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In this issue:

Flying start for the India Travel Blog
What does the Microsoft-Yahoo deal mean for the travel sector?
Is Content King in Travel and Tourism?
An online advertising success: MyCapitalGardensUSA.co.uk
Kerala State Tourism choose Dot Tourism

Flying start for the India Travel Blog

Launched in May, the blog we developed for Mahindra Homestays has got off to a great start. It has attracted almost 4,000 visits in its first three months.

A key aim of the blog is to build organic traffic from people researching India as a travel destination. Our keyword strategy and content plan is already reaping rewards, bringing traffic from over 500 non-branded terms. Pivotal to this is our growing list of things to do articles, which aim to cover the whole of India and engage the interest of bloggers and social media users who can propagate messages they like.

What does the Microsoft-Yahoo deal mean for search marketing and the travel sector?

The early consensus is that saturated sectors, like travel, will now have a feasible alternative to paying top whack for popular keywords on the Google AdWords platform. Also Bing's current focus on travel as a search area will be strengthened through the partnership.

The biggest effects will be on the US search market where the combined forces of Microsoft-Yahoo have a substantial share, however, in the UK they will have less than 10%.

Whatever happens, there won’t be massive change overnight. You'll have a good year (or longer) to prepare.

For a little more reading on the subject check out:
Five things you need to know about the Yahoo/Microsoft deal from BrandRepublic and Top 10 Things the Microsoft/Yahoo! Deal Changes for SEO from seomoz.

Is content king in travel and tourism?

The topic of ‘content’ comes up time and time again in discussions about online presence. I’m not sure who coined the phrase ‘content is king’ but I have customers continuing to ask about content’s importance.

Without a doubt, quality content is vital to online marketing success. Especially for smaller outfits and organisations that have a limited online presence. Sure, there is plenty of free content out there – and judging by the traffic numbers of sites like Wikitravel and the forums on Lonely Planet, free content is here to stay.

Read the rest of this article

An online advertising success: MyCapitalGardensUSA.co.uk

Following on from a very successful online campaign last year, we were commissioned again by Capital Region USA to develop a website to promote gardens to the UK market. The result, www.mycapitalgardensusa.co.uk, was launched in February with over 50 garden profiles and sponsored by television presenter Monty Don.

Over 50% of all site visitors entered the competition and more than 12% subscribed to the e-newsletter. We're delighted with these high conversion rates. We exceeded our entrants target by 23%.

Key to the success was the highly targeted online advertising campaign run through Google AdWords and Facebook. This allowed us to reach key demographics and those with an interest in gardening.

Kerala State Tourism choose Dot Tourism

Building on our India connections, we're very excited to soon be working with Kerala State Tourism. We'll be creating fresh digital assets that will enable them to further reach the UK audience, their largest overseas market.