RSS the new Email?

Several stories today regarding the growth of RSS (really simple syndication). Is RSS the new email? With so much useful information out there RSS makes it easier to manage text, images, blogs, news sources, and now even podcasts. Using Google Reader (but there are probably numerous other RSS readers out there) RSS definitely helps me manage the numerous newsletters, blogs, news feeds and podcasts that I have to keep an eye on. From a business strategy point of view RSS and blogging in particular is a great way of opening up a dialogue with your customers and it can get you some great in bound links as well.

Take a look at just a selection: From RSS To My Media A Standard Symbol For RSS? Podcasts, Ricky Gervais

Food stores in Christmas online sales surge

We did almost all our Christmas shopping online this year!!! Promised delivery dates all met - no problem. The retail consultancy TNS predicts that Britons will spend £3.3bn next week - a rise of 17% from the same week in 2004. I wonder what the total figure will be for the 3 months leading up to Christmas and how this compares with 2004.

However this BBC article Food stores in online sales surge seems to suggest that supermarkets with websites are under extra pressure this year as more people try to order their festive groceries online. The report suggests that orders are being restricted because the supply chain is unable to cope with demand. This was denied by the big supermarkets.

SEO For The Big Three

SEO For The Big Three: "Ranking your website highly on one of the 'big three' search engines (Google, Yahoo or MSN) is a daunting task let alone ranking your website highly on all three."

Does Hosting Location Effect SEO

If your main audience is UK based consumers then it si preferrable to have your website hosted in the UK? However, many UK based resellers for US based hosting packages, don't even tell you that their server is US based, unless you specifically ask - so be careful. This blog from cre8asite suggests that if you want to come up for country specific searches you have to either host your site with a host based in that country or acquire a top level domain (TLD) from that country. I would suggest preferrably both. Also personally if I looking for UK specific information I feel more comfortable using the .co.uk.

Introduction to Ranking Factors

Take a look at this article from SEOMOZ .org which contains a list of the factors that can influence a web document's rank at the major search engines (Yahoo!, MSN, Google & AskJeeves) for a particular term or phrase. Although it is impossible to say for certain which of these items affects which search engine or how important the factors are individually, the authors have created an estimated ranking importance scale to give readers an indication of how important each factor is.

According to the contributors the most important factors are:

1. Title Tag
2. Anchor Text of Links
3. Keyword Use in Documents
4.Accessibility of Document
5.Links to Document from Site-Internal Pages
6. Primary Subject Matter
7. External Links to a Linking Pages (the authority of those pages that linking to the document)
8. Link Popularity
9. Global Link Popularity of Site
10. Keyword Spamming

So concentrate on the title tags, anchor text and incoming links.

Marketing Thy Blog

You know how useful bloggs can be to SMEs. Well if you decided to make the leap then take a look at this posting which gives loads of good advice on how to market your blog from making an impact, choosing a suitable URL, getting the content and voice right through to getting it out there. There loads of ideas here.

LogMeIn.com

I was looking for a product to network my computers over the internet. useful when out of the office or travelling. Craig at Urquhart Technical Systems recommended I use a solution from LogMeIN.com . I can fully control the mouse and keyboard of any remote PC from a web browser. but more importantly it enables me to securely access, transfer and backup files and folders from PCs anywhere in the world. But the real bonus was the Guest Invite functionality which allows me to do online demos with clients. I know it sounds like I own the company or something - which of course I don't, but it just is great to get your hands on something that just does what you need.

Content is King

Writing webcopy is a real skill. Producing copy that is appealing to both human and robot plus fits with your website design layout is not easy May be take a look at this book to help with all those online copy changes.

Sell Your CEO On Blogs With This Article

In a recent PR Week and Burson Marsteller survey about 59 percent of CEOs surveyed said they find Web logs, or blogs, useful for internal communications, while 47 percent see them as tools for communication with external audiences They are also an increasingly useful way of encouraging in bound links through communicatio with potential clients and staff..

SEO Makes Newsweek

Check out this article which appeared in Newsweek Search Engine Optimisation makes it to the mainstream press. Don't worry at www.ju2.com we've definitely got the white hats on!!!! Working with the search engineers is the only way to maintain search engine prominence.

Landing page Quality Now Influencing Adwords Position

According to the people at Inside Adwords From today Google started incorporating a new factor into the Quality Score- the landing page which will look at the content and layout of the pages linked from your ads. This should be good news for good PPC companies as effective ads linking to quality content will receive a boost to their adwords rankings.