Search Engines :: Travel Manager

April 16, 2010 – 9:00 am

Every Bus and Tour Operator knows the value of getting your website listed highly on the search engines and this has driven the demand for companies to use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services.

So when developing the latest version of Tours for TravelManager we wanted to insure that your tours would get indexed quickly by the likes of Google and Bing. To do this we create static HTML pages dynamically, which basically means that rather than having the pages created via a database when the customer makes a request, the tour pages are performed. (This is a big deal for search engines in helping them read the pages and for creating nice search engine friendly URL’s).

For example:

1) Traditional Solutions usually create a URL like this:

www.mytourcompany.com/search?&232-REF0013a.php (No SEO value)

2) while Travelmanager creates URL’s like this:

www.mytourcompany.com/tours/city-sightseeing-tour-of-copenhagen.html (Clearly shows it’s a City Sightseeing tour in Copenhagen)

**This also helps search engines categorize your web pages and along with some other proven techniques for tags and image labels we’re seeing our customers website shoot up the search engines.

TravelManager Tours Automated Search Engine Optimization

Blog Post Update:

Here’s something nice that I thought I should update to this blog post regarding the channels used by Travel buyers…

Travel Buyer Channels

Source - “Consumer Response to Travel Site Performance” – PhoCusWright, Market Research

October 19, 2009 – 6:00 pm

For the last few months we’ve been working with lead Motorcoach and Tour Companies in designing a new Tours module in TravelManager.

Now that we have some of our users live with Tours on their website and with more to following in the coming weeks it’s a pretty exciting time for Tours. However this is just the starting point over the coming months we want to help more of our existing and new users to get up and running.

If you’re listing your Tours as PDF’s on your website, you’re missing a huge opportunity with the search engines. They love content and by using Tours in TravelManager you get to leverage that content to drive more traffic to your website.

Our goal is bring new and innovative features to TravelManager that will really help sell and promote your Tours. For us this means really listening to your feedback and sharing ideas on how to market your Tours more effectively. Search Engines, Social Networks are potential growth areas for your business, let us help you get the most out of these.

Look forward to hearing from you.

Regards,

Eamonn

October 2, 2009 – 8:30 am

With the increasing number of ways for customers to express their opinion about your product or service there’s a new trend to monitor sentiment on the Internet. Basically it’s about tracking whether the crowds opinion is positive or negative in blogs, social networks, news articles, online forums etc.

Good and Bad Sentiment Online

What does this mean for the Motorcoach industry? Well not a whole lot at the moment, but there’s an opportunity here to get and stay ahead of your competitors by starting to invest in your online reputation.

This is more than optimizing your website for search engines and more about really listening to what’s being said about your company good and bad. In fact as often is the case with dealing with traditional customer complaints, dealing with the negative effectively can often turn into a positive experience for the disgruntled customer.

Over the next few weeks I’m going to share my experiences about Twitter and similar tools you can use to manage your online reputation.

Regards,

Eamonn

*Data mining and connecting with services like Facebook and Twitter will be part of TravelManager in 2010 to help our users connect with new customers and retain existing ones.

Don’t just take my word for it! Recent Article in the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/24/technology/internet/24emotion.html?_r=3&pagewanted=all

January 30, 2009 – 1:42 pm

The last few weeks I’ve been working with TravelManager users on reviewing their websites. We’d looked at how they track their traffic and the benefits of adding the Online Quoting Widget to their website.

During the process I started looking at their PageRank; which is a value between 0 and 10 that Google gives websites based on importance. 10 being the highest, but anything over 4 is good but if your site has 5 or 6 you’re really doing well as some of Google’s on sites like Google.ie only have a PageRank of 7!

Or as Google says on their website:
“PageRank Technology: PageRank reflects our view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that we believe are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results.”
So why does all this mean to Motor Coach Companies? Simple, the higher your website PageRank the better chance I have of listing near the top of Google.
How can I increase my PageRank? Basically, you need to get links to your website on other websites that are relevant to your industry. So in the case of the Motor Coach Industry links on Tourism Websites, Tour Operator Websites are great. If you do work for Universities or Sports Teams or State Body and Government Agencies getting a link on their website would be fantastic as these typically are regarded as very important by search engines.
So if you do one thing on your website after adding the Online Quotation Widget to your website …. You need to start getting some good links to your website.

Regards,
Eamonn

**All search engines work on a similar basis so it’s universally good to have links to your website. So what are you waiting for get link building today.

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