Felt Tip Pen

Top team aiming to woo tourists

0 Comments | Leicester Mercury, Jul 29, 2010 | by DAVID OWEN

Hotels, museums and visitor attractions are being urged to work together to attract tourists.

East Midlands Tourism, part of East Midlands Development Agency is updating the county’s tourism strategy for the first time since 2003.

In the past seven years, lowcost airlines have expanded and the internet has taken over from travel agents as the number one way people find a holiday.

More than 700 organisations, from large attractions to bed and breakfast providers, have been asked for their views for the plan for the next 10 years.

Tourism is worth more than Pounds 1.3 billion to the Leicestershire economy a year.

Official figures say 32.5 million people visit annually. A spokesman for East Midlands Tourism said: “The nature of the region’s tourism industry has changed dramatically in the past seven years. “There have also been changes in how consumers book holidays, with greater reliance on the internet and third parties such as lastminute.

com.” Tourist attractions said they needed to be able to adapt to attract visitors and get positive reviews.

The National Space Centre, in Leicester, had more than 221,000 visitors last year.

Malika Andress, head of marketing, said: “Customers are no longer passive recipients of marketing but are much more involved, through consumer forums and blogs.

“We need to be able to adapt.” About 7.4 million people spent a day out at attractions in the National Forest in 2008, with 1.2 million more extending their stay overnight.

Penny Wilkinson, tourism officer for the National Forest Company, said: “One of the things we would like to see is a more co- ordinated approach in developing a wider range of accommodation for visitors.” Martin Peters, chief executive of Leicester Shire Promotions, said the key was developing an image for the county and promoting this through short breaks and visitor guides.

Last year, 1.27 million online visitors made www.goleicestershire.com one of the most viewed tourist web sites in the UK.

Mr Peters said: “We have built up a significant consumer database and our marketing campaigns are based on offering targeted short- break experiences to people in the UK through traditional and online marketing, e-communications, social media and public relations.” The first draft of the strategy is due out in September.

SEO is no place for amateurs by Andrew Plimmer
in Business / ECommerce (submitted 2009-09-23)

How Come everybody is nowadays an SEO Expert?

Let’s face it; not a day goes by where we don’t see someone offering their services as a Search Engine Optimization specialist. The strange thing is however, many of the people offering such services on the various forums tend to have no runs on the board themselves. Of course, I’m not saying there aren’t a great deal of reputable internet marketing services out there, but they are becoming increasingly outnumbered by those with little or no experience at all, and it is these people and their companies which are highly unlikely to ever produce satisfactory results for their clients.

Perhaps one should bear in mind that there is no difference between investing your money in internet marketing, and investing your money in a regular market. In both cases you need to measure your results just as you need to target the correct audience. For example, you wouldn’t even consider wasting your money by advertising your product or your service in a newspaper that is completely irrelevant to your target market. Advertising is done for one purpose and one purpose only, and that is to bring in a return on your investment, irrespective of whether the advertising is done online or offline.

Why you Should Avoid the Amateurs

Essentially, you need to bear in mind that while any Tom, Dick, and Harry can learn about search engine optimization, it takes several years of dedication, practice, and careful analysis, in order to fully understand the different techniques, and how to apply different techniques to different types of business.

The bottom line is; a SEO campaign is in fact a highly intensive process that starts out with intense keyword research in order to establish which keywords are the most likely to produce maximum results for a website. Once the ideal keywords have been established, it can be incredibly tempting to simply spread them around on your website and hope for the best. However, in most cases you’ll find that the most popular keywords also have the most competition. As such, why bother targeting particular key words, irrespective of how popular they are, if there’s virtually no chance they are going to help in terms of ranking? In fact, you could end up waiting for several months before the major search engines start recognizing your website.

On the other hand, a specialist who is highly skilled in internet marketing will be aware of which relevant keywords and keyword phrases will help to improve a website’s ranking. Likewise, a true professional will also know where the keywords and keyword phrases should be placed on a website in order for them to have the maximum amount of impact, without being penalized for keyword stuffing.

Onsite optimization of keywords is notoriously time consuming if it’s being done properly. But if your goal is to give a website a boost in search engine ranking, then this optimization process needs to be continued off-site as well. Here again, a competent SEO professional will know exactly how to go about implementing a successful link building campaign, including article marketing, submitting articles to directories, taking advantage of several social networking sites, and also social book marking.

Furthermore, because a professional SEO specialist appreciates the importance of being able to get a good return on investment, they will also make use of Analytics tools in order to track conversions and monitor the success of an internet marketing campaign. Bear in mind, that these tools are essential in order to fine tune any good SEO campaign.

Steer Clear of Internet Marketing Fraudsters

Unfortunately, but also as is to be expected, the internet is full of undesirable people who focus entirely on targeting honorable businesses by means of providing them with false promises regarding guaranteed results. These people will more often than not guarantee that they will get your website to the top of the search rankings by using specific keywords. However, in most cases, they simply use keywords which are so rarely used, they show at the top of search rankings simply because they have no competition – nobody uses them. Obviously, if nobody is ever typing that keyword into the search box, then why waste money on it? One of the easiest ways to determine whether or not an internet marketing expert is in fact legitimate, is that the legitimate ones never offer any guarantees with regards to getting you in the top spot on search results. This is because they know that nobody can guarantee such results due to a number of reasons, such as algorithms which change continuously.

How to Avoid the Wrong Internet Marketing Service

First and foremost, you need to ask the right questions:

1. You need to determine how long the company has been involved with Internet marketing.

2. You should ask to see testimonials from past clients.

3. You should search online for their services
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