The travel industry is embracing social networking like never before and there are a few relatively new online communities which are making a big impact.

Boo.com is a user generated travel guide offering reviews, blogs, photos and tips. There are destination, restaurant, sight seeing and nightlife guides, all with an ever increasing amount of content and traffic.

The DK Travel website not only looks fantastic but presents the DK travel content really nicely. The site allows you to create your own guide using travel information, reviews and user recommendations and you can then share and print your personalised guide to take on your trip. You can also download a Podcast guide which can be added to your destination guide and transferred onto your iPod.

A bit on the flashy side and not as pleasing to the eye, the Sheraton Resorts website is an example of a travel company trying to engage with its consumers. Users can add photos and comments on each of their hotels through the guest gallery. Content is displayed on the hotel information pages with weather, photos, offers and of course, booking information.

Web 2.0 and social media has been bubbling around the surface of travel for a while now but many of the offerings have not been engaging enough to make an impact. There are now new and improved websites which are becoming increasingly popular and the travel industry is having to adapt to this form of marketing.

There is a large proportion of holiday goers and travel enthusiasts who prefer this new way of communicating with the experts. They can offer their own thoughts and views and become part of a community where they can share experiences, photos and videos. The travel companies can now engage with their customers like never before, advising and presenting their own expert information whilst building a profile and raising the awareness of their brand.

Travel search is progressing and user generated content is king!

Do you know of any other travel related websites which deserve a mention?

Mike Grehan has written an interesting article stating that SEO Is Dead… I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Mike on a few occasions and he is an extremely colourful character… the article speaks a lot of truth although the title is 100% link bait material.

I agree with some of what he is saying though, I personally come from a marketing background and agree that the old days of SEO geeks optimising description tags and tweaking code is pretty much gone. However, web users will always want to find stuff and online marketeers will always need to sell stuff – SEO is all about branding, content and information and making it all readily available and easily accessible. Optimisation is more about usability; the use of title tags, breadcrumb trails, well structured content and sitemaps is as much about the user experience as it is about spiders and crawlability.

SEO is not dead, it’s just evolving. It’s all about writing compelling content that web users can interact with, image and video optimisation has been going on for ages now so a lot of us SEO’s are ready for the new and exciting looking SERP’s which will only improve the overall web experience for everyone.

I regularly attend the London SEO pissup. I recently expressed an interest in moving a future event down south and a bit more closer to home. Rob Kerry who organises the London Pissup has asked me if I would like to organise something in Brighton for the summer.

I know there are a lot of SEO agencies and consultants also based by the seaside so I wanted to start the ball rolling and see who might be interested in attending…

If you’re based in Brighton and you’re an SEO, let me know if you would be interested in attending a piss up in a local pub, preferably by the sea to talk all things search.