Donald Trump Trumped by Travel Sites With SEO

Donald Trump recently launched a travel site located at www.gotrump.com. Trump, like many new website owners, built a site without first considering the unique nature of online marketing and promotion. So where did Trump go wrong? From an SEO standpoint, little of the site is optimized, including title tags and pages. The tags currently in place are too long and don't conform to search engine standards. The site is geared toward those looking for a deal on airline tickets, car rental, last minute flights, hotels and more. Online travel industry sites such as these are highly competitive and require both an initial optimization effort and a PPC campaign.

Since the site is new, PPC advertising is crucial. Organic listings garnered from proper SEO techniques take time to produce. Still, organic listings are preferred over PPC by the majority of web surfers, so it's a bit of a surprise that the site is littered with subpar optimization efforts such as bolded keywords and other SEO strategies that haven't been valid since Mr. Trump woke up next to Ivana. Over time, organic rankings earned through proper SEO implementations will bring in more quality leads and lessen the reliance on paid listings. Every business should have a plan for effective marketing from the outset, and whoever drew up this plan should be the next one to hear the words, "You're fired".

A search for airline tickets yielded no PPC results for www.gotrump.com. Perhaps Mr Trump is relying on the popularity of "The Apprentice" or other forms of advertising to make the site a success. Still, considering the comparison shopping nature of most web surfers, one needs to advertise on the net to be a valid contender. Most people rely solely on PPC ads and organic listings to find the products or services they will purchase when shopping online. Suppose Mr Trump placed an ad for the site in each episode of "The Apprentice", which has an average weekly viewership of around 20 million. The last time I checked, that leaves well over 230 million Americans alone who would have no direct knowledge of the site even existing.

The purpose of this article is to teach people that anyone, even Donald Trump, can benefit from the use of SEO. This is why future web entrepreneurs need to be aware of the marketing avenues that are pertinent to the World Wide Web. All the money in the world won't help if you don't put it to good use. Avoid the aforementioned mistakes by incorporating an effective SEO strategy into your web based business. If you do so at the time the site is created, you will not only have a solid marketing plan but also save money by not having to implement SEO after the fact. Remember, just as in real estate, stocks, bonds and all business venues, the internet has an exclusive set of rules by which success and failure are governed. For a guy who has been successful in almost every type of business venture there is, there is little excuse for being ill prepared.

Joe is an SEO consultant. His SEO/SEM firm has helped many companies increase there organic placement. He also writes SEO articles and creates a weekly podcast on SEO. Check out the Mr SEO message board. Low prices on hosting and domain names see his sister site.