I have had another client that I have been explaining why to take off the intro page to their website. So this is my reasoning for not having an intro page for your website.

What is it
An intro page is a page before you get to the main content on a website. It sometimes says welcome to the website or has a fancy animation on. Then you have to press enter to go into the main bulk of the website.

Why not
Sometimes people think of a website as a brochure or book and these have covers, so people can think that it is a good idea. It is not. People who come to your website have already wanted to see what it is all about, maybe they clicked on a google listing or advertisement. These are the covers really. The visitor is looking for information, and the more barriers you put in the way, the less people will bother with the website.

Another reason not to have one is that search engines like google give a lot of ‘weight’ to the homepage, and if you do not make the most of it and only put your company name on and a skip or enter button on, then you are not making the most an important part of a website.

So if you have an intro page on your website then break free today and get rid of it, it will boost your results.

The news today that online advertising spending has overtaken TV advertising is no suprise to most people but it’s an interesting note that the line online advertisting spend has now been formally reconised as the most spent on media.

Most of the money is spent on google ads but it also includes display ads and email advertising. As the traditional media’s audience falls and online audienace grows the trend will continue. Google have created a platform that most small businesses and individuals can use to promote their services and products, and the instant access to unlimited amounts of people at a relitivly low cost has made the move from traditional media to online easier.

I updated Filezilla to the new version, and found a script that enables you to easily transfer the site settings to the new v3 program.

If you have to do this then use the converter script that is linked below.

http://nyrodev.free.fr/filezilla/convert.php

Techcrunch posted an interview with Steve Ballmer of Microsoft talking about the future of Microsoft and where they are going and other things like the cloud and Twitter.

He also talks about the future of search and that he thinks the next five years will see more inovation in search. With bing starting to gain search share it should be interesting where search can go.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/24/microsoft-ballmer-interview-exclusive-techcrunch-bing-mobile-azur/

A useful article has been written by Grant Simmons on imediaconnection.com, that is worth a read if you are interested in getting your website higher in search engines.

It includes how to measure a search campaign and clicks, and gives a quick guide to what things like bounce rate and pageviews mean in analytics.

If you are new to SEO and search engine analytics then its well worth a read.

http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/24535.asp

A client was asking questions today about ranking for various keywords and should they try and get their website on the search engines for specific words. I get asked this somethimes and so thought I would do a quick blog post about it, to explain my point of view.

First what are keywords and keyphrases?
Well a keyword when talked about in SEO terms means a word that you would like google or a search engine to pick up and show your website in the results for that word. For example a keyword might be website or design or web.

A keyphrase is the combination of a couple of keywords. So it may be website design or web developer. It can also be a few words long such as web designer worcester.

The main thing that any website owner should be primarily concerned with when it comes to search engines is what is your target audience going to type into the search box. It does not matter if you are number 1 in google for a never searched for phrase. Also I would say that it does not really matter to get loads of traffic to a page that visitors instantly leave or that you are not interested in.

Thinking about the search user

If for example I wanted to be found in google for any keyphrase or keyword it would not be very useful to rank highly for design, really. Someone who types that into a search engine is proberly not looking for my services, and it also puts me up against a load of other websites.

For me my ideal client would be a business searching for a web design company or web designer, and also maybe restricted by area as well. So my idea customer would be searching for web design +Worcester maybe.

I have been working for a while on www.orthopaedicnursing.org which is an online resource for orthopaedic nursing around the world. For the project we used modx a cms that allows easy editing of the website. The admin can edit, post news, events and documents.

Modx is an opensource cms that is equipt with AJAX and SEO resources. It runs in php and allows for easy theming and has a set of powerfull tools.

Modx allows for easy editing of a website for the admin and also has a large set of features, making it a good choice for marketing websites and also custom applications.

We just got a client to number 1 in google search rankings, hurry. Isn’t it great when you can get someone to the top of the most used search engine and get a hole load of traffic for the client. I cannot say who or what the keywords were so not to let the competition know but it is a good thing to get another client to the top.

Today I found an a really good example of an artist using all the different social media’s like twitter, facebook and youtube. The artist is called Imogen Heap and she has been blogging, twittering and using video blogging to engage with fans over the production of her new album.

Her youtube channel has had a small updates regualry asking fans for feedback through the new album production. And she regulary uses 12seconds to showcase thoughts and work.

Also she talks indepth about the struggles and successes of making the album and uses the video platform to really give fans an insight the production and thinking that go into the album. There is more in this article http://threeminds.organic.com/2009/09/unleashing_the_artist_within_t.html which goes into more depth about what Imogen is doing.

For anyone that is making music or even any businesses this seems like a good method to follow to really connect with your fans and make them fell part of everything. Which leads to more sales hopefully.

Application

The video updates are a good example of not just using video for viral video marketing, but using video marketing in a way that engages people and gives them more insight into what makes your product and how much work you put into them.

If you have a product that people can engage with you even participate in, then maybe the use of social media will create a load of evangelists for your product.