Another new website from Google, this time in an effort to help with Global Literacy.
The Literacy Project is a collaboration between LitCam, Google, and UNESCO’s Institute for Lifelong Learning, and provides, “A resource for teachers, literacy organisations and anyone interested in reading and education”.
Check out The Literacy Project here.
I have been working hard recently on the Truly Scrumptious web site (see case study) getting good results by following our own advice about building better web pages.
One area of focus is building more quality incoming links to increase the Page Rank of each individual page. Finally, finally I managed to get a 3/10 on the home page and a couple of the other important pages were getting ranked. My link building techniques were paying off.
Then a strange thing happened, the page ranking dissappeared. It was strange and had me baffled, until I realise that I was at home checking, rather at work (saddo). Then Matt Cutts posted this, which explained something to me. He also followed up with this.
Basically, the page rank is updated very infrequently on the Google Toolbar (what we see) compared to the number of different servers that you may be accessing when doing a search. Yes, when you visit Google, it is probably a different server you are seeing every time. That’s why the same search may give you a different result!
Then, I found this nice little tool which showed me more information on all the servers.
So, if you have been doing the same, check your site out on Live PR and then sit back and wait. Sorry, don’t sit back and wait, keep on making your site even better!
That one step between good and great is what makes the real difference. A good designer will argue over letter spacing, leading, white space; and so they should (IMO). That’s what they are there for. That’s why they are a weird bunch (a good one anyone). They live and breathe what they perceive as ‘cool’ in terms of design.
So, for that you can forgive. Even better, test them to the limits…
Cameron Moll talks about his recent presentation with his nine key differences.
A report released yesterday by Neilsen/New Ratings gives us an insight into how people are using technology and what it means to them. It also covers a very important point, do they understand it?
Also, acronyms, loved by techies and marketing all over, are a big turn-off. For instance, 350% more people know what a Personal Video Recorder is compared to a PVR.
The same would apply (as we have found) with all sorts of industry terms, not just technical.
So, be careful out there. Your SEO may be hampered by a lack of judgement using those CMS systems. This may affect your CTR and PR.
E-Consultancy reports news that UK online ad spend will overtake national newspaper advertising by the end of 2006.
A study by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers, showed firms spent £917.2m on online advertising in Britain between January and June, a 40.3% rise over the same period last year.
The
IAB said the web continued to be the ad industry’s fastest growing
sector during the six months, having increased its market share to
10.5% from 7.3% a year before. It is now within 1% of the national press, which the IAB said commands 11.4% of the market.
The UK Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) had their website
redesigned and re-built earlier this year. Their specifications required
the new website to be accessible. It isn’t. (writes Roger Johansson).
One thing I have noticed a lot is when people claim W3C compliancy, and when validated, the page is not; or the page complies to ‘transitional’ status. This, in my opinion (and I may be alone here), doesn’t count. If you are going compliant, you may as well go the whole hog - no shortcuts.
Another big issue is with content-managed systems. Now, even when adding copy to a web page using a CMS system, you may be buggering up your compliancy. For instance, when is a £ not a £? To create a £ sign using standards, it needs to be entered as ‘£’ or ‘£’.
Now, I am sure that over time CMS systems and web page generating software will come up-to-date on these issues, but at the moment they don’t and herein lies the problem.
If you are proud enough to claim compliancy, you should be proud enough to ensure that it runs through your site.
That said, I better quickly go off and check all of our pages!
If you are still wondering what Accessibility is about, you may be interested in this white paper.
If you have a new website (domain), the chances are you won’t be able to find it in Google when you do a search, even if you submit your URL.
Google needs to know you’re not some fly-by-night spammer trying to make a quick buck.
This great article by Andy Hagan has some very good advice on how you can avoid the Google Sandbox (as it’s known).
To paraphrase, we have three bits of advice:
This sounds obvious but so many people simply don’t. Your pages need to be relevant and written well. Each page needs to be built as an individual page. So start by making better web pages.
Many people have a tendency to upload their new site and wait for the traffic. Not gonna happen! Tell people about your site, drive direct traffic. Email footers can be used to advertise your new site; create press releases for trade or your local area.
Also, don’t leave the content static. Update the site regularly with news and opinions. The search engines are looking how active your site is as well.
If you are technically-minded, upload your site map to Google direct.
Go out to the big-wide web and set up some incoming links to your site from quality sites and blogs. Comment (intelligently) on respected peoples blogs and track-back to your website. You are not only getting incoming visitors from these sites, but also incoming links. This is important in building trust to your site.
You can also use sites such as Digg, Netscape, Hub Pages, Squidoo, del.icio.us and Blink to build links to articles on your website.
No-one said it would be easy!
Maybe the next big thing in marketing - Self-destructing e-mails.
Lawyers are using Echoworx Corp.’s "secure send" option to remove
time-sensitive emails from a recipient’s inbox and to confirm that the
right person opens a letter, DMNews reports. Some marketers apparently think it could prove useful for EDM (Electronic direct marketing) campaigns, too.For example, a message for 15 percent off within the next week could
disappear at the sale’s end, when the content is no longer relevant.
Rather than having an inbox full of messages from one retailer,
consumers would see only the latest one, giving the impression that the
retailer isn’t bombarding them.
From Marketing Vox
Sexy little Direct Mail Piece produced for Pillar Data (storage experts backed by some fella called Larry Ellison)… TAKE CONTROL.
This concept revolved around gaming, winning
and taking control of your storage, hence the 360 handset. Included a nice little 3D rendering of the handset.
Escape client, Truly Scrumptious, owned by ex-Escapee Claire (now a Killick), today launches a new online shop selling beauty products.
TSBeauty Shop runs from The Escape On-line shop solution, due to be launched officially in early November.
Combined with e-mail marketing, we are currently building up this new site with a combination of PR (mainly online), Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing.