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.

PamFax: Sending Faxes via Skype

PamFax: Sending Faxes via Skype

One aspect of the telephony domain that has been absent from the Skype ecosystem has been the ability to fax documents via Skype. Fundamentally, sending a fax is an asynchronous one-way activity that has "ridden" the phone network to transmit a document to a device that is able to decode the fax signal back into a readable paper document. Skype itself has traditionally allowed document exchange via the file transfer feature; however, it does not address the issue of sending a document to a destination without Skype access or sending "executed" documents in legal transactions. Even for those who have a fax machine in their home office, sending a fax while traveling can be a challenging (and usually somewhat expensive) experience.

PamConsult, publishers of the pioneering Skype Extra, Pamela, this week launched a beta version of their forthcoming fax utility, PamFax which will be available as a Skype Extra. PamFax makes faxing a document from any broadband-connected PC a relatively straight forward experience:

• Designate the document to be sent
• Enter the recipient information (multiple recipients allowed)
• Select a cover page
• Enter the cover page message
• Select notification methods: Skype Chat, SMS and/or email
• Pay for the fax
  • Option: Preview the fax

The fax is then sent, followed by receipt of the selected notifications in, say, a Skype Chat window, an email message and/or an SMS message.

During the process:

• PamFax will only open if you have Skype running on your PC
• You may designate the document to be sent in multiple ways
  • Browse for the document from the PamFax client
  • Select PamFax as a "SendTo" destination in the Windows Explorer right click menu
  • Select the PamFax button inserted into the MS Word or MS Excel toolbar
• On the recipient information screen there is an option to view the destination location on Google Maps. Not terribly granular but it provides the location to within, say, a North American area code.
• Payment is executed via deductions from your Skype Credts
• When you select the "Pay and Send" button on the "Pay for the Fax" screen, you are sent to the Skype payment page in your web browser where, as would happen with any other e-commerce site, you are presented with an invoice, an option for inserting promotion codes and a "Buy Now" button.
• If you do not have sufficient Skype Credits, you can navigate to the Skype Credits purchase page (requires your Skype login information) and buy Skype Credits through the same Skype transaction engine used to buy SkypeIn, SkypeOut and Skype Pro services. If linked to PayPal you will also have to login into your PayPal account.

PamFax is accompanied by your own individual PamFax Portal - a web-based utility that logs your faxes, stores your default settings (cover page, sender information, notification settings) and provides a rate table.

Rates vary by destination country and can run from €0.17 per page to most European and North American destinations to €1.28 per page to many Middle Eastern, African and South American countries and €1.59 to unlisted countries (confirm via the rate table). Prior to sending a fax and even approving payment, you are provided with the cost of the fax.

Having been a beta tester there are still a couple of features I would like to see in forthcoming versions:

• acceptance of fax numbers from Microsoft Outlook
• adding a fax number to a Skype user profile (which would probably require some coordination with Skype itself).
• configure PamFax as a Windows printer driver option

In summary, after many years of fighting with WinFax and other PC telephony client installations and configurations, PamFax does provide a simple means to transmit faxes from your PC while on the road or any situation where the clarity and accuracy of document provided by a "direct to fax" process that bypasses scanning "fuzzies" is required.

Interesting to note is that, as for using actual Skype features, PamFax only uses Skype Chat for notifications and the Skype Extras Publishing Studio for both hosting the application, managing the digital rights licensing and providing the e-commerce engine.

Note: according to this FAQ, during the beta phase, PamFax is only available to Skype users outside Canada and USA.

Download PamFax beta

PamFax FAQ's.

New Dive Show Announced for Pacific Northwest

First consumer dive show in the area in the last 25 years to take place in early May, 2008.

Northwest Dive News announces the establishment of a new consumer dive show in the Pacific Northwest. The show held on May 2, 3 & 4 at the new Convention Center in downtown Tacoma Washington. This event will be the first consumer dive show in this area in the last 25 years.

"We are very excited about this event and its beautiful venue," said show coordinator, Rick Stratton. Stratton is owner/publisher of Northwest Dive News and Northeast Dive News magazines. The Greater Tacoma Convention and Trade Center, the newest meeting location in the Pacific Northwest, has a 50,000 sq. ft. column-free exhibit hall. The attractive convention center is centrally located on the I-5 corridor; just 30 minutes south of Seattle.

Consumer dive shows like this one bring attention to our sport and provide access/opportunity for businesses to market their products directly to dive consumers, Stratton said. "Our area is well known for its excellent diving and diving community. We have needed an event like this for a long time."

He continues, "The dive community is a very small one. Every exhibitor is a share holder in the success of this event. We are asking all our exhibitors to market this event to their customers and associate companies."

The Pacific Northwest is well-known for its excellent diving and active diving community. The region has more than 200,000 certified divers; we expect the community to enthusiastically respond during the weekend. Divers will come from as far north as Alaska and as far south as California.

The dive show builds on the success of the NW Treasure Hunt, that has a large following of divers and exhibitors. According to Stratton “ We will build on that success and offer our exhibitors a well organized and well attended event.”

For more information about the NW Dive & Travel Expo held on May 2-4, 2008 in Tacoma, Wash.

Contact NW Dive News Magazine at 360-240-1874 or nwdiver@nwdivenews.com

Google AdWords Keyword Tool

When designing an online campaign, we want the best possible info on keywords and our competitors.

And for those of us who use Google AdWords, there are few better sources of information than the Google AdWords Keyword Tool.

Just enter a keyword (or phrase) and choose from four possible data display types; the default mode shows the search volume and the state of the advertising competition.

We know that if we choose wisely from the tool's list, we'll have essentially have a Google-approved campaign.

Windows Live Webmaster Portal Beta

Excellent wee post/articl;e and discussion about this new tool. Definitely a good heads-up for us all out in the boonies to watch out for it:

Windows Live Webmaster Portal Beta

===========================
By: Lee Odden 2007-09-11

Earlier this year I participated in an online focus group where questions were asked about various webmaster and SEO tools. The session was run by a third party and I was able to get them...

...to admit it was for Microsoft. Tonight, like many others that showed interest, I received an invite to register from Nathan Buggia, Sr. Product Manager of the Live Search Webmaster Tools Team.

Similar to Googles Webmaster Tools (Vanessa Fox interview here) and Yahoos Site Explorer tools (Tim Mayer interview here), the services included in this Beta of Microsofts Windows Live Webmaster Portal appear to be split up into three categories:

Troubleshooting

• Site crawling


• Site Indexing


• Robots.txt


• Sitemaps

Sitemaps

• Creation


• Submission (upload, autodiscovery)


• Ping

Stats

• Top search terms for your domain


• Top search terms for other domains


• Top keywords on your site


• Inbound links to your site


• Inbound links to other sites


• Outbound links from your site


• Outbound links from other sites


• Perceived site quality score


• Number of pages indexed

===================================================

Excellent wee post/article and discussion about this new tool. Definitely a good heads-up for us all out in the boonies to watch out for it:

Windows Live Webmaster Portal Beta

Google Webmaster Central gets a new look

Webmaster Central gets a new look

Google has launched Webmaster Central back in August 2006, with a goal of creating a place for us to learn more about Google's crawling and indexing of websites, and to offer tools for submitting sitemaps and other content.

Google has also been working to roll out exciting new features for Webmaster Tools, like internal/external links data and the Message Center, over the past year.

Anyone who is NOT paying attention to these tools is simply silly. Google are happy to give you all the stats for what they see on your site and it's VITAL that Google ahs a good handle on all your pages.

Read about their new Webmaster Tools features here on the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog.

Top 10 Reasons Prospects Leave a Landing Page

(Courtesy Atlas NetConversions)

Landing pages have long been considered an after thought when it comes to an online campaign. Many marketers rely solely on their outbound marketing to drive conversions and neglect the landing page altogether. In other words, many marketers think that the campaign does the bulk of the work and the landing page simply is a conversion receptacle. Not true!

Campaigns are built to drive traffic to the site. Some of that traffic may even be well-qualified depending on creative, placement and messaging. However, your landing page is the critical piece to the overall success of your campaign. Your landing page must convince, engage, and provide enough information to your prospect to stick around and hopefully sign-up or buy what you are selling them.

Atlas NetConversions has been collecting and analyzing the behavior of over 4 million web users on clients’ websites for over 5 years. With all that data, we have a pretty good idea of what works to convert customers and what doesn’t. A la David Letterman, here are Atlas NetConversions’…

Read the full 10 points (whoich are spot on!) here: Travel Team Consulting: Solutions