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.

Trent Blizzard is teaming up with the Horry-Georgetown Technical College to teach a seminar about Google: “Using Google to Market your Business”

Attendees will learn powerful tips, tools and tactics for search engine success.   The hands-on full day workshop is focused on the hospitality industry in general, and the hotels, resort and property manager segments in particular.  HGTC offers 6 Continuing Education Units.

This Google workshop is limited to 20 people and is expected to sell out.  Attendees should bring a laptop.  Sign Up Here

Attendees will learn:

• Industry research about search engines
• How Google works
• Tools for keyword research
• How to optimize their website
• How to build powerful referral links
• Tools for tracking results
• Tools for spying on your competitors

Details

• Where: Myrtle Beach, SC
• When: Wednesday, March 11, 2009,  8:30 -4:30
• Where: HGTC Conference & Business Center
• Cost: $199 per person   (more…)
  

Congratulations to three of Blizzard’s recent award winners:

February Employee of the Month (MVP)

Cristin Oldenburg

Blizzard Excellence Award:

Greg Chavez

Customer Service Award

Anna Kaiser

Thanks Anns, Greg and Cristin for all of your hard work and professionalism!

Winter Park, CO - February 16, 2009

Vacations Inc, of Winter Park, Colorado continues to add vacation rental properties to their inventory as home owners are drawn to strong internet marketing and better search engine ranking.

As the present economy has greatly affected the progress of many companies across the country and globe, some are navigating these troubled waters thanks, in part, to strong online marketing efforts.  Vacations Inc, a vacation rental management company in Winter Park, Colorado has placed internet marketing at the top of their marketing mix for the past several years, and their inventory is growing because of it.  Vacations Inc manager Brian Lence recognizes their success in this crucial area.  “Owners are gravitating towards us because of our strong internet presence,” he writes.

Vacations Inc has been a client and partner of Blizzard Internet Marketing for the past 5 years, relying on them for website design, Search Engine Optimization, and web marketing.  Since 2005, they have benefited from a 58% increase in annual website visitors, and search queries in Google find Vacations Inc ranking in position:
(more…)