I live in Barnard Castle, a tourist town in England which got a lot of publicity nationally and internationally recently through a visit during covid lockdown by Dominic Cummings - the main government advisor. I am on the volunteer tourist group for Barnard Castle that also includes the mayor, headmaster, other councillors and hotel owners etc. I put together (pro bono) the tourist site for the town www.barnardcastle.org.uk that gets most of its traffic from www.thisisdurham.com - the county official tourism site. The site uses the town’s best photographers to show off the beauty and history of the town. I had to build the site quickly using adobe so there is no SEO, so our site is not ranked on google at all (still had 36,000 views in the last few months partially through wikipedia link).
I had hoped that I could add missing interesting historic sites in the town and link the official site to those reviews. Some existing links give very little interesting historical info - for example the county bridge had sieges floods, battles, illegal wedding ceremonies etc so adding to them and changing the url would help
Additionally we are soon getting free town WIFI for the town so I will be launching a free online history walk website showing over 260 photos of the town from the past, shown to the tourist where they were taken - a huge then and now spot the difference. Photos kindly supplied by various museums in the region. The site will also give great historical detail eg bull baiting cock fighting, ducking stool, gallows and so on along with blue plaque audio eg Charles Dickens visit. If anyone can tell me the best means to let tourists know about that free online tour on google too would be greatly appreciated.
Regards
Geoff
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Hi @GeoffBarnardCastle if you represent the places, you could claim and manage them via Google My Business https://business.google.com/ - I would make sure you use a dedicated account so when its time to move on you you can easily hand it to someone else.
As a Local Guide you can update Maps entries to add official websites. Note that you’ll need a page (or at least a unique URL) for each place you are adding to.
Paul
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Hi @GeoffBarnardCastle ,
Whilst the website looks great, the navigation is non existent. For example, to simply view the town map I would have to scroll to the very bottom of the incredibly long page. To be honest with you I’d remake the website, you’ve got lots of great content, so that’s 90% of the work done. To convert this in to a conventional website wouldn’t be much more than two days work. You would then have an SEO friendly website that Google will love because of the amount of keyword rich content. I know this isn’t the answer to your question, but it’s what I would do.
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Thanks Gary - the site was a quick fix online tourism booklet by me pro bono as I spotted the main traffic from the county tourism site was going to a dead link. We were not expecting huge media interest during covid. Unless someone else locally wants to do a replacement site with SEO that is it for the forseeable. No budget.
I have been off for a spine op, so have a backlog of paid work (I don’t normally do websites btw as you might gather). There is a second huge history walk site (with a lot better content to follow) also pro bono that took me a long time to research - so hit my free quota. Apart from trying to get more links, I need to concentrate on my paid projects. The site is getting c 500 views a day atm so the current site is better than the tourists seeing nothing.
Geoff
I understand Geoff, I’m not far from you in Stockton, I may be tempted to take this on as I feel it would be a nice addition to my portfolio. I’ve just started getting back in to web design after having a ‘long’ break due to health issues. I handed all my old clients off to other developers, so I’m starting slowly from scratch. I’m currently working on two projects but once they’re complete I may have free time if no other jobs come up. I’ve added you to my friends list here on connect and will send you a private message if and when I’m able to help out.