SEO 101: For a Bed and Breakfast a Committed Ethical SEO Professional is Your Best Choice

"If you build it, they will come." does not work with web sites. The largest amount of money that an innkeeper will invest in their internet marketing budget will be for SEO, not the design of their web site. SEO means search engine optimization. This involves a number of activities from proper design of your web site, directory/link building, and other internet promotion. A SEO professional will help determine whether "best practices" have been followed in the design of your web site, develop a plan for promoting your web site, and overall work to increase the performance of your web site.

Ethical SEO Professionals

We all expect results however a SEO can never guarantee results. If they say they can they are either lieing or engaging in unethical practices which will eventually get your web site punished or in some cases, even banned from the Google search engine. Some SEO's will only engage in practices which are considered "white hat" (a cowboy metaphor indicating a good guy) and never engage in "black hat" practices. There are some "grey hat" areas of web site design and promotion, however these are generally best avoided since in time what was once considered "grey hat" can become a "black hat" practice.

Do SEO's Need to Understand the B&B Industry?

No, the best SEO practices are general principles that are not specific to one industry. A good SEO can work for any industry and will be able to determine the best keywords, web design, and promotion for a B&B innkeeper. You want the best SEO, not one who says that they are an expert in the B&B industry, but a mediocre SEO. Anyone can hang a sign out calling themselves a SEO, just as anyone can hang out a sign and call themselves an innkeeper. To excel at an industry takes time and talent.

Some SEO Professionals With Time and Talent

Doug Heil of Ihelpyou Inc.
Considered one of the top ethical experts. According to Wikipedia, Doug Heil is an outspoken advocate of strict white hat SEO and has helped clean up the SEO industry of questionable practices.

MOR Designs offers full service web design and ethical SEO sevices out of Orange County CA. This businesses focus is on small business with a complete and affordable solution to today's complicated Internet.

Andrew Henan does not provide full SEO services, however for $50 USD he will help diagnose problems with a web site that has developed troubles. He calls this problem Sick Site Syndrome: A combination of benign signs and symptoms that - taken together - damages a site's relationship with the search engines.