According to Oregon’s tourism web site, there isn’t a single amazing thing about Oregon, there are about ten zillion. While none of us had time to calculate that figure to be sure, we’re all in agreement that Oregon is truly a special place.

We’ve just returned from a week-long marketing summit with Starwood Hotels & Resorts’ top communications leaders in Portland and are so pleased to be among only a handful of vendors invited to participate in a conference of this scope.

We received a warm welcome from everyone we spoke with and are especially thankful that we had the chance to sit with key members of the Starwood global management team.  Above all this was a chance for us to build on the existing trusted partnership between Starwood and WebCanada that we have enjoyed for more than eight years.

Well we made it!

We’ve just returned from Boston where we were exhibiting at the annual New England Condominium Condo Expo— the leading real estate tradeshow in New England. It was both successful and informative… but also an adventure!

Our beloved tradeshow booth was lost by a shipping company and we had but twelve hours to make an entirely new one. The Concierge Plus team pulled together and the result was a new booth we’re thrilled to exhibit with. Thankfully this was the only hitch in an otherwise fantastic weekend!

Washington DC continues to outperform most housing markets in the US and economists are projecting continued demand due to historically low interest rates, strong job growth and supply constraints in the condo market. This was certainly apparent with the flood of attendees at the recent annual conference of the Washington Chapter of CAI (Community Association Institute). It was also clear that community managers and board members are looking for value for their communities.

Today is a momentous day - we held a launch party in honour of Live CMS 5!

After months of hard work, testing and many late nights, Live CMS 5 went live yesterday. We've fired up the back end, notified our clients and watched the product soar. 5,500 user accounts have been migrated in 70 countries and 29 languages. We've been hearing a lot of great feedback and encouragement, and we truly believe this will be the most powerful iteration of our Live CMS product to date.

Many thanks to all of WebCanada (it seems like everyone contributed something) and special shout outs to the Live CMS 5 team: Paul, Nikola, Andy, Ian, Matt, Ilia, Linus, Billy, Rinaldi and Daniel.

Check out the photos after the read more link.

Google's search algorithms are constantly evolving to keep up with changeable nature of the web in an effort to keep spammers at bay. What many people don't realize, though, is that a search engine optimization strategy that worked well in the past may now get your site blacklisted from Google's results.

Many SEO strategies that were once successful ways to maintain a search presence are now considered unethical by Google. If you've seen your search results falter and you haven't taken a look at your site back-end in a while, now might be a good time to root out any old SEO tactics and update them with a current strategy.

There are no words that can account for the tragedy resulting from the earthquake that Japan experienced on Friday. The loss of life and damage from the tsunami that followed the earthquake itself is heartbreaking.

Prior to this situation, I had made arrangements to meet with customers in several Asian countries, including Japan. With some uncertainty and a desire to keep my commitment I arrived in Tokyo on Sunday. The flight over took a small detour to avoid the badly damaged area, and any possible radiation, around Sendai. Upon landing at Narita, it seemed like business as usual. Other arrivals and departures are on time, train service to the city restored, and passengers busily moving around the terminals.

I'm excited to be part of a talented panel discussion that will address the challenges and opportunities of building global websites as part of next week's travel and tourism marketing conference in Toronto.

This year the sixth annual "Online Revealed" tourism and online marketing conference has partnered with The Hotel Association of Canada and the Canadian Tourism marketing Summit. Dubbed as Canada's first and only user generated internet marketing conference, they are attracting over 500 of the top tourism and travel industry professionals to share ideas March 8-9 at the Sheraton Centre Toronto.

We are thrilled to be a part of Starwood's Room With A View hotel webcams project which recently launched its second phase complete with a new user interface, enhanced social capabilities and an extensive list of new functionality.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the concept, over 100 Starwood hotels spanning five continents have installed webcams from their most picturesque views, making the live feeds available on roomwithaview.com and individual hotel webcam Room With A View portal sites.

Last Thursday we officially celebrated our arrival at 260 King Street East with an Open House party. A big thanks to everyone who was able to come and for those who couldn't make it we've included a few pictures and a link to our online memory game created by Front60.

It's a reality; every year retailers work harder to make it easier for consumers to shop online, and at the same time consumer confidence in shopping online continues to rise.

A June 2010 IMRG study found that "online retail sales have increased 22% year on year," and that "this is the highest rate of increase in more than two years."

So why is this happening? Is it because there's more selection online? Is it because it's more convenient? Is it because retailers have become smarter and are giving consumers fewer reasons to say no?

I would argue it's a mixture of all of those reasons, but primarily it's because of the latter. So what have the leading online retailers done to give consumers a reason to buy online instead of in-store?

The success of modern companies is heavily determined by how easily their brand and their services are found online. Discovering the search terms potential customers are using and gearing your website content to return results for those terms is a proven method for generating online leads and driving revenue.

It all starts with selecting those crucial keywords. It should be noted that a keyword can refer to a single word or whole phrase, for example "WebCanada has great clients" can be considered a keyword.

A May 2010 report by Forrester Research offers some interesting insights about online shopping behaviour, and particularly, why so many people abandon their online shopping carts before making a purchase.

The report entitled Understanding Shopping Cart Abandonment found that nearly 88% of web buyers have abandoned shopping carts at some point. If online retailers can convert only a small percentage of these lost sales, the effect on their bottom line could prove significant.

Organic SEO strategies that every website should adhere to: page names, titles and headings. We all know that content is important, it gets your site passed around, linked to and revisited. Content is the main piece of the puzzle, think of the next four tips as the supporting cast that will help your site gain a coveted first page ranking.

1) Page Names. It's a good idea to a descriptive vanity URL like "about-us".
By doing this your URL will appear www.yoursite.com/about-us. When you do this Google and other search engines will recognize it as part of the content. Using a content management system like Live CMS has certain advantages, like not having to worry about file names, and automatically assigning "vanity URLs" like "www.yoursite.com/about-us".

There are many ways to get your company's name out there. Historically, word-of-mouth, advertising, sales and marketing have driven the way businesses connect. It remains to be seen how effective social media will be in forging B2B relationships, though it's in no doubt promising. There is however one reliable marketing method that businesses have been taking advantage of for decades: direct mail, or in its more recent form email marketing.