Anyone given this lot a go?

OTA = Online Travel Agency, which means those sites that sell the booking and take the payment for you.
Paul Carmel
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Anyone given this lot a go?

Post by Paul Carmel »

Hi,

Do any of you use this lot? It's the market coverage that makes me think I might give it a bash.


.holiday-home.com
Cheers
PC
Forrest Gump
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Post by Forrest Gump »

Hmm, you know what makes me a bit wary? They say they are no.1 on Google with the keyword 'holiday-home'. However, how many people put a hyphen between the key words when using Search Engines? I know I don't :?

I also just did a search for 'holiday-home' on Google and they didn't come up no.1 - I don't even think they were on the first page unless I accidently over looked the listing.
janskov
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Post by janskov »

on a search from Denmark they come up as number 1.
On a UK search - couldn't find them.
On a German search they were number 2
Strange.
Anyway - not many Danish and Germans would use that search term
Paul Carmel
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Post by Paul Carmel »

Hi Janskov,

If you search in German or Danish using words that they would use to search, forgetting their domain name how do they fair?
Cheers
PC
janskov
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Post by janskov »

on Google.de they come up as number 46 for a search on "ferienwohnung korsika".
For "ferienhäuser korsika" they are around number 30
This is not too bad since there is a lot of competition for those search terms

on Google.dk they are invisible for Danish search terms- but I think that Danish people would most likely search on English and "holiday home corsica" brings them up at number 6 - very good - I think. I will check them out for Croatia too.
Paul Carmel
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Post by Paul Carmel »

Well I have been looking for a replacement for VacationVillas, as we will drop that one this year ( expensive and no bookings) , and this one looks to be the winner.
Cheers
PC
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TravelPixel
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Post by TravelPixel »

Regarding the hyphen inbetween words this is actually good practice as google and other engines will treat the words as seperate entities...ie 'holiday' and 'home'

So when someone searches for the highly competitive 'holiday home' they are more likely to rank than if their URL was 'holidayhome' which is seen as one word. Most people will not search for 'holidayhome' unless they make a mistake.

Chances are this site will have to do some serious link/PR/marketing work to get anywhere near the top10 for such a popular phrase, hyphen or not.
petehols
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Post by petehols »

Hi Travelpixel

Really have to disagree with you on this the the hyphen will not make it stronger than the word running together. When the domain names first started there was no domain names with hyphens they were always all one word, then when the internet started to take off and more and more people were after domain names they decided to release the hypenated names. Now it is getting out of hand as you can now register double hypenated names like holiday--forum.com ( just an examle this is made up. So if there was any emphasis on any domain name it would have to be the ones that are all one word and this really has no effect on Google at all.

Pete
for worldwide holidays try www.lastminutevillaholiday.co.uk
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TravelPixel
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Post by TravelPixel »

Hi Pete,

You may well be right, but in my experience and from other web geeks ive talked to the hyphen does matter.

Whether it matters less in the root URL than in actual pages of the site perhaps is questionable, but this is the joy of being in SEO!

:D
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