Jon,

Obviously this is my business and if I give out too much information I will soon be out of business!!

However, I have looked at the site and their isnt much indexable content (text that is visible to the search engines when they visit the site).  This can make a huge improvement to his site in terms of ranking and visitors experience.

As for free traffic, links, maybe you should look at link baiting.  This is the task of creating something free, usable and fun related to the sites content.  Currently a lot of this relates around Web 2.0 and in particular AJAX and Google Maps.  You may want to have a play seeing what you can do.  Also, look at creating content that could be useful to users at sites like digg.com or del.icio.us this is especially relevant to your link bait!  Getting on the front page of one of these sites can do amazing wonders for your sites traffic and one way in bound links.

Well Im sure you have plenty of things to get on with...

I wish you well

Stephen Dean
SEO Marketing Solutions
http://www.seo-firm.co.uk

On 13:30:34 13 February 2006 jonbovard wrote:

A friend has setup his own business specialising in overland expeditions through South east asia. He has been really good at organising logistics and planning but he has misunderstood the complexity or value of his site, so he has asked me to help him

The thing is that he doesnt have a lot of cash and I feel inclined to help him as I know how much effort he has put into this and i hate watching 'the little guy' get burnt due to a strict lack of online marketing know-how

overland adventure tours asia

I have been inclined to help his as best I can setting him up with
- Google analytics
- PPC on Google and Yahoo
- Search engine optimisation

Im also helping him with a (needed) redesign and setting him up to take online payments eventually

The critical thing at this stage is traffic volumes, of which we have been unable to obtain much at all organically

The problem we face on the PPC front is that there is little search volumes for the phrases that would obtain converting shoppers. For example "exploratory overland tours asia" hardly gets anyone looking daily
Of course there are lots of searches for 'asia tours' or 'backpack thailand' but nobody with half a brain is going to inefficiently bid £1.50 for some of the overpriced generics like that.
Although he is in a massively competitive market, he does have a niche service and carving out that niche is proving tough.

Does anyone have any ideas as to methods to drive traffic cheaply from other sites on the web?

My online marketing skillsets are not industry specific - I will be honest and say that my knowledge/speciality is definitely not the 'travel' industry.

I wonder if their are any Travel/tour specific Affiliate networks that might be ideal for him to source conversion'able type traffic?

any other ideas from a 'cheap' traffic, perspective would be very welcome or indeed ideas to improve his business model

thanks
jon