7 Quick SEO Tips for your Outdoor Business

April 29, 2012 in Services, Step by step, Tips, Uncategorized with 0 Comments

7 Quick SEO Tips to Get Started

We all keep hearing that SEO is important to keep your website ranking for keywords, but many don’t know where to start. SEO is a VERY complimentary service to our business because in theory, if you’re driving traffic, then you’re booking trips.

So what are the important steps you need to take today?

On-Page SEO Checklist

Make appropriate changes to your website first. If you have a website lacking good content, then you can’t expect to move up in the rankings too quick.

Remember that content is STILL KING. Google changes their algorythm 700 times a year. But you can always be sure that if you’re producting good content on your blog that you’ll be heading in the right direction.

  1. All pages indexed in Google?

    Search your website on Google. Typing in “Site:www.fishing.com” in Google will show the pages indexed for your website.

  2. Images in navigation bar

    • Since text in images cannot be indexed, a search engine does not understand what the navigation is directing to. So instead of using images, use html text.

  3. Alt text for images?

    • Describe your image on your website so that Google will know what the image represents. Remember that Google will want to see an image that relates to the content.

  4. Keywords in URL

    • A keyword in the URL of a page will tell Google what the page is about. A good structured URL looks like http://www.fishing.com/bass-fishing. A bad example is http://www.fishing.com/page2/wa2200

  5. Single H1 on each page?

    • The H1 (Heading 1) page title should sum up the page in very few words. The “7 Quick SEO Tips to Get Started” at the top of this blog is our Heading 1.

  6. Title tags per page – Keep it under 65 characters

    • The <title> tag tells the purpose of the page. It should be short and needs to relate to the keywords for the topic. You should also lead the page with the keyphrase you’re topic is covering. For example; Bass Fishing Tips | Bass Fishing | Fishing.com

  7. Meta descriptions – Keep them under 155 characters

    • The purpose of  meta descriptions is to summarize your page.  It is also displayed in the search results for people search to read. If the summary is intriguing, then they may click to see you!

We’ll be posting a bunch of SEO post coming up. Make sure you check back for more tips like the ones above!

7 Tedious Tasks Made Simple

April 25, 2012 in Guide Management, Services, Updates with 0 Comments

Online Booking Made Simple by Software

My Outdoor Calendar started as Hunting Square back in 2008 as a hub for hunting and fishing enthusiast. When we saw the need for guide and client management in the outdoor industry it only made sense to build the platform that we now call My Outdoor Calendar. We build tools to help our clients do their jobs faster and easier. That paper calendar? Month-end reporting? Keeping up with your guides? The solution has arrived, and we are happy to announce an even more affordable option.

All you need are the right tools.

We always want to be innovative in the outdoor industry and we do this by providing these 7 Tools…just to name a few.

What now?

Request a free demo with our Executive director. The demo is a quick way to meet our staff and learn about how My Outdoor Calendar might fit into your operations plan.

Using Facebook Timeline for Outdoor Brands

April 2, 2012 in Clients, Photos, Tips with 3 Comments

The buzz around social media is highly focused on the new timeline for brands. We hear about it due to our Online Booking Facebook App (we need to update our screenshot) and it’s been fun to see what brands we follow are using for their timeline photo.

Here is a list of some of our favorites!

Deneki OutdoorsDeneki Outdoors

Tailwaters Fly Fishing

TailWaters

Outdoor Channel Outfitters

Outdoor Channel Outfitters

Ascension Bay Bonefish Club

Ascension Bay Bonefish Club

Final Approach

Final Approach

Strip Strike Charters

Strip Strike Charters

Hunting Life

Hunting Life

Who would you add to the list?

The secret to book more fishing trips on your site

March 13, 2012 in Uncategorized with 0 Comments

We are asked the secret to book more fishing trips on a website. Recently, we ran a survey with some of our clients to really discover the secret of our clients success. What we discovered is easier than you think!

Your Outfitter Website

Fishing Guides & Charter boat owners build a site for the same purpose all of us build websites.

  1. Drive traffic
  2. Educate potential clients
  3. Generate leads
We can’t really help you with the first one on the list but if you’re able to drive the traffic to your website, we can help you close the deal.

Traffic vs. Trips Booked

Sending people to your website from a business card or from telling them, makes your website the 2nd touch point with you.

How are they going to react when they see your site? There options are to call you back, book online or leave your site and not return. Assuming that you don’t need a better designed website, the chances of your potential customers calling or booking online is really high.

During our survey we discovered the “sweet spot” for online booking. The average number that was found with website traffic to trips booked was 0.6% – This means that clients with online booking would see 0.6% of there customers convert on their website on the first visit. AND this doesn’t cover the number of people who emailed or called to also book a trip.

Online Booking on the Rise

The trend for your clients booking online is growing and you can take advantage of your traffic.

Lets toss out a few numbers…

Your website gets 1,000 hits a month – - This is a pretty average number for sites that don’t promote themselves too much. Then lets say that 0.6% of your traffic converts to your $350 package. Your business would be booking 6 clients for every 1000 visitors to your site and earning $2100 from those leads.

Dream big! – - One of our clients gets 20,000 hits a month on their corporate page. You can only imaging what they see with online bookings.

Why now?

Online booking is a fairly new trend outside of the travel industry. Your clients are beginning to expect an option to book a trip, lesson or rental gear from your website. Are you ready for them?

We want to hear your thoughts and experiences with your online booking success or failures. What worked for you? What didn’t work for you?

Growing you business during the cold winter months

January 4, 2012 in Guide Management, Services, Step by step, Tips, Updates with 0 Comments

Fly Fishing Shop Business – Winter Edition

Increasing your sales in the winter is quite the task for some fly shops while others are seeing their bookings go up during the winter months.

Fly Fishing in WinterHere are some ways our clients are increasing winter sales:

1. Combining fly fishing trips with a duck or goose hunting package. Many times referred as the Cast & Blast package, guides and outfitters continue to see sales spike during freezing months.

2. Offering discounted rates for spring fly fishing trips is already becoming a hot item for many fly shops in Colorado and Montana. Clients will hop on early deals since they’re already booking a few months out for travel.

3. Casting lessons and river flow classes. Our clients continue to see an increased interest in off-season training. If you can use a local high-school gym for fly fishing casting lessons, promote that you’ll be teaching lessons every X day…It may be a good off-season revenue stream.

4. Blog about all of your great fall trips. Seriously, there is something to be said for always keeping your clients excited about catching fish. Try to re-spin a few stories and publish them on your blog and newsletter.

5. Go tropical! You think we’re joking but that’s not what many owners such Andrew Bennett from Deneki Outdoors. Andrew keeps his a year round opportunity by having locations in warm tropical locations. What’s better than year-round business?

Do you have other tips or suggestions to add? Feel free and post in the comments!

 

 

5 Ways to Enhance your Guide Business Website

December 19, 2011 in Step by step, Tips with 1 Comment

Placing your brand in the online marketplace is an ongoing struggle for many business owners. Try some of these tips to better enhance your online guide business website.

1. Jazz up your local SEO 

Write copy that enhances the keywords on your website. If your website is about trout fishing in Montana, then try to focus on “trout fishing Montana” as your keyword or phrase to build out on your website.

Common mistake: Optimizing for a keyword that is not being searched. If you’re hunting lodge is called Wild West Adventures and you’re trying to optimize for the keyword “Wild West Adventures” then you’re heading the the wrong direction.

Find 3-5 different keywords you would like to work we  Learn what kind of keywords you should be targeting using Keyword Spy and Google Traffic Estimator.

Keyword Traffic Estimator

2. Develop better Titles & Descriptions

Tired hearing about SEO already? Fine we’ll end here. As most of you know, search engines deliver results to your potential customers in a common format shown below. You can add a different title and description to each page in order to tell the search engines what to show. The example below shows up when I search for “reservation tool fishing” in Google.  Continue Reading…

The Minimalist Guide to Daily Deal sites

November 25, 2011 in Tips with 0 Comments

Daily_Deal_Outdoors

Daily_Deal_Outdoors

Save up to 50-90% | Great for the consumer, but what about you (the vendor)

You may be asking yourself as an outdoor business owner whether or now you should be utilizing the daily deal websites for your business. Knowing how these sites work and knowing how to use it for your business can affect your company in big way.

Be Loyal

When a customer finds that you’re offering a trip for $150 when they just went fishing with you for $250, your client is not going to be happy. Make sure you’re prepared to handle clients that learn that you’re offering a discount. Communicate through email and on your website in order to keep the lines clear.

Don’t dilute your Brand

As soon as you start “giving away” your trips on a daily deal site for 30%-50% off, you’re clients will react. Most likely they will like it and book a trip. But this means that you just earned a client that will pay for your service when it’s discounted. Is this the client you want to attract? Continue Reading…

21 Awesome Resources for Business

November 19, 2011 in Photos, Tips, Updates with 0 Comments

21 Business ResourcesAll of us have certain resources we use on a daily basis and here are some that we think you should be using.

Website
1. Elance allows you to post jobs (development, database entry, virtual assistants, etc.) for alternative options
2. Google Analytics tell you all about your traffic and provides you with real-time website analytics
3. Website Grader measures your website and shows you ways to optimize it
4. WordPress or Joomla – CMS is the way to go if you’re not wanting to call your web team for every web edit.

Marketing

5. MarketingProfs – Marketing resources for marketing professionals and businesses.
6. SEOmoz – SEO tips to analyze keywords, research backlinks, do on-page analysis, find accessibility issues and more.
7. Keyword Spy – Monitor your closest competitors with a tool that measures tracking and ad research.
8. Compete – An Online competitive intelligence service that combines site, search and referral analytics.

Blogging
9. Stock.xchng – A huge gallery for free high quality stock photos or share yours with others.
10. Tumblr – A blog hosting platform offering professional and fully customizable templates
11. Copy Blogger – Tips, software, and training for copywriters, bloggers, and content marketers.

Bookkeeping
12. FreshBooks – Track Time and Invoice Your Clients. Great for teams, small businesses and service providers.
13. outright – Hassle free way to keep track of your small business finances.
14. zoho Books - Online accounting and bookkeeping software with time tracking features.

Business Management
15. SalesForce – A CRM software and cloud computing for the social enterprise from salesforce.com, the leader in CRM solutions.
16. My Outdoor Calendar – Our online based booking and management tool designed for guide & lodge management.
17. Basecamp HQ – A web-based project management and collaboration tool.

Gear
18. Steep and Cheep – One killer gear deal, one deal everyday.
19. Deal Spoon – Deal of the Day tracker for sites like Woot, Steep and Cheap, & Amazon.

Social Measurement
20. Sprout Social – A social media management tool created to help businesses find new customers & grow their social media presence.
21. Radian6 – Tools for real-time social media monitoring and analysis designed primarily for PR and Ad agencies.

These are some of our favorites! What about yours?

 

7 Website that will sell more Trips

November 14, 2011 in Guide Management, Services, Tips with 0 Comments

Sell More Fishing Trips

There are many sites out there that will only enhance the efforts you’re putting forward to book more trips. From online directories with a edge for selling trips, to social media type websites for enhancing your brand. All of the websites below offer ways to increase your brands exposure and ultimately increase your chances to book more fishing trips.

  1. Reserve Fishing
  2. Gofishn
  3. Fishhound
  4. Fish Explorer
  5. Outdoor Connection
  6. Fishidy
  7. Go Fish the Planet

**Bonus Tip: Did you know that there is an app you can use on your Facebook page to book trips on Facebook? You should take every step to prepare for that potential lead that might not pick up the phone to book a trip.

One Tool You’re not Using that you should Be

November 13, 2011 in Tips, Uncategorized with 0 Comments

As most of you already understand, your clients are going to be using search engines to find you. From Google to Yahoo to Yelp and to Yellow Pages. The trend of this is only going to increase for  your potential customers and you need to make sure you’re showing up. Now to take this a step closer, we’re focusing on your Local Search optimization. When someone is booking an outdoor adventure trip, they’re probably focusing in a certain area; for example Zip Line Tours in Denver.

Yext gives you instant control of your local search information and add photos and specials to dozens of local search sites like Yahoo!, Yelp, MapQuest, Whitepages, Citysearch and many others.

Go ahead and run a diagnostics check on your websites: Run Test

Local Search Optimization

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reporting – Only Yext gives you daily statistics on how many views your business profile got on each site, as well as the number of searches you appear on. See how your marketing and offers are performing!

The correct business information – Preview your perfect listing as you enter your information, and see how your PowerListings will look when live!

Get Started – Start Optimizing your Local Search Results Today – Yext.com

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