Welcome to the LocalHotelDirectory.com Blog!
by Adam on February 1st, 2007
Welcome to the LocalHotelDirectory.com blog! As excited as I am to dive in and start writing on what this blog will focus on, I think it’s important to give you some background of the site this is attached to and who will be contributing. And yes, this is as predictable and boring as first blog posts come so, like the espresso with 4 sugars I’m drinking, I’ll try and keep this short and sweet.
The Site:
First off, LocalHotelDirectory.com is a site that allows hoteliers to maintain all of their local search engine and yellow page profiles in one place and then have them automatically distributed.
As “why should I care about local search engines?” is generally the immediate response to this line whenever I shoot it out to a hotel GM or DOR, the easiest way to answer is to have them do a search on Google for “Chicago, IL hotel.” See those three mini results beneath the Sponsored Listings but above the regular ones? That’s local and they generally appear no matter what market you are searching for. And I doubt there’s anybody that has found this blog that hasn’t used Google or Yahoo Maps. If you do a search for a hotel while in there you will be fed local results.
“But how often do people actually use these services?” is often the follow-up question. In truth, it’s a small percentage of total searches done online. The interesting bit of data, however, is watching how quickly local search has grown and how much it is projected to grow in the next couple years. Much of that growth is going to come from non-search engine traffic like mobile phones and GPS systems that have local search offerings built in. The iPhone, for instance, will come equipped with both a Google Maps and Yahoo Local interface preinstalled!
But enough with how great and useful this site is, let’s talk about the people behind it.
The People:
There are three people who you will see posting to this site, Jon, Jay and Adam (me!). While I suspect that most posts will have a large degree of hands-on from everybody, we will still post them individually so that over time you can stat looking for specific personalities.
The Blog:
In short, expect posts every two weeks on all topics internet marketing related but with a heavy, heavy slant to the hospitality industry (Attn Hotel GMs: Bookmark this site now!). While LocalHotelDirectory.com is focused on Local Search, the blog will cover everything from SEO to PPC to e-mail to analytics to usability and anything else we can think of. We have dozens of topics already planned but would always appreciate suggestions on what you would like us to write about so feel free to comment!
Next Up: 3 Easy Ways to Increase Your Hotel’s Search Engine Presence
