I’ve talked before about the importance of learning what to look for when managing your brand and reputation online.  As someone who does mainly SEO and Reputation/Brand Management - I see brands neglected in so many ways.  Like a child, you’re obligated to nurture and keep your brand alive and growing.  Without growth and outreach, a brand is just a domain - with some content on it that will mean little to your visitors.

Review Sites
Making sure you’re checking review sites and posting management feedback where available is an important step in this process.  Being approachable and involved in the conversation is key to cultivating a favorable online reputation.  Don’t get defensive, own up – explain the issue – and give available solutions to lead the conversation to a favorable outcome for all parties involved.

Nobody can manage online reviews FOR you – it’s something each hotel, resort or property management company must do on their own.  As a marketer I can tell you where to look, what to look for, and some suggestions for responding.  If I were to respond myself, and represent myself as someone in a position of power at your lodging property – it would be unethical – and a lot less effective.  I don’t have the power to make decisions FOR you – but you do.

Branded Search Engine Results Saturation (SERS)
In my mind, branding and reputation management walk the forest path hand in hand.  Having a strong online brand can alleviate the impact of minor reputation management crises.  Let me explain this concept further:

If you’re strong in the top 10 results for your brand name, in many cases negative reviews will have less impact for brand-based searches.  Saturation for a brand can take many forms – sometimes its sites that are owned, operated and populated by content that can be controlled.  Sometimes its listings that are not all “owned” but can be somewhat controlled – see a search for Starbucks.  If I were in charge of marketing for Starbucks, I would approach the brand managers there with the following tactics in an attempt to move “ihatestarbucks.com” and “starbucksgossip” out of the top 10.

1. Get a Facebook page – optimize for brand name and the word “official.”  I see some applications and some other profiles that “might” belong to corporate, but they’re under-utilizing the potential here.  Yes it takes man hours to do this, but the payoff could be HUGE if they do it right.
2. Start a blog on a subdomain of starbucks.com where anyone in the company can post – or where your corporate employees post information on what’s happening around there.  There are many things that can be done on subdomains – I suggest taking a look at a search for “Zappos” and looking at the first few pages to see search engine results that include content from various subdomains that target a portion of their business.
3. Start some sister sites (on completely different URLS) that address most popular features of Starbucks “PikesPeakBlend.com” or “StarbucksWIFI.com” are examples.
4. Get involved on Twitter – link to your website from your profile and GET INVOLVED.  I found a Twitter profile for Starbucks that hasn’t been used and is protected.  I’m not sure if this is an “official” profile – I somewhat doubt it.
   Now not all of these are “guaranteed” to work – but they can have an impact which is exactly what you want when trying to “own” the top 10 in Google.
   Paid Advertising

Branding and Paid Advertising 
Ignoring the impact a brand campaign can have on your paid advertising is a mistake.  Because some brands are pretty obscure (hotfrog), and some are pretty generic (Island real estate) this can have different levels of success.

I recommend every client w/ paid advertising have a branded campaign.  This campaign doesn’t have to have a large budget; for the most part branded searches are fairly inexpensive.  Be sure you set these up right and use negative keywords to make sure you’re not showing for brands that are similar, but not related at all.

I looked at one client in Gulf Shores, AL and their branded search terms that brought traffic to their site from January 1 through June 26, 2008.  If we combine paid and organic conversions, branded keyword searches resulted in nearly $530,000 in revenue during that time period.  They don’t spend money t o optimize for branded terms, they don’t have particularly spectacular saturation in Google for their brand, and they only spent $1506 in paid advertising for their branded campaign over that time period.

$530,000   x100 = 35,192% an INSANE return on investment!!!
$1506

Your brand is something that needs to be nurtured, protected, fed, and exercised – just like a child or a pet.  It’s your legacy and ignoring its “upbringing” can result in severe problems with its future.  You put so much effort into creating it, if you don’t take care of it you can consider that time wasted.

Would you build a building without blueprints?   Would you set out to a place you’d never been before without consulting a road map?  The answer to these questions for most people would be a resounding “No.”  However, we at Blizzard are often asked if we can “just get started” on a marketing or design project and skip the initial research.  Below are a few critical benefits to having thorough research results in hand before beginning any website marketing or design project.

• Save Money - Like the building built without a blueprint or the road trip taken without a map, a marketing or design project launched without research is bound to take more time and incur more costs.  Why?  Because inevitably some of the work will need to be altered mid-project in order to meet unforeseen needs or concerns.  Lee Odden posted a great internet marketing article earlier this month where he describes a scenario all too familiar to online marketing professionals.   A redesign is to be published on Monday and Friday afternoon someone decides to ask, “How does this look with regards to SEO?”  The result is twice the time spent cleaning up what could have been avoided had thorough research been applied at the outset.
• Minimize Risks and Realize Higher Returns - Having research as the foundation for your marketing plan is the best insurance for that plan’s success.  If your marketing team is able, through proper research, to identify risks and weaknesses at the start of a plan, they are able to allocate marketing funds towards those initiatives that will mitigate weaknesses while building upon existing strengths.   Let’s take the example Lee offered in his article.  If instead this project had begun by creating a research team before launching their redesign, a thorough migration plan could have been in place before one piece of code had been written.  The SEO team would have been given the opportunity to identify successful, high ranking pages to preserve in the redesign process and to pinpoint underperforming pages that offered opportunities for increased visibility in the new design, resulting in increased returns from the finished product. 
• Gain a Competitive Edge - A successful marketing initiative doesn’t exist in a vacuum; a complete analysis of the competition provides a panoramic view of the marketing landscape in which your initiative will perform.  Competitive analysis will find weaknesses to be capitalized upon, strategies to be emulated and opportunities for growth in market share.  

At the beginning of a marketing project, the Blizzard Internet Marketing team may implement a number of programs to glean as much as possible about your design or marketing plan prior to implementation.  Here are some examples of the types of research your team may conduct:

• Keyword Research - We utilize several tools in order to assess which phrases will bring your website the most traffic, which will offer opportunities to expand market share and which are being overlooked by your competition.  If you want to try it out for yourself, Trent has listed a couple free tools for keyword research.
• Website Navigation Roadmap - At the outset of a design or redesign, our SEO experts map out the recommended site structure from an SEO perspective.  This research helps create a website that utilizes the latest techniques in website usability and search engine optimization.
• Competitor Research - Competition research includes search engine rankings and the various elements that affect them, including SEO and linking strategies.   Your project manager will use these findings to your advantage when creating the marketing plan for your project.
• Website Baseline Research - Your marketing team analyzes the strengths, weaknesses and opportunities associated with your website based upon industry benchmarks for page saturation, inbound links, age of domain, usability and conversion rate.  Historic traffic trends and website statistics are also recorded, if available.
• Demographic Research - If your website analytics software has the capability, your marketing team will evaluate the demographic profile of website visitors based upon location, channel and platform utilized.
• Paid Advertising Research - Pay-per-click campaigns can make up a large portion of an online marketing budget.  Detailed research prior to account creation can help maximize the return on this investment by targeting the most cost-effective keywords to include in the campaign.
• Directory Research - Our directory experts analyze your current internet reach and identify new resources to build traffic to and conversions from your website.
• Online Reputation Research - What are your customers are saying about your company or your product?  Online reputation research involves reviewing social media sites so that marketing efforts can capitalize on what your clients like while addressing any issues that may be uncovered by the team.

What’s the moral of this story?  Don’t start driving until you know where you’re headed!  Whether embarking on a design or marketing project, comprehensive research will provide a strong foundation for any project’s success. 

 Photo from federico_marque

Ever wonder if your website design is giving visitors what they need to complete the actions you want? Is your navigation intuitive? Does your website give users an easy opportunity to reserve a room online or sign up for a newsletter? How much time do visitors spend on different pages on your website? With the new Google Website Optimizer landing page test tool, you can find the answers to these questions. Google’s Website Optimizer can work in combination with Google AdWords and Google Analytics to take the guess work out of knowing what aspects of your website are more likely going to convert into reservations, newsletter subscriptions, etc.  Website Optimizer allows you to experiment by testing different versions of your web pages.  That being said, Google Website Optimizer can be used independently of AdWords and Analytics – but packaging them together is easy and adds to the features available.

The “before and after” test is simple to setup with Website Optimizer. You can make a small change on a page to see if the performance improves. This test is uncontrolled since many factors can contribute to an improvement or decrease in the performance of the page.

We recommend using a control page (no change) and the test page (small change) to see how what you’ve done effects traffic and conversions.  Keep in mind, if your website traffic is seasonal, comparing March to April is probably not a valid measure, but comparing April to April could be.

The A/B test is useful for those that want to test small changes without a large amount of time investment or complication.  A/B testing allows you to change the content, the look and the overall layout of two or more pages on your website.

Multivariate testing allows you to test multiple variables on different versions of your web pages. This type of test can be used to change different aspects on the page, such as the header photo, headline, and the text content on the page. If these are areas you wish to improve, Google Website Optimizer would show visitors the different versions of each design aspect. Website Optimizer is also capable of showing visitors several different combinations of the page versions; for example, Headline #1, Header Photo #2, and Text Version #3) to see what brings the best response.

You can also use the test for the time spent on a page, to let you know if the content on your web pages is of interest to your visitors.

The test pages that are set up in Google Website Optimizer will be alternated by scripts when the page is opened in a browser a visitor. The tool does show the each unique visitor the same version of the page, even if they visit more than one time.  Soon after you begin your A/B or Multivariate testing with Google Website Optimizer; the tool will start showing you reports allowing you to decide which pages are leading to the desired results from your visitors. If the visitor ends up on the desired conversion page, Google Website Optimizer will record the conversion and display it in the reporting section of the tool.   It is important for you to remember that tests need to measure a significant portion of traffic before conclusions can be drawn.  One day is not indicative of a trend, but one month may be if you have high unique visitor counts.

By combining Website Optimizer with Google AdWords allows  you to test and refine your landing pages, ensuring increased conversion rates from your paid advertising.

For each text or local map ad within your Google ad groups, you can designate the landing page URL and utilize either Google Analytics or other tracking software to see the results of each click. You will also be able to see the results of any test you are running in the Google Website Optimizer tool. The scripts that you are required to use on your desired conversion pages will not interfere with any existing tracking scripts on those pages.

Testing different variations of your landing pages will allow you to increase conversions, decrease the bounce rate of visitors to your website, increase visitor approval, and increase the amount of time visitors spend on your web pages. While Google’s Website Optimizer is a new tool, just out of beta testing, it could prove to be invaluable in finding out what aspects of your website are attractive to visitors, leading to more online conversions.

To many people, Search Engine optimization, also known as SEO, seems like voodoo. In reality, Google does an excellent job of telling us what they consider to be a good website that deserves high rankings.

While putting all of the pieces together in the optimum way is both a complex science and an instinctual art, if you get the basics right, you’re well on your way to creating a relevant source of information that Google will reward.

Matt Cutts, Google’s well-known anti-spam czar, recently told USA Today what those basics are. Cutts gives 5 easy to understand tips:

1. Spotlight your search term on the page.
2. Fill in your “tags”.
3. Get other websites to “link” back to you.
4. Create a blog and post often.
5. Register for free tools.
6. Don’t overdo it.

To read the details of these recommendations from Google, see the full article and video interview, Google’s Cutts: Good Directions Drive Traffic to Your Website.

I received an email yesterday from Orbitz. Usually I delete these as I tend to use Expedia - but this one had a neat green dollar sign on it and i read further.  Apparently Orbitz has started a new program called “Price Assurance.”  This service guarantees you the lowest cost on a flight by offering $5 to $250 back PER TRAVELER if someone books the flight for less on Orbitz between the time you book and the time the flight takes off.

In this age of increased traveling costs, I think this move is quite brilliant.  By booking VERY VERY early, even at a higer price - a traveler could realize the lowest price possible on a flight - without checking every day or week waiting for the prices to drop.

So here’s the example they gave in the email - If I book a flight at $350 and 2 weeks later someone books my same itinerary at $250 - they’ll send me a check for $100 within 30 days after my trip.  The beauty of it is THEY track it.  I don’t have to.

I think this is a great program and I hope it works well for them.  Hopefully the other travel sites such as Expedia and Hotwire implement a similar program to keep it competitive active.

Have you ever risked your life rushing to the airport only to find out when you arrived that your flight was late?  Wouldn’t it be nice if someone called your cell phone and said, “Hey dude, slow down. Your flight is 45 minutes late”?

If you want to know if an arriving flight is on time for a friend or relative you’re picking up, wouldn’t it be nice if they called you and said, “Oh by the way, I’m late by 45 minutes and you don’t need to take off work to get me at the airport”?  Unfortunately, they are still in the air and can’t call you.  While internet flight status reports and real-time flight tracking are not new, you can now set up alerts to call your cell phone and/or e-mail yourself or others regarding changes to your flight.

One of my responsibilities at Blizzard Internet Marketing is to make travel arrangements for the numerous speaking engagements and trade shows Trent Blizzard attends all around the country.  While away on a trip recently,  he called to tell me he was running late and there was NO WAY he was going to make his flight.  He asked if I would I check out options for other departing flights and see if…  Just then, we both heard the sound of a text message being received.  “The flight gods are with me!” Trent exclaimed, as he checked the phone message.  The text message informed him his flight would be 45 minutes late, so he had just enough time to make it.  What a relief!

Trent then wondered if he would make his connecting flight.  So, I went to my favorite real time, on-line flight-tracking source, Flightstats , and entered his connecting flight number and date.  Indeed, it was a lucky day.  His connecting flight had another perfect 45-minute delay!

This flight tracker site has an array of helpful features, including flight availability by route, airport parking, historical flight ratings and airport delays.  My favorite feature on flightstats.com is the simple to use flight alert. This free online application monitors flights and sends informational messages to e-mail enabled devices and cell phones.  You receive flight alert messages in the event of a cancellation, diversion or delay greater than 30 minutes.

After logging in, go to Travel Tools and enter the airline, flight number and date of departure. Alert messages include:

• Status confirmation up to 3 hours prior to departure.
• Notification if the flight is delayed by more than 30 minutes.
• Notification if the flight is cancelled or diverted.
• Arrival notification when the flight lands.

If you select Departure Alert Messages, you receive a status update prior to departure and a flight departure alert. I f you select Arrival Alert Messages, you receive a message when the flight arrives at its destination. What great customer service!

I’m always looking for smarter ways to travel, so if you have any great travel tips, please share them with me and our readers in the comments area. Thanks!

I just returned from a vacation with my family and to tell you the truth - traveling with kids is a royal pain. My kids are 11 and 6 and they fight like you wouldn’t believe. The key to keeping a happy family on vacation is to keep everyone busy. Vacations are supposed to be about relaxing, but to be honest - when you’re traveling with young kids - relaxing on the beach reading a book is just NOT going to happen. Some things I don’t see hotels or vacation rentals doing to help draw the family traveler could be quick implementations and could also be great ways to tout your “family-friendliness” on your website.

• Put a comprehensive list of area attractions along with close to current pricing in EVERY room or rental. I had done some homework so we had a few days planned out, but the days we had planned to spend “relaxing on the beach” were overruled by cries of “I’m bored!” and “It’s too hot!” By giving me a list of stuff I can fall back on in a pinch, you’re helping me keep everyone happy and NOT fighting. No fighting means a happy vacation for mom.
• Vacation Rentals should be stocked with a few decks of cards and some simple board games. Things like Monopoly and Connect Four will keep kids occupied for awhile and they are also games the family can play together. I’m flying to my vacation and I cant bring these things with us - so having them available when I get there is a BIG bonus.
• Get the kids involved in planning by putting a few widget-type games on your website. Have a kid’s section that is dedicated to things they’ll want to see in the area and history or area fauna that will interest them. My kids are big into dinosaurs. In Plant City, FL there’s a big dinosaur attraction. A Web site for a hotel in Orlando might feature a fun little “watch the dinosaur eat the tourist” game. This sounds morbid but kids think this is hilarious and it would be fun for them to play. It could also win them over to your property so when mom asks “Where do you want to go?” the kids have an answer. If the parent thinks the kids are going to be happy, they’re more likely to be happy with the accommodation choice.
• If you have a pool that starts at 3 feet, you need to let the parents of small tots and babies know that. No kiddie pool means mom & dad have to float the kid around endlessly in the 3′ deep water. That can be okay for a few minutes, but not every time we go to the pool. My best advice? Build a kiddy pool that goes from 6″ to 12″ deep or something similar so mom and dad can lounge under the umbrella and watch the tots splash around.
• Small touches like a stuffed animal at check-in or a workbook of puzzles and games that is age appropriate is a great way to engage the kids and make mom and dad happy and more likely to book. A game room or arcade is a good way to keep families occupied during inclement weather. I would love ALL hotels have a small movie room where they could show family movies at certain show-times with popcorn during the hottest parts of the day and on rainy or snowy days.

Thinking of small things and some big things can go along way to proving to the travel shopper that you really ARE family friendly. Everyone may be saying it - and throwing some pictures of cute little kids on the beach into their website - but are they following through? Think about how you can appeal to your youngest shoppers and use your imagination - you never know where you’ll find the pearl in that funny looking oyster.

image courtesy MyAngelG