SEO Ireland

Limerick Local Heroes - Town Hall Success

2012-01-31T22:52:00.000Z

Last night saw the first main event of the Limerick Local Heroes event - the town hall meeting. It was, by all definitions, a complete success. Many thanks to all of the co-contributors and a big round of applause to Tony Frawley for getting everything going, keeping it going and for standing up and introducing everyone!

It was chaired by Aonghus McAnally - who gave up so much time for us - and was a superb presenter and speaker.

It was hugely inspiring - there was so much feedback - and everyone was positive. It was everything we as a group wanted, and it was great to see that there was only a message of solidarity and support. We had no idea that so many would turn up - but we're pretty glad we planned for it. With about 160 people pre-registered, we still had no idea of how many others would turn up but we were so happy to see the Strand Hotel fill up so quickly!

Support from the Strand and Absolute Hotel has been superb. The Absolute has been "housing" the many meetings that the event organisers have held to prepare and plan over the past 3 months (and I've only been a small contributor) - and the Strand generously and similarly donated the fantastic Shannon Event Suite.

Fair play to everyone and all of the volunteers who got involved - anonymously and without self promotion - it's so good to see community/altruistic spirit at times like this. And to many the people who gave up 3 hours of a Monday night in January on a whim of a chance at watching something happen to make a difference.

Also - super to see so many people who have moved to Limerick become so involved. Limerick is as diverse and as friendly as it is historic and traditional.

I think we all loved the Monorail idea - who couldn't but be reminded of the classic Simpsons Episode featuring the town hall meeting to propose a monorail? Absolutely brilliant - and with all of the colleges and skilled engineers we have, a chance to revisit an idea that has become a worldwide obsession since the 1800's - cheap, easy to build transport for everyone.

Thank you to everyone!

Funny that some Limerick bloggers can find only negativity in this. Sad to say - and pointless to link to in anyway - but funny that half the reason that some people have to push harder because some people can only find a reason to hold back. I'm not sure of the right words - In spite of or despite? Maybe someone can help .... :)

Public Town Hall Meeting for Limerick Local Heroes

2012-01-19T21:53:00.000Z

Limerick Local Heroes are inviting the people of Limerick to attend a townhall meeting to discuss the project and how people can get involved. The meeting will take place on Monday, the 30th of January at the Strand Hotel in Limerick. More details here.

Tony Frawley, spokesperson for the Limerick Local Heroes Steering Group, explains

“Limerick Local Heroes was born out of a frustration amongst genuine Limerick people drawn from the arts, business, sporting & community sectors who believed their voices haven’t been heard in developing a future vision for Limerick, particularly in terms of job creation."

The Limerick Local Heroes initiative is not for profit and the steering group behind the initiative is made up of individuals from all sections of Limerick society, business, sports, arts, community, education all of whom are giving their own time to developing an environment for job creation.

Those who are interested in attending can pre-register at http://llh.eventbrite.ie/?ebtv=C

Limerick Local Heroes | Be the change

2012-01-12T17:33:00.001Z

I've always thought it was important for local citizens to support their city - take pride, responsibility and get involved in whatever they can. Limerick has been an employment black spot for a very long time. In fact, it seems like it's been that way forever. But something is afoot to change it - Limerick Local Heroes

It struggled to get a University - and only when an American entrepreneur philanthropist decided to back (read: fund, pay, do it) and it struggles to get other things - like developing citizens who can believe in themselves, their city and their county. Limerick is the underdog of the underdogs. The National media pour scorn on Limerick - as if to point out that living in the overpriced, traffic choked capital isn't so bad because it could be worse - you could live in Limerick, where presumably people are shot dead just for trying to go outside to find water or charcoal.

Its a city that struggles with itself. When your own government tells you can't then you begin to believe it. The best leave. And then come back and find that the people who stayed behind now demonstrate a feeling of collective abandonment.

But those are just feelings. The thing is that Limerick is a terrific place in my opinion. And I grew up in the place that was just voted as the top destination on the planet: Cape Town.

There are fantastic things happening in Limerick. And Limerick is made up of lots of really smart, interesting, talented and lovable people and includes people from all over the world who now call it home.

So lets highlight this a bit by supporting the Limerick Local Heroes Initiative, based on the incredible success of "Can Do" recently exhibited by Dundalk on the RTE show, "Local Heroes - a town fights back".

Great to see many of the faces from Limerick Open Coffee and Bizcamp Limerick there (mainly Gabriela Avram, to whom this city owes a huge debt of gratitude and high praise for her tireless efforts in promoting the city, educating the city and creating so many positive events that include the very successful 3D Camp amongst many more).

The problem with blaming the government for the lack of progress in dealing with job creation and economic success is that holding them responsible for something that they know nothing about is frankly, absurd. The government needs to create the right conditions for economic activity to take place: Infrastructure, Education, Security, Enabling Trade. There are some interventions that are super necessary - enterprise ireland, the IDA, regulators. But frankly, entrepreneurs have to be the small in SME. Nobody is going to do it for us.

What makes America great, in my opinion, is Americans. They take pride and responsibility. They've believed in the unbelievable and made it happen. Now its our turn: after all, where did most Americans come from?

Some of the many success stories in Limerick include: Analog Devices, Dell, Vistakon, Cook Medical, LIT, The LIT LEAP Programme, The University of Limerick - which includes Leroy, Aughnish Alumna, Wyatt and so many more.

Follow the Local Heroes Limerick campaign on Twitter via the hashtag #limerickurmylady and on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/#!/localheroeslimerick

Techspectations - SEO & Social Media - great day for IM Geeks

2011-11-02T18:57:00.000Z

I was delighted to be at DCU yesterday to see the speakers and audience at the latest Techspectations event. Its the second one I've attended and I was very kindly asked to join the Q&A Panel at the end. It was by far one of the most interesting discussions I've seen with some great questions from some very engaging members of the audience.

We held a free Techspectations event today at Dublin City University in conjunction with the LINK Research Centre, North Dublin Chamber of Commerce and DCU Business School. The event was entitled "When Search and Social Collide" and Master of Proceedings as our very own Sean Donnelly (@Seanog1982).
You can read the rest of the post on Theo Lynn's Google+ page

It was a really enjoyable day with a lot of high level and technical knowledge being handed out. As I was invited to sit on the panel, I also got to meet some absolute legends from the world of SEO and Internet Marketing, which included SEO Nuts Alan K'Necht, Gillian Muessig, Anne Kennedy, Evan Fishkin, our "own" Krishna De and Rick Kelley from Facebook.

Who's Who
+Gillian Muessig (CEO, SEOMoz) @seomom http://www.seomoz.org
Anne Kennedy (Beyond Ink) @annekennedy
Evan Fishkin (Slingshot SEO) @efishkin http://www.slingshotseo.com
+Alan K'necht (Digital Always Media Inc) @knecht http://www.digitalalwaysmedia.com
+Krishna De (BizGrowth) @krishnade http://krishnade.com
Rick Kelley (Director of Sales- EMEA at Facebook) http://www.linkedin.com/in/rickkelley

Dealing with Bad SEO and Spam SEO

2011-10-21T23:59:00.002+01:00

The easy guide to dealing with bad seo

View more presentations from PrimaryPosition.com

Our latest SlideShare, which looks at how Bad SEO is perceived and how people ultimately deal with it. A good guide and set of checks to ensure that your SEO Consultant or Vendor is working for you and is using best practices.

Now in Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQ1mQX4mosY

Fascinating Survey - why do users abandon funnel carts

2011-07-06T20:03:00.003+01:00

Econsultancy posted a blog post today, entitled Why do consumers abandon online purchases, and it's just brilliant. It really underscores what we've been saying for years - based purely on experience. While this was just a small sample, the data stacks up with the reason behind the growth of the internet and search marketing as a result:

Consumers want to buy the right product at the right price
Consumers want to buy it from the right place

Traditional marketing has always been built around a brand and search marketing (for example SEO) has always been built around generic. This has been difficult for Brand Marketing to understand. Brand marketing is, in it's worst form, quite often one dimensional. Often the message is "Yes you could buy this for less over there but we want you to spend more". That is - honestly - many people's perception of a company or a product. And that is a brand. Brand's don't want you calling it by the generic. They want you to remember the brand. So they engage in heavy advertising. They get music starts. Movie starts. "I love my [insert brand here]". Do they ever even use it?

Are you just paying more to have the same the thing sold to you at a higher price because you're aspirational?

Businesses are least likely to buy in this fashion but it was interesting to take the following away from the post

Amongst the chief signals to give people trust:

Trustmarks (think SSL, Membership, Testimonials): 48%
Contact Information: 46%
Someone they know had used it before: 40%
Looked Professional and well designed: 32%

Least important were:

Well known brands: 24%
Being fast: 23%

Most likely to stop you purchasing after adding a few products:

High delivery charges: 74%
Technical problems: 54%
High Prices: 49%
Needing to register: 24%
Other: 2%

So, when you're reviewing your website, make sure you're pricing, returns policy and delivery prices are in order. You could probably increase sales more by reducing shipping charges (and maybe demonstrating how low they are) more than by many other improvements combined!

Its amazing how many people will tell you with absolute confidence that x, z and y are critical. With full conviction yet based solely on their own personal belief or vested interests!

How to develop an internet marketing strategy

2011-07-01T23:29:00.000+01:00

How to create an Internet Marketing Strategy

View more presentations from PrimaryPosition.com

Spam: Dirty. Sexy. Funny.

2011-06-16T17:58:00.000+01:00

Can the Spam
The reminders of this are everywhere this week. Everywhere I look, its coming. I used to defend SEO vigorously on twitter and in blogs when people had reached levels of despair with the rising tide of spam. It's everywhere: Blog comments, blogs, twitter, cookie cutter sites, LinkedIn, paid links and e-mail. Actually e-mail isn't that bad - not as bad as it used to be. Well done to Microsoft and their crack anti-spam investigation team that recently stopped as much as 60% of spam e-mail.

Someone recently shared how they "dominate LinkedIn" recently. I'm not linking to it but essentially his job profile was literally the length of the screen - "Marketing advisor, Marketing assistant, Marketing..". You get the picture - it wasn't pretty.

The Dirty
Spam and blackhat SEO to me, was largely the preserve of American hard-hitting Blackhat marketeers and the enourmous sweatshop industry they've [help] create in India, China, Malaysia, the Philipines. People who probably never used the internet except to make money. Your internet experience is not their concern - you're just another over paid, over consumerised and lazy Westerner to sell rolex watches, holidays and insurance to. Its obvious, its bad, its annoying. And that's just the US side. But it's getting into Ireland. Bar the top tier SEO agencies (of which there is really only a handful) - probably 60% of people providing SEO as a paid-for service - outsource it. And it's always spammy. SEO as a product plan can only be spammy.

A young, vibrant and dynamic company recently approached us. Their existing SEO was handcrafted, slightly outsourced and very heavy. And it needed more. So we started looking at the guys at number one. The spam wasn't just obvious. It was an avalanche. I had to lie down. It was enourmous.

And it was Irish led. Entire fake, cookie cutter sites which 'spun' content were created - a single bad, copy+paste blog post was refiled again and again and again, giving them NASA terminology numbers in backlinks. I was distraught.

One person called me a spammer. Once. It was 3 years ago. I'm still shocked. I hate spam in all its various incarnations. As do you probably.

The Sexy
There's nothing sexy about spam kids, but its used a lot on twitter - 0 followers, lots of bit.ly tweets and a really sexy avatar. You know the drill. Well, it's not enough. I think we need to be more on guard. Those dodgy looking websites and blogs aren't just a mere inconvenience - they're harming real businesses. They push real businesses, ideas, brands and genuine content out of the way. So if you're on twitter and someone spams you - Report it - close it down - let twitter work out their IP Addressess and lets help can the spam.

The Funny
Some spam is just ridiculously funny. Self certifying SEO experts are spammers - how do you certify yourself? I think its funny anyway. Especially when its obvious to all and sundry that you clearly couldn't rank in Google if you tried. Just because you've read a few books or blogs about meta data, bookmarking, blog commenting, links (see where the spam comes from) - doesn't make you an SEO expert. Nothing does. You're not a guru. You haven't created anything. You aren't an oracle. Selling yourself as one = snake oil.

Want to show that you rank - then do. Rank for your area or region. People will respect that. Get referred to people for doing a good job. Classing yourself as an expert is your opinion on your own set of credentials. It's empty, meaningless and if you don't know that then how do you know what it is you don't know?

Except when you see the costs that they add to businesses who to have spend more to get them out of the way. So, if you're in Google and see a spammy website, log in and report it. Website copying content? Using too many keywords (stuffing) ? Deceptive pages (e.g. "rolex in Dublin" but then showing something else?) Report it to Google. Help us all make it a better place.

You can report spam found in Google in the Google Spam Report

Google results and Social Media

2011-06-14T20:53:00.001+01:00

Google Gets Social

Working in a series of posts about Google and it's integration with Social Media (see the Google +1 Button and the LinkedIn Recommend Button) , I'm seeing more and more twitter shares in Google results featuring twitter, blogger, flickr and others. I also noticed tonight that Google sometimes links people via MyBlogLog.com (a Yahoo! service and Social Media profile aggregator) that was shut down on the 24th May this year - bit of a disappointment as I quite liked it!

Showing up

Here's a search for "Gaggia" that shows what I mean. It shows who in my network shared this link via twitter - I find it quite useful actually. Note that you need to be signed into Google (aka Personalised Search) - otherwise it doesn't work. More importantly, you don't need to be signed into twitter - Google tracks this from your public profile and also from other networking sites.

Staying in control

If you didn't know this, you can control what accounts Google associates you with through a special "My Accounts" control panel. You can link your LinkedIn, twitter, Quora, Plaxo, Yelp, Microsoft, Yahoo and other accounts. If you want to.

Sharing yourself

Most sites I've looked, the "Shared by" tends to be an employee/owner or representative - possibly the first person to share.

Notes: You need to be signed in to use personalised search fully and also to use or see the Google +1 recommend button. You may also still be signed in after you've signed out of Google. Depending on your level on cynicism, Google is trying to either continue helping you or track you - you decide!

Here's the Google Video on it

Blogger launches new Mobile Template

2011-06-13T22:21:00.000+01:00

Blogger are catching up fast and their new Mobile Template is pretty slick. It uses your Blogger Blog's existing Template and modifies it for mobile screens. This is literally one-click formatting-and-publishing. It looks really well on my iPhone and it will be interesting to see the mobile usage on it change over the next few months - if any! Here's what the blog looks like using the Blogger Mobile Template Preview:

It's getting hardrer to move to WordPress (although I'm dual-blogging - here and on our SEO Glossary) Actually, we always use WordPress, I'm just stuck on Blogger - especially as the features are growing so quickly and its so easy to maintain and edit.

SEO Clare

2011-06-05T00:17:00.000+01:00

Blog post to see how far this will go up for SEO Clare and how long it will take.

Lots of love to my boyz Keith, Raul and Paul

Bringing Virtual to Reality - Ireland Day and Techspectations

2011-05-21T16:43:00.000+01:00

On Tuesday, I'll be attending Techspectations for the DCU and PocketNative #IRLDay Initiative at DCU, designed to Get #Ireland Trending, thanks to Theo Lynn on twitter.

So, to make it a bit more fun, I'm asking our virtual and global audience to log in to the SecondLife sim of Dublin, http://secondlife.com/destination/dublin, and if possible, DCU will screen it live, with extra insights from @daynuv.

No naughty gestures no, you hear? :)

Ireland hashtag search: http://twitter.com/#!/search/Ireland

Can you Tweet your Value Proposition?

2011-04-19T22:42:00.000+01:00

I was recently invited to Guest Post for Future Curve, a Value Proposition consultancy, about Social Media and Value Propositions. My post, entitled "Can you tweet your Value Proposition" was posted here : http://futurecurve.com/can-you-tweet-your-value-proposition/

Digital Advertising Ireland

2011-04-07T23:26:00.000+01:00

Just a quick blog post to start talking about our next venture into Digital Advertising Ireland. We're currently expanding and working with a world-class crew to take Primary Position to the next level in Digital and Online Media.

The Google +1 Button - long overdue

2011-03-30T21:18:00.001+01:00

Google announced the Google + 1 Button on their blog, today, which I think will likely have a positive impact on SEO.

Users of the first Google Toolbar will possibly remember the like and dislike voting buttons on it. They were available beside the PageRank Meter but you had to enable them manually. (I don't have a screenshot). I used to like them but they were quickly disabled as they were too open to abuse. But Google has returned, Facebook-esque, with the Google +1 Button. I think this is brilliant and much overdue.

A lot will be made of it being a Facebook copy-cat but that's overrated. Much of Facebook isn't original and Google has tried this in the past. It's also not social networking - Google is an aggregator of data and their star rating system, like/dislike voting buttons and PageRank systems are relative dinosaurs compared to Facebook and the like button.

Here's why I think its so important and where it will have some positive effects for SEO.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder
Users liking sites brings back appreciation for design, UI and UX. If design is really bad and the User Experience is awful, this will could have a negative effect on a website. Of course, design is impossible for search engines to take into account and its pretty hard for humans given its subjective nature.

This to me is great news for people who value strong design and user experiences and is a big shot in the arm for web designers. But it's how the design affects you, not how you feel about the design (note for site owners) - and so "graphics-free" sites like Craigslist will probably garner many likes.

Up until now, design and UIX was taken into account by indirectly valuing the CTR and link back stats that Google collects.

Can the spam
A massive benefit could be reduced spam counts. Rubbish and empty blogs, posts, press releases, content farms and other spam mass generated by ruthless and shameful blackhat-SEO companies and their careless clients should be hit again by giving a direct vote to users

Bringing Balance to the Force
By giving users a vote on pages - it essentially starts to move to balance out the guesswork by the algorithm. For example, if users keep picking the first few sites that rank but they get less likes than other sites - it makes sense for Google to shake up the mix a bit.

Execution
Its unlikely that this will be a heavy weight factor at the start. Because internet representation is still anonymous (and Privacy Campaigners keen to see it that way), the system is open to some abuse, so some form of balance of power to limit it.

Ennis Open Coffee gets started

2011-03-30T10:16:00.000+01:00

Ennis Open Coffee is now on thanks to @enewmedia.

It’s an open forum, where you might feel obliged to buy a coffee, but otherwise you are free to drop in between the hours of 11AM-1PM each 1st Friday @ The TempleGate Hotel, Ennis, County Clare.

http://www.e-newmedia.com/advice_centre/ennis-open-coffee-club/

The Internet : Going Global and other myths

2011-03-01T21:43:00.001Z

It's 2011. We're embracing the 3rd decade of public internet access. Since 1991, home use of the internet has been mushrooming. Google has been at the forefront of the use of the internet. If you want to find something on the internet, you use Google. Ok, maybe you use Bing or Yahoo, but same thing really.

Why? Search engines have the whole internet read and indexed, stored and filed, cross referenced. Google has been going since 1994 and in 2001/2 became the biggest search engine in the world (by use and by documents indexed - the then used benchmark). You can read more about the history of Google on my slideshare.

With all of these documents, Google has to look at different ways to present information. It's slowing moving towards the concept/idea of a Symantic Web but allowing cross-referencing. Google is learning to return results on the way you use results. It's using Places (Geo-Targeting) and Organic Ranking. It displays results by Blogs, Discussions, Real-time (twitter), Video (including Youtube) and Images. It uses User Ratings and reviews, average prices and other data (Google Snippets).

It's a vastly different animal from 10 years ago. So why do pre-Google myths still surround us? Some of them are made up and some of them are just scary. Many of them are issued like edicts by self-professed experts. But they're all debunkable - Google goes to comprehensive lengths to distribute accurate information but we've too many soap-box experts willing to shout out rather than sit back and listen.

This is a quick list of my favourite, pet-peeve Internet Myths. I hear them daily. I read about them on Fora (plural for Forums), blogs and in advice given to clients. Sit back - some of them seem like complete fact - but these are all bona fida Internet Urban Legends. If you hear any SEO Guru espousing the virtues of these - run, run away fast!

1. Keywords and Keywords density: Why do 1990's SEO "tips" still survive into 2011? Because its easy to understand. It's based, loosely, on a library-style indexing system. Really - Google is going to rank you for "Hotels Dublin" because you have it 101 times on your home page and you competitor fell short at 100? Forget it - Myth Busted: Google doesn't respect a Keywords Meta-tag!

Snake oil Hint: Keywords are just text.

2. You get penalised for duplicate content: I've been lectured on this at length. I keep 4 domains with exact, duplicate content that are all at least 5 years old and none of them are penalised. I don't need to - Google has a video on it. Duplicate content, that you own, is not necessarily penalised. Cloned, syndicated, plaguarised and scraped content being different. Rolled up content is not penalised content. This is actually quite a complex area but I'll keep it simple - its how I can tell the cowboys from the real researchers!

Snake Oil Hint: Be careful but be weary when someone pontificates on this one!

3. .COM is global: This is the worst and most damaging myth of all. A .COM, for most parts is a TLD but it's not necessarily Global. If you're a search user in Ireland or France, you'll get search results based on your location. A .COM hosted in France with largely French Traffic will most likely be seen as a French site - interchangeable thus with a .FR - the ccTLD for France.

Why is this myth the worst? We speak to companies and web designers every day who think selecting MyCompany.com will make them ubiquitously available. The issue is Geo Targeting. Google uses your Location (e.g. Ireland) to show websites that match your search and location best.

Here's an example:

This a search for "Pensions" from Google IE and Google UK. So whats so different? In both cases, the search is "Pages from the Web", not just pages from Ireland or the UK. In both cases the results are perfectly tailored to my Geo-Location. In fact, because I have a Dublin IP address, Google is showing me a map of Dublin and showing listings and cross referencing them with their listed places. In the UK search, my Dublin address doesn't match a UK Region, and therefore no map is shown.

So what does this mean? Well, in the UK results, most of the UK sites (AdWords aside) are targeting the UK. In Google Webmasters, you can only associate 1 country with a domain. In the case of a ccTLD - you are stuck with the countries that keyword is associated with (for example .IE is for Ireland only and .CO.UK for the UK only). Any of the TLD's (COM, NET, ORG, INFO, BIZ,....) can be set to target any country.

Even if you don't set it, in the case of most new TLD's , Google will auto-select your Geo-Location for you based on hints provided by where you're hosted, words used in your content, address hints, where you get links from, searches you're associated with.

In some cases (but rarely) - Google will select 2 locations - this is common for companies with both Irish and UK companies. But's it very hard to create.

Why does this myth persist? Well, big sites like Microsoft.com often outrank local sites - but that's because of their enormous authority. When you select "Pages from [my country]" they often disappear.

So whats the big deal? Well, many web designers are still building websites that can only run on one domain. Quite often it's a .IE or if their client wants to be international, on a .COM - even though the site will probably still only be seen as a .IE (and there's little they can do about it). When queried, most retort that Google "Punishes" duplicate content or that international domains are hard to purchase. And this is holding us back. As long as we continue to believe, perpetuate and listen to myths, we'll only struggle to use the Internet as a successful exporting vehicle.

Hint: German and English content published on two domains does not qualify as "Duplicate Content"

It doesn't matter what the myth or excuse is - there's no reason for them to exist anymore, and web designers will have to rise to the challenge of developing localised sites - that's how people work and that's how Google works. Time to work with it, not against it!

Our new project for 2011

2011-02-23T18:56:00.002Z

The Project
Our new project for 2011 is to take and analyse traffic source data from a number of websites with a combined pool of at least 100k - 1million visitors. This should be relatively easy as we manage sites with that level of traffic monthly.

The hashtag on twitter is #IrishTrafficSurvey.

Who?
We're doing this as a part "collaboration" with our sister WebCare (which builds and maintains Websites and Media for e-Commerce Clients). We'd also like to expand this to other online marketing companies to build a base from which we can measure the state and climate of the Irish Internet.

We're currently looking at traffic from websites in our Analytics accounts. This data will be compiled in proportion to each site (to give highs and lows) but will be kept anonymous. The data will be normalised and compiled and then made available to the public, but first we'll be sharing it with a select group of other online marketing observers.

If you'd like to be involved, please use the tag or contact us to add you to the list.

Data
Here is how we will look at the data and how the data will be made available:

Data Criteria:

Source

We're using Google Analytics only
We're using Absolute Visits, not Unique
We may include Page Views

We're selecting all traffic from Irish Websites targeting the Irish market. Websites and domains targeting other Geo-locations are not included
We'd like to sort that information by Irish Traffic within it - but that isn't going to be as easy as it looks as it sounds
Data will be taken from Analytics
All websites will be selling online and taking payment online. Those that are close-to-online sales may be included but recorded separately for further analysis
All sites are Business to consumer

Data Segments

Search Engines (By Google and Other)

Google Organic
Google CPC
Other

E-Mail Marketing

Where Possible
Some Newsletter

Top Social Networking sites

We've identified these as common referrers

twitter
Facebook
Stumbleupon
Boards.ie
Other Irish Forums

We'll also try to track the effort involved

All of this is our "planned" Data List - we look forward to any comments, ideas and suggestions you may have!

Google gets fed up of Fianna Fail and Fine Gael; Invents new party

2011-02-16T12:58:00.000Z

Google has clearly gotten into the Irish 2011 General Election with a huge amount of enthusiasm. Spurred on by a high search volumes in all of the political parties, Google is seeking to make it a bit easier with the new "Fianna Gael" party - which stands a pretty good chance of winning...

Google has a habit of grouping keywords together and often assembling new keyphrases based on words from different seaches. Each time you search - Google is "learning" - using pattern recognition. A major part of Google's drive is to essentially help you find things faster. So, it's take to optimising the whole search process - from the start of the search idea right through to delivery:

Here's how it does it:

Rapid search - searching billions of documents in split seconds using caches and compiled indices
Search Phrase suggestion (as you type, a predictive text style phrases suggester - see below)
Instant Results (where results display as your type, requires you to be signed in or 'recognised'; highly annoying)
Benchmarking the sites in the index to make sure the sites it sends you to are fast too (based on an average)

A famous example recently, was during "DrunkGate" - when you started typing in "Brian Cow" for "Brian Cowan", the predictive text or phrase suggester displays: (suggestions in Bold)

During the day it emerged, the "Brian Cowen Drunk" suggestion was first, demonstrating Google's focus on "trending" searches. If it was me, I'd be heavily engaged in Reputation and Personal Brand Management but this obviously doesn't matter to everyone. The suggested searches above are horrendous at best. There are now positives, only some neutrals.

Back to the topic at hand - Google often slices "related" keyphrases (one or more words in a group : Keyphrase but still called a keyword). The biggest search phrases are, according to the Google Keyword tool, "Fine Gael" (14k lcoal searches) and "Fianna Fail" (9,9k local searches). This isn't remotely accurate. It's based on a sliding curve/pattern system and multiplied out. The numbers are just too even - anyone who works with stats would find that more than a bit odd!.

But the oddest and funniest suggestion is "Fianna Gael":

And its not just a suggestion. Google's taking it quite seriously - having added the search volume for "Fine Gael" and "Fianna Fail" together - Google estimates a colossal 23k searches per month - making it the biggest political party in Ireland. So, if you're voter and can't make your mind up - try these guys. In fact, Google is so confident about it's new political party, it clearly doesn't think much of Voter Apathy - with "Why Vote" only topping 170 monthly searches....

The Green Party push their internet strategy into high gear...

2011-02-15T20:15:00.002Z

Only it's not good. In fact it's even worse than Fine Gael's desperately bad Valentine card. I'm not going to even link to it. It's just too dire. It was the worst online effort in #GE11 so far. But then the Green's did something worse - even worse than even not doing anything at all.

I was in the middle of gathering my thoughts about the challenges facing internet businesses in Ireland and the complete lack of them on anybodies radar. The challenges I'm referring to aren't about driving traffic or recessionary but a look at the wider challenges of a developing but diverse Irish Internet scene. Gateway providers, retailers, enablers and consumers are faced with a growing range of problems that are not being addressed or even heard of at a national and political level.

But, despite these the Green Party has decided to be completely unhelpful. They've suggested that we tax data usage on the internet. Just trying to do that would be an exercise in futility but it would seriously damage our international competitiveness, our fledging internet businesses and our campaigns to make internet access more universally acceptable (and this after we're already behind). I'm shocked and slightly outraged to be honest. Cynically, I've wondered if this was a bit of a political "smoke screen" - designed to create a diversion - but why would you want to divert people by destroying your own name? Something they learnt while in power perhaps,...

They suggest that this would be a good replacement for the TV Licence. Granted, the TV licence should go. Afterall, it subsidises RTE's overpaid staff - allowing them to charge less for advertising (pushing more effort on the independent channel TV3) while pretending to carry the voice of the national as the "national broadcaster". Got to love the recent Edelman Trust Barometer that highlights that Google is now more trusted than RTE by the public as a news source. And its not even a news source...

It does highlight the plain ignorance and almost contempt that Irish politicians treat the internet with. Comparing a data download tax with the TV Licence assumes that data is nothing more than idle 21st century consumerism - digital "Fair City" if you will.

Ireland's future is intertwined with the Internet - it will either take us into the future as product developers and technology owners or it will drag us there, enslaved because we failed to identify, adopt and embrace it.

Fianna Fail now targeting Fine Gael

2011-02-08T19:31:00.000Z

In an update to my last blog post, I have noticed that the term "Fine Gael" is now being targeted by Fianna Fail in their AdWords. They'll find it a lot higher CPC-wise (cost per click) to outrank "Fine Gael" though - as no doubt they'll have a much lower Quality Score (QS) which affects the cost of your ads.

Equally interesting - and I'm quite impressed by this - Fine Gael are using time-current ads - their ad below suggests that people watch an address from the Fine Gael leader, Enda Kenny, this evening.

How they rank - the main Irish Political Parties

2011-02-07T21:29:00.000Z

Damien Mulley recently lamented how little politicians were using the Internet to promote themselves and engage with the electorate in the upcoming General Election (#GE11) - and in particular networking sites like Facebook. Not that I expected them to much better on SEO/SEM, I thought I'd take a little peek to see how they were at least managing their brand in the Google SERPs.

It seems that Fianna Fail have quite a strong Brand SERP result - most of the results are either their own or at least "brand friendly". Nobody is running any AdWords on their name - including themselves.

Fine Gael have a similarly strong brand performance in the SERP's but they're also targeting their name through AdWords. If nobody else is targeting your brand in AdWords and you own the top Organic spots, then it may seem redundant and a little costly but it will also give you quite a lot of ancillary information: Just how popular is your brand (not if nobody is targeting it) and also how many searches actually take place (assuming AdWords is a lot more accurate than the Webmasters CTR tool - which, given its related to financial charges, AdWords should be more accurate). Because of the close relationship between the site linked in the AdWord, the Quality Score should be high and the CPC quite low, even if being targeted by a competitor.

The most interesting is however Labour. The difference between Labour and the other main parties is that Labour is a generic English word - so the other sites returned are related to instruments of the state involved in Labour policy and management. Interesting that Fianna Fail is targeting "Labour" but also so is Pampers (???)

Nobody seems to be currently targeting either Sinn Fein or the Greens....Draw your own conclusions!

Google accuses Bing of copying it's search results

2011-02-02T12:40:00.001Z

Today Google has claimed that Bing is now using Google's Search Results in its own search engine. The claim - and that it is denied by Microsoft - was asserted on the Google Webmaster blog. Bing have posted a reply.

The evidence produced by Google is for a search for [torsorophy], which is a misspelling of a surgical term ("tarsorrhaphy"). But this resulted in a very narrow result set (just 2 pages or results are returned) which Bing returned (although only 1 of the 2 URL's matched Google's - so hardly concrete evidence).

Incidently, a single or two word phrase that returns just 2 results is known as a Googlewhack and are very rare.

My reading of this is that Google is accusing Bing of using it's toolbar to help it crawl the web and develop search suggestions. The argument it is putting forward is that it discovers these pages through it's web crawling and indexing systems "organically" whereas Bing is just copying them from the results gathered by the IE 8 toolbar.

It's not stating that Bing is just using Google's results or result order in it's searches. Interesting to see how this pans out.

What URL shortener do you use?

2011-01-21T19:58:00.004Z

URL shorteners are very handy little utilities that shorten URL's. There's a good choice and I usually opt for http://Short.ie but experienced a few issues. Google launched theirs in 2009 but they recently opened it up (it used to only work on Feedburner and the Google Toolbar) and because it produces stats (when logged in) - it's become my favourite.

Instead of using, for example: http://primaryposition.blogspot.com/2011/01/seo-and-internet-marketing-training-and.html , you can shorten it to this http://goo.gl/RIcAV. This URL is much easier and shorter to share in places like twitter, linkedin and facebook where space is limited - or on e-mail where it can get concatenated and stop working (if the URL isn't whole, it mightn't take the user to the desired spot).

Essentially all that happens is that Google have purchased GOO.GL - a play on "Google". GL is the ccTLD (Country Code Top Level Domain - ccTLD) for Greenland. This software then translates the short address into the long address, and also provides a fast lookup so that sites can show the target URL when you mouseover

It also gives amazing real time stats about how many people follow your link, when they clicked and from what country and platform.The shortener can be used without logging in - handy but then it doesn't store any details. As per usual with web visitor stats, the information tracked is not personal and doesn't identify any individuals at all.

The main dashboard gives you an overview of the URL's you've shortened

The Shortener detail screen shows the user platform, application, age and the number of clicks

This makes it very handy when sharing on twitter - so you can see who finds which links interesting (by country) and how many people following you are actually engaging with you. This should hopefully improve your blogging and tweeting content!SimplyZesty blogged about tracking twitter RT Click-through-Rates here, which I thought was interesting and relevant.

SEO and Internet Marketing - Training and Tools

2011-01-20T17:42:00.000Z

Just a note that we've updated our page on the the training that we provide in SEO and Internet Marketing.

The tools we train people to use include

Google Analytics
Google WebMasters
Google Places, Alerts and Profiles
Some AdWords
Keyword Selection
Site Architecture

WebCare.ie, our e-Commerce support partner is currently hiring e-commerce support engineers.

SEO - the devils in the detail

2011-01-19T20:05:00.000Z

Of all the tools I've used over the years, the Google SK tool is the most useless. It looks really good and really easy to use - and perhaps that's the problem. It just doesn't give nearly enough information. Too little detail. And with SEO - that's where it all happens.

SEO is a strategy. PageRank, SERP's (Search Engine Rank Positions), Alexa scores, Website valuations, keywords and titles - these are all symptoms of the implementation of a strategy. SEO isn't a checklist of things you need or have to do. Some of them are accidental or even intentional red herrings.

When you read all the many blog posts and news articles on SEO (and Internet Marketing), many of them are just written by people who want to be good or think that if 10 websites say the same thing, it must be true. Many are just looking for a website that can grow extra income on the side. "Work from home" ads in the classifieds were huge in the 1980's and 1990's and they're still going strong online.

Stop looking for a checklist - develop a strategy.

Google AdWords - Is a higher spend good for you?

2011-01-12T14:48:00.000Z

The User Interfaces in Google Analytics and Google AdWords have become much more similar in recent years, although some stark differences are visible. I noticed this a while back and I just couldn't resist blogging about it - it's a rather curious way Google reports on the metrics in AdWords.

In both, when viewing a comparison report (for example last month to this month or last 7 days or this month compared to the same time last year), increases and decreases are shown by a percentage change and then colour-coded - red if the change was negative and green if positive. For example, if your traffic grew 100% in the December over November, then the 100% is green. If, unfortunately, the bounce rate increased from 50% to 55%, then the 5% increase is noted in Red - because this is a negative metric change. You don't want your bounce rate to go up, just like you dont' want your page views to go down.

A client asked me to look at their AdWords campaign, as we often do. What's curious to me is that Google denotes an increase in spend in Green - so this is positive!?! Sure, if you have the right formula, and then you were returning €10 profit for every €1 spent, why wouldn't you drop €50k or even more - but just to have the up in spend regardless of the conversion rate as a green made me smile.

Leak Detection - An announcement from Smart Energy Systems

2010-12-07T15:24:00.000Z

We've been asked to help spread an announcement on behalf of one of our clients, SmartEnergySystems.ie, who are keen to raise awareness about the issue of leaking pipes over the Christmas period. Not only are leaking pipes an environmental hazard, it’s a huge drain on our limited safe drinking water supply. Frozen pipes can burst in extremely cold weather which only exacerbates the problem. Undetected water leaks are the main reasons for loss of water supply at this time of year. The public's cooperation in conserving water use (including not allowing taps to run continuously) is also greatly appreciated to allow water levels to return to normal. Water is our most valuable natural resource and we must conserve it. Smart Energy Systems have an emergency response number, 0818 288 050 and are available 24/7 for urgent leak detection. The company is operating right throughout the Christmas period and can be reached at any time to deal with emergency leak detection situations.

Alan Treacy, Director, has this to add:

Remember: Leaks on your premises are your responsibility, and will not be repaired by the council or water providers. Insurance companies will only settle claims once the leak is found and repaired, and subsequent leaks may not be covered by insurance. Underground leaks will require specialist leak detection equipment in order to be found. An undetected leak can cost a business thousands of euro and it is in a companies own interest to detect and repair them as fast as possible. Leaking water =leaking money. We would recommend carrying out a simple water audit on your supply to establish if a leak is present which can be done in under 5 minutes.

For instructions on how to carry out the simple check visit http://www.smartenergysystems.ie/simple-water-audit/

For leak detection enquires/concerns contact Smart Energy Systems Ltd (SES Ltd) on 0818 288 050 or email info@smartenergysystems.ie for a no obligation free consultation/advise.

Leak Detection Waterless Urinals

The New LinkedIn Recommend Button

2010-12-03T10:06:00.002Z

LinkedIn have added a new Company Recommend Button for websites and blogs. Similar to the Facebook "Like" button, which is quite consumer orientated, this button is must have for business websites.

Google and the Sponsored Links Text

2010-11-11T13:03:00.012Z

Google's first strategy to generate an income from it's Search Business was the Google Device. Described as a "Search Appliance" and displayed as a bright yellow rack server box, it wouldn't really have become the billion dollar system that AdWords is today.

But Google was right to stray away from the other monetisation routes of the day - like Yahoo's $299 search-inclusion service. This meant that the Google Search results were "organic" (or algorithmic) and influenced by a community rather than than by paying advertisers.

This was a major shot in the arm for smaller companies. Because Google had reduced the number of results from any domain to just 2 per 10 results, while a big brand may have been number 1, there was plenty of room for newcomers. Consumers could, for the first time, gain unbiased views on products and services, quite often not available in their own town or peer group. It was a major boon for the little guy - the consumers and the brands!

When Google appointed a new (and current) CEO, Eric Schmidt, he helped Google develop the AdWords system (also called Pay-Per-Click/PPC) and paved the way for Google's epic IPO. One of the more curious aspects of this, is that while Google has a strong policy on Paid for clicks (and we abhor paid for links), they've previously opted to name their AdWords adverts "Sponsored Links".

We welcome the correct use of the word Ads, in-line with FTC ruling that forces bloggers, writers, twitter users and other digital content creators to acknowledge client or otherwise commercial links, mentions or recommendations as such. This has caused huge confusion, and its not helpful to people who have clearly been confused between a number 1 organic ranking and a number 1 advert (aka sponsored link).

This has to be one of my all time favourites (note: organic rankings change cyclically but the point is valid):

10 years of Google

2010-10-17T22:44:00.002+01:00

A look back at how and why Google displaced thousands of search engines - to become the largest driver of traffic on the internet today

10 years of Google

View more presentations from PrimaryPosition.com.

The Great Irish Online Survey : 2010

2010-09-26T12:45:00.001+01:00

We plan to run a survey in a couple of weeks that we hope to get responses from Irish consumers regarding shopping habits, attitudes towards brands, payments, security, design and continuity. Respondents may be involved in the web industry but we'd like to separate the results out as much as possible.

The overall aim is to get a better idea of how people buy online and how to improve the experience for everybody. It should also establish some facts on which Web UX can be improved.

If you are involved in the Irish Web Industry - a shop owner, designer, PR, agency, industry body for example - and would like to help create, publish and invite respondents as a partner, then we would like to hear from you. We'd also like to publish any special offers/freebies that partners would like to give.

The data will be shared with partners equally for their own analysis.

Should every business be on Facebook Fan Pages? No....

2010-09-02T20:03:00.000+01:00

If only to start a balanced debate on what companies are really achieving through Facebook, I've started a debate on the Irish Webmasters Forum about it. With facts like "400 million potential" customers on Facebook, its quite scary for business owners - who need, more than ever, to make more sales - to ignore.

That makes this post very hard to write. Its been on my mind for months now. Facebook and in particular fan pages, are being sold as a cure-all, ignore-at-your-peril, never mind the obvious must-have for businesses. If only it was that simple....Well I've discussed it with lots of smart people that I really know and I think it's worthwhile opening up the topic for a little bit of discussion.

But 400 million customers? So Irish taxi drivers will be able to magically overcome geographical and legal (not forgetting commercial) constraints and pick up punters in New York? And Irish accountants and solicitors will be able to get work in Japan and Mexico. Because Facebook will bring you together.

Not forgetting language barriers, exchange rates (remember Ireland is still at the top of the top most expensive countries for things like mechanics, accountants, solicitors - well any skilled labour) etc.

Working in Primary Position puts me in unique and privileged place - we have access to over 200,000 visits per week through Irish websites that come from a variety of different sources - Direct, Search and Referral.

Visits from Facebook fall into the Referral variety. The % makeup between Search and Referral varies from 90% to 50%. Sometimes traffic from Direct/Referral spike with events, news, e-zines. Its all part of the rich tapestry of online traffic. Facebook accounts for less than 1%. That's an absolute fact. Many have very successful Facebook fan pages with 000's of fans. Naturally grown too.

While Facebook is an exciting, useful, fantastic tool - generating less than 1% of your traffic means that you have to generate 99% from somewhere else. Facebook is good for peer referral, peer review and a good indication of how people see your brand/product/service. Its a good traffic recycler (maybe the visitor didn't buy but he can recommend you) - but its not a core generator. Generate 100 visits from Search to get 1 Facebook fan - probably need to have 1000 really. That means a lot of work.

Want to sell online? Try Facebook...

2010-08-13T11:43:00.001+01:00

A very interesting idea was sent to me this week. A shopping cart for facebook. A facebook application that you can literally add to your profile or possibly even your fan page. It lets you sell directly through facebook, without having to send people back to your site.

I think this could be a really good idea for some people and it brings more and more of a person-to-person commercial element on the site. It looks quite good and the little test drive I gave it demonstrated it was quite workable. It was also developed in Ireland, which I think is also cool.

We have quite a few B2C clients that I'm hoping will be able to make good use of this. It also looks quite good for Charities who will be able to take donations straight from their followers. I'd also love to know what other people think. You can find the app here http://www.facebook.com/Vendorshop

Domain names and Northern Ireland

2010-07-21T14:05:00.001+01:00

This has been an issue for a while. With most situations, we advise businesses to create localised content when targeting different countries (in both their own language and their target markets), Northern Ireland is in a difficult position. Forgetting the political situation, Northern Ireland is part of of the .UK ccTLD group. This includes co.uk, .com.uk, .org.uk, and so on.

Ireland on the other hand has the .IE ccTLD extension, and for reasons unknown to me, doesn't have the .gov.ie, .co.ie, .org.ie subs. Which means the Governments' domain names are as exclusively recognisable as that of countries who do have a .GOV.xxx domain TLD.

Most people in Northern Ireland, with a UK/NI ISP, would have Google.co.uk (or Bing.co.uk or Yahoo.co.uk*) as their home page. Therefore their results are "localised" to UK results. Bear in mind that Belfast does have a UK Local Search (Dublin currently doesn't, at time of writing).

Thus business on either side of the border may have to consider having a .IE and a CO.UK for their business - which adds a bit of a nightmare to their content management and online Brand development.

As with .COM's, the lack of availability of domains on a global and national space is a growing problem. Many companies share the same names, and even with regional ccTLD's, the problem persists, as company names aren't always exclusive (unless protected by Trademark or other Registration). The problem is exacerbated for Northern Ireland, which is growing in it's connectivity with its neighbour to the South. There is no real border anymore, calling Northern Ireland from the South doesn't require an international extension.

The problem is, in part, that the web is still governed by a US-centric view of the world and a continued lack/resistance to localise, due in part to the pervasive myth that having a .COM (or indeed any TLD) is going to make your business global. Worse is the frightening trend that many Web design companies-cum-online marketing types still sell .IE domains only to companies clearly targeting other countries.

Its for this reason that I've never been a big promoter of the .EU domain. I just don't get it's point. Its no more relevant to someone in France or Ireland or Italy than any other domain bar their own. Given the different population and area sizes of some countries - and their own regional independence questions, perhaps the .EU needs to be localised. :-). The .IE covers a much smaller population than do .FR, .IT and .DE - so their localisation issues are probably much greater.

Thank you to @IvanODonoghue who pointed out that Scotland and Wales are probably in a similar predicament, as are maybe other ethnic groups living as part of a wider national

*Yahoo however, includes .CO.UK as potential Irish matches, particularly if hosted in Ireland

Just Google It! Advertising, Quad Bikes and CTR

2010-05-17T20:53:00.001+01:00

A couple of companies are now running "Just Google It" advertisements - both as sign boards and on radio - loosely based on Imagine! Broadbands WiMax ad (for which they didn't rank until they changed their page title - which I suggested although I doubt they picked that up from me). I think this is quite a clever idea - although I'm not really sure if it's working for them yet.

The most recent ads I've seen are one for an adventure centre (Quad Bikes) in the middle of the country somewhere around Mountrath I think and the new Advertising ad by Advertising.ie. In the first instance, the adventure centre used a person's name (I'm still not sure why it's so common to trade under your name in Ireland but there you go) - which I struggle to remember. Possibly because the name was quite common and that I've never met that person but if it had been Irish Adventure Centre for example, I might have a better chance of remembering it.

The "Advertising" campaign is quite clever - the radio advert demonstrates the companies full range of services but alas, despite registering the domain of the same name, the site ranks #3 in pages from Ireland. Also, I couldn't remember if the ad said "Advertise" or "Advertising" - it turns out it it was the latter - and they don't rank at all for "Advertise".

If you're going to rank #3, then you have to consider the other 9, 18 (including indented), 36 (including youtube, live, suggested, adwords) places that you've now brought people in front of that don't connect to you.

This is what I mean: see the image links and adwords on the side and middle?

The links at the bottom offer video and suggested search.

Certainly, the user will be able to find the site they are looking for - but the online marketing person should have built a wider profile to provide better auxillary results pages to increase the click through rate.

From initial analysis using the Google CTR tool for organic results, we can tell that even if your domain and company name exactly matches the search phrase keyed - unless you have more than one result on the home page, your Click-Through-Rate can be as low as 50%. This is a fary cry from the originally touted 75% average CTR for the #1 position - we haven't seen anything close to 75%.

Bizcamp Limerick is back on!

2010-04-13T22:48:00.000+01:00

That's right! Bizcamp Limerick is back on at the Kemmy Business School at the University of Limerick on the 8th May, 2010. Visit Bizcamp.ie to register to attend and/or talk. Last year's Bizcamp Limerick was an outstanding success and its great to have a follow up event! We also have a LinkedIn group and twitter account @bizcamp - so please stay in touch.

Visitor Optimisation : Tracking Telephone Calls in Google Analytics

2010-03-31T11:50:00.002+01:00

Google Analytics has become one of the most widely used tracking tools for web developers, owners and SEO's. And for good reason - it's easy to integrate, its easy to use and understand and it's always evolving. Previous server-side applications like AWStats have suffered from a lack of development and an inability to correlate visitors and action. This is where Google has excelled and this is why they've dominated the Web Visitor Statistics market - better User Experience.

But one form of conversion tracking has been notoriously elusive - Telephone calls. Web developers around the world are building calls to action on every page - most well designed websites don't make the user click through a minefield of pages to get to a companies contact information (so do intentionally, where they prefer users to create an account and help themselves). And tracking the telephone call conversions has been a huge issue for many SEO's and online mareketeers - with many choosing to avoid it.

Google have suggested a couple of ways to track this on their Analytics Blog - one of them is to use unique telephone numbers (for AdWords, Organic leads etc). However, I think the proposed solutions add cost and possibly raise more questions/issues than they answer:

What if you get two phone calls from visitors on your site at the same time?
What if the user saves the number and calls back later, when their session is closed?

This has been bugging me (and countless other webmasters no doubt) for years. What we need is a simple, cost-effective and in-session solution. And here at Primary Position, we think we've found it! A conversion tracking system that tracks enquiries inline and keeps the conversion in session, to make it easier to follow where an enquiry was made from.

This procedure is quite simple, but its implementation should be quite powerful, so we've decided to give it away for free. For the next couple of weeks we'll be demonstrating the concept and how it works with a select group of web designers. There'll be no fee or licence costs or anything at all - it will be freely available to the general public during April 2010.

We'll also be listing blog posts about the concept - so please let us know if you review it.

Google Snippets - Geo Location and Country Location

2010-03-10T18:23:00.000Z

One of the many reasons Google Search became so dominant was that it was the first to offer localised searching by default. Yahoo, for example, has always been particularly bad - especially in Ireland. PrimaryPosition.co.uk (as do several other .co.uk ccTLD's) ranks for SEO in "Pages from Ireland only" in a search for SEO! Click here to see that search.

Google is now displaying the country it thinks a site is best fitted too. Geo-Targeting, or associating a website with a country (or more), is a really simple concept. The US-centric nature of the world's biggest search engines for the last 20 years (dominated by Google for the past 8 or 9) has meant that .COM's are often seen as global and previously (before 2004/5) sites ranked regardless of location - which suited most US surfers just fine. Top Level Domains (TLD's : .COM, .NET, .ORG etC) can be assigned to any country and sometimes span more than one. This has often caused a lot of confusion, with many first time webstore owners (and some others) belieing that .COM's (in particular) are global and show up equally everywhere (which really isn't the case)

Having a domain attached to a country makes sense. If you were searching for a plumber, coffee shop, accountant, cinema, online store, having results from other countries doesn't make a lot of sense. Google went further with their Local Business Listings but the new snippet - showing the country or Geo-Target is an interesting development - and one I hope will clear up that misunderstanding.

Having localised sites for your clients ultimately gives the surfer what they want (maybe not the website owner but hey, Google's customer is the user) - so this might be interesting for a lot of people to see.

SEO News - Newspapers jump on the blackhat bandwagon

2010-02-11T09:09:00.000Z

I've noticed recently that newspapers are popping up intermittently for searches related to SEO. It started with an article in a UK newspaper. News and UK sites often appear in Irish searches - more so in Yahoo! where UK sites (with .co.uk Domain names/ccTLD's) often outrank Irish sites even in "Pages from Ireland" only searches.

I noticed the first article appearing late in 2009. The newspaper (I think it was the Guardian) lamented that its journalists had somehow sacrificed their writing in favour of adopting SEO techniques. Rather, that they were trying to use popular search words and other "SEO" techniques to get more traffic - as traffic was thought to be the equivalent of readership. Which its not really. Readership is a subset of traffc, as we really know.

Today I balk at the snippet above - the Belfast Telegraph have created a post with words quite unrelated to their article. It could have been called "Blackhat online Marketing Techniques" - but instead they went for big hitter search phrases.

I quite agree with the debate around spam and online marketing. Its getting very big. We get hundreds of requests every month from (mostly) Asian based link-building sweatshops with assembly line style link bulding in 0 authority link farms. These shops turn out tens of thousands of rubbish back links. If you're a blogger or a website owner, this is probably where you're getting all those junk e-mails and rubbish posts on your blog. One dodgy Irish SEO even extolled their virtues recently on the Irish Web Master Forum, but thankfully the rest of the Irish web industry wasn't impressed.

Sound good - tens of thousands of inward links to your site? Don't be fooled - a page with 100 outbound links on a "farm" of 100,000 pages with millions more isn't going to impress users or Google. People who buy these links are probably guilty of adding to the growing web of spam building up. More on this in the next post.

Google Analytics - Faster new Asynchronous Analytics Tracking

2010-01-26T13:32:00.006Z

Google have announced a new Asynchronous Tracking script for Analytics. The new snippet decreases a webpage's loading time over the previous urchin/script as it is inserted higher up the page source thus not slowing down the page load on the client side (rendering). This is a nice feature as the Google Analytics code can add significantly to the time between page download (request) and the time it takes for the user to see the page (rendered).

New Script example:

<script type="text/javascript">
var _gaq = _gaq || [];
_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXX-X']);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);

(function() {
var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;
ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
(document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0] || document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0]).appendChild(ga);
})();

</script>

Read more here: http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/tracking/asyncTracking.html

New websites & Projects

2010-01-13T22:42:00.001Z

Congratulations to Tynan & Co, the 100 year old firm of Limerick Solicitors, who have just launched their new website. Tynan & Co. have just entered the digital age with their first ever web presence - and we're delighted to be working on their SEO and Web Marketing programme.

We've also started the launch of the first website for the new Connect Limerick website. Connect Limerick are a business networking group in Limerick and are seeking to promote and encourage business networking in the Mid West. Primary Position is delighted to be a sponsor and member of the group and website.

Google Personalised Search

2009-12-08T20:28:00.001Z

Google's new personalised search now works even if you;re not logged in. I never used personalised search before and found it highly annoying, so I haven't been looking forward to the public one. You don't really have much of a choice to opt-in - you're co-opted in automatically just by using Google (which on principle I really hate). You have to opt-out (repeatedly even) - so there's no respect for your personal wishes.

Here's my big question: if you always got back the same results from the same sites you already know of - what do you need Google for? I'm guessing the impact of this will be low and that it may even be pulled/easier to opt out of than it currently is.

One of the first times we came across personal search issues was shortly after it was launched more broadly sometime last year. A friend of ours in Dublin was doing a demo and discussing SEO with a client of theirs. The client wanted to check where we ranked but we didn't show up anywhere. My friend rang me and they were quite curious - we eventually clicked that they were logged into Google and they were seeing personalised search. And it's been a big problem since then, so I'm wondering how much of a problem will it be going forward.

A couple of people have raised the idea that Google may be doing this to push their own AdWords sales and to be honest, I'm wondering myself.

Initial Verdict: Google may be a very successful search engine - but thats because they were so clever and user focused at the start. Now they're changing quite radically. If open personalised search is the future and in the best interest of the user - then I can only agree with it. But I'm still not so sure....watch this space!

Links:
Google's Official Blogpost
Krishna De

LinkedIn adds business profiles

2009-12-05T12:29:00.000Z

LinkedIn.com has added a new tool - Business Profiles. I've always wondered why they didn't do this sooner but then again, the personal 1-2-1 networking opportunities it provided was always going to be the most important part of it. So it's even more curious as to why they've added it now.

As I've been using it for ages, I was glad to be able to put up Primary Position. As business profile tools go, this is certainly of the best I've ever seen, allowing you to add different locations, employees and lots of details on your business.

Our profile is here: http://www.linkedin.com/companies/primary-position. Or you could just look at the screenshot below :-)

Falling for the oldest (SEO) trick in the book

2009-11-24T22:31:00.002Z

I can't believe I just fell for one of the oldest "tricks" of SEO tonight. I arrived in, after a very long drive in the cold rain and I popped in a search phrase, Search Engine Optimisation, and to my immediate surprise, this is what I got:

I'm normally used to seeing completely different results - the usual Irish sites (and my own, hopefully) who normally appear but this seemed like an international list of complete unrecognisables. I immediately went to check that I wasn't searching Google NCR (No Country Recognition) or USA or CO.ZA but I was at the right place. I'd searched for "Search Enigne Optimisation" by mistake, instead of "Search Engine Optimisation".

This has to be one of the most overlooked yet easiest to implement opportunities for Webmasters and its one of the oldest tricks. Don't expect your target search market will never make mistakes - in fact, plan for them. The number of sites in the index for "enigne" instead of "engine" is only 12,600 - but in the correctly spelled version, there are 38 million results - much easier to rank for!

People make this mistake with everyday words all the time - apartments (aparments), Christmas, accommodation (acommodaiton etc), travel destinations (Porto for example) - so make sure you have both bases covered, don't rely on Google to auto-correct.

Endeavour Programme in Tralee

2009-11-21T18:04:00.000Z

I got an e-mail from John Dineen, CEO of Learnpipe.com - Ireland's (and the worlds) leading training course search engine, about the Endeavour Programme. From his own blog, I am copying this so you can read all about it

Back in September, I was listening to Matt Cooper's Last Word drive time radio show when I heard an interview with Jerry Kennelly (founder of Stockbyte) on the launch of a new entrepreneurship programme in Tralee, Co. Kerry called Endeavour.

The interview caught my attention - it seemed as if the Endeavour Team were trying to build something special - almost like an Irish Y Combinator / TechStars. The programme offers seed capital (CORD) combined with intensive mentorship - all designed to hatch new companies / take others to the next stage - very, very quickly.

Wiseloads - Online Courier and Parcel Delivery

2009-11-19T17:35:00.001Z

Thanks to top chap Ted Vickey, Golf Fitness Writer and commentator, I was introduced to Pauric Logue, the man behind Wiseloads.com, Ireland's new online courier website. Pauric is setting up some interesting new solutions for companies that need cost effective parcel delivery etc.

SEO Dublin

2009-11-11T22:36:00.001Z

Given the amount of travelling I'm doing to Dublin and the time I'm spending there, I hope to announce a new SEO Dublin office address there shortly. I like Dublin and I used to live there but I'm settled in Limerick with our family here and in Kerry, so I'll have to continue splitting my time until then.

I've been offered a nice desk near St James' Gate and I'll update everything next week when I get a chance!

Bootstrap funding for Irish Technology Companies

2009-11-10T22:30:00.002Z

This slide show demonstrates a model for bootstrapping a Technology/HPSU company in Ireland - as long as you meet the necessary Enterprise Ireland requirements. A Blog-On from which says:

Outvesting was largely inspired by the IQ Prize and the conversation around two blog posts, by Pat Phelanand Joe Drumgoole. While lots of figures were bandied about throughout the discussions the sum of €5,000 kept coming up as a baseline figure that a bootstrapping startup could do something useful with. It’s also the amount of funding received by Level 1 awardees at Social Entrepreneurs Ireland.

http://www.outvesting.org/about/

Boot Strap Model 1

View more presentations from PrimaryPosition.com.

SEO in Killarney | What does Google turn up on you?

2009-11-01T22:45:00.000Z

I've spent the weekend in Kerry and we spent a night in Killarney. I love Killarney and would love to live there. I'm not sure how lively the SEO scene is there but I'd love to be able to work there and spend more time there.

While we were thinking about hotels, I noticed two interesting issues with one hotel site. When I got back to Limerick, I went to twitter to ask people if they ever check their own site, company name, brand name etc on Google. I didn't mean a Google Alert, which is obviously a good thing and was pleased to see that most people were actively using it.

What I meant was - in the first page of 10 results, how much of the returned results was about you and how much of it was good?

Google is a search engine. Most companies want top listings in Google. That's what SEO is about and that's the business I'm working in. So if you've spent months and months working on an SEO campagin, whats the point of having possibly negative or confusing results display below you?

Here's an example from the Brehon Hotel in Killarney:

There are two domains here. Its hard to guess which is the hotel and which isn't. Both sites will allow you to legitimately make a booking. One of them will cost the hotel more (the one they don't own) and the other may net you a better deal as you can talk directly to the hotel. You're possibly thinking that either way the hotel will make a sale, so whats the problem? Then why did the hotel bother setup a site then? Most hoteliers prefer to make the sale directly - its cheaper for them and they get to start a relationship in some cases.

Some research/opinion I've read from an Irish SEO who analysed click-throughs from another search engine (not Google) showed that on average 54% of clicks went on result number one - so why start your SEO programme by losing up to 46% of visitors by just not dominating your own search results?

The second thing I noticed is that even though they have a website - the Brehon don't list their telephone details, except on the contact us page, and not on every other page. I was using my iPhone and in North Kerry, the reception can be dire. As a result we ended up booking somewhere else.

Given that many people, especially those new to the web, now enter the domain name or part of a domain name into Google rather than try to remember and type in the address into the address bar, can you really afford to have confusion for your own site/brand/url in the returned results? Or do you just assume that people will work hard to find you?

Techludd and MIcrosoft Website Spark Launch

2009-10-28T20:25:00.002Z

Last week I made it to the TechLudd Relaunch/Microsoft WebsiteSpark progamme launch. Organised by Anton Mannering (TechLudd). WebsiteSpark (part of the Bizspark programme). WebsiteSpark is for small companies developing web apps at the coalface in ASP and, surprisingly also PHP. It's great that Microsoft recognises and embrace developers who develop on PHP too - and are offering support to them to help building web applications and systems on the stronger and richer enterprise environment offered by Visual Studio Professional editions.

Microsoft is demonstrating its commitment to small Irish IT companies. The costs of enterprise development software and web server applications can very high. The new WebSiteSpark programme offers support as well as 3 years free licences of Visual Studio Professional Expression 3.0, and Microsoft Web Server 2008 as well as the stunningly powerful SQL server 2008 Web Edition. These licenses can be very expensive on their own. Their is a US$100 fee when the company exits the programme (optionally or after 3 years) - which frankly really is peanuts for the 3 years development usage afforded under the programme. But you can read more about it yourself.

The launch was a brilliant event and I got to meet some great people from Microsoft, as well as the iia and Anton himself. Plenty of Guinness (it was held at the Guinness Storehouse) and lovely finger food abound.

I also got to meet Ruairi Browne, of Galway website development company, Kro IT, who also provide custom software. Ruairi has signed up to the programme and I look forward to meeting him Galway soon.

I stayed at the Jurys Inn, which was very handy being in town but quite dear for parking and breakfast and booked it via Dublin Hotels.

Wimax - Google It - from Imagine

2009-10-23T21:11:00.001+01:00

It's interesting to see Imagine's new billboard ads for "WiMax", in which consumers are invited to Google "Wimax" to learn more, rather than giving a URL, as is the way in probably 99.99% of cases. This makes sense from the point of view that most newbies (to the web) don't even know what an address bar or address URL is - and use Google search to find sites they already know of.

WiMax is a huge term and Imagine don't rank it for organically. Instead, Wikipedia, Intel and Wimax.com are listed on the home page, so ranking for it is quite hard. So Imagine are using an AdWords campaign to make sure they come up. I find this understandable but its given me something to think about.

It's an interesting phenomenon. Some of clients even have to use AdWords with their own brandname to prevent competitors from outbidding them with their domain name. Google AdWords has this this facility, which I find a bit odd, whereby I can advertise one URL but visitors are sent to an entirely different name.

For example, I could have an ad that lists the URL as "imagine.ie/wimax" but users are actually forwarded to, say, "eircom.net". This is obviously hugely devious and underhanded but for whatever reason, Google not only allows it, it also allows you to remove your competitors listing by using their domain publicly and your domain as the real destination - as long as you're willing to pay more for it.

You would think Imagine would try to rank for it, even from "Pages from Ireland" but clearly paying for each visit they plan to get via their national advertising campaign seems more logical, for some reason....

Microsoft Website Spark Launch with TechLudd - 20 October 2010

2009-10-13T13:11:00.004+01:00

Event Date: 20th October 2010
Where: 7 PM at The Guinness Store House, Dublin

Techludd have announced they are relaunching their website and will co-ordinate the launch with the announcement of the Microsoft WebsiteSpark programme, which will also coincide with the anniversary of the BizSpark Programme.

We’re delighted to be relaunching TechLudd today and what better way to relaunch it than by a collaboration with our old friends at Microsoft who’ve been one of the biggest supporters of events and networking in the tech industry here in Ireland. It’s the anniversary of their BizSpark program and they are also launching a new initiative WebsiteSpark aimed primarily at web based businesses.

Tidi Signs up with Gifts And Vouchers

2009-10-01T19:46:00.005+01:00

I'm really delighted to see long time client of mine, Tidi (web: tidi.ie) have signed up with gifts and vouchers site, Giftsandvouchers.ie.

Tidi, based in Shannon, Ireland, have been a great client over the years, and are a new Irish company that have already made massive strides into the Irish retail sector. Their state of the art product design and development studio is giving birth to lots of new and innovative products.

By signing up with GifsAndVouchers.ie, they instantly added an online e-commerce presence in just an hour. To have their new online store with us is really cool but it's doubly great as the first product, the non-slip hanger, sold 7 units in the first day.

Google Experts

2009-07-30T15:59:00.006+01:00

June and July have been very busy. Nearly 35 companies have come to us to talk about Search Engine Optimisation and growing an online business. Its been great - this is what I love to do. I've had so many ideas, so many talks and so many meetings. This post is about so-called Google Experts, who they are and how to identify them

Its good to see the Irish SEO community, particularly those at the top, start talking a bit more. And I've been very chuffed to see that I've been recommended a lot over at the Irish Webmaster Forum and Boards.ie.

And so I haven't been able to get to my blog - and this isn't going to be my future blog going forward, as I've embarked on a number ambitious new web projects. Because I trade online - i.e. I have my own websites that are selling to consumers - I have real experience in what makes a web business over what makes a website. Anyone today can stick a website together, and as such - many people are putting together websites thinking that they now have a web business.

So my mission on the blog, my next SEO blog and on the boards and forums, is to bring home the message that a web business is a business and it requires marketing, and promotion, and development. Just because it's on the web doesn't mean it will bring you business.

Secondly, I've been very busy trying to educate people as to so called "Google Experts". They come in the form of online marketing specialits, the self-conceived and self-appointed "Google Retail Partners" (complete nonsense) and other online web design companies who feel they now need to sell SEO but don't fully understand the bigger SEO picture.

So this is my plan over the next few months:

Learn how to build an online business

1. I'm going to conceive, plan and run a new web business from scratch
2. I will use Google - AdWords (Pay-Per-Click) and Google Organic rankings (through my SEO Google Expertise)
3. Affiliate marketing
4. A brand new design
5. Brand new domain names

I will highlight the following key points:

1. Budget
2. Timescales
3. Promotion
4. Identifying and selecting your Partners
5. Getting the name out there
6. Designing the site
7. Developing the site
8. Managing and promoting it all the way through to making money.

Savenet Solutions selects Primary Position as SEO Partner

2009-06-06T15:03:00.000+01:00

We're delighted to be working with Savenet Solutions, one of Ireland's fastest growing online backup companies. Savenet provide a number of key data solutions:

You can contact them at

Savenet Solutions
3013 Lake Drive
Citywest Business Park
Dublin 24, Ireland

Ph: 01 5143010
Fax: 01 5143030

sales@savenetsolutions.ie
support@savenetsolutions.ie

The end of the road for single domain name strategies

2009-05-29T10:57:00.010+01:00

For a long time many companies have focused on a single domain name for their business. Typically this has taken the form of their brand name. This is fine if you are an established well known brand like Rolex, Mercedes, Coca-Cola or Walkers.

But for the guys that are offering a competing product, they don't have the same brand appreciation as the bigger brands. And for the most part, they are targeting consumers and businesses based on cost. There are many smaller companies operating on differentiating themselves through better value, better quality and better supply/availability. But they're not actually winning through branding. And this is a key failure for most businesses to recognise.

If you are targeting a marketplace based on selling commodity or in demand product on cost - you are not selling a brand. Yes, you can create brand awareness but you're targeting people interested in price, not a brand.

Most companies who pick their Brand name or company name as their domain name are therefore carrying the same mistaken idea into their online marketing campaign. Firstly, people don't come to your website automatically. They come for a reason. The world's premier TV and electronics producers bring people to their websites through massive advertising programmes.

People who are selling discounted electronics products bring people who are looking for discounted electronic equipment and/or discounted electronic brands. Putting your own brand up gets in the way. If you want to sell products that compete with brands, then use domain names that match what people are looking for. Don't be afraid to use more than one domain.

The strategy for small, price-competitive brands
to use brand names in SEO marketing really
has reached the end of the track

Some advice about selecting an SEO....

2009-05-27T19:43:00.005+01:00

Ok, this might sound a bit funny - an SEO telling you how to pick an SEO but I know my fair share about SEO and how it works, and I've been doing it for a long time (since 2001), so I'm bound to have an opinion or two! Here is how I evaluate an SEO company or service when I come across one:

1. What do they have they say about SEO? Is it just a few pages of content on SEO? Maybe it's just a single page on a website offering a range of services. SEO is quite a broad and in-depth subject, so having a content-thin site sets off some alarm bells.

2. Do they have a PageRank - PageRank can be a funny thing but if it's zero, it could be of concern - an SEO should have at least some PageRank (0-10, 10 being best)

3. I check to see if they rank - can they be found - for their town/city and county? Do they rank nationally? I check a number of search terms - SEO, Search Engine Optimisation, SEO Dublin, SEO Ireland, SEO Limerick etc

4. What is their portfolio like? When I visit their clients, do their clients rank? Do they rank well?

5. I get very concerned when I see on-site pricing models. SEO is about competition - "property" or "Pensions" as search phrases are highly competitive. Giving different pricing levels without first evaluating a site seems pretty impossible and optimistic to me at best.

2009 is shaping up to be very busy

2009-05-18T20:15:00.004+01:00

Not that I'm complaining but I'm getting so many referrals and calls, its been a lot to deal with...so I've been busy working on proposals and enquiries. Which has given me a lot less time to catch up on twitter, the blog and the beautiful weather that we should be experiencing in Ireland. At least I presume it's lovely outside.

It still surprises me that so many people don't think SEO is an involved manageable proposal. A lot of people I talk to still think SEO is something thats done quickly. In fairness, a good few understand that it's an online business development programme.

A worryingly large number of people still believe heavily in off-site SEO. I think that people are picking up a lot of this from the many websites and web design companies that offer their understanding of SEO. Most of these sites and web designers don't actually rank anywhere, so its very surprising that people are so ready to believe!

Anyway, we are delighted to be announcing that we will be working with the widely acclaimed Landscape Contractors, Castleknock Garden Services, who provide a range of garden design and maintenance services as well as paving, lawncare, wooden and timber furniture and extensions (think decks, patios and tables).

We're also delighted to be continuing our work with leading high performance and leadership development company, PeopleResources.ie.

Organ Donor Week

2009-03-30T21:19:00.002+01:00

This week is Organ Donor Awareness week. I was reminded of this very important week and the life-saving contributions that families and people make becoming Organ Donor's by Sian from www.GiftsandVouchers.ie - the Irish Gifts website - through reading her very brave and touching story that she's shared on her gifts and vouchers blog.

So, I'll take this opportunity to encourage everyone to register as a donor and get a donor card.

Source: http://blog.giftsandvouchers.ie/

Bizcamp Limerick

2009-03-25T17:33:00.005Z

Bizcamp Limerick was an outstanding success by all accounts. Many thanks to the people who attended, talked and organised the event, which was held at the fantastic Kemmy Business School, which is a brilliant, world-class facility of higher education.

First of all, a big thank you to the Dean of the Kemmy Business School, Prof. Donal Dineen. It was a great space and very apt to have the Bizcamp here. The next big thanks and congratulations go to Stephen K insella, Evert Bopp, Ger Hartnett, Shane McAllister, Gabriela Avram and Mark Cahill. Also all members of Limerick Open Coffee Club who got together after the fall out from Dell and other large scale redundancy notices.

With nearly 200 people attending, a wave of media coverage and much buzz, it was a fantastic day altogether. Thank you to everyone again!

I gave a talk on SEO and how it works. I'll post up the presentation when I get back from Milan. Thanks to everyone who sat in, asked questions and the plenty of positive feedback I got.

I also met a lot of twitter buddies. Twitter is working out fantastically - it's how I got involved in Bizcamp in the first place. I've also found an exciting new business to invest in - but more about that in April.

Was delighted to meet great minds like Anton Mannering, Tony Frattaroli, Chris Byrne, Joy Redmond, Derry O' Donnell and many others I've already forgotten. Mail me if I met you and forgot you!

Reacations from the blogsphere: ShaneyMac's photo series on Pix.ie, Bizcamp Limerick, Limerick Blogger's coverage, Mark Cahill, Anton Mannering, Mike Quilligan, Reva Health.

Quick Post: Curious FBD ad

2009-03-22T13:12:00.003Z

For some reason, FBD Insurance have this ad, which I spotted on the Limerick Leader website. I found this quite curious. They're trying to advertise a fast motor insurance quotation service - which hardly sounds unique given that this has been around for years but, anyway, they've used a speedometer clearly racing up and down to the maximum possible speed (120) in Ireland to demonstrate this. This sends a worrying unclear message given the change in attitude to driving fast. Also, driving at 120km/h is only possible on a handful of motorways in Dublin.

Also, even more curious, is that FBD refused me a quotation on my safety-loaded SAAB because it's a HPV. Since when is the size of a car's engine a basis for safety? My car has 6 breaks on 4-discs with ultra-wide tyres. Keeping within the legal and safe speed limits this gives me a huge advantage over smaller cars with cheaper to replace narrow tyres and inferior drum and disk shoe breaking setups.

Tuesday Push & other announcements

2009-03-10T20:52:00.003Z

Tuesday's push is for MyMunster.com, a networking site for Munster Rugby Supporters. Tuesday Push is a coordinated spread of an idea launched by Damien Mulley.

Adrian Wreckler thinks that Irish Tech companies should get Government Aid. I don't agree fully. While I do think SFI is a bloated money black-hole, I think there Seed Capital is missing in Ireland. A lot of people seem to think European companies are over-government reliant - and while I do agree, I think they're forgetting that the US Government was extremely interventionist until the private sector took over. The US Government established the Small Business Investment Fund in 1958 as a precursor to VC. The EU followed suit in 1994. Private sector VC took off in the US in the 1970's. However, Seed capital funding is far easier to get in Europe and the US than it is in say, Limerick or Cork Or Tipperary or Dublin. I think the Government has a big role to play, particularly in the recovery in 2009. Have your say here.

Bizcamp Limerick, the business startup site for Limerick, now has 123 sign-ups! The Bizcamp is taking place on the 21st March this year and looks like it will be a cracking event. The RTE news video on the Dublin Bizcamp, which was an outstanding success is also on the site. Well done to the organisers of both!

We've been appointed SEO providers to Munster Energy Solutions with their new website, www.mes.ie. Munster Energy Solutions are BER Assessors in Limerick, Cork and Kerry. They are also able to assess commercial buildings, which not all BER Assessors are certified to. All new houses/apartments sold in 2009 will need a BER Certificate as will any existing house or apartment let in or after 2009.

World Vision Ireland announce a new blog for their mini-marathon fund-raiser. Best of luck!

While the EU, US and UK cut rates, taxes...

2009-03-05T21:26:00.007Z

...we're too busy finding new ones or raising old ones. Raising new taxes, existing ones and VAT will dry up the spare money we have, contribute towards deflation (which sounds good but really, really isn't) will result in more domestic companies closing - particularly consumer related like food, retail, property and so on...Yet nothing is being done about economic stimulation. Training will not help. New jobs are not being created. We have too many solicitors, accountants, architects, IT professionals, teachers. And these are quite well educated people.

Actually the government has just confirmed my worst fear: apparently SME's can't help themselves - we need the councils to help (although they already have Enterprise Support): http://www.rte.ie/business/2009/0305/sfa.html. What a dire waste this will be.

Limerick Open Coffee Club was a great success. I met Tony Frattaroli, the Limerick Entrepreneur who went on to the Dragon's Den and shared the behind the scenes experiences of the grueling 1hr30's he spent discussing his ideas with the Dragon's as well some other insights we as an audience don't get to see. Tony is a dynamic, determined and self-motivated person - a perfect entrepeneur - just the type we need to be encouraging more of in Ireland.

We were appointed SEO to www.PolskiQuote.ie, which has a fluent Polish brokerage team (Ubezpieczenie samochodu).

We're also doing the SEO for accomplished beauty clinic, www.Akina.ie, who provide a range of treatments include skincare treaments, laser treatment and beauty treatments among others!

Rocketjobs announces Primary Position as SEO Partner

2009-02-27T15:14:00.008Z

RocketJobs.ie, Irelands newest jobs website, has awarded us the contract for providing Search Engine Optimisation for it's website. Derek Hardiman, founder and CEO or RocketJobs made the announcement today in Dublin after choosing from a number of very strong proposals and we're delighted to have been selected.

We put together a very comprehensive programme and proposal, which began about 3 weeks ago, to increase the visibility and traffic to the RocketJobs site and we're looking forward to seeing this site more frequently at the top of the job search listings in Ireland.

RocketJobs announced the partnership on their blog and you can read the full release at http://blog.rocketjobs.ie/2009/02/27/rocketjobsie-selects-primary-position-as-seo-partner/.

About RocketJobs.ie
RocketJobs.ie is an industry wide jobs site focussed on making the search and application process as easy and as quick as possible for job seekers. With a number of the major agencies already on board RocketJobs.ie is poised to increase the number of roles on the site significantly in the coming weeks. With a continuous attention to improving the user experience of the site RocketJobs.ie has recently released the first Twitter job search capability in the Irish market, with more social networknig features to follow in the short term.

More information is available on our site and our blog.

Wednesday Web Wrap-up

2009-02-11T21:13:00.007Z

AIB and BOI are each to get €3.5 billion each in re-capitalisation. Please call them if you need to be recapitalised

ICTU have a plan - we'll all just find new jobs after we get skills. Somehow they missed where those jobs will come from...absolutely no reference to job creation. Apart from Government hires of course.

Lots of posts for yesterday's Tuesday Push (which I missed) which was for Sxoop Technologies' Twitter Mosaic Tool, which is pretty cool!

Niall Harbison has rebranded iFoods.tv as LookandTaste.com. Congratulations and best of luck!

Save money on your bills - shop for alternative Broadband, digital TV, Insurance and Travel with uChoose.ie

Looking for Corporate booking and hotel search? Try MustBook.ie.

Reacting to the Recession- VC for Limerick (& Others)

2009-02-04T19:36:00.008Z

The Limerick Open Coffee Club is meeting tomorrow at 11:00am in the Absolute Hotel. All welcome. I've been getting some great support and feedback and even a few offers for the Bizcamp and the Incubator, now christened "Greenhouse Limerick" by it's founder, Evert Bopp.

After reading Nev Farell's thought provoking post, I've been thinking. I'm sure the government will get a programme up in Limerick - sometime. To the best of my knowledge, they did an ok job with developing Galway and tech development there, based on larger grants and % claimable, and larger tax benefits on BES (I could be wrong), under the BMW Invesment incentives.

But these incentives were dished out, albeit in higher quantities, through the usual agencies. And these agencies have their hands tied in terms of what they'll support. Even if you meet the somewhat questionable requirements (why emply 15 people over 3 years, whats wrong with 12 per sè?)

Some of the worst ideas

The Tax incentives for building hotels - this was a disaster of an incentive. According to one publication on www.taxwatch.ie, prepared by John Heffernan, shows that "room occupancy levels across all regions were 5% below the 2000 levels in 2004" yet the government ploughed ahead.

This was despite a 2005 report by Indecon, prepared for the Deparment of Finance, shows that" €664m capital expenditure was actually incurred on tax based hotel projects with a further €651m to €1302m likely to be incurred on future projects".

Why couldn't the government put this into developing small business in Ireland? We've known for years the high exposure we've had to foreign multinationals (not they haven't had a great positive influence, we've just been a little over dependent) and to manufacturing industries. How is Ireland supposed to develop it's own? Irish people don't invest in ideas. As one colleague said to me today, about Irish Innovation: "If someone else isn't doing, then we definitely won't". People who do have ideas have nowhere to go, and this is particularly true with the onset of the Credit Crunch.

Even a special localised VC fund of just €50 million would do wonders in Limerick. We could start a multitude of smart, innovative companies. Most companies stray from their original ideas but the original idea gets them started or creates the right set of questions and answers to get it started. We can't reproduce great idea generating in a scientific method but we can grow them by supporting innovative thinkers, sponsoring incubation centres, facilitating networking and providing funding.

Enterprise Ireland

Sadly I've heard more bad stories than good but I've also seen quite a few companies become successful thanks to aid. Unfortunately too few. They have strict, rigid meeting and education systems instead of open networking events. It's too much like school, it's too inhibitive.

The solution

We need to throw out our tax incentives and start looking inward. We had €70 billion in 2008 in the National Pension Reserve Fund. If we hit 10% or 20% unemployment, whats the point of having a massive retirement fund. Dublin has lots and lots of VC. No wonder the government cannot decentralise. Why can't we put €8 billion into Cork, Limerick, Galway, Waterford, Ennis and Sligo, in proportionate amounts, into BUSINESSES, not into hotels, property, roads.

The government and civil servants will not and cannot solve innovation, invention and enterprise growth. Private sector businesses can and need this funding. This funding would create a safe haven for banks to invest in and for the agencies to deliver grants and other inestments. €1 billion invested in Limerick and Cork, say, could help create up to 2,000 companies with 5 employees. That would remove 10,000 people from the dole.

Incubation centres, according to Wikipedia [?], have an 87% success rate even after 5 years. If just 50% of these were successful, and just 1% became big enough to employ more than 500 people, it would be a roaring success. Plus they'd have a base in Ireland, not North America where they currently have to go.

The top things that twitter Social Media Experts DONT tell YOU

2009-01-31T11:01:00.011Z

They're everywhere on twitter. Easy to spot and fit into the same profile. They are twitters self-acclaimed "Social Media Experts" (also: Ninja, Gurus). Niall Harbison and others have posted about them - they're a modern day plague.

If you've been on twitter for longer than a week, then chances are you already know them! The bio's with big cheesy smiles, often American, self proclaiming their Social Media/Marketing expertise based on the 10,000 followers and a blog containing 10-, 15- or 25 top tips to market on twitter. Nuggets of information like "Top 10 Tools used by Top Twitter Marketeers".

All of them proffer advice about marketing but it's always twitter-related. Twitter DVD's about "Traffic Explosion 2" and "How to get 45,000 followers while eating a small sandwhich." etc.

Well they aren't experts - they may be taking advantage of a very open and friendly social media tool - and the people who use them -but they are not top marketeers. There is nothing wrong with mixing business and social media if it's done right. But you don't go around to your freinds house and repeat every 2 mins "I can make you rich. Log on to my blog right NOW to find out how!". It's ridiculous, shameless self-promoting at it's worst.

Time to shed some light on them with my
Top Things Social Media Experts DON'T tell YOU!

They claim to be online marketing experts. They have a blog about it. Truth: Funny how their blog often has no PageRank or a low PageRank (i.e. Google doesn't think much about it) and their only visitors come from twitter. That's not online marketing! Real Online marketeers, whether using social media or SEO have been at it for longer than 2 months and have some PageRank. It's a good test for anyone.
They back up their claims with the 4,000 followers they "gained" while putting on their socks this morning. Truth: They may be following your tweets (for a while anyway) but they're not hanging on your every word! The reality is that when you follow someone, they follow you back, it's polite. It's not because you're a genius. Having followers on Twitter doesn't make you a leader.
Twitter is broadcast channel and they are the News Desk. Repeating the same message daily about sharing Aloha or how they got $4,000 in one hour (and you can too!). Truth: After getting bored, most people stop following and ignore them. Twitter and tweeters don't need this and if most of your followers are selling the same thing, how are you going to sell to them.
Twitter is great for marketing. And you need them to tell you how! Truth: Twitter is great for marketing if people recognise you as a leader in what you do and recommend you or write about you. If people just promote you or link to you because they want to get promoted, you end up with a meaningless list of sheep. Just share your thoughts, news and information and -if it's good - people will follow you automatically.
They're getting thousands of visitors while just sipping on a soda. They clearly have the magic formula and you need to buy the ebook before it sells out. Truth: They have lists of followers as long as highway BUT - here's where it falls down - 90% of them are selling the same message.

Americans are great at standing up with a smile and trying to motivate, sell and market to anyone who'll listen. And Americans are great at sitting there and paying money to be sold motivational, selling and marekting advice. That's great - in Vegas. Not so great on twitter for the people who love to use it.

Twitter - what is all about?

2009-01-31T10:42:00.007Z

I'm relatively new to twitter but already I love it. I've gotten to meet a great bunch of people, including the Limerick Open Coffee Club and the inspiring #Bizcamp Limerick Business Startup Project. I've also caught up with people I used to know and work with (pre-twitter).

twitter is a great tool. You pick up on news very quickly. People share ideas, knowledge and information that you'd otherwise never be able to pickup on. I always thought the News on TV and newspapers never went into enough satisfying detail. I don't just want to know what happened to the bank, I want to know why, how and who was behind it - and thanks to all of the financial gurus, technical whizz-kids and general bloggers out there I can get a whole better understanding.

twitter has some great networking opportunities. Meet like minded and smarter people at tweet-ups, barcamps, bizcamps etc. People end up collaborating together or even get hired for a particular project or event. All very good. But this great tool is under massive abuse from the so called "Social Media Expert". These people are very easy to spot and my next post will go into further detail

Blogs need promoting too!

2009-01-18T22:34:00.004Z

I've been reading quite a lot of new blogs this past week. I've also been convincing a number of people to setup their own blogs. I spent Thursday and Friday in Dublin meeting a number of clients and I'm delighted that they are all going to start blogging!

These blogs will give them a better way to connect with their clients. Websites can be a little cold, too much of a shop window. But websites need search engine optimisation (seo) too! Blogs have great avenues for SEO and I was very pleased to see this blog get a PageRank of 3/10 from Google in just 4 weeks. Not that I'm overly bothered with Toolbar PR! (Read about Toolbar PageRank)

The traditional way to promote blogs is from having other people recommend you - through blog aggregators, blog rolls, twitter posts, social media networks and so on. But look at the visitor traffic information for any well read blog and you'll see traffic from Search Engines is one of the biggest traffic providers - but only if you have Search Engine visibility.

Many young or first time bloggers forget this, opting for the "build it, they will come approach". Yes Google loves unique content and every good SEO will repeat this mantra over and over again.

But you cannot stand out on the internet through self validation alone. Unique content without authority/votes from other important, relevant meaninful sites are still needed. Blogs go down very well with Google, but a blog with little or no links won't gain traction. There's too much competition. Google's ranking of sites is still heavily based on its link-voting system.

I'll be setting up a new, personal blog this week (I hope), and I'll use it as a case study about promoting blogs. I know I'm relatively new to blogging but SEO for blogs hasn't changed. In the 6/7 weeks we've set this up, posts from this blog are live in Google in under 5 minutes, and often ranked in the top five for it's post title or tags. We get 50% of our traffic from Google and have over 100 subscribers across different subscription systems.

Must to things to promote your blog? Build a circle of links to your blog, website and social networking sites from your blog, website and social networking. MyBlogLog, a service from Yahoo, is a fantastic "hub" type link spot. Here you can join your blogs, profile and links from social services in one page. So Google can find your other profiles and so can other people. You can also join other communities and make new friends. Take a look at the page I setup for this blog to see what I mean.

Then go over to Technorati and set up your blog there. You'll need to add a widget to your website. It's not that complicated! My Technorati blog page is here. Now, set yourself up with Feedcat. Feedcat gives a great little button so that people can see how many RSS subscribers you have with that service. Other great places to get your blog into are:

Geo Targeting in Google

2009-01-12T18:09:00.006Z

The days of having one domain show for all countries is nearly over. Domains are now, almost always, indexed for a particular country. There is a way to set certain folders on the same domain for different countries, but if you're localising content, why put it on the same domain. Single domain strategies are a failure - that's what happens when you listen to branding experts!

Such a common "strategy" of people is to use their business name/brand name as their domain name. Of course every company should have a matching domain name to their brand but if you're interested in SEO, then it's to reach people which your brand hasn't. So having the brand name in the domain name doesn't help. You can put your brand name on the web page.

For companies with multiple products and multiple locations, then multiple domain SEO is the best strategy. Note to self: follow up on this in more detail

Chemstore have launched their new Irish and UK sites for safety storage and chemical handling products over at www.chemstore.co.uk.Happy Camper, the Campervan and Motorhome rental people, have also launched dedicated sites for the UK Motorhome rental Ireland market. Now, results show in both Google.ie and Google.co.uk searches. Perfect.

Update to Open Coffee

2009-01-12T18:09:00.002Z

The IGO Network URL is http://www.igopeople.com/g/564-Dell-Limerick for people in Dell Limerick who are interested in setting up or helping others setup their own business.

Limerick goes on...

2009-01-12T17:00:00.003Z

I wasn't too impressed with everyone blaming the government for DELL's closure in Limerick. I'm not entirely sure that DELL are moving to Lodz as much as they are just closing Limerick. There has been a downturn in demand for it's products. So it cut from it's most expensive cost base.

Limerick has become too costly for a number of reasons - land, fuel, shipping, labour costs from suppliers (think contractors, electricians). It's very sad to see it all cut so quickly.

In response to it, Evert Bopp and others are using the Limerick Open Coffee Club to spearhead an initiative to help people in Dell and Limerick who want to take their own ideas to market. The group is made up of professionals and experts in Limerick who meet informally at the Absolut Hotel.

The club meetings are open to everyone and anyone may attend. I attended last weeks meeting, and found it very worthwhile and interesting. I'm sure with more and more members this will only get more interesting. There was a good range of people with business and sales experience, as well as general entrepeneurs who no doubt have many years of wisdom to pass on. I look forward to meeting the other members in time.

For those interested in starting up in Limerick, there are a number of resources you can look to. I'll Publish about this separately.

DELL closes in Limerick

2009-01-08T19:17:00.003Z

Just a quick post to say how very sorry I am for all the employees at DELL in Limerick who going to lose their jobs this year and maybe into next year. I'm also very sad to see DELL's plant close in Limerick as I feel it was an important part of Limerick and a great source of local pride. It's also a massive part of the Limerick and Irish economy and I feel too for the many suppliers who will be hurt who don't get as much of a mention, as well as the many retailers and hotels and so on - we'll all be affected by it. I worked at DELL for 2 years, met my fiancè while working there and cut my teeth as a programmer, software engineer and project manager.

Let's not forget at this time the many companies who have weathered many storms in Limerick, much longer than DELL. Analog Devices, just down the road from DELL have been here since the '70's, I'm sure their continued presence will be even more value by Limerick.

Saying goodbye to 2008, lets say goodby to some bad habits

2009-01-07T21:18:00.005Z

If you build it, they will come. The famous quote from the film, Field of Dreams, became a rally call in the 90's and early noughties in the newly discovered "Web of Dreams". This is easily one of the biggest myths about owning a web business and selling on the web - and it's rampant.

Everyday I meet and talk to people who believe in this so fervantly that they refuse to listen to advice, no matter who gives it or why. They'd rather believe that as I work in SEO, clearly my advice must be biased and aimed at making a sale.This myth is strongly tied to the misbelief that a website is a marketing tool. Fact is, both statements are very wrong, even though 90% of people with little web experience probably believe it.

The worst thing about this myth is watching the slow realisation that dawns on the would-be Internet Business Owner as they watch the visitor stats that never seem to grow. It's painful because you've seen it 100 times and you really want to help.

Compounding this, we refuse to accept that if we're going to enter the web world, that we have to try to understand it. "I'm not technical" has become a standard gym-class excuse note for all manner of people throwing money at websites. Clearly building a web-business is just like having your car serviced - you go to a mechanic, get a price and job done. You don't need to know how your variable valve timing system works, he does. It's his problem.

People believe all too commonly that a website is a cheaper way to open a shop in O'Connell Street. It is a shop. And everyone knows that when you open your shop people come in the door. Can you build an e-Commerce site for €3,000? Certainly. And a very nice one at that. Can you kit out a new store in town for that? No, you certainly can't. Can you set up a serious retail store for less than €25k? Possibly, now that tradesmen aren't as expensive, but I wouldn't say you could do it for much less.

So why do people think they can setup a web-based business and take on Ryanair or Amazon for €2,000? Because they believe that their website is their business, shop and marketing tool rolled into 1. Add to that the next common myth suffered by many businesses and agencies - the Automatic right to Google #1!

That's right - so many companies, agencies, organisations and NGO's believe they have an automatic right to be number 1! That Goolge will just call them up and ask them where they'd like to appear.

New Golden Rule for 2009: If you want to get into business on the web, you've got to be prepared to understand how the web works for business AND how it doesn't. It's not about being "technical" (God I hate that) - its about being responsible to you, your business and your investment.

If you want to try your hand at an internet business, apart from whether or not there is space for your business or it's a good idea, know at least these things:

Chances are if you build it, nobody will come
You don't have an automatic right to be #1 or to be found at all!
You need to go out and promote your website on the internet and off it
You have to compete on the web, maybe even harder than if you had a store
You may have to spend more on marketing it than you spent building it - this is because the startup costs web-store can be cheaper than a real store
At least web marketing can be cheaper than traditional marketing (TV, Print, etc)
You are going to have to write your own, unique, readable, interesting content
You are going to have to connect
You cannot hide behind the excuse of "I'm not technical" - because nobody cares. Understanding the web and social media, networking and marketing are not technical. Programming computers and assembling space rockets - that's technical. This is business.
Forget branding. If People used SE's only to look up brands, we wouldn't need them. SEO is the opposite of brand-based marketing. It's used by people to launch products against the big brands as much as it's used to sell big brand products.

Best of luck to everyone setting up an online business in 2009 - Don't be afraid to ask !!!!

SEO is a modern hero for the average Joe - a new theme for 2009

2009-01-03T16:21:00.004Z

I read recently on an Irish Web blog that "SEO is bull****". I read this a while back and I've been thinking about just how wrong that statement is. SEO and Search Engines together are a modern hero we've never had before. Marketing Agencies are very brand orientated. Brand is everything. Branding is used to build a company. SEO, Social Marketing and Search Engines are about people recommendations - people can vote and promote a product they like not because a marketing agency has told them but because they have discovered it and shared it.

Brands have been a powerful force that shaped our lives from the 1800's. Many people grew up calling their vacuum machine a "Hoover" or their oven a "Stove" irregardless of the manufacturer. These were uber-brands. Companies have used the power of brands to tell us that "Guinness is good for us", Knorr tells us that their products are natural, wholesome and good for you. Cow and Gate currently feature an ad with babies in a happy form and a captions below them making ludicrous statements like "I don't look like I need more nutrition do I?" etc.

Well we don't know, you just look happy. It's a baby. Did the babies in the ad really take Cow And Gate? Are they happy All the time? People really buy into this. Instead of checking to see what really is best, they see the happy baby on TV and want their baby to be happy and healthy.

Why is SEO/SE/SM a hero for modern times? Let's say take Knorr. For years in Ireland they've dominated Soup Stocks. Until a few years ago, you could make your own stock (if you knew how, many people don't) or you had to use the soup stock cubes available in all Irish shops and supermarkets. Because of their huge advertising and marketing budgets, its been very difficult for anyone to get into this market place with a proper product. Like organic stock or superior quality stocks. OK, maybe our market is small and not attractive. But a raft of stock producers have come in. Superquinn in Limerick have been great to offer these rangs and I note Dunnes and Tesco are following suit. This is great for us consumers. The Knorr offering has been sub-par and even Knorr have changed their products suitably, offering improved recipes and now a jellified stock-pot. This would never have happened without competition.

Thanks to Chef's like Niall Harbison (read his video recipes blog), people are learning to become better cooks and to use better products. More people buying fresh organic stock helps fight bad brands who use money to tell us their product is better!

2009 is here.....Happy New Year Web-people

2009-01-01T16:20:00.005Z

What will 2009 bring? No doubt the Irish media will continue it's recession news-fest. Is it just me or do RTE seem to present news of the widening financial crisis with glee? They are very sensitive when it comes to job losses up to a point - who wants to be interviewed on national TV just seconds after your job has been taken away?

What will 2009 mean for retail? I suspect quite a few ambitious retail projects will be forced to close down - even in a strong economic climate I think that too many retail outlets opened up, particularly in the home/DIY segment, where Limerick has been very well served - but are there enough shoppers to sustain all of them?

The main challenges facing us in 2009, I think are, in order of most obvious:

Reduced house purchases
Reduced investment into new business
Reduced construction in all sectors
More and more businesses folding

Main Drivers for these factors are:

Reduced confidence
Mass Emigration (Irish people and Migrant labourers) - reducing demand for housing, retail and entertainment

Worst Case scenario for year-end 2009:

20% unemployment
20% drop in population
1980's style dole-que's, etc

Unless we start spending again, en masse and businesses have to pay their bills on time - this is causing massive cash-flow strains for a lot of businesses in Ireland. And it's a knock-on effect that is becoming harder and harder to tolerate for many. I think January and February will set the tone for the year, so hopefully we won't have to wait too long. There is still a lot of money out there - just how will it be invested?

Happy Christmas Internet and a merry New Year

2008-12-26T11:45:00.003Z

So we seemed to have survived another Christmas, despite a raging flu-pandemic that has hit most of Ireland. So next up is New Years and the start of 2009 - a year many are predicting to be an economic free-fall, which it will possibly be. A lot of people who have spent the last few years in senior, management and professional careers are now seeing an opportunity to setup their own company. Also, the government has this new businss incentive for start-ups which should prove interesting.

The next step most people seem to take after coming up with the idea is to setup a new website. Having hindsight and experience, I would always advise setting up a website and SEO ahead of starting to trade. Once you're sure the business venture is a runner - set up the website without hesitation.

Websites need time and maturity to help them with SEO - setting up a website after you start trading gives you a slight disadvantage. There is nothing wrong with setting up a site before you're ready to trade - chances are nobody will find it for the first few months - but the longer the Search Engines Index your site, the easier it gets to optimise it!

Saving money with O2

2008-12-18T17:31:00.002Z

We recently moved to O2. We had several good reasons.

Vodafone were costing us a fortune - up to €200 per user
O2 have the iPhone
Vodafone were costing us a fortune no matter what plan/add-on combo and they don't have the iPhone.

Ok so it's 2. And there is probably a million people to tell me that you could buy an iPhone and stay with Vodafone and another million to tell me that Vodafone is the same. We've tried every package and add-on and idea from Vodafone only to see the calls go up.

Well, it's not. And a lot of our business friends have higher costs. We moved to O2, got iphones for everyone for €50 and our bill is coming in at €90 per head. Ok, that's only after 2 months, to be fair, but it is a substantial drop.

My advice - whoever you're with - you could save money by moving simply because your existing network won't actually get you a better deal. They could look at your spend over the last 6 months and tell you which package would have cost you less but they won't....so we moved and we're delighted.

BTW - if you didn't know already- the iPhone rocks. It's more than a gadget. Its a necessity. The App store, accelerometer, browsing capabilities. Even people with the LG "iPhone killer" version readily admit the iPhone is a lot more intuitive, capable and feature packed.

What do you get:

Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) with Google Maps
an iPod
YouTube
Touch Screen
Accelerometer (detects motion in the handset, like a Wii. Has Wii like games too)
Millions of apps to download

Hmmmm.....the 'R' word

2008-12-10T21:43:00.002Z

The 'R' word is back and with a vengeance. R is an important letter in ROI - Return on Investment. If a website is the most important tool of the modern age, then surely search engine optimisation is the most important tool in increasing the return on that investment.

I still find it hard to accept that so many business still don't see that having a site and not having a plan for building traffic means that no matter how much was invested in the original site, the site has, almost no value. It's not until SEO or SEM comes along that the site begins to add value - to both the domain and the business itself. For many companies, particularly those with a smart multiple domain strategy, the domain and website have an asset value of their own, aside from that of the owning company.

I've heard this too many times: "But we're the best supplier of cakes in Dublin. We're supposed to come up number one. Everyone knows that!" Yip, try telling that to Google though! No, really, you should tell Google and that's what SEO and SEM are for!

I also can't believe that so many companies believe that they can compete with strong websites, particularly national or even international players by paying someone €1,000.00 or so as an "investment" in their website! That's not an investment, it's a moderately priced flyer.

Your website doesn't inherit or mirror you're business' real life presence on the internet. When you adopt a full, proper internet development programme, you are essentially opening an Internet based business of sorts.

You need to therefore be aware of things like Blogs, Social Media (for connecting you and your associates, partners and clients in a business and social network) as well as SEO and SEM.

Why do I think SEO delivers better as a value-add over any other form of advertising ? A well optimised site that continues to grow with unique, original and infomrative content will continue to grow traffic, generate leads and grow your business. Far better than any paid advertising.

Paid Advertising requires a constant budget - stop paying and you kill your traffic, leads, sales and business. A well optimised site will continue to grow. You'll get free traffic. You'll get people "clicking" into you and you'll sell. Your site can be sold as a going business asset of it's own right!

New PrimaryPosition.com launched

2008-12-08T19:22:00.004Z

We're delighted to announce the official website for SEO Ireland, www.primaryposition.com. We've been working on it a while and even though I'd like to get more done with it, there's a lot to be said for getting it up and running!

Tomorrow/this week I plan to post about why people should be investing more in their web infrastructure - websites, booking forms, new content and SEO - during the upcoming recession we've all heard so much about.

We've also been doing a lot of work doing some SEO for hotels site, GlobalHotels-24-7.com. Like booking a hotel in Amsterdam, a hotel in Barcelona or for hotels Dusseldorf

New Site Launch - www.Chemstore.ie

2008-11-17T16:53:00.003Z

Its great to announce the launch of Chemstore's new website which has just had a new design and overhaul. The new site has a brand new Product catalogue, cms and design, as well as a new SEO programmer that started in October.

MS Live Webmaster Tools

2008-11-16T13:26:00.001Z

Apparently its been around for a while but I only just thought checking to see if Microsoft had a Webmaster Tools site just the other day and it turns out they do. It's pretty much a copy of some of the things Google provides. If you've used the Google Webmaster Tools before, this will be a very familiar experience.

The authentication process is a little more involved and it checks to see if you are an authenticated user EVERY time you want to access a site statistics (not sure if Google does this everytime, it's a good idea). It means you can grant access to a remote user and then revoke it at a moments notice.

One tool stands out - the backlink checker shows the domains linking back to you and the sites rating in a scale of 1-5. The scale isn't very thorough and it's even more blunt than the 1-10 PR ranking method of Google's. But it is nice to see a tool that shows you each and ever page that is linking to you. I look forward to seeing Microsoft (and Google) adding some more innovative tools!

Visit the Microsoft Webmaster Tools Site.

a quick plug for two charity sites

2008-11-10T14:07:00.002Z

Ok, I never wanted to make this a Blog for plugging other sites but I do want to mention two charity sites we've been helping to optimise. World Vision (Ireland) - at www.worldvision.ie and their new alternative gifts site, www.worldvisiongifts.ie. WorldVisionGifts.ie is a new site and I would ask anyone who has a blog or newsfeed or site to add a link to this domain. They are a wonderful charity that helps some of the neediest and most vulnerable children in the World's poorest spots.

PrimaryPosition.com SEO Blog

2008-11-10T13:22:00.003Z

I've been meaning to setup a blog for ages and now I've finally got round to it. Over the past 6 years we've launched, redesigned and managed over 200 websites and optimised over 120, covering almost every industry and business sector.

I think SEO and Web Development is one of the most interesting fields to work in. It's diverse, dynamic and brings you into contact with a lot of new ideas. There a lot of people "offering" SEO too, some very good and many who couldn't explain SEO to you if you gave them the answer.

I hope to use this blog to help people discover more about the web, to showcase ideas and to have the odd rant/praise/....