Advice on home page seo

[mediakitchen]

I am just doing the final tweaks to my UK accommodation site before going live and wondered if the following is a good idea or not.

I have seen similar sites include a list of every county or town at the bottom of their homepage listed as follows:

Hotels in Bedfordshire
Hotels in Berkshire
Hotels in Bristol
Hotels in Buckinghamshire
....
Hotels in Wrexham

I assume they do this not only as an additional way to help the user search but also to increase the use of the keyword Hotels?

I am thinking of doing similar and just wanted to get advice on whether this is a sensible idea from an SEO point of view or not? Don't want to do anything that will have negative effects.

Thanks

Paul

[jason830]

This is long tail keyword, you know some people will search "hotel" on search engine,some people will search other words,all of these word could take you traffics.The main keyword and long tail keyword you need contain in your site.

[mediakitchen]

Would this be penalised? I read somewhere about keyword stuffing and that is what this looked like to me.

[fisicx]

As long as you link to a page listing the 'hotels in sometown' then you should be OK. If it's just a list of locations then there is little value to the visitor. At best the SE will just ignore them and at worse decide you are trying to manipulate your ranking and give you a little slap.

[mediakitchen]

Would it be OK to redirect each one to my search page as follows using a mod rewrite


RewriteRule ^county/([a-zA-Z]+)/?$ search.php?search=1&location=$1&radius=0


So for example, I would have a list as follows:

Hotels in Berkshire
Hotels in Buckinghamshire

Each would have a link as follows:

/county/Berkshire

Thanks


Paul

[fisicx]

Will be ok for the sentient visitor but not so sure if there will be any ranking benefit. Can't you set up some permalinks so that the locations are hard wired into the site structure?

Note, I'm a really pants programmer so I might not be using the right words.

[QVA - Emma]

I am just doing the final tweaks to my UK accommodation site before going live and wondered if the following is a good idea or not.

I have seen similar sites include a list of every county or town at the bottom of their homepage listed as follows:

Hotels in Bedfordshire
Hotels in Berkshire
Hotels in Bristol
Hotels in Buckinghamshire
....
Hotels in Wrexham

I assume they do this not only as an additional way to help the user search but also to increase the use of the keyword Hotels?

I am thinking of doing similar and just wanted to get advice on whether this is a sensible idea from an SEO point of view or not? Don't want to do anything that will have negative effects.

Thanks

Paul

The phrases would have far more use to your user if they had a link to a page that was about Hotels in XXXX - you say it is a UK Accommodation site so what is the actual content? Will companies be able to advertise? Is it a directory or is it merely for company/personal use?

I tend to agree with Fisicx that the SE's won't think much of it - plus I think lists like that look really ugly on any site - they are of no benefit to the user and look a bit "smilelocal" (if you've seen one of their spammy sited you'll know what I mean!):D

Emma

[mediakitchen]

Thanks fisicx

I don't want to hard code any links as they will be dynamically generated based on which counties have listings on my site.

The site lists all sorts of accommodation so as well as hotels, there are B&Bs, lodges, caravans, campsites, boats etc etc so it seemed sensible to just link to a search for all types.

Paul

[mediakitchen]

Thanks Emma

The site is a UK accommodation directory, the main emphasis being the ability to search for accommodation in a particular location (using any location description such as postcode, town, county, address etc)

The results of the search will display all listings that match the search criteria.

I agree these kind of lists look ugly and was only considering adding them if they aided my ranking for "long tail keywords" (a term I only learnt about today)

Otherwise for example, I do not mention all the different areas or accommodation types on my site apart from in a drop down for areas or accommodation types when searching.

[QVA - Emma]

Thanks Emma

The site is a UK accommodation directory, the main emphasis being the ability to search for accommodation in a particular location (using any location description such as postcode, town, county, address etc)

The results of the search will display all listings that match the search criteria.

I agree these kind of lists look ugly and was only considering adding them if they aided my ranking for "long tail keywords" (a term I only learnt about today)

Otherwise for example, I do not mention all the different areas or accommodation types on my site apart from in a drop down for areas or accommodation types when searching.

Interesting... In which case in my opinion it would benefit the user and your rankings. Anyone dropping onto your site would find it more beneficial on seeing a link to hotels in blackpool rather than having to search. In which case you wouldn't put the links in the footer of the site though.

It's a tough call without seeing the site and actually getting a feel for what you are trying to acheive other than a mini tripadvisor type site? Some of the phrases are pretty tough to rank for, particularly certain towns. There is a website owner who monopolises a couple of the biggies with around 20 sites pulling in millions £ every year. Feel free to PM for more info :)

Emma

[fisicx]

Consider your site architecture. The search engine can only follow links on the page. It can't use a search box or a form dropdown. Unless you have text links from your homepage to the pages you want indexing the search engine is going to struggle to find your content.

So you suggestion of footer links will actually help the SE index the site even if it doesn't do much for your ranking.

(if you already have fixed links on the site then please ignore)