Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Internet’ Category

Googles long awaited pagerank review started working its way through the sites over the last few weeks but still doesn’t appear to have settled down.

It’s quite a confusing picture going by a number of sites that I keep an eye on. A friends key site for instance has dropped from PR5 down to PR3 for no good reason and is particularly worrying for me as he does far, far more SEO than I ever bother with. My thinking is that if it can happen to him, then it’s sure to happen to me sooner or later.

Wendy’s site has gone from PR2 to PR2 to PR0. Again, no good reason comes to mind. In fact, she’s been upping the ante with the SEO over the last few months so it should have gone to PR3.

This site is, for the moment, steady at PR4. I’ve not done any SEO on it over the last few months but was sort-of hoping for PR5 in that there’s a lot more content on it now than there was.

Meanwhile, our Whole Earth Guide has gone from PR0 to PR2 on a site which doesn’t, yet, have a whole lot of content.

Actually, as I read that, the one common factor in drops is that SEO has been done on the sites. Could it be that Google have somehow managed to negate all that SEO and look instead through to real value in the sites? Although, that would beg the question: is this blog of “real value”?

As it’s the start of the B&B/self-catering marketing season, I’ve made a start on trying to drum up some more entries for our various listing sites.

Usually, the rule of thumb is that you get about 1% return on any marketing so, in theory, I need to send out 100 invitations just to get one new entry. That’s certainly been the case with any previous e-mails I’ve sent out but for a variety of reasons the return on this particular e-mail has already passed 3% and there’s probably another week or so before the responses will start to really peter out.

How come? It’s combination of reasons. The listing is free which should improve the response although it hasn’t done so in the past but perhaps the bigger reason is that I gather that a lot of people haven’t had a great year with their properties so they’re probably taking up more marketing opportunities now than they would do otherwise (funnily enough, the sites have been pulling in much more business than expected this year).

Anyway, if you’re looking for a good freebie listing for your B&B/inn or self-catering place you can sign up at Our Inns.

Testing websites can be quite difficult once you go beyond the simple online brochure type of website.

For one thing, unlike most “normal” computer applications, you have untold millions of untrained people who can access your site and therefore you need to make sure that you try equally stupid things along the way of your testing as they are sure to do in “real life”. Clearly internet connections go down for instance and you need to allow for that, but what about the speed of their connections? One or two sites that I’ve tried out lately have consistently timed out on me no matter what I’ve done because my connection just isn’t anything like the speed that the writers of the site assumed that it would be.

Once you get into databases it’s a whole different ballgame too. For one thing, you always need to be able to let a number of people update your database simultaneously which in itself requires a different style of programming than that which is sometimes taught in the schools. What’ll work on a closed corporate network isn’t necessarily acceptable on an open Internet one.

Even after your site is up for a while, you should make a point of trying it out now and again. Actually looking it as your customers will see it. Remember they don’t necessarily have the 25″ widescreen monitor that you have and, even today, are more than likely using resolutions of 1000×800 or less. Watch the fonts you use too as many that you get with your computer aren’t available via the Internet; newer computers don’t always support the fonts on the older ones either.

Although we’re now well into the marketing season for B&B and self-catering listings sites, the usual wave of marketing e-mails from such places is quite noticeable in its absence this year.

Last year was a little unusual to be fair as maisoneurope.com had a new owner and he was firing out e-mails like there was no tomorrow several times a month at least and sometimes several times per week. This year, that particular factor is absent for the moment though presumably he’ll be getting going again in the not too distant future provided he’s not gone bust on the adwords campaigns that he was running. Whether he was successful at it or not remains to be seen but the site has never yet come up on ordinary searches that I’ve done myself so I’m a bit doubtful. Still, perhaps the adwords to sell the properties combined with the subscription income from them is enough to keep things ticking along nicely.

This year, all that’s appeared sporadically has been an e-mail from frenchentree.com who are expanding their site with rental listings. The pricing doesn’t really work for B&B so I’ve not bothered with them as yet but if their six months free offer is still around in February I’ll probably take them up on it.

Our own sites don’t have offers as such in that they’re free all the time which has caused us problems in roping in new entries for the crazy reason that people figure that if it’s free it doesn’t have any worth. Consequently, we added the option of paying us £29 per year which by placing a value on the listings meant that we started to pull in more people than before.

Of course, that begs the question: if I raised the notional price to, say, £129 would that bring even more people in?

Indeed, if I listed it as a six months free offer would I pull in really big numbers of new entries?

I’m toying with the idea of doing something along these lines on one of our new-generation sites – either Inns4u or perhaps, when I get around to updating it, Our French Chateau (which gets a surprising number of hits even now).

Marketing a B&B is usually a Winter-time activity as you’re just too busy to do much about it during the Summer season when you’re full with guests.

So, as we edge out of the shoulder-season (which can be quite busy), we’re edging into the marketing season and therefore the arrival of e-mails offering to advertise your B&B and bring you thousands of bookings if only you’ll pay a few hundred pounds to list your place.

Last year, I thought I’d have a go at e-mail marketing for the listings sites that I run and was very surprised at the initial reactions that I got. Although the sites are free to list, or rather because they are free to list, several people were very suspicious about them in their replies to my e-mails. So, I had a think about this and added a charging option which interestingly helped me pull in a lot more entries than when it was totally free!

Funnily enough, only one person has ever paid for a subscription to the site yet it seems necessary to have a charge sitting there so that people give their free listing a value ie they are saving £29 per year. The value is even better this year though as I now offer to pay those listed for any recommendations that come via them.

Anyway, I’ve fired off my first batch of e-mails to B&Bs in Scotland last night and it’s already pulled in a dozen or so new entries which is pretty good going for the first day and, all being well, they’ll be trickling in over the rest of the week.