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WHAT ON EARTH AM I DOING WRONG ???


les Favets
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Coco, I'm not sure that this is necessarily a "bad" year but rather a very peculiar one.

We had a dead on target March, April and May but June isn't great at all (triple last year's bookings but not nearly as high as it should be). July/August aren't full by any means but we get the bulk of our bookings 2 weeks ahead so that's no surprise. Ironically, our gite which receives next to no marketing is doing pretty good over July/August. Seeing as we're only running a year and a bit these are pretty much all new guests too.

On the other hand, there's a CdH up the road from us which is pretty much full for June yet at the same time gites of friends of ours are empty all summer! Yet we also have friends with a very similar gite who are full for most of the summer and have been for months.

Probably a topic for another thread, but it strikes me that if we're all upping the ante this year with the marketing that with a decent year next year we could all be pretty much full at the very start of the booking season. Certainly most of the advertising that we're doing now runs well into next year and I guess that's the same for most people.

Even more off topic... is there something that happens on August 20th? We've already been turning down bookings for the periods leading up to it and immediately after it.

 

Arnold

 

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Even more off topic... is there something that happens on August 20th? We've already been turning down bookings for the periods leading up to it and immediately after it.

Don't know of anything nationally; is there something specific in your area?  Alternatively, we have found for absolutely no reason in particular that some weekends seem to be extremely popular and we turn loads of people away; I always try and persuade them to come the next week, or preceding week, when we may be empty but it never works!

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[quote]Have three gites in original stables a 7 hectare lake which our clients are able to fish freely inclusive of hiring. Gites are to a high standard. Swimming pool, prices are not expensive We are situa...[/quote]

I don't know the answers, but offer some thoughts. I guess problem might be that the "traditional" gite users are families / groups - That's certainly when I would want a gite, when I'm on my own or just with one other, "I" would be inclined to use a B&B. Now that doesn't help because you can't make them any bigger. So what you do need to do is think about what sort of "pairs" would want the freedom that a Gite offers and then target them. The obvious one is fishermen, but how about painters, bird watchers etc. If you advertise on sites/magazines that they use and use words which emphasis that you are set up "just for them to get away from it all and indulge in their (solitary) hobby" you might get some results.

Just a thought.

 

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One reservation I'd have about the mag advertising is that it's seriously expensive and we've found that it doesn't really target the theoretical audience very well.

The problem is that specialist groups don't necessarily look where you think they might look. For us it was "obvious" that an ad in FPN would pull in loads of house hunters yet our carefully worded ad only pulled in one couple for two days vs maybe 25+ couples over six months or so with our more general advertising.

So, yes, at first thought the fishing mags are the ones to go for but don't go overboard with the advertising spend 'til you start seeing some results. You might find that the fishermen just fire up google and search for "fishing lake gite" which, if you try it, turns up a whole heap of general interest listings sites which have places meeting those criteria on them.

The other issue is that the general interest market is much, much larger than the fishing market ie chances are that you'll actually get quite a lot of people who just fancy a holiday on a lake rather than being fishing people per se.

 

Arnold

 

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Final thought, if you're mainly aiming at the UK market, get a UK phone number.

We get most of our bookings in working hours and most people can't call international numbers from their work phone so this may bump up your number of enquiries. You can get an 0871 free (see http://www.ourgites.org/en/owners.htm) which costs 10p a minute for people to call (it can be redirected through to your French phone at no charge) but more to the point is a UK phone number.

 

Arnold

 

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[quote]once again a big THANK YOU to you all for your input todate. I am trying to arrange my mind around what has been suggested, so if somewhere along the way I don't cover comments in total, please don...[/quote]

Emergency now over, to continue : Teachers & Lecturers ( How do I find where to make contact with them ?)  Getting People to visit website and once found my site ( Where should I aim my site at ? ) I must stress that although we have the facilities for fishing ( Carp - Bream - Pike _ and others with French names ? ) we do not wish to specialise but offer the facility.  We agree that we are aiming for couples 9 Oh you know : retired couples, couples whos families have grown up and no longer want to come with Mum and Dad or just any couples for any reason they would like to get away from it all ).    Marketing needs a fix ! ( In what way )  Would not be involved in PICK UPS.  THANK YOU CoCo for that little boost.  Perhaps it is early days as one felt.  What the heck! it doesn't really matter, for we love it here any way.

ONCE AGAIN A BIG THANK YOU TO YOU ALL

Les Favets ( Well Royston actually )

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Think about it Royston. How many couples do you know who are both into angling? Will the fishing be an added advantage for the type of people you describe. If one settles down with a rod, What's the other going to do?

BTW I think Arnold's suggestion about the UK phone number is a belter.

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Teachers & lecturers... search out a forum that they're on. Just about every "interest group" has a forum knocking around. Likewise for the fishermen. I suspect there are loads of forums for all these and the bulk of forums let you put either a targetted "advert" on or, as here, put your website in your signature. If you're active in the forum, you'll get the hits and perhaps the business too.

To be honest, I wouldn't "aim" the website but rather use the shotgun approach. We have a substantial regional guide page which gets a lot of hits for us and has more than paid for itself through the clients it has attracted. Add pages aimed at fishermen, ones for couples, ones for the region, activities available locally, etc. In fact, try to get a page for every single interest group that you can think of.

Duplicate the pages in French too if you can.

You can't really aim a website anyway. When you get right down to it, you've no idea of how people will find you. For instance, although we have a tiny gite, don't market it really and are thinking of doing away with it, our single most profitable word on the website to date is "gite" as an end of year booking looked for "gite pyrenees-orientale", found us and forked out 3.000€ on a booking! We rated our attempt at selling rooms on ebay a failure as it pulled in one two night booking (at a hefty discount) yet six months later we picked up another week long one at full price and, we think, have filled up most of a week in July from it too. As I say, you don't really know what works 'til well after the event.

If you're interested in get away from it all weekends, you have to do pickups. We hadn't targetted it, but we get what, I think, is more than our share of "dirty weekenders" who just want to get on a plane and go. They don't want to rent a car because they won't be out of the room 'til they're leaving. It's a hassle with a big place like ours but it would be a doddle to do them for your place I think.

 

Arnold

 

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I personally would never stay anywhere that said 'unsuitable for children, pets and smokers.' It sends a message of rigidity and unfriendliness. Add to that a ban on night fishing and it begins to sound like a reform school not a friendly holiday destination.

Sorry but you did ask.

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Hi,

I'm married to a fisherman of 31 years and we did have a giggle when reading all the comments.  I fish too (case of can't beat em, join em, probabably) and also prefer to holiday with my husband so we would be interested in fishing holidays where wives are catered for.  I would be looking for other activities too and the swimming pool would be a good draw for me.  The comfy gite accomodation rather than a bivvy tent is also a draw for a fisherman's wife, believe me.  The night fishing ban hasn't been a problem for us in the past but then - problem - we also have 3 children aged 5-8 who also like fishing, so that would rule your site out for us, and is also probably why the night fishing ban isn't a problem (have to be up early with the kids so it would be torture if we stayed up all night fishing!) 

Having said that, if we didn't have kids and your place was advertised as a romantic getaway with comfy gite accomodation and a nice swimming pool, and fishing too (definitely with details of stock and a few pictures of fish caught) then it would probably be very attractive to us as a couple. 

My thought is that you don't seem to target anyone in particular as much as you seem to exclude people in particular.

Hubby says if you have coarse fishing available (as it seems you do) then the best place to advertise (where he, a long experienced coarse fisherman, would look) would be in Angler's Mail (magazine), Angler's Times (newspaper) and Improve your coarse fishing (magazine) as well as an internet search.

Just an extra thought - but have you submitted your site to all the free submission search engine sites?  Does it come up on a search fairly near the top?  Spending a bit of time doing this and adding suitable keywords in your html header might be a big help. 

Debra

 

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[quote]I personally would never stay anywhere that said 'unsuitable for children, pets and smokers.' It sends a message of rigidity and unfriendliness. Add to that a ban on night fishing and it begins to sou...[/quote]

Point taken and accepted as fair criticisms but in all honesty, we are trying to be honest to potential clients and not waste their time ( not showing the details you refer to ) in them making contact with us only to establish that we have these policies.  We have covered the reason for ; Not suitable for children, because as stated our gites only able to sleep two person in one bed. re Pets, we adore dogs and have had them ourselves in the past but for the sake of hygiene in a space that is going to be used by many people some of which could be allergic ( as one of my daughters ) and also the smell that animals tend to leave in a property,we decided " No pets " which I am sure many or our readers here will agree and possibly have the same policy.  No Smoking!! Have you ever walked into a hotel room or house which has been used by a smoker ??? Once again there will be ( we Hope ) many people using our gites who do not smoke and we would not wish to force upon them the smell of stale smoke.

In passing Deborah !! have noted your comments under this one.  I have a Deborah and you sound just like her ( happy go lucky and nice to know) .  I am sorry we can't cater for you but I am sure you will understand the reasons.  Perhaps  !! and not too soon , I hope when the children grow up you will have many happy times fishing JUST THE TWO OF YOU.

Regards Royston ( Les Favets )

www.ruralfranceholidays.com

 

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More questions for you. If your market is fishermen are you expecting them to share a bed. If your place was cheap, which it doesn't seem to be, maybe good mates might 'muck' in. Otherwise I would think a couple of blokes would like a bed each.

Also those Banquettes, I hate banquettes. I hate to see them in adverts. They put me off and I feel that they infer that that is where I'll sleep, I give it a miss. And maybe that might put a couple of blokes off too, if they think that they will be expected to share.

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I'd be inclined to state the policy as "no smoking in the building" rather than "no smokers".

Hadn't thought about a couple of fishermen going by themselves. We've started to get similar groups starting to come to us and always they ask for the twin rooms. A friend of ours who targets bikers has only single beds in his gite.

 

Arnold

 

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Hi Royston,

Several comments. (I've read throught the thread, and agree with many of the others' comments, by the way).

I looked at your site, which looks very attractive (although you've put FAR too much on just one single page) and the very FIRST thing I noticed was the RED BACKGROUND SAYING NO NO That's a real turn off. I agree that you've got to be honest, but I think you would be better off emphasizing the positive on your "front page" and then creating other pages (I'll come to this later) one of which would be "terms and conditions". THAT'S where you should say, "no this", "no that", "no the other". But I do think you should see if you can make things a bit more positive. Is there room for a baby in its own cot in the two Gîtes for 2. What about the Gîte for 2/3? Could they add one child? Also, I feel you should be much more forthcoming as to WHY. If you're worried about kids' safety in the Lake, then say so. As for smoking... explain yourself in a positive kind of way. Something like "Because we have many people in the Gîte, we have to make sure that there's no residual smell from cigarettes. You're entirely welcome to smoke outside, but please don't do so inside."

As for multiple pages, it's a good principle that a web page should be able to be printed out on one - or two at most  - side of A4. Your excellent site would easily divide, obvious choices would be "The Photo Gallery" and "Prices and Bookings". Make sure there are plenty of easy to follow links between them. As Di (another member here) once said to me "Decide what you want people to do on your web site and make it easy for them to do it!"

Another point. You can have the best Gîte in the world, but if no one knows about it, you might as well burn it down and forget it. So, you need to be MUCH more active in promotion. You say (rather weakly) "well I piggy back on a couple of web sites". So what about serious guides? Some friends of ours had a two person (no smoking, no kids, no animals) gite in an old "four a pain" not far from here. They kept their prices reasonable and they are booked >20 weeks every year! They advertised in "Chez Nous", and that's about all they did. What about Gites de France? (Not that their average lettings - in the Correze anyway - are that magnificent this year either).

By the same token, you can have the best web site in the world, but if no one can find it, you might as well take it down. How much time have you spent in submitting it to search engines. Google, Ask Jeeves, Lycos, Yahoo, and so on? Not only in the UK but in the US. The biggest single clientele for Gîtes are the French, so why isn't your site bilingual? Could you find it by typing "Gites, Auvergne, peche" into French Google? Search  engines can't find and spider your site unless you tell them about it. Also, I've had a look at the keywords you use. FAR too waffley, in my opinion, and far too many of them. I counted 64, and several are mutually contractory. "Gites, gite holiday, holidays in france, france, holiday, puy de dome, auvergne, massif central," are all fine, though I'm not sure how many people will search for "holidays in France" as opposed to "gite, Auvergne" for example. However  "luxury, villas, farmhouse, apartment, bed and breakfast, villa, gites cottages, chateau, manoir, bed & breakfast, hotels and farmhouse, french cottages," gives me the impression of a desperate attempt to get hits on anything at all, and are unlikely all to be true at the same time. A villa, a chateau and a cottage? So decide what you really are, and just use the right key words.

Also you could use a "Location" keyword, thus:-

<META NAME="location" CONTENT="France, Europe, Allier, Massif Central, Auvergne">

for example.

Anyway, I hope I've helped in making pointed criticisms, but each with putative solutions.

 

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Absolutely excellent critique Ian!

One point to watch is that a number of the search engines (notably google, but there are others) don't look at the keyword tag at all and instead scan the text on the pages. Therefore the keywords need to be within the text. The text needs to be text for this to work; at present the address details on the site are a graphic which is effectively invisible to google.

 

Arnold

 

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I assume Royston is targeting his business at professional couples without kids who like to fish.

I am an early retired professional without kids who travels at lot. My wife smokes and we have two well behaved healthy labradors whom we regard as family. My wife always smokes outside, even at home. Our dogs never smell, are very clean and have regular baths. We travel with transport which provides accomodation for our dogs. (People carrier). One of the joys of travelling in France is all hotels allow our dogs to stay both in the rooms and in public areas without any hassle. I also stay regulary in a hotel chain in Spain which allows dogs in the hotel. Unusual for Spain but increasingly common. I also rent villas in southern europe during the winter which allows for our dogs and my wife to smoke.

The point I am making Royston is with your red lines you are choking off business and narrowing your market opportunity even further. There are oodles of nice places to stay in France where red lines don't exist.

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I think the situation is changing re the pets in hotels. It's definitely not 100% acceptance anymore for sure.

We originally accepted pets but didn't actively promote the fact and in practice had all of four dog owners stay with us with no problems. The fifth caused us so much expense and time to clean up after them that they negated completely any advantage that we might have had in accepting even 100 pet owners so we just flat out refuse them now. It's sad, but the economics are such that one problem pet owner (and it's rarely the pets themselves) can cause sufficient problems to close yet another hotel to all pet owners.

 

Arnold

 

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Dear Royston,

I totally agree with what the other people have said about that comment on your home page - it comes across as really unfriendly, negative and off-putting, even to people who don't smoke or have pets or children. Sorry.

But I also have another comment. This is purely personal, but if I were looking for a nice place to stay for a romantice trip, just my husband and myself, I would look for a cosy authentic french country gite. I'm sure your gites are very comfortably furnished - but I am immediately put-off by your 5th photo, the one with a large bookcase which looks remarkably like the ubiquitous Ikea "Billy" bookcase which everyone I know seems to have lurking somewhere in their house (including me - I've got two of them staring at me right now in my study!). When I go for a romantic break in rural France, I don't want to be reminded of home... Given the abundance of choice, I would not choose to stay at your gite just for this simple reason. Sorry again, but as someone said in one of the earlier replies, you did ask.

Could you photograph the room again? You could move the bookcase out of the room, and move the coffee table into its place (maybe with a nice bowl of fruit or a large vase of flowers). Then once the photo has been taken, you could move it all back. I don't think this is being dishonest, as there is nothing actually wrong with the bookcase, but for me anyway, it doesn't add any value to the photo, IMHO.

...I've just noticed something else, having just revisited your website. Having previously looked at it a couple of times, I never noticed until just now that you have a swimming pool. I think you should make more of this, as it is not immediately obvious that you have one. Do you have a photo of it?

...Also, you seem to have different texts for each gite - does gite 3 include fishing permits and bed linen like gites 1 and 2? Does gite 1 include rods like gite 2?

Good luck - I am sure you will find your niche and start to get more bookings!

 

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[quote]Hi Royston, Several comments. (I've read throught the thread, and agree with many of the others' comments, by the way). I looked at your site, which looks very attractive (although you've put FAR to...[/quote]

Hi Ian !! Now that is the sort of reply that feeds me some constructive information.  I am still on a learning curve in relation to correct marketing procedures to be used on web-sites and no way in a million years would I have been capable of puting a Web site together ( There I go again being negative ) But believe it or not  I AM NOT A NEGATIVE PERSON AND WHAT IS MORE although it does not come over to some people reading our web site. I am considered by many to be a friendly person. What I am leading up to ; THE SITE WAS PAID FOR and the key words were given by the professionals??  Q1  How do I submit it to search engines ?  Q2 " Location " key words ( what should have been done ?

IN PASSING TO THE MANY OTHERS WHO HAVE BEEN KIND ENOUGH TO GIVE THEIR POINTS OF VIEWAND SUGGESTIONS : Thank you all yet once again and I will certainly take on board some of your suggestions.

Regards Les Favets

www.ruralfranceholidays.com

 

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> Q1  How do I submit it to search engines ? 

There is no need to 'submit to search engines' - best advice is to get out on the internet and find websites that will list your website, and / or find other websites that will give you links

> Q2 " Location " key words ( what should have been done ?

The location meta tag is part of the dublin core, it is not ness. for search engines and will make no difference - in fact the tag is supposed to indicate the 'document' location not the location of the property in relation to to the planet!

It sould be used as <meta name="DC.location"

Spliting your site up into several pages and targetting those pages and specific terms is going to give you the biggest improvement, combined with getting links in from directories / other websites you should see a vast improvement.

There are many things involved with marketing a site and starting with a good foundation is abs. critical - dont stress over the 'keyword' issue too much, use them (what your target market would search for) in the page text as you would do normally when writing about a subject - many people see keywords as the easy / quick fix answer and it certainly is not
I see many websites sat at #1 that dont even contain one instance of the keyword being search for

You could use google adwords to get instant targetted traffic to your site - but TBH I would spend some time on the site making sure that visitors follow the path YOU want them to AND that they find the info they need on the site - after all if you use adwords you will be paying for every visitor.

 

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What you have to remember when you pay for websites is that, in general, the people doing the designing are almost entirely reliant on the information that you provide. They won't necessarily know what are appropriate keywords for you for instance. In your own specific case, I'd say that it's unlikely that they'd know as much about fishing as you do which will affect all kinds of things that have been touched on in the various comments that you've had via this thread.

That said, it's also quite difficult for the people paying for the websites too as it's not always obvious what information that they need to provide. In your own case it would have been useful to have had some pages specifically about the fish in the lake and the fishing of them but then that's with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. Likewise for fishing related keywords.

The way around this is to do the site yourself. To do a simple site is not nearly as difficult as you might think. You've already got a reasonable layout to start from. I'd get FrontPage (£160) and have a go if I were you (it's very similar to Word).

If your site has been done professionally, then it should have already been submitted to a number of search engines, specifically those operating on a keyword search basis that accept automated submissions eg google. Slightly technical bit here... if the people who designed your site have 1) included a link from their site to yours and 2) their own site is already in google etc., then it will take about a month for your site to appear on google. If either 1 or 2 don't apply then, even if they have submitted your site to the search engines, it will take about six months before your site appears in searches. Short cut around this is to get listed in a site that links to you [cue plug for www.ourgites.org (free listing)] which will reduce this time back to one month and gets you immediately live with a listing.

As far as submitting yourself to search engines go, just go through them all (search google with "search engines" to find them) and click on the "add a site" link (not all search engines have this). Don't forget the directories as these won't have been done by the people who designed your site (it takes me three or four hours to do ie it would have added around 150€-200€ to your bill). These can only be done manually as you need to find the point in the directory that your site should be listed in.

I'd change the graphic with your name & address to normal text as at present it can't be used for "local search" ie if I search for "puy de dome", I'll never find you whilst it remains a graphic.

 

Arnold

 

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Dear Royston,

I'm sorry - I did not mean that I thought that you were negative and unfriendly - but I do think that your website makes you sound that way! You should be stressing all the positive things about your property! -  "Great getaway for couples", "Peace and quiet", "swimming pool", etc etc.

Also, I know I mentioned it in a previous reply, but I really really recommend that you look at www.laymyhat.com as the subject of building websites and search engine optimisation has been examined and picked over in excrutiating detail, particularly within the forum.

Good Luck!

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Hi again Royston

Very briefly, (just about to have a pre dinner bath!)

Keywords. I accept that they aren't a "be all and end all", but they exist for a purpose. Use them, they cost nothing. At best they'll add focus, not only to YOUR way of thinking about your properties and how you want to market them, but also to the way the search engines and directories assess your site and at worst they will do no harm. Chat with your other half about what words you expect people searching the Internet to use to find you. In fact, try to find yourselves using search engines/directories. Whatever anyone may say, if you can't find yourself easily, something's wrong.

Agree absolutely with Arnold that there MUST be a tie up between what you do, how you describe it on your web page and what the keywords say. So if you want to be found by people using the words B&B, Allier, Fishing (I know you don't) then your text should contain those words at various places (top, bottom and middle of your main page) but I repeat that these words _should_ be in your keywords. B&B is tricky, because the ampersand is used as an HTML escape character you need to put in "B&B" (without the quotes). Submit your site to the W3W validator site - http://validator.w3.org/ as the comments can help your webmaster make sure his code is in conformity with the standards - helps to make sure it displays well on _all_ browsers.

I am unconvinced by Buntina's comments re the location keyword, though it's hard to find authoritative descriptions of the way keywords _are_ in fact used.

To look for YOUR keywords, load up the page in yur browser and then navigate your way - using the top bar, to "View source". Then you might like to do a similar exercise on mine.

You might like to ask your webmaster what search engines/directories he sumbitted your site to, and in which countries. Why should most such services have a "submit site" button, if it's entirely unnecessary? You might also like to print out the various comments you think are relevant and pass them to him for comment.

Lastly, I fully accept that YOU are welcoming and good hosts. However, reading your site as a total stranger, who has been asked "what are we doing wrong?" I have to say that I get the _impression_ of negativity. That means that the site isn't reflecting the reality - or to put it more classically - isn't a good piece of sales material. Selling isn't easy, and too many people think that it is. Because it's dead easy to throw together some impressive looking HTML code, (even easier to use Dreamweaver - though it produces horridly convoluted code) many a random Tom, Dick or Harry has set themselves up as Web designers. I'm NOT saying that's happened in your case, though I don't think the overall design of the site is planned to lead people towards pressing the "book now" button, which is what you need.

Anyway. I'm repeating myself. Sorry.

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I'd watch the spelling of gite too and add things like "apartment, appartment, appt, vacation rental, holiday rental" etc. The list is, of course, endless.

I've looked up the location tag and it's used both ways. Newer pages appear to run with the physical location interpretation, older ones with the "where the file is on the computer" interpretation.

You might like to ask your webmaster what search engines/directories he sumbitted your site to, and in which countries. Why should most such services have a "submit site" button, if it's entirely unnecessary? You might also like to print out the various comments you think are relevant and pass them to him for comment.

Yes, but ask if it will be billable time first. Your website isn't disasterously bad by any means (the best website in the world will get untold points for improvement if anyone asks) so you don't want to be doubling your bill. The "problem" might just be a combination of a poor year for tourism and your site not having gotten out of google's sandbox (which puts a six month delay on your appearance on searches).

"Submit site" buttons aren't strictly necessary for most sites as most professional designers will use automated submission. Also, in principle you don't really need to submit a site if it has a link to it from another site which is itself within, say, google as google will find the new site by following the link on the site it already knows about. Where you do need to submit site is within directories such as yahoo (ignore the bit that says professional sites have to pay $299 and use the free submission).

"Because it's dead easy to throw together some impressive looking HTML code, (even easier to use Dreamweaver - though it produces horridly convoluted code) many a random Tom, Dick or Harry has set themselves up as Web designers. I'm NOT saying that's happened in your case, though I don't think the overall design of the site is planned to lead people towards pressing the "book now" button, which is what you need."

I don't know who did your website but as Ian hints, it's not 100% professional. Right down to the gallery, it looks fine. No problems with it, although the address should be text rather than a graphic. Below that, it looks very DIY. It's good to have a photo gallery but it should be on a separate page; ideally each photo should be integrated with the text (eg see www.mascamps.com/region/en.htm which has lots more photos but I use each one to introduce yet another swathe of keywords). For instance, your first photo says "View of Gites from Island on our lake" when it could easily say something like "View of the Puy de-Dome gites as seen from xxx island in lake xxx" thus adding the name of the island and lake as search terms (you should try to have the name of every attraction within an hour or so's drive of you in your text).

Having looked at the whole site again, it looks very much like a brochure that's just been put online without any real changes. There's even a gap for the booking enquiry form from the last page on the first page! We too have a brochure but it's 2 A4 pages vs getting on for 100 for the website if you print it all out. We'd never be able to afford to print a small book to hand people out but online, it doesn't really cost us anymore to have those 100 pages than it would if we'd only 2. That, of course, assumes that you start working on the site yourself as you'll get a serious bill if you ask for 100 A4 pages worth of website.

It's not been said yet here but as you've probably gathered, just about everyone has had a go at their own website. The reason for that is really simple: it's one of the most key parts of everyone's marketing these days and you need to keep a handle on it.

It's really not that difficult to do a simple site and that's really all that you need. Yes, if you check out the websites of those of us who used to do it for a living (comme moi) or those who've been doing it for years they look pretty good, but honestly, you can run up a very successful website in a few days from scratch. It might not look as good as one you've forked out several hundred euro for but that doesn't matter - all the guests want is 1) to read about the facilities, where you are, etc. 2) to see them and 3) a way of contacting you to make a booking. That's not to say that your site won't get better over the years but initially something simple that you can maintain yourself is a better bet than something complicated that you either can't change or can't afford to change.

 

Arnold

 

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