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Google have released public data to the world, it’s a marketers dream, but is also really handy for business users if you can spend the time sifting through the stats.

Here’s the link http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/statistics-for-changing-world-google.html and heres a video with a basic explanation.

Now there is more US data than UK data at the moment – this should get better over time, but if you do sell internationally (especially US) you will be able to look into for example specific growth areas of employment.

Granted some of the data will be a little out of date, but any marketer knows that it’s rare to get up to the month data like this (unless you spend a lot of money!). Most times it’s a best experience and knowledge estimate on trends using previous data to extrapolate how to exploit a particular area of a market.

This is why having someone who knows traditional marketing (generally referred to as offline marketing) as well as new marketing (generally referred to as online marketing) like we do is vital in being able to ensure there is a market place for a new website.

A slight side note and something that has been bugging me when I talk to new clients, every single one of them only want to pay for online makreting and they ignore the obvious offline marketing strategies. In today’s world too many people concentrate only on online marketing, what about the foot fall for retail, pubs, restaurants, events etc… you can’t possibly just do only online marketing, well not if you want to be successful, ok so mini edu-rant over.

Anyway this looks like it will become a great resource for the future and I look forward to keeping an eye on the updates Google make to the system.

Alan

I thought today I would give out 10 tips for improving your Search Engine results, I’ve split it into Avoid and Do not’s.

Avoid

1. choosing a title that doesn’t match up to the content on your web page
2. embedding text in images as users may want to copy and paste it or even more important search engines won’t be able to pick it up.
3. not formatting your page with the proper structure, think back to doing essays in english, title heading, content, sub heading, content, sub sub heading, content. google and many other search engines will reward you for it
4. having a complex navigation structure as search engines won’t like it but more crucially it may turn away visitors as they won’t know how to find the information they are looking for
5. having drop-down menus, images, or animations for navigation only. Most search engines may miss out on some crucial links from your website. Also having the links follow the standards will aid in your sites accessibility

Do not

1. hide text on your website, Google or another search engine may remove you from the search engine results.
2. duplicate content on your site from other sites. True, Google does like content, but it needs to be original to help get you to the top!
3. buy 1000’s of links and think “that will get me to the top of the search engines!”. Google especially like natural link growth over a long period of time and are coming down hard on mass link buying.
4. link to every single person/business who wants a reciprocal link. Try to only link to sites that are related to your industry and will help your visitors.
5. have the same anchor text for every link pointing to your website, try to change it to use various keywords that you want to target your site with if possible.

Alan

This is something us web developers struggle with knowing and it’s good to have the record set straight. It will also help you to know that relevancy is still king.

Alan

Ok be very careful with your twitter accounts, and instead of me trying to explain it here is a great video that explains it really well.

Alan

So if you hadn’t worked it out by now you’ll know I’m a bit of a geek, ok completely a geek, but I’m very comfortable with that stereotype. So when I cam across this video I just couldn’t help myself I had to share it with you all. Lego and Rubiks puzzles were two of my favorite all time toys when I was growing up, next was the computer (if you hadn’t guessed). This is really impressive in so many ways, engineering, programming and pure creativity.

Just in case you were wondering what the world record is for a human solving a rubiks cube, it’s not the fabled 12 seconds everyone seem to think it is, it’s actually 7.08s trust me that is super quick! Want some proof ok I can do that, just watch the video below.

Man that’s so cool, hey I did warn you that I was a geek and if you’ve read this post and watched the videos you may just be one too!

Alan

Just a quick one today, if Google Adwords confuses you then head over to the wordtracker site put in your email address and you’ll have a PDF that helps explain it all.

I sometime ago put together a list of reasons of why to use your own blog software that you can backup and not one of the generic free ones that are out there. You can read that post Are blogs still relevant & useful to a business.

This is especially true for businesses as it should be treated as an asset, a record of your expertise, all the problems you solve, the comments made by fans of your blog, all the opinions you have. If you don’t value all of that then you have nothing to worry about and probably shouldn’t be spending the time putting the posts online.

This is a real world example of why this is important to maintain your own copy of your blog, you never know what subject might be the next to go See Article.

Ok so this one is about potential pirated MP3’s, but think about the fact that you have no control over the information you put up there, Google or whoever else runs you’re blog can just whisk it away at any time.

Alan

Well Bing, Microsofts new search engine is really pushing what’s called Mashups. This is where different technologies on the internet are mixed together to essentially create a new experience. What they show in the video below is the potential for maps at street level, but with other peoples photos that are free to use from Fliker. They match up these photos to the buildings so you can essentially see what it was like when the person was there.

This is quite exciting for Photographers, but also everyone else as you get to experience things you may have missed, next step video??

Alan

I was doing my usual rounds online and came across this printer that I thought I should share with everyone. It will take some time for it to come over here as it’s a Japanese invention, but when it does it will finally make all the other printing companies realise that they can’t charge ridiculous amounts of money for cartridges & toner. It’s only Black ink printing at the moment, which is fine for the majority of prints a business would need, but I’m sure they will work on a colour version as soon as they can.

If you are not sure you can trust your anti-virus program to know about every single virus out there, especially if you’re running a free one, then I would recommend going to this site to get your file scanned by many anti-virus programs.

http://www.virustotal.com

Alan