By Bill Furlong, CEO
Trent Blizzard, founder of Blizzard Internet Marketing, presented his list of 25 Web sites that every VR manager should know. Trent's presentations are always lively and packed with info. And best of all, they are very practical with some tips and/or sites that present opportuunities for VR managers to improve their online marketing.
Oh, and if you're counting you might note that Trent admitted that he fell a couple sites short of the 25. But there should be more than enough below to keep you busy.
According to Trent, links drive 66% of Google's search results. Metatags drive 0% of Google today (still drive Yahoo search results, but Yahoo search will switch to Microsoft's Bing under the recent deal between the two companies).
Social Networking faves:
- Facebook: Good for search engine results saturation. But you can waste a lot of time. A lot of people are doing it wrong.
- Twitter: All about last minute stuff.
- Linked In: All about your business. About business networking and not guests and bookings.
SEO Faves:
- DMOZ.org: submit your self
- PRWeb: for distributing press releases.
- Best of the Web: Nice listing and link that helps in search engines ("SE"s)
User Gen Content faves:
- Flickr: upload your pictures.
- YouTube: Second biggest search engine in the world. 50/50 split in the audience of how many managers are using videos on their web site. Consider Wistia.com for hosting videos. More customizable if you are putting it on your site. Tubemogul.com will push videos out to multiple sites at once (YouTube, Vimeo, etc.)
- CommunityWalk: Create maps. Good for search engines. Especially local SEs.
- Google MyMaps: Ditto above.
- Google Earth (keyhole): Ditto above.
>> Tip: Put full contact info with address and phone not just link.
Review Faves:
- FlipKey
- Yelp
- Judy's Book
- Google Local: Take ownership of your listing on Google Local
>> Tip: Try and get reviews in a lot of different places.
Yahoo Faves:
- Travel.yahoo.com
- Local.yahoo.com
- Yahoo Biz Directory: $299/year
>> Spending 10-20 hours can pay off. Sites are below the radar for a lot of people, so you can do well.
VRM Faves:
- Postlets: Upload homes. RE and VR site. Very time consuming to upload by hand. Free.
- Besttraveldeals.net: Helps Google page rank as well as passing traffic. Completely free.
Learn to Fish!
- SEMRush: Most exciting tool on Internet. Searches Internet phrases and what keywords you rank for.
- Yahoo Site Explore: Top links to your site or your competitors'.
- SEOMoz Juicy Link Finder: Fee-based tool. Rich tool set.
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