Is This Travel Discount Package Really Gigantinormous?

Ah, the hype the advertising executives will come up with to get your attention. Gigantinormous. Gigantic and Enormous all rolled into one. Travelocity coined a new word just to get your attention. Arent they clever. They are having a Gigantinormous sale.

You save $100 instantly off your reservations when you book one of their Flight+Hotel TotalTrip packages or one of their Last Minute Deals packages. The reservations must be for two people or more and there is a three night or longer stay required.

The package must be booked by November 16, 2006 and travel must be done before January 7, 2007.

To get the $100 discount, you need to enter the promotional code GIANTSALE when checking out.

After you make your reservations for your initial travel, Travelocity will send you another promotional code good for $200 off your next qualifying Flight+Hotel TotalTrip package for two or more people with a minimum stay of five nights.

To take advantage of the $200 off offer, you must book by March 31, 2007 and the trip must be taken by July 31, 2007.

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So its time to do a little comparison shopping. How does their Gigantinormous sale hold up against their competitors prices? Since Im wondering if this is a way to save on holiday travel, Im going to find the price for a fictional family of four (2 adults plus 2 kids ages 5 and 8) to fly from Chicago to Philadelphia for Christmas.

Travelocitys Deal

Plane Reservations American Airlines leaving Chicago OHare at 10:55pm on December 23rd, direct flight to Philadelphia International; American Airlines leaving Philadelphia International at 11am on December 29th, direct flight to Chicago OHare
Hotel Reservations Best Western in Center City one room, two double beds
Travelocitys bottom line after Gigantinormous discount $1568.01 for flight, hotel, taxes and fees.

Expedias Deal

Plane Reservations - American Airlines leaving Chicago OHare at 12:40pm on December 23rd, direct flight to Philadelphia International; American Airlines leaving Philadelphia International at 4:15pm on December 29th, direct flight to Chicago OHare.
Hotel Reservations Expedia could not get me reservations at my hotel of choice Best Western in Center City so I choose a comparable three star hotel in Center City Club Quarters.
Expedias bottom line - $1,760.58 for flight, hotel, taxes and fees. Almost a full $200 more than Travelocitys price.

Hotwires Deal

Plane Reservations - American Airlines leaving Chicago OHare at 2:15pm on December 23rd, direct flight to Philadelphia International; American Airlines leaving Philadelphia International at 8am on December 29th, direct flight to Chicago OHare.
Hotel Reservations Hotwire could not get me reservations at my hotel of choice Best Western in Center City so I choose a comparable three star hotel in Center City Doubletree Inn
Hotwires bottom line - $1864.00 for flight, hotel, taxes and fees. Almost a full $200 more than Travelocitys price. Almost a full $300 more than Travelocitys price.

Pricelines Deal

Pricelines best price with undisclosed flight details (including a possible plane transfer) and a comparable three star hotel in Center City was $1,659 for flight, hotel, taxes and fees.

The winner Travelocity by a Gigantinormous $200-$400 savings.

Now, the savings are just on the initial trip booked with Travelocity. If you add the additional $200 savings on a future trip booked with Travelocity the savings may be even greater. Of course, any wise traveler would comparison shop even with the $200 discount.

US Airs Offer - Not Quite Gigantinormous, but a Savings Non-the-Less

US Airways is extending an invitation to its frequent flyers to escape from the chilly fall weather to the warmer climate of the Caribbean, Mexico or Central America. They have special fares to these destinations if you book now and travel before December 15th. There is a minimum three night stay associated with the offer.

In addition, you will receive a $25 gift card for each seat booked that can be used for a later flight with US Airways or one of its affiliates. The e-mail said that this offer is only good for members of their frequent flyer program.

So it seems as if this seasons deals are coming in the form of save a little now, save a little more later. The deals may be truly good for those who are planning to travel both sometime this fall and again later on in the year or early next year.
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By: Jawahn Thompson

This article on discount travel packages has been brought to you by daily air travel.

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Submitting Your Site To Article Directories

There are a lot of different article directories on the web and there is good reason why. These directories not only serve as locations for a vast amount of articles on many different topics, but they also allow articles to be submitted, usually for free. When articles are submitted to article directories, they accomplish at least two things. The first is that they provide information about a specific topic. If people are searching for that particular topic in the search engines then it is very likely they will come across your article on that subject. Once they read the article they will find the answers they are looking for and most likely, a link back to your website, which is the second aspect of submitted articles.

The Purpose of Backlinks

Backlinks are the number one reason many individuals choose to submit articles to web directories. By submitting the articles, the individual or website owner may also choose to include one to two backlinks. The backlinks are important because they help websites receive a higher ranking on search engines. Therefore, if you submit one article that is original to different article directories you will receive quite a few backlinks. The more directories you submit to the more backlinks your site will receive when the articles are published.

Now, consider submitting 10 articles to the directories. That is even more backlinks. Now, what if you really went for the top position in the search engines and submitted upwards of 100 articles over time to multiple directories? You could be looking at more than 1000 backlinks. That is a lot of backlinks, which makes your website more popular with the search engines. The more popular your site is with the search engines the higher it gets ranked. As you can see the more articles you are able to submit to article directories the better off your site will be with the search engines.

Keywords

Another positive aspect of article submission is the use of keywords. The article may be written with specific keywords in mind. This attracts more attention to the article when people are searching the web. The more people that see the article results in more people clicking the link and visiting the site. Therefore, not only will your websites traffic increase thanks to the higher ranking from all the backlinks but traffic will also increase as a direct result of keywords attracting more people to the article.

These are the basic benefits of article submission. Many websites are using this technique to position themselves and move up in Google, as well as other search engine, rankings. Of course, it takes time but if you are committed to being number one on Google, you can achieve this much faster by submitting articles to directories.
Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com
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Mark Goeder-Tarant hosts his own general web directory. Submit as many URLS as you want to over 300 categories. You have also the option to suggest own category. All submissions to free web directory are human edited and will be approved within 24 hours.

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Search Engine Optimization - Do You Really Need It?

Search Engine optimizationSEO for short is the art of making both the reader and the search engines happy with your webpage. Now how do I do that? Well simply put you want to have a set of keywords or phrases that appear on a certain page a number of times.

No sweat right, well yes it can be. Those words have to appear in such a way that they are conversational and balance against the amount of code that is on your page. Keeping the code to the needed amount and not extraneous is no short task. But having your keywords balance it and appear to be natural in the text can be a challenge.

One easy way to do this is to keep each page focused on one or two keywords. Remember that search engines rank pages, not sites. Its always better to have one page rank number 1 than to have 25 pages rank 250th in the search engines..

Stay online for long and youre sure to get conflicting messages:

Learn everything you can about search engine optimization, the experts will say, because without your website will die.

Dont worry about search engine optimization, others will tell you. Its just a myth to get your money because the search engines will crawl your site anyway and you want to write your copy for your customers, not the search engines.

The problem with both of these messages is that they are both correct. Yes, I said thats a problem. Both statements are true.

Search engine optimization is the science of studying the search engines and how they rank web pages so that you can build a website that gets crawled quicker and ranked better for your important keywords. The issue with putting too much stock in it is when you think there is an automatic formula or panacea for all your lack of traffic or sales. Search engine optimization wasnt designed to cure all of your problems, but it can cure some of them.

The first thing you need to know for excellent search engine optimization is research. You MUST conduct the proper keyword research. Thats a starting point. Then, you need to narrow down your niche. Do this before you build your website. In future posts on this blog we will show how and why this is important and give you all the details in performing the proper search engine optimization without wasting your time on useless activities. Stay tuned in. More to come.
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Nick Stamoulis and Brick Marketing provide companies with Internet Marketing Services . He writes daily in his blog the Search Engine Optimization Journal

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