Finally developed my niche travel website (affiliate), would appreciate your reviews

[SpaceCityVirtual]

www.VisitSaintMartin.com

My goal was to build a site with a lot of content about Saint Martin so that it would rank higher in search engine results. It's a travel affiliate site and visitors can search for hotel, airfare, etc. which is linked to priceline.com. Commission is earned if the user purchases anything from priceline.com within 30 days of visiting.

Thoughts?

I'm having a very difficult time driving traffic to the site. I tried Google Adwords with a $5/day budget but all that buys me is a measely 2-4 visitors. I bought 5,000 "visitors" from a traffic wholesaler yet these visitors spend less than a second on the site. I contacted some blog owners but no one is interested in showcasing my site.

Any thoughts how I can drive valuable, targeted traffic to the site????

 

[DomainLeads.net]

Now I''ve read this post I would say probably one of the best things you can do is to be part of a community about Saint Martin. Talk in forums and maybey you can even do some advertisement on that kind of forums.

Try to get some decent reviews about Saint Martin on a subdomain on your site from people who have been to Saint martin. Reviews will attract more relevant leads to your site. Not easy but it is something to be busy with!

:kickass:

 

[DomainLeads.net]

Home About Us Site Map Contact Us © 2012 Company Name. All Rights Reserved

All little things help, don't they? The site itself looks good to me!
I am starting to think about a nice holliday to a sunny beach...

 

[enlytend]

Travel is one of the toughest areas to have success - especially as an affiliate. You're competing with the big guys, with Google themselves, other affiliates ...

From an SEO standpoint, you have lots of room for improvement:
- Get unique page titles on all your pages!!!
- Get relevant, but not spammy, alt attributes on all your images!!!
- Resolve your canonical issues - your site should resolve as either "www" or without, not both.
- Get UNIQUE content on the site - I don't just mean "uniquely worded" and "passes copyscape" - tell us something we don't know. That will drive long-tail traffic (which is what you need.) Go into more detail on the content you have.
- Get user generated content - let people rate or review beaches, restaurants, etc. This not only makes your site a useful resource, it will also help in keeping Google from flagging you as a "thin affiliate" - they're quick to put that label on travel affiliate sites, especially one-provider affiliate sites.
- Don't be afraid to link out to authority sites (like the nature reserve)

Skip the "buy thousands of visitors" crap - as you found out, total waste of money.

Adwords - how well do you know Adwords? People new to the product usually overspend and underperform because they bid on the wrong keywords and/or don't know how to structure campaigns. Try display network managed placements, try image ads ... Be very careful to send ads to a landing page which meets their quality guidelines re affiliates.
That said, keep in mind that in this niche you're competing with huge budgets and some of the top professionals.

Consider trying Bing. Still competitive, but worth a try.

Media buys on relevant sites.

Get involved in travel communities - not specifically about St. Martin, any place where people travelling to the Caribbean might look for information. Talk, participate, answer questions.

Do you know the island well? Guest blog on QUALITY sites. Sign up with HARO.

You have your work cut out for you - good luck!

 

[DU]

- Resolve your canonical issues - your site should resolve as either "www" or without, not both.

Why would you not want one to resolve?

Or are you saying 301 redirect?

I thought the canonical tag allowed you to soft redirect and was supported by the three big SEs.

Can you elaborate for idiot me?

Appreciate your post - love that you share

 

[enlytend]

Why would you not want one to resolve?

Or are you saying 301 redirect?

I thought the canonical tag allowed you to soft redirect and was supported by the three big SEs.

I meant 301 redirect. Google's comments on rel=canonical:

Is rel="canonical" a hint or a directive?
It's a hint that we honor strongly.

Which suggests that the 301 is a maybe little more foolproof.

Appreciate your post - love that you share

Thanks! (It's not like I'm giving away any big secrets - Most people don't read, or they aren't up for doing the work if they do!)

 

[vckc4ever]

you can also contact the Tourism industry in your area, and also try the traditional ways of advertising in local bulletins, classified sites, newsletters, newsgroups and not forgetting word of mouth.

do not forget to promote via social medias such as facebook, twitter, pinterest and instagram.