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Using Twitter and Facebook for Search Engine Optimisation

Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last couple of years, you’ve probably heard of Twitter. If you’re a business in Bath or Bristol and have had any contact with a web design or web development company they’ve probably talked about Twitter. But do you understand what is the point of Tweeting? How can it help with search engine optimisation?

In simple terms, SEO “experts” bang on about the benefits of Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites for a single reason. It’s a simple way of generating content. You don’t needs any complex tools, experience or software installed on your webserver to enable you to write articles about your business. The content you create is then potentially available for Google to index, analyse and hopefully add your nice shiny content into its search results*.

Twitter and Facebook also provides a “captive” audience. If you can get someone to Follow you, or Add you as a Friend, everything you then create will pop up in their news feed. So you get captive eyes.

To make the most of Twitter follow some simpe rules:

  1. Choose a good username. Mine isn’t great. “Powerbookboy” says little about the businesses I run. It should be “MacSupportBath” or “WebDeveloperBath”. I’ll sort that when I get a moment…
  2. Use hashtags. If you’re Tweeting about a subject, extend the number of people who might see your post, then sign up to follow you, by using a relevant hashtag.
  3. Write short keyword rich “teaser”  articles that then point back to your main website, which should contain the full article content.
  4. Think about what you’re tweeting and why. None of this “Stuck in car. Bored” rubbish. Every piece of content you create should be considered. Ask yourself “does this article help promote my business goals?”. If it doesn’t, don’t publish it.

Want to understand more about Search Engine Optimisation and Web Marketing? Based near Bradford on Avon, Bath, Bristol, Trowbridge, Wiltshire or Somerset? Give us a call on 01225 30162

* You won’t get any benefit from “link-juice” as all links you create getwrapped  by “nofollow”; so don’t believe any crap you get told about creating beneficial  “in-bound” links.

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Refurbished iPod Touch 119 quid, MacBook 719 quid, MacBook Pro 849 quid

Apple have some very nice deals on Refurbished MacBook and iPods at the moment. The iPods are probably because the new generation models are looming into view in the next couple of months…

  • – £119 inc VAT and postage
  • – £79 inc VAT and postage
  • – £719 inc VAT and postage
  • – £849 inc VAT and postage

On the basis of past experience, you only have a few hours before the best deals will go, so break out the plastic pronto is you want to get a bargain…

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Coping with MobileMe sync duplications

If you’ve used MobileMe on more than one device, you’ve probably had a few instances of duplicate items appearing in your Address Book. And once they are in there, they can hang arrange like the plague. So here’s a quick hit list…

Take one machine and clean up the offending AddressBook on it. Open the MobileMe System Preference pane. Replace the data on MobileMe with data from that Mac. Change a contact and re-sync. Check the data is visible in your account on Me.com. Then on all your other devices replace the data on the Mac with data from MobileMe. Run some test syncs, then make tea…

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Learning from the Magento core…

Learning any framework is complex. Learning one as labyrinthine as used by Magento e-Commerce is positively painful. So why not learn from the people who programmed the system? When you are in the Administration interface, note down the url path you are interested at. Find the controller action that corresponds to this path, by looking in the /app/core/Mage/Adminhtml module, and then dissect the action code to get some handy hints…

Not sure what the url for an event is, because some AJAX trickery is happening? Then break out Firebug and grab the network activity…

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Fancy a drop of brandy?

Just had a fascinating morning getting a crash course in brandies. A local business in Bradford on Avon, Brandyclassics, have asked me to look at ways of improving the search engine performance of their current e-Commerce website. They sell vintage single producer brandies. Up until now, I had no idea of the difference between Cognac, Armagnac, Eaux de Vie or Calvados and what VSOP or XO meant. I thought they were basically brands. Not so…

I was completely amazed find that you could still buy, and drink, cognacs that were bottled in the early 19th Century. Unfortunately I haven’t got a few thousands of pounds knocking around like famous brandy aficionados Tom Jones or Snoop Dogg; so if I want to buy Pre-phylloxera cognacs, I shall just have to save the pennies until I can afford a bottle! Or maybe just a glass if I can find the right hotel…

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