Recently I upgraded my home PC to Windows 7 Beta. Yes you might think I am a sucker for punishment with Microsoft being notorious for releasing buggy software however many people are reporting that Windows 7 is supirior to Vista even in the Beta stages.

Anyway, while the Windows 7 experience has been quite pleasurable there have been a few gremlins to work around. The main one being trying to get Outlook 2007 to work with my Exchange email that is hosted by Fasthosts.

If you set up the email as normal once you start Outlook it repeatedly asks you for your password as if it is not recognising you as a user.
So after resorting to Outlook Web Access for the past couple of days I decided to pull my finger out and figer out what is going on.

Anyway I found a useful post on Vinodunny.com. With hosted exchange account names are normally in the form of name@domain.com, however internally on the Exchange Active Directory they will be stored in the format of ADSDomain\name_internetdomain. So therefore if you use the format of Exchange Active Directory for the username you will be able to set up your email.

Apparantly if access Outlook Web Access go to options and change password you will be able to see the correct username there.

Unfortunately for Fasthosts users this option is not there however if you use the normal username (ie name@domain.com) and change the authentication from “Basic” to “NTLM” it does appear to fix the problem.

This technically should not work as Fasthosts claim they use basic authentication however they may use NTLM authentication internally. Either way it appears to resolve the issue.

Opera recently carried out a report on websites that pass W3C markup validation. The study is part of the Metadata Analysis and Mining Application Project (MAMA) and tested 3,509,170 URLs with the W3C’s markup validator.

The study found that only 4.13% of the URL set passed validation (with 4.33% of the domains having at least 1 URL that passed validation).

While this is a relatively low figure it is an increase on previous years.

In December 2001, 2,034,788 URLs were tested, 14,563 passed, equalling a pass rate of 0.71%

In June 2006, 1,002,350 URLs were tested, 25,890 passed, equalling a pass rate of 2.58%

W3C Validation is arguably not that important, as it does not have an effect on functionality of the website, nor does it affect the rankings in the Search Engine Results Pages.

However it is regarded as important to help ease of maintenance, cross platform compatibility, and access by people with disabilities along with other benefits.

Having a website that is cross browser compatible will help improve traffic and sales conversions as the bounce rate of users viewing a site that appears “broken” will likely be considerably higher than a website that is fully functioning.

Having a website that is accessible to people with disabilities will help improve the number of people able to view your site, which in turn should help increase sales. It is also worth noting that a website that does not take into account people with disabilities is theoretically breaking the law as there is a legal requirement to conform to the disabilities discrimination act. At the moment in time there have been no known cases of these causing webmaster legal issues but as the web becomes more ubiquitous providing access to the disabled will likely become more important.

North South Media have been doing an SEO league table over the past few months based on the rankings each company achieves within the search engines. As part of our on going SEO on our own site we have gradually moved up in the table and finally been ranked at No 1 for the UK results and No 2 for the International Results. While the league is not official or even that serious it is nice to be identified as one of the top SEO companies in the UK. Congratulations to Hobo Web and Just Searching for achieving No 1 in the Scottish and International results.

Regional results as follows:

UK National results as follows:

International results as follows:

I’m easing myself into work by doing a couple of blog posts before I start work on our clients! Along with neglecting blogging have have neglected reading Sphinn and other blogs recently. One of the Sphinn topics I noticed was by Copy Brighter on SEO techniques Google has smashed in 2007. One of the reasons I like posts like this is because I see so many SEO companies still practicing these techniques or advising their clients to use them. I have no doubt many of these companies will continue using the techniques throughout 2008 and onwards. One of the key jobs as an SEO is to actively read Blogs, Forums and other information sites in order to keep on top of the regular changes search engines make to their algorithms/rules. While it is impossible to know the exact Google algorithm it is often publicly announced when Google make an important change. Some of these changes include:

1. Reciprocal linking. This is an out of date technique still widely used by many SEO companies and webmasters and it is important to realise that it is no longer a valid technique. In May of 2007 Realtors who relied heavily on reciprocal links were hit with a -30 penalty from Google, severely harming their business. If really need to do a reciprocal link it is best not to use a links page but to embed the link within an article or news item, this makes the link look more natural. Google also say it’s the excessive reciprocal linking that is not allowed, so swapping links with select sites that have a good authority within your industry should be fine.
2. The “site: *** -sljktf” command (to show the supplemental index results). It used to be common practice to check which WebPages were in the supplemental index, as it would identify which pages needed some extra work doing to them. However Google has now merged all the pages into the regular index making it harder to identify which pages are under-performing.
3. Directory Links. Another outdated technique still widely used. During 2007 Google hit many directories with a reduction in Page Rank. Sites using the directories should not be directly affected / penalised but have the value of the links from the directories reduced.
4. Sponsored blog post networks. Google made quite a controversial move in 2007 when they penalised Bloggers who accepted payments to provide blog posts about websites, products, services and companies. Many websites had their Page Rank completely stripped away and has upset many Bloggers that generate some extra money from their Blog.
5. Paid for links / Sponsored Links. Similar to the Sponsored Blog posts Google hit many sites that sold link placements on their site. This is due to people trying to increase their Page Rank artificially by paying for links from high PR websites. This is another move that caused much upset as many sites had a big drop in PR, many of the site did not even sell links.
6. Dominating the SERPs with sub domains. Often used as a Reputation Management Technique allowing companies achieve multiple results from several different sub domains. This technique was devalued with Google making it more difficult for each sub domain after the first 2 to good achieve rankings.
7. 10 Blue Links. This is not really a penalty but Google has shifted from provided strictly 10 website search results on page 1 to a mixture of results including Images, Videos, Blog posts and News Items. Google is making a big push towards relevancy and quality of search results making it harder for websites to rank in the top ten. This will mainly effect website with little content and deliberately made for Adsense.

After a previous post regarding Tindall Marsh & Co using our design we are in discussion about resolving the situation. I have spoken to the owner and hopefully the problem will be sorted without too much incident. It would appear the situation occurred due to a rather foolish designer whom has now left the company, and the owner has expressed his apologies. So thank you for the quick resolution.

Ok I am being petty again, but I have decided that I am going to create a page dedicated to all the crap SEO spam emails we get. If I remember correctly another SEO company was listing them on their own site, so if anyone remembers the site let me know and I will give them some link love for the idea.

My main reason behind this is because it is funny how stupid SEOs make themselves look when they spam other SEOs with SEO services. I assume they are automated requests so I guess they can’t help it, but then using an automated technique is pretty stupid too.

Today WebSearchPR.Com were kind enough to take some time out of their day to send me an email. Apparently my site only has 155 links in Google, and that they used the Google link count because that is the most important.

“A higher number of links will help me achieve far higher rankings on Google.”

Really? Links are important? Why did no one tell me?

Apparently they have achieved excellent results for their clients and they have increased profits for 100’s of their clients.

Strangely enough they do not seem to have any links in Google themselves, Yahoo shows seven and MSN (+link:) shows none. Maybe they should spend more time building their own links rather than spamming other SEO companies.

Ok so I know they are not going to stop spamming but I am still going to moan about it.

Approximately 2 days every month we get an email from this seoedge.com, either through our main email or our contact form. Every single email has been regarding buying links on one of their sites or link exchanges. One email even apologised for disturbing me and they will not do it again!

One of the amusing things I noticed many of the links they were trying to sell is on their own site seoedge.com, apparently it used to be a PR6 but it now appears to be PR0. Guess no one told them selling links is not allowed in Google’s eyes.

If an SEO can not keep up to date with correct practices for their own site what hope do their clients have? I suppose the fact that their SEO packages cost $99 and $199 a month goes to show you get what you pay for. At least they do not guarantee 1000s of top ten listings within X days and they seem quite honest about the service you pay for.

SEO Edge are not the only culprit and they are probably not the worst it is just that I noticed they were repeat offenders.

While this is some what of a pointless rant it is partly due to the fact that companies like this make winning clients more difficult. Certainly in the UK, SEO is still quite an un-developed industry, there is a very mixed bag or good SEOs and awful SEOs with very little in between.

Unfortunately I find that many small firms / SMEs are quite uneducated about the industry and will go to the cheapest SEO possible. I am happy to to lose a potential client to a better SEO or at least a good SEO that undercut me/presented themselves better than me. If you are paying £50 a month and targeting a competitive industry my personal opinion is that the money would be better spent on buying SEOBook and maybe a member ship to SEOMoz and do the SEO yourself. Both them resources will probably make your more skilled at SEO than the SEO company that charges £50 a month for SEO that is way out of date.

If you are considering paying for SEO then no matter how much the company charges I think you should always read up about some of the techniques to avoid, look at the clients the company has had and the results they have achieved. If any of the techniques used on the site look suspicious then it is probably best to stay away from them. Techniques to look out for and avoid include:

1. Micro Sites / Shadow Domains that redirect to the client site. Google mentions using deceptive redirects but I would also avoid a company that uses Micro sites with a keyword rich domain name, keyword rich content and dozens of links back to the client site. It looks rubbish, and it is a bad practice.
2. Does not distinguish between paid for and organic results. You want to be the top ten in Google for No Win No Fee? Yes I can get your site to the top by the end of today. It will cost you £10 a click though and it is called AdWords.
3. Guaranteed rankings, we have all heard it before. You can not guarantee rankings for competitive terms. Yes anyone can guarantee you 100s of top ten rankings but they will be obscure terms no one searches for.
4. Hidden Text through various techniques include NoScript, White on White, CSS visibility:hidden etc. It may get good results for a while, you may see competitors having a great success from it. Sooner or later the site will be penalised and you will lose all rankings. This maybe ok for sites generating short term income from adsense etc but if your business is dependant on your company name, website, etc then I would stay well away from this technique.
5. Excessive duplicate content. Some SEOs may add numerous pages per month to the site. This is quite frequently duplicate content, it probably will not get your site penalised but it is unlikely the pages will get indexed for anything. If the content is scraped from a limit number of sites then the sites the content is scraped off could file a DMCA request and have the content removed from the index.
6. Paid Links. Again the site should not be penalised in the Search Engine Results Pages for using paid links but Google does not like it and most likely will devalue the links and possibly strip away the Page Rank of the site.
7. Reciprocal Linking, it has not been much use for a while, do not even bother with it especially it is obvious too. If the file name is has links or resources in it and there are a 1000 links on the page, it is kind of obvious that the site is using reciprocal links.
8. No FTP/Site access needed. Not really a technique, more a lack of one, but the site needs to be optimised as well as gaining links. If the SEO makes no changes to the site then the results will be limited.

There are many other things to avoid I just listed a few that came to me. There are also loads of good SEOs in the UK but unfortunately a few seem to give the rest of the industry a bad name. I hope as the demand for SEO increases the overall awareness about the techniques that should and should not be used will increase too.

Well it has been a few weeks now since Microsoft opened the Webmaster tools and also made the Link command work again and I have been trying out both of them.

Firstly the Live Search Link commands, this now works by using + in front of the command then the URL you want to check. Therefore instead of link:dolphinpromotions.co.uk it is now +link:dolphinpromotions.co.uk. Joost de Valk pointed out that Live Search appears to obey NoFollows which is pretty useful as Yahoo is quite frustrating when showing all the NoFollow links. It also groups together the sitewide links well and the tool is usable through the API. Overall it is quite good news, it appears to be more accurate than Yahoo and obviously the Google one is not very accurate.

Next up is Live Webmaster, the equivalent to Google Webmaster Tools or the Yahoo Site Explorer. At the moment I think it is still in Beta, while I could sign in and try to add a site the tool kept creating a validation error. On further research I had to email lswmp@microsoft.com to request my account to be activated. My first thoughts were that it is defiantly more advanced than Site Explorer. Some of the features include:

• Top 5 Pages – Not entirely sure how it evaluates the pages but it assigns a rank to them, it shows the Language, Region, Last Crawled and whether it is blocked.

• Indexed Pages – The total number of indexed pages.

• Profile – You can add your sitemap.xml etc

• Keywords – Check how well a page performs in the search results for the specific keyword

• Top Links From – Top 10 performing outbound links in Live Search.

• Top Links to – Top 10 performing inbound links in Live Search.

While there are more functions than Site Explorer, it definitely seems buggy (it is beta though). The main things I noticed were:

• Rank – Every single page it showed was ranked 5, so I am not sure if this is even working at al.

• Country/Region – All my pages apart from the home page was classed as GB, the homepage is classed as US. Though I presume this is related to which country the majority of users visit. So more people from US have visited the homepage of this blog.

• Indexed Pages – It reports 701 pages for this blog, which is defiantly not accurate, Google reports 190. The +Site command also reports 701 pages.

• Keyword Function – I am not entirely sure what this is supposed to do, the description says “Review how this page performs in search results against specific keywords.” which I would of expected to show me the position of my site in Live. However it just shows a list of my pages, I assume it shows which page performs best compared to the other pages in your site for that keyword, rather than the actually SERPs.

• Validation – Our main site www.dolphinpromotions.co.uk is still HTML 4.01 (We will change it one day!) so when I added the meta validation it created an validation warning due to the forward slash, when I removed this the site failed the validation. Granted the slash doesn’t actually create an error so I could just leave it in, and you can also authenticate the site through and XML file so it is a bit of a moot point, but the site should not really fail authentication because of that.

Overall I think there is plenty of potential there, though to be honest I do not use Site Explorer or Webmaster tools a lot. I find Site Explorer a bit crap and it does not seem to provide much benefit to my sites. Webmaster tools is definitely the best of the bunch but it has been around for quite a while now so hopefully Live will develop plenty of useful feature in the future.

The original reason for me starting this post was for me to justify to myself that this blog does not actually validate using the W3C Markup Validation Service even though I happen to have a Valid XHTML 1.0 logo in my right sidebar(which I will remove after this post). Now I am not out to deliberately deceive people by making them think this blog is valid when it is not, it is just because as I have made posts or added things to my sidebar the site has developed validation errors. At the time of writing the homepage has 20 errors, I expect it will have many more by the time I finish this post. So anyway I thought to myself how many other blogs actually advertise they are W3C Valid when they are not, so I began looking around a few of the sites I read and also some of the top Technorati Blogs. To my surprise not many people actually declare they are valid the only 2 I found before I gave up looking for the logo or Valid Refer Link (XHTML) were Matt Cutts Blog and the SEOmoz Blog. When I checked both the Blogs Matt Cuts had 20 errors and SEOmoz had 29, though it is worth noting that the SEOmoz homepage is actually valid. Yeay I thought I am not the only one with this problem and I think the problem is basically brought about by the fact that a lot of blogs actually start out as W3C Valid and as we make posts more and more errors get added, the only way to avoid it is to validate the Blog each time a post is made and then make the required changes which is just a nuisance.

In fact is it really the bloggers responsibility to validate their blog? I have been using Windows Live Writer for 2 weeks now, as I am sure you are aware it is a desktop application that allows easy WYSIWYG Authoring of posts so surely Live Writer should be responsible for turning the my post into Valid HTML/XHTML? After all I am sure not every blogger out there is that proficient at HTML or even knows what W3C is, so why would they check for validation?

I suppose the question people may ask me (and I ask myself sometimes) is why should I care about that stupid W3C validation anyway? Well:

W3C was created to ensure compatibility and agreement among industry members in the adoption of new standards. Prior to its creation, incompatible versions of HTML were offered by different vendors, increasing the potential for inconsistency between web pages.

Source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W3c

In fact there are some arguments that not conforming to the Web Accessibility Guidelines (Not the same as W3C Valid Markup) is actually against the law.

1. The UK 1995 Disability Discrimination Act – how does your website measure up?
2. Disabled access to web sites under UK law

So anyway this all got me thinking a little more, how many other websites out there do not have W3C Valid Markup. So I decided to ignore my morning list of tasks and have a look around at what sites failed or passed the W3C Markup Validation. I am going to post the results in the next post as this one is lengthy enough as it is.

Please also note, as far as I am aware all the following data is correct, I used the validator.w3.org tool to check all the sites and I have only copied the results from there. Also while I have checked some accessibility sites etc just because they don’t validate does not mean they are not accessible several sites on the list have text alternative websites etc. I am not a usability expert but I assume a text alternative is not the ideal solution to accessibility though. Actually the Web Accessibility Guidelines Checklist actually states

If, after best efforts, you cannot create an accessible page, provide a link to an alternative page that uses W3C technologies, is accessible, has equivalent information (or functionality), and is updated as often as the inaccessible (original) page.

One of the worst part the worst parts of my job is having to invoice clients and do our accounts. I am not sure why really, you would think invoicing someone should be a good job, it means that people owe me money and that is always good. I always used to use Sage Accounts, and while I am sure its a brilliant piece of software for my accountant I can’t bear it!

The past 2 months I have been trying out FreshBooks as an alternative method of invoicing. It is basically an online invoicing and time tracking service which simplifies you client and invoice management.

Some of the features it includes are:

1. Easily create, send and manage invoices
2. Track time (for you and your staff)
3. Send invoices by snail mail or email
4. Accept payment with PayPal, Authorize.Net, & more
5. Automatically send invoices & late payment notices
6. Create robust reports and import/export your data

Click here to go to the FreshBooks site.

The main aspects of FreshBooks I like are: (After the jump)

Read the rest of this entry »