How many monitors to you use in your workspace? I have 2, sometimes 3 when my laptop is open.

Everyone at Blizzard Internet uses at least 2 monitors and our developers have 3.  One employee told me that “you will pry my 2nd monitor from my cold dead hands before taking it away from me.” So, that pretty much sums up how they feel about it.

I HIGHLY recommend that you get your employees at least one more monitor because:

1. It will increase their productivity. I have seen research that productivity can be increased by anywhere between, 9-50%, that alone is worth the cost. I read this in Computer Weekly, the USA Today, and the New York Times.
2. It’s cheap. 24″ screens are now less than $300.
3. They will love (or at least like) you more. This will increase morale and increase productivity.

Check out my productive team:

Larry, the master of his own domain and master of coding, uses 3 monitors to rule the world.
Matt optimizes his productivity when optimizing websites using dual monitors.
Angelina Doglie is working as slow as molasses with her single monitor.

See more pictures of the Blizzard Internet Marketing Team being productive on on Flickr.

Now that you know the top 10 Site Map Do’s and Don’ts and the basics about site maps, we will answer a few questions that we often get about creation and size.

How many links SHOULD I have on my site map?
In our research, we have found that Google allows up to 50,000 URL’s on one site map!  But remember, the Google site map is not intended for human visitors but for the Googlebot that indexes your XML site map to see all of your pages.
For an HTML site map, usually fewer than 100 links is acceptable.  Any more than that Google considers to be a “link farm” and your site could be penalized.

How do you create a Site Map for a large site? (more…)

Blizzard Internet Marketing is excited to announce that we have officially moved our headquarters from the downtown area of Glenwood Springs to west Glenwood!

We shopped for the perfect place for a few years knowing that we wanted to stay in Glenwood Springs because it’s a central locale, our strong connections to the community, and the beautiful views.

Blizzard Internet purchased the office building previously occupied by the Bureau of Land Management who is now in a new building west of Glenwood. After a few touch ups, new carpet, and fresh paint, it is really starting to feel like home!

We had a huge garage sale in June to get rid of the extra stuff, including over 50 staplers (somehow they multiplied, we gave up trying to solve that mystery), and other things that a growing company accumulates after being in a location for almost a decade.

Like any move, this was not an easy process and it would not have been possible without a great leader to make it happen. Dolly Weber, our receptionist extraordinaire, headed up the gigantic project and made it as seamless as possible; she organized everything from the movers to the employees and the contractors, all with a smile on her face.

Blizzard Internet’s IT and Hosting Department also went above and beyond to assure that there was no down time. The minute our teams arrived to the new office we had internet access and were ready to rock.

So if you are driving on I-70 in the mountains Western Colorado, make sure to stop by and say hi. We are on the north side of the highway and now have a sign, so you can’t miss us!

Check out pictures of the new digs!

Here is a list of webinars we are planning for Spring 2009. Each of these webinars are targeted at hotels, vacation rental managers, and resorts.  The are free, just follow the links to sign up.

Measuring What Matters I:  How Do you Stack up Against your Online Competitors?

While monitoring a few top keywords phrases is a tempting yardstick, it doesn’t accurately measure your effectiveness against your competitors.  Learn about a set of metrics that offers a more sophisticated and accurate comparison.

April 8th, 2009 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM MDT

Measuring What Matters II:  Tracking Your Website’s Critical Drivers

While monitoring a few top keywords phrases is a tempting yardstick, it doesn’t accurately measure your websites effectiveness.  Learn about a new set of metrics that will predict the future success of your website.

April 14th, 2009 11:00 AM -12:00 PM MDT

Recession Buster Marketing for Lodging Properties

Tips, trips and strategies to help fill rooms during tough economic times.

April 22, 2009 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM MDT

Link Popularity and Page Rank – How they Work

The single greatest factor in your website’s overall presence in search engines is arguably links — the quantity, quality and context of your links can make or break your Google rankings. (and Yahoo and MSN if anyone cares).  Learn more about how link popularity, page rank and anchor text work.

May 6th, 2009 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM MDT

Online Reputation Management for Vacation Rentals

New opportunities and risks abound as reviews grow more ubiquitous in the Vacation rental world.   Learn how to start managing this area of growing importance

May 13th, 2009 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM MDT

Wordpress Blogs Whitepaper

Blizzard Internet Marketing, Inc., a search engine marketing company out of Glenwood Springs, Colorado, has released a new whitepaper: SEO for Wordpress Blogs – A Non-Techie’s Guide. The whitepaper instructs readers on the finer points of using Wordpress to futher the success of their weblogs in Organic Search Results.

Blogs, by their very nature, are search engine friendly and provide natural advantages in optimizing for the Search Engines.  More and more, SEOs agree that among blogging platforms, WordPress provides superior flexibility and more advanced options that enable administrators to customize their designs with specific components. By following simple tips and using recommended plug-ins, even those with limited technical skills can have an easy-to-use content management system that ranks well in the Search Engines.

SEO for Wordpress Blogs is authored by Carrie Hill and Mary Bowling.  The 15 page whitepaper is available for download at http://www.blizzardinternet.com/whitepapers/ (more…)

Congratulations to Carrie Hill who is our 2009 Employee of the Year!

Carrie is known around the office as a team player.  She is involved in SEO and  R&D and does a fantastic job representing Blizzard at SEO industry events.  Carrie provides awesome research to our whole office.  She is a forward thinker who can also bring it back to the basics.  As our SEO team leader she is a true expert and is passionate about her job.

Thanks Carrie!

Fine Print: Carrie was actually awarded the Blizzard Internet Employee of the Year award in January at our annual Blizzard Ski Day 2009.

Pretty nice numbers, huh?

We also had someone who experimented with taking brand bidding (bidding on brand name terms, even though the client already ranked in organic for them) on and off their pay-per click accounts. This client was a boutique hotel and was tested for several months. It would seem that bidding on your brand increases the ROI from PPC marketing:

Brand Bidding:

• Raised their click-thru-rates by over 100%
• Rasied their phonecalls from PPC visitors by over 500%
• Raised their “web events” by 1000%
• Decreased their cost-per-visitor by over 50%
• Increased their online revenue from PPC by over 300%
• Increased their overall online revenue by 30%

I wonder if this information on brand bidding will elicit some comments? 

Hopefully, many hoteliers and resort mgrs are reading this post saying “I don’t have this data” and are going to email me right now and ask if Blizzard can help revamp their pay-per-click marketing campaign!   Really, there are two question here: 1) can you even measure your benefits? 2)How do your metrics compare?

If you are spending a couple of  thousand dollars a month on PPC, you really should be sure you are maximizing the return on that investment.  My direct line at the office is 970-928-7875 xt. 101 if you would rather call.

Talk to you soon.