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

ThinkVisibility

This past weekend Wiebke and myself headed to Leeds for ThinkVisibility. It was the first industry conference either of us had been to, so we had no idea what to expect. We definitely didn’t expect it to be quite as great as it was!

Pre-conference Booze

Friday night started well with us meeting Paul and James of NorthSouthMedia. I’ve "known" Paul for what seems like an eternity but it was the first time we’d actually met. What a thoroughly stellar chap he is, as is James.
As luck would have it the next two we met also greeted us with West Coast Scottish accents (which if you don’t know it is like an East Coast Scottish accent, only not as good :p). I’ve seen a lot of Shaun and his company Hobo-Web online, but had never spoken to him. Shaun is extremely social and someone you really should get drunk with if you have the chance! Chris of Sunshine was making sure that we did get drunk with exceptional generosity in the form of beer and vodka redbulls. I’d not heard of Chris before, but seriously what a great guy!
The only other couple we encountered were Dave and Elaine from Allkids.co.uk, we met these lovely people (I hope) just in time before I started slurring my words.
Ok, this is where it starts to get a bit hazy… but I think we met Alastair of WebsiteDoctor and Al from SelfMadeMinds both of whom are sterling gents too, though there’s more about them to come later…

The Conference Proper

TheHodge welcomed us all to ThinkVisibility and I’d like to give him a little extra attention just now, because he deserves it. Thinkvisibility was full of brilliant presentations which I will come to. The other phenomenal thing for me was the broad spectrum of people there. I have written about the people we met before the conference above and will write about those we met after too. So Mr. Thehodge, I would like heap praise upon you for organising ThinkVisibility to entice all these fine people away from their desktop! Well done Dom.

Tim Nash

Tim Nash Tim’s presentation was a great start to the day. He told us how he’d been challenged to explain how a search engine works to pre-school children. He then had buckets with red water in them – apparently gJuice is red, who knew? By using holes in the buckets he showed how gJuice is transferred but by bunging up those holes only a few drops escaped. At some point he expected the buckets to explode, despite this not happening it was a wonderful analogy which I haven’t heard before. Ranking for white coat SEO would have worked had Dave Naylor not have hijacked him ;)

Chris Garrett

Chris Garrett’s presentation fitted ThinkVisibility very well: "25 ways to get visibility with blogs". Chris ensured everybody knew to use quality as opposed to tricks, concentrated on people over numbers and realised there were only 3 sources of traffic. He then went on to share his 25 ways of getting visibility (sounds almost like a linkbait resource post, doesn’t it?) including some that I had never considered. Q&A sites for example, sheer genius.

Tom Smith

Tom Smith came the closer to Twitter that I have ever seen any live person come. His style of presenting and evident enthusiasm for Social Media left eery second sentence unended. I must admit to never having heard of Tom prior to Thinkvisibility but anyone with such passion and energy is worth keeping an eye out for!

Guy Redwood

Guy Redwood did a phenomenal job of debunking the F pattern myth that I, as many others in the room, had subscribed to wholeheartedly. Despite having seen eyetracking usability testing from "both sides of the mirror" in the past, Guy’s presentation gave much more insight into the whole field of usability testing – the fact that male and female users don’t differ on the whole was new to me for example.

Lunch

Lunch was a buffet and a chance to retank some electrolytes in the form of scotch eggs and crisps to help with the dehydration from the night before. We did get a couple of offers of going to the pub, but being the lightest of lightweights declined graciously.
Just before the next presentation started poor Chris Garrett got caught between two hatted and booze fuming Scotsmen:

Dave Naylor

Dave Naylor answered more questions than anyone else and was frank and open throughout it all. He gave both sides of the coin: From the 3 month old website that had 1500 pages of exceptional content outranking older more established domains without a single backlink, to sites being disappeared in a Van Helsing stylee ;) Buying links is bad kids m’kay.

Tom Critchlow

Tom Critchlow had a raft of advice and knowledge on reputation management to share. From putting stories straight, to the evil wikipedia-press-wikipedia cycle that can take months and legal proceedings to fix. Ryanair of course got a wee mention too, but Tom’s presentation will be remembered above all for informing us of the current market value for Thai brides ;)

Patrick Altoft

Patrick Altoft gave a great talk on linkbuilding, underlining that the vast majority of people forget to figure out what type of links their site needs. He then went on to describe 3 main types of links and how to go about getting them, truly invaluable. The Q&A at the end of his presentation also revealed a further Van Helsingesque technique ;)

Kieron Donoghue

Kieron Donoghue enlightened us about affiliate marketing. Some of his successes with older content getting found again really drove home the point that you should archive and not delete! Announcing to all that Chris would be buying beers in the pub was a great finish to his presentation too ;)

Post Conference Dinner

After leaving the conference and heading back to our hotel Chris, Dave & Elaine really kindly asked us if we’d come along for dinner with them later on. We went with them all to meet Kieron and Ray / @befuddle for a cracking Thai meal. The name of the restaurant escapes me for it to get a link too. Good food is always all the better when shared with good people :)

Booze upon Booze

The Hog’s Head was our after dinner booze destination to catch up with the other good folk. From this point on my hat got passed around a fair bit as my lovely assistant helped to capture:





After the Hog’s Head we went back to our hotel bar where we got more and more drinks in with Tim, Chris C, @Caius, @Peterc, Shaun and Alastair joining us after retrieving his passport ;) More hat swapping ensued:




At some point I fell over, in a spectacular fashion it must be said!

The hotel bar had closed so, as is customary it was decided MacDonald’s was a good idea. The last men standing were snapped by the last lady standing, and proud of her I was too!

Other Posts About Thinkvisibility

Chris C at pfft

Shaun at Hobo

Paul at NorthSouthMedia

Lynne at PoLR

Andy at mmmeeja

Tom C at SEOmoz

Why I am an idiot

I am an idiot for many reasons really, but I realised on Saturday is that:

• I should write a lot more often
• WebArchitecture is a dozy tag
• Half of the photos I should have taken I didn’t
• AndrewBurnett.com should be my personal blog
• Realising you’re an idiot is better than not realising it!
• I’m still hosted on this server.

If you can think of any other reasons I’m an idiot I would genuinely love to hear them!
 

How to Create a Skittles.com TwitterSearch Front Page Yourself

It could not be simpler ladies and gentlemen.

Go to this page, copy the source code and replace “andrewburnett” with whatever it is you want to appear in the TwitterSearch. (You’ll also want to delete or change the Google Analytics script).

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.

 

You Are Known By Your Avatar And Name

You are known within that community by your name and your avatar. On popular social sites and services there will be many users listed together. The “Who Dugg This” panel on Digg is an extremely good example:

The Who Dugg It panel on Digg

It is much easier to spot someone if they have an avatar that sticks out, even at 16×16 pixels.

Be Consistently Visible

If you use many social sites and services where you have the same friends, it makes sense to have the same avatar so they can spot you in the crowd. Wherever possible use the same username too. If someone else has already got your username of choice at least your avatar will let them know it’s you. After all, they are friends with you, not your username. It’s all about people.

Very Visible Avatars

Avatars which work well are highly visible. To test my theory I’d like to conduct a little experiment with you.

Andrew Burnett is a very common name. Unfortunately “andrewburnett” was taken on Digg so I had to choose another username. The experiment is very simple:

What is my username in the picture at the top of this post?:

andrewburnett avatar

Is Being Visible Important?

You tell me, I know I’d like people to be able to spot me quickly.

@clarocada's tweet

When I clicked on the link to Top 83 Tweets of 2008 I got a wonderful surprise! There was @andrewburnett at the top of the list!

When People Feel Good

They tell other people. They retweet. They StumbleUpon. They Friendfeed. I know I do :)

When people tell other people through their various channels wonderful things start to happen:

Most popular blog post of last 6 months

Traffic up 334%

Silly amounts of traffic

traffic up 665% over yesterday's high!

Make People Feel Good

Making people feel good means more people visit your website, it is that simple. Even better, if more people visit your site how are you going to feel?

How are you going to feel if more than 3 times as many people visit your website today compared with yesterday? How are you going to feel if 6 times today’s visitors come tomorrow? Thought so, me too.

Is Social Media Worth It?

Of course it is. Not only can you make others feel good but you can feel good doing it too!

Twitter As Social Media

Since May last year I have been twittering away on twitter [@andrewburnett ]. All the while I’ve been following others who entertain, interest and often educate me.

It has all felt very very social. But until this week I didn’t realise I was missing out on possibly the single greatest benefit of twitter: Meeting fellow twitts

Social Media In Real Life

This week I took the plunge and headed along to RefreshEdinburgh on Wednesday evening where I met (in no particular order):
@nonimage [Andy Lobban]
@sneeu [John Sutherland]
@roryf [Rory Fitzpatrick]
@nelstrom [Andrew Neil]
@EdinburghMenus [he who hath no card getteth his real name forgotten ;)].

Thursday evening my good lady wife accompanied me to a talk on social media (of all things) by Mike Coulter for the Edinburgh Internet Marketing Meetup Group . First and foremost it was a great talk with many insights, but it also brought many twitts together in one room. I met (again in no particular order):
@jimwolffman
@dav_hamill
@colingilchrist
and of course @mikecoulter.

If I’d managed to go to the pub afterwards no doubt I’d have collected even more @s! Mike plugged the Edinburgh Coffee Morning meet up which is every Friday morning – you’ve guessed it, I went.

This morning (Friday) I met (along with others from last night)
@jonmountjoy
@darciec
[edit]I didn’t get your twitter handles at the time, but found you since:
@hazelh
@nevstokes
[/edit]

So What?

As much as you can squeeze into 140 characters nothing beats meeting people face to face, talking over a coffee and exchanging knowledge and ideas. That’s what!

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.