Owner: Xebidy Strategic Design URL:http://xebidy.com Join Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2008 02:09:40 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: Thoughts on Web 2.0, SEO, Web Design and Development, Internet Marketing and all things Internet for the travel and tourism industry. Site statistics:Click here
Become a Travel Writer 2008-08-24 23:32:28 By the end of this week stage 1 of the stealth Travel
Generation project will be launched: a blog-a-zine for backpackers by backpackers. While we are still keeping the actual URL under wraps the new site will feature articles, blog posts, photos and videos from our pro-travel bloggers as they travel the world, plus the [...] Read more:Become
, Travel Writer
, Writer
Before you Send an Email - Read This! 2008-08-14 16:05:59 I am as guilty as the next person of mass emailing people, or blind cc'ing someone further up the food train to show my worth. How about those emails you send at 9 o'clock at night to let everyone know you are still working? I am currently reading Seth Godin's lateset book, Meatball Sundae, and saw this post on Start-Up thought this was very clever - it's Seth Godin's 36 point email checklist. Read more:Email
Reciprocal Links 2008-08-13 20:06:38 My mind is just racing these last few days thinking about link strategies. One thing I have been giving considerable thought to is how bad are reciprocal links really? Read more:Reciprocal
Link Strategies - Use your brains 2008-08-13 16:06:26 Working on link strategies can be an extremely frustrating process because of the difficulty in getting other people to put the link on their website - let alone to do it without having to give a reciprocal link. I can't say enough - I believe reciprocal links are increasingly meaningless. But then I get asked - "well how am I supposed to get links if we are not swapping". It is quite simple - Read more:Strategies
Links, links and more links 2008-08-12 17:06:19 A few days ago I introduced the idea of the Latent Semantic Indexing algorithm as a way for search engines to evaluate the value of a page for its keywords based on the keywords of its sub-pages. Some readers, however, misconstrued my article as completely deprecating the value of backlinks
. This was not the case, in fact the introduction, I stated that links were important, but that Semantic In
Latent Semantic Indexing 2008-08-10 16:06:06 We have said it before, but Google is awesome. The algorithm for determining search engine positions is very complex and very little is known about the composition of it. We certainly know that links are important, as are headings; but to what extent weighting is given say for reciprocal versus one-way links, or heading one over heading 2, we simply don't know. A huge focus is always given to t Read more:Indexing
, Latent
, Latent Semantic Indexing
, Semantic
Lifestreams are The New Blogs 2008-08-09 01:06:13 In a recent post I introduced the new blogs we have recently developed for Base Backpackers and the Calypso and NJoy hostels in Cairns. I was just in Cairns this last week and I introduced Brad and Brett to Twitter and Friend Feed - they didn't get it! All this got me thinking, is the fact that these businesses are finally picking up on the blog mean that the cutting edge marketability of these Read more:Blogs
Setting up social netwa.king in five minutes 2008-08-04 02:00:00 Want to increase your social footprint - here is how to achieve saturation in 5 minutes
: Google Reader; Flickr; You Tube; Friendfeed; Twitter and Delicious Read more:Setting
Generating Fresh Content 2008-07-31 16:02:58 Following on from my post about the launch of the Base and NJoy/Calypso blogs and the value of fresh content here are 5 tips on how to get ideas for all the fresh content. Read more:Content
The Value of Blogs for Business 2008-07-30 16:58:21 We have recently developed a new blog for Base as well as our Calypso and NJoy. Both have the potential to be very cool and market leading, but what is the real value of them? In this post I list a few reasons every company should have a blog. Read more:Blogs
, Business
, Value
Connectivity and Stickiness - The Social Currency Solution 2008-07-29 16:47:32 We consult on a huge amount of web projects and increasingly they all have some sort of social Web 2.0 element. The interesting thing is that in all of them I find myself saying the same things: in any website that some sort of socialness goal they are two key factors which, without both, are essential to the success of the site: quality and social currency. Read more:Connectivity
, Currency
, Social
, Solution
Browser Wars Explained 2008-09-16 18:28:40 So Google has released it's own web browser (Chrome) - and all us web geeks simultaneously went yeehaa (as opposed to Yahoo!) and argh, another bloody browser to test everything in. But what I have realised talking to "normal" people is that most don't give a toss and just don't get what it all means. So here it is - browser wars in laymans terms.
A list of the top travel blogs 2008-08-25 04:13:46 So with our new (still under wraps) launch of phase 1 of Travel Generation involving the wiki and the blog I have spent a whole day looking at all the travel blogs (those that I think are relevant to the backpacking market). Here is my pick of the crop in no particular order:
Bebo the TV Channel 2008-07-28 22:52:02 Following my earlier questioning post regarding advertising on social networks it is interesting to see the sponsor partner direction of Bebo as it moves to outgun TV channels and online broadcasters in luring mass audiences to web-specific programmes. Read more:Channel
“Flow” in a Website 2008-07-27 17:56:29 From my preceding post on our wonderful experience in Mount Cook building the new Travel Generation website I have done some more reading about the concept of "flow" in website design. According to Chicago University Professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced "CHICK-sent-me-high-ee"), a great website is created not by navigating through content but by staging a complete experience for the user
Working in Mount Cook and the Flow 2008-07-27 03:56:28 I am writing this post from my hotel room in Mount Cook Village - the middle of the South Island at the foot of New Zealand's highest Mountain. I won't actually get this posted on the website until tomorrow night when I get home and plug in as we don't have Internet here. What the hell I am doing there?
Content is king! 2008-07-04 00:19:59 If you don’t know by now we design and develop great websites (hic). But great design and lots of cool functionality doesn’t necessarily maketh the website - it’s a cliche, but it’s true - content is king. Read more:Content
Extracting keywords from content 2008-07-03 00:16:57 We have our own sort of 5 stage methodology for undertaking SEO programmes. Starting with keywords we move onto getting the content all sorted. One of the key parts here is the way in which content is structured. We use a number of tools here; and one of the interesting ones here to look at is this little number based on a Yahoo! Api.
New domain name structure 2008-07-02 00:14:52 Often wrong, always adamant! For what's it worth here is my thoughts on the new domain
name suffixes that are making all the news.
Bruce Thurlow departs 2008-07-02 00:12:27 Yesterday Bruce
Thurlow posted for us on the awesome Oz Experience travel planning functionality. One thing I failed to mention was that in fact this was the departing shot from Bruce as he has moved on from Oz Experience.
Oz Experience travel planner 2008-07-01 00:11:24 Xebidy developed a marketing leading travel planner
as part of the Oz Experience overall website development. In this post guest author Bruce Thurlow from Oz Experience explains how the travel planner actually works.
Oz Experience website launched 2008-06-18 19:59:27 In October 2006 I was asked to look at the Oz Experience website
and the whole strategy behind their website with a view to increasing sales. Over the next 6 months we devised a complete strategy and with approval of a really forward thinking Board of Directors we have this week launched what we think is one of the coolest websites ever - not just in tourism but across a lot of the Web 2.0 world.
Google versus XEFEED 2008-06-14 15:11:11 XEFEED is a product developed by Xebidy for Internet monitoring and RSS feed reading. In the past month we have begun to migrate this service away from XEFEED and across to Google
Reader and other Google services.
In this post I look at the advantages that Google Reader has over XEFEED and the continuation of the XEFEED service. Read more:versus
Content is king (or the death of a website) 2008-06-11 13:54:21 If you don’t know by now we design and develop great website
s (hic). But great design and lots of cool functionality doesn’t necessarily maketh the website - it’s a cliche, but it’s true - content is king.
The content is one of the most important parts of the website and often its ignored, given to the [...] Read more:Content
, death
Outbound links on your website 2008-06-03 21:19:22 Is there any value in having outbound links
on your website
or are you in fact damaging the value of your website in search engine rankings?
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