According to an article on ModernAgent.com, research released by the European Travel Commission finds that the number of travelers booking via hotels’ own websites increased by 33 percent in 2005 compared to 2004.
Elizabeth Malloy – Blizzard Internet Marketing, Inc.
To be successful in Search Engine Marketing (SEM), you must first drive qualified traffic to your travel website, then convert that traffic to meet your goal, whether it be fame, fortune or fulfillment. SEM can be incredibly complex, but don’t let that scare you. Remember, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Start simply, work methodically, and continually build upon your success. The more time and energy you can devote to the process, the more quickly you can expect to attain your goal. Oh, and some cash helps, too.
Looking for help to get started? Check out Shawn Campbell’s road map, “The A to Z Guide to Getting Website Traffic“.
I had a discussion recently with a co-worker about how newspaper and magazine writers were working to learn to write for the web. Not only are print articles seen on paper, they are generally put online. How do they make their articles become more popular on the Internet, where virtually unlimited information is available?
I saw an article this evening on the NY Times Website that addresses this question, from the writer’s perspective. Stepping gingerly into this new medium, newspaper and magazine reporters are slowly coming to realize that Google is king, and they have no choice but to write for the Web.
“Part of the craft of journalism for more than a century has been to think up clever titles and headlines, and Google comes along and says, ‘The heck with that,’ ” observed Ed Canale, vice president for strategy and new media at The Sacramento Bee.”
If you’re already working to optimize your website text for the search engines, well done. If you haven’t started yet, start working on strategies to make your travel destination visible on the web or you risk being left behind.
You may have heard the term “link–baiting” thrown out there in the online community – even in this newsletter. If you think about the term long enough, it sounds like it may be deceitful or corrupt. However, link-baiting is simply a link building technique that will hopefully result in building inbound links to your travel website.
Link baiting has been around basically since the invention of the internet. As you have probably learned over time, the amount of links, especially relevant ones, that point to a website is an indication of the site’s importance. Google’s own page rank algorithm uses these links to determine your “popularity”, and even Yahoo and MSN use links to differing degrees to quantify the importance of a site.
I am sitting at a hospitality industry conference right now down in Gulf Shores, Alabama. Gary Sain from YPB&R is doing a presentation about travel trends from their most recent research. Of special note:
Two places have grown in importance in terms of what consumers trust to base decision on:
64% of all travellers go online to research travel decisions.
You may remember from a couple of months ago that Blizzard Internet is assisting a charity website in a Search Engine Optimization contest. The contest involves trying to get a website to the first position in Google for the nonsense phrase, “V7NDotcom Elursrebmem”, which had no results in Google at the beginning of the competition. The contest still has one month to run. A number of things have been learned and proven so far in the V7ndotcom Elursrebmem contest.
Currently, the website is between the fourth and fifth position of the Google search engine response pages. This may not seem good, but it is a recovery for the webpage. The webpage experienced a phenomenon that has until recently, only been a theory. This theory has been dubbed “Google Bowling“.
With the release of TheLobby.com, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide aims to take advantage of the social internet, or Web 2.0. Intended to personalize the company and its properties, the blog posts articles from travel writers on a variety of subjects.
To read more about what TheLobby.com offers, see this article from eHotelier.com.
Elizabeth Malloy – Blizzard Internet Marketing, Inc.
