In the UK, the months of July and August have long been known as ‘the silly season’ in the world of journalism, the term was even used before the end of the 19th century. Referring to the more frivolous news stories that appear in the media during the ‘quieter’ summer months. Despite the move towards news consumption online, the adage runs true and these summer monnths continue to be a slower news season and so a great time to attract the eye of an editor who may not normally give your pitch or press release even the once over. There are many reasons. With summer holidays always popular, media teams are stretched thinly during the silly season, so have less time to research new material. Additionally, the summer holidays mean there are less people sending in press releases or story ideas, so your story is more likely to get attention thatn during busier times.

So if you have a good story, a new product or new staff member, now is the perfect time to push it out to the press. Admittedly, the summer of sport this year has made the silly season less silly than normal, but editors are still desperate for a story that is a little different and something to break the monotony of too many sports related stories this summer. That said, as the multitude of ‘specials’ confirms, many editors are looking to climb aboard the media train following the Olympics if you can give your own story a topical twist you could find yourself front page of a trade journal or even prominent in a national newspaper.

It is not all press driven either. You can help yourself and your site with some SEO considerations too. With the world’s eyes on the UK at the moment with the London Olympics, the rising trends  in search are unsurprisingly Games 2012 related. That’s what people are searching for but competing against the big guns in terms of those keywords would be unwise. It would be even more unwise to try some ambush marketing techniques that risk infringement of the very strict LOCOG rules  covering the use of certain protected words around the competition. Yet, with a little bit of thought and some clever writing you could help see your own blog or website, jump on the coat-tails of trending keywords. If you are GB based, make-sire you are making the most of the current trend for GB and Great Britain, but do remember Google will penalise you if your use is not relevant to your site.

Have you taken advantage of the silly season? We’d love to hear your stories.

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There is no magical recipe for successful SEO, it is more about constantly applying well-know approaches. The rules that search engines use to rank websites is ever-changing, thus your efforts should be consistent.

Google is constantly tweaking its search algorithm to return relevant results. Some tweaks have little effect on search engine results, whereas others have much wider effects, and you might discover that your page dropped from a top three ranking to a page 10 of a search results page. This means that you need to keep updated with Google’s improvements in order to improve your site.

Top 5 SEO tips to stay on top of your competition

Here are the top 5 things you should focus on to ensure you get the most out of your SEO efforts:

Tip 1: Review your most linked-to content and create more based on it

Use Google Analytics or a backlink analysis tool to find the content that is most linked to. Then use the same approach and create another article using a different angle or providing new and interesting insights.

Tip 2: Follow-up new links to your site to form partnerships

If you are getting valuable traffic from other sites, find out from which ones and try to form relationships with the site owners. This way you can improve these links to get more traffic or look at opportunities for future links.

Tip 3: Reconfigure high authority links

Use a backlink analysis tool such as Google Webmaster Tools to review the state of your existing links, especially those with high authority. Determine how you can improve them in terms of anchor text or how you can add other links.

Tip 4: Focus on the pages which will give you the most boost

Use Google Analytics to review your landing pages and find out which ones are attracting a high volume of natural or organic traffic. Then try to improve these pages by tweaking them – change titles, headings and sub-heading, add call-to-action and internal links.

Tip 5: Review your title tag on key pages

Take a closer look at your title tags and tweak them if necessary. You might discover some of them are too short or too long, maybe automated by your CMS. That’s why it’s best to review and edit them manually.

The future of SEO

With all the tweaks and changes that might occur, the best recommendations are to keep providing your visitors with outstanding quality content that is relevant and interesting, as well as ensure you create an unbeatable user experience.

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Launched in March 2012, Scotland based password manager my1login is making a name for itself as internet users switch onto the critical need to protect their online passwords. The company, which uses 123-reg for domain, hosting and email services, has been making serious strides in the technology sector, with CEO Michael Newman interviewed on the BBC’s online technology section after just a month in business, showcasing the brand’s password management software.

So what problem does my1login solve and why is it important? In simple terms, the business offers a solution to users having too many passwords stored in different locations. The company has experienced fantastic traction in their user numbers and is already protecting in excess of 10,000 online accounts. ‘my1login employs military grade encryption, using stronger encryption technology than many online banking platforms. Users’ keys are never stored on the servers and therefore not even my1login employees can see or access users’ data’, Newman said in a recent interview with 123-reg.

The incredible start to the business is something that 123-reg is proud to be a part of. Speaking with Newman, it is clear that my1login values the assistance that 123-reg offers his business.

‘We’ve been delighted with both the domain, hosting and email services, together with the responsive support provided when needed most’, he said.

In the security industry, reliability issues have to be considered and it is a positive endorsement of our services that such a company chooses 123-reg.
‘Any reliability issues with domain and email provision would have been an obstacle to continued use. 123-reg’s high availability services have ensured this was never an issue’, Newman said.

With this is mind, it is no surprise that when asked what services my1login valued the most, reliability was again fundamental to Newman and his team.

‘As an always-on cloud-based password manager it’s vital that my1login are continuously available for our users. The reliability of 123-reg’s email and domain services is of great value in enabling us to provide an uninterrupted service’, he stated.

123-reg prides itself on providing a service that is both price competitive but also gives users control. We are delighted that our philosophy has helped my1login and other customers grow.
‘The speed with which services can be ordered and initialised, the easy-to-use and feature-rich control panel and the competitive pricing model of 123-reg are the perfect ingredients for any business’, Newman concluded.

It is our belief that my1login will continue to be successful and we are committed to providing a service that meets the expectations of Newman and his team. It is a wonderful reward for 123-reg to be playing a small part in the success of British entrepreneurs in such challenging times for start-ups. Moreover, the success of my1login should inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs.

To find out more about my1login please follow the link to their website.

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I am so over Twitter. For a while, it was a really important way of life, an addiction. I had an overwhelming compulsion to tell everyone everything I was doing. Every little detail of my life had to be shared. I thought I was being hilarious, creative, daring and pushing the boundaries. Hell, I’ve got nearly 32,000 followers, I must be important.

Actually, I was probably being quite dull, as sadly, most people are on there. Hardly anyone has anything important or funny to say. And why should they? Most people are dull, and Twitter is just condensed dullness.

But, there are some shining lights on this barren sea of everyone shouting at the same time (that metaphor almost makes sense!)

First up is the comedian Adam Hess. Never heard of him? Don’t worry, you will. I’ve seen him live a few times and he is wonderful. For the first 2 minutes, there is silence in the room as the unsuspecting audience wonders why someone with such obvious difficulties has bothered to get up onstage. However, patience pays off, and at some point early on in his set, the crowd ‘gets it’ and is then taken on a most bizarre and enjoyable ride for the next 20 minutes. He is the only comedian I have seen who has managed to truly capture his act on Twitter. I know, hard to believe, but true. Follow @adamhess1 to see what I mean. I’ve just taken one of his recent tweets at random –

At my 16th birthday party, 1 guy came as a bunch of balloons, another as an untouched table of snacks & another came as an empty church hall

Wonderful, and it’s just relentless.

My most recent Twitter find is pretty similar in style to Adam’s. But whereas Adam is a grown man (sort of), @toddlerquotes1 is a 2year old. Or at least, the words are coming from a 2 year old. It’s the parents that are doing the tweeting. This isn’t the usual cute, cloying nonsense that parents think is funny but actually isn’t, this is proper laugh out loud genius that only a kid of this age could come up with. One of my fave lines is –

 (Cuddling his brother) You are my little Waitrose.

Simple, funny and totally life affirming. Follow immediately.

Hey, want to see a bonkers Finnish man show you his entire collection of VHS video recorders? Of course you do! That’s what the internet was made for.

I warn you know, this video is 8 minutes long and is just plain odd. It’s very hypnotic, partly because of the music, but mainly because of his monotone voice, bizarre obsession with outdated visual recording equipment and his bowl cut. This clip has had over 1,000,000 views. TV channels, pay attention. THIS is what people want.

This months ‘what on earth were they thinking?’ goes to http://www.watching-grass-grow.com/ It does exactly what it says on the tin, along with a bizarre and strangely uplifting version of Live And Let Die playing in the background. It sounds like it was composed on a Sega Mega Drive and I kept expecting Alex Kidd to pop up.

Last month I introduced you to the world of Women Laughing Alone With Salad, today I give you Women Struggling To Drink Water  It is a total joy. I just lost an hour of my life looking at this. Is it supposed to be sexy? Why do they keep missing their mouths? PUT THE BOTTLE TO YOUR LIPS AND THE WATER WILL GO IN!

I hate Garfield the cat. Tedious, not clever and just plain annoying. That is why I was so excited when I heard of Garfield Minus Garfield. This is, and I quote directly from the site –

‘…dedicated to removing Garfield from the Garfield comic strips in order to reveal the existential angst of a certain young Mr. Jon Arbuckle. It is a journey deep into the mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness and depression in a quiet American suburb.’

Genius.

I was going to end the article there, but I’ve just had an email from Chris Kennedy telling me about what is now my new favourite site of all time. I shall leave you with www.zombo.com where the only limits, are your imagination.

If you’ve got any exciting websites you want to share, email me iainATiainleeDOTcom

———

You can read Iain Lee’s very own take on the internet here on the 123-reg blog every last Friday of the month.

A familiar face on television since he got his first break landing the job hosting Channel 4’s thrice weekly topical comedy show the 11 O’Clock Show at the age of 25, Iain is also an award winning radio presenter, top podcast creator and a genuinely funny guy with an eye for the bizarre.

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Writing content for the web can be challenging, especially because web users don’t read a lot. According to a research study conducted by usability expert Jacob Nielsen, web users scan the text and usually read between 20-28% of the words on a web page. This means that one of your main goals, as a site owner, is to make the content on your site highly readable.

One of the easiest and most effective practices to improve website readability is to use headings. Aside from making the content easier to go through, headings are also important for SEO because search engines consider them an indicator of the content published on a page.

Enhancing content readability

Web content management expert Gerry McGovern wrote an article based on his usability study concluding that web users do not scan pages, but blocks or sections of text. He calls it “block reading”. He explains that when a web user sees a page, he doesn’t see it as a whole, but rather as blocks of information. We tend to read in sections, going directly to what interests us or catches our attention.

McGovern’s study results are also supported by one of Nielsen’s eye-tracking studies, which reveals that web users do read in chunks. Nielsen says that web users read in a horizontal movement, and then continue down the page in an F-shapped pattern, thus skipping a lot of text in between.

Source: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/f_reading_pattern_eyetracking.jpg

As you can see, the coloured red areas are the ones where users looked the most, followed by the yellow areas and then the blue areas, which are the least-viewed areas. The grey areas did not attract any attention from the users.

That’s why it’s recommended to break up long articles into blocks of text by using heading to catch the user’s attention and encouraging him to read more. When you don’t use headings, you’re making it difficult for your visitors to scan the page because you’re not giving them any indication of the content on that page.  Also, they tend to leave the page immediately if they can’t scan it.

Enhancing SEO

In terms of SEO, headings are important because they let search engines know what’s important on that page. That’s why, when optimising the content on a web page, it’s advised to include your targeted keywords in headings and sub-headings, thus making it easier for search engines to index it and for users to find it.

Header tags

 Like any article, online or print, the content on a web page should be broken into heading and sub-headings. For instance, the H1 tag is the most important on a web page and should catchy enough to get the users’ attention. The heading is written in bold or a larger font, and it should include the main keyword you are targeting for that page.

The sub-headings (h2, h3, etc) are usually written in smaller font but these should also include keywords. The sub-headings are used to break the page into logical blocks of text to make it easier for the users to read the content, as well as to summarize the content that follows.

There are many benefits to using headings on a web page, such as enhancing content readability and SEO. When you use headings, users can find your content faster and read it easier once they visit your page.

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Running an online business has many advantages over a traditional bricks and mortar company. A virtual shop front gives you the ability to attract customers from all around the world. You’re not restricted to people passing on the local High Street. Your overheads are typically smaller, and if your product is an online service, you don’t have to worry about manufacturing or shipping costs.

But there’s a downside too. If your business only exists as a set of pixels on your customers’ computer screens, how do you prove to them that you’re more substantial? Can you demonstrate your credibility, and can you persuade them that you’re not a here-today-gone-tomorrow company?

Create a real world presence

Perhaps your online business needs a real-world presence, to build confidence and trust among more sceptical customers. At 123-reg, we’ve decided to try a high-profile route, by advertising on some of London’s buses. But there are plenty of other ways to ground your online company in reality too:

• Attend trade shows and events. Conferences, industry gatherings and public events are a great way to show the face of your business and meet potential customers. Maybe it’s wedding fayres or perhaps it’s motorshows, but attending the right events can dramatically increase your company profile among your target customers.

• Open a pop-up shop. A growing trend over the last couple of years, a pop-up shop is where you temporarily take over a retail space, usually for just a few weeks. It gives you a physical presence without having to worry about a long lease. Business campaign group StartUp Britain is currently giving online retailers the chance to sell on the High Street in a pop-up shop.

• Brand up your car. Driving around in garishly-branded cars is a trend popularised by estate agents. But there’s no denying it can be effective, particularly if you drive a lot for business or tend to use your car in areas where potential customers live. You just have to make sure you’re happy piloting a big, attention-grabbing advert for your company.

• Offer a collection service to local customers. Many online businesses are run out of small industrial units, large enough to store stock but not suitable as a retail outlet. If you have premises, why not give customers the option to visit to collect their purchases? Simply offering this facility will reassure customers that your business is established and successful.

Finally, always ensure you include a bit of background information on your website. At the very least, it’s important to provide full contact details, including a postal address where people can reach you. Additionally, your website’s ‘about us’ section is the ideal place to provide more information about the people behind the company.

Have you done anything to make your online business more tangible in the real world? Leave a comment to let us know.

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Last week Kate Dailey posed a question on BBC News Magazine Online: “Is it possible to quit Google?“.  Featuring the thoughts of three computer professionals trying to part ways with Google, the article raised concerns over the Google group’s privacy agreements that even EU officials have suggested are too invasive, but is Google really that bad?

In a word: No. Without the data-mining, data-crunching and processing that Google has spent years building its reputation on, the internet wouldn’t be as advanced as it now is and equally neither would our daily lives. What Google does may lead the way – certainly in terms of numbers – but it isn’t alone in wanting to collect information about us, process it and then use it to improve our user experience. It’s rife, not just on the web but also offline too. Your bank will use fraud monitoring systems to track what, when and where you spend, process that and then flag up an alert if your ‘pattern’ changes. Your store loyalty card does the same. Tracking what you buy, processing it and sending you vouchers for similar things, trying to tempt you back in, to link more data and more processing about you, into their systems. Same intrusion? Same tracking? Same complaints? As Google themselves are always at pains to point out, they don’t sell users’ personal information, they merely use it in-house. That’s not something others online or offline could realistically claim.

A lot of the anti-Google speak is based on their sheer dominance of the market, number one and two in search land (Google Search and YouTube) is massive in the digital world but they have achieved that from nothing by just being good at what they do, very good. Much criticism is also based on the founding values of the internet: Freedom and everybody as equals. Nice values to respect and uphold but the internet is a much different beast nowadays, driving economies across the globe and still continuing to connect those on the periphery at a tremendous rate.

We all owe a great deal to Google, especially those of us who find themselves using the internet daily whether we consciously use Google products or not.

Part of Google’s success as a search engine is its own success. How many of us have simply typed a website into the Google search box instead of typing the full URL in the address bar? Google is now the lazy man’s bookmarks. Google knows that too, and based on their processing of our data, is trying to help us to find ‘exactly’ what we are looking for, via innovations such as social search, etc.

Whatever their knowledge, use or understanding of the internet, 99.9% of people who have surfed have probably used Google. They know it. Even people who haven’t used the internet know of it. That’s not a bad thing. That’s good branding but that is also being good at what they do too and providing solutions to problems sometimes we didn’t even know existed. As a business Google should and will serve you on so many levels, via so many channels. For the former customer looking to get back in touch “after that great work you did a couple of years ago” for them, Google offers the way of finding you if your office has moved or your number changed.

Google not only re-unites but it also helps find new customers. It is no fluke that SEO and PPC are now abbreviations known to almost every business person and wannabe in the developed world. Google helped drive that, and like it or not, Google lead the way in each of them. That’s technology. It’s what they do and it’s what they do best. Yet, it’s helping hand for businesses needn’t even be that techie. Potential customers who see your print advertisements, see your office sign, or perhaps just get recommended via word of mouth, will more often than not simply “Google it”. It’s a phrase that is almost a caricature of itself now, simply because it works. Google can even help connect you to would-be customers who have never heard of you, just searching for a solution to a problem that you have been clever enough to cover in your content that has then been trawled, crawled and listed in Google’s massive data system.

So while privacy online should be a concern and you should always be encouraged to read the small print, we shouldn’t see Google as the ultimate dark force to be evaded. Interestingly, in the article referred to at the start, the attempts by the interviewees to de-Google themselves seemed to fail. One of the three interviewees even admits to now being “a total Google geek”. Perhaps only when you truly look at the impact of what it does and how it goes about it, do you really appreciate the fact that without Google we would be lost. So if you and I (with a fairly high level of internet knowledge) would be lost, where would that leave our customers and furthermore where would that leave our businesses?

What do you think? Do you agree? Let us know.

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Almost every week the news channels are busy with a story on another big high-profile password breach, the latest being Yahoo  investigating a breach via its Yahoo Voices servers.

Here at 123-reg we recently altered our entire password and login procedures to improve customer security and peace of mind, yet even with regular prompting many people still leave themselves open to potential risk. It doesn’t matter how strong the gateway of your information holder, if you make accessing your account easy you make yourself vulnerable.

So here’s six tips on choosing your password to minimise the risk of being hacked.

1. Treat your online home as you would your offline home

You wouldn’t get the same key cut to open your front door, your back door, windows, car, cupboards, any lockable bags or boxes, etc, so don’t use the same key or password for every account you have. In fact you should use a different password for every website you use. That may sound like a minefield of passwords to remember, but it can be done – perhaps by using passwords that remind you specifically of that site or the services it offers – remember to avoid the obvious though!

2. Ignore Phishing emails

We’d like to think we’re all wise to these now, but opening up that email bleary-eyed first thing in the morning you may not be quite as alert as you need to be. The key point to remember is that even if it looks like an official communication – and you can often spot a pixelated logo, or spelling mistake – if you are asked to reveal personal information such as name, password, etc make sure you are certain it is a genuine site. Also beware of the links you click to avoid downloading harmful malware.

3. Change your passwords regularly

It may sound like it is complicating matters again, but it pays to be ahead of the game. By setting password change as part of your monthly or even weekly schedule you will re-inforce the importance of password security too, so it will keep your mind focused and help even more towards minimising the risks. There’s a reason many sites will regularly prompt you to change your password, so follow the protocol across all sites you login to.

4. Make sure your password is strong

Most sites will give you an indication of password strength when you input a new one, so pay attention. A combination of letters, numbers and symbols works best, as does a mix of lower and upper case characters.

5. Consider using a combination of pass words to create a passphrase

If remembering a whole host of passwords is going to prove difficult, this little cartoon may help inspire. Basically using a combination of four random words and swapping their combination between websites, will give you a higher protection than even a standard mix of numbers, letters and characters that you re-use across sites. While it is difficult to guess – even with advanced computerised checking systems – it is very easy to remember as you know the four words used in the passphrase generation as well as your own name and probably have them ingrained in your brain.

6. Don’t be lazy or lax

It sounds silly but so much that we do is online nowadays it is easy to forget basic protections. Don’t write passwords down and certainly don’t store them on your PC or laptop – even in encrypted form they are tempting for a keen hacker. Apply the same rules to your password creation whatever site you are creating an account for. Firstly this keeps you focused and trained to using a more secure system and secondly.

Finally, while password management sites, apps and programmes may have a place in helping you, remember they are just as vulnerable and probably bigger targets when compared to other websites. Last year LastPass admitted a security breach with the issue again highlighting the vulnerability of using weak passwords.

Do you have any password top-tips? Care to share?

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Bounce rates are considered an important ranking factor by search engines. That’s because bounce rates measure the quality of visitor engagement. Usually, the lower the bounce rate, the higher the engagement.

First, let’s define bounce rate. Bounce rate is the percent of visitors that enter a website and exit from the same page, without clicking on anything else or without visiting any other page on that site. In fewer words, it measures a site’s single page visits. Usually, a 25-30% bounce rate is considered good for ecommerce sites, approximately 50% for informational sites and 75-80% for blogs.

Why and how do visitors bounce from a site

Most often, a visitor leaves a site when he realises that the site does not offer the promised information. For instance, this can happen when a visitor is mislead by an attractive offer or discount and then realises there are certain costs that come with it. That’s when the visitor bounces from that site by:

• clicking on an external link
• clicking the back button in the browser
• simply closing the window or tab
• entering a different URL in the same window or tab

How to reduce bounce rate

The most effective way to reduce a website’s bounce rate is by publishing engaging content that is both attractive and informative for the visitors. It’s that type of content that grabs their attention and determines them to go through other pages of that site to see what other interesting information they might find.

One other way to engage with visitors is to show them related content to the one they’ve just read. “You just read an article about the causes of low bounce rate; we would also recommend an article on ways to reduce bounce rate on your site”. You can also use a plugin that shows related content at the end of each article.

Another way to engage with your visitors is to link certain keywords in an article to related content on your site. This way they can find more insightful information on that specific topic.

As a conclusion, when looking at bounce rates, you should also consider other factors, such as time spent on site because sometimes more time spent on site means that the content was engaging for the visitor. However, other times, it may mean that the visitor kept on looking through the site trying to find specific information, but with no luck. That’s why it is advised that you combine and analyze all the information on your visitors in order to reach a correct conclusion.

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The meta description is mainly used by search engines and is a great way to get traffic to your site, but it can be tricky to get it right. This short paragraph is used to describe the information that is included on a page and it should be written to “sell” it and get people to click.  The meta description is the short paragraph that appears on search engines like Google so it’s very important to pitch it perfectly.

It’s an elevator pitch

We are all busy people, so you have just a few seconds (10, the most) to pitch your idea, article, product or whatever it is that you’re trying to get the world to see. Take an hour or two or how many you need to come up with maximum 160 characters of content that will summarize the information on your page and get people to click. So your meta description should be short, catchy and perfect for your target audience.

Craft your description

Start with research. See how your competitors or other businesses you look up to are writing their meta descriptions and what details they are including, then start crafting it. You might not get it perfect the first time, but with practice you will get better and better at it. Soon enough you will be able to write it in a few minutes.

Another thing to consider is the uniqueness factor. Try to write your description as creatively as possible because if it’s predictable, chances are your audience will not pay attention to it.

Things to do, things to avoid

The meta description should be written for people, not for search engines. You can include a keyword or two that is relevant for your site or business, but try to avoid over-optimising it or stuffing it with keywords.

Each page should have a different meta description, usually between 100 and 160 characters, otherwise search engines tag it as duplicate content. Don’t forget to include a call-to-action, such as “Buy now”, “Find out more”, etc.

Have we missed anything? Do you have any tips to share that can help write a perfect meta-description?

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