Author: Dr. Manus Ward │Head of Digital Strategy and Data Protection │Hotelconsultant.com is a qualified and experienced former hotel manager, culinary Olympic team manager and hospitality Head of School who is passionate about passing on the knowledge he gained from one of the few hotel digital strategy doctorates in the world to you the hotelier. Bonus: If you have any problems with this contact me (100% free) at manus@hotelconsultant.com or 086 8185829 on this or any aspect of your hotel’s digital strategy.
Why do we need to do this
Google allows you to “nofollow” links if you do not want to be associated with that site but for whatever reason you feel you must have a link on your site. Do not “nofollow” everything as you lose out on links to quality sites.
What does this means
Links from other sites are a major part of how Google ranks your site in searches. The more links a website has pointing to it, the higher it will be ranked in search results, thus you will receive many requests for links. Hotels will have links to various other attractions and activities on their site. Google may penalise your hotel if you link to spam or low quality sites from your hotel’s website. If your hotel has links that you do not vouch for or that somebody paid you for, you should use the nofollow attribute.
Currently there is no advantage to your site if you “nofollow” a link but there is a disadvantage to the site that you “nofollow” as Google count it as not being a link thus they gain no rankings boost from the link.
What do I do: Google expects links to be natural i.e. there should be a mixture of “dofollow” and “nofollow” on your site. If you “nofollow” every link from your site this looks unnatural and while not a penalty right now Google have publically neutralised the positive effect of “nofollow”. Do not ever “nofollow” your own site, it sends the wrong signals to Google.
How do I “nofollow” a link: Use this line of code. Purple is the page you want to link to and red is the text you want to appear on your website.
<a href=”http://www.examplehotel.com” rel=”nofollow”>Stay in our hotel</a>
How do I follow a link: Use this line of code. Purple is the page you want to link to and red is the text you want to appear on your website.
<a href=”http://www.examplehotel.com“>Stay in our hotel</a>
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