9 South Albany Road, Redruth, Cornwall TR15 2PE | Tel: 01209 213784
Mercator English Language School run by Dr Mersedeh Proctor and based in St Austell had waited a long time for an update for their website and it has finally gone live. It uses WordPress as a Content Management System, this makes it expandable so extra functionality and items can be added at a later date.
Within a day of the new website going live, improved search engine results were recorded.
Google personalise their search engine results according to the websites you have visited and what you have searched for before.
I have noticed an increase in this recently. I had been searching for Hotels in Paris and looking at Eurostar deals, not only did I then get emails from the likes of Trip Advisor, Thomson’s related to this, but when I was on Facebook various adverts came up with different deals.
Now this is could be quite helpful if it means you get the best deal but if you are searching for where your business appears on search engines you could be getting a misleading result.
Channel Computing has written a really good article entitled “You are not really on page 1 of Google“, they explain it in more detail and also what you can do to avoid it, worth a read.
I have got used to the daily emails from various banks telling me someone has accessed my account and I need to “click here” to correct it, even the begging letters from Africa – but this is a new one.
The subject on the email was “Expiring Registration” and it related to my domain name hoopergraphics.com – which incidentally is a my Portfolio as a Flash website.
So I checked with 123-reg, who I manage all my domains, and www.hoopergraphics.com was not due for renewal. So I assumed it was an email scam to get me to transfer my domain to them.
But I then went back and read the email properly – turns out it was for Search Engine Registration for 1 year! It does state I am under no obligation to pay the amount, it is not an invoice and it is just a courtesy reminder and they also provide a link to unsubscribe.
However I am not too happy about their warning, which states if I don’t pay the money people may find it difficult to locate me on search engines, and I am concerned that people may just click and pay up without realising what they are doing. Unethical search engine optimisation techniques I feel – I know some really good people based in Cornwall, so no way am I going to pay someone from America to do it!
Interesting video from Google on choosing a domain name.
It seems they are changing the way they rank websites and how it uses keywords in the domain name. It used to help if you had your keywords in the domain name. For example Redruthwebdesigner.co.uk would rank higher than hoopergraphics.co.uk if searching for “web designer”. This video shows that they have changed the importance they place on the domain name and a snappy name could actually help your business in the longer term.
I think this is a good change of policy, be interesting to see how it works in practice.
A few weeks ago I did a website for Green Clearance Company, they specialise in house clearance, as well as office and garden clearance and I was delighted when it got picked up on Google within a week.
I have just heard from Ed who tells me he has had good feedback from friends and friendly about the website, but more importantly it secured them two clearance jobs.
This is an excellent result and very pleased.
On visiting IKEA the other day I noticed they have included a new range of cleaning cloths to their household section.
It is a selection of three cloths for different usage areas, the grey is for windows, glass and mirrors, the red cloth for furniture and the white for general cleaning.
They recommend just using water on the cloth for cleaning purposes and so far I have been very impressed with them and it certainly saves money on cleaning agents, and then ultimately the environment.
However I wouldn’t recommend driving miles to your local IKEA store, but I may well stock up on a few more when I next visit Southampton (probably get a few for presents as well.) IKEA do have an environmental policy that encourages its customers to make small changes that can make a big difference, and this is certainly one easy step.
Last night was the official launch of the Book – The Condurro Story 1939–2010, produced by Girlguiding Cornwall to record the history of their campsite at Condurro.
The book was produced by the Committee responsible for Condurro, along with Senior Section Guides from the Falmouth and Penryn area.
The content was gathered from Girlguiding Cornwall Archive’s, The Cornish Studies Library as well as recording personal memories of happy times spent at the campsite. A cd-rom has also been produced to accompany the book, where more of these memories can be heard.
Jane Bennett was the overall project manager and the project was given financial support from The Young Roots part of the Heritage Lottery Fund. This has enabled a high quality final product to be produced and certainly I felt privileged to be part of recording the history of such a special place.
I am delighted to report that I have passed the last module of my Chartered Institute of Marketing exams and have been awarded the Professional Certificate in Marketing Level 4.
It was exceedingly hard work, especially when trying to run the business at the same time, learnt a lot on the course.
I received an notification that my domain name registration was due to expire. I was quite confused, I manage all my domain names through 123-reg and they are very good at notifying you when names are up for renewal. I had been sent this from Domain Name Renewal Services.
On closer inspection I realised that they were just wanting me to transfer my domain to them – they did have a lot of text that told me there was no obligation for me to do anything with this notice, it was not an invoice, it was entirely up to me. So they covered the legal bit.
However how many people have received something like this, not realised it had no authority and just paid it? Bit naughty I think but always check the small print.