Comments on: Building a Tourist Community Website With WordPress: Content Rules

By: nikos

nikos — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 12:34:29 +0000

Promoting a travel site for a Greek tourist destination is a very difficult task. As I said previously, there is a great keyword competition and if you use AdWorks the keyword costs are very high. For us, Discover-Rhodes.com is more of an experiment to see where we can get with WP and some plugins. Of course you need a lot of qualified and, mind you, low cost content which in our case came from other sites we own and/or manage. The web ring you refer is an old idea. I think a web site like 9rules.com only for selected travel web sites or blogs would be a better solution. Anyway, I’m open to suggestions.

By: Amir

Amir — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 13:26:53 +0000

Hi nikos,

What kind of promotional activities have you done to make discover-rhodes more popular?

I’ve got a shareware business that’s doing pretty well. It’s a tiny site, but still manages to stay on the front page of Google for the keywords I need (which are quite competitive). Here are the things I’ve done for it:
* Regularly, come out with press releases. Some appear in print magazines and some online.
* Build working relationships with other small businesses and offer complementary services. Naturally, this includes links back and forth, but the links are not the main point.
* Offer free stuff that people love to link to.
* Appear in related listings.
* Contribute articles to other sites.
* Run an active newsletter and remind people that I still exist.

All these activities can be applied to any business. I also think that small tourist community sites can cooperate to build a ring. The same people who visit Rhodes might be interested in trips to South America, and vice-versa. A ring of several dozens of tourist related sites, in different parts of the world stands a much better chance of competing with experida than any single one by itself.

By: nikos

nikos — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 16:50:51 +0000

We’ve been building travel related sites from 1995 and I can tell you that this web niche is extremely competitive. Check the Google index and you can see that it is oversaturated by sites that are using the right SEO recipe but offer no actual or pertinent content at all, they’re just trying to sell bookings. For me, a travel site with focused on a certain location (like the island of Rhodes in our case), has more probabilities to offer really useful content when compared to a mega travel/accommodation site. But unfortunately search engines doesn’t think so. For them sites like Tripadvisor.com or Expedia.com have more authority and are getting a better exposure, no matter the keyword. So, at some point, you’ll have to come into terms with this fact and will try get a better position in the search engines. Fortunately, WP with the help of some plugins and some careful planning can assist you in this task, helping your site to gain some popularity. So, to be honest, no, content is not king but if you manage to attract visitors into your site then the content will play key role into keeping their interest high.

By: Ray

Ray — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 20:43:06 +0000

We’ve been building a rich content “vacation guide” site for Puerto Rico over the past 22 months. Our traffic results are not _great_, but I’m happy with them. It’s further proof that good, original content … and this part is key … that answers questions and is helpful … will drive a site.

By: Building a Tourist Community Website With WordPress: Navigation and Usability Rules « Lorelle on WordPress

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 12:03:08 +0000

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By: monika

monika — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 00:27:43 +0000

[offtopic] I love dict.leo.org -now I understand your figure of speech … *you can lead a horse…*[/offtopic]

Yes content is king! And good content is the best marketing for a website. Give the user what he would like to *find*.

good luck with the project

Monika

By: Lorelle VanFossen

Lorelle VanFossen — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 20:33:26 +0000

Marketing will always be important, but we’re talking about the building of a website here, one with original content that helps readers and searchers. I support Amir’s belief, as well as the belief of many, that writing good content can make or break a website or blog. It’s the old “you can lead a horse to water” bit, but it works.

By: Franklin Bishop

Franklin Bishop — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 19:33:38 +0000

I’m sorry, marketing will forever be king. Content can be so-so and still work.