Referrals - visitors who come to your hotel web site because they have found
a link from another site to yours
Like George Orwell's pigs, not all links are created equal. There are links
and there are links !!
On my own web site for Corisande
Manor Hotel Corisande Manor Hotel, Cornwall
- I believe that I have maximised the number of visits I can get from search
engines from people wanting "a hotel in Cornwall"
- On top of search engine referrals I get, for every 1 search engine referral,
another 9 referrals from other web sites
- here, you have finally found, is the secret to the whole house of
cards.
- if you cannot get referral from other sites in large numbers then you will
not get more than search engines can supply
- this is why most hotel sites get only 5 to 10 visits per day - that is the
maximum they can expect to get from search engines, without any "top
up" from referrals from other web sites
So the key question is, "if search engines are only of limited
importance, then how do I get referral business to visit my hotel web site"
- you cannot force other sites to link to you. Anyone that gives you a free
link will probably not send you much business down the link. If you exchange
links with, say a hotel in Japan, or a scuba diving site in Cornwall, it is
unlikely that more than 2 people a month will come down that link
- If you pay for a link you will not necessarily do any better -
aren't I full of optimism for the possibilities?
- the AA site, for example will charge you for a link, you will be lucky to
get more than 2 or 3 visits a month coming down that paid link to your hotel
site
- the BTA site will also supply you with a paid link and will deliver even
less to your site
So what is the answer, how do you ensure a steady flow of , say 4 or
5, visits per day down a link
- big sites like the BTA get thousands of visits per day (around 3000 per
day last time I looked)
- however they have thousands of establishments on their data base (24,000
last time I looked)
- therefore the chances of a visitor to their site coming down a link to yours
is remote
- similarly if you swop links with the local fish shop you will get virtually
nobody coming down that link, but this time because the local fish shop has
only 5 people a day looking at their site, and their links page is buried
in the site, so few visitors to their site ever find the links page, and fewer
still use the links
- the only way you can get a commercially acceptable number of visits via
a link is if you buy into a site that is dedicated to supplying a reasonable
number of visitors to you.
- for example out conference hotels
site, county house hotels
site or our Cotswolds Calling
site both deliver daily numbers of browsers to some our hotels in the area
- Eagle House in Bath Fosse
Manor in Malmesbury
- as more and more hotels get their own web sites, then these referral sites
are going to become the key to getting visitors. Imagine 250 hotels in the
Cotswolds all with web sites, they all cannot come up on the first page on
Google or Yahoo, on top of that the browser will want an easier way of filtering
the data, so they will turn more to the referral sites
- Check your own figures against mine
Return to Web Site Facts &
Figures web site facts and figures page