New: Usability Click Mapping

By tracking where people click on your website, you can have insights into usability. The tool is Crazy Egg

Online Strategies to Compete with VRBO

• VRBO Weakness: Many guests are having bad and inconsistent experiences.
• VRM Opportunity: Make those horror stories more public. Utilize Travel Reviews.
  
  
• VRBO Weakness: Difficulty in comparison shopping on VRBO website... they can be overwhelming
• VRM Opportunity: Create a website that is user friendly and makes investigating your properties and market are even easier.
  
  
• VRBO Weakness: Difficult to contact VRBO
• VRM Opportunity: Online "push" chat, Answer phones in evening, Use CRM and Email Marketing to develop lifetime customer.

VRM Challenge: Managing their data and content out on the Internet... the more units you have, the harder. Possible Solutions:

• Have Data available at fingertips.
• Focus on portfolio representative properties
• Check out Clipmate.com to quickly paste info into resources
• Use Picasa for your photos.
• Get some properties in VRBO directories, Googlebase, Craigslist

Google Maps and Earth

Google Maps

• Use Google Maps to create fun, easy and interactive maps for your website.

• Consider using Community Walk, an application to build better Google maps.
• Example Embedded into a website or here. Search that demonstrates how well these work.
  
• Google Earth is the dynamic 3D version of Google Maps. Community Walk creates Google Earth maps. Here is an Uploaded Version (You have to have Google Earth installed).
  
• Google Adwords has special features for a presence in Google Maps and Google Local.

2008 Strategy: Blogs and/or Blogosphere

Corporate Blogging: Blogs are Content Management Systems with enormous benefits:

• Empower people in your organization to create and maintain content on your website
• Increase Traffic and improve Search Engine Results.
• Adds Interactivity to your website and creates community with your guests.
• Look, feel and act "professional"
• Having a Blog is different than being a "blogger."
  

Being a Successful Blogger means:

• Have something to say, and the time and commitment to say it regularly.
• Tightly integrated their Blog with their website. Just setting up a blog over at blogger.com doesn't deliver the same benefit.
• Join the blogging community, and spend time developing relationships with other bloggers.
• Focus on delivering content that is relevant and useful to their potential guests.
  

Examples:

• Mountain Property Management and Mead Brown and Skaneateles Lodging are entire websites that are blog. Can you tell?
• Home Ranch: A blog integrated into a website. Can you tell?
• See Gulf Shores and Glenwood Blog are blog driven community portal website.
  
• Blog content can easily be pushed into other websites, or, pulled into your website:
  

Blogosphere: There are over 70 Million Blogs. People are out there talking about you and your destination. What is your strategy?

Importance of Search

Travel and Hospitality Industry Research:

• 80% of website visits begin in a search engine or a directory service. (Forrester)
• 72% of online travel buyers made travel relevant keyword searches in the weeks prior to their online booking. (comScore Networks.
• 60% of online travel shoppers claim to use search engines to research their vacations. (PhoCusWright)
  
• Check out our whitepaper with travel industry research

Local Search

Local Search is a vital Component of SEO

1. Claim your business on Google local and Yahoo Local.
   
   
2. Don’t ever just link to yourself… links from pages with all of your contact info
   
   
3. Online Yellowpage distribution. www.localeze.com
   
   
4. Using online mapping and Travel Review sites when possible.
   
   
5. GDS/Net Rate listings Increase your Local

Image Search

Image Search can drive a lot of traffic and is worth a bit of attention. Sometimes Google ads image search right into its search results.

1. The more important your page, the better the images can do… so focus image optimization FIRST on 10 powerful pages on your website.
   
   
2. Images should be surrounded by related keywords on the page and use a short alt tag (image tag).
   
   
3. Create an image sitemap that link directly to image files instead of html files.