BrownsGuides.com adapts the editorial content and style of the popular Brown’s Guide to Georgia Magazine to the Internet, bringing information about the state’s travel and recreation resources to a broader audience in Georgia and throughout the United States.

“I’m convinced the Internet was invented for the travel and recreation industry,” says BrownsGuides.com publisher Fred Brown. “In the printed version of Brown’s Guide, we might have listed 150 Georgia restaurants in an issue. On the website, we have over 800 restaurants in Atlanta alone. In the magazine, we might have featured one attractive North Georgia vacation rental cabin per issue. Now on the website, we list EVERY vacation rental in North Georgia and include links to their websites when they have them.”

“We have even adapted the popular Brown’s Guide Magazine cover featuring original Georgia art to the website format,” says Brown. “Website visitors see a new ‘cover’ every month by a different Georgia artist. In addition, more of the cover artist’s work as well as that of other Georgia artists and craftspeople are available for viewing in the Brown’s Guide Gallery. And it is always there; it doesn’t disappear when a new ‘issue’ comes out, something you couldn’t even think about in a print format.”

With over 7,000 profiles currently on the site and more being added every day, BrownsGuides.com is the largest and fastest growing portal website for the travel and recreation industry in Georgia. All of the state’s travel and recreation resources are organized by category with over 200 categories currently on the site, including restaurants, do-it-yourself and guided tours, family vacations, hiking, canoeing, shopping, guides and outfitters and many more. Website visitors can easily search activities or locations they are interested in by category, travel region, city or key word.

“In the print world,” says Brown, “if you wanted to have access to material previously published in the magazine, you needed an annual index and a good collection of back issues or a library. Now, it’s all instantly available 24/7 via a series of easy-to-use and fun ‘searches.’ And we can keep all of the detail information about hours and fees and other changes at a particular travel and recreation resource always up-to-date.”

In addition to over 7,000 profiles, other website features include Blogs, Videos and Galleries. Experts “blog” weekly about restaurants, family vacations, do-it-yourself and guided tours, Georgia state parks, and many more topics.

“With over 60,000 paid subscribers to the printed magazine, we had a loyal and enthusiastic audience in Georgia with a few subscribers scattered elsewhere around the country,” Brown said. “With BrownsGuides.com, we not only reach a larger Georgia audience, we have regular website visitors from all over the United States and internationally who are interested in knowing more about Georgia or actually planning a visit. Most of the visitors come from Southeastern states, but we have a surprisingly large number of visitors coming from New York and California, as well as other states.”

A year ago, BrownsGuides.com began an aggressive program of “Search Engine Optimization” in cooperation with California-based Compass/Blackwater, one of the top SEO companies in the country. Today, if you search Google or any of the other six major search engines for Georgia Tours, Georgia Restaurants, Georgia Family Vacations, or Georgia Lodging Accommodations, you’ll find BrownsGuides.com on page 1 or 2. In addition, there are over 1,000 words and phrases that if typed into a Google search box will give you BrownsGuides.com on page 1.

“What we have learned about Google and other search engines over the past year,” Brown says, “is that ‘content is king.’ And with over 7,000 profiles and an active group of bloggers, BrownsGuides.com has a massive amount of content organized by category and indexed to be easily searchable. That’s not only appealing to website visitors, it’s a magnet for search engines as well. Our search engine experts are advising us that within a relatively short period of time, if you type ‘Georgia’ into Google, BrownsGuides.com will appear on page one, and we are already beginning to see evidence that that is happening.”

BrownsGuides.com is developing plans to expand the Georgia website format into additional southeastern states. “A state is the most logical and satisfying way to search for travel and recreation experiences,” says Brown. “When people are planning travel, they think about states and cities as contrasted to thinking about the entire United States or even a region like the Southeast. The BrownsGuides.com format and content lends itself to being easily and quickly adapted to other states with South Carolina and North Carolina being the target states for 2010.”

BrownsGuides.com has been developed in partnership with Savannah-based EMarketSouth, long recognized as one of the top website design and programming firms in the Southeast.

BrownsGuides.com publisher Fred Brown is the author, co-author, editor or publisher of over a dozen books about the travel and recreation resources of Georgia and the Southeast, including The Georgia Conservancy’s Guide to the North Georgia Mountains, The Riverkeeper’s Guide to the Chattahoochee, The Flint River Guide Book, The Best of Georgia Farms Cookbook and Tour Book, The Best of Virginia Farms Cookbook and Tour Book and Macmillan’s Unofficial Guide to Atlanta, among others. He is married to long-time Peachtree City resident, Peachtree City Development Authority member, and frequent editorial collaborator Sherri Smith Brown. Their 6-year-old daughter, Brianna, attends Crabapple Lane Elementary School.

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