Do I need a website anymore?

Once upon a time if you had a business you had to have your own website.

It took ages to write copy, mainly because you'd never done it before and when you read it back it sounded really dumb. You had to find a designer, who always looked about 12 and baffled you with tech jargon and produced an expensive flash website no one could find, but hey it looked amazing!

Well I was just thinking,why on earth do you need a website any more? The Internet is full to bursting of free tools for websites and blogs, social networking, photography hosting sites, e-commerce sites. Loads and loads and loads of stuff just laying around for free.

All this stuck together must be able to make your presence on the Internet, easy and fulfilling plus making it blindingly easy to find. I'm not techie, but I've heard of using the 'Cloud' i.e. having everything floating on the web and I honestly can't see why it shouldn't be able to work it's just a bunch of links at the end of the day.

I'm sure I'm re-inventing the wheel because this is so blindingly obvious that someone far cleverer than me must be already doing this. Regardless I'm going to try and see if I can get this off the ground if only for my own amusement.

Anyone willing to help, drop me an email. Even if it just to laugh at me for not already knowing all about it.

If you know something talk about it

I've just given a free consultation to two guys who are friends of my boss. The original idea was that they needed help with Pay Per Click campaigns. What they really needed was help with marketing thier product full stop.

They've got a business which sells high performance car days, you know 6 laps in a Ferarri. They are getting over run with booking but want to make more out of it.

I probably spent about 1 hour with them and mentioned Pay Per Click for about 2 minutes. They were looking at the problem from the wrong end.

They needed overall advice on how to get thier product to market at the lowest cost with the biggest return on investment.

The best bit of advice I gave them?

Make it easy for your customers to book, get the crap out of the way and make it simple. They'll be adding a large click here to book button to the top of every page.

The return on investment will go through the roof. I'll guarantee that.

If you've got a problem with your site, I'll happily take a look. Failing that ask someone you know who isn't a marketer, doesn't know your product really and doesn't use the web much. If they can't make your site do what you want your customers to do then you need to think again.

My best critic like this, my wife.

Blog 150! SeoMoz guide to Social Media

I know that using social media will be good for my site and company. I already use linkedin. I'm sure there are ways to use MySpace, Bebo, FaceBook and the rest but I'm never sure where to start. If you're like me then this Whiteboard Friday from SEOMoz is for you. Enjoy



I never thought I'd reach this many entries!

Google Book results

I'm using my friend's PC at the moment so I don't have my bookmarks. So to get to pages normally on there I'm searching Google for the pages.

I just searched for Seth Godin so I could read today's blog. I got very weired book search results I've never seen before. When I followed them the results got stranger. After a couple of results which showed shots of chapters from Seth's books it showed other related books and then finally a map of all the places mentioned in the book, with links. All great in theory but surely not for Seth's books, they're not travel guides.

Maybe Google have just set my aspirations too high now, but it's disappointing when things aren't perfect on the results.

Public Relations and SEO

Over on Aaron Walls blog he gives a fantastic blog about how PR is the way to go with SEO, Blogging and business in General.

We use PR as a main tool for spreading the word about the company. without it we wouldn't be as well known as we are. It's pretty cheap too if done correctly. Don't be scared of PR use it well.

Has Google rounded down your sites PR?

I noticed recently that the PR (little green bar) has been lowered on my site. For at least 2 years it's been PR 7. The ranking for our keywords is fine, the number of visitors is fine as well.

I know that the little green bar doesn't give much information and can't be relied upon but it's just a little disconcerting.

Have Google rounded down PR's in general? After looking at a few other site I think they have. Any ideas? If Matt Cutts is reading I love an idea of what's happened.

If you've had a similar thing happen to your site let me know.

Google using user data to help serps? Surley not!

There's a rumour that Google are using Google Analytics and other Google tools to tweak the way search rankings are shown. I'm sure this is no surprise to anyone, though Matt Cutts denies it.

Behind the Google curtain - Matt Cutts

Matt Cutt's puts in his twopenneth on the article in the NY Times.

As always Matt gives a little bit more, but it only ever really triggers more questions.

Damn you Google!

Inside the GooglePlex - what goes on in the Google Algo team

What happens inside the Google Algorythm team is a closley guarded secret. The New York Times got a man on the inside and though he's doesn't get much information the article shows that whatever you do there's no point trying to cheat Google.

If you rely on them like I do play it safe, keep to the Google guidelines and build interesting sites with great content.

Website Landing Page Conversions

Whatever your landing page is designed to do, generate sales, download software or read an article it needs to convert and it needs to do it at a decent cost especially if you are using AdWords or other advertising. Everyone needs increased conversion.

This great study on Landing Page Conversion uses real life case studies and shows real results. It's worth testing the ideas here and seeing what happens.

I'll be testing and reporting back my findings.

How to check if your site has pages in Google's Supplemental Results

Supplemental results for any site are a disaster. Google's supplemental results are the ones Google keeps in the back file in case the main results can't answer a search query.

And as Google's main results are so great, the supplemental ones don't get used very often.

To check if your site has pages in supplemental results, you can use this search query in the Google search box.

site:www.yoursite.com *** -sjpked

Just substitute yoursite.com for the url of the site you want to check.

If you have pages listed in here, check to see that your navigation links work ok, and start to try to build good pagerank for these pages.

Internet Masterclass

Yesterday I gave my first "Internet Masterclass". I was asked by the Yorkshire UKTI to do this for the people they have on their Passport to Export Scheme.

I was a bit worried mainly because I'd never thought of myself as an Internet master, which would be a good start to give an Internet Masterclass you'd have thought.

The funny thing about being asked to present anything is that you don't realise how much you know about something until you begin to explain it to others. The group was only a small one but that helped because I could give more personal information to the delegates.

If you were asked to give an "Internet Masterclass" what one bit of advice would you give? I'd love to know because I'm sure whatever you think, I bet I forgot it, or didn't know it in the first place.

If you'd like to see the presentation and read the document I put together, then drop me an email and I'll send it on. I'd love to hear your feedback and thoughts.

Search engines through the looking glass

I just found this great article on Search Engine Optimisation on a site I'd not come across before Stuntduble.com

It's a great article full of amazing information, take a look now.