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Articles from Xebidy Strategic Design

Become a Travel Writer 2008-08-24 23:32:28 By the end of this week stage 1 of the stealth Travel Generation project will be launched: a blog-a-zine for backpackers by backpackers.  While we are still keeping the actual URL under wraps the new site will feature articles, blog posts, photos and videos from our pro-travel bloggers as they travel the world, plus the Travel Generation wiki which already has over 25 destinations created and updated by our affiliate sites. Later this week we will announce our Editor in Chief and also begin introducing some of our writers.  And that is where you come in - we still have space for a few more travel writers.  Check out the information below if this is something for you: Love sharing your travel experiences with friends? Have a passion and flair for writing? Fancy the prospect of getting paid to regularly impart your worldly knowledge in the coolest Travel Forum on the net??? … Then we want to hear from you! Sendh your personal and travel bio along with some of your travelling ph ...

Before you Send an Email - Read This! 2008-08-14 16:05:59 Is it going to just one person? (If yes, jump to #10) Since it’s going to a group, have I thought about who is on my list? Are they blind copied? Did every person on the list really and truly opt in? Not like sort of, but really ask for it? So that means that if I didn’t send it to them, they’d complain about not getting it? See #5. If they wouldn’t complain, take them off! That means, for example, that sending bulk email to a list of bloggers just cause they have blogs is not okay. Aside: the definition of permission marketing: Anticipated, personal and relevant messages delivered to people who actually want to get them. Nowhere does it say anything about you and your needs as a sender. Probably none of my business, but I’m just letting you know how I feel. (And how your prospects feel). Is the email from a real person? If it is, will hitting reply get a note back to that person? (if not, change it please). Have I corresponded with this person before? R ...

Reciprocal Links 2008-08-13 20:06:38 The facts of the matter are: We know that Google does not like link swapping We also know that a link from a high quality content page to your site (with complementary content) is a very good tool in pushing you up the search engines. We know that an outgoing link from your website to another with high quality complementary content also helps your website rankings. Finally, we know that it is your websites complete content that contributes to your overall rankings - that links to your internal pages are very important in pushing up your home page ranking. BUT: a probing question - what is you have a link within one of your pages to another site with high quality complementary content; and that site from a different page on their site has a link to your site (not the page where you have the link to them) - are these reciprocal links? Visually the structure is: Are there really reciprocal links? ...

Link Strategies - Use your brains 2008-08-13 16:06:26 Let’s look at a real-world situation - say an accommodation provider in the centre of New Zealand. Firstly, they get contacted by a tour operators who is in fact one of their main suppliers of business wanting a link (say for example, Stray Travel stays here) - but the link is not reciprocal. Where should this property get it’s links from? Simple! What other sites might be of use to their customers or vice versa - or in another way to look at is, what are the potential feeder sites to your business? How about other accommodation providers in towns that might be en-route to your property? Say if you are in Taupo you might look for links in places in Rotorua, Wellington or National Park - sites where your visitors are and will be looking to move on from. How about things to do in town - sites your visitors might come across and then also look for somewhere to stay? When I start working with clients it is amazing what they come up - regional tourism sites, fellow operator ...

Links, links and more links 2008-08-12 17:06:19 First and foremost, search engines and Google in particular view links to your website as a tick for your website as the relevancy and authority of the content of your site. The more links the more important your site must be and therefore the higher it ranks in search engines. Combine many links with strong on-site optimisation (the part of optimisation for your site that makes it clear and easy for search to determine what your keywords are) and you are sure to succeed in search engines theoretically. A second benefit of inbound links is that search engine robots will be driven to your website more often. So why would I say that search engines are placing less decreasing value on inbound links and increasing value on alternative weightings such as Semantic Indexing algorithms. Quite simply I believe it is due to the continual gaming of the system by us. Once we realised the importance of links we started creating massive links pages and even sites that were totally dedicated to li ...

The Social Media Marketer 2008-08-11 15:06:54 If we were to try and write a job description for a social media marketer it might include such terms as brand evangelist, engagement of customers, community building and even viral marketing. Clearly the role might be described as retaining your current customer base and growing it. This makes sense if you think in terms of bottom line profit - it is much easier to make money by retaining your customer base and adding to it than it is easy to be continually rolling over your customers for new ones. A person engaged in social media marketing aims to keep their current customer happy while adding new customers. One of the main things about social media marketing is the way in which the company message can be spread to literally hundreds and thousands of people at once. The social media web is built on patterns of friends, followers and even strangers. Bookmarking sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon and Delicious can take a website from backwater to prominence at rocket speed, and micro ...

Latent Semantic Indexing 2008-08-10 16:06:06 When we talk about Semantic Indexing, one of the algorithms that I find interesting is one known as the Latent Semantic Indexing algorithm (LSI). LSI determines a websites importance for it’s keywords and keyword phrases based on the websites use, and composition, of other keywords that commonly appear alongside the chosen keyword and keyword phrases. In this way the Latent Semantic Index also considers the content of your website in evaluating the rank of a single web page by looking for compositions of words that are considered to be commonly associated with the keywords you have optimised your website for. Optimising your website for Latent Semantic Indexing algorithms necessitates excellent design of your website structure and architecture. At the upmost importance is the proper use of keywords as part of your internal link anchor text that properly support your top-teir keywords. The best way to optimise your website for Latent Semantic Indexing is to create what are know ...

Lifestreams are The New Blogs 2008-08-09 01:06:13 Blogs have been the darling of the Web 2.0 era; companies and individuals have expounded their thoughts and relationships around discussions have been formed. Many refer to the blog phenomenon as the democratisation of the Internet; in which everyone can be a publisher. This blog alone has over 1,000 subscribers and many more daily visitors. Blogs also provide unbeatable food for search engine - their continual fresh content and interlinking nature of the blogosphere rocketing well populated blogs up search engine results pages. In one year alone this blog has achieved a Page Rank of 6 with no Search Engine Optimistation or marketing effort on our part at all. So what is the problem? Information overload! I tried to introduce Google Reader to the Backpacking Queensland Committee as a way of being able to consume more information faster. But do we really want more information? More stuff to read? Blogs such as this actually entail quite a commitment from our readers to take the ...

Setting up social netwa.king in five minutes 2008-08-04 02:00:00 Facebook - your too late - your customers already did it for you Setup your own blog - hopefully you already have one Setup a Google reader and start monitoring lots of blogs about your area of interest. Share posts of interest and stylise your shared items page. Share the URL on your website, emails etc. Setup You Tube channel and add you own videos and start searching You Tube finding videos about your product and making them your favourites and friends. You can setup an RSS feed to monitor You Tube for your search terms in your Google reader: http://www.youtube.com/rss/tag/cairns+calypso.rss change the last two “tags” to whatever you want. Add this feed to the Google reader you set up and you can monitor it in one place. Share the items that you like and set them up to show on your Friendfeed and Twitter account . Setup Friendfeed and instantly set it up to read your shared Google items and your Your Tube RSS for your relevant tags - you can setup more. Friend f ...

Generating Fresh Content 2008-07-31 16:02:58 In my previous post I showed how creating fresh search engine optimized content on a regular basis is one of the best ways to build your Internet footprint and search engine rankings.  However, getting ideas for that content can be a challenge for even the best marketers, bloggers, or webmasters.  Here are 5 ideas that I use to get the creative juices flowing and a few ideas for our blog here: 1.  Look at relevant question and answers sites.  We spend a lot of time on questions and answers sites as well as social media sites on behalf of our clients fielding relevant questions.  I also monitor topics that are of interest for ourselves particularly in the areas of SEO, Internet development and tourism.  From here I look regularly spot hot topics in a particular area to which I have either formulated my own opinion, do some research or talk to the guys here at Xebidy to aggregate their thoughts. 2.  The use of keyword generating tools is an almost daily if not hourly task for the ...

The Value of Blogs for Business 2008-07-30 16:58:21 Fresh content attracts more attention from search engines.  Search engines love fresh content and there is no easier way to create relevant regular content than a blog. Search engines crawl websites with fresh content more regularly.  Although search engines will come past your site frequently, daily or even weekly visits are limited to sites that are more popular and more importantly, those with regularly changing content. In the case of hostels a large amount of the content on a website does not change very often - room types and location don’t change - and getting search engine traffic can become difficult.  A blog can offer a means of introducing fresh content on a regular basis. Fresh informative blog content can help a site be seen as a greater authority on a topic The nature of readers commenting and linking to blog posts creates a web community of interlinking sites generating new traffic to your site.  Links are perhaps the biggest factor used in modern search algor ...

Connectivity and Stickiness - The Social Currency Solution 2008-07-29 16:47:32 A key element in a website with social functionality is stickiness.  To evaluate the stickiness of your social site answer these two questions: Why will a user stay on your website? and; Why will a user return to your site?  In other words what is in it for your user? One of the first things to think about is that there are a lot of websites in the world and for yours to not just grab users attention but to actually hold their attention needs something pretty special.  You need a hook to keep your users returning again and again - and please don’t say keeping touch with friends - that’s what they are doing on Facebook and Bebo! The answer I don’t hear enough of is “quality”.  Whether that be the quality of the content, the travel planning software or even the ads being served.  The quality of your sites functionality is a very important factor in retaining your visitors. Let’s assume you do have a site that is easy to use and offers functionalit ...