Reviews matter.
Hotel Enjoys Ginormous ROI from Reviews — Infographic
April 26, 2012 by
Best Practices of Mobile Website Usability in the Hospitality Industry
April 11, 2012 by
The key to ensuring a positive user experience for your guests on your hotel, resort or vacation rental mobile site is to simplify and streamline. Smart phone users are often on the go and are looking to quickly and easily complete their goal. Ask yourself, “What goals would my guests like to complete on my mobile site?” Is it to book a stay on the mobile site? Is it to call in to book a stay? Or is it simply to improve their stay by having easy access to relevant information?
More often than not the mobile user on a hospitality site is looking for your contact information. This could be a phone number to call for booking or other information, or this could be a physical address to use to navigate to your site. The number one rule for hospitality mobile sites:
- Have your address and phone number boldly displayed on every page of your mobile site and make sure it they are clickable!
Next, since this is not every mobile user’s goal, there are a few more important usability rules to follow. Whatever your guests are looking to accomplish, the first step is to make all goals easier to achieve by cutting down as much excess media and content as possible. Make sure you provide enough content to support your goals but don’t overload the site. Keep in mind while designing your mobile site: [Read more...]
Fixing High Bounce Rate Pages
February 21, 2012 by
Our Director of Search Strategies, Carrie Hill has been recognized by Blogworld for her article called “Two Simple Rules for Fixing High Bounce Rate Pages”. If you are experiencing a high bounce rate, click here for some good advice to help you turn that around. 
Now You Can Watch A Full-Day Marketing Seminar from Your Desk
October 20, 2011 by
On Sunday October 9th, Trent Blizzard presented a full day online marketing seminar. It was chock-full of timely and important marketing tips for travel marketers.
We are making the full video available on Monday October 31st. You can order it for the small investment of $50. It will be available “on-demand” so you can watch it at your desk and at your leisure.
Topics Included:
- Google +1 is a promising new feature from Google that is still being developed. Learn what it can do for you now and what strategies to implement in 2012 to achieve maximum benefit.
- Custom Facebook Apps and Tabs: A review of the nifty, convenient and seductive world of Facebook custom tabs. The real pros are using these to turn their Facebook page into a second website that can turn lookers into bookers. Bonus: Blizzard will give each attendee a free Facebook App. ($250 value)*
- Facebook Pay-Per-Click Marketing: Learn how to take advantage of Facebook’s PPC program to increase your ‘Likes’ and steal mind-share from your competitors.
- Top Facebook Tips: The top 10 tips for getting new fans and engaging with your current ones.
- Link Building is still going strong. Learn about recent changes and how Google uses links in its algorithm. Bonus: Blizzard will give you 10 great links that will drive qualified traffic ($250 value)*
- Website Load Time: Learn how your website’s speed… or slowness… is being factored into Google’s algorithm. Find out how to measure your speed, track it in Google Analytics, and what simple steps can improve it.
- Schema: Learn about the new coding directives that Google, Bing and Yahoo! rolled out in June, 2011 and how you can take advantage to help Google index your website.
- The Changing World of Online Reviews: Google has changed how they index your reviews and your strategies should change accordingly. Learn the best way to get more out of your current reviews and where to drive new reviews.
- Google Analytics: Learn about all of the changes and new features that have happened to Google Analytics in the last year that will help you to measure your growth and success.
- Email Marketing: Learn some easy tricks and discover a few powerful tools to capture more email addresses, and get more out of your existing email marketing efforts.
- Vacation Rental Marketing Benchmarks and Stats: Learn how your website compares to industry benchmarks using BlizzardTracker.
- Booking Engine Effectiveness: Increase your conversion rates by implementing 10 proven features.
- New Online Tools: Discover cool new tools to track your results, monitor your competitors, increase your effectiveness or just plain have fun.
- $50 to watch the video-on-demand at your leisure.
- The video is free for current Blizzard clients.
Advanced SEO Presentation
October 17, 2011 by
Trent Blizzard presented on “Advanced Search Engine Optimization” at the National Vacation Rental Manager Association conference last week. Here are the slides: Advanced SEO for Vacation Rentals
Watch the Video:
Integrate Your Google Webmaster Tool Data into Google Analytics
October 14, 2011 by
Connecting your Google Webmaster Tool account and your Google Analytics account provides better reports in your Google Analytics AND more convenience. This feature was released last week on the Google Webmaster Central Blog.
I especially like having the “Queries” report right in Google Analytics which shows how many impressions my website received in Google search results (by Query), the Click-Thru-Rate and the average ranking. Pretty Handy.
Here are the step-by-step instructions… with a caveat: you must be in the “new version” of Google Analytics, not the old. If your screens look different, you are in the old version. The login to the new version is at the very top of your page.
Here are the step-by-step instructions to integrate these two accounts:
1) Login to Google Analytics and click on the gear to the right of the reporting tabs:
Linkbuilding with Twitter
September 2, 2011 by
Rand Fishkin is arguably one of the smartest people in the industry, if not THE smartest. His Whiteboard Friday Videos always get my mind working overtime, although the execution sometimes doesn’t really follow.
Today’s whiteboard Friday is no different. I LOVE all of the ideas he has for using twitter to build links; I’m just not sure it’s realistic for someone who doesn’t have a dedicated link-baiter/link-builder on staff. I’d love to try some of these tactics out, so if you’re looking to invest in someone taking the time, give me a call :)
Twitter, to date, has been a bit disappointing on the “revenue generation” front, and it seems like interactions are a bit fleeting, while Facebook seems a more sustainable engagement platform.
Would love to hear your comments on Rand’s video below.
