Group Hotels
“We couldn’t be happier with the work Steve and his team did for us! I bought Group Hotels with high hopes and with Waterford Technologies as my partner moving forward I know there is no ceiling to the services I can now offer our customers! We will be THE destination on the web for group travel planning services!”
- Robert Miller, Owner
Background
GroupHotels.com set out to create an engaging experience to help group planners research, plan and book the perfect trip at GroupHotels.com – the portal site for Travel Advocates. Increase search visibility and drive a new brand identity while providing a foundation for providing group travel discounts for businesses, sports teams, reunions, and other travel needs.
Solution/Results
- Sales in the first 6 weeks out performed the prior 6 months
- Website traffic increased 200% in the first month
- Social Media footprint increased significantly; adding hundreds of new visitors to all properties within weeks of launch
- The new content management platform allows remote administrators to publish content from all over
Technology: Microsoft .NET, DotNetNuke Platform, XML, SQL Server 2010
Read MorePinterest: What Is It?
Pinterest is all the rage in social media and the new HOT topic. Like everything else web it’s moving at light speed and people aren’t sure what to make of it, how to use it, and if it’s even something they need to use for their business. Well here at Waterford we’re in the same boat and are looking to evaluate this new network for our business just like everyone else. Over the next few days we’ll walk through this together and see if we can’t come to some conclusions about why, how, and when we should all start taking advantage of the latest social media trends for our business.
Let’s just start by figuring out what ‘Pinterest’ is. According to their website:
“Pinterest is a Virtual Pinboard. Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes.”
Translation: Pinterest is an image-sharing website where people can build and maintain theme-based image collections. Pinterest uses these themes to connect people through common interests. People started connecting through shared recipes, favorite places, favorite music, etc. While you mull that over think through your product or service and see if you can think of ways to connect consumers to your business in this same way. Check back for Part II!
Read MoreGoogle Places Ranking Factors – Third Party Article
Google Places Ranking Factors – The PhD Version
Mar 19, 2012 at 10:00am ET by Andrew Shotland
Bizible, a start-up that makes local marketing software for SMBs, approached me recently* to preview the results of a Google Places Ranking Factors study they had conducted and I was intrigued enough by their findings to share some of them here.
Bizible’s team is made up of former Bing AdCenter guys and counts a PhD and a stats expert on their staff, so their study is a more scientific attempt to figure out what’s going on with Google Places than your typical “here’s what some SEOs think” kind of thing.
For methodology, they studied 30 potential ranking factors by querying approximately 20 cities across approximately 20 local categories (about 400 search terms), looking 30 results deep in Google Places rankings. They looked at each factor in isolation and then looked at them in combination to see if there were any multiplier effects.
While there are likely some holes in their methodology – for example, changing physical location of the browser might lead to different results (Bizible used a variety of IP addresses to try to mimic this), there’s no accounting for personalization or Google SPyW results and their approach sounds like something a quant geek might approve of. Their site has more detail on their methodology if you’re into that kind of thing. Also note the research was conducted before Google’s Venice Update which changed the way Google ranks URLs for local queries.
So what did them fancy PhD-types discover? Some interesting stuff.
The Bizible data shows a big difference in ranking factors between improving ranking when the local result were integrated in the main SERP page and when it did not make it in the 7 pack/5 pack/universal results.
Top 3 Factors To Improve Ranking For Pages In Integrated Results
- Places page category matches a broader category than that of the search (search for “pizza”, Places category = restaurant). This only applies of course if there is a broader category. This applies for both primary and secondary Places page categories.
- The search category appears in the business name (“Rocky’s Pizza” for a “Seattle pizza” search).
- The search category appears in the “at a glance” section.
Top 5 Factors To Improve Ranking For Pages Not In Integrated Results
- Having 5 or more Google reviews.
- Location term in “at a glance” section. (Seattle in “Seattle pizza”)
- Category term in Google review content. (pizza in “Seattle pizza” is in the contents of the Google reviews)
- Category term in business description.
- Category term in “at a glance.”
Other Interesting Nuggets
- Having a physical address in the city of the search did not turn out to be a strong ranking factor, only distance from centroid seemed to matter. So, if you are just outside the city and your address is not officially in the city, this didn’t seem to hurt any more than a business whose address was in the city, but just as far from the centroid.
- That said, for every mile away from the centroid, ranking dropped by .4 (4/10ths) of a position.
- An average Google Review score of 1 or less significantly hurt ranking (as expected), although the incremental increase in ranking as the review score increased from 2->3->4->5 ranking was negligible (interesting, no?).
- The presence of a business description did not help ranking, although having the search category in the business description did help ranking.
- Getting your 5th Google review significantly helped ranking, although incremental reviews between 1 and 4 and above 5 had a very small impact on ranking (you have to get 100+ of reviews for it to help ranking any more than just 5, so good news for much-loved businesses and review spammers).
According to Aaron Bird, CEO and Night Janitor at Bizible:
“For the integrated results, we found that on average, implementing all of these factors showed an increase in rank by about 2 positions, which is fairly significant for a 3/5/7 pack. For the non-integrated results, we found that on average, implementing all of these factors showed an increase in rank by about 9 positions, which good as well, given that we only went 30 results deep.”
I encourage you to review the initial report, Google Places Optimization – Local Ranking Factors (nice keyword targeting guys) at Bizible’s site. Over the next couple of weeks, they will be adding four more reports on different aspects of the results and Bird told me they may incorporate post-Venice data in a future study.
If you haven’t updated your Google Places Page categorization by now, what are you waiting for?
*Note: the author is not affiliated professionally with Bizible.
Facebook, Twitter…Linked In? What We Need To Know
Social Media, like the Internet in general, is moving way too fast for most businesses and we’re all struggling to keep up. It’s hard enough to keep up with all the Facebook changes let alone staying on top of all the top social media outlets. Most small businesses have decided to focus on Facebook and Twitter and stay current on the others while being ready to jump in when they can. So what about Linkedin? Should we still keep an eye on it or is it maybe time to jump on board?
Given the fact that Linked in has 150 million members worldwide, and is adding 10 new members every 5 seconds it definitely deserves attention! Especially important is that the majority of their audience is targeting corporations and business. Now that they offer the ability to create Linkedin Company Pages it can be used in a whole different way. People on Linkedin are targeting business contacts and present an entirely different audience from Facebook. It’s this diversity that makes it attractive. It’s time to give it a serious look! We’ll talk more about this over the next week…start your research!
Read MoreU.S. Joint Forces Command
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS); ISA Server 2006; Exchange Server 2007; Live Communication Server 2003; Virtual Earth; Add-ons and Web Parts
