I’m declaring today “Try Another Search Engine Day” at Blizzard. I’m trying to get my coworkers to cut the cord between themselves and Google and try out Ask.com.

Besides the really cool start pages, the content and layout is really nice. A recent Comscore report showed that Ask.com grew faster than Google, MSN or Yahoo in January 2008 – when compared with the prior month.

So why is Ask getting popular? That’s a hard question but my guesses are:

Ask has a great interface – and people are starting to notice it? (that’s a stretch probably)

People are afraid of BigBrother Google and are looking for an alternative?: (possibly but probably not)

Ask pays them? (okay no, that’s not it)

Some reasons from Ross Dunn at Stepforth ( I found this via MarketingPilgrim – so thanks to the Pilgrims)

• The shun the nofollow tag and pass some juice!
• Local businesses can submit their business manually to Ask’s local portal AskCity. If you’re not included and want to be, you have to send an email request.
• Ask owns blog reader Bloglines and they rank blogs partly based on their popularity on Bloglines.

I encourage everyone to give their search engine a try. They’ve really embraced universal search results and you’re going to find a ton of neat stuff for your queries. The result below is a query I did for “Best Snow in Idaho”

Video is the new mobile - in a sense.  Three or four years ago, the thought of surfing the web on your phone was a bit foreign to most of us, today it’s second nature – even for those of us with horrible phones that don’t surf well.

So in the door walks the new darling child of the online marketing world – (it’s really an infant) and an excellent opportunity to take advantage of SEO on your travel website.  Most of you already HAVE videos on your site, you just may not know it.  Virtual Tours are basically videos of your hotel, property, rooms, restaurants, etc.   There are ways to convert or build virtual tours in formats that allow easy uploading to video search engines, and easy embedding on individual pages of your site….you see where I’m going with this, right?

 Each page on your site that features a video should have a few things to make the subject matter of that video rank well -

1. Search engines can’t index video – yet – so you need to wrap some excellent descriptive text around your video on the page to make sure search engines know what you’re offering.  An easy way to do this it to create a written transcript of what you have to offer and place it on the page with the video.
2. Use closed captioning when possible.  Some format allow text files that are transcripts to be attached to the video, if you can do this – take advantage of it
3. Give the video a descriptive keyword rich file name.  Try “northshorevacationmovie.wmv” vs. “movie.wmv”
4. Optimize the text on the page – add relevant and unique page titles, meta description, h tags, inbound link text, etc.
5. Link to that page with good keyword-rich text.

Search engines will not index your video on your site – they don’t have the technology to make that happen.  You MUST upload those videos to a video sharing site such as YouTube, Ifilm or MetaCafe to have them included in the Google or Yahoo indexes and showing as results.  If you do this correctly, you could potentially capture a good listing in the regular web results or in Video results.

 Converting and File Types

There are some technical and logistical issues you need to consider if you want to convert a virtual tour into a video.  Some come ready to upload to the video search engines, in .mov format – others do not.  Ask your virtual tour provider for a copy of the tour in a supported format.  Every engine is different but YouTube for example supports .wmv, .avi, .mov and .mpg. 

Make sure you OWN your videos.  Some third-party companies will not let you have a copy of your video or virtual tour for use in promoting your business – this is limiting and you should be able to negotiate a copy in the correct format when you sign the contract to have the work done.  Make sure you read the video fine print – are they going to add in ads or graphics that don’t support your brand?  Yellow Pages videos add a graphic to the corner of every video they make, this forces the viewer on YouTube to find you in the yellow pages, not directly on your own website – and the potential for a lost sale increases.  Investing in video is expensive – so make sure you can get the most out of your investment.

 For more information on optimizing the images and videos on your website, check out Blizzard’s Free Markting Whitepapers and particularly the whitepaper on SEO: Images and Videos.

AOL just announced that its video Search Engine, Truveo, has surpassed the one hundred million mark in indexed online videos. They expect this number to swell to one billion – yes, 1,000,000,000 – online videos by 2009. Are you ready for this?

Video has been a bit of a sleeper in online marketing, mainly because traditional marketers have a hard time seeing video as anything beyond TV ads and, if they can’t monetize it, they find it unimportant. These numbers, however, show just how dangerous that kind of old school thinking can be.

While some web businesses spend their time wondering how they can use internet video to make a buck, every day others are finding ways to mine its potential for online branding and for attracting traffic and links to their websites. If you’re not already thinking about how you can use video to help your online business, you’re certain to be playing catch up – and soon.

What Should You Do Now?

Survey The Landscape

Search for videos that relate to your business online – both in regular search and in the video search verticals of the major Search Engines. What’s showing up? Who put it there? And where did they put it?

Search for videos that relate to your business on video sharing websites, like YouTube, Blinx, Metacafe, etc. Here’s a long list of video websites from Joe Whyte to get you going.

Learn From Your Competitors

Are your rivals using video? Keep an eye on what they’re doing and how they’re doing it. Then, try to do it better. Improving is easier than inventing, so steal good ideas wherever you find them.

Ask Kids

Face it, your children, your friends’ children and the young people who work for you and live in your neighborhood know much more about what’s hot and what’s cool than you ever will, so conduct a little market research. Find out what they’re watching online. Ask them to forward their favorite short videos to your email address. Also, ask them what kind of videos you could use to promote your online business. Offer rewards for great ideas. Then, put them into action.

Start Shooting

Get a digital video camera and start using it. Take lots if videos and upload them all over the web. You either need to learn this stuff yourself or you need to hire someone to do it for you.

Reap the rewards of the Social Internet.

By now you have heard of Web 2.0 and the social platforms upon which the concept is based. Every day there are exponentially more sites to compete with the Myspaces and Youtubes of the Social Internet. Every new site has the potential to become another of these “power brokers.”

Have you taken advantage of this Social Internet phenomenon to promote your property? Do you know what is being said about you in review and forum sites online? Does your website have a blog? If not, you better get on top of these things before Web 3.0 comes along!

Travel is a natural fit for the Web 2.0 Social Internet community. Trip planners and vacationers are some of the most social people on the Internet and aren’t bashful about posting reviews for everything that is travel related, suggesting area restaurants, or discussing their plans for future vacations. You need to get your name into the discussions on popular social media sites and entice vacationers to your product!

Take advantage of the Web 2.0 phenomenon and Blizz Live to get travelers chatting about you!

Contact your Business Development Manager today to get started! Contact us toll free at 888-840-5893 or info@blizzardinternet.com.

There are so many benefits to adding a blog to your website including increased content and online exposure, higher traffic, brand recognition, and building an online community.

With the emergence of Web 2.0, online communities are the new consumption. With a blog you have the opportunity to become a local expert and resource to your area. Create an online community and discuss topics such as restaurants, activities, and other businesses in your neighborhood. Encourage readers to participate by leaving comments to local reviews and develop an interactive format.

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Social Internet has become a new way of communicating, learning.

Wikipedia, Myspace, Forums, Blogs, RSS … all these words form and represent a new way of using the Internet, and has come to be known as Web 2.0. The web is no longer just about finding information, but also having the ability to influence it from a social perspective. Web 1.0 was about reading, advertising, companies, encyclopedias, home pages, and taxonomy. While Web 2.0 is about opinion, writing, word of mouth, communities, wikipedias, blogs, and folksonomy.

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

As we take on this new way of learning and communicating, how does it affect the user’s experience? How can Web 2.0 be used to help make the experience a better one? As so many discussions about Web 2.0 focus on the technology and methods, it is often forgotten the most important part, usability, the experience of the user.

Web 2.0 has brought technologies that can be used to create a more interactive and better experience for the customer. Some of the technologies that have been developed include RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and Ajax.

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Take advantage of the Social Internet with the variety of Blizzard’s existing plans, including Web 2.0. Blizzard Internet Marketing has developed two new products in addition to our existing Blizzard Live program.

Blizzard Live is an exciting service that involves the concept of Web 2.0 and word-of-mouth advertising. Blizzard Live Web 2.0 focuses on the social interaction and software platforms being shared by the masses such as youtube, flickr, TripAdvisor, and Blogging. Websites now have the ability to share social preferences, opinions, reviews, photos, videos and personal experiences while creating online relationships. Hospitality consumers are basing travel decisions on feedback they receive and reviews they read from these online resources and communities.

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