This Little Box – The Death of Hotel SEO? Dream On

The basis of these claims is that by squeezing in the Google Hotel Finder paid search box into the initial results page, Google has pushed all organic hotel or OTA listings ‘below the fold’: ie everything the consumer immediately sees, has to be paid for by advertisers.

But Georg Ruebensal, Managing Director of Expedia Australia, said: “We have not seen an impact on SEO at this stage, either for domestic or international searches. Travel SEO has been pronounced dead a couple of times before but it hasn’t happened. There’s still a lot of opportunity to invest in SEO.”

Mr Ruebensal says the most likely impact will be to increase paid search rates because Google has reduced the number of paid ads at the top of the page from three or four to just two to make room for Hotel Finder.

“The top spots are the place to be from an SEM perspective and (reducing inventory) simply increases competition and drives up the cost per click,” he says.

Kate Gamble, Kate Gamble, Director of SEO, Social Media and Digital Content Strategy at Bruce Clay Australia, which oversees search for the Toga Hospitality and Best Western accommodation brands, says has seen no impact on SEO conversion at this early stage of the Google Hotel Finder rollout.

“It’s not really going to change SEO,” she says. “I think evidence from previous Google changes tells us that, for a period of time, some users get distracted but then revert back to their original behavior.” By that she means scrolling down the first page of results to find a natural result that suits their search.

And the reality is that the days when natural results appeared well above the fold are ancient history in web terms. In fact, there are now more natural results on the first Google results page than ever before – up to 29 or 30 for some searches, with paid accounting for roughly 60% and paid 40% – plus a map.

In the golden olden days, it was all text and there may have been 10 organic listings. But it was easier to get seen because there was so much less competition. Search was only being seriously deployed by a savvy few. The rest were yet to catch on.

Now everyone is doing and the competition is cut-throat. The web isn’t fun anymore – just a very expensive necessity.

SEO in 2013, the Importance of AuthorRank

One of the biggest trends we are going to see changing SEO for this coming year is AuthorRank. If you have heard of Pagerank, you have an idea of what sort of tool this is. AuthorRank won’t be a replacement for Pagerank, rather used to inform Pagerank, in the hopes of enabling Google to rank quality content more appropriately. The most important changes are;

1) AuthorRank uses Google Plus profiles

2) Content quality will no longer be based solely on domain or Web page, it will now be reputation based and take into consideration the “authority” of the individual that authored the content. So what can we do to meet AuthorRank’s SEO standards?

Authors
In the AuthorRank world, we need to have an author who is an “authority”, meaning he or she has a lot of “natural” links and he/she is optimized for their blogs on Google Plus. If no one in your organization holds a strong online reputation, start building up the AuthorRank of your chosen “agent” within the organization to leverage in the long term. To leverage this author, here are 3 key steps;

1. Add a Rel=Author code to your wordpress website. Here are the detailed instructions from Google.
   
2. It is suggested that your author should interact as often as possible with Google Plus (authors are ranked on the number of Google Plus circles they are included in).
   
3. Stick to one topic. If the author writes about a whole host of subjects it is assumed that the content will be weaker. Google ranks honed authors higher.

Google Plus
The interesting part about this new algorithm is that it requires you use Google Plus. So bloggers are now going to be encouraged to use Google Plus to boost SEO. Here is how: At the bottom of your Google Plus profile page (in edit mode) you will see a contributor section; this is where you can enter in which blogs you are contributing to. By doing this, you create a relationship that increases your SEO. This action will also make your listing more prominent in a search because it causes your profile picture to show up.

Measure
Once you set up Google Authorship, go and track down all the (quality) content you have created in your specific area of expertise. How do you see if you are measuring well? Use the Rich Snippet Testing Tool. You will verify authorship and then see your results.

Huge change?
The normal SEO criteria will still be highly valued; don’t walk away from reading this thinking all you need to do now is become active on Google Plus! The biggest change we are going to see is more and more bloggers on Google Plus. It’s very sneaky of Google making their social networking site essential for SEO, but just as most bloggers will submit to this requirement and start using Google Plus, Google is doing what they have to do to gain more customers

Google Penguin Update Will Affect Many SEO Companies, Marketing Expert Fiona Lewis Believes

It is true that many (and major) SEO companies have grown complacent during the last years and that they have been optimizing for search engines in ways that are not very Googthodox.

However, this month a new announcement came from Google and the phrase which is now terrifying the World Wide Web is ‘you don’t want the next Penguin update’, uttered by Matt Cutts, Google specialist in SEO issues.

While nobody knows what he really means, Fiona Lewis and many other internet marketing experts are already wondering about the future of SEO companies who have been cheating their ways into good rankings.

The update has already received several nicknames such as ‘Googageddon’ or ‘carnage’, but the latter seems to resonate the most with people. When asked about her opinion on this denomination, Ms Lewis answered, “It will be carnage for many companies and business owners. I feel sorry especially for the businesses that pay good money to slack SEO companies who didn't see this coming.”

According to Ms Lewis, SEO companies have about three months to get things straight with their practices before their clients will start noticing problems. Fiona Lewis puts the blame on the SEOers who have been lazily crawling their clients’ websites to the top: “The worst part is that they have been doing bad practise for so long and were lazy, and business owners trust the SEO companies are doing the right thing.”

What seems to be the end of many SEO companies, will be, however, a good thing for those using Google as their search engine. It is predicted that Google will show random or unexpected results which will not affect the everyday user, but it will affect a website’s ranking.

In a nutshell, while internet users will not suffer from this update, it is the SEO companies and their clients who will have to deal with the consequences.

Ms Lewis highlights the importance of having a “real business, with real influence, that interacts with its clients – real people – and is active online.

I admit that at sometimes this new approach to SEO can be a bit frustrating and I am sure that many internet marketers will pass through some hard times switching to these new methods. I’m already doing everything Google wants, but that doesn’t mean that I can pull my hair down and relax. SEO will never be about laziness and relaxation.”