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.

Twitter is a micro blogging platform, that has grown exponentially in the last year. Everyone is now talking about twitter and it is also getting known as one of the fastest ways to spread news.

To use twitter you just need to sign up for an account then start following people to hear the latest of what they are doing.

Facebook is a social connecting website that people can join and make friends with other people. It is known for sharing photos and also a host of apps that you can have on there.

As a business you can have a page and a group as well as an individual profile.

Youtube is a website where users can post there videos and share them with other users. It has become the number 1 video website and has millions of videos.

Each user can have a video channel which is useful for building a collection of your videos.