Over the years things got a little more complicated sophisticated. Sites continue to compete for pole-position and search engines continue to evolve. The basic principals of SEO have remained the same, however new tools and processes have emerged, each giving you a different advantage over your competition. Both innovative and scrupulous companies have been born from demand and filtering truth from fiction has never been harder.

So what advice can I give you to get your page to the top of the pile.
Focus on Google 1st. Google is undoubtedly to most popular search engine of our time, and I believe that if you get it right for them, then it will be right for the other search engines. There are no “silver bullets” to improving your search engine rankings, but there are ways to help the Google’s ‘spiders’ (a.k.a. the Googlebot). Here are my Top 5 tips to start you on your SEO Journey:

TIP #1. Be Prepared.

Before you start to optimise your site, you need to invest time in understanding your competitors. Think about the keywords and phrases that you would expect your clients to use when searching for your types of products or services and test them. Explore the results and understand your competitors. I like to use KGEN (a firefox plug-in) to analyse keywords on a competitor pages and I review the meta-data within competitors code. Ask yourself the following questions: What keywords this page have the most weight? Is this site a true competitor? What differentiates your site from these from them? With your new perspective you may want to make some changes to your keywords and run through the process again, and again, before you feel you have the right focus. Take the time to get this right, this is your SEO plan and it is your foundations for SEO success.

TIP #2. Have a powerful opening statement.

The first thing your users and Google will see is your opening statement, we want to use this to your advantage. Be aware that we don’t know how long we can keep Google’s or your readers attention so we need to get the key messages out quickly. Use your SEO plan to help form your thinking and try and use as many of your keywords and phrases as practical. Explain your site, your products and/or your services. If you get this right then your readers will hang around and read more; and more users will ultimately mean more attention from Google.

TIP #3. Use quality code.

A well coded site is easier for Google to get around. Code it poorly and the bots will run into errors and give up. My top 3 coding rules for SEO are:

• Use the CSS as it was intended, make sure that your site uses headings in order from h1 to h2 and so on
• Avoid graphical links, use text links where you can – Google can’t read images
• Validate your CSS and HTML; and iv) keep your links current.

Tip #4. Make Google your partner.

It is so easy and beneficial to make Google your partner. My Top 4 Google’s services for SEO are:

• Google Apps for your domain, as a Google Apps user you will receive valuable advice on getting the most out of Google
• Google Analytics, with Google Analytics you can understand your sites performance and set and track goals for future performance
• Google Web Master Tools, With Google Web Master Tools you can submit XML sitemaps and set rules to help the bots get around your site
• Google Adwords, with Google Adwords you can bring in extra traffic and google will even give you $75 worth of credit to get you started

BTW. All TechN sites come with Google Apps for your domain and more.

Tip #5. Promote Yourself.

The key to top rankings is popularity! and Google determines this by how many back-links point to your site (this means how many other sites have links to your content). Todays web makes it easy to get out there and promote your self. Start by writing a few 300 word articles about your site, your products or your services and publish them to EzineArticles.com, GoArticles.com, Hubpages.com and/or Squidoo.com. Make sure you includes links back to your homepage and your contract-us page and use different articles on each site. Next you should think about social networks. Use Namechk.com to get all the social network accounts that relate to your business (Don’t worry, I’m not going to make you use them all, however it is better you have the name and not use it than someone else have the name and use it to your detriment). Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin are of course the biggest social networks at the moment and these are great places to promote yourself. Take your time to connect with friends and family and then slip-in a self-promotion or two. Try to get others to pass-on your links with re-tweets or likes – remember the more back-links the better. For more information checkout Social Media for Business.

Following these tips will start you on your SEO journey, however this doesn’t mean you will be number 1 instantly. Be patient and remember good things come to those that wait, but being patience does not mean being passive. Monitor your analytics and look for improvements to your content (not your code). Explore your site and look for changes that you think will have a big impact on your user experience and your business value. Repeat the process and keep things current. Sites need to be nurtured, add new content and refine old content to keep your site alive.

Of course there is a lot more that you can do in the name of SEO, but I’ll save the rest for the another article. What SEO techniques work best for you?

You may also like to read:

• http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.google.com/en//webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf
• http://www.feedthebot.com/dontconfusethebot.html
• http://www.joomplaza.com/seo-tips/406-help-google-bot-to-crawl-your-website-effectively.html
• http://seanseo.com/seo/how-to-get-more-backlinks/
• http://thekeywordacademy.com/do-not-submit-your-website-to-google

Social Media Marketing is recognised as a leading strategy in opening doors to prospects and provides customer interaction beyond the reach of traditional media and marketing techniques. Social Media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Stumble are growing at a rapid rates, giving Search Engine Optimisation(SEO) a new definition and slowly depreciating other forms of advertising such as print ads. There is no easier, faster or cost effective way to target your market than Social Media. You can engage with pinpoint accuracy, obtain feedback, communicate effectively and form meaningful business relationships all from the comfort of your browser or mobile phone. But rush in uninformed and you may find that Social media fails your business.

Social Media can be a powerful to tool but it is important to understand that it’s success stories didn’t happen overnight. Like any capability maturity model we need to learn to crawl before we walk and walk before your run. In terms of social media I like Mashable’s view that Social media success has 10 stages:

Stage 1: Observe and Report
Stage 2: Setting the Stage + Dress Rehearsal
Stage 3: Socializing Media
Stage 4: Finding a Voice and a Sense of Purpose
Stage 5: Turning Words Into Actions
Stage 6: Humanizing the Brand and Defining the Experience
Stage 7: Community
Stage 8: Social Darwinism
Stage 9: The Socialization of Business Processes
Stage 10: Business Performance Metrics

It is important to remember that Social media isn’t a silver bullet and not everyone will get the same value from it. Social media fits more naturally with some businesses, but that doesn’t mean other businesses shouldn’t try. It may just take more time to build an audience.

Depending on what the goals are. You might find that simply gathering competitive intelligence turns out to prove valuable to you and your business.

Social media is a double edged sword and if you don’t pay it the attention it deserves than it will bite you. Treating social media as a one-way communication channel is common mistake. To be successful you need to interact with your fans and followers, and interaction takes time. You need to plan to invest the time in getting it right, ask for feedback, respond to questions and comments, and build relationships with customers. If you don’t listen then they will talk to someone else and they’ll probably mention you shortcomings.

So where to start? Depending on where you look and who you talk to you will get many different views. A lot of people are already familiar with Facebook so they think they should start there, however Twitter is far easier to set-up and run, plus it generally provides a quicker return on your investment. However you need to secure your name in all the platforms that you may one day get value out of … Introducing namechk. This service will check 80+ web services for your preferred user-name availability, get them all! Better to have it and never use it than to want it and not be able to get it, or even worse have someone else get it and impact your brand.

The more research and implementation I do the more understanding I get regarding the complexity of success with social media. This was just the ‘getting stated’ guide and I expect to publish many more articles in this series. Right now I’m focused on writing up on each of the major platforms, but I’d love to know what you want to hear about and what successes or failure you witnessed.

To get started you need to be using Firefox or Google Chrome. FYI Firefox 4.0 was just released and if you are new to Firefox I’d suggest you start here, however if you are an existing Firefox user with a few extensions already in your collection, I’d hold off on upgrading just for the moment. The reason I say this is that some of your extensions may not be Firefox 4.0 ready, but if you wait a little longer the extension developers may have released new, compatible versions for you.

Now before you download and install the Stylish Extension for Firefox or for Google Chrome, you might want to know what Stylish is. Stylish lets you run a local CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) over the top of any site and it’s because of this we can identify, isolate and hide the <div> blocks used to show Adds. There is a lot more you can do with Stylish, more on that later. If you want read ahead, I’d suggest checking out – http://userstyles.org/ 

Quick stock-take – We running Firefox or Google Chrome and we’ve downloaded and installed the Stylish Extension. Now we need a to install a style. If you are running Firefox (like me) you notice a little black and white in the status bar – this is Stylish. Click on the and we get the menu, select ‘find styles for this site’ and a new tab opens up with all the styles written for the site you were on. Find a style and click install and that style will be applied to that site from now on. When a style is changing the site you are on the black and white turns into a colored . Of course you can disable or uninstall any style, simply head back to the menu by clicking on the .

If you know a little CSS? write your own with ‘Write new style’ or you can download a style that is close to what you wnat and customise it to your own needs. Try my TechN Mail style for Gmail.

This extension makes it easy to Change the way the web looks. What’s your favourite Stylish Style?

1st lets look at HTML synatax.

HTMl uses code called tags. tags look like <this>. There are 2x types of tags: 1) Self-closing tags and 2) open/close tags. Their syntax is <selfclosing /> and <selfclosing></selfclosing>. The difference is a self closing tag has a trailing / and an open close tag is actually a set of tags, <> for open and a </> for close. A good example of a selfclosing tag is <br /> used to indicate a line break (i.e. a return character). A good example of a open/close tag is <p>Sample Text</p> which indicates that the word Sample Text is to be dsiplayed as a paragraph.

Next lets look at HTML structure.

We’ve already seen <br /> for line break.
you may see <div></div> around a block of code. This is generally used for linking to your CSS file for formating
<h1></h1> is a preformated heading level 1. Level 1 is the biggest heading on your site, you can use h1 through to h6 for heading formats.
<p></p> is probably the tag you will use the most, as mentioned earlier it sits around a paragraph.

Special HTML tags.

<a></a> the ‘a’ stands for anchor and is genrally used to create a link. Anchors require extra attributes to create a link and look like <a href=”http://desitination.com”>Click Here</a>
<img /> is used to embed images and also require extra attributes to present an image. the 2x most important attributes are source and alternate name and are code like this <img src=”http://imageaddress.com” alt=”the image name” />

HTML Lists.

Lists need to be opened and closed using either <ol></ol> or <ul></ul>. ol for ordered lists (numbers) and ul for unordered list (bullets).
Between the list open and close tags you need to include list items. List items use the <li></li> tag.
A final list might be coded like this:

<ul>
<li>Item Name</li>
<li>Item Name</li>
<li>Item Name</li>
</ul>

Finally lets look at some HTML formatting.

HTML formatting is not as effective as CSS and may create format inconsistencies across your site, however some basic know-how might help you in a bind.
use <strong></strong> around text to make it bold and <em></em> around text to make it italics. Plus formatting tags can be used in combination, just remember to close every tag you open.

Lets bring it all together with an example.

If you coded this:

<p>So, <strong><em>bye</em>-bye</strong>, Miss American Pie<br />
Drove my <strong>chevy</strong> to the levee<br />
But the levee was dry</p>
<p>And them good old boys were drinkin' <em>whiskey</em> and rye<br />
<a href="http://www.missamericanpie.co.uk/lyrics.html">Singin' this'll be the day that I die</a><br />
This'll be the day that I die</p>

You would get this:

So, bye-bye, Miss American Pie
Drove my chevy to the levee
But the levee was dry

And them good old boys were drinkin’ whiskey and rye
Singin’ this’ll be the day that I die
This’ll be the day that I die

In conclusion, HTML is not a hard language to get started with.
If you have any questions feel free to drop me a note.

We go out of our way to understand and discover new web practices and emerging technology so that you can reap the rewards. Our research ensure you are getting the right products at the right price. We take the time to understand your requirements and ensure fit-for-purpose solutions. It doesn’t matter what you need, web-hosting to new laptops; and more – TechN is here to help.

Domain Registration is simple and easy.

Visit web.techn.com.au and check the availability of the domain names you want. Once you find what you are looking for, register it yourself or contact us, either way the registration process takes minutes.

Web Hosting – start small and grow.

Starting at $75/year when you pay 2x years at a time, our web hosting is designed to grow with you. Most client never need more, but if you do we can meet your needs. Built for Speed, reliability and service, When you host with TechN, your website resides on state-of-the-art-servers-and-data-centre connected to the Internet via high speed SLA backed fibre optic links that peer with major backbone providers. We also peer with local Internet Exchanges in order to leverage ever more performance. This means we can offer you a 99% uptime network guarantee and 24 x 7 uninterrupted service.

Best email in the world!

I know its a big claim, but I believe it to be true. With a ‘powered by Google’ and supported by TechN experienced, what more could you want.
All TechN sites come with Google apps for your domain to give you much more than a simple POP3 experience.

Build for growth.

Building a static HTML site is limited and costly to upgrade, all TechN sites are build on industry leading content management systems to ensure your site can grow when you need to. Extend your base capability with custom code using PHP, Javascript and CSS to deliver the right web experience. Present your content your way.

Design and Development.

Don’t commit till you’re happy, we’ll send you design mock-ups to show how your site will look when we’re done and our collaborative approach will ensure you’re driving the solution. Once the design is set, we’ll launch a prototype site to extending our collaboration across a real-world experience. Working together most sites are launched quickly with the final site meeting every expectations.

Performance and Compatibility.

In today’s technology expiereince there are alot of things to consider. Feel confident that you site has been tested for compatibility against the most commonly used browsers – and even a few that are not so common now (like Internet Explorer 6). With poor coding comes poor performance, all TechN sites are HTML and CSS validated as per W3C standards to ensure the best performance possible from your design.

Want More?

All TechN sites come optimised for search engines.
Support agreements and managed services are available on request
or ask about Social Media strategies to improve your search rankings, site traffic and business value.

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I clipped some screens and rushed back to Photoshop only to discover that the problem was that IE was rendering my images darker than the originals. It didn’t make sense! but with a little research I started to learn the truth.

I’d use “Save for web” but still no success. It is important to ensure Photoshop (or what ever graphics tool you are using) isn’t interpreting colors for you – when it comes to web design you need colors you can trust!

The problem as I now understand it is that many graphics tools apply color changing pallets by default. Saving your image with the pallets on will sometimes result in different effects when viewed through different browsers. Luckily it turns out this is easy to rectify and avoid once you know how.

Open Photoshop and without any images open, go to Edit / Color Settings. Change the top drop-down to Monitor Color. From now on, when you open an image that has a color profile, Photoshop prompt you, to make sure you know the pallet is not going to be used.

Next go up to View / Proof Setup and select Monitor RGB. This is to make sure Photoshop won’t be start changing colors on your nice new profile-less images.

Finally open up any image on your machine and use File / Save For Web.

That’s it. Happy coloring

This job took about 6 weeks to deliver and during that time I was privileged to work with Stephen Townsend the Creative Director at goldenarm.com.au. Over that time we we worked through about 1/2 a dozen iterative design before we agreed the finally direction of this web site.

The key was to draw in the inspirations of the company and create a unique web experiences. We wanted to present a dark theme with a Hitchcock feel; and it was important to ensure the site was simple to get around.

Stephen’s now working to fill the site up with content and I look forward to watching this site grow into something amazing.

The funny thing is alot of people are already in the cloud and they don’t even know it – hands up if you use Gmail, Hotmail or some other online webmail … that’s right, alot of you. Well guess what – you are already in the cloud!

Put simply cloud computing is where the user interface is provided as part of a web experience rather a desktop or server provided experience.

So what are the benefits? Lets look at Delicious – and lets think about your favorites or bookmarks. Delicious is service that liberates your favorites to the cloud. If you are still using the favorites or bookmarks function embedded in your browser that you links are trap within that browser and on that computer. The Benefits become obvious pretty quickly – You can access your favorites anywhere! and in the case of delicious you can now share your favorites with others and access a community of knowledge when it comes to finding links to certain topics.

All that is left is to start surfing the cloud and I recomend a few web services for starters. Sign-up for Gmail and/or Google Apps (you wont be disappointed), then create a Delicious accounts – welcome to the could.

It all started one day as I sat day-dreaming, trying to find a way to define my brand – or at least what I am passionate about. Was it design? was it projects? was it web? was it technology, was it coaching? and then it dawned on me … could it be all of these?

That was when TechN was born. Starting as a thought about Web1.0 becoming Web2.0; would there be a web3.0? does this mean there could be webN? Was it just about Web? what about technology? What about TechN!

Now days I talk about TechN more like a verb – Q: “What are you doing?” A: “Just TechN”

So what is TechN the business? Technology advice, coaching and solutions for home, business and web. Want a new computer, I’ll help you to understand your needs and the opportunities in the market; got a problem? I’ll help you fix it; thinking about a change? don’t waste you money – talk to me about free alternatives; or need a Web site? it’s amazing how easy and cost effective it can be.

Email me at enquiry@techn.com.au

I will create a blog (cchatterton.com.au) and tell the world what I know about making computing easy;  I will create a repository of knowledge where I can store tips, tricks and fix-its; I will succeed!