Each week, the buuteeq team scours the web for the latest news and trends in hospitality, marketing, and tech that hoteliers need to know about to be successful.

Here are the must-read articles you may have missed last week:

1) Google+ Redesign Looks a Lot Like Facebook, Pinterest

2) Top 5 Hotel SEO Mistakes

3) Social Media Strategies: Show, Don’t Tell

4) Writing Content For Responsive Design

5) Is Your Social Network a Puppy or a Dog?

6) Google Tests Hotel Search Campaign with Lots of Photos

7) How Long Does a Brand Last?

8) Mobile Payments Get Serious on Google as Wallet Evolves to Handle Travel

9) HotelTonight Launches A More Visual (And Less Review-y) Take On Hotel Reviews

Google’s search wizard Matt Cutts released a short video explaining the 5 most frequent SEO mistakes made by website owners and SEOs. Here they are, in order:

1) Failure to have a website, or making it invisible to Google robots. Some hoteliers have told me that having a directory listing, or a micro-site on a franchise or brand page, is enough. But clearly, Google wants to see a unique, individual web presence for each business, which means building a domain and building a hotel website for each property you own.

2) Not including the right words on the page. This is a great one, and simply means that you should write about what your guests are searching for. If your hotel is in Boca Raton, be sure to have articles about your hotel in Boca Raton Florida, and write articles on your website like “Top 10 Things to Do in Boca Raton, Florida”.

3) Link-building, instead of building compelling content and marketing your website. The philosophy behind this is that if you build your hotel’s reputation online, you’ll end up building quality links as a natural consequence. But if you focus solely on link-building, then you’ll miss an opportunity to build a reputation and online awareness for your hotel–and, you’ll likely attain low-quality links that could actually harm your website. In short, focus on people, not links.

4) Not thinking about the titles and descriptions of your important pages. These are the meta title and description tags that you can edit yourself using buuteeq’s Cloud DMS, if you’re a subscriber. One of the first places Google inspects on your website is your title tag, to see what your website is about, and then your description tag to offer a short, pithy, enticing description to users in their search engine. Write a meta title that accurately says what the page is about, and that includes the appropriate keywords you’re trying to rank for. (For example, “My Florida Hotel – Boutique Hotel in Boca Raton Florida” might be an appropriate meta title tag.) Even though Google doesn’t rank your website based on what it finds in your meta description, it still may choose to show users this description. This makes your description tag an unique opportunity to convince users in your own words to click on your website. Use it well!

5) Failure to use Google Webmaster Tools (WMT) and other webmaster resources. WMT is Google’s direct connection to you, as I explain in my guide to Webmaster Tools for hotels. It’s what they use to communicate with you when they’ve detected an unnatural link profile on your website, for example, or if they discover that your content has suddenly gone offline due to a webmaster outage. It can provide you or your webmaster with important info about how Google sees your website, so you can make the appropriate changes.

This list is a reminder to us all that, while we could spend days, weeks, or even months tweaking little things here and there, the major issues that impact our websites the most are obvious and relatively easy to fix. While it may be a fun hobby to research the inner-most workings of Google’s algorithm and making experimental changes to our websites to one-up competitors, our time is best spent elsewhere.

See the video below for Matt’s complete comments.

Top 5 SEO Mistakes

Each week, the buuteeq team scours the web for the latest news and trends in hospitality, marketing, and tech that hoteliers need to know about to be successful.

Here are the must-read articles you may have missed last week:

1) Snickers Catches Bad Spellers With Smart Google Ads

2) buuteeq Teams Up with Choice Hotels International

3) Back to basics – Four essentials for any mobile travel strategy

4) The 5 Rules to Pitching a Guest Blog

5) 10 Signs Your Old Marketing Tactics Aren’t Working

6) 18 Sweet Tips For Facebook Page Posts

7) U.S. hotels have given up on extra fees, raising room rates instead

8) TripAdvisor steps up process to include more genuine reviews of hotels

9) Industry first alert: Google teams up with Hilton brand DoubleTree for interactive YouTube channel

In this short video by Concur Technologies, buuteeq CEO and founder Forest Key explains the value of buuteeq.

Learn exactly what Forest set out to do when he founded buuteeq–to change and improve the user experience of travel, while simultaneously giving hoteliers back their direct bookings.

Forest starts at about 44 seconds in.

“We help independent hotels and chains directly market themselves, and connect to guests.”

Last night we were featured in Seattle’s local King 5 news, as a finalist in GeekWire’s 2013 awards for ‘Perk of the Year’. See the coverage below.

Trotamundo is the name of the employee perk we give to encourage travel and talk with hoteliers. buuteeq will help pay for an employee’s vacation, to anywhere in the world!

buuteeq is hiring! Learn more about our available positions on our jobs board.

► buuteeq Jobs Board

There was once a time when hotel marketing focused on brochures, newspaper listings, magazine ads, banners, and lots of printed paper. Things have changed, and print media is less effective at driving new bookings as it once was. Today, it can be hard for hoteliers to learn how to acquire new guests aside from turning on a flickering ‘vacancy’ light in the window.

This problem is exacerbated as guests move away from more traditional hospitality customer acquisition channels, in favor of more accessible digital channels. In this whitepaper, we will explore the primary acquisition channels used today by the most successful hoteliers and hotel marketers around the world.

►Download the Free Whitepaper

Today we announced a new teaming up between buuteeq and Choice Hotels!

We are now bringing property level websites and direct bookings to Choice franchisees across the United States. Choice’s wide-scale support of our platform confirms our mission to enable properties around the globe to connect directly with their guests. Every hotel deserves that direct connection. We are proud to be the industry trailblazer in providing innovative and cost-effective digital marketing technology for thousands of properties around the world.

Read the press release at ChoiceHotels.com.

Pilot Customer

The Sleep Inn & Suites in Colby, Kansas is one of the first Choice franchisees to start their digital marketing adventure with buuteeq. Visit www.sleepinncolby.com to see their new web presence in action, and enjoy a gallery of website screenshots below.

Buying a website is expensive, outdated, and even dangerous. Buying project based web services or static software is the way of the past, and is already being usurped by software as a service, which is cheaper, up-to-date, and more secure—simply more efficient.

Think of software subscriptions like your home utilities—a concept I covered to some extend in my previous article on utility computing. We shouldn’t make one-time purchases of software or web services for the same reason we don’t hire men with shovels to dig us wells. Purchasing water as a subscription from the water company is easier, cheaper, and faster—simply more efficient.

The marketing team here at buuteeq just finished directing this excellent infographic by the fine folks at Killer Infographics, exploring the journeys of hoteliers going the agency route compared to the SaaS route. I elaborated more on this after the jump.

Agencies vs. SaaS – Which Path Would You Pick?

Click on image to enlarge.

What is SaaS?

The old model of crafting a website, shipping it, and then moving on to the next thing, is long outdated. Software developers are also shying away from the ‘buy an upgrade’ method. Instead, they’re selling software as a subscription, and then offering updates to their clients for free, over time, as technology evolves. This method, called Software as a Service (SaaS), keeps software up-to-date and adapted to the day’s latest tech trends and necessary integrations—something traditional software can’t achieve without expensive, time-consuming software patches and upgrades.

Give me some context, please.

In the late 90s, I worked as a sales rep for Comp USA, a big box computer store that I believe is out of business today. Back then, half the store was dedicated to selling software in boxes. I remember when Internet Explorer 5 was released—our shelves were filled with the browser in boxes. You had to buy Internet browsers back then, a concept which is ridiculous today since they’re all free.

Anyway, take a look at the boxed software section the next time you’re in Best Buy. Pretty tiny, isn’t it? You’ll likely find a slew of hastily made video games, or useless productivity software made irrelevant by free Google Chrome apps. Anything substantial can be found online.

Instead of buying tax software in a box, people login to TaxAct online, which is already updated with the latest tax regulations in time for the next tax season. Instead of buying the latest boxed set of Blizzard games, many people download and install them from Battle.net. When the next update is available for, say, World of Warcraft, gamers automatically download upgrades for free the next time they log in, because they’re still paying for the subscription.

 

Recently, Adobe switched to the SaaS business model for their praised creative products. As a video editor and animator, I’ve been a huge fan of Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe After Effects since I started animating in 2005. My one gripe has always been that each year there was a new version of each product, introducing new functionality I would never enjoy unless I forked over $thousands for a complete upgrade. Last year, Adobe solved this problem by launching the Adobe Creative Cloud. For one monthly fee, I now have access to every product in the Creative Suite, always updated with the latest animating innovations, as long as I maintain my subscription. When asked to explain this radical business shift, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen quipped:

“Companies that simply try to preserve the status quo will fail.”

A Simple Subscription

Historically, hotels have been forced to pay tens of thousands of dollars for a new website. This steep cost has forced many hoteliers to pay for incremental upgrades, costing hundreds of dollars hourly, or to not update their website at all. I recently saw a hotel website urging viewers to install Internet Explorer 5, a 14 year old web browser, and then come back, because that’s the browser it was designed best to work in.

Instead, SaaS for hotel online marketing keeps up with technology so hoteliers don’t have to, upgrading their software and delivering it to their subscribers at no additional cost. This saves hoteliers time, money, and is far safer.

Simply, more efficient.

 

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Infographic Transcript

DON’T ROLL THE DICE ON YOUR DIGITAL MARKETING

Which path would you pick to get your dream site up on time and on budget?

Agency Avenue

• High hopes and lofty promises. Advance 1 space.
• Explain your vision. Advance 2 spaces.
• Waiting for response…
• WARNING: Fees ahead! Pay in full upfront, lose a turn.
• Inquire about mobile features. Pay extra, roll the dice.
• Ask for updates. Advance 1 space.
• Waiting for a response. Roll the dice.
• See first draft…but it’s a WordPress site. Lose 5 morale points, advance 1 space.
• Request changes. Pay out-of-scope fees, lose a turn.
• Waiting for changes. Roll doubles to receive them.
• See revisions… they’re not what you asked for. Lose 10 morale points, roll the dice.
• Clarify your vision, again. Pay out-of-scope fees, move back 1 space.
• Clarify your vision again. Move back 2 spaces.
• Clarify…seriously?! Lose patience, but push forward 1 space.
• Get email from new contact. Lose remaining morale, but tiptoe ahead 1 space.
• New contact asks for your vision again… Trudge ahead 1 space.
• Lose your investment, time, and sanity.

buuteeq Boulevard

• Your vision is understood! Advance 1 space.
• buuteeq’s full content management system means you avoid the development stage entirely. Advance 2 spaces.
• No development necessary.
• Preview your site; changes are quick and easy.
• Optimized for mobile devices.
• Live and lookin’ good! Advance 1 space.
• Break even in just 4 weeks. Advance 1 space. (This is the typical experience of a buuteeq customer).
• See clear analytics. Advance 1 space.
• 24/7 access to customer success team. Advance 1 space.
• buuteeq’s customer success team has a 95% satisfaction rating.
• Finished… time to celebrate! Morale and budget intact.

Hoteliers using buuteeq’s Cloud DMS see a 1-5% growth in unique visitors year over year.

Our site bounce rates are just 30-40% (compared to an industry average of 50-60%)

Subscription software platform updated 2 times monthly.

Hoteliers see a 1-2% minimum booking conversion increase with a buuteeq powered site.

You keep 100% of money made using our booking engine.

The path is clear: buuteeq is invested in your success, every step of the way.

We’re excited to introduce a new series on the buuteeq blog: Must-read Monday! Each week, the buuteeq team scours the web for the latest news and trends in hospitality, marketing, and tech that hoteliers need to know about to be successful.

Here are the must-read articles you may have missed last week:

1) WordPress is Nipping at Your Vertical: Restaurants, Weddings, and Now Hotels

2) How Do Colors Affect Purchases?

3) A Hotelier’s Guide to Google Webmaster Tools

4) Prepare Your Hotel for Penguin 2.0

5) Fewer Travelers Lug Laptops to Hotels, More Bring iPads

6) The 10 Most Clickable Twitter Headlines

7) Hotel Online Marketing Budget Disconnect: A Perpetual Case of Bringing a Knife to a Gunfight

8) Vacationing Americans Prefer Giving Up Booze Over Mobile Devices

9) 3-Step Guide to Google Hotel Finder

Google Hotel finder is an untested but intriguing new marketing channel. Already, online travel agencies are lining up to secure promoted advertisement slots for you hotel, decreasing you profits even further. It’s possible for hotels to work directly with Google to bid on their own property’s listing, but the process is complicated and potentially expensive. Is it even worth it?

In this guide we will explain Google Hotel Finder—how it works, how viable it is to gaining new guests, and what you need to do if you want to market on it directly.

Download the free eBook