Content is your way to shine.

When writing the content for your listing, put yourself in your potential customer’s mind. What makes you special? Why should they book with you, visit or use your experience? What sets you apart from the crowd?

Always think about what will interest the visitor, not necessarily what information you think they want. Tell them what’s nearby and what there is to do in the area, as this will help your visitors plan their trips. For example, mention if you are a 5-minute walk to the lake, coast or village. Highlight walks from the door, or your proximity to a particular museum/attraction. Let visitors know if there’s a pub next door!

Tell the story of your business in an authentic and engaging way to attract customers – use creative language in your description to inspire and emphasise the unique appeal of your offer.

Don’t be afraid to provide as much content as possible; Google likes pages that have at least 300 words of content when ranking pages but pay special attention to the first 15 words or so, as these appear within the search results. Visitlakedistrict.com performs very well within a lot of key search terms, so it’s important to get your message across effectively.

Google doesn’t like duplicate content so please don’t just cut and paste the content from your own website or others that you have listings on line as it will affect your rankings.

This is your chance to really promote your business to thousands of potential visitors. Use your description to highlight what makes you stand out from the rest!

We cannot stress enough how important good images are. Research tells us that images sell and that decisions are made almost instantly based on the quality of images being displayed, so it’s important to get this right.

How many times have you clicked on a website, looked at the pictures and just moved on? Think really carefully about your lead image as this is the one that will show in searches and make potential visitors click on your business.

Membership gives you up to 20 images per item. Images need to be at least 1500px wide x 879px high. These may be quite large files so we suggest sending them to us by WeTransfer, Mailbigfile or similar.

Good photography is really important and used throughout your marketing so it may be worth investing in professional images; or perhaps you know a talented amateur or have a staff member keen on photography?

You can even ask your customers to send you their best shots from their visit; many will be pleased to support your business. Also, most smartphones now provide high quality cameras that make it even easier to achieve good results. The team is always happy to give some hints and tips: campaigns@cumbriatourism.org

If you are looking to update your photography, we have some supplier members who may be able to help: Click Here

We are now able to support direct integration with TripAdvisor ratings, Facebook, and Twitter on your Visitlakedistrict.com listings, and we recommend taking advantage of this!

Visitors are able to filter searches and pages on Visitlakedistrict.com by TripAdvisor ratings, and they can also see your reviews, so this is a great opportunity to help persuade visitors to book with or visit your business.

Additionally, visitors appreciate knowing that businesses are active and engaging on social media – research has shown that more and more visitors use social media for inspiration and decision making when planning trips.

We are also able to link to additional social media channels such as YouTube, TikTok, and Pinterest, so if you are interested in adding any of these connections to your listing, just let us know at website@cumbriatourism.org.

Our site’s SEO specialist has put together some hints and tips of how to maximise your listing on Visitlakedistrict.com below:

There are two types of search. A branded search and a non-branded search. What’s the difference?

Let us say for example you own Adam’s Breakfast Café. If people searched for “Adam’s Breakfast Café” then this would be classed as a branded search. If however people searched for “Cafes in Cumbria” then this would be a non-branded search.

How does Visitlakedistrict.com help your businesses with a branded search?

Your company should rank in position 1 with a search for your unique business name. Even with a branded search only 30% – 40% of traffic will click the Number one result.  20% to 30% will click position 2 and around 10% will click position 3.

Your company name should be in position 1. If you are not in position 1 register your business with Google My Business, make sure the site is secure with HTTPS, and make sure it has no glaring technical problems. If you still have problems, you may need an SEO expert to evaluate your site using Google search console.

You should then aim to get your product page on the Visitlakedistrict.com website into position 2. This will mean you now have 50% – 70% of traffic coming to your business. You can help this to happen by ensuring you have 300 – 500 words of original copy and at least 6 high quality images with descriptive unique alt text (email the web team if you are unsure what to do here). Your images can also include tables, maps or charts if they are relevant.

If you can also get a social media page into position 3 then you are dominating branded search for your company.

How does a Visitlakedistrict.com listing help your businesses with a non-branded search?

Non-branded search terms such as ‘hotels’, ‘restaurants’, ‘cafes’, and ‘attractions’ can be very difficult to rank for. These searches have far bigger search volumes than branded searches and this is where a DMO website like Visitlakedistrict.com is strongest. The DMO website can rank where the business cannot for huge amounts of potential traffic.

By contrast, not supplying enough quality content and images for your business listings on visitlakedistirct.com can have a negative overall effect on the site quality and search engine ranking. This affects all business and tourism in the region, so it’s important to take the time to check the content in your listing and keep it updated regularly. If you are unsure how to do this, please get in touch with the web team for advice.

So not only is it important for your web profile to be high quality for your own branded searches, it is also important for the DMO website and the region as a whole. A high quality site makes a much stronger site that ranks for high value keywords.

Working together, businesses and the DMO can maximise the web traffic coming to local organisations.