Nancy Hayssen Sonoma County, California writes:
“I am a local private pilot and web entrepreneur who has launched a website targeting Sonoma County residents and visitors traveling direct into the area from L.A., Seattle and Portland who want to visit the Wine Country.
“The site recently has been ‘taking off’ and I’d love your help. I’m looking for ways to improve my site, increase traffic as much as possible, unusual PR ideas and ways to build my subscriber list even more.”
Obtain coupon offers for tours, gifts, wine tasting, B&B’s, ballon rides, etc. Don’t be afraid to charge those merchants some $ for the benefit. Make sure to meta-tag those offers which may help you in search engines. Accelerate your subscriber list with contest or contests.
Sonoma country site should delete the words at bottom of his site that says this is not the official..Should read. Enjoy this site showing the Sonoma spirit….
Your site is too busy looking for me.
The .org site you say to go to, it far more easier to navigate.
I don’t believe the 30 day draw! Maybe: Give me your email details and you’ll receive emails showing you our Sonoma Spirit,
Show the spirit!!!!!
Don’t give away what you do as a prize. Showing the sonoma spirit (spirit having 2 meanings 1x fun, excitement 1x alcohol)
Give every person who made a booking with you the spirit message as a bottle of specifically labelled wine with sonoma country details on it. Most people tend to keep for a while as a momento, which also makes a good talking point when visitors go to their house & If you made a memorable impression, you will be talked about.
You are losing your ‘branding’ by running a top ad for someone else. Because your site has many ads, you are losing your logo and identity in the long run. When I first came to your site I had a hard time differentiating from the ads and your information.
Also, your site is not ‘search engine optimized’ as much as it could be. You do not have some of the highly ranked keywords in your meta tags. You can do a search on Google to find some free keyword searches.
Do you have a e-newsletter? Even a quarterly one will supply you with e-mail addresses and information about your visitors to assist in future marketing plans.
Search spider bots also use links as keywords. I would move ‘parking’ down on your links list on the left side.
Put together a ‘memento’ book for each traveler. Have your logo on the front, your contact information on the back. Put in some interesting facts about the Wine Country. Leave a page for them to enter: Flight Date; Captain; passengers in group; etc. Then leave some pages for photos. This all can be done on your computer for less than a good bottle of wine! Great momento and keeps your contact information with them and anyone they show the photos to!
Think about adding blog to target Sonoma wine fanatics
Cultivate ties with journalist so you can feed
them info on stories they are working on.
Think about adding more wine education resources
in the form of reports with titles like:
How To Boost Your Wine IQ
10 Hottest Wineries in Sonoma Valley
25 Great Wine Sonoma Valley Getaway Ideas
Must See Sonoma Valley Wine Places To Visit Before You Die
You could do a review of Airline wine lists.
Have a ‘dream’ wine contest.
Maybe develop a lists of presidential wines
or a wine election poll where wine tasters
identify the wine they drink and their presidential
candidate
This could be Pr opp in wine mags …
“Who Are Wine Lovers Voting For In 2008”
Think about making a prominent link for:
Sonoma Valley Travel Deals Of The Week
Directory of Sonoma Valley Food & Wine Events
You are more in less in the heart of wine country; between Napa, Sonoma and Mendocino there are quite a number of wineries new and old to visit.
Think about finding a way to work with wineries, travel agencies or even online wine review sites. Perhaps a cross promotion or referral fees or even simple cross linking of websites; you list the wineries and they list you as a transportation resource. The larger wineries or websites may not go for it, but with all the small start ups from Petaluma to Fort Bragg over the past couple of decades I’m certain you would find some takers.
The key there is not about link farming; it’s a waste of time. If you do any cross linking it needs to look like you are partners, not just people trying to build link popularity.
If you do nothing else, start a blog and a FaceBook fan page. It used to be you could simply build a website, optimize it and get tons of traffic, but it doesn’t work that way anymore.
Greatly simplified, you need lots of relevant, quality content added frequently.