我常想知道，有多少人真正了解搜索引擎优化的过程，拥有一个对搜索引擎友好的网站是什么意思。凭借过去几年里我所服务的客户的数量，在我看来，有很多“SEO专家”对此过程的理解很模糊。因此，他们造成很多酒店经营者不再抱有幻想——他们花了钱，却没什么效果或者收效甚微。
讽刺的是，在众多从SEO中寻求更好结果的客户中，我们发现，他们雇佣做SEO工作的人员规模或数量与是否成功没什么关系。这一现象很讨厌，它只能是强调了SEO混乱之深，即使对于那些所谓的专家来说也是一样；我们发现，大大小小的SEO公司会犯相同的错误。
更令人烦扰的，实施SEO的收费标准存在巨大差距，但我们同样没发现这差距与成功有什么关系。这强调了选择SEO伙伴时需要谨慎。在SEO上多花钱并不保证成功。
需要考虑的重要一点是，过去几年搜索引擎技术已经发生了很大变化。搜索引擎算法发生了转变，变得更为复杂，进而改变了可接受的工作准则。先来看看搜索引擎优化在其短暂的生命中是如何演变的。
这一切是如何开始的
网站管理员从20世纪90年代中期开始搜索引擎优化。最初，网站管理员所要做的是就是向各种搜索引擎提交一份网页或网址，然后搜索引擎就会发送蜘蛛或搜索机器人到该网页、指向其他网页的链接中“爬行”，并收集将在网页中发现的资料，用于索引。
该过程包括，搜索引擎蜘蛛下载网页，并储存于搜索引擎自己的服务器里，在这里，被称为索引的第二道程序，提取网页各种资料，如它所包含的文字和它们所在的位置，以及网页包含的所有链接，这些将被放置到数据库中，便于以后抓取。
早期版本的搜索算法仅仅依赖网站管理员提供的信息，如关键字Meta标签，或索引文件。标签提供每个网页的说明。但是利用Meta数据索引页被发现并不可靠，因为在网站meta标签里，管理员的关键词说明并非真正与该网站内容中发现的实际关键词有关。
这一切在1998年，Page和Brin创办Google时发生了变化。互联网用户喜欢Google的简单设计，PageRank等页外元素，它的链接分析以及对内容因素页内分析。这使得Google能够避免搜索引擎上可见的这种操纵，即只考虑Meta标签来提升排名。
自2007年以来，搜索引擎为其排名算法考虑了广泛的不明因素。Google表示，它使用超过200种不同的信号划分网站等级。
SEO现状
今天，搜索引擎优化是通过目标关键词的“自然”或“有机”搜索结果提高网站流量的数量和质量的过程。在通常情况下，网站出现在搜索结果中越早，或者“等级”越高，访问网站的搜索者就越多。
作为增加网站相关性的一种营销策略，SEO思考搜索算法如何工作，哪些人在搜索；SEO的努力应该包括网站编码、整体设计、导航计划、丰富的文本内容、结构，以及解决阻止搜索引擎索引和蜘蛛充分爬行网站的问题。
更引人注目的努力可以包括在网站中加入独特的内容，如可搜索的图库，简介页面，旅游资源等，并确保内容能很容易被搜索机器人索引，设计网站必须有必要的销售元素生成网上预订。
搜索引擎优化其实是从网站的初期设计开始的。搜索引擎友好的网站将必要的因素纳入网站的设计和内容。设计欠佳和功能有障碍的网站进行SEO是徒劳的。网站的设计，导航计划，以及丰富的文字内容对SEO成功来说是必不可少的。
搜寻引擎只能阅读文本中，因此，创作和书写酒店网站的文字内容是至关重要的。关键是提供必要的信息，满足网站访客的需求，同时反映该网站关键词搜索的相关性。
白帽SEO VS 黑帽SEO
我们极力主张为网站选择SEO伙伴时谨慎行事；作出错误的选择，可能带来严重的后果。构思良好的SEO项目会有一些奖励，同样的，故意或无意违反搜索引擎认可的准则，也会面临搜索引擎严峻的惩罚。
SEO技术被一些人划分为两大类：作为搜索引擎推荐的，良好设计一部分的技术，以及那些搜索引擎不认同的被称为作弊的技术。业界评论家将这些方法以及使用他们的专业人员分为白帽SEO或黑帽SEO。许多网站因黑帽作弊而被降低排名甚至被封杀。
作弊一般是指，不择手段或者不清楚情况的网络管理员企图通过使用隐藏文字绕过搜索引擎，或者使搜索引擎和用户访问到不同页面，这被称为“伪装技术” 。
网站的营销策略
成功的搜索引擎优化活动能够提高页面在搜索结果中的自然排名。好的活动可能包括使用付费广告或按点击付费推广，以提高网站的可见度；搜索引擎巨头Google视人气为索引网站的巨大资源。
构思并实施良好的搜索引擎优化项目能够极大地增加人气，因此，网站的效率至上，不过，最好的营销策略是多元化营销，从各个方向着手。SEO应辅以链接策略，从其他网站带来流量。
重要的是，要了解搜索引擎索引站点时，会考虑相关内链的数量。这里的关键是相关性；提防以前没看过的公司，他们会将你的网站与包含没有旅游内容无关链接的“链接工厂”相链。这样做弊大于利。
网站的营销策略应包括搜索引擎优化、精心构思、链接策略，并且要知道你的SEO伙伴能解决任何阻止搜索引擎完全抓取和索引你站点的技术问题。这不是火箭科学，但是要小心，有许多网站设计和SEO骗子。
作者：Neil Salerno，酒店营销讲师
原文链接：http://ehotelier.com/browse/news_item.php?id=P12836
What the heck is hotel web site SEO, anyway?
By Neil Salerno - Hotel Marketing Coach
I often wonder how many people truly understand the process of search engine optimization and what it means to have a search engine friendly web site. It seems to me, by the number of clients I've inherited in the last few years, that there are many "SEO experts" out there with a fuzzy understanding of the process. As a result, they produced many disenchanted hotel operators, who spent a fortune, only to receive poor or mediocre results.
Ironically, among the many clients seeking better results from SEO, we found no success relationship to the size or popularity of the company that they hired to do the SEO work. This is troubling and only emphasizes the depth of confusion about SEO even among the so-called experts; we found many of the same errors made by SEO companies large and small.
Even more disturbing, we also found no success relationship within the huge disparity of fees charged to perform SEO. This emphasizes the need for caution when selecting an SEO partner. Spending more money for SEO does not insure success.
An important point to consider is that search engine technology has changed considerably in the last few years. Search engine algorithms have evolved and have become more sophisticated; thereby changing acceptable working guidelines. Let's look at how search engine optimization evolved during its short life-span.
How It All Began
Webmasters began optimizing sites for search engines in the mid-1990s. Initially, all a webmaster needed to do was to submit a page or URL to the various search engines which would then send a spider or searchbot to "crawl" that page, extract links to other pages, and collect information found on the page to be indexed.
The process involves a search engine spider downloading a page and storing it on the search engine's own server, where a second program, known as an indexer, extracts various information about the page, such as the words it contains and where they are located, as well as all links the page contains, which are then placed into a scheduler for crawling at a later date.
Early versions of search algorithms relied solely upon webmaster-provided information such as keyword Meta tags, or index files. Meta-tags provided a guide to each page's content. But using Meta data to index pages was found to be less than reliable because the webmaster's account of key words in the Meta tag were not truly relevant to the site's actual key words which were found within the site's content.
That all changed in 1998 when Page and Brin founded Google. Internet users liked Google's simple design, off-page factors such as PageRank, its hyperlink analysis as well as on-page analysis of content factors. This enabled Google to avoid the kind of manipulation seen in search engines that only considered Meta tags for their rankings.
Since 2007, search engines consider a wide range of undisclosed factors for their ranking algorithms. Google says it ranks sites using more than 200 different signals.
Today's SEO Reality
Search engine optimization, today, is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" or "organic" search results for targeted keywords. Usually, the earlier the site is presented in the search results, or the higher it "ranks", the more searchers will visit that site.
As a marketing strategy for increasing a site's relevance, SEO considers how search algorithms work and what people search for; SEO efforts should involve a site's coding, overall design, navigation scheme, text-rich content, and structure; as well as fixing problems that could prevent search engines from indexing and fully spidering a site.
More noticeable efforts may include adding unique content to a site, such as searchable photo galleries, quick facts pages, travel resources, etc. and ensuring that content is easily indexed by search robots, and designing the site to have the necessary sales elements to generate online reservations.
Search engine optimization actually begins with the conceptual design of a web site. A search engine friendly web site incorporates the necessary elements into the design and content of the site. Applying SEO to a poorly designed and dysfunctional web site is futile. The site's design, navigation scheme, and richness of its text content are essential to SEO success.
Search spiders can only read text, therefore, creating and writing the text content of a hotel web site is of paramount importance. The key is to provide the necessary information to serve the site visitor's needs, while at the same time reflecting the site's key word search relevance.
White Hat versus Black Hat SEO
We strongly suggest some caution when selecting an SEO partner for your site; making the wrong selection could have some severe repercussions. Although there are some great rewards which often result from a well conceived SEO program, there are also some severe search engine penalties for those bold enough to intentionally, or unknowingly, violate search engine accepted guidelines.
SEO techniques are classified by some into two broad categories; techniques that search engines recommend as part of good design, and those techniques that search engines don't approve of, referred to as spamdexing. Industry commentators classify these methods, and the practitioners who employ them, as either white hat SEO or black hat SEO. Many sites have had their site ranking reduced or even banned as a result of black hat spamdexing.
Spamdexing is generally a result of unscrupulous or unknowing webmasters attempting to circumvent search engine guidelines by using hidden text or producing a different page if requested by a search engine and, another if requested by a human; this is known as "cloaking".
Your Site's Marketing Strategy
A successful search engine optimization campaign will drive organic search results to your site's pages. A good campaign may also include the use of paid advertising or pay-per-click promotion to boost site visibility; search engine giant, Google, considers popularity a huge asset in the indexing of a site.
A well conceived and implemented search engine optimization program can dramatically improve the popularity and thus, the productivity, of your web site, but, the very best of marketing strategies are those which are diversified and attack the market from various directions. SEO should be supplemented with a link strategy to drive traffic from other web sites.
It's important to understand that search engines consider the number of relevant in-bound links when indexing a site. The key here is relevance; beware of unknowing companies wishing to link your site with "link-farms" containing dubious non-travel, irrelevant links. These can do more harm than good.
Your web site's marketing strategy should include search engine optimization, a well conceived link strategy, and understanding that your SEO partner should correct any technical issues that may keep search engines from fully crawling and indexing your site. It's not rocket science, but caution there are many web site design and SEO pretenders out there.
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