Tasha Harrison

Before Twitter all of our thoughts where focussed into our blog and discussions took place on both our own blogs and other people’s blogs.  You referred to other’s blogs in your own posts and continued the conversation that way.

Now we see a blog post that we find interesting, Tweet it and then continue the conversation on Twitter.  Obviously conversations do still continue on the blog post as it is easier to comment and follow the discussion within that format, but has Twitter diluted the discussion and caused us to blog less?  Instead of sharing our ideas in a well thought out blog post do we simply quickly write them out in 140 characters, possibly losing the essence of what we mean?

As Twitter is evolving I am finding that my blog is still the best place to publish my main ideas, but I’m not sure that this is the case for everyone. It will be interesting to see how blogs evolve and whether micro-blogging is sustainable within the whirlwind of spam that is currently afflicting it.

Writing the meta data for your website can be one of the most laborious tasks, but it is also one of the most important parts of launching any new site or improving your existing site.

There are three types of meta data that relate directly to search engine optimisation (SEO). They are:

• Title tag/Page title: this is the title that your browser will give to the page. It is also the first port of call for the search engines when they examine your site. It tells them exactly what your page is about. Search engines use this title in your listing.
• Meta description: this should compliment your page title and give a little more detail about the content of the page. Search engines use this description in your listing.
• Meta keywords: keyword stuffing used to be a common ‘trick’ for getting your site to rank highly on Google and as a consequence the meta keywords were given a much smaller significance.  In essence they are a way of telling search engines which keywords your page is relevant to.

The reason the page title is the most important is that it holds the highest relevance for search engines, so make sure that each page has a unique page title that explains exactly what that page is about and remember to keep it brief. I always like to put the name of the company in the title to help build brand recognition in the listings on Google.

For example, a site called Clothesonline will have a page title for its blue jeans of:

Blue denim jeans – Clothesonline

For the black jeans page:

Black denim jeans – Clothesonline

And so on – it really is that simple, but very effective.

Every year certain ad campaigns come under fire for pushing the boundaries for what society finds offensive. Famously, the government’s anti-smoking campaign in 2007 was banned for it’s use of shocking images of people with a fishing hook in their mouth.  At the time I was working for a design agency in Leeds and I remember the office being in complete outrage at any advert being banned. The fishing hook was designed to be shocking in order to have an effect on smokers and encourage them to quit smoking.  That people were offended by it is a real shame, since it could have been a really effective way of helping people to quit.

It was to my great surprise yesterday, then, that I discovered a horrific advert that is truely shocking.  It is the kind of ad that gets suggested in a brain storming session and everyone quickly moves on, knowing that it is a great idea, but also that it is incredibly offensive and insensitive. Here is a link to the video:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/sep/04/ddb-brasil-wwf-twin-towers-ad

It is an old debate when advertising crosses the boundary between shocking/effective and shocking/offensive. I think this advert may just have shown where that line lies.

SEO is the art of driving relevant traffic to a site from search engines.  This is done getting a site to rank well on search engines for selected keywords that are most relevant to that site’s core message or product.

There are several elements that search engines look for in a site:

• Page title: this is the title that you can see at the top of your browser and that Google uses when it lists your site.
• Meta description: this is data that sits in the code of your site. It is used by search engines as the description.
• Meta keywords: keyword stuffing used to be a very effective way of ranking highly on Google, but it is now considered to be spamming.  They are still worth entering into the code, but be very specific with them.
• Headings and content: the content on your page is very very important.  Google will look at the content and judge how useful your site will be for the user. The easiest way to get your content right is to create it for your user.
• Links: other sites linking to your site shows Google that they think your site is useful, so Google sees links to your site as a recommendation.
• Site structure: when Google’s bots visit your site they need to be able to find all of your pages easily.  A logical structure makes it easier for them.

These are the basic foundations for optimising your site.

For more on SEO I recommend these articles:

Cheap SEO is not always the best SEO – Cheap is what it is
Beginner’s Guide to SEO links