Algorithm is more than a buzzword. It is the sole factor between you and high placement on highly visible, often free, search and content results. Here are a few 30-second (and a touch longer) versions of the key points of some of the most common algorithms that resorts should keep an eye on.

1) BING
BING and Yahoo! are one and the same in the US and Canada. Yahoo! search used to be run by their own, proprietary algorithm. No longer. All Yahoo! results are created by BING. While opinions vary, I’ve noticed for my own ranking efforts that the BING algorithm responds to SEO efforts a little bit faster than Google. This means that you can ranking higher quicker in BING, but it also means when you stop doing SEO, your rankings won’t last as long either.

2) FACEBOOK
I’ve brought this topic up fairly recently, but let me condense it down even further. Popular Facebook posts show up in the news feeds of your fans higher and more often. The Facebook algorithm considers popular posts as ones that are likes, commented, and viewed. Improve your placement by encouraging comments and likes.

3) GOOGLE
The biggest, trickiest, and most valuable of them all. I was talking with a web marketing friend about SEO the other day. His take? The Google algorithm is good. Really good. If you want to rank well you need valuable, fresh content, lots of incoming links, and natural keyword density both on you page and links anchor text. In other words, create real, valuable content and the links will come (along with the rankings) just like it should be.

4) LIFTOPIA
Although I could try to email Larry Page & Sergey Brin, I doubt I would get a response. Luckily, the guys at Liftopia are much more accessible and open to sharing the ways resorts can get those most out of their tools. Evan at Liftopia gave me a lot of great content, I’ll post the rest tomorrow, but here is the 30 second version of how LIftopia’s results are compiled. The key behind placement is that the best “values” float to the best positions on the site. Value is determined by many factors (which I’ll share in more detail tomorrow) and end up rewarding top performers because their performance is one of the indicators of that value.

About Gregg & SlopeFillers
I've had more first-time visitors lately, so adding a quick "about" section. I started SlopeFillers in 2010 with the simple goal of sharing great resort marketing strategies. Today I run marketing for resort ecommerce and CRM provider Inntopia, my home mountain is the lovely Nordic Valley, and my favorite marketing campaign remains the Ski Utah TV show that sold me on skiing as a kid in the 90s.