Hiring Older Workers Might Save your Company Small to mid-sized companies are struggling to find good talent today. It’s technology, a shortage of highly trained workers, a wave of unmotivated Gen Z’s, along with the wave of retiring baby boomers. Strangely, stats show many company owners aren’t interested in hiring older workers. It begins in…
The Immediate Impact of Trend Style Content An interesting new report just published by Seige Media tells us a lot about the trends in content today. It relates to how fresh, relevant and immediately useful our content is. And in how we might use trending topics/info to raise search engine rankings, gain pre-eminence with visitors,…
Is an AI Bubble About to Burst the Stock Market? We’ve had massive market bubbles before characterized by financial fiascos, stock overvaluation, greed, unrealistic expectations and major technology changes. Is the current market bubble any different? It’s difficult to challenge the notion that this is a bubble. The P/E valuations of most of the best…
✈️ 20 Travel Startup Ideas (Low-to-Mid Budget) I discussed the many business opportunities in travel for VC investors and entrepreneurs and want to expand with some practical possibilities that you might find very interesting (and profitable). It’s a billion-dollar industry of course, and has a bright future despite current geopolitical, migration, and recessionary issues. People…
Your Career in Travel? Are you looking for a new career? Drained by another week doing work you have no interest in? How about something more engaging, inspiring, and rewarding with a whole swath of cool benefits? Who isn’t right? After all, the employment market is shrinking and changing drastically due to a number of…
🙏 The Power of Targeting Only the Best Client Prospects Every business person or company needs great customers who translate into a successful, satisfying relationships. And it seems that only the customers who love your company will buy from you again or engage in long-term business. The rest vanish. In this spirit, I offer this…
🤗 How to Take Good Care of Your Self-Esteem During Unemployment US and Canadian jobs are shrinking and expected to worsen for a variety of reasons. There’s a lot of negativity and fear about the long winter ahead. Tariffs, AI unemployment, small business struggles, automation, migration changes, government meddling, corporate greed and more make the…
Travel Business Opportunity: The Right Plan for VC’s and Entrepreneurs Travel remains a growth sector with amazing possibilities, even when there are lulls in consumer or business-related bookings. If this is that lull, then the sector must be promising for the years ahead. The US and global economy is expected to improve, and any easing…
🍁 Why Canadians Still Make a Great Choice for Outsourcing The US is undergoing a fantastic economic, cultural and business transformation launched via tariffs, deregulation, tax reduction, cheaper energy and artificial intelligence. Growth will be phenomenal. In 2026, the FED rate will drop allowing small US businesses to enter the boom times. We’ll see burgeoning…
Generative Engine Optimization Guide A slow shift to using AI search engines by consumers is underway. It means small business owners must create a different kind of content experience on their websites, this time organized for the needs of these AI-powered info sources. AI search engines offer a different experience for search users (your customers). …
Hottest Topics in Residential Real Estate Realtors like yourself should be curious about the real estate-related topics thaat buyers and sellers are concerned with as we approach 2026. After all, these issues are what shape buyer’s perceptions of value, drive intent as well as affect sellers thoughts about when to sell. See the full list…
La Jolla: A Coastal Drive Toward Culinary Elegance The Pacific Coast Highway in southern California is renowned as one of the most beautiful drives in the world. For travelers over 50, the views, sunshine, and California ambiance is nothing short of marvelous. For those who revel in pleasant drives as part of a great travel…
Toronto Housing Market Bubble Despite falling home prices in August, Toronto home buyers have that sinking feeling that accompanies a recession. As covered in the Toronto housing market report, sellers are listing their prices. They want their dream price, but as the market slides many of them are starting to give in and entertain some…
Toronto Housing Market Report TRREB in its September housing market reports a rise in home sales with a price drop in the GTA region. More sellers listed their homes, with many of them deciding to give up on their “dream price” to get their home sold. For home buyers, it’s an issue of affordability, down…
How To Optimize your Content for ChatGPT, Gemini, and other LLMs As you’ve read in the Generative Experience/Engine Optimization post, AI search engines are creating more search engine users. They love what the AI LLMs give them — fast information and insight, even above quality. AI search engines are arriving with big impact on content…
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) It’s nothing short of a revolution in content marketing and search happening right now. A new type of search engine is growing in popularity and it’s presenting small business owners with a first-mover advantage. It’s always wise to get a jump on technology waves. Did you miss any of them in…
How You Can Beat AI Travel Agencies With OTA’s and new AI travel agencies impinging on your audience and customer base, you’re understandably concerned. Young travelers are open to AI-driven travel planning and services. Agency owners on the other hand appear to be resisting anything that carries that artificial intelligence tone to it. However, as…
Why is Real Estate SEO in such High Demand? SEO remains as perhaps the largest source of new leads for search-savvy Realtors. Whether it’s Google, Bing, ChatGPT, Google AI/Gemini, or just listings on Realtor.com or Zillow, ranking algorithms can be mastered to build more exposure for you and your client listings. Real Estate SEO arises…
Travel Business Social Media Strategy “𝅘𝅥𝅯 I’ve got two tickets to paradise – honey, two tickets to paradise…𝅘𝅥𝅯 ” That’s a catchy headline phrase from a great song and perhaps useable for an ad or social post for a travel agency. Yet would it align with your company’s travel marketing campaigns on social media? Too…
Tailored SEO, Content, PPC & Social Strategy for Travel Agencies Considering a new team member or to hire a versatile freelance marketer? Your first task is to visualize what you need to accomplish and find the most efficient staffing solution. I’m just a little biased, but we shouldn’t underestimate what one single talent can do…
Stock Market Forecast The S&P, NASDAQ, Russell 2000 and the Dow Jones continue on their bull rally trend as the market likes everything it’s seeing. And Friday’s FED-fueled jump is significant for the forecast. Interest rates are the number one factor, ahead of earnings, tariffs, inflation, etc. As each week brings its own news and…
Russell Index Forecast Are Russell Small Caps a Wise Choice as we Approach 2026? Stock market analysts and market economists have been talking about a market broadening for some time. The gist of their forecasts revolved around investment flows into small caps, which are fundamental to what the Russell 2000 index is — an index…
Helping You Achieve Your Potential This year’s travel season is a little challenging, but we know it’s going to pick up as the economy strengthens and the tariff issues weaken. I aim to help improve your 2026 results and build your travel website content quality, along with your web and social outreach campaigns for some…
Small Business Marketing Report The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) says its latest Small Business Optimism Index in July, rose 1.7 points to 100.3, slightly above the 52-year average of 98. Uncertainty remains (fell 8 points from June to 97) and is a big factor in growth and hiring intentions. Yet, respondents feel the…
🏅Content Strategy: Your Number One Marketing Asset Content strategy isn’t regarded highly enough by many business owners. Most don’t know what it is. Content strategy is how you design and use digital assets to make customers feel strongly about what you offer. Done well, it achieves many marketing objectives — producing customers with higher intent…
🥇SEO Services Toronto It’s a new business environment for many Toronto companies in diverse industries ranging from travel to manufacturing to software development. A US business cultural trend to exclude Canada is afoot, and a good way to counter that threat is to employ effective digital marketing. A comprehensive marketing strategy that leverages high-quality content…
🏆What is Advanced SEO? Advanced Search Engine Optimization is the use of sophisticated techniques, frameworks, tactics and practices to gain an edge over competitors who only do “best practices” or general SEO work. This is a sophisticated strategy of maximizing/focusing the ranking resources your site possesses, while you promote your business to build on the…
🥬 Google Loves Fresh Content – So Do Your Visitors How do you feel about eating that 4 day old salad you left in the fridge? How about that salmon that’s still in the garbage bin after a few days? Then you understand freshness so well. And that’s not all. How about the hypnotizing aroma…
AEO Answer Engine Optimization If you’re a digital marketer, you may have caught wind of a new type of search engine optimization. They’ve dubbed it Answer Engine Optimization or AEO. You’re well aware that consumers and business users are using the Generative AI chatbots (ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Microsoft CoPilot) more recently. Instead of typing in…
Adobe™ Offers AI LLM Optimizer for AI LLM Content Optimization Adobe™ has been an innovative, graphic design software company for decades. It’s products were world class. And this year, it’s extending its brand reputation by venturing into the Generative AI realm with new some cool, new AI tools for the mid to enterprise level marketing…
How LLM GPT’s Help us Create Great Content AI LLMs are a major change in how travel consumers experience search and content on the web. ChatGPT and Google Gemini are the two new AI search engines gaining significantly in the search marketplace. Many users love the comprehensiveness of answers to their questions — their pre-trip…
Market Correction Coming Soon? Do you ever get that feeling that when things look too good to be true, you’re not far from finding the truth? And one truth is that the stock market is not driven by valuations or earnings, but instead by the emotions of institutional and retail investors — animal spirits. Right…
Why Homeowners Are Frozen in Place (And How to Warm them Up!) There is a big increase in home listings almost everywhere, as the economy goes through its changes. Still, sellers may be reluctant to let go of their properties and aren’t getting the support they need to let go at market price and move…
It’s Not Complicated for a Pro If your first attempt at search engine optimization didn’t pan out, don’t fret about it. It’s all about strategy and hard work. You may have been duped by hype, doom talk, and “techy talk” that plagues authentic SEO. Just feel the disappointment of those poor results, so you can…
Building In-Demand Marketing AI Skills The marketing landscape is rapidly evolving with Marketing AI — which are tools, techniques and skills critically important for SMB marketers. And the movement (happening for a long time now) is transitioning from learning and using AI to “delivering AI” for tangible business outcomes. Are those outcomes learning, execution and cost-efficient…
Sales Boost: Grab Your Low-Hanging Fruit If you’re not as interested in massive traffic and getting placement on prestigious travel sites, there is an alternative. The fastest, least expensive way to grow bookings and revenue is to harvest your agency’s contact list. And the process of reaching them all, impacting them and moving them forward…
Best Marketing Analytics Solutions for Travel Businesses The only thing worse than knowing your digital marketing isn’t working is not knowing why. Which is why we need deeper insight. In this post, I present some great analytics software solutions for you to review and I think you’ll be surprised at what could be the right…
The Ultimate Guide to PPC Optimization and Lead Generation At some point in time as a small business owner, you have launched an online ad campaign on Facebook or Google, and likely discovered how difficult it is to produce leads and revenue. Your budget suffered and so did your confidence. Then you wondered if ppc…
The Untapped Wealth of Search Engines In other posts, you saw how much consumer online search traffic there is – trillions of searches by consumers actively seeking products/services — to fulfill their intent. It’s not like social media where users are inundated with irrelevant, low-intent topics/ads they have little interest in. And social doesn’t connect…
Blogs Drive Engagement, Leads & Revenue Today, with the competitive noise, spam and AI-generated material on social media, blogs, websites, customers need travel agencies or Realtors that are relevant, authentic and trustworthy. Your blog is ideally suited to communicate the values they respect and the offer that matches their intent. When a blog is designed…
Build Deep Insights of Your Targeted Travelers If you’re fortunate enough to have website traffic, social engagement, leads, and traveler inquiries, you may still struggle to convert those leads. It’s because they’re not getting the content experience that meets all their needs. You can improve conversions through understanding the why’s and whats via user-intent analysis,…
💵 Buy Now Pay Later a Growing Opportunity in Travel Market While many wealthy Canadian, European, and American travelers can easily pay for their vacations and trips, most others are stretched to make them happen. Not being able to buy a travel package right away, as expected, means they don’t. And that results in making…
⚡ Why You Need Me on Your Travel Marketing Team If you own or manage a traditional travel agency, you’re likely concerned about keeping your loyal clientele, and creating more bookings and clients via word of mouth. Travel is competitive and the market is aging, changing, and it has slowed which I’m sure you know…
The State of Hotel SEO Travelers from Europe, Asia, South America and in North America conduct billions of searches for hotel rooms. Given the scarcity and cost of hotel accommodations, they may see the hotel search as the most important aspect of their itinerary planning. All travelers need a place to stay. SEO is a…
🛡️ Bulletproof Hotel Marketing While the leisure travel market has returned to surpass pre-pandemic levels and B2B travel continues to recover, there remains significant headwinds for small to mid-sized US hotels. While hotel businesses spend fortunes on physical assets and advertising, it’s wise for CEOs and marketing managers to reconsider the power of digital marketing…
🚗Top Tour Marketplaces Online The tour industry has grown in leaps and bounds, as global travelers search eagerly on Google, Bing and tour company websites for interesting travel experiences. Travelers want something invigorating or interesting to do for a sense of personal meaning, and a feeling that they’re immersed in these wonderful places. It’s all…
Launch and Scale a Better Travel Agency The travel market forecast for the next 5 years is positive. The world craves new, novel adventures and experiences and in the era of AI job loss and business destruction, travel will hold its own. In fact, AI CRM and AI travel planners eliminate mundane work and satisfy…
How AI Tools Empower Your Key Personnel for Big Bottom-Line Impact It’s estimated that 25% of digital marketers have been replaced by AI powered software tools. In fact, companies are reorganizing and flattening their employee/freelance hierarchies given the pluses that AI is providing. Aside from the customer-side tools available (e.g., AI travel itinerary generators and…
Visibility is Everything Whether you’re in the travel business or in real estate sales, being discovered and getting your message heard is paramount. And I’m reminded of what SparkToro’s well-known CEO and co-Founder, Rand Fishkin said recently — that discovery is the next big marketing objective, ahead of clicks. Because as he puts it, being…
🚀 Travel SEO: Capturing Motivated Travel Consumers Search engine optimization, when done really well can drive significant brand awareness and booking success. The image of SEO has fallen dramatically over 25 years. It once captivated marketing and business audiences then suffered when IT shops, web designers, and others tried to leverage its value to win…
😇Travel Angel Investing: A Goldmine if you Choose Well Like the rest of the globe, US travel is changing dramatically, drawn back to a domestic focus which I explored in the US domestic travel market report. As an angel investor, you have plenty of industries to invest in, however, as mentioned in the travel startup…
🚀 2025 Best Small Business Opportunity: AI Travel Agency Given the turmoil in the North American travel sector, you might think it’s an industry to stay clear of. And as an entrepreneur, you might not be licensed or have sufficient qualifications to run a travel agency. Then there is the whole challenge of it and…
🎁 Travel Incentives, Discounts and Rewards US travel companies are digging in deeper to make their trips and packages more affordable, and their brand image more powerful. Surprisingly, the solution they seek might be in techniques normally associated with losing money — offering incentives and discounts and reward points. For many of them, the strategy…
🗽Exploring the US Domestic Travel Boom A big change is happening in US travel and tourism — a shift to domestic travel destinations and vacation experiences. Such a trend is good for the economy and good for Americans by encouraging them to explore their own country by plane, train or automobile and thus support tourism…
🤗 Selling Vibes to Travel Customers? Most travel salespeople would agree that the customer’s wants and pain points are the core of any selling strategy. Travel decisions are complex and emotional, and travelers tap into emotional reasoning to simplify their decision. A basically, that means they rely on the “vibes” they get about your trips,…
🤩 The Essence of Stellar Travel Content Arguably, the biggest weakness of most small travel companies online is shallow, mundane content. Much of it fits “best practices” in style or topics but doesn’t seem to build brand loyalty or captivate an audience enough to make a booking. And in terms of a great content experience…
Website Traffic is Your Company’s Lifeblood Traffic is everything. Without visitors to your website, there is no impact, no content consumption, no brand building, no convincing sales pitch, no customer or sales revenue. In fact, when your site is never visited, it means your current customers are being wooed away by highly visible competitors. A…
Empowering Travel Agencies The 2025 travel market is suddenly looking a little more challenging with the introduction of the Trump tariffs. International travelers are adjusting their trip decisions based on worsening economic outlooks, rising US dollar, and rising costs due to inflation. And Canadian and US travelers are are hanging their travel plans given costs…
How Long Before You Lose Your Job to AI? AI is here, and it’s like a forest fire that generates a little smoke at first but accelerates into intense firenados as it meets thick brush forest aided by higher winds and dry hot air. AI feeds on a high-cost, low-productivity environment which becomes fuel for…
Advanced Search Engine Optimization Consulting One of the issues of being in a prosperous city with a regional population is that services sometimes lag current demand. Finding qualified talented SEO consultants and expert content creators is difficult, let alone those who can weave SEO and engaging content pieces together for even more impressive lead generation…
SEO Services for Travel Companies There’s often a lot of doubt and confusion about how SEO is done and delivered, so I’d like to present this series of steps that clarifies how I will work with your travel business. Google’s ranking algorithm looks for many strengths in content quality and relevance, and that clear signals…
Making Impact on Your Visitors is High Priority For a decade now, marketers have been focusing more on the visitor experience and user engagement. Yet the first part of experience and engagement is the impact your content and brand make on visitors. You may have some great product shots, a nice-looking webpage, and a…
When Will the Housing Market Unfreeze? Buyers can’t buy, sellers can’t sell. And this agony for buyers might not be eased within the next 12 months. Buyers/sellers, mortgage agents and Realtors all wonder when rates and home prices will fall. When will it all end? There’s a glimmer of hope that spring or H2 of…
The Power of Iconic Brand Symbols If you’re not up on branding or impressed that brands have any power, you might want to take another look at it. Because a brand is your biggest asset once you build it. Brands have many dimensions, promises, value points, and touchpoints with travel consumers. And your travel content…
Boston Expert SEO Services You’ve been thinking about the lead generation possibilities of search engine optimization and you’re weighing whether to hire an agency, SEO company or a specialist SEO consultant. It’s not an easy decision, so let’s go through some of the process of prioritizing services and skills that each might provide. I’ve enjoyed…
What Will Push Toronto’s Housing Market into a Slide? The GTA housing market has been on edge for months now. This is new for a market that has endless buyer demand but no supply. And you might think that a lack of supply will ensure no crash happens. But it’s on the other side where…
Upcoming Tour Operator Conferences and Conventions The Travel and Tourism sector is readying for an exciting winter season along with growth in trips and tour bookings in 2026 as the US and global economies continue their growth. You’ve got some outstanding events planned for this fall, such as Tourpreneurs “TourWeek” in South Carolina, and US…
Fundamental Knowledge Foundation for Smart Crypto Trading The cryptocurrency market is an exciting one for many investors today, as many consider it the best place to become a millionaire. While investors are loving the returns they’re getting in the stock market, particularly the NASDAQ, the growth in price of Bitcoin is perhaps the biggest accelerant…
Coinbase – Gateway to the Crypto Economy Coinbase Global, Inc. (NASDAQ: COIN) is one of the world’s most recognized cryptoasset companies and one of the major cryptocurrency trading platforms. For many individual investors, it has served as the entry point into digital currencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. Since its founding in 2012, Coinbase has grown…
How to Invest in Cryptocurrencies & Crypto-Equities: A Sensible Guide 2025 appears to be a boom year for cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. Massive amounts of investment money is moving into this sector and inflating the prices of assets. Everyone is intrigued about how they might cash in on the boom. Some buy for the long…
Using Schema Markup for GEO As mentioned in the GEO post, AI search engines rely heavily on entities that AI LLMs can recognize. And that is described in the structured data schema created by schema.org. Schema, if you’ve never heard of it, is a set of structured data document categories that help define what content…
Top 10 Visibility Factors for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) A wave of experimentation and immersion in AI search engines is upon us now in 2025, and although growth is flattening, generative AI is increasingly important to what is shown on Google, Bing and elsewhere in the search engine marketplace. Experts aren’t sure how big AI…
Top 15 factors that Drive Clicks for Online Real Estate Sites Conversion rate optimization (CXO) has been a hot topic for at least a decade. For a variety of reasons, it’s become more difficult to entice consumers to keep clicking to fulfill their purpose. At some point, they stop clicking. By adopting a conversion path…
Housing as Canada’s Best Path to Growth and Affordability The Canadian economy is beginning to slouch significantly and the Liberal government appears to lack any solutions to save it from further harm. It’s a depressing scenario for all Canadians including those looking for a place to live, or a home to buy, or who need…
Real Estate Marketing Strategy After you’ve failed to convert your audience and spent a fortune on paid advertising, you might feel miffed at how to make digital marketing work. It’s a difficult job, however, if you choose the right systems with useful technology and have a dedicated marketer with you, you’re able to get the…
Real Estate Marketing for 2026 and the Next 5 Years While sales in the US and Canada are frustrating most Realtors, some are enjoying a good sales year. They’ve found paths to success and you can too. Your fundamental challenges are visibility, brand image/impact, engagement and persuasion. That’s why a more thorough digital marketing strategy…
Power Up Your Site’s Internal Linking for Impressive Outcomes If your website is filled with awesome content yet suffers from low visibility on Google sarch, there might be a number of reasons including low-ranking power, few relevant backlinks from credible, authoritative websites, and poor internal linking. Linking has never gotten much respect, and Google has…
Search Generative Experience Optimization Google continues to lead the way in how it offers a hybrid search alternative to search engines. In its ranked search results, it may include a special search feature called AI overviews. It’s a special form of results where Google’s artificial intelligence system offers up a generalized overview of a topic,…
Google is Fading? It’s Actually Rising Oh, the AI hypesters. All of them so eager to push their new Agentic AI, Chatbots, AI apps, and AI-augmented services and infrastructure. And many of these AI followers lash out with rhetoric about Google being a digital Dinosaur, whose user traffic will suddenly disappear. Much of the rancor,…
Responsible Tourism Response to the Anti-Tourism Surge Anti-tourism rallies and sentiment are sweeping across Europe, combined with excessive immigration pushing Spaniards, Greeks, Italians, French, British and other nationals to reject mass tourism. Even in Mexico City, the chant “Gringos Go Home” is catching media attention and adding to the growing rancor for tourists that locals…
A Glorious Day for Investors Markets rocketed with the Dow hitting an all-time high at 45,737 as J. Powell suggested a coming lowering of the FED rate. It doesn’t matter what he said, as investors only look for signals of the trend and when it will happen. At Friday’s closing bell, the Dow Jones rose…
Fight the Zero Click Universe with Zero Click Marketing! As a small business owner, you’re likely aware that your free organic web traffic and social media impressions and clicks have declined over the last 5 years. Unfortunately this increasing trend is being fortified by AI, making the big web platforms an air tight container for…
Consolidating your Marketing Team: Performance/Cost Benefits SMB owners have been reorganizing staffing and marketing spend for quite a while now. Costs, inflation, labor shortage, tariffs, and more have brought on big pressures to simplify. And now the AI revolution is necessitating more change. The problem is owner’s aren’t sure how to create the ideal team…