The Wealth Report – WSJ.com : Are the Rich Stealing America’s Best Vacation Spots?

Here is an interesting article about top vacation spots, and how the rich maybe limiting our choices.  I disagree, even though I usually agree with people who think that the rich are taking away from the poor.  I do believe that the world is discovering top vacation spots faster and will continue to do so.  We are evening writing about them in our vacation spots blog, follow the vacations links we are SEOing for it.  We don’t want to just SEO other people’s websites, but our own dreams, enjoy:

It’s summer, the time when American families return to their favorite vacation spots, relive their childhood rituals, and complain about gentrification.

It will happen everywhere, from predictable spots like the Hamptons and Nantucket to the newer hot spots of affluence, like Idaho and the Georgia coast.

The place may change, but the complaint is the same: The rich are ruining the neighborhood. They turned that corner ice-cream stand into a specialty-food shop that now charges $20 for a tin of foie gras. They turned all those quaint, affordable shacks into $10 million megamansions priced for out-of-town Masters of the Universe. They bought up that great patch of beach and turned it into a yacht club.

Barbara Ehrenreich, the longtime champion of the working class, tackles this theme in a new essay that’s adapted from her new book and featured in a series about inequality that just launched in The Nation.

She says inequality in America has created a new general rule of vacation spots: “If a place is truly beautiful, you can’t afford to be there.” She mentions Sun Valley, an Idaho town called Driggs, and Key West as examples of how “the rich are robbing the rest of us of beauty and pleasure.”

**As always this Free blog is sponsored by our marketing book, web design St. Louis, air purifiers by Steril Air Purifier, and Background check information by PeopleFinders.com.

knowing your market is important, do you know who is looking for your site? what information they may be seeking, what problem are you solving and is there a market for it? what are the trends

Doing some sort of market research is important before you jump into an SEO campaign or even a business venture I’m not going to get in to how to actually do your research because this is general, I will be posing some questions to ask your self.

before I start an SEO campaign I like to ask myself:
1) who is my target market? – kids, adults, teens, mothers, men, women… More than likely they will search on different terms this is good to keep in mind as you’re looking at the traffic on a keyterm
2) how do users search terms on the web? – If you are trying to get traffic for your children’s game, a child may search on a specific game such as Xeko where as an adult may search on the term children’s educational game which term should you choose? which makes more sense in your contents context? which has higher traffic? who is going to get you the sale?
3) where are the communities on the web that are centered around your search term? – If I were SEOing for Vacation Rentals, what communities might I want to interact with on the web? what good quality information can I offer them? will they allow me to post contextual links within my content?
4) who can I contact or read about to verify my assumptions about my target audiences behavior? – I ‘m looking for free market research, look for events in your area that may be happening, that you can attend that your target audience is attending. Ask individuals you think are in the know around your audience. online magazines about your target audience. (think library) scour the web for reputable resources.
5) what are the general market trends around the keyword and audience? – do you follow market trends these may be hard to find for some keyterms and target audiences, and definitely worth the effort. this will help you anticipate what and who to target next.

much of this is common sense, go down the path of asking questions and looking for answers. before you get rolling. this will save you a lot of headache in the end.

**sponsored by VRBO, People finders background check and web design St. Louis

Our friends at Steril Air purifier have upgraded that Air purifier to be more energy saving and it has a new look.  But better yet, we just found out that after months of SEO work with no higher rankings than #18 for the keywords “Air Purifiers“, we cracked the top 10 with a #6 ranking. We are obviously very excited about the air purifier site GreenIsBetter.org getting ranked this high for the keyword “Air Purifiers“, but we don’t really have a high ranking for the keyword “Air purifier“.  SEOing for the plural would also lead you to the singular being SEOed.  But, Google does some strange things, and the singular plural thing does not always hold true.  Regardless our friends at Steril 5 Air purifiers should be very happy.

Here is the technology for the Air purifiers and why it makes them better:

Our Technology

UV   Kills virus, bacteria, mold Without Ultraviolet, dangerous organisms can contaminate your air or even the very filters you rely on to protect you. Carbon Absorbs hydrocarbons (VOC’s), smoke, smog, radon, ozone Only a TRUE hydrophobic (long life, moisture resistant) carbon filter, (supports extended operation without leaving your lungs unprotected from damage and disease. TiO2 Stronger than ozone, yet safe Many toxic chemicals and compounds will pass through even the best HEPA filter. TiO2 breaks down what lesser filters miss. HEPA FIlters allergens, pollen, pet dander An industry standard, and a valuable component in the filtration sequence. Electrostatic Prefilter Protects other filters A permanent filter which extends the service life of other filter stages by preventing build-up. Negative Ion Generator Helps keep air clean Inhibits contaminants in air before and after purification. Particulate Sensor Guards against room contamination Automatically senses changes in air pollution before you can, and adjusts itself to compensate. Low Power Consumption Save money, save the environment Protect the Earth AND your family.

SterilAir5™ with BioSmart™

I just finished watching Rick Steve’s travel show on Milan, and a look at what happens in the back ground with the production crew. There is so much that goes on in the background, it really is amazing. Rick Steve is from Edmonds WA, about 15 minutes north of Seattle. He is amazing and provides so much information about art and culture to complete any and all information on top vacation spots. Our blog Vacation Top Spots @ VacationTopSpots.com really is about providing incredible/comprehensive information.

The best thing about Ricks Travel shows and Travel shows in general is the amazing visual scenary, the taste of exotic foods, and meeting people. The learning of international vacation spots and destinations is underlying, but in the background. What is apparent is the beautiful essence of he local attractions and beauty of these far away places. Rick is of course well known for his travel guide book, “Europe through the back roads book tour”, he updates it every year. We need to contact him, and see how we can start generating revenues from his content for all of us benefit from.

While, I was working today, I saw a stat that Expedia had 25m visitors a month, versus 11m-15m for Travelocity, way to go Expedia, you are the travel and vacation spots site. I actually almost went to work for this great vacations and travel site. Why do I keep using the word vacations in this blog? Well you know, we are trying to SEO for the keyword vacation spots and vacation rentals. Our friend has a website for the VRBO world, called RentExpert.com and they are a great vacation rentals for owners service provider. I think their software will be a great asset for vacation rentals property owners. The guys at MyTypes free blogs and blogging platform, Keith and Bennett are still providing SEO Services for a select few clients, such as the web design st. louis guys, VRBO for Rent expert, Silver Jewelry for LoveRelic.com. Oh yeah can’t forget the folks at PeopleFinders for their business on background checks, and background check. Besides SEOing their own site for the keywords create a blog, free blogs, and marketing book, yes they are selling that marketing book online. Don’t know how many copies they have sold, a few I am sure.

I was perusing the Google webmasters blog and came across a post about duplicate content, and how that affects the rank of a site. I was great to read that in General duplicate content is not seen as a problem!

Google separates duplicate content in to 2 buckets – One: duplicate content on your site, and Two: Duplicate outside of your site.

For duplicate content suggestions and tips take a look at these three articles:

Duplicate content summit at SMX Advanced

Deftly dealing with duplicate content

Ranking as the original source for content you syndicate

These articles will provide you with the technical information you’ll need to curb duplicate content on your site or externally to your site. a brief synopsis of those articles:
1) know your CMS. make sure your not in inadvertently creating duplicate content by moving content to another portion of your site and not using a redirect from the old URL to the new URL is ONE example of creating duplicate content.

2) Guide search bots to the content you would like to be indexed. This can be done by specifying the the urls you want searched in a sitemap, blocking versions of content you would not like to be indexed, such as printer friendly versions of a page. and specifying your preferred domain in the google webmasters tool (if your not signed up for a google webmaster account. run out and get one Right NOW! hurry, there are lots of Goodies for you to look at!)

3) make sure your RSS feeds include links back to the original content.

4) links back your own page in your articles. that way if your content gets scraped then you get some promotion! Just kidding, really this is another way that the search engines can attribute you as the original content creator.

5) don’t worry about it too much. Search engines are tuned well enough to eliminate duplicate content on their own and know where the original content came from.

**as always this free blog is sponsored by our clients from web design st. louis, VRBO services by RentExpert.com, Silver Cross Jewelry by LoveRelic.com and Background Check Services by Peoplefinders.com. If you want any or all our SEO Services insights don’t be afraid to pick up our marketing book from Amazon.com. As we always say, SEO is simple you just have to provide a lot of valuable content for your users.

The report of so many executives leaving Yahoo is staggering, I have never seen anything like it. It’s like the folks at the top of Yahoo, Jerry Yang and Sue Decker, were delusional when they walked away from MS, but did we think that people at Yahoo really thinks so too. What’s worse, having no company to run or staying indepandant?

This whole thing has to be significantly embarrassing for the two love birds, Sue and Jerry. Yahoo had so many great properties, and it simply had all the traffic in the world, but it could not monetize it. We all know that Google is dominating search, but the other competitors are never too far away, and Advertisers want a choice. They learned their lesson from the one shop show of the 90′s. They won’t let that happen again. We didn’t want to cover Internet Advertising in our SEO blog, as we are focused on SEO, but our clients do ask us for the advertising advice. So all we can say is same rules for optimizing apply, pick your keywords carefully. And, read as many blogs on SEO, SEM, and Internet Advertising. Don’t be afraid to pick up our Marketing book, it’s worth it’s weight in gold. Cathca later aligator!

It’s not always easy to blog and write fresh content. But it’s important to keep writing and blogging for SEO effectiveness, therefore you should spice up the old content with creative insights. Or the other option is to just update the old content with fresher data or recent news or events, that can often make a blog obsolete. If you are looking for ways to Blog for your SEO effectiveness, read the following article. If you are looking for SEO Services, or want smart marketing insights, buy our marketing book. Good luck and be spicy!

SEO for Bloggers: The Summary (Part 6 of 6)

Blogging is uniquely suited for search engine optimization, because the search engines definitely favor websites that have lots of relevant, easily updated content.  However, there are ways you can maximize your blog’s promotional abilities – SEO techniques you can use to “blogcast your brand”.

Here’s a rundown of my SEO for Bloggers series:

Part 1: Getting Started with SEO.  Start here to learn exactly what SEO is and the basics of how to use it to promote your message, including choosing your keywords properly.  If you only read one of these posts, read this one (but you really should bookmark them all!).

Part 2: Link Building and Link Popularity.  This post covers a key component of any blogger’s SEO strategy: getting tons of incoming links.  Search engines love websites that lots of people are linking too – after all, popular blogs are popular for a reason, and that reason is simple: people like ‘em.

Part 3: Link Baiting for Fun and Profit.   Link baiting is the art of getting other bloggers and webmasters to link to your site by creating interesting posts that benefit your readers in some way, shape, or form.  After all, people link to content they find compelling.

Part 4: Building Your Cornerstone.  Strong flagship posts are the pillars of blog – they are your most compelling content, they bring in the links, and they naturally have an ultra high keyword density.

Part 5: Off-Site SEO and the Social Media.   This post describes how to use the social media networks and the user-driven aspects of Web 2.0 to enhance and promote your blog.   There are a whole lot of amazing tools and communities out there, so use them to your advantage.

There’s one more point to remember about SEO, and that point is that the results generally don’t happen over night.  Yes, content can go viral, but building a popular blog with lots of readers takes time – you have to develop your keyword-dense cornerstone content, to build link popularity and generate incoming traffic, and to make a name for yourself in your niche.

All of these articles are in our SEO for Bloggers category!

Don’t forget these free blogs are supported by our clients at MyTypes and the SEO Services clients for Keith and Bennett.  Our original co-founder Vipin Singh no longer works with our projects.   He is off working full time at a high-tech company.   Our clients include PeopleFinders for Background Check, VRBO for RentExpert.com, Web Design St. Louis, and Air purifiers by Steril Air Purifier.  We also promote the marketing book our company published that has the simple SEO and blogging strategies for the average person.  It’s for sale on Amazon and we would love for you to buy it.  We are also launching a Vacation Top Spots blog as we are focused on the Vacations business not only through the VRBO services of RentExpert, but love to write about travel related topics.

Travel is not just about Vacations

But vacations sure are fun, people travel for learning, for business, and often for adventure to experience far away places and cultures. Some of the best things about vacations and travel are the food and historic sites and land marks. As an American, I am often reminded od all of the historic places around the world, and so much that is part of our own culture. America is a cultural melting pot, unlike probably any other country in the world. Because we don’t just have the mix of 70 plus countries of Europe, but 50 plus Africa, 20+ of Latin America, Asia, including the varities of China and India. I have traveled to many continents, but there is still so much more for me to see.

Since I can’t leave my family, I often travel on vacations through my imagination and the television. My vacations have lately been through route 277, the travel channel. And some times, I travel through hwy 9, the PBS and Rick Steve’s express way. One of the best shows I love are the Anthony Bourdain of the Travel Channel, he always covers travel with the chef and philosophical perspective. I have to tell you, if he is on, I usually prefer his insights on travel and vacation top spots. He is an amazing ways of voicing not only his truth, but also the deep historic secrets of a destination.

Samantha Brown of the Travel Channel always covers the main attractions, with a sense of style, of lodging and hotels and resorts. It almost seems that she caters to the hotels, and they pay for her stay, though I don’t feel a bias from her. Andrew Zimmern is of Bizzar food from the travel channel, and his sense for the unique food is sure fun. But, it’s hard to watch someone eat ants and snakes and crazy insects. It simply just grosses me out, especially in the Asian countries.

Rick Steve has been a popular name around Seattle, with his shows on PBS and Europe through the back door. He is also based out of a suburb of Seattle, Edmonds. What I like about Rick’s travel is his focus on historic learning about the cultural importance of travel. He was on PBS today, and I watched two segments of his, one on Scotland, and one on Vienna Austria. I do have to tell you, that things you learn are comprehensive, though the way we get to them maybe with a quick Rick Steve brush. I also learned that Rick is supporting a charity of feeding the poor of the world. I think the charity is called http://Bread.org.

I wonder if Rick would let me use his content to promote all of the places he has visited.

We will be blogging on VacationTopSpots.com, guess about what? We love blogging about distance places, travel and vacations with adventure, and not just because our friends have a VRBO (Vacation Rentals By Owner) software company. So stay tuned and comment or send us pictures and articles and we will publish them and give you credit and high PR links.

**as always this free blog is sponsored by our clients from web design st. louis, VRBO services by RentExpert.com, Silver Cross Jewelry by LoveRelic.com.   Our best Infrared Heaters and air purifiers by Steril Air Purifier.  If you want any or all our SEO Services insights don’t be afraid to pick up our marketing book from Amazon.com.  As we always say, SEO is simple you just have to provide a lot of valuable content for your users.

Keith Mithcell is our tech guru and he started to write on our web design blog a couple of weeks ago.  If any of you have any tech questions regarding web design, especially from a tech and SEO perspective, drop him a line or comment on his web design blog.  Here is one of his recent posts, we won’t be writing as many SEO blogs as we use to.  Sorry but we are just too busy with projects at the moment, but we will keep a healthy schedule of at least once a week.  Enjoy this web design blog, and don’t forget to get all of our SEO and blogging advice from our Marketing Book, which is now selling at Amazon.com.

Web Design Inspiration… are you design impared too?

May 22nd, 2008 at 03:59 pm by Keith Mithcell in Design Inspiration

Today It’s all about design and inspiration for the non artistic folk ahem… or design impared. I would consider my self a hack at best when it comes to web design. When at all possible I like to leave the design to the to the designers, AND sometimes I feel like putting myself through the torture of creating a logo from scratch, or a complete web design for friends and family. Let me tell you after ending up looking like this guy a few times I decided there has got to be a better way to come up with foder to fuel my design …. Here are a few trips and trick I use to create designs Design Inspiration.

Where do designers get their inspiration? Talking to clients, using current trends in design, from the project parameters, or maybe right off the ether.

I go to a few sites:
For Logo inspitation check out – http://logopond.com/

For complete web design inspiration check out – http://www.designshack.co.uk

For More in depth design information check out – http://webdesignfromscratch.com/

lastly if you need a color palatte take a look at – http://www.colourlovers.com/

GOT Graphics?

Now That you’ve been inspired the design and creative juices are flowing…or at least trickling where are you going come up with graphics? the subtle aspects of a sites design that add that extra touch. Hell lets bust out the Wacom tablet fire up adobe illustrator and start drawing! oh you don’t have a wacom tablet? Ohhhhhh riiiiiight, how about a graphics editing program? No? Ok forget the wacom tablet too much hassle. but the graphics editing program is essential. I personally I would choose adobe illustrator and photoshop. The reason being is that it’s the industry standard. If you want to go the Open source route use GIMP a great photo and image manipulation app. now that you’ve got an editing program lets go find some images and graphics
For vector images check – http://www.freevectors.net

for Free photos check – http://www.freephotosbank.com

Don’t forget to google as a resource, to find similar sites there are many out there. please provide attribution the authors of images and photos when appropriate.

**As always none of our Free blogs could be possible without our clients, and we could not be blogging regulary and provide up to date information to help you.  We thank our clients such as web design St. Louis firm Art Works Design, Air purifiers by Steril Air purifier, Designer Jewelry by LoveRelic.com.  We also want to mention that all of our insights can be found in our Marketing book, I am sure you have seen the title.  It really does cover all of your SEO and blogging tips to help you promote your business.  We also want to promote our Seattle Real Estate Agent Alex Zeiday with NWgreathomes.com, he is not only a client but a friend.  He and his team specialize in Kirkland real estate, and Kenmore real estate, both great Seattle real estate neighborhoods.