Why A Blog Can Improve Your Website Ranking

by on April 23, 2010 in Online Marketing, Tourism Industry Blog

Blogs can improve your website rankingSearch engines love regular fresh content and links to a website, the more you have of both the better your website will rank in search results and your website visitors will have more reason to visit your website regularly to see what’s new.  So a blog function on your website is a great solution to achieve this.

If you need more convincing then see this article on Hubspot called “SEO is Evolving Fast – Is Your Website?” – it discusses Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and includes how a blog can now help a small business website to achieve better rankings than a larger/less flexible competitor website.  Another great article on this topic is “6 Reasons Every Small Business Should be Blogging…Are You Missing the Boat?”

For tourism operators or organisations a blog is a great way to promote any news, media releases, tips for travellers coming to your area, events and activities – anything that is relevant to your business, specialist knowledge and tourism in your area.  It doesn’t have to be about opinionated articles and topical issues.  Once you get the hang of it adding new articles is easy and fun.

Another great thing about blog articles and RSS Feeds (all blogs have an automated RSS feed) are that they are very easy to share online adding significant opportunity for you to increase the number of inbound links to your website, which identifies it as a popular or important site by search engines.  You can also list your blog URL with a large number of online blog directories, see this list for starters.

When setting up a blog, to ensure you get the best benefits for search engine rankings, make sure the blog software allows the following:

  • The blog can be “self hosted” with your website domain rather than a separate domain e.g. the blog URL is: www.ABCTours.co.nz/blog.  This takes a bit more effort to set up than just using a free blog hosted site and you will need your web designer to get it set up for you – but it’s worth it as all the website traffic to your blog will be credited to your main website ranking which is ultimately where you want the traffic and recognition to be achieved.
  • Each blog post title can be set as part of the URL name so that keywords are included, for example this article URL is:

http://www.tourismindustryblog.co.nz/2010/04/why-a-blog-can-improve-your-website-ranking

  • Each blog post can have meta tags applied (see this article “Using Meta Tags to Get Your Website Ranking Higher in Google“)
  • It has a blog plugin to easily share your content online via social media websites or email.
  • You can easily set up a blog email subscriber function to build an email database and send out articles as they are published.

If you were to ask my opinion on what blog software to use to achieve all of this (and more) then I would always say WordPress.org (self hosted) wins hands down, but what you use may depend on what website content management system you have, so talk to your web designer.

Got any examples of good tourism websites with blogs? Here’s a couple I’ve spotted recently: Sky Dive Wanaka, Dive! Tutukaka


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    100% Pure New Zealand Brand – Is it Time to Change?

    by on April 19, 2010 in Tourism Industry Blog

    100% Pure New Zealand BrandIt’s been around for a while now (over 10 years) and quite possibly one of the most successful and unique tourism brands in the world that has stood the test of time. But is it time for something new? Would anything new just be a hard act to follow? Or a welcome evolution of progress and the growth of our industry?
    We certainly wouldn’t want something safe and generic like the new Australian “There’s nothing like…” campaign. Yet 100% Pure is more than a campaign, it is a true brand that has earned it’s significance and can be interpreted on so many levels – it’s not just about being pure and green, it’s about promoting pure New Zealand experiences.

    Changing a brand that works so well is a big decision, a gutsy move and something that perhaps should not be done just because “it’s time” but because it’s no longer relevant or effective. Tourism New Zealand certainly haven’t indicated a change is coming but it’s no doubt something for the new CEO Kevin Bowler to consider with his team.

    Overall I think it’s a been and still is an effective overall umbrella brand for New Zealand and we should continue to create campaigns, like the “Youngest Country” and other more tactical campaign initiatives under that umbrella that can be differentiated to continue to inspire and attract our various target markets.

    I’d be interested to hear the thoughts of others in our industry with your opinion is as to whether we should still be “100% Pure New Zealand”?

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    Why You Shouldn’t Ignore Facebook as a Marketing Tool

    by on April 13, 2010 in Social Media Marketing, Tourism Industry Blog

    Facebook Pages as a Marketing ToolIn the US Facebook recently overtook Google for popularity based on weekly traffic (for a week in March) accounting for 7.07% of US Website Traffic for that week – this is an incredible achievement given Google’s dominance on so many levels. With over 400 million registered users for Facebook worldwide it has become a social media website that is difficult to ignore and as a business you should be considering using it as a way to communicate and share content with your target market.

    Not only that, the applications and tools available on Facebook pages are a great fit for tourism businesses that can sell your features based on interactive and user content such as photos, videos and reviews. The personality that you can show about your brand and your people can come through strongly and add to your online brand profile.

    Facebook Pages

    • This is the key way for a brand or business to represent themselves on Facebook, and can generally be set up in less than 30 minutes, create a page here. Note: All Facebook Pages have to be set up by someone with a personal profile.
    • It can be viewed without being a Facebook user so you can have a link directly to your page from your website but only Facebook users can follow your page as “fans”
    • There are a multitude of free applications that you can add to your Facebook page that can enhance it’s functions, see this article on Mashable.com “5 Essential Apps for Your Business’s Facebook Fan Page“
    • Your updates will appear on the personal walls of your fans to draw their attention to the activity on your page
    • You can send your fans messages, so it’s essentially another form of database marketing and incredibly powerful because all fans voluntarily opt in to receive your content
    • While it all sounds easy, creating and maintaining your content plus attracting user content from your fans requires a time investment and a strategy to keep it growing effectively combining it with your other marketing media
    • Always keep in mind that the is aim to use tools like Facebook to drive traffic to your website and increase your marketing database of targeted customers

    Establish Your Fan Base

    Building your Fan base is always the first challenge for a new Facebook page, so here are some ideas to help get it going:

    • Create some interesting content on your Page first so that when you start promoting it will attract fans
    • Promote your Page with in a prominent place on your website
    • If you have a marketing database then use email marketing to promote your Facebook page, similarly if you already have a following on other social media sites like Twitter then you can promote your page to them
    • Use the Facebook Ads to promote your page – costs are based on pay per click and you can select the demographics and location of people you want to target
    • Develop some fun and interactive viral marketing initiatives that can be featured on your page, competitions and incentives are a great way to attract visits

    Popular Tourism Facebook Pages

    If you have some doubts over the benefits of building a busy Facebook Fan Page have a look at the number of fans generated on some the following popular tourism pages – marketing gold!

    Australia - 384,220 Fans

    100% Pure New Zealand – 118,800 Fans

    Air New Zealand – 18,844 fans

    WellingtonNZ – 13,846 fans

    Have you got any more examples of popular tourism Facebook pages or useful apps to use on your page? What has worked for you to build your fan base?

    Become a Fan of the Tourism Industry Blog Facebook Page :-)


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    Email Marketing: How to Get Started

    by on April 8, 2010 in Tourism Industry Blog

    Email MarketingEmail marketing can be an extremely cost effective way to communicate with your regular customers and drive traffic to your website and social media pages. Despite this I’ve noticed this is an underused marketing tool for tourism businesses, for some this is because they don’t have a strong repeat business base – but for those that do then email marketing should be a key part of your marketing communications strategy.

    What are the key steps to Get Started?

    • Develop a database. You may have a lot of email addresses of regular customers in your email software so add these into an excel spreadsheet for starters (so you can import them into email marketing software). It’s OK legally to send marketing emails to customers who you already have a relationship, but it might be a good idea to email them first to invite them to subscribe.
    • Have an email subscription option on your website. Make it easy for your regular customers to opt in to receiving your emails. Ideally this function is linked to your email marketing software so they are automatically added to your database. “Opt in” email marketing is the most effective in terms of open rates and successful campaigns.
    • Use professional email marketing software. You do not need to purchase or download this software, there are plenty of options that are internet based. Pricing will depend on how big your database is and how often you send out emails, generally it’s quite cost effective and you will find an option to suit your budget. There are also free systems like Mailchimp for smaller databases. Email marketing software provide design templates that you can customise with your own colours and logo, it’s also worth considering have a professionally designed email template that matches your website as a one off cost. The software will also track the open rate and click throughs from your campaign so you can measure it’s success. It will also manage unsubscribes and bounced emails.
    • Establish a regular email marketing schedule. Too often can be annoying so don’t overdo it, once every 1 or 2 months is a good start or just when you have something newsworthy.
    • Keep the content relevant and interesting. Special offers, events, new products and competitions are popular reasons to send out an email, be careful not to make the email too long. Ideally you will provide links to your website for further details and to make a booking.

    Email Marketing Tip: The best time to send out an marketing email is Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon

    Got any other tips you want to share or email marketing software you prefer? Let us know.


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    Google Launching into the Online Travel Market?

    by on March 24, 2010 in Google, Online Marketing, Online Travel Market, Tourism Industry Blog

    Google Maps Hotel Pricing Feature

    Click on the image to enlarge

    Interesting to see an article on the Mashable website yesterday about Google Testing Hotel Prices in Google Maps. This news, which was announced fairly casually on Monday on the Google Maps blog siting it as an “experiment”, will no doubt spark up interest among the Online Travel Agents (OTA’s) as a new way to advertise pricing and get click through traffic to their website.

    For travellers it’s means they can use google maps to find accommodation with the ability to search on dates of travel to get real time pricing and then click through to the provider website to book.

    From Google’s perspective it’s probably seen as an evolution of the maps business listings and another way to develop advertising revenues rather than a desire to become part of the online travel market, however it will no doubt have an impact on OTA’s and introduce a fairly competitive necessity to be included as an advertiser on the google maps.

    Of interest to accommodation providers will be whether they too get the opportunity to be one of the listed advertisers to attract direct bookings or whether the pricing has to come through an automated feed from participating OTA’s or booking systems – if it’s a bidding model like Google Adwords then it’s likely the large global OTA’s will dominate this opportunity.

    Potentially the effects of this will be lesser felt in New Zealand as many accommodation suppliers do not participate on the global OTA’s, leaving the opportunity open perhaps for more of the local accommodation booking websites and accommodation providers themselves.

    So time will tell on how this will all work and impact on the market, we will keep an eye on progress of the likely roll out of this new feature. In the meantime, if I were an accommodation provider I’d make sure I’m listed on a selection of OTA’s.

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    Viral Marketing for Tourism

    by on March 23, 2010 in Online Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Tourism Industry Blog

    Viral Marketing for TourismViral marketing is essentially the “word of mouth” spread of a marketing message by an organisation through the use of some sort of media – typically it is shared through online social media such as You Tube, Facebook or Twitter, but it could also be text messages or email. Using video or something interactive is the most common vehicle for the campaign and it must be entertaining. It will be targeted at a particular market who are likely to share it with others because of it’s amusement value (not because of the brand or message).

    Developing the right viral campaign is a bit of an art because you have to be careful not to make it too manufactured, it needs to be genuinely funny and the brand or message involved has to be visible but not dominating – potentially the more outrageous and cheeky it is the more success you will have. People will either love it or hate it – but that’s OK, so long as it gets exposure.

    How can tourism use it? Very creatively hopefully! This is a superb way to create interest in a destination or particular tourism product in a different and memorable way. A couple of current examples of viral marketing campaigns for New Zealand tourism organisations are:

    Air New Zealand – Who Would You Spoon?

    A funny video featuring comedian Di Henwood with the campaign centred on the Air New Zeland Facebook page. They have even produced a Facebook application for the spooning campaign so fans can select some of their friends to spoon and enter a competition to win a weekend away…the marketing message for this campaign? It’s all about their new Economy Skycouch which allows passengers to lie down during flight to sleep, and presumably spoon if travelling with a close friend…

    Destination Northland – Northland For Dummies Aussies

    A clever couple of videos have been produced and placed on YouTube with the star of the show being the likeable Bazza from Oz. Targeted at Australians to visit Northland, these 2 videos (A language Guide and an Outdoor Guide) are being spread virally through You Tube, Facebook and Twitter. Bazza has his own Facebook page and Twitter account so you can follow his travels through Northland.


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    Using Meta Tags to Get Your Website Ranking Higher In Google

    by on March 4, 2010 in Google, Online Marketing, Tourism Industry Blog

    Using Meta Tags to Improve Website RankingsEvery business wants their website to rank well in google, and tourism is no exception – this is a very competitive industry and we all need to get found online.

    Firstly, you should know that there are never any guarantees to getting your website ranking 1st for your desired key google searches because there are external factors (like the performance of competitor websites and how many direct competitors you have) that you can’t control, so any company that tells you they can guarantee it if you pay them are just doing a sales job on you.

    Secondly, meta tags are just one factor used by google – but an important and easy one to implement. Despite that, I have noticed after doing audits on over 50 tourism websites throughout New Zealand in the last 12 months that very few have effective meta tags.

    What Are Meta Tags?

    • The meta tags are found in the html code of your website and can either be entered by your web designer or added in through your content management systems (CMS).
    • Google (and all search engines) use meta tags to quickly find content about your website to include you in relevant search results.
    • Meta tags for search engine optimisation are made up of Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions. Meta Keywords are no longer used by google.
    • The meta titles and meta descriptions will be the text that is displayed in google search results, if the meta tags are missing Google will grab the first text content that is on each page (e.g. the page title and first sentence).

    Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions

    • A meta title should only be 60-70 characters (including spaces) and the meta descriptions about 150-160 characters – any text after this just gets ignored.
    • A key thing to remember with your meta tags is to apply DIFFERENT meta tag content for each page which should be RELEVANT to the page contents.
    • Avoid repetition of the same phrases. The idea is to include a variety of search phrases across your sites meta tags to increase the range of searches you will appear in.
    • It’s also effective to use more specific search phrases rather than broad terms e.g. “Queenstown luxury apartment accommodation” instead of “Queenstown accommodation” so that you appear in results that reach your target market – there will also be less competition so a higher ranking is likely.
    • Choosing the contents of your meta tags is important and often it can come down to how well differentiated your business is – what’s unique about it? Who are you trying to target? The answers to these questions will help define the content of your website and meta tags. The more unique you are as a business the more likely it is you will rank high in google for the target market you are trying to reach.

    TIP 1: A good way to check your meta tags in your browser is to select the option in the menu bar to view the “page source” of each page on your website. This will show you the html code of the page and the meta tags will be located near the top of the page and look something like this:

    <title>Using Meta Tags to Get Your Website Ranking Higher In Google</title>
    <meta name=”description” content=”View some tips on how to improve your meta titles and meta descriptions to rank higher in google.” />

    TIP 2: You can view what content from your website pages is displayed in google for quick analysis by doing this google search:

    site:www.yourdomainname.co.nz

    Now go and check your meta tags!

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    How to Manage Your Business Blog

    by on February 21, 2010 in Online Marketing, Social Media Marketing

    Business BlogsThis is a great summary by Karen Rubin from Hubspot about how to manage and plan content for your business blog so you can keep coming up with useful blog topics that attract targeted traffic. The video is 29 minutes long but definitely worth the time if you have your own business blog or are considering starting one.


    See our Blog Set Up & Management Services

    [business:Adept Marketing]

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    What Tourism Websites Perform the Best For You?

    by on February 18, 2010 in Online Marketing, Tourism Industry Blog

    Best Performing Tourism WebsitesI’m interested to hear from New Zealand tourism operators as to what tourism websites bring them the most traffic and booking enquiries and why. Is there a website that you would absolutely always maintain a listing on (free or not)?

    I quite often monitor the website statistics for tourism clients to see where their traffic sources are coming from so we can make decisions on where to best spend marketing money for online advertising. The answers are not always clear cut, and some sites work better for some and not for others, often depending on how the site ranks businesses (alphabetical or paid vs non-paid listings for example).

    So is your most valuable tourism website any of the following or something else?

    • Our national tourism website newzealand.com
    • High profile tourism websites that you pay to list on like AA, Jasons and New Zealand Tourism Guide
    • Your RTO, regional and local tourism websites
    • Sector or Niche tourism websites that you specialise in e.g. luxury accommodation, B&B’s, Eco-tourism, etc
    • Instant booking websites like Wotif, Ezibed, Travelbug, Expedia and so on

    Perhaps there are a few key ones, and if you don’t know then you probably should find out. It’s a good strategy to be listed on a combination of the above listed sites to ensure broad exposure, so it’s just a matter of figuring out which ones. In any case it would be great if you could share what you think works for you.

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    Be Part of The Conversation

    by on February 16, 2010 in Social Media Marketing, Tourism Industry Blog

    There are conversations going on everywhere, all the time by your customers. Whether good or bad it’s “word of mouth” and something we are largely ignorant of until it gets back to us in the form of a new booking because someone has recommended you, or a complaint about something that didn’t meet their expectations.

    A lot of the time you will never know about these conversations….well not quite, fortunately there’s now a growing number of these conversations happening online. Social networking sites, travel review sites and blogs are all ways people are now sharing their experiences with others in a much more public and accessible way.

    Many tourism operators are very nervous about this, but I say it’s an opportunity – to be part of the conversation. It’s an opportunity because you have the ability to respond, whether it’s a thank you or an explanation to resolve a situation that has been remedied, then you can have your say.

    But how do you find out about these “conversations”? There are a number of ways and you won’t find them all, or have time to, but if you participate in a few simple ways you can at least find the one’s that will get the most exposure on mainstream websites, so here are some tips to help:

    • Set up and guide your customers to your own social media pages to make comments, this is your best approach. Have your own Twitter and Facebook pages that are promoted on your website for people to connect to, view and share their experiences on. Encourage them to comment, share their photos and recommendations. Overwhelmingly, if you have positive content on your own pages then this will overshadow any “glitches” where negative comments may have been made.
    • Embrace the key travel review sites and promote your listings with them on your website where you can place their logos and website “widgets” (like Tripadvisor, Rankers and Virtual Tourist) and link to read your reviews. You can see a bit more about this topic in an article I published in August 2009, “Tourism Operators: Make Traveller Reviews Part of Your Marketing Strategy“
    • Do online searches for “mention” of your business name – you can google it or do this on sites like Twitter, Technorati and Social Mention.

    Of course, if you are confident of your business delivery and service then you may not be bothered to do all of this, but then you’d be missing out on some great conversations!

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