Big news was announced last week – Yahoo Search is officially powered by Bing’s organic search results.

There have been clues that this would happen including evidence of testing throughout the summer, but now it’s official.

Bing!

There is also chatter that Yahoo’s paid-advertising platform will be powering Bing’s ads this fall.

It only makes sense that the both organic and paid ads would be driven by the same product…stay tuned!

The Owner Community blog over at HomeAway had a great article in their newsletter about 11 types of travelers that might rent vacation homes in the fall.

I’d argue that these tips aren’t ONLY for vacation rental managers; hotel and resort managers could hop on the bandwagon also.  Keep in mind, in many locations “Off-Season” is longer than “On-Season” in this economy; the lines between seasons are blurry.

Here are some tips for maximizing your fall, and the possibility of turning your “slower” season (between summer vacation and holiday getaways) to your busiest. The ideas here can be developed for nearly any location, although some do require Mother Nature’s help.  You can’t peep at leaves in Palm Springs!

1)  Leaf Peepers – This is big business in the Northeast, but some locations have great color but not a lot of recognition – get the word out if you’re a great destination for seeing the fall colors.

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I read a great article today over at StateOfSearch.com on optimizing images for search engine rankings.  It was put together nicely and a great resource for “how to” tips on making your images rank in Image and Universal search.

The tips aren’t all that different from what we’ve been saying for awhile now, validation is always nice, but putting all the tips together makes the underlying theme of image search apparent: ALWAYS use keywords where you can.

As with most things ranking – keywords are king – and should be chosen for images with as much thought as they are for the content on your page.  Start your image optimization with fresh keyword research.  I’d take this a step further and see if anyone is searching for your keyword AND image keywords appended together, such as {Keyword} + photo, photos, pictures, pic, pics, image, images, etc.

Once you’ve found your keywords, assign them to the images you have on your website.  You don’t want to overdo it – so maybe one or two keywords per image.  After you’ve assigned them – you can do this by listing the URLs and the photo descriptions in Excel – start optimizing the photos.

Here are the steps according to the comprehensive article cited above: (more…)

Getting a better ranking in Google Local  is always difficult.   The main reason is that it continues to be a “black box” that is hard to reverse engineer.  It often seems to irrationally rank one business over another.

Our favorite research resource is David Mihm’s Local Search Ranking Factors which has been updated in June of  2010.

In a nutshell, they survey a bunch of local search experts on what they think most important factors are.  They tally the results, and voila, you have an instant resource on what the true experts believe works and doesn’t work.

Here are their top 20 factors:

1. General Importance of Claiming Place Page / Local Listing
2. Business Address in City of Search
3. Associating Place Page with Proper Categories
4. Volume of Citations from Major Data Providers + IYP Portals
5. General Importance of Off-Page / Off-Listing Criteria
6. General Importance of Customer Reviews
7. Quality of Citations from Major Data Providers + IYP Portals
8. Product / Service Keyword in Place Page Business Title
9. Volume of Customer Reviews associated with Your Business
10. Quality of Unstructured Citations
11. Volume of Unstructured Citations
12. Proximity of Address to City Centroid
13. Customer Reviews Left on Third-Party Websites
14. Product / Service Keywords in Place Page Description
15. General Importance of On-Page Criteria
16. Quality of Inbound Links to Website
17. Velocity of Customer Reviews Associated with Your Business
18. Volume of MyMaps on which Your Business Is Included
19. Associating Photos with Your Place Page
20. Associating Local Area Code as Primary Place Page Phone Number

And here are the top negative factors that hurt you (the worst one is the last): (more…)

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.

Is it a just a game fad or a great loyalty marketing?

Some innovative marketers are turning to location based internet marketing and using it to track and reward their loyal patron’s visits to their establishment through a growing number of mobile resources.

There are a number of applications that provide information and/or allow users to “checkin” (register) their visits to almost any location based on GPS features in their mobile devices.  Some of the applications reward the user with awards and badges and sometimes the user can receive free or discounted rewards from participating establishments.

The number of users is growing but its usefulness is still controversial. (more…)

TripAdvisor is helping out hospitality businesses in the Gulf Coast that have been affected by the spill by offering a free business listing for 3 months.

This includes listings for both new and existing customers.

This offer is extended to owners and managers of hotels, vacation rentals, inns, and bed and breakfasts on the coastline and within 10 miles of the shore that have been impacted.

For more information, call TripAdvisor for Businesses at 866-322-5942 to inquire about your listing.