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IPhone4
Just seeing if I can snag an iPhone upgrade at the apple store in Brighton. About a 30 minute wait. Glad I waited til lunch time to come down. There were queues right out of the store and down to Debenhams.
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How to create a Microformat hcard
Simply go to http://microformats.org/code/hcard/creator and fill out the form. Simple!
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Site Rebuild for a client - How NOT to get kicked off google
I had a call recently from the father of a client who’d had his website “re-designed” by his current web designer as a bit of a favour. The company is known as “Dave the fence” and he’s been doing nationwide electric fence contracts for years and doing quite well out of his website for enquiries and so on.
Dave the fence, called me and asked if I could do something about him being “removed from google” as he put it. He was interested in what I could do as I’d been doing some good work for his son over at www.jobmortgages.com (Mortgages for Police).
I’ll be working on Dave’s electric fencing website when he returns from holiday but I just wanted to point out the dangers in re-designing your site and not taking into account all the work that’s been done to get it in the google rankings. Clearly Dave was suffering from this as he’d stopped getting enquiries from the website since the redesign. (Some favour!)
Anyway the process I was going through with Mark at www.JobMortgages.com was pretty solid and made allowance for the fact that the old site had some strange page names and some not so great meta tags etc.
I redesigned the site for him and added in all the meta tags he needed to get some google search rank going. One little tip you might keep in mind when re-doing a site and optimising page names and URLs for the new site is to redirect the old pages to the new and relevant URLs thus quickly telling google that the content has moved and not loosing any of the knowledge already built up over the last year. It’s pretty simply to put in place a dot HT Access file with a 301 permanent redirect instruction list for the old to new page redirects.
That’s what had been missed out when Dave the Fence had his site redesigned. It’s not the whole story but it was a significant factor in the site getting de-ranked in google.
The moral of this little story is, make sure you plan well for any site updates and redesigns and include some time to figure out the SEO implications.
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Inbound Marketing - what is it?
As with all things there is always something more one can learn. Well, today I am reading and listening to articles about “Inbound Marketing”. So what is inbound marketing?
In simple terms its a way to get your customers to seek you out rather than you seeking them out. It’s about internet marketing really and how to use the internet to effectively market your business.
At the moment I’m listening to (and typing this…) an audio presentation about blogging. Seems to fit nicely as I’m typing this as a blog post.
The main point about business blogs is that you should be promoting your services thought talking about related items. It’s almost subliminal marketing in that if you’re writing is interesting to a group of your potential customers then dropping in a note about your products and services in a subtle way just increases the readers awareness of you, your company and your products & services.
The inbound marketing presentation I’m listening to says there are 4 components to a blog, The header, the side bar the main blog post and the comments. I’d never really thought about the comments on my blog as being part of the blog and certainly never thought that the comments could make my blog more interesting. But, now I think about it, it seems really obvious. If there are comments in a blog I tend to read them and check back with the blog post to see if the commenter has got the gist of the blog and then I usually comment if I think the blog OR the comments are inaccurate or just wrong.
Is the blog layout important? For the most part blogs have a header across the top then a left main column with a right side bar that is slimmer than the left main area.
I think this type of blog layout works really well as there is plenty of room for the blog posts and for some additional items in the side bar and your branding across the top.
one of the important things is that the information in your blog should be useful and accessible.
If you don’t have a blog and you’re wondering how all that works and need some help. Drop an email to info@rockpaperimage.co.uk and I’ll be happy to send you some really helpful hints and tips on what to do to get things going. Most importantly I’ll let you know things you should not do.
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Be an expert? Build back links
So part of my SEO tips is to advise you to become an expert in your field and to write web content on your subject that’ll get picked up by those good ol’ googlebots and seen by many thousands of interested people across the world. They’ll most likely link to it and hey presto you’ve suddenly got loads of back links.
The big question is, I guess, how do you become an expert?
If you already run a business and you have a web site you’re probably already half way there. If you’re not quite the expert you think you should be it ok to say so but give people the benefit of the knowledge you do have and build up from there. Main thing is don’t try to fool your readers into thinking you’re someone you’re not. Be honest and give them something usefull.
If you’d like some more info on being an expert in your field drop me a line on email. steve@rockpaperimage.co.uk
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Early Starts
Good morning all. It’s an early start for me today ad as I type this quick note it’s 5:30am.
Seagulls are already squawking and the sun is up. Looks cold outside.
Anyway, the early start is due to a BNI visitor day. BNI is my Thursday networking and business referral group and I’m the “chapter director” so I have to be on form and there early so I can great the guests / visitors as they arrive. Seems that we have about 30 guests coming today so the room will be pretty full. Maybe some of them will join our group
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SEO Today
I had a chance to hear Helen Charnock speak on Social Media yesterday and found what she had to say quite interesting but a little too high level. I’ve have liked more detail on the effects of social media on business. Still Helen talk has inspired my creative juices in social networking so I’ve been doing some of that today.
The biggest thing I took from Helens talk was that you need to “Create a Buzz” around you by just being ordinary and getting involved in social networking.
It’s a BNI mantra that “Givers Gain” which i guess is true in social networking too. If I give out stuff you’ll probably be OK if I ask for something in return. But who knows? Time will tell as they say.
BTW - I’m giving away tips on SEO in return for your email address. I need somewhere to send the tips to you see. Sign up on my home page
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Whats this blog about?
While listening to Seth Godin on Youtube talking about his blog and his book “the Dip” I just thought I’d say what this blog is about.
Well it started out as a weekly SEO tips blog a place where you could come and get some solid advice on how to do some on page SEO for your own web site and try to improve your google rankings. It sort of still is that place but I’ve added back in the type of stuff that’s about me.
The Beer and nuts picture post is a prime example along with the Photo of me on my 53rd birthday.
So this blog is about me and what I do. You’ll get to know about me if you continue to read but what do I do? I build websites I provide SEO service and advice I take photographs for on line use.
Am I any good? I’ll leave you to judge that…
bye for now :)
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Shopping Cart website…
I’m currently working on a shopping cart website for a local company and using Zen Cart. this seems much easier than magento which is where we were going with the site.
Having to write some XML processing routines too so we can get a product datafeed from suppliers and post the products and stock levels etc into the shop system on Zencart.
Interesting stuff and a little bit of fun.
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A photo of me on my Birthday… A start to my 365portrait Project
