China - They Should Never have Been Given The Olympic Games

Government, INDEX, News, Politics

Some they think that awarding the Olympic games to China was a serious attempt by the IOC to affect change in a country that had flouted the human rights of its people for decades. If it had been, then what arrogance on the part of the IOC. It is more likely that in an attempt to attract the attention of the world to the fact that Communist China could play the free economy game and do it better than the rest of the world, they cynically ‘played’ the IOC manipulating the evident corruption within the organization…. and won.

So what we are left with is a distasteful display of Chinese mockery effectively killing the Olympic ideal and showing the games for what they have now become; an exercise in commercial exploitation.

It should have been evident early on that the Chinese had no intention of changing its policies towards human rights. The eviction of 250,000 of its own people from their homes to make way for the Olympic Village to house athletes should have been warning enough that the IOC had made a serious error in judgment. If that was not enough then their treatment of the citizens of Tibet should at least provoke some reaction from the leaders of the free world.

Maybe the fact that China now holds a large proportion of the debt of western economies is an indicator to the lack of response by our leaders. If so then we are in an inevitable downslide. I for one, whilst I love a good Chinese, dont fancy eating it every day!

The best response to the Chinese is to hit them where it hurts. Stop buying the products they manufacture and when it comes to the Olympics….if our leaders will not take action, then we must do it as individuals. Cancel your trips to Bejing if you were thinking of going. Don’t watch the coverage on the TV. If you are a company thinking of buying advertising slots on the networks…..don’t. In these times of economic hardship we are starting to check the labels on what we buy a little more carefully. Parents are already boycotting toys made in China due to the sub-standard paint jobs containing lead. Lets all check where what we buy is manufactured and where possible avoid the goods made in China. It’s not easy. Shopping at Wallmart these days is like a trip down a Shanghai high street store. Maybe they also need a reminder of who they are?

If we want the Chinese to change then we must stop supporting their economic progress and more immediately a boycott of these Olympics by the people of the world will send a message that whilst ignored in the short term will prove benefit in time.

P.S. They should also sack all those who voted for the Chinese to hold the games in the first place. What prats!

Choosing Your Villa Rental Advertising Site

No Comments Property & Real Estate, Spanish Property, Travel

Millions of people are now choosing to rent their holiday villa or apartment directly to their prospective clients through advertising on the internet. In the first of our series of articles we looked at how to choose which sites to use through the use of search traffic statistic provided by the major search engines. Search traffic represents the volume of visitors that are searching the internet for specific keywords and phrases as is an indicator of how many visitor a particular site may attract because of their positioning on the first page of the results for a given term.

Keywords are only an indicator. To fully benefit from a websites traffic it is also important that the page you create has as much information formatted in the most optimized manner so that your ‘advert’ has the best chance of being listed independently on the search engines. This will help drive traffic not just to the website you have advertised with but also send traffic directly to the page showing the advert of your holiday home.

The premise is, that if the page you create is properly formatted and contains the correct information you are able with a little work to make it visible for some of the most targeted keyword searches, sending visitors who are specifically looking for your type of property in your resort location, straight to your villa.This is much more preferable than hoping they click on your villa as one of many in a database search from the websites homepage. This type of search will send traffic to your page but the ratio of enquiries will be much higher in the former scenario than the latter.

The first thing to look for having chosen a number of sites to consider is the landing page. This is the page on the website that you land on when clicking on the link in Google. This should be a page specific to your resort or property type. This being well search for a villa such as yours and click onto one or two of the properties. There are several things to look out for on the ‘advert page’.

First, compare the title of the page between two or more properties. The title is the description you will find in the blue bar at the top of your screen. Check to see if the title is the same or different for each property. The title of any page on a website should be specific to that page. It is one of the most important things that the search engines look at when they index a page. If the website you are looking at has the same title on every page of the site, forget it and move onto the next website in your list for consideration.

If the title are different they should contain some specific information. This includes, The name of the resort, the property type and the rental status. By this I mean for example, a villa for rent in Moraira, Costa Blanca, Spain should have the minimum included phrases of Moraira, Villa, and rental or holiday rental in the title. You can check the actual title against the list of most popular keywords that you have made from the Google keywords tool. If the page title matches up well with a well search phrase then you can look further.

You should also then look to see if the page has a headline. Usually in bold at the top of the page. If the site is doing its job properly, this headline will be whats known as a h1 tag. You can check this by going to the menu bar at the top of your browser. If you are viewing in Internet Explorer, go to ‘View’ and click on the link in the drop down menu for ‘page source’. In Firefox this say just ’source’. A page will appear with the code used to create the page. It looks confusing, but do not be alarmed. Just slowly scan the top third of the page looking for the text used in the headline. Once you have found it, check to see if at either end of the text there is a <h1 symbol. If there is, good, if not, just make a note, a negative point if you will for this site.

Slowly you will be able to build a picture of which sites are most suited to bringing you the most traffic for your villa or apartment advertisement.

About the Author

Neil Ebsworth is the founder of AMLASpain, the Spanish Property MLS for property for sale in Spain and Villa Rentals Spain