Your holiday (still) matters
A few years ago I was one of the founders of a site called Your Holiday Matters. The original goal of the site was to list holiday rental properties where the quality of the accommodation could be guaranteed in some way – so people don’t think they are booking a villa overlooking the sea and [...]
France This Way gets all cuddly
Once upon a time life was simple, or so they tell me. We were all allowed to be as sociable as we liked: if someone else wanted to spend every night partying until dawn, well why not as long as they have the stamina, and if someone else wanted to be a hermit, no problem [...]
France web 2.0 – one big happy community
See that gizmo in the right-hand column? That is a new groovy ‘web 2.0′ idea from google to bring social networking to the masses. No longer do you need to dash off to facebook or mybloglog to join communities – now you can do it in the comfort of your own favourite websites. Now I’d [...]
Advice for gite owners from Gite Guru
I came across a great new resource for gite owners at gite guru that will be useful if you either don’t have a website for your holiday rental yet, or the one you have looks a bit outdated…or simply never shows up in the all-important google results! There are lots of steps involved in having [...]
Enhance your website with Lightbox
Although I spend all my time working on websites I rarely mention ‘website’ type matters here. Just for a change I thought I’d explain briefly an addition you can make to your own holiday rental website that is very worthwhile and I have used to good effect on a couple of sites. The big challenge [...]
Searching for your holiday in google
Many (most?) people start their search for a holiday by using google or one of the other search engines. Because of this website I get a rare insight into what people actually search for – my statistics show me, each day, what several thousand potential travellers have searched for and how they found the site. [...]
France website design – free advice!
Because of my computer dabblings I am often asked how to make/design a website. Sometimes people even try and cross my palm with silver in the hope I will do it for them. I usually stick the silver in my pocket and then explain that it’s not really my thing… When I start explaining how [...]
Marketing a gite website and property
Yippee doo dah! Yesterday we broke all records (at least for us) and the francethisway site had 6,400 page views (about 2,600 people total). So almost every 30 seconds, right through the whole 24 hours, someone new came across the site and popped in for a look. I’m especially happy because the end of September [...]
Guest bloggers wanted
I came across a good idea the other day and I’ve been wondering how successful it could be. Someone told me that a good way to add new excitement and interest to a blog is to have ‘guest bloggers’ – i.e. other people who write a one-off or occasional entry for the blog. The idea [...]
Shock horror expose of underhand blog techniques
Technique No 1: use other people’s stuff Hope you enjoyed that last post. No it wasn’t paid for (if you’re interested) but I have been feeling guilty, because posting a free article only takes about 2 seconds. I’m only happy if I’ve sweated blood over each entry, and carefully crafted every word and phrase myself. [...]
Coming top in google
I keep an eye on how people reach this blog (and the whole site) and sometimes try and write entries that are related to what people are looking for. Not surprisingly most searches relate to France, French life and generally expat type things. This makes my job easier. Occasionally they are about cycling, which is [...]
You are a funny lot
I just added this blog to a ‘blog statistic monitoring service’, so that I can see how visitors to the blog find us, and its been a fascinating experience. I’ve spent the last couple of hours engrossed as I can see ‘live and online’ what people have searched for in google etc to get to [...]
How popular is Boris
After a nice day out yesterday – Mrs B dragged us to Moissac and Lauzerte against our will, but we all had a nice time despite ourselves – I thought I’d take a look at our site statistics to help me get over all the excitement. The France This Way site has been getting an [...]
Swooning fainting ladies
Another month over, and visitor numbers to this blog are still increasing, so I thought I’d take a look at what the visitors are looking for, and whether they are finding it when they get here. I get statistics for lots of things, including the phrases that visitors typed into google in order to find [...]
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