Small business don’t have that luxury, that’s not to say that the smaller guys can’t compete, they just have to work harder and smarter to get their share of attention online.

Some of my favourite small business SEO tips are below, some are mine, others are from people who volunteered their own ideas on Twitter.

1. Optimise for local search. Figure out who are the authoritative citations within your city – ie touchnottingham.com via @APSG
2. Concentrate on local search and longer search terms as these give more of a chance with a smaller budget. Google Maps add is a must in your town! via @StuartFlatt
3. Be active online. Forge relationships with blog owners, find journalists on Twitter. These contacts will be invaluable when it comes to getting coverage.
4. Write content that’s relevant to your business and your customers & keep it up to date. via @picseli
5. Get your analytics package in place as early as possible. The more data you have the more you’ll be able to analyse your marketing decisions.
6. Utilise your current relationships – reciprocal linking is not perfect, but still has a good effect on local search (imo) via @CMaddison
7. Brand yourself as an expert. Write informative articles about your industry. Post them on your site, ask to have your work published on others.
8. Try to focus on conversions rather than rankings. Too many small business owners are obsessed with being first, rather than focusing on profits. via @CMaddison
9. At the very least ensure your page titles are unique and relevant to the content on them.
10. Don’t scrimp on your website, a less than satisfactory site may save cash in the short term, but it’ll cost you in conversions.
11. Build your list – capture customer data, segment it, test it and contact them regularly (not too regularly) with useful information, articles, links and offers.
12. Consider using Adwords for initial data collection / keyword selection – find your best converting/most profitable keywords for under £100 via @CMaddison
13. Build trust – make sure you’re easily contactable, make sure your site has a prominent address and telephone number on each page, explain why your buying process is secure.
14. Find out who your competition is, then find out who links to them using Open Site Explorer – get those sites to link to you.
15. Setup Google alerts for your business name. Make sure you monitor these, it’s a great opportunity to ask for links when people forget, or to network with people who are already talking about you.

Check out this comic from The Brads

I like to use a website contact form because they’re quick and easy. It’s not always convienient to pick up the phone, especially when you may be on hold for half an hour.

Lately I have had a couple of enquiries for Camden City Council. Although I get an instant confirmation email (from no-reply@camden.gov.uk) it includes a disclaimer reading “If you do not hear directly from the team involved within 10 working days you may contact the Central Complaints unit direct on….”
If it was suitable for me to call them then I would have in the first place, but for whatever reason I have chosen to email them, and it’s not unreasonable to expect a reply. I still have not had a proper response from them about my enquiries.

Likewise, an enquiry to Traid for some photos following a revamp event I attended fell on deaf ears – I didn’t even get an aknowledgement.

These are just 2 examples; unanswered enquiries happen all the time. It’s so common that you’re probably thinking “Well that’s what you get from filling in an enquiry form.”

But I have huge faith in websites, and I know encouraging contact is the main goal of many sites – so why is this rudeness acceptable and website enquiries go ignored?

Janey at Basically Black is an example of how to do offline follow-through well. We recently did a survey of her customers and almost everyone said how friendly and helpful she had been with choosing sizes, placing orders and managing returns.

It’s no surprise she’s seeing a lot of repeat customers and verbal recommendations – and it’s a shame others are missing the trick.

Business owners and managers don’t have time to learn technical jargon, so if their web developer puts keywords in the URL then the “search engine friendly website” box is ticked.  There’s a bit more to it of course, and here are some pointers…….

First things first – hosting

Is your website a .com address? Which company is hosting the site, and where are their servers located?

.com / .net / .org and similar domains are glamorous for businesses as they don’t “belong” to a country like a .co.uk web address does. When confronted with a .com (and other non-country specific domains) search engines look at where the server is geographically located to determine which country the website is intended for. If your website is aimed at a British audience, has a .com address and is hosted on a server in Germany, then your website will tend to perform better in natural search results done by people on German soil.  You need to host your website with a company that has servers in the same place as the majority of your customers.

Put your web address in http://whois.domaintools.com to find out more.

If you’ve got a .co.uk or a country specific domain, then you don’t need to take any action.

How much Flash on my site?

Sites built completely in flash don’t always do well in search engines, and tend to be used as a marketing tool or a campaign site. http://www.speakvisual.com is a good example of a brand using flash as a showcase site.

If you go to Google and search for something competitive that people want to buy e.g. consumer goods, clothing, specialist equipment etc, the sites that feature at the top of the natural listings make limited use of flash and concentrate on providing text that search engine spiders can crawl.

Want to see your site like a search engine does?  Go to http://www.seo-browser.com and enter your URL.

If you see some text and blue underlined hyperlinks, then what you see is what a search engine knows about your site.  If you can click your way through to all your pages then a search engine can do the same.  Try getting to Colin Smiths’ page on Speak Visual using SEO-Browser…..

Canonicalization

There are a number of different definitions of this word Google them at your leisure.  For this tutorial its the process of choosing between http://www.example.com and http://example.com versions of pages.

Try this simple test go to your website and type in one of your deeper pages without the “www” part e.g.  http://datadial.net/Services/Online-Marketing

• if the website automatically changes the URL and you see the page you expect (e.g on our site typing in http://datadial.net/Services/Online-Marketing changes to http://www.datadial.net/Services/Online-Marketing ) then you’ve got nothing to worry about
• if the website shows both http://example.com/page and http://www.example.com/page then you’ve got duplicate content that needs to be fixed

Duplicate content

“If I’ve got more than one version of the same page on my site then its all good! It means there’s a greater chance of search engines finding it right?”

Search engines take the view that information on a website should not be repeated, and generally adds one version of a page to their records, and ignores other versions.

http://www.webconfs.com/similar-page-checker.php have a good tool for checking duplicate content.

Canonicalization is one instance where duplicate content may happen.  For ecommerce sites a particular problem is where a product may “live” permanently in the brands category, and the lifestyle section, and therefore will have two (or more) web addresses for the same item.

The content management system can be configured to create only one version of a page, and its worth talking to your team about their proposed way of addressing this.

Page titles, meta descriptions, keywords, and headings

Search engines scan the HTML code on websites for clues as to what the site is about.  Its easy to get carried away here so in order to keep it simple….

page title <TITLE>

Each page on your website should have a unique title with the most important word starting on the left….

description <meta name=”Description” content=”…..>

The information that appears here is not visible to customers looking at your pages, however search engines sometimes use this text as a summary of the page when it lists natural search results.  This should include calls to action to encourage people to click on your entry rather than others listed on the page…..

headings <h1> – <h6>

<h1> is the most important heading <h2> less so, and so on.  So keywords important to your business (and appropriate to the content on the page) should be organised accordingly…..

Most content management administration systems give you the ability to manually edit page titles, and meta descriptions.

Take action

Hopefully this article has explained what some of the jargon in SEO-world means, and you now know what impact it can have on your business.  Have the conversation with your people, and if any of the above need attention, ask them to fix it.

Having looked at a range of sites, from basic to imaginative ones; I have 3 favourites that pop to the forefront of my mind for December.  I especially like these for their design, products, colour and simplicty:

www.mungoandmaud.com 

I was drawn to this site, because of the unique name.  I loved all the textures and choices of products and I’ve passed it on to all my friends with dogs all shapes and sizes!

www.hunkydoryhome.co.uk

Clean, sharp site which shows off funky, quirky and very original asseccories for your home.  

www.yeovalleyorganic.co.uk 

This site made me want to dive into the picture and soak up the open space! I love all their delicious foods and inspiring recipes.

Happy Christmas!

Content is king

Yes, it is correct that all websites need good content, and ideally need good content being added on a regular basis. However the “content is king” mantra seems to have misled people into thinking that ALL you need to do for your marketing effort is to add what you consider to be good content. Content needs to be optimised, content needs to be linkable, content needs to be publicised, content needs to be linked to. Lots of great content remains ignored and unranked as it is passed over for more mediocre but better publicised and linked-to alternatives.

Build Multiple Sites

You have one website that’s doing very well, if you add another you’ll double that success. Add 10 new sites and you’ll be retiring in the next 12 months right? Wrong. Ten more sites will mean 10 times the marketing effort and budget, and ten times the cost. Having one site with 1000 pages of content on it with 1000 links will perform far better than the same content and links divided between two sites.
By consolidating content and links onto one domain you will increase that domains trust and authority, which will mean it’ll rank far higher than it would if the resources were split across two properties.
The only time I would advocate building more than one site is for strategic business reasons such as a planned sell-off. If you are running several sites for no particular reason, other than it seemed like a good idea I would certainly look at consolodating them.

E-Mail Marketing Is Spam

Spam is bad mmmkay? Don’t do it. EMail Marketing to an opt-in list that you have built as part of your brand will deliver a massive return on investment. Every company should be building, collating, segmenting and marketing to your customer data, it is a tremendously valuable resource. Avoid emailing people too often, and for heavens sake keep it interesting, useful and punchy.

All Sites Are Equal

Certainly in an SEO sense this isn’t the case. You’ll find that bigger brands can get away with a lot more than tiny start-ups. Older, more trusted domains with a higher authority can get away with using far more spammy tactics that would get smaller sites penalised. Google hasn’t exactly levelled the playing field with the Google brand update, which is rumoured to give big brands a rankings boost for certain commercial keywords.

Social Media Is A Fad

The rocket-like growth of social media sites has taken many people by surprise, online marketers, brands and PR agencies included. People react to change in different ways, some labelling the growth as a fad, something to be ignored. Others learn and adapt and have made millions in the process.
Social media is a fundamental shift in the way people communicate, used correctly it is a cost effective way of reaching brand advocates, consumers and influencers. Just because you haven’t worked out the best way of using, tracking, measuring and monetising social media for your brand doesn’t mean it’s not worth the time.

Rankings And Traffic Are Your Most Important Metrics

Checking your sites rankings is fine, and it’s a good idea to keep a close eye on your traffic numbers, but are these your most important metrics? Probably not. SEOs and online marketers in my opinion spend far too long obsessing over rankings and traffic numbers, and less time learning about conversion rates, segmenting visitor sources, looking at link acquisition rates, keyword £ values and ultimately sales volumes. Not many clients will tell you they value visitor numbers over money in their pocket.

Search Engine Submission

No, just no. If anyone tells you that you need to submit your site to a search engine give them a sharp poke in the eye. Search engines have gone far beyond having to be told where sites are located and are quite capable of finding them themselves through links. It’s been this way since the 1990’s but the myth just won’t go away.

Magic Page Keyword Density

I keep hearing the same question asked time and time again about what the optimum page keyword density is. There certainly isn’t a magic mathematical formula for keyword % that will give you any kind of boost over your competitors.
It’s far more important to write for your visitors and intelligently use your keywords in certain places on the page – sure it’s logical that they should be present in the body text, but search engines will attribute a far higher weight to words mentioned in places like the page titles, image alt tags, headings, bold and italic text etc.

Flash Sites

There are a huge number of misconceptions about flash websites. Can search engines read them or not? On the whole, now yes they can, text and links can be read, with the exception of some JavaScript links. Until 2008 this wasn’t always the case, with most flash sites being all but invisible to search engines.
So is now the time to rush-off and convert your site to flash because it looks so lovely? Probably not. There are still many fundamental reasons why flash sites don’t perform as well in search engines as their HTML cousins. Problems with page mark-up, content not being on unique URLs, and doubts over crawlability all don’t lend flash sites to ranking well in search engines.

One of Douglas Wilson's beautiful prints

I’m about half way through The Elements of Typographic Style and thoroughly enjoying it.  I really wish there was a way you could read a book and ride a bicycle so I could get more reading time in while commuting, but I’ll just have to take my time reading it instead!

Some thoughts so far…

“With type as with philosophy, music and food, it is better to have a little of the best than to be swamped with the derivative, the careless, the routine.” (Page 117)

I think this is true of all design.  In a time where you can get free website templates anywhere or make a website yourself so easily, the designs that have a lot of thought, care and expertise behind them really stand out from the crowd.

Shaping the page

Example of a page layout based on the Golden Section

Although the book focuses on print, the principles found in the chapter Shaping the Page can be applied to web design also.  It is a great reminder to me of design school, especially the theories of the Golden Section and Fibonacci series.  Using ratios based around φ are useful for arriving at a design that is easy on the eye and feels comfortable to use.

Visiting Switzerland

Coffee cup in Zürich

What you read opens your eyes to things around you; I have been noticing nicely designed type everywhere!  Recently we spent a weekend in Zürich – I love it how clean, thoughtful design surrounds you in that beautiful country.

We have designed the user interface to be as intuitive as possible, with an emphasis on speed of use and productivity, while at the same time a feature-rich interface gives in-depth data about the source of mentions and enables you to tag, comment or share mentions for further action.

• This service should be seen as part of any effective online marketing strategy.
• You will be able to track and measure what is being said.
• Armed with this information you will be able to see the effectiveness of your campaigns, gain customer insight, learn how your brand, products and services are being perceived and also join in the conversation and, if necessary, react to any adverse publicity.
• The results will help you with planning for future campaigns, enabling fine-tuning and therefore saving you money.

At this point the software is still at a beta stage, so we are inviting as much user feedback and suggestions as possible on design and functionality. Signup to track one phrase is free, so please go here to signup for an account.

One particular debate arose on the legality of competitors squatting on variations of their branded domain names, and offering up the domain name for extortionate prices. I did a little research and dugg our the Oasis case study from earlier in the year:

credit:perspicacious.co.uk

Since 1991, the highstreet brand Oasis has been trading as a UK women’s clothing chain, and in 2006 the domain name oasis.co.uk was acquired by Mr. James Dale who parked the domain name and displayed sponsored links to women’s clothing sites using the DoubleClick advertising network through Google AdWords.

Earlier this year Oasis challenged the registration of the domain oasis.co.uk, stating that the domain took unfair advantage of the company brand and trademark, taking their appeal to Nominet. Under Nominet’s Dispute Resolution Service, the initial case had been won by Oasis, and initially decided that the domain should be transferred to Oasis.

However this was no ordinary Nominet recovery case. Mr. Dale then came forward shortly thereafter to advise that the complaint had been mailed to his previous address, thus meaning he found out about the decision without having a chance to appear to do anything to fight it.

Mr. Dale had failed to update the Whois registration information after changing both physical and email addresses, and only found out about the decision after a friend contacting him to offer commiserations on loosing such a valuable domain. Mr. Dale was able to appeal against the decision, stating that Nominet had his correct details from other correspondence and asked that this violation was overlooked. He was allowed to file an appeal, although the DRS appeal to a three person panel would cost him £3000.

In Mr. Dale’s response to the complaint, the panel allowed the submission of new evidence, which was not their normal practice. However, due to the fact that his non-appearance at the initial hearing was due to circumstances of notification rather than just a basic failure to appear, they felt that the fee for filing the appeal was punishment enough. Thus they allowed the new evidence in the interest of true justice, rather than depriving him of the domain in an unjust fashion. By this time the appeal panel had in essence already found in favor of Mr. Dale based on the merits of the case.

Mr. Dale informed the panel that when he spent £4000 to purchase the Oasis domain name he had no idea that it had been a domain related to a women’s clothes shop. He had no interest in such a business and wanted to use the Oasis domain for a financial services or bingo website. Mr. Dale then produced proof of discussions that had taken place in which he could prove that the domain was intended for financial services. These kinds of claims are often viewed by dispute domain panels with much skepticism, but they could not dispute the proof provided by Dale. Combined with the fact that Oasis was a common English word, the panel accepted Mr. Dale’s argument that he did not wish to target Oasis with the registration of the domain and thus the acquisition of the domain could not be considered an abusive registration.

Due to other factors, however, the case would not end here. Unlike the UDRP, under the DRS abusive use later on is sufficient, even in cases where the domain was actually acquired in a genuine fashion. The question that then came about was if it was abusive to use the domain for sponsored links directing to women’s clothing websites. Under Nominet’s policy, parking pages are not abusive in and of themselves. The nature of the domain, it’s links, and the ultimate responsibility for the domain by the registrant must all be considered by the panel.

Since some parking pages depend on specifications set by the owner while others have content that is generated automatically, the appeal panel found it would be dangerous to simply draw conclusions by looking at parking pages. Parties should explain in detail how their parking pages work, but in this case there was no explanation by either party.

It was then claimed by Mr. Dale that the parking page originally used contained only general links. To build his case against Oasis, Dale produced a statement from the parking company. The statement suggested an uncommon situation of how the women’s clothing links appeared on the domain’s parking page. It seemed that Oasis was using the domain name of “oasis.co.uk”, which was not owned by Oasis, as a keyword in their online marketing campaign. This in turn meant they would be targeting users specifically searching for the domain owned by Mr. Dale. Although Dale’s claim was short and did not provide much detail, the panel thought it was something that should be considered.

Oasis’ dismissal of the claim as “fanciful, unproven, and bizarre” did not satisfy the panel, as there was no statement provided by Oasis that it hadn’t used the keyword “oasis.co.uk” in their marketing efforts.

Since this claim was brought up by Mr. Dale and Oasis didn’t seem to have a valid defense, the panel then decided to check the Oasis website out for themselves. Upon inspection of the Oasis website, it was found that the keyword “oasis.co.uk” was indeed among the keywords being used to drive traffic to their own website.

What turns a genuinely acquired domain into an abusively used one can be assessed by Nominet panels by using the abusive acquisition or abusive use test provided under DRS. The normal approach to this situation has been that liability by the registrant is only present if they actively exploited their position by making reference to the trademark. The panel backed up Mr. Dale’s claim that it was the action’s of Oasis themselves which led to women’s fashion links appearing on the domain oasis.co.uk. Oasis lost it’s appeal as it was proven that not only did Dale not actively exploit his position, but the complaint that Oasis had filed was actually caused by their own behaviour.

While this may have looked like a good case for Oasis, it shows that assuming any DRS case is a “pushover” is a risky assumption. Detailed evidence must be provided explaining how the parking pages of any parties domain work. The content of a domain parking page cannot be assumed to be the responsibility of the registrant, and information from the parking company itself could be a necessity.

My point is this: if you can prove domainers are holding a variation of your domain to capitalise on your brand or trademarks then you probably have a strong case for appeal. If however the domainer can find any excuse (such as not updating their whois record after moving house!), they can drag the process out and duck out if they have some form of proof the domain was acquired for any other purpose.

Also trademark owners need to be aware that it may not be in their best interest to include domain names that they don’t own in their marketing strategy!

Further reading: Is It Me Or Is Everyone Else Stupid, Perspicacious, Ashurst

A little about me: originally hailing from Australia, I can’t get enough of the great outdoors and playing sport (but no, not cricket!) I also enjoy exploring the UK countryside and have a notable fondness for chocolate, mulled wine and Christmas time.

I’ll be involved in SEO, search marketing, social media and development with Datadial and I’m looking forward to meeting and building a long (and very happy) relationship with my clients!

If you’re on Twitter, feel free to add me to keep in touch! My username is LindyHolman

]]> http://www.datadial.net/blog/index.php/2009/11/30/a-new-arrival/feed/ 1 http://www.datadial.net/blog/index.php/2009/09/29/the-differences-of-helvetica-and-arial/ http://www.datadial.net/blog/index.php/2009/09/29/the-differences-of-helvetica-and-arial/#comments Tue, 29 Sep 2009 09:20:20 +0000 Rachel http://www.datadial.net/blog/?p=446

Thank you to Steff for passing on this lovely graphic illustrating the differences between Helvetica and Arial.

The usual reaction in squeezing more out of a website is to rush into a redevelopment exercise.  Redeveloping a website is expensive that is often undertaken on a whim and without real research into what is working and what is not on the current website. Indeed it’s often the case that the current site is perfectly capable of delivering many more sales and that it just needs refining to improve the user experience.

This doesn’t need to be an expensive exercise. The key to successful marketing is to consistently test and measure everything that you do.  Delivering fantastic conversion figures is within reach for us all, no matter how small the budget.

Here are four ways that we have carried out for some of our clients to help increase their onsite conversions at virtually no cost.

1) Online surveys

What better way to really understand your customers than to ask them for direct feedback?  What is it that makes them want to buy from you rather than your competitors?  How did they hear about you?

Carrying out market research will enable you to build on what you’re doing well and make any necessary adjustments and help you to grow.  You will be surprised by how many people are willing to take the time to reply to surveys.

We recently did a survey for one of our clients Design911.co.uk which gave vital insight into user behaviour.  Coupled with Click Tracking report (see below) Design911 have been able to fine tune their website to respond to users’ expectations and behaviour.

Below is a sample of the survey results  that were produced.

2) Mouse tracking -

Why do other sites make it so difficult to buy anything from them?  We’ve all experienced a confusing website at one point or another.  But could your site also be suffering from usability issues?  Find out where the sticking points are with Mouse tracking.

You may also find that users are trying to click on things on your site that are not designed to be clicked on.  We found this with Design911:

With design 911 we found that that very few people clicked on the middle of the page and that lots of users tried clicking on ads on the right handside of the page which were not actually clickable.  We found too that the search box was being under used as it was below the page fold and that users were taking at least 60 seconds to make a click on key navigation items.

3) Study your analytics

It’s all too tempting to gloss over your analytics reports – these reports contain vital information which reveal where users are getting stuck, turned on or turned off.   Seems obvious to say it but unless you take the time to check what is going on on your site you will never be able to intelligently amend your site and measure the effect of your changes.

There is a mass of information to look at but here are 3 basic things to do

Check Bounce Rates: Bounce rates tell you if a visitor who has been directed to your site via a search engine or Adwords likes what they have found.  If they leave the site immediately this is called a bounce.  If this happens you need to question if you are showing the right products for the keyword search  and if you could provide better information, or if they had come via Adwords, are your Adwords set up correctly.

Funnels: You can set up funnels to determine where people are dropping off over a series of pages (typically the shopping cart process).  Different funnels can be set up for different goals.

Compare to previous periods: There are a number of trends such as time on site, the number of keywords that you are being found for, the number of pages per visit that are good to compare from onen time period to another so that you detect trends.

4) A/B Testing

Having pawed over your analytics you can then start making intelligent changes to your site.  How will you make more people fill in your enquiry form?  How can you get them to add one more thing to their basket.  Take a look at the forms below and guess which one had the higher conversion rate.

This company carried out A/B testing on their sign up form and increased their conversion rate by 10%.

This is called A/B testing or Multivariate testing which we use to determine which images, copy and design most appeal to your customers and which version increases conversion.  You can have as many or as few variables as you like when creating your A/B testing.  Ideally you would set it up to automatically serve different versions of the page to alternate users but to save money you can do it on a week on/week off basis.

We helped Conference Genie increase conversions on their site by altering the sign up process.  Interestingly we did it by making their site more complicated.

Weirdly the problem on this site was that it was too easy to use   Users could not believe that they could just dial a default number, punch in a code and start a conference call.  So we made the site appear to generate a specific telephone number and a unique code for them.  Turning a one step process into a two step process actually increased conversions.

Making small changes instead of wholesale changes was also recently backed by Peter Fitzgerald, who leads Google UK’s retail industry division.  He said that the whole area of analytics – that’s technical jargon for examining the ways that people navigate websites when they shop online – has taken on new importance to retailers.

Simple changes can make the world of difference, particularly since statistics show that 50.1% of online shoppers who place items in their shopping carts still do not buy them.

By subtly altering a website’s layout based on how people use it, websites can increase sales significantly.

“There is often a lot of unimportant information on the top of a web page. If you move this information out of the way it can make a huge difference,” said Mr Fitzgerald.

For example when Comet, the electricals retailer owned by Kesa, the listed stores group, removed two bits of text from the top of its web page (saying ‘top checkout tips’ and ‘you’re safe with us’ respectively), its conversion rates increased by 6.7pc.  “Online retailers are spending more time on analytics to see where things are going wrong,” said Mr Fitzgerald.

Department store group Debenhams recently tested the message and positioning of an online sign-up form for its Beauty Club.  Improvements to it increased the number of customers the chain signed up by over 89pc.  Little such tweaks are being made by online retailers as a means of gaining incremental sales. Experts say that the results of the small changes can be seen almost immediately.

Google’s Mr Brittin said: “By interpreting analytics data and continually testing their sites, retailers can really understand what consumers are looking for online. Often very small and seemingly obvious tweaks can boost sales significantly.”

All of the above exercises can be implemented fairly quickly and inexpensively.  However, don’t underestimate the time you need to truly get to grips with your findings.

By constantly analysing the results and carrying out appropriate changes you will be able to squeeze every last conversion out of your site without incurring expensive redevelopment costs.

When you actually break them down, the numbers and stats surrounding social media are truly staggering.

Some of my favourite social media stats……..

• 77% of active internet users read blogs
• 700 million pictures re added to Facebook monthly
• Digg attracts 236 million users per month
• 40 % of journalists use blogs to research their stories
• 13 HOURS of video is uploaded to YouTube every MINUTE
• Flickr contains more than 3.5 billion pictures. That’s one for every 2 people on the planet
• 5 billion minutes spent on Facebook each day

For many many more have a watch of this……

DO: Put yourself in their shoes

This is the key to all of the items that follow – always spend some time trying to put yourself in your contact’s mindset.  Consider how you react when you get an email from a company you don’t instantly remember.

DO: Introduce yourself

People are not likely to instantly remember that they bought something off you 1 ½ years ago, especially if it was offline and you’re contacting them online. A big part of reminding them of who you are is the look & feel of the email template itself.  Make sure that your template is on-brand and carries over consistent elements such as your logo that they may remember.

Keep branding of your template consistent with offline and other brand implementations

DO: Remind them of how you have their details

Here you want to answer the question “Why are they sending me an email?!” and build up the legitimacy of your message. The more detail you can put into your reminder the better. Including a reminder of how you got their details significantly improves how well the email is recieved.

DO: Thank them by giving a special offer

Say thank you for their time and patience by giving a special offer code or discount.

DO: Allow them to leave your contact list easily

For messages to cold contacts, one of the biggest issues you have to overcome is people hitting the Junk button when they don’t recognise you.  Overcome this by allowing them to unsubscribe easily – and you’ll actually be surprised by how few unsubscribe when you allow them to do so in such an easy way.

Example of an easy unsubscribe

DON’T: Sell, sell, sell

Selling in your email is okay if balanced by all of the above, but certainly do not launch straight into your products without it. If possible, don’t sell at all in your first introduction email, and instead look for the long tail result of converting a cold contact into an interested one.

Selling to cold contacts done well - one product is profiled on an email announcing the new website with a polite introduction.

I attended the Online Marketing show at Olympia on Tuesday and listened to “How to implement a social media campaign” By Amelia Torcode, Partner and Head of Digital Strategy, VCCP.

VCCP and Amelia are now the darlings of the social media world following their successful Compare the Market/ Compare the Meerkat campaign.  Anna picked up an NMA award last week for the campaign.

I’ve got to say that I was a little disappointed by the presentation, especially on behalf of the delegates who had actually gone along in order to learn about Social Media Marketing.  All they got was a self indulgent “aren’t we wonderful” lecture on the Meerkat experience, along with a repeat of some of the adverts just in case you hadn’t quite got the message yet.  The talk cost £40 to attend so you would hope to learn something in return apart from how wonderful VCCP are.

But my main beef with the whole thing was actually the question of whether this was in fact a successful Social Media Campaign at all.  At its simplest VCCP came up with a cute idea, paid a huge amount to advertise it, set up a Twitter account and Facebook page and then encouraged the banter on these and other sites.  This has created incredible awareness and has kept a lot of people happy.  Site traffic has gone up 80%,  but still way below Confused.com. Succesful quotes have gone up 20%.

But was this really a social media campaign in its truest sense?  Could they have achieved a better result at a fraction of the price? Did they essentially miss the point of social marketing?

Social media is a method of generating discussion about your product or service within social network platforms seemingly without any effort being made by yourself.  In short you start a story, others pick it up and pass it around because its either funny, interesting or useful.  If you get the story right you don’t need to spend any money because the “network” does the work for you. In VCCP’s case they (must have) spent a fortune on the development of a separate www.comparethemeerkat.com website and on the TV campaign, and in the process killing the average cost per conversion, although Anna claimed that this had come down by 21% but it was not clear that this took into account VCCP cost.

The point and beauty of social media is that you don’t need a TV campaign, the network does the work for you.  The message is passed on because people feel the need to.  And the number of people who link to your site ultimately help the Google rankings.  The actual spike in traffic is an irrelevance compared to the long term effect on Google rankings

On the point of search engine rankings, in her talk Anna started off by saying that Google was the benchmark around which the whole campaign was based but then did not mention Google from that moment in.  When I questioned her about the traffic from Google she was unable to answer as she had no stats and there was a separate agency altogether dealing with natural SEO. In fact any discussion about Google rankings or PPC had her flummoxed.  I found this astounding.

I don’t want to knock Anna or the the meerkat campaign but it’s really interesting seeing the different approach that an Advertising agency can have to Social Media compared to a proper Online Marketing company.  Advertising is all about brand awareness.  SEO is all about driving sales via the website.  As an SEO consultant myself I could not imagine implementing a campaign without keeping Google and other search stats at the forefront of any analysis of the campaign’s success.

Also I would have questioned a totally separate site, comparethemeerkat.com to be the backbone of the campaign.  Any self respecting SEO will tell you that for a social media campaign to be successful is to get people to link to your client site voluntarily which in turns helps rankings and therefore sales.  In this campaign as the majority of the new links will be pointed at the stand-alone Meerkat website.  In my opinion this is a huge miss of the campaign.   1000’s of lovely links all going to the wrong website – how depressing!

The only solution would be to 301 the meerkat website one day when no one is looking, though this is a huge social media faux-pas and could potentially lose them a lot of trust and goodwill.  Undoubtedly VCCP have been successful in raising awareness of CompareTheMarket but I am unconvinced about the benefits of the long term online presence.

If I was new to social media I would certainly have left none the wiser after this talk.  If I had been giving the talk I would have attempted to reveal the theory behind succesful social media marketing, explained how stories got picked up and spun about the web, how a traffic spike in itself is not important but the links that it brings, how the ultimate prize is rankings.  In short I would  have talked less about myself and more about how to help others, especially if I was charging £40!

Anyone doing PPC will know how vital it is to have a proper landing page which responds to the what the user is searching for.   This could be costing a fortune in lost conversions for John Lewis. 

I wonder how long it will take for anyone to notice.  So far it’s been like that for a week. 

The listing in Google

 Part of the landing page

Christmas 09 is only 4 months away.  No doubt you’ll already have your products organised and maybe some ideas on offline marketing but what about online marketing.

Because online marketing can take 4-6 months to “kick in” there’s no time like the present to activate your Christmas strategy.   So below are 12 timely reminders on what needs to be in place to ensure that your site delivers this Christmas in a way that would make Santa Claus proud.

1. Blogging – sounds similar to ‘tobogganing’ and is just as much fun

• Simply, unless you are willing to put the time into adding useful and interesting content on your site then there really is little chance that the search engines will bother ranking you for anything more than your domain name.  You have to deserve to be number one.

2. Social Media – it’s time to get social (both online and off line) – and we don’t mean just churping along with the robins

• Marketing is no longer a one way monologue.  It’s all about dialogue now and if you’re not up for a chat then users won’t listen.   If you say something  interesting then others will refer to it and pass it onto their friend – if it isn’t then they will talk about your competitors products instead.

3. Link Bait – lay the foundations now and reap the rewards by Christmas

• How would you like say 500,000 more visitors to your site. Content will go viral if written properly – but before it goes viral make sure that your website can take the strain of the increase in visitor traffic.

4. Mouse tracking – discover how your customers behave online and throw them a lump of cheese…

• Find out where people are clicking on your site and where they are getting confused. You’ll be surprised by how quickly and easily people get lost and move on elsewhere.  Make sure buttons like “Add to Basket” are big and easy to find (and look like buttons) 

5. Cross-selling – if your customers have a basket, fill it!

• Seems pretty obvious thing to do but many companies still miss this easy opportunity to up the customers’ spend by 10% or so.  Ask your web programmers to implemenet basket based offers.

6. Communications – ensure your data management system is working for you and send glad tidings to all your customers

• I’m presuming you already have an email database.  If not, why not?  But continue to refine your database so that you can target relevant offers at different people.

7. Seven swans a-swimming – (well we had to give some reference to the twelve days of Christmas) Will your customers be able to swim through your site without any hold ups?

• Should you really be making your customers register before purchase?  Are you hiding your delivery charges? (Hidden delivery charges are the 2nd most cited reason for people abandoning a shopping cart). Is it obvious how to make the order?  All these issues will effect conversion rates.  Get friends to perform specific tasks on your site and see how they perform. You’ll be surprised.

8. Content management system – check that your system will enable you to do everything you require. We’re still working on a turkey cooking programme but we are happy to cover off everything else.

• Got a great idea for a Christmas offer? Have you checked that your e-commerce software is capable of handling this type of offer.  Find out now and don’t leave to last moment.

9. Reputation management – discover if you are featuring on your customers’ Christmas wish lists this year

• Find out what people are saying about you with Datadial’s reputation management software and then respond to these comments and start a dialogue.  See how Love Film responded to a post I wrote about them – this was a classic bit of Reputation Management whereby they quashed my negative comment about them.

10. PPC – Pretty Perfect Christmas?  We believe Pay Per Click is the icing on the cake of an online marketing strategy (never the key ingredient)

• Multi channel marketing includes PPC as well as snail mail.  PPC is expensive if implemented incorrectly.  Get this sorted before the Christmas rush starts.  Do all your experimenting with what works and what doesn’t or else you’ll find all the money coming in one end is going out the other end.

11. Online PR – You don’t need to bring frankincense and myrrh but if you’re doing anything quirky or different then let the blogosphere know about it

• Do not presume that your PR company can do online PR.  Online PR is an entirely different science to Offline PR and most PR companies do not have a clue about how to create buzz on line.

12. Online optimisation – creeping round every corner making sure everything is as ‘friendly’ as possible

• This is the most important thing to get right – If your website is not optimised for search engines then it has no chance of being ranked for its keywords.  Ask us to provide a website analysis for you.  If you ask nicely we might even do it for free, seeing as it’s nearly Christmas!

If you’ve got it all covered then you can join our happy Santa on the beach

I recently copied the terms and conditions from www.lovefilm.com into a word document.  Lo and behold, Word then revealed all the tracked changes that had been edited, presumably by Lovefilm’s lawyers.

Delightfully we are given an insight into the weasel legal world of small print; for example see how they have subtly shifted any responsibility for lost CD’s onto the member, sorry subscriber, rather than Lovefilm.

None of this is overly important, just a bit amusing but it also reveals the perils of copying and pasting from word into HTML and why you should always use a plain text editor instead.

If you’re interested, and if you are, do you have a life? – I was copying the text so that I could work out how they do their neat subscription model so that I could emulate the concept for one of our own projects.

Here are a couple of excerpts copied from http://www.lovefilm.com/info/terms_and_conditions.html

End

From 1st January 2010 there will be a change to the basic rule regarding the place of supply of services. This is the rule which identifies the country where services are deemed to have been ’supplied’. Currently, if a supplier has established its business in the UK, then the place of supply will be deemed to be the UK and any services charged for will be subject to UK VAT. There are, however, numerous exceptions to this rule. Establishing whether a service falls under one of the exceptions – and if so, which one – constitutes a major headache for businesses.

The new basic rule states that if the recipient is a business customer then the place of supply is the country where the recipient belongs. Therefore, when the new rule applies, if a UK business supplies training services to a business customer in Spain and delivers the training in France then the place of supply will be Spain and the reverse charge will apply. The existing rules dictate that the place of supply is France, with the result that the UK business may need to register in France.

The new basic rule also states that if the recipient is not a business customer then the place of supply is the country where the supplier belongs.

As is now the case, there will be some exceptions, but these exceptions are in many cases different from those currently in force. It will be important to ascertain just how your business will be affected.

The changes may affect businesses which receive services from abroad. Such businesses may already account for VAT using the reverse charge mechanism, but may in future have to do this in situations where the reverse charge currently does not apply.

Another significant change, which is being introduced as an EU anti-fraud measure, relates to EC Sales Lists. Businesses supplying services to commercial customers in other EU countries will be affected. Currently, EC Sales Lists are required only for supplies of goods. Although this comes into force on 1st January 2010 you should be preparing now to collect the necessary data.

 The above was copied from an email sent to me by UK Training (Worldwide) Limited

Registered Office
4/5 The Mayflower,
Liverpool Road,
Formby,
L37 6BU.

Tel: +44 (0)1704 878988
Fax: +44 (0)1704 832124
http://www.uktrainingworldwide.com/index.asp

I have no association with them but the information is important to digest for anyone trading online.

As ever Datadial are here to assist you in implementing your e-commerce sites to the specification you desire.

Here are 30 of the worst sites bandwidth can buy.

Warning, be prepared to regret clicking this link! Seriously, epileptics beware! I’m not quite sure what was going though their minds when they thought this was a good idea.

http://www.paperrad.org/

I’m actually a fan of MIA, but this site seems to have been designed by the same guy as the site above, though possibly while drunk, asleep, or both.
http://www.miauk.com/

Evangel Cathedral is a church site that is in dire need of ADD medication – this site is buzzing, literally.
http://www.evangelcathedral.net/welcome.htm

You may need to take motion sickness medication to view the next site. I kept asking myself “Is THIS what Jesus would do?”
http://www.dokimos.org/ajff/

This site is actually amazing, there are no other words for it. Why procrastinate over going for a two or three column layout when you can go for five. It’s okay though we’ll make things simply by having 9 forms of navigation.
http://www.havenworks.com/

Sometimes I wonder if people are even looking at what they publish online?
http://home.texoma.net/~jimg/welcome.html

Bad site, but great product! Inflatable churches, shame it’s a whole six months to my next birthday.
http://www.inflatablechurch.com/

You’re looking forward to your big day as a bride. Who do you choose to take care of the outfits for your big day? The site that looks like it was designed by borderline crazy person of course. Missing plugins? I must be missing the one that makes this site readable.
http://yvettesbridalformal.com/

Bright colours hurt the eyes, and godawful design that scares small children. I had to highlight the text just to read it. Under construction apparently, maybe the best option would be to knock it down and start again. If I were a part of Princeton Consultants, I think I’d consider litigation.
http://home.comcast.net/~dmaneyapanda/zugorific/personal2.html

Broken links, and I’m not even sure what that is in the background. This site does partially redeem itself however by allowing the viewer to chose music, or not. Not I think.
http://ronoslund.com/

Lets see how many tables we can fit on a page. Oh look, that many.
http://www.huntgraphic.com/moto.htm

Perhaps not as offensive as the previous sites, this site definitely has been beaten with the ugly stick. I can’t believe they have the nerve to offer free backgrounds. That’s like Gordon Brown offering free PR advice.
http://members.tripod.com/fuzzymartian/

A big fat obnoxious site, with a monotonic robot voice. This page must have been designed by a former, disgruntled employee. Scrolling, flashing text and graphics actually made me have to take a break from researching this post.
http://www.esupersoft.com/lips/

If the appearance of this site means all officers are on the street protecting the citizens of West Virginia, rather than taking web design lessons, then it has my blessing.
http://www.martinsburgpd.org/

Never let so called ‘web conversion experts’ tell you that you shouldn’t put all of your products on one page. Why bother with layout, or indeed logic.
http://www.arngren.net/

Possibly not the worst site on the list, but hell, these guys are supposed to repair computers, not infect them with awful designs.
http://home.comcast.net/~computerphysicians/

This eyesore of a site at least has a nice dog picture- dogs win, web design loses.
http://frnz.de/

Jackson of Piccadilly does not fit in the ugly, flashy, boring or eye-popping categories. In fact, it is rather pretty. It has a lovely face, but no substance. Navigating this site made me want to reach for a coffee. I don’t even like coffee.
http://www.jacksonsofpiccadilly.co.uk/main.htm

As well as the wacky misspelling of the word “wizard” in the site’s name, this is a pretty gruesome site! Not the sort of design that would convince me that they’re the best people to stick a needle in my arm.
http://www.wizzardstattoo.com/

This guy actually does web design. In that case I’m a brain surgeon.
http://www.webking.com/computer-services/index.html

Does anyone have any idea what this site is even about? I really am at a loss.
http://bremen.weltregierung.org/abstraktindex.html

Someone thought that using a colour scheme based on a wounded zebra would be attractive.
http://www.izzza.com/

Maybe not typical of German efficiency and ingenuity, unless you count efficient as putting as many elements on the page as possible. Actually, maybe those crazy Germans have stumbled on something…….
http://www.ingenfeld.de/

A site of very few words. I guess they’re letting the pictures speak for themselves. I’m not sure why, but I feel a bit uncomfortable looking at this site. Maybe it’s becacuse I feel like I’m about to get run-over by those trucks.
http://www.mccormickrecovery.co.uk/

Yes, more frames, tables, bright colours, marquees, and flashing graphics – you’re spoiling us!
http://www.fabricland.co.uk/

This is actually Aaron Wall’s first site. I guess we all started off like this, myself included, mine just isn’t online anymore
http://www.newnavy.us/

The sparse wasteland of this site is perhaps only rivalled by the grusome design of their building, which they seem to be very proud of for some reason.
http://cbm-eureka.com/

Does this chiropractic site instill trust? I think a good rule to live by is if someone can’t sort out text justification then you probably shouldn’t let them play with your spine.
http://www.proactivechiropractic.org/

With thanks to…..

Good Web Practices
Blogstorm

There are also some fantastic posts over at SEOptimise and Distilled that are well worth a read.

The State Of The Search Industry

• The search industry must focus more on, analytics, holistic search and education for senior management. Cooperation between companies is required in order to grow the industry.
• During the keynote, Brian Fetherstonhaugh from Ogilvy One pointed out that although search marketing is seen as the holy grail of marketing by the top 1000 CEOs, this still only occupies around a 1.5% mindshare. Search marketers should focus on how search can ad value to existing advertising mediums and can be sold as a research tool.
• The US has a greater buy-in from senior management. This could be due to an increased understanding/awareness of the technology, or better and more organised education.
• Integrated search is set to be a huge growth area, both in the form of integrated digital campaigns (SEO, PPC, Digital PR) and also increased synergy between online and offline PR.
• 46% of respondents to the Guava/E-Consultancy Research were spending a minimum of £10,000 p/a on SEO.
• 32% are spending a minimum of £100,000 on paid search.
• 55% of companies predict an increase in SEO spending despite current economic conditions.
• SEMPO research indicates a shift from paid search back into natural search.
• SEO is increasingly being used for branding as well as direct response advertising being driven by an increase in local, video and news results visibility.

Keyword Research Tips And Advice

• Download the Microsoft adCenter Excel Add-In for keyword research. This will help to quickly build keyword lists and give additional demographic information.
• Don’t just use traditional tools for keyword research. Initial brainstorming with client sales teams is usually an untapped resource for potential keywords, as well as looking at internal site search queries.
• The credit-crunch has altered search behaviour. Consumers are searching more, researching more but buying less.
• There has been a 3-fold increase in informational and a fall in navigational search queries. Less brand searches, more price-led queries.
• Optimise category pages for plural search keywords, product pages for the singular.
• Use Google Trends to find and keep ahead of topical search terms in your industry.

SEO

• Wordle is a great tool for finding which keywords a site/page has been optimised for.
• Using a keyword site:domain.com query you can find the most important pages on your site for a specific keyword.
• Mis-spellings can be targeted using a glossary or a ’similar searches’ widget.

Link Building

• Before releasing online PR/link bait you must understand the reasons that people link to pages. If your content doesn’t encourage people to link in some way, then it isn’t linkbait.
• A successful linkbait article has an average of 2.7 seconds to grab a bloggers attention. The solution to retaining this attention? A Great Headline. These great headlines should be continued into the subject of the text, and should also be continued into the headlines of whichever social media distribution channel you choose (Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon etc).
• Websites Don’t Link to Websites- People link to other people’s work. To improve the response from your linkbait, look into the mindset of the blogger reading your piece- why would you link to it if it was your blog?
• Discussion sparking content – Create content that can spark controversial discussions. Not everyone in your industry will always have the same view, and providing content that sparks such discussions allows readers to get involved in the discussion. Invite other bloggers to get involved in the conversation (subconsciously inviting the blogger to link to the discussion and make a comment on the discussion on their own blog).
• Actively promote your own content. Build a directory of targets and inform them when you publish linkable content to increase the take-up rate.
• Link your articles with current affairs, topical news stories, or hot topics in your industry to increase the chances of publication.
• Link building is very much dependant on the kind of website you’re working on. Big brands can get away with a far lower link quality than smaller companies and brands.
• Analise the current inbound links- Big brands should have a range of authoritive links, meaning less authoritive links with optimised anchor texts can help when optimising for a particular phrase.
• Install ‘Links From Images’ Plugin on Wordpress. People still hotlink images… why not provide them with the HTML code and include a link back to the page the image.
• Where possible, remove all social media buttons (‘tweet this’ buttons etc) on linkbait articles- remove the option for visitors to share the content on other networks to encourage linking to the article instead.
• Six degrees of seperation works online… target the bigger sites in the industry that the smaller bloggers will read to get links from both the bigger and smaller blogs (and scraper sites!)
• Build a Promotion Network-
  1. Research sites in the industry and see what they link to
  2. Create an email list
  3. Create the linkbait article
  4. Social media promotion- this is mainly for show- the more powerful links will come from the bloggers you email directly
  5. Send a personal email to the bloggers on your email list informing them of the post ahead of the buzz
  6. Watch the links come in
  7. Show gratification- thank the bloggers and show gratification (Tweet/Stumble/Digg their post in return)

Social Media

• Social media is now sending significant amounts of traffic to many sites, for the right industries/demographics it’s crazy to ignore it.
• Utilising Facebook connect and the Twitter API is an excellent way of encouraging your visitors to interact on social sites and linking that interaction with your brand.
• Use the RIOT principal – Relevant Interaction = Optimised Traffic – Massimo Burgio
• Bear in mind the 4 P’s of social media – Passion, Proactively, Perseverance and Patience
• Twitter may well become more important in the search engine world as it starts to index the content of links in tweets and starts to rank these.

Reputation Management

• There are several basic strategies for dealing with negative listings in the search results. 1) Legal action 2) Purchasing the offending site 3) Organic strategies to push other listing above it 4) Paid listings to argue your case/divert attention5) Hacking – not recommended!
• Resort to legal action only if sure of your legal footing and as a last resort. It’s very easy for aggressive tactic to blow-up in your face.
• Sometimes authority domains that have negative listings may also contain positive pages that can easily be used to replace the negatives.
• Reputation management shouldn’t just be thought of in crisis situations. Effectively monitoring and managing online reputation before a crisis occurs can save time and money later.
• Bear in mind that if people want to look hard enough for negative stories and articles, they will find them.

Analytics

• SEO is not a ‘free’ medium – everything has an ROI that should be measured.
• When monitoring the performance/conversions of large groups of keywords, separate them out into groups for more manageable analysis – Top 10, Top 100, Top 1,000 and 1,000+
• Brand engagement can easily be worked out using BE = #brand searches + #direct visits / #search visits + # direct visits
• Another metric worth measuring is the % of pages yielding search traffic. Consider replacing or amending under-performing pages.
• Link building counts are a metric that people should be using. The most accurate tools for tracking this are Linkscape and Google Webmaster Tools.
• Use the 2nd page traffic filter to spot keywords sending you traffic from the second page of search results. Pushing these phrases onto the first page are your low-hanging fruit.
• Use multi-touch tracking to find the initial referrer for a sale rather than the final one. Often a sale initially comes from a long tail search query, then possibly a branded search or PPC ad which then incorrectly gets the credit for the sale.

Digital PR

• Get Known- build a brand, attend conferences, seminars and other industry engagements. Comment in forums and become a noticed resource.
• Build a Platform- Speaking slots, interviews, trade shows. Announce your presence at these industry events ahead of time
• Find industry news and get on it

Presentations/Write-Ups Currently Available Online

Dean Chew – What’s New With Social Media?
Lyndon Antcliff – Smash A Brick In The Face Link Building
Richard Gregory – The Latest Stats About The Search Engines
Patrick Altoft – Blow Your Mind Link Building Techniques
Ciaran Norris – Old Or New? The Future Of Media
Will Critchlow- Analytics Every SEO Needs to Know
Lucy Langdon- What’s New With Social Media?
Rich Cotton- Paid Search & Tricky Issues
Rob Ousbey- Brand & Reputation Management Strategies
Guy Levine- Writing Killer Search Ads
Massimo Burgio – What’s New With Social Media Marketing?
Richard Baxter – Diagnosing Website Architecture Issues
Richard Gregory – Paid Search And Tricky Issues
Nick Abramovic – Multivariate Testing

Anything I have missed? Let me know

In the meantime I really wanted to post a video that Ciaran Norris from Altogether Digital showed during his session – “Old Or New – The Future Of Media” Slideshare here

Certainly the most thought-provoking session of the day for me, the original version of this was made in 2005, and it’s scary to think how close to reality many of the events and prediction in the short actually are, and how many aren’t too far from reality.

The problem for many companies is that there are some fundamental differences between the two disciplines, while at the same time it’s increasingly important to maintain as much synergy as possible between your online and offline PR messages.

Where Does Online PR Fit In With SEO?

It’s often confusing nowadays where SEO ends and digital PR begins, the two disciplines are complimentary and do overlap to a large extent. There are certainly two differing objectives, I view SEO as being more metric orientated, it’s about maximising revenue through increasing traffic sent via search engines, ultimately raising search rankings. Online PR is more about client perception, managing exposure, and building relationships with key influencers. Where some confusion lies is that very similar techniques are now used to achieve both goals.

Developing Key Relationships

Certainly the largest difference between online and offline PR is the diverse and fragmented nature of online media. Your offline press targets may consist of 40-50 publications, online that total may well run into several hundred, potentially more. These contacts themselves will almost certainly be diverse, spread worldwide, some professional writers, many part-time amateurs.

Obviously maintaining one-to-one relationships with all of these people is unrealistic due to time constraints, however, be aware of the key influencers in your industry, find out which sites are the highest trafficked or have the most RSS subscribers and make sure you try to forge relationships with them.

Going Social

A valuable alternative to forming direct relationships online is community participation. A key part of any campaign is being aware of where and how your industry communicates online, these days most industries now have forums and message boards, influential industry blogs and Twitter communities. It’s vital that you’re not just aware of these, but active participation will ensure that you have a direct line to these influencers at what should be a minimal time cost.

Writing For The Web

Often the bane of the offline journalist, mundane press releases and content along the lines of “We’ve just hired John Smith” or “Our new Widget 3000 is the best Widget since the Widget 2000″, these kind of topics just don’t cut it as content any more – they never really did. Whereas before a cosy relationship with a tame journalist may have helped snooze inducing releases get published, online it really is the content that counts. You will find yourself having to water down brand messages and promotion in order to maximise your take-up rate.

Before you sit down and write anything, ask yourself what’s in it for other people. Despite being a great bunch, bloggers (I’m one myself) are generally pretty selfish. They’re not going to publish something just because you ask them to. You have to give them something in return.

6 Great Paths To Publication

1. News – Bloggers can’t resist genuinely newsworthy stories that aren’t already published all over the web. A possible alternative to this is expert commentary on breaking industry news.
2. Humour – everyone loves a bit of humour, especially bloggers.
3. Controversy – Be careful here, controversy works very well at generating publicity, much of it negative. Be prepared to defend yourself and field some awkward questions – Ryanair, we’re looking at you.
4. Tools and applications – Building great tools and apps and making them available for free is a sure-fire way of getting great publicity.
5. Resources – Articles that act as how to guides or resource lists are usually well received.
6. Poll and survey results and data – Try conducting customer and industry surveys and publish the results via press release and offer them to key industry sites in advance of publication.

Writing Tips

• Be aware of the keywords that people use to find your products/services, and be sure to use these in key areas such as press release titles or page headings.
• Keep it short and punchy. People tend to scan text online. Bullet points and lists work well.
• A punchy attention grabbing headline is key, this is what readers will see first and influence their decision to read or not.
• Work an angle – where possible relate the content to something topical that is happening in the news or your industry.

Time For Release

Once you’re happy with the content of your press release there are several dedicated syndication sites such as PR Newswire, PRWeb and PR.com. However, by just syndicating to these sites you’re almost certainly missing a huge proportion of your market. Contacting news sites and blogs directly will bring far better short term success and will also help to develop a long-term relationship.

• Start by creating a list of blog and news sites in your industry. Google is a good place to start, use searches like [your industry]+news and [your industry]+blog to find some established sites. Follow their blogroll links to find out who they link to. Search blog directories and Technorati to create an extensive list of your press targets.
• Contact them all individually, introduce yourself and your company, ask them if they’re happy to receive press releases from you, and ask about their editorial policy
• Keep a spreadsheet of information such as URL, contact email, key staff, editorial policies and notes on the site content. This will help you later when it comes to choosing who to send individual releases to. For example, some sites may be happy to conduct product reviews, others may prefer to concentrate on industry news. The key here is to continuously add to this and to keep it updated over time.

Pre-release be sure to publish the release on your site and link to it, rather than emailing the whole thing to people. Bloggers don’t generally like to just republish releases, they’ll generally want to rewrite them and offer their own opinions. The editorial integrity of blogs is pretty sacred to many bloggers, don’t try to ride roughshod over this.

Be sure to include high quality images that you’re happy for people to re-use. Again, don’t email these, give them a link to them

Some Examples Of Successful PR/Social Media Campaigns

Will It Blend? – A great example of a brand using the humour hook to generate publicity. Blendtec got around the problem of having a fairly mundane product by videoing their blenders being used to destroy all manner of interesting items.

Compare The Meercat – A fantastic integrated campaign, engaging users on a variety of social media, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and of course the microsite.

Ryanair – Ryanair are either the kings of the contraversy hook, or they just don’t care about PR at all. I’d go for the latter, especially when carfully crafted stories such as this, this and this manage to get them a disproportionate amount of media attention from the national press. How damaging some of these stories are to the brand is of course debatable.

Barack Obama – The Obama presidential and nomination campaigns both focused on listening, engaging and getting people involved. Another cross channel campaign, engaging on Twitter and a range of online tools to increase participation.

Measuring Impact

One of the advantages of the internet is the fact that almost everything is measurable. Whereas offline you may be relying on a press cuttings service and measuring success in column inches, online you can measure an almost infinite number of metrics, such as visits, sales, links, search rankings, social media mentions etc.

Of course, to be able to do this you need the correct tools. Some of my favourite ones are,

Google Analytics for measuring traffic, referring sites, keyword search data.
Blogpulse – for tracking brand/story mentions in the blogosphere
Google Alerts – Sign-up to receive an email alert each time you brand is mentioned online
Technorati – Another great way to search what blogs are talking about.

While playing around on Digg yesterday I began to notice a lot of stories in the upcoming section that were either from the BNP website, or were from blogs sympathetic to their cause.

For the uninitiated Digg is a social news site where people share interesting stories by submitting links and voting for stories that they find interesting. Digg has the potential to send huge amounts of traffic to links that prove popular, raising their profile considerably. For this reason many site owners try to ‘game’ Digg in order to increase the level of traffic to their websites.

The BNP (The British National Party) for those people unacquainted with their politics is a “far-right whites only political party based in the UK. (Paraphrased from Wikipedia)

While I don’t want to get into a political debate regarding political views, a study of the submissions being made to Digg read as a good study on how NOT to do social media.

Concerted Effort?

After a little digging (no pun intended) it became clear that there has been a concerted effort to submit as many pages from the bnp.org.uk website as possible with little regard to their quality, topic or relevance. Some submissions for example are simply candidate profile pages or navigational pages with very little content. Submitting poor quality pages such as these are a sure sign of  some form of suspicious voting activity.

The Digg search function makes it easy to isolate all articles being submitted from a specific domain – all submissions from bnp.org.uk can be viewed here.

Using date filtering it’s also possible to view when the articles are being submitted – over the past 12 months there have been an average of 212 submissions each month. Compare this to The Conservative Party with has 32 submissions from their website, and the Labour Party website which totals just 7 submissions during this entire 12 month period, the number of submissions is far above what you would expect from a political party. In fact, even The Sun, the UK’s highest circulation national newspaper has only 1000 more submissions over the time period.

Reading through some of the comments on the stories I found some postings by a couple of regular Digg users that indicate that I’m certainly not the first person to notice this unusual activity.

For anybody who doesn’t know, the BNP has recently made a big push into Digg and other social media sites, enlisting members to vote up their press releases on a daily basis.

Jordan117

Doing a search of BNP submissions I found the following comment:

“Operation BNP Outreach is proving to be a huge success – keep up the good work, comrades.
By 6 June, with lots more hardwork and a fair wind, we should have our first MEP!
VOTE BNP – you know it makes sense!”

This ‘Operation outreach’ seems to be what is causing the trouble.

TheAuditor

Poor Submission Selection

This first lesson to learn is that topic is everything. Submitting poor quality stories will not get your submission onto the front page of the site. Of the 3036 submissions just 5 have received more than 100 votes. Compare this number to popular front pages submissions which frequently run into thousands of votes.

Wrong Target?

In all probability the BNP submissions will have minimal impact at Digg as on the whole users of the site tend to be at the opposite end of the political scale. During the US elections the user base was well known for ‘Digging up’ positive Obama submissions, with one entitled “Digg this if you voted for Obama” receiving a huge 38,443 votes. Submitting controversial far-right political material is unlikely to generate success as the majority user base will ‘bury’ articles far before they come close to reaching the front page.

Clumsy Tactics

The submission and voting tactics that are being used also arouse suspicion, with the same users submitting content from the site over and over again and voting on each other’s submissions – not always suspicious activity on its own, but when couple this is a distinct lack of submission and voting activity on other domains it begins to look more and more like a deliberate strategy to promote content from a specific domain – which incidentally is against the Digg terms of service.

What Can You Learn?

As a business owner social media is a powerful medium if used correctly.

• Create great content, give knowledge and expertise away for free. In social terms, content really is king.
• Make sure you choose the right audience. Write for your users and submit to sites that are consistent with these topics and demographics.
• Submissions from your readers are more powerful, getting your network of staff to submit everything on your site is easily noticed.
• Interact, get involved with real users of social sites. Network and communicate, you will find that relationships are what breeds social success.
• Don’t be tempted to cheat or get involved in schemes to promote your own stories. This kind of activity is almost always spotted.

What is Twitter?

The basic idea is that users have 140 characters to post their message, and then this message (a tweet) appears to their ‘followers’. When you choose to ‘follow’ people you see their tweets. Conversely when they ‘follow’ you they see your tweets.

Twitter is simply what you make it to be. You choose who you follow, and therefore the kind of updates that you see. For example, if you choose to follow the key movers and shakers in your industry, then you’ll not only keep abreast of the latest industry news, but the chances are you’ll also get to hear about it before anyone else. Not only that, but you’ll also have a direct communications channel with industry figures such as publishers, PRs, bloggers competitors and consumers.

Will it work for me?

Maybe, maybe not. If your customer demographic is 16-40, tech aware and users of social media, then getting a presence on Twitter should be a very high priority. Even if your demographic just targets the 16-40 year old age range then you would still be surprised at the number of your customers and potential customers that are already using the service.

Some notable Twitter stats (Hitwise & Quantcast) -

• Twitters largest age group is 35-44 years of age accounting for 25.9% of all users
• 63% of users are male
• UK Twitter traffic has trebled in 2009
• There are an estimated 8 million Twitter users
• 53% Earn over £40,000 p/a
• 63% Have at attained a college education or higher

First Steps

1. Sign up for an account. You’ll certainly want to register your company name, maybe even individual accounts for key staff within your company. The main thing to consider here is how much time people can spare. It’s probably better to have several people using a single active account than a few seldom used accounts.
2. Make sure you add a picture to your account. A clear logo or company name is a must. If you’re registering individual people then a clear face picture.
3. Add your bio – a clear concise introduction of who you are and what you do.
4. Follow people interested in your company and your industry. This may include customers, potential customers, competitors or suppliers.
5. Start to interact. This isn’t a forum for you to post what you’re up to every moment of the day. Ask questions, answer other people’s questions, give opinions, offer tips and advice and post useful links and information. The more useful your Twitter stream, the more followers you are likely to attract and retain. Simply spamming your products and services is likely to lose you all of your followers. Don’t be afraid to put a human face on things and use some personality. People are there to talk and listen to you, not to hear a brand message.
6. Above all, be sure to have a clear strategy and goals as to what you want your Twitter account to achieve, who your messages to be aimed at, and how you want to be viewed by your followers.
7. While I don’t want to spend too long on the basic account functions, there are several Twitter guides aimed at beginners, have a read of some of these to get a taste of how the real basics work. Some of the best ones can be found here, here and here.

How To Choose Who To Follow

Choosing who you follow is one of the most important steps that you’ll take. These are the people whose updates you’ll be seeing, the people that may choose to follow you back, and the people who you’ll be forming relationships with.

I recommend using tools like Twitter Search, Twellow, and MrTweet to find people talking about topics in your industry.

How To Get People To Follow You

• Follow people relevant to you, many people follow people back if they are tweeting about similar topics.
• Leverage non-twitter properties, promote your Twitter account on your blog, emails and business cards.
• Twitter isn’t a one way conversation, talk to people, and not just to those that are already following you.
• Make sure you’re following key people in your industry, this is where Twitter ‘communities’ are formed and you need to make sure you’re part of it.
• Be an expert – be free and easy with advice, tips and answers. Being an expert on a topic isn’t enough, you also need to look like one.
• ALWAYS make sure your profile is complete with a picture and bio, and preferably have more than a handful of tweets to your name. With an empty profile it’s difficult for people to gauge who you are and therefore hard to make a decision to follow you.
• Post interesting material – posting great links and info is the best way to build a reputation as someone who needs to be followed rather than be ignored. Make sure it’s not just links to your own site. Make sure you subscribe to the RSS feeds of key industry blogs and news sites. These are a great source of interesting industry links that will provide a great source of message ideas.
• Organise contests, giveaways and give discount codes, reward those that do follow you.

Ideas On How To Use Twitter For Your Business

• Getting feedback – Twitter is a great way to get free and impartial advice on product and service decisions.
• Making connections – Bloggers, publishers, journalists and PRs are amongst the heaviest adopters of social media, and a large percentage of Twitter users fall into this category. If you want to make contact with the influencers in your industry, this is probably the best place to do it.
• Monitoring Conversation And Opinion – Twitter is a great way to monitor what is being said about your company, products and your industry. Use Twitter search to setup some search queries, subscribe to the RSS feed and receive email updates every time you’re mentioned on Twitter. Then follow those talking about you, respond and listen to what they have to say.
• Fast access to information – Twitter is a massive source of information and opinion. If you’re following the right people then you’ll get access to news and industry gossip far before its published on any official channels.
• Customer Service – Many companies are now using Twitter as an informal customer service channel, offering product information, answering questions quickly and fielding queries and feedback.
• Brand And Personalise Your Company – Not just branding your company and yourself as experts, but also use it as a chance to show off the real people behind the brand.
• Promoting items of interest – Use Twitter to publicise items of interest on your own website. Be careful here though, there is a fine line between drawing peoples attention to interesting posts and spamming them, so be careful what you post and how often.
• Giveaways and discounts – Reward your followers by offering giveaways, discounts and competitions. As well as increasing interaction and creating a buzz this will help follower retention and acquisition.
• Advertise vacancies and recruit staff – Many companies are turning to Twitter as a way to recruit staff. As well as being instant and free, you can guarantee that any respondents will already be interested in your company.

Case Studies

There are a wide range of companies already using Twitter, with a diverse number of aims, some are unsurprisingly better than others.

Businesses That ‘Get It’

• Zappos – While several members of the Zappos staff have Twitter accounts, the main company account is run by the company CEO. As well as covering the daily goings on at the company, the account is also used for obtaining feedback on website functionality and conducting giveaways. Approaching half a million followers this has to count as one of social medias most successful business users.
• JetBlue – Use the service to monitor people talking about the airline. Frequently responding to people, engaging in conversation, dealing with complaints and resolving issues in a organised and professional manner.
• WineEnthusiast – It’s not just big multi-nationals that can benefit. There are many wine bloggers, publishers, journalists and producers already using Twitter. The Wine Enthusiast website has connected with this group of influencers and posts relevant links for them and builds relationships with them.
• Whole Foods Market - Use Twitter as a way of connecting with their customers. They ask questions, engage in conversation and recommended resources and their podcasts.

In a hat-tip to HR Block, they explain in this interview how they use social media effectively for their company.

Business That Don’t

• Zenergy Internet Marketing - Directly offering (spamming) your services to other users is bad enough, but to do it without checking who they are, and as a consequence offering them to your competitors is just plain dumb. Pimping your services in this way is the equivilent to going up to people at a party and asking if they want to buy from you, without any form of introduction. You wouldn’t do it offline, so don’t do it online.
• Skittles – Skittles though it would be smart to publish every tweet that mentioned Skittles on it’s homepage. Of course as soon as this was picked-up upon many people started posting less than flattering comments about the product.
• Ryanir – After freely admitting that they have no interest in engaging in social media and calling bloggers ‘idiots’ it was a surprise to see a Ryanair account appear on Twitter. In what looks like a failure to establish a presence on the service, the door was left open to imposters to create accounts and pose as the company themselves. Attempts to contact Ryanair and to clarify the situation have failed.

Twitter Tools For Business

There are many free tools that help to make running a Twitter account far easier for a business. A short list of my favourite ones include.

• Tweetdeck – This time saving desktop application allows you to save time, organise and group your messages, send pictures, create custom searches and ensures you don’t miss anything important.
• Monitter – This is great for tracking products, company or brand mentions. Input your keywords and let Monittor do the rest.
• PollDaddy – Allows you to create polls for your followers. Useful for asking questions and getting feedback.
• TweetLater – A useful tool that will let you schedule your tweets and it will post them automatically.
• SplitTweet – This is a must if you’re monitoring several Twitter accounts. It allows you to follow and reply to tweets quickly and easily.

I am a regular user of Twitter and can be followed here!

Lets get one thing straight – Google is still the search engine to beat when it comes to archiving vast quantities of historical information and giving users a simple interface to retrieve this stored data. If you want to find expert reviews of that new LCD TV that you’re thinking of buying, research your homework, find that website that you can’t quite remember the URL of, look for a good cheesecake recipe, and whole host of other search query types, then Google is your first port of call.

However, where Twitter is coming into its own is enabling its users to get real-time access to information from real people.

Three main factors have contributed to Twitters strength in this area and will act as barriers to entry for others,

1. Twitter turns users into publishers – on Twitter people are the key. Everyone using the service is a publisher. Posting information, ideas and facts that effect and relate to them.

2. Achieved a critical mass – over the past few months the enormous growth of the Twitter user base means that with the huge amount of information being published every day by a massive number of users now increase the chances are that someone will have posted on the subject you’re looking for, and if needed you can even contact them directly.

3. Mobility – The concise nature of the service means that it is one of the first web services that is truly suited to use away from the computer and gives people the ability to post and access information on the go.

One of the first examples that brought home the power of the service to me personally was when travelling through London a couple of weeks ago only to experience the usual travel chaos.  A quick Twitter search on my phone revealed that depressingly there had been a fatality, and the station was unlikely to reopen for some time. With the use of Twitter I was even able to meet up at a bar with some friends who were also stuck in the area, and we then got updated via a Twitter travel service when the station had reopened.

Twitter isn’t just suited to turning miserable Friday evening travel chaos into drinking sessions. Even the major news outlets are waking up to realise the power of the service. During the G20 protests in London, Sky News, who were the first to announce a dedicated Twitter correspondent, dispatched three ‘Twitter reporters’ into the area who were tasked with reporting up to the minute news via their Tweets and the use of Twitpic for images. While following the progress of the events on both TV and the major news corporations websites, I increasingly found that is was Twitter search that was providing information far in advance and in many cases in more detail than was being provided though traditional sources.

It’s not just real-time national and local news where Twitter gives access to information that other search engines don’t. It’s also a great resource for “real peoples” product and service experiences. People are now far more likely to Tweet about their opinions on purchases than they are to blog about them or add their views to a reviews website. Consumer electronics, airlines, hotels and internet services companies have all been on the good and bad side of Twitter publicity. An added dimension is given by the ability for these companies to contact their users directly.

With user growth and usage being directly proportional to the volume of information continued growth can only mean increasing the services usefulness as a search engine.
Mainstream media has been among the first industries to wake-up to the potential of Twitter, and on the whole have embraced it as an additional news channel.
So what is next for Twitter? I can see their real-time search results taking on additional dimensions, perhaps some form of relevance ranking, additional sorting options and further integration to tie it more securely to the service. Monetisation of these search results is probably not too far away

Initially it was quite amusing – designing a high-spec ecomm website with bits of paper, scissors and a glue stick!  But it really worked.  We were able to get the page laid out very quickly, interact with it, drag bits around and play with spacing collaboratively – without touching a computer. 

I have been finding pencil sketches working well too, but this just took it an extra step as we could so easily drag bits around without having to erase pencil lines to make a change.

To help you along we have created a simple Cheat Sheet to put in front of your programmers to make sure that they are on the ball.  If they look at you all confused then you can give us a call.  Please click on the image to download the .pdf

It’s important not to make the mistake of assuming that as the need for links hasn’t changed, that the methods of acquiring them haven’t. Just as the web has changed from brochure websites to interactive communities so has the methods of building links to these sites.

So how did people used to build links?

• Directory submissions – We’ve all seen the “submit to 10,000 directories for $9.99″ adverts haven’t we? With that many links you can’t go wrong surely?
• Internal links – Footer links, yes I know, we’ve still got them!
• Paid links – need some quick links? Pop over to Pay-Per-Post and get a blogger to knock up some paid reviews.
• Forums and blog comments – Drop by, drop your links, nobody really cares right?

All of that sounds easy right? And to be fair it is, or was. Google wised up to all of these methods a long time ago. Some are devalued and won’t bring you any benefit, others are going to put your site in danger of being penalised.

So bearing all of this in mind, what should your link building strategy consist of in the Web 2.0 age?

• Directory submissions – I’m a firm believer that good directories will still pass value. Directories like Yahoo, JoeAnt, Business.com, BOTW, The Good Web Guide, Elib, Site Sift and many more are on my submit list. Niche directories that offer a comprehensive review process are also worth their weight in gold.
• Internal links – Logic dictates that footer links are probably devalued by now. Either way, it’s probably preferable making the most out of your standard navigation links. Include your keywords where possible. Make sure your navigation links are present on each and every page. Provide an additional breadcrumb navigation where this isn’t practical.
• Internal in-content links – It’s not just navigation links that help. Be aware when you’re using your keywords in your body text. Link them to your target pages.
• Online PR – Drop the paid links and start drawing up a list of sites that you HAVE to be seen on. Go through the list contacting them, form a relationship with them, find out what you need to do to get involved with their site. They may allow you to write editorial for them, offer to review your products, publish your link in their directory or even just give you a mention where relevant.
• Offline PR – A lot of people don’t give this any consideration. Bear in mind that a lot of offline PR is now also published online in digital editions. A surprising number of places don’t automatically include a link to the website, your PR has to be aware of this, normally it’s just a case of asking.
• 3rd party hosted pages – Make sure you have a presence on sites that offer profile pages. Facebook brand pages, About.org, Flickr, Squidoo and many other industry based sites.
• Press releases – Do something newsworthy. People generally aren’t interested in how your XPC-1i is different to your XPC-1ii, but they’ll probably want to write about it if you’ve just set a land speed record in it. Don’t just submit it to the PR outlets, but send it directly to the people that you want to publish it.
• Linkbait – Create worthwhile content. These days your site HAS to stand out. You need to offer something that others don’t. Create something useful, funny, or shocking – think like a tabloid newspaper editor or an encyclopedia publisher. Whatever you do, do it better than anyone else.
• Related industry pages – Don’t forget industry bodies and associations, suppliers, retailers or other business contacts with websites. Many have places where they would be happy to link to your site.
• Network – One of the most important of all. Join in with your industry online. Comment on blogs, post on forums, subscribe to RSS feeds, link up with people on Twitter. Networking with people will give plenty of opportunities to ask for a link. By getting involved though you’ll probably find that people link to you anyway.
• Competitive intelligence – Tools like Linkscape and Yahoo Site Explorer now mean that we have even more imformation than ever before about who links to our competitors. Find out who they are and then add them to your target list.

While linkbuilding over the past few years has become more skilled and time intensive, it isn’t always harder. Just like Web 2.0 linkbuilding 2.0 is all about developing relationships, information sharing and adding value.

It all started when a Dublin based web designer Jason Roe posted on his blog that he had found a potential bug on the Ryanair website which changed the displayed price of a ticket to €0.00 when he amended his flight times.

At this stage Ryanair had three options of how to deal with this,

1. Post on Jasons blog thanking him for notifying them of the error, explaining the steps that they had taken to rectify the problem. Possibly even offering him a discount for bringing this to their attention may have turned this into a positive piece of PR.
2. Fix the error and do nothing, solves the issue but not much else. The incident gets little attention and goes away.
3. Post on Jasons blog anonymously insulting him and his website.

In the event they opted to go for #3.

jason!
you’re an idiot and a liar!! fact is!
you’ve opened one session then another and requested a page meant for a different session, you are so stupid you dont even know how you did it! you dont get a free flight, there is no dynamic data to render which is prob why you got 0.00. what self respecting developer uses a crappy CMS such as word press anyway AND puts they’re mobile ph number online, i suppose even a prank call is better than nothing on a lonely sat evening!!

Although this was done anonymously, the Ryanair staff member was easily identified through his IP address. At this point having their staff members abusing people online becomes far more of a news story than a bug on their website ever was, and starts to get coverage on the major social news sites popular with bloggers like Digg, Reddit and Twitter.

Although Ryanair are starting to look bad for not listening to their customers, an apology and explanation for the comments would probably have sufficed and the story would have died before it gained any more momentum.

Unbelievably Ryanair then released an official statement further insulting Jason and bloggers everywhere.

“Ryanair can confirm that a Ryanair staff member did engage in a blog discussion. It is Ryanair policy not to waste time and energy in corresponding with idiot bloggers and Ryanair can confirm that it won’t be happening again.

“Lunatic bloggers can have the blog sphere all to themselves as our people are far too busy driving down the cost of air travel”.

This is now becoming a major story threatening to blow up in the faces of Ryanairs communications department. As well as national press coverage of the story this morning in The Times and The Telegraph people are now threatening boycotts of the airline over their treatment of customers, dragging up old grievances, and has sparked a raft of blog comments and even protest sites.

What Can We Learn From This?

1. It just goes to show how failing to deal with, or worse, dealing badly with negative online reputation can blow up in your face.
2. It shows how closely online and offline PR strategies are linked and should be treated as such.
3. The importance of having an online strategy that ALL staff are aware of and adhere to.
4. The power of an apology – it can turn negative PR into positive very quickly.

Is This Part Of A Wider Failing At Ryanair?

Managing the reputation of a budget airline such as Ryanair can never be an easy task at the best of times. Uphappy customers and poor press all take their toll. However, performing a quick audit of their online reputation throws up several areas for urgent attention and improvement.

Their search results, that threaten to take a battering after the latest round of blog posts and national media attention are already suffering. I have highlighted their own properties and positive results in green and negative results in red.

Worryingly for Ryanair, not only are they suffering from negative press in their search results, but there are also competitors and affiliate websites that are potentially stealing business from them, both in the natural results and though pay-per-click adverts.
Failure to respond to this is undoubtedly costing them business and keeps other Ryanair properties such as their hotels, magazine and insurance websites off of the first page. The PPC competition needs to be addressed though a campaign of their own.

In terms of their reputation on social media they fare even worse than in the search results. Searching Technorati for blog posts about them brings back an overwhelmingly negative sentiment, the same is replicated on Twitter, though Digg is more mixed however Michael O’Leary is named among the worst corporate leaders of 2006. Lots of negative sentiment to Ryanair in the comments though.

Ryanair protest sites such as Ryanair Campaign and a Ryanair Customers Google Group seem to be very busy with complaints from users and boast visitor numbers running into the hundreds of thousands.

5 Steps For Ryanair To Take To Fix Their Online Reputation

1. Address the search results problems using SEO to boost their own properties onto the first page while pushing down negative results.
2. Use press releases and rich media to take ownership of Google news, video and image search results.
3. Use a PPC campaign to outbid competitors bidding on their own brand names.
4. Instigate a blogger outreach programme to listen to and address peoples public concerns – turning negative PR into positive.
5. Create a social aspect to their own website, bringing complaints and concerns in-house so they can be dealt with more quickly and effectively – firefighting negative PR and limiting it’s impact.

Grid style product layouts are now the norm and dare I say it, a little bit dull.  And just as you are congratulating yourselves on getting all your ducks in a row, as it were, the big players are moving on and showing some more innovative ways of displaying products.

Again Zappos lead the way with their Zappos Product Explore – click on a product you like such as a Red Stiletto, you are then shown 54 similar products in a matrix. Horizontally you see products that are similar in style (more high heels in other colours). Vertically you see products in the same colour (red sandals).”

Compare this with Clarks new website which though quite good, (especially on customer service) pales in comparison to its US rival with regards innovative product display.

Check out also some other retailers daring to try something a little bit different.

Border’s virtual bookcase

Amazon WindowShop – turn on  your speakers!

Apple iTunes Cover Flow

The pleasure was all the greater given that no PR effort had been made to get a write up.

“Wine merchant Yapp Brothers is celebrating its 40th year in the business with a suitably swish revamp of it’s online home. The fresh design combines a stylish layout with a pleasantly personal tone, and offers several useful new features. These include an ‘easy wine selector’, which makes selections based on the colour, style, grape and price of your choice, and a food-and-wine matching facility that tells you which tipple goes best with specific meals.

Yapp Brothers specialises in wines from the Rhone, Loire, and Provence regions, many of which you won’t find anywhere else, and sells a great deal more besides”

Not sure what we had to do to get 5 stars

Quick links to the Yapp website
Food and wine matcher
Easy Wine Search

You tell me!

One of the sites that we’ve designed recently, Conference Genie, uses a cartoon style vector illustration to capture their three service in a unique way.  I thought I would share with you the process that I went through to create these graphics.

Each character starts off with pencil sketches, which helps me and the client to get the same feel for the illustration.  This part of the process should be a time of a lot of discussion and collaboration with the client.

The sketch is then scanned into the computer and opened in Illustrator.  Here I outline the sketch and start building up some shapes.

The shapes are then filled with colours, and tweaked according to what is needed.

Finishing is then applied to the illustration in Photoshop and it is incorporated into the website design for a unique look and feel.

It’s well known that discounting does not engender loyalty necessarily and so retailers need to find other ways to add value.

First lets see what customers actually want:

EMEA survey

A recent study by EMEA concluded that the two biggest factors, likely to influence consumer spending during a credit crunch, are competitive prices (79%) and a combination of good prices AND good customer service (72%).

Retailers relying on brand pedigree, product uniqueness or reputation to see them through the downturn in spending may come unstuck as these were listed as the three least influential factors.

In a recent New Media Age survey consumers said:

89% believe internet has better prices
68% said online was cheaper (taking into account ancillary costs of “outside” shopping
81% said Internet offered wider range
89% cited ease of finding items
95% cited ease of comparing prices

Where the Internet could improve
74% said lack of waiting made high street attractive [Personnally I've never understood why retailers cant offer next day delivery if items are ordered before a certain time]

70% said customer service was better on the high street [there's so much to say about this that I will write a separate blog post about this]

So customer service (combined with customer service) and lack of waiting are key elements that customers want.  Lets see what other retailers are doing to respond to this.  I am assuming that if you run and e-commerce site that you have already covered the basics: free delivery, free returns, properly organised website with your telephone number and security in place etc..

We have scoured the Internet to see what successful retailers have come up with in terms of building customer loyalty and service over and beyond the usual discounting:

Customer service – Delivery
It’s always baffled me that retailers still think it’s ok to take 5 days to arrange delivery.  Next day delivery should be standard for most products. ASOS have made a start on this at least by offering Saturday deliveries at no extra cost as well as offering a next day service.  With 74% retailers citing this as making the high street more attractive I would have thought this should be the most pressing thing for most retailers.  Use a branded delivery service that can represent your brand.

Customer service availability
Zappos, an Online retailer that specializes in selling apparel and shoes has been able to grow from $1.6 million in 2000 to $597 million in revenue last year alone. Some of Zappos’ highlight features include their excellent customer service and a free overnight shipping on all orders. Over the past 8 years.  “We`re continuing our focus on service, which includes 24/7 customer service, free overnight shipping and free return shipping with a 365-day return policy.”

Customer service – communication
Letting customers know its coming – If you’re sending something bulk then why not call ahead to let the customers know.  www.naturalcurtaincompany.com do this and it’s very effective as people will tell other people about the great service.

Customer service – Know what your service is.  99% right is not enough
Make sure your Website is 100% accurate. Zappos ran into trouble when it used to have the manufacturers drop-ship orders, because their inventory was often off and created backorders and unhappy customers. Even 99% is not good enough.

Increasing loyalty
Amazon – Amazon Prime  – Amazon Prime is an exclusive membership program that gives you and your family the benefits of unlimited One-Day shipping on eligible Amazon.co.uk purchases for an annual membership fee of £47.97. During your one month trial, you will enjoy all the benefits of being an Amazon Prime member.

Understand FREEMIUM – the concept of making money out of giving things away for FREE.  This is not for eveyone but you need to understand the power of it. What ever you are selling think of what can be given away for free which will add value to your proposition. Give your service away for free, acquire a lot of customers very efficiently through word of mouth, referral networks, organic search marketing, etc., then offer premium priced value added services or an enhanced version of your service to your customer base.” viz google, facebook – read more http://inside.123-reg.co.uk/archives/chris-anderson-free-long-tail

Communication – The ability to communicate with your customer base is now as important as ever. The ability to get your message to your clients quickly and efficiently can translate into large profits. Blogging, mailing lists and participation in social networks can and do make a difference. Again using the example of Zappos over 400 members of staff use the microblogging service Twitter. This gives the company the ability to contact thousands of people in an instant about offers or new products. The CEO of Zappos alone has 35,000 people watching his updates.

Discount vouchers being sent with each delivery. Whilst constant discounting is not the direction to go in, it’s good for encouraging viral sales.

Membership -Sexypantiesandnaughtyknickers.com – get 15% off for life once you reach a minimum spending limit (bronze) then 25% silver etc.

more to follow…as we find them

Apparently there is a recession.

The media will have it that the world is in meltdown and that it’s armageddon out there. 

Woolies, MFI and Adams have gone to the wall.  Well honestly, I am not surprised.  Woolworths and MFI were awful businesses stuck in a time warp and deserved to die.  They were slothful and easily out done by more dynamic competitors.  MFI have done nothing in the last 20 years to dispel their brand image of producing low quality, dated furniture.   Woolworths were kidding themselves if they thought that people actually enjoyed entering their shops.  They may have been cheap but even the bargain hunters appreciate clean, well presented shops.  I never went into Adams but they looked pretty dated even though they were relatively new.

Other companies are retracting as well.  Marks and Spencer are closing some food halls but so what.  They had over expanded in the good times.  The fact that they are closing a few poorly performing shops isn’t the death knell.  It’s just a little tightening following a gluttonous expansion.  And maybe it means that the consumer, who is a little more careful these days would prefer not to pay an excessive premium for near identical products being sold next door. 

The care free spending attitude has changed and retailers need to adapt, but it doesn’t mean that people won’t spend money if the product is well priced and well presented.

This all reminds me of a previous hullabaloo in 2000 when the .com bubble burst.  The world’s press then tried to write off the whole Internet as a busted flush, when in fact there were many businesses doing very nicely online thank you.  It was only the news grabbers who had borrowed millions to set up spurious, hubristic .com world beating websites that failed to succeed.  They were poorly thought out businesses and poorly executed.  They too deserved to die.  There were many smaller, prudent businesses making a decent return throughout this period.

So, as before and as now there may be some troubled waters but there is no reason for retailers to panic. (Though for bricks and mortar businesses, they need to renegotiate their exorbitant rents with their landlords).  This is especially true online.  People still have money and they would prefer to spend it online. Anecdotal and personal experience shows that online sales on most websites are growing.  Latest sales figures from those retailers that have reported on Christmas sales also supports this:

John Lewis – online sales up by 27%
House of Fraser – online sales increase of 150%  (1.7 million visitors over Christmas period)
M&S – online sales up by 29% (although down 7.1% overall)
Ocado – up 97%
Sainsburys – online sales up 27%
Thorntons – online sales up 25%
Next Direct – up 1.1% increase since last year
Aldi visitor traffic up 64% year on year
Play.com Sales up 20%

Our own clients at Datadial have also reported record online sales. 

The big question for these retailers is how to return to charging full value for their products and services and to get away from the omni present discounting.  This is the subject of my following blog.

I think the root of my dislike is the way they diminish your creative output.  Many others have written about how going straight to a computer with a design can limit the effectiveness of the outcome.  Mindy from Vidget wrote late last year how she’s found her creativity drop significantly the more she looks at gallery websites around the internet.  This oversaturation of information is exactly how I feel.

When I go to my sketchbook rather than my computer, I can often come up with much better results, and much more quickly.  So my New Years resolution is to use my Moleskin to its fullest, filling it with sketches and drawings, before touching the keyboard & mouse.

This common question isn’t limited to just blogs– news sections, articles, careers sections… any grouping of content will at some point cause the question.

For those who don’t know- ‘news.google.co.uk’ is an example of a subdomain, where “news” is the subdomain of “google.co.uk”.

A subdirectory is a folder within a domain- e.g.- ‘google.com/analytics/’ where “analytics” is a subdirectory (or folder) within “google.com”.

While these may appear relatively similar, subdomains and subdirectories have different uses for a site, as well as different effects in a pages ability to rank in search engines.

Generally, search engines will allow pages within subdirectories to rank easier in comparison to pages within a subdomain. This reason being subdirectories inherit more authority from the domain name, whereas pages within subdomains inherit less authority from the domain (thus being treated similar to an external domain, although still receiving some of the authority from the main domain.)

So if subdirectories inherit more authority from a domain, why do companies choose to use subdomains?

Subdomains are used to segment a large amount of content on a site by a specific topic. If the number of pages are relatively high for a section (e.g. hundreds of pages), it may be logically better to place these pages within a subdomain rather than a subdirectory.

Otherwise, we recommend keeping within the content within the domain (i.e. using subdirectories)- this will make it easier for pages to rank better in search results as these pages inherit more authority from the main domain.

more websites = more traffic = more sales.

Logically, this may seem like a good idea- after all, two hands are better than one, five are better than two, right?

When it comes to domain names and search engine optimisation- this couldn’t be further from the truth!

Sadly, many site owners with limited SEO knowledge make this assumption- either, pointing many other domains to their existing site or copying their existing site and hosting it separately with other domain names. Both methods don’t work, and are likely to get your existing site penalised, causing less traffic and less sales. Why?

Search engines use links to crawl pages within and outside of a site. If links point to a page on a domain name, search engine robots will crawl that page. However, having multiple domains pointing to a site allows search engines multiple entrances to the same content, effectively presenting the same page multiple times.

E.g. if www.mysite1.com points to the same server directory as www.mysite2.com, search engines can see the same single page through more than one source- and if not correctly managed (using 301 redirects) duplicate content problems will occur which will result in the sites receiving a decrease in rankings and potentially a ban from search engines altogether.

In the second instance, by hosting the same content on multiple sites the duplicate content issue is also present, resulting in a drop and a possible ban for all duplicate sites (including the original site) in extreme circumstances and probable indexing issues.

How Can Multiple Domains Provide Any Value?

Having multiple domains can provide your site with additional value if managed correctly. For branding purposes, companies may purchase premium domain names which can potentially provide additional direct traffic from searchers typing in the URL directly.

For example, searchers for “cables” may directly type into their address bar “cables.com”, providing this site with additional direct traffic.

Other large corporations buy the localised versions of their domain name, partly to protect their brand and largely to help with usability.

For example, hp.co.uk provides the UK index page for HP, while HP also own hp.com, and hp.com.au, to name a few.

How is it then that large companies are able to use multiple domains and not get penalised in search engines? The answer is, these domains are managed correctly and redirect these domains to the appropriate pages on the server. By using a ‘301 Permanently moved’ redirect, these domains point to a single page on the server, therefore minimising duplicate content issues.

i.e. when someone types in hp.co.uk, a request is made to the HP server, where the server then identifies this request and directs the visitor to the UK main page on the universal site, therefore not duplicating the content on the page as search engines see the same file on the same server, be it through hp.co.uk or through http://welcome.hp.com/country/uk/en/welcome.html

Should You Consider Using Multiple Domains?

If you are a large corporation and if this will help the usability of your site then consideration of multiple domains should be made. However, if your brand is not internationally known and if there is no main benefit and no potential direct traffic, we strongly advise against it. Remember- very few people are going to directly type in ‘this-is-my-nice-branded-domain.com’ or ‘thisismynicebrandeddomain.com’- domains such as this example will bring little (if any) direct traffic from the domain name, and whilst they may look good for additional branding, they provide no real support to your current sites domain.

Google updated their policy on brand name keywords and trademark terms that trigger competitor’s adverts to display back in May. Previously, competitors could not bid on other brand names to display their ads, but since Google updated their policies on brand name keywords and trademarks, competitors in various industries have been using competition brand names to trigger their adverts.
It has been reported keywords include “Interflora”, “Intaflora” and “Inter-flora” which have been used to trigger the display of competitors adverts.

Interflora’s argument is that the actions of Marks & Spencers and Flowers Direct are a breach of trademark law, as marketing director Michael Barringer stated:

“The Interflora brand is extremely valuable and we will not tolerate competitors taking advantage of it and infringing our right.”

However, both M&S and Flowers Direct are abiding by the Google Terms of Service- no mention of the band is made within the advert itself and is now somewhat of a common practice across industries, as a spokeswoman for Marks & Spencers was quoted saying they are “extremely surprised by Interflora’s course of action” adding it was industry-wide practice and not unlawful.

Interestingly, there has been no mention of Interflora or any other company suing Google over the use of trademark terms in AdWords for allowing this to happen.

This is not the first report of companies suing over the use of their trademark terms on Google AdWords either, as Dominic Farnsworth (a partner at Lewis Silkin) commented:

“There are a lot of legal letters flying around in the background at the moment and many disputes are being resolved without the need for legal proceedings”.

This poses an interesting situation for advertisers and search agencies- how long is it before competitors terms cause a lawsuit against your company or client, or how many more examples are needed before Google considers refining their policies? As Google have recently allowed the advertising of gambling and alcohol related sites, it appears they are expanding their policies to get even more from their advertising revenue—could this be Google’s solution to the current economic downturn? Let us know your comments.

Every product page should have great descriptions of the product, as well as inviting and well-presented professional photography to entice and attract searchers into making a purchase. However, one common mistake many e-commerce sites make is copying the descriptions written by the manufacturer.

Lets take the Apple iPhone product page as an example:

From the official product page, searching for the first sentence “With its beautiful 3.5-inch widescreen display and Multi-Touch controls, iPhone is also one amazing iPod” in Google returns 13,500 pages!

This shows there are hundreds of pages using the default description as the description on their pages- causing lots of duplicate content in Google’s index.

Why is This a Problem for You?

Duplicate content is a large problem search engines face. Search engines do not want to display pages in their results which contain the same content as another, as this can affect their credibility in delivering the closest possible results to which the searcher is looking for.

In addition, search engines do not want to waste their time indexing content which is provided on another site, so may skip a duplicated page, and are likely to skip an entire site if too many duplications are found. This not only has an effect on the new product page but also has a knock-on effect to other pages already indexed- penalising your site.

And this example is just for one product- supposing you sold other Apple products and copied the description from the manufacturers product pages? This means a large amount of the text on your product pages is copied.

This causes a problem for your site in search engines, as duplicate content is a major problem which search engines can and will penalise your site for!

So how can you avoid this problem? The ideal solution is to not copy the manufacturers description to begin with. Instead, creating your own product descriptions is far better- not only can you tailor it more specifically to your customers needs and desires (thus getting you a better conversion rate), but this also gives search engines more unique content to crawl when indexing your page.

If however it is essential to copy the product description from the manufacturers site, ensure you add additional unique content to the page- and don’t forget to reference and link to the manufacturers page.

By applying this small change, search engines are less likely to penalise your site for duplicate content, giving you a better chance of outranking your competitors, along with other on-page and off-page optimisation techniques!

For those who don’t know, footer links are a common method for linking pages to other pages within a site. Placed at the bottom of the page, footer links link to some of the popular pages of a site- like this fine example from ebay-

The advantage is search engines will potentially crawl these links more often as they will come across them more often, thereby noticing any changes made to these pages and follow the links on these category pages to pages deeper within the site.

This in principal is a great idea- take a category page for example, which lists all of the products within that category. If you add a product to that category and place a link to the product on the category page, if that category page is linked from other pages in the footer links, chances are search engines will crawl the category page and follow the link to the new product page (in principal anyway).

The problem is search engines do not have as high a regard for footer links (or any links towards the bottom of the page) as they do to links towards the top of the page. Because of this, footer links are no longer as effective as they once were (but this doesn’t mean they are redundant, yet).

My thoughts are how long is it before footer links become worthless? In my opinion, footer links do little for visitor navigation anyway- when was the last time you scrolled to the bottom of the page to find out where in the site you are, or to find other pages which might be of interest?

My take on this is this- in time, footer navigation will have little effect to the internal link structure of a website in the eyes of search engines. Enter breadcrumb navigation!

For those who have no idea what it is, breadcrumb navigation is a form of navigation placed towards the top of a website (either in a vertical or horizontal format) which uses hyperlinks to show the depth of the current page within the site, allowing easier navigation to previous (higher level) pages. Here’s a great example from The Financial Times.

Users and search engines can easily identify related pages and can work backwards to higher level sub-category and category pages.

The beauty of breadcrumb navigation over footer links for SEO purposes is breadcrumb navigation is at the top of the page, therefore having a higher regard than footer links in the eyes of the search engines, as well as being useful for site usability (a visitor is more likely to click a breadcrumb link than scrolling to the bottom of the page and clicking a footer link).

Breadcrumb navigation is also better for larger sites with hundreds of pages, as dynamically generating breadcrumb links is relatively easy to achieve (remember to avoid doing this in JavaScript- search engines have difficulty in indexing JavaScript). By using keyword rich anchor text for breadcrumb links, search engines will be able to get a better understanding of the pages content, as well as being able to traverse links up and down the site, improving the accessibility for search engine spiders.

I’m not suggesting everyone rushes out and does away with footer links- footer links are still an effective method of internal linking. However I am suggesting you look into implementing breadcrumb navigation in your site if you haven’t already done so, especially dynamic sites with 100+ pages. Having the two is not likely to hurt your rankings (although this is dependent on the number of links already on the page) and you are likely to find an improvement in the number of indexed pages over time by implementing breadcrumb navigation.

Not surprisingly, search advertising should continue to be the largest category, growing from $9.1 billion in 2007 to $20.9 billion in 2013.
- Source: C|Net News, June 30, 2008

While the current spend on natural SEO?

SEO: $1.3 billion (11%)
- Source: SEMPO data via Massimo Burgio, SMX Madrid 2008

So, out of a total of around $10.4 billion spent on search, only $1.3 billion, or 12.5% is spent on natural search placement. Therefore you would expect the potential traffic from natural search to be the smaller piece of the pie, right?

Wrong.

Looking at the Google heat map we can see that it’s the natural results that catch the attention of users viewing the page.

This superior visibility is matched by the click through rate data,

The natural results in Google drive more than 70% of search traffic, though only account for 12.5% of online spend.

Why is this? Take your pick from any one or more of the following,

• PPC is an easier concept for people to understand, there is a general lack of education and understanding of the SEO process.
• PPC is quicker (almost instant) to get results and you only pay for traffic that you actually receive. There is a higher perception of accountability and control.
• Traditional marketers pay far less attention to SEO, column inches in the business press given over to SEO are far less than PPC. Again this may well be due to a lack of SEO understanding amongst journalists.
• There is a lack of trust in a segmented and unregulated SEO marketplace. A basic lack of understanding handicaps buyers and can lead to acceptance of poor advice and wrong buying decisions.

If you take your website seriously, you’d hire a professional Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) company who dedicate their time to improving the visibility of your website, and all good reputable SEO companies will provide link building within their package… (and if they don’t then I’d stay well away!)

BUT… what exactly is link building- What’s the point?

First we need to understand what a ‘link’ is. Short for hyperlink, a link is navigation to another web page- this can be on the same site or a completely different website. Search engines ‘crawl’ the web based on these links, and more importantly, links from other websites are considered votes or recommendations. The more links your website has from greater authority websites, the more ‘votes’ have been assigned to that page, which search engines take into consideration when ranking your website in their search results.

A web page can have two types of links- inbound and outbound links, inbound being links coming to your page from other websites, outbound going to another webpage on a different website.
Reciprocal links are links from different websites that exchange links for the purposes of creating more inbound links. Search engines can see that the two (or more) websites have linked to each other and give less weight to these links in comparison to one way links.

Inbound links are the focus of a link building campaign, and there are several ways of achieving inbound links. There are also several other factors to consider in inbound link building. For example:

credit

•    The topic of the webpage linking to you- If a site linking to you is within the same topic as your site and the page being linked to, the link will have more weight than from a page from an unrelated topic. E.g. ‘dog grooming’ page linking to ‘dog brushes’ on a different site will have a greater weight than a link from a ‘real estate’ page to ‘dog brushes’.

•    The authority of the site linking to you- The authority of the linking website is also important- a link from CNN.com to your website will be far more important than a link from AdamsHomeMadeNews.com as CNN have a higher authority.

•    The location of the link on the page- The location of the link- search engine robots read the code on a webpage from top to bottom. Generally links at the bottom of the html code have less weight than a link in the middle of an article.

•    The text used within the link- (known as ‘anchor text’) The text used in an inbound link- the anchor text helps inform the search engines what the page is about as it crawls your page. So if your webpage is about dog grooming brushes and the anchor text is ‘dog grooming brushes’, this link will have a greater weight than the same link but with less relevant anchor text such as ‘dog stuff’.

•    The text on the page linking to you- (including the text surrounding the link) The text on the page and around the link also helps in the weighting of an inbound link. The text on the page and surrounding the link (i.e. within the same paragraph) should contain the keywords to the pages topic, and if the topic is closely related to yours (as it should be), the search engines can identify this is relevant to your page, thereby increasing the weighting of the link.

… as well as several other factors.

So now you have an idea of some of the factors used in link building, how can this help your business? Well firstly, if you are performing your own link building of your site, taking these considerations onboard can greatly increase the effectiveness of the inbound links you get.

If you’re already hiring a company to do this for you, you can evaluate their efficiency. If you’re currently looking to hire a company to do this, you can find out how much they really know about the topic.
You can also assess the status of your current inbound links. You may find that potential changes could increase the visibility of your website in search results (inbound link statistics are taken into consideration when search engines rank your website in their results), you may also find that changes may need to be made to improve the navigation to your website for human visitors also.

You may want to suggest to other website owners within your industry to link to you (legitimately)- by providing your own linking html code (which of course takes onboard the above considerations), website owners may be more likely to link to you if you’ve made it easier for them by giving them the code to do so.

I believe it is important for any website owner, manager and webmaster for any business to have an understanding of link building, and how it affects your website. For human navigation, inbound links can bring visitors who are already targeted (may have read a review and now want to buy from your online shop, for example) which can maximise the conversion of your website. For search engine rankings, effective link building can have a massive impact in the ranking of your website in the results, thereby having an impact on the number of potential leads coming to your website. It’s a fact- good link building campaigns can make your website stand out from the crowd, and can make your company an industry leader—if done correctly.

We took a dogs dinner of an old website and transformed it into a work of art that converts users to buyers. As always the project was delivered on time and on budget.

Design

Yapp Wine Merchants website now has a fresh, modern design, packed with tools to help you find the wine you need.  It is unfrightening and designed to cater to Yapps broad user base.  We’ve made searching for wine fun and easy whilst retaining Yapp’s connoiseur edge.

Usability
Everyone has their own ways of looking for wine so we implemented 4 ways to navigate the site:

• The Easy Wine selector uses dynamic searching
  Watch your search results change dynamically with easy to use search sliders. Have a play.  The great advantage of this is that it all happens on one page with no hopping backwards and forwards to and from search results.
• The Food and Wine selector allows you to search for wine by Food Type by clicking on images of different food types.  This is not rocket science but is dis-armingly useful.
• Advanced Search - for those who really know what they are after.
  Search by Regional maps
• “You recently looked at”
  Isn’t it annoying when you look at lots of different items and then have to re-find them by re-doing the searches.  Well we eliminated this problem with the “You recently looked at section” so you dont have to re-do previous searches.
• Tell a friend / Bookmark tools
  Not strictly a navigation tool but so simple and effective.  How else can you let your loved one know what you want for Christmas?  Simply post your choices to your Facebook page and invite others to have a look.

Search engine friendly

As always with Datadial, the site is built to be search engine friendly
All pages from the old site have been redirected to the relevant new pages.
The site uses Friendly URLs so http://www.yapp.co.uk/Wine-List/Rhone-South/Chateauneuf-du-Pape/ instead of

http://www.yapp.co.uk/?catid=6/?type=3/desc?=12/

Technology

Integrated stock control – the site is integrated to draw stock levels from Sage accounts.
The site is fully content managed, giving Yapp control over all aspects of the site including creating offers, mixed case offers and product information.
The site is also integrated with Datadial’s email marketing system.

Sitting though about 15 hours of presentations and Q&A over the past couple of days was no mean feat. I’ve got a lot of sympathy for people with a short attention span!

Taking this sentiment on board I have put together a list of the best hints, tips, tools and strategies from the past couple of days, not just from the speakers themselves, but also picked up from around the conference halls and bars.

1. Download the Microsoft AdCenter Excel plugin for keyword research. It’s incredibly versatile, users can easily manipulate long keyword lists and data. It even goes as far as adding extra data sets into the mix by offering historical data and demographic breakdowns. Unfortunately, since the is currently still in beta UK specific data hasn’t yet been made available.
2. In ushering in a new era of transparency MSN is giving users an unprecedented amount of access to actionable data though the impressive AdCenter labs, some of the best tools include,
   - Detecting commercial intention based on a URL or keyword phrase.
   - Keyword group detection tool for detecting related keywords.
   - Search funnels, for visualising search sequences and search funnels.
   - Ad text writer, for the lazy PPC marketer! Enter a page URL and it will spit out a list of ad text.
3. MSNs webmaster centre is now displaying lists of pages your pages that are penalised, contain malware or link to pages that contain malware.
4. “More than 60% of companies are planning to increase their PPC or SEO budgets in 2009″ Linus Gregoriadis. Recession? What recession?
5. Keyword phrase composition – consider all of the elements that may make up your users potential keyword phrases.
   For example – Use (For school) + Action (Buy) + Price (Cheap) + Attribute (Black) + Brand (Sony) + Location (UK) + Quality (New) + Your Keyword.
   Consider the alternatives for each of these and build your keyword lists accordingly.
6. There is a real lack of awareness of new UK laws (enforced by Trading Standards and The Office Of Fair Trading) that now make it illegal to offer fake editorial content, without first making this fact clear to the reader. This will also affect fake internet reviews, promotional blog posts and comments that don’t offer disclosure of payment. – Judith Lewis
7. Although there is/was some obvious disagreement, the consensus is that owning the local TLD is by far the easiest way of of ensuring rankings in the correct local search engines. Other factors include local hosting, links, translation and address data in both the WhoIs and on the pages themselves.
8. The Redfly Google Global Firefox extension is perfect for searching local versions of Google quickly.
9. Linkbait – It is now vital to keep it on topic/niche. Wandering off topic may make things easier, but it’s probably tempting fate. Jane @ SEOMoz
10. Facebook fan pages are live, indexed and the links are non-nofollow.
11. The Forrester Groundwell tool is great for understanding the likely social media engagement level of your target market demographic.
12. Social media campaigns must should be carefully planned – be sure that you know who your audience are, which social media channels they’re likely to use, the creative message that you want to get across and your delivery strategy – Ciaran Norris
13. Vanessa Fox – Duplicate content across local TLD properties “should” be properly dealt with by Google, the correct verion “should” be delivered in the equivalent local version of Google. – Notice emphasis Again, I would say to be sure to have key content rewritten.
14. Use psychological hooks in your linkbait. Take your core niche and add in a social media angle – environment, politcal, geeky etc. Be aware of the linking demographic, they’re typically male, intelligent and tech savvy. Linkbait isn’t linkbait if it doesn’t elicit links! – Lyndon Antcliff, Cornwall SEO
15. Use search operators to find expired pages such as keyword+”this page is no longer available” either, contact the page owners for them to add a link to content on your site, or, contact the sites linking to the expired page asking them to link to your content instead. Tom @ Distilled
16. Keep an eye on competitor business closures or bankruptcy, this gives an opportunity to either buy they domain, or contact sites linking to them to link to your site instead. Wiep Knoll
17. Use forums and similar Web 1.0 communities for user generated linkbait
18. Always try to use your keywords in the article title of linkbait pieces – it really helps getting your keyword phrases in links.
19. Try launching linkbait on forums before onto social sites. In this way you can test it’s effectiveness, get feedback, and frequently pickup better quality content.
20. Avoid foreign links from foreign sites, in large quantities these can be an obvious flag for closer inspection. Jay @ LinkFish Media
21. Some “killer” tools worth taking a look at – Linkscape, Majestic SEO, TubeMogul, Optilink
22. Buying websites for SEO can provide a competitive advantage in terms of links, or 301 redirecting the site to pass domain trust/authority and the backlink profile. Use these tactics sparingly though, too many sites being redirected can lead to a search engine penalty. Concentrate on buying traffic and relevance over PR and backlinks.
23. Web 2.0 linkbuilding! We’re moving away from Web 1.0 methods like exchanges, link pages, paid links and comment spam, and moving towards internal link optimisation, online PR syndication, targeted PR submissions, guest writing, linkbaiting and social media.
24. When buying domains change ownership indicators slowly, things like Whois data, hosting, design and content should be left as long as possible and changes staggered, Google will zero any link and age benefits if there is an obvious change in ownership. DaveN
25. Finding domains for sale – Google searches, forums, DMOZ listings etc Richard Kershaw

Thanks also to Rob, Bruno, Chris, Rob, Rishil and many other people who I had a lot of fun discussing all of this with!

Going back to my days in offline marketing, the sales and marketing funnel looks rather like the image on the left.

During the sales process there are several possible points of contact for the seller to influence the buyer. Everything from casual interest at the top of the funnel, though evaluation/research/comparison, and hopefully all the way to sale/commitment and possible referral.

The ability to understand this process is vital to an online marketing campaign, not just during the SEO process, but it should also impact on the website structure and build.

The Buying Cycle

Firstly think about how you yourself might behave online when you’re researching buying a product.

Taking a typical online purchase for something like a television. You might start with a search query for a very general phrase like TV or television. You’ll see that there are several irrelevant results for our purpose such as the BBC and ITV results, but using the informational properties such as Wikipedia, or the Google shopping results you may then make a decision that you’re looking for a plasma TV rather than an LCD TV.

Of course you may also decide to visit one of the commercial websites listed for these queries, or buy from the PPC listings, but it’s more likely you’ll want to research a bit more first.

Next you’ll probably search for Plasma TV, this is looking a bit more promising, there are several relevant shopping results some reviews websites and a few more relevant commercial sites appearing. After reading a few of the sites you decide that the Panasonic 50PZ800B looks fairly impressive and you want to find out a bit more about it.

Of course you search for it, possibly adding terms like review, test or comparison to bring up the more informational resources.

It’s about now that you feel you’re happy with your choice, you’ve compared it against other makes and models, you’re happy that it’s what you’re looking for and you want to go ahead and purchase.

To find online shops selling that specific model you may use buying trigger search terms such as buy or cheap, or possibly even adding geographic search terms such as London or UK.

Points to note…..

• A typical online sale is unlikely to result from one specific query, but is made up of several queries
• Some studies have shown up to 12 separate searches may be made before a purchase
• This process may take several days or even weeks
• At any point in this cycle the customer may decide to buy
• The process may crossover several mediums, the eventual sale may come from a phone call or a shop purchase
• The further into the cycle the higher the chance of a purchase
• The further into the cycle the lower the number of searchers

So how does this affect your actions when it comes to building and marketing your website?

Firstly you need to ensure that you’re targeting a range of search phrases that cover the entire sales process. If you’re only targeting the more general phrases such as TV and television then you’re probably missing some low hanging fruit in terms of the sales trigger phrases such as buy and cheap. Similarly if you’re only targeting the specific phrases then you’re also missing a lot of traffic that can be converted into sales.

Bearing the sales process in mind when building and organising your site can have a dramatic effect on sales and conversions.

Treat your site hierarchy as a representation of the sales process. Undecided visitors making generic searches need to be sent to the homepage where then you can influence their decision and funnel them further into your site using tools like buyers guides and FAQs or offers and other calls to action.

Visitors making more specific searches should be sent to relevant category or sub-category pages.

Product specific searches should of course be sent to the product page. Minimising the number of clicks that the visitor needs to make before buying will have a dramatic impact on search engine visitor conversion rates.

Although all of this sounds obvious, I constantly lose count of sites that try to optimise their homepage for as many phrases as possible when there are far more suitable landing locations on internal pages.

Recent figures released by ComScore indicate otherwise. A huge 41% of the total internet audience visited at least one blog in August 2008.

“Blogs have become part of the essential fabric of the Internet today,” said Herve Le Jouan, Managing Director, comScore Europe. “They live and breathe in real-time, helping quench media consumers’ thirst for the most up-to-date breaking news, information, and analysis. It should not, therefore, be particularly surprising that they’re increasingly displacing traditional media usage and carving out an ever-increasing slice of the online advertising pie.”

It’s no surprise that the most visited properties were technology and entertainment based with Engadget and UnrealityTV being the most popular.

It’s fine if they stick to Quark and what they are good at, and all credit to them, but for some reason they think they have carte blanche to roam into areas which are not their concern.

For example, let’s say that you wanted to design a new boat.  Who would you go to first?  Would you go to a designer of aeroplanes?  No, you would seek out people who have experience in boat design, because what you want is a boat,  and you need someone who understands nautical things like waves, water, ballast, the pros and cons of different hull shapes, propellars, and the like.  Would you really want to go to sea in a craft designed by a designer of aeroplanes? I think not.

Do you work for a web design agency?  Does this happen to you that clients get their so called “brand” guardian to do the web design or the guy who did their brochure and aks you to implement it as a web site.

And is it just us or do you receive a complete load of tosh that disobeys practically every law of web accessibility, search engine friendliness, usability, extensibility and future proofing, font usage and image sizing hell?

What planet to these people live on?  Why don’t they put up their hands to their clients and say we can give guidance on the design but we are graphic designers for print and you need a professional web designer who can take into account the requirements of the web.  Because they work in the web every day they will know what is the right way and what is the wrong way to do things.  Do web designers try to do design brochures?

I won’t get started on programmers who think that they are web designers as I’m far too angry.  Just for the record, in case you are a print designer and you are still wondering where you went wrong here are few tips:

• Decide the width of your design and what happens to the site when viewed on different size monitors
• Think about usability and consider tried and tested conventions.  No need to think of your own “unique” style of navigation.  There’s a reason for some of the conventions.
• Think about search engine friendliness.  Not enough space here to explain but be aware that 60-80% of traffic and sales on most e-comms might come from search engines.
• A little flash can be nice, it can look good. A whole site built solely is flash is pointless – just drop it.  Nobody is interested in seeing your logo sliding in and out.
• Think what happens in the future.  What happens if more menu items, or product lines are added.
• Think about who will administer the site and how many image sizes you really need.  It’s a pain creating 4 different size images for each new product, (although yes there are ways round this programmatically).
• Splash pages – why? What are they there for? Why do you feel the need to make people click an extra time to get to where they are going?
• Consider the online audience – they do not know your company probably so help them help you by giving as much information about yourself and don’t try to be so cool that they have to be Sherlock Holmes to find out what you do.

Thanks for reading, I feel better now

These days you really can’t get away with that kind of static approach to web publishing. Websites aren’t brochures anymore. They are resources, communities and communications channels that are updated on a regular basis.

Why is content important?

Website content is important for several reasons.

It drives visitors – Search engines love text content, the more good, unique and relevant content that you have on your site, generally the more visitors you can expect search engines to be sending you.

It encourages links – Great content encourages people to link to it. Try to develop your site as a ‘resource’ offer free information, stats and tables, guides and tutorials. The more useful content that you have the more sites that you will find will be happy to link to you – it is these links that send traffic and will also increase search engine rankings.

It ensures return – Better quality content encourages return visitors, the more people return to your site, the more likely they are to buy from you.

It strengthens branding – Great content will help to strengthen your brand and brand recognition. Not just through search engine rankings, but also through word of mouth and referrals. People are not only going to be talking about how great your products and services are, but also how useful your site is and how their friends and colleagues must go and take a look at it.

It creates trust – Writing on your area of expertise is a great way to demonstrate how much you know your topic. You’re more likely to buy from someone that is knowledgeable and generous with their expertise right?

How can I develop content on my own site?

Okay, now we’ve established that content is important and vital for commercial sites, but how do we go about creating a content development strategy of our own?

Below we have put together a list of tips on how to go about developing a content strategy for your own commercial website.

1. Leverage your people. The more people you have helping to create website content, the more ideas, variation and knowledge that you have. It’s also far less of a workload to have 8 members of staff generating one article each per month, rather than one person having to write a couple of pieces every few days. Set out a timetable that people are encouraged and rewarded for adhering to.
2. Consider your platform. It’s imperative that your have an easy publishing platform that your staff members can use and you don’t have to wait for developers or designers to get involved. Using a blog platform like Wordpress will mean even your less tech-savvy staff will be able to publish their own content in a matter of minutes.
3. Pitch it right. Make sure your content isn’t overtly promotional. Sales pitches don’t generally interest people, neither does it tend to encourage people to link to it. However nobody expects you not to link to or mention your commercial activities. Finding a happy medium that works for your site can sometimes take a little time.
4. Brainstorm – Involve others in coming up with article titles and ideas. A monthly meeting should be sufficient for coming up with a few weeks of article titles and content ideas. You’ll find that some of the more wacky and off the wall ideas work the best.
5. Get involved. Make sure you get involved with your industries online community. Don’t be scared to link out to other industry sites. Comment on their blogs, offer to write for industry journals, invite industry figures to write for you. All of these activities will help to develop your online brand and increase the number of websites that are linking to your own.
6. Keep abreast of industry news. I recommend subscribing to as many industry newsfeeds as possible using an RSS reader. Not only does this easily keep me up-to-date with what’s happening in my industry, but also it gives me lots of topical subject ideas for relevant industry comment.
7. Look at sites within your own industry. What kind of content do they provide. Do they do anything that you’re not doing? Can what they’re doing be improved upon?
8. Look at sites in other industries. Are other sites doing anything that may be reworked to crossover into your industry? Can you apply things like video, community, social media, images or widgets to stay one step ahead of your competitors?
9. Demonstrate your knowledge. Consider adding content that displays your knowledge of your topic. Ideas like FAQs, guides, how-tos, client Q&As and critiques are great ways of demonstrating the experts at your company.
10. Be keyword conscious. Know which keywords people use when searching for products and services in your industry. Bear these in mind when developing your content writing timetable and article text.
11. Content isn’t just writing. Although you’ll find the bulk of your website content will be text based, don’t ignore the benefits of image and video content. Some of the best corporate linkbait is image based.

Some examples of corporate content ideas in action

Best Western – The On The Go With Amy travel blog.

Dell – A good example of FAQ pages

HSBC – The HSBC business network connecting businessmen using blogs and forums.

Nike – The Loop’d community connects extreme sports fans.

Office Furniture Express – The 6 coolest offices.

OfficeMax – Elf Yourself

Phillips – Shave Everywhere

Shock Absorber – The Shock Absorber sports bra. A product aimed at women with linkbait aimed at men!

September site report summary

Bumper Month with record number of Site visits and Page views

Total business
During September 08 we had 141,000 visits to our 4 sites which is the largest ever in one month. It is also a 91% increase on September 07!
During September 08 we also had 430,000 page views which, again, was a record and was a 62% increase year on year.

xxxxx.co.uk had 93,000 visits in September 08 – the biggest ever – beating the previous record of 77,000 which we got in July this year. Year on year we have doubled the number of people visiting the site.
Looking at page views we had 273,000, another record and 57% up on Sep 2007.
We also had 1,600 new registrations in the month which is the largest monthly figure, outside of a period where were spending money to generate new members.

xxxxxx.co.uk had 44,000 visits in September 08 – the biggest ever – beating the previous record of 35,000 which we got in March this year. Year on year we have increased the number of people visiting the site by 91%.
Looking at page views we had 129,000, another record and 59% up on Sep 2007
We also had 1,390 new registrations in the month which is the largest monthly figure, outside of a period where were spending money to generate new members.

With this particular client one of the largest problems was the size of the sites, running into the tens of thousands of pages. Initially we concentrated on the site structure, making sure that the page optimisation was good as possible – ensuring each page had unique page titles and meta data, improving the page structure, URL formats and internal navigation.

Once we were happy that the site would rank as high as possible we concentrated on ensuring all of the pages were indexed and raising the overall profile of the site through an ongoing like development program. The client was very easy to work with during this entire process, taking information on-board and acting on our recommendations – of course now they’re benefitting from the results!

In this article I’m going to look at why you, a small business owner needs to consider SEO for their website and some steps that you, or your web developer can put into place that will help ensure your site is performing as well as possible in the search engines.

Why do small business need SEO?
If you have a website then you should at some point have considered how people are finding you online. Relying on ‘push’ marketing factors such as brochures, business cards and flyers is all very well, but you already have had some contact with these targets – it’s not really using your website to its full potential to draw in a previously untapped market.

Over 70% of online sales start with a user conducting a search. If you sell or gather leads online, that’s a huge slice of your potential market that you’re missing out on. Good search engine rankings for relevant and often used search terms will drive qualified leads to your site at a fraction of the price of other marketing methods.

When To Keep Things In-House
Given the skills and the time it’s perfectly possible to conduct a reasonable SEO campaign in-house. If you or your web developer are happy to edit your website, and you and your staff have some time to devote to the campaign, then there’s no reason why you can’t make a success out of things without getting some experts in.

When To Outsource
If your website is (or has the potential to be) one of your major revenue streams, and a budget is available, then you should consider getting some experts in to run the campaign for you. Take care when hiring, make sure you ask the correct questions and ask for references. Our free SEO Buyers Guide should help you out here.
Essentially when hiring an SEO consultant, you’re not just paying for their time and knowledge, but also their experience and industry contacts – it is this that will give you a real edge over your competitors.

Some SEO Tips For Small Business’

Know Your Market
Firstly, before you go any further, you need to ensure you’re targeting the correct people. Is your market geographically based in one country? If so try to ensure that you’re using the correct top level domain for that country, for example a .co.uk domain in the UK, or a .fr in France. Failing that, if you have a more generic .com or .net domain then make sure that your website is hosted in the correct country. This will help to ensure that the traffic that search engines send will be from the market that you’re targeting.

Understand Your Keywords
One of the most important stages for any SEO is understanding which keywords are being used by people to find your products. Start off by brainstorming a list of keywords that you think people may use to find your products and services. Then use a keyword research tool to expand and develop your list beyond those that you have already thought of.

Page Titles/Descriptions
Ensure that each page on your site has a unique page title and meta description. If you’re comfortable editing web pages yourself then it’s not terribly complicated. Otherwise you may want to ask your web developer to do it. The titles and description tags should always be unique and reflect the content of each individual page. Here it’s best use your keyword list in order to understand which terms are most frequently searched for.
Other areas of the page to use your keywords are places like headings, image ‘alt’ text, bold text and the page content. First and formost ensure the pages read well to visitors, avoid stuffing as many keywords onto the page as you can – that doesn’t work anymore!

Use Analytics
You’ll be able to make far better decisions regarding the marketing of your site if you have a solid understanding of how people are finding your site, which keywords and sites are driving visitors, and which visitors convert into sales. Signup for a free service like Google Analytics which will give you all of this information and more.

Consider Your Content
Great content can make it far easier to get a website ranking well. Look at the kind of information that your competitors are offering and improve on it. Try to ensure your site is a resource for everything that someone in your industry will need. Resource sites tend to rank a lot better as people are compelled to link to the information contained on them. Consider adding a blog your website that you can publish and archive regular posts on.

Think Links
Up until now everything that you have done has helped a search engine to understand what your pages are about. The page optimisation and content creation all help a search engine to decide which subjects your pages cover.
However it’s the links that point to your pages that let search engines know how important your pages are, and therefore how highly they should rank on the results pages.
Look for opportunities to get other webmasters to link to you. You may have suppliers or clients that you can ask. You may have industry bodies that link to members. You can consider writing articles on other industry websites or adding your site to relevant directories. The list of linking opportunities is endless.

Local SEO
Add your business to the local search services that the main search engines now offer. This will help return your business when people perform geographic queries such as “London accountant” Go to Google, Yahoo or Live to add your business.

Above all SEO takes time and patience. It’s not something that happens overnight. Over time you will find your efforts are rewarded with high quality relevant website visitors that convert into sales.

Out of the box, Wordpress is pretty search engine friendly- it has an excellent internal linking structure through its use of categories, archives and tags, along with its ability for easy content creation, which are a couple of reasons why search engines like them so much. But to maximise the efficiency of your Wordpress blog from a search engine optimisation perspective, there are a few additional steps we recommend taking to ensure your blog is as efficiently optimised as possible.

Permalinks

By default, Wordpress uses URLs which aren’t so efficient in terms of SEO. Permalinks allow more efficient URLs to be used making links more efficient, improving the structure of posts and not to mention the ability to include keywords in the posts URL.
Permalinks can be activated under ‘Settings>Permalinks’. We recommend using the ‘Day and name’ option- the URL shows the age of the post through the date as well as the post name (and if you’re using post names correctly you’ll have important keywords in the post name, thereby including them in the post URL if using this method).

Post Titles

Post titles represent the title tag for the posts page- one of the most important aspects of on-page search engine optimisation- their importance has already been covered in the Top Five Tips For Optimising Your Business’ Meta Tags post. By default, Wordpress uses the format “Blog title » Blog Archive » Post Title” which ideally should be “Post Title » Blog Title”. Search engines pay more attention to keywords at the beginning of the title tag; therefore placing the post title (which should contain those important keywords) at the beginning of the title is more efficient. This also helps the readability of the pages result in the search engine results, therefore increasing the click through rate (CTR) in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
To change the post title structure, additional plugins are required. There are a few good Wordpress plugins available, we recommend using the All in One SEO Pack plugin and changing the post and page titles found under ‘Settings>All in One SEO’.

To optimise the titles, click the ‘Rewrite Titles’ checkbox and change the title formats for each option. We recommend:

‘%post_title% | %blog_title%’ for post titles
‘%page_title% | %blog_title%’ for page titles
‘%category_title% | %blog_title%’ for category titles
‘%date% | %blog_title%’ for archive titles
‘%tag% | %blog_title%’ for tage titles
‘%description%’ for description format
‘Nothing found for %request_words%’ for the 404 title
‘- Part %page%’ for page format.
It is also wise to check the ‘Use noindex for Categories’ and ‘Use noindex for Archives’ checkboxes to disable indexing of these pages.

Optimising Posts and Pages

Now that the basic general optimisation for the blog has been set up, you can optimise your posts, starting with the post title.

Post Titles

Remember to keep the title relevant to the post topic and to include your important keywords in the post title. Also remember the post title will show up in search results, so make the title interesting and have a call to action in  the title where needed.

Tags

Tags are incredibly useful for internal linking- if a visitor is on your site and likes the content for a specific topic, they may click on one of the tags. You should therefore add tags to all posts and pages, making sure the tags are relevant to the post. Tags are comma separated, just click the ‘Add’ button after you’ve entered the tags and the post will be recognised under these tags once the post is saved or published.

Categories

As with tags, categories are also efficient in terms of internal linking. Categories can also improve the time a visitor is on your site- if they can see you have more relevant information on a topic under a category, they will probably want to see what other posts are in that category if they enjoyed the content  of your post.

Make sure categories are well structured and specific. Check the boxes which your post is most relevant to.

All in One SEO Pack Tag Optimisation

If you’re using the All in One SEO Pack recommended earlier, you will also have an All in One SEO Pack tab when writing/modifying a post or page. Here you can override the defaults already configured. To do this, enter a title tag, description tag and keywords tag to override the default settings already entered.

There is also a ‘Disable on this page/post’ checkbox- this will disable all SEO modifications and revert back to the Wordpress defaults (which is unlikely you would want to do so) so do not check this box unless there is a specific reason.

Once each post/page has been optimised, save the changes. This covers the basics for Wordpress Search Engine Optimisation- there are more advanced changes which can be made but by implementing these recommended changes you will notice an improvement in your search rankings, your listing in the search engine results and an improvement in the indexing of your blog.

New – e-commerce launch: www.basicallyblack.com

One for the ladies. As usual this site is fully updateable by the client and includes stock control, dispatch notes, customer management, full reporting and is integrated with Datadial’s email marketing system. Perfect site to find that oh so hard to find little black dress. Buy now!

AJAX engineered quote generator – www.flowduplication.com

A site for generating quotes for DVD and CD duplication. The quote generator has been developed in AJAX and provides an easy to use interface for ordering CD’s and uploading artwork.What is AJAX – AJAX speeds up a website by only refreshing the part of a page that needs refreshing. Well that’s the simple explanation. The increased speed hugely improves usability and eases frustration Datadial developed the site from a logo provided and designed all artwork on the site

The client commented “my boss was grinning like a cheshire cat all afternoon when he saw the site, thanks to you and the team

Content management system www.lloydgeorge.com with Fin International

Relaunch of this Fund Management site, following a re-branding exercise by www.FinInternational.com.  The site is fully updateable by Lloyd George staff using Datadial’s content management system.

Originally designed brochure site and blog www.carnabystreetthemusical.com

You haven’t heard of it yet this will be the next BIG West End musical in the New Year. The site is being populated bit by bit as people send in their memories of the sixties. If you were famous in the Sixties and loved Carnaby Street let us know!!

Using the Times Top 100 Companies To Work For list in order to gain a useful cross section of company types, sizes and industries. It soon emerged that corporate blogging seems to be somewhat of a alien concept to the majority of UK business. In fact, of the 100 companies that were surveyed only two (kudos to Rackspace and Pannone) had an official active blog that was available from their corporate website.

So with a rather pathetic 2% of UK companies actively blogging can this be viewed as a failure of their online communications strategies? Possibly not. A saving grace was the number of companies (76%) that did make available a mixture of company and industry news, articles, opinion, comment, press releases and whitepapers. UK companies obviously understand the importance of making useful information available, however making the leap from static news pages to and to a more interactive blog is currently too much of a challenge.

A number of factors could be responsible, perhaps there is a lack of understanding of the benefits and opportunity – a failure of their media agencies to make these clear. Often companies don’t feel they can commit the resources to keeping the site updated or are worried about company perception in what is usually an open and conversational media. Added to all of this there is the intrinsic fear of having people being able to comment and voice opinion on their blog posts on their corporate website.

Today meta tags should be used responsibly. By optimising these tags efficiently you may notice an improvement in search engine results pages (SERPs), as well as the Click Through Rate (CTR) of your results in the SERPs.

The following tags are found within the HTML code of your page. By using these tags wisely, you can increase some of the on-page search engine optimisation for your site with very little effort.

Tip #1: Title Tag Optimisation

Although not a meta tag, the title tag is widely considered to be one of the most important parts of on-page optimisation, not to mention being equally important to visitors. The title tag is the text you see in the top left of your browser window – a tag that displays the page title, but the text does not actually appear on your page itself. In the HTML code, your title tag may look something like this:

<title>Web Site Design And Web Development London UK : Datadial Ltd </title>

Title tags are important to visitors- just as a title is important to a book. The title tag can be used to identify your site from another if multiple browser windows are open for example. Obviously the title should be accurate to the content of the specific page. It’s very important that each page on the site has a different title to reflect that specific pages content. Having uniform title tags across all pages is a waste of prime optimisation space.

The title tag is also be used in search engine results. For example, in Google (and many other search engines), the blue links millions of searchers click on everyday, almost without a thought, uses the title tag for the page.

You can see from our example the title tag is being shown as the title of the search result. By creating a well optimised title tag that is compelling to the reader, you will notice an increase in your CTR.

Tip #2: Placing Keywords In Title Tag

By placing your most important keywords in your title tag, your page in the search results has more of a chance of getting that click, as the keyword will be bolded, as you can see in this example:

So a result for the search query ‘free widgets’:

The page with the title tag: “Free Widgets: Download Your Widgets For Free Here Now” should get more clicks to their site over a page with the title tag: “The big title tag that mentions Widgets”.

Why?

Firstly, several key phrases are found in the tag (as opposed to just one of the keywords). This means potentially more of the title is bolded if those search phrases are used, which attracts the searchers attention.

Secondly, the keyword is located closer to the beginning of the tag. Since most searchers read from left to right, the quicker the keyword is seen in the tag, the more likely the user will stop to read the result, and as less text has been read prior to discovering the keyword, your result may appear more relevant.

Thirdly, the tag is exciting, as opposed to the other, which doesn’t inspire the searcher to stop and read the description for the result.

Fourthly, the tag has a call to action, inviting the searcher to click the link.

The main aim of your sites title tag should be to include your main keywords (which will be bolded and attract their attention), then provide them with a compelling title that fulfils their search need. By fulfilling their search need, the searcher will either click the link, or continue reading your listing (by moving on to the results description).

Tip #3: Description Meta Tag Optimisation

The description meta tag is an important part of on-page optimisation. A well optimised description meta tag can have a large impact on your click through rate (CTR) for your site in the search engine results, along with the ability to contain your top keywords.

The description meta tag is intended to contain a brief description of the page’s content. Certain search engines use the description meta tag within their results, therefore it’s a good idea to get your description meta tags right!

The description meta tag in the HTML code may look something like this:

<meta name="Description" content="Datadial offer complete online marketing solutions to meet your targets and fit your budget. Internet marketing services and consultancy that gives results." />

And may appear in search results:

The description meta tag text does not appear in the page text itself. However, when optimising your description meta tag, be sure to keep the description of the page accurate, and to include your main keywords. These keywords will again be bolded in the search results, therefore drawing more attention to your result.

It may also be wise to place a subtle call to action, slogan or mission statement within your description meta tag or a description that will entice the searcher. Remember, you are competing with many other pages so providing searchers with a reason to click on your page is a good idea and can easily be accomplished with the description meta tag.

Note: If you have submitted your site to the DMOZ Open Directory Project, you may find that your description is used from that of the DMOZ description.
To prevent this from happening, and to prompt search engines to use the description meta tag on your page, add the following robots meta tag:

<meta name="robots" content="noodp">

This meta tag also works for MSN, as well as Google.

Similar effects can also be found in Yahoo! Results if your page is listed in the Yahoo! Directory by using the following robots meta tag:

<meta name="robots" content="noydir">

If you would like to use both, you can simply comma separate the ‘content’ for the robots meta tag, like so:

<meta name="robots" content="noydir, noodp">

Tip #4: Robots Meta Tag

In addition to instructing search engine robots to not use DMOZ or Yahoo! Directory descriptions, the robots meta tag can also be used to control which pages can be indexed, followed and archived.

The robots meta tag is also found in the HTML code, and again does not appear on the page. This meta tag is an instruction to search engine robots when crawling a page and can be used to control which pages can be indexed or followed by the search engine spider. The robots meta tag may be similar to this:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex,noodp,noydir">

The ‘content’ part of this meta tag controls the instruction to the search engine robot. The following operators can be included within the content:

• noindex- prevents search engines indexing the page
• nofollow- prevents search engines following links on the page
• none- combines the function of noindex and nofollow into one
• noimageindex- prevents search engines indexing images on the page
• noarchive- prevents search engines caching the page (keeping an archived copy of the page in their results)
• noydir- prevents Yahoo! from displaying the Yahoo! Directory description
• noodp- prevents search engines from displaying the description from the Open Directory
• nosnippet- prevents a description appearing in the SERPS

The robots meta tag is useful for excluding pages you do not wish to be found in search engines (such as member pages), as well as the use previously mentioned.

Tip #5: Keywords Meta Tag Optimisation

The keywords meta tag used to be a powerful SEO tool. By placing keywords in this meta tag, SEOs used to be able to see their pages ranked for these keywords relatively quickly.
Once the search engines realised that it was effectively being abused, all weight that the keywords meta tag had on a page’s results was removed by the majority, effectively making the keywords meta tag relatively redundant.

Now it is not necessary to place keywords in the keyword meta tag- this has little to no effect on the pages ranking in search results. However, placing your keywords in the keyword meta tag can still be found in practice today, as small search engines may still rely on keyword meta tag content.

The keywords meta tag is found in the HTML code and may look similar to this:

<meta name="keywords" content="seo,buying seo,seo guide" />

Keywords are comma separated, and should not be repeated. This was once a tactic spammers used to trick search engines into thinking a page was relevant and today repeating keywords can hurt you rather than helping. You can also include synonyms of your keywords as well, ‘book’ and ‘books’ are not the same.

There are many other meta tags in use today, including abstract, author, copyright, distribution, expires, language, refresh and revisit meta tags, amongst others. While these meta tags can also be used, these tags have little effect on optimising your pages for search results, therefore these meta tags have been excluded.

Summary

By using the meta tag optimisation tips mentioned, you should notice an improvement in search engine results, as well as an increase in the Click Through Rate (CTR) of your results. To make the most out of meta tag optimisation, we suggest testing different title and descriptions to maximise the amount of click throughs your results get, tracking the results over a set period and using the best performing tags to improve your CTR from search engine results pages (SERPs).

You should also be aware that other on-page search engine optimisation efforts should also be used to make your pages search engine friendly and rank higher.

If you’re looking to target a specific locality, then it’s vital that your site is recognised by search engines as being from that territory. Local websites are featured more prominently in local versions of the search engines, there are also surfers are given the option to see only pages from their location excluding foreign based sites.

Up until fairly recently UK hosting tended to be fairly expensive in comparison to our US cousins. For this reason many UK based sites found themselves running into problems when they tried to save costs by hosting their sites in the USA.

Don’t take it for granted that by hosting with a UK based company that their servers will also be based in the UK. Many UK hosting companies locate their servers overseas including one very well known host that bases their servers in Germany. I’m sure this is the case the world over. When signing up for hosting contracts, if location is an issue for you, always check that the servers are located geographically where you would expect them to be.

There are several factors that are theorised that effect the location of a site in terms of search engines. This list tends to include,

• The top level domain extension (.co.uk, .fr, .de)
• The location (IP address) of the website host
• The geographic location of the domain registrar
• The language that the site is written in
• The location of incoming links
• On page factors (addresses, telephone numbers)
• Registering with Google Local

Obviously some of these factors hold more importance than others, some I theorise are used marginally, others I believe not at all, or their effect is too minimal to test.

Using The Correct TLD (Top Level Domain)
This is your best case scenario. You have a site that you’re targeting to UK consumers, holding a .co.uk site will pretty much guarantee that you’ll be found in the UK search results, even if you choose to host out of the country. For example the server for whois.co.uk is based in the US, but the site is still returned in the UK only version of a Google search.

Website Host Location
There are of course many instances of websites that are targeted to a specific country but are using a generic top level domain such as a .com or .net. In these cases simply ensuring that your hosts servers are geographically located in your marketplace should ensure that the site is recognised as being local. The Datadial site for example is using a .net TLD, but as its host is located in the UK is still appears for UK only queries. ASP.net which is located in the US does not appear for the equivalent query.

Geographic Location Of The Domain Registrar
I feel this is a factor that is sometimes overlooked by many webmasters, but as Google has access to the geographic location such as the location of the domain registrar it would make sense for them to make use of this as well. This along with other registrar information such as Whois data could well be used as a ‘tie-breaker’ when country-specific TLDs are hosted elsewhere. For example many country specific TLDs such as .fm, .cc, and .tv are now being used because of the brandability of the domain extension. In cases such as these where the TLD extension is indicating one location and the hosting location indicating another then it would be a logical step to make use of the information available from the domain registrar.

Site Language
Obviously as well as it making sense to make sure your site is written in the language of the search visitors that you’re looking for, it may well be one of the factors that a search engine may use to help determine the location of a site. It certainly isn’t a defining factor though as it’s relatively easy to find foreign language sites within the UK only search results.

Location Of Incoming Links
As above, the idea is that a search engine can use the location of incoming links to determine the site location. Again, I’m sceptical if this is any more than of marginal importance. I have seen lots of sites with low quality link profiles that consist of largely overseas located links and of course news sites with very few links seem to have little problem get geographically placed before backlinks have had a chance to develop.

Site Addresses/Telephone Numbers
Again, it’s just good practice to have local contact details for local markets. There is also speculation that this may be used to place a sites location. Again this is difficult to test but I’m doubtful if this is would be anything more than of marginal importance.

Registering With Google Local
Again, hard to test, but it would make sense for Google to make as much use of all the information that was made available to them. Yahoo and MSN also have similar local services.

Going back to our original list I would place the factors in the following order of importance,

1. TLD extension
2. Hosting location
3. Domain registrar
4. Google local registration
5. Incoming links
6. Site language
7. On page addresses/phone numbers

Of course, many of these factors are very difficult to test on their own as it’s difficult to isolate individual factors on their own. Certainly the first three seem to influence the outcome the most.

Site Targeting In Google Webmaster Tools
Last year Google added an option in Webmaster Tools to define a geographic location for a website. Unfortunately this is only an option if you site is already on a non-specific TLD.  Vanessa Fox wrote on SearchEngineland,

If your domain is a location-specific TLD (such as the .fr example above), Google will show you the country that your site is associated with but won’t let you specify something different. However, if your domain is not country specific (such as a .com or .net), you can indicate the location of the site…

You can provide information at a more granular level than country. For example, if your site is for a pizza restaurant in Seattle, you can specify up to the street address (although you can input any granularity that makes sense for your business such as city or state).

One of the most useful things about this tool is that it lets you specify different locations for each subdomain. This can be extremely helpful for large corporates which could save them from having to purchase domains and/or source hosting in many different localities.

Geo-Detection Tool

The SEOMoz Geo-detection tool is is a useful way of checking how well a website is targeted to a specific country or market.

More resources
Get Elastic – Location Targeting In Google
Webmaster Central Blog – Better Geographic Choices For Webmasters
Search Engine Journal – On Site Geotargeting And SEO
Search Engine Land – SEO And SEM Outside The US

The problem arises when less scrupulous companies aim to take advantage of this lack of knowledge, promises are made that can’t be fulfilled, or the required work simply isn’t carried out.In the end it is not just the client that loses out, but also the industry as a whole as confidence is a difficult thing to win back.

Our buyers guide is aimed at taking the guesswork out of choosing your SEO vendor. It details the more common scams, details the work that should be being carried out in any good SEO campaign, and offers a list of key questions that you should be asking your potential SEO.

The key for any buyer is to educate yourself as much as possible about the service that you’re buying, the more you know, the more informed your decision will be.

Download our buyers guide for free

Kodak – I love this effort as it doesn’t focus on cameras, but what it’s target audience is interested in, the photography.

Innocent Drinks – Kind of wacky and crazy, just the kind of thing you would expect from the company really! It does a good job of keeping things interesting and engaging the audience.

Southwest Airlines – A really nice showcase for the company, great design, interesting content and does a good job of passing company news while keeping things light-hearted.

ASOS – A good example of what can be done with an ecommerce site. It does a good job of focusing on products, but also scatters in industry news.

BBC – Obviously the huge manpower at their disposal and being able to tap some the finest journalistic minds gives the BBC an unfair advantage, but their blog network is among one of the best online.

Marriott – A self-confessed technophobe Bill Marriott proves that it’s never too late to start blogging. Not only that but the resulting blog is an extremely useful communications channel.

Waitrose – A great example of what can be achieved when a not so traditional web company takes blogging seriously.

I deliberately left out examples of tech and web based companies to prove that it can be done well for traditionally non-web based companies.

Okay, so what is the point?

Audience engagement – Blogs are a great way of engaging your audience with topics that you wouldn’t normally cover on the main section of your site. You can keep company news and conversation clearly defined from the ‘corporate’ sections of the site while at the same time offering your audience more in-depth information should it be required.

Information gathering – Blogs can be used to gather opinions, get product feedback, collect email addresses and collect RSS feed subscribers. Over time a growing audience is a valuable commodity in itself.

Communications channel – Corporate blogs have been used as an instant communications channel between retailer and customer. Product information, manuals, corrections, notifications and recalls can be made available instantly.

Content creation – An increased number of pages of your site will generally increase the amount of content leads to an increase in the number of search engine visitors. With clearly defined calls to action this should lead to an increase in sales.

Social media – Blog are a great way of opening up the marketing power of social media sites. Visitors can easily submit posts to sites like Digg and Stumbleupon, this directly leads to an increased number of visitors, links and the visibility of your site as a whole. Active blogs generally encourage more incoming links from other sites, so can be a great way of supplementing a link building strategy.

Things to remember….

• Get started using a simple blogging script like Wordpress. It’s pretty much the industry standard, it’s easy to use, and best of all it’s free.
• Keep the blog on your commercial domain. You’ll get little benefit from using a hosted blog or a seperate domain altogether. The idea is to get additional visitors to your commercial site. blog.company.com or company.com/blog is ideal.
• Define a writing policy. Be clear who your audience is and what will interest them. Also be clear on exactly how much information you’re going to make public.
• The writing style is important. Traditionally visitors expect a less corporate and more conversational writing style. The use of humour can work well. Ideally your posts should be short and punchy.
• Avoid over promotion. It’s fine to link to your products and services from within your posts, but visitors won’t come just to read a rehashed product catalogue.
• Keep things fresh. Your blog should be regularly updated, sharing writing amongst your staff is the ideal solution, outsourcing the writing is another, though is no substitute for your staff knowledge and expertise, staff participation should be encouraged.
• What do I write? Traditional topic areas are company news, staff news, product news, industry discussion and thoughts, how to’s and resource lists. Ideally the more diverse the topic areas, the easier you’ll find things to write about and the bigger the potential audience.

However, the latest report from Netimperative shows that online advertising is proving to be the choice advertising stream for small and large businesses, having a dramatically increased prediction for advertising spend over the next couple of years.

According to the report:

“81% of advertisers claim that their allocated online ad spend has grown in 2008 and predict that it will continue to do so over the next couple of years”

With a predicted increase of 16% in 2009 and 17% for 2010.

Furthermore, “three quarters (73%) state that they are increasing their use of online as an advertising medium whilst 31% of advertisers claim their use of TV is decreasing and 40% cite a decrease in the use of newspapers.”

So What Does This Mean For Your Business?

In this economic climate companies are rightly evaluating where and why they are spending money. However, businesses looking to cut back on their advertising spends should be aware of this report when deciding which advertising streams to cut back on.

The predicted growth of online advertising according to this report is set to be potentially the best, with TV and newspaper advertising decreasing. With the support of these latest statistics, it would be a wise move to increase your online marketing budget, as the growth of your online audience delivers cost effective results.

The timing for increasing your online advertising return on your business is now. With the growth prediction for online advertising for the next two years, increasing your online advertising budget now will help increase brand perception and brand awareness for your business, whilst bringing greater return on your online advertising spend.

Contact Datadial to maximise your online advertising budget today

Google provides several keyword matching options to enhance the exposure of your ads, which when used correctly, can pre-qualify visitors and maximise your advertising budget.

Google’s keyword matching options include: -

•    Broad Match
•    Phrase Match
•    Exact Match

Broad Match

Broad Match is the default keyword type where the advert runs on relevant variations of your keywords and phrases. This means your ad could display when the search term includes synonyms, singular/plural forms and other phrases containing your keywords.

Google’s example provides an excellent example of how this keyword matching option operates. In their example, if the keyword web hosting is used, the advert would display for the following search queries:

web hosting company
webhost
web site hosting

You can see that related synonyms also trigger the advert to display, along with additional terms within the triggering keyword (such as site in the last example).

As the keyword variations triggering your adverts change over time, Google continually monitors the keyword quality and performance, meaning you continue to display the highest performing and most relevant keyword variations.

Broad match has several advantages: – more visitors can be attracted to your site as your advert is displayed for other keyphrases which you may not have thought about targeting, but are still relative to the keyword you’ve chosen.

The disadvantage to broad match keywords is that unwanted search terms may trigger the ad to display (if not correctly managed using negative keywords, which will be explained later).

Phrase Match

The next keyword matching option is phrase match. Phrase match keywords trigger your advert to be displayed if the search query contains the keyphrase in the order specified, and phrase match keywords are enclosed in quotation marks (“ “). For example, the phrase match keyword “football boots” will display for the search queries such as:

football boots
buy football boots
football boots review

but would not display for search queries such as:

boots for football or football shoes.

Phrase match has the advantage of being more targeted than broad match, but also has the disadvantage of potentially displaying the advert for an unwanted search query if not correctly managed using negative keywords, i.e. for the phrase match keyword “football boots” the advert would also display for the search query free football boots. If your business is selling football boots and your ad displays for this term, you’re unlikely to make a sale from this searcher!

An important note: For phase match keywords, your keyword or keyphrase triggering your ad is not case sensitive to the search query.

Exact Match

The third keyword matching option is exact match. Exact match keywords will only display the advert if the search query is exact to the keyword.
Exact match keywords are enclosed in ‘[‘ and ‘]’ characters.

For example, for the exact match keyword [buy dog bowl], the advert will only display if the search query is buy dog bowl and would not display for any other search query.

Exact match keywords have the advantage of being extremely targeted if you know an exact popular term for your industry.

Negative Keywords

The final and equally important keyword matching option is negative keywords. Negative keywords are used to NOT display the advert if the search query contains the negative term. Negative keywords are used by placing a ‘-‘ character before the keyword.
For example, if your business is selling web templates, using the negative keyword
–free will not display your advert if the search query as free web templates.

There are several free tools online that will help you to dip your toe into the world of reputation monitoring.

Google Alerts
This is something everyone should have setup. Google alerts will notify you by email every time they find a mention of a specific keyword anywhere online. By setting alerts for keywords like your company name, brand/product names, key staff etc you can keep track of when and why you’re getting mentions online. Key queries include [domain name], [domainname], [domainname.com], [your name], [Brand Name], [yourname], etc.

Google Blog Search
Play with the date parameters to see what people have been saying about your company in the past few days

Twing
Lets you find out what people have been saying about you on forums and discussion boards. Many companies keep a close eye on this and react to positive/negative comments.

Twitter Search
While Twitter is still quite new to a lot of people, it has a huge user base, and many larger tech and media companies are already using it to connect with their audience. Using Twitter Search you can monitor mentions of your company. Subscribe to the RSS feed to be alerted with new brand mentions.

Geolocation errors
Many people don’t realise that to target UK customers, then Google must recognise that your website is based in the UK. If you’re using a .co.uk domain then you’re almost certainly fine. If you’re using a generic domain such as a .com or .net then you must ensure that your hosting is UK based rather than in the US or Germany as happens often.

Additional Domains
Additional domains don’t mean additional traffic. Having 10 domains doesn’t mean you get 10 times the visitors or sales as you would expect with one site. In fact by dividing your marketing techniques over 10 sites rather than one, you’re probably diluting your efforts and actually reducing the potential traffic you’re receiving. Ensure any additional domains that you own are ‘301 redirected’ into your main domain to rectify this.

Failing To Optimise Internal pages
If only the homepage of your website is optimised for your keywords then you’ll be missing out on a huge proportion of your potential traffic. Each and every page on the site should be optimised for its own specific keywords.

Poor Navigation
Using search unfriendly technologies such as flash and javascript for your menus and navigation may well mean that search engine don’t even know about the majority of your internal pages. Thankfully this doesn’t happen so much anymore, but it’s always worth checking.

For every difficulty encontered during application development, chances are this problem was encountered before (and solved). Design Patterns represent key programming practices that have been proven to get the job done in the most efficient, reusability and extensibility. This greatly increases efficiency of code and helps to break an application down into loosely compelled manageable chucks.

As a .Net developer you may have used some of these patterns without even knowing. A design patterns name captures the basic concepts that govern its use and a common practice is to include the pattern name in the name of the object that implements it.

You may have come across the following names while working with the .Net framework:

• Proxy
• Adapter
• Command
• Factory

The deeper your understanding of Design Patterns the more you’ll be to understand the .Net framework and how it can leverage you applications.

Main Design Patterns Concepts

• Use interface inheritance over concrete base class inheritance
• Create loosely coupled objects to promote code reuse by keeping object small and specialised
• Defer / Delegate responsibility to specialised objects using composition

Choosing the correct pattern
The best way to decide which pattern is fit for the jobs it to break down your development specification into each requirement. If these requirement exhibit certain characteristics that relate to a design pattern then apply it. E.g. If you application is responsible for monitoring a file system and reporting changes back to a number of objects you are most-likely to implement the Observer pattern.

Summary
Once you have gained an understanding of object orientated concepts you should be ready to tackle Design Patterns. You will be surprised how many patterns that are already familiar to you and how much the put things into perspective. You’ll also find that the more you learn, the more you’ll see application development from a different perspective (almost like seeing the Matrix!!). To truly understand the benefits of Design Patterns you have to apply them to your application development. This will improve your object reuse and make future program changes less painful!

List of Design Patterns LINK:

• Adapter Pattern
• Command Pattern
• Composite Pattern
• Decorator Pattern
• Factory Pattern
• Flyweight Pattern
• Intepreter
• Model-View-Controller
• Null Pattern
• Observer-Observable
• Singleton
• State Pattern
• Strategy Pattern
• Template Pattern
• Union Pattern
• Visitor Pattern

RSS feeds are designed to aggregate multiple feed of information by grouping and storing topics of interest into one location. Users can browse these feeds at their own leisure safe in the knowledge that they can access the latest information relating to their chosen interest. If you are interested in a particular subject, (i.e. football) you could visit a site that exposes its content via RSS and subscribe to it. Now, at your own leisure you can check your RSS feed and browse the latest feeds (or newly posted information) in a uniformed and sortable format.

Each item within a feed contains a title, date, summary and sometimes videos and images. If the topic is of particular interest, you can click the feed link and jump off to the source of the feed (web site) to read more. This is a much cleaner and efficient way of keeping up to date with topics you are interested in rather than trawling the internet and storing lots of bookmarks. This way the information comes to you without having to lift a finger. Users are completely in control of the information they receive as unsubscribing is just as easy, if not easier that subscribing. You remain totally control of the flow of information. RSS feeds are a huge time saver and can boost you productivity .

Types of RSS feeds:

• Blog posts – Receive updates every time a new blog is posted
• Article Feeds – Get summaries or articles written about a particular subject
• Forum Posts – Receive updates each time user reply to a particular forum post you are interested in
• Retail Feeds – Many ecommerce sites are publishing whole product lines as RSS feeds. Each time a new product is added you’ll be notified
• News Feeds – Receive breaking news from sites like Google
• Industry Specific – Keep up to date with industry related articles, news and reviews that maybe related to your industry

Subscribing for RSS Feeds
The best way to do this is by registering with a Feed Reader site like Google Reader, which allows you to store all of you feeds in one central location online. This is a simple process especially if you already have a Google account. Once you have done this you are ready to start subscribing to RSS feeds. The next time you see an RSS link or image simply click it, choose the feed reader you have registered with from the dropdown menu and click subscribe. You’ll instantly have access to the entire feed displayed in chorological order.

Create your own feed
If you publish regular information on your site you can benefit from publishing this as an RSS feed. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. By not having an RSS feed you are missing out on an opportunity to keep your customer / audience informed on what you business is up to. RSS feeds should be thought of as a free promotional tool. You’ll be able to relax safe in the knowledge that as soon as new information is add to your site users will be informed. This will bring in more site traffic a users may want to find out more or purchase products

Window Mobile (OS)
Window mobile is a compact operating system for mobile devices. These devices include Pocket PCs, Smartphones, Portable Media Centres and on-board computers for cars. Windows Mobile has been designed to be similar aesthetic to Vista and is currently at version 6.1 with a new release scheduled for 2010.

.Net Compact Framework
The .Net compact framework is a scaled sown version of the .Net Framework and uses some of the same class libraries with a few additional libraries designed specifically for mobile devices. This can be integrated with Visuals Studio 2003, 2005 and 2008 to develop impressive mobile windows form based and web based applications.

ASP.Net Mobile Controls and the Microsoft Internet Toolkit
Developing applications for mobile devices can be a challenging as there are certain limitations, which include:

• Different mark-up languages for PDAs, Cell phones or Japanese phones.
• Devices have a varying number or display lines, horizontal/vertical orientation and screen colours.
• Different network connectivity
• Capabilities, display resolution and ability to make phone calls.

All these factors must be taken into consideration when developing applications for mobile devices.

This is where the Microsoft Internet toolkit comes in, as it addresses these issues so that developers can build one mobile web application that delivers the appropriate mark-up for a wide range of mobile devices.

The mobile toolkit contains:

• Mobile web form controls which are similar to ASP.Net controls as the generate mark-up code
• Mobile Internet Designer which integrates with Visual Studio .Net IDE to provide a web application design environment
• Browser Capabilities which makes it possible to run ASP.Net functionality on mobile devices
• Quick Start Tutorial with sample code
• Developer Documentation
• Device adapter code samples

Using a combination of the Windows Mobile operating system, .Net Compact Framework, and the Microsoft Internet Toolkit applications can be written to run on a wide range of mobile devices in a similar manor to that of regular browser base applications.

Summary
These are the three basic tools that are necessary to start building applications that target mobile devices.
Mobile devices are becoming increasingly popular as people continually want to stay connected when they are away from their desk. Microsoft has developed a cohesive little package of products that integrate well together and provide an infrastructure similar to their full blown application development environment. This will hopefully encourage developers to venture into the world of mobile application development.

In this blog post I will briefly touch on some of the database administrator functions and focus on the developer functionality, additions and upgrades.

Administrators

Management
SQL Server 2008 policy management has been updated and is now called the ‘Declarative Management Framework’. It is now possible to configure multiple database servers so that a standard configuration can be applied and maintained on multiple servers and databases.

Multiple Server Integration makes it possible to execute queries against multiple servers by placing them within special groups. Result can be categorised into one result per server or merged together as one set of results.

Security (Transparent Data Encryption)
A cool new feature of SQL Server 2008 is the improved flexibility of data encryption. Data encryption is now a property of the database instead of application code. This makes the database administrator and developer’s life’s easier as now they don’t have to make changes to the database every time encryption functionality changes at the application level.

Resource Governor
Database administrators can now specify how much CPU/RAM each user is allowed to use. This will help to eliminate situations where a user’s mistake could potentially bring down a whole server. By imposing these limitations users are restricted to a predefined amount of CPU/RAM usage.

Developers
Developers have also been treated to some appealing updates in the latest version SQL Server. There are a number of new features that have been added to make a developer’s life easier and increase their productivity.

LINQ Vs SQL
Most developers are pretty familiar with writing T-SQL queries to retrieve data for application objects. Most are also aware of the distinct syntactical differences between VB/C# and T-SQL. SQL Server 2008 provides something called the LINQ to SQL provider, which makes it possible to write LINQ commands directly within SQL Server. This lets develops use one common object centric language in the application domain and the database domain. Developers will be able to use the LINQ programming syntax on database table and application collection, XML and datasets.

DATETIME Data Type
Datetime has now been separated into two separate data types so that each one can be defined independently. These new data types will help increase performance by eliminating the need to perform certain operations to extract the date or time portion of the Datetime data type.

GEOGRAPHY and GEOMETRY
These two additions have been added to better represent location specific data. This eliminates the need to break geography and geometry data down into formats that fit other standard data types.

Syntactic Sugar
The SQL language has had some small additions in the shape of Inline Variable Declarations:

Old
DECLARE @myVar int
SET @myVar = 5

New
DECLARE @myVar int = 5

C like math syntax
SET @i += 5

Icing on the cake
SQL Server 2008 had been blessed with Intellisense. All I can say is “about time too”. Gone are the days where you would have to do a Google search to remind yourself of certain T-SQL keywords, statements or syntax. Now SQL Server will give you’re a full list of statements and keywords available for a particular variable’s data type as well as column names for a particular table.

Conclusion
SQL Server offers some interesting new features that will keep developers and administrators happy. These new features integrate well with Visual Studio and the .Net framework 3.5 making SQL Server a nice finishing touch to a well rounded application development environment.

Designers and developers must make sure they spend adequate time planning the flow of information by firstly identifying the needs of their intended users, then creating a path for site visitors to follow, which firstly, addresses a users initial concerns, then gradually takes then towards achieving their goals. This is achieved by understanding the goal the goals of you target users and then identifying the information your site needs to provide.

There are millions of web sites all competing for the same space, so it is important that you get the right information across a quickly as possible. It has never been easier for users to find a competitors web site, which may do a better job than yours. It is important that you meet the immediate needs of your site visitors as this the fundamental principle behind good web design.

Web designer must realise that if a web site is hard to use or hard to read, users will leave the site. This is because most users simply do not want to spend a large amount of time trying to figure out how to use a site as there are plenty of other sites to choose from.

Definition of Usability

• Easy to learn
• Efficient to use
• Easy to recover from errors
• Easy to remember

Navigation (Breadcrumb Trail)
Site navigation is crucial as users must know where they are and where they are going at all times. The easiest way to achieve this is to follow certain site convention, layouts and phrases (i.e. company logo should be in the top left corner with a link back to the home page, ‘about us’ links should display organisational information, shopping cart or basket should refer to items a user wishes to purchase etc).

These conventions must not be adhered to whenever possible as users have become accustomed to them. Developers and designer must use this to their advantage because sticking to them can increase the usability of the site.

Download Speeds
How many times have you exited a web page because it has taken too long to download? As broadband speeds get faster users are becoming increasingly impatient when it comes to page download time. On average users are prepared to wait 8.6 seconds, so it is important that you pay attention to this. There is no use having a fancy web site with high resolution images if users aren’t prepared to wait long enough to see them.

Faster page download speeds can be achieved by using CSS instead of images, placing CSS code in a separate file and using Unobtrusive JavaScript.

Usability Testing
Many web designers fail to complete adequate usability testing due to time and budget constraints. They fail to realise that a usable web site or CMS will eliminate a lot of time spent providing technical support. It is crucial that designers and developers know that the adoption of usability testing will eventually pay for itself many times over.

The key is to start usability testing early and to involve your target demographic. If possible, use five people to complete these tests as this has been known to uncover as much as 85% of usability issues.

Conclusion
Usability is a hugely neglected area of web development and is an issue that needs to be addressed. We must always remember that users always come first and that if you make the user your priority then they will reward you with their loyalty.

It is not good enough using programmers and designers to do the testing either, as IT professionals do not think like the average web user. The best way to complete thorough testing is use candidate that are similar to your target audience.

Usability is an incredibly valuable tool that can save an organisation a lot of money, improve their competitive position and customer loyalty. It’s never too late, so start today.

Mobile broadband relies on 3G technology, which makes it possible to access the internet using a laptop (or PC) anywhere that has mobile phone coverage. You don’t even have to be in a wireless hotspot area as your broadband coverage and connection quality depends on how close you are to a mobile phone mast. The closer you are, the faster the connection speed you will be able to achieve.

Who is Mobile Broadband for?
Mobile broadband is an attractive solution for students or those living in temporary accommodation as it doesn’t require a land line. In fact in most cases it doesn’t require a mobile phone contract either. This has many advantages over conventional broadband access.

It is an essential tool for businessman and entrepreneurs, as it gives them the flexibility to complete their work on the move. It enables them to keep in touch with their latest emails and access important documents in a reliable way.

Hardware (3G Modems)
Setting up mobile broadband is extremely easy. Firstly you will need a 3G modem, which comes in three forms; USB Dongle, USB Key or Data card (laptop only).

• Dongles are about the size of a mobile phone and plug into your USB port.
• USB sticks are much smaller and are geared towards users who want a more portable option.
• Data cards are more discrete but are less popular as they require a laptop with a plug and play software/expansion slot.

Providers
The five main mobile broadband providers are:

• 3 Mobile
• Vodafone
• T-Mobile
• Orange
• O2

Each company offers various packages and uses their extensive mobile coverage to deliver a high quality internet connection.

Technology
Mobile broadband is made possible via 3G services, which are made possible via HSDPA (high speed download packet access) and HSUPA (high speed upload packet access). These enable broadband speeds of up to 7.2 MBPS download and 1.76MBPS upload.

3G functionality is also becoming a standard feature in modern laptops. This means users don’t have to worry about using dongles, making it easy to switch from wireless broadband at home to 3G broadband on the move; all with a few mouse clicks.

What’s the catch?
Mobile broadband is a new service and because of this there are still some limitations. Many of the current packages have quite restrictive monthly download limits depending on the package you are on. Another downside is that the higher your download requirements the longer your contract length will tend to be. Contracts lengths range from 0, 12, 18 and 24 months, which allow download limits of between 1-15GBs.

These limits have been imposed as the cost of transferring data across 3G networks is more expensive than transmitting data across home broadband networks. Providers also have to make sure that heavy users do not overload the network causing lost connections and slow services for others.

Conclusion
It is estimated that mobile broadband account will grow by as much as 50% by 2010. By 2009 mobile broadband can be expected by companies like BT, Virgin Media, Tiscali and AOL.

The addition of Femtocell base stations will help to boost mobile reception and advances in technologies like 4G will also bring faster connections. This will lower the cost to mobile operators, which can be passed back to the consumer.

.Net framework 3.5 is an incremental build which means that instead of creating a completely new framework Microsoft has instead added new assemblies and fixed known bugs. This decision helped make the transition between .Net framework 2.0 and 3.0 as painless as possible. In essence .Net framework 3.5 contains the 3.0 framework which contains the 2.0 framework.

New assemblies include:

• System.Data.Linq.dll – The implementation for LINQ to SQL.
• System.Xml.Linq.dll – The implementation for LINQ to XML.
• System.AddIn.dll, System.AddIn.Contract.dll – New AddIn (plug-in) model.
• System.Net.dll – Peer to Peer APIs.
• System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement.dll – Wrapper for Active Directory APIs.
• System.Management.Instrumentation.dll – WMI 2.0 managed provider (combined with
• System.Management namespace in System.Core.dll).
• System.WorkflowServices.dll and System.ServiceModel.Web.dll – WF and WCF enhancements (for more on WF + WCF in v3.5 follow links from here).
• System.Web.Extensions.dll – The implementation for ASP.NET AJAX
• System.Core.dll – In addition to the LINQ to Objects implementation, this assembly includes the following: HashSet, TimeZoneInfo, Pipes, ReaderWriteLockSlim, System.Security.,
• System.Diagnostics.Eventing. and System.Diagnostics.PerformanceData.
• System.Data.DataSetExtensions.dll – The implementation of LINQ to Dataset.
• System.Windows.Presentation.dll –WPF support for the System.AddIn.
• System.VisualC.STLCLR.dll – STL development in the managed world.

AJAX support has been added to .Net 3.5 as standard so that server and client-centric AJAX functionality can be added to existing and future web applications.

Some additional data-controls have also been added, in the shape of ‘ListView’ control for displaying data and the ‘LinqDataSource’ data control that exposes LINQ data to web applications. The ListView control is highly customisable (using templates and styles) and supports edit, update and delete operations as well as paging and sorting functionality.

Support from Vista styled Windows application has been added, which will even allow developers to update the appearance of old applications written using previous frameworks. Common file dialog boxes will be automatically updated to the Vista version. (See. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/926167)

Some of the biggest language orientated changes to.Net 3.5 are the inclusion of XAML, C# 3.0 and LINQ. Link and XAML are covered within my Silverlight and Visual Studio.Net posts.

Summary
One of the most important things to realise is that current web and windows application can be easily upgraded to .Net 3.5 as it is essentially built on the back of the previous two frameworks. Developers can make the switch safe in the knowledge that it won’t break their existing applications (unless their application exploited a bug, in which case it will!).
These types of upgrades are extremely welcome as it lessen the learning curve and give .Net developers more faith in Microsoft frameworks core infrastructure.

Tying these pieces of information together is crucial for the success or any aspiring or enterprise level business. The best place to start is by making this information easier to find by creating a centralised location to store it in. The next step is allowing individuals and teams to have access to this information inside and outside your organisation via intranets and extranets. This is where Microsoft’s SharePoint comes into play.

What is SharePoint?
SharePoint is best described as a “browser based collaboration and document management platform.” It can be used to host a wealth of different data storage mediums in a manner that make accessing the relevant information extremely easy.
Each individual piece of SharePoint functionality is exposed as web part, which is an individual frame or column based piece of information (similar to the way web pages are separated into section like: main-content, left-sidebar, footer etc). Each web part can represent a predefined collation of related information (i.e. monthly meetings, current projects, today’s weather, industry related blogs/RSS feeds etc). Users can view a summary of the web parts content or click through to access a more detailed view of that particular topic.

Each SharePoint site is built using ASP.Net 2.0, .Net Framework, IIS Web Server and an SQL Server database. This has huge advantages to IT companies that already use these technologies as SharePoint is fully customisable. Even if you aren’t a developer or database administrator it is still possible to create impressive workspaces using SharePoint’s intuitive templates and drag and drop web part functionality.

Office 2007 Integration
SharePoint has tight integration with Microsoft Office and can be used to manage large amounts of documents by creating a centralised point of access. The addition of version control means that groups can ensure that they are working with the most up-to-date version of a document and that any changes they make will be reflected across an entire organisation. This integration provides a simple, familiar and consistent user interface.

Security and Authentication
Using window authentication, all users of SharePoint can be identified accurately identified. SharePoint administrators can designate specific privileges / permission so that only certain users can view, add, edit or delete certain content. Network users can be invited to view new content via email and online status can be verified via SharePoint’s integration with Instant Messenger.

Separate SharePoint sites can also exist, that target specific departments or topics. These sites can be as simple or as complex as necessary, restricting access to authorised members only. Each site can also have child sites (i.e., the Datadial site contains an Accounts and an IT site. The IT site can then contain an SEO sub-site and a VB.Net sub-site.).

Summary
SharePoint has a wealth of possibilities depending of the needs of an organisation, department or individual. It s ability to centralise data from a number of data sources in a manner that is both searchable and collaborative is so astounding that once adopted, many will wonder how they work without it.

The reason I have chosen to investigate the difference between the two is that non-programmer constantly ask the questions: “What’s the difference between PHP and ASP.Net”, “Why can’t PHP applications talk to ASP.Net applications?” or “That could have been done in PHP so much quicker, for free”. There are so many deciding factors when choosing a web application framework. I will attempt to outline the differences using a For and Against bullet point format for both.

For PHP

• Free
• Open source
• Easier to learn due to its basic scripting language structure and build in functionality
• PHP5 now offers many object orientated development concepts
• Has many free IDEs available that are very impressive and well supported (e.g. Eclipse)
• Runs on Apache server which is open source
• Run on IIS 6.0 and IIS 7.0 due to Microsoft’s implementation of FastCGI open standard
• Has multiple platform support
• Marginally faster due to the overheads imposed by .Net’s Common Language Runtime, which is responsible for intermediate compilation of .Net’s many languages
• Has a huge support base as it is open source

Against PHP

• Although it claims to be free, when using free 3rd party add-ons developers often run into issues when developing commercially available applications (i.e. ownership of code / intellectual rights)
• Most PHP IDEs require lots of add-ons in-order to add similar functions to Visual Studio
• No built in support for AJAX. Requires add-ons.

For ASP.Net

• Can be developed using the stunning Visual Studio.Net IDE that offers vast array of features, that make coding much easier and development more productive
• Developers can download a free scaled down version of Visual Studio that offers an impressive array of features. This is aimed at students and hobbyists
• Runs on IIS (Internet Information Services)
• Applications can be written using many programming languages (e.g VB.Net, C#, J#, C++ COBAL)
• The .Net framework (the engine that ASP.Net is runs on) has more sophisticated error handling capabilities than PHP
• Allows better separation of design and application logic using of code-behind pages and user-controls
• Has built support for AJAX as of .Net Framework 3.5

Against ASP.Net

• Requires a Microsoft licenses
• Requires a basic knowledge of object orientated concepts which can sometimes deter newbie developers
• Single platform and will only run on Microsoft web servers

These bullet points emphasise some of the main differences, advantages and disadvantages of the two languages.

Quotes from other developers for ASP.Net and PHP

For ASP.Net
ASP.Net is Strongly Typed, Object Oriented, Sandboxed, Multi-Syntax, Component Centric, Event Driven, forms oriented, pre-compiled experience.

PHP is a loosely typed, objects optional, fixed syntax, component-less, runtime interpreted, structured programming model.

Joe Stragner

For PHP
In the end, PHP is less expensive, faster, more secure, and able to be deployed from a Linux server that is also less expensive, faster, and more secure than their Windows based counterparts.

Anon

Conclusion
There are many factors that may sway you decision about which web application framework to choose. This decision should be based on the factors above, the kind of career path you want to choose and detailed research. In reality though the decision is usually down to which framework you are exposed to first as many develops get comfortable with on languages syntax and features.

My advice would be to use both; if you can, as each one has its own merits and has earned its place in today’s web application development industry.

The main issue in achieving faster broadband is that currently the UK relies on an out dated telephone system to deliver broadband internet. There is a danger that the future growth and use of next generation web applications will be stunted due to our out-dated method of transmitting data. Sites like YouTube, MySpace, BBC iPlayer, 4 on Demand etc, would never have been possible using a dial-up 56k modem. This is a clear indication of how better connection speeds can improve level of web applications that can be delivered. Currently broadband speeds are sufficient for today’s use, but we must look to the future if we are to realise the potential of the Web.

The majority of the UK ISPs is still using copper wire to deliver their services, as opposed to fast fibre connection. It is estimated that fibre alternative connections can increase broadband speeds as much as 20 times.

BT has plans to install super fast fibre connections via their Openreach project, which will hopefully replace their old copper phone network in the future. The cost will be huge but their aims are to finance this by renting lines to rival ISPs such as TalkTalk, Tiscali, Car Phone Warehouse and Sky on a wholesale basis. This will allow next generation broadband packages and services to be delivered to consumers at a competitive price.

Leaders
At present the UK is miles behind countries like Japan and South Korea who have some of the fastest broadband speeds in the world, allowing them to watch broadcast quality television over the internet.

It is estimated that 90% of South Korea’s population are using broadband with an average connection speeds of 43MBPS. In Japan the average advertised connection speed is an incredible 90MBPS, which has been made possible via fibre-optic networks.

Current state of play in the UK
UK broadband prices are certainly dropping, and speeds have definitely improved since the days when 512KBPS was something to be proud of! Today’s norms are as much as 16x faster than they were a few years ago. The downside though, is that many of us in the UK don’t actually receive the broadband that we are sold. It is very much a postcode lottery, as people who live in more rural areas often receive a poorer service. This is due to the direct correlation between distance from the exchange and broadband speeds achieved.

If we are to keep up with Japan, Korea and of EU countries like France and Germany, our main focus should be on upgrading the way we transmit data. The fact that we are trying to squeeze every ounce of speed out of a network that was designed to transmit voice calls is a stark reflection of where we are and where we need to be in the future. Our current telephone network lacks the capacity to deliver the kind of high-speed broadband we require to realise the potential of UK Internet services.

Conclusion
We risks being left behind if we do not take the necessary steps to upgrade our data transmission infrastructure. This upgrade will allow businesses to develop new web related technologies to serve us in the future.

The future is bright for the Internet as new web applications are developed everyday that would never have been possible 5 years ago. The Internet will continue to evolve in years to come but its growth must not be stunted by something as simple as poor data transmission speed.

Giving extra attention to the typography works especially well in minimalistic designs.  For example, artists or galleries they want few distractions to the works they are showing on the website, resulting in (often) a white background and shades of grey.  To stop this beautiful minimalism being interpretted as “boring” by the general public, the role of the type on the page becomes crutial. We will soon be launching a website where this is the exact case.

As there are only a handful of “web safe” fonts, the lack of choice can sometimes be a hurdle. However we have recently also been employing some fonts that come packaged with Windows Vista, and use appropriate roll-backs for those who are not on Vista.  Likewise if your audience is going to be primarily creatives, there is a good chance they will also have the Adobe font packages installed, opening up a wider range of fonts available for use.

Some cool typography websites:

• Mark Boulton’s five simple steps to better typography
• I Love Typography
• Veer Type

Relational databases have been the industry standard for persisting data since the mid 70’s. Relational databases consist of flat two-dimensional table that are related to other tables using keys.

Data manipulation is handled by SQL (Structured Query Language) which is standard across the majority of database vendors.

Downside
The downside to relational databases is that the application object model that developers code against cannot be stored in a relational database. Classes have to be written to provide the necessary mapping so that the objects and databases can communicate. Each object has to be flattened out to support many-to-many relationships. Each field and property has to be mirrored in database tables or views in-order for fields to match up. Stored Procedures are also needed (sometimes as many as four per class) to marshal data to and from the object. The mapping of class fields to database columns is a laborious but unavoidable task.

Alternatives
Object database approach things from a different perspective, offering a different way of designing the persistence layer of an application. The fundamental idea behind object databases is the idea that you store your data in the same way that you use it.

Matisse Object Databases
One of the major .Net object database vendors, is a company called Matisse Software Inc. Matisse have created a database management system that helps developers to bypass the whole mapping process usually associated with object application design and relational databases.

Using Matisse the object database management system, developers can create database schemas and generate application code from simple class diagrams. The development mapping process is eliminated as this is all taken care of for you behind the scenes. Performance is increased as complex joins are no longer needed. Object databases store object as they exist in the application domain along with all the necessary object relationships.

Conclusion
There are many other interesting feature object databases have to offer and this post has simply scratches the surface as to what is possible. The main point to make though is that using Matisse or any other object databases database management system allows you to stay within the object orientated paradigm, eliminating the need to bridge a gap between two different domains. Matisse’s support for VB.Net, C#, Java and C++ make it an extremely via candidate for a .Net developers that are ready for the paradigm shift or tired of the huge overheads in terms of code maintenance and database administration.

Matisse

IE browsers have been renowned for being bug ridden due to the inability to follow web standards. As well as introducing some new addition to their browser IE8 also tackles past compatibility issues by attempting to make IE8 standards compliant. The downside to this is that it may break existing web page / applications designed to run on their previous browsers (IE6 & IE7).

To combat this issue, Microsoft has design the new browser with a facility that allows IE8 to be switch to three different modes: Quirk, Strict and Standard. These modes are activated either by the inclusion of specific tags (e.g. <meta http-equiv=”X-UA-Compatible” content=”IE=7″ />) within a web page or via user setting within the browser itself (the latter requiring a restart). Standard mode will be the default making IE8 use a more standardised DOM like Firefox and Opera.

The ability to switch modes is a very important as IE8 must stay compatible with older web pages; especially offline versions such as those found on instructional installation DVDs and CDs. Pages like these cannot be updated to accommodate the new changes so this facility is essential.

The addition of the browser version switching facility has been met with some controversy as some have argued that this hinders the progression of web standards. By giving people a choice, developers may continue to target older browser version instead of finally adopting a universal standard. Some have also stated that this is an example of “monolithic behaviour due to Microsoft’s dominating position in the web browser and operating system market.” – Hakon Wium Lee – Chief technology officer of Opera Software.

Web Slices
IE8 offer a brand new and interesting feature called Web Slices, which allows users to bookmark a specific section of a page (e.g. the London weather section of the BBC web site). This then allows users to view this specific snippet of information in isolation as a widget of popup. In the future web browsers will be able to predefine specific content that is available as a Web Slice so that users can simply add them to the browser tool bar and access them on demand. Each time a Web Slices content is updated the user is given an un-intrusive indicator to let them know that the content has been updated.

Activities
Activities allow developers to attach specific functionality to information on a page. For example, with additional browser add-ons users will be able to hover over an address field and IE will open a popup layer that links directly to Google Maps or by hovering over a key word for an item of clothing IE may open up an EBay popup with a list of search results. Current IE8 beta add-ons include Translate, Send, Map, Find, Define and Blog.

Developer Tools
Fans of Firefox’s Firebug will be happy to hear that IE8 will be equipped with a similar development tool that allows them to inspect a pages HTML, CSS and JavaScript in a visual debugging environment.

Conclusion
We must remember though that IE8 beta 1 is aimed at developers as it still contains many bugs. It has a long way before a general user beta version is available but it is heading in the right direction. The slight downside is that as much as many developers are excited about many of the new additions and updates, a lot of these updates are simply bug fixes for issues that weren’t addressed in IE6 and 7. Some of these issues even go as far as their core layout engine Trident, which was developed 10 years. IE8 will use Trident Version 6 which, believe it or not is first version to pass the Acid 2 test (except for the white stripes).The decision to make its default mode to be set to Standard (i.e. standard compliance) is also welcome even if some pages viewed in IE8 will initially break.

Microsoft has a huge task of improving their support for web standards without breaking existing web sites and we all know that standard compliance and backward compatibility do not go hand in hand with Internet Explorer.

Silverlight improves the potential for developers and web designer to create rich applications that aren’t limited by the constraints of modern web browsers.

Silverlight runs on all major browsers including Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari and also has the ability to adapt its video quality depending on what device it runs on e.g. desktop browser, mobile device, or 720p HDTV video mode.

Silverlight application can be created by a graphic designer or a web developer using either:

• Microsoft Extended Blend – for layout and graphic design
• Visual Studio .Net – for coding

There are currently two versions of Silverlight, 1.0 and 2.0 beta. The most noticeable difference between the two versions is Silverlight 2.0’s support for the .Net Framework.

Silverlight includes Windows Presentation Foundation which is new to .Net 3.0 and is designed to allow rich client features by extending browser based user interfaces beyond what is capable with HTML alone. It also provides a declarative mark-up language known as XAML (Extensible Application Mark-up Language; pronounced “zammel”) as well as adding extensions to JavaScript so that the client UI elements can be manipulated programmatically using event handlers.

Silverlight 2.0 is designed to integrate seamlessly with existing JavaScript and ASP .NET AJAX code and goes one step further by making it possible to create applications using VB .NET and C# due to its ability to access the .NET Frameworks programming model.

To run Silverlight applications all you need is a modern browser and the Silverlight plug-in, which can be downloaded and installed in minutes.

Silverlight XAML syntax is very similar to HTML as it allows you create rich web based UIs in HTML like syntax. Using Microsoft Extended Blend (MEB) designers can create engaging graphics, animation and media. MEB can generate XAML so that (via Visual Studio .Net) programmers and designer can collaborate and work on the same files.

XAML
XAML is to Silverlight what HTML is to web pages. It is text based and can be incorporated directly into a web page via the Silverlight runtime. It is used to define objects and their properties and focuses on defining UIs. XAML is firewall friendly unlike other technologies like Java Applets, Active X or Flash, (which all send binary content to the browser) which can pose security risks and is also easier to updates due to its text-based nature, unlike its rivals, (mentioned above) which have to be recompiled and redeployed after every change. Each time a Silverlight application is updated a new XAML file is generated that will be automatically downloaded the next time a client request is made. This eliminates the need for re-installation or redeployment and prevents the user experience from being disrupted.

Silverlight has a long way before it can compete with flash’s popularity, especially as it is a Microsoft only product. It has a huge amount of potential as it is designed to work with the .Net framework, which is a robust and proven foundation. Only time will tell as to how popular it will become and whether users and developers will jump on the Silverlight express!!

Multi-Framework Targeting
This is a superb new feature that allows Visual Studio to target previous versions of the .Net Framework. In the past developers have had to have as many as three different versions of Visual Studio installed (i.e. 6.0, 2003, 2005) so that they could update and modify old applications built on previous frameworks. It is now possible to target applications written with .Net framework 2.0 SP1, 3.0 and 3.5, safe in the knowledge that each project targeted at a specific version will contain the correct project types, toolboxes, references, features and intellisense.

Intellisense
A welcome addition to the intellisense library is JavaScript. This new Intellisense library is smart enough to look at the underlying type and deduce what methods and properties are available (e.g. if you choose a numeric type, the intellisense dropdown will be populated with the correct methods and properties available to that type).

Intellisense has gained an additional feature in the shape of option filtering. This is very similar to the way Internet Explorer suggests previously visited web sites when typing in a URL. Visual Studio now filters the options available based on the words you type, instead of just jumping to the key word that best matches the text. This makes it easier to find the properties or methods you require as it eliminates unnecessary choices.

Support for the ASP.Net AJAX Library is also included as standard (due to Visual Studio .Net 2008’s full integration with .Net 3.5), so traversing the new JavaScript base class via intellisense is a welcome addition. This added functionality makes creating next generation AJAX enable web application more pleasant.

Split Screen View
The use of multiple monitors is not just reserved for designer anymore. It is fast becoming more common for developers to use dual monitors too; due to an increased number of simultaneous applications being used (i.e. Dreamweaver, VS .Net, Adobe Photoshop, Outlook etc). Visual Studio capitalises on this fact by allowing users to tile their code and design view windows across two monitors. This feature will increase a developer’s productivity by decreasing the amount of time spent scrolling through lines of code.

ADO .Net Entity Framework
ADO.Net has also been improved by raising the level of abstraction at which programmer work with data. This changes the way developers interact with databases and removes the need to code against rows and columns. This means that developers can use a richer vocabulary that includes concept like inheritance, complex types and explicit relationship (See. LINQ blog post).

Conclusion
Visual Studio .Net 2008 offers a vast array of additional features and takes advantage of the latest framework advances. With each update programming and application development moves to a new level and commonly used programming techniques and coding procedures are moved into the framework to help increase productivity and so that developers can concentrate on higher level functionality.

It is expected that the majority of .Net developers will eventually upgrade to Visual Studio .Net 2008 as the benefits literally speak for themselves. Any developer that wants to stay on the cutting edge of today’s software development procedures should upgrade to Visual Studio 2008 as it will allow them to concentrate on the next generation of application development.

How do you capture their interest within those few seconds?  First of all you must understand these people. If content is prioritised and targetting to them they are much more likely to start exploring.  If you are close to the people that will be using your website then you start to understand their priorities.

If it’s within your budget consider establishing a focus group, which is an effective way of understanding your audience.  If you don’t have the time & money for this, at least try to interview representatives of your audience. You can cheaply develop a survey where people can then opt-in for further in-person interviews.  Never forget that these are real people, and go out of your way to befriend those that will either make your project fly or fall. Listening to their concerns can be especially useful.

Design is so much more than putting pictures on a page and slapping on some pretty colours.  Informed design revolves around who you are reaching, and what they are wanting to achieve from the site.  These designs are also never really finished – they thrive off feedback and further modifications based on informed decisions, constantly improving for your audience – and in turn you.

Web 2.0 can be considered as applications and services that are built around the internet instead of expecting the internet to suit or adapt to the application.

The version number (2.0) suggests an improved World Wide Web (i.e. blogs, podcasts, RSS feeds etc) that provides a more interactive experience than standard read-only websites. The main goal is to bridge the gap between users and the providers. In many cases with Web 2.0, users become the providers as they are given the ability to upload content as well as download it.  Over time these sites become more popular and informative the more users add content, which is a stark contrast to old school Web 1.0 sites that limited used to viewing only.

Richer Web Applications
Web applications that incorporate technologies such as Flash, AJAX, Java, Silverlight and Curl have enhanced the user experience by creating improved browser based applications. These technologies make it possible to update specific sections of user content without the need to refresh the whole page. These techniques also tend to make more use of the client computer / browser to reduce the need for page postback and decrease server workload. This helps to increase the responsiveness of Web 2.0 web applications and improves the user experience. This is important as it makes it possible to create a richer, more responsive UI that is better able to mimic modern desktop applications.

We must remember that many of the new concepts that have been made popular by Web 2.0 have not replaced old protocols. They have simply added a layer of abstraction to them.

Web 2.0 should be thought of as bridging the gap between users and web content. It is about understanding how and why people use the web and providing the correct services to better serve their needs. The needs of the user must outweigh the visions of programmers, marketing directors or information architects. Web 2.0 is about doing things on the web that cannot be achieved on any other medium, not reinventing the wheel and shoehorning old concepts it into a web application and calling it Web 2.0

Usually the most common way to implement event based JavaScript is to embed event-handlers directly into HTML tags i.e., onclick, onmouseover, onload etc, or to generate dynamic mark-up using document.write functions. Unfortunately these techniques aren’t always implemented using the appropriate methods and sometimes go against the UOJS methodology.

It is important to remember that a web page should still be functional without any scripting and caution should be taken to avoid the over use of functions and dynamic content generation. The key is to separated web content into appropriate layers (i.e., Structure – HTML, Presentation – CSS and behavioural – JavaScript) so that each layer complements the layer that proceeds it.

Wherever possible, each layer should be separated into its own file and hooked into the page via IDs and Class attributes. Dynamic page content should be inserted after a page has fully loaded so that if JavaScript is disabled users aren’t left with a partially functioning page. UOJS stresses that the behavioural layer (JavaScript) should act as an enhancement to a page rather than a dependency.

Loading JavaScript Files
There are two ways to load JavaScript into a HTML document. One is to add the JavaScript within the head tags and the other is to add the script before the closing body tag. The first method can cause loading issues as it can slow down the page loading process. By default functions placed within the head tag are fired after the browser has rendered the page content. This means that the extra time it takes to download the necessary external JavaScript files is pointless, as the functions are called after the page content has loaded. If a web page relies on a particular JavaScript function to dynamically render or position content this can cause page elements to display incorrectly or jump when the desired function is eventually fired.

A more ideal solution would be to place JavaScript at the bottom of a web page so that by the time the function is fired the DOM is fully loaded and ready to be manipulated since the script is being loaded after the HTML. This method decreases the time it takes to load the page and forces the developer to build a page that doesn’t initially rely on JavaScript.

JavaScript Disabled Browsers
In circumstances where we have to generate dynamic HTML a useful method would be to add HTML place holders. These place holders take the place of the pre-rendered dynamic content (using CSS to set ‘visibility:hidden’ in-order to preserve the elements dimensions) and once the page has fully loaded we can generate the appropriate dynamic content and unhide the place holders via the JavaScript that loads at the end of the page.

You may be thinking that this contradicts the purpose of writing UOJS as users with JavaScript disabled will be left with parts of the browser content missing. The point of this technique is that by leaving the rendering of dynamic content to the end of a page users with JavaScript turned off will still be able to view the page without any page errors. Missing content can always be replaced by some informative information indicating why the content is absent. The above technique is highly recommended for web sites that are heavily reliant on JavaScript.

Summary
Although this blog post briefly touches on the subject of Unobtrusive JavaScript, hopefully it has wetted you appetite to go on and investigate the subject further. There are many guidelines and codes of conduct when applying UOJS so it is strongly advised that readers of this blog post explore this topic in more detail (especially articles written by Jeremy Keith). It is not always possible to implement all the concepts of UOJS as in some cases it may even break an application. A good working knowledge of this methodology, especially at the early stages of development may improve scalability, portability and efficiency of your future web applications.

All too often (especially in the IT industry) employees are expected to work in basements, boiler rooms, bullpens, hallways and quite truthfully un-inspirational offices that are often bad for their physical and psychological health. Other negative factors come from indoor pollution caused printers, photocopiers, carpets, dust, electrical equipment and office cleaning products.

In order to achieve the best possible performance from employees it is important to create the optimum climate within your office. This can be achieved by air purifying plants that release moisture and oxygen and absorb heat and breakdown harmful substances. Many of people find that office plants can help to reduce stress as well as symptoms of headaches and fatigue. Research has also shown that employees who spend more than four hours a day in front of a computer screen feel much better and more productive when plants are placed on their desk.

Benefits of office plants:

• Emits Oxygen
• Purifies the air
• Reduces stress
• Reduces minor aliments
• Improves concentration
• Increases productivity
• Reduces dust pollution

Another ways of reducing stress and increasing productivity at work is by using a technique known as design psychology. Design psychology is the study of how our environment can affect or behaviour, mood and well being. It even goes as far as claiming that furniture arrangement, décor and other design aesthetics can influence a person concentration levels and well being.

In reality it is not always possible to implement certain changes to your office due to limitations like health and safety, budgets and space, but these improvements don’t always require you to purchase expensive items or make drastic physical changes. It is possible to improve your office environment with non-tangible things like instant messaging, which can help to make employees feel less isolated and more connected with other colleges and the outside world. Thin client technology like VPN can also make a big difference to working life as they allow employees to work from home or other remote locations, which can help to improve their emotional, physical and psychological welfare.

With a small amount of money, some imagination and a willing boss, an office can be transformed into an environment that facilitates new ideas, productive employees and social harmony.

Working at Google Zurich

This time around browser vendors and developers are working together to create the best possible version of HTML that meets the needs of modern and future web applications.

Much has changed since HTML 4 was published in 1997. The age of static web pages being cutting edge has long since faded and has been replaced by media rich and dynamic web applications that function on desktops as well as mobile devices like mobile phones and PDAs.

In-order to get as much feedback as possible, the W3C created the HTML Working Group in March 2007 as a forum for building a consensus around the new HTML standard and has since published a number of design principles and features to help guide the development of HTML 5 in a direction that truly represents the future of the World Wide Web.

Some of the more exciting feature additions and advantages are:

• APIs for drawing two-dimensional graphics
• Embedding Audio and Video
• Maintaining persisted client-side data
• Improved page element representation
• The ability to choose a classic HTML or an XML like syntax

Structural Element Tags
One of the many interesting additions to HTML 5 is the inclusion of structural elements tags, e.g. header, nav, article, section, aside and footer. These tags are intended to replace the arbitrary DIVs that would have contained IDs and classes of similar names. These new tags make source code more intuitive and easier to read and allow specific rules to be applied as standard. They also eliminates the age old problem of conflicting naming conventions by providing a more standardised method of structuring HTML.

Old:

New:

Audio and Video Tags
Two of the most interesting tags to be added to this new version of HTML are the Audio and Video tags. These tags provided HTML 5 with a method of embedding multimedia elements in a page, which was previously provided by 3rd party plugins like Flash. It will also be possible to apply style and custom interfaces that provide playback functionality via DOM APIs and clients-side scripting.

Here is a list of the new tags planned for HTML 5 (this list is subject to change):

• <article> Defines an article
• <aside> Defines content aside from the page content
• <audio> Defines sound content
• <canvas> Defines graphics
• <command> Defines a command button
• <datagrid> Defines data in a tree-list
• <datalist> Defines a dropdown list
• <datatemplate> Defines a data template
• <details> Defines details of an element
• <dialog> Defines a dialog (conversation)
• <embed> Defines external interactive content or plugin
• <event-source> Defines a target for events sent by a server
• <figure> Defines a group of media content, and their caption
• <footer> Defines a footer for a section or page
• <header> Defines a header for a section or page
• <m> Defines marked text
• <meter> Defines measurement within a predefined range
• <nav> Defines navigation links
• <nest> Defines a nestingpoint in a datatemplate
• <output> Defines some types of output
• <progress> Defines progress of a task of any kind
• <rule> Defines the rules for updating a template
• <section> Defines a section
• <source> Defines media resources
• <time> Defines a date/time
• <video> Defines a video

Tag definitions from http://www.w3schools.com/tags/html5.asp

Summary
HTML 5 is still a work in progress and may take another few years before it is finalised and few more before it is supported by today’s popular web browsers. The W3C welcomes and encourages feedback from individuals as well as software vendors and urges people to join the HTML Working Group to ensure that HTML 5 meets the need of today’s web users, designers and developers.

Ajax stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML and has become hugely popular due to concepts such as Web 2.0 that has been made fashionable by companies like Amazon and Google. The key word in the definition of AJAX is Asynchronous! Despite all the wonderful web technologies available today the method in which users access web content is still synchronous (i.e. request / response model). This means that when a user navigates to a web page, their browser makes a request to the web server and then waits for a response. This means that replicating the quick seamless response of a desktop application is almost impossible due to the distance the data has to travel. This request for a web page (known as a postback) requires the server to render / re- render a page’s content to the users browser window (i.e. the server returns a complete page of HTML).

Synchronous postbacks are one the major disadvantages of many of today’s websites as the round trip from the client to the server can be slow; especially when accessing web pages that require intensive updates (i.e. pages that contain large images or other rich media content). This is perfectly illustrated by comparing the Synchronous model of http://www.streetmap.co.uk/ to the Asynchronous model of http://maps.google.co.uk/. Google Maps seamlessly delivers it content while the user browses and Street Map performs postbacks every time the user requests a different section of the map.

Introducing ASP .Net AJAX (Synchronous Vs. Asynchronous)
Consider the case whereby a web site has to regularly update its content with ever-changing information, e.g. stock prices. This stock price information may only take up a small portion of the page but in-order for this small update to occur a full page postback is required. Even on a good day when the round trip to the web server is fast this will still case the browser to blink / flash and on a bad day users will be left staring at a blank white page while the server build the new page and posts back the results.

When using AJAX enabled web pages it is possible to implement partial page updates whereby the only part of the page is updated allowing the users to continue browsing other content while a specific region of the page is updated. The addition of visual loading indicators are also possible as a welcome change from a blank screen and give user a clear indication of what is going on.

ASP .Net AJAX Architecture

Using conventional ASP .Net controls the server is responsible for dynamically creating HTML mark-up which isn’t ideal as it doesn’t provide a clean separation of presentation and business logic. ASP .Net AJAX follows a different model whereby data is still managed on the server but presentation is handled by the client side components that run in the browser.

The AJAX library has been developed to make client-side functionality easier as it provides core classes that extend JavaScript to support object orientated scripting. It contains a base class library that also offers error handling, debugging and tracing; a network layer that provides asynchronous communication and an application services layer, UI layer and Browser layer.

From a programming point of view the AJAX library provides a more powerful JavaScript programming model that offers many of the constructs that are needed for object orientated programming like, namespaces, interfaces and inheritance.

Summary
ASP .Net AJAX can be easily incorporated into excising ASP .Net applications and makes it possible to develop a richer client-side experience.

Combining the client-side Microsoft AJAX library and ASP .Net AJAX 2.0 Extensions .Net developers can add an extensive array of new functionality using a familiar object orientated programming environment (Visual Studio .Net, Dreamweaver etc), Web Services and new sever controls, all in a unified design and coding framework. With the new possibilities that ASP .Net AJAX provides the key decision for developer is how much of the application logic to place on the client (JavaScript) and how much to place on the server (VB. Net, C#)?

LINQ allows you to model a relational databases using object relational mapping. You can then run queries and perform inserts, updates and deletes using its object programming syntax.

LINQ is not VB .Net or C#, even though it can be expressed using a similar syntax. It contains standard query operators that allow you to work with data in a more intuitive way regardless of whether you are working with a relational database, XML or in-memory collections (i.e. generic lists).

Some of the main query operators are:

• Select
• OrderBy
• Where
• SelectAll
• TakeWhile
• Take
• Skip
• First
• SkipWhile

These are similar to their SQL equivalents while some operators add additional functionality.

LINQ fully supports views, transactions and stored procedures and with the addition of the ‘LINQ-to-SQL’ designer users can easily create object representations of any SQL Server database. The LINQ-to-SQL designer is a type of wizard that can automatically create the mapping classes needed to link an object to a database table or view. This saves developers a huge amount of time as it dynamically maps table column names to a mapping class and creates the necessary properties within that class.

The code generated by the wizard is split into several classes depending on how many tables that have been targeted. The main class (which is of type System.Data.Linq.DataContext) relates to the database as a whole, and the remaining classes relate to each of the tables or views.

Using the LINQ-to-SQL wizard isn’t essential as these classes can be created manually. A happy medium would be to allow the wizard to generate the necessary code for you then customise and strip out any unnecessary content.

Data Modelling
Many developers may find the way LINQ creates object relational mapping very familiar to how the currently work. It models one-to-one class entity relationships with a key (ID) property (e.g. a product has a category, therefore a category ID is placed within the product class). In the case of a one-to-many relationship (e.g. an order object has many order-lines); a collection of order-lines are placed within the order object.

Conclusion
Many developers are used to the tedious but essential process of mapping relational data to .Net objects but with the introduction of LINQ this process can be made a lot smoother as it provides a bridge between the two domains. Additionally you can use some of the other LINQ data providers to map data like: LINQ-to-XML, LINQ-to-Entities, LINQ-to-Objects, LINQ-to-SharePoint and LINQ-to-Terra Server. The addition of LINQ to the latest version of the .Net framework makes writing error prone mapping objects and stored procedures a thing of the past.

Here’s an Example

If you ever fancied getting your web content displayed in one of these flash viewers (you don’t even have to have a magazine, a product catalogue will do for example), ZMAGS provide an affordable way of creating these “online magazines” via the upload of various PDF files that represent the pages of the e-mag.

The service costs £19 for 1 magazine, £79 for 10 and £149 for 25.  More info here.

Many companies have used this service including our client, Pocket London as shown in the example above.  Other clients include, TNT Magazine, IKEA and Volkswagen

For Pocket London, we built a system around the Zmag IFrames that enables the client to “brand” each e-mag separately to their specifications.  The client can change the header, footer or an intro page around the IFrame through a bespoke content management system, therefore providing limitless possibilites of re-branding their online magazine for any number of clients.

Here are a few examples of the finished product:

Example 1

Example 2

Example 3

I have been keeping constant track of changes in this data over the past year or so and have been able to study trends and changes in different usages.

My source for the data is W3Counter’s Global Web Stats, who compiles these usage statistics every month by studying the last 25,000,000 vists to approximately 12,000 websites.  There are some other sources for browser activity, for example, W3Schools Browser Statistics (not accurate because statistics are only based on visitors to 1 website).  By sticking to one source for information (even if it is not 100% accurate), it is easier to accurately discover just how quickly things change over any given time period.

Looking at browser usage statistics, Firefox’s share of the browser market has significantly increased.  According to the latest statistics, the total market share for the Mozilla/Firefox browser family is 29.62% compared to IE’s 61.43%.  Over the past year, Firefox has narrowed the gap by almost 10%.  These statistics take an average across many different countries, although recent reports suggest that in some countries, Firefox’s share is significantly higher – for instance in Poland where it is 45%.  However in the UK it is thought to be less than the global average at only 20%.

Internet Explorer 6 has shown a steady decrease in usage with Internet Explorer 7 increasing, although 6 still remains the most popular.  With the advent of Internet Explorer 8 on the horizon, it will be interesting to see how many people ditch IE6 immediately for version 8 and how many make the switch from 7 to 8.  IE8 has been billed as a far more standards compliant browser, that previous versions have been severely lacking in, which could potentially see some recovery for Internet Explorer over Firefox’s increasing market share.

The new Firefox 3 has just been released with rave reviews all round and is already increasingly its popularity.  Although the stats for June only show a 1% market share, this is sure to jump right up over the coming few months as more people upgrade to version 3.

Safari still “enjoys” a rather low percentage of the market (just 2%), despite now being available on PCs and Opera is showing a small but steady increase in popularity, though still only at a 1% market share.  The AOL browser seems to be completely dropping off the radar as more users are encouraged to switch to far more sophisticated browsers such as Firefox.

The following two graphs illustrate these shifts over the past year:

Recent operating system activity shows only slight changes in the market share between Windows and Mac operating systems.  Apple have increased their share to roughly 5% and Microsoft Windows versions account for 91%.  The most interesting statistic is slow uptake of Windows Vista, now a year and a half after its original release, the market share is just 8%, while computers running XP still account for 78% of the market.  With the possible release of a new Windows operating system less than 5 years away, it has been commented on that many users will stick with the largely stable XP until then, after the many grumblings and problems that Vista has had.

The following is a basic illustration of the change in operating system market share at the lower end of the market (not including XP) over the past year:

An analysis of the usage in various countries gives little indication of any change since my last report.  The developed nations of the USA and UK are seeing a decreasing share (although I suspect still an increase in overall usage in these countries) and making way for faster developing countries such as Germany, China, The Netherlands and Turkey.

The statistics on screen resolution confirms we are in the middle of what I like to call a “Widescreen Revolution”.  Screen resolutions such as 1280×800, 1440×900 and 1680×1050 have all shown a significant increase over the past year, and the “old reliable” 1024×768, 1280×1024 and 800×600 resolutions are on a steady decline.  Particularly in our office we waved a rather unemotional farewell to the last or our old CRT monitors that made a bee line for the scrap heap.  I’m sure there are thousands of other offices across the world also seeing the last of those big, chunky, heavy monitors.  In most cases they are being replaced by not only one widescreen flat monitor, but in many cases – 2 or even 3.  Yes, we are also seeing the “Multiple Monitor Revolution”!

The following graph illustrates this behaviour:

There will be another update on Global Web Stats in 2009.

The man who once claimed he wanted to put a computer on the desk of every home has decided to take a step back from the amazing expansion seen in the computing industry over the past 30 or so years.  He plans to devote more time to his family and to his charitable organisation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, while still remaining Chairman of the company and keeping some influence over special projects such as future versions of Windows.

Bill Gates originally started his career by creating the programming language BASIC with his old school friend, Paul Allen, for the Altair 8800, one of the world’s first “Personal Computers”.  Eventually he registered Microsoft as a trademark in 1976 out of this work and brought together a collection of computer hobbyists and enthusiasts to become his first employees.  By 1980, Gates and Microsoft agreed to produce an operating system for the PC being developed by IBM, otherwise known as MS-DOS.  What followed was a massive expansion in their employee base and turnover, which in turn produced the first version of Windows by 1985, Microsoft Office by 1989 and by 1995, Gates was declared the richest man in the world.  At present, Microsoft now employees over 90,000 workers.

Just what does Gates’ departure mean for the future of Microsoft?  Well you would probably be suprised to hear – not much.  Two people have taken over Bill Gates’ role – Ray Ozzie and Steve Ballmer, but in the large part no one will know the difference as Bill Gates will always be considered as ‘Mr Microsoft’ long into the future.  I suspect the work at management level and the key decisions that are made will remain much the same.

I think that the next big task for Microsoft is to really brush up on the quality control side of things.  It’s fair to say there have been a few shambles over the past few years in all branches of the companies products – from the faulty X-Boxes, to the completely unfinished Vista, to the shambles over Office 2007 document formats and backwards compatibility and the uproar over Outlook 2007’s email rendering it’s been a pretty fiery time for Microsoft recently.

It’s not all bad though as on the plus side it really does seem they are keeping on top of the ball in the future of touch screen technology, releasing Windows on next-gen phones and attempting to make multi-billion dollar takeovers of major rival companies.

What the future really holds for Microsoft, that remains to be seen.  One thing for sure is that there will always be Microsoft haters and hard-core devotees – that will never change.

Each frame was a simple, relatively small area of text that displayed the current share price for a listed fund:

There were to be 3 frames in total.  Each frame was to display a different price, in the bottom 2 frames, only the share price was to be displayed and not any of the other content.

Using standard CSS positioning techniques I was able to position the 3 frames so that the 3 share prices were aligned correctly:

(Note the CSS code here is inline for simplicity)

<div style="display:block;position:absolute;top:0px;">
|||||<iframe src="http://www.myurl.com/iframe1" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="yes" scrolling="no" style="width:200px; height:90px; position:relative; left:-20px;top:30px;margin:0;padding:0;" />
</div>
<div style="display:block;position:absolute;top:30px;">
|||||<iframe src="http://www.myurl.com/iframe2" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="yes" scrolling="no" style="width:200px; height:90px; position:relative; left:-20px;top:30px;margin:0;padding:0;" />
</div>
<div style="display:block;position:absolute;top:60px;">
|||||<iframe src="http://www.myurl.com/iframe3" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="yes" scrolling="no" style="width:200px; height:90px; position:relative; left:-20px;top:30px;margin:0;padding:0;" />
</div>

Here is what it looked like

The major problem here is the overlapping of IFrames, while the positioning is correct, the 3rd IFrame overlaps the 1st and 2nd IFrames, and the 2nd IFrame overlaps the 1st IFrame.

To get around this we use the z-index property of CSS.  This property only works on elements that have been positioned, as we have done with each IFrame, in that it has been placed within an absolutely positioned HTML div element.  Z-index facilitates the display order (or ’stack’ order) of elements on a page.

Hence we get the following by setting the z-index of each div to 999, 998 and 997 respectively.

<div style="display:block;position:absolute;top:0px;z-index:999;">
|||||<iframe src="http://www.myurl.com/iframe1" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="yes" scrolling="no" style="width:200px; height:90px; position:relative; left:-20px;top:30px;margin:0;padding:0;" ></iframe>
</div>
<div style="display:block;position:absolute;top:30px;z-index:998;">
|||||<iframe src="http://www.myurl.com/iframe2" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="yes" scrolling="no" style="width:200px; height:90px; position:relative; left:-20px;top:30px;margin:0;padding:0;" ></iframe>
</div>
<div style="display:block;position:absolute;top:60px;z-index:997;">
|||||<iframe src="http://www.myurl.com/iframe3" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="yes" scrolling="no" style="width:200px; height:90px; position:relative; left:-20px;top:30px;margin:0;padding:0;" ></iframe>
</div>

The effect this gives is shown here:

Note the lower the number the z-index, the lower the priority it has in the stack.  Z-indexes can also be negative.

The solution was effective enough for the client to be implemented on their site and saves the space that would otherwise be needed on the web page if there were 3 IFrames positioned separately from each other.

With server virtulization you can cosolidate work loads of underutilized machines onto smaller number of servers reducing energy and hardware costs and maximizing performance of all your servers.

Other beneifts with virtualization is the ability to take snapshots of a running machine wich can then be easily revert to a previous state improving the overall recoverability your Virtual Machines. The ability to easily test upgrades and service packs prior to upgrading the production machines without the need of purchasing new hardware. Migrating Virtual MAchines from one physical host to another with minimal downtime.

Alan Stevens from Zdnet has written an excellent article on the topic of Hyper-V�

Management of the virtual desktops is more simplified as you only have one host to manage and deploying different software in each Virtual Desktop is as simple as ticking the package you want each use to have.
This is still a new concept and not widely used but that was the same for server virtualization just 5 years ago not many companies used this technology and know it’s one of the most talked about topics.
There are still several drawbacks that need to be resolved for this to hit the mainstream and become more widely used.

• Firstly thin clients are still to expensive (Most users would be using the personal machine anyway)
• The graphics for multimedia users leave a lot to desire

So for any business that find themselves in a similar situation this is a would be a worth considering as the initial investment is very low compared to other options.

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