Team Tasmania is a program that helps tourism operators in Tasmania who are targeting international visitors work with Tourism Tasmania on a number of international marketing opportunities.

Team Tasmania operators engage in a number of networking events with an element of the event focusing on helping operators improve their international marketing reach. The following is the presentation and discussion that I was involved in where we discussed some principals of Search Engine optimization.

Areas that were talked about were

• The web is a supporting tool for a business
• Areas that a website owner should think about
• Accessibility (Hosting, Coding, sitemaps, CMS)
• Usability (Overcoming visitor obstacles, Set conversion goals)
• Analysis (Google Analytics, Free tools, Google Webmaster tools)
• Popularity (SEO, SEM, Social Media, Offline activities that need to dove tail)

The importance of Search Engine Optimization

SEOmoz SEO Pyramid developed by Rand Fishkin was used to talk about the layers involved in an effective SEO campaign. Some factors were explored around effective SEO. The SEOmoz SEO Biennial Ranking report was used to highlight some SEO areas.

Social Media was discussed.

• Any one can get involved
• Trying to cover everything takes too much time
• When thinking about getting involved in social media identify a category or type of social media and concentrate on getting it right. Dont try and tackle everything all at once.
• There is a difference in being involved in social media as a commenter or using it to understand what is being said as opposed to creating viral content that will promote your business.

Search Engine Marketing or Pay-per-click

Although it is becoming a more difficult area to obtain quick wins with higher keyword costs etc it is still an area that will help a business get exposure on the internet. It is important to get the right tools, do the right research and follow up with effective monitoring and testing.

A list of a few helpful resources

Sitemaps

http://www.sitemaps.org/

http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ – Help Generate a sitemap

Usability
http://crazyegg.com/ on page interactive tracking

http://www.surveymonkey.com/

http://www.usabilityone.com/usability-resources/articles/usability-articles.php

Analytics

http://www.google.com/analytics/

http://web.analytics.yahoo.com/

Keyword tools

https://adwords.google.com.au/select/KeywordToolExternal

http://www.google.com/sktool/ Search based – find keywords from other side

Toolkits

http://tools.seobook.com/

http://www.seomoz.org/

Web master tools from Search Engines

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools

http://www.bing.com/webmaster

Competitive intelligence

http://www.google.com/insights/search/

http://www.google.com/trends

http://www.keywordspy.com/

https://www.google.com/adplanner/

PPC

https://www.google.com/adplanner/

www.google.com/intl/en/adwordseditor

https://adwords.google.com.au/

Good SEO Blogs (information)

http://searchengineland.com/

http://www.seomoz.org/blog

Other Tools

http://www.addthis.com/