Conference Calls for Small Businesses
I realised that for ages I haven’t posted and TBH if I start writing a post about links for SEO I’ll never stop do instead I thought, after listening to Radio 5 yesterday interviewing folks from Saracens about how they’re going to cope with a staff member in South Africa I thought I’d give you some ideas on software etc I use for conference calls and webinars.
I love this. Use it all the time for calls with people abroad. It is dependant upon the quality of your internet connection. I recently used this as my sole means of communication with the SEO Office in Edinburgh recently whilst as PubCon in Vegas. The IM is like all other instant messaging platforms but the ability to call phone numbers and other computers makes it really useful. The iPhone App is really good too. But remember to turn it off when you dont want to be contacted – I got Skyped in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 the other day not realising I hadn’t actually turned it off.
It’s not always viable to utilise an online service and the best place I’ve found for conference calls that I want to have with multiple participants is PowWowNow. Dead easy, simple – dial in and away you go. No fuss. No charges – just goes onto the phone bill.
I also use the normal places like WebEx for web conferences where I need to show presentations etc to clients when not in their offices – Skype does have this facility but TBH its pretty weak and I’ve never managed to get the resolutions to match up.
Thats all for now. If you have any alternative services for conference calls and/or web meetings let me know so I can check them out, having said that based upon this review of the Orient Express if they had Wifi I’d rather do that than be making calls all day long.
Google Losing Pages and Losing my respect
If it weren’t for the fact that everyone used Google I’d be in a position not to care about it. But unfortunately I’m not in that position and currently I’m getting fed up with it.
- Google Losing Pages – in the last couple of weeks I’ve seen more and more pages being ‘lost’ by Google. I had a section of one clients site dissapear (it came back) but all the same it vanished. Oh and currently my blog homepage (http://www.mercurythread.co.uk/blog/) vanished. Google just keeps losing things which is most annoying. Read More »
Banner ad style links are all the rage – and enraging
Link building makes me smile. It’s an art as well as a science and I’m always being nosey about what people are doing where and the ways in which so many people obfuscate links to users show them to search engines. Increasingly what I;ve been seeing that a banner style ad is becoming the rage.
One of those I’ve seen getting used more and more is to put a set of links in a div attach a JavaScript link onto the whole div so that if the user clicks you get taken to page a. Under this you place a set of links – all to the same domain with some nice anchor texts and link these back to the specific pages – so that the search engine can read and index all of the links.
UX is completely different from what SX (I just made that up but by SX I mean Search eXperience I was going to use the acronym for Search Engine eXperience but I didn’t fancy getting adult filtered). there is no way that a user can click the link – unless they have JavaScript turned off of course.
What was more kinda surprising that I’ve came across a big brand doing this – not a small company. I guess they know if Google catch ‘em nothing will happen. Too big to be banned I guess.
<div>
<ul>
<li><a href=”http://www.domain.com/keyword-rich-url-1.html”>Keyword Set 1</a></li>
<li><a href=”http://www.domain.com/keyword-rich-url-2.html”>Keyword Set 2</a></li>
<li><a href=”http://www.domain.com/keyword-rich-url-3.html”>Keyword Set 3</a></li>
<li><a href=”http://www.domain.com/keyword-rich-url-4.html”>Keyword Set 4</a></li>
<li><a href=”http://www.domain.com/keyword-rich-url-5.html”>Keyword Set5</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
TBH I’m kinda impressed at this but also dissapointed if the search engines can’t algorithmically see it. Oh well. Let me know if you find any pages hosting this kinda stuff. Interested to see how widespread it is.
Sweet, another SEO in Falkirk
Quick post – been busy in my new job (more of that next week). Anyway over here there is a wee fell by the name of Scott McLay (I stuck the facebook link in as it made me laugh when I saw the picture – looks like he should be wearing a spock costume from the recent Star Trek Movie) who is an SEO in Falkirk (ok he’s in a village right next to Falkirk but he’s got an FK postcode so I’ll call him an optimiser in Falkirk). Anyway he’s on the journey from Link Monkey to Link Developer to SEO => I’d say he’s more in the latter part of this search engine optimisation career progression judging by some of the cool ways in which I’ve seen him to be link building.
Anyway he’s battering up a new website all about internet marketing/SEO/links etc over at his new SEO Blog (check him out).
Google homepage background image – Bing style #fail
So the Google homepage was lauded because it was hugley usable. Removed all superfluous nonsense to allow users to complete what they wanted to do at Google which was search. The white background made Google simple to understand. So I read on Twitter about some horrendous image thing kicking in over at Google; “Google’s turned into Bing” was the first exultation I was greeted with when I entered the office.
I hate it. It’s a serious #fail – it’s not as bad as the whole debacle between Google and China (I just linked to the Wikipedia I feel defiled but I’m in a hurry here) but it’s annoyed me.
bingoogle - Google Background Image
Huge arrows on PPC sitelinks in Google
I’m really starting to hate the PPC testing at Google – they call it usability improvements. There again I can’t blame ‘em for trying to improve the profitability of their products. Today I was searching for a few brands to see about getting some new life insurance. And I see the following when I search google.co.uk for “Sun Life Direct”:
Sun Life Direct PPC ad with arrows on the sitelinks
Huge blue arrows next to the site links – all that is missing is a couple of large neon signs which say “CLICK HERE” in blinking text to attract even more attention. Yesterday the background colour of the top PPC ads (yellow above) had changed to pink on my machine and green on another computer! I thought I was going colour blind -apparently not.
OK back to follow CTR improvements on PPC sitelinks for a while and determine if this increases the value of these for clients.
Explicit Web Podcast
Ok. I love podcasts. I can listen in my bed, on a train or in my car using my itrip and get some views from people who generally I trust but also other stuff. During my recent ramblings into HTML5 and some research I looked on itunes for some pieces to listen to. The coolest little podcast I found on HTML5 is the Explicit Web Podcast (and no it’s not got videos of girls in next to nothing).
Three folks, ten mins each to talk about a segment of a topic. Simple. Fixed length podcast (which is always good) from knowledgable folks. Anyway you can check them out over @ http://explicitweb.co.uk/.
Right back to work I toddle.
The dangers of ReTweeting (it can make you feel like a wazzock)
Sometimes I sit and read stuff on Twitter and just hit the retweet button without thinking about it much(assuming the idiocy of the post or something else would come through) and some times the daftness is mine.
Today I did just such a thing and within minutes I get DM’d asking what I was doing mentioning such a story. TBH I can’t remember RT it but ignorance is no excuse!
I get sent a link to an article on the SEOConsultants.com website – a website which has more stuff on it that I can keep up with TBH and the the value of their RSS comes into it’s own – and the horror hits home. I’ve just in some way endorsed the sort of b*****ds I continually rail against.
Cheers to PageOneResults for making me feel like a complete wazzock on a Sunday morning and teaching me a useful lesson – I must think before I RT! And TBH more than that. Hitting RT does not always assure that everyone knows why you’re RT’ing, and remember kids check out those you’re mentioning as the web’s a dangerous place, full of dangerous companies, doing nasty things and in the same way you wouldn’t link to a toxic domain containing crap hitting RT provides a social link to equally toxic stuff (it’s your rep on the line not just a domain).
Self flagellation over for today…. I hope. Off to do 100 hand written lines of “I must not hit RT without thinking”, “I must not hit RT without thinking”,”I must not hit RT without thinking”…
Daily Record website makes amends
Sometimes it’s good to take all the glory and today I shall 
whether it is warranted or not.
Whilst wandering through my Twitter a/c for the day – having read about Google doing credit card comparison and Google staff being sentenced for taking off a video of some kid beating up an autistic kid (way to go the Italian court system) I saw Dr Aleks Krotoski mentioning that she had been labelled a he over at the Daily Record.
Did a quick search for the journalists name over in google with email, got an email address, sent email and quarter of an hour later it was changed
So duly I’m claiming all credit for them fixing it to a more correct sexual descriptor – using she!
Daily Record call the cute Dr Aleks a he 
I changed the Internet for the better – I believe – now back to some black belt ninja SEO (ok sumo SEO may be more appropriate but I’m sure I’ll start the diet soon).
World of Sofas, Falkirk… continued
In my previous rant about World of Sofas I was ready to lose it completely. I’ve given it some time and now I find it’s going to be April before the living room furniture is going to arrive! Just to recap I ordered at the start of October 2009 and my couch will be here in April 2010.
They have offered to give me my deposit back – and the manager at World of Sofas was apologetic but it still doesn’t help me as a customer. He also acknowledged that their customer service had been woeful by them not giving me the correct information at any time – they found out before Xmas that it wasn’t going to be here but maintained it would be up to Xmas-eve for example.
Either I go and order a new suite (god knows how long thats going to take to turn up) or sit and accept that its all gone seriously wrong. And TBH I’m so angry at the whole thing I can’t face starting the debacle all over again.
- There has been no written communication from the company on any of this. To me using the telephone is a way to back track every time. If nothing physically exists how can you prove it happened. I could go as far as recording our conversations but nmo doubt I’d get sued for not having played them a pre-recorded message before hand.
- There has been no goodwill gesture from World of Sofas. I’m not looking for one but to not offer a single thing seems to place their business before consumers.
- I have to phone them. At no point have they phoned when they promised to. Anyone would think World of Sofas were trying to get away from me.
Oh and did I mention their websites awful at finding anything. But I’m off topic. Am planning a party during April to celebrate my furniture being delivered. But I did that at Xmas as I wanted furniture for Xmas. And don’t get me started on the decorating that is planned for after the stuff is delivered from World of Sofas.
