Sheila's Guide To The Good Stuff

Need to do something right NOW to improve where your destination or attraction shows up in search engine results?

Do this:  title, describe and tag your online photos and video.

Why?

Because particularly for Google, universal search brings back a basket of results for various strings of search words/phrases, and that basket often includes related images and video.

AND….

….the competition in search is very stiff for text and keywords, but right now it is much less so for photos and video because many people do not optimize them very well in their rush to upload.

Therefore, your chances of making Page One of search results is much higher with images (and since YouTube is the number 2 search engine in the world, with video.)

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People may think I’m nuts, but Google+ is going to be the lever that begins prying Google away from total domination of much of our online lives.

What follows is, of course, conjecture, but one thing I’ve learned over the years is that I don’t trust my instincts often enough, so here goes….

They’ve Shot Themselves Over Search, Of All Things

By using Google+ to manipulate their own search results, Google abandons the very core of their business culture – serving up unfiltered, “best” results as they attempt to organize the world’s information.

By telling Google employees who push back to get on the train or get out, they undo their organization’s credibility from the top down. A cushy work environment in Mountain View is just lipstick on a pig if your business doesn’t deliver on its promises.

I don’t know where it’s going to come from (Microsoft’s Bing search engine is not nimble enough, although I’d be happy to be proven wrong) but there will be a challenger to Google that will come out of nowhere and capture those who want to go back to basics.

FocusOnTheUser.org is one example of how that movement has already begun, with their “Don’t Be Evil” alternative search button tool. Tellingly, it was created by some engineers from Twitter, Facebook and MySpace.

Privacy – Google Is All UP In Your Business

The privacy issues with Google are even more significant than Facebook’s.

At least with Facebook, you can just get the heck off of it, or at a minimum take draconian measures with your settings.

Google is everywhere – our email, our videos, our maps, our photos, our search habits and our Android phones – and you cannot opt out of their creepy data mining.

I’ve been told that many people don’t understand the implications of this, and/or don’t care about privacy issues. Fine, but Congress and the FTC do care.  Someone’s going to move on Google; either the consumer public or regulators or both.

Not Another Social Network!

Google+ is essentially another Facebook with some cool bells & whistles (I do like the G+ video Hangouts) but despite apparently roaring user numbers that don’t add up, I sense that in terms of true mass adoption, the regular Joe Bag o’ Donuts guy/gal is not jumping on Google+ like they are getting onto Facebook.

People go where the people are who they want to connect with;  I saw this in microcosm in 2008/2009 when Plurk failed as an alternative to Twitter.  The Geekerati said that Plurk was so much better organized, easier to use, etc. etc. but the fact is, everyone already HAD networks on Twitter and when they didn’t move over en masse to Plurk, people went back to where the people were.

Does anyone out there really want one more blasted digital thing to manage?  Even a lot of techie types are feeling rather overwhelmed, and many others in the mass market are still figuring out Facebook, are puzzled by blogs and find email challenging.

Not Another Social Network! Except Maybe Pinterest

In contrast to the “no THERE there” that is Google+, I’ve been watching the recent explosion over digital bulletin boards on Pinterest. No one wants another thing to manage, unless they really like the thing, and they like this one.

Fans of Pinterest are truly crazy about it. My own line of work, tourism and hospitality, is diving into Pinterest. I can’t remember when I’ve seen such rapid adoption and wild enthusiasm, albeit still mostly among a more tech-savvy crowd than the mass market.

May I remind you of the popularity of scrapbooking?  The hordes of people who’ve jumped onto Facebook worldwide (it just knocked Google’s Orkut off as the number one social network for Brazil) are perfectly capable of figuring out how to transfer their scrapbooking skills and enjoyment to something like Pinterest.

On the other hand, I can’t see any of them lining up to laboriously sort their friends into Circles on Google+.  Actually, it wouldn’t be that laborious, because no one’s really ON Google+!

Tech journalist Omar Gallaga compared Pinterest and Google+ on his Digital Savant blog, saying:

“Despite the growth of Google+, I have yet to hear a single person say she loves it. The people I see posting more often there are marketers, photographers, social media experts and a handful of media people like me sharing the same kinds of links and jokes they also post to Twitter and Facebook. Google+ otherwise feels like a weirdly active ghost town….”

My geek crowd is saying that they love the visual organizing, inspiration and connections on Pinterest, but most see Google+ as a somewhat bothersome “I have to do it because it’s Google” chore.

A privacy-invading chore is not a recipe for mass adoption.

Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely

We’ve been here before with AOL and Yahoo! and other behemoths who are now pygmies. No one stays on top forever.

Google has self-immolated their corporate values by embracing search manipulation and calling it “social.”  Update: Farhad Manjoo on Slate – “Google just broke its search engine.”

They’ve created something that is mostly a marketing obligation for many, a chance to write a quick how-to book for others and a genuine place of enjoyment for specific niches like photographers, who do seem to like G+.

That’s not much of an endorsement for what will be yet another Google failure at building a social network, and will also lead to the beginning of the end because it is not part of the business culture or values that made their company great.

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Most of you probably have the same reaction that I do when someone announces a “new social network”  -  oh, no, not ANOTHER one!

It’s enough to keep juggling the time-suck challenges of all the current ones, right?

So, it takes a lot for me to pay attention to yet another way to stare at some sort of glowing screen, and I have to see the new tool’s application to tourism and hospitality since that’s my business.

That’s why I’m not interested in Google+ right now (other than its implications for search) but I’m quite intrigued by Pinterest, a digital bulletin board or scrapbook that allows people to “pin” interesting photos onto a themed Board.

I first noticed some tourism geeks talking about it around August 2011, then in November 2011 BusinessWeek ran the article, “Why Image-Sharing Network Pinterest is Hot“.

The service is taking off like crazy, especially among those who like visual inspiration: photographers, travelers, decorators and stylists, designers and food enthusiasts.  If you know the story of the Fiskateers and crafting, you know that a lot of activity and discussion can happen in a passionate niche.

CVB/DMO and Hotel Pinterest Boards

What are the possibilities for tourism?

Boards could focus on your unique local foods, architecture, shopping, birding, special events or historic sites. The more specific and visually appealing, the better.

Some examples:

**  Visit Savannah on Pinterest  -  they created an inspiration Board (shown to the right) for St. Patrick’s Day, which is a HUGE annual event in Savannah.

**  Visit Jordan on Pinterest  -  the famous ruins at Petra are certainly magnificent, but how about the curative powers of country’s places to relax, including Dead Sea resorts?

**  Indiana Tourism on Pinterest  -  get hungry looking at their Super 46 Board of sandwiches in honor of the NFL Super Bowl #46 in Indianapolis.  Need ideas for social media integration? Note how the sandwiches campaign also shows up on the Visit Indiana blog (the Pick Your Favorite Super 46 Sandwich(es) post,) on Yelp via each sandwich restaurant’s page, on Twitter via sandwich-related tweets with the #Super46 hashtag and on their Facebook Page by status updates that highlight each sandwich, often with a video that’s also on YouTube.

**  Canton/Stark County, Ohio on Pinterest  -  building up their local Restaurants Board.

**  Wyoming Tourism on Pinterest  -  the Boards you’d expect (incredible vistas and Western stuff) but I really like their HA! Board of pics that make you chuckle.

**  Experience Columbus, Ohio  -  many exciting Boards, but here’s a nice plug for local Columbus-based crafters:  a Columbus on Etsy/Made Here Board.

**  The Hotel Klausnerhof, Hintertux, Austria  -  how about this Advent calendar Board of snowy Tyrol photos?

**  The Four Seasons Hotel in Austin  –  still a pretty new account, but I like the thought behind this 2012 Wedding Trends Board.

**  Guatemala’s Pacific Fins Resort and Marina  –   for Hemingway-esque, The Old Man and the Sea types, a Blue Water Fishing Board.

To look for other examples, try a People search on Pinterest for CVB or Visit or Tourism or Hotel.

Pinterest Can Help With SEO

Just as with photos, video or other visual social communications, spend a little time on the descriptive text of your pinned images;  all of that text can be crawled and indexed by search engines.

Yes, Pinterest counts for SEO (Search Engine Optimization.) Direct link to the SEO for Pinterest video below, by a  bridal consultant.

Also note that each Board has a Facebook “Like” button, which can help spread your curation across your follower’s Facebook networks.

Pinterest is the topic of the January 19, 2012 #tourismchat on Twitter – I’ll update this post afterward with a link to the transcript.

Update:  Here’s the 19 Jan #tourismchat transcript (about Pinterest) via Chirpstory  http://chirpstory.com/li/3920

Update 2:  My friend Troy Thompson has a terrific interview post featuring Joe Vargo, who runs the Columbus, Ohio Pinterest Boards mentioned above.  Get some insights from Joe’s experiences:  5 Questions – Joe Vargo on Pinterest 

The possibilities are pretty endless, aren’t they?

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In preparing the keywords section for our July 26 webinar with Travel Online Partners about SEO basics for tourism, I was struck by the obvious….if you have a rich vocabulary and are good at crafting descriptive sentences and well-organized paragraphs, you are perfect for SEO (Search Engine Optimization.)

Why then do so many think that SEO is some sort of impenetrable, exclusive club for techies? Beyond any mumbo-jumbo you may have heard, SEO means creating content in a way that makes it easy for search engines (and people!) to find it.

Two words for those who may need to do some SEO for content written in English – English major.

Duh, right? Yes, you CAN get a job with it!

So can communications majors, journalism majors, heck even anthropology majors, because you know how to WRITE.

What words will people use in search engines to find your content, and how can you craft content to match what they seek?

Words. Yes, you can DO this….

PS – the SEO webinar info and signup is here, or if you some across this blog post at a later date, it will be available in our Tourism Currents Store, in the Webinar section. Thanks!

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Pretend you are a visitor to town XYZ.

Go stand in some central area – maybe downtown – where your visitors tend to cluster.

Pull out your phone, open up the browser, and type “XYZ restaurants” or “XYZ hotels” into the magic Google search box. Like any tourist, you’re asking, “What’s here for me?”

Look at the results. Which ones of your attractions are up towards the top, and which ones are invisible? Do you think your unique, local places have any idea about claiming their business on Google Places or encouraging reviews, in order to be more find-able? As we point out in some search advice in this Tourism Currents newsletter, input from your locals (not just visitors) matters, too.

Close the browser.

Now, open up the Yelp app (application.) Ask it to tell you which restaurants, shops and hotels are around you, based on the GPS position your phone is transmitting.  It will do so.

Look at the results. How many of the owners of the businesses you see (showing around your location) have any idea about all of the reviews and feedback on Yelp, and that people make decisions about where to eat, where to shop and where to stay based on that information?

Put the phone away. Return to the office. Schedule some workshops with your local partners.

Help teach them to rise above the local search slush pile.

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Who is most likely to link to your content?

Those who find it valuable, but especially other online publishers who know you, appreciate your work and want to help give you a boost.

How do you get their attention and interest?

By building personal and professional working relationships, on- and off-line.

Sorry, no magic pixie dust here. Blogger outreach and social networking take time and effort.

Hey, You! Gimme A Link

I thought about all this when I saw a posting on the Travel Blog Exchange (TBEX) site.

The “Country Vacations & Resorts” vacation rental site (hell no, they aren’t getting a link from me here) was making a bid for linkbuilding by getting bloggers to run their prewritten content as guest posts:

“Guest site [to run a Country Vacations-provided post] must be at least a PR2 [PageRank 2 on Google.] Posts are unique and only for one publication per post. Have several 400-500 word articles that will need “homes”, 1 link (required), 1 image (I provide), would be great but not required. Happy to consider exchange posts with my blog….”

They want links from sites that rank at their PR or higher (my stats show they’re currently PR2 – as a comparison, this blog is PR4) and they want one deep link back to their blog from a wide variety of other blogs.

If I saw this guest post, I would no doubt find very carefully placed links back to specific Country Vacations content, with anchor text chosen to support their SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for certain keywords.

Links: Coin Of The Realm For Search

There’s nothing illegal here. None of it smacks of black hat SEO; it’s all pretty much in line with Google guidance on quality links and linkbuilding although I wouldn’t exactly call it the “natural” linkbuilding that Google says it prefers.

Here’s why all of this matters….the number, type and quality of inbound links to your content has a direct impact on where you rank in search engines. Links from Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and many other social sites are “no follow” – they don’t count in Google’s algorithm (although they’re fine for humans, who DO still matter.) So, all that retweeting of a link to your blog post is not as powerful, SEO-wise, as a direct link to the post from a quality site (there are some rumblings, however, that social signals are starting to count in search for both Google and Bing.)

From what I’ve seen, everyone opining about how to get links ends up saying some version of, “Suck up to people really hard and then ask them for a link.” Let me tell you, that works a lot better with people who already know, respect and like you. Otherwise, remove your lips from their bottom, pronto.

The issue here is the randomness of the request in the example above;  it was tossed out in a travel blogger’s forum, for all comers. Hey – Newsflash! Those who are that desperate for content are not the bloggers you want.

Online publishers (well, the good ones) are rather picky about what they post. Why would anyone take some random company’s content, slap it on their precious digital baby, bore/disgust their readers and tacitly endorse a company that didn’t take the time to build a relationship?

What To Do (Instead Of Random Crap) To Build Links

**  Publish interesting, quality stuff that helps and informs your readers. Period.  It’s the hardest thing to do consistently, and the most critical.  After you publish, make sure people can find out about it. Yep, it’s a marketing game. Crafting the content is only the start.

**  Network your tail off on the social Web to get in front of those who might link to your work. Connect with people on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Follow hashtags where bloggers congregate, like #blogchat every Sunday night, 8 pm CST with Mack Collier.

**  Network your tail off IRL (In Real Life.) Go where the geeks are. Attend conferences like BlogWorld and New Media Expo, South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) or niche-specific ones like BlogHer Food (for food bloggers.)  Get that blog URL on the business cards you hand out, too, and follow up after the conference.

**  Once you have a good relationship – however long it takes to build it – then make your pitch. For example, are you a California destination? Ask relevant people in your blogger network if they might be interested in a guest post from you about certain highlights of your town; even a general Q&A with you would be fine. Try to craft your guest post your way, but remember, it’s their blog.

**  Give to get. Do plenty of linking out yourself, to quality content; it is noticed and appreciated by the link recipient. I remember the days when I was a newish blogger and got a big ol’ fat link to one of my posts from a big-deal website. It happened because the author and I connected online and became friends, so she was looking out for me and helping me grow.  Thanks, Liz Strauss, for not turning up your nose at my PageRank back then.

Building links is part of blogging – that’s one reason I still run the Carnival of Cities blog carnival after all these years. It’s my way of highlighting blogs and giving back, through links and attention.

How do you inspire people to link to your content? Please let us know down in the comments….

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A long time ago (early 2006) I was a brand-new blogger just getting started growing the BootsnAll Family Travel blog.

There was a lot to learn about how to get traffic to a blog – or from a B2B perspective, how to build a blog that draws a crowd.  One suggestion on a favorite blog of mine (Free Money Finance, still going today) was to build inbound links and traffic by submitting posts to relevant blog carnivals.

A blog carnival is centered on a theme or topic; it’s hosted on one blog but usually rotates hosting duties, and it gathers posts on that topic into one blog post called a Carnival “edition.”  There’s a blog carnival site that helps to organize and standardize the submission process.

In February 2007, I was hired to run a weekly blog carnival for the now-defunct Home Turf Media – it was called the Carnival of Cities and featured blog posts submitted by lots of different blogs, all about any aspect of one, single city (or fair-sized town – we were pretty loose about that and still are.)

Through all the general Web upheaval, I kept up my involvement with the Carnival, and ended up as the owner/host of it.  Sometimes, continuing to take inputs and craft editions seemed kind of silly and outdated; so “old school,” right?

Enter the rise of Twitter and Facebook information sharing with their no follow links, and the increased challenges in building solid inbound links to one’s site for SEO (Search Engine Optimization.)  Suddenly, the chance to get legitimate, decent quality links from another blog, simply by participating in a blog carnival, doesn’t seem so old-fashioned any more.  One downside is that spammers have figured this out, too, so a lot of garbage submissions come in, but hosts are usually pretty ruthless about weeding it out or their Carnival dies.

Here is the latest Carnival of Cities edition, hosted on Absolutely The Hague! based in the Netherlands. Entries are sorted by continent and there’s a nice variety – that’s why we say that we “tour the world in one blog post.”

It so happens that this blog hosts the next Carnival of Cities; this week on Wednesday, October 20.  Given the focus on tourism and travel here, I would love to see more CVB, DMO and tourist board blogs participating.

The submission deadline is noon CST Tuesday, October 19, so get hopping and go here to submit your (one, non-spammy) recent blog post about any aspect of one, single city.

If it’s past the deadline, no worries….I’m also hosting the Carnival on November 3 on the Perceptive Travel blog. The November 17 edition will be hosted on Byteful Travel.

No one will read your blog unless they know about it, so think about submitting to mine or any other Carnival,  and also take a look at this Darren Rowse (ProBlogger) video titled, How I Use Social Media to Promote My Blogs.

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You know I’m getting a bit more into video production for CVBs and tourism organizations, and I want to ensure that you understand how important it is to optimize your video content for SEO (Search Engine Optimization.)

Great videos that are never found are just….nice.

The video below features Greg Jarboe telling you a little bit about how to increase your chances of being found – here’s a helpful article on press release and video SEO on Jarboe’s own site.

Hat tip to State of Search, who interviewed Jarboe at the International Search Summit in London this month.

Here’s the direct link to the video on YouTube, in case you can’t see the embedded box….

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We are used to seeing handicapped parking spots and curb cuts, but how many of us think about the accessibility of the Internet – specifically travel and tourism Web sites – to those with disabilities?

As I discussed in an earlier post (Can you see this? Let’s talk Web accessibility) I’ve become a convert to the importance of making the Web accessible to everyone, including those who cannot hear or see very well.

By the way, if you are young now but plan to live to old age, come to grips with the realization that you won’t be able to see or hear as well as you do now. Web accessibility matters to everyone, eventually.

The disabled travel, too, and there are millions of them.  Have you thought about whether your tourism-related Web site gives them the information they need to plan a trip?

I’m trying two different tools to make my own content more understandable and easier to use.

Perhaps you can find some useful ideas here for your own site….

1)  BuzzVoice.  Look at the right-hand sidebar on this blog; you’ll see a little phone-looking icon (we call it a widget) created by a company called BuzzVoice.

It uses text-to-speech software to turn my written words into spoken English, so a visually-impaired or dyslexic person can still absorb my content.  Thanks to this post about BuzzVoice by Jason Falls, I’m helping out with the software’s beta-testing.  Your feedback is, of course, most welcome down in the comments for this post.

Is something like this only for the visually-impaired? Nope; another benefit is that people who have long commutes, road trips,  workouts or who simply love audio content can “listen” to my blog posts on iPhones, iPods/MP3 players & other mobile devices (and now on the new iPad.)

To share the Sheila’s Guide talking widget on Facebook, Twitter & other social sites, just click the “Grab This” button at the bottom of the widget (you can embed it like you do a YouTube video.)  You can subscribe to the vocals as an RSS feed or as an iTunes audio feed.

The software doesn’t “translate” perfectly, of course, and it’s an electronic voice rather than my own, but still, it’s a step ahead for allowing multiple ways for readers to enjoy the site.

2)  Video captions.  A service to help you with automated video captioning is now available for all YouTube users, so I’m trying it out on a few of my own videos.

I’ve been schooled by Web accessibility expert Glenda Watson Hyatt on the importance of video captioning for the hearing-impaired (here are some captioning tips on Glenda’s blog) but until this machine transcription service, it was “too hard” and “took too much time.”

To request a machine transcription (the software for it was created by a deaf Google engineer) go to the Edit function of your selected video and look for the tab labeled “Captions.” Click that, and ask for an (English only) machine transcription if it’s not already been done.

You’ll get an .sbv file to download and edit.  I recommend opening it in WordPad for better formatting. You’ll see the words lined up with the time that they were said in the video; you’ll also see that the speech-to-text technology is….er….not terribly accurate.

No matter:  at least you have a time-synched rough draft transcript to work with, right?

Rename the “captions.sbv” file something like “Smithville downtown video transcript.sbv” and go to work – edit the file to make the text match what is actually said in the video.

It is much easier to edit a video when the speaker is clear and speaks slowly; since I tend to speak quickly when I narrate my own videos, I am a pain to edit.

When the .sbv file is ready, upload it back on the same Edit page for the video, and it will automatically be entered into the video.  Watch the captioned video all the way through to make sure everything is correct.  If there is a problem, go back to editing, remove the old file and re-upload your corrected one (it will again be automatically added to your video.)

Here is one of our Tourism Currents videos with captioning: 60 Seconds on Blogger Outreach with Zoetica Media’s Kami Huyse.

Are there SEO (Search Engine Optimization) benefits to adding this caption text to your videos? My very preliminary research indicates that the jury is still out on SEO benefits of YouTube’s captions, but at least now you have a transcript that you might be able to add to the video description or place into your own blog post below the video’s embed box (and that text WILL be indexed by search engine bots.)

More importantly, actual humans appreciate captions. Here is a video from the California School for the Deaf High School (here’s a direct link to it on their YouTube channel) with students explaining why they’re so excited to have more captioned video content – I dare you to watch it and not realize the power of Web accessibility:

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While doing a live Tech in Twenty show last night on Blog Talk Radio (our topic was women in social media in 2010 and you can listen or download it here) I noticed that my fellow panelists Colleen Pence and Holly Hoffman both had the same answer when our hosts asked us to tell the audience where they could find us online:

“Just Google me.”

When you’ve worked long and hard and consistently to establish your Web site, blogs, LinkedIn profile, Twitter account, Flickr photostream, Facebook profile, YouTube channel, etc….plus you’re talked about and linked to online….then it is easy to be confident that not only are you “at the top of Page One of Google,” you can FILL that page.

How broad and deep is your destination or attraction’s presence in search engine results, especially with all of the recent changes with Google and Bing?

Does your tourism organization’s material pop up at the top of Google search results, or is there some commercial site or savvy local blogger who trounces you with a better online presence?

How can I help you rise to the top?

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