Google Panda – Further Thoughts…
Hopefully you watched the video in my last blog post regarding the recent Google Panda updates? If not, you can take a look here. // Like many of you I’m sure, I have been considering how Panda has and will continue to affect my sites and it is clear that the way we all look at SEO in the future has changed dramatically. Before Panda it was enough to have pages of good quality, unique content and a few inbound links to your site in order to rank well in Google. Now, as the search engine becomes smarter, it is clear that this method of SEO is not going to be enough. Instead, Google are fine-tuning their methods of assessing the whole user experience on our websites. In other words, if the user isn’t having a good experience then why should your site be ranked highly in Google’s results? So how are Google able to assess user experience? Well although the algorithms etc that Google will be using are, no doubt, massively complex, the basics of how they can assess user experience is actually quite simple. Google has access to an absolute ton of data gained from both the way
Jeez, it’s easy setting up an online business these days!
// Seriously, how much easier can it get?! I started my online ‘journey’ in 1998 and getting an online business or website up and running was a totally different experience to today. My first ‘product’ (if you can call it that!) was something which went onto become an eBook. However back then, I had no idea what an eBook was and I certainly wasn’t aware of the fact that you could buy software to create one. Thus my first eBook was little more than a text file (which went onto become a Word document)! It looked cheap and scrappy and to be fair, it was BUT the content was solid and that was the most important thing and my poorly presented text file sold by the bucketload. When I eventually decided that there must be a better way of presenting the information I was selling, it took me days of Googling (actually I probably wasn’t even using Google back then so perhaps that should be AOLing or Yahooing) to find the one piece of software that would do what I wanted. Search for ‘eBook software’ now and Google is jammed full of the stuff! Not only that but today you
The WadCast Episode 13
// swfobject.registerObject(“ssg_gplayer_object-654-0″, “9.0.0″, “http://www.theuktrader.co.uk/wp-content/plugins/ssg-wordpress-google-audio-player/swfobject/expressInstall.swf”); The WadCast Episode 13 What’s a WadCast? Find out here… Website design and avoiding scams online get our attention this week. First published 10th May 2007 The WadCast is produced by Internet Marketers, Richard Grady (www.theuktrader.co.uk) & Stuart Morrison (www.stuartmorrison.com)
Using a web designer instead of doing it yourself…
// I built my first website approximately five years ago and since then, I have always designed and built my own sites. This process has served me very well and over the years, my web building skills have advanced considerably (mostly through trial and error!). I have always recommended to my customers and subscribers that they too learn how to build their own sites and this is for two reasons: 1. It means that you know exactly what is going on with your site and how it actually ‘works’. As you have built it piece by piece, you know, quite literally, every aspect of it. 2. Doing the work yourself will save you a small fortune on web design costs. During the past couple of weeks though, I have done something that I would have previously not even considered doing – I have started to talk to a professional web designer with a view to hiring him to build a new business website for me!!! Why I hear you ask? Well the answer is simple – because he can do a much better job of it than I can AND he will take on all of the stress that the
An easy way to build a content-based website
// One of the biggest stumbling blocks that people come across when starting to work online is how to actually design/build their website. This is especially the case if you are planning a large content-based site with many, many pages. Creating each page can be a highly time-consuming process and if you want to make even a minor change to your page template, you could end up having to amend hundreds of individual pages. There are different options out there that will make your task easier and in the past couple of weeks, I have been using some software scripts known as Content Management Systems. These scripts are installed on your web server (which is probably the hardest part of using them) and allow you to build and design your website via your Internet browser. The basic layout is set though you can choose different ‘themes’ to give your site a unique look. Where these scripts really come into their own however, is the ease in which you can add new content. Let’s say you have written an article and you want to add it to your site. You simply copy and paste the article into the appropriate form in
