Learn website design for tourism

Links from external web sites: Links to your website (from other web sites) are supposed to reflect your website's popularity, which in turn contributes to a website's position in Google search results. However, the frenzied effort to build catalogues of unrelated link pages has probably influenced Google to reduce, or at least refine, the effect of links on Google Rank. So, there are a few strategies that could help to increase the effectiveness of your link trade campaign.

Group you links pages into categories, such as countries, and focus on travel related websites. Google suggests that webmasters concentrate on developing content that serves their customers, rather than search engines. So, it is probably advantageous to include a paragraph of text at the top of each links page, describing the category, e.g. the location of the country.

Three-way link exchanges enable webmasters to give the impression that their website is so popular that other websites link to it without expecting a link in return. It involves providing a link to your website on the condition that they reciprocate the link by linking to an alternative website. The problem with three-way link trading is that the website you offer links from is subsequently neglected and so it might lose its hard-earned status. It is also important that you don't inadvertently cancel out your three-way link exchanges by also offering three-way link exchanges in the other direction to the same websites.

Since it is so time consuming to build reciprocal links, at some point a decision has to be made to focus on content, especially since Google indexes the text appearing in your pages and may even reward web sites that are regularly updated.

Your link details need:

• a title (for your website)
• the URL and
• a brief description

The description should include a regionally defined location and it should also specify the accommodation type. Ideally, links should include a title tag, as part of the code. The title tag gives search engines additional keywords, so it should also refer to location and accommodation type. Note, however, that search engines may penalise websites that stuff too many keywords into title tags. To ensure that your link has a title tag, you'll have to provide the code itself. For example:

<a href="http://www.holidayaccommodationaustralia.com" title="Holiday accommodation in Australia, organised into towns and categories.">Holiday accommodation Australia</a>: Directory of holiday destinations with links to backpackers, youth hostels, bed and breakfasts, caravan parks, tourist parks, holiday apartments, holiday homes, hotels, motels and motor inns.

Google rewards links that appear mid-paragraph more generously than links appearing in a list. So, you could also place your link within a paragraph. For example:

Find holiday accommodation in Australia, including backpackers, youth hostels, bed and breakfasts, caravan parks, tourist parks, holiday apartments, holiday homes, hotels, motels and motor inns.

To make your link stand out to users and search engines, you could also highlight a key section of text. For example:

Find holiday accommodation in Australia, including backpackers, youth hostels, bed and breakfasts, caravan parks, tourist parks, holiday apartments, holiday homes, hotels, motels and motor inns.