For those who have read my blog before I am all for sticking up for the little guy when they appear to be getting a raw deal or have been ripped off and our experience with Why Pay Full Price Australia definitely falls into that category.

Now Why Pay Full Price Australia (WPFP) explain what they are all about on their “about us” page on their site for those of you who don’t know…

“WhyPayFullPrice.com.au is a group buying website that offers consumers massive daily savings of 50-90% on products and services such as travel, restaurants, beauty, entertainment and more. Every day, we email one fantastic deal in each city to hundreds of thousands of our subscribers. Our goal is to provide consumers with massive savings on exciting offers.”

The Deal

Just $889 today, normally $3,245- save 73%
You’ll get 7 nights and 8 days for 2 adults (and 2 children, if you wish) in your very own 5 star villa!
Each stunning villa contains one bedroom complete with king-sized bed, living room, kitchen, and a large air-conditioned ensuite bathroom
Enjoy all the resort facilities including a restaurant, beach club, resort centre pool and fitness centre
Just minutes walk to Bali’s most famous beach
On arrival, you’ll receive a cool aromatherapy towel and welcome drink, as well as a 15 minute massage and a fruit basket guaranteed to revive you after your journey from Australia
Includes 2 way airport transfers, daily choices of breakfast served in your villa or the restaurant, complimentary daily afternoon tea from 3-5pm, daily turndown service.
Free shuttle service within Seminyak area
Relax with your partner and enjoy a 2 hour spa together & one romantic candle lit dinner for 2 adults
An energised yet non-obtrusive team delivers the finest Balinese hospitality on offer
Honeymooners will receive additional romantic benefits including a complimentary flower bath and bedroom flower arrangement set up upon, plus a complimentary honeymoon cake upon arrival
Complimentary daily newspaper, bottled mineral water, coffee & tea in your villa and fresh fruit and flowers on arrival
Unlimited complimentary use of wireless internet connection and entry to the resort gym

Discover pure romantic paradise at The Elysian Bali! Just $889 for a 7 night LUXURY escape in a 5-star villa INCLUDING your very own private pool to soak up the sunshine, breakfast daily, fresh fruit and flowers, full resort facilities including free wireless internet & gym, luxurious 2 hour couples spa package, candle lit dinner for 2 adults AND airport transfers – worth $3245. This offer is for 2 adults and 2 children!

Just $889 today, normally $3,245- save 73%
You’ll get 7 nights and 8 days for 2 adults (and 2 children, if you wish) in your very own 5 star villa!
Each stunning villa contains one bedroom complete with king-sized bed, living room, kitchen, and a large air-conditioned ensuite bathroom
Enjoy all the resort facilities including a restaurant, beach club, resort centre pool and fitness centre
Just minutes walk to Bali’s most famous beach
On arrival, you’ll receive a cool aromatherapy towel and welcome drink, as well as a 15 minute massage and a fruit basket guaranteed to revive you after your journey from Australia
Includes 2 way airport transfers, daily choices of breakfast served in your villa or the restaurant, complimentary daily afternoon tea from 3-5pm, daily turndown service.
Free shuttle service within Seminyak area
Relax with your partner and enjoy a 2 hour spa together & one romantic candle lit dinner for 2 adults
An energised yet non-obtrusive team delivers the finest Balinese hospitality on offer
Honeymooners will receive additional romantic benefits including a complimentary flower bath and bedroom flower arrangement set up upon, plus a complimentary honeymoon cake upon arrival
Complimentary daily newspaper, bottled mineral water, coffee & tea in your villa and fresh fruit and flowers on arrival
Unlimited complimentary use of wireless internet connection and entry to the resort gym

The Deal on WhyPayFullPrice’s website

The T’s & C’s

Valid for 12 months
Bookings essential and subject to availability
Booking must be made by 31 March, 2012
Travel validity till 15th November , 2012
Additional nights can be purchased at SGD 379 net per night with breakfast
Children under the age of 12 will stay complimentary when sharing a room with their guardian in existing bedding
Children above the age of 13 stay in extra bed with additional charge at SGD 49 net per child per night including breakfast
Baby cot and extra bed is subjected to availability upon reservation confirmed
To check availability, call Villas International Property at +65 6294 8060 OR +65 62960089 between Monday-Friday 10am-7pm, or on Saturdays between 10am-3pm (GMT +8)
To book, email apac@villasindonesia.com and include your travel dates, full name, mobile number and other contact details, and ensure that you attach your WhyPayFullPrice coupon (bookings will not be processed without the coupon)
Do not contact the resort directly to book, as they will not take in direct bookings
A minimum 7 nights consecutive stay is required during peak season period (20 December 2011 – 5 January 2012)
Villa rates are inclusive of all government taxes and service charges
Extension night at SGD 389 nett per night
Check in time is at 14:00 check out time is at 12:00
Rates are inclusive of any taxes and service charges
Rates do not include airfare
3rd person will be charged at SGD 65 Nett per night with breakfast ( using one of the 2 sofa beds within the room
Children age 0 -11 stay complimentary on existing sofa beds and receive complimentary breakfast; Children aged above 12 years old are charged at SGD 65 Nett per night using sofa bed (sofa bed size is 90 cm X 180 cm). this includes breakfast
High Season Surcharge (1 – 31 August 2011 with a minimum of 3 nights stay): SGD 180 Nett per night
Peak Season Surcharge (20 December 2011 – 10 January 2012 with a minimum of 5 nights stay): SGD 199 Nett per night
Rooming Policies; Bedding Configuration: 1 King Size Bed + 2 Sofa Beds. Maximum Capacity 3 adults + 2 children:
Check In & Check Out; Check In time is 14:00 hours & Check Out time is 12:00 hours; Early occupancy of rooms before the indicated time above is on request basis subject to availability
Multiple coupons are not allowed for extension nights
Coupons will be emailed to you from 8 Dec 2011 after 11 p.m.
Alternatively, you can login to your WPFP account and download your coupon directly from 8 Dec 2011 after 11 p.m.

What Happened

Sounds great yeh? Well my husband and I seen a great deal for a 5 star villa (The Elysian) holiday in Bali back in November 2011.

We booked up and paid our $889 to WPFP on 18th Nov – got email confirmation all was booked and now all we needed to do was book flights and call WPFP’s partner company Villas Indonesia to make our booking.

Again once we booked our holiday (for our birthdays in March) with Villas Indonesia they confirmed all the details in an email and we got on with booking our flights.

The day before we flew (9th March) we received an email from Villas Indonesia saying the driver would collect us from the airport.

We arrived in Bali on the Saturday (10th March) and waited for the driver. And waited….and waited….and waited. When it was apparent that the driver was not going to show we used the phone at the information desk (who would only allow us to call Bali) and rang The Elysian direct. The manager told us our booking had been cancelled by Villas Indonesia 3 weeks prior and the money was never passed onto the hotel.

Obviously devastated that not only our dream villa was cancelled but that we had potentially lost $900 (plus flights plus everything else) we tried to figure out what to do.

We had to re-book accommodation at another hotel (no where near as nice but still half of our spending money needed to be used to pay for it!) and work out what to do from there.

We were 3 hours into our holiday and still at the airport!

Once at the hotel we got onto wi-fi (mobiles would not work in Bali) and emailed WPFP. We got no response so I relied our experience in a post on their Facebook page. They later deleted this post (obviously not wanting anyone to know the horror of what had happened to us and possibly the other people who bought this deal) and told us to email them direct.

Which we did – their response was from “Rebecca” on 13th March who said

“Hi Andy,

I am very sorry to hear this but of course we will organise this for you and we will make sure the amount in full is back in your credit card account within the next 6 business days.

Kind regards,
Bec”

We responded and asked what exactly they knew about it to which “Rebecca” responded with

“Hi Andrew,

Unfortunately we found out about this on Friday the 09/03/2012 when the Elysian Resort emailed us to say everyone’s bookings had been cancelled. “

So as you can imagine the fact they knew about this before we even left Sydney and failed to inform us has stuck in our throats somewhat. Three hours wasted at the airport could have been avoided, alternative accommodation could have been researched and booked accordingly or even the flights moved or refunded!

Since then we have received no further correspondence from WPFP and they ignoring our emails. We have had no refund and any Facebook post is deleted within minutes.

We are now struggling to know what to do next.

Has anyone else had problems with voucher websites – especially WPFP and in Australia – if so get in touch. Comment and let me know.

I will as ever keep you guys posted on any developments from WPFP in regards to our refund!

My advice – stay away from voucher sites especially WPFP.

This post reflects our experience with WPFP.

A previous post of mine Subdomains – Pros and Cons for SEO/ explained how search engines were seeing subdomains as a separate website to the naked domain.

This has some serious points for consideration when deciding whether to use a subdomain from an SEO perspective as any link juice from the root domain may not be shared onto the subdomain.

However a recent announcement by Google Webmaster blog has changed this strategy as now subdomains are regarded as internal links in Google Webmaster Tools.

So what does this mean?

Basically links from subdomains such as cats.example.com or pets.example.com will also be categorised as internal links for www.example.com.

Large publishing networks such as ninemsn often use subdomains for different aspects of their site i.e. News, weather etc – linking from subdomains to other subdmains on their own network will have previously given authority as these subdomains were treated as separate websites but now this network linking will only contribute to each as an internal link.

For these large websites it is worth now considering external link building pratices outside of their network directly to the relevant subdomains to aid authority in each aspect of the site.

Note that, if you own a root domain like example.com or www.example.com, your number of external links may appear to go down with this change; this is because, as described above, some of the URLs we were previously classifying as external links will have moved into the internal links report. Your total number of links (internal + external) should not be affected by this change.

Anyone who spotted the Periodic Table of SEO Ranking Factors as featured on SearchEngineLand.com will know this quirky little illustration summed up basic ranking factors in a niffty graphic that people can share with their pals.

That is the beauty of inforgraphics, if the are interesting or relevant enough people will share them. And did they ever! check out the shares on this one!

Now as previously mentioned social signals are important to driving traffic after all if you can get people to spread the word about you, your product or your service then volia! your reach increases considerably making it great for increasing traffic.

What to remember if producing an infographic-

• Make it simple – don’t over egg the pudding with snazzy graphics if it means the infrographic is confusing or does not tell a story
• Provide something useful – make sure that it has a “stickiness” to it, that people want to read on and find the information on it useful so they might want to pass it around
• Consider technical issues – the aim is to get people to share this so consider making that easy for them, offer them the code to embed on their own sites and blogs, don’t make the image too large in physical size and file size
• Include a back link – now you want people to share this but if they are going to find it useful enough to promote on their own websites why not ensure that in the embed code you include a back link to your site to help with link building
• Optimise the image – if your subject is around stats on a certain subject ensure the title etc is relevant to a search around this subject. Also make use of the ALT and TITLE attribute to allow for it to be found via Google images.
• Make it relevant – make sure it relates to you, your business or your service, develop a page to place it on and optimise this page around the subject of the inforgraphic to allow for a better chance of this page ranking. (don’t forget all your share buttons and embedded code elements on this page also)

And there you go. Whether you are producing an infographic for link baiting, link building or to help drive traffic and increase your reach bear one thing in mind…make it shareable!

If you are from the UK and making the move to Sydney, Australia remember you are moving to the most expensive city in the world and so I come up with a list of what I advice I could give to those who are thinking of moving overseas; particularly to Sydney. Here are some I have come up with:

Sunscreen – ok all you sun worshippers like me you will be saying “ah it’s not that hot, I have sunbathed in hotter” but the one thing I did NOT release is that the hole in the Ozone everyone was bleating on about in the 80’s and 90’s is pretty much right over Australia. Australia has the highest skin cancer incidence rate in the world. Australians are four times more likely to develop a skin cancer than any other form of cancer. Approximately two in three Australians will be diagnosed with skin cancer before the age of 70 – this is not scaremongering its common sense. Factor 30 at least even when its overcast!

Housing – Look in the real estate market before you leave – getting an apartment over here is difficult due to the demand, for every place you look to rent there will be a queue of people behind you waiting for the same place! Destinations like Mosman, Bondi and North Shore are always popular. It is an idea to do some research from www.domain.com.au before you leave, check your budget and speak to the letting agents to find out when open houses are taking place. It is hard to apply from outside the country if you see somewhere you love. Usually it is a good idea to make the application in person but sign up for email alerts via domain.com.au to get ahead of the game. I event think they have a phone app! So you never miss out.

LAFHA – it stands for Living Away From Home Allowance. If you are lucky enough to be sponsored with an employer in Australia talk to their HR or accounts department about LAFHA, I do not understand the calculations but basically if you are working in Australia and working here means you are not in your normal place of residence i.e. 1 Smith Street, London, England – then you can apply for LAFHA which allows you to get an extra allowance on tax depending on the amount of rent you pay. There may be other conditions but it is worth investigating once you start working – more information can be found at http://www.lafha.com.au/Home.aspx

Shopping – unlike the UK, Australia does not tend to have large supermarkets, or if they do they tend to be out of the city centre and could require a hefty bus trip to reach them. If you are lucky enough to owe a car it makes life a lot easier, although beware of toll roads! There are lots!

Gumtree & Ebay – a god send if like us you are starting from scratch. We did not ship any furniture over from the UK mainly due to the cost so when we found a place to rent it was bare! Gumtree is bigger than ebay over here with lots of things for sale and some for free! But you will need to organise a way of collecting i.e. hire a car/van/yute. Beds and sofas are very very expensive compared to the UK and electronics like Fridges and TV are on the pricey side as well. Look at discount warehouses, house sales or notices in local shops to grab a bargain. We also found some of the cheapest clothes dryers, on appliancesonline.com.au which is another good site for assessing the prices of household appliances. Also if you are not proud (or can’t afford to be like us when we started out!) the residents of Sydney have a “clear out” about twice a month. So you could be going along a main road in a residential area and see piles of old furniture, tv’s computing equipment etc all by the side of the road. If you see something you think is in good condition you can simply take it before it is collected by the local council. We actually picked up a pretty decent coffee table this way. Be warned though, second hand furniture like this is not always in the best condition. Check out www.gumtree.com.au and www.ebay.com.au

Cars – now we don’t actually own a car yet as they seem to be very expensive. Even the 25 year old bangers seem to go for $3000! Then there is the added expenses of Rego (registration, cars need to be registered to the state they are in), GreenSlip (Tax and 3rd party insurance combined), parking (most apartments in the CBD will not have parking and you can “buy or rent” a parking space if you need to) and Stamp duty (only really applicable on new cars). Public transport is pretty decent in Sydney and cheap and I recommend trying that first www.131500.com.au but another alternative we found was www.goget.com.au. Goget is a car share initiative which allows you to join as a member for about $49 a month then basically there are lots of cars parked around the city, you go online find one close to you pick it up and drive away for the day. You don’t pay petrol, tax, insurance or tolls! There are mileage charges but they are minimal.

Alcohol – unlike us boozey Brits the Aussies do not allow you to purchase alcohol at your local supermarket. There are designated liquor stores if you want to buy alcohol but be warned compared to the UK it is expensive. Even in pubs you are looking at $7-8 for a “scooner” which is 2/3 of a pint.

Creepy crawlies – now to be honest we have been pretty lucky in avoiding such encounters at the moment as I think I would be on the next plane home, but it is worth considering that the little beggars will get in your house (especially in Spring as flies are everywhere) so my advice is look at getting insect screens over your windows, or ask your landlord to look into it as an investment. In the summer months it can get hot on an evening and windows have to be kept open and this is when they will come in handy. Those living in high rises probably won’t have so much of a problem. Also invest in sprays and air fresheners that deter them from wondering into your house in the first place. Mosquitos are an issue especially near water we have found so invest in some sprays from the local shop to stop getting bitten.

Removals – If you do not have a van at your disposal and you need to collect furniture (as bought on ebay or the like) it can be cheaper to hire “a man with van”. These guys usually advertise on Gumtree under removals or in local shops and charge about $30-45 an hour – which is cheaper than hiring a Ute or paying delivery charges from shops.

Walking – Sydney is very hilly so if like me you are not used to walking it is always an idea to bring trainers with you in your bag for those steep climbs. The CBD is not so bad but the suburbs can be tough on the old calf muscles.

Anyway I hope this was helpful to those of you who have just arrived! Good luck and welcome to Sydney.

Its been a busy couple of weeks for Google, with the launch of their +1 and Google+ set to rival Facebook they are proving to have their finger on the pulse when it comes to becoming more social after appearing to be a little reluctant to jump on the social band wagon.

Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools have added new tools for tracking the impact of tweets, likes, +1s & more on your website’s traffic.

Google Webmaster Tools now allows you to report on the impact of the +1 Button and how this can affect your click through rate. You can also view the new “Activity Report” within Webmaster Tools which will help you see how many +1’s your site pages have received

A great new tool launched within Google Analytics is the Social Plugin Tracking tools. This not only tracks +1s but other Social Signals such as Twitter tweets, Facebook Likes and Facebook Sends.

Google recently admitted that Social Signals now do play a part in ranking success and this is backed up in a study by SEOmoz’s Rand Fishkin for the new Ranking Factors for 2011 have been revealed with Social Signals play a significant part.

The Social Plugin Tracking allows you to create three reports: Social Engagement, Social Actions and Social Pages.

Social Engagement tracks behavior changes (time on site, pageviews, bounce rate, etc.) for visits from social plugins.

Social Actions tracks the number of social actions users take on your site,

Social Pages compares your pages on the number of social actions they are receiving.

These new tools offers a greater insight into Social Signals and the impact of such on your website. Especially how Social Signals are driving traffic to your website.

This is invaluable data and means web masters can better devise a social strategy to aid website rankings.

For many search marketers PageRank is an important factor both on their own website and those they approach for backlinks – and rightly so, PageRank needs to be a key consideration when devising an effective strategy.

The PageRank is a numerical value assigned by Google that represents the importance of that page on the web.

A higher PageRank can be achieved by another relevant and highly PageRanked website linking to your site. This will act as a “vote” for your site from theirs and you inherit reputation for this.

However it is worth noting that PageRank is called PageRank as it applies to the page of a website only, not the whole website. For example, the PageRank (or PR) of a websites homepage can greatly differ from that same websites privacy policy page. This is mainly due to the fact that typically the homepage of a site will acquire the most backlinks and deeper pages, although maybe more relevant, tend to be harder to promote via backlinks from other websites.

Search marketers need to ensure this is taken into account when devising a linking strategy. If part of the strategy applies to directory submissions for example, it is worth noting the PageRank of the page within the directory’s category that the link will appear.

Just because a website has a homepage with a PageRank of 5 doesn’t mean that every page within the site will be attributed with this level of PR. If fact, generally speaking, the deeper the link the lower the PageRank.
However, if a website has a homepage rank of 5 it indicates this site is reputable and will be frequently crawled, giving your link a good chance of being picked up even if it appears deep within the directory.

Quality V Relevance

So is a backlink from a PageRank 5 page better than a website which shares common themes with yours and is therefore highly relevant to the keywords you want to rank for? This is the $64 million question.

Both play a part but lower PageRank sites can rank very well for keyword relevant to your website, same as websites with high PageRanks and limited content quality can rank highly and are seen as reputable thus contributing to your own PageRank should a backlink be granted.

So the question you need to ask yourself is are you more interested in link reputation and gaining a higher PR for your own website or are you looking for improving your ranking for specific keywords quickly?

The ideal solution is to use a blend of both strategies. It could be argued that a small sacrifice could be made in PageRank if the site is highly relevant as it is not always possible to achieve both.

HAPPY LINKING.

Google have written a new algorithm to combat content farms and to help eliminate these from the search engine results pages.

The aim of the update was to target sites with the following and stop them from ranking on the SERPs:

• Shallow content (not enough content to be useful)
• Poorly written content
• Content copied from other sites
• Content that’s not useful

The update has been met with mixed emotions as some legitimate sites have suffered lost rankings due to the update. Google have acknowledged this and are implementing an extra layer to the algorithm to accommodate for this.

However it is worth noting that although this update is targeting content quality there are other factors being taken into account when your site is assessed.

Bounce rate for instance, if visitors are not spending a decent amount of time on your site i.e. not enough time to read the articles and content it is an indication that the content is not compelling or useful.

Brand awareness and credibility also play a part in the bigger picture of whether your site will be targeted.  Design and user experience need to be considered as well.

Some advice from Matthew Brown of AudienceWise (previously with the NY Times) given at the recent SMX West event was:

• Getting rid of poor quality pages entirely (redirect them if it makes sense, otherwise 404 them)
• Building out brand signals
• Working on promotion and engagement

The key advice to those who have lost rankings is to remember that it’s the quality of the content that’s at issue and this is not exclusively targeted to content farm sites.

At the moment the changes have only been rolled out in the US so the full scale of the impact still remains to be seen.

Google has finally taken a step towards weeding out content farms from search results. These sites have been a bain for many a user over the years and Google have announced an algorithmic change to help combat searchers frustration, affectionately named within the SEO community as the “Farmer Update”.

Officially, Google isn’t saying the algorithm change is targeting content farms. It is more targeted to those sites that scrape or automate content. This should reduce the chances that sites who use duplicated content from outranking the original source.

However this may indeed pose questions for those who use article sites to submit content as part of an offline strategy and whether this tactic will now be penalised.

In a recent article on SearchEngineLand by Danny Sullivan it appears that this should not be an issue as long as the content submitted is of course original and interesting and the sites themselves are of high page rank and relevance to the subject.

So far 12% of sites in U.S have seen drop in rankings, in particular article sites i.e. Hubpages.com, buzz article.

The long term effects of this Google algorithm change in other countries remains to be seen but for many SEO consultants now would be a good time to review your offsite strategies.

Best practice – ensure relevance to your subject and avoid spamming within your content. Make it interesting and compelling but be sure to watch this space as this could be a shake up of things to come from Google.

Well we did it! we sat on a plane for 12 hours, a brief stop in Hong Kong, then onto another plane for 9 hours and here we are! Its morning here in Sydney Australia and the weather is balmy and overcast, to be honest I was expecting raging sunshine but not to worry I am sure its just an off day!

We have arrived at the hotel and are just taking everything in, including the view which is stunning. We drove over the Sydney Harbor Bridge in the taxi and a pang of home sickness and pride pricked me as Dorman Long (the company that build the bridge) are from my hometown of Middlesbourgh. Also Captain James Cook lived in Teesside so is this all serendipity? You have to wonder when your life takes this much of a monumental turn in another direction.

However on first impressions, I think we are going to like it here!

Well the countdown is on for the move to Sydney and I must say we are pretty organised, albeit I am flapping like a chicken and writing lists until they come out my ears. Flights are booked so no turning back now.

Living at my dads so his front room resembles some sort of storage facility but we are getting there with the packing.

Looking forward to starting my new SEO job, nerves are getting to me a bit but I am sure I will be fine, its like anything, you can have your doctorate in Nuclear Physics  but start a new job and you can struggle working the fax machine!

Christmas as bizarre and a little bitter sweet, it was nice to have that family feeling of everyone coming together but knowing that a move of nearly 12,000 miles is pending its sad to think this may the last get together for some time.

Anyway on with the rest of the packing.