SEO, Website Content Optimization
& Software Development

The BBC today reported positive news as Chinese official export figures for the previous month (Sep 2009) are said to indicate that the economies in the rest of the world are recovering. This appears to be good news for global economies, but there is also another trend which in the longer term could well have benefits for those in the West who get in a position to take advantage.

One of our senior managers from our China office is in the UK at the moment. One of her immediate observations to us, on this first visit in three years, is that things now seem comparatively “cheap” in comparison to how she remembers last time. The comment was made after a shopping trip to Asda. It’s likely indicative of how prices in China have increased as well as current exchange rates working in her favour.

As a company with a long established Chinese office branch, we have experienced wage inflation, certainly amongst the white collar educated staff which our business tends to employ. Recent valuations of the pound has also made purchasing in China seem more expensive for UK companies, as the Renminbi (pegged to the U.S. dollar) has risen in value. It is nevertheless a surprise to hear such a comment, especially as we have considered China a cheap place to do business for so long. (more…)

China is the single largest new Internet market we’re likely to see emerge in our lifetime, so why are so many companies so slow to gain an early advantage?  The answer seems to be the perennial, “…we’re aware that there are questions we should be asking, but we don’t know what they are….”  So, let’s start on just a few of the basics….

“Will the Chinese user feel comfortable using my site?”

Not only do you need to make a great job of translation, but are you adapting your Chinese website to fit the culture too?

Ensure that a Chinese person finding your site shouldn’t have to think about credibility, usability, language, and most important of all, trust – it needs to speak their language in every way. (more…)

This week has seen thousands of peoples email addresses and passwords being posted online as three of the biggest free email services Microsoft’s Hotmail, Yahoo’s Mail and Google’s Gmail were the victims of severe and crippling Phishing attacks.

What is Phishing?

Phishing (pronounced fishing) is quite simply the criminal process of stealing someone’s personal information online. This information tends to be credit card details, usernames and passwords.

So just how did three of the biggest names in technology fall foul of Cyber criminals? (more…)

On a post on the BBC Business section (7th Oct) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8291319.stm, a small business dealing in road and white line painting services asks the question as to which are the best advertising investments for their niche business.

The BBC’s expert, Ganesh Selvarajah, is an advisor at Business Link. He suggests that primarily after research on possible clients, the company should create a brochure, call up companies and mail the brochure out to them.

Developing the website is also a secondary suggestion - insofar as making sure their unique selling point is clear on the home page.

When reading this, it reminds us that, as an company steeped in the methods of internet marketing,  how many offline avenues to lead generation are still valid in today’s climate - networking, word of mouth,  as well as mailings suggested here. (more…)

Google have made us aware for many years that their ranking procedures are algorithm based. This gives some of us a feeling of some security no doubt - that the natural results we see are the result of a process which analyses all websites in a similar manner and comes up with the resulting rankings as a result of each website being subject to the same process.

We noticed with interest a post on Google’s help forum yesterday (7th Oct) asking “Why did Google fail me on such a straightforward search?”. http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Web%20Search/thread?tid=33778b5d5232c234&hl=en. The poster was asking why, when searching for text relating to President Obama’s statement on Information Literacy Awareness Month, this didn’t show up anywhere in the first 20 results.

A Google employee was straight on the case and within a day has posted that they made a “slight change” and now such a search appears at the top of the first page on Google. (more…)

Getting ranked on Google is great for business, right? Well, despite the obvious commercial benefits of the number 1 spot on Google, one website is having a good attempt at throwing it away - by blocking Googlebot.

A large UK chemical supplier, SciChem Ltd, currently holds top spot for the keyword phrase “chemical supplies” - no doubt pretty lucrative if that’s your line of business.  However, a search for the phrase currently brings up a rather unusual snippet:

The IP address that has been “logged and is now banned for improper use of this site” is none other than Googlebot.

Googlebot’s IP block was probably triggered automatically during the course of its regular crawl and (judging by the website’s continued high rankings) is likely to have happened fairly recently.

The danger is that unless the ban isn’t lifted in the near future, the website’s ranking could suffer badly. As far as Google is concerned, the website content is limited to the message it receives; they’ll probably let a failed crawl or two go - most sites are down through maintenance or problems at least once in a while - but any longer and Google starts to think the problem is permanent and won’t want to rank or send visitors to the site any more.

Occasionally, it can be necessary to move a website onto a new or different domain. You might have acquired a better domain name (like home improvement store B&Q purchasing diy.com) or just want to consolidate domains after a merger or takeover.

 

Whatever the reason, moving domains shouldn’t be undertaken lightly; if you get it wrong you risk damaging (or even completely losing) your search engine rankings. A botched move won’t do the user experience of your visitors any favours either – 404 (File not found) errors are the last thing anyone wants to see.

Image credit: Salim Fadhley

Think of moving domains as a bit like moving house – you can opt to just move your stuff and leave it at that, but for continuity you should really let everyone know where you’ve gone, arrange to get your mail forwarded etc. Making the transition to a new domain as seamlessly as possible is a similar process; it’s essential that everything redirects properly from your old domain to the new one.

 

How to move domain

 

1.  Place a copy of the old domain website files on the new domain.

 

2.  Create 301 redirects from each page on the old domain that point to the same page on the new domain (A guide on how to do this can be found here: http://www.webconfs.com/how-to-redirect-a-webpage.php).

 

A 301 redirect tells search engines like Google that the page has permanently moved and to index the new ones instead.

 

3.  Do not use a blanket redirect on all traffic from your old site to the homepage of the new one. Although this will pass search engine ranking value, it will provide a poor user experience for website visitors trying to access specific pages.

 

If there isn’t a corresponding page on the new site, redirect to one with similar content.

 

4.  Update the internal hyperlinks on your website and point them to the new domain locations rather than having them redirect from the old ones. If possible, contact external websites that link into the site and ask them to update their links.

 

5.  Login to Google Webmaster Tools and (a) verify your new site and (b) submit a sitemap. You can also use GWT to check for crawl errors and verify that the 301 redirects are working properly.

 

6.  It may take a while for Google to register the changes in its index, but if the redirects are functioning properly it should only be a matter of time.

 

If you are also planning a site redesign or changing the branding, it is a good idea to wait until the redirect has been successfully completed before implementing any further changes; it’s not only easier to handle, it also limits the change to which you subject your users.

 

It is likely you will experience a fluctuation in rankings as things settle down – this is normal and, provided everything has been redirected properly, should only be temporary.

 

If you are considering moving domains, please get in touch and we will be happy to advise you on the process and help ensure it is as painless as possible.