Comments for Internet Marketing Blog :: Travel & Tourism SEM :: Blizzard Internet

Comment on 5 Must-Dos for a Stellar Summer Family Vacation by Justin@Wall Decals

Justin@Wall Decals — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:04:08 +0000

Really good advice on planning for a family trip in the summer. Especially the looking beyond the “usual suspects” Park City, Utah is beautiful in the summer and always has so much to do, really good advice.

Comment on Video How To: Managing the Content on Your Web Site with WordPress by Make Money Bank

Make Money Bank — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 22:54:06 +0000

I love this tutorial. Wordpress is definitely the best blogging platform I ever used. I already transferred my site from Blogger to Wordpress to avail of the many benefits of this great content management system.

Comment on What are SERS? by Trent

Trent — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 16:46:28 +0000

David,
So do I! I like the quick ROI from PPC but the long-term ROI is a lot more profitable. It dismays me to see people throw money at PPC (I think they do it because they have a blind-spot for Google and irrationally spend money with Google) and not invest in seo and link building. PPC is like Crack… you will feel good now, but the long-term benefit isn’t there. Organic SEO is like going to the gym… if you keep at it regularly , the results are impressive. Too many people are not willing to take a long-term view of success… they want results NOW.

Comment on Email Marketing: Why Text is Key to HTML Newsletters by Frank

Frank — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 16:00:09 +0000

One wordpress plugin that I find useful is Commenter Emails. Every time someone post a comment to your blog, it collects the email and put it in a list. Saves time.

Comment on What are SERS? by David

David — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 16:27:04 +0000

I like to do organic result for the long term.Because there”s no cost from search engine.Not like PPC.

Comment on HomeAway Acquires BedandBreakfast.com: Why is This Smart? by Host

Host — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 01:00:42 +0000

Here is an email from Eric at BedandBreakfast.com to customers:

We are excited to announce that BedandBreakfast.com, RezOvation/Webervations and Inns.com have been acquired by HomeAway®, another Austin, TX-based company.

HomeAway is the global leader in the vacation rental marketplace and is making a large-scale, concerted effort to provide a wide range of alternatives to chain hotels. They are a great fit for BedandBreakfast.com and RezOvation; the same teams you have worked with for years will be staying intact, both in Austin and in Ohio. Like BedandBreakfast.com, HomeAway is focused on making it simpler than ever for travelers to easily find unique and memorable travel experiences. They are used to working with tens of thousands of independent property owners and property managers and helping them promote their businesses to the world. They have built a great company full of smart folks and I am confident that our combined businesses will be able to meet innkeepers’ needs better than ever. HomeAway is also working hard to let folks know that there are reliable alternatives to chain hotels. You may have seen their recent commercial during the Super Bowl featuring the Griswolds. You can visit their website by clicking here, and see the Super Bowl ad here. Please click here to read our FAQ for more details.

Aside from my wife and three kids, this business has been my baby, my life and my passion for the last 15 years; selling the business now was one of the toughest decisions I have ever made. The more I thought about what this opportunity meant for our member innkeepers and customers, as well as for our dedicated team of employees, the more I realized that this opportunity was too good to pass up. I remain as passionate about our industry now as I was when I came up with the idea for the business back in 1994. While I will remain regularly involved in the company as the founder and look forward to seeing many of you at conferences around the country and on the various online forums, I will be stepping down from the day-to-day operations of the business. John Banczak, who has been with the company for six years, will remain with the business and will run both BedandBreakfast.com and RezOvation. Sandy Soule will also be working with the business in a role similar to my own for the next year.

I have complete confidence in the teams we have built and in their ability to continue to deliver the best products and services in the industry, along with the on-going support that you have come to expect. I am equally confident in the folks from HomeAway and their ability to take the business to the next level. Here’s to an exciting year ahead of us as we blaze new trails for the B&B industry to bring you more guests than ever before.

All the best and I hope to see many of you at PAII next week!

Eric

Comment on What are SERS? by Trent Blizzard

Trent Blizzard — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 15:57:17 +0000

John,

I think you are right about social media, but not about the major listings sites. My logic is as follows:

a) many companies don’t have a “brand” yet… and need these sites to actually build it.
b) these listings sites are often “authority” sites in Google’s eyes and being represented on them is important
c) these listings sites attract millions of potential buyers and send a lot of high-quality and qualified direct buyers to my client’s sites
d) my analytics show that traffic from many of these listings sites is very high conversion and can create a powerful ROI

So, I say do both!

The area I would agree with you on are those websites that take your listings, but don’t link to you or give your phone number… because their business model is to capture a percentage of your revenue, not send you qualified visitors. Even with that said, the can also create a powerful “halo effect” http://hudsoncrossing.blogspot.com/2009/11/expedia-billboard-effect-cornell-agrees.html

Thanks John!

Comment on 5 Lamest Ways to Build Links by Trent Blizzard

Trent Blizzard — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 15:47:22 +0000

Here are some good supporting articles for this post:

Matt Cutts Announces Death of Cheesy Link Exchanges
http://www.seobook.com/archives/001675.shtml

What it Looks Like to be Hit by Googles Real Estate Reciprocal Link Penalty
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/what-it-looks-like-to-be-lost-in-googles-real-estate-reciprocal-link-penalty

Post Mortem – Banned Sites Forensics
http://outspokenmedia.com/internet-marketing-conferences/banned-sites/

And, a post from Matt Cutts himself from 2006 discussing what it looks like when Google penalizes you for linking to bad neighborhoods:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/indexing-timeline/

Comment on 5 Lamest Ways to Build Links by adelaide dancing

adelaide dancing — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 05:28:13 +0000

great post, very informative, although, i would like to know, what are some of the best ways to build links?

Comment on 5 Lamest Ways to Build Links by Josh

Josh — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 02:00:00 +0000

I’d have to agree with what Wynne said as far as posting on blog sites for backlinks. As long as it’s a meaningful post and perhaps has relevant content to the site your linking back to this can be fairly helpful when it comes to raising your pr and search traffic. Where I see a lot of people fail in this process is they’ll spend a weekend posting on as many blog sites as possible, and then stop posting for a month. This isn’t the right approach and can appear more as spam than genuine posts.