Scoot - new airline, still a lot of SEO work to do

Scoot is the new (mid to) low cost carrier coming out of Singapore. They launched sales yesterday and have just commenced the first push in Australia with a sale for departures in June and October. Unfortunately they have not prepped properly for their launch. Have a look at the below Google search results for keyword Scoot. Lots of code in their ranking and Jetstar news article in number two. Gentle (if not firm) reminder how important it is to get SEO right at any time but particularly before a launch.

PS - they also need to get their twitter planned sorted out. @scootariline is not them and neither by any stretch is @flyscoot

SEO rules - why have a top 7 or top 10 when you can have 59 things to do to improve your SEO

As a blogger I know that nothing drives retweets and inbound links like a good top x list of reasons why something is something. For example my post on the three lies that the travel industry keeps telling consumers was my top trafficked post for August 2009. Normally the list is kept at less than ten because the aim of the post is part informing the reader and part driving traffic. I came across a article last week that broke the rules on keeping the list at less than 10 - therefore hurting their chances at retweeting and inbound links but compensates by being a genuinely informative read and well worth being a recommended read of the week.

The post is "59 SEO Ranking Factors" from Joe's AdBlog. It contains what it says it contains - a list of the 59 factors that influence your site's organic search ratings. There is nothing flowery or engaging about the writing in this post but this lack of wordsmithyness (how's that for a made up word) does not detract from the value of this content. This is a great info source and worth you taking a look.

Thanks to Danard Vincente for the fantastic image (via flickr)

BA opens highlife website. Good start. But much more needed

Read in newmediaage that British Airways has launched a dedicated content website - BAhighlife.com - based on the years and years (35) of content from their inflight magazine highlife. This is a great move by BA. Other than the website architecture and support this is a very low cost means for BA to generate organic traffic from travel searches. Assuming they have indexed the content properly (and from my initial glances it looks like they have) they will also be able to generate traffic outside of pure traveller review searches (ie in sport, entertainment etc). Good move by BA.

But the launch here is still a dramatic under-utlisation of a enourmous amount of good quality editorial content. Once a consumer lands on a article/page at BAhighlife.com this is what they can do with it:

• read it;
  
• email it; or
• bookmark it.

That is it. If BA wants to make the most out of this then the customer should be able to:

• Share: share with social networking site (digg, facebook, reddit);
• Comment: make comments, join in a conversation about the article;
• Find more: find other related content selected by consumers, from the same author, about the same destination;
• Save: save favourite stories on a profile page or trip plan page;
• Use: use all information gather to build up a trip plan; and
  
• Book: have contextual links to relevant trip itineraries.

In other words build an interaction and community service that drives brand and bookings rather than a news service that adds a little bit of traffic and ad sales rev.

Good start. More needed.