The originally designed website is always best, but not necessarily from an SEO perspective. After all, your web designer may design great sites that do a horrible job on site optimization.
Nevertheless, if you can build an original design, for branding purposes, that’s a big plus. But what are the issues you need to look out for from an SEO perspective? Here are six things you will want to consider:
1. Code Bloat – This can happen with an original design or template. Does your site’s design incorporate too much code? If so it could hurt your rankings. Keep your code lean and mean.
2. Permalink Structure – CMS systems like to rely on dynamic permalink structures that somehow don’t do well for SEO. If you can influence those to a more SEO-palatable structure then you’ll fare a lot better in the search engines.
3. CSS Files – Sometimes your CSS files can work against you. You could have too many or the ones you have just may not be well optimized. Keep them lean and don’t rely too much on extemporaneous code.
4. JavaScript – Cut it out. Not too much. It can’t be crawled.
5. Internal Navigation – This one gets a lot of webmasters. Make sure your internal navigation menu is crawl able and that your pages get indexed.
6. Tables – Tables have their place, but it’s an old way off doing things. Get up to date and don’t build a site with too many tables. When possible, use CSS, but keep it light.
Your web design will be judged by your human visitors, but the search engines judge it too. Make sure you keep it light and that all things work for the good of your site’s rankings.

That’s a difficult question to answer. It really depends on how consumer and brand initially meet. If they meet through friend introductions and that leads to business then it could very well be bypassing SEO. However, Facebook pages do often appear in the search engines, and quite often very high in the search engines. That means brands could be found through search despite the fact that the connection is taking place on social media sites. It is likely that a certain percentage of those connections are as a result of search queries while another percentage is due to brands and consumers connecting wholly through social media.
I think you’ll see, more and more, brands meeting up with consumers through social media sites. But I wouldn’t discard my search engine optimization strategy yet. In fact, social media and social networking should work together with your search engine optimization efforts.

Specifically, he’s compared WordPress with Typepad and some of the other popular blogging platforms available and WordPress always comes up on top. Why is that?
I think there are several reasons why WordPress does so well:
First, it has a great community of support. Being open source, there are thousands of people working to improve WordPress every day. Many of the people who are most involved in developing WordPress improvements are themselves successful Internet marketing and SEO professionals. Their work benefits themselves as well as the rest of us so it behooves them to improve WordPress’s SEO benefits whenever they can.
Another reasons WordPress is so good at optimization is because developers go through the trouble of creating plugins that are useful. These plugins and the source code of WordPress work together to build a solid platform for blogging.
Finally, WordPress has a reputation. Online, reputations matter. If you build a solid reputation for your product or service and word gets around, the search engines tend to honor that. Word of mouth reputations are important and it’s something that robots can’t measure. That means Google’s algorithms are built in part on human interactions and input, whether by design or fiat.

To get started with you WordPress blog give me a call on 07971 116823 or email campbell.murdoch@spideronline.co.uk

1) Lacking Zing
2) Spread Too Thin
3) Not Contagious
4) Poor Consistency
5) No Plan Stan

Please share with us your enperiences. Everyone who replies will be eligable to take advantage of Spiders FREE no obligation half day of online marketing consultancy. We come to you and leave you will a plan which will contain a whole range of recommendation that you can implement straight away!!

What are you waiting for?

Campbell

By: Unknown
January 10, 2002

Please design and build me a house. I am not quite sure of what I need, so you should use your discretion. My house should have somewhere between two and forty-five bedrooms. Just make sure the plans are such that the bedrooms can be easily added or deleted. When you bring the blueprints to me, I will make the final decision of what I want. Also, bring me the cost breakdown for each configuration so that I can arbitrarily pick one.

Keep in mind that the house I ultimately choose must cost less than the one I am currently living in. Make sure, however, that you correct all the deficiencies that exist in my current house (the floor of my kitchen vibrates when I walk across it, and the walls don’t have nearly enough insulation in them).

As you design, also keep in mind that I want to keep yearly maintenance costs as low as possible. This should mean the incorporation of extra-cost features like aluminum, vinyl, or composite siding. (If you choose not to specify aluminum, be prepared to explain your decision in detail.)

Please take care that modern design practices and the latest materials are used in construction of the house, as I want it to be a showplace for the most up-to-date ideas and methods. Be alerted, however, that kitchen should be designed to accommodate, among other things, my 1952 Gibson refrigerator.

To insure that you are building the correct house for our entire family, make certain that you contact each of our children, and also our in-laws. My mother-in-law will have very strong feelings about how the house should be designed, since she visits us at least once a year.

Make sure that you weigh all of these options carefully and come to the right decision. I, however, retain the right to overrule any choices that you make.

Please don’t bother me with small details right now. Your job is to develop the overall plans for the house: Get the big picture. At this time, for example, it is not appropriate to be choosing the color of the carpet. However, keep in mind that my wife likes blue.

Also, do not worry at this time about acquiring the resources to build the house itself. Your first priority is to develop detailed plans and specifications. Once I approve these plans, however, I would expect the house to be under roof within 48 hours.

While you are designing this house specifically for me, keep in mind that sooner or later I will have to sell it to someone else. It therefore should have appeal to a wide variety of potential buyers.

Please make sure before you finalize the plans that there is a consensus of the population in my area that they like the features this house has. I advise you to run up and look at my neighbor’s house that he constructed last year. We like it a great deal. It has many features that we would also like in our new home, particularly the 75-foot swimming pool. With careful engineering, I believe that you can design this into our new house without impacting the final cost.

Please prepare a complete set of blueprints. It is not necessary at this time to do the real design, since they will be used only for construction bids. Be advised, however, that you will be held accountable for any increase of construction costs as a result of later design changes.

You must be thrilled to be working on as an interesting project as this! To be able to use the latest techniques and materials and to be given such freedom in your designs is something that can’t happen very often.

Contact me as soon as possible with your complete ideas and plans.

PS: My wife has just told me that she disagrees with many of the instructions I’ve given you in this letter. As architect, it is your responsibility to resolve these differences. I have tried in the past and have been unable to accomplish this. If you can’t handle this responsibility, I will have to find another architect.

PPS: Perhaps what I need is not a house at all, but a travel trailer. Please advise me as soon as possible if this is the case.

So I am all for great content. I define great content as “original, up-to-date and relevant”. Rupert Murdoch is right to this extent, we completely under value the newsroom. A great newsroom is worth its weight in gold. In another forum, I would make the case that it is essential to the very health of our democracy. The problem online is that there are an awful lot of very poor newsrooms. If we take the quality of the content as a given, we need to get it into the hands of the people who need or are interested in the content.

Good SEO is critical in this process. SEO should not be a black art. It is traditional marketing in every sense of the word. Connecting the business with its target market – putting buyers in touch with sellers if you like. SEO is there to help you grow your business. If you don’t have a clear marketing strategy doocument for your online business, and as importantly, clear statistical analysis in place to measure the effectiveness of your campiagn, then don’t spend a penny on SEO. In additon, your SEO partner should be educating you as you work together. If you are not learning more about the techniques of online marketing and if you are not experiencing a growing level of confidence in this space then you have the wrong SEO partner. The facts tell us that the vast majority of all websites built in the UK have been coded to PREVENT search engines from seeing them! We think about look, speed, security and funtionality and code accordingly. Only when the construction is finished do we turn to marketing. We are starting with a burst ball. SEO must be the start of any web project.

SEO is like content – there is a lot of rubbish out there, but if you get the best of both worlds you have won a watch!

We are looking for an SEO Specialist is need to help us continue to grow our online audiences. We’re looking for someone with at least 2+ years proven SEO/SEM experience who can demonstrate success.

We’re looking for someone to work on either a long-term project/contract basis, or as a permanent employee. Your key responsbility will be to lead the strategic development and the implementation of our site marketing/SEO activity. So you’ll be using your brain to keep abreast of the ever changing SEO landscape and your keyboard to make it happen and optimise our network of sites.

You’ll need proven experience and demonstrable skills in:

Search Engine Optimization – SEO
Search Engine Marketing – SEM
Organic search
Social media, blogs, forums, etc.
Affiliate programs
Affiliate marketing
Web analytics
Link building
Content generation
Site audit & reporting
Major input into proposal writing and strategic ideas
High level of coding competence

You’ll be working closely with the commercial director and the technical team, and will play a key role in the ongoing development of the online strategy we offer to our clients.

To be successful, you’ll need to have:
- 2+ years of experience driving and optimizing SEO campaigns & site marketing.
- Very strong understanding of Web analytics.
- Experience with social media marketing & online PR.
- The ability to communicate your ideas to other humans.

and, prior experience in an SEO agency would be a big plus!

What’s in it for you?
- An exciting, growing and well resourced company with ambition.
- Competitive compensation & benefits with a performance incentive.
- Your opportunity to lead our strategy and make it happen.
- Support to develop yourself, your knowledge and your ideas!

If you have 2+ years experience as an SEO/SEM Specialist, can tick off the key requirements detailed above and live within commuting distance of Glasgow city centre, then apply online below and include a brief cover letter to detail why the opportunity interests you (use the feature provided).

For further information, or to arrange a meeting please email Campbell Murdoch, Commercial Director, Spider Online at campbell.murdoch@spideronline.co.uk

Targeting Innovation Ltd is delighted to announce the launch of the 2009/ 2010 Scottish Software Awards. The prestigious and unique programme will culminate in an Awards party on Friday, 27th November 2009, in Glasgow. The Awards party will bring together the industry’s most innovative companies and individuals to celebrate excellence and inventiveness in the Scottish software community.

Established in 2003, the Scottish Software Awards recognise the expertise, know-how and business acumen prevalent in Scottish software companies and the contribution they make to the industry and the Scottish economy.

The competition is open to Scottish software companies of any size and age. Please visit http://www.scottishsoftwareawards.co.uk/awards for more information on categories and how to submit an entry.

Deadline for entries is Friday, 9th October 2009. For more information and bookings please go to:

Assessing Senior Leadership, Friday 2nd October 12.30-2pm, Edinburgh:

Everyone knows leadership is fundamental to organisational performance, but how do you assess if yours is fit for purpose?

We are delighted to welcome as guest speaker John Waddell, Chief Executive of Archangel Informal Investment to discuss how he assesses leadership capability when reviewing an investment. John will present ideas relevant to all organisations on how to determine whether leaders really can deliver on business objectives.

How to manage and develop your Sales Director, Friday 27th November 12.30-2pm, Glasgow:

Sales is the lifeblood of any commercial organisation and now is the time to be taking a keen interest in improving the performance of the person who heads up your sales function.

We are delighted to welcome Campbell Murdoch as guest speaker. Campbell has extensive experience leading sales functions and mentoring and developing those that do. Campbell will discuss practical ways in which you can support your Head of Sales or Business Development to improve organisational performance.

Please see the attached invitation for further details on both events.

Places are limited – to book RSVP to chris.perkins@fairplace.com or call 0131 220 8292.

About the Scottish Talent & Leadership Forum:
A forum for senior HR professionals – we bring you leading practitioners from our client base, examples of best practice drawn from other organisations, and you can network with your peers in Scotland and across the UK. We debate and evolve winning strategies that keep your organisation ahead of the competition, ensuring you attract and retain the very best talent in the market. There is no subscription or membership fee, participation in the forum is free.

Yours sincerely,

Chris Perkins, FCIPD
Regional Director, Scotland.

P.S. If you are unable to attend but would still like your organisation to be involved, please forward this invitation to a colleague.

I’ve noticed that many search engine optimsiation blogs are starting to do a lot more of two different things:

1. Talk less about what is really valuable information related to SEO
2. Spread more inaccurate information about the nature of SEO

A good question is why? Why are search engine optimsiation experts passing off bad information to their readers? And why are readers buying it?

First, the SEO industry is very competitive. Everyone wants to rank for their keywords, but most people who own websites or are thinking of starting one don’t know about SEO. That means they’ll have to spend their time learning or pay someone to do it for them. Since blogs are marketing tools, you can’t expect an SEO who is hoping to win your business to tell you everything he knows. That would defeat the purpose. He or she is not going to give his knowledge away for free. But they have got to tell you something on his blog. So what?

The best SEOs aren’t going to tell you everything they know. They might share with you some basics, the fundamentals, which are already in the public sphere anyway. But if you want the full extent of their knowledge, you’ll have to pay for it. Professional SEOs are above the board about this. They won’t pull any punches.

But there is another type of optimsiation expert who isn’t going to be above the board. They are going to spread misinformation. The intent is to throw you off. They don’t want you competing with them. So their hope is to tell you lies and hope you believe them because they are the expert. They don’t really want to sell you services. They are protecting their turf. The bottom line, it’s all about the money honey.
Here at Search Engine Optimization Journal, I try to share our insights as openly as we can and still remain competitive. Of course, like any professional SEO, I am not going to tell you everything that I know. You’ll get enough that you can go out and try to do it yourself and if you can fill in the blanks and succeed, that’s great. We’re happy for you. But if you hit a brick wall then we hope that you’ve gained enough valuable information from our blog that you’ll remember us and come back. We’re here and willing to help. Competitive business doesn’t have to be about trying to run people out of business. It’s really about being honest about who you are and what you can do for others. At least, that’s our goal.

Thanks to Nick Stamoulis, President, Brick Marketing, Boston, USA.

End

And that is our goal at Spider Online. If we can work with you to develop your strategy and help you deliver results for your business please call us on:

+44 141 353 0574 or email campbell.murdoch@spideronline.co.uk

If you would like to post an article on this blog please send copy to:
campbell.murdoch@spideronline.co.uk