Factors of visibility for listings

How to create products that perform well on Visitnorway.com

In this article, you find all the information you need to boost your listings' visibility on Visitnorway.com. We have also included some tips on how to increase conversions and make use of all available features.

1 How to create products that perform well on Visitnorway.com
2 Required fields
- 2.1 Primary category:
- 2.2 Images:
  - 2.2.1 Main image
  - 2.2.2 Other images
- 2.3 Name:
- 2.4 Short & Description:
  - 2.4.1 Short
  - 2.4.2 Description
- 2.5 Coordinates:
3 Give your product  a better ranking
- 3.1 Contact information
- 3.2 TripAdvisor
- 3.3 Prices and opening hours
  - 3.3.1 Categories
  - 3.3.2 Call to Action
  - 3.3.3 TripAdvisor
  - 3.3.4 Prices and opening hours
4 Avoid duplicates at all costs! 
5 Language versions 
6 Template listings

We recommend that you update your listing a few times per year, for example for each season. This will improve your ranking and make the listing more visible to potential customers.

To add a new product, you can use our step-by-step guide on creating products in TellUs.

For both points below (‘Must have' info’ and ‘Give your product a better ranking’), you need to take a few elements into account. Click on Read more to show more info about each element.

Required fields

The five elements below are mandatory for every listing. Without these, the listing will not be visible on Visit Norway.

Check out the additional tips for each field for tips on how to improve your ranking.

Primary category:

Pick 1 primary category that is most relevant to your product or service

The primary category allows us to publish the listing on relevant pages, where the user might expect the product. For a good user experience, consider carefully which category to pick as your primary.

There are 12 primary categories on Visit Norway. Pick the one that suits your product most:

Attraction & Culture
Family Fun
Getting Here & Around
Hotels & More
Meeting Organizers
Meeting Venues
Recreation & Sports
Shopping
Taste Norway
The Great Outdoors
Tourist Information
Tours & Sightseeing

If you offer different products or services, you should create separate listings for each of these products.

Example: You want to promote your hotel on Visitnorway, but you also have a hotel restaurant that is open to the public. In this case, you should create two separate listings: one for the hotel and one for the restaurant, bearing in mind best practices for the primary category, image, title, and description. In the description you can mention the relation between the two products.

Never create two listings for the same product. This will be punished by Google and by the Visit Norway algorithm and will impact your ranking negatively.

Images:

The image is the first thing that catches the user’s attention and it will influence how they feel about your product. Pick your image carefully to attract as many clients as possible.

You need one unique, high-resolution image in landscape format for each listing.
If you use more than one image, try to avoid any that are used in other listings on Visit Norway.
You can also add a video as one of your images, but not as the main image

Main image

The main image is the first image you upload.

It is important to have a unique image for every listing - do not use the same image as the main image on more than one listing. The algorithm will find out if the same image appears as the main image multiple times and punish this behaviour by making the listing less visible.

The previews throughout Visitnorway are standardised and therefore the preview image needs to be suitable for these standards.

The format of the main image should be landscape/horizontal (the image should be twice as wide as it is high, 2:1 aspect ratio)
The subject of the main image should be clear, even in smaller formats
Be sure to use a high-resolution picture
No text or other graphic elements
Make sure to comply with copyright regulations. Give credit to whom credit is due.
To improve accessibility and SEO, give your image an alt text.

Other images

Each listing can have several images in a slideshow. Some tips:

Don’t go overboard and use too many images – quality is better than quantity
Use high-quality images that are not too heavy (aim for images below 5 MB)
Landscape format is recommended, but portrait is also possible
Try to avoid images that are used in other listings
Select pictures that are relevant to the product you’re offering
Include some variation in your choice, to give the user a more complete overview of what the listing is about
You can also add a video to the slideshow, but it can’t be used as the main image.

Name:

Stick to a maximum 50 characters (including spaces)
Only capitalise the first letter of any proper names (city, country, brand…)
Make sure that the name is unique and specific. It’s important to avoid using the same name as another listing on Visit Norway

Aim for a name that is as descriptive as possible, within the format specified above. Try to make it clear and interesting for the users.

Only add a language version of a name if you also have a description in the same language - otherwise, the algorithm will give it less visibility.

Short & Description:

The field Short (introduction/preview text) should be 200-250 characters including spaces. Use it to spark the users' interest.
For the description field, aim for at least 1,000 characters (including spaces).

Short

The field Short contains the introduction, which is shown in bold in all listings. Some of the text you put there will also be visible in listing previews. This part needs to be concise and to the point – think of it as a summary of the product description.

Make sure it is not a straight copy/paste job from another listing page's intro text – this will be noticed by the algorithm and punished accordingly.

Also be sure not to copy and paste the first sentence or sentences from the description as it will show twice on the listing page.

Description

In the description, you should provide clear, concise and useful information about the product. Make sure that the introduction (the text in the field Short) does not appear again in the description.

Make sure that the description is in the correct language – the algorithm will detect if the language is wrong and punish the visibility of the listing.

Coordinates:

The geographic coordinates are required for your listing. Without coordinates, your listing will not be visible so be sure to add them.

To get your coordinates, simply click on the little map icon next to the fields Latitude and Longitude. A map opens and you can pick the right location and save.
For tours that don’t start at your office, add the coordinates of the meeting place. This might save some confusion for the user.
If you know your coordinates already, you can insert them directly in the Latitude and Longitude fields.

An alternative way to find the coordinates is via Google Maps. Follow the steps below:

Open Google Maps.
Right-click the place or area on the map where your product is situated.
Select “What's here?”
A screen appears at the bottom of the screen with the latitude and longitude.

Give your product  a better ranking

The following fields are not required but will improve the quality and visibility of your listing. This will give you a better chance to get a high-ranked position on Visit Norway, which will bring more potential clients to your listing.

Contact information

Include contact details so that people can get in touch with you
This can be a button, booking link, email address, or phone number
If your product has a Facebook fan page, you can add it to the summary

TripAdvisor

Link only one TripAdvisor ID per Visit Norway listing.
Make sure both your rating and reviews are shown on your listing. This will attract more customers.
When doing this, make sure you read our guidelines in the Read more dropdown menu below.

Prices and opening hours

Adding this information in the dedicated fields (and not in the description field) is good practice for usability and will improve your ranking.

Avoid duplicates at all costs! 

Before creating your listing, check if there is an existing listing for your product already. If so, update your existing listing instead of creating a new one.

Every listing on Visit Norway should have:

A unique title
A unique main image

Reusing a title or main image will be punished by the algorithm and lower your ranking. The reason behind this is that only the title and the image are displayed in most previews. Seeing the same image twice on the same page (or reading the same intro twice on the same page) drastically lowers the users' impression of content quality. The rest of the information on the listing should ideally also be unique.

Language versions 

Visit Norway is published in 11 languages, and you can also create language versions of your listing.

All listings should have an English and a Norwegian version, but you can create language versions for the other markets as well. When there is no language version for a specific listing, the system automatically shows the English version of the listing (with the exception of the Swedish and Danish versions of Visit Norway, which defaults to the Norwegian version of the listing).

To meet the needs of your users in different countries, and to increase visibility, it is valuable to have relevant language versions of your listings.

If you decide to create language versions, it is important that you use the right language.