Search Marketing Blog
EngineWorks At Search Engine Strategies Travel Edition
Posted by Kent Schnepp on 07.27.2007
From left to right: Myself, Angela Yost and Mike Rosenberg
I am currently at the Search Engine Strategies conference in Seattle with my two EngineWorks counterparts, Angela Yost, Mike Rosenberg. This particular conference is focused on organic search, paid search and social media strategies for the travel and hospitality industries. So far the conference has touched on the following subjects:
- Constructing a search engine friendly Web site
- Organic optimization tips
- Keyword research for the travel vertical
- Travel writing and content creation
- Travel search engine overview
- Social media
- Paid search
So far we have attended these sessions:
Designing for the Senses & Search – This session provided a basic overview of how information architecture, accessibility and content can affect organic search engine rankings. The speakers provided some useful tips not only on SEO but customer acquisition as well.
Who, What, Where, When: Keyword Research for the Travel Sector – This session reviewed the importance of extensive keyword research for both organic and paid search. Know what your potential customers are actively searching for and target you SEM campaigns around those keywords.
Travel Writing & Content Creation – This was an excellent session about the importance of writing proper content fro the travel industry. The session also reviewed basic social media techniques such as blogging, user-generated content and submitting viral content to social media sites (Digg, Reddit, Netscape, etc.). Richard Zwicky, Founder & CEO of Enquisite brought up an interesting point about writing different content for each search engines. Each search engines has different user demographics. So site publishers should create different content to address this.
Elisabeth Osmeloski, Director of Online Media for Zonder, an online vacation rentals booking engine, organized and hosted Search engine Strategies Travel.
Meet the Travel Search Engines - This session was a simple overview of the different travel search engine approaches, including: Yahoo! Travel, Kayak.com, SideStep.com, Mobissimo and startup Farecast.
Travelers Talk: Spotlight on Social Media – Great session reviewing the compelling benefits of social media marketing. Each speaker discussed blogging, user generated content and providing addition tools to visitors. Not only does this benefit SEO efforts and the “stickiness” of your site, but it also helps create transparency and authority which leads to increased conversions.
Mike Rosenberg 07.31.2007 at 1:23 pm
It was a lot of fun!