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Multiple Hostel Names and Domain Names

Internet Marketing

Dean Strautins started this discussion 15 years 5 months ago

NOTE: This thread is a continuation of this thread:
http://www.hostelmanagement.com/forums/hostel-booking-engine-apis-hostelworld-hostelbookers.html --Josh
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You could give your hostel a completely different name to list on Agent sites. Then the Agent can add value by exposing your hostel under a different name. But the name should be location orientated. Munich Train Station Hostel, City Central Hostel Berlin, Main Street Hostel New York, Hyde Park Hostel London, Pimlico Hostel London etc.

Then you will have the freedom to promote your own website for your hostel called the Rising Cock City Central Hostel etc etc.

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HostelOffice

15 years

Famous Hostels is another example of having your hostel promoted under another name that does not cause confusion to the guest.

If long time hostel managers created additional websites for the hostel they worked at then they could attract more bookings to the hostel they manage, they would have something of extra to deliver to a hostel they started to work at, and be able to add value to managers that take over when they retire by selling the website to them.

I should add that I am not writing theory. I am writing about what I have done and achieved for my hostels websites. I have at minimum two representations of my hostels on the first page of google and as much as five when using the 5 most common keyword combinations. There is usually just two other hostels with one direct website address on the first page of google and the remainder is occupied by agent sites. Some of my sites that do well might have one or two inbound links so there is no dilution with links and I have even let outbound links drop off from the main sites. 60% of my bookings come direct. If I did not give full allocation to agents then these hostels would surely gain a higher percentage of direct bookings.

One of these hostels is a 50 bed hostel saving 600 euros a month by gaining bookings direct and not losing 10% to agents. So for a 100 bed hostel it can be expected to increase profits by at least 15,000 euros a year by working on your website.

follow any SEO advice and make the effort to improve your website.It is not an argument about who is wrong or right. Josh certainly knows what he is writing about.It is not my core business. I just share what I know works and what other hostel owners and managers tell me that they want me to share with you.

Last week I activated a built up strategy for one domain name for a hostel and within a week it comes up in the middle on the first page of google.

I am not going to go on about this if there are people that just want to argue. What I have learnt I use to improve the websites of the hostels that use our software www.hosteoffice.com

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santa klaus

15 years

Famous Hostels is another example of having your hostel promoted under another name that does not cause confusion to the guest.

We have been a member of Famous Hostels and it DID cause confusion sometimes.

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Josh Hostels

15 years

There is no dilution, there is better representation. Each of my websites specialises for different search engines and different search terms. One website can not cover all bases. eg how do you cover plural searches, Country searches, City searches, tour searches?

I think that plurals, country, city and tours can all be targeted on one website. Ideally, one page should target one narrow set of keywords. Another page should target another narrow set of keywords. Once a basic website is online, the basic way to increase traffic is to add more pages of content and get inbound links.

If agents occupy 5 results on the first google page then I want to have at least 2 of my sites on the first google page no matter what search term is used.

If there are 50 hostels in a city and 5 spots are taken by the booking engines, there aren't enough spots in Google to go around for the rest of the hostels. If a hostel takes up more than their fair share of the Google results, competitors are going to say, "hostel X is spamming Google with multiple websites and it's not fair". That's what I mean about creating tension between competitors.

There is quite a bit tension when the booking engines do it too.

It might not be not pure black hat SEO [scroll down to "mirror sites"], but it's definitely "gray hat"*. I've seen one hostel site get banned in Yahoo for doing it, probably because it was reported by a competitor.

* "Black hat SEO" refers to techniques that go against search engine guidelines. "White hat SEO" refers to techniques that are in line with search engine guidelines. "Gray hat SEO" refers to shades in the middle.

I'm my opinion, a better way to get three listings in Google is to rank one site in the natural results, one in the Google Maps section at the top of the SERPs, and one in the sponsored results (AdWords). Competitors won't like it, but they won't consider it unfair.

The technique you're mentioning can work, but I think it's risky and there are downsides to it. There are ways to get the rankings and traffic without risking anything.

Famous Hostels is another example of having your hostel promoted under another name that does not cause confusion to the guest.

Famous Hostels has a central site for the network, but doesn't each hostel still only have one name?

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Scotch Argus

15 years

I am not going to go on about this if there are people that just want to argue.

If people disagree with you it might not be that they "just want to argue". They might want to air an opinion that is not the same as yours. Surely that is what a forum like this is about? The more people there are who are feel confident enough to post here - the better the forum will be.

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Josh Hostels

15 years

I am not going to go on about this if there are people that just want to argue

Sorry, I missed that sentence before somehow.

I'm not meaning to argue above -- just having a friendly debate.

I'm not saying you're wrong. I believe the method you mentioned can produce monetary results. I'm just adding my perspective on it. :)

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HostelOffice

15 years

If there are 50 hostels in a city and 5 spots are taken by the booking engines, there aren't enough spots in Google to go around for the rest of the hostels. If a hostel takes up more than their fair share of the Google results, competitors are going to say, "hostel X is spamming Google with multiple websites and it's not fair". That's what I mean about creating tension between competitors.

I have waited years to deploy this strategy. I have owned domain names that have city name and hostel and cityname with backpackers and not used them. But when a hostel opens using the cityname and hostel like berlinhostel then what do you do?

If an agent starts to use berlinhostel.com what do you do?

If a hostel from a city outside of berlin uses berlinhostel.com what do you do?

If a website that has little to do with hostels and is not even promoting business on the same continent uses berlinhostels.com then what do you do?

If you do not do something then someone else less relevant will. It is your duty as a hostel owner and manager to protect your patch so that travellers can find your hostel. To sit on your hands and let your business get hijacked in fear of confusing some first time users of the internet is not the way to service travellers interest.

Famous Hostels has a central site for the network, but doesn't each hostel still only have one name?

There is a company name that can have multiple businesses operating under multiple business names that each have multiple domain names for each of these businesses that each have multiple twitter, you tube names etc.

So if you like your brand of Camden Hostel and you think there is value in it then you need to do things to enable people to find Camden Hostel. Once they find Camden Hostel then they have a chance to become loyal customers.

You can pay add words or you can more permanently set up your online presence to include these words.

I am really avoiding spelling out an example. I think each person has their own unique understanding and values to add. For example I do not use twitter, facebook or myspace so I can not tell about value they have added. I think if you list your hostel on these multitude of mediums then that is causing dilution of your website and make things worse.

For example if you list on 10 agent sites before you have a strong website of your own then you are opening yourself up to have your hostel be stuck accepting bookings by agents only.

If there are 10 results in google and hostels get tense about this then why do they help their facebook account push off their website from this first page?

The technique you're mentioning can work, but I think it's risky and there are downsides to it. There are ways to get the rankings and traffic without risking anything.

I am not suggesting exact copies of your main site. Although agents do that and do not get trashed. But the risk can be with changing your site to keep up with technology. Making URL changes to your main site does trash it.

Why not just create a new site to move with trends and technology. Use a different domain name for the new site and keep the old site going. Then get the links to the new site. There are lots of new hostels opening all the time so there are plenty of linking opportunities.

It takes years to build up a good presence and many hostel owners have a collection of domain names they have been sitting on ready to put in to action. 'The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago' and conversely the best time to make your online business stronger was 2 years ago.

But with new additions to the online story like You Tube there are opportunities to get ahead of those that started 10 years ago. If you do not have an online plan for your business then you will not recognise an opportunity when it is in front of your eyes.

I could list a bunch of opportunites to get your hostel to the top of google but that would dilute the value we deliver to hostels that work with us. This thread is about booking engines and my whole point is that a supplier of a booking engine will provide real value to your hostel if they can also deliver solutions so more people book via your website. That's what we do www.hosteloffice.com and we have a bunch of excellent websites ready to link to your website/s.

We have not even started discussing how to capture the non traditiional hostel traveller. At the HW conference in Dublin 2 years ago they spoke of the economic downturn and how it will make it difficult to capture more guests. I walked out in the middle of the negative talk and spoke to Grainne and suggested that the downturn has mega opportunities for hostels and why is HW not telling us about their plan to capitalise on this for us all.

What are you as a hostel doing to capitalise on it and gain more travellers to hostels? HW submitted a new definition request to a dictionary for the name Hostel. That was a brilliant idea. Then Colm came out with his off the mark You Tube video on hostels that was a sideways step. I am sure he will come out with a better video. Ifhe doesn't then I will make one for us all that will kick arse.

do you think Tarantino did us favours to capture the USA market?

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Josh Hostels

15 years

I have waited years to deploy this strategy. I have owned domain names that have city name and hostel and cityname with backpackers and not used them. But when a hostel opens using the cityname and hostel like berlinhostel then what do you do?

If an agent starts to use berlinhostel.com what do you do?

If a hostel from a city outside of berlin uses berlinhostel.com what do you do?

In my opinion, do nothing :)
If your hostel isn't called "Berlin Hostel" then there's nothing to worry about. If your domain is "asdfjklwi.com" you can still rank for:

berlin hostel
berlin hostels
hostel berlin
hostels berlin
berlin backpackers
berlin youth hostel
and thousands more keywords

If a website that has little to do with hostels and is not even promoting business on the same continent uses berlinhostels.com then what do you do?

In that case they probably aren't getting much traffic for the hostel keywords. It looks like a domain squatter has parked "berlinhostel.com" and I don't think it significantly affects hostels in Berlin.

If you do not do something then someone else less relevant will.

If someone takes a domain with your brand in it then it's a problem. I don't see it as a major problem if other hostels use a generic term for their main website. Compete with a generic name by making a memorable brand name.

It is your duty as a hostel owner and manager to protect your patch so that travellers can find your hostel. To sit on your hands and let your business get hijacked in fear of confusing some first time users of the internet is not the way to service travellers interest.

I only see it as hijacking if they register your hostel name or trademark.

For example I do not use twitter, facebook or myspace so I can not tell about value they have added. I think if you list your hostel on these multitude of mediums then that is causing dilution of your website and make things worse.

Those social media sites are great link building and PR opportunities. As long as the hostel doesn't use duplicate text, any traffic the social media sites get is in addition to the hostel's own website.

For example if you list on 10 agent sites before you have a strong website of your own then you are opening yourself up to have your hostel be stuck accepting bookings by agents only.

As long as you don't copy/paste text from your own website onto the booking engine site (a common occurance) the booking engines won't outrank a hostel for its own business name. Just be sure to point links at the new website. There are many places to get links listed here and here.

If there are 10 results in google and hostels get tense about this then why do they help their facebook account push off their website from this first page?

Following a few basic SEO rules will prevent that. There is an SEO checklist in my my free ebook that will help prevent that from happening.

I am not suggesting exact copies of your main site. Although agents do that and do not get trashed.

It sounded like you were suggesting creating mirror sites -- duplicate websites that target different keywords with no significantly original content. That's the main point I disagree on. A couple of booking engines are doing it, but only one is successful with it. They registered the domains many years ago.

Many search engine techniques that were popular years ago are forbidden by search engines now. Many old sites that used what is now considered "black hat SEO" were grandfathered into the rankings.

Like I mentioned before, black hat SEO can work because search engines aren't able to automatically detect it. But if a competitor reports it and a human employee looks at it, all they have to do is push a button and the duplicate domain name is banned from the search engine forever.

One other factor in getting banned is AdWords. Booking engines pay thousands of dollars per day to Google for AdWords. If someone reported a booking engine, I suspect Google would turn a blind eye.

The German BMW website was banned from Google for black hat SEO in 2006. I believe the banning lasted just 4 days. If people search Google for the German BMW site and Google doesn't show their visitors the website, it makes people think that Google "can't find the website". I am guessing the bigger your site is and the more you pay for advertising, the better your chance of avoiding a ban.

Why not just create a new site to move with trends and technology. Use a different domain name for the new site and keep the old site going.

If the name of the hostel is changed, I would do one of two things:

redirect the old site to the new site in a search engine friendly way, or
put a note on the old site letting visitors know that the hostel has a new name. That way people will stop linking to the old site and point new links at the new site. The old site will gradually drop out of the top results, and the new site will see a corresponding benefit.

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HostelOffice

15 years

I think the differences in opinion are coming down to what impact it has on you. If increased profits for the hostel do not make a difference to income that goes in to your pocket then probably you are more likely to follow perceived rules and common thought.

But if you are motivated by increased profits like the agents are then you will fight fire with fire. What I propose that works, plus more I will not write here, is for those that have difficulty maintaining market share due to aggressive marketing by competition that drowns them out.

And before someone copies that sentence and suggests I am being aggressive if I am going to fight fire with fire, I will add that once we get to a position of strength we use that position to benefit all hostel owners and not shareholders.

But I will add that out of the hundred or so hostel websites I have seen and representation online in maybe 50 cities I do not see hostel managers do much conventional let alone what I suggest. The market is still wide open.

There are better ways to be a market leader than we see now how the agents abuse their position because they are motivated to please shareholders. If they did other value adding things that were not so profitable then they might not stimulate dissatisfaction and competition so readily.

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Josh Hostels

15 years

I think the differences in opinion are coming down to what impact it has on you. If increased profits for the hostel do not make a difference to income that goes in to your pocket then probably you are more likely to follow perceived rules and common thought.

All hostels are motivated by profit to some extent. I don't know anyone who willingly runs their business at a financial loss.

The idea behind HostelManagement.com is that hostels should work together and cooperate with each other in order to make the industry stronger. Even when a city becomes over-saturated with hostels, there are good hostels and there are bad hostels. I picture good hostels working together and bad hostels either getting it together or going out of business.

In my opinion, the biggest threat to hostels isn't the competing hostels -- it's "no backpackers in your city". Hostels should work together to make their city a great, friendly place to go hostelling.

I think that if a lot of hostels use multiple hostel names and mirror sites for a single business, it would have a negative impact on the hostel industry. Competitors generally don't consider it to be playing fair, and it confuses travelers too (including me).

But if you are motivated by increased profits like the agents are then you will fight fire with fire.

Better to fight fire with water :)

If it's getting out of control, it's possible to report competitors who are spamdexing (search engines consider mirror sites to be spam). All the search engines have spam reporting forms and teams of human quality control reviewers.
Build a strong website using a blog for keyword expansion and social media techniques for PR. There is no reason why even the smallest hostel can't be getting 500 to 1000 or more visitors per day and ranking for thousands of keywords. (step 1, step 2, step 3)
Build a recognizable brand name for the hostel. When someone says "hostel in Amsterdam" many people think "Flying Pig". When someone says "Corfu" many people think "Pink Palace", etc.
Make the hostel into a destination in itself where people will come back to the city/town just for the hostel.

What I'm talking about are mirror sites: "Hosting of multiple websites all with conceptually similar content but using different URLs."

I'm not referring to the hosting of identical websites under different domain names, which is a bad thing to do from an SEO perspective, but is only going to hurt the hostel that does it.

But I will add that out of the hundred or so hostel websites I have seen and representation online in maybe 50 cities I do not see hostel managers do much conventional let alone what I suggest. The market is still wide open.

I agree with you there. :)

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HostelOffice

15 years

All hostels are motivated by profit to some extent. I don't know anyone who willingly runs their business at a financial loss.

From all the hostels I have seen and met 99.9% do not make a basic effort to prevent loss of business. So they may not be running at a financial loss but they as good as all do not do the basics to gain the business they deserve.

What we have been discussing is way too far beyond anything most hostels have done already.

I was just in Budapest and met with a hostel owner that was going bankrupt. I pointed out why people could not book online from his website and offered him a lot of immediate help that would bring bookings within a week for next to no cost. Then he wanted to beat me down from my already low price of 700 euros for two hostels with software and SEO help for a year. I walked away because the work I would do for him to stop him going bankrupt was worth well over 10,000 euros and would save him from losing his property. Over summer I could have got his hostels to gain an income of at least 20,000 euros that now he will not see because he did not want to pay 700 euros! That was a one time offer.

Most hostels like to bleed money to some degree. I simply can not understand that mentality because it encourages competition and lower profits.

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