Thomas Cole SEO & Web Development Blog - What's going on...

Broadband Speeds Higher, But A Digital Britain Is Still A Dream

2012-02-02T10:00:00.003Z

Ofcom has recently revealed in new research that the UK average broadband speed has jumped 22% in a year!

When said like that the news is good, however the research also shows that the average UK connection is still just a measly 7.2Mbit/s, it is faster that the 6.2Mbit/s in November 2010.

Akamai compare the different connection speeds in the world on a quarterly basis and their report is constantly ranking the UK's speed lower than Ofcoms speed ratings, Akamai's research shows that 7.6Mbit/s still places the UK below Latvia and the Netherlands, not even close to Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea.

Ofcom has itself noted that this improved average is still a large way below the advertised speeds that customers are paying the big communications companies for each month, the closer you get into rural areas and the situations are even worse.

Ernest Doku, of a major UK service comparison site, has said that “the reality is that many parts of Britain, and especially rural areas, are still operating in the broadband dark ages and are digitally isolated due to sluggish speeds and patchy coverage”. He claims that his figures show a quarter of home broadband users are still having to make do with broadband connection speeds of less than 2Mbit/s.

The UK Government, is continuing to put significant public funds into extending the broadband network. European money is being used, too, although sources say Whitehall is taking such a cautious fund release approach that some of the communication projects and systems could be jeopardised due to finance delays.

A total investment of £630million is aiming to give Britain the best broadband network in Europe by 2015 – but the aim is not simply to let more people log on to the BBC iPlayer; The ambition is much more about delivering more services from the Government digitally.

That’s why, on Tuesday (31/01/12), the latest phase of the new gov.uk website was unveiled. Although it’s still a test version, covered in caveats, the new site is the first glimpse of how new services will look.

Google Updates Its Webmaster Tools

2012-01-30T09:28:00.001Z

Google has announced over the weekend that it is upgrading its Webmaster Tools sitemaps feature. The updated sitemaps will feature details explaining the content type including stats from Web, Videos, Images and News featured more prominently.

"This lets you see how many items of each type were submitted (if any), and for some content types, we also show you how many items have been indexed" explained Google Webmaster Tool's Engineer Kamila Primke. "With these enhancements, the new Sitemaps page replaces the Video Sitemaps feature, which will be retired".

Within the refined and renovated Webmaster Tools there is also now the ability to test a sitemap. "Unlike an actual submission, testing does not submit your sitemap to Google as it only checks it for errors" Primke went on to say, "Testing requires a live fetch by Googlebot and usually takes a few seconds to complete. Note that inital testing is not exhaustive and may not detect all issues; for example errors that can only be identified once the URL's are downloaded may not be caught by the test".

Google is also displaying the errors in a new method, rather than listing each instance of an error and repeating it, errors are now grouped so that they can be address on an error type basis rather than individual errors.

Also as a finishing topic, be careful with the Delete button in Webmaster Tools as Google has changed its functionality - deleting a sitemap will remove it from Your Webmaster Tools Account aswell as any other site owner accounts.

Google+ Changes Direction - Nicknames Allowed!

2012-01-25T09:36:00.000Z

Google is to now allow users to sign up to its growing social network (Google+) using just a nickname or pseudonym.

Just a few short months ago the company was under fire from the media and potential members for deleting accounts of users who had joined the site using 'fake' names.

Many of the people that had accounts deleting and normal members alike cried out to make clear that for many of them their online names (or handles/tags) were what made them known on the internet and many of their followers, fan bases and target audiences only knew them by their online names.

The same people also made it clear that for many users of internet services in certain cases identities need to be concealed - for example the case of last years Arab Spring Revolutions accross the middle east.

Google+ currently receives around 625,000 member signups a day and based off current predictions its set for over 400million users by the end of 2012.

Buddies on Facebook? Don't depend on them in a crisis...

2012-01-24T08:52:00.002Z

The average young adult has around 237 Facebook Friends, but out of that figure only two percent are likely to ever help and support you in a real world crisis.

The survey, which was out of 1,000 people aged between 18 and 35 and conducted by Macmillan Cancer Support found that two thirds of respondents said they felt they had two or fewer really close friends.

Macmillan went on to discover that one in eight respondants admitted they did not had a single person that they considered a good enough, or close enough friend to rely on, if things got hard.

The survey also revealed that 16% of men, were more likely than the 12% of women to have no one to turn to.

"It is surprising and concerning that people confide in such a small number of friends and family - and more so that others may not confide in anyone" - Jeannie Wilkinson, a relate counsellor funded by the cancer charity.

"It is important that, when going through something tough, like a cancer diagnosis and treatment, you can speak openly about what you're going through to ensure you get the right support you need."

"We meet a lot of patients and people caring for someone with cancer who feel like they need to be 'strong' and bottle up their emotions. This causes great strain on relationships,"

The RichardBranson.xxx Dispute

2012-01-18T09:28:00.005Z

Multi-millionaire Richard Branson is currently using his company Virgin to attempt to gain control of the domain richardbranson.xxx.

The company has to the action after an individual that is unconnected with the company registered the domain name through a US domain registrar.

A Virgin spokesperson went on to say:
"We have a complaint against the owner of richardbranson.xxx"

"We spend alot of time protecting the Virgin brand and the Richard Branson Name and increasingly this takes us online."

"We do see this as a growing problem with changes to top-level domains and we are not alone".

The .xxx top level domain (TLD) launched last year (December 6th) after a heated debate between many parties. The ICM Registry that manages the .xxx domains has offered all companys the chance to pre-register their domains by the way of a one off fee to protect your companys brand prior to the general sale (Pre Dec 6th). ICANN is also currently planning to expand the current TLD's by a extension of the net naming system.

In order to take control of the domain in question Virgin has to file an application with the National Arbitration Forum, a body which handles domain name disputes. This dispute will take into account the legitmate interests of the new owner using the name and if the registration has been in good faith.

Wikipedia 24hr Shutdown - SOPA Protest

2012-01-17T09:30:00.005Z

Wikipedia is voluntarily shutting down its server farm for 24 hours this week in a protest against internet piracy laws in the United States (SOPA ~ Stop The Online Piracy Act)

The UK version of the site is expected to be offline from 5AM GMT on Wed 18th Jan till 5AM GMT on Thurs 19th Jan.

A major target of the protest, SOPA has already been halted by their opposition at the White House, but Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia, said the blackout will go ahead as planned. During the blackout users will not be seeing the usual database of more than 3.8million articles but a holding page urging them to contact congress.

'@jimmy_wales'-

"This is going to be wow. I hope Wikipedia will melt phone systems in Washington on Wednesday. Tell everyone you know!"

He went on to argue that SOPA's companion legislation, PIPA (the Protect Intellectual Property Act), under consideration by the Senate, also posed a threat to websites.

“PIPA is still extremely dangerous,” Mr Wales wrote.

He is expecting that around 100 million English-speaking Wikipedia users will be affected by the blackout and then urged students to “do your homework early”.

Wikipedia is the 6th most visited website in the world, according to Alexa. The protest is to be matched on other major websites throughout the world.

Tech Tip:
Its great to see someone standing up for our right but if you need to see the content you can Google the query adding the term wikipedia and then view the cached copy (click the arrow next to the result to expand the menu) - just incase anyone needs to do their homework last minute!

New Year.... New SEO Tip

2012-01-12T09:48:00.000Z

How to change your web site’s hosting whist minimising damage to your site’s ranking.

Find a hosting company that matches your needs.

Ensure that the new host has all the necessary features that are required to display your website properly (operating system, bandwidth, limitations etc)

Select the location of the server carefully

The physical location of the server is used as a GEO location signal by most search engines. As a result if the server of the new hosting company is located on a different country than the one of the old host, this might affect your rankings. Usually the best choice is to host your website to a server that is located on the same country as the one of your target audience.
Upload the web site onto the new hosting and test it thoroughly – Make sure that the site behaves normally before continuing and setup all the email accounts, ftp accounts and configure it to work properly before you go live.
Update the TTL of your DNS records

A good way to speed up the DNS update process is to change the value of the TTL from 24 hours (86400 seconds) to 5 minutes (300 seconds). If you do this 1 day before you actually transfer your site, you will ensure that once you update the DNS records, your visitors are going to access directly the site which is located on the new server
Change your DNS Records

Update the DNS records and point them to the new site. Depending on how your new web hosting works you might need to update the Name Server records or the A Records. Moreover don’t forget to change back the TTL time from 5 minutes to 24 hours.
Keep both servers live for a couple of days then remove your old one.

Fraud is Up, Mobile Fraud is Down

2011-12-16T17:09:00.003Z

After two of the internets most busiest shopping days have grown to a close and its getting hectic ready for forgotten Christmas present orders we have some news... On holiday shopping & fraud rates!

After analysing the data and double checking for errors, and then once more for good luck we can report back that:

400% increase in the rate of fraudulent transactions (from 1% to 4%) on Black Friday

25% increase in the rate of fraudulent transactions (from 3% to 4%) on Cyber Monday

15% greater transaction volume on Cyber Monday compared to Black Friday

4% mobile fraud rate on both Black Friday and Cyber Monday

This is great news for anyone that has an e-commerce website that is properly secured down, the market is doing nothing but growing!

Mobile Apps to make you healthier?

2011-12-07T11:31:00.000Z

A small trial has been conducted, with 30 patients that have type 2 diabetes. The patients spent 12 months using a iPhone app that provided real time feedback on their blood sugar levels and prompted them when to eat or take prescribed medication. While doing this it also sent the digital log books to their GP and/or specialist doctors to allow the medical staff to track their progress and management of the illness.

The result that suprised the participants was the 58% drop in A&E/ER Room visits over the year of the study compared to the previous year.

Now not only does it mean that the participants has less medical equipment to carry in their day to day life but it also was a step towards reducing the ongoing treatment and care expenses of the estimated $218 billion a year expenditure required to support and care for diabetes patients.

10 billion downloads on the Android Market!

2011-11-30T11:00:00.000Z

When people think of mobile phones nowadays they generally either think of a Android, iOS or RIM powered smartphone.

With these handsets catering to one of the fastest growing markets - Mobile Application Development, they are all competing for the best app store and the apps to go on them.

Based on the latest figures from the Android Market Google do not need any help in gaining more customers and apps as the android market reached 10 billion downloads with a staggering growth rate of one billion app downloads a month!

To put it into perspective the Market hit 6 billion downloads in July 2011, 1 billion downloads in July 2010 pretty impresive considering its launch in 2008.

One of course should now compare it to Apple's App Store that reached 10 billion downloads as of January 2011 after it too launched in 2008.

To celebrate Google has announced it will be making select premium (paid) apps available for 10 cents an app and a new set of apps will be available each day for the next 10 days.

For more information on Mobile Applications click here.

The Broadband Slowdown,

2011-11-22T12:27:00.006Z

Daily between 7pm and 9pm, on your ISP.

UK Broadband Speeds are falling at peak times based on a new report with the largest drops in the 7-9pm timeframe.

The report has been published by uSwitch and is claiming it has performed over 2million speed tests across the UK and found that the national average of 9.6Mbps can only be reached when using the internet at 3am.

During its tests it found that Weson-Super-Mare in Somerset had speeds that dropped by two-thirds at peak times, from 9.5Mbps to 3.4Mbps. Wadebridge in Cornwall was another place in the UK to suffer bandwidth drops with an average of 4.1Mbps off peak to 2.1Mbps in the evening.

BT is expected to make a response but in the past has criticised uSwitch for its research.

All is not bad for broadband customers as fibre is being pushed harder than ever with Virgin Media rolling out 100Mbps fibre lines with BT claiming it can match and beat Virgins speeds by adding a higher data send rate. BT also claims its upload speed is up to 50% faster at 15Mbps compared to Virgins 10Mbps.

To run a speedtest yourself you can use SpeedTest.net's speedtest here or uSwitch's speedtest here. Both of them have a result list that you can compare your connection to.

Google+ Open for Business

2011-11-21T16:50:00.002Z

Google+ has opened its doors to offical business pages on its new social networking site, you can now create a profile to advertise you company, brand, products or services!

If you have a Google Business Page then you will likely have already had an e-mail inviting you to Google+ and briefly explaining a little of what it is about.

If you have a Google +1 button on your website currently you should also check to see if the +1 button is liking your actual business profile on Google or if it is liking your web address.

If you would like more information on Google+ or how it can help your business just give us a ring on 08000 85 25 84.

UN pushes for more broadband in developing countries

2011-10-26T09:28:00.001+01:00

The United Nations wants to provide more people across the world with Internet access. The U.N.’s Commission for Digital Development Aims that by 2015, to have broadband available to half of the world’s developing countries. In that same time frame, it wants the Web to be accessible to 40% of households in these regions. It has a slightly higher goal for the developed world, where the commission wants 60% of people to be connected by 2015.

It issued a document called “The Broadband Challenge,” which details the plan. “It is vital that no one be excluded from the new global knowledge societies we are building,” it reads. “We believe that communication is not just a human need—it is a right.”

Part of the Challenge includes making Internet access affordable - The UN hopes it will cost less than 5 percent of average monthly incomes even in the poorest of places, and it is calling on governments and private firms to help make this possible.

An Old School Attempt At Combating Piracy..... With Rap!!

2011-10-20T12:22:00.000+01:00

SEO tip of the month: Don't leave it to the IT team

2011-10-18T10:21:00.004+01:00

Search Engine Optimisation is an IT thing right? Wrong. Unfortunately, your in-house IT guy (or IT team) may think that Search Engine Optimisation belongs to the IT department since it involves a variety of algorithms, coding and maths.

While an effective SEO project will require someone with a certain degree of Web programming skills, to carry it out effectively it should be undertaken by a “Search Team” consisting of Web developers & Internet Marketers – Otherwise your site will end up in a well constructed but poorly optimised mess.

Image from SEO.com

Underscores Vs Dashes

2011-10-15T10:15:00.000+01:00

Google's finally come down on one side of the fence

Do Multiple Links From One Page Count Towards SEO....

2011-10-12T10:00:00.000+01:00

Google recently announced the new series of Google Webmaster Help Videos and requested from SEOs and Webmasters to post their questions. One of the questions posted was the following:

“If we add more than one links from page A to page B, do we pass more PageRank juice and additional anchor text info? Also can you tell us if links from A to A count?”

Here is Matt Cutts' Reply

Google Page Rank Changes!

2011-10-03T09:55:00.000+01:00

Google's recently applied some changes to the PageRank Toolbar values for the forth time this year!

The previous 2 updates took place on 19th of July and on 27th of June. It is not clear yet how many websites have been affected by the update, but it seems that this time the changes are much less aggressive than the previous ones.

To find out how your site was affected by the new Google PageRank Toolbar update, use the PageRank Check tool.

Was your website affected by the PageRank Update? Leave your thoughts below.

Happy Birthday Google!

2011-09-27T09:38:00.000+01:00

Google is currently celebrating its 13th Birthday!

Over the years Google has developed quite a portfolio of different software and services that are useful to web browsers and developers all over the world.

In the thirteen years it has been in business it has created over 50 services ranging from Search engines to E-mail interfaces, Mobile phone software to E-commerce shopping software.

All of us at Thomas Cole look forward to seeing what they bring to the table next!

Mozilla Firefox 7.0 Released

2011-09-27T09:20:00.000+01:00

Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser managed by the Mozilla Corporation.

Firefox currently is used by approximately 30% of web users in the world with the highest usage coming from the German (55%) and Polish (47%) web users.

Firefox recently announced it would be updating the browser on a faster release cycle to ensure that users of the software get the latest updates as soon as possible.

The latest version of Firefox Beta has the following changes:

Drastically improved memory usage,
Added a new rendering backend to speed up Canvas operations on Windows systems,
Bookmark and password changes now sync almost instantly when using Firefox Sync,
Added support for text-overflow: ellipsis,
Added support for the Web Timing specification,
Added an opt-in system for users to send performance data back to Mozilla to improve future versions of Firefox. This can be enabled by installing an add-on,
Stability Issue Fixes.

Download Mozilla Firefox Here

Google+ Open To The Public!

2011-09-21T09:01:00.005+01:00

Google Inc. has opened its social network up to the public, previously Google+ (Google-Plus) was available via invite only or to developers and bug testers.

On release Google added a few last minute features to Google+, the ability to search for information on various topics, the hangout video chat with upto 10 people.

Google has started to allow app development for Google+ and has several partners already such as Zynga.

Google+ is currently receiving around 25 million unique visits a month but it has not yet marketed it on its search engine or to many of its other service users.

Open a Google+ Account Here

Some Fascinating Facts About The Internet.....

2011-07-26T12:36:00.000+01:00

Tonys BIG charity swim

2011-07-21T12:06:00.005+01:00

Our very own Tony Dickinson has decided to do his Big Charity Swim again, this time for the MS Support Centre. For those of you who don’t remember the last time he wore his Speedos and leaped in the pool, basically his plan is to swim 22 miles in 12 weeks (4th July-25th September).

He needs all the sponsors he can get to help aid the commendable charity of the MS support Centre. What will your return be? Well you’ll feel a warm glow of helping others and a secret satisfaction that Tony will be out of bed half an hour earlier; while you’re tucked up. So dig deep and give all you can because every little penny counts.

To donate or find out more go to Tony’s just giving page; http://www.justgiving.com/AntonyDickinson

Google Goes Social With Google+

2011-07-05T14:43:00.000+01:00

Check out Google's latest attempt at a social network. What do you think?

Facebook: Multiple ways to give cyber-criminals your personal details

2011-05-09T12:00:00.000+01:00

Facebook is a lovely bliss-free online utopia. A magical online haven where you can spend hours ‘poking’ sexy friends, pressing a button labelled ‘like’ to express admiration of witty comments, and generally having a whale of a time in the safety of your own home, right? Wrong.
Those cyber-criminals and spammers are at it again, ruining it for the rest of us. Alas, you now risk an injured computer or crippled bank account by simply clicking on stuff. Here are things you should do on Facebook if you want to just hand your personal information (and even bank details) over to evil Lex Luthor-esque cyber-criminals lurking on Facebook;

• Accepting friend requests from everyone – especially if they have dreamy eyes, voluptuous curves or washboard abs. Again, receiving and accepting a “new friend request” from a new person in your email box. The more the merrier!

• Use a short password that is a pet or your fave TV show etc. No-one will ever guess that! Use the same password on Facebook that you use in other places on the web – as it will be easy to remember.

• Help your poor friend who is stranded in Nigeria and needs $500 for a plane ticket home! Nobody likes to be stuck at an airport – as anyone who has visited Healthrow can back-up. You’ll feel awful if you can’t help him/her. Scam? No way! This is one of my Facebook friends. Why did he/she use the term “cell phone” instead of “mobile”? Dunno. Probably not thinking straight due to the stress of being stuck in Nigeria?

• Click on enticing links such as “I just got the Dislike button, so now I can dislike all of your dumb posts lol!!” or “Student attacked his teacher and nearly killed him” with a link attached to it. They are probably brilliant. Virus? Nah, it was posted by one of my friends, so it is definitely safe to click on any links.

•Open an attachment from an email that appears to be from Facebook saying the company reset your password. It looks like it’s from Facebook, so it obviously must be correct.

Please do NOT follow these frankly idiotic suggestions above…or you could have your face hijacked and a meeting with the Police Central e-crime Unit booked. Do follow these basic guidelines though…
• Ensure that you only accept friend requests from people you know and accept them within Facebook.

• Use a long password (that is different to other passwords you use) with unique characters that is not obvious to your friends.

• Be wary of scams.

• Do not click or open suspicious looking links or attachments.

• Check the Facebook security page to keep yourself up-to-date with the latest news on viruses to be aware of on Facebook…and tell your friends: http://www.facebook.com/security

Now you can get back to all that poking! Enjoy.

This article was written by Andrew Parker

Google Releases Exercise Video!

2011-04-01T14:54:00.000+01:00

Want to know how to increase your finger dexterity and typing speed??? Google once again has come up with the answer with this helpful video -

Approval given for xxx domain names

2011-03-28T11:21:00.000+01:00

The use of the xxx suffix denoting adult content has been narrowly approved by the governing body for internet names, meaning it will join the likes of com and org online.

The support of nine of 16 board members of Icann, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, at a public meeting in San Francisco on Friday brought to a close one of the most contentious issues in the non-profit organisation’s history.

“This decision represents a difficult, careful balance, weighing the extensive community advice both for and against,” Icann said at the conclusion of a week-long conference that culminated in the board meeting.

Use of the suffix had drawn fire from conservatives and divided adult entertainment interests, some of whom feared being isolated or censored in countries that could block access to domain names ending in xxx.

No governments participating in the policy process at Icann endorsed the plan, while some opposed it. Icann chose to ignore much of the advice from the panel of government representatives, underscoring an independence that continues to come under fire.

In one of many compromises between Icann and ICM Registry, the US group that will sell the addresses, the company will collect fees to fund efforts designed to keep children away from online pornography.

Many in the internet address industry had hoped that the San Francisco meeting would resolve a broader push to allow all manner of so-called generic domain name endings, such as travel and hotel.

The same committee of more than 100 governments that objected to xxx has argued fiercely to slow the generic names down, citing the likelihood of infringement on the rights of trademark holders.

The Icann board held prolonged talks with the government committee before setting an official target to resolve the remaining issues before June 20.

However, the dispute continues to strain relations between the governments and Icann at a time when some large nations want to move control from the organisation, which aims to serve “multiple stakeholders”, to the United Nations, which serves countries.

Rod Beckstrom, Icann chief executive, told the Financial Times that the move to undermine Icann’s authority was “certainly a credible threat that those who want a global, unified internet should be concerned about”.

However, he said progress between the two sides over the generic names issue and Icann steps to improve transparency in its operations should help alleviate the pressure.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011

2010 Social Media Stats

2011-02-26T15:20:00.001Z

Mobile Thomas Cole Office Deploys Canoe @ Windermere....

2011-02-21T15:09:00.003Z

Some Useful Internet Stats For 2010

2011-02-15T15:06:00.004Z

Our Top tips to Obtain Free Website Traffic

2011-02-03T14:30:00.001Z

Website traffic is one of the main concerns of Internet marketers, the more website traffic that they have, the higher the possibility that they can obtain more sales and income. However, website cannot be obtained overnight. Another concern is the cost of website traffic. You can hire professionals to do the job for you but you will have to pay more because of this. If you have the will to spend time and effort to increase website traffic, then you can consider these free website traffic tips.

If you want to generate free website traffic and increase sales and profits for your online business, here are some of the tips that you might consider.

First is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It is the best way to increase hits to your website on a daily basis. If you will use this kind of method, you will have to do this every day. However, do not expect results after a few weeks. You will have to be patient if you will be using this kind of method. If your site will rank for a certain keyword on Google, then you can be guaranteed that your website will be placed on the top of the search engine. You can easily get traffic with these because after a couple of months, you can get your website ranked on the search engines. If the users will search for your keyword, then you can have the chance to be placed on the top of search engines and people will click on your website.

Second is using the power of social networking sites. A lot of people know that the popularity of social networking sites today is really awesome. Facebook and Twitter are the top social networking sites on the Internet and they can really help you obtain website traffic for free. You can join different groups on Facebook and Twitter and start making friends. As you build up a friend's network, you can try to update your status and start posting your web page and blog sites. You can create massive amount of web traffic with this kind of method. You can also create groups and invite friends.

Third is writing high quality and unique articles. If you want to generate free web traffic, then writing articles is the next big thing. However, you must be sure that your keywords are included in the articles. This is because your articles can also be searched in the search engines depending on the keywords that you used. You will have to submit these articles to different article directories. The best thing about this is that article directories are free of charge. They offer free posting and submission for your articles. Be sure to post on top article directories such as ezinearticles, article dashboard and Goarticles. This is the next big thing when it comes to generating free website traffic.

Fourth is you must learn to do forum marketing properly. You can get a lot of web traffic if you can join forums. Try to search forum in your niche and check their popularity. Try to post comments on the forums but make sure that your comments make sense. Do not simply post any kind of comments. Try to impress the members of the forums. Do not forget to include your signature for every post that you will make. Place the link of your blogs or main website in your signature. If you will become popular in the forums, there is a big possibility that the members will click on your link and visit your website. You can also advertise your website if you are already popular.

Advantages of Photoshop

2011-01-18T11:02:00.001Z

There are some people who believe that photos serves as evidences of the past. The things that happened yesterday cannot exactly be repeated today or tomorrow. This is the reason why people keep pictures. However our faces develop lines that represent our age as the years pass. Worried about the imperfections you see in your face especially when the way you appear in your photos? Do you want to be in a particular place without literally being there? Do you know that even photos get benefited by our advanced technology? Have you heard about Photoshop?

Photoshop is a program in the computer which has the ability to create changes and even wonders on your photos. Here are some advantages of using Photoshop:
It can enhance colors. As the years pass by, colors on the traditional photo paper will start to fade. And as they fade, it decreases the clarity of the contents of the photo. If you do not like the original color in the picture, it can be altered using Photoshop.

It can change the backgrounds. When the background does not appear attractive, Photoshop has a tool that can change the background.
It can create tricks. This is the fun part. Deceitful yet wonderful tricks can be applied to the photos. For example, a person's face can be placed in a photo with pyramids to make an illusion that you've been to Egypt. Moreover, if one person was unable to be in the picture, his face can be inserted to make it appear as if he was present when the photo was taken. These things and more are included in the tools and features of Photoshop.

It can make old photos look like new. Aside from the fading colors of old photos, there are also some features that contribute to its decreasing the quality. Photoshop helps in enhancing old pictures.

It is a fact that there is a rapidly increasing population of people using the internet every day. Many things can be done online like storing and disseminating information, doing business and marketing and most importantly communicating with other people. Nowadays, it is common to place pictures in our profiles over the social internet websites like Facebook, twitter, Myspace and the likes. Because of this, it is very much helpful to have a program like Photoshop. In this way, we can have the ability to create wonders out of our old, pale and boring photos.

Make the most of video...

2011-01-14T09:16:00.000Z

According to comScore, 34.7 million internet users in the U.K. watched 6 billion videos in November 2010. Why not take advantage of this by showcasing your products or services in a short video on YouTube?

The SEO Rapper

2010-12-08T13:03:00.002Z

Ever wondered how to design a website in such a way that search engines will like it? Fear not, an SEO expert has posted the following video highlighting some important design factors.

Seemingly Pointless Practice...

2010-12-03T15:13:00.000Z

Occasionally, you'll see a domain name that somebody has bought with the intention of driving traffic to their web site. In my opinion, this is a pretty pointless thing to do.

Typos
Common examples include registering typos of very popular sites, such as ggoogle.com or gooogle.com, but don't try going to buy those domains specifically because recently Google registered a few typo domains... Puts an end to that problem for them! It looks like bing have been at it too though, with binng.com and bingg.com!

Domain Extensions
Another way to do it is to register alternative domain extensions to the popular norm. For example, google.me.uk, or bing.me.uk. Both of these alternatives have actually been registered. Bing.me.uk is understandable, as the registrant has a name that suits the domain name, so I'll let that one pass. However, google.me.uk is set to forward to the web site for Hook Evangelical Church... Honestly, what are they tring to achieve? If somebody were to type that domain in (looking for the head of Bing UK's personal web site maybe?) then they aren't going to want an Evangelical Church in Surrey.

Now, while .me.uk domain names aren't exactly expensive this is a pretty pointless SEO tactic. This is somebody who's only interested in quantity not quality!

Google TV is Here!

2010-11-18T09:47:00.006Z

Google TV is here, check out some of its features:

Search Your TV - Type in whatever you want to watch and let the Google find it for you. Allowing you to watch whatever you want in minutes!
Google TV users can use their Android phones or Apple iPhones to control their TV
TV Apps - Google will provide a wide range of Apps for your TV such as Amazon and Twitter, and with the Fling app users can send videos and pictures direct to their TV from other devices.
Google TV users will be presented with the ability to record whatever they watch.

Facebook's New Messages Feature

2010-11-16T16:09:00.006Z

So you've heard that Facebook has launched a new e-mail feature but you have no idea what it's about... Fear not; below is a video from Facebook explaining everything:

Top Google Adwords Tips

2010-11-10T15:54:00.002Z

Recently on our website we mentioned that the UK's display advertising revenue has increased by 34% - so if you're thinking about setting up an adwords campaign here are some tips:

1. Don’t Buy Keywords That Cost More Than You Make
It would make no sense to spend £10 on a keyword if you plan to sell a £5 hat.
Don’t waste money by buying expensive keywords that do not earn a profit.

2. Track Your Conversions
Set up split A/B testing using Google Website Optimiser on each of your adword campaigns, test, and tweak your landing pages accordingly to improve your conversion rates.

3. Include your Phone Number
You could try out adding your phone number into your adword campaign. If you are doing a local adword campaign, when users see that you are a local company they may pick up the phone on the spot to give you a call, saving you on the adwords click.

4. Optimise For What Users Are Searching For
By using the following code you can input the exact keywords that people are using into your ads: {keyword: add backup text here}

5. Use proper Capitalization
As long as you don’t caps lock the entire ad. Use proper capitalization to create a headline which stands out from the rest of the ad.

Myspace Launch New Site

2010-11-02T16:30:00.012Z

The new MySpace website was launched today in a desperate bid to compete with its social rivals Facebook, Twitter and Bebo. But is it too late?

The 'place for friends' used to be the king in the social networking community but has been shifted to one side of late to make way for the likes of Facebook, Bebo and more recently Twitter (who had 30 million sign-ups in September alone!!).

Today though the veteran website has been fully revamped in a move aimed at repositioning the company back at the top of the social world ... or as near to the top as it can get.

The new site features a completely new style interface and drastic changes, ditching their original “A Place For Friends” slogan.

The entire layout of the website has changed, from the home page right through to the profile and topic pages, they’ve moved to a more simplistic grid layout mixing images, video and topography, it also used to be cluttered with advertisements but there are now significantly fewer ads present.

The 'new' Myspace will encourage users to share and recommend music, film and television content, rewarding the most prolific trendsetters with virtual tastemaker badges. A celebrity category has also been added to allow MySpace to share links and information about the stars of the tabloids.

"Over time, MySpace got very broad and lost focus of what its members were using it for," MySpace President, Michael Jones said, revealing that a new, streamlined site will better cater to the site's 120 million web users who predominately use the social networking site to listen to, share and comment on music.

Its’ new vision, is to be “The leading entertainment destination that is socially powered by the passions of fans and curators.”

Rumour has it that a mobile experience will be launching too soon, so watch this space.....

Tweet This!

5 Tips for effective calls to action

2010-10-24T15:02:00.001+01:00

Once you have carefully designed, developed and optimised and marketed your search engine friendly website, your next step is to use it to generate revenue and increase your sales. To achieve that, you need to ensure that your website has effective calls to action.

But what exactly is a call to action? ....

A call to action is a simple way to interface with your website's visitors and encourage them to take an immediate action after viewing or reading your website’s content.

Examples of calls to action can be phrases written into website content; like 'Buy Now', 'Click Here', 'Check it out'. these phrases target your website visitors to react immediately and take action.

Here are 5 quick and easy tips to boost your sales via effective calls to action:

1. Define your website objectives
For successful call to action, you first need to set your website's goals. Ask yourself what do you want to achieve from your site, what your primary targets are and what you want to achieve on each page of your website?

Once you define a clear objective for each webpage, you will be able to create appropriate calls to action.

2. Place your calls strategically
To make your website's visitors notice your calls to action, you need to place them in a strategic location for direct visibility.

They should stand on their own, ideally on the top half of your web page so that users see it immediately.

I.e. Website phone numbers can be used as effective calls to action, these should be placed at the top of a website (usually in the top right)

3. Make it clear and simple
To make sure the visitors react and respond to your call to action, you need to make them clear, simple and achievable.

If you provide visitors with too many options they are likely to loose thier attention. Imagine filling in a contact form with 46 fields, you'd get bored.

4. Write persuasive calls to action
Use the imperative tense in your copy and try to communicate a sense of urgency to make your visitors react immediately.

Use phrases like “call now”, “buy now” “register” or “subscribe” in phrases that will entice them to perform the action or by setting deadlines.

Using a simple “submit” or “read more” will not bring the same sense of urgency or good deal to the readers as “order before Friday and get 10% off!”.

5. Experiment
Some calls to action will work better than others, use Google Website Optimiser and other means of testing to experiment to find the perfect blend.

Yahoo keeps Site Explorer’s View Backlinks Tool!

2010-10-20T15:43:00.001+01:00

Today we were given some great news. As we all know the Bing-hoo (Yahoo & Bing) alliance led to several changes for the Yahoo search engine.

Yahoo recently announced that their service BOSS V1 will be discontinued and a new paid API will be launched (BOSS V2) for Yahoo Search.

At the same time, the future of an other great service, the Yahoo Site Explorer, was uncertain due to the announcement that it’s API will be discontinued in December....

Today The Product Manager of Yahoo Site Explorer, Mr Minocha, announced that Site Explorer will continue providing the backlinks for a given webpage and that they plan to keep the export to CSV feature! =D

“We are working with the Microsoft team to ensure that webmasters can continue to use Yahoo! Site Explorer to view inlinks (a.k.a backlinks) to a given webpage or a website and to further be able to export them as CSV if desired. Please note that this functionality will be available only through the Site Explorer UI and not through the Webservices API.”

What do check before launching a new website

2010-10-07T16:06:00.001+01:00

There are many things that web developers and internet marketers must bear in mind when they are about to launch or develop a brand new website, the following checklist has been compiled to help you get the foundations of your site right so that your website start’s in the best possible way.

When constructing use a logical structure
Use search engine friendly URLs when building
Write relevant, unique page titles for every page
Unique Meta descriptions for every page
Valid XHTML and CSS
Externalize Javascript
Use includes for footers, headers and navigation
Sitemaps
Reserve you website’s name on social networks like Facebook & Twitter
Write a privacy policy, accessibility statement and terms and conditions

To h1 or not to h1....

2010-10-04T17:01:00.005+01:00

What is a H1 tag and does it matter to the SEO of your website?

The H1 tag is the visible heading on a page and it is important for the SEO of your website as it tells Search Engines what each page is about; and if they are written with keywords in them it can help your Search Engine rankings (be careful not to spam them though).

Google and the other engines have said that they give more relevance to the H1 tag over bold or strong tags; although other features like the title tag of the page are more important from an SEO point of view, there are still definite benefits of having header tags on each page.

Each page of your website should have a H1 tag included and each of them should be quite short and unique (having an entire paragraph as a H1 is not good for SEO, and neither is having your website title/logo as it will be repeated over the whole site)

So take a look at your website titles and see if they’re search engine friendly

This happens way too often....

2010-10-04T15:13:00.004+01:00

With Connor 'Brew Spiller' McMahon working in the Thomas Cole office - this happens quite a lot:

New Website For SMC Premier

2010-09-22T15:07:00.004+01:00

The web developers and the web design team at Thomas Cole internet are pleased to announce the launch of a new web site for SMC Premier Cleaning.

SMC Premier is a major provider of contract cleaning services across a wide and diverse range of clients and industry sectors. They are a long established family company and have been delivering their commercial cleaning services for over 25 years.

They provide highly trained experienced operatives using the most effective, cost efficient and environmentally friendly equipment and consumables. Some of the services they provide include:

The specification given to the web development team was to re-vamp the old, slightly dated and produce a fresh, new web site that was good looking, dynamic and that improved on the current branding and styling.

The new web site should display all of the different services that SMC Premier have to offer and and have seperate information on all of the services available.

Click the image above to be taken to the SMC Premier Web Site

New Website For Flexicomms

2010-09-15T14:56:00.007+01:00

The website development team at Thomas Cole Internet Solutions have recenlty completed building the new website for Flexicomms.

Flexicomms are a North West based telecommunications infrastructure who build and maintain network infrastructures throughout the UK.

The specification given to Thomas Cole Internet Solutions was to produce a fresh web site that was good looking, dynamic and that improved on the current branding and styling without damaging the current search engine positions.

The web site is fully content managed so that new projects and news can be showcased on a regular basis, and so that web site can be regularly updated to keep the content fresh.

The result is a high quality and formal web site that showcases the company’s services in a professional manner.

Click the image above to be taken to the Flexicomms Web Site

Google Doodle takes a chunk out of carbon reserves

2010-09-07T09:39:00.002+01:00

Did anyone notice Google's doodle at the weekend? Yes it was the buckyball doodle, the one that whacked your CPU usage on the Task Manager up to 100% for no good reason.

In fact it's not just your CPU usage that was being eaten up, according to blogger Gingerwarfare, it was the planet too! Apparently the buckyball doodle took up an extra 15-20 watts of power compared to other web pages he tested it against.

Now while 15-20 watts doesn't sound like much, times that by a few million people who viewed the google homepage and you're looking at a pretty massive energy consumption.

Google may try their hardest to be good to the environment with their rented goats eating up their lawns, but something like this kind of throws all that to the wind...

Google Develops 'Real Time' Search Engine

2010-09-02T11:39:00.010+01:00

People are always saying that social media is an important tool when it comes to marketing, yet most people are reluctant to take it on as they can't see how it can increase traffic to their site or how people will find their posts etc.

But now Google has started developing a new tool to add to it's 'social search'. Last year they made deals with some major social networks such as Facebook and Twitter which allowed them to incorporate posts into their search results. This usually only happened for 'hot topics' but now they've released a new version of their search engine that only works based on Facebook posts and tweets!

This new social search engine can be viewed here: Google's Social Search

What's Next For Google?

2010-08-31T12:07:00.001+01:00

Just a quick post, Google has been recently spotted testing 'real time' displaying of search results in their results pages.

A spokesperson for Google stated that the company is currently running limited tests of the function, which is said to be one of "50-200 experiments" operating simultaneously on the search engine.

A demo video of the new function can be seen below

Feed Google's Spiders With Fresh Content!!

2010-08-26T12:07:00.002+01:00

The global search engine giant Google delivers the best search results based on content relevancy and information freshness.

Google's spiders are very busy as they regularly crawl our sites looking for information keep Google’s database full of fresh information.

However, because of the vast amount of data available, spiders have become very strategic in their crawling, visiting more frequently those sites with fresher information. If you feed the spiders more frequently, they’ll visit more often.
This will make Google happy. When Google is happy, Google will reward your site with higher search engine position and hopefully more traffic.

SEO TIP: Make Google 'happy' by feeding the it's spiders fresh content often – Then see how Google repays the favor by sending more traffic your way!

Beth Finally Jumps!

2010-08-16T15:39:00.005+01:00

After 2 "cancellations" (we still profess that she chickened out) Beth finally got to do her jump on Saturday 31st July. Beth's jump took place in Whitchurch and was to raise funds for Thomas Cole client The MS Support Centre.

Beth managed to raise a fantastic £465, and landed safely. She said: "The jump was an amazing experience, and something that I would definitely do again. I am delighted to have exceeded my initial target of £400 too."

You can still sponsor Beth by visiting her Just Giving page. We were all forced to.....

Facebook - Privacy Experts Extraordinaire

2010-08-02T15:54:00.003+01:00

The Social Media giant Facebook has stirred up fresh security and privacy criticism due to a file being made readily available for download that details over 100 million users personal details.

The file has been made available for download on the infamous file sharing site Pirate Bay, leading to privacy advocates stating that Facebook's settings were confusing and could easily compromise user information. This incident is reminiscent of a similar episode earlier this year, in which Facebook received heaps of negative press concerning users' privacy settings... This lead to Facebook simplifying their privacy settings which appeared to satisfy the sites' critics for some time.

A Facebook Spokesman said, "People who use Facebook own their information and have the right to share only what they want, with whom they want, and when they want. In this case, information that people have agreed to make public was collected by a single researcher and already exists in Google, Bing, other search engines, as well as on Facebook. No private data is available or has been compromised."

So in conclusion, it's entirely your choice whether or not to set up a Facebook account, and then to post personal details to it. But remember, you never know who might end up getting their hands on them...

The Importance of Proofreading

2010-07-19T10:30:00.004+01:00

Before you decide to upload your content to the 'World Wide Web' make sure you either trust your own spelling, grammar, punctuation and ability to make sense, or get somebody with a little bit more sense to read through your text...

The importance of proofreading becomes all too relevant when you've had a paragraph of text displayed on your web site that's been viewed by a large number of people with terrible spelling, grammar or whatever. It makes your company look like they've not got a clue what they're doing. Even if you aren't an English teaching company you should still know how to do basic spelling.

It's not always all about spelling either, just because you've whipped out a cracking piece of content and can't wait to stick in onto your web site you should definitely check through the text. The least you could do is use the Microsoft Word Spellchecker to make sure you don't spell 'the' as 'teh' or any other meaningless word.

It's one of the most unprofessional looking things ever, since blurry images and broken links. Sure people are more likely to notice blurry images and maybe even broken links but that might not be your fault! Please just make sure your content makes sense, doesn't contain awful spelling mistakes and is grammatically correct...

Spam is one thing that annoys me, bad spelling is another... And now for those of you struggling to spell definitely, here's a handy web site! http://www.d-e-f-i-n-i-t-e-l-y.com/

Firefox Chrome Edition?

2010-07-09T11:49:00.004+01:00

Firefox is out of ideas when it comes to usability and design so they've gone to Google for help - download the Firefox 4 Beta and load it up in either Windows Vista or Windows 7.

Once you get over the "Brand new interface" you realise that it's not that brand new at all.... in fact it looks like a carbon copy of Google Chrome to me.

If there wasn't a great big orange button that said 'Firefox' at the top i doubt most people would be able to tell the difference between the two browsers in this picture..... alright the tabs are more rounded in Chrome but come on, they're pretty similar.

Check Out A Slide Show Of The Similarities Here

Personnally i'll stick to IE 8....

Better Website Usability Means Better SEO

2010-07-09T11:17:00.004+01:00

I've got another 5 minutes so thought i'd write a short and sweet set of web development tips. It may be short but it is a really good reminder that a website's success is not all about search bots and search engine positions - make it for people in the first place.

Make your websites as easy to use as possible for REAL people (remember what is easy for you might not be easy for someone with less tech-experience) - get the basics right first and the SEO will follow.

For example:

Use a simple structure located in a conventional position (e.g. top left);
Avoid jargon except when you know your target audience will understand it;
Be concise - there's no need to always go into great detail.
When providing an RSS feed, provide an e-mail alternative.
Keep lists short - when there's more than 5 points people start to forget the first points.

Jump start your SEO on a new site...

2010-07-07T15:00:00.003+01:00

One of the main SEO tactics that you can incorporate when starting optimising a new site is purchasing a good domain name.

By purchasing a domain with your primary keywords incorporated into it(if there's any available) search engines will give you an automatic boost.

The reason for this is because most of the time companies will purchase domains which contain the company's name as it makes sense for a company to rank highly in search engine results for its own name.

In cases when the domain name is not a company name, the search engines will still give it a boost as it is currently too much trouble for them to investigate every single case.

As a result the domain will often rank high for the keywords that are included in it.

Page 1? Position 1?

2010-07-06T16:28:00.003+01:00

Obviously, position 1 in Google is the best place to be. But just how important is position 1? Isn't first page enough?

Holding a page 1 ranking is a good start, but to gain the most number of clicks position 1 is most beneficial. Position 1 gets most clicks out of all possible positions, up to around 80% to be exact. As you get further down the page the number of clicks drops rapidly, but with a small increase for positions 9 and 10 compared to 7 and 8.

So overall, having a page 1 ranking is good but a position one ranking will maximise the amount of visits you get from the search engines.

Don’t pay spammers!

2010-07-05T12:04:00.003+01:00

Recently captain spam has cottoned on to the fact that social bookmarking sites exist and if used properly can be beneficial to internet marketing and now every day I receive numerous e-mails offering to “submit your website to 100 social bookmarking sites for just $35”…. Sounds like a good deal right…. Wrong!

For starters, a link is submitted to the social bookmarking site, not the website itself, and to top it all off, those links are no follow unless they get promoted to the home page. Which they never do because they are submitted by captain spam and one of two things always happens to them.
1. The link is posted in the site and is done so in a spammy way so it gets deleted
2. The spammer does ‘hit and run’ submissions and your link gets buried under thousands of other submissions and will never see the light of day, so will never make it to the home page and will stay as no follow forever.

Just save your money and stop funding the spammers, and eventually they may go away.

5 Quick SEO Tips

2010-07-01T12:21:00.001+01:00

I've got 5 minutes to spare so thought i'd update the blog with some quick SEO tips:

1. Write an optimised title.... but don't over spam it with keywords

2. Internal Linking Matters - While internal links don’t carry the same importance as links from other websites, using internal links can easily tell the Google and other search engines what your other content is about all without leaving your own site!

3. Focus Your Content - don't go after a million different keywords. Choose a select few and focus on them. When writing content for your website, always keep SEO in mind. Be sure to mention your target keywords often

4. Have a good navigation structure as it will make your site .... easy to navigate. This one is pretty self explanatory. Link to important pages within your navigation bar. You don’t have to link to every other page on your site from the navigation bar, but try to fit as many important links as you can.

5.Search Engine Friendly URLs - They're not just search engine friendly, they're user friendly. What looks better:

www.exampleshop.com/shop?ID=166866082565421765201045 ... or
www.exampleshop.com/shop/shoes/trainers

Search engine friendly URLs allow you to get some quality keywords into your address and make it easier for users to remember.

Choosing a link building company

2010-06-25T16:33:00.004+01:00

If you’re going to pay somebody to build links for you, at least make sure they are a good quality, well referenced link building company. Just about anybody can build links, but building good quality, long lasting links takes skill and time that some link builders just don’t have.

Tips when choosing a link building company:

Ask for a portfolio or some examples of link building campaigns they have carried out in the past.
If they do send you a list of places they link from, check to see if they are blacklisted, or frowned upon by Google by searching for the URL. If the site isn’t listed it has likely been picked up as a spam site. Links from spam sites will have a negative effect rather than a positive effect on your site.
Check the PageRank of the links, not necessarily all of the sites but at least some of them. It’s all well and good promising you 1000 links, but if they’re all from poor quality, low PageRanked directories it’s a waste of time.

Some link building companies build links from web sites that disappear within a couple of months, so they can prove to you they built the link, and then it disappears so it’s no use to you anymore.

Your link building company may use software that submits links to hundreds of directories automatically, which is definitely frowned upon by the search engines.

You need to find a link building company who can prove they can build high quality, long lasting links from web sites Google has no issues with.

2010-06-20T12:07:00.002+01:00

New Websites!!

The techies @ Thomas Cole Internet Solutions are pleased to announce the launch of the two new Exclusive Lighting web sites! We're actually quite impressed with them =)

The brief given to Thomas Cole for the Exclusive Lighting web sites was for a pair of brand new, stylish ecommerce sites that would increase brand awareness and sales for an already well established lighting supplier. The web sites should have the same products on each, and managed from the same content management system but have a different design from each other.

For this project a bespoke content management system was built so that both web sites could be managed from one system, quickly and easily. Full training was given so that staff felt confident to carry out the relevant updates.

2010-06-10T16:12:00.002+01:00

Bingle?

If you haven't used Google today, don't waste your time. Just go to Bing instead, they pretty much look the same anyway.

Isn't one of Google's primary principles simple search? Isn't that why they've got the fading in links on the home page? To make the whole thing simple and easy to search? If so why now have they got a huge image taking over the site and slowing the whole process down?

Yes, that's right, one of many recent updates the internet giant has rolled out is the home page background image - which I think looks strikingly similar to Bing's trademark appearance.

It really does look like Google have woken up one morning and thought they were Bing. Both Bing and Google today have images taking up most of their pages, the difference is Bing have being doing it from day one.

Google appear to be copying Microsoft's search engine, perhaps they've caved in to the Bing advertising campaign? Apparently they're trying to give us all inspiration to use their new image feature...
All I know for sure is I really prefered the simplicity of Google, just a logo and a search box, but Google seem to be getting more complicated and straying away from their principles. Luckily you can disable the annoying background image by logging into your Google account and setting the background to white, but this is annoying as the logo is currently white.

To be honest, I prefered Google Pacman...

2010-05-26T16:02:00.002+01:00

How to get listed on DMOZ?

A lot of people seem to ask this question on various forums and the like, so I thought I'd give you my view on the 'Open Directory Project'.

According to DMOZ itself there are four steps to submitting your site. You can follow these steps but from my experience it'll rarely result in a listing being created for your site. At best you'll be waiting months if not years for a listing to appear.

While many SEO's and Webmaster's will tell you it's crucial for your site to be listed on DMOZ for you to have decent search engine rankings, it's not always worth the time and effort as your listing can be rejected or just added to a very long list. The editor for your category could very well be one of your competitors, who became an editor to get their own site listed, so it's not in their interest to list your site, so it will be rejected. DMOZ editors also have the right to reject a web site if it is similar to another site already listed in the category, so this lowers your chances even more!

You could spend the time you take submitting to DMOZ doing something more worthwhile, like building a few links from elsewhere. Even though DMOZ has PageRank 8, and a PR8 link would be great, chances are that you won't even get listed.

So in conclusion, if you do happen to have 5 minutes completely spare time with nothing better worth doing, you may as well submit. Who knows, you might even get listed...

Just as a final note, at the time of writing, DMOZ verification doesn't work due to the AOL code used being down. So attempting to submit at this time could be even more of a waste of time than otherwise stated in this post.

Posted by Ed

2010-05-21T15:48:00.000+01:00

Business Listings On Google Maps ...

Local business listing at Google allows you to promote your website and its events, new products, specials and much more. You can take advantage of this Google feature very easily (once you have claimed your listing) by following the following five steps.

1. Log into your account on the Google, and go to Google Places through your account or by going directly to http://www.google.com/lbc (you can also claim your listing here)

2. If you have multiple local business listings, choose the listing you want to update and click View Report.

4. Click in the edit box and write a 160 character description of your business update.

5. Click Post and you’re done!

Your information will appear to the public in your local business listing on Google Maps. As of this writing you can only have one post and we’re sure this will change in time.

2010-05-12T16:43:00.001+01:00

Watching your links

The best way to check your backlinks is to set up Google Webmaster Tools, this will give you an exact number of links that Google picks up for your web site and show you exactly where the link comes from.

If you don't have Webmaster Tools set up though, Yahoo! has another good online tool you can use. This is the Yahoo! Site Explorer.

The Site Explorer tells you how many pages Yahoo! has indexed of your site, and the number of links pointing to your site as well as where these links come from. The tool also allows you to export these results. It is useful to know where your links are coming from, and can also be used to find where your competitors are getting their links from.

Webmaster Tools and the Site Explorer may show different results for links. This is because Google and Yahoo! both crawl and index sites differently, so it may either mean the page has not yet been indexed by either of the Search Engines or the link was not picked up.

Sometimes, even if you can see a link on a page yourself, your links will not show on the Site Explorer or Webmaster Tools. This may be because the page with the link has not been indexed yet, or the link is set to 'nofollow'.

Links:
siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/
www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

I always find it useful to check up on links on both the Site Explorer and Webmaster Tools as both give slightly different results.

2010-04-28T12:45:00.001+01:00

Word Of Mouth Marketing

Word of mouth marketing is one of the most cost effective means of marketing available to any business, although it can be more difficult to measure.

The most challenging part of a word of mouth marketing campaign is the ‘getting people to talk about your business’ part. But as the whole world has gone ‘social’ lately, this is not as much of an issue as it used to be, you just need to know where to go….

Well over 50 million messages (or tweets) are sent a day on Twitter and your business should be contributing to this. Twitter is a social media tool that acts as an instant billboard for marketers. Post a message, put in the relevant keywords (or hash-tags) and a split second later your message and page are displayed to your relevant market.

Neglecting this opportunity would be a bit of a waste.

For more information about Twitter, social media or other means of word of mouth marketing, just go to the Thomas Cole Contact Page.

2010-04-22T16:32:00.002+01:00

The Dos and Don'ts of SEO

As I’ve often stated before, search engine optimisation takes a good amount of time when done properly and ethically. It’s always important to keep up with the way search engines rank and decide where to place your web site, so here’s a quick list of a few SEO do’s and don’ts…

SEO Dos

Keyword research – Make sure you’re concentrating on the right keywords. If you’re optimising your site for a keyword that doesn’t have many searches, you’re wasting your time. If you properly research your keywords before starting any campaign then you are likely to have better results in the long term. There’s no point ranking for keywords like: “dog grooming services in the North West of Brinscall”. It’s probably easy to rank for, but pointless in the end.
Link building – It’s important to build links pointing to your site as the search engines view a site with more links to be more important, so it gains higher rankings. It’s also important to make sure these links comes from relevant sources. If your site is about fish and you get a link from a site about construction it won’t look any good to the search engines.
Meta tags – Although these aren’t as important as they used to be, especially the often spammed keyword tag, it’s still important to write some good Meta tags with relevant keywords added.
Content writing – Create a lot of pages with a lot of good, fresh (not duplicate) content using your relevant keywords and you have a much better chance of ranking than if you don’t have much content or your content is ripped from somewhere else.
Keep optimising – Don’t stop working just because your site has got good positions. If your keyword has a high value, there will be other SEO’s trying to beat your site to number 1. Ongoing link building campaigns combined with regularly updated content is what the search engines like the most.

SEO Don’ts

Dire keywords – If you’re concentrating on a terrible keyword, you’re wasting your time. It’s also worth not spending too much time concentrating on easy to rank for keywords, generally localities, as these usually get fewer searches than others.
Bad links – While having any links is good most of the time, you need to be careful you don’t get a link from a bad network of sites. The search engines don’t like some communities of sites and in their eyes, bad sites link to other bad sites. Links from these kinds of sites can seriously affect your SERPs.
Link farms – A link farm is a web site with pages full of keywords pointing to web sites, with no other relevant, reliable or even readable content. In the past these were used by Black Hat SEOs to gain positions fast. Now if you are caught with links from a link farm your site will often be blacklisted and dropped completely from the search engines.
Quick and easy links – If you find a link page that is incredibly easy to add a quick link to, there probably isn’t much point. Even if you’re the first one there, there’s almost definitely going to be dozens more just like you. The page will soon become full of completely unrelated links and will either be recognised as a link farm, or your link in a sea of others will become incredibly pointless.
Keyword stuffing – Once you’ve found your keywords it’s good to apply them to your content and Meta tags but don’t fill every possible part of your site with them (a personal pet hate). The search engines frown upon keyword stuffing. It is also incredibly bad for usability. Nobody wants to see content with the main keywords every three words or so. It will make no sense and will eventually get you penalised by the search engines.

As the search engines constantly change you need to keep updated with the most recent SEO techniques. It’s always worth having a read of the latest Search Engine Optimisation techniques. Although the search engines don’t publicly reveal their exact algorithms you can still stay on top of the search engines.

2010-04-20T16:36:00.001+01:00

Content writing and duplicate content

When you need content for a web site, there are a few ways you can get it. The best way to get content for your web site is to write your own. This will ensure that your content will be 100% original and not duplicated.

Google doesn’t like duplicate content and when crawling sites Google have a number of duplicate detectors that can detect whether or not your content is your own.

While it might seem easier to just rip a page of content straight from Wikipedia or a competitor your site will suffer as a result. If you take content from a competitor they may have copyrights with their content.

Writing your own content takes more time, but is definitely worth it in the long run.

2010-04-16T14:58:00.003+01:00

Google likes it slow

When optimising a new site, you will want to build some links pointing to the site. And while you’re making sure you build good quality links from high PageRank relevant content pages, another thing to consider is how fast you get the links. You need to try not to get too many too fast.

Think about it from Google’s point of view, they don’t want spammy web sites. So when they pick up a new web site and it gets 10,000 links in the first week it definitely looks like somebody’s up to no good spamming. Google, like me, despises spammers. When you get hundreds of links in a short period of time it looks bad for your web site.

One bad thing about some linking companies is that they build up too many links too fast and Google will suddenly notice the extra 1000 links you bought.

Building links over a longer period of time is Google’s much preferred method. So your linking project needs to involve high PageRank, relevant web sites that link to you over a good period of time.

Post by Ed

2010-04-15T08:58:00.003+01:00

Don’t Dismiss Non-Anchor Based Links ….

When trying to improve a web sites external link structure as part of an SEO campaign, too many people focus on anchor text when trying to seek out linking opportunities – Yes, a do-follow, keyword filled, anchor text link is the best for search engine optimisation, but it is important to not overlook other linking opportunities.

The main type of link that people seem to disregard is URL based links (http://www.thomascole.net/services/seo) – these don’t usually move your site straight to position 1 on Google but they can sometimes still be of great use.

Imagine for instance if you were able to get a link from the BBC or Money Saving Expert, would you pass up a link from a site with relevant, fresh content from a page with a high page rank and thousands of potential visitors just because they wouldn’t include your keywords in the anchor text for the link? If you’re a bit of an idiot you might. This link, although it’s just a URL link will carry site authority credit and ergo will increase your web site’s authority, and high web site authority can make it easier to rank for keywords.

Yes, anchor text, do-follow links are the best – but by turning down URL based links you’re not doing yourself any favours. Just bear this in mind next time you consider turning down a link to your site.

Post By Ash

2010-04-08T15:10:00.003+01:00

Building Links and Your Brand

When building links for your web site for search engine optimisation you need to be careful where you get links from. Linking from irrelevant or inappropriate web sites can lead to your site being penalised.

Random spammy links will also make your site look poorly marketed and your brand name will suffer as a result of this. If somebody sees one of your completely off topic links they will get a negative feeling for your site.

The best kind of links are links from high PageRank pages with relevant content. People will appreciate the relevance of the link and Google will love it too!

2010-03-29T11:26:00.003+01:00

Submitting your site to the search engines

It’s a pretty basic fact that if your web site hasn’t been picked up by the search engines, you won’t rank well. For new sites that you aren’t sure are on Google, Bing and Yahoo yet, it’s worth checking by quickly searching for your URL, or by typing your title into the search engines. If nothing is found, your site hasn’t yet been indexed by the search engines.

While a lot of sites will get indexed in their own time, by links pointing to the site, the process can be sped up by manually submitting your site to the search engines. This is a simple process and can be carried out by following these links:

• For Bing: http://www.bing.com/webmaster/SubmitSitePage.aspx
• For Google: http://www.google.co.uk/addurl/
• For Yahoo: http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/info/include.html

Bing and Google are easier to submit a site to, but if you follow the instructions you can still easily get your site listed on Yahoo.

The other way to get listed on the search engines is to build links to your site. When the links get indexed the search engines will start to recognise your site and will index it. There are arguments that this is the search engines preferred way to find your web site, so it’s probably worth doing some research before jumping into a submission.

So if you’re going for speedy recognition then submitting your site is the way, but if you would don’t mind a short wait then leaving it to the spiders could be worth it.

Post by Ed

2010-03-17T14:48:00.002Z

Keyword Density.......

When optimising your web site you need to make sure you put most concentration on your important keywords.

This means that you need to have a high concentration of these main keywords in the content of your web site. However, you can’t just throw them in as many times as you feel necessary; the content to keyword ratio has to balance out.

If you use too many keywords in your content or use them unsuitably it becomes difficult to understand to regular readers. Google and other search engines can pick up on this and this will damage your search engine positions.

So the balance must be just right to gain the best possible results on the search engines.

2010-03-10T10:22:00.006Z

The top ways to increase the amount of ‘good’ traffic coming to your web site.

Why did you create your website? Probably to make some money – but without visitors this isn’t going to happen. But high traffic isn’t the key to making money from a website it’s all about driving the right visitors to the right parts. If all the people that visit your site aren’t finding what they are looking for then your site has failed … and that’s not good.
So you want to increase traffic to your site and sales? The most important point is quality of your visitors vs. quantity; from there you can plan your next step.

In order to reach your goals and make your site work, you need to achieve three things:
• A low bounce rate
• Get RELATIVE traffic to your site
• Convert this traffic into sales

So how can I increase ‘good’ traffic and convert it? …… I’m glad you asked

1. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO UK)

Take out an search engine optimisation SEO campaign to increase your site’s positions in the organic search results of search engines. To find out your website’s current positions in the major search engines it might be useful to have a search engine audit done on it to see what areas can be improved and to plan your strategy.

On of the main factors that affects search engine positions is the overall structure of the website – it needs to be easy to navigate and easy for the search engines to spider through and locate all the content. If it takes a million years for Google’s spider to analyse your website then it’s going to be penalised in the search results - So re-design your site to make it search engine friendly.

What are your keywords? That’s the next stage. What do you want your website to be found for – this is the tricky bit because what you think your target audience are searching for may be completely different to what they are keying into the engines. So you’ll need to take out a keyword analysis and do a load of research before applying anything to your site.

Then you can start the linking process. Search engines work on links – links act as a sort of referral, if you can get a link from a site with a high page rank, such as the BBC then Google, Yahoo! and the rest will look at that link when spidering through, and as long as it comes from relevant material will probably move you up in the results.

But remember, if you decide to do this yourself, search engines don’t like to be tricked, and there are a lot of companies out there that will promise you top positions overnight if you hand over your house, car and the entirety of your bank account. But if they use black hat techniques (which they probably will) this won’t last and your site will most probably be removed from search engines completely, and then you’re back at square 1.

So take your time when choosing a search engine optimisation company.

2. Articles and e-mail marketing

Write about your site and brag about it – search engines love Blogs. So create a blog (or get a development company to do it for you) and communicate with other bloggers in your field to write about your site and promote it.

You can also submit your news in forums and inform the members about products or services that might find interesting

E-mail marketing can bring to your site traffic with minimal cost. There are e-mail newsletter tools that you can buy and customise to fit your company’s profile and use to send newsletters to your clients informing them about new services, products or special offers. Why not add a signup form to your site in order to collect e-mail addresses from the people that want to get your news?

3. Social Media

There are a wide variety of different social networks that you can utilise to improve the online visibility of your business. The world and their mums are on Facebook – so why not open an account or a fan page … or both!!! Then advertise your company with it, post company pictures, news updates, create an application, sync your blog with it – and many more things, all this can be done to create a following and increase traffic coming to your site. Other things you can do include tweeting on Twitter (which is rapidly gaining members), and joining social book marking sites such as Stumble upon and Reddit.

4. PPC

Take out a Pay per Click (PPC) campaign on the important keywords of your site. You can use Google Adwords or Microsoft’s Adcenter to have adverts placed on search results for your most pertinent keywords relatively quickly. These ads can also be placed on a variety of related websites to help increase traffic. But be careful when managing the campaign in order to save money wherever possible because with Adwords it can get very expensive VERY quickly. It might be worthwhile to ask advice from a marketing company to avoid making any wrong moves.

If you have no idea how to do any of the above don't dispair, as Thomas Cole Internet Solutions offer all the services discussed .... just give us a call on 01254 832 815 or get in touch via the contact form

Post By Ash

2010-03-10T08:43:00.002Z

Should I Spam Keywords?

Now everybody knows how much I hate Captain Spam, and I hate him in all of his many forms. Be it the terrible spammy link at the bottom of a dead forum thread, or the hideously overstuffed keyword tag.

One of my most hated forms Captain Spam takes is in the form of horrendous and hideous page footer keyword spam.

This makes your web site look ridiculous and will probably just end up getting your site penalised by The Google. The Google will then drop you like a bad idea. Your positions will die before you have a chance to delete your footer.

So Captain Spam, it might have seemed like a good idea at 2 o’ clock in the morning, after a few too many cans of special brew, to fill your footer with repeated spammy ramblings but you will regret it in time! You will regret everything you’ve done Captain Spam!

Post by Ed - Captain Spam - Daykin

2010-03-01T11:36:00.004Z

Tech Rant ...

"Microsoft is about to give millions of Windows users the option of changing to another web browser, away from their own Internet Explorer."

"The change follows an agreement made with European competition authorities, who ruled that bundling IE with Windows abused Microsoft's dominant position."

My thoughts on the matter:

Not this again. is it really so bad for Microsoft to include their own browser in their own operating system? Where will this go next?

Will Apple / iPhone users be asked if they want to switch from Safari?
Will Ubuntu users be asked if they want to switch from Firefox?
Will Orange start sending me details of Vodafones talk plans?
Will Vauxhall salesmen be retrained so they can tell you all about the Mondeos features?
Will Samsung have to stop supplying remote controls with their TVs just because other remotes are available?

I don't think so....

I paid a lot of money for my copies of Windows, they belong to me, and I object to them being used to advertise to me.

There is already a wide choice of browsers out there, if you want to use Firefox then use it, if for some strange reason you want to use Safari, Opera, or Chrome, then use it! Don't beat Microsoft up for helping the average user get online, if IE was not included in Windows what would most people do?

If Microsoft are guilty of abusing their market position by including IE in Windows, then surely Google are guilty of the same crime by not offering search results or sponsored links from Bing, Yahoo, or Hotbot, and by forcing their toolbar into the installers of other programs, AND by including their ads in Youtube videos!

Once again Microsoft are being punished by providing value for money, it takes the 'matt-le-tiss'.

Posted By Greg

2010-02-26T13:58:00.002Z

Tech Rant - Captcha Codes ...

Let’s talk about captcha codes, verification codes or whatever you want to call them…

Sure, stop the spammers! This is a great way to do it! It even stops some non-spammers from submitting comments, forms or anything to your web site because it’s unreadable or doesn’t load!

The worst of the worst codes I’ve seen half disappear off the bottom of the image, with the remaining characters impossible to decipher whether it’s a R, A or something else!

Another contender for worst of the worst displays 6 characters for the code which are easily readable, then only lets you type 5 in the box. What’s the point in that?

There are much easier ways to stop spammers… Or at least sort your validation/ verification/ captcha/ recaptcha/ anti-spam code out…

2010-02-25T11:42:00.001Z

Really......

I’ve just seen an advert for a product offering to “Get first page rankings on Google overnight.”

Hold on a minute… Overnight? Somehow I seriously doubt that. Unless you’re offering Pay Per Click management I don’t think you’d be able to get my web site to the first page of Google for “Any keyword in any niche.”

I’m considering signing up for their overnight page one service for the keyword “Google”, just to demand my money back when they can’t carry out what they promise.

But I’ll probably just leave them to it…

2010-02-22T09:05:00.003Z

Overstuffed Meta Tags!

One thing that really annoys me when I’m looking at a web site’s Meta tags is horrendously overstuffed keyword tags!

There’s no need to have every possible variation of your keywords, along with misspellings of your keywords and misspellings of your variations. Then after you’ve filled about 20 lines of code with your keywords, misspellings variations etc, you really don’t need to have the same for your company name, along with misspellings and variations and misspellings of your variations!

The very worst I’ve seen contains all of the above plus a few random keywords that appear to have been added only because they get a high number of searches! If you’re selling a selection of antiques on your web site there’s no need to put keywords such as “Youtube” and “Facebook” in some vain attempt to gain attention.

There is absolutely no way in hell that your web site is going to be found for these terms just because they are in the keyword tag! Most search engines have pretty much made this tag obsolete anyway so it’s just a pointless waste of time and resources.

As a final note, please don’t throw your competitors name into the keyword tag. You aren’t using sly and crafty tactics to steal their business; you’re just being exceptionally dense.

2010-02-18T16:16:00.004Z

SEO Tip of the week ...

Search Engine Optimisation is a thing that takes some time, if done ethically and to keep good positions. At the least a good white hat SEO campaign will take around 6 to 9 months to have any major impact on the search engines.

You can’t expect page 1 results in a matter of days, unless you use highly unethical black hat SEO techniques which technically can get you listed quickly but these positions are unlikely to last.

One reason SEO doesn’t happen overnight is that Google likes old domain names. The older a domain name is the more Google will like it, under most circumstances.

Google seems to love age, because it also likes old back links. The longer a link lasts for the more Google likes it!

Google likes maturity

Posted By Ed

2010-02-18T14:17:00.001Z

Google's social network accused of breaking privacy laws ...

Google's new social networking service offered through their e-mail client Gmail, has been accused of breaking privacy laws, leading the internet giant to revise its Google Buzz once again.

These allegations come from the Electronic Privacy Information Centre (EPIC), who have launched a complaint with the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

EPIC state that Buzz, which is integrated into Google’s Gmail service, is “Deceptive” and breaks the consumer protection law.

Despite Google trying to improve and implement changes to their Buzz service EPIC say that Google still hasn't gone far enough."

“Twitter is a social networking site and people know what they are signing up for. With Gmail, users signed up for an e-mail service not a social networking service."

"Despite all the changes, they still do not give users a meaningful way to opt into it."

The lack of a user opt-in feature has been the main controversy surrounding Google Buzz since it was rolled out to Gmail users last week. With many users criticising the ready-made circle of friends automatically created by the service, which is based on contacts emailed most regularly.

Although the service was tested before it was rolled out to Gmail users, Google admitted that testing done on it may have been inadequate, stating: "We've been testing Buzz internally at Google for a while. Of course, getting feedback from 20,000 Googlers isn't quite the same as letting Gmail users play with Buzz in the wild."

2010-02-15T11:31:00.001Z

Microsoft leaks information on Windows 8 ...

Window’s 7 has only just been released and Microsoft is already in the process of creating their next operating system - the company briefly published a blog on msdn.com, and then took it down almost immediately.

A cached version of a Microsoft blog post titled 'What's in store for the next Windows?‘ offered a taste of what might be involved in the successor to Windows 7, which is being referred to as Windows.next.

In the blog post, the anonymous author promised "The minimum that folks can take for granted is that the next version will be something completely different from what folks usually expect of Windows - I am simply impressed with the process that Steven (Sinofsky) has set up to listen to our customers needs and wants and get a team together than can make it happen.”

"To actually bring together dozens and dozens of teams across Microsoft to come up with a vision for Windows.next is a process that is surreal! The themes that have been floated truly reflect what people have been looking for years and it will change the way people think about PCs and the way they use them. It is the future of PCs..."

Rumors and speculation started last month, stating that Windows 8/Windows.next would launch in July next year.

The anonymous blogger also revealed that the company had succeeded in restoring its reputation with Windows 7, following mixed response to its predecessor Windows Vista.

2010-02-11T17:05:00.003Z

Another way to utilise Facebook....

Facebook has many a way to increase the amount of traffic coming to your business’ web site. Be it by way of links, pictures, paid advertising etc. But these can take time and if you’re like me, it takes ages to update all the different social networks with all the company news and information.

Another useful way to increase the amount of updates on your profile or fan page with minimal effort is to utilise the Facebook ‘notes’ application.

If your business has a Facebook fan page or profile ( if not why not?!?! ) and a blog you can link the two via an RSS or ATOM feed to post all of your updates on you’re wall.

Right, here comes the maths….

If you have 30 fans on your company’s fan page, who in turn each have 100 friends, your blog posts can be seen by as many as 3000 people! And, with the new Facebook architecture these blog posts can appear both on profile walls and on the news feed.

This works because people that view your notes and add them to their note feed, have essentially endorsed you to all their friends. This sort of endorsement is a big part of what influences consumer buying decisions.

Written By Ash

2010-02-11T14:31:00.000Z

Are you in love with your web site?

It's that time of year again! "Love is in the air!" and all that. But let me ask you something... Do you love your web site, the same way fish love water? Or do you hate it, the same way ice hates heat?

I know the Thomas Cole Blogmaster would wine and dine this blog if it was possible! There'd be no taking this thing to Burger King for him! Only the fanciest, swankiest restaurant is fit for this site.

So do you want to wine and dine your blog? Or is the spark just not there anymore?

I have a few hints if you need to light the fire again.
1. Buy your web site a new dress and shoes to make it feel sexy. (Or redesign it and spruce it up to look better.)
2. Take it out to dinner at the fanciest place in town to make it feel respected. (Or market the web site to increase visibility.)
3. Take it home and spend some quality time just talking with it about it's problems to make it feel loved. (Develop the web site to iron out any problems.)

There you go, you have a web site that loves you and you love it back!

Written By Ed

2010-02-09T15:34:00.003Z

To Link, Or Not To Link…

As we all know, there are a few types of link building. Some of them are worthwhile while other are not.

If you manage to get strong links that are going to last, Google will love you! If you manage to get links from shoddy directories that barely have any structure and always ask for a reciprocal then your web site will suffer.

You can spend ten minutes filling out a form to submit your link to www.523hjg.org.com.au but eventually (probably very soon) this web site will either collapse or change to something completely different. That’s ten minutes you’ve just wasted on a possible (but probably never made live) link that will last no time whatsoever.

So the moral of the story is: Think before you link!

Written By Ed The Techie

2010-02-01T16:39:00.001Z

Another thing about contact forms…

One of the services offered by Thomas Cole is Search Engine Optimisation. This means that we do not need you to get us any “GUARANTEED 1ST PAGE GOOGLE RANKING!” And when you say something like “We would like to get your website on first page of Google”, you really mean you just want to take our money and disappear.

If you were a real SEO company that were actually any good at what you claim to be able to do then you wouldn’t have the e-mail address: peterd623@gmail.com. Real SEO companies have their own e-mail addresses.

If your SEO methods are really white hat, then why write ""white hat"". Is there any need at all for the double inverted commas? Does this mean that it’s “white (wink wink) hat”?

There’s just something I don’t trust about your e-mails. It might be the horrifically spammy way you write them, or the way you sign off with “See you at the top!” Or it could just be the fact you feel the need to shout at me in what appears to be some kind of an attempt at a sales e-mail.

Book your ideas up.

Written By Ed The Techie

2010-01-25T16:18:00.001Z

Social Media Usernames ...

Social media sites for the most part offer all of their users a profile name and profile page. Take Twitter for example, on Twitter our profile name is ThomasColeLtd.

Brand names and company names are extremely important in controlling and since most of the social media sites nowadays rank pretty well in Google, it makes perfect sense to be proactive and secure your brand name now. Because if you don’t either an affiliate marketer, a competing company, or some random idiot will go out and register your brand name across all the social media platforms they can and rank for your company in search engines.

With this, they can use the profile, in your companies brand name, to build relationships with your customers, and increase traffic going to your competitors web sites or even destroy your reputation.
Just imagine how damaging a Twitter account for the BBC could be, especially if it had thousands of followers and then tweeted something misleading about the company's operations.

The first step to combating this is going out and securing your company name on all the relevant social media. For this there is an excellent tool available called CheckUserNames.com. CheckUserNames.com searches across a vast number of social media sites to check if your desired username is available. If it's available then register it now before someone else does.

If your username is already taken, don't fret most social media companies such as Twitter can be quite cooperative in taking care of this for you, because they do not want brands being misrepresented inside their network.

Once you have obtained these accounts setup your profile page to increase links going to your site and to get your posts indexed into Google's results for increased internet visibility.

Written By Ash

2010-01-25T15:45:00.000Z

China Denies Attacking Google Search.

A spokesperson from the Chinese government has recently spoken out to deny any involvement in the recent cyber attacks that targeted several companies including search giant Google, saying the claims made by them were “groundless”.

The spokesperson, from China’s ministry of industry and information technology said: “The accusation that the Chinese government participated in [any] cyber attack, either in an explicit or inexplicit way, is groundless. We [are] firmly opposed to that”.

They then continued to add “China’s policy on internet safety is transparent and consistent.
On an official post on the Google blog, a spokesperson revealed that the Google Mail (Gmail) accounts of Chinese human rights supporters had been unlawfully accessed in a strategic and targeted cyber-attack, which was believed to have originated in China.

Although Google did not accuse the Chinese government of being involved in the attacks, Google recently had threatened to withdraw from China unless the state agreed to stop restricting free access to information through its search engine.

The state-run newspaper China Daily said that America's internet strategy is going "to exploit its advantages in internet funds, technology and marketing and export its politics, commerce and culture to other nations for political, commercial and cultural interests of the world's only superpower."

While the situation is still far from resolved, China stated last week that Google and other international companies had to obey their laws and traditions if they wished to continue to operate in China.

This led to Google postponing the launch of their two mobile phones there, and is considering a full withdrawal from the country's internet market if the Chinese government doesn’t stop censoring search results on the company's Chinese search engine - a scenario that is looking increasingly unlikely.

2010-01-21T10:27:00.000Z

Keeping Your URL

When optimising a web site you will often create links pointing to your URL. These will help with your search engine positions. If, however, you decide to change your domain name then all of these links will be void.

Also, all of your rankings will soon disappear. You’ll virtually go back to square one, unless you point your old domain at your new domain, although this will have menial value compared with just keeping your domain name in the first place!

So the moral of the story is: stick to one domain name!

2010-01-14T14:52:00.003Z

Facebook Group vs. Facebook Fan Page

Right, at Thomas Cole we are forever being asked questions about social marketing and one question that keeps cropping up is “which is better, a Facebook fan page or a Facebook group?” so today I’ve decided to highlight the key advantages of each.

Ok, first of all there are two main differences between groups and fan pages and they define what types of marketing they can be used for. The major difference is that unlike groups, fan pages are visible to unregistered people and therefore can be indexed by search engines making them better for SEO.

The other difference is that Facebook groups allow users to send out “bulk invites” whereas fan pages must have invites sent out manually. Therefore groups are more often used for viral marketing, meaning any group member can send bulk invites to all his/her friends… and they can do the same and so on. Groups generally increase in size faster than fan pages due to this feature.

Right, so that’s the main differences. Some of smaller differences between the two include:

Facebook fan pages can have custom URLs whereas groups have disgusting and lengthy ones that make little sense to anyone.
Facebook fan pages can have applications added to them to increase the visitor's interaction with the page.
Fan pages come with visitor statistics, showing the number of visitors, increase in members etc. Whereas groups don’t.
Fan pages can create and invite people to events that the administrator is hosting
Fan pages can be promoted via the Facebook advertising system.

There are also a series of similarities between the two, such as they can both hold a discussion between their members, host a forum and a wide variety of different multimedia can also be posted on the pages walls etc.

At the moment this seems to be a totally one sided argument in favour of the fan page but that is not the case. Yes the fan page has more features, but that’s not the point, the point is that they both have their uses in marketing, and when used correctly they can increase the overall visibility of your business dramatically. Or if used badly they can do nothing for your business at all.

So to conclude, fan pages are better for long term interaction with your target audience and increasing internet visibility (i.e. SEO) whereas groups are better for a quick discussion on a topic and attracting attention quickly (i.e. viral marketing).

2010-01-12T16:57:00.005Z

Getting On Top.... Of The Search Engines

PageRank (PR) is not the most important aspect when it comes to search engine rankings. You can search for your main key word and be annoyed at the web sites that come higher than yours, and then be even more annoyed when they have a lower PR than you! Oh no, shock horror!

This is because it’s not just PR that affects positions! There are many other things that affect positions such as inbound links, relevant content and regularly updated content.

When Google re-indexes on a large scale a lot of peoples PR will flicker up and down. It’s ok to celebrate when your web site hits PR5 but this still doesn’t mean that you’re a guaranteed number 1!

However, the same thing applies to inbound links. Well done, you have built up 12,000 links pointing to your web site. Don’t be too distressed when you find the web site that is thrashing your position only has 200 links. “200?! But my web site has 12,000 links and PR4!” There is a lot more that affects your position.

So, stop worrying as much about PR, don't worry about getting thousands upon thousands of links, and concentrate on getting on top!

2010-01-11T13:40:00.004Z

Google launches ‘Near Me Now’

Yet again Google pick’s up the pace in the world of search by launching yet another product to make searching the internet simpler. Users of smart phones such as the newly released Nexus One and Apple’s iPhone will find a new option on their search screens as Google rolls out geo-positioning into mobile searches.

A ‘Near Me Now’ option has appeared on Google’s home page allowing people searching to locate local bars, restaurants, cafes etc based on their current location.

A post on Google’s mobile blog stated "We wanted to make it fast and easy to find out more about a place in your immediate vicinity, whether you're standing right in front of a business or if it's just a short walk away.”

“Google wanted to make searching for popular categories of nearby places really simple”

“Imagine that you emerge from the subway station and you want to grab a coffee, but you don't see a coffee shop around you. You can simply search for all nearby coffee shops by using 'Near Me Now.’”

In order for users to fully utilise this new feature, smart phone users will need to allow Google to identify their location via GPS. How popular this will make the application with those with Google-related privacy concerns is questionable.

2010-01-08T15:01:00.005Z

Thomas Cole Encounters Captain Spam

Most messages that come through contact forms asking for link exchanges appear to come from spammers with e-mail addresses like “dave12723@googlemail.com”. Obviously, spammers want to use you and your web site to their own advantage.

Even when a seemingly legitimate link exchange request came through from a decent e-mail address offering what sounded like quite a good deal; one link from our web site pointing to his, and one link from his web site pointing to ours. Really though, he was no better than the average Captain Spamtastic, he was trying to bleed us for every bit of worth our link could get him.

The deal he really wanted to make was a link from a spammy directory page pointing to us in exchange for a direct link to his web site that offered the same services as our directly from the first header on our home page. When I told him he must be joking he tried to persuade me that the link would benefit me more than him. How exactly? By driving our users directly to his site? That doesn’t sound like much of a fair deal to me. He told me, “I am trying to do you a favour!” By stealing our customers?

When I continuously told him I wasn’t interested in his pointless link exchange he continued to ask for more and more. He wanted multiple links from all over the web site, he never bothered to raise his stakes though, and I don’t think it’s vital to have links from his spam directory.

Whilst link exchanges can be good under certain circumstances, this wasn’t one of these times. I suppose at least he wasn’t offering cheap meds.

2010-01-08T12:17:00.003Z

Natures Aid

Thomas Cole Internet Solutions are pleased to announce the launch of the new Natures Aid web site.

The specification given to Thomas Cole was to produce a fresh web site that was good looking, dynamic and that improved on the current, but out of date branding and styling. The web site should display all of the health supplements and products that Natures Aid had to offer and make use new technologies to allow the user to find their nearest Natures Aid stockist.

The web site incorporates Google maps and coupled with an in-depth content management system allows the web site administrators to add new suppliers and stockists as the company continues to grow.

Visit the Natures Aid Web Site

2010-01-06T11:46:00.001Z

Twitter ends 2009 in profit

Leading financial news magazine Business Week has recently reported that the micro blogging site Twitter has had a profitable year after the company signed two separate deals with search giants Google and Bing. These deals allow Twitter posts (tweets) to be indexed and searched through on their respective search engines.

The deals with Microsoft and Google reportedly generated $25 million for the social media site. Despite all parties remaining quiet about the figures needed to secure the deal, Business Week revealed that Twitter generated $10 million from its deal with Microsoft to allow them to index the tweets in their Bing search engine, and a staggering $15 million from Google for the inclusion of the tweets into the real-time search results.

Twitter, which is based in San Francisco, allows its members to post 140 characters long SMS like messages on their profiles and enjoys over 55 million visits every month.

Recently, the company has been developing plans to start increasing revenue from the immense popularity of the micro blogging site by rolling out premium plans for businesses, allowing them to use Twitter’s platform to market and promote their products on the social networking website.

2009-12-17T09:42:00.000Z

Black Hat SEO Targets Google Doodle

The use of popular internet trends and searches for the distribution of malicious software (malware) – many experts in the matter say that this method of delivery is more or less the standard for most types of phishing software and malware. The latest method of distribution from criminal gangs was hiding links to rogue antivirus sites behind the Google Doodle.

On Tuesday, Google visitors were greeted with a very questionable search results page when they clicked on the Doodle artwork paying tribute to the Esperanto creator L.L. Zamenhof which was displayed on the Google homepage.

The flag was displayed, like many date-appropriate modifications, on Google's front page, in the same way as pictures of Santa Claus at Christmas. Clicking on the "Doodle," performs a Google search for the relevant terms.

However, the cyber criminals had struck first in this case. Many of the top search results from clicking on the Doodle contained malware, pushed to the top of the rankings by black hat SEO techniques. Visitors unfortunate enough to click through to one of the sites were affected by scareware & rogue anti-virus scams.

A Google spokesman said that this type of problem affects other search engines as well. Google is aware of Tuesday's Doodle problem and has "already removed many of these sites from our index. To do this, we have manual and automated processes in place to enforce our policies."

He continued, "We're always exploring new ways to identify and eliminate malicious sites from our index."

Scareware combined with black-hat search engine optimisation has drastically increased in popularity among cyber criminals in 2009.

2009-12-15T15:12:00.002Z

Google launches URL-shortening service

Earlier today search engine giant Google has launched its own URL-shortening service to compete with the likes of Bit.ly & TinyURL.com

The Google URL Shortener can be reached at the custom URL goo.gl. Although the service is currently limited to Google Toolbar and Feedburner users not yet available for broader consumer use the web service could be expanded in the Future.

"With character limits in tweets, status updates and other modes of short-form publishing, a shorter URL leaves more room to say what's on your mind - and that's why people use them," a Google spokesman wrote on the Google blog.

"Currently, Google URL Shortener is only available from the Google Toolbar and Feedburner. If the service proves useful, we may eventually make it available for a wider audience in the future," he continued.

At the moment, the two most popular URL-shortening services available on the web are TinyURL.com and Bit.ly, although security experts have warned that they can be exploited by cyber criminals.

Spam e-mails containing shortened links have been used in the past to direct internet users to illicit web sites that may have been obvious traps if the real URL had been used.

A Spokeswoman from the New York Times commented on the new Google web service and called it "a direct attack on Bit.ly".

However, shortly after Google's announcement on their blog, Bit.ly revealed that it would begin creating custom URLs for a number of major clients, web sites and publishers, including The New York Times (at nyti.ms), The Wall Street Journal and even Microsoft's search engine Bing.

2009-12-14T16:01:00.001Z

New Web Site For Kevills Solicitors

The specification given to Thomas Cole Internet Solutions for the Kevills Solicitors web site was a corporate web site that would advertise the solicitors and and generate more enquiries leading to increased business.

The result is a high quality and formal web site that showcases the company’s services in a professional manner.

The web site is fully content managed so that new projects and news can be showcased on a regular basis, and so that web site can be regularly updated to keep the content fresh.

If you have any queries about website design, search engine optimisation (SEO) or any other type of internet marketing you can drop us a message via the Contact Us Page or call the Techteam on 01254 832815.

2009-12-11T15:27:00.000Z

Facebook announces new privacy settings

Facebook announced late on Tuesday night that it has adopted its new proposed privacy policy which offers new privacy options that grant users better control over their personal data.

The social networking website which has over 350 million members is asking its users to review their privacy settings for all their content posted on Facebook when they login.

Facebook site states that the reason for this update is that they seek to empower users by giving them improved control over their data, but many people think that there is an ulterior motive. One of these skeptics is Brad Stone of the New York Times who states that the revisions also provide an opportunity for Facebook to fix faulty or outdated services that may be holding it back in the social networking market against rivals such as Twitter.

In a press release, Elliot Schrage (Facebook's Vice President of Communications, Public Policy and Marketing) stated: "Facebook is transforming the world's ability to control its information online by empowering more than 350 million people to personalize the audience for each piece of content they share.

"We've always designed Facebook to enable people to control what information they share with whom—it's the reason our service continues to attract such a broad and diverse group of users from around the world. We're proud of the latest evolution we're announcing today and we will continue to innovate to serve users' changing needs."

Since this update was launched on Tuesday 9th December digital rights groups and bloggers have heaped heavy criticism on Facebook’s changes.

Critics said the changes were not welcomed by Facebook users and that they "nudged" users towards sharing their personal data with the world wide web and to allow them to be found via search engines.

"Facebook is nudging the settings toward the 'disclose everything' position," said Marc Rotenberg, director of EPIC (the US Electronic Privacy Information Center). "That's not fair from the privacy perspective." EPIC said it was now analysing the updates to see if they were considered deceptive.

If you have any queries about this latest development don't hesitate to get in touch, you can drop us a message via the Contact Us Page or call the Techteam on 01254 832815.

2009-12-08T17:19:00.000Z

Google Launches Real Time Search!!

Today search engine giant Google has revealed that its new real time search feature will be going live in the next few days in the UK, US, India and Australia, with additional countries getting the feature in 2010.

Real time search results are being pulled from a variety of web sites such as Twitter, Yahoo! Answers and various other social media and traditional sources such as news web sites and blogs.

Google released a demo video of real time search in action on You Tube and a statement regarding the update - "Now, immediately after conducting a search, you'll be able to see live updates from people on popular sites like Twitter and Friendfeed, as well as headlines from news and blog posts that have been published seconds ago, all of these updates are ranked to show the freshest, most relevant results related to what you're looking for."

The main question that we’ve been asked is how will it affect the world of search engine optimisation and search marketing?

In the short term it is very unlikely that this new feature will change much from the point of view of companies using traditional search engine optimisation and pay per click campaigns on Google Adwords. The real time search results only appear for very specific searches that are seen as “Hot Topics” by Google. Therefore it is unlikely that many of a web site’s main keywords and phrases will cause real time results to be displayed.

In the long term, this update was rolled out to ensure that Google remains at the top of the search engine world, and once again Bing-hoo! have got considerable catching up to do if they want to take Google’s place.

At the minute Bing has incorporated Twitter posts into some of its search results but the algorithm it uses at the moment is no where near as sophisticated as Google’s. This new update may force Bing’s hand, making it bring more sources into its Twitter search feature.

Thomas Cole Solutions have spent time researching into this new Google architecture, and are preparing new SEO techniques ready for when it goes live. If you have any queries about this latest development don't hesitate to get in touch, you can drop us a message via the Contact Us Page or call the Techteam on 01254 832815.