Foreign Perspectives

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One thing that constantly surprises me is just how little care people put into their SEO efforts.

Granted, most people don’t really bother about SEO at all but of those that do quite a surprising number don’t seem to have spent more than 5 seconds on writing up the description of what their website is about. I see these ones all the time via our directory: the majority of those who submit links to it don’t read the bit where it says that links aren’t free so I just let them build up until I get a proper entry that I enable and whilst I’m doing that I run the delete script to get rid of the junk (of which there’s over 1000 awaiting deletion at the moment!).

What’s sad in some ways though is that quite a lot of people have gone the extra mile in registering various permutations of their name yet they miss out on the final hurdle by selecting the wrong spelling. So, for example, Dennis C Carey used the version of the sitename with the hyphen in it but doesn’t actually use that particular website as he seems to have been running with the non-hyphenated version instead.

Popularity: 16% [?]

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Lots of people would like to run their own business but don’t quite know where to start.

If that sounds like you then you should look into the possibility of a franchise opportunity. Franchises vary enormously and cover all fields of business so there’s sure to be one that suits you. You’ll have seen the likes of McDonalds but fastfood retailing is merely one of many formats available these days and you can choose from one person franchises with minimal investment required of you through to large scale businesses.

How they’re run varies a lot too. In all cases you’ll be given a basic format for the business but beyond that there’s a lot of variation with some master franchises letting you a pretty free rein whilst others exert more control. It’s therefore quite important to ask a lot of questions upfront to make sure that the franchise you end up choosing is one that fits both your own experience and how you’d like to run things.

Popularity: 8% [?]

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We’ve had two separate groups booking with us recently who seemed to be experiencing senile dementia at a very early age indeed: their 20s!

The first group was Australian so Wendy was quite keen on having them here as she always likes to chat to Australian guests when she gets the chance. We did wonder about them a little early on though as they clearly wanted to be staying at a place on the beach yet had booked our place which is in the countryside although some people do that in the peak season as we’re cheaper. Not only that but although we offer pickups they turned up in a taxi (usually around three or four times the rate we charge). Although they were only here a couple of days they managed to go downhill from there ending up by booking a meal with us for 7.30 and not bothering to sit down to eat it. “More money than sense” is a phrase that definitely applies to them!

The second group was from the UK and couldn’t work out how to get here despite being told in the automatic confirmation that they received when they booked and again on the confirmation e-mail that they received from me the next day. What confused them was that there were no buses to our place at 7pm despite it saying on both e-mails that the last bus is at 6pm. Now, I know that most people don’t read the complete confirmation e-mails but this information was in the second paragraph!

They’re just the first of many similar guests that we expect to receive (or not as in the case of the second group) over the next month or so.

Popularity: 15% [?]

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