EU Idiots – War on Cookies

Its not very often I post about stuff like this, but when I heard about what the UK government was planning I felt obliged to share my disgust at the clowns that run the country I live in.

I wont bleat on about this, simple because there are other – more eloquent folks out there who will be able to resonate my negative feelings more effectively than I can.

Basically, if what has been proposed does become a law, it will essentially make a massive percentage of EU websites illegal! It doest matter if your a lonely little blogger like me or some massive conglomerate, they want to brush you with the same stinky stick. Have a look at this brilliant video from nocookielaw.com - it sums up this shambles perfectly.

I will say one this however, mainly to anyone worried about this, this law is so ridiculous and has been clearly dreamt up by some overpaid waste of space who has no idea – the idea that they can police each and every site around is just stupid, so the law seems pretty much enforceable.

iPad Distractions – Call of Mini: Last Stand

A mere five days of iPad ownership and I’m already developing an unhealthy addiction to some of the top quality productivity killers just screaming for your attention in the app store.

Now, given my above average fascination with the undead folks often depicted in films and video games (think Dawn of the Dead shuffling zombies, not the 21 Days Later style sprinter) – any game offering me the opportunity to dispatch some dead dudes is bound to get my attention, even albeit for a fleeting moment.

One such game which I’ve found myself sinking way more time into than I should is a Zombie blasting gem called Call of Mini: Last Stand.

The premise is simple, shoot the bad guys from your static perch using an array of weapons. All you have to do is last as long as you can. It may sound a little mundane, but as you accumulate money from playing a re-playing the single level on offer, you can unlock more meatier guns and other helpful items, which means you can last longer during subsequent playtime.

An addictive shooter, well worth looking for on the app store when your next stuck for a time vacuum.

Web Development on the iPad

Apple’s new toy is not cheap, and for me personally, to remain productive whilst out and about there are some tasks the iPad needs to perform – one of the main ones is a code editor, which luckily the iPad can do with ease, providing you select the right app to compliment your workflow.

After some trial and error (and wasted money on the app store) I have found a great tool for the mobile developer – Gusto!

Gusto is a basic but certainly capable code editor, offering syntax highlighting as you may expect, but also you can FTP your files from the app itself.

The only downfall I have noticed as that – like other apps – the FTP connection can fail if you use very strong passwords containing symbols, so some amendments may need to take place depending on your security.

So, anyone looking for a quick and dirty solution to web development in your pocket, go search out Gusto on the app store.

iPad Distractions – Mini Tower

After years of resistance, I have finally succumbed to the pressure and splashed out on a shiny new iPad 3 and I must say after 3 days of ownership I’m already addicted to it and have found myself using more than my trusty Dell laptop (even in cases where a PC would be the better choice)

So what has had me glued to Apple’s latest offspring? Some amazing web development app? Taking pics with the HD camera? Nope, an 8-bit inspired tower sim called Mini Tower.

I’ve never played a game like this before, but my god it is compelling. I strongly suggest any iPad owners search for it in the app store – then promptly kiss goodbye to your usually productive spare time.

On-page SEO & Why Its Important To You.

Ok, so if you have read my last post you should have an idea about the keyword your targeting and ideally should be aware of your competitors – and more crucially their strengths and weaknesses – but what can how can this information be used to optimize your website’s content? This is when on-page SEO comes into play.

What is on-page SEO?

On-page SEO is a technique that has been used for a very long time, since the early days of search engines in fact (after all if you never mention your keywords on your site how do you expect Google’s bots to know what your all about?). In the beginning search engines used less sophisticated algorithms to ‘read’ your website. Back then, when the internet was much smaller than it is today, it used to be very easy to get ranked highly for whatever keyword you were targeting – primary due the lack of completion, however as the internet started to grow, it became more difficult for search engines to differentiate between one site from another. so the technology used to read your site has evolved too, but simple tailoring your content to target your selected keywords can take advantage of these changes and push you up the search engines. But where do you start?

The Page Title

When looking at on-page SEO, the page title is the single most important element of a page. While most people don’t pay a lot of attention to the page title, it is very important for search results – try to emphasize your topic and word it in such away as to mimic the expected search terms you wish to get found for. Imaging when someone searches for a topic online, the page title is the result of that search – so this step is very important. You must use also try to utilize relevant keywords in the title, but be cautious here as to not make it seem show-horned in – appearing natural is key

Description & Meta Title

Something else you need to look at when optimizing your web pages is your description meta tag. This needs to be a short but relevant paragraph or couple of sentences to give Google a summary of what the page is about. These are important because Google might use them as snippets for your pages (Ill cover Rich Snippets in a future post) when listing your site. Always ensure ALL of your pages utilize meta tags – if your not currently using any – add description meta tags to each of your pages and make sure that each one is unique to that page.

Structure of Your URLs

This may be overlooked by some, but clean URLs are another very important part of on-page SEO. This may suprise you but bare in mind its your URL which will be displayed in search results so you want them to convey your content’s information and be easy to understand. If your dealing with a lot of articles or posts, keeping them organized and using descriptive category names not only helps your sites on-page SEO, but could help search engines when crawling your site. You may need to alter your .htaccess file when cleaning your URLs, but a tidy URL is a friendly URL, so its worth it!

If you have any questions – get in touch via @SimpleSites4U

Some Tips to Help You Achieve A Successful SEO Campaign

As an enthusiastic web designer from North Wales, I could never profess to being an ‘expert’ when in comes to good SEO, however in an area where changed are constant and competition is rife, I have achieved great results for my clients so I can at least say I know what im talking about, so I hope to help anyone seeking some advice for improving your page rank through good SEO.

So, your looking at improving you website’s Google Rank, or perhaps seeking to target a new keyword or demographic but need to know where to start? Here are some tips to help you improve the effectiveness of your next SEO campaign

Research is key.

This cannot be overstated! An important initial real step to achieving your SEO goals is research, and lots of it, but what should you be looking for? Well the most important area of research to any SEO campaign is keyword research – will need to consider the niche or market you are in, and the products or services that you have to offer to wish to

Know the enemy. promote in the results pages. You should draw up with a list of potential keywords that your customers would use to find you on the web, this such as sentences or phases associated with your business – ask yourself, “what would I search for” to help you in the right direction. A fantastic tool available to help you at the stage is the excellent Google Keyword Tool which can analyze your suggested keywords and show you how many searches you could be targeting. On top of this it can checking the competitiveness, number of monthly searches and the strength of the competitors currently on page one. Although this may not be the most invigorating task, doing a thorough job here will help massively later on in your search for good SEO.

Ok, Now What?

Next up, you need to check out others currently operating in your field. Using your final keyword list, create a spreadsheet or document with all the keywords and then go through them logging their SEO strength to identify what your aiming for. list all the competitors from page one of Google. You could use a program like SEO quake to collect some So head over to Google and get researching those keywords! Another usful tool available to help here is SEO Quake – it can give you all the stuff you will need like their page rank, number of indexed pages, inbound links, whether or not they have a site map or not and much more.

Next time I will cover some considerations you will need to bare in mind when looking at good on-page SEO. If you have any questions in the meantime, please get in touch.