Trevor's Travels

Ask this question of any SEO expert and they will tell you “fresh content” and “backlinks”, other than Google took over Blogger. The last one is the favorite as no one can argue with that.

Search engines like fresh content as it is valuable for their users, and links show that other sites or blogs (and not just your own website) think that the information on your website is useful to their readers.

A blog can be an individual’s viewpoint, a life journal, a school girl’s diary, a poet’s space, an artist’s expression, or just about sharing your moments with family and friends. One can share information, pictures and even videos with no previous knowledge of designing and programming.

Companies use blogs to promote their latest products, introduce new services, announce upcoming events, share event pictures and videos, announce special offers/discounts, run opinion polls, introduce new team members, special announcements, build loyalty, and invite their customers to leave comments and give testimonials.

Bloggers believe that blogs are being taken more seriously as information sources. One in five bloggers don’t think that newspapers will survive the next ten years. Half believe that blogs will be a primary source for news and entertainment in the next five years.

Bloggers are most open to receiving marketing messages from other blogs. Even non-blog web content is more influential among this group than traditional media sources for brand information.

Home businesses and young entrepreneurs use blogs to increase awareness and attract traffic to their online business, new ventures, and daring expeditions into the unknown.

Professionals use blogs to brand themselves, create awareness and credibility, make money (yes that’s possible), and share their knowledge and experiences.

Housewives use blogs to share cooking tips and recipes, their children’s growing moments, travel log of the last trip, and shopping expeditions.

We SEO experts use blogs for achieving higher rankings for specific keywords. Unbelievable, and yet in many instances my blog link appears higher on search engines results page than pages that I optimize personally for the same keyword.

Getting started with blogging is relatively easy. You can sign up with blogger.com or other such blogging platforms.

If you don’t own a domain name for your blog, no worries, you can start with a free subdomain with Blogger.

Lets look into some interesting statistics on blogs.

The numbers vary but agree that blogs are here to stay!

comScore MediaMetrix (August 2008)

- Blogs: 77.7 million unique visitors in the US

- Facebook: 41.0 million | MySpace 75.1 million

- Total internet audience 188.9 million

eMarketer (May 2008)

- 94.1 million US blog readers in 2007 (50% of Internet users)

- 22.6 million US bloggers in 2007 (12%)

Universal McCann (March 2008)

- 184 million WW have started a blog | 26.4 US

- 346 million WW read blogs | 60.3 US

- 77% of active Internet users read blogs

Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere 2008 Report is now available. For a detailed report go to technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere/

The report states that Brands make up a major part of bloggers’ online conversations. More than four in five bloggers post product or brand reviews, and blog about brands they love or hate. Even day-to-day experiences with customer care or in a retail store are fodder for blog posts. Companies are already reaching out to bloggers: one-third of bloggers have been approached to be brand advocates. (ref Technorati 2008 Report)

But wait, that’s not all. The report also states that Blogs are an increasingly attractive platform for advertisers. The majority of bloggers we surveyed have advertising on their blogs. Marketers realize that bloggers are creating high quality content and attracting growing, loyal audiences. So there is potential for profit from blogging. (ref Technorati 2008 Report)

Well you are convinced, and you start writing periodically, uploading photographs and videos and have shared your blog link with many friends, but a few months down a nagging worry start to hit you (this is for those who don’t track their readers using tracking software’s like Google Analytics) that you are writing for “you” alone and your mum who thinks “my son is the best”.

While there is nothing wrong with writing, just for the pleasure of writing, I am sure you all want to reach out and touch someone else with all your hard work. The real challenge is to get your target audience to read your blog whether its family, friends, colleagues, or readers around the world who would be interested in what you are writing about.

Trust me even friends will betray you if what you write does not make them want to come back, so pay close attention to the questions below and answer them as honestly as you can.

-What would make your blog special to your audience?

-Why would they want to bookmark your blog?

-Why would they want to link to it and tell others?

-What is my ultimate goal for this blog?

While the first 3 questions require you to dig down deep inside your minds and hearts, the last question is most critical. What do you ultimately want out all the hard work, late nights and coffee cups invested into your blog?

Well, whether your blog is for the purpose of sharing knowledge, gaining credibility, increasing visibility and rankings, building customer loyalty, sharing information, making money, or assisting our fellow men in the journey of life, the bottom line remains search engines love blogs, and so should you.

So keep writing!

http://www.seo-optimization-experts.com/seoblog.html

The Web is an essential tool for travelers, but as booking engines and trip forums evolve and multiply, you have to know where to look — and whom to trust. To help you, Intra Globe Travel Services has assembled the ultimate online guide for travelers i.e. hotelandpackagesbooking.com

Decide how much you want to spend and when you want to travel, Intra Globe travel Services will overlay the lowest fares pulled from different airlines. Don’t get stuck on the name. This is a great resource for learning about traveling and tourism. Select your two endpoints (say India and Europe) and learn who can get you from one to the other on a direct flight, hotel and packages booking only shows you who flies where; within your budget. Search hotels by ratings in your city of choice, and the site turns up an impressive mix of reduced rates on rooms at luxury properties.

Not only the information about hotels and airlines but hotel and packages booking will explain about an obsessive community of feisty people around the world share secret finds. The site features international locations and most beautiful places with images, videos of local culinary customs, how to travel within the city, and blogs such as the newly launched Tasting Notes. Plan a trip to one of more than 90 destinations from start to finish. Along with all the basics (hotel, restaurant, and entertainment ideas), get tips on what to read before you go. Decide on your transport of choice, as well as how far you’re willing to walk, and get point-to-point directions for all cities on our website.

Our services will help you to get information about different packages offered by travel agents, if you are a individual traveler then also you can check for hotel packages, discounts in hotels, budget travel packages. All information about your tours. And we are providing facility to compare different packages to book online.

Intra Globe Travel Services is a smart travel company providing information, pricing, availability and booking facility for air travel, hotels, buses and car rentals across 5000 large cities and small rural areas around the globe. As an online travel company, hotelandpackagesbooking.com acts as a complete tour planner for travelers and is a one-stop shop for every travel need.

The contemporary web world scene can be described as a cluster of millions of websites struggling to get past each other. Website designing India is therefore the most sought after service for all those who want to create their own web presence. The more appealing the website looks, more popular it gets.

 

The most modern way of globalizing any business is through the web. Internet has paved way to take any business world-wide. Just by creating an impressive web presence any one can drive customers to his business. Consequently striking a gold with practically negligible efforts as compared to the traditional way of running a business. If pondered over, website designing covers almost 40% of the entire project pie. Now it must be quite clear, how important is the role of website design in any flourishing or just-seeded business.

 

 

Designing a website has many aspects to it. Website designing is accomplished keeping in mind those aspects.

A well designed website should be appealing to the eyes.

Quite well said, ‘first impression is the last impression’. To cast the spell of that ‘first impression’ it is indispensable to have a website designed in such a way that it catches the eyes. Graphic designing and flash animations can boost up your site’s appeal. The color scheme should be taken care of according to the needs and nature of the customers you are dealing with. For e.g. a B2B project should have a professional touch in its look and feel. So, one should try to get his website made in a pleasing manner.

 

Website designs should have an easy-to-navigate interface

 

Like every customer in your shop or showroom is precious and worth taking care of his experience similarly every new visitor in your website must have a pleasing user –experience. That comes through easy to navigate interfaces. Customer wouldn’t care to search for a link or wait for a page to load. He has as many choices as stars in the sky. It is you who need to treasure every customer who lands up in your website. Making him wait for minutes together before he gets what he wants is a sure way to drive him away from your site. A pleasing web experience for any user is the ease with which he travels through the site. Too many links and sublinks may confuse and irritate him. A site should be so well planned that the customer gets what he wants in maximum two clicks.

 

Proper choice of language in which the coding is to be done.

 

While writing the code of a website, one must keep in mind the programming language. It is always advisable to choose a programming language that facilitates speedy loading of pages.

 

These days website designing companies have expanding their role to website development and maintenance. This means merely creating a website doesn’t end their task. They take up the charge of maintaining your rank on Google and other search engines through their SEO skills, revamping the website by updating the outdated stuff and publicizing the website through blogging, press releases, promotional articles so on and so forth.

 

Therefore, it won’t be wrong to say that website designing is the backbone of any online business.