How To Find The Right Meta-Index For Your Tourism Business

April 3rd, 2008 Posted in Maximizing Promotion with Meta-Indexes

Since meta-indexes are web sites that list resources within a certain niche, it makes sense to target them for marketing your tourism business. All you have to do is search for meta-indexes within your niche.

That’s easy if you know how to do it, but surprisingly, not everyone does. It’s as simple as performing a search at one or more of the search engines online. Of course, to be most effective, you should search on more than one search engine.

When it comes to performing research on your niche, stick with the big search engines and directories:

  • Google
  • Yahoo!
  • MSN Live
  • Ask.com
  • AOL
  • DMOZ

Plus, try to find a find a travel or tourism-related directory, or two, as well.

To search through one of the search engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN Live, Ask.com), you should find the search box for that search engine and search for keywords related to tourism. Some of those would include:

  • Tourism
  • Travel
  • Sightseeing
  • Air Travel
  • Rail Travel
  • Road Trip
  • Tours
  • Guided Tours
  • Self-Guided Tours

Use keywords that are specific to what you do. For instance, if you are a tour guide for nature walk trails in the Appalachian Mountain Range then you might use “nature walk” or “nature walk trail” as keywords, but you wouldn’t use “air travel”. Also, use your keywords in conjunction with words like directories, or directory, guide, reference, list, index, etc.

Be sure to search more than one search engine. They all rank and index web sites differently so you might find a resource on Yahoo! that you don’t find on Google. And go beyond the first page of results as well. Scroll through the top 10 pages. Most of your competition won’t do that so you’ll have an advantage if you do.

AOL, it should be noted, is an aggregator, not a search engine. But it does have search features. An aggregator compiles results from several other sources. By using AOL, you’ll get the top results from Google, Yahoo!, MSN Live, and Ask.com. But I would still search those search engines as well.

When searching through a directory, like DMOZ or Yahoo! Directory, you’ll have to manually click through to the categories that are appropriate for your niche. Depending on the size and organization of the directory, there could be more than one directory category or subcategory that could list your web site. Some directories, like DMOZ, will only allow you to submit to one directory, however. So be sure that you choose the correct one if submitting your site. But when searching for meta-indexes in the directory, search several categories and subcategories because you never know which one someone else might choose as most appropriate for their site. You want to cover all of your meta-index bases.

Still curious about how to get to the top of the search engines? Why not try my Search Engine Optimization Training Program, and have all your questions answered at once.

-Written by Susan Sweeney 

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