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snowdeals.com.au

sp@rky13

Top Contributor
Hi, so I'm Sp@rky13 or just sparky and as Ned has already outlined in the other thread, Scott and I have been given an awesome opportunity to learn about SEO and monetising websites. Even though I am in year 12 and therefore do not have much time to spare, this was an offer I could not refuse. So, thanks again to Ned for giving me this opportunity. I hope that through Scott and I documenting what we do and through the community's responses, we will all learn better ways to do things to save time, earn more money and increase SEO ranks etc.

Ned gave me a few domains to choose from and the eventual two I came down to were snowdeals(dot)com(dot)au and computerdealers(dot)com(dot)au. Skiing and snow sport is something that I wish to do more and is something I'm interested in, so was a great option for me. Computerdealers was something that I was even more interested in as it could be something that could be made into a basic website or be made into a complicated website with lots and lots of pages etc. The reason I chose snowdeals.com.au was that as seen in google's search results, computer dealers isn't a terms people use to find someone selling computers. You search for computer stores etc. Snowdeals on the other hand, although isn't as good as holiday deals or skiing deals, it still has that idea that it is a site that will get you the best deal possible. So, snowdeals is the domain I chose to go with.

My plans for the domain is to have it laid out by region, aka each snow field area within Australia and NZ (for the moment). This may be categorised under countries or states (unsure at this stage) or may have all listed at the top (currently thinking the former). Under each location will be a page describing the area and what it has to offer, ways to get there (may use affiliates with planes/hire cars etc) as well as photos showing the stunning views etc. This is the base level of the site though I plan to (if possible) be able to integrate an API that deals in planning flights, accomodation etc. I am currently still researching at the moment to see if that's even possible, so feel free to let me know your thoughts, ideas, praise, criticism and random other chat in this thread.

Thanks again to Ned for this opportunity but also thanks in advance to this awesome community who I know will be stacks helpful in the big and little things of this site.
 

FirstPageResults

Top Contributor
Think you chose the right domain there sparky. A couple of things you may like to consider are lead generation (capture details via form and pass them on to agents) rather than using booking widgets (or a combination of both) and also a way to capture email subscribers so you can build a marketing list.

Good luck!
 

jam

Top Contributor
Good Luck sparky, hope it all works out well for you. Will be interesting to see what you come up with.
 

Oz.

Top Contributor
Great choice of a domain, but I know nothing about the market - I rather head for the surf (SurfWatch.com.au) than snow. :)

Best of luck mate!
 

sp@rky13

Top Contributor
RE: SSTechBlog floating ad: According to this, it is ok. I will look into ir further to ensure that.

Thanks for all the best of lucks etc :p I'll check out those two sites James and FirstPageResults I'll have a look into that
 

Chris.C

Top Contributor
Also a FYI for your http://sstechblog.com/ not too sure about the Adsense TOS on the floating adsense unit, may get you into some drama with Google.
Agreed. I would find it hard to believe that Google wouldn't disable your account for this sort of implementation.

In terms of this James what part of it are you thinking to do similar. From what I can tell from the site. It is basically a one page site that links to a region centric page on hays travel
As far as I could tell the Google support response you read was not referring to the ad unit moving around the page - it was referring to the float method of div alignment.

That said, here is another more informative bit of information:

http://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=105955

From this it would appear that your ad placement is a breach given that it isn't in a "static frame" with your content being in the secondary frame. You have it the other way around - content is static, ads are dynamic.

So I don't think a Google AdSense reviewer will agree with your interpretation of their TOS.
 

sp@rky13

Top Contributor
It ended up that I'd missed the links on the sites (eg. Thredbo.com.au) to media. They all appear to have a media section though most require a log in so I sent an email to each location and also got a login for fallscreek itself. According to their Terms of Use etc they all seem to be fine with it as long as it is promoting the location.

That link looks great though. After I get these emails back I'll sort through those images. Thanks :)
 

coreyg

Top Contributor
snowdeals.com.au ?

Database Error: Unable to connect to the Database: Could not connect to MySQL
 

sp@rky13

Top Contributor
Yep, sorry everyone. I was thinking of using wordpress but then decided to use straight HTML/css and due to being extermely busy over the past week, I have not completely removed WP etc. Turned in a 3000+ word essay on Hitler today and have a software assignment due Monday....

Will either get some stuff done on the weekend or next week. I got 3 replies back for snow locations with 1 saying flat out no, one needing more info and the other saying yes :)
 

zhenjie

Top Contributor
Would definitely recommend sticking to some sort of CMS solution, its more scalable for future developments.

I'm a snow junkie, so subscribing to this!
 

sp@rky13

Top Contributor
Sorry for the lack of updates and work recently. Had 2 assignments due (turned the second in yesterday) and then found out yesterday about my mark for maths.

So, what I've done:
I've decided to split the site like this: NSW, Victoria and Accommodation. There will be one accommodation page per location (eg. Falls Creek) which will link to the accommodation section for that location (Falls Creek). Within the accommodation section on the sidebar will be the basic information such as contact info, website, location etc (done via custom fields). (such as Alpine View Apartments)

For each location (falls creek etc) there will be these pages (my thoughts so far):
  • Accommodation
  • Basic Info
  • Map
  • How to get there
  • Trails

I think that's it in terms of info.

To do list (There's stacks to do but this is something I'll forget):
  • For the victoria, nsw, accommodation pages have a static page

I apologise if that didn't make sense. Have a quick look around the site and see if you know what I mean. Also, suggestions, feedback etc would be great :) The icons for falls creek (besides the one blank one) are set unless there's reason to not like them. Obviously as you'll see there's just placeholder content telling you a slight bit about what will be there
 

sp@rky13

Top Contributor
Here's what I got done today:

I used Widgets of Posts by Same Categories I added a list of recent posts to the sidebar. This took a lot longer than planned as I had to edit the plugin itself to change the title (so it didn't list the categories) as well as to disable some stuff :) Also, had to disable it for certain categories so there weren't duplicates on the page

The other thing I did was added some info and links to the Falls Creek page.

I also added some post images for Falls Creek

Next on the agenda:
Work on the content for Falls Creek and figure out what info will be included on the accommodation pages

To do list:
  • For the victoria, nsw, accommodation pages have a static page
  • When I add new categories I need to edit the exclude list for the categories (in sidebar.php)
 

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