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*** Australian Escapes ***

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Australians spend more than AU$51 billion on domestic travel every year.

Australia - Straya

Figures from Tourism Australia suggest Aussies are taking short breaks instead of long holidays and focus on making the most of a destination.

So, if you’re short of time, travelling with a family, needing a beach break, looking for a different food scene or a bit of culture, where should you go this year?

Here’s a list of Australian weekend escapes to help you plan your next escape.

  • Best for families – Byron Bay, New South Wales
  • Best for food – Darwin, Northern Territory
  • Best for a weekend break – Adelaide Wine Region, South Australia
  • Best for an unusual island experience – Bruny Island, Tasmania
  • Best for an indulgent escape – Daylesford Spa Country, Victoria
  • Best for a cultural fix – Canberra, ACT
  • Best for the great outdoors – The Kimberley, Western Australia
  • Best for a beach break – Noosa & the Sunshine Coast, Queensland

Read more

#Australia  #Escapes

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*** Crocs, Crocs & More Crocs ***

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After spending 12 hours in a cramped and uncomfortable British Airways 777 from Heathrow to Hong Kong and a much more pleasant Cathay Pacific flight , Maureen and I were greeted by our daughter Alison and grandson Matari at Cairns airport even though we arrived an hour late.
We hadn’t seen them for 18 months since their visit to England when we took them on a weeks’s trip to Munich in Germany to visit friends and take the cable car up the mountain for Matari to see snow for the first time in his 6 years.

Although we’re in Australia for 3 weeks time passes quickly catching up with family and friends we haven’t seen for many years and checking out the local eateries and drnking places.

However, we’ve travelled around a bit and on Sunday we went to the market at Port Douglas stopping off at the “Zen Beach” en route.

On the way back we visited Hartley’s Crocodile Adventure Park and had a great afternoon, and if you’re in the area just north of Cairns do yourself a favour and pay them a visit and help preserve these incredible creatures.

You can cruise the Lagoon in a boat to see 5 mtr saltwater crocodiles in their own wetlands environment.  Walk the Wildlife Discovery Trail and meet freshwater crocs, turtles and lizards and go through the tropical walk-through bird aviary. Visit the Macalister Education Centre for an insight into the local environment. Meet the beautiful flightless Cassowaries, and discover why they are so important to our rainforests. Enjoy entertaining and educational wildlife presentations including snakes, cassowaries, koalas, crocodiles, quolls and much more that makes up our unique and beautiful eco-system.

This is a great family attraction and you can find their full programme at www.crocodileadventures.com

Our thanks to the guys and girls who run this fantastic park and made our day really one to remember.

Cliff
Traveljunkies.com

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*** Are You Mobile? ***

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How does your Website, Blog or Facebook Page look on a mobile phone?
Are you missing out on loads of traffic and what does Google say?


Mobile phone XXX
Take this one minute Google Test to see …  https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly

It checks … 

  • If text is readable without zooming
  • Whether users have to scroll horizontally or zoom
  • If links are far enough apart so that the correct one can be easily tapped
  • For software that isn’t common on mobile devices, like Flash

And shows …

  • What Googlebot sees and how it affects your website performance and search engine ranking.
  • What it takes to earn “mobile friendly” status with Google. This is important because Google, and other search engines, now look for “Mobile Fiendly Tags” when determining Page Rankings and positions.

Check your site, it only takes one minute.

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly

If your site is Mobile Friendly – Great.

If not, you know what to do.

Please pass this on to friends, colleagues or even your enemies to help their website design.

Thank you.

Cliff Chapman
www.traveljunkies.com

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*** How Strong Is Your Website? ***

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This is Website Grader’s analysis of traveljunkies.com

How strong is your website?

Your website is the window to your business and like everything, first impressions count. Without a website, you don’t exist, and it’s the same if nobody can find your site.

But it’s more than that.

We help by sending traffic to your website using your free advert, but it’s your website that actually does your selling, and your success is down to three main factors.

 1.  Performance.

An optimized website’s is crucial to its performance, increasing traffic, improving conversion rates, generating more leads, and increasing revenue.

  • Page Size. The heavier the site page, the slower it loads. For optimal performance, page sizes should be below 3MB
  • Page Requests. The more HTTP requests your website makes, the slower it becomes.
  • Page Speed. Webpages should load within 3 seconds. Any slower and visitors will abandon your site, reducing conversions and sales.

2.  Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Your website must be easy for users to discover—and easy for search bots to understand—with better page titles, headings, and descriptions.

This might sound technical but can be broken down into four simple parts.

  • Page Titles. Page titles should be no longer than 70 characters in length and not repeat keywords.
  • Heading tags distinguish headings from core page content.
  • Meta Descriptions. Meta descriptions should be no longer than 155 characters in length and should be relevant to the page.
  • Site Map. Site maps help users navigate your site quickly and easily.

3.  Mobile

In today’s world this is the most important factor.

Various reports give varying percentages of searches made by mobile devices but the simple fact is more than half of all searches are made on mobile devices and growing fast.

For some time now Google penalises websites that aren’t optimised for mobile.

What Does Website Grader Do?

Hubspots Website Grader analyses your website and gives you an overall score out of 100, plus individual scores for each of the above factors plus a score for Security.

It makes recommendations on what to do next to increase your sites ratings and improve your website’s performance.

It’s completely free, takes just a few minutes and doesn’t require you to enter your email address or any personal information.

Go to http://websitegrader.com and enter your website URL and in a few minutes your results will be displayed on the screen.

What you decide to do next is entirely up to you and will obviously depend on the rating your site gets and the recommendations the report makes.

A side bonus is that you can enter any website URL even to see how your competitor’s sites are performing.

Please contact us and drop us a quick reply if you have found this useful.

Thank you

Cliff & Alison
Traveljunkies

PS.  Get your website graded here

Please pass this on to any colleagues, friends or even competitors.

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*** Who are Bamboo? ***

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ABOUT US

Bamboo was built on a cornerstone of a combined experience of almost 40 years in international travel and global volunteering. The three co–founders; Colin, Steve and Mark, each share the same visions and agree it’s essential that travel in developing countries must be giving–back to the communities that it visits. This, combined with having the most fun possible, is the priority of all Bamboo’s tours. Each tour is designed around the positive impact that creates, the legacy that it leaves behind and the way that travelers and communities work together. This is as much about a cultural experience as it is a holiday.

The history of Bamboo is as interesting as the tours that we now operate. Colin is the real trailblazer having launched Global Volunteer Network almost 15 years ago. GVN, as they were known, was the first of its kind, paving the way for other volunteer travel companies to follow suit.

Mark and Steve met in 2009 whilst working for a small volunteer–travel company. They quickly became friends and realized that the only way to ensure that what they had their name on was operating honestly and with the very best of intentions was to do it themselves. They took a huge leap of faith and launched the now world–famous, Bamboo Project.

GVN and The Bamboo Projects worlds’ collided in 2015 when the three founders met up in Thailand. It wasn’t long in to that first meeting they realized that by working together, with the principles on which Bamboo is founded, they could effectively begin to change the face of international travel. Bamboo was born.

GVN is one of the oldest and most well–respected volunteer placement organizations on the planet. They became and held that position to become a trusted brand because of the commitment they have shown to their volunteers and their projects. The Bamboo Project reached incredible heights in a very short space of time due to being different, being fun and taking every step with a huge smile on its face. This was recognized in 2015, after operating for just 16 months, when they were awarded the much coveted ‘Worlds Best Volunteer–Tour’ by Tour Radar!

Over the last 15 years, GVN and The Bamboo Project have placed 26,769 volunteers on projects around the world and opened the eyes of international travelers to new cultures and customs globally. They’ve raised almost $2.5 million in project donations and have generated tens of thousands of volunteer hours for needy and worthwhile projects.

Since GVN and The Bamboo Project have joined forces the effect has been incredible. As one, in the first six months, they’ve signed up over 3,000 new and returning volunteers and travelers. In the first full year, they will have signed up over 5,000 new volunteers!

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*** Forgot Your Password? ***

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Do you want an easy way to remember your passwords?

Our second tip is a tool we use to manage our passwords.

How frustrating when you need to access a website or use a service you’ve signed up to only to find the password you thought was correct isn’t the right one. This frequently happens when you need to do smething quickly and time is a constraint.
And even more infuriating when you’ve tried a few other passwords and access is then locked.

Well all this can be a thing of the past due to a great service called Dashlane.

Once set up you only have to remember your Dashlane password and the rest is simple.

Click here to go to Dashlane and download the free version. Once you start using it you’ll wonder how you managed without it.

Cliff & Alison
www.traveljunkies.com
If nobody knows about you, how do you get new customers?
If you want a quiet life – don’t advertise.

#Tips #Password

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*** Is Your Website Down? – How Do You Know? ***

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Do you know when visitors to your website or blog see this?

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404 Error: File Not Found
The URL you requested was not found
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You have invested time and money in your website and it must work for you.

  • But what if it isn’t there?
  • What if nobody can find it?
  • And how do you know when it’s down?

When our previous website stopped delivering the traffic we expected we carried out a lot of tests to discover why and it was only when we installed Uptime Robot we found the hosting server kept dropping out, sometimes for hours at a time, due to testing they were doing which had nothing to do with us.

Uptime Robot pinged our website every few minutes and sent us an email whenever our site went down and another email when it came back up so we knew how often and for how long our site was down.

Your hosting company isn’t likely to tell you they’re not providing the service you expect, and pay for, so getting an alert when your website is down is very much in your own interest so you can do something about it.

The sad truth is that if visitors see your website is down, they most likely won’t visit you again, and worse, may well spread the word your site was down when they visited.

We highly recommend installing  Uptime Robot – and it’s free.

It takes just a few minutes to set up and immediately gives you the comfort of knowing how reliable your website is.

Cliff & Alison
Traveljunkies

PS. We installed our new Traveljunkies website in January using a different host and Uptime Robot is now showing 100% availability.

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*** Too Much Information ***

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TOO MUCH INFORMATION ON THE INTERNET

So much information

We know the Internet is full of information that could help small businesses if only we had the time to look for it.
But many of us we have our business to run.

Over the next few weeks we’ll post tips we’ve used which could help you.
They’re quick and easy to use and they are free.

So please keep watching

Cliff & Alison
www.traveljunkies.com
If nobody knows about you, how do you get new customers?
If you want a quiet life – don’t advertise.

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*** Lifestyle ***

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Travel and work anywhere in the world.

Don’t tie yourself down doing a job you hate. Free yourself to travel and work anywhere in the world you choose.

Let’s face it … you hear this all the time

A few months ago some guy was living in his car and now he’s driving around in a limousine and living in a mansion. And all because he’s discovered a new way of making money nobody’s thought of before, and he wants to share it with you.

Yeah, right!

But now and again, someone comes along who really is making a life changing income and showing others how to do the same thing. They are totally different to other people out there on the Internet.
 
 
Andrew Reynolds is not your typical rags to riches story. The fact is he had a decent job before he started making millions online every year…
The only problem was he hated his job, and maybe you do too?
  • He hated the commute every day, stuck in traffic every morning and evening.
  • Working himself to the bone.
  • Barely making enough to get by

Do you recognise this or perhaps your circumstances are different. Maybe you haven’t got a job, or it doesn’t pay enough or you just want a change.

Andrew decided to take action and create a different life for himself, and you can do the same.
Now he has a thriving home business that practically runs on autopilot from his laptop and if this sounds good to you … 
 
 
It can be absolutely life changing 
 

Cliff Chapman
Traveljunkies

 
Please Note – this offer is only available in UK.
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*** How To Get Found On The Internet ***

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Getting found on the Internet is often a matter of luck that someone happens to search for a word you have on your site that few others use.

It’s a fact that the more popular relevant words are used by most sites and those with the deepest pockets dominate.

And the same applies to advertising.

So how do small business owners compete? How do you get found on the Internet?

We have owned the domain traveljunkies.com since 2002 which is why a Google search for traveljunkies or travel junkies produces a quarter of a million results and we are at the top of page 1. And the same applies for searches on Bing, Yahoo and even the top Chinese site Baidu.com.

When we advertise we use this tactic to get more people interested.

Imagine Being Found Even When People Aren’t Looking For You

 

For Example:  If you run a hostel, B&B or Hotel and there are activities in your area, your advert could look something like this.

Friendly quality hostel accommodation, 10 mins beach, 20 mins city centre, dorm, single and double rooms, pool, transport, full facilities, great value hostel. Prices from $20 per night. Water Sports and many other Outdoor Activities can be arranged nearby Tel: xxxxxxxxxx

ooo

It’s all about using the keywords people search for.

Adding a short sentence in your advert (see Italics) that has some connection to your business, greatly increases the range of your advert at no extra cost.

Just make sure it’s relevant for the people making the search.

You don’t want to be a spammer.

And finally – don’t advertise where you are just listed with everybody else.
Advertise where a search will find all your key words in your advert.

Please note – Premium Adverts in Traveljunkies are suspended due to Coronavirus

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