Jeff+Monaco

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• SEO (on page)

o ON page SEO meta world, title most important, description important for what Google shows in search  There is too many different tags. If there is going to be more support then there needs to be less, and more relevant tags to “ECHOTRAILS”. The tags are not relevant, such as “Swiss Army Knife”. For more hits there needs to be less, and more effective keywords for the search engines, such as: “English-speaking guided tours, Luzern Switzerland Hiking”. In the description it should be shorter and potentially not include “English speaking natives”. To me it is assumed that the guide speaks English. o H1 and H2 text  The H1 text “welcome to EchoTrails” seems to be a bit unnecessary. The visitor already knows where they are, and clicked on the site because they wanted to learn more information and not beat around the bush. Also, there is little informative facts in the H2 section. There is no indication of availability, price, selection, rather just gives general information that most likely pertains to every Switzerland guided tour. o Off page- link  A good off-page link that I had trouble finding was ECHOTRAILS location on Google map. There must be a head office to purchase tickets and meet with the tour before it starts. It would be a great link to find the tour that has a departure location near where the tourist is staying. Some customers probably won’t have means of transportation and need to know where they are. On Facebook I couldn’t find any relevant page for EchoTrails, if there isn’t one, there should be and it could have links on the actual website to get the first few members or followers of the page. Also, companies like trip advisor have links to recommended tours, or pages such as the following that recommend tourists to their trusted tour companies: http://www.zuerich.com/en/Visitor/tours.html

Competitor Analysis from similar companies in Canada

Similar offerings from home: The Canadian Rockies are one of the highest tourism locations in Canada. The on the next page is an example of a player in the tourism industry that concerns traveling within the mountains. This is an example of a Facebook page that EchoTrails should implement. Having such a page is a great way from potential patrons, young people especially, to discover the availability of a potential walking tours. All it takes is for one person to like the page and there will be a spider-like effect as more and more people discover the company through their friends.

This particular company that I found (http://bigbus.ca/home/) has a small number of keywords, and was one of the top searches when I typed in “Vancouver Tours”. They only had a few keywords that obviously were effective. All the keywords also pertained to what the site had to offer, and didn’t use any misleading keywords such as “Swiss Army knife”.

• Pay-per click • Pay per click ads are effective. For example, as seen in the image below (user viewing tendencies), showing that Google ads can’t help but be noticed. For a company using Google ads, it gives customers the impression that the companies that are shown right at the top of Google are reliable. Also, some people may not even realize that the top choices are ads; resulting in, an undeniable advantage. Everyone uses Google, and tourists love guided tours, therefore, having your site easily accessible alongside a highly reputable company such as Google would offer a serious advantage over your competitors.

An example Of a competitor back home using British Columbia would be the following. When you type in “Rocky mountain Tours” the following Ads come up.

For echo trails, they’re using meta tags that will not get clicks. Using Google ads, if someone were to research Swiss walking tours they could at least capture some of the market online because their name will actually show up.

• Social media o Nowhere on the site is there any indication the usage of social media. Almost every site online has a “share button” that gives you several options of an outlet to do so. It is not a difficult strategy, and offers many benefits. For example, a patron could notice a limited time offer or low price on the EchoTrails website, and share it on Facebook. As a result, that one person shares the same information with potentially hundreds of friends. Also, the advertising is more effective as it is coming from a friend who recommends it; instead of a random annoying ad placement online.

Using the same competitor as before travel site as before, I found That the following company offers several outlets of social media. Most importantly, Facebook and twitter. Using the little media links below the information, a person is able to use these portals to access the media from a different outlet. After these media outlets would be created for EchoTrails, there needs to be links like the example below. Using these things there is endless possibilities to how many different links could be posted all over the internet.