Posts

Well I've got to be honest, I'm genuinely gobsmacked.

Maybe the sudden surge of socialism and lurch to the left wasn't to be unexpected in light of years of economic pain and austerity.

But I think Cameron must have thought he'd won the lottery when Corbyn won. Labour now needs to rewrite recent history, dismantle it's current image and rebuild itself as a true socialist and trade union party, something I never thought I'd see again in my lifetime.

It will be interesting to see if Corbyn policies can be tempered by Labour moderates, such as bringing back nationalisation and scrapping Nuclear weapons, or if this really is the new style Labour party. 

Business leaders seem to be cautious in their responses as they wait to see how the Corbyn led party shapes up, and how his previous Tax business approach pans out.

What do people think?

Do you think Corbyns Labour will be a boost for small businesses or a danger? As Rebecca says, it looks like we will have some lively exchanges to look forward to 

After having an SEO research Fri afternoon, came another superb article courtesy of Moz.

If you ever wanted to know the complete low-down on all the current thinking on how to rank your website, or what factors are stopping you from ranking, it's all here!

It's long, it's full on, and has as much information as you will ever need.

Google Ranking factors - Northcutt

If you do read it, be interested to hear any views, anything you don't understand, disagree with?

he's been terminated....  

Once in a while when trying to catch up on the inner workings of today's SEO, from the millions of articles of varying quality, you stumble upon a diamond.

Here is one such article. 

How to improve title tag CTR by 20%

The article stems from January this year, but it is well worth a read.

Just so we are clear, title tags are the name of your web page that shows up in Google search results, eg below:

If you have access to your code, they sit in the "head" section of your code and look like this:

Help with getty images threat | My Local Services

Title tags have long been a very important factor of SEO, and if you know nothing about them, then it's time you should. A starter for 10 is my SEO 101 post from yesteryear but still relevant.

Ross Hudgens from Siege Media argues that Title Tag optimisation is now a very overlooked part of Google ranking, and techniques that were relevant a few years ago, have been superseded.

The author has done a lot of analysis on title tag optimisation, so it's well worth a read, and I know from experience how effective title tag optimisation is.

So have a read a read and let me know what you think. A 20% increase in click through rate isn't to be sneezed at!

www.siegemedia.com/title-tags

Be interesting to hear any observations or thoughts.

Don't you just love those off camera "mike still switched on" gaffs

BBC News

Wearing a microphone but not on camera, he was thought to be rehearsing an answer to a question on devolution.

Ahead of a speech in Leeds, he said: "We just thought people in Yorkshire hated everyone else, we didn't realise they hated each other so much."

It is not known whether Mr Cameron was making a joke and Downing Street has refused to comment.

As expected, Twitter has come alive and hasn't failed to disappoint

But my favourite so far...

Dunno, habit, familiarity, convenience? Used to only be Morrison's near me when I lived up North.

These days, Tescos always seems to be bigger and busier, especially in Stratford. Plus I drive past Morrisons every day to and from the office. Tend to find Morrison's cold cuts aren't a patch on Tescos, but they certainly seem to be cheaper, at least on the rubbish I buy. 8 pack of diet coke cans, £2, 24x bag of quavers, £3. Plus sarnies are much better than Tescos.

No Sainsburys near us, and I can't face going into Lidel or Aldi 'cause I'm too posh

Can't fault passion and enthusiasm, and long hours are the curse of the business owner. But from someone who's been there, married life, young family and long hours without switching off is a dangerous combination. Took me a long time to appreciate it.

Put your family first and delegate.

But forums is ok, you can do that on the phone or tablet while the missus is watching bakeoff 

Hi bouncernev

You asked a question and have some good responses, has any of that helped? What are your thoughts?

As Google repositions itself and becomes a subordinate under it's Alphabet overseer, Google itself has decided to re-brand.

It's not the first time, and as they say in their blog, it won't be the last. But it's an interesting development that might be worth taking on-board or at least thinking about for your own business.

Here's the new Google logo:

Which replaces the outgoing one:

Although more of a tweak than a re-brand, the real story is the acknowledgement that Google no longer sees the desktop as it's primary delivery device. It has built on it's now familiar colour theme to create familiar looking logos which will work on smaller devices.

The fact it has created the microphone one shows how much importance it is putting on speech capable devices.

So if nothing else, look at your own business and branding. How does it compare across different devices. Is it recognisable, does it work, and can your customers identify you?

Here is the Google blog entry if you haven't seen it:

Google’s look, evolved

Yep, I think Rebecca won that 

Fastest Alexa rank in history I suspect...