We are excited to announce the launch of the Anchorage Home Builders Association’s (AHBA) newly redesigned website. It features CMS access for direct editing by AHBA staff, display advertising options for AHBA members, blog, and a database of current AHBA members.

Google Places (or Maps) now allows business owners to respond publicly to reviews on their Google Place page. For Alaska small business owners, this is another great opportunity to publicly respond to reviews. Note that the reviews must be from ones posted to Google Places (reviews from other websites outside of Google may also be displayed on your place page).

Google has provided instructions and guidelines for responses to reviews.

If you have not claimed your business listing/location(s) within Google Places, you can start the process at Google Places.

We have helped Phillips Cruises and Tours launch a new website for Anchorage bound cruise ship passengers. The Anchorage Shore Excursions website promotes the 26 Glacier Cruise of Prince William Sound to cruise ship passengers during their stay in Anchorage.  Bus Transportation from Anchorage to Whittier (and the return trip to Anchorage) is included.

This new site targets a new market of cruise ship passengers who are looking for shore excursions in Anchorage.

Recently, I’ve had a number of clients ask me about “too good to be true” offers for cheap, flat-rate management of CPC campaigns that often feature “top placement” and “unlimited impressions,” often starting for only $50 per keyword, per month. One company in particular promises “1st Page Google Placement.” I learned fairly quickly that I could simply do a search for “[company name] scam” or “[company name] review” and quickly see if a majority of their current and past customers thought if the company in question was offering legitimate services.

So how does a business offer CPC campaign management services for a low flat fee?

1. In order to get the ads on page one, they use exact match to target keyword phrases (and possibly make use of geo-targeting & scheduling as well). In my experience, they often choose low-volume keywords that really don’t generate many impressions or clicks (less clicks = more profit).
2. Lack of Transparency: they control the Google AdWords Campaign (even if you already have your own campaign, they will launch a campaign under their account). You can only get information on how many clicks you have received if you ask. There is no way to verify if this data is correct, since you don’t have access to the AdWords campaign they are running on your behalf.

And why doing business with flat fee, “Too Good to Be True” CPC management companies is a bad idea:

1. No control or access to the CPC campaign account.
2. Lack of control over ad variations – often only allowing one ad per keyword phrase. Typically, CPC campaigns constantly test new ad copy.
3. It may be difficult to learn how many clicks the ad is generating (but if you closely read what is being sold, they often stress impressions and don’t guarantee clicks).
4. No conversion tracking: no way to really measure if the CPC campaign is generating sales or leads. And your AdWords campaign won’t be properly linked to your Google Analytics account.
5. According to some feedback I have seen, the flat fee can be increased at any time, without notice.

A true CPC professional will help you evaluate your campaign’s effectiveness over time, add or remove keywords based on performance, and work on optimizing it to meet your goals. There should also be transparency within the campaign and what the professional services actually cost. And finally, your business should have control over the CPC accounts, so that you can control over who has access to your CPC campaigns.

So when in doubt, do a quick search on the company in question, and check out their reputation with their current and past customers.

Recently, I have assisted several clients who were having problems with their domain registration. In some situations, it did not appear that the domain was properly registered with the business or organization as the owner of the domain. This could end up being a big problem for a business or organization if they cannot get control of their domain name(s).

I was also surprised to find an Alaskan ISP registering their web hosting clients’ domains in the ISP’s name (so it looked like the ISP was the owner of the domain). Given that whois search tools may show this data a little differently, I could be mistaken about this, but it was a pretty eye-opening experience while I was trying to get a domain transferred properly for a client. The ISP was very helpful in getting the domain transferred, once I found the right person to speak to.

I’ve also seen domains expire, shutting down a business website and email; while the IT support staff and/or web site designer had no access to the registrar account. A primary domain should never be allowed to expire, especially given that several notices are sent via email prior to a domain’s expiration date, and the fact that most registrars allow you to auto-renew with a credit card on file.

For a business or an organization, make sure that all of your domains are properly registered in the business or organization name (and preferably have all domains registered through the same registrar of your choice). You should be able to set up to 4 contacts for a domain: Registrant, Administrative, Billing, and Technical. Make sure the contact information is up to date that everyone who may need to assist with domain registrations has access to the registrar account.

As a web designer/consultant, I’ve learned not to overlook the domain registration, and make sure that my clients have clear understanding who is responsible for the domain renewals for their organization, as well as making sure that the right people have access to the registrar account.

Google is launching a preview of their next generation architecture for search. The system isn’t completely ready yet, but they are offering a preview here: http://www2.sandbox.google.com/ One can also provide feedback to Google on the results that you find from this new index.

The talk so far about the big change with this index is “Freshness.” From what I’ve seen so far from limited testing, it appears that sites that have the freshest content are doing better than older, static, or “stale” sites. I suspect that the quantity and quality of backlinks plays an important role as well.

Updating your site with fresh content via articles, blog posts, social media, etc. may be more important than ever. It will be interesting to watch the search engine results pages to see how this new index plays itself out.

There is a good article at the Wall Street Journal about real life examples of companies making use of social media to monitor negative PR and move quickly to rectify it. Even if you are a small business and can’t afford to dedicate significant resources to monitor comments and reviews made about your company, you can make use of free and paid tools to monitor comments about your business.

For Alaska tour operators, it’s very easy to monitor travel review sites like TripAdvisor with the tools they provide to business owners (you can be notified via email and/or a RSS feed when you have new review).  I set up email or RSS feeds for my Internet marketing clients and can quickly react to positive and negative reviews. Sometimes a quick post to clarify a policy is all it takes to respond to a question or a negative review. There are many free and paid tools out there to monitor reviews, article mentions, and social media. Here are just a few of the possibilities to consider:

• Google Alerts: Set up the term(s) to trigger an email or RSS feed. A very useful way to monitor news, blogs and other websites that mention your business.
• Twitter Search: Enter your search term to see how many tweets include it. RSS feed available, or make use of TweetBeep and have the results emailed to you.
• Social Mention: Real time search of social media sites.

Ideally, your company or organization should take the time to craft a strategy for monitoring social media and engagement. Perhaps I’ll tackle that one in my next post.

There has been quite a bit of discussion about the value of Twitter Search. The downside has been that in it’s current form, it’s simply a text matching search engine, and the results can be repetitive (and even filled spam tweets, I’ve been noticing more spam-looking tweets).

CNet reports that Twitter has announced that it will begin to crawl the links included within tweets and rank the results. Reputation will be important as well.

For businesses that truly engage their customers (and potential customers) on Twitter, such changes could give them a real advantage.

Alaska Wildland Adventures has announced an Escape to Alaska or Bust Essay Contest. The rules appear to be simple: in 500 words or less, convince Alaska Wildland Adventures why you and your group should escape to Alaska this summer. You could win an Alaska Trip for four people (two cabins for the family or group) with Alaska Wildland Adventures, featuring the new Kenai Fjords Glacier Lodge. The tour is 8 Day / 7 Night Action-Packed Wilderness Lodge and Wildlife Expedition, Valued at Over $12,000.

The second and third place winners in the contest receive discount coupons for Alaska vacation packages from Alaska Wildland Adventures during the 2009 summer season.

See the Alaska Wildland Adventures’ Escape to Alaska website for the details.

A new green tourism certification program is being launched in Alaska. For those people searching for Alaskan tourism businesses that care for the environment and Alaska’s communities, this new program will serve as a great resource. The Adventure Green Alaska program will announce the first businesses to be certified on March 4, at the 20th Annual Ecotourism conference hosted by the Alaska Wilderness Recreation & Tourism Association (AWRTA).