Video is definitely here!

Well after playing with the video sites for a while now (hasn't everyone?) it';s time I took the punge and started to actually work with some. Here is a first try at embedding some video into Blogger!

Stuart

Great updates at the ATTA World Summit in Whistler

A few of you know that I am currently in Canada after attending The Adventure Travel World Summit in whislter in BC.


Anyway one of the main things that came out of it for me was that VIDEO is neede by all my sites and clients to keep up at the leading edge of SEM. So much so that I spent a few hours chatting with the pros, including Anupam from Mixpo.

His blogs are very informative... And I am quoted...
Stuart

Conversion: Lookers to Bookers

We attended the Adventure Travel World Summit in Whistler last week. This is the premier international event for the adventure travel industry with executive level participation, excellent networking, and just a cool venue (Whistler). It turned out to be everything we expected, and more. The most energizing thing for us was the lively discussion with customers (ranging from tour operators to destination marketing companies to resorts to publishers….), which is refreshing compared to so many other industry events where industry people talk to each other about what customers are asking for and need. But where’s the customer in all that discussion?

.....

A few such businesses we met were the owners of Matava (Fiji), Tui Tai (Fiji), and Roam (Canada). They are all extremely passionate about the Internet as a sales channel, and took the leap of faith early on to move their entire marketing online, and are now extremely knowledgeable and creative to make use of its full potential. In fact Stuart from Matava mentioned “We realized 3 years ago that there was a freight train coming. Brochures, DVDs etc weren’t working. We decided to move 100% online especially as Fiji is so remote. And now our growth is better than ever. This has been fantastic for us. It truly is the world wide web”. Pioneers such as Stuart, Tige and Brian from these 3 companies will continue to push the boundaries with emerging technologies. We have a lot to learn together in this exciting journey.

Anupam Gupta
President

www.Mixpo.com
agupta@mixpo.com | m +1 (425) 829-2991 | f +1 (206) 299-3446

SEO, Accessibility, Usability and Web Standards

So another way of looking at what makes a good website is to describe it in new terms. A good website is:

• Search engine optimized
• Accessible
• Usable

Many of the factors that make a site better at one of these also improve it in another, there is lots of overlap between them. For example, a site that is (x)html semantically structured (the xhtml explains the document, not how it looks) will be easily read in a screen reader by someone who has poor vision. It will also be easily read by a search engine spider. Google is effectively blind in how it reads your website.
Another way of thinking about this is graphically.

A good web site will have lots of overlap. Here we have introduced the idea of a framework of W3C valid code. A site that is validates to the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) web standards has a much better foundation for making it accessible, usable and search engine optimized. Think of these as building codes for your house. A website built with them is stronger and safer. You can check your pages with the W3C's HTML validation service. for free. At its simplest, a site that meets W3C validation uses semantic (x)thml and seperates content from presentation using CSS.

SEO

About half of searches on the web are done with Google. What does it take to get a good SERP with this search engine? Patent #20050071741 or "Information Retrieval Based on Historical Data" (Google) describes over 118 factors that effect a web site's position in search engine's rankings.
Some of the more important on-site factors are:

• Keywords in title tag, h1/h2 etc tags, alt text, URL and site links
• High keyword density in body, (content seperated from presentation) preferably near beginning
• Small Pages <30k
• Themed pages
• Efficient internal link structure

The negative on-page factors include:

• Text presented in graphics
• Excessive JavaScript
• Excessive Flash

A well organized usable page that is designed to be accessible will have a better chance of acheiving high SERP. You can find more details about SEO at www.compassdesigns.net/articles/webmarketing/seo-guide.html

Originally published at JoomlaShack:

http://www.joomlashack.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=159&Itemid=1

Search Engine Optimization: Ten Golden Rules For Beginners

By Leo Jackson (c) 2007

The following are the ten simple ways to optimize and increase traffic to your website. The guide is meant for those who intend to or are just starting out in Search Engine Optimization. It shows you all the basic things you need to know and what do to improve your rankings with the search engines and increase traffic to your website. No geek speak. No technical jargons. Just practical, easy to follow tips.

Directory Submission: Submit your site to online web directories. There are several directories you can list your site with. There are free ones as well as paid services. Directory registration can be a time-consuming elbow grease so the temptation is to go for a paid service whereby you pay a company or any other concern to help submit your site to all relevant directories. However you do not really need to shell out to get listed in the right directories with decent traffic and pagerank. The search engines have their own directory services and is a great place to start. Yahoo has its directory service www.dir.yahoo.com. Visit the site and submit your URL and feed in the category that matches the kind of website you run and / or your kind of business. It might take a while but your site will be listed. Getting listed in a directory like that offers all the exposure and presence a major player like Yahoo has to offer. Another directory to aim for is the Open Directory Project (dmoz). It does take some effort to get listed here but given the fact that this directory is highly valued by most of the big search engines, then it must be worth every effort. It can be found at www.dmoz.org.

Search Engine Registration:Register with the search engines. Registering with the search engines is introducing your website to them, inviting them to visit the site and help announce your existence to the world wide web. This can be explained simply without getting into geek mode. Forget about algorithms, spiders, crawlers and all that. In plain terms, the search engines on being registered with, will visit your website and index it. Hopefully they like what they see and they keep coming back and once someone searches for the contents they have found on your site, they point that person towards your site. So a sure way of being noticed by the search engines is simply to register with them. Of course Google should be your number one target here. Other prominent search engines you should register with include Alexa, Entireweb, Scrub The Web, Jayde, Info Tiger, Exactseek, Lookseek and Lifetips.

READ WHOLE ARTICLE HERE:
Search Engine Optimization: Ten Golden Rules For Beginners

Leo Jackson is a London, UK based web entrepreneur and freelance journalist.