Engage Web August 2009 - Engage Web

Lego says no to Spinal Tap YouTube video

Posted on August 31, 2009

Toymaker Lego has poured cold water on the flames of Spinal Tap, the mock rock band from the film Spinal Tap, who wanted to use a YouTube video featuring Lego versions of them playing their hit ‘Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight’.

The video was created by a 14 year old in 2007, Coleman Hickey. It was uploaded to YouTube and has become a viral success. The video also caught the attention of the band Spinal Tap, who used the video in their recent tour ‘Unwigged and Unplugged’.

The mock band are made up of Harry Shearer, Christopher Guest and Michael McKean. Harry Shearer is probably best known for his work on the Simpsons, where he voices many different characters, including barkeeper Mo.

Now the band want to release a DVD of their tour, but permission to use the Lego video footage has been refused by Lego. The Danish company stated:

We love that our fans are so passionate and so creative with our products.

But it had some inappropriate language and the tone wasn’t appropriate for our target audience of (more…)

Posted by Carl Hopkinson

Schwarzenegger crashes in on Twitter

Posted on August 30, 2009

Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Governator, dropped in on Twitter this last week to meet the founders, see their offices and take part in some Q&A tweets live on the website. Governor Schwarzenegger said that he regularly uses Twitter to keep in touch with the electorate as it’s a great way of knowing what the voters think very quickly.

While he was at Twitter’s office he met the founders, Evan Williams and Biz Stone and took part in the live chat via Twitter. The Governor of California was asked questions about the economy in the US and about his days as Mr Universe.

Arnie commented about Twitter:

Social networking, I think, is something you have brought to the ultimate level. It is brilliant what you came up with, staggering.

Schwarzenegger on Wednesday, leaving Twitter's office

The star of the Terminator movies then added (more…)

Posted by Matt Jones

Increasing your traffic levels with Google News

Posted on August 29, 2009

We’ve written a few times about how Google News can increase your traffic levels and allow your website to rank for search phrases that you would otherwise find impossible to rank for organically, and here is another example of how it can help your traffic levels.

We recently wrote about the former Vogue model Liskula Cohen, and she took Google to court in order to get the identity of a blogger who wrote offensive material about on a blogspot blog. Liskula Cohen won her case, forcing Google to reveal the identity of the blogger as fashion student Rosemary Port. Rosemary Port then stated she was suing Google for failing to defend her right to privacy.

It all got very legal very quickly, but naturally became a top story. Consequently, anyone looking for information on (more…)

Posted by Cheryl Mathews

Comments are good for SEO

Posted on August 28, 2009

Comments left on your blog posts, articles, news and other parts of your website are worth their weight in gold (if they had weight). The comments are free content left by other people, yet add great value to your website and your online marketing efforts.

Why are comments so great for SEO?

They keep the website updated, which encourages Google to index more frequently
They can be found in the SERPs, so every comment contains text that bring you traffic
They encourage more people to comment, which means people are interacting with your website and are coming back regularly to respond to further comments

Despite their obvious value, some website owners don’t allow comments to be posted on their website as they don’t want the hassle of having to moderate them, or they don’t want other people writing on their websites at all.

Refusing to allow the posting of comments hinders the content on your website and restricts the effect of your SEO campaign. You only need to spend a few minutes a week approving or deleting comments, and they don’t have to go live without being moderated first, so inappropriate content never goes live on your website.

Posted by Cheryl Mathews

Microsoft swaps black man for white man

Posted on August 28, 2009

There are certain mistakes that you can get away with and brush under the carpet, and then there are those that will haunt you for the rest of your life thanks to the way news spreads virally on the Internet and particularly on Twitter. Microsoft has just made one of the latter mistakes.

In a faux pas of epic proportions, Microsoft has Photoshopped an image from its website to remove the face of a black man, replacing him with the face of a white man.

It seems Microsoft removed a black face and replaced it with a white face. The reason? The image is for their Polish website and Poland has an almost entirely white population.

It sounds like a reasonable explanation, however would it not have just been easier to use a different image? This is assuming of course that Microsoft could have found any images in their extensive collection that weren’t perfectly divided up to suit their idea of representing ethnic minorities. All of Microsoft’s photography seems to include (more…)

Posted by Carl Hopkinson

Google goes in search of Loch Ness Monster

Posted on August 27, 2009

Do you believe in aliens, the supernatural and the Loch Ness Monster? Whether you do or not, you’ll be interested to learn that Google is on the case, of the Loch Ness Monster at least.

A strange shape was spotted on Google Earth in Loch Ness, which looks suspiciously like old Nessie. The image was recorded by Google’s satellite photography, and can still be seen on Google Earth with the coordinates 57°12’52.13″N Latitude and 4°34’14.16″W Longitude. It was noticed by Jason Cooke, who immediately reported it to (more…)

Posted by Cheryl Mathews

Topical news is better for your traffic and rankings

Posted on August 26, 2009

When writing content for your website, the more topical you make the articles that you write, the more traffic you’ll receive and thus the more links you’ll attract, which will help your rankings.

For example, if a celebrity dies, gets married or does something newsworthy they’ll receive a lot of online coverage on various websites. They’ll be talked about on Twitter, blogs and social networking websites and people will be searching for them in Google and other sites. Therefore, if you write about them you’ll receive traffic for those searches.

Now, this doesn’t mean you have to write irrelevant content about celebrities just to gain traffic for searches based on their name. You can always work the relevance into your article with some clever writing.

Say for example you wanted to write about Britney Spears, but didn’t want to simply write an irrelevant article about her as it wouldn’t fit your website about car bulbs. You could write the Britney Spears guide to changing car bulbs, in a funny tone and made simple so that even Britney herself could understand it. This way you’re writing something relevant, yet topical.

Posted by Matt Jones

Yahoo people search will be better than Google, claims Yahoo

Posted on August 26, 2009

There’s a reason more people use Google than Yahoo and Bing put together, then doubled a few times, and that’s because it works. Google gives you the results you want for a search without filling its SERPs with spam, junk, paid listings are irrelevant results.

However, Yahoo (fresh from selling their soul to Satan) claim that their new search product (which hasn’t launched yet, so we can’t test its level of failure) will result in better searches for people than those found in Google.

Yahoo claims that when you’re looking for someone of note, presumably Katie Price or Britney Spears, you’ll be presented with such gems as their social networking pages on Twitter and Facebook, official sites, YouTube videos and (more…)

Posted by Matt Jones

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