Archive for June, 2006

Firstly, some of you might be asking, “what is a bad neighbourhood”?
When you link to a site from your own, it is the online equivalent of recommending a business to a friend. If they turn out to give a bad service then YOU catch it in the neck from your friend, and your reputation with your friend is tarnished slightly. 

This is the same online with links. If you link to (recommend) a site, and it turns out that the site is a bad site in the eyes of the search engines, then YOU too will be seen as ‘bad by association’.

More information on Google Quality Guidelines can be found here Google Webmaster Information on Quality
OK SO now I have worried many of you, spoiled your breakfast, or sent you running to your links pages to look for bad neighbourhoods, I guess I should sort of help you identify these bad sites.
You can find a bad neighbourhood by going through the following process. 

1 . Check page rank with the Google toolbar. If this is 0 or greyed out, that is a warning sign (new sites also have this so do not listen to people who say PR0 = ban they are confusing cause and effect).

2. Run a site:www.domain.com search on them, and if they come up with 0 pages in the index then that is also a warning

3. Run a search for their company name on Google and see what is brought up.

4. Check the ownership and age of domain. (this will help distinguish potential banned, from the site simply being new, as the signs are very similar)

5. Finally run a back link check.

This is where we get to the crux of the matter as links are the key. If a couple of year old site has no pages listed and no PR, then there is reason for caution. If however the site is showing no backlinks, then it might well be a genuine case of the site being new to the web.

If however the site is a few years old, has no PR, no pages listed, yet has hundreds of backlinks, there is a fair chance that site has a penalty against it.

These are simple checks designed to help answer the question of ‘am I linking to a bad neighbourhood’?  I can not tell you how important it is that you vet your linking partners. There is a lot of false information about bad neighbourhoods, including stuff like. I don’t link to gambling sites because Google doesn’t like them. Google doesn’t care about the genre of sites, it cares about the specific practices that each site and cluster of sites uses. Sites like ‘William Hill Bookmakers’  are not banned, nor are they bad neighbourhoods, yet they ARE gambling sites. Sure gambling sex and pharmacy sites are more likely to get into bad linking practices and spamming, but if you are in the same business, then they are on topic links.
One last thing though. When linking, keep these questions in mind. Am I linking to and from the most relevant pages of the sites?. Is this link on topic? Will I get traffic from this link? I am NOT saying you have to stick to the sites where you can answer yes to all, but I AM saying that if you CAN say yes to all those questions, then you will have just given your internet marketing a big boost.

I thought I would post this, as it was a question asked in Aardvark business forum that really warmed my heart. The question was simple, do you have any enduring memories from when we were children? Here are my thoughts. Please add yours in the comments if you like.

I remember once being sent to see the headmaster after I misbehaved. I remember taking the long walk with Total dread thinking about his harsh punishment that was totally in keeping with the Boys Grammar school. Only a week earlier, my best friend Dai ‘leg’ Davies had been sent to him for punishment, and Dai STILL could not sit down a week later…..

I remember thinking, as I knocked on the door to the headmasters office.

Please god don’t let him find ME attractive (joke of course)

One of my most enduring moments was being beaten when I misbehaved.

I remember one time going to bed with blood trickling out of my ear.

I remember making swings up the mountain with rope.

I remember making Dutch arrows, running through the ferns on the hillside behind where I lived.

I remember my first proper girlfriend, and the one I was certain i could not live a single day without (but some 30 odd years later appear to be able to )

I remember walking along a stream on a hot sunny day, sun blazing on my skin while the ice cold water cooled my feet,

I remember taking a drink of water from that stream while walking up the mountain, only to find a dead sheep in the same stream a few hundred yard higher up (it didn’t kill me)

I remember How green my valley looked then, even though it was black with coal dust from the collieries that surrounded me.

I remember seeing thousands of dead fish floating down the river killed by the same collieries that gave our communities life.

I remember playing rugby and football in the mud, kick the tin, hide and seek, and fox and hounds.

I remember kiss chase and wondering how come the good looking girls ran so fast, but thanking god that all girls look the same with my eyes closed

I remember growing up painfully.

I remember going to a party and getting tipsy on vermouth and ending up locked in a bathroom all night with little Deb (who my best mate Tob later married) Sadly but nicely Deb and I talked all night. Later that year Punk was born and we all wore black bin liners and spat!

I remember Leaving home, and coming back to Wales, GOD how beautiful this land I live in is.

I remember our first boys holiday to Corfu. I remember dancing on the shoulders of my mate Dai Rees to Simple Minds ‘don’t you forget about me’ I remember a beautiful midnight Kiss on the beach in Corfu with a young Irish lady from Cork.

I remember growing up, the pain the heartache love gained love lost, money earned money spent, memories made, but never forgotten.

I remember these and much much more.

Well today Google is launching its latest in a long line of online real estate pages.. Oh sorry I mean do no evil useful web applications Google Spreadsheets, you can request to become one of the first here http://www.google.com/googlespreadsheets/try_out.html . Personally I will not be using it, as I like the old software on my desktop thing. “Old Welsh guy You’re an old Fart” I hear you say, but in my defence I say I have a 6 3/4 year old, so can tell you that the Krusty Krab, is a diner not a dance (or a sexual disease) Bikini bottom is NOT a prn site, and Snails really do Meow . Yet knowing all this I STILL wonder why a company who have ‘a machine crisis’ would want to place so much more load on those full ole servers. Like Grandad Simpson, one day those teeth will fall out ” you’re no son of mine Homer”

So we currently have Google moving into desktop applications, Microsoft moving into web applications with it’s  ’Live ‘ series of stuff, and Yahoo doing deals with ebay to ward off Googlebase .

I just wonder if all these three might eventually combine to form the great big company, and, if this happens, will we all be woken by an electronic Cockerel that screams MicroOogleHoo .

its a funny old world we live in.

Yesterday I went shopping, while in Asda (Wallmart for you Murcans) I couldn’t find a product I was looking for, so I asked. The assistant was fine, she said ‘certainly sir follow me’. I was then led half the length of the store and taken to the exact spot where the range I was looking for was situated. She then proceeded to tell me they had threeproducts, and told me the pros and cons of each product, she asked me if I was allergic to a certain item, (I was) which left 2 options. I asked her if she had tried them, she said that she had, and that she preferred brand A. I picked them up and threw them in my basket a happy man.

 Now call me a sad man if you like, but it made me think about how online selling should reflect offline selling.

1. I needed assistance to find something, if I could not find it I would not have bought it. (bad navigation can cost a sale)

2. I requested help, and immediately found what I was looking for (a good search facility saved the day)

3. I was delivered to a selection of products (good grouping of your products in the catalogue)

4. I needed help to make my decision to buy (good copywriting information about the products)

5. I Asked for advice and was given it, even down to asking for a recommendation (cover every aspect of the product in your decription, think of any question that  might be asked, and answer it), with regard the recommend, customer comments and/or product reviews would acomplish this.

Here is a question though, and it is one that ANYONE selling online or offline should think about. WHY do I drive 12 miles to go to Asda Walmart having to physically drive past A tesco hypermarket, Tesco Extra supermarket, and a Morrisions supermarket?

I am loyal to the brand, their selection of goods is fantastic, their value for money is great, their range of products vast (although Tesco extra have a far superior range now). I STILL shop at Asda! The staff you see are great, they smile, are helpfull, knowledgable and friendly. The store is well laid out and they rarely move things around so you can’t find them. In short, it is my kind of shop!

Is your online store like this?

I was Moderating over at Highrankings earlier today, when the above question was asked. I gave the standard reply of  as many as it takes but keep it to readable chunks. I was then asked what a readable chunk is defined as!

What is a readable chunk? I would say that it is a section that covers a topic, and finishes when you are ready to move on to the next bit. One or two A4 pages is enough, but it totally depends on the subject matter as well. I mean if you asked me if a film was worth going to see and I droned on and on with a scene by scene breakdown is that too much? On the other hand, if you were to ask me the best way to rebuild a transmission, you would not be happy with ‘get some spanners, take it all apart, replace the broken bits and rebuild it’ would you