Online PR UK & Expert SEO

if you’re a hard ass, rocky running up those steps, then this  is probably not the one for you,

but if youre like me… then this is internet bliss, Its a 3 minute video showing the evolution of the internet.

YouTube Link

Hi, this is geek shout out to anyone having problems doing a flat html copy of your dynamic site form your localhost i.e your desktop PC

here is what I have done:

1. set up xaamp on my local machine (i do this usually becaseu it speeds up site theme building)
2. build the CMS, whatever flavour for the purposes of this blog post
3. download and install winhttrack
4. copy the local site onto a server where there is no ability to have a dynamic site… but where you like most of the dynamic stuff i..e navigation and so on

I’m doing all of the above on a client site.
Now here is the trick with winhttrack…

- you need to use your machines IP address as the source http:// location and make sure you do the same in your cms, so instead of the site being located in http://whatever it will be he IP address you have got from doing a check on your machine.

- make sure under the> set options > spider > 2nd drop down box > set the rule to no robots.txt (xaamp prevents the winhttrack from fully spidering the site)
IP lookup for pc’s : see here

winhttrack : see here

xaampp : see here
cms’s to try and download : opensourcecms.com

I was asked by someone how to get their web site up the rankings…..common question by the way

So in order to avoid the usual; tag this , keyword that link this and link that , I went to a far more base level…

the enlightened of you will have heard of www.cluetrain.com (markets are conversations) and taking my que from that, I explained by my learned friend that he had to get into a conversation with the right people in the internet.

Conversations and seo !?!

If we assume search engines want to leverage humans as a quality control tool for filtering links and information, then places like wikipedia, DMOZ ….and blogs, make complete sense.

Aside: this explains why a few years back, google ranked those niche directories.

Blogs follow a set format, they have humans filtering stuff and importantly their prominence mirrors off line social interaction. i.e. the more opinionated, knowledgeable and entertaining the writer, the more likely the person will rise to prominence within their sphere of other influencers. Prominence in this case is links and commentary in from the right sites.

So back to my friend
My advice was:
- spend on pay per post/reviewme
- really bend overbackwards to help the paid for bloggers write good stuff
- pick you keywords carefully, going for words which are’nt too competitive early on and build from that
- use this opportunity to build some goodwill from the bloggers
- if you do it right and really enter into the spirit of the cconversation you will get a buzz going
- that buzz means more writeups and more links (unpaid for)

and then you should get on to the google SERPS for some meaningful keyphrases.

The other point about paid for blogging is that its dips under the search engines radar for ’spammy’ paid for links, unlike the template text links of old.

and since there is a self adjusting ‘human filter’ involved i.e. write crap, and your fans abandon you, it seems like a relatively sustainable model.

Finally. If I were paid for this, how do you think a search engine would know!

If you are in the business of getting links placed and you want to do a fast ‘take’ on a website to see if

a. the links are clean:
You roll your mouse pointer over the links in question and see of the link address is the same as the advertised destination. (If you look at the bottom left corner of firefox, you will see the link address) If its not, then its not a ‘clean’ link.

b. they have ‘nofollow’
This is a tag which means ’search engines don’t go here’ - the problem is that on default firefox, unless you do ‘view source’ and trawl through the code, you won’t see the offending tag…bummer

Aside: I’m a big firefox fan, in fact most of the power user community seem to rave about it and for good reason!
Why? because you can do neat tricks like this….
Spot that nofollow tag fast !

(for XP users with firefox 2.0)
go here: C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\res\html.css ( or where you have put your firefox install)

and open it with whatever editor you uee (wordpad does nicely)

and add this at the bottom of the page

a[rel=”nofollow”]
{
background-color: red !important;
color: white !important;
text-decoration: none !important;
}

Save and restart firefox and youre done !

Thanks to http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2005-01-19-n34.html for the css and the basic inspiration on this.

The old ways are NIGH!!!

I’ve begun to use google mobile since I have a new orange SPV M3100 with wireless. it means I can read my rss feeds and do a bit of light web surfing at the most random of times.

Anyhow - I wanted to do a keyword lookup and so I typed in overture uk keyword tool’ and up came my site (SEPguy) as top result. Amazed, I did a ranking search on googlerankings.com and it turns out that I’m really ranked 298th on Uk search.

And , yes the result worked, since I have a link to overture keywords search on my site. Cool! So it rocks.

On a professional level, I’m a bit nervous.

I reassure myself by the core idea: good SEO is good SEO and all personal search is doing is helping clear the clutter for users.

I suppose the final outcome is that sites will get less of a spread of irrelevant traffic. Conversion rates should rise since youre getting the right traffic and there will still be massive competition for top spot for your ‘type’ of user.

But how do you get to the top of the rankings?

If its based on personal user patterns, then is it google giving ou sites associated with the sites you have already checked out? If so, maybe if youre not visible now in the emergence of personal search, then you will be buried later on. becaseu if they never see you, how can you be associated with a given search.

I guesss the net outcome is less shifting in popularity of encumbant sites and possibly more reliance on ‘viral’ spread of informaiton on new sites through the blogosphere and the like.

Interesting future we have!

I was asked by a friend who has a 10k unique users a day site about advertising and here is my reply:

Background: hes re organising his site and working out how to monetise it properly, so he asked about meta tags and keyword ideas.

“the meta tagging stuff is dependent on your keyword strategy i.e. what is a broad target i.e. celebrity gossip and so on.

I think the game is more traffic, to then get advertisers on board. advertisers are often unable to really analyse the traffic, until they have advertised. So bigger numbers are better on the whole for hooking them initially

Usually there is a ‘try it and see’ process with advertisiers, where you will have a musical chairs effect for a while (whilst they are paying for the pleasure) and then it settles down on a per advertiser basis.

So like I say, more traffic and make it look like converting traffic to a big spread of potential advertisers - they will judge the advertising potential by the tone of the content, not by the keywords your site is ranked for.

Keywords & subsequent referrals from the seach engines are a strong filter for the type of user you will get…and can’t really  analyse at this depth initially.
And once you get a good stable of advertisers, make sure you do our best to find a balance between making the ads useful and keeping your traffic.

Its all smoke and mirrors and a bit of tight rope walking!”