O’Rourke Hospitality Marketing attended the SEOmoz PRO Training Seminar 2009 and interviewed guest speaker, Tom Critchlow, after his talk, “The Pacman Chunk of the Piechart: Getting Links”.

O’Rourke specializes in the hospitality industry, and we aim to provide your hotel with useful tips on how you can improve your website optimization. Link building plays a major part in increasing your website’s visibility and page rank, and can help your hotel listing rise to the top of the search engine results pages.

We enjoyed Critchlow’s talk on link building, and wanted to share some of his insights with you, so we asked him his thoughts on how the hotel industry in particular could increase their page rank with link building.

Tom O’Rourke, Founder/President of O’Rourke Hospitality Marketing, interviewed Critchlow and asked him to expand upon the following question that many hotels are asking, “What advice would you give today to a hotel who is ranking somewhere between 3-4 in Google right now and have finished out all their on-page SEO? What do you think they should do moving forward?”

“Link building is the Key!” said Critchlow.

We agree with Critchlow in that hotels need to identify their USP (Unique Selling Proposition). As he states in the video, “If you haven’t got a USP – figure one out!” Perhaps your USP is that you are a boutique hotel, or an eco-friendly hotel, or conference-focused. Establish your USP and promote it through creative public relations.

Once you have your angle you can start leveraging it. You can get recommended links from people you know or have partnered with. For example if you host a conference, ask the conference organizers to post your hotel link on their website and give them instructions on how to do it.

Another point that Critchlow mentioned is that a lot of hotels and travel-related companies spend too much on paid links. Hotels should take that money and spend it in a more intelligent way which can result in building better links. He suggests growing your organic PR side of things rather than paying for links.

As Critchlow says, “The real key when you are talking about link-building is to embed it in your whole business. Don’t consider SEO separate to other activities in your business but consider SEO as a part of everything. Whatever you are doing; PR, marketing, business development, embed SEO in all those processes.”

O’Rourke suggests that your hotel experiment with new ideas, and brainstorm some of your own, on ways you can attract great links to your site. There may be many opportunities available to build links that you may have overlooked. Remember, you can also create your own opportunities!

This tool will analyze your domain, page-by-page, according to the number of linking route domains. It will provide you with valuable information about your domains and links.

With ‘Top Pages on Domain’ you can find old domains that aren’t linking anywhere and need to be re-directed (you can do this with a 301 re-direct).

You can also see what your highest value URLs are and set up internal links from those pages.

Another advantage of using ‘Top Pages on Domain’ is that you can see your competitors’ back links and strongest URLs.

For more information about this tool see the SEOmoz Blog entry on Top Pages on Domain.

Below is a complete list of the world-class speakers who will be presenting, as well as the two-day agenda:

SEOmoz PRO Training 2009 Speakers

• Seth Besmertnik, CEO and Co-Founder at Conductor, Inc.

• Matt Brown, Co-Founder and COO of Define Search Strategies

• Tom Critchlow, Head of Search Marketing at Distilled.

• Danny Dover, SEO Consultant and Program Coordinator at SEOmoz.

• Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOmoz.

• Vanessa Fox, Founder of NinebyBlue.

• Nick Gerner, Linkscape Architect at SEOmoz.

• Ben Hendrickson, Linkscap Architect at SEOmoz.

• Ben Jesson, CEO and Co-Founder of Conversion Rate Experts.

• Ken Jurina, President and Co-Founder of Epiar.

• Todd Malicoat, SEO and Social Media Marketing at Stuntdubl

• David Mihm, Founder of DavidMihm.com

• Lindsay Perkin-Wassell, Manager of SEO Consulting at SEOmoz.

• Conrad Saam, CMO of Avvo.

• Dharmesh Shah, Chief Technology Officer & Founder of HubSpot and Blogger at On Startups.

SEOmoz PRO Training 2009 Agenda

Day One
August 24, 2009

“SEO is Nothing Without Content”
Speaker: Rand Fishkin

•    Tips for Scaling SEO into Editorial Content Creation
−    How to fit SEO into content brainstorming
−    How to make content that’s produced more likely to earn search traffic
−    How to make SEO part of the content creation tasks

•    Tips for Baking a UGC & SEO Soufflé
−    How to get users to do your SEO for you
−    How to maximize/incentivize UGC
−    How to get users to link to UGC

•    Tips for Designing Content that Can Earn Links
−    How to author works that build links for you
−    How to learn from examples on the web

•    Tips for Incentivizing Natural Links
−    How to trigger psychological responses
−    How to turn a tweet into a link

“Structurally Sound: SEO for Site Architecture”
Speaker: Rand Fishkin

•    Tips to Maximize the SEO Value of Your Navigation Systems
−    How to Make Categories and Subcategories Efficient and Valuable
−    How to Employ Tags & Tag Clouds
−    How to Use HTML Sitemaps to “Get Around” Bad Site Architecture

•    Tips for Very Large Sites (50,000+ Pages)
−    How to Make Categories and Subcategories Efficient and Valuable
−    How to Make Navigation Structures that Flow the Maximum Amount of Link Juice
−    How to Apply XML & HTML Sitemaps

“First You Get the Keywords, Then You Get the Money”
Speaker: Ken Jurina

•    Tips for Competitive Keyword Analysis
−    How to Discover Keywords Your Competitors are Targeting
−    How to Find the Keywords No One is Targeting (Yet)

•    Tips for Choosing Keywords to Target
−    How to Determine if You Have a Chance at Rankings
−    How to Find Out the Keyword’s Conversion Rate

•    Tips for Building “Perfectly” Optimized Pages
−    How to Place Target Keywords on a Page
−    How to Effectively Target Multiple Keywords on a Single Page
−    How to Avoid Keyword Cannibalization (while being mindful of double listings)

“How to Make SEO Reporting Sexy”
Speaker: Lindsay Perkin-Wassell

•    Tips for Which KPIs to Use vs. Avoid

•    Tips for SEO Data Visualization

•    Tips for Analytics-Driven Action

“Make SEO Tools Work for You”
Speakers: Nick Gerner and Danny Dover

•    Tips for Getting Value from SEO Tools all over the Web – Danny Glover

•    Tips for Getting Value from SEOmoz Tools

“Sustain Verticality for 3 Rounds”
Speakers: David Mihm and Matt Brown

•    Tips for Local Search SEO – David Mihm

•    Tips for Image Search SEO – Matt Brown

•    Tips for News Search SEO – Matt Brown

•    Tips for Taking Advantage of Rich Snippets

“The Pac man Chunk of the Pie chart: Getting Links”
Speaker: Tom Critchlow

•    Tips for Manual Link Building: Finding the Right Link Sources & Converting Them
−    Hot to find worthwhile directories
−    How to find good article sites
−    How to find good sites to buy/rent links
−    How to ask for a link and get it
−    How to find/get links from social media sites & profiles (that actually pass value)
−    How to use metrics to judge a site & page

•    Tips for Embedded Content Links
−    How to design great badges that people will put on their site
−    How to design awesome widgets that people will put on their site
−    How to design compelling graphics that people will put on their site
−    Examples of great embedded content links

•    Tips for Press/Media/Blogosphere Links
−    How to architect your site to attract media links
−    How to tell a compelling story about your site/business/product
−    How to find the right sources to “pitch” with your story
−    How to issue a press release that earns links

“Good vs. Great: Why Some Startups Make the Leap and Others Don’t”
Speaker: Dharmesh Shah

Question & Answer Open Forum

Day Two
August 25, 2009

“Presentation Off: History of SEO [Todd Malicoat] vs. Future of SEO [Rand Fishkin]
Speakers: Todd Malicoat and Rand Fishkin

“Social Media Investments that Bring Real ROI”
Speakers: Todd Mailcoat and TBD

•    Tips for How to Define Business Goals & Metrics for Social Media Campaigns

•    Tips for How to Craft Successful Link bait

•    Tips for How to “Go Popular” with Viral Content

•    Tips for How to Use Twitter & Facebook for Link Generation

“Researching the Search Engine Algorithm”
Speaker: Ben Hendrickson

•    Tips for What to Pay Attention to in Google’s Algorithm

•    List of Correlations Between Data & Rankings

•    Tips for What’s Different Across the Various Engines

•    Tips for How to Conduct Your Own Search Engine Tests

“How to Win SEO Budget and Influence Your CMO”
Speaker: Seth Besmertnik

“Staying Inside Search Engine Guidelines & Dealing with Penalties”
Speaker: Vanessa Fox

•    Tips for Avoiding the Most Common Penalties and Bans

•    Tips for Identifying Penalties vs. Basic Rankings Drop

•    Tips for Fighting Your Way Out of a Google Penalty

“Conversion Rate Optimization”
Speaker: Ben Jesson

•    Tips for Designing Landing Pages that Sell

•    Tips for Designing & Pricing Promotions

•    Tips for Building Email-Signup Funnels

•    Tips for Email Marketing

“Building a Kick-Butt In-House Web Marketing Team”
Speaker: Conrad Saam

•    Tips for Focusing Everyone on the Right Metrics

•    Tips for Organizing Your Team’s Responsibilities & Personnel

•    Tips for What to Do In-House vs. Contract Out

Question & Answer Open Forum

O’Rourke Hospitality Marketing will attend the 2009 SEOmoz PRO Training Series in Seattle WA, next week, August 24th & 25th.

The SEOmoz PRO Training Series is a two-day training seminar that will focus on Tips, Tricks, and Tactics in SEO from industry experts including Rand Fishkin, Todd Malicoat, Dave Naylor, Vanessa Fox and Ben Jesson.

The core curriculum consists of Content Creation, Site Architecture, Linkbuilding, Keyword Research, Social Media Marketing, Conversion Rate Optimization, Competitive Intelligence, Vertical Search, and Search Engine Penalties & Guidelines.

This annual seminar is limited to 220 attendees and as described by SEOmoz, “As always, this is not a conference, it is an in-depth, fast-paced, educational training seminar designed to take your SEO game to the next level. With two full days of candid, no-holds-barred content from leading industry figures, you will walk away a better SEO than when you started”.

O’Rourke will keep you informed with real-time recaps of the training seminar through our blog entries and videos. You can subscribe to our blog through the RSS feed. We will share with you the latest SEO hints and secrets that can put you way ahead of your competition!