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A new political landscape

Wednesday, 12 May 2010 08:00

There were many of us who were largely concerned about the impetus of the technology bills going through parliament under the old 'regime'.

Not least, were the many small businesses who were finally looking to get their businesses online only to see any hope of competing washed away under the 2010 Digital Economy Bill that was pushed through before the election.

As the bill currently stands there is still much to be worried about and I hope that common sense will prevail to make the necessary changes to remove some of the perverse legislation that can only result in restricting the Internet for future emerging online business.

The first stumbling block is the introduction of an overseeing body in OFCOM which widens its remit to include Domain Registration Regulation, Copyright infringements or abuse regulation, ISP obligations and information service regulation. Quite how they intend to police all this remains, happily, a mystery. But it does mean that if interpreted a certain way, then blogs such as this one could be subject to scrutiny and change subject to government intervention.

What does this mean to business owners?

Well the biggest threat is in the interpretation of the restrictions. In essence OFCOM would be able to regulate the deployment of domain names, a job currently being perfectly performed and at relatively low cost by Nominet. I for one seriously doubt that OFCOM will be providing this extra unnecessary service free of charge.

Additionally, and the most alarming, is the regulation of copyright.

What this means is that under the new system you can register the copyright on your site with the new service but only if you are prepared to pay the costs associated with it. Then you will be able to hold to account any perpetrators who steal your content for use on their own site and the accused would then have to cover the cost of that action plus face a penalty charge for so doing.

The important point in this is that the law does not recognise who first created the copy. Under this new regulation the Copyright subscriber who can afford it has the advantage, which clearly places the impetus in the hands of bigger business and could quite legally be used to penalise smaller online businesses even if they are innocent.

Currently the way the Internet works is that Google and other search engines records the content in their vast data-banks and records who came first. They then penalise repeat obvious plagiarisers by negatively affecting their search engine positioning. This in itself is usually enough to deter would be copyright theft on the Internet. So why did the government seek to bring in this regulation?

It was of course brought in to protect the music industry, but the wording of the bill itself has left it open to include other forms of content and media, which could, if not addressed, be detrimental to small businesses using the Internet to grow their businesses online.

Let us hope that until the new government can fix these obvious holes that they are not exploited by unscrupulous business.

What is Search Engine Optimisation?

Wednesday, 28 April 2010 07:32

Search optimisation used to be the adaption of Web Content to better market your site on the Internet through Search engines like Google and Yahoo.

SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is itself a very sought after and valuable skill for any web site owner. There are many web business providers who list in their armoury SEO skills and website optimisation, many of whom know what they are doing but there are more that do not.

Google and Yahoo/Bing constantly revise the way they review web sites to ensure that genuine listings and the best sites are accorded top positions on search terms, which isn't easy when you are dealing with a growing marketplace of billions of web sites. The problem they constantly come against is the constructed sites developed by SEO specialists who use their skills to get a web site to the top of a search engine request where that site is not relevant to the search.

Everyone who uses the web will come across this, you type in a search term and a site that is only vaguely relevant to what you were looking for appears in the top 3 positions. This is usually because it has been optimised and then incorrectly positioned by the search engine robots.

A common way of achieving this is to use 'Black Hat' techniques. These are techniques that go against the search engine code of conduct for websites - such as continuously repeating the key words or hiding the keywords on the page so that they are visible only by search engine robots. These are techniques also known as spamming.

It is precisely the kind of activity that should be avoided at all costs especially as it will now result in the search engines penalising the site if you are discovered. How would they find you? Well Google in particular has a great incentive in that they will give your competitors a way to report your site to them and then they in turn will evaluate the site and consider the issue of penalising it. Once penalised your site will not appear under any search engine terms for a period of up to 18 months.

A very high price to pay for poor SEO.

Our means of optimisation are called 'White Hat' techniques where we look to utilise best practice with Google's help to achieve the best position under the most relevant search terms for your website.

Another trick that other less scrupulous web developers may try to employ is the Search Engine Optimised Site routine, which is where they say your site is optimised upon completion in that it can be found and referenced by the search engines. Be absolutely assured that in itself that will not be enough.

Ask your web developer to detail exactly what they will do to optimise your site.

When a Cohere Internet web site is created we carry out a basic level keyword analysis and then apply the right search engine keyword tags to your site on publication, together with search engine friendly linking, site maps and meta descriptions to start you off. If you want more marketing help then Cohere offer the full marketing service including Google Webmaster tools, referential back linking, relevancy analysis and all important content adaption.

If in doubt - contact us.

Ryan.

Quick note about site planning

Saturday, 24 April 2010 05:59

Plan your site

Before starting rough out a quick layout of your website.

The important thing about planning your site is to put yourself into the minds of those who are going to be using the site.

What are they going to want to see?
How are they going to find what they are looking for easily?
How will they communicate with you?
What will they want to know?
What will they need to know?

Above all else remember that it takes only a few seconds for someone to make up their mind and

the website should be designed to encourage them to choose what YOU want them to choose.

We know your products are best, but does your website tell people that.

Google changes regularly

E-mail

Saturday, 24 April 2010 05:33

If you have ever wondered why it is so difficult to obtain and maintain a high position on Google - consider this.

Matt Cutts a Google Associate and ex-google software engineer recently announced on one of his many SEO tours that Google were making adjustments to their search engine algorithms to give preference to faster loading sites.

In itself that is particularly unremarkable, the sign of good site is that it should be fast enough to load to maintain interest and at Cohere it has always a priority consideration. What was unusual was the resulting panic where many 'optimised' site owners then went back to their SEO marketing companies to conduct site speed reviews to ensure that their positioning was secure.

The issue is not so much that the faster the site the higher position that many had assumed would be the case, but that the slow loading sites would be marginally penalised in favour of quicker sites that were just as relevant in terms of content. The real point being that content should always be the driving force.

Google make it a point that the search engine positioning should be about the usefulness of the site in relation to the search term entered, not just about clever optimisation tricks. It is precisely for this reason that Google and the other major search engines like Bing and Yahoo constantly review their search engine positioning methods so that when you as a user type something into their search engines you are getting listed in order of relevance.

Those that search will be aware that many search engines are still some way away from getting it exactly right. With so many optimisation companies out there trying to 'beat the system' it is a constant struggle for the search engine companies to achieve their desired results.

Which leads me to the question that is most relevant to this blog - while making the above statement Matt was asked from his experience how many changes did Google make a year to its algorithms?

His answer - usually one a day, sometimes as many as 400 algorithm changes a year.

That is 400 extra ways that Google reviews your site to determine your online position relevant to your search criteria every year. It is no wonder that so many companies pay SEO professionals to stay ahead in the search engine marketing game.

From my point of view the issue is - get the site right, make it really relevant to what your customers are looking for and you can't go wrong. It is exactly this process that Google are trying to encourage and Cohere have been pursuing that philosophy since we first started working for clients on the Internet.