Upcoming Search Marketing Workshops

October 4, 2012 by 1BlizzAdmin

Blizzard’s upcoming workshops that can help you market your website more effectively.

It would be great if you can attend any or all of these… if you cannot, order a video copy instead. We are selling a package of ALL 3 workshop for $499 and will record each workshop and deliver it to you via streaming video after the event. You can watch it at your leisure.

At VRMA 2012 Nationals in Phoenix (October 21st) we are hosting a 4-hour workshop that is All About Google Analytics. Learn how to use Google Analytics more effectively. I hope to see you there!

Are you looking for a more intensive learning experience? We are offering both a beginners and an advanced workshop in the next few months:

All About Google 2-day workshop will be in Glenwood Springs on November 12 and 13th. This is a great opportunity to sharpen up your SEO skills and understanding of the many opportunities Google offers your website.

Advanced Search Marketing Workshop is a 2-day workshop intensively focused on enhancing the performance of your website marketing efforts. January 21-22 in Glenwood Springs, CO.

Filed Under: Analytics, Breaking News, SEO Simplified

Timeline of TripAdvisor in the News for last 12 months

October 31, 2011 by 1BlizzAdmin

Read a summary timeline of TripAdvisor in the news during the last 12 months with links to articles with more details:

10/28/11 Hoteliers and restaurateurs anxious to sue TripAdvisor in the U.S. over travelers’ disparaging reviews may have to rethink their strategy following a legal decision involving Yelp. Read More

10/20/11 TripAdvisor gets sued for 10 million after naming hotel the “dirtiest hotel” in the country. The Grand Hotel, in Pigeon Forge, was ranked the dirtiest hotel in America and now its owner is going after TripAdvisor. Read More. Also read: Does TripAdvisor Play Dirty with Hotel Reviews? in USA Today.

10/20/11 TripAdvisor is seeking verification from a consumer after discovering a potentially false review. The Howarth House (a hotel in the UK) brought brought the review to TripAdvisors attention. Read More

10/4/11 Trip Advisor punishes hotel for writing its own reviews, and for writing a negative review of a competitors. The hotel now has the “red badge” on its listing at TripAdvisor and denies wirting fraudulent reviews. Read More

9/27/11 TripAdvisor now emphasizing Traveler photos (along with reviews). With over 8 million traveler’s photos on TripAdvisor, your guests can now shape public opinion of you not just by writing about your, but by also sharing photos. This is a natura; extension of TripAdvisor’s user-generated content. Read More

9/12/11 TripAdvisor waters down its trustworthiness when it removes “Reviews You Can Trust” and changes to “Reviews from our Community” Read More [Read more...]

Filed Under: Breaking News, Heard Here and There, Industry Spotlight, Industry Vendors, Web 2.0

How Does Your Website Rank in Google’s Quality Rating

October 21, 2011 by 1BlizzAdmin

Jennifer Ledbetter, the author of PotPieGirl.com shared a great blog post last week abut how Google makes its algorithm changes using human raters to rate search engine results.

In a nutshell, Google has an army of humans that guide their algorithm changes by examining the “quality” of websites. Those quality signals eventually become encapsulated into the mathematical algorithm and then roll out into the entire Google index. Your website goes up-or-down based upon your “quality footprint.” The possibility even exists that your site could go up or down as a result of a manual review, outside of an actual algorithm change.

Here is a short video from Google explaining:

Is this scary? We don’t think so. In fact, this really confirms what we have been teaching our clients for years: Focus on making your site the BEST site and your search results will follow.

The most fascinating element of her post is that she shared a “proprietary and confidential” 125 page document from Google that gives step-by-step instructions on how to do a “quality rating.” Unfortunately, Google asked her to remove that link. (you can find it probably by searching for it) Fortunately, we downloaded the document last week and will summarize the important bits for you. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Heard Here and There, SEO

Google Places May Be More Important Than You Think

October 6, 2011 by 1BlizzAdmin

A fascinating eye-tracking study was released by SEOMoz today that is worth paying attention to. The eye-tracking research shows how eyes moved through Google search results and posted several “heat maps” of the results. These results included Google Places and Google map data that is currently being “blended” into the search results by Google. The conclusions Blizzard draws for hotel and lodging websites are not new:

How you look when you do rank is very important. A lower ranking with a great looking search results can really deliver.
Because so many lodging related searches are “local searches”, your Google Places becomes increasing important because Google uses Google Places data to “enhance” a simple search result with red map icons and review info.

This is something we spoke about a few months ago when we got excited about how Google Places was giving individual hotel websites a big boost over Expedia and TripAdvisor in Google’s own search results. The bottom line is that lodging companies should work to improve the visual appeal of their search results. This will encourage the consumer to actually look and see your listing when he or she searches. Practically speaking, this means working to improve your presence in Google Places.

I encourage you to visit the SEOMoz post to look at more, but here is an example:

Filed Under: Heard Here and There, SEO, Travel Marketing

Google Not Allowing Businesses in Google+ Just Yet

July 21, 2011 by 1BlizzAdmin

They warned everyone, and now they’re enforcing that warning. Google+ community managers are now taking down business profiles built on the personal profile platform.

When the Beta of Google+ was released, Google asked users to NOT sign their businesses up at that time, as they were still working on the logistics and coding for the Business Profile pages.

It appears that ABC News Radio, LAUNCH and Boing Boing have all been removed, or have voluntarily taken down their Google+ profiles,” according to this article at Zoetica Media.

It looks like business pages are still a week or two out. We’ll keep you posted as we learn more.

Filed Under: Breaking News

Google Analytics Gets Past First Touch Attribution with Multi-Channel Funnels

May 17, 2011 by 1BlizzAdmin

Most online marketers use and love Google Analytics. We get excited by the numbers and spend hours figuring what is working and what is not. Google Analytics is continually improving and rolls out new features regularly. The next new feature it is rolling out is exciting; multi-touch attribution and multi-channel funnels.

“Huh?” you say? Here is the problem: Google gives “referral” credit to the most recent referrer… so if yesterday a visitor finds your site a link at your chamber of commerce, and then today returns after searching for you by your business name in Google, and then books a room in your hotel booking engine… Google’s brand name search gets ALL the credit (assuming you are one of the 35% or so that actually track referrers for online bookings… see our online marketing benchmarks yourself.).

This last-touch referral drives marketers crazy. Adding “first” touch referrals is nice… but there are often other channel involved. Enter Google’s new Multi Touch Funnels which will give us reports on how all the channels work together. You can read about it at Google or watch this video:

Or, this video: [Read more...]

Filed Under: Analytics, Breaking News

Hotel Calculator: Online Travel Agency Hidden Costs

February 23, 2011 by 1BlizzAdmin

Madigan Pratt & Associates have created an online calculator just for hotels:
The Hotel-OTA Hidden Cost Calculator

The average annual spends are pretty spectacular even with modest numbers.
The clear suggestion is that perhaps investing in online marketing would drive a higher ROI.

Filed Under: Heard Here and There, Toolbox