The “New” SEO – SMX Advanced Seattle Takeaways

June 22, 2011 by 1BlizzAdmin

My recent trip to SMX Advanced provided my brain with an overflowing basket of new ideas, concepts and procedures to process and bring to our clients.

I love these conferences, not just for the sessions that are taught, but for the ability to network with my SEO-industry friends and bounce ideas off of each of them. We collaborate on ideas and come up with some awesome thoughts for helping our clients succeed in their online markets.

This SMX Advanced in Seattle was info-packed for sure. I certainly cannot provide all of the details in one blog post, but I wanted to share information from the best SEO session of the conference.

First, the New Periodic Table of SEO Ranking Factors – a daunting chart of colors and initials that made me cringe at first. Luckily, a little known fact, here – I was a chemistry GEEK in high school. I couldn’t do math to save my soul, but give me a chemical equation and I was in hog heaven, I LOVED them…..weird, I know.

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Filed Under: SEM, SEO, Words of Wisdom

How Much Content Should I Have on My Homepage – Matt Cutts Weighs In

June 8, 2011 by 1BlizzAdmin

For those of you who don’t know, Matt Cutts is the head of the Web Spam team at Google, and does a lot of liaison work with the Webmaster/SEO community. He’s definitely worth listening to when it comes to deciding what will and will not work in Google.

Today’s video from Matt goes over how much content you should have on your homepage. He says “I wouldn’t have 20MB of content -that’s too much.” He goes on to say that the content on your homepage is how Googlebot determines what your page is about, and then determines what keywords you’ll rank for. This is especially vital for those that might have split homepages or landing pages….Vacation Rental & Real Estate – or messages about activities conflicting with your homepage content and calls to action about what your business does to make money.

Check out the video below and do a word and theme check on your homepage, what do you think? Too much or too little?

Filed Under: How To: Tips & Tools, SEO

How Google Works Infographic

January 2, 2011 by 1BlizzAdmin

Thanks from the Pay Per Click Blog for this Infographic about How Google Works in Gory Detail:

Infographic by the Pay Per Click Blog

Filed Under: Infographic, SEO

TripAdvisor and Google Places Changes Good News for Lodging Businesses

December 21, 2010 by 1BlizzAdmin

Back in November we reported that the change in Google Search Results is GREAT news for lodging businesses because it emphasizes the business’s website over the giant lodging directory.

This good news would be bad news for those giant directories like VRBO.com or TripAdvisor.

As a followup, in December, TripAdvisor acknowledged that its traffic from Google dropped by more than 10% since Google made the changes to its search results that emphasized the Google Places content. Curiously, this came on the heels of an October claim that “TripAdvisor benefits from Google’s new Place Search feature” which clearly proved to be mistaken.

We think the individual lodging websites are the ones that took that 10% back from TripAdvisor.

Meanwhile, TripAdvisor had pulled its reviews from Google Places. It used to be that TripAdvisor dominated the reviews at Google Places… now websites like Hotels.com, Yelp, Travel.Yahoo.com, Travelpost, etc. are more important for reviews.

This is probably pretty good news for most hotels and lodging operations for two reasons:

Many hotels had problems with TripAdvisor reviews and rankings and TripAdvisor DOMINATES the spots. By removing TripAdvisor reviews from Google Places, hotel operators have a bit of a clean slate.
Many hotels have been gaming TripAdvisor, but ignoring the multitude of other review spots. Now those other review locations will have a little more importance.

If you currently dominate TripAdvisor in your market… this is all BAD news!

Filed Under: Industry Spotlight, Marketing Musts, SEO, SEO Simplified

Develop Your Search Marketing and Google Expertise in Colorado

September 22, 2010 by 1BlizzAdmin

Create your in-house search marketing expertise during a 2-day search marketing workshop intensively focused on gaining success from Google.

You are invited to join Blizzard Internet Marketing for a Google Boot Camp held in our hometown of Glenwood Springs, Colorado.

Join hospitality, lodging, vacation rental managers, and other travel companies to discover online marketing strategies that will increase search engine rankings, drive more traffic to your website, and improve your marketing strategy; guaranteed.

You will leave the workshop with a list of marketing action items, guaranteed, or your money back.

The workshop will be held on October 13 -14, 2010 at the Hotel Denver, in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. A Glenwood Springs landmark, The Hotel Denver is adjacent to the Colorado River the famous Glenwood Hot Springs, and is walking distance to historic downtown Glenwood Springs.

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Filed Under: Bits From Blizzard, SEM, SEO

New Feature – Respond to your Business’s Reviews on Google Places

August 4, 2010 by 1BlizzAdmin

For years Blizzard has been advising our clients to respond to reviews placed at websites like TripAdvisor, Yelp and Yellowpages.

Until today – reviews left at Google Maps (now called Google Places) were the stepchildren that didn’t offer this feature.
Belabor the fact no more!

Announced today at the Google Lat Long blog, Google now offers verified business owners the ability to respond to reviews made directly on their Google Places page!

Responses will be featured below the review:

Google Reviews

At Blizzard, we recommend everyone: 1) be aware of all reviews made of their business, 2) respond to reviews in a public forum where appropriate; and 3) understand that all feedback is valuable.

Google agrees with this stance and gives some helpful tips for responding to reviews:

1) Be Nice - This isn’t just a guideline – it’s a good idea.
2) Don’t Get Personal – Remember that you’re replying to feedback about an experience, not about you as a person.
3) Feedback is Helpful – Both positive and negative feedback can be good for your business and help it grow.

If your business listing isn’t verified, we advise you to do that as soon as possible. If it is verified, start responding to reviews – both negative and positive – to engage with your audience and ensure future viewers of those reviews see you care about each and every guest.

Filed Under: Breaking News, SEO

What are SERS?

February 25, 2010 by 1BlizzAdmin

Search Engine Results Saturation (SERS) refers to how many spots in the search engine results are about you.

The more spots in the search engine results that are about you, the better! We already know that:

If you have an organic AND a PPC ad on the same page, you get a lot more clickthroughs.
Consumers reached across multiple publishers were twice as likely to convert as those reached only on a single publisher
Sponsored search clickers were 22 percent more likely to convert if they were exposed to display ads

Managing a stable of high quality listing sites not only drives you qualified traffic and helps you in the search engines, it also improves your click-through rate and your conversion rate. Search engine saturation works!

Listings sites like VRBO, Bedandbreakfast.com and TripAdvisor will all help you garner more spots in the top-10 and improve your brand recognition. Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube and Flickr are also excellent resources for increasing your search engine results saturation.

As you go out and build links to help you rank better in Google, don’t forget the other key benefits of getting listings that will rank directly in Google: