria is plain a waste of time.

Start your content creation with the class 0 keywords. Work through it. Once done, take the class 1 keywords. Continue like that.

Three tips that made my first website appear on the search engines in the nr 1 spot for my main keywords:
1. Build a large website. Write lots of user friendly content. In that industry with huge online competition, my starting point was more than 25 pages.
2. Around 3% of the content should be your keyword. In other words, for every 100 words you write, your keywords should appear about 3 times.
3. Build lots of backlinks (links showing from other websites to your own.) Directory submissions, forum posts, LinkedIn Updates, YouTube Videos, etc. Your keyword must be in your link. Read more about 'guesthouse in north west'.

Sorry if this sounded like a lecture. I hope this can help you to get more traffic, more interest and ultimately, more clients.

Regards,
Francois

[IMHO]

Thanks Francois

Will study this.

[IMHO]

Wow, six months later and only now can I present my website! I first got Afrihost as my hosting company. Scared to carry on, this account was dormant for a few months. hehe. Eventually I got myself to learn about Joomla. I quickly realized that I should get a decent template if I want to do anything nice and I decided on IceTheme. Bought the template and then the hard work started. If you know nothing about Joomla, the template is very complicated. I worked hard and slowly came to grips with it over the last two months. The site is not finished, but at a stage where I can invite you guys to look at it and give me feedback. Hope I can handle it...

So, there it is. Much easier to pay someone else to do it, but less rewarding.

The marketing have not really started. I purposely did not list with AddWords yet, as I first want to get the basic SEO right and good results on Google without it. Must say, that is taking way longer than I expected. I must still do what Fracois told me in his post.

http://www.mascarene.co.za/