Engage Web July 2008 - Engage Web

Beware – even the greatest of reputations are way behind

Posted on July 31, 2008

I spoke recently with a potential client for our industry news content products.

I was surprised to see that their suppliers were still working with platforms and solutions that are so yesterday. Don’t get me wrong, they are bread and butter solutions – they are needed – but in no way should they be the main focus.

One particular focus was on article production for sites such as articlecity.com. Yes, its a good way to get content out there with some links, but its nowhere near as important as it used to be. articlecity.com and sites like it do not carry the clout that they once did. (more…)

Posted by Matt Jones

Wasted Content

Posted on July 29, 2008

One of the biggest mistakes (in my opinion) online is the hiding of content. This can be done in several different ways.

For example – email newsletters that aren’t also available on the website. Why expend all the energy of creating newsletters for only a certain number of people to view the newsletter. It would make a lot more sense to also add them to your website when you send them out. Extra pages of unique content for no extra effort. Brilliant!

Or try this – people who hide content behind a form. Search engines have difficulty finding pages that are only viewable by using a form to find them. Google can partially browse forms, but it is rather erratic and can misunderstand the forms. It is far better to provide an alternative method to find the content, either by using an HTML menu, or an XML or HTML sitemap.

These are just two of the more common ways in which content is lost to search engines due to bad decisions. While these issues are all easily fixable, it is important to recognise when you are wasting content, either by not putting it online, or by making it hard for search engines to index.

Posted by Carl Hopkinson

Is Google moving away from link strength?

Posted on July 28, 2008

A few SEOs around and about the internet have been suggesting that Google has made an algo-change that lessens the importance of linking.

We have seen a few signs of this, which has seen some older, content-rich sites jumping in the rankings – which is nice.

In our opinion, this would be a good thing for the web. The sites with the best content repository and the best release of new, fresh, relevant content should ideally be at the very top of search engines, not sites that have paid for links from various sites from semi-themed partners. (more…)

Posted by Matt Jones

Clever content from PPC campaigns

Posted on July 27, 2008

If you come from an SEO background like we do at Stuck On, you will undoubtably have seen some awful pay per click (ppc) campaigns as part (or the whole of a company’s) web strategy.

One thing that we learned early on about PPC was the fact that it came down to two main words – ‘care’ and ‘attention’.

I have seen campaigns worked on by the largest SEO companies in the UK that just toddled along not really doing much for the client, but helped the bank balance of the company running the campaign. In fact, I have seen it so many times and often find it embarassing to explain to the people that I am meeting with that they are currently wasting an awful lot of money. (more…)

Posted by Matt Jones

Making content for mobile devices

Posted on July 26, 2008

As the use of mobiles increases and the whole “the web’s going mobile” hype actually happens 7 years later, should you be providing mobile content on your site?

If you are writing regular interesting content and ensuring that the design of your site meets W3C standards then you are 90% there.

As devices such as the iPhone have come and improved the market with excellent web browsers, the need to create separate mobile versions of a site has decreased. (more…)

Posted by Carl Hopkinson

5 tips for better content

Posted on July 24, 2008

OK, we have all seen those ’10 ways to make your life better’ and so on, so here is something that I have made, literally in the past 5 minutes, so expect it rough around the edges.

Write about your industry – awards, latest news etc. Your content will naturally contain ontological keywords that Google will enjoy reading, helping you to better positions in its rankings.
Write stuff that happens in your office. It wont help your rankings, but it will make the site more interesting. One my own favourite blogs contains a 50/50 split between industry news and watercooler talk in the office. (more…)

Posted by Matt Jones

What are your favourite type of web tools?

Posted on July 23, 2008

I was thinking of designing a tool for a client yesterday. Whilst I was doing this, I asked myself the question – What are my favourite web tools that I have come across whilst browsing?

Some came to mind:

eBay
web colour picker
Google keyword tool
salary checker tool

I was then trying to piece together what made them ‘good’ for me. eBay is a huge tool of course, but the others are simple in essence, although there is plenty of data behind the Google keyword tool. (more…)

Posted by Matt Jones

Content ideas – where do they come from?

Posted on July 21, 2008

OK, so you are suffering from writer’s block. You need to get some new content on your site today because thats what Stuck On says – and you know that they will get mad if you dont do it – what do you do?

You can do a number of things (these aren’t the normal things you usually get in blog posts):

Go to the shops and buy a magazine loosely related to your topic
Read a few blogs around your industry
Ask your friends what do they think about your industry from what you have told them
Search for forum posts about your industry
Go and have a sandwich and think how tough it was to learn about your industry when you started
Read the business section of your local paper to see what companies are around

Doing these kind of ‘off the wall’ type things help to loosen the brain when you are trying to write new stuff. Getting out of your daily routine will help you to have a few different thoughts and should fill you with creative juices.

Posted by Matt Jones

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