VIP Mountain Holidays has reappointed Invoke to manage their Internet Marketing services. The Internet Marketing campaign will focus on increasing VIP’s rankings in the search engines and driving qualified traffic to their website.

VIP Mountain Holidays provides full service, concierge holidays in Whistler BC. Their mission is to provide each guest a luxurious hassle free holiday by providing unparalleled service before, during, and after their Whistler Vacation. VIP Mountain Holidays has access to all of the top Whistler Accommodations, including Whistler’s Hotels, Chalets, and Private Lodging. The company philosophy of “no is not an option” has allowed VIP to provide the best service possible to all their guests. VIP has come to understand top quality service with over 35 years of combined ski industry experience and we are keen to introduce you to this type of service.

Posted by Ryan Holmes

Mike Bradbury of Object Ware Inc. in Atlanta recently released a great article in EntireWEB Weekly on keyword selection for SEO. His article is full of information beneficial to even the most seasoned SEO professional, but it’s written in a way that a newcomer to the art could understand his steps.

Bradbury’s example of an upstate New York shoe store is representative of many of the smaller businesses that are tackling SEO as a viable marketing opportunity right now. SEO is affordable and with more and more potential customers researching their options online before eventual purchase, it is becoming vital for the survival of small- and medium-sized retail businesses.

Bradbury’s most important tip is that you must know your site. SEO professionals are trained, tried and true when it comes to reading websites for valuable keywords, ideas and information, but for those just starting out in this area, it’s sometimes difficult to know what is on your website, where it’s located, and how each page needs to be treated. Knowing what is on your website and what is not, and the best tactic to optimize that site for the right keywords, is truly an exact art.

The first step is always general keyword selection. For any business that’s trying to make a name online, it’s important to keep realistic: ranking first on Google, Yahoo! or MSN for a general keyword like “chocolates” is going to be an incredibly long, arduous journey. Thus, keywords must be narrowed down. Businesses should start by adding modifiers to their more general keywords; Vancouver Chocolates or Organic Dark Chocolate Truffles BC are great ways of narrowing down a big idea to a more manageable size.

This is where it gets more complicated. Now you’ll take your keyword list and you’ll pluck it down into a keyword tool like Google’s. This tool will give you some suggestions as to different variations for your keyword based on searches made for that keyword as well as the content of your website.

Once you’ve created a good keyword list, you must gather the competition. There are a few ways of doing this, some more complicated than others. Try searching one of your keywords up in Google. Below the search bar, in that blue bar across the page, you will see your keywords linked individually, the time the search took, and a ranking number for competition, like so:

Results 1 – 10 of about 25,200 for vancouver dark chocolate organic truffles. (0.25 seconds)

So it’s your task, now, to beat those 25,200 pages and get your page right at the top. Seem like a lot? Try a more general keyword. There are 122,000,000 results for chocolate. And besides, most of those pages won’t be as relevant as yours, so you still have a good chance with targeted keywords.

Bradbury makes some good points here. Really, you don’t need to beat all 25,200 of those pages. You simply need to beat the last one that contains the keywords in its title or anchor text – the text that links to the page. Here’s his guide…

Go to http://www.startlaunch.com/research/.

1. Copy your list of keywords into the box, click “submit”.
2. Click on each link.
3. Find and copy the number of pages that the search engine returns for this query from the top right of the SERPs to a new column next to the corresponding keyword in your keyword list spreadsheet (this is your competition).
4. In another new column, divide the number of competitors by the number of monthly searches for each keyword.
5. Sort the table from low to high (ascending) using that column.

It’s not easy, but that’s the trick. Now… where do you rank?

We just found this great article on 10 things businesses should know before building a website. The main points are pulled from a few different sources, notably Esther Schindler’s Becoming Clueful article:

1. Understand what you want
2. It costs more and takes longer than you think
3. A Web site has several pieces. Don’t cut corners.
4. Balance glitz and guts
5. If you build it, they won’t necessarily come
6. Avoid bit decay: the site needs maintenance
7. Treat the Web team as professional

Seth Godin wrote an article in July 2006 on working well with your designer. He’s right; it’s tough stuff and designers, managers and clients sometimes butt heads due to misunderstandings.

The last thing I’d like to point out is this older article by Seth Godin – Marketing Potholes – which everyone who’s looking to hire a design team should read. Seth writes, “Lots of marketers (and most of their bosses) like to say, ‘I’ll know it when I see it.’

“Actually, you won’t.”

We love working with clients who are new to the web, but we need to be able to do our thing; sometimes people forget that they’ve hired us for a reason – ’cause we know our stuff.

Interactive media buyers have gone through some rough times over the years. Following the dot-bomb, September 11, and the subsequent recession, agencies started making cuts. Many buyers and planners lost their jobs. Some opted to change industries entirely. Those who stuck with their trade took pay cuts and saw their creativity stifled by agency directors who thought it best to play it safe. Finally, it looks as though our luck may be changing.

Media buyers and planners are again in high demand. According to TalentZoo, the number of media jobs now available is about three times greater than last year. And recruiting industry insiders say demand is high for those with online experience. Things are looking up.

Or are they?

Media buyers may no longer want for work, but another phenomenon now threatens to obstruct our progress: do-it-yourself media campaigns.

Consider, for instance, the recent trend toward viral marketing. Since it started to take off, the Internet media space has managed to garner an amazing amount of attention. That’s great for our industry as a whole, but what of media buyers? Online viral marketing started as just one aspect of a greater campaign — an afterthought marketers threw in to a contest to boost their media buys. But many of today’s viral efforts don’t involve the purchase of online media at all.

General Mills’ recent online film spoof of “The Italian Job” promoting Lucky Charms was distributed directly to U.S. students and 20-somethings, but no online ads promoting the effort have been seen. The Gap also rejected ad placements in lieu of promoting its “Watch Me Change” site entirely by word of mouth. With advertisers now able to execute viral campaigns without corresponding media buys, is there still a place for those who specialize in negotiating ad placements?

The increased blog use for corporate marketing is equally disturbing. Prior to this trend, businesses looked to advertising to help them build a relationship with their customers. Branding campaigns were used to create a positive association with conglomerates and to humanize even the most faceless corporations.

Now companies use blogs to satisfy these intents, generating traffic via their corporate Web sites and word of mouth. No longer must a business rely on online advertising to connect with the public. Blogs can do this and more.

In many ways, online media has become a self-service communications channel. Advertisers, even those with little online experience, are discovering what consumers have known for years: at its core, the Internet is a medium “for the people.” It doesn’t necessitate assistance from the pros. One can develop ad creative using a home software program, launch a site using inexpensive Web design and hosting tools, and promote one’s initiative with blogs, discussion boards, and good old word of mouth — all without traditional advertising agencies, media brokers, or placements experts.

Where does that leave media buyers, whose livelihoods depend on the demand for ad placement expertise? There’s no denying the need for evolution. Today’s buyers and planners must prove their worth by showing versatility and demonstrating expertise in new formats to makes themselves indispensable. Though it’s certainly possible to work without media buyers, they possess a knowledge of the Internet space and its users that professional and amateur advertisers alike would be remiss not to exploit. Having access to DIY online advertising is one thing. Making it work is quite another.

At the same time, it’s highly unlikely traditional Internet advertising will suffer extinction any time soon. Techniques may be maturing to better serve consumers’ changing wants and needs, but until the Internet adopts a pervasive fee-based content model there will be a place for in-site advertising. And advertisers will need to reach the consumers sites attract.

Modern media buyers aren’t just buyers; they’re planners and strategists, too. This makes us even more valuable than ever before. But we can’t breathe a sigh of relief now that economists say we’re back in demand. We must stay on our toes. The last thing we want is for the next DIY campaign to be of the job-search variety.

Original story

Chris Tacy, a self-proclaimed “ex-chef, entrepreneur, ex-corporate exec, ex-barista, consultant, geeky web business guy,” has written an interesting piece about the cost of a corporate site. His conclusion: professional, corporate sites always come out at about $10,000 per page. The most interesting bit, though, is that he breaks down how and why. Read the full piece here.