“If you build it, they won’t come”. Simply purchasing a URL and getting your website up and running is not enough. Clients won't just stumble upon your website on their own, it is up to you to tell your clients how to get to your website and to help your clients find what they are looking for.

Remember that with your site, the number of visitors isn’t the most important number, but rather the number of clients who have contacted you to purchase a vacation.  For example, if you get 5,000 hits one month, but only 1 client booking, you haven’t generated much business – however if you get 800 hits one month and get 5 client bookings, this is a much better ratio.

What are your goals?
Ask yourself what goals you are hoping to accomplish with bringing more clients to your site. 

• Are you hoping to increase your bookings by 10%?
• Increase repeat customer business?
• Increase exposure to local clients?

Remember that hoping to compete with expedia or travelocity is probably not a realistic goal, however increasing your bookings by 10% is a realistic goal (and achievable!).

How Search Engines can help
Search Engines can help your clients find your NexCite. We have compiled some information that will help your sites placement within search engines.

While we cannot guarantee placement on any search engine, the tips outlined here will generally help your search engine placement.

There are several things to keep in mind when trying to increase your ranking with search engines:

• Don't get overwhelmed! You don't want to do everything all at once. Try a few changes at first and see if your rankings improve. Once they do, you're on the right track, so try a few more things!
• Don't expect results over night! Search engines have many, many sites to go to, it will take them a while to get back to your site.
  
  
• Courtney's NEW favorite Resource about Search Engine Optimization
• Using images effectively
• Using Search Engines, Portal Listings and Agency Locators
• Submit your company to Google's Local Business directory 
• Increasing incoming links to your site
• Improving text and content
• Build a client profile and tailor your site to your clients
• Before you get started, make sure your site is ready
• Promoting your website through print
• Now I have more traffic, what do I do next?
• Ideas for pages to create on your site
• Submit Sitemaps
• The Secret Of SEO For Travel Agents: Blogs Help Immensely

Text and Search Engines
Search engines love text, and so do your clients. However, it is important to make sure it is the right kind of text. What is the right kind of text? Text that answers a question, describes something or otherwise provides information. You don't want to fill your website with a bunch of words that don't make any sense together, instead create pages for different types of information and on those pages include text describing your topic. This will help customers get the answers they are looking for, and help search engines find the unique text that they are looking for in order to rank your website.

Want to improve your site, but only have a little time?  Here are the 10 things to do first:

1. Make sure that you have good titles for your pages.
2. Write something new, rather than the standard basic text, for the Home, Cruises and Vacations page.
3. Add your city, state and zip code in your site footer.
4. Add ALT text to your images.
5. Add some headlines to your text.  Make them bold or italic.
6. Check your spelling and grammar! You don't want to drive away clients who have come to your site because you have Enjoy your Vaction! on the top of one of your pages.
7. Submit sitemaps to Google and Yahoo.
8. Complete Google's site verification (make sure to choose the verify by META tag option!)
9. Update your about us page to list your specialities and where you've been recently. Show your clients why they want to book their vacation through you.
10. Create a new page to keep clients coming back.  Maybe a weekly specials page, or a tab for some of the various cruise line/vacation packagers weekly deals (Some ideas include: Royal Caribbean Sales Event, Celebrity Exciting Deals, Holland America Flash Fares, Norwegian Cruise Lines Weekly Deals, Carnival Spotlight, Silversea Luxury on Sale, Rockwell Weekly Deals, Pleasant Holidays Weekly Deals).