Bed & Breakfast Web Design & Other Online Resources for Innkeepers

We've compiled a list links a bed and breakfast proprietor may find useful when either searching for a web developer to design and market their site or creating their own. We've also included a few links that have nothing to do with websites, but useful nonetheless! We're constantly updating this section, so be sure to bookmark and check back often. If you have a link you would like us to consider adding, don't hesitate to contact us!

Bed and Breakfast Website Design Advice

Married to the wrong website? We found this article about a year ago. In our opinion, it succinctly and eloquently addresses the issue of having a poorly designed website for your bed and breakfast. Now, we're not that impressed with the example they use in the article...but the message is sound nonetheless!

The B&B Lady Drops Some knowledge about the Importance of Good Website Design Sometimes it's difficult to admit that our website is...well...not that attractive or effective. In this article, the B&B Lady, lays out the good, the bad, and the ugly of bed and breakfast website design. She makes some very good points. Enjoy the read!

Bed and Breakfast Website Design Advice
by Inngenious Call us crazy for linking to a fellow website design professional. But heck, credit should be given where credit is due. Steve Wirt, of Inngenious.com, has put together a series of essays for innkeepers interested in developing their own websites. We agree with 98% of what Steve has to say and encourage all you innkeepers out there to take a look!

Additional Innkeeper Resources

Words of Wisdom for Aspring Innkeepers About.com is always a fountain of information, and that's no different when it comes to innkeeper advice. There are loads of articles and an active forum for aspiring and seasoned innkeepers alike.

Attention Canadian Innkeepers Canada Bed and Breakfast Hosts is one of Canada's most active association of innkeepers. Their private, member-only advice (and venting) forum is always chock-full of information, tips, and recipes. The best part is that it is only $25 to join which includes a free listing on their online bed and breakfast directory.

Links Useful for Innkeepers The folks over at Inside Innkeeping have a very good collection of websites that are of interest to innkeepers. They've done a great job and we wanted to share!

Bed and Breakfast Web Design Tips

Lately, everybody's talking about search engine optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM). In brief, SEO has to do with how a website is built and SEM with how it is promoted. These are very loose definitions - but service our purpose for this discussion.

There's a ton of information out there about SEO and SEM. In an attempt to make things a bit less confusing, we pulled together some fast facts on the subject.

• SEO is the act of coding and wording the copy on a website in such a way that is ideal for search engines.
• SEM is the process by which one goes about marketing a website on the internet. For example, link building, pay-per-click advertising and monitoring, etc.
• The single most important aspect of SEM is getting other websites to link to yours. If your website is perfectly optimized (or SEO'd), but nobody is linking to you, the chances of ending up on the first few pages of Google or Yahoo! are very slim! Be aware, however, that Google has recently made changes to their "linking" policy. Make sure the person you are using for SEM is aware of these changes!
• Some SEO "experts" charge for submitting your site to thousands of search engines. This is a scam. It's simply not necessary to do that anymore. There are only a dozen or so search engines anyone should be concerned about.
• Some may disagree with us on this, but a large component of SEO/SEM has to do with how long a website has been up and active. Moreover, if your site is only crawled by search engine spiders every two months or so, it will take that long for any efforts to reveal themselves. Advice: if you are a new innkeeper, consider getting started on your website 6-12 months before you actually open.

The points above are only the "tip of the iceberg", but we hope it helps. If you have any SEO/SEM questions, don't hesitate to contact us...even if we're not developing your website. We're always happy to answer questions!