1. I wore my father’s wedding dress to get married in.
2. I have 42 James Brown Albums on vinyl, 38 are original pressings.
3. I have the same ethnicity as James Bond (Scottish Father / Swiss Mother).
4. My Achilles tendons are as thick as your thumb.
5. Amongst the random crap I have collected are 6 rubber bullets.
6. The Swiss army gave me a medical certificate stating I should “lie down as required”.
7. I tried to have a child with my first girlfriend by planting lettuce seeds in her navel. (Aged 4)

Right now for tagging the 7 lucky sods who get to reply, in no particular order (but locals last :P):

pascii
Vladimir Prelovac
Alastair McDermott
Roberta Kyle
Stephanie Hicks
Mike Coulter
David Hamill

The Charlatans, Telling (SEO) Stories

The Charlatans are telling stories about SEO and how they can get you to the top of the world, aka Google. Some are harmless and merely miss out the fundamental steps. Others do real damage, which can take months to fix.

Charlatan SEOs: Difficult for the unwary to spot, but if any of the points on my “You need an SEO or a new one if:” post apply, they’re one of the Charlatans.

The Pretenders, Don’t Get Me (Social Media) Wrong

With Twitter exploding across the web, the number of overnight social media gurus is rising exponentially. How to spot The Pretenders?
Check the following, follower and update figures on their twitter profile to filter out the Twitter spammers

Don’t get me wrong, checking their Twitter profile is not the end of it, but it will at least filter out the more obvious Pretenders.

Seether, Fake It (Web Design)

Thankfully this lot of Fakes are easy for everyone to spot. My rule of thumb is that professional web designers do not aim to make my eyes bleed. Garish colours, animated flashing buttons and comic sans are but a few characteristics.

It’s easy to fake it. The design may look shiny but not checking the code could cost traffic, maybe even bandwidth charges.

Nice Weather For Ducks

The amount of ducking filletantes* plying their trade is bound to rise with unemployment skyrocketing.

While they give the rest of us a bad name, they make more work for us in the long run.

Thank you Charlatans, Pretenders, [those who] Fake it and of course the filletantes.

*Shout out to QuoteSnack for reminding me of the beauty of spoonerisms.

 

The Nature Of The Beast

These are devilish wee blighters, I’ll give them that. To start with I wondered how they did it, 1000+ followers with under 50 posts. It doesn’t matter HOW they do it (essentially what they do is add roughly 2000 people overnight, wait a couple of days and unfollow most of them again). What matters is WHY they do it: By getting huge networks of “blind followers” they have a larger target audience to unleash their nonsense on.

The Nature Of The Web

A prime example is plying her (or his) trade as I write – I’m making screenshots of the progress s/he is making. I took screenshots at 18:02, 22:41 and 23:32:

18:02 1999 following 1717 followers 22 updates.

22:41 105 following 1653 followers 22 updates.

23:32 1912 following 1906 followers 35 updates.

The Nature Of The Web Pt. II

As I write this there is a phishing attack appearing on Twitter, you may have seen it. Direct Messages are sent from friends saying “hey! check out this funny blog about you… h**p://jannawalitax.blogspot.com/” [link broken on purpose] the page you land on redirects you to another page inviting you to sign in to twitter. The sting is the page asking you to log in is very, very, VERY bogus. [Further post to come.]

What Next?

This twitterer will build up a following of however many thousand and over time become more difficult to spot. Then again, someone who wants to “build a massive network overnight” isn’t interested in the long term and will give up.


*thanks because the more intelligent of these halfwits have given up but didn’t stop following people. This inflates my number of followers making me seem more important than I really am.


Thanks again for following me mister/missus spammer but don’t expect a follow back :)

Do you want search engine traffic to your blog?

This is always my first question:

Are you happy with it being for friends and family or do you want to reach people who are searching for your chosen blog topic?

If your blog is for friends and family then simply sign up to blogger.com and start blogging.

If you want to reach an audience via search engines there’s a little more to it. These are the main steps for creating a blog which gets search engine traffic. Anyone can do this, but be aware it does take time and effort.

Get a domain name for your blog

Woot! Yay! Let’s go and buy a domain name right now!
No! Stop! Nein! Halt! Non Arrêt!
Do some keyowrd research for your blog first, having your target keyword(s) in your domain name generally will help – but don’t overdo it.

Use a standard free blogging software such as wordpress.

By using the same blogging software as others in your niche are using you can utilise many of the same features that they have for free too. The other major benefit of using such blogging software is that if you have a problem with it there are plenty of people who can either tell you how to fix it, or fix it for you.

Get a template or theme for your blog

The look of your blog will need to please you. Your template or theme also controls the html code which is used to display your blog. Good clean code and a search engine friendly structure are essential if you want to get search engine traffic.

Depending on your budget get a ready made free blog template or get a theme designed which you feel will be appealing to your audience. If you do a google search for “free wordpress themes” for example you’ll find a heap of ready made templates. Getting one properly designed and built will cost money, but if done really well will be worth it. Properly designed and built means it needs to be search engine friendly – beware here, many claim to be search engine friendly but are not, do your research.

Get yourself known, if you’re not already, in your blogging community

Make comments on other people’s blogs, get involved in discussions on other blogs in your niche. When you do this remember to fill out the field “website” or “url” which will normally make your name a link back to your blog. This will get you noticed and help your blog along too, make your blog posts interesting and informing so when people do visit your blog they like it. Do not spam other people’s blogs, as this will get you a bad reputation.

Creating a blog which gets search engine traffic is simple

Anyone can do it, but it does take time and effort. All the knowledge you need to do it is out there. If you follow the above steps and invest the time and effort into it you will have a blog which gets search engine traffic too!

The answer, unfortunately, is a resounding no. With the rise in people seeking SEO has come a rise in the companies offering it. In itself this is a good development, more competition fosters stronger players. The current situation is alas not so rosy.
 

The rise in demand for SEO has attracted the get rich quick brigade, the snakeoil salesmen and the illusionists. Like moths to a candle you may say, you’d be wrong, remember the moths are the ones who get burnt. The snakeoil salesmen may well sell wares with no value, but never forget that they do make sales. Lots of sales.

Genuine

When they fail to deliver, they damage all of us who work to provide genuine results through genuine effort based on genuine experience.
 

There is a genuine need to protect ourselves and our clients, present and future, from these charlatans. Clients who have experienced them are lucky if they have “only” lost time, resources and money. It is in our collective best interests to stem the tide.
 

Sorting The Wheat From The Chaff

I don’t think that naming and shaming is the answer. There will always be more than it is possible to keep an eye on. No, the answer lies in informing our clients present and future.
 

Quite apart from the task being an impossible undertaking it would very possibly get lost amongst bickering and in-fighting, which unfortunately is rife in SEO.
 

Alarm Bells Shoud Ring If

You get a cold call promising you a number one ranking. Everyone gets these calls even SEO companies, believe it or not, are not immune.
 

You’re told about a “special offer” with Google for getting your site to the front page I have actually been offered this for a page that already was on the front page.
 

Your SEO company will not reveal what they’re doing and why they’re doing it Would you want a mechanic fiddling with your car and not telling you what they’ve done and why? Probably not, eh?
 

You’re given no improvement suggestions for your site. If your site needs no onsite work, in all likelihood you already have a good SEO company, keep them.
 

Any talk of keyword density, whatsoever. Keyword inclusion or keyword placement are both important of course, without them how should the search engines (or your visitors) know what the page is about? But the “density” of them is utter nonsense.
 

Or do they?

This is the perfect time for growth, the perfect time for overtaking your competitors. By taking advantage of your competitors introspection and making more clever use of your resources you can not only survive but thrive.

Maximise Your Potential, Embrace Change

Companies that wish to maintain their marketplace position while reducing their costs must embrace change. Those that do the same as they’ve always done, but with less resources will suffer potentially crippling losses. Do not let your company be one of them. Embrace change, recognise that by using your resources more effectively your company can come out of the credit crunch stronger than it went in.

How Can Google Help?

By increasing your visibility on Google (and other search engines) you will be found by more people looking for your services. This may sound obvious, and indeed it is. You may think your more forward thinking competitors are already trying this, and you would be right. So how can you get a competitive advantage over these competitors? By doing it more effectively is the simple answer.

Andrew Burnett Webarchitecture knows which methods yield real results and which are simply pretty but give no real return on investment. We are sure you will agree, pretty results are much less important than profitable results.

The purpose of this post is to act as a quick checklist for anyone with a website to see if it performs.
 

Frames

Navigate your website, does the address shown in the address bar change?
 

If it doesn’t change your website probably uses frames. This greatly hinders any efforts you may make. Unfortunately this normally means rebuilding your website before any real success on search engines can be realised
 

Two versions

Next go to the address bar of your browser and enter your website address, press enter. If you started address with “www.” remove it, or if you started it without “www.” add it and hit enter again. Do both versions of the address appear in the address bar?
 

This is known as “canonicalisation”, basically you only want one of the two to appear. Search engines can look at these two addresses as being duplicate versions of your website. This is normally a quick job to fix, but is best done by someone who knows what they are doing.
 

“Untitled Document” and other title issues

Does the title of your browser ever show “Untitled Document” when you browse your website? Is the title ever the same on two different pages? If the answer to either of these questions is yes it is best to address this, the search engines will thank you for it.
 

Header tags

Navigate to your website, any page you like, check a number of them if you like. Next view the source code of the page, right clicking (PC) or Ctrl+click (Mac) and select “View Source”. Next search through the code for “<h1>”,
<h2>”, <h3>”. If you don’t find any, your site needs some work to be optimally equipped for the search engines.
 

Ranking for site name

Go to Google.com and search for your site name. Is your website within the top few results? If your site is older than a couple of months and not in the top few places for its name, your SEO is probably not up to scratch. This is a very general test, but can give a good indication.
 

Do you grab the phone and call your “webguy”?
 

There is no need, you can simply visit this website to check if your website is “ down for everyone or just me?“. As well as being a helpful service this potentially can save you a little money and time.
 

I was sure that every webbuilder, webdesigner and SEO knew about this service already, but was recently proven wrong.