Building Links to Success

Best Rising Star 07

2007-05-25T14:27:00.000+01:00

Well its official - at last nights Big Chip Awards I took home the award from Best Rising Star.

It was a great night for the whole team and I was thrilled to see some fantastic awards going to some real talent in the North West's New Media Industry.

Thanks guys for making the Evening a night to remember!

Rolling Out The Content...

2007-05-24T14:04:00.001+01:00

As with many large digital industry conferences and awards, the geeks like to get the content out of the venue before they have managed to leave themselves! The race is on from the time the keynote speaker gets to his feet - and a critique of what he is saying is circulating around the blogosphere before he has finished introducing himself!

Well tonight is the Big Chip Awards, Manchester's Industry awards, by the industry, for the industry! And the boys (and girl) over at PushON have been searching hard to see what Web 2.0 has to offer in terms of social interaction.

So how do you juggle content distribution and a fun night of drinking and eating?

Well we think we've found the answer, in the form of twitter and ShoZu.

Twitter - Twitter is a blog-like site that allows users to "twit" about what they are doing at the moment. What makes this service more interactive then others is that it allows users to post messages via standard sms messaging.

ShoZu - is a Media distribution service that allows users to harness the power of their mobile phone to upload images and videos straight to their Flickr feeds.

So with the above installed and ready to go, all we have to do now is wait out and get ready for the awards. Oh - and remember to "Roll Out The Content..."

See what Katrina is saying on the PushON Blog for more.

Easter Project...

2007-04-15T23:33:00.000+01:00

I've spent a bit of my Easter Break having a look over the AglowHealth website for a friend.

He asked me to help him bring his website up to W3C standards and to show him some optimisation techniques. There were some real common faults that I found in the Internal Linking and Navigation of his website. This in itself makes it difficult for search engine spiders to 'crawl' and 'index' his site. To overcome this I've helped him implement a standards safe navigation system, HTML Sitemap, XML Sitemap and submitted them to Yahoo, Google and Ask.

We also had a play with the layout of the site making it a bit more friendly on the eye and incorporated the Wealth & Wellness News Section into the main site.

Rob is offering a great business opportunity for anyone that would love a new and exciting way to make some extra money. So if you'd like to make some extra cash or are just interested in the great weight loss products on offer at Aglow Health then drop by and say hi.

Big Chip Nominations

2007-04-04T12:48:00.000+01:00

The first week of April means only one thing to the North West’s New Media Industry… who has successfully been short listed for the Big Chip Awards?

Well I am pleased to say that Virtuaffinity and PushON have followed on from last years success at the awards with not just one but two nominations.

In the category of Best Commercial Website Virtuaffinity has been short listed for their work on the Didsbury Magazine Online. And in the category of Best Rising Star I have been nominated for my work over the last year with PushON.

As you can imagine we are really excited by the news that we have been short listed for these awards and that a body of the industries finest has continued to like our work. The future is looking bright for both PushON and Virtuaffinity – and nominations at such high profile events as this will continue to help us show the North West that for a small firm we can compete and succeed against the big boys.

Read all the Big Chip Shortlists here.

Say Goodbye to ISDN

2007-04-03T12:18:00.000+01:00

BT have announced the "Withdrawing of consumer ISDN, as the demand for it has dived with the availability of cheap, fast broadband." the withdrawal will take place later this year.

So where does that leave consumer ISDN users?

As everyone knows broadband can be one faster and cheaper solution, but for those that don't want to go over to net-based alternatives that use the IP protocol what else is there?

As the bigger players start to drop out of the market, for being unable to deliver goods and services competitively, it has left a void for smaller niche ISP's to break into.

One such contender is FreeUKisp, a UK based ISP offering ISDN Alternatives. Simon Wharton, Managing Director of FreeUKisp said "It's allowed our market share to grow as we start to supply where big players no longer can."

For those concerned by the drop in connection speeds, FreeUKisp recommends the Netfury Accelerator, a state of the art internet accelerator that boosts the connection speed of any standard dial up connection.

So many consumers are now left having to look for new ISDN Providers as BT concentrate on making more money and forgeting about there loyal ISDN customers. But where will they go?

1 Year Today

2007-04-02T13:58:00.000+01:00

Yes – as we break into the new tax year it can only mean one thing… I’ve been here a year! So what have I been doing in the last year you ask? Well I’m not sure. Looking back over my past blog posts it would appear that I have:

Continued with My Degree

Attended the Big Chip Awards

Attended some Networking4Business Events

Developed some Blog Optimisation Techniques

Discovered Social Media Marketing

Worked on some great campaigns – Manchester NTI

Helped Implement a Viral Marketing Campaign

So all in all I have been quite busy! One thing I can say for certain is that PushON have allowed me the chance to grow. I’m am really grateful for the opportunities I’ve been given to help develop the my professional and technical skill set and help make a difference to the way we do business.

Cheers Guys.

Viral Marketing gets Exposure

2007-02-24T00:38:00.000Z

The Viral Marketing Campaign we're working on at PushON is getting international exposure!! Today it reached the top post on Web Pro World and making their weekly mail out to all members.

So far we’ve had mixed comments, but love it or hate it, it’s proving to be a viral success. I am surprised by many of the comments/criticisms; most are about length, language (both swearing and English colloquialisms) and the use of women to sell the video!

If you’ve not already seen it, take a look at our Viral Marketing Video; but be warned, it’s not for the faint hearted!

PushON launches Viral Marketing Campaign

2007-02-23T01:40:00.000Z

The PushON video has gone live, and it’s pretty funny if you’re into Online Marketing.

It's interesting to see the how a simple idea can explode, thanks to some Viral Marketing Strategy. I'm going to blog further on some of things we've all discovered while playing with this project but here is what the final video looks like...

...And if you'd like to see it on the PushON site; have a look at Viral Marketing in Action.

Naughty SEO

2007-02-13T16:05:00.000Z

Now before I go any further I have to say that I fully support White Hat SEO techniques. But sometimes its worth knowing about the techniques that others implement in order to cheat the system.

Katrina, has been busy putting together a list of Naughty SEO tricks and bad practices and she discusses the pros and cons of using them.

As I've often mentioned in previous posts; Black Hat techniques do not pay off in the long run. The search engines are becoming wise to such techniques and anybody using such tricks could find their website being penalised from search results.

So check out what Katrina has to say, and make sure your website isn't implementing any Naughty SEO.

Why Architecture Matters?

2007-01-30T15:39:00.000Z

The following photo is of The Winchester ‘Mystery’ House. This grand and quite unique house was built back in 1884 and took 147 builders 38 years to build.

Here are some quite unique facts about the house, it has:

160 rooms
40 bedrooms
6 kitchens
2 basements
950 doors

However, there was NO Architect involved in the designing, planning and building of this house and as a result there are:

65 doors to blank walls
13 staircases abandoned
24 skylights in floors
And – No architectural blueprints (although some rough drawings have been found on table clothes!)

At PushON we regularly receive requests for Website MOTs. It is a service we offer because so many websites on the internet have been built like The Winchester ‘Mystery’ House; they look good but have little or no functionality. Here are many of the things we find wrong with websites:

No inbound links to your website – Blank Doors
Poor navigation structures – Abandoned Staircases
Duplicate content on older sites - Skylights in Floors

An MOT is free and will give you a good overview of both your websites structure and online presence, along with some suggestions for improvement.

So if you’d like us to MOT Your Webiste drop by and let us help you make your website work for you.

Mobile Web

2007-01-14T23:06:00.000Z

I was having a play on my PDA the other day and I thought I'd have a look to see if websites geared up for mobiles/PDA were better the when I last checked.

I have to be honest and say that I was slightly disheartened by the lack of sites showing good quality content that was changing quick enough for me to bother having a look on the move.

I've previously written about Time Magazine developing a mobile friendly website and I was pleased to see that the BBC have followed suit with:

But after struggling to find any good sites I went to the place where all search marketers begin... yes Google! Google have launched Google Mobile Services.

As you can see from the layout of the search engine it has been stripped to purely functional elements with a new option for Mobile Web (Beta).

I'm undecided by its usage at the moment but as I look around at the new mobiles for sale today, its clear that the devices to support mobile web are selling everywhere and its not going to be long before companies are going to have to take their 'Mobile Web Presence' seriously.

FeedBurner FeedFlare

2007-01-13T16:06:00.000Z

FeedBurner's FeedFlare Services allows feed publishers to add content to the bottom of their syndicated post with more information about their content. It gives your subscribers an easy way to email, tag, share, and act on the content you publish.

FeedFlare places a simple footer at the bottom of each content item, helping you to distribute, inform and create a community around your content. This really is where Feed Optimisation meets Web 2.0
To see FeedFlare in action check out My Feed.

Blogger Upgrade

2007-01-10T02:15:00.000Z

As like many fellow bloggers on Blogger I've 'upgraded' to NEW Blogger! After having a look at the tour the following functionality seems to have been implemented:

Customising Your Template Tool
Create a Private Blog Function
Extension of the Feed Options (Including RSS Support)
and An Updated Dashboard Layout

Some other bits I've noticed include the introduction of category tags to posts and the removal of the option to publish the entire blog or just index (which won't be missed!)

I'm quite impressed with the new upgrade, although I'm still wondering why I now log on using my Google Account details?

I'd be interested to hear how other people have found the upgrade... Drop me a comment and let me know.

Update: Keep an eye on the 'Official Blogger Buzz' as it happens.

Update: I've introduced a range of social bookmarking badges into the full page version of my blog posts.
I found the script for the buttons on badged.net.

The Team is Growing

2007-01-10T01:19:00.000Z

Great News...

Yes we finally found someone to fill the positions advertised back in October.

At PushOn, Katrina has joined us from Code Computerlove in Manchester and brings some real marketing brains to our team. Check out Katrina's Blog to see what she has been up to and how she is getting on.

The guys at Virtuaffinity are growing too. Jim has joined them and brings a wealth of web development know-how to the team. You can have a read of all the clever things Jim gets up to at JimNeath.com

So it looks to be an exciting start to the new year. I look forward to updating you on how we're all getting on.

Building a Wiki

2006-12-29T18:22:00.000Z

I've spent the day building a wiki for one of our clients Restore Foam.

Well actually that's not the whole story - I've spent two days attempting to build a wiki and then I accidentally killed it during a routine update! So after a change of wiki software and a few hours sleep I started again.

I was surprised to see all the wiki software available. But after some thought we went for the wiki that powers Wikipedia.

I've spent the day playing with the MediaWiki and I have to say that I'm a big fan already. It's stable, reliable and pretty straight forward (once you've got your head round the syntax.)

If you fancy a look at what I've been up to have a look at the Orthopaedic Wiki.

Event Marketing

2006-12-27T14:01:00.000Z

When is online marketing not just about marketing online? Well in the last week or so I have been busy helping The Manchester New Technologies Institute to market a number of their successful corporate training courses.

The problem I faced was not knowing how to advertise a course? An event that has a specific start and an end date. The usual linking, blog posts and article submissions were all well and good but I wanted to create a solution that would be removed from the web once the course had finished. The last thing I wanted to do was create duplicate content that would be penalised by search engines having a negative effect to the client’s online presence.

The answer has come in the shape of eventful an online events search engine. This site allows users to add information about a range of courses, events and gigs. Affiliated to ping-o-matic the site updates a number of resources with newly updated content taking the legwork out of distributing your event information across the web.

Its early days for this site but I’ll be keen to see how it develops and to see what new sites appear on the back of this great idea.

Networking Guru Takes Networking Online!

2006-11-28T18:31:00.000Z

Will Kintish, Manchester's Leading Business Networking Guru, has taken his networking skills online.

Will chose the ever-growing myspace to start his Social Networking Adventure, Check out what Will has to say on his new profile.

PubCon

2006-11-12T14:28:00.000Z

Simon and Roy (The MD's of PushOn) are over in Vegas this week at PubCon attempting to grow professionally.

I'm quite envious because some of the keynote speakers include:

John Battelle - Author of The Search, Chairman of Federated Media Publishing, and editor of the well known and highly respected Search Blog.

And

Danny Sullivan - Founder and Editor of SearchEngineWatch,
Director of Programming - SearchEngineStrategies Conferences.

It looks like they'll have a great time. No doubt they'll be blogging throughout the event so follow what they have to say on the PushOn Blog.

The PushOn blog has moved!!

2006-11-12T14:27:00.000Z

Yes that’s right. Whilst we have nothing but praise for Blogger and the service it offers we have decided to move our Blog to http://blog.pushon.co.uk and use wordpress instead.

No Doubt I’ll be blogging about the functionality benefits soon enough!

The Battle of the Browsers

2006-10-24T10:27:00.000+01:00

Well its a week of Internet browser launches. Microsoft launch its much awaited Internet Explorer 7 last week and hot on their heels is Mozila with its latest release of Firefox 2.0.

I haven't actually tested either of these browsers yet but from the outlook they seem to have taken the middle ground and developed many of the same features:

RSS Feeds
Tabbed Browsing
Improved Security Features (anti-phishing)
Print Previews

One feature that really stood out for me in the new Firefox release is the introduction of a spell checker. It claims to spell check anything typed into your browser; including webmail and even when blogging!

If anybody has had chance to test these new browsers I'd be interested to know what you thought about them.

It Could Be You!

2006-10-15T13:54:00.000+01:00

No, this isn't a post on the national lottery (otherwise I'd probably have titled this post "It probably won't be you!")

As you may have realised by recent posts, work is going very well. It’s going so well in fact that PushON and Virtuaffinity are looking for new staff. There are some exciting work opportunities available the right applicants to work for one of North West's leading Web Design or Search Marketing Agencies.

If you think that could be you then check out the following:

Online Marketing Business Development Consultant or
Web Designer / Developer

Good Luck!!

PushOn gets a facelift...

2006-10-11T13:56:00.000+01:00

The PushOn website has had a bit of a facelift. The boys over at Virtuaffinity have been working hard to give the site a new look.

The facelifted site is boasting a load of new Online Marketing Articles too so drop by and let the guys know what you think of the changes.

Free Web Word Processor for your Blog

2006-10-07T17:49:00.000+01:00

I've just created this post testing out WriteToMyBlog.com ... A new tool that allows you to write blog posts in rich text format, with LOADS of functionality and post them to your blog. I've had a quick look over it and I really like it. I can see me recommending this to a few of our clients. It even has a tag creator built in, Simon will be pleased!

Tags: Blog, Posts, WriteToMyBlog

The PageRank Guessing Game...

2006-10-02T22:26:00.000+01:00

Well I'm not sure if its just me but I seem to have got a PageRank of 3... Thats not bad for only 36 post work!
As Google put it:

PageRank is a function of Google that measures the quality of a website on a scale of 0 to10. The theory is that high quality sites receive a higher PageRank based on visitors and traffic your site receives. PageRank is a “vote”, by all the other pages on the internet.

For more information on PageRank try checking out the Google Technology Page.

A tag too far...

2006-09-18T18:20:00.000+01:00

Some people will tag anything... But this has to be too far!!

Kintish is being 'Pushed Online'

2006-09-18T17:17:00.000+01:00

Here at PushON we've been doing some work on Will Kintish's website, in an attempt to add to his online presence.

Will is an amazing networker and a highly professional speaker whose presentations are always enjoyable. He has a wealth of knowledge and is always more then willing to share his stories, anecdotes and advice.

Well, we've just made it easier for Will to do just that, by adding a Free Networking Articles section to his site. It's packed with plenty of sound advice from the Guru himself.

As if that wasn't enough, there's always Will's Business Networking Blog to look at. Drop by and let him know what you think.

Defining Web 2.0

2006-09-18T17:03:00.000+01:00

There has been some discussion over a solid definition of web 2.0 that anyone can agree with. But finally the guys at Information Week have come up with a definition that could catch on:

Web 2.0 is all the Web sites out there that get their value from the actions of users.

Here are some good examples:

Wikipedia: An online encyclopaedia written and edited (and re-edited and re-edited) by its users.

Digg: A social bookmarking site where users post story links and vote for, or "digg," stories posted by others. Those with the most votes make it to the home page, so visitors to that page see only the most popular stories.

Technorati: A blog search engine that ranks blogs according to how many other blogs link to them.

Flickr A site where anyone can post and share pictures, which can be browsed by anyone else with help from popularity rankings.

Frappr: A mash-up, or combination of two sources of data, that lets you show the locations of the members of any group on a Google Maps map.

So what do you think of Web 2.0? Will this diffinition catch on or will we be constantly be battling for an answer? Guess that’s what happens when you consider Web 2.0 is all about participation.

Social Media Directory

2006-09-18T12:32:00.000+01:00

Go2Web2.net is a new directory of social sites that have been branded "Web 2.0″. Services include MySpace, Digg, Meebo, StumbleUpon, Facebook, YouTube and many more.

The site is a mosaic of brands and logo images that are instantly recognisable as the web giants that now steer much of the social community. The site allows you to search companies, sort them and filter them by appropriate tags.

It’s a nice directory that shows just how many of these sites can be found on the internet. The real question is, how many will survive?

A New SMO Discovery

2006-09-16T16:52:00.000+01:00

I've spent some time playing around with squidoo.com this week, as an attempt to continually improve the online presence of some of our customers.

Squidoo is an online resource centre that allows individuals to create pages on their area of expertise and share them with the community.

I've been having a go at creating 'lenses' as they are known on the site for

Will Kintish - The Business Networking Guru
and
Restore Foam - Manchester's Leading Memory Foam Manufacturer.

Sites like these are growing everyday on the web and are starting to open up SEO into a whole new creative field - taking it away from its purely technical origins. SMO, or Social Media Optimisation, as it has become known in the online marketing world is starting to be hailed SEO 2.0 as it starts to take steps towards being the next level of Internet Marketing.

Link Building

2006-09-16T16:41:00.000+01:00

We all know how valuable linkbuilding can be. Io was reading an Online Marketing blog today and came across the following links... These articles will change the way you linkbuild (hopefully for the better!)

Rand Fishkin presents his thoughts on why email is still king for link building.

Jim Boykin has a great post about the quality vs quantity issue with link building.

Eric Ward dispells a common myth about .edu links in his post: ".edu link fallacies dispelled".

Of course there’s Aaron Wall and Andy Hagan’s post from last month: "101 Ways to Build Link Popularity".

Browsing the Mobile Web

2006-09-11T14:33:00.000+01:00

I'm starting to get use to the benefits of having a Pocket PC. I've been looking for some good sites that offer mobile browsing compatibility.

I was pleased to see that Time Magazine has rolled out a mobile version of its site that includes links to Time's blogs and its other content.

When sites are built well, using WC3 web standards, it helps users of portable devices access your products and services that much easier... it's worth the investment.

Never Forget

2006-09-11T14:20:00.000+01:00

There's nothing else to say...

Xda - Pocket PC

2006-09-10T17:08:00.000+01:00

Its finally arrived... I upgraded this week to the Xda Mini-S.

The Xda come's full with WiFi Internet and Windows Mobile® 5.0 allowing me to send and receive emails and download files. Its also makes accessing my emails, calendar, contacts on the move much easier!

I'm still getting use to the slide out QWERTY keyboard to check over my work on Microsoft Word and PowerPoint slide presentations but I'm getting there... who knows, I may even get use to blogging from it!!

A day at Tiger Tiger

2006-09-08T12:16:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I enjoyed an afternoon of business networking at Manchester's Tiger Tiger. The even was hosted by Mark Greenwood's Networking4Business group.

It was a great opportunity to get out and meet people from a range of industries around Manchester and to enjoy chatting to them over a drink or two.

I don't profess to know that much about business networking, but I've found these 'business networking tips' really useful.

Firefox Extensions

2006-08-24T19:51:00.000+01:00

Carrying on the theme of extensions after yesterday's post on MS Outlook Skype extensions I thought I'd treat you to some of my favourite Firefox Extensions:

FlashBlock: Never be annoyed by a Flash animation again! Blocks Flash so it won't get in your way, but if you want to see it, just click on it.
IE Tab: This is a great tool for web developers, since you can easily see how your webpage displayed in IE with just one click and then switch back to Firefox.
GooglePreview: Inserts preview images (thumbnails) of web sites and Amazon products into the Google and Yahoo search results pages.

There are bucket loads of Firefox extensions out there, if you have some favourites drop me a comment and let me know what they are. Cheers.

Skypein' my inbox

2006-08-24T00:01:00.000+01:00

I've seen some pretty impressive integrated tools and extensions for Firefox recently but I'd never seen any for MS Outlook, until today...

Skype, is a much loved VoIP service that allows users to chat, conference, send messages and share files for free. I've been using the service for sometime and find it really useful. As I was updating this evening I noticed they have launched a series of plug-ins for Outlook, Outlook Express and Thunderbird, that claim to allow you to:

Call Skype Names and phone numbers written in emails
See when your contacts are online
Start instant messaging in follow up to emails
Add a Skype Button to your email signature, so other people can just click to call you

It's up and running on my inbox but only time will tell how useful it will be!

Ping-o-matic

2006-08-23T19:04:00.000+01:00

Here's a site that will take the leg work out of getting your blog 'pinged' by the most commonly used Ping Services on the web.

Simply provide your blogs name, url and site feed (optional) and ping-o-matic will not only ping all their services for you but they’ll allow you to bookmark the page. You're now only one click away from getting your blog instantly pinged every time you update.

Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) Help

2006-08-23T15:31:00.000+01:00

If like me you've done a bit of CSS but most of it is trial and error or you're just not sure how you should go about modifying your website to include CSS Manchester NTI might have the answer.

They are running an Advanced Layouts and Accessibility Course over 10 weeks that looks to cover all major CSS and XHTML.

Using CSS correctly will have real benefit and will aid you in building your website to Web Standards.

RESTORE© Blog

2006-08-23T15:27:00.000+01:00

RESTORE, Manchester’s Memory Foam specialists, have launched a blog today to provide customers with information on their Memory Foam product range.

We’ve been working alongside them to help maximise their online presence. Check out the Restore Foam Blog

A Virtual Me!

2006-08-22T21:39:00.000+01:00

I found this great site today, called Meez. They specialise in providing custom avatars to use with IM and social networks including: MySpace, Facebook, hi5, Xanga, Blogger, Windows Live Spaces, MSN Messenger, Skype etc etc.

You can design your character using a neat little Flash app, adding and changing all the facial features, clothes and accessories.

The site charge for special items using an internal currency called “Beenz” (that look more like magic beans!). They’re also charging to add Meez wallpaper to your mobile.

Meez have cleverly produced many of the features to integrate with myspace and there is even a chance for you to use your meez profile to show your youtube vids!!

Here's me hard at work... writing this blog! I need to get a chair in my office I think!

Detecting the NoFollow Tag.

2006-08-22T11:47:00.000+01:00

We are all aware that inbound links are key to how a search engine ranks and rates your website. Good quality inbound links will help your site or blog to gain credibility.

Unfortunately some webmasters and SEO teams misuse inbound links to make them nothing more than spam. For this reason the rel="nofollow" attribute has been created to indicate to a search engine spider not to follow the link, and therefore not index the page.

So how do you go about detecting when a site is using nofollow links?

I personally use the SearchStatus SEO tool. It has a nice option that allows you highlight no follow links:

To give you an idea of what links that are using the nofollow attribute look like here’s a description of my blog - that has been highlighted using the SearchStatus SEO tool.

For more information on the use of nofollow, check out what Matt Cutts has to say on the Google Blog

Getting POP/SMTP access to Hotmail?

2006-08-20T09:16:00.000+01:00

I was trying to help a work colleague, Haris Ahmed, access his hotmail account via MS Outlook last night. I manage several email accounts using the MS Outlook email client and I was sure that this would be as easy as the rest... I was wrong!

Hotmail restrict the use of external mail clients for one reason alone, Advertising. You see MSN use the free email service as an advertising billboard and aren’t too keen for you to get your email from anywhere other than them.

It reminded me of a post i read about losing traffic through rss on the Virtuaffinity Blog.

I predict we'll soon see a move by consumers to services that will allow external access. As mobile devices become more popular in our information driven culture consumers will vote with their feet... I certainly will!

Measuring Inbound Links

2006-08-20T09:15:00.000+01:00

I’ve just spotted Socialmeter on Steve Rubel's blog, a site that scans several major link-tracking sites and throws back an analysis of your URL's popularity.

They currently track links on all the major social bookmarking sites:

del.icio.us
digg
Furl
Google
Technorati and a handful of others.

The result is an aggregate count of most of the social links to a Web site and then some. It's a pretty handy tool, not just for blogs, but for websites too. There's even a Socialmeter bookmarklet. Drag this link to your toolbar and use it on any URL.

Haris Joins The Club

2006-08-14T14:06:00.000+01:00

As those of you that read my blog will already know, I’ve been doing a bit of work for PushON Ltd, an Online Marketing firm in the North West.

I’m always pleased to see friends and colleagues enter the blog arena and have a dabble at writing ‘something’ of interest for those of us that have too much time on our hands and spend our days surfing the net. Which is why I was so pleased to hear Haris, a fellow colleague at PushON has launched is own blog called ‘Optimize Me’.

Drop by and check out what he has to say about the world of Search Engine Optimisation

Keeping Busy

2006-08-14T13:55:00.000+01:00

Sorry for the lack of blogging recently, we’ve been really busy lately with a few new account wins and a high level of training and research as we continually strive to become the SEO Market Leaders in the North West.

One of our most exciting account wins is with Manchester’s New Technologies Institute. Manchester NTI offers a wide range of courses to suite all your training needs.

They have some exciting Corporate Training Packages available from September so book now to avoid disappointment.

New Business

2006-07-30T23:37:00.000+01:00

Everywhere I seem to go at the moment I get talking about work. The first thing someone asks me is if they can have a business card.

I'm pleased to say that thanks to the creative expertise of Roy at Virtuaffinity I now have my own set of business cards being made up.

What do you think?

Social bookmarking on another level

2006-07-30T23:19:00.000+01:00

At PushON we’ve been playing with some new social bookmarking tools… yet again!

And I really think we’ve stumbled on an amazing tool. Its called Diigo

As a team we like to work collaboratively, often musing over blogs, potential website rebuilds or even relevant articles we’ve seen. What Diigo allows us to do is highlight text, underline whole sections and add our own sticky notes. (if you have the diigo toolbar installed you’ll see some comments I’ve left on this blog)

This is social bookmarking with brains… It will add your bookmarks to furl and del.icio.us, allow you to add tags to Technorati and will let you leave handy reminders on the page.

Have a play and let me know what you think.

A Mass Market or a Mass of Niches?

2006-07-15T20:07:00.000+01:00

In my last post I commented on how to achieve a solid distribution of product, news and PR by targeting both online and offline distribution channels.

I was reminded earlier by a conversation I had this week with Simon Wharton my MD. He was telling me of his love for obscure bands (having been a rather passionate goth in his younger years). It surprised me to hear that Simon tracks such bands down using mySpace.

I’ve been doing some reading recently on the ‘New economics of culture and commerce’ I’ve been made aware of something that, although its not new to me, it has changed the way I think about search.

Chris Anderson puts it like this A TV Channel directs one show to millions of viewers. The internet however, directs one viewer to millions of shows.

The key is knowing how to use this to your advantage. The bands that Simon listens to are no longer in the Top 40 (I’m not even sure if they ever where) and yet they still have a presence on the internet and still have a fan base. To understand this we probably have to understand our high street stores. HMV could not possibly stock all of the music the internet can; there just isn’t enough shelf space, so they limit themselves to the most recent or bestselling products only. The internet doesn’t do this, so although there maybe millions more competitors, you all start in the same position.

How can I change my position?

Using solid Search Engine Optimisation techniques is a great way to boost your sites performance in search engines results. Some of the ways that you can achieve this is to build your site to WC3 Accessibility Standards and to increase the number of inbound links to your pages by Link Building.

If you implement these techniques well you will soon start to see an increase in traffic and better performance in the search engines.

From the Blog to the Printed page.

2006-07-13T08:21:00.000+01:00

Its common practice in today’s emerging blogosphere to read of blogs going into print. As a fan of .net magazine I am no longer surprised to see a large percentage of its content coming from blogs commenting on the latest conferences, products and industry trends.

Blog literature and poetry are winning international awards and I now own my very first ‘blog in print’ Chris Anderson’s – The Long Tail

It is exciting to think that today’s bloggers are affecting tomorrow’s news articles. I have recently joined the North West Enquirer’s Directory of Bloggers in the North West. Chris and the team are doing a great job in promoting the hard work of my fellow bloggers and featuring them on his site.

I would not be surprised if content written by bloggers starts to find its way into the North West Enquirers Newspaper.

In Digital Marketing it is easy for us to focus on purely ‘online’ activities. After spending sometime with Rob from ArtisanMC I now have a better understanding of PR. It is important to strike a balance between online and offline PR distribution. Both activities target a different type of reader, if you concentrate too much on one you risk damaging the other, at the cost of alienating potential customers. This in any industry is surely a bad thing.

The beauty of the blog is that it makes everyone a journalist, an observer, a commenter. It goes without saying that all blogs vary in quality but nevertheless if used correctly (and used alongside conventional publishing techniques) I believe it will revolutionise the media of tomorrow.

Age and the Google Sandbox

2006-07-12T18:37:00.000+01:00

It is widely recognised in SEO that an important factor to effect your Google Page Rank is age.

Some specialists in the field refer to this as the Google Sandbox or aging delay (Some argue that these are two separate time-related effects but for the purpose of this post we’ll consider them as one.)

The first thing I must point out is that even though we refer to this effect as the ‘Google’ Sandbox, the principles of the effect are widely believed to apply to all the major search engines.

Some believe that when a search engine finds your site they temporarily hold it in the sandbox and won’t rank it highly. I’m personally not of this school of thought, See Roy Wilding’s post on the Restore Foam website he recently built.

There is a wide spread debate about the effects of aging on a Google Page Rank and although many recognise that it has a part to play they don’t consider it to be the overwhelming factor.

As an SEO Specialist it is important for me to consider this in the larger picture and the part that it has to play in providing our clients with an effective SEO solution. The truth about effective SEO is that it is not:

a short term solution
an off the shelf product
a plug-in

Good, solid Search Engine Optimisation needs to be built into your long-term marketing strategy (and your budget). If you do this than you will see fruit from the time that you have invested in good foundations.

Google does not discriminate on the basis of old age; it merely gives older domains more credibility in their search results.

So next time someone tells you that you have no control over time, remember this: the sooner you start your SEO Project the sooner you’ll start to benefit from the ‘positive effects’ of aging in the eye of the major search engines.

To tag or not to tag!?

2006-07-11T23:07:00.000+01:00

Tagging Update

Well this week at PushON we've been playing around with the tagging that I mentioned earlier ... If you tag it... they will come!

...After reading a lot of sources and considering the benefits to the reader and blogger I no longer feel as excited about it as I once did.

It's not that I find tagging too difficult or a hassle, I'm just not seeing much return on my efforts (in subscribers or traffic) and all the time Technorati are having quality inbound links built to their homepage.

I'm looking into some other forms of social bookmarking so I'll keep you up-to-date on my findings.

My Reading List

2006-07-09T15:09:00.000+01:00

I'm going away for a couple of days next week so have decided to get some books to help me pass the time.

I've opted for:

As with anything I do, I believe it's always best to take every opportunity to stay as up-to-date as possible. This industry is changing every day, it's vital if you want to be a serious player to stay on top.

I'll let you know how I get on with the books, and I look forward to sharing with you some of the tips I've picked up on the way!

Tags: SEO Books

Keep an eye on what you've said!

2006-07-05T15:45:00.000+01:00

I was reading Steve Rubel's half time report for 2006 today and was intrigued by a suggestion he made about comments becoming accessible in search.

coComment are offering a service to track all comments you post and all comments made on your blog. They can even track comments on comments!

This service allows registered users to comment on any blogging platform, news articles, photo galleries (flickr) and many more sites.

I haven’t quite worked out all the options and tools that coComment can offer at the moment (so watch this space...) but it sure looks like the next phase of growth in the blogosphere.

Steve concluded I would bet on coComment to add search to at least all of the comments it is aggregating by year's end.

To read Steve's post Read his 2006 report here.

Tags: Steve Rubel coComment flickr Blogosphere

If you tag it... they will come!

2006-06-30T15:34:00.000+01:00

Tagging

Some of you may have noticed that I’ve began to ‘tag’ my blog posts. I stumbled upon this concept by accident and it’s completely changed the way I think about searching the web for blog and article content.

Tags allow a blogger/journalist/photographer etc to categorise their submissions and posts uniquely without having to search for a category on the blog. So no longer will I be searching the net for relevant blog directories, I’ll simply submit to one site and use my tags on my post to automatically ‘ping’ blog search engines!

No doubt I’ll be blogging on this in the future as I continue to discover more and more about the aft of tagging!

Watch this space!

Jamie
SEO Specialist

Tags: Tagging Blog SEO Search Engines

Blogging... what's it all about?

2006-06-30T00:35:00.000+01:00

What are Blogs?

Web logs or blogs, as they are otherwise known, are web pages made up of usually short, frequently updated posts that are arranged in date order. The content and purposes of blogs varies greatly—from links and commentary about other web sites, to news about a company/person/idea, to diaries, photos, poetry, mini-essays, project updates, even fiction.

Why Should I be blogging?

What ever your line of business you can be sure that someone somewhere is searching for something related to your industry right now. The Top 5 search engines account for 213 million searches daily* - Can you afford to not be among the results?

Many bloggers often report receiving traffic to their blog (and onto their homepage) via what is known in the search engine industry as the 'long tail'. This is often a very specific search term that a blogger may have written about months previously. An example might be: “referrals from a professional firm” Something that Will Kintish has blogged about on several occasions but that he may not of consider as being a relevant search term to attract new readers to his site.

Conclusion

Blogging is fundamentally about building up content, an archive, a back catalogue of thoughts, ideas and opinions. In an internet era driven by a demand for content you can be sure that it won’t be long (if marketed correctly) before you start drawing new customers to your blog and onto your homepage.

*Source: searchenginewatch.com

Tags: Kintish blog Long Tail

Boosting your Page Rank… or letting us do it for you!

2006-06-22T17:06:00.000+01:00

Page Rank (PR) is no new buzz word. Every webmaster from the amateur hobbyist to leading web designers like our friends at VirtuAffinity all know about the value of a site's PR. But what so many people don’t always realise is what actually contributes to your site getting a good PR.

Some people believe that it is the number of sites pointing to their site that will determine their link popularity, and the more links there are, the higher their ranking will be. This is true; however, it is only partially true and can lead you into a trap.

PushOn’s Approach

At PushOn we take this concept and create a bespoke solution to your online marketing needs, based on the principle discussed above. We strive to build you a net of inbound links, that will not only boost your PR but will direct ‘traffic’ or customers to your site.

Your Site

Firstly, we give the site a once over. Is it legal? Does it conform to Accessibility Standards? Is your content appropriate? These are just some of the questions we’ll attempt to answer as we go through a steady ‘on-page’ optimisation of your site.

Your Marketplace

We believe that if your product is worth selling, and marketing, then you want it to be in the marketplace most appropriate for you. One thing that the big search engines seem to love is contextually appropriate links back to your site from sites in the same market. Links like this are gold dust and with a little help you could find your site linking in from a series of PushOn’s known sources.

Anchoring Links

A high number of your newly found inbound links will come from directories. For every link that we create we attempt to maximise your site's link presence by creating additional links within the descriptions available. This has been a highly successful technique and we’ve seen some great results from it.

The Personal Touch

Unlike so many bigger (and possibly cheaper) SEO firms, we don’t use automated tools to ‘spam’ your site's details at directories in a hope that a few of them may add your site to their pages. We believe this not only gives your site a bad reputation but is damaging to ours also.

Instead we employ a team of well trained and motivated LinkBuilders to create valuable links to aid us in boosting your site's PR and online presence.

What Next

PushOn have a range of tools and techniques to help boost your site in your chosen online marketplace that we’d be excited to discuss with you. So give us a call and see how our expertise can give you that edge over your competitors.

About the Author

Jamie Clouting is an SEO Specialist working for PushON, a Manchester based online marketing firm. He is currently studying Information Systems Engineering at the University of Manchester.

Tags:business PushON SEO Directory VirtuAffinity

We are family...

2006-06-16T11:17:00.000+01:00

Our sister company Virtuaffinity have received a special commendation for their Heaven SPA website at this years Big Chip Awards in Manchester and they're pretty chuffed! Congratulations to them.

Based in Manchester, Virtuaffinity create effective web site solutions that help make money for your business. So check them out.

Jamie
SEO Specialist

Tags:business PushON Heaven SPA Virtuaffinity

Online Business Directory

2006-06-14T23:23:00.000+01:00

PushON have continued to add to their portfolio of "Stuff" recently by expanding the use of its online business directory under the VA Slingshot domain. It's main purpose is to aid in our Search Engine Marketing activities, but if you want a link in there (and would be kind enough to drop a link back!) we will be happy to oblige.

Jamie
SEO Specialist

Tags:business PushON SEM Directory

White Dental Spa - Cosmetic Dentists

2006-06-14T01:49:00.000+01:00

I've been doing some SEM for this Cosmetic Dentists in Alderley Edge, near Manchester, in the heart of Cheshire. They have created one of the leading cosmetic dental practices in the UK.

They cater for both NHS and Cosmetic Dental Treatments.

Let me know what you think!

Jamie
SEO Specialist

Tags:Business PushON Dental

Why I'm here...

2006-06-14T01:24:00.000+01:00

Just got a new Job, working with some great guys at a firm in Manchester Called PushON. Spending a lot more time on the net doing 'SEM' for them so thought I'd get going with one of these.

Oh and by the way... just incase you dont know what online marketing is...

Online Marketing is simply a collection of methods that help make your website work for your business. There are many reasons to market online. For instance, it may just be that you want to build your brand presence online. You may also want to bring lots of people to your website. Once those people reach your website, there may be a wide range of things that you want them to do. Many businesses want those people to buy something, but you could also consider bringing them to your site as a point of contact to support your product or service, effectively helping retain customers. Whatever you motivation, there are some solid and measurable techniques that you can apply to Digital Marketing

Check back soon to see what I'm upto.

Jamie Clouting

SEO Specialist

Tags:business PushON SEO