You may be aware that one of the many foundation, best-practise points recommended by search engine optimisation experts is to have your own customised error page. An error page is the page of content presented, when an error has occurred in trying to access or locate content on your website. In this case we are talking about when content does not exist or cannot be found, but has been requested and ‘heard’ by the server. Search engine professionals and web agencies may often refer to this as a ‘404′. (404 being one of the Http codes for errors of this nature, though there are others.)
Turn an Error into an Opportunity (Commercial ‘404′)
Posted in Blog, Business, SEO, Websites by Nichola: 17th Nov 2009, 12:057
Google – Well we can’t all be perfect!
Posted in Blog, SEO, Search by Nichola: 16th Oct 2009, 15:32SEO is in some ways a science and at the same time a craft. Given that the search engine algorithms are kept possibly more secret than ‘The Colonels Secret Recipe’, none of us know for certain the definite answer to any SEO question. Our theories of what works and what does not work, must be informed by experimenation; however working with multiple variables in an uncontrolled environment means that we can never be 100% sure that our action is the sole driver of the reaction.
Top 5 SEO Ranking Factors Explained
Posted in Blog, SEO, Search by Nichola: 30th Sep 2009, 13:13SEO can be a confusing discipline for many, including those within the online industry. A lot of conflicting advice, secrecy, misdirection and outdated practise still exist. A good way to get a feel for how to cut the bullshit, (if you’re a small business or brand owner, seeking to hire an SEO) is to refer to expert blogs and independent research. A blog search engine such as Technorati can help you refine blogs by subject matter and will also rank blogs by authority. Additionally the consultancy SEOmoz publishes an extensive report every two years Search Engine Ranking Factors, which uses a polling methodology which survey top SEO professionals by invitation only. Such methodology is useful as this means you get the aggregate opinion of a large number of industry leading professionals (72 respondents in 2009 edition.)
How and Why to Own Google Page 1 for Your Brand
Posted in Blog, SEO, Social Media by Nichola: 25th Sep 2009, 14:57For any business, your brand is one of the most important things about you. It’s your intellectual property, your social currency, your reputation and what makes you distinct from any other organisation. It is arguably easier now than it ever has been to reinforce and promote your brand, due to media and technologies that allow for non-specialist participation that reaches a mass audience.I’m of course talking about search and the interweb, (mainly Google).
Why Metadata Matters
Posted in Blog, SEO, Search, Websites by theMediaFlow: 25th Aug 2009, 17:47We’re often asked by our clients ‘What is metadata?’ and ‘Why is metadata important?’ Metadata quite literally means ‘data about data’. In terms of web pages, metadata allows you to describe your website, mostly for the sake of search engines but it can also benefit your users too.
The HTML format allows for the inclusion of a variety of types of metadata, most commonly keywords and description however it can be expanded to highly-granular information such as the Dublin Core and e-GMS standards.
