Newsletter : November 2004
brought to you by New Zealand Tourism Online www.tourism.net.nz
In this November Newsletter:
NZTO Comment
by Garry Bond, General Manager, New Zealand Tourism Online
Well, we're rapidly running towards the end of 2004 and for many tourism operations this is the start of the peak season. How are you coping? This time of the year often brings many challenges and a large one for many businesses are staff numbers (or the hard task of attracting quality people). For many companies this is compounded by the requirement for short term employees. The difficulty is that everyone else is looking for the same type of person.
With New Zealand's current low employment rate of about 3.8%, the Government has recently announced that the number of oversea's holidaymaker's allowed to work here will increase from July next year to at least 40,000. These will be 18 to 30 year olds with no children and will be allowed to work here for up to one year. The current limit is apparently 31,000. While this is good news and shows that the Tourism and Immigration departments are talking to each other, it isn't going to help you much this season.
Although the unemployment rate is low, it's also important that the tourism industry attracts New Zealanders. After all, a visitor to this country would expect to deal at least some of the time with a people who actually live in NZ. Historically high staff turnover or the difficulty attracting locals has been due to low remuneration rates, seasonal job prospects and possibly the lack of a clear career path. Although it's difficult for individual operators to change some of these aspects, it's important that as an industry we continue to move forward to address the issues.
Xmas Draw
As a token of our appreciation of your business this year, New Zealand Tourism Online will place everyone who is a client into a draw on the 23rd December 2004. The winner will receive an extra 6 months online for free (applies to Bronze, Silver and Gold listing packages).
If you'd like to expand your current exposure on the www.tourism.net.nz Web site or would like to enquire more about our range of services, please drop us an email or phone toll free on 0800 14 65 48.
PS: We're also having a special draw for all those who pay their bill between now and December 23rd 2004. This includes those who buy a listing now and pay before the cutoff date - call or email for more details (as above).
DIY Link Building
by Mark Rocket, Avatar Web Promotions
In today's search engine environment, there are a number of important elements that will allow a site to rocket to top-10 ranking stardom. Two of the most important are:
- An abundance of search engine friendly, keyword-targeting content.
- An abundance of quality links into your site.
We're just concentration on the link building site of things here. It's a little time-consuming, but extremely valuable if you're serious about improving your online performance.
Why Is Link Building Important?
Link building is a complex area, so it's difficult to define in a couple of paragraphs the myriad of reasons why search engines like links. Essentially, many search engines count links into a site as a method of determining how popular a site is. It indicates that someone thinks you're 'link-worthy', which is like a vote of confidence. In addition, if the site that links to your site is of good quality, or is a major player for your industry, or has a lot of search engine popularity, then that vote of confidence is worth even more to your site. Search engines, such as Google, that analyse site links often use this measurement as a key method of determining which sites rank well on their search results pages.
What Exactly Is A Link?
Understandably, many Web site newbies aren't exactly sure what a link is. Just to be sure we're all talking the same language, examples of links can be seen here:
- http://www.nzs.com/business/shopping/florists/
- http://www.rocketflorist.co.nz/new-zealand/
- http://www.entertainmentnz.com/links.html
Links can be text or graphics that link to a site.
How Do I Do It?
We'd suggest you allocate at least two hours per week. If you don't have this resource in-house then you may like to consider hiring a temp to do this work. It's a matter of finding a site that would be willing to link to you then:
- Assess if the site is appropriate for a link exchange.
- Assess if the site has a links page.
- Send the site owner / Webmaster an email asking if they want to exchange links. You have more leverage if you offer them a link in return.
Link building can be a process of trial and error but one that is well worth while in the long run.
We welcome any feedback or contributions for our next newsletter - just email our team web@tourism.net.nz
Regards,
The Team
Ph. 0800 14 65 47
https://www.tourism.net.nz
New Zealand Tourism Online Limited
Head Office: 208 Cashel Street, Christchurch
