What a great idea, nuff said really.
Search Marketing Services Holistic SearchArchive for January 2007
Podcasting – who has the time for the buggers?
In blogcasting, podcasting, podcasts on January 30, 2007 at 11:26 amComments
Don’t turn me off
Ever go to a webpage only to find the extension of someones ego splattered all over it by way of a ‘cheery’ little ditto or cheesy corporate adblurb? You know the type, ‘Welcome to wearefeckingreat.com the leading innovator in top notch BS’.
I guess its one of the reasons why I browse with my audio switched to off. If its 3am and my kids are asleep, I really don’t need them hearing it. Why do people do this? God knows; bad design choices I guess. Too much of an ‘Oh I love what I have so much I want to force it on every person who shows up’ syndrome going on.
IOW sound for some of us,just doesn’t cut it. We don’t want it shoved in our mushes, choice is the order of the day. Which brings me on to a particular blog fad that I’ve seen pop up here and there. Read the rest of this entry »
Knowing your MyBlogLog Visitors
In blog tools, metrics, mybloglog, stats on January 26, 2007 at 11:36 amComments
I’ve developed a little program that will give you a few extra metrics on your MyBlogLog visitors.
If you’d like to use it then just visit this url and follow the instructions.
Its pretty basic, but does offer a couple of features that MBL does not currently.Things like user pageviews, number of visits, last day visited, that kind of thing.
Its completely opt-in, you need to add some code on your webpages in order for it to work. It will only give you stats for visitors who have a mbl account and have opted for stat recording.
I’m going to add bits and pieces as times permits, eg allow non MBL users to sign up too, but in the meantime, feel free to have a look at it and use it.
If you notice any problems or experience any difficulties or would like to offer suggestions for improvement, then please feel free to share your viewpoint here.
I hope you like it and find it useful.
Update Numero 2:
If logical is equal to logical and logical is not equal to illogical then logical is not equal to illogical, else illogical is equal to true. 
Trust me, thats how it gets ya at times! Ive made a number of little tweaks that should make this whole thing perform a little more reliably. Can you believe that I was trying to stat people via a combination of IP address, useragents, MBL lookups and all that? Sheesh, not good. Ive adopted a cookie approach, which I should have done from the outset but for some reason couldn’t quite work it out and ended up going in little circuitous ever decreasing smack my head against the wall circles! Anyhow, I think I’ve cracked it now so we shall see.
If people don’t accept cookies then it won’t work, but I guess thats pretty academic cos mybloglog uses them too.
Ive got a little outstanding issue with regard to people having multiple websites in their mybloglog accounts. I have to adapt the parsing script to allow for that, and hope to do so soon.
That’ll do for now, EOB.
Will a long Blogroll flush your site down the search engine ranking toilet?
In blogging, blogrolls, google, links, search, seo, social media on January 23, 2007 at 10:35 amComments
Brad wrote an interesting piece today which got me thinking about the topic of linking out, authority scores, pagerank leakage and all those old chestnuts.
Lots of papers out there on PageRank and theories and counter theories on how linking out can effect your PR adversely/positively and all that, so I’m not going to rehash any of those arguments.
I have to confess, there was a time when I was kinda obsessed with the whole SEO PR leakage thing too, worring about ‘bleeding’ precious PR and all that jazz, however I do think the ‘game’ has moved on a little, in terms of the SE algo’s have matured to a more considered examination of what is and what is not a good or a bad page worth ranking. Why do I think this? Well just go and look at a few well ranking sites and see how they link out. One immediate one that springs to mind is Wikipedia, although their recent decision to stick a nofollow tag on their outbounds may come back and bite them ( I hope) 
.
Server Outage
In downtime on January 18, 2007 at 9:34 pmComments
The 2nd floor of IFL2 had a total loss of power this afternoon. 3 hours is like forever in this internet world of ours.
Its a pain. You have to go in to your PPC accounts and turn the buggers off, meanwhile you are stressing cos you just know your customers are going to be on the phone imminently added to which all you can tell them is its being attended too. They forget about the other 364 days of trouble freeness and just humph and grump at the massive inconvenience of it all, can’t blame them I spose, they’ve paid for a service and want it up, as do I.
Anyways, I’m glad to be back, I’ve fielded 35 where are my email questions, so am now gonna sit down and have a hot chocolate and general lookabout.
What do you do when your provider drops the ball? Do you get all stressed or do you just shrug and go for a walk?
Google Ranking – Want to perform well? Bring on the subs.
In google, marketing, ranking, subdomains, wordpress on January 17, 2007 at 3:05 pmComments
If you’ve ever launched a new website, especially since 2005, then you’ll know that it can take quite some time to be found for your target kw’s and phrases within the search engines.This is a little look at Google and how it treats new domains and how trust and authority are bestowed from parent domains to subdomains and how it can be an effective strategy in kick starting a new campaign, without excessive reliance on PPC campaigns.
I launched a new subdomain on the 1st January 2007. It fitted in with one of my new years resolutions of blog regularly.
I wrote a few posts about various odds and sods as and when they occured to me. I gave them logical titles and didn’t give too much thought to any SEO’d page content and structure strategy. It was a Wordpress subdomain in the form of robwatts.wordpress.com.
MyBlogLog – Y! Privacy and Widgetisation
In big brother, blogging, data protection, mybloglog, privacy, search, social media on January 15, 2007 at 10:05 amComments
I love the recent Y! acquisition, mybloglog. Its like a myspace with bells on. Ive encountered some really nice and interesting people too. In case you haven’t seen or used it before its a social media platform. You can join communities, add contacts, upload photos and if you install a piece of code you can get stats and display photos of visitors from their network on your site as they arrive.
On the user front I think its kinda cool. IMO I think It adds an extra dimension to ones website by way of showing an extra human dimension. You can see the latest faces of people who have visited and if you so feel inclined, go and check them out to see what they are all about; at least thats what Ive found myself doing!
Their stats page is cool too. Gives you a non fussy overview of where your readers came from, what they viewed and what they clicked. It even tells you what ads they clicked on too.
Dmoz re-opens its add url feature, maybe they should just shut it again
In directories, dmoz, rants, wikis on January 14, 2007 at 10:42 amComments
Aaron wall reports that DMoz has re-opened its add url or suggest a site feature.
So there you have it.
If you have a site and fancy hanging about chasing them up to see if your site has been accepted you know what to do. Hell, if you really want to, you can go over to their forum (assuming they re-open it) and get flamed by a bunch of arrogant rude feckers who will tell you that they are just volunteers, or tell you that DMoz doesn’t exist for the benefit of webmasters, or tell you that your site is an affiliate, or tell you that your site sucks etc etc blah blah blah.
I’m an SEO expert, no really I am, trust me, you have my word
In Pagerank, disinformation, rant, seo on January 12, 2007 at 10:47 pmComments
I’m watching Ugly Betty, but only half heartedly, just can’t get into it, so i start flicking through the wordpress tag link in the control panel of this install. I came across this site entitled “Do You Want to Double your PR for the Next Update“.
Anyhow,I almost felt moved to comment and say, well no actually mate, that’s a lot of old tosh, but upon reflection thought nah, what’s the point he’ll either get miffed at my audacious brass neck daring to question his ‘expertise’ and the like, and either delete what I say, or just try and argue black is blue.
No redirection with Wordpress
In rants, redirection, wordpress on January 12, 2007 at 11:52 amComments
I love wordpress, its a great product. I used it recently on a free subdomain of theirs and wrote a few posts. I wasn’t sure I was going to get into this blogging lark so thought it was a handy half way house. I didn’t want to go out and get a domain to put it on, upload the scripts and configure it unless I was really sure that I was going to get in to it.
10 days later I’m kinda hooked. I like spouting off and venting about stuff that pisses me off or interests me or just bemuses/amuses me.
So last night I bit the bullet. I exported all the old posts to the new WP setup here and went out and sourced the various plugins and themes I wanted to use.
SEO – Brain surgery? Perhaps not, but its not so far off!
In google, html, php, search engines, seo, sql on January 11, 2007 at 12:00 pmComments
Reading this blog here from oilman got me thinking about SEO and how people value their worth in terms of what they charge for their services and how some of what he is saying about others and their denigrating what we do can impact upon us negatively.
Putting to one side all those idiots who say they will submit your site to the search engines for a one off fee of $100 solicited by way of some awful looking spam email or adsense ad somewhere. Those tosspots really don’t help the situation as they help paint a perception that there really is nothing to what people like me do, when the obverse is so blindingly obviously true!
Watch your CMS – it could be getting you into trouble
In blogging, google, seo, spam on January 8, 2007 at 1:10 pmComments
Graywolf blogged about some Disney Blog getting de-indexed for hidden text.
Seems that some blogging platforms/cms’s have issues that could get your site removed for web spamming by inserting text that is hidden.
One commenter there had this to say:
Some freely available Wordpress templates (specifically from blogthemes.com)contain hidden links from the designer linking to certain cancer websites. I am sure most people do not see that as it is kind of sneaky.
I do wonder why they don’t just ignore such aspects for ranking purposes. If its identified as hidden algorithmically then it can be ignored as a ranking factor too…no? Or am I missing some bigger picture here.
Say no to splogging and yes to blogging
In blogging, google, seo, spam, splogging, splogs on January 8, 2007 at 10:42 amComments
Say yes to Blogging
So, Ive blogged now for a little over a week. Ok, so Ive blogged in the past on other topics, but not as consitently or comprehensively; at least in the sense of making posts longer than 20 or 30 words and posting everyday writing unique and semi compelling stuff!
Why am I so surprised that I’m actually enjoying writing about things I find interesting, amusing and entertaining? I haven’t got any huge audience or anything like that, and to be frank I’m not too bothered. I’m just enjoying the process. Its cathartic even, its good to talk.
As Ive said previously. I have blogged before. Some of the stuff I blogged on was kinda personal. I blogged about my divorce for example, it was an excellent vehicle that helped deal with a shitty time in my life. Ive blogged about my everyday life – its ups and its downs, mostly just sporadic moans and rants.
Web PRO News Videos from Search Conferences
In digg, search, seo, web marketing, wpn on January 7, 2007 at 9:00 pmComments
Web Pro News have put together some really good videos together over at their site.
This link here entitled the do’s and dont’s of Digg is a great discussion on doing well in Digg as well as things to avoid. Its also a good general discussion around social media, tips for choosing an SEO, PPC and arbitrage, the future of search, trends in the industry and a few other related topics.
If you are interested in search and blogging and site monetisation and social media and all the other stuff that makes up this thing called the internet such an interesting space to play in, then go check them out, they are definitely worth a look!
Good stuff, well done Mike,Neil and Todd . 
Warning: Make sure you have some time on your hand as I spent like um…2 hours watching all sorts of interesting stuff over there!
Pay to Blog what’s the big deal?
In adsense, advertising, blogging, marketing, payperpost, search on January 6, 2007 at 11:24 amComments
I was just over at tech crunch reading some of the broohah about some deal that fell through regarding performancing and payperpost and was kinda surpised at the level of snorting and derision being applied there. There is this guy named Ted, who like most people trying to get things off of the floor in life has managed to obtain $3 million dollars in funding for an idea, which he feels might just fly. So far he has managed to stir up a bit of controversy, with various high profile people like Matt Cutts coming out against the idea in general.
So ok, I can see why a search engine might have an issue with squillions of bloggers being paid to promote and talk about things using keyword rich anchor text to distort the search landscape but thats just tough I guess, they’ll find a way to deal with it, or mightn’t bother even, hardly the end of the world for mfa sites adsense now is it. Besides what with all this talk about mature algos and whatnot, I doubt it’ll make a huge difference anyways, a storm in a teacup even? Perhaps, or maybe some might see it as the thin end of a wedge. The lines get a little blurred when you think ahead and envisage a SERP full of results containing blogs that have been written on the basis of some monetary consideration. In those scenarios, where would the distinction between paid ads and paid ads masquerading as free serps be drawn? Should the search engine be held accountable for its editorial decisions?
How to build a database driven website part 2
In html, marketing, mysql, php, seo, webdev, websites on January 5, 2007 at 9:32 pmComments
In part 1 of how to build a database driven website we looked at creating the database and tables and looked at some simple options for inserting data. In this part we are going to look at connecting to the DB using PHP, creating a simple template as well as discussing a few site architecture issues.
In this part we are going to look at connecting to the DB using PHP, creating
a simple template as well as touching on a few site architecture issues along
the way.
We are going to use a simple PHP connection script to connect to your DB, which
will be saved in a separate file and stored outside of root.The connection script
will contain the username and password for connecting to our database.
It looks like this.
<?
@ $db = mysql_connect(“localhost”, “username”, “password”);
//this line specifies the user and password for the database we intend to access
if (!$db) //if we are unable to connect to the database we tell people {
echo “Error: Could not connect to database. Please try again later”;
}
mysql_select_db(“hotels”);
?>
We save the above code in a file and call it conn.php. We can then use a PHP
include or a require at the top of pages that access the database like so.
<?
require “../conn.php”;
$country=”England”; //set the country for the database
?>
More on connecting to the database further on, for now, lets briefly look at
a typical page and how we intend to output our content and urls.
Page structure and URL formats
Our database will be used to determine our url naming conventions. We will use
the place names and hotel names and hotel id’s to form our linking and navigational
structure.Our database contains a series of places from across a region. For
brevity sake lets assume that our site is specific to England.
England is made up of around 39 specific counties. These counties contain a
number of towns and cities. Our plan is to output hotels specific to each county
and town within.We would aim for a clean url structure so that each section
of our site has a url that is logical to the area it represents, is easy to
read and book mark.
Even though our site is dynamic, we can use a handy little feature of the apache
webserver model to change our urls from ugly difficult to read concepts like.
/filename.php?county=hertfordshire&town=hitchin
By using something called an .htaccess file we can rewrite urls so that the
above can be made to look like this
/hertfordshire-hotels-hitchin.html
The .htaccess entry that enables this might look something like this.
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule (.*)-hotels-(.*)\.html$ /filename.php?county=$1&town=$2 [L]
It uses an apache module called mod_rewrite.
This is very handy indeedy as it allows us to have the clean uniform url file
structure we are seeking to use, enabling naming structures throughout thus.
$county-hotels-$town.html becomes hertfordshire-hotels-hitchin.html
* We can add additional lines for additional pages and files specific to whatwe want to achieve. A link to al the site files will be supplied at the end of the series.
A database query for say, hotels in hertfordshire would then use the $county
variable (referenced as $1 in the .htaccess file above), and return a list of
towns or hotels for that particular area.
Page Template and contents
Our sample page is going to be very simple. It consists of a logo at the top,
with a main body content area.
*Ive omitted <head> content for now. The information that follows concentrates on the content that will appear between the <body></body> tags. Full html code will be supplied at the end of the series.
Header Logo
Our header ‘logo’ is a styled header or Hn tag which uses a background image to sit
behind the text and gives it the appearance of being an image..
The <style> is contained in the <head> of the document and looks
like this.
<style>
H1 { font-size: 12pt; height: 24px; width: 100%; letter-spacing:
4px; vertical-align: bottom; color: #000066; font-weight: 35; background:0 url(/header.jpg)
no-repeat; float: left}
</style>
<h1>Hotels and Accommodation in <?=ucfirst($town);?></h1>
Area related images
The images are sourced via a flickr plug in using the tag aspect of the flickr
url to order area specific images.
<script type=”text/javascript” xsrc=”fullflickurl&tag=<?=$town;?>” mce_src=”fullflickurl&tag=<?=$town;?>” ></script>
Contextual adverts
We may as well accrue some residual income. Not everyone will like the hotels
outputted, so if they click on our ads and find what they want its all good,
we win, they win.
<h2><?=$town;?> Travel Ads </h2>
<script type=”text/javascript” >Contextual
ad code </script>
Outputted Hotel
We are outputting our hotel to give a brief outline of its key points . We will
include high level information such as name, price, star ratings, booking url,
full detail url as well as a teaser of its full description.
We achieve this using the following code.
First our query
<?
$query = “select * from hotelcontent1, hotelcontent2
where hotelcontent1.custid = hotelcontent2.custid and town
= ‘$town’ and county =’$county’ and country = ‘$country’ order by custid limit 0, 1 ” ;
$result = mysql_query($query);
?>
Then we want to do some manipulation on the description element of the returned content.
<?
$row=mysql_fetch_array($result);
$desc = stripslashes($row['description']);
$content = $desc;
$text_length =300;
$add=strlen($row[town]);
$text_length=($text_length + $add);
$stricon=($content);
$all_content=strlen(“$stricon”);
$standard_content=substr($stricon ,$text_length);
$compare=stristr($standard_content ,” “);
$minus_content=strlen(“$compare”);
$result_content=$all_content-$minus_content;
$display_content=substr($stricon ,0, $result_content);
$stripped_content=stripslashes($display_content);
$stripped_content=nl2br($stripped_content);
$description=$stripped_content;
?>
Before finally putting it all together and outputting our hotel.
<h2><?=ucfirst($town);?> Hotel of the Month </h2>
<?
echo”<div class=message><h2>$row[ename]</h2><i class=p2>
$row[country] > $row[region] > $row[county]> $row[town] </i><br><table
width=\”95%\” CLASS=\”hoteltables\”><thead> <tr><td
bgcolor=\”#999999\”> <b><font color=\”#FFFF33\”>Hotel
in $row[PostalTown] </font></b></td> </tr></thead>
<tr><td> <p class=p2><img xsrc=\” /$row[photourl]\”
height=\”68\” width=\”90\” alt=\”$county hotels:$row[ename]\”
align=left id=thephoto> <strong> $row[ename] </strong> – $description
…<br> <a xhref=\”/book.php?id=$row[hotelid]\”>Book</a>
<a xhref=\” /more.php?id=$row[hotelid]\”>More</a>
</font></p></td></tr></table> <br></div>”;
?>
Navigational links
Links are an important aspect of the sites architecture they are used by humans
and bots to give anchored clues to the content of their target pages. Search
engine bots use these anchors or its better known phrase of anchor text to help
weight documents in their search engine databases.
To output our links we used the following sql.
<?
$query = “select Distinct county from hotelcontent2 where country = ‘$country’ ORDER BY county” ;
$result = mysql_query($query);
?>
The query here is very simple, it says give me a set of distinct counties from
the database table named hotelcontent1 where the counties returned are a subset of England. These are then outputted via a loop producing a series of links for our navigation footer.
The for loop for which makes this possible, might look a little like this.
<h3>Regions of <?=$country;?></h3>
<p>
<?
$num_results=mysql_num_rows($result); //number of rows
for ($i=0; $i <$num_results; $i++) {
$row = mysql_fetch_array($result);
$countyname=strtolower($row[county]); //ensure the county name is lower case
echo “<a xhref=\”/$countyname-hotels.html\”>$row[county]
hotels </a> “;
}
?>
</p>
The above loop outputs something like this in our footer
We could also produce other links relative to the county we are in. We are in a page that is a subset of Hertfordshire (Hitchin) . Contextually, it makes sense for our users to see what other towns are in Hertfordshire. It also helps our other pages to get indexed by search engines and has the added bonus of making our pages that little bit different for others within in our site.
Lets output the towns relative to our $county and $town variables referenced from the url for our page about Hitchin hotels in Hertfordshire.
<?
$query = “select Distinct town from hotelcontent2 where county = ‘$county’ and country =’$country’ AND town != ‘NULL’ ORDER BY town Limit 0, 20? ;
$result = mysql_query($query);
?>
The query here is very simple, it says give me a set of distinct towns from
the database table named hotelcontent1 where the town is a subset of a variable
named $county (hertfordshire in this instance) .Which when looped and
outputted produces a maximum of 20 urls, or links for our nav footer.
The for loop for which makes this possible, as in the one outlined aboved might look a little like this.
<h4>Towns within <?=ucfirst($county);?></h4>
<p>
<?
$num_results=mysql_num_rows($result); //number of rows
for ($i=0; $i <$num_results; $i++) {
$row = mysql_fetch_array($result);
$townname=strtolower($row[town]); //ensure the town name is lower case
echo “<a xhref=\”/$county-hotels-$townname.html\”>$row[town]
hotels </a> “;
}
?>
</p>
In the next part we will look at building an individual hotel detail page and look at some of the structural elements that will, given a multitude of other factors, help our pages perform relatively well for our target keywords within the search engines.
How to build a data driven website part 1
In html, marketing, mysql, php, search, seo, webdev, websites on January 5, 2007 at 2:40 pmComments
Celebrity Big Brother 2007
In big brother, c4, celebrity, tv on January 4, 2007 at 9:42 pmComments
Celebrity Big Bro 2007
I missed the live version of c4’s celebrity (note the small c) big brother last night so have plotted my bottom on a big squishy cushion and have decided to watch it. I am finding it all mildy amusing. There is this Donny Tourettes chap swearing and sounding off like a big plum, swearing for England sounding like a 1st class prick (with ears ) I think he’s a little bit lashed too, no doubt got sloshed up before he entered the house. I’m loving some of the incredulous looks these people are giving him though – too funny, Jermaine Jackson just looked at him utterly bemused as he said “Hows ya fuckin Bruvva..” or words to that effect…anyhow enuff of him, he’s giving the swearers amongst us a bad name!
What’s really interesting, strictly from a people watcher perspective is how a group of strangers, z list celebs or not, kind of smile and form alliances and groupings at such an early stage. You can see them all sussing each other out deciding whether to buy or reject the new people in their lives. Cleo Rocos ( a girl who was famous for her knockers) has taken a shine to our sweary upstart…and ooh, look who just walked in, its Face from the A Team (Dirk Benedict) carrying his token big fuck off cigar. He was in Battlestar Galactica too and ha! Mr Tourettes has just been rude to Dirk Benedict he referred to him as Dirk ‘Fuckin’ Benedict.
Ha, this show is funny – Its a giggle to watch people trying to impress each other; funnier still to see people embarrass themselves too!
Ken Russell (film director) is a character, big fat old boy, lively as anything, 80 odd years old, eccentric as hell, pink shirt ,purples trousers, green embroided waistcoat.
There’s a Bollywood star too. Shilpa Shetty good looking woman (funny name) ; but I wouldn’t have known she was famous.
There’s also Jo O’Meara (S Club 7), Ian ‘H’ (Steps) Danielle Llyod Lloyd (Model not very well known at all) Carole Malone (Carole who??) . Last but not least there’s Leo Sayer (“you make feel like dancing” - ”when I need love”) 70’s singer, curly whirly hair.
I think I could get lost in a nightly hour or so of this stuff for the next couple of weeks. Yeah, I know, just a bunch of show offs all trying to raise their profiles to relaunch their flagging careers and what not, but sometimes that’s when people can be at their bests; when they are hungry with a point to prove.
What does any of this have to do with search and technology? Um..its on the telly and err, just go and do a few googles for Celebrity Big brother and play spot the affiliate marketer site
Google is Beta-Testing Keyword-based Ad Filtering
In adsense, contextual advertising, google on January 3, 2007 at 7:29 pmComments
This could be kinda cool for publishers. Caydel reports that Google is beta testing keyword based ad filtering. Publishers will be able to input negative keywords so that low priced cpm or cpc ads won’t show…
Hmmn, interesting eh? How many times have you seen ads that made you think what’s all that about then, a 0.07 cent ad how cool, not!
I’m hardly a PPC or adsense expert but Ive played with both so can see a few advantages and disadvantages here.
For advertisers, dependant upon take up and use, couldn’t this well push up costs? As publishers exclude low cost kw’s from appearing, then there would as a consequence be less playgrounds to play in. Less exposure = less clicks = less revenue/higher cost conversions overall…no? It would also have an impact on the adwords/adsense arbitragers out there too. It’ll sure squeeze their capacity to get that ultra low cost traffic.
As far as publishers go, would it be all good? Or could they overstep the mark and exclude too many kw’s, just to be left with PSA’s or alt url ad outputs.
Will be an interesting one to watch!
I am the Green Lantern
In fun, marvel, quizzes, superheroes on January 3, 2007 at 1:33 pmComments
Whilst reading about search patents and stuff like that over at Spideyman’s I decided what the heck, and took this little quiz…
You are Green Lantern
|
Hot-headed. You have strong will power and a good imagination.  |
Apparently Green Lanterns all have power rings, this definitely makes sense, especially when viewed from a nice curry and few pints of Stella Artois perspective.
Colour Psychology – Blue sky, green fields, white serenity
In design, psychology on January 3, 2007 at 9:16 amComments
The psychology of colour
It occured to me that some of the websites I like to read or visit, and some Ive just stumbled upon or viewed out of curiosity have that nice blue, green and white mix going on. I’m turned off by dark stuff, I don’t want to read white text on black, its just not my thing. So why is this? Why do I find one set of colours appealing, yet another so off putting. The web is about information right? I go to pages to learn stuff and connect with ideas and improve my understandings, interact and have a little play. At least thats what I like to think from a logical perspective. Can you believe that in all the years Ive knocked up websites of various types and themes and different business models and purpose, that I never once considered the emotional impact of the colours I used! Not once! I usually sat there and ummed and ah’ed or looked at an existing brochure and just went with a range of options that popped into my head, or varied a theme I’d seen elsewhere and liked.
I guess that’s why Ive always called myself a web developer rather than a designer, I’m more interested in the codey techy widgety bits than any overall appeal to the heart – wow, what a huge ommision. But hey, so what, no big deal, like I said, I’m not a designer – never have been, that just happened to be a label slapped upon me by friends and stuff, my falut of course “What do you Rob?” “Um..I make web pages” ergo Rob, becomes a web designer.
Anyways – that little confession aside, its interesting to read about colours and what they say and how they can influence our readership and message, check out a few of the links, it’ll make for some interesting thoughts and observation.
Here’s what the guys over at infoplease have to say
Blue - The color of the sky and the ocean, blue is one of the most popular colors. It causes the opposite reaction as red. Peaceful, tranquil blue causes the body to produce calming chemicals, so it is often used in bedrooms. Blue can also be cold and depressing. Fashion consultants recommend wearing blue to job interviews because it symbolizes loyalty. People are more productive in blue rooms. Studies show weightlifters are able to handle heavier weights in blue gyms.
Green - Currently the most popular decorating color, green symbolizes nature. It is the easiest color on the eye and can improve vision. It is a calming, refreshing color. People waiting to appear on TV sit in “green rooms” to relax. Hospitals often use green because it relaxes patients. Brides in the Middle Ages wore green to symbolize fertility. Dark green is masculine, conservative, and implies wealth. However, seamstresses often refuse to use green thread on the eve of a fashion show for fear it will bring bad luck.
The people over at Little Monkey Murals expression a similar variation on this theme
Green - Is the colour of harmony and balance. It is good for tired nerves and it helps with the heart area. It will balance the emotions and bring about a feeling of calmness. Green is a good general healing colour. Green is a restful colour so will aid sleep, it also represents nature, and therefore promotes balance, harmony, peace, hope and stability
Blue – Is the colour of truth, serenity and harmony, by helping to soothe the mind. Blue is good for cooling, calming, reconstructing and protecting. Blue will help feverish conditions, it will help stop bleeding and it will help with nervous irritations. Researchers found that children tested higher on IQ tests in rooms with blue ceilings Blue, if diluted to a lighter hue, can reduce stress and relieve tension. Is a colour of peace, tranquility and wisdom and can generate a sense of well-being. Blue gives the impression of space and coolness and represents serenity and loyalty.
Then there is white of course colour wheel pro has this to say
White is associated with light, goodness, innocence, purity, and virginity. It is considered to be the color of perfection.
White means safety, purity, and cleanliness. As opposed to black, white usually has a positive connotation. White can represent a successful beginning. In heraldry, white depicts faith and purity.
In advertising, white is associated with coolness and cleanliness because it’s the color of snow. You can use white to suggest simplicity in high-tech products. White is an appropriate color for charitable organizations; angels are usually imagined wearing white clothes. White is associated with hospitals, doctors, and sterility, so you can use white to suggest safety when promoting medical products. White is often associated with low weight, low-fat food, and dairy products.
I’m definitely gonna think a little more about this in any future projects, thats for sure.
Affiliate thoughts for 2007 – keeping ahead of the chop
In Aff Marketing, google, search, seo on January 1, 2007 at 7:24 pmComments
Easy come easy go…
It’s no news to say that the days of easy rankings with easy commissions are long gone. With some search engines, it just no longer works. Anyone, and lots are, can whack up a DB or add a feed from some central source. It’s child play, and from a search engine viewpoint its just not welcome. They’d be happy to kick yo ass as soon as look at ya, and who could reasonably blame them? You can have the most well linked, beautifully constructed site in the world full of some mythical kw density perfection, css’ed to the nth with elements positioned to the max, but if you aren’t saying anything new, then the chances are that things could get pretty serious pretty quickly. Search engine death could well become you. Sure, you’ll get spidered, but expect to go supplemental pretty quickly, and if that don’t happen then you might get extra lucky and get lumbered with a nice fat -31 ranking penalty.
Fat or thin?
Over the years, there’s been quite a bit of discussion on what constitutes a thin or a fat affiliate. Lets look at travel. Fat boys like tripadvisor for example, are flying with lots of top spots on a range of travel related kw’s whereas others are floundering.
I recall a time when for like, 4 or 5 years a particular little travel network absolutely kicked arse on all of the big 3, Google, Msn and Yahoo. Be it ‘hotel in town‘ or ’town hotels’ these guys had top spots usually in the top 5 positions. They were nothing other than a well constructed, well linked network of affiliate feeds that did little other than pump out content that their suppliers provided. It really was an education to look at what these people had done. Their strategy was for the time, basically fab. They hosted a variety of big sites across a variety of IP’s. They mixed pages up with a mishmash of approaches doing things like varying page element factors, curtailing product description content, differing kw and kp densities, different navigational placement, text types, god you name it they’d factored it in one way or another, and it paid them big dividends. I guess really it was a day when it was all about getting as many pages into the search engine db’s as you possibly could. Their duplicate content filters were so underdeveloped that provided you did enough variation in the places that mattered, ie page naming, title tags, H tags general kw peppering here and there in your content spread etc, then you’d be pretty ok. In fact you got massively rewarded and could do some great stuff with inward link creation too. You didn’t have to worry about going out and sourcing zillions of links from here there and everywhere, you’d just create your own and ensure that they were appropriately placed and hidden across a network of unidentifiables, albeit in the sense of what the spider saw and registered at least!
A different breed of engine
Today of course, these guys are nowhere to be seen, at least not in any recognisable guise. Their network was nuked and they don’t rank for jack no more. Things like the Google eval team have given people using that particular strategy a short sharp shock.
New generation networks, if they hope to have sustainable long term SERP viability have to be a whole lot smarter in 007. Content feeds and databases, particularly with regard to outputting their contents within a site needs special attention – noindex tags, robot exclusion protocols really are serious considerations, to not do so could really be a huge folly. Drastic?,Perhaps so, but what with duplication filters and all, the question is one of almost can you afford not to?
Sure, there will always be those who look to employ methods for circumvention, all that lovely content is just too good to pass up on after all, right? Not sure about you, but I’ve seen all manner of interesting adaptations; things like replacing keywords and phrases programmatically so that an aspect of a phrase like um…this hotel is decorated to a fine standard is changed to read… this fine placename hotel is adorned to a splendid configuration instead, or variations upon that theme. I’ve seen sites that rank well by using contractions of product descriptions, eg chopping the first 40 characters from the phrase and outputting the remainding 180 chars. Ive seen others that just hide them all together, via a document.write or iframe method. Some go as far as employing people to write phantom reviews, and some even write programs that write reviews on the fly! It really is incredible to see the ingenuity and nous that people have with this stuff, it really is the most elegant of elegant of spamination. I think its fair to say that people do this because they realise that things may well be tenuous, they know that unless you are whitelisted then you need to tread very carefully as your income stream is very precarious.
As simple as adding value then…
Perhaps its simple though, isn’t it all about thinking in terms of adding value, going above and beyond what your competitors are doing, seriously asking yourself will you be able to pass some random manual inspection, which lets face it, if you are ranking in a competitive earning space, you are likely to receive sooner or later. You’d be an idiot for thinking that just because you managed to outwit the bot via some clever use of string functions, or tag placement or link generation that a human wouldn’t pick up and notice something amiss.It isn’t unreasonable to assume they’d ask whether your site handles all the look up processes - Does it check for availability – Are the payments handled insite, or do they go off elsewhere?- They’d see through a hidden frame or include or some obfuscated url redirect, you just will not be able to get away with what you once did, and if you think you will then, i wish i could share your complacency, as any serious examination of what you do would look at exactly some of these things.
On the positive, some of the better providers and networks do offer more advanced solutions of course, this helps insulate both them and their partners and is basic good business sense, but lots don’t too and for those who are getting hit via various penalties resulting, its a bit of a shame at best and a damn tragic waste at worst.
Should these guys be helping their income generators in this way?
If you are a search rep then you’d prolly say no, it sucks and doesn’t help in the goal of delivering varied unique content, but OTOH why would any big supplier expose themselves to the vagueries of singular url streams of income that could be cut off at the whim of a policy shift. I know what I’d say of course, I go with the majority scatter and seed approach. Watch the darwinian process evolve and reward my best performers. I’d also help nurture and protect newcomers too, my future top performers. Give them tools to get their users interacting, enable the creation of communities, feedback tools, make it all that little bit different, employ advisors to help steer and encourage and generally add value all round, but I guess i’m me, and not some multi layered corp that moves real slow.
I’ve used travel as its any easy example to flesh out and one that I’m at least familiar with. I do wonder whether other sectors face similar challenges; I expect they do no doubt to both lesser and greater extents, especially in some of the mass product markets. It would be great to read some inputs, feel free to call me out!
Google and People and 007
In google, search on January 1, 2007 at 10:57 amComments
I was just over at Matt Cutts’s blog reading his thoughts on some of the challenges that he sees Google generally facing through 007. He talked about Googlers in general almost suggesting that they were of the same pod, well not directly perhaps, but it was a thought that occured to me; and kinda got me thinking on this whole corp structure and ethos thing. Why do some organisations flourish whilst others flounder? Great management really does matter, not just of business and ideas, but people too.
Its interesting how people who work for a large organisation can often split or diversify into different mindsets. A company that treats its workforce well, as in gives good reward, recognition and purpose can do exceptionally well and take on all comers. It really is possible to get groups of people all singing and dancing from the same collective hymn sheet. Iv’e never worked at Google, to my knowledge ive not even physically met a Google employee, but I have watched a bod or 2 over the years, Matt Cutts to be specific. Matt’s online persona is pretty cool. He enages and crosses swords with all sections of the web community and seems to have a knack for staying balanced and true to his core message. You’ll never read Matt slating anybody in a rude or disrespectful way; hell, even when he gets mad at people he manages to inject a little dryness and humour, just go look at his blog and see if you can pick out the odd ass or two! Ok, so im in danger of sounding like I’m a paid up memeber of the MC fan club , I’m not, there’s quite a bit I could say that would give a different opinion, but thats for another day of course and is more Google policy than direct Matt related. No, the point Im getting to is that corporations, organisations, teams, are lead from the front. People stand to gain a great deal of benefit from those who have purpose and vision. Shared purpose and values are a formidable force in any sphere of life and can be the making or breaking of an organisation.
A few years back I worked for a company; this company was locked in battle, split right down the middle. Workforce vs management. There existed 2 separate collective identities. Management were commited to winning. Great you’d say, ah but no, let me tell you. It was not so great at all.Management were commited all right, but for the wrong reasons. They were commited to trying to break the organisation of the workforce rather than growing any shared objective of the business and its values. They took great pains publically to paint a face of concilliation and shared objectives, yet their actions suggested that their motives were all together different.
The workforce representatives were just as bad. Most were locked into ideas of the past, ideas that had an inherent mistrust for the motives and pressures of business resisting change at every opportunity, lobbying intensley to ensure that public ownership was maintained and sustained. There was a complete lack of trust towards any idea that through shared objectives, shared vision, shared rewards the organisation could grow and prosper and move forward united, competing on the stage that rightly or wrongly is global capitalism.
God, when I think back to where it stood in say 1996 it really did have some massive opportunities to grab this whole internet thing by the balls. It had some 5000 outlets the length and breadth of the country, a fantastic distribution system that accessed the rail, road and air networks. Some 200, 000 mouthpieces to help grow and spread the word of new products and initiatives. It could have diversified to become a world leader, an Amazon, an Ebay, anything it wanted to really, but was shackled, shackled by inertia and closed mindsets unwilling to either trust or dare to look beyond some point of conflict or dogma. it sat idley by relying on the patronage of governmental control and finance and years upon years of irrelevant industrial collective bargaining agreements.
Why was this? Well Im not going to go into too much detail about who did where and what and why, as a lotof it is just supposition and more opinion based thn anything else. I did know a fair few of the key movers and shakers and was involved in a lengthy dispute/resolution process or two, so lets just say that I came to recognise some of the almost impossible internal presures and hurdles they seemed to be faced with, on both sides of the divide, not to even touch on any idea of individual complacency!
So, what am I getting at? I guess Im saying that as organisations grow and get wealthier and are subject to new challenges and pressures then it can be pretty easy to lose track of where one is going. Reading what Matt wrote kinda made me think in terms of, well quite clearly matt is one of those people who knows how to push and prod and get things done within his sphere of influence. I think he may have been responsible for the appointment of Adam Lasnik. If you read Adam’s posts at the google blog or webmasterworld.com you’ll see that he seems to share some of the characterisitics that Matt tends to push out. Even keeled, considerate, user focused , as responsive as he feels he can be. Another firm hand on the tiller that is the tricky path of webmaster public relations. How many Adam’s or Matt’s or Eric’s or Larry’s are there at Google? Probably an army of them. It sure seems to be an organisation that is pretty sorted, and with people like Matt Cutts questioning and responding to criticism of google, even disagreeing with things that he feels are either just wrong or removed from what he sees as the general shared purpose of making the best search engine they can for its users, then its pretty safe to say that for the foreseeable future Google from a web search perspective, will continue to be ok. OTOH of course, should the hawks be able to grab a hold though and the push for profit is put before the push for users, then it could well be a different story. Altavista should be a word that haunts many a Google stock holder. If I ran Google, I’d stick up altavista is dead posters everywhere, just to act as a salutary reminder.
Happy new year, hope its a good one for you all. Im off to burn a few more calories on this cold English morning, thank god for bicycles