The idea is to get Google to index a page really quickly and understand the content of that page. The page is an ecommerce site about tyre changers and with a bit of luck, it will be indexed quickly.

If luck isn’t on our side, then it won’t make much difference, but that’s the whole point about experimentation!

The idea of the above site is to attract customers who are using a particular set of keywords. The tyre changers direct site is a window onto an ebay store, therefore content is easily found. The site specifically extracts information about garage equipment, tyre changing equipment and other related items. By concentrating on one particular niche (in this case automotive, specifically tyres and wheels) we are giving Google a really easy target.

We are also specifically targetting cheap tyre changers and discount tyre equipment. Should be a doddle!

Now, we’ve all known for some time that Internet Explorer can be a bit buggy and many in the ‘geek’ world will spend a lot of time convincing us that we shouldn’t use it due to security holes, but Microsoft are a big company and you expect that they’ll do their best to keep us safe.

Ooops.

It appears that Internet Explorer has a *massive* hole in it that is currently being exploited by ‘The Bad Guys on the Net’. The security flaw could result in people taking over your computer and stealing passwords, credit card details and the like. It’s scary stuff.

Microsoft have now issues a patch, but with millions of people never updating their PC, many will remain vulnerable for some time to come.

You can read about it here: BBC News

And the solution? Switch to another browser - but which one?

Here’s a roundup of our favourites and where to get them from:

Firefox (get it from here: http://www.mozilla-europe.org/en/firefox/)

This is the grandaddy of the Internet Explorer competitors and it’s an open source effort. Essentially, ‘The Mozilla Foundation’ owns the browser, but contributions are made to both its code and the costs of development.

It’s also one of the safest browsers for this very reason - the code is available so everyone can see if there are any errors.

Google Chrome (get it from here: http://www.google.com/chrome)

The newest of all the browsers from the big ‘G’, Google Chrome has made a name for itself for being incredibly fast. It was built from the ground up with speed in mind and if you are user of web applications, it works an absolute treat.

So far there haven’t been any major security risks, however it has a small user base - the bad guys haven’t got round to it yet!

Apple Safari (get it from here: http://www.apple.com/safari/)

Safari has been around for years and originally it was just a Mac application. It’s been available for the PC for a while now and whilst it has been one of my favourites for a while due to its speed and security, the odd design of the interface puts a lot of people off. It attempts to be simple without quite getting it right.

If you’re used to the Mac though, it’s a faithful replica.

So there you go. If you’re looking for an Internet Explorer replacement, there are plenty.

We’re the first to admit that our portfolio pages are sorely lacking in the latest sites we’ve been working on, heck, we haven’t even got some of last years’ sites on there. That needs to change, but in the meantime here are a couple of sites that will be going live very soon.

The Saress

This is an amazing product! The Saress is a replacement to the sarong that many women struggle with on the beach each year. It was designed by Julia Fish of Wolverhampton and is one of the only clothing lines to have made it on to the British Airways duty free list.

Julia has been selling them for a couple of years now from her website and has also got distributors world wide, but she needed something extra. The site needed a change and based on customer responses and requests, we have created a completely new web store that makes it easy for customers to browse, view and purchase the items.

From an administration point of view, the site was difficult to update and adding products was sometimes a hit and miss affair. This had to change! With new products coming on line all the time, it needed to be simple to use, update and promote.

The site makes it easy to sell products all around the world too with international shipping costs based on weight, automatic VAT reduction on non-EU destinations and PayPal integration giving people confidence to pay.

The Saress website will be live before Christmas, check it out!

Newbar Engineers LTD

It’s rare you find an engineering or manufacturing company that has the forsight to realise that the Internet

is the way to promote even traditional businesses. Barry Newnam of Newbar Engineers is one of those people and he knows that by embracing the web, he can beat the downturn and find new customers with ease.

His website goes live this week and it will be aimed at building business contacts and links and reaching global customers for his Plastic Injection Moulding business.

Over the past few years, many of his customers have been poached by the growing Asian economies but now people are realising that although there might be a small decrease in costs (something that is now changing), the quality of imported products just cannot compete with home-grown expertise.

Trouble is, if you suddently appear on the scene with a website that’s quite obviously trying too hard, Google may penalise you more than if you’d done nothing at all.

Way back in the 19th Century, Britain suffered an outbreak of cholera that threatened the lives of many people living in large cities. London was particularly affected and people were being rushed to hospital and, unfortuanately, dying with alarming regularity.

However, an interesting thing happened during the outbreak. Records show that the number of deaths from the disease was actually higher amongst those who sought treatment in the hospital than those who had none or went for alternative treatments.

How can it be that those going to hospital had a higher death rate? Surely the hospital was using the latest technology?

Well, yes and no. You see they were doing what at the time seemed to be the best way to treat the disease and these treatments included blood-letting and leeches. Nice.

In fact, their methods were useless and actually ended up killing more people than they saved. It’s believed that they made things much worse by reducing the patient’s tolerance to the disease. By trying too hard, they actually condemned many people to a pretty nasty death.

Ok, a gruesome analogy, but you get the point? Doing too much of anything that’s supposed to be good for you can end up with bad results. In the case of SEO, if you go crazy and try to ram too much work in, you’re on a hiding for a banning from Google.

Reign it in, do it slowly, it’ll happen in the end.

I remember, back in my system admin days, sitting at my desk, cranking up the modem and surfing around the Nasa website clicking on images and links with abandon without a care in the world. I guess I remember that with the same nostalgia as we all remember the long hot summers where we could walk the streets in safety.

The ‘net back then was safer. It wasn’t perfectly safe because even then people realised that they could exploit loopholes and deploy something to delete a hard disk or email itself to all your contacts.

However, in those days the Internet was the domain of the geek. Us nerds were the only people who ‘logged on’ and so we were well versed in keeping safe. It was almost seen as a challenge to ensure you surfed the net perfectly safely and closed off all potentially dangerous ports in the firewall (usually by connecting a big green screen terminal to the hardware in question).

Today, things are different. The Internet is now where everyone goes. From kids to grannies, the internet is the place to meet up and chat and share ideas. It’s also the place for businesses to advertise and expand their reach. Everyone is welcome, but not everyone is ready.

There are more dangers on the Internet than there ever have been. The Internet is full of scam artists and danger and yet the users of it are less prepared and more gullible than ever before (no offence).

And now even Facebook has been targetted (http://tinyurl.com/5daqu3).

This particularly nasty virus will attempt to steal your credit card details by fooling you to download some malicious software. But why?

Well, when any particular website or software or platform becomes popular then a certain critical mass is created. If someone writes some software that exploits a loophole then they’ve got a pretty good chance of getting away with it for a long time on a platform that has lots of users. Even though the message will get round quickly, there’s still plenty of money to be made due to the sheer number of users who won’t hear about the problem until it’s too late.

So what’s the answer?

Unfortunately, no one piece of software will save you. You need to be savvy if you’re going to dip your toe into the Internet waters and you need to be wary of scams. You need to be prepared for people to try to take your money and steal your stuff.

In other words, it’s a bit like life.

Seriously, please shut up.

I’ll give you the answer here: no search engine optimisation company can tell you your site will be ‘number one’ in ‘x’ days for ‘y’ length of time and you will make ‘z’ millions pounds. It’s impossible because until they’ve started your campaign, analysed your market and measured some results, there’s no way to tell.

Sure we can do some keyword research and find out what the most searched for terms are and yes we can find all the variations of a particular set of keywords, but whether they will end up with someone parting with their hard-earned cash is another matter.

Oh, and the design of your site has nothing to do with whether you like pink or green as a background either. The psychology of buying is extremely complex and you don’t understand it. We understand it, but we don’t necessarily understand it in your industry.

Let me put it this way, if we knew how to sell a million widgets to the world using a certain set of keywords, don’t you think we’d be doing that already?

Search engine optimisation is slow, it’s methodical and sorry to point this out, it’s dead boring. Boring, that is, until you reach the top five for a set of keywords. But even then it doesn’t guarantee you’ll make any money out of it because you never know, people just might not like your product.

If you have a million visitors a day and nobody buys, then it’s nothing to do with the search engines, it’s something to do with your site, your product or you. And we can’t tell you that until we’ve measured it.

Notice I keep saying the ‘measure’ word? Yes, SEO isn’t just ‘fire and forget’. We don’t just set it up and let it go and the keep checking to see where you are, no, we measure and check that what we’re doing is absolutely right for your company. When we get it right (which we will, eventually), your site will be high in the rankings, it will make money and you will get rich.

If you want to learn more for free, download our DIY SEO e-book.

Gregor Spowart has just blogged about something that you should be aware of that had completely slipped my mind, simply because I hadn’t realised it still went on. Namely, the “we’ll submit your website to hundreds of search engines” nonsense being spouted by lots of web firms.

You’ve probably seen them, adverts to submit to loads of search engines presented in such a way as to make it look as if you will be instantly number one on all of them. This is obviously ridiculous because unless your site is optimised and targeted correctly, each one of those websites will probably just give a bored shrug and ignore you anyway.

But that’s not the point. You see, there’s absolutley no need to be submitted to hundreds of websites for the following reasons:

• Only one search engine really matters - Google. Who cares about some obscure search engine with a ‘cuil’ name that no-body’s even heard of? If you’ve never heard of it, chances are your customers haven’t either.
• If you link from another site to yours, Google will find it anyway. Once it’s found, the work will begin.
• Google gives no preference to ’submitted’ sites as opposed to ‘found’ sites.

Years ago it could be argued that regular submission to search engines helped with your ranking, these days it’s more likely to annoy the hell out of them. In fact, many specifically forbid the use of automatic submission tools.

But it seems many companies are still advertising this service as if it’s a good idea and it’s all that’s required for a good SEO campaign. It certainly is not. There are no short cuts to good search engine optimisation, try them and you’ll be very disappointed.

You can read the original post here : http://www.massmediadesign.co.uk/blog/index.php/why-search-engine-submission-is-bad/

They’re not content with just offering up search results that they think you’ll be interested in, they are now giving you the choice of altering the results, saving them and remembering your favourites so they can serve you better in the future.

For example, if you searched for ‘Sandwich Shop’ and you weren’t happy with the results, you could promote the results you preferred above the ones you didn’t. Sounds odd, here’s it in action:

Easy huh? But what effect does this have on search engine optimisation, and importantly the whole industry?

Interestingly enough, it’s being welcomed by many, including us. You see we concentrate on what the consumer wants to see at the top of the search engines, not what we think Google wants to see. It’s ultimately the consumer that buys from your site and so they should be the ones that benefit from search. If a company manages to promote a poor site so well that it appears above good sites then the consumer is missing out. Now they can redress the balance by pushing out the poor sites and promoting the good ones.

In essence, it makes the job of good SEO companies easier and those of bad much harder.

But we’ve heard some worrying comments from some businesses about shortcuts they intend to take to ensure they are ready. Unfortunately, they could end up losing thousands.

Having trained as an accountant decades ago, I learned a little bit about tax calculations and so when people talk about percentages etc, I like to think I can join in on the conversation. It was when I heard the following comment, though, my ears pricked up and I realised that many people are making a very big yet almost obvious mistake.

What I heard was “We’re not going to alter the individual prices of goods, we’re just going to take 2.5% off the total when the shopper gets to the cart”.

Almost sounds too easy, I mean 17.5% (old rate) minus 15% (new rate) is 2.5%. Except it’s not.

Some will have already clicked, but others won’t see the big flaw in this logic. I’ll explain with two very simple formulas:

£100 + 17.5% = 117.50 

£100 + 15.00% = 115.00

As we can see, the customer is 2.5% better off. However…

£117.50 (old price) minus 2.5% = £114.56

Reducing the shopping cart by 2.5% will actually mean a net loss for the company. OK, it’s only a bit, but one of our customers only has margins of 5%, can they afford to lose a big proportion of that simply through a shortcut?

The answer is simple but time consuming. In some cases a whole shopping cart will need to be updated, however in the long run this may actually save you money.

Thing is, when we tested a lot of search engine companies, even the big ones, the first thing they ask is “what keywords do you want to be optmised for?” The problem for many companies is they just don’t know and even if they think they know, they’re not the expert so what if they’re wrong?

We’ve had two enquiries from companies this week who have had no results from their search engine optimisation campaign. Now I don’t think this has anything to do with the actual SEO process, I beleive it’s simply down to using the wrong words.

If you target the wrong words then you’ll get the wrong results. You can be number one for a particular phrase that you think absolutely nails your core product, but if nobody’s searching for it, it’s a complete waste.

We know companies that have spent thousands on SEO to get their product to number one and within five minutes I’ve been able to prove to them that the search is never or poorly used. If only fifty people in the world ever search for the term ‘amalgamated widget’, you’re going to have a tough time selling anything.

But there’s a worse problem - choosing a search term that is too popular. I’ll tell you straight, unless you’ve got a very big chequebook or access to a bank vault, you’ll have an uphill struggle trying to compete with Google and Amazon with the keyword ‘books’.

This is where the art of the SEO engineer (I know, grand title but it’s late and I’m struggling for a decent description!) comes in. We won’t just take your ‘desired’ list of keywords and merrily hit the search engines in the hope of getting you to number one. Nope, we we’ll tell you why your keywords are wrong and then suggest some that you’ll have a chance with.

It’s not all about volume, it’s about volume and quality. If we can get you a hundred leads from customers ready to buy, it’s better than thousands of random visitors just clogging up your website.

Simply attacking the process by desperately trying to get high Google ranking on keywords you ‘think’ are the right ones is simply a waste of time and money.