This was my article about blogging in the Brighton & Hove Argus last week (we are a Brighton SEO, after all). Sorry if it’s a bit simple for the more technologically-minded out there.

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There’s a saying that you hear increasingly in the world of website optimisation: “content is king”.

A rough translation from geekspeak to English is: “if you want people to come and visit your website, there should be something interesting for them to see when they arrive.” The more often your site is updated with interesting content, the more people will come back.

Traditionally, this has presented a problem for many business owners. Even if you have a website, you can’t necessarily update the pages, either because you don’t know how or don’t have the necessary access.

Nowadays, with the availability of free blogging software, there really are no excuses.

A blog (abbreviated from “weblog”) is like an online diary where you can post text, images, videos or music for the world to see.

This may bring to mind images of Trekkies hunched feverishly hunched over their keyboards debating the twists and turns of the Starfleet, but this is increasingly distant from the truth. Keeping a blog is now the easiest way to ensure that your website is interesting and fresh.

Here are some simple tips:

Think about what you are trying to achieve. If you are keeping a blog for your business, goals could include showing more of your company’s personality to potential customers, demonstrating your awareness of current events by responding to developments in your industry, offering your customers a forum for debate or sparking debate of your own.

Whatever your goals, update your blog regularly. It is very easy to start blogging and then forget about it. This has the opposite of the desired effect – while the blog is there partly to keep your site fresh and keep people coming back, it will quickly look dated if your last entry is more than a couple of weeks old.

Be consistent. As well as posting regularly, make sure that the voice in your blog is identifiable. Try and avoid just posting press releases without any comment or analysis.

Read other people’s blogs. Comment on other people’s blogs. Whatever business you are in, there are blogs out there dedicated to it. There is a real sense of community among bloggers.

To make the most of a business blog, you should host it on your own site. This is because you want to have the blog closely associated with you and your work. If you write an interesting or useful blog, it will also drive more traffic to your site, which usually means more business.

Happy blogging!

Today (at the fourth time of asking) Vodafone delivered my shiny new Nokia N95 8GB. I am just coming to terms with the universe of features on the phone, more details of which can be found here. Three of us in the office now have N95s and we are well and truly smitten.

Now I can see why my N95 owning flatmate shakes his fist at the television every time one of those insufferably smug iPhone adverts comes on – Nokia’s flagship phone was out before the Apple and has higher spec, more user options and a lovely two way slider. And it’s 3G.

Which leads nicely on to the topic of this post: a great new website called Qik, which allows you to stream direct footage from your 3G mobile phone to the internet.

We have been spending a frankly upsetting amount of time in the Upstream office playing with this site. You register your mobile phone on the site, receive an sms to confirm and later receive a link from which you download the necessary software.

It is still very much in its infancy, but looks to be a revolutionary development (please correct me if this has been done before). At the moment, the majority of videos being streamed are people sitting in their offices checking if the site really works. A number of them have come from Upstream’s Brighton SEO office. One cool thing is that you can comment on people’s videos as they are streaming… these comments appear on their screens as they are filming. This hasn’t been fully integrated yet, but does have tremendous potential (for both honest interaction and juvenile entertainment).

The potential for streaming from mobile phones is great… lets just hope it doesn’t end up the great big fleshfest that sadly seems on the cards!!

We are based in the city of Brighton & Hove.

For those of you who don’t know the city, it is on the south coast of the UK and is well known for its piers (well, pier and a bit), Pavilion and pebble beach.

We are proud to be a Brighton SEO. One of the main advantages is that there is a great digital community and spirit of entrepreneurship down here. There are two universities in a town of 250,000 people and many students don’t want to leave after 3 years of hedonism, hence a young, creative workforce that you are as likely to meet in the pub as in a networking event. And as for those networking events in the pub…

If you are looking for an SEO in Brighton & Hove, give us a call and find out what we can do for you. While our clients are based around the world (including Brazil, USA and Spain), we are very much a Brighton SEO and enjoy being a part of the thriving digital community down here. We are members of Wired Sussex and Sussex Enterprise, not to mention keen supporters of the local pub (the Wick Inn)- check out our Flickr page for documentary evidence of this.

Some of our longest standing clients are based in Sussex. If you fancy catching up with us in Hove, or our clients at the top of Google, give us a call!

Following on nicely from Dave’s post on Digg, the Guardian Unlimited site today offers a great example of the power of Digg to drive traffic.

Here are yesterday’s most read stories:

Nothing fascinating here, you may think.

What is interesting is that the top story “Mysteries of Computer from 65BC are Solved” was posted on the site in November 2006. Why would such an old story suddenly become the most popular story on the UK’s most popular newspaper site?

That’s the power of Digg!

I’ve been commissioned (or, to put it another way, asked repeatedly) by Alex to write a few posts now and again on the social media and bookmarking side of things; the part of our SEO work over which I currently preside. Lately we’ve been working regularly with several social bookmarking sites, most notably Digg and StumbleUpon, but there are so many out there that it’s probably easier to start with these two. Alex has rather genially already mentioned Digg in a previous post, but I thought it might be nice to go into a wee bit more detail.

If you’re involved or interested in online marketing and have not yet heard of the social bookmarking phenomenon known as Digg, it’s probably about time to poke your head out from behind that rock and embrace one of the big boys currently in the Social Media world.

Digg runs off an entirely social platform, relying solely on its users for its constant injection of fresh, peer-reviewed content. People submit an URL, wedge it into one of Digg’s many categories, stick a title and quick description on it, and then unleash it upon the masses. If someone likes it, they can ‘digg’ it, which basically amounts to giving the submission a single vote. If, for any reason, a user does not deem the content worthy of Digg, they can ‘bury’ it. The more positive votes, the more visibility the content gains, and the more traffic is whisked off to the URL in question.

Digg is not the first site ever to have come up with this idea. Slashdot has been operating a peer-review system for its comments for years now – it seems to be a particularly effective measure against trolls and fanboys filling comments threads with rubbish. Digg, however, have taken this system and put it into action on a grand scale, and in the process have spawned several sites who share content in a very similar way, such as Reddit and Mixx. The algorithm grants the users who have a history of submitting popular content more power than the average Joe, giving their submissions greater visibility. Categories can be masked so each user gets only the content that is most relevant and interesting to them. Almost anything can be submitted to Digg: articles, images, videos, Flash games, podcasts, directories – even updates to Digg’s site and inner workings are announced by submitting a link from the Digg blog.

But what can Digg bring to your site? Well, a hell of a lot of short-term traffic. The vast majority of stories on Digg have a short life-span, but during that time you can enjoy a sharp surge in visits. Here’s an example for you – one of our more successful viral posts was submitted to Digg and gained around 1,750 diggs in its first 24 hours on the site. While this may not seem a particularly large amount, let’s see how that converts into traffic…

As you can see, the daily visit count has gone from pretty much zero to a whopping 60k visits. In one day.

Naturally you’ll want your site to be full of good content in order to keep that bounce rate low, gain return visitors, and translate the traffic into sales; but the window of opportunity is slim due to the short lifespan of most content submitted to Digg.

Digg’s influence does not end here. Online activists Anonymous have been utilising Digg’s power in recent weeks to spread word of their war against Scientology, using the site to popularise anti-cultist sentiments, releasing secret Scientology documents and even arranging a variety of ‘raids’ – non violent protests outside major Scientology centres around the world. This further emphasises the idea (and real-life power) of online socialism – using YouTube to release their video press releases, utilising social media sites to spread the word; and most importantly, galvanising people to feel compelled to do something about L. Ron Hubbard’s legacy. Tom Cruise be damned.

More on Digg next time – and perhaps a short foray into the world of StumbleUpon – same species, different animal.

Being a sales and marketing bod often involves going to a lot of trade shows. This week’s was the TFM&A (Technology For Marketing and Advertising) at Earls Court 2.

A very interesting day it was too. I was particularly impressed with Danny Meadows-Klue, from Digital Strategy Consulting and his talk on “Marketing to the Facebook Generation”. While there was an element of preaching to the converted about his talk, he raised a number of interesting points about the flow of traditional marketing spend to the internet and how best to manage this change.

One point that he made which really resonated was the current underuse of online channels by many companies of all sizes. It was only a small part of the talk, but was particularly interesting to someone who devotes a lot of time and energy trying to convince companies to devote a larger chunk of their marketing spend to the web.

His point was that, for most companies that now advertise online, this media channel would be the least likely to suffer cutbacks in the coming squeeze. The strange thing is that many companies are yet to even dip their toes in online marketing!

(This seems like a convenient point at which to crowbar in the fact that we are now getting some coverage in the print media – check out my internet marketing column in next Tuesday’s Brighton & Hove Argus – it’ll be in the Business Section and called “The Bottom Line”)

Danny gave some examples of great online marketing campaigns – the two which come to mind are Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty and STA’s great travel blogs, which are offered to anyone who purchases a ticket from the company. These campaigns show how a little thought goes a long way with online marketing. The Dove campaign shot from inbox to inbox around the world in record time. STA, on the other hand, is a grower. Both are examples of fantastic social media (or web 2.0) marketing.

Having worked online for a couple of years now, it is amazing to see how seriously people are now taking our field. Even four years ago, internet marketers were viewed strangely by the traditional marketing world, kind of like a geeky subculture. Now, everyone is scrambling to get onboard. Early adopters have seen fantastic returns in both brand perception (one of the cornerstones of Danny’s talk) and – this is particularly true of SEO users – sales.

Next stop SES on the 22nd!

It’s amazing how many sites we see that have been made by self-proclaimed “SEO experts” but are missing a number of the absolute basics of SEO design.

Here is an extract from an article I wrote for the Brighton & Hove Argus in January, with some of the bare basics to demand from your designers.

Of course, if you want great design first time, you can always ask us!

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Make sure that the search engines can find every page in the site. Search engines look through a site using so-called “spiders”. Don’t worry; these aren’t as sinister as they sound! They are programs which visit a site and follow every link that they can find, making a note of what is on every page. This process of recording is called “Caching”. You can only get results for pages that a search engine can find. To make sure a search engine can find every page, create a site map: a page that links to every other page on the site.

Make sure that the page title of each page reflects what is on that page. You will generally see better results if the title and content of each page are closely related. This is not a huge issue, but as a certain supermarket says “every little helps”. This philosophy hasn’t done them badly.

What are your “keywords”? You should think about what words people use when they are searching for your products. Which words would you use if you were searching for your products? Make sure that these appear on the relevant pages on your site. Be careful not to overdo it though, leading nicely to the most important advice:

Don’t try and cheat! It is not a good idea to try and “stuff” keywords into your site, by repeating them over and over just for the search engines. Other techniques such as using white letters on a white background and hiding lots of links where users can’t find them are also a bad idea! Google is very perceptive (certainly for a ten year old) and will punish sites found to be using underhand techniques to improve their search positions.

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When does “no” actually mean “no”?

When does “no” mean “yes”?

As has been widely reported, the folk at Yahoo! are less than keen on being swallowed by Microsoft. This isn’t stopping Microsoft from pushing on with their attempts to buy their rival.

Where is this leading? It seems that the two companies will just continue losing ground to the Big G while they thrash out the details of a potential takeover. Microsoft apparently feels that it is being more than generous and that Yahoo!’s shareholders are not being provided with all the necessary information to make an informed decision. The money men at Yahoo! disagree.

I fear that the nature of this takeover could lead to the companies falling further behind Google in search. Yahoo! is already a company in the process of absorbing acquisitions and any potential tie in with Microsoft would leave the company in a hugely unsettled condition. If the takeover happens in bad blood, surely this will just slow the process further.

It’s hard to imagine that Yahoo! will be able to resist Microsoft’s advances for much longer. We are all well aware of how ruthless the Seattle company are when they want something and they are, after all, phenomenally wealthy in a way that Yahoo! are not.

The world watches…

Our work in the sphere of Social Media Optimisation is growing by the day. This is due, in no small part, to the fact that the sphere of social media is growing by the day!

As discussed elsewhere on this blog, the article submission sites like Digg and Stumbleupon are great for generating site visits and links. We
A few of the more established sites built up without the hoohah that now seems to be associated with anything driven by user content. Way before Youtube, for example, there was Flickr.

Flickr was, and remains, the daddy of photo sharing websites. Even before it was purchased by Yahoo!, it was the definitive place to post your pics online, for all the world (or just friends and family) to see. It is testament to the quality of the original idea that Yahoo has now removed their own photosharing site to focus energies entirely on Flickr.

I have been using Flickr for a couple of years now. If you are interested you can check out my photos here.

What is impressive about Flickr is that, unlike many of the new social media sites, they have a great way of making money: they allow you to post 200 photos for free, after which you must upgrade to a paid-for, “pro” account. Becuase Flickr is the definitive photo sharing site, nobody begrudges them the $25 per year for a pro account.

They also offer prints, which are delivered to your door.

Another nice thing about Flickr is that users seem to avoid the “idiot comment syndrome” that affects a large number of sites driven by user content. Most comments that people make are either praise or constructive criticism. If you don’t believe this, check for yourself!

Many people who used to post pictures on Flickr migrated to facebook, wooed by the option of tagging other users. Unsurprisingly, this hasn’t diluted the quality of images on Flickr at all. And how much money does Facebook actually make?

From an SMO (social media optimisation) point of view, Flickr is a great way of adding depth and personality to your site. Do not underestimate the power of an “About Us” section on a website… with so much business done through email and phonecalls now, business is becoming increasingly impersonal. How often do we actually meet with our clients?

One way of adding some personality to a site is to give access to your social media pages. My Flickr photos are there to be seen. Hopefully they give a little insight into who I am (or at least where I drink in Brighton!).

Flickr is one of the great sites on the net. It gives (over 2 billion images are currently hosted there), asks no more than you are willing to give and offers a strong community of like minded snappers around the world. If you haven’t already, you should check it out.

Again, blimey!

Microsoft are trying to eat Yahoo!

Both MSN search and Yahoo! are struggling in the UK search market, but this is not true abroad. In the States, for example, Google’s market share is little over 50% (compared to 90% in the UK and 94% in Germany).

This is big news in the world of search. So big, in fact, that I felt the need to blog it at 5pm on a Friday.

Let’s see what happens over the weekend. Have a good one.