Millions of people are now choosing to rent their holiday villa or apartment directly to their prospective clients through advertising on the internet. In the first of our series of articles we looked at how to choose which sites to use through the use of search traffic statistic provided by the major search engines. Search traffic represents the volume of visitors that are searching the internet for specific keywords and phrases as is an indicator of how many visitor a particular site may attract because of their positioning on the first page of the results for a given term.

Keywords are only an indicator. To fully benefit from a websites traffic it is also important that the page you create has as much information formatted in the most optimized manner so that your ‘advert’ has the best chance of being listed independently on the search engines. This will help drive traffic not just to the website you have advertised with but also send traffic directly to the page showing the advert of your holiday home.

The premise is, that if the page you create is properly formatted and contains the correct information you are able with a little work to make it visible for some of the most targeted keyword searches, sending visitors who are specifically looking for your type of property in your resort location, straight to your villa.This is much more preferable than hoping they click on your villa as one of many in a database search from the websites homepage. This type of search will send traffic to your page but the ratio of enquiries will be much higher in the former scenario than the latter.

The first thing to look for having chosen a number of sites to consider is the landing page. This is the page on the website that you land on when clicking on the link in Google. This should be a page specific to your resort or property type. This being well search for a villa such as yours and click onto one or two of the properties. There are several things to look out for on the ‘advert page’.

First, compare the title of the page between two or more properties. The title is the description you will find in the blue bar at the top of your screen. Check to see if the title is the same or different for each property. The title of any page on a website should be specific to that page. It is one of the most important things that the search engines look at when they index a page. If the website you are looking at has the same title on every page of the site, forget it and move onto the next website in your list for consideration.

If the title are different they should contain some specific information. This includes, The name of the resort, the property type and the rental status. By this I mean for example, a villa for rent in Moraira, Costa Blanca, Spain should have the minimum included phrases of Moraira, Villa, and rental or holiday rental in the title. You can check the actual title against the list of most popular keywords that you have made from the Google keywords tool. If the page title matches up well with a well search phrase then you can look further.

You should also then look to see if the page has a headline. Usually in bold at the top of the page. If the site is doing its job properly, this headline will be whats known as a h1 tag. You can check this by going to the menu bar at the top of your browser. If you are viewing in Internet Explorer, go to ‘View’ and click on the link in the drop down menu for ‘page source’. In Firefox this say just ’source’. A page will appear with the code used to create the page. It looks confusing, but do not be alarmed. Just slowly scan the top third of the page looking for the text used in the headline. Once you have found it, check to see if at either end of the text there is a <h1 symbol. If there is, good, if not, just make a note, a negative point if you will for this site.

Slowly you will be able to build a picture of which sites are most suited to bringing you the most traffic for your villa or apartment advertisement.

About the Author

Neil Ebsworth is the founder of AMLASpain, the Spanish Property MLS for property for sale in Spain and Villa Rentals Spain

When you read about SEO. Thats Search Engine Optimization for the uninitiated or the profession of trying to put a website at the top of the organic search results for any given keyword.
Having just read the first line of this article I have realized just how much jargon we use in this industry and that for the novice, and we were all novices once, it must be somewhat confusing.

So let me simplify. If you have a website it is normally because you have a product or service that you wish to sell to the public. To achieve sales you need people to visit your website. Your visitors are called traffic. The best way to gain traffic is to appear in the organic search results of Google, (and other Search Engines) for search terms that are relevant to your business. For Eample I own a website for Estate Agents in Spain to list their property on a MLS. The Biggest search term for this industry is Spanish Property, which receives about 10x as much traffic as any other search term. Therefore in a perfect world my aim eventually is to reach No 1 position for this keyword. In the interim you must aim to reach a Page 1 position for smaller traffic keywords which are less competitive and more easily achieved. Think of your keyword goals as a Christmas tree with the most competitive as the fairy on the top. The least competitive and most easy to achieve are at the bottom of the tree. There are many more of them to choose from so be selective, but a wide base of keyword terms that bring you a visitor a day is easier to achieve than trying to rank for one term that will bring you a 100 visitors.

Now most articles that you will read will start to talk about the fact that to rank for any given keyword you need to build links pointing at your site from other sites with the keyword you are trying to rank for in the anchor text of your link, (thats the clickable part of the text that sends the visitor to your site) . This is all true. You will read about the need for Directory submissions, writing articles, reciprocal linking strategies and many more ways to gain links from your piers so that you may build your link popularity and get your deserved place on the first page of results for the keywords you have chosen.

I will leave all those noble strategies to other for now and focus on a method of obtaing as many links as you want for yourself without going outside the remit of your own website. Do not get me wrong. All that you read about in-linking is bona-fide and should be pursued as part of a multi faceted approach that is necessary for successful placement in the Search Engines. This article is designed however to highlight the importance of internal linking strategy of your own site that can make a great effect on your Search Engine position. It is an overlooked subject and often missed by many site owners. It is often the key to out ranking your competition but also should not be confused with a tradition of spamming the content of your web pages to gain position by stuffing the content with meaningless keywords and links.

Those strategies have pretty much been taken care of by the Search Engines in their algorithms.

When linking your pages internally there are some guidelines to consider.
These include,
The percentage of links pointing at any given page with the same keyword anchor text. If the percentage is too high it may be deemed to be spamming, so always keep your link texts varied leaving the most important keyword links coming from the most important pages of your site.

Use your footer to carry links to your most important pages. That way you are linking your most important pages from every page on your site. These can also be used as a baseline link for a generic keyword creating a good number of links to an important page. If you then link in content links with a more specific target keyword from an internal page you will gain good points for the important keyword along with recognition for the baseline links in your footer.

A final example as this subject will need to be extended later.

If you create a hundred pages of quality content about your site subject or product and you have 1 link in the footer to your homepage. Lets say its a site selling property and your footer link is property homepage. In the text you carry a link for Spanish Property for Sale also to the homepage. You now have 200 links pointing at your homepage with 50% of them targeted at your keyword.

If the assumption is correct that Google allows and reads up to 100 internal links on any given page without penalty then you can see that by interlinking your pages in an intelligent manner you could end up in our example with 10 000 links from a 100 good pages of content.

Whilst it is by no means the only thing to consider, it makes a good start.

About the Author (HTML)

Neil Ebsworth is co-founder of AMLAspain.com, TheSpanish property MLS and Villa Rentals Spain. A portal for Rental Properties

The most recent film starring the American icon, the Harley Davidson motorcycle, was called ‘Wild Hogs’. Named after the nickname given to its riders in the 1970’s, this family comedy with an all star cast including John Travolta didn’t quite meet its hyped expectations. Falling flat in plot and more importantly, script, the movie was a disappointing attempt at capturing the lure of the Harley and the thrill of the open road. It should have been no surprise. Putting Disney together with Harley Davidson was a little like asking John Carpenter to do a remake of Bambi. ‘ Nice death scene, but it didn’t quite capture the mood of the original!’

Hollywood however, has had a love hate relationship with this most unlikely of stars for more than half a century. It unwittingly threw the spotlight on what had been an American standard of industry, only to demonize the name to the extent that The Harley Davidson Motor Company nearly went bankrupt. As with most relationships though, time heals all. It would be the elevation into cult status of the very same movies that nearly destroyed the company, that would raise the phoenix of Harley Davidson from the fire, and turn it into the iconic symbol that it is today.

As with the careers of most movie stars, early appearances and bit parts are mostly forgotten. You may catch a glimpse of a Harley in WWII movies. (The motorcycles were supplied to the army as utility transport during both World Wars until the Jeep took over as the main utility vehicle in 1942). The big break for the Harley Davidson came in 1953 when it was cast alongside, or should I say under, Marlon Brando in The Wild One. The movie, which told the story of Jonny, the bike gang rebel, reflected the tone of rebellion sweeping America at the time amongst the nations teenage youth.

Unlike today however, 1950’s society was not one driven by youth culture. The impact of the openly anti-establishment images that the genre portrayed did not spark a boom in sales for Harley Davidson as it would later achieve for such products as Ray-Ban sunglasses following the 1982 movie Top Gun. The effect in fact, was the opposite, leading the motorbike manufacturer into a period of declining sales. Conservative, middle America in the 50’s was not willing to support what Harley Davidson had become and the youth generation that idolised the films and their stars were not yet in charge of the finances to supplement their dreams.

Whilst commercially Harley Davidson was in trouble, its portrayal in movies continued to flourish. The notable peak in came in 1969 with the movie ‘Easy Rider’. Once again cast as the bad boys favourite mode of transportation, the Harley Davidson Chopper cruising the open highway, will always epitomize freedom and rebellion. Maybe it is this dichotomy of emotions, so fundamental to American history and the ‘American Dream’ that has been the backbone of the Harleys endurance.

The nineties saw Mickey Rourke and Don Jonson take up the gauntlet, although in this film it was Mickey Rourke’s character that bestowed the Name Harley Davidson to the title of the film. Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man once again cast the character of the rough neck to, yes you guessed it, Harley Davidson.

As the nineties progressed, the teenagers that had idolized Marlon Brando and those early biker movies in the 50’s were maturing into the wealth of America. Like an old friendship lost but never forgotten, it was these middle aged rebels of yester-year that would rekindle the corporate fortunes of Harley Davidson. they customized their bikes to stand out in a crowd and create for themselves a separate identity apart from the rest of the corporate clones. They were rebels that may have succumbed to the corporate ladder but now had the finances to relive the youth they could never afford.

So, it is with somewhat of a saddened heart, that the movie that was to portray the story of this revival and tell the story of those 50’s youth reborn, should have turn out to be such a damp squib. Maybe Harleys executives still feel the pinch of the bad boy image and this is why they turned to Disney to tell the story. Personally, I think they should have gone with Tarrentino, the guts and the glory, the true Harley Davidson.

About the Author

When it comes to Harley Davidson Motorcycles , merchandise, Harley Davidson parts, new and used Harley Davidson bikes, www.lookcyclesusa.com is the place to shop