But stop and think for a second, is this the mentality that Social Media is promoting?

Do not get me wrong, having advice from your friends is useful, but how much objectivity do your friends bring, do you have friends whom are brutally honest with you?

Just curious..

Then again, how much objectivity does Google provide you?

Technorati Tags: google objectivity search google objectivity search

I wrote this page so that you do not have to "view source" to ascertain if I use the "no-follow" tag in the comments section of this Blog, or not. By reading this you can be safe in the knowledge that I do not employ it.

The no-follow tag was invented as a method of trying to eliminate Blog comment spam, which was playing havoc with dear Google's algorithm. So what you'll discover now is that the majority of Blogging platforms now ship with the "no-follow" tag included in the code. You can easily check that out by "viewing source" and looking at the HTML itself, if you do not know what that means it's time to learn.

No-follow?

Yes, this is a snippet of code which instructs search engine robots to not follow urls in a web, or more to the point, to not pass on any page rank to the linked page. The logic here is that unscrupulous webmasters/mistresses were using robots (still do) to automatically post comments with a url back to their site which they are/were pimping.

Why take it out?

I have not employed it on my Blog here because I think that if you are kind enough to come along and leave a comment the least I can do is share some Google Juice back to your site, it would be pretty selfish otherwise, which is common practise actually. As well as that I have an anti-spam comment system in place which is perfectly adequate of detecting a human.

Technorati Tags: engines google juice no-follow page rank ranking robots search spam google juice no-follow spam robots search engines ranking page rank

These are my 140 characters or less web bizz tips for the week, that I first post on Twitter, then blog here.

Let me know if you want something expanded by leaving a comment.

1. A prospect needs to sense credibility before making a buying decision, credibility is built up overtime, no short cut.

2. Build mechanisms to bring prospects back. Newsletters and free courses work well, so do forums and other interactive social elements.

3. Use persuasive copy which reinforces the user benefits, not how great you or product is. How will your product benefit a persons life?

4. Get a dedicated IP, forget shared hosting. Make sure your ISP gives you an IP address which is not appearing on blacklists or such.

5. Build own email lists, social media sites are good but you need your OWN, with your own privacy policy in place, own your data.

6. Check your site load speed, if it is less that ultra rapid you will be loosing surfers period.

7. Have more text than pretty pictures, search engines can't understand pretty pictures, but they love text, like a hungry pac man.

8. Actively seek out in-bound links, make it part of your weekly routine, ensure the target keyword phrase is in the anchor text.

9. Don't waste your time with time wasters, are you here to work or fuck about?

10. Publish content daily ensuring that the url, title and H1 are the keywords you are targeting.

Stay tuned for more tips, you can always subscribe to my feed with your email address, put it in the wee box on the right.

Technorati Tags: business H1 IP keywords search search engines tips title traffic url web keywords tips web business IP traffic search engines search H1 title url

Microsoft today put a bid in for Yahoo!, which seems, and naturally so I suppose, has everyone excited, for good or bad reasons.

Apparently profits are down for Yahoo! and I guess Microsoft feel now is the time to strike, and gain so much. But what are they after here? What will they gain from this IF this is allowed to go through (I think there are clauses on fair competition about huge deals like this, which would have to be squared away first).

Microsoft have been aiming to get a big slice of the search engine pie for years, yes they have their own search but Yahoo! is well up the radar, of course not even close to the coverage of Google, nonetheless it is a huge player. But more importantly Yahoo! has a considerable user base, as an example I have a Yahoo! Messenger account, a Flickr account and I also have Yahoo! mail (albeit for my junk mail). I’m not in the minority either, I’m sure you probably have a connection somewhere too?

So, Microsoft would gain an even more enormous user base and essentially obtain serious channels into additional markets.

I’m not sure what all this will means yet but what has sparked my interest more that anything is the speed with which the “hot news” riffled around Twitter within minutes.

Microsoft to buy out Twitter? That would be a story too, exciting few days ahead I think.

Technorati Tags: bid messenger microsoft search twitter yahoo microsoft yahoo bid twitter search messenger

Having been involved with the web, in a business sense, since the mid 90s I’ve found that it has been essential to practise search engine optimisation (SEO) in every aspect of my online work from forums, blogs, articles and links, you name it, my head is in SEO.

If you are reliant on the internet for your traffic it makes crystal clear sense that you ought to optimise all of your content for the search engines, to provide them tasty food that will keep them coming back for more, time and time again.

Ignoring appropriate SEO is akin to taking cash and setting fire to it, if your site is not optimised to rank very well you are simply throwing away prospects and essentially income, from whatever means that may be, affiliate links, google adsense or product up-selling.

I’m also fully aware of the power of “word-of-mouth” or new/social media communities and I am an advocate for that approach 100%, but the secret really is in a blended approach, you can have a large community all digging your content for you with various tools, but that community is infinitesimally small to the power of ranking on the first page of google within a competitive niche, period.

The other thing many people working exclusively in social or new media don't always get is that their own tight-knit community of "diggers" are often not the prospects, not the customers, so hence no income generation!

I have operated for a variety of clients over the years helping them to optimise for their niche market, tweaking code and content here and there and creating a variety of campaigns and methods for organic growth of back-links (essential activity), of course social media now helps immensely with the later IF the rel="nofollow" tag is omitted.

I am available for SEO and Social Media contracts, just inquire and we can have a chat about what you want to achieve.

I’ll gently challenge you and leave you with the tools to empower yourself too.

Technorati Tags: engine forums google links media online optimisation prospects ranking search social tools traffic seo media social optimisation search google engines