Blogs

Tourists are already coming to Virginia Beach's web site in droves -- and we want to thank every single one of you.

We are already the top ranked site on Google for the search term, "Virginia Beach", which is the dominate query (versus "va beach"). People tend not to abbreviate and we can't blame them (locals can tend to do it but not tourists).

Three more Virginia Beach hotels are coming on-line shortly and we've added the ability for people with timeshares to sell or rent them.

Well, it's been awhile since I have put any information on my Geodomain blog. We have done quite a bit since I last wrote online. Here are some of the changes:

Implemented a content management system.
Added a bed and breakfast section.
Started hosting hotel information on our site instead of redirecting.
Added local content (movie show times and concerts).
Brought on new advertisers: Sandbridge, Sanctuary, Seagull Motel.
Partnered with Tim Wiley for outside sales.
Converted the blog Wordpress files to our CMS (so I can start writing more)
Added restaurant listings/reviews.

For those that have requested information on Virginia Beach Parasailing, we are now sending your requests to David with Adventure Parasailing. I for one hope to give this a try this year. It ought to be super fun. Hopefully David will email everyone more information daily.

We look forward to having a write-up on our attractions page too (hopefully with photos)!

Well, what have we done lately (besides help a ton of people reserve hotels)? We’ve been quite busy (the fact it’s past 1AM and I’m trying to blog should tell you a little about the schedule).

I merged the old attraction page with the new attractions we’ve put online. We’re adding fresh Virginia Beach attractions weekly. I know this is going to be a very big part of what we do from here out. Our goal is to increase the # of minutes our readers stay on the site. What better way to have more information about Virginia Beach Attractions and Virginia Beach Hotels?

We have a few new clients coming on board! You’ll see their sponsorships later this weekend. We know we’re going to bring them an amazing amount of business. There is no other site that can bring the same return on Virginia Beach advertising. Our existing clients tell us no one else has come close to helping them succeed like we have.

When you’re offering better advertising programs that cost less than the telephone book, everyone benefits (the readers, the advertisers and us). There are no losers.

We’re proud to announce that the Virginia Air & Space Museum has added us as a media contact. They were thrilled to see our write-up. That information will soon go live for millions of tourists to see.

Our ability to match Virginia Beach tourists with local businesses and attractions is second to none. We fielded three sales opportunities today. When I started cold calling Virginia Beach businesses back in 2000, I don’t think people recognized the true power of this domain name.

We’re proud to announce we have an upcoming meeting with the Virginia Aquarium. We want to do a series of web articles on why tourists should make this one of their top ten things to do while visiting Virginia Beach.

Rachel has written two more articles and they are fantastic. She features the Air & Space Museum and American Indoor Karting. We hope these guys will become part of our new newspaper family with more articles to come.

Well, I’ve spent some time getting the new Virginia Beach Guide on-line. I decided not to use the www.virginiabeach.com/1000 link. The name didn’t convey what we were trying to do. It’s something new.

We already have our first attraction on the guide. After a few more are put in there, we’ll open it up for the public. My goal is to feature 1000 companies/attractions/events.

As a brief list, I’m talking about pictures/information on:

Busch Gardens

The Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel

Hampton Air & Space Museum

Virginia Aquarium

Virginia Living Museum

etc.

We really have some amazing tools here that nobody knows about to help companies advertise in Virginia Beach. 2008 will turn things around as we push to make the local companies aware of our abilities.

Tourists already know. Millions of dollars in hotel revenues go through our site yearly. We have more hits that other sites and we’re finding our readers are coming back regularly.

What are the benefits of advertising on VirginiaBeach.com? Incredible ROI [return on investment]. Here are some of the tools we have to help local companies advertise:

Working with Google is definitely a love/hate relationship. While you want to have the traffic they can bring to a website, you certainly want to write them a very stern letter about their inability to help diagnose problems.

I’m very glad that our web site doesn’t depend on them for traffic. About 10% of our traffic comes with web search engines. The majority of our readers merely type in www.virginiabeach.com to arrive here.

As the CEO of VirginiaBeach.Com, Inc (yes, we’re a real corporation), I thought it might be nice to write about some of my experiences running one of the best GeoDomains in the industry.

While it won’t be as exciting as watching an episode of American Chopper, it might be kind of fun (or perhaps stress relief for me) blogging.

The software (Wordpress) was pretty easy to setup. I wish all PHP applications were this easy. Well, to be fair, most are but this one was really, really easy. If anyone else wants to start a blog on www.virginiabeach.com, just let me know.

Steve