Do you have a sweet lodging special that is worth promoting? Do a press release. Is your company holding a fund raiser? Do a release. Are you opening up after a remodel? Release the hounds!

Let the people know why you are unique and why they should give your business a try!

Writing a press release isn’t easy and it’s not cheap. Even if you find someone to write about your company it takes time and effort to craft the message that you want to get out. And if someone writes for you there is good chance that that you will make more than a few revisions.

To be a press release hero you are going to need a little bit of help to get moving. After all, you spend so much time and money writing that you want to get the most exposure for your buck, right?

You will need:

• Access to a wide range of media outlets and organization to maximize your efforts
• A platform that will target and distribute to local resources
• Attention from news outlets that are frequently indexed by search engines so you will get Google love
• A solution that not only drives traffic to your website but tracks who is reading your news and who is coming to your website
• A system that is cost effective, quick to distribute and an online interface that is easy to use

The platform we prefer, because it does all of the above in one place, is Vocus. Vocus allows us to streamline public relations efforts, gain maximum search engine visibility and increase website visitors.

News sources naturally get search engine attention, so doing a press release is a straightforward way to get your name out into the webosphere and be hero for your company.

Need guidance with writing or releasing? Let us know! Info@BlizzardInternet.com

Superman picture by adjustafresh

Here are some great websites to turn to for inspiration:

24 Beautiful Hotel Website Designs to Get Inspired

Checking in Hotel Web Design: 50 Cosy Hotel Websites and Trends

90+ Remarkable Examples Of Bold Colors In Web Design

50 Excellent Corporate Website Designs

35 Beautiful Water-themed Web Designs for Inspiration

30 Beautifully Textured Web Designs

Web Design Trends: Testimonials Design

20 Super Creative Website Menus

Web Design – Pricing Tables

48 Excellent Examples Of Blog Post Footer Designs

30 Best Free Icon Sets for Bloggers is a good place to go to get cool looking Facebook and other blogger icons.

The Importance Of Wireframes In Web Design And 9 Tools To Create Wireframes is worth investigating if you want to create visual mockups of your website and/or its navigation

And it wouldn’t be right to not mention the two “meta sites” that have these and lots more:

DesignFollow: best of design and Web Development and more

Super List of Web Designs Round Up for Inspiration

Photo by onextrapixel

Blizzard Internet Marketing Inc. announces new consultation services for hotels, resorts, vacation rental managers and hospitality businesses seeking to boost earnings from online marketing in 2010.

Blizzard Internet Marketing Inc. is now offering consultation time with their award-winning, industry leading team to companies seeking advice or guidance to accelerate their internet success.

Trent Blizzard, President and Co-Founder notes that “companies often come to us and are missing pieces of their internet marketing puzzle; they have spent thousands on a website that is not attracting the traffic expected, it’s not ranking well against their competitors, it’s not converting as hoped, etc., and they need a little bit of guidance. We are excited to offer this plan that will provide a few hours of help to get hospitality websites going in the right direction.”

Get expert advice on the powerful disciplines of search engine marketing including:

• Search Engine Optimization – learn what specific strategy to employ to improve search engine rankings and which to avoid in personalized, one-on-one search engine optimization help sessions.
• Paid Advertising with Google AdWords – paid advertising is one of the fastest ways to drive website traffic, but there is a right way to do it and many others that will cost novices a lot of money.  Get advice for creating and running an AdWords account that is geared towards specific demographic and niche markets.
• Website Usability and Design for Conversions – driving visitors to a website is easier than converting the visitors into a customer. Consult with Blizzard’s experts and learn where website improvements and changes need to be made to convert the looker into the booker.
• Facebook and Twitter Visibility –setting up a Facebook profile and a Twitter account the right way will increase search engine presence, boost branding, and create new connections. Learn how to create and manage your social media visibility in just minutes a day using best practice strategies.
• Website Tracking with Google Analytics – learn how to make informed, smart decisions about your marketing dollar by collecting and analyzing data from Google Analytics.
• Content Management and Website Design with WordPress – website updates and changes don’t have to be difficult. Learn how to easily manage website content and updates with the search engine, and user, friendly WordPress Content Management System (CMS).

Improve, supplement, or create a solid search engine marketing strategy with the help of Blizzard Internet Marketing, Inc. today.

1. Bebo
2. MySpace
3. World Cup
4. Metacafe
5. Radioblog
6. Wikipedia
7. Video
8. Rebelde
9. Mininova
10. Wiki

Look how far we have come, here are the top searched terms in Google during 2009:

1. Michael Jackson
2. Facebook
3. Tuenti
4. Twitter
5. Sanalika
6. New Moon
7. Lady GaGa
8. Windows 7
9. Dantri.com.vn
10. Torpedo Gratis

Check out 2009 Year-End Google Zeitgeist for other top searches.

Worried that your new website is missing a few important details?

Before you roll out your new website design, talk to your website designer about each of these.  Make sure you have implemented the following 5 best practices:

404 Page Setup – A 404 error page is a “whoops” page that your website visitors see when they go to a malformed or non-existent web-page.  Make sure you have 404 page that fits the character of your website and shepherds all those lost visitors back into your website.  With a new website, you are bound to get a few “whoops” visitors.

• Tip: consider monitoring this page to see if there are any major sources of traffic that need accounted for.
• Benefit: it is easier to keep a visitor than get a new one!
• Learn More about 404 pages

301 Redirects - When you build your new website, your page names change (ie from www.yourdomain.com/oldpage.htm to www.yourdomain.com/newpage.php).

This confuses the heck out of search engines and can cause lower rankings and lost visitors.  Make sure you set up a 301 redirect for each old page of your website to a new page.

• Tip: Ask your new designer to work with your host on this.
• Tip: Ask for the list of 301s they are implementing.
• Benefit: More visitors to your website.
• Learn more about 301 redirects

Sitemaps – Always make a simple sitemap available to your users and search engines.  Make it easy to see, typically linking from the footer:

• Tip: Make it read nicely and be easily skimmable, many humans use these.
• Tip: If your website has hundreds (or more) pages, break sitemaps up into usable chunks and put on different pages.
• Benefit: helps your users and search engines navigate your website
• Learn more about sitemaps

Analytics - Make sure your Google Analytics is setup. The only reason NOT to use Google Analytics is you already have a different tool.

• Tip: Make sure it is installed on every page of your website.
• Tip: try setting up goal funnels and revenue tracking.
• Learn more about Analytics
  

Google Webmaster Tools – Benefit from the unique insights available via Google Webmaster Tools. Google shows you how it sees your website and alerts you to any problems.

• Tip: Once your site is registered with Webmaster Tools, leave a comment on Sidewiki
• Benefit: Excellent tool for troubleshooting problems with your rankings.
• Learn More about Google Webmaster Tools

Having these 5 invisible yet important elements installed in your website will protect your new website from losing visitors and give you best of breed analytics and reporting directly from Google.

After about 18 months of bad news, it appears that the industry is looking up!  While numbers were down for 2009, they clearly were trending up during the fourth quarter.  This is partly due to the comparison to an absolutely miserable 4Q of 2008.  Nonetheless,  it looks like the market has stopped falling and is holding steady (at worse) and even improving a bit!

Here is their month-to-month comparison for 2009 VS 2008 bookings:

This report is a must-read for any student of the Vacation Rental industry.  They offer a free download with over 20 pages of data.

Thanks Escapia for making this data public!

Escapia is an industry leading provider of property management software, bookable websites, web distribution and yield management for the vacation rental management industry.  With over 300 active users, their on-demand software offerings are among the hottest in the VRM industry.

The Truth on Social Networking: Where to start with a  Web 2.0 strategy?

What strategy works and what does not? Learn how to distinguish the pitfalls from the opportunities in the realm of Web 2.0. Important segments like blogging, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Linkedin will be analyzed. Learn about easier Web 2.0 entry points like Google Local, TripAdvisor and Yelp. This session is designed to create a social networking strategy with prioritized segments.

Event Details:

When:
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
11:30am-12:00pm Registration
12:00-2:00pm Lunch and Presentation

Where:
Arrabelle at Vail Square
675 Lionshead Place
Vail, Colorado 81657
Complimentary parking is provided

Price:
$25 Members / $35 Non-Members
Cash or check accepted at the door (no credit cards)

RSVP:
To Cristen Meyer at cristen.meyer@mollygibson.com

Photo of Arrabelle at Vail Square by felix388

See the PowerPoint Presentation

There is a large world of developers who are creating upgrades, plug-ins and furthering the usability platform. Our favorite WordPress features are that it is easy for our clients to update and it is search engine friendly.

Trent Blizzard and Lindy Norris, our Director of Web Development, have created a video to walk though the dashboard and the backend of a WordPress system to help you get the most out of your website.

Get the video: An Introduction to Managing the Content on Your Website with WordPress

If you are looking for a new website platform, watch our webinar on-demand: 10 Reasons to Use WordPress to Manage Your Website

WordPress TShirt Photo by  Titanas

Here is an overview of the new guidelines:

• The business name must be the full legal business name.
• No stuffing of keywords into the business name, Google recognizes that you are trying to manipulate the search results. “Key West Vacations by Antlers Realty” is a no-no.
• No stuffing of URLs or phone numbers into the business name.
• A property for rent isn’t considered a business; use the main office for the address. This is a big one for vacation rental companies and real estate agents who have tried to list every property in their inventory separately in the past.
• If your business operates in several cities, don’t create a listing for each city, use the main office location.
• Physical business locations only, PO Boxes don’t count.
• Best practices have always been to use an email address that
  matches your business’s URL, so for www.AwesomeRentals.com use Info@AwesomeRentals.com.
• It’s also best to use an email address that is shared by people in the company. For example Info@BlizzardInternet.com is shared between the business development and marketing team.
• When choosing categories only choose those that apply to your business, and not related categories
• Use the description and custom attribute fields for additional information about your listing; don’t stuff it into other fields.

Photo by  Spencer E Holtaway

If you don’t want your page to be indexed simply change your settings by going to: Settings –> Privacy Settings –> Search –> then UN-CLICK the box that says ‘Allow indexing’

Since yesterday Facebook has responded to the “misleading rumors” that Google will index all of your information with the pop up below when you go to your settings:

By “basic information” they mean some of your friends, what you are a fan of including products, places, websites and stores.

Our take is that you WANT Google to index your company page, so “allow” indexing, and if you don’t want your personal page to be indexed then un-click “allow indexing.”