Category Archives: Website SEO

It's time to throw away previous models of online distribution! Tomahawk Director and tourism marketing expert Gina Paladini presents the drastic changes in online distribution for tourism, and how your business can stay ahead of the curve.

Download the whitepaper as a PDF

Let’s start by looking back to the 1990 era of travel distribution.

“Those were the days.” The distribution chain was an easy, single flat line with the novel addition of a supplier having their first website.

Today the available distribution "chain" is more like a bicycle wheel with spokes than a chain!\

The increase of distribution channels options requires an deep understanding of your customers, and which channels are best for each stage of the travel purchase...

While imagery and design dominate the overall look and feel of a website, there is no denying the fact that more than 50% of any average business website is words. At the end of the day, your customer is browsing your website to gain information about your product, not just look at pretty pictures. It is therefore crucial to devote a lot of careful thought and deliberation to getting typography right on your website. 

Choose the right type

Finding the ideal font to pair with your brand can be challenging. There is a plethora of good typefaces out there, but which is that one combination that fits your needs perfectly?

There are multiple styles to choose from such as Serif, Sans serif, handwritten, cursive script, decorative or different weights like Regular, Bold, Italic,...

Over the past month Google has changed the way Adwords is displayed on desktop search results. Have you noticed the difference yet? Here's how the changes may affect your business.

What changed?

1. No more text ads shown on the right-hand side.
2. Up to four ads are now shown above organic (natural) search results – when previously the maximum was three.
3. Three ads are also now shown at the bottom of the page.
4. This means the number of maximum text ads has been reduced to seven whereas before there could be 11.

Why did it change?

Many people will say the answer is money, but by removing the ads on the right, Google has created a cleaner user experience that is more consistent with how mobile search is displayed. The right-hand space is also now used for other...

All we seem to be reading about at the moment is the Google Mobile "Armageddon", the premise that on the 21 April if you are not mobile-friendly your website will be surreptitiously wiped off the face of search.

But it’s not quite all that dramatic. Let’s look at what is actually involved and whether you should be panicking just yet.

WHAT’S SO BIG ABOUT MOBILE?

We've been telling our tourism clients this for some time now: you must invest in a mobile-friendly (ideally responsive) website to succeed online. It’s no longer a “nice-to-have” - it’s a must-have.

• There are 1.08 billion smartphones in the world
• 50% of local search is done on a mobile device
• Nearly half of consumers say they won’t return to a website if it doesn’t load well on mobile

Last year...

We are often asked by clients whether additional domains would benefit their website and/or SEO.
 
For example, say you run a motel in Auckland and your website is "www.imaginarymotel.com" but you also wonder about registering "www.imaginarymotel.co.nz", or even "http://auckland.imaginarymotel.com".

Answer?

There are only ever 3 reasons to register additional domains.

1. To protect your brand. In other words, stop someone else like a competitor from getting to it first. Alternatively, your company name might be easily misspelled and you want to catch those users who mistype it.
(Side note: If protecting your brand is your main concern, you should also register social media accounts under your company name ASAP, even if you don’t plan on posting anything just yet. Use