I have a web designer currently creating website for me and constantly goes on about Google searches and how important they are to get customers. I need a bit of help as I don´t really know what I´m doing when it comes to technology.
I am licensed guide in Austria -I can do city walking tours, historical tours, bike tours/hire, concentration camp tours, mountain hiking, mountain biking, wine / beer tastings, pub crawls and so on…………
Can anyone help with what I should put into the SEO stuff? Or even just a few examples so I know what I produce is any good.
Any help would be most appreciated.
Many thanks

SEO is one of those areas that can be as much snake oil as fact. It also moves quite quickly so anything that tries to “game” the system isn’t likely to be that useful in the long term. Google change their ranking mechanism on a fairly regular basis

If your site is clean and focussed on your core subject with quality content then you are most of the way there. You’ll only really know once your site is up and you start doing searches yourself and see the results. It also depends on how specialised your subject/area is – I maintain three sites relating to one particular subject and without any SEO they all appear on the first page of a Google search – there used to be four but I haven’t maintained the fourth for several years now so it’s dropped off the front page.

I found this quick intro https://www.coredna.com/blogs/is-seo-dead

First and foremost search engines want to deliver the most relevant content to their users. So use descriptive, concise, relevant content. You’ll find endless amounts of information on this online, don’t get caught up too much in quick tricks promised to get you results, search engines don’t like people trying to game the system, just write good content…

There are good practices of course, again you’ll find loads of info, but it’s a never ending process, and if you have any competition it can be extremely difficult to reach the position you want. The amount of money big online brands spend will make your eyes water, and they can see their positions drop overnight when Google change their algorithms.

How important SEO is to you will depend on how you get your customers.

Judging by the amount of individuals, usually from Eastern Europe or India, who offer to improve our SEO so we rank first I’d say it’s mostly snake oil. Concentrate on an easily to use website containing useful content and you’ll be most of the way there.

Just do the free Google course on the subject:

https://learndigital.withgoogle.com/digitalgarage-ie

It will make you realise that a) it’s quite involved in making a success of it and b) there are a lot of people selling male cow poop when it comes to SEO.

I do it for our company, as and when I can. 60%+ of our web visits come through Google and Bing, however only a couple of percent go on to be customers or sign up to a newsletter (one of our goals). The other 40% are through referrals, and I see that they are 5x more likely to be a customer or sign up to the newsletter. It’s not rocket science with a good site, but it does take some thought and a little knowledge before wading in.

What you also can’t do is have a website that you never update, as this will not help you in searches. You need to be constantly updating the website, keeping it active, that will also help

There is no button you can press to be top of Google otherwise everyone would press it 🙂

There is some basic stuff but that is usually already built into your website.

The best thing to do is think what are your visitors looking for and searching for rather than what do you want to show them.  So, imagine the sorts of things they might be wanting to look for and type into a search engine and then think of how Google would know that that is what your site provides.  Have you used those words in your text?  Is it in a heading so Google knows it is important?  Is is next to a photo with the same name?  is your photo geotagged or is the address somewhere on the page so Google knows the location is correct?  Google will do the very best they can to give people what they are looking for.  They really excel at that.  Your task is tell Google as much as possible about what your page is about so they can find you.

Also look at your page from the point of view of the person visiting.  Can they find what they want or do they immediately go away.  So maybe put links to other relevant parts of your site ‘price of guiding’, ‘sign up for our newsletter’, ‘nearby accomodation you can book’.  Work on helping people stay on your site because I’m sure Google check bounce rate when deciding how high to put you up their lists

Sign up for Google Webmaster Tools (or whatever it is called now) so you know the sorts of keywords your site hits for.  That will give you a clue if you are doing it right

That course matt oab posted looks good

remember, it’s real work to make it work but it’s a black art.  The trick is not to focus on clicks but remember to focus on what you really want – bookings.

Don’t re-use content from one page on another for the same website. Duplication gets severely marked down in the rankings.

Also checking your own search ranking requires a ‘clean’ browser with no cookie cruft from Google on it.  Regular searches using a browser with Google cookies from a previous session will give a false (higher) impression of where you are. Use something like Brave with all the shields up and cache clearing on quit to get an idea of where you rank, you may also need a proxy server.

The foregoing assumes that you are sticking your business name into the Google search box to check your ranking.

I’m sure you know this. But look every customer in the eye and ask them politely to review you on tripadvisor

That is irrelevant your question. But it’s free and likely to make make a real difference

In the early days, you could game search engine results by stuffing your content full of keywords (or hiding them in your code), even if they weren’t relevant to your site.

These days, that kind of thing doesn’t work.

Plus, there are a lot of snake oil sellers out there, and it’s also hard to keep up with Google’s ranking algorithms.

So, until you start digging into the detail of what makes good, search engine optimised content, here are three general rules of thumb that will at least get you started – and which will have longevity in the face of Google’s ever-changing algo.

1) Create useful, good quality, relevant and original content that’s written for people to read (rather than for search engines to index). Give those people a reason to link back to it or share it across social media – the more this happens, the better it will rank.

2) Create lots of that kind of content. Regularly, and often.

3) Make sure that content is accessible – eg, html should be semantically correct, images should have alt/title tags, text should have sufficient contrast against its background, content should work on mobile as well as desktop, etc.

That lot should give you a decent leg up.