Not All Links are Created Equal

Just got an email from a camp director in Maryland asking how to get more links from other websites so his own website will rank higher search result rankings. Pretty astute guy. He's obviously aware accumulating links from outside websites which point to his could help his site show up better in Google.

Nobody's gonna just link to your site because they're in a good mood. Your site needs to be full of great content and value for others to link to it. And people need to be able to find your site in the first place if you hope to get any inbound links at all.

So what you need to do, you need to create a link-building strategy. The main thing to think about, though, is that you want concentrate on the QUALITY of the links, not the quantity.
This means if a popular summer camp blogger provides just one link to your camp's website, that's better than getting five links from five different gas stations around town. The reason why is because Google will view the link from the summer camp blogger as a vote of confidence for your sight while seeing the gas stations as having nothing to do with your camp at all.

Now one thing you may not be able to do is control what the links pointing to your site say, but if you can, you're in really good shape. Let's revisit the summer camp blogger example.

Let's say the camp blogger provides a link to your website with the words, "check out this website." As we mentioned, just the fact the link is coming from the blogger's site to yours is a big deal for you. But if the blogger changed the link words to say, "check out this summer camp website," that's MUCH, MUCH better. The reason why is because Google is looking for the most relevant websites to return to a user when the user types in their keywords. When the users keywords match your link words, BINGO, you've hit the jackpot!

So it's pretty clear that not all incoming links are created equal. When trying to accumulate links for your site, you should be targeting popular sites that relate to your camp while trying to influence what the words in the links say, if you can. This is one of the main ways Google and the other search engines rank your site in their search engine results.

Referral Marketing Idea

When you send enrollment confirmations to families, why not include a lottery ticket, Starbucks gift card or small gift certificate to the ice cream store. Parents and kids will love it and tell their friends. You can bet almost not other camps (if any) are doing anything like that with their confirmation packets.

Summer camp Marketing Workshop this Fall

At our summer camp marketing seminar this fall, I'll show you how to triple your enrollment in 6 months or less and triple your facebook fans in less time. We'll offer one live workshop seminar and one online seminar too, probably in October or November. Gonna be fun!!!

How to Make Twitter More Relevant for ... Teens?

Here's an article I just read on Mediapost regarding teens and Twitter. It pretty much confirms what everyone already knows, namely that teens don't care one bit about Twitter and prefer Facebook and photo sharing sites instead.

But then the article goes on to discuss how to make Twitter more relevant for the teen audience, basically saying teens could use Twitter to share photos and videos instead of (or in addition to) using Facebook and YouTube to do the same thing.

Personally I don't see the day when teenagers will find any use for Twitter (unless they own a business or have something to promote). Twitter just isn't built for the teen market.

Google Places is a Great Camp Marketing Tool

We've discussed many times before the importance of local marketing, especially for day camps. And we know many folks head straight to Google to start their camp search. That's why it's so important to have a Google Places profile. Here's a little more info about that from Inc. Magazine.