Little Keywords Modification, Impacts Your Search Results

Couple months back I experimented on our company website, moving around keywords in the web page title, meta description and body tags to include consistent keywords related to our business. The results was quite surprising, if you go on Google and search on "PR Agency in... Beijing or Shanghai" we'll come up in the first page, while our Hong Kong and Singapore office comes up in second page results which is still not bad considering we didn't have any SEO/SEM Agency to help us.

My message for today's PR fellows, is that your press release should not only contain the "pretty words". But also the keywords that is trending or the keyword where you can excel in. You can use Google's keyword research tool to do this or you can also look at your website analytics to determine how people found your website, you can then take the rest from there by just doing tiny modification and including your keyword into your press release. This is an even greater value, especially when your press release is picked up by an online media. But keep on top of this, as keyword is a competitive market and you'll never know when your competition start coming in. You can use this tool to check your page rank on Google, there is also this to check on multiple search engines.

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Wanderfly, I want to #travel to...

I was very impressed with Wanderfly, although it is still in beta. I think it will have a bright future ahead.

Here is why I like it:
  • You can enter your budget for traveling, when and where you are departing from.
  • You can select the mood you are interested in - outdoor adventure, beach, snow, etc.
  • It will provide for you short intro of the destination, photos, map twitter feed on the destination, weather and your friends. It will soon feature the currency data, destination review and travel tips. (I'm wondering if it will pull data from TripAdvisor)
  • If you are comfortable in allowing Wanderfly to pull data from your Facebook, most importantly is your friends data. It will provide you a quick preview on which friend do you have on that particular destination you are visiting. (I do am sure I have friends in Toronto, not sure why the data is not displaying)
  • Will also recommend flights (data pulled from Kayak) and hotels (data pulled from Expedia Affiliate Network).
  • Will also give you estimate how much money it will cost you.
  • Finally at the bottom are photo list of activities you might enjoy, organized by category. It pulls up data from multiple source such as Yelp, Foursquare, Lonely Planet, Nile Guide and others.
This tool is almost similar like Tripit, but different. Design and interface wise I Wanderfly more and simplicity to use. You can record your trips or just simply use it to plan your holiday. It really is a very handy and easy to use tool. The ideas and creativity behind it is genius, design wise hands down more interesting than other trip planners. By far I think their integration all in one place is the best I've seen.

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Hotel Websites Integrates TripAdvisor Reviews

Last year Accor started integrating TripAdvisor, one of the most important and probably largest hotel review social network into their website. I just noticed that more and more hotels are integrating it into their website, good or bad they are what they are.

Here are just some hotels I was able to found that integrates TripAdvisor into their website, but please share with me if you ever found other websites that integrates TripAdvisor reviews:
  • Accorhotels.com note this does not appear if you search via their individual brand website like Sofitel or Novotel. But the integration is very nice and subtle on the right hand side, just below the booking engine, it shows how many reviews the hotel has received and the overall ratings. When you click on the more reviews, it will pop-up a small window.
  • Langham Hotels did this integration fairly recently I believe, I didn't notice it at all. It is after all on the way at the bottom of the website. But if you click what it differs from Accor is their dedicated pulling content from TripAdvisor and feed it directly to Langham website, so visitors will not need to go away from their website. The feed is rather slow though and very selective, so you can see the whole content. Note that not all hotels integrates this feature
  • Pan Pacific included a logo of TripAdvisor that links to the particular hotel review on TripAdvisor directly, but not all hotels include this feature.
  • Ayana Resort in Bali creates multiple social media links at every page of their website, one of them is the TripAdvisor logo however it only invites users to vote or reviews their hotel on TripAdvisor instead of showing what other guests have to say.
  • Paradise Point integration is one of the nicest I've seen so far, the load time is fast and it also pull reviews from other OTA such as Priceline. (Engine is called Social Buzz by Revinate, credit @bilbaobab for introducing me)
  • Indy Marriort again another integration via Social Buzz by Revinate like Paradise Point, although I don't know if it is standard via all Marriott hotels. (thanks @michellewohl for introducing)
I foresee this will become a trend across all hotel websites, with over 40 million reviews TripAdvisor is the largest travel social network. On top of that TripAdvisor actually drives traffic and business for Expedia so that's quite big, which is the reason by TripAdvisor + Expedia is fighting Google.

I do think, general managers should stop fighting and being vicious about it. It is what it is, can't have absolute control on everything, but rather just try to talk and listen what people has to say. It is a human purpose era after all. I did once get a call by a hotel wanting to confirm that the TripAdvisor reviews my hotel has been receiving is fake and the reason behind is that their general manager "heard about it". In any case your hotel "conversation are taking place" whether you like it or not and unlike hotel that GM can control, conversation is not, you can only manage it.

About Social Buzz from Revinate:
Revinate's Social Buzz is a powerful system that makes it easy for you to promote your public feedback from across the Web on your own sites. Why does Social Buzz make sense for hotels? Honest recommendations from guests is now the most significant driver of booking decisions. But feedback from your guests is being posted to review and third party booking engines, so the value of the feedback is benefiting their sites, not your own. (click here for their official blog)

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Flock Social Media web-browser

After raving reviews and heighten buzz of RockMelt (which by the way made 2010 top 10 Twitter technology trends).

It appears a similar web browser has been around - Flock, founded back in 2005 (so yes Flock has been around a wee bit longer than RockMelt).

It has more or les the same concept as RockMelt, but instead of focusing on Facebook and Twitter, it also integrates other social media site - Flickr, YouTube and Linkedin.
I was pretty much surprised by Flock, with Chromium based technology it is incredibly fast.

You also get the benefits from Google Store of different apps you can install to your web browser. I have already found several apps that I really like - Awesome Screenshot, url shortener and Delicious bookmarks.

I also like the clean-cut design, compared to RockMelt which splits and takes up your left and right side of the bar. Flock's design is simple enough that everything is all on the right-side, you can gaze at your convenience, you can sort by your favorite channels and it streams live.  Aside from that you can also add your favorite RSS and ATOM feeds, so it does offer a lot more.  You also get the option of creating your online secure profile, where you get to store your bookmarks and other channel preference so you can travel easier.

I am still test-driving it but it is looking pretty good so far and with my bookmarks now saved under my Delicious (but I am a bit pissed that Yahoo! is abandoning Delicious sucks that I have to switch), I am thinking of switching from Firefox to Flock... should I?

I have to admit the constant updates from your multiple streams can be a bit overwhelming as it constantly flows on and on, although you get to switch off/on what you want to see.

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Can We Save Newsweek

Here's what the staff and team at Newsweek.com (better visit the site to see or save while you can, as it will soon disappear) are trying to do whatever they can to save the website from merging and completely disappear in the belly of the Beast.
According to Mashable, both publications are reporting yearly losses in the millions ($28 million for Newsweek and $10 million for The Daily Beast).

And do try to re-blog, re-tweet or re-post their message, hopefully we can make a difference (remember GAP logo?).

Click here to see the complete article, visit here for the Newsweek tumblr blog.

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Website design: Online Shopping Crate&Barrel

Apology for not updating for quite some time, there has been few changes in my work life. Currently traveling and staying in Hong Kong for the next week or two, city is fantastic, humid and hot; but still fantastic. The lifestyle and retails/shopping are just flourishing here, a complete change compared to Beijing. Here it seems people's life revolves shopping malls, where as in Beijing not as much, I can count with my fingers how many successful shopping malls in Beijing.

Anyway, this week's topic is design. I really enjoy a great website design and I believe nobody does it better than Crate&Barrel. Their layout is always simple, great pictography, simple bold calling-to-you-action text. Their emails are always great to look at. Integration is nice and easy and they don't always blast you with catalogs, but also interesting stuff from time to time to keep the routine interesting. To me it's an integration between beauty and functionality that makes money.

Have a look at the design below, visit their site and let me know your thoughts or would appreciate if you can also share other interesting web designs.

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China Online by the Numbers

1 Billion hours spent online in 2009, more than US and Japan combined.

37 Billion dollars of transaction value in e-commerce.

137% expected online shopping growth by 2012.

What can I say, the numbers speak for themselves. China will still be in the driving seat in terms of numbers, especially with the Gen-Y taking lead on Internet front.

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