BBOnline Helpful Guidelines
The BBOnline Team would like to help you improve your listing! Here are some simple ways to boost your listing's performance, enhance the user-experience, and gain better search results on Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other search engines.
Content
The most important change you can make to your listing is refreshing your content. Make sure your text is original and to the point.
Read through your listing and do the following:
Identify the most important information about your bed and breakfast
Remove less important information to cut down your listing to an easy to read size
Re-write any content that looks like it was copied from somewhere else, including your website
Why should I change and cut down my content?
Internet users don't like reading, they will skim at most and are intimidated by too much text
Less content will keep users interested and can drive them to your website for more details
Text directly taken from your website and other pages online will be seen as "stolen" content to Google and other search engines
"Stolen" content will hurt your search results ranking
What information is important to travelers?
An Introduction describing your inn
Breakfast
Amenities
Weddings, special events, and corporate events
Unique amenities, services, or activities only offered at your bed and breakfast
What are some less important details that I can remove?
Directions
Policies
Readability
The second most important change you can make to your listing is how it looks.
Organize your content so readers can easily find information
Keep the look of your listing as clean as possible and avoid over formatting
If there is too much going on, travelers will most likely move on without reading
Formatting to avoid:
Bold text
Underlines
Italics
Coloring
Text size that differs
Center alignment
Use specials characters only if they are appropriate. Use the following sparingly:
! (exclamation points)
? (question marks)
* (asterisk)
_ (underscore)
- (hyphen)
... (ellipses)
Take Advantage of Your Marketing Package
Make sure you get the most out of your listing by keeping these sections updated:
Slideshow Photos: Include bright, clear, and high-quality photos of your inn. Showcase your cozy rooms, beautiful gardens, scrumptious breakfast, and any other unique parts of your inn. Be sure to add the maximum number of photos allowed with your package to best show off your inn!
Specials: Highlight the exclusive deals your bed and breakfast has to offer! Romance packages, dinner coupons, deals on extended stays, and other specials added to your listing will also attract more visitors on our Deals page at www.bbonline.com/specials
Recipes: Add an unlimited number of recipes paired with appetizing photos to boost your listing's visibility. Your recipes will appear in one of the most popular sections of our site at www.bbonline.com/recipes
Social Media: Add your Twitter feed, Facebook page, YouTube video, and Blog to personalize your listing.
Additional Locations: Increase your exposure by selecting your additional locations. In these additional locations, your inn will appear as a "B&B in a Town Nearby." Your bed and breakfast will automatically appear as "B&B in a Town Nearby" for cities 20-30 miles away, so the benefit would be to choose cities 30+ miles away from your inn that attract the most travelers!
Insider's Info Interview: Send us your answers to our special interview section! Provide unique content and useful information about your inn and its area attractions at a quick glance. If you wish to participate, please email us your responses to the questionnaire below at [email protected].
1. Why do most travelers stay at your inn?
2. What are you best known for? What makes your inn unique? What do you love most about your inn?
3. If someone has never been to your city, what is the #1 reason to come visit?
4. What's the best compliment you have ever received about the inn?
5. What's the best kept secret about the area?
6. If a traveler is staying at your inn for 4 nights, what should he/she do in the area?
7. Is there anything within walking distance of your inn?
8. What is your favorite restaurant/food in the area?
9. Any good area guides/websites that travelers could reference?
10. How many rooms does your inn have?
11. Do you accept pets? (If not, do you have suggestions for local pet motels or alternatives for pet owners?)
Links
Try to limit the number of links to outside websites. At 10 outbound links, search engines will start to drop a page's rank, sometimes even removing it from searches.
