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14 de agosto de 2011

Google Panda: Forcing Businesses to Create Better Content

If  you haven’t paid any attention to the news around Google Panda but use content to market your business, here’s what you need to know. Google recently changed the way it ranks websites with content in search engine results. So all the dozens of article directories (also known as content farms) are no longer ranking at the top of search results. If you’ve been using article directories to increase your ranking, you’re now wasting your time.
Essentially, Google now looks at the quality of every site that links to yours and determines its value. Of course, Google’s secret formula will never be known, but what we can glean is that it doesn’t like:
  • Sites with a lot of unrelated content
  • Sites with lots of ads
  • Sites that don’t appear to be moderated
  • Sites that are overstuffed with keywords
  • Sites that link to many others without reason
You know those sites when you visit them. And while many companies bemoaned these new rules, they’re actually really good rules, if you know how to play the game.
panda bears
Rule 1: Deliver Good Content
This should be the only rule, honestly. If you’ve been mindlessly churning out articles with little value and lots of keywords, you need to change your strategy. Instead, focus on what your customers want to know. This could be how-tos on your products, frequently asked questions, industry commentary, company news or op-ed pieces. Find out what pains your customers have, then ease them by providing useful content.
For example, you came to Small Business Trends because you were looking for information related to small businesses. You (we hope) find the content useful, and might even come back to see what other good stuff we’ve got going on. You can do the same thing we do on this blog on your own website. Be the expert in your industry and drive traffic to your site through content.
Rule 2: Keep It Fresh
Google loves new content, so don’t write one article and think you’re done. Create a strategy for putting out several articles a week and determine what you’ll write about. You might ask different people in your company to write on their areas of specialty to keep it diverse, but still relevant.
Rule 3: Invest in a Good Writer
Most CEOs don’t have the time or ability to write awesome content week after week. So don’t skimp. Hire a freelance writer or agency specializing in blogs and articles to help if you don’t have someone on your staff who can do it. Look for someone with experience in writing blog posts. You want a pro to drive traffic to your site.
Rule 4: Share Your Content
Your content’s only as good as the people who read it, and if that includes just your mother, it’s not doing its job. Set up an RSS feed from your blog; publish links to your posts on social media; share links in your company emails. Eventually people will find your content on their own, but you need to help them get there.
Look at Google Panda as a positive change that will help you rise above competitors who were doing a bad job of content marketing. If you follow the new rules, you’ll be able to effectively use content to get new customers.

Editor: Alex Rojas writes articles related with technology, social media and marketing. Sponsored by Costa Rica Hotels, Motor de reservas en linea and Travel to Costa Rica

21 de julio de 2011

Hotel Marketing Ideas for 2011

As has become my tradition at the end of each year and beginning of a new one, here’s my summary of 111 marketing ideas to consider as we enter 2011.

Planning & strategy

Social Media


Website

Mobile

  • Create a mobile-friendly website to avoid platform issues
  • Know that 81% (to 19%) prefer mobile websites to mobile apps for researching products and prices (eMarketer 2010 survey)
  • Make sure you don’t run a mobile ad, and then send traffic to a page on your site that’s not mobile-friendly
  • Use QR codes to bridge the online/offline gap (Example from Tailor Made Hotel)
  • 4 important things to do with mobile for customers: learn, recognize, reward and personalize
  • You’re not going to succeed in mobile on your first try. Experiment now – learn by doing.
  • A big opportunity for mobile is rewarding loyalty.
  • Look at TopGuest
  • Creating great mobile experiences requires you to get out in the world and interact with your environment. Don’t design in a cubicle.

Reputation Management

  • Tracking online reputation should not just be aggregating reviews. Use a tool that gives you insight into trends and patterns.
  • I recommend you start using ReviewPro (Why I am)
  • Begin tying online reputation to your staff bonuses
  • Know that 86% of consumers are using reviews as a deciding factor in their purchasing decision
  • An unhappy customer used to tell 3 people, now they tell 3 million. This highlights the importance of quickly catching and resolving issues.
  • On the brighter side, the majority – two-thirds, actually – of online reviews are positive [research from Keller Fay Group]
  • Increase customer confidence by monitoring, collecting, and re-publishing positive reviews
  • Monitoring for online mentions sometimes provides you with some great promotional material
  • Write better post-stay “thank you” emails to encourage online reviews
  • Get creative in how you ask for reviews. Like a banner on your WiFi network login page.
  • “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it. If you think about that you will do things differently.” – Warren Buffett

Advertising

Email

Service

Amenities & Technology

  • A poor hotel Wi-Fi experience influences 36 percent of business travelers on whether they re-book that specific hotel in the future [more research on hotel WiFi]
  • iPads are the #1 most-wanted tech amenity guests want from a hotel [USA Today poll]
  • Consider virtual meeting technology as a way to profit from lower business travel volume

Press & Media

Measurement & Analytics

Source: http://www.hotelmarketingstrategies.com/hotel-marketing-ideas-for-2011/

Editor: Alex Rojas writes articles related with technology, social media and marketing. Sponsored by Costa Rica Hotels, Motor de reservas en linea and Travel to Costa Rica     

18 de abril de 2011

Study shows promotion effect of online travel sites.

A new study confirms the existence of the so-called 'billboard effect' for hotels that are listed on third-party websites operated by online travel agents (OTAs).

The study used publicly available data from comScore on brands operated by InterContinental Hotels Group to assess the impact of listing at OTAs upon bookings on the "hotelbrand.com" site.

Anderson, an assistant professor at the Cornell School of Hotel Administration, replicated and expanded an earlier study, which found that a hotel's listing on Expedia increased total reservation volume—not including reservations processed through Expedia itself. This larger study looks at 1,720 transactions for InterContinental Hotels brands during the summer months of three years (2008, 2009, and 2010).

"It's clear that there is increased reservation volume on the 'brand.com' site as a result of having the hotel appear on the online travel agent site," said Anderson, "and it appears that the commissions paid to online travel agents actually should be considered a marketing expense."

Anderson also tracked the surfing behavior of would-be hotel guests. He found that almost 75 percent of the consumers who booked at the brand's site visited the OTA, with 83 percent performing a web search prior to the booking (and two-thirds doing both). "Some travelers spend enormous time researching hotels online," he said. "On average, hotel consumers made twelve visits to an OTA's website, requested 7.5 pages per visit, and spent almost five minutes on each page before booking."

The study, "Search, OTAs, and Online Booking: An Expanded Analysis of the Billboard Effect," by Chris Anderson, is available at no charge from the Cornell Center for Hospitality Research (CHR) at:

www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/research/chr/pubs/reports/2011.html
Fuente: http://www.4hoteliers.com/4hots_nshw.php?mwi=8516

6 de marzo de 2011

Google Forecloses On Content Farms With “Farmer” Algorithm Update

In January, Google promised that it would take action against content farms that were gaining top listings with “shallow” or “low-quality” content. Now the company is delivering, announcing a change to its ranking algorithm designed take out such material.
New Change Impacts 12% Of US Results

The new algorithm — Google’s “recipe” for how to rank web pages — starting going live yesterday, the company told me in an interview today.

Google changes its algorithm on a regular basis, but most changes are so subtle that few notice. This is different. Google says the change impacts 12% (11.8% is the unrounded figure) of its search results in the US , a far higher impact on results than most of its algorithm changes. The change only impacts results in the US. It may be rolled out worldwide in the future.

While Google has come under intense pressure in the past month to act against content farms, the company told me that this change has been in the works since last January.
Officially, Not Aimed At Content Farms

Officially, Google isn’t saying the algorithm change is targeting content farms. The company specifically declined to confirm that, when I asked. However, Matt Cutts — who heads Google’s spam fighting team — told me, “I think people will get the idea of the types of sites we’re talking about.”

Well, there are two types of sites “people” have been talking about in a way that Google has noticed: “scraper” sites and “content farms.” It mentioned both of them in a January 21 blog post:

We’re evaluating multiple changes that should help drive spam levels even lower, including one change that primarily affects sites that copy others’ content and sites with low levels of original content. We’ll continue to explore ways to reduce spam, including new ways for users to give more explicit feedback about spammy and low-quality sites.

As “pure webspam” has decreased over time, attention has shifted instead to “content farms,” which are sites with shallow or low-quality content.

I’ve bolded the key sections, which I’ll explore more next.
The “Scraper Update”

About a week after Google’s post, Cutts confirmed that an algorithm change targeting “scraper” sites had gone live:

This was a pretty targeted launch: slightly over 2% of queries change in some way, but less than half a percent of search results change enough that someone might really notice. The net effect is that searchers are more likely to see the sites that wrote the original content rather than a site that scraped or copied the original site’s content.

“Scraper” sites are those widely defined as not having original content but instead pulling content in from other sources. Some do this through legitimate means, such as using RSS files with permission. Others may aggregate small amounts of content under fair use guidelines. Some simply “scrape” or copy content from other sites using automated means — hence the “scraper” nickname.

In short, Google said it was going after sites that had low-levels of original content in January and delivered a week later.

By the way, sometimes Google names big algorithm changes, such as in the case of the Vince update. Often, they get named by WebmasterWorld, where a community of marketers watches such changes closely, as happened with last year’s Mayday Update.

In the case of the scraper update, no one gave it any type of name that stuck. So, I’m naming it myself the “Scraper Update,” to help distinguish it against the “Farmer Update” that Google announced today.
But “Farmer Update” Really Does Target Content Farms

“Farmer Update?” Again, that’s a name I’m giving this change, so there’s a shorthand way to talk about it. Google declined to give it a public name, nor do I see one given in a WebmasterWorld thread that started noticing the algorithm change as it rolled out yesterday, before Google’s official announcement.

Postscript: Internally, Google told me this was called the “Panda” update, but they didn’t want that on-the-record when I wrote this original story. About a week later, they revealed the internal name in a Wired interview.

How can I say the Farmer Update targets content farms when Google specifically declined to confirm that? I’m reading between the lines. Google previously had said it was going after them.

Since Google originally named content farms as something it would target, you’ve had some of the companies that get labeled with that term push back that they are no such thing. Most notable has been Demand Media CEO Richard Rosenblatt, who previously told AllThingsD about Google’s planned algorithm changes to target content farms:

It’s not directed at us in any way.

I understand how that could confuse some people, because of that stupid “content farm” label, which we got tagged with. I don’t know who ever invented it, and who tagged us with it, but that’s not us…We keep getting tagged with “content farm”. It’s just insulting to our writers. We don’t want our writers to feel like they’re part of a “content farm.”

I guess it all comes down to what your definition of a “content farm” is. From Google’s earlier blog post, content farms are places with “shallow or low quality content.”

In that regard, Rosenblatt is right that Demand Media properties like eHow are not necessarily content farms, because they do have some deep and high quality content. However, they clearly also have some shallow and low quality content.

That content is what the algorithm change is going after. Google wouldn’t confirm it was targeting content farms, but Cutts did say again it was going after shallow and low quality content. And since content farms do produce plenty of that — along with good quality content — they’re being targeted here. If they have lots of good content, and that good content is responsible for the majority of their traffic and revenues, they’ll be fine. In not, they should be worried.
More About Who’s Impacted

As I wrote earlier, Google says it has been working on these changes since last January. I can personally confirm that several of Google’s search engineers were worrying about what to do about content farms back then, because I was asked about this issue and thoughts on how to tackle it, when I spoke to the company’s search quality team in January 2010. And no, I’m not suggesting I had any great advice to offer — only that people at Google were concerned about it over a year ago.

Since then, external pressure has accelerated. For instance, start-up search engine Blekko blocked sites that were most reported by its users to be spam, which included many sites that fall under the content farm heading. It gained a lot of attention for the move, even if the change didn’t necessarily improve Blekko’s results.

In my view, that helped prompt Google to finally push out a way for Google users to easily block sites they dislike from showing in Google’s results, via Chrome browser extension to report spam.

Cutts, in my interview with him today, made a point to say that none of the data from that tool was used to make changes that are part of the Farmer Update. However, he went on to say that of the top 50 sites that were most reported as spam by users of the tool, 84% of them were impacted by the new ranking changes. He would not confirm or deny if Demand’s eHow site was part of that list.

“These are sites that people want to go down, and they match our intuition,” Cutts said.

In other words, Google crafted a ranking algorithm to tackle the “content farm problem” independently of the new tool, it says — and it feels like tool is confirming that it’s getting the changes right.
The Content Farm Problem

By the way, my own definition of a content farm that I’ve been working on is like this:

* Looks to see what are popular searches in a particular category (news, help topics)
* Generates content specifically tailored to those searches
* Usually spends very little time and or money, even perhaps as little as possible, to generate that content

The problem I think content farms are currently facing is with that last part — not putting in the effort to generate outstanding content.

For example, last night I did a talk at the University Of Utah about search trends and touched on content farm issues. A page from eHow ranked in Google’s top results for a search on “how to get pregnant fast,” a popular search topic. The advice:

The class laughed at the “Enjoyable Sex Is Key” advice as the first tip for getting pregnant fast. Actually, the advice that you shouldn’t get stressed makes sense. But this page is hardly great content on the topic. Instead, it seems to fit the “shallow” category that Google’s algorithm change is targeting. And the page, there last night when I was talking to the class, is now gone.

Perhaps the new “curation layer” that Demand talked about in it earnings call this week will help in cases like these. Demand also defended again in that call that it has quality content.

Will the changes really improve Google’s results? As I mentioned, Blekko now automatically blocks many content farms, a move that I’ve seen hailed by some. What I haven’t seen is any in-depth look at whether what remains is that much better. When I do spot checks, it’s easy to find plenty of other low quality or completely irrelevant content showing up.

Cutts tells me Google feels the change it is making does improve results according to its own internal testing methods. We’ll see if it plays out that way in the real world.

30 de noviembre de 2010

Expedia on how to grow your ADR without impacting occupancy

In working with hotels across various chain scales and markets, Expedia identified a handful of strategies that can effectively increase ADR without impacting occupancy. This article uses Manhatten as example, but the observations and recommendations can be applied to any market.

By Nick Graham, Expedia Director of Market Management for New York


As the industry recovers from historical lows in occupancy and ADR, I’ve been hearing a common question from many hotels – “How are we going to grow rate?” Occupancy growth has to come first before rate growth, but in markets that are already seeing occupancy come back, hotels have the ability to achieve ADR increases.
In working with hotels across various chain scales and markets, I’ve identified a handful of strategies that can effectively increase ADR without impacting occupancy. I use Manhattan as an example because it is in many ways leading the recovery among U.S. lodging markets, but these observations and recommendations can be applied to any market that is experiencing even modest occupancy growth.

1. Grow your yieldable channels mix
Adjusting your segmentation to reflect more yieldable business, such as OTA channels, is the best place to start because it’s where rate adjustments can have the most immediate impact. In Manhattan, Expedia ADR has been growing faster than the market’s as a whole. Expedia ADR for Manhattan in June was up nearly 25% year over year, versus market-wide ADR growth of just under 18% . Year to date, the spread is just as pronounced, as the market has grown ADR by 9%, versus Manhattan ADR growth of 14% on Expedia. That means the OTA segment is growing at 57% the pace of the market, and this is due to the fact that the OTA channel is yieldable, as opposed to other pieces of business that were contracted at lower rates prior to the recovery. Because OTA pricing floats off of a hotel’s best available rate, revenue managers can raise or lower rates in immediate response to the market, while with traditional wholesale or contract segments, hotels are locked into fixed rates. In a recovery environment such as the one we find ourselves in now, pockets of demand that allow for rate increases may not become pronounced until closer to the date. In these instances, the hotels that achieve the highest rate increases will be those that can yield up a larger percentage of their business, as opposed to hotels that may already have contracted fixed pricing.

2. Implement a need date strategy
Every market, even in a recovery, has slow periods. But with the right strategy, it is possible to grow rate over these need dates. In Manhattan a prime example is the autumn weekend on which Yom Kippur falls. Corporate travelers check out early, and the locals leave town. Year after year, the market tends to react to the gap in occupancy about three weeks prior to the actual date, and cuts pricing to drive last minute occupancy. But once the 3-week window is reached, not only has the prime booking window passed, but the business in that window is at a considerably lower ADR than in the preceding 4 months. By anticipating need dates, hotels can use advance purchase promotions to fill their rooms further ahead. As long as the dates are identified correctly, promotional rates and the occupancy advantage a hotel gains earlier on will result in a higher ADR than if the hotel waits until the last minute to pick up occupancy. And if you have rooms left last minute, having that occupancy base allows you to discount safely through an opaque channel like Hotwire, as opposed to dropping your retail pricing. To successfully implement this strategy, it is critical to know the booking windows, which for many markets may be further out than expected. For example, in Manhattan, 50% of Expedia’s international package business is already booked 90 days prior to arrival. For international standalone, the average booking window is 60 days. These patterns are examples of the information hotels can use to implement promotional strategies to target the customer during their shopping cycle.

3. Use value ads rather than rate promotions
Once you’ve identified your need periods, the next step is to create an offer that will help shift business in your direction without leaving rate on the table. One effective way to stand out that won’t affect ADR is to use value adds. For example, the best performing value adds we have seen in Manhattan are free breakfast and free upgrades. If your property doesn’t have a managed restaurant on-site or the ability to fulfill a value add at check-in, some OTAs like Expedia will manage the value add on your behalf. For example, Hotels.com’s inline merchandising program recently offered a “free” pre-paid $50 Mastercard with qualifying bookings. Participating hotels saw a lift in their bookings, without an impact on their rate.

4. Turn up the volume on demand during eak compression dates
Every now and then, I hear some hotels talk about “cutting distribution costs” over peak dates by closing out OTAs. But a secret that many successful hotels have realized is that they can achieve higher rates over peak periods by ensuring inventory remains available through their distribution channels, and yielding rate up in response to the significant demand that ensues. We recently looked at one of Manhattan’s highest compression years in recent history. That year, there were 50 days with over 95% occupancy (according to STR). Over those dates, the market ADR was $344 and Expedia’s net ADR was $354. The reason behind this is that Expedia brings a lot of fairly price-insensitive demand at 2-3 weeks prior to peak compression dates, driven by customers that can’t find availability at their usual hotel. By keeping inventory open and adjusting rates up, hotels not only fill rooms at higher rates on Expedia, but also on their own channel through the Billboard Effect. We recently started sharing new peak compression date data with our hotel partners, which provides advance guidance to determine when a hotel has the opportunity to increase rates, or in some cases to revisit and perhaps reduce rates for specific dates. We share a mutual desire with our hotel partners to identify the ideal rate based on what the market can bear.

5. Stop giving away room upgrades
Many hotels offer some assortment of room types, even if it’s just a choice between standards and suites. The trouble is, the lead-in room type is often overbooked, forcing the property to upgrade the guest for free at check in. By applying a promotional strategy for upgraded room types (being sure to target dates or upgraded room types that might typically go unsold), hotels can entice bookings for higher rate rooms and achieve a higher ADR overall. For example, a typical mix of bookings at one hotel I work with in Manhattan was 75% standard rooms and 25% suites. After they began applying a promotional rate just for the suites, they boosted the mix of suite bookings to 33% and grew overall ADR from $226 to $253. They started getting paid for those room upgrades, and it paid off in higher ADR.

Obviously, the hotel industry today looks much different than in years past. As hoteliers navigate today’s landscape, they need to remain flexible and open-minded to using new and different marketing channels in order to adapt and drive demand in the recovering market, and putting the above strategies into practice is a great place to start. In the final analysis, it benefits an OTA and its hotel partners to grow rate and occupancy. Reach out and engage your OTA market manager. Odds are, they’ll have insights and suggestions about your marketplace that you may not have considered before. Working together with OTA marketing experts like Expedia will accelerate the return to improved rate - but only through active collaboration.

10 de julio de 2010

Porque twitter?

Este video nos explica la esencia de Twitter, y sus usos. Relacionado con el medio empresarial, es una herramienta muy valiosa para conocer los comentarios de los proveedores, clientes y personal de la empresa.

5 de febrero de 2008

Tip #1 de Posicionamiento web: Herramienta para medir Popularidad del site

Vamos a iniciar una serie de publicaciones con tips y consejos prácticos para mejorar el posicionamiento de su página en Internet. Para hoy, le recomendación es una herramienta que nos permite verificar en línea si nuestro sitio web está dentro de las 3 primeras páginas de los mejores buscadores de Internet; con los keyword que le indiquemos.

El servicio es gratuito, pruébelo en www.marketleap.com/verify