Improving the worst part first

On the Saasu blog this last week was an interesting comment about different ways to improve your business.

It’s funny where you pick up great insights. I was watching a national gardening program and one of the winners of their annual Gardener Of The Year prize was asked by the host how she succeeded in building such an amazing garden. Her answer floored me…

I just keep improving the worst part.

It is an interesting concept and one which I think has a lot of relevance for the tourism industry and for managing websites especially for smaller businesses.

Rather than try and fix all the problems at once why not start making a list of things which need doing whether it be replace the carpet in a room, update to a more online accounting system, take new photos for your website, SEO, etc.

A good way to manage this is using google docs or google applications.

Simply create a file and keep it updated with ideas. Then you can prioritise and work our which bits you want to do first and also see the benefits and cost.

When you are running a company like RainbowTourism.com there is always more to do. For example when we were developing our new website with Canz Design we made a file of future ideas. It meant we could keep working on the site but not loose sight of good ideas. Some of these still are to be implemented but by getting the things we needed first rather than getting distracted by lots of other issues our site was completed.

This along with other items will be looked at each month to decide which part needs to be improved first.

Of course there are arguments to fixing everything at once but if you are a small company this has lots of hidden dangers in that if you don't have the time you can easily have the changes take more time - so why not focus on the worst part first.

Make friends and partnership links

Whatever type of tourism you are in, you are bond to know what other services are around your area, and further afield.

Link partnerships with places nearby.
If you have a CMS website, where you can make small changes yourself, it is worth making link partnerships with complementary services. E.G. you have a hotel website and in your area there are 6 tourism operators, they all have their own little websites, if your visitors ask you what there is to do in your area, you often recommend these people.

So why not get together with them, and set up a website link exchange, get everyone to write one sentence about their particular business. Then agree to add all the links to your own website.

Links with other places to stay future away.
Then you may know of other hotels that are in other towns close by or hundreds of miles away. Do the same thing with them.

The end result, if your website will rank better in search engines, because other websites in your area link to you, and rank even better again since other websites that do the same thing as you, offer accommodation also link to you.

By taking these easy steps you could help your website immensely, as well as the websites that you have the linking arrangement with. It is also quite possible that your website will get found when people do a search for accommodation near a tourism activity that you have a link exchange with.

Great service for your clients.
This is a very good service to offer your customers, if you own a fishing charter, and a visitor to your website see’s you recommend a hotel nearby, chances are they will book a room at that place, it only makes sense they wouldn’t have to decide to take your fishing trip, then have to go search the web for somewhere to stay before and after, it would be much easier and quicker, to go with your suggestion wouldn’t it.

More services to offer.
Once you found this worked well, you could even go one step further and make a package deal, a customer’s stays at this place, does your fishing charter, and get’s a cut rate at each place, if both sites offer such packages you could be getting bookings from two sources, do this with everyone in your link list, and you could quite be doing quite a good business out of it.

regards Lynny
Serious SEO Services

Rainbow Tourism is Live!!!

Last night the Rainbow Tourism website went live, after 3 months of building, testing, rechecking, what a relief to know that at last the site is build, online and having new visitors.

Go check it our

RainbowTourism.com The spirit of Gay and Lesbian Travel

Lynny
The Best SEO

How to tell if your SEO has done their homework 1. B&B

Tonight while doing research for what words to optimise Rainbow Tourism.com new website, I remember an interesting trend I leant some time back that might intherest those of you that own a B&B.

Most people thoughout the world search for
Bed and Breakfast

As a rule this is the order of searches

Bed and Breakfast
B&B
B and B
Bed & Breakfast

The two highlighted in red interchand depending on what country the search was done from. Americans Tend to search nore for B and B rather than B&B

This tells me of course that if you have a B&B website, and have already had the optimisation done, that a good SEO would have known this trend, and even if the name of your business is something like Molly's B&B that a good SEO would have told you about this, and asked you to consider calling it Molly's Bed and Breakfast on the website.

Look below at the search trends for Australia, United Kingdom, United States, and New Zealand.
New Zealand is really interesting, Kiwi's didn't even start searching for B&B is general until late 2006!!! I wonder why, Bed and breakfast places have been around for years.

Anyway, click the picture below and look at the trends,

If you are interested in study's like this, you might read this one, where I looked at the most popular searches for accommodation in general

Regards Lynny

SEO by Canz

How Secure is your data

I read the following interest blog on Saasu's blog today called Winning The SaaS Security Challenge

Of particular importance are the following questions:

• Can you achieve better security than us?
• Is that laptop of yours (with accounting software on it) safer in your car, home or office than in our international data centre?
• Does your laptop have a guy with a gun standing in front of it to protect it?
• Do you back up your data as many times as day as we do?
• Do your store credit card numbers in your MYOB or Quicken file? What is your liability if you lose these?

You might ask the same questions about your online booking system.

So here is another reason to choose online systems compared to off line systems.

For example Rainbow Tourism uses Saasu accounting software and all our invoices and documentation is stored online safely and securely for a small annual fee. We email all invoices and receive all invoices electronically. This saves a large amount of money in paper, postage and printing and reduces our environmental footprint.

Similarly Rainbow Tourism uses the Seekom booking engine to manage all our bookings again storing all our documents securely.

So the question is how secure is your data?

Just for Fun take a look at websites that were

This is nothing to do with anything, but I was just looking through my Favourites Links, and found this link Webpage Archives if you have a website that's been through a few changes, or are just interest in seeing what your favourite website used to look like, just type in the url of the site and have a look way back.

If you can't think of a url, try our main website www.canzdesign.com and in a couple of days you can check out the old www.RainbowTourism.com we are just putting the finishing touches to the new RainbowTourism.com website, and it will be live by this weekend 9-11-07 maybe sooner.

I hope this one gives you all a smile, or jogs your memory.

Have a Great Day
Lynny Bishop
The Honest SEO

Online Availablity... Check your emails twice a day

This post might seem silly to some people, but we have come across accommodation websites that reply to enquiry's about avaiablity of rooms upto 2 weeks after we email them, with the excuse that "we don't get a chance to check our email very often"

Get real, if you have a website, then turn your computer on, login and download your email twice a day, it will take 5 minutes each time.

And check your spam bin. An email from someone new emailing you will often end up in the spam bin, so check the spam bin or folder each day and empty it.

Handy Hint Combatting Spam.
If you are finding you are getting too much spam through your main email, make a new email in your website control panel call it bookings1@ yourwebsite.com or enquiry1@ and put this new email on forward to your usual email, and change the emails on your website to the new email, when that one starts to become a spam magnet delete it, and make a new email booking2@ or enquiry2@


Handy Hint 2 Combatting Spam. If your main email is over run with spam, make a new email, and go through your email address book, sending out an email to everyone saying please update your address book with our new email, you have gotten email like this from time to time, and are happy to update the email if it means something haven't you.... then just wait for about 6 weeks, until all you recieve at the old email is junk, and simply delete the old email address.
You spam will be cut down heaps. If you combine this with the first hint you will get your spam problem under control easily.

Handy Hint 3 Combatting Spam If you are having a new website built never ask for the 2 defualt emails admin@ and info@ many spambot's now just gather url's and send emails automatically out to these 2 addresses. If you have one of these addresses, then reread Hint 2

Cheers
Lynny
NZ's Best SEO