Recently Northstar was approached by a company offering advertising on its website which targets the National Health Service. For a mere £350 we could have a 70 word listing as one of 5 preferred suppliers for website design in the Yorkshire region.
The reason for this opportunity is that the government has given up on a centralized computer system, after spending several billion, and now requires that all hospitals, surgeries and medical practices create and maintain their own websites.
Rather than paying to appear on someone else’s website, we created a single page that was optimized to target the NHS.
Using Google’s Keyword Tool, we identified a handful of popular search phrases to incorporate into the meta data and content.
Within three weeks, this page on Northstar was outperforming an entire website built to capture this target market.
Here are just a few of the phrases that are getting first page results on Google (July 12, 2010}:
NHS web design Leeds - No 1
NHS web design Yorkshire - No2
Visit Northstar’s NHS web design page »
Search Engine Optimisation isn’t some magic button you just press. It’s about continuous growth and development of your website, generating content that is targeted at key search phrases that will bring clients to your business.
As video production gets more affordable and broadband connections become the norm, embedding video on your website becomes a viable option.
Video has impact - and with all your competitors only just a click away - can be an ideal way to retain attention and ensure that your website gets over your message.
Web video applications
- Product demonstrations - Dyson commercials have been very successful
- Talking heads - sales pitches in the Cillit Bang approach
- Walk-throughs and virtual tours - popular with estate agents and property developers
- Infommercials - you know, the hard sell DVDs they have in department stores
- Web adverts - or webverts, as some people are calling them
The historical problem has been the expense, videos take a tremendous amount of bandwidth and hard disc space on the server.
One quick and easy solution is upload your video to a free video sharing service, such as YouTube, Google Video or Vimeo.
Although these companies offer free hosting, there are some compromises that have to be paid for: poor quality video resolution and sound, the fact that it is open to the public, and that the video branded and has a link that takes customers away from your website.
With Paid Video Hosting you have improved audio and visual quality, the choice of screen size, resolution, opening frame and other customization.
Dedicated video hosting at Northstar starts from as little as £10 per month. Check out our video production page for further information.
Over the course of 2009, a consistent theme that Google has been involved with is that of speed. In announcement after announcement, Google has talked about the importance of speed on the web, and how the company wants to do everything it can to make the web a faster place. Has it occurred to you that how fast your page loads may have a direct effect on how your site ranks in Google?
Don’t worry, it hasn’t had an impact…yet. In an interview with WebProNews, Google’s Matt Cutts told us that speed may soon be a ranking factor.
“Historically, we haven’t had to use it in our search rankings, but a lot of people within Google think that the web should be fast,” says Cutts. “It should be a good experience, and so it’s sort of fair to say that if you’re a fast site, maybe you should get a little bit of a bonus. If you really have an awfully slow site, then maybe users don’t want that as much.”
“I think a lot of people in 2010 are going to be thinking more about ‘how do I have my site be fast,’ how do I have it be rich without writing a bunch of custom javascript?’” he says.
I would say that based on Matt’s comments it is probably fair to assume that Google will indeed begin taking page speed into consideration as a ranking factor, although he doesn’t come right out and say that they definitely will. That said, making your site faster is going to benefit your users and possibly your sales anyway, so you might as well start optimizing it for speed anyway. Then if Google really does start using this as a ranking factor, you will have a head start on boosting your rankings.
Google has generally been pretty good at providing webmasters with tools they can use to help optimize their sites and potentially boost rankings and conversions. Google recently announced a Site Speed site, which provides webmasters with even more resources specifically aimed at speeding up their pages. Some of these, such as Page Speed and Closure tools come from Google itself. But there are a number of tools Google points you to from other developers as well.
If you’re serious about wanting your site to perform better in search engines, and you haven’t given much thought to load times and such, it’s time to readjust your way of thinking. Caffeine increases the speed at which Google can index content. Wouldn’t it make sense if your site helped the process along?
Source: news.cnet.com
Tags: google
Subject: seo |
Shortly after the UK government announced £27 billion lost in failed IT projects another minor embarrassment was revealed, this time for the Office of Government Commerce (OGC), whose website proudly states: “Helping Government deliver best value from its spending.”
The logo cost £14,000 to create, and was intended to signify the bold ambition of the OGC of “improving value for money by driving up standards and capability in procurement.”
You can imagine how many meetings, hefty documents, PowerPoint presentations and endless focus groups had to be held to rack up £14,000 in fees while this logo was deliberated - and yet for all this contemplation they missed the glaringly obvious.
According to insiders, the graphic was already proudly etched on mousemats and pens before it was unveiled for employees, who spotted the clanger within seconds.
Just tilt your head to the left.
A spokesman for OGC said: “It is true that it caused a few titters among some staff when viewed on its side, but on consideration we concluded that the effect was generic to the particular combination of the letters OGC - and it is not inappropriate to an organisation that’s looking to have a firm grip on Government spend.”
A firm grip indeed.
Google likes to lead from the front when it comes to the practical application of sophisticated technology. Goggles is no exception, a nifty little programme for people with smart phones that uses Googles massive image library and fast developing image recognition system.
If you want to know about what’s in front of you, be it a landmark, painting, tree, restaurant or whatever, just take a picture and pop it into the Goggles image search, and a few moments later up comes all the information. At the launch Google’s VP of Engineering Vic Gundotra gave a demonstration by taking a picture of a bottle of wine, up came the results with tasting notes, including that this vintage had a hint of apricots. It can also ‘read’ other printed images, such as book jackets and bar codes.
The problem is that it can also recognize faces.
Take picture of someone in the street and it has the ability to pull together all the information about that person from the internet … and with millions of people increasingly living their lives online, the possibilities of abuse are enormous.
Anthony House from Google said: “We do have the relevant facial recognition technology at our disposal … But we haven’t implemented this on Google Goggles because we want to consider the privacy implications and how this feature might be added responsibly.”
Facebook has also upgraded its security this week, prompting users not to display personal information to the public.
The moral of these stories is simple, if you don’t want your details to fall into the wrong hands don’t post them on the internet.
Tags: google
Subject: Internet |
I’ve been a Apple Mac user since the early 1990s so obviously I am biased - the same as anyone is, whatever computer you are used to has to be the best.
However, since I got involved in web design about 10 years ago, I’ve had to run a PC to test my sites and make sure everything is working across all platforms. This has given me dual view or running a PC and Mac side by side to compare the two operating systems.
What I have always loved about Macs is that they just work, in simple terms that you can intuitively understand - you’ve got a Hard Drive, so it’s called a Hard Drive - there’s no messing about with b / c / or d drives? You want to move a file from one place to another, you just click and drag it there.
Keep it simple stupid
Macs work from your perspective, making things simple, not technical. They boot up faster, they are more stable, the type is clearer, and graphics are better. You get everything you need in a box, rather than loading and registering software from dozens of different companies.
I think they have always been a winner because virtually the whole interface is image / icon based, rather than file sub directories and root folders. Plus, there is the added benefit that you can customize virtually every aspect of how you computer looks and behaves - I know this sounds daunting to most users, but it’s nice to have the option if you want it.
Mac’s reliability and stability have also come on leaps and bounds, and since the launch of OS X I haven’t had a single crash in 3 years.
While I’m getting into this, you also have to take into account the usual Mac hype about no viruses. Now this is true, it’s something that no Mac user has to worry about because we are such a minority (less than 10% of the market) that no self respecting juvenile hacker would want to bother us.
So I don’t have to worry about subscribing to Norton or some other software program and there are no annoying pop up windows that just tick me off. It just works they way you want it to.
Change happens
When I have gone on about Macs to my PC friends, they have come back with two arguments: that you can’t run PC software on a Mac and that the machines are too expensive. Wrong on both counts.
It’s easy to run your current PC software on a Mac, and for all those hard nosed business people looking for quality, value for money and reliability - this is an independent survey carried out the highly respected Which?:
Laptop Best Buys
| Model |
Price |
Score |
| Apple MacBook |
£799 |
75% |
| Apple MacBook Pro |
£850 |
73% |
| Samsung Q320 |
£666 |
71% |
| Dell Studio XPS |
£799 |
70% |
| Dell Studio 1555 |
£749 |
70% |
| Acer Aspire 77352 |
£414 |
70% |
| Dell Studio 17 |
£699 |
70% |
Desktop PC Best Buys
Results of survey carried out by Which? magazine:
Apple
Apple gets an impressive 94% in our customer satisfaction measure. It’s also rated highly for support, earning a good overall rating. Apple computers are reliable too, with an above average reliability rating.
Sony
The Sony range is rather limited and priced at the luxury end of the market, but they’re well regarded, as is reflected by its customer score of 80%. There isn’t enough data for Sony to get a reliability rating, it receives a disappointingly poor rating for support.
Novatech
Novatech is popular with customers, achieving a satisfaction score of 79%. There isn’t enough data to get a rating for reliability or support.
Owners’ verdicts - At a glance: the brands rated most highly by Which? subscribers.
| Model |
Score |
| Apple |
94% |
| Sony |
80% |
| Novatech |
79% |
| Dell |
75% |
| Asus |
75% |
| Medion |
72% |
| Hewlett-Packard |
71% |
Acer |
65% |
Compaq |
63% |
Information courtesy of Which?
Tags: apple
Subject: news |
WHO ARE THESE MEN ?
Who are these men who march so proud,
Who quietly weep, eyes closed, head bowed?
These are the men who once were boys,
Who missed out on youth and all its joys.
Who are these men with aged faces,
Who silently count the empty spaces?
These are the men who gave their all,
Who fought for their country for freedom for all.
Who are these men with sorrowful look
Who can still remember the lives that were took?
These are the men who saw young men die,
The price of peace is always high.
Who are these men who in the midst of pain,
Whispered comfort to those they would not see again?
These are the men whose hands held tomorrow,
Who brought back our future with blood tears and sorrow.
Who are these men who promise to keep
Alive in their hearts the ones God holds asleep?
These are the men to whom I promise again:
‘Veterans’, my friends - I will remember them!
Poem by Jodie Johnson (aged 11)
The English language can be weird, ask any 10 year old.
The trouble is with phonetics. We spent all those long hours at school, fidgeting and passing notes while some teacher tried to explain how two words that sounded exactly the same, were actually spelt completely differently. Ahh, there their.
So how come, many years later, educated adults have such a problem with simple words that are spelt just how they sound? Organized, specialized, mobilization, optimized, prioritize … are all spelt with a Z, not with an S.
There seems to be a dark fear or phobia about using a Z - as though it was some sort of dreadful American spelling.
This mistake has become so common, that replacing it with an S has even made it into the Oxford English Dictionary in recent years as (alternative spelling).
The irony of the situation is that the Americans are using the correct English spelling, whereas we are more frequently using a French alternative.
Zut Alors!
Wordle is a free web application for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide.
This rides on the back of the popular Tag Clouds you see on so many Blogs these days - words with the greatest frequency are given greater prominence in the cloud.
Simply key in your words, submit your RSS feed or delicious bookmarks account - and voila, a beautiful word cloud. You can tweak the fonts and colours to your heart’s content.
Make your own Wordle Word Cloud »
This word cloud was generated from my blog content in about 2 seconds, looks almost artistic doesn’t it? It would take a typographer a few hours to do this.