Tourism Internet Marketing U

Winning Awards, Cool Sites and More: Becoming a Host of Your Own Awards Gala

You can also create your own awards program to draw traffic to your site; however, this requires a considerable amount of work to maintain. Hosting awards may be a very appropriate strategy for a destination marketing organization or industry association.

The benefits of having your own awards program include having links back to your site from the awards placed on winners’ sites. Having links back to your site is important for search engine placement because of link popularity. If you are the host of the awards program, you control the text that takes people back to your site, so make sure you include your most important keywords to enhance your link relevancy score and to further improve your search engine ranking.

There are also great opportunities for permission and viral marketing.

In addition, having your own awards program provides you with “bragging rights” and the opportunity for press releases to announce your awards, which gain exposure for your web site and increase traffic. You need to work at it daily or weekly, so you must be committed to it.

Be sure there is a benefit from a marketing perspective before you design and develop your own awards program. You must also be prepared to conduct your own searches to find sites worthy or your award if the quality of sites being submitted to you is not up to your standards.

Working with awards and viral marketing can be tricky when just starting out. For more tips, advice, and expertise, pick up a copy of my book 101 Ways to Promote Your Tourism Business Web Site. I’ll show you just how easy the process can be.

-Written by Susan Sweeney