Ben Wheeler

New site launched: http://www.inhouseents.co.uk

2 bed mid terraced house for sale in Cwmdu, Swansea.

2 double bedrooms
1 reception (open plan)
Kitchen
Bathroom
Nice garden with decking and grass

Good condition throughout, ideal first time buyer, move in and do nothing and under £100,000

Quiet house, nice neighbours, near park

Due to take place from 8 – 14 February, Tinnitus Awareness Week 2010 will be the focus of a UK-wide campaign.

As organiser of Tinnitus Awareness Week, the BTA is aiming to ensure that as many people as possible are informed about the condition and the free support services that the charity provides to sufferers and their families. Educating people about tinnitus, and most importantly, letting people who experience the condition know that they are not alone, are the main aims of the campaign

In 2010 the BTA is hoping to reach thousands of people of all ages across the country while focusing on two relevant themes; the effect of stress on tinnitus and the risks of exposure to loud music. By raising awareness of these two important issues the BTA aims to encourage better hearing health and to highlight ways in which tinnitus may be prevented.

The BTA is teaming up with its newly appointed ambassador – radio presenter and DJ Eddy Temple-Morris – to host a free music event featuring some of the world’s biggest DJs and both established and emerging bands to launch the start of Tinnitus Awareness Week 2010.

http://www.tinnitus.org.uk/

Some of the changes at Google are more visible than others, and some more useful than others, but it goes to show that Google aren’t quite ready to let things stagnate just yet after the launch of Microsoft’s Bing.

Realtime results

OK, so maybe you have to be using another search engine to miss it, but a list of recent search result changes would be incomplete without mentioning this big one.

For some search terms Google are now displaying realtime results: effectively results from Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks. Undoubtedly this will have an effect on search engine optimisation, but whether that means more up to date (and more relevant) results are being returned or simply people will spam Twitter to be featured at the top of Google’s search results remains to be seen.

Site owners might also start registering their search keywords as a Twitter account, in the same vein of buying web site URLs with keywords to get their keywords at the top of the search engine results pages. If this happens, this could drastically change the way Twitter (and Twitter username choices) is seen.

Breadcrumbs

For those web site pages that contain breadcrumbs, Google are starting to show them underneath the search result listings. It’s not available just yet with every site, but for those listings that do contain them I can see this feature being particularly useful to the end user, showing for example direct links to a product’s category for an online shop’s listing.

Web site owners can take advantage of this now by introducing breadcrumbs to their sites on any relevant pages. It’s always worth adding them to pages, as even if Google don’t add them to your site’s listing, it’s good practice to add them anyway because breadcrumbs not only improve usability but they could also help with your search engine ranking.

Personalised search for everybody

Google Personalised Search now works even for people who aren’t logged in. This is a big one for search ranking, as this might result in your site getting a different ranking for each visitor who performs a search.

If a result has been clicked a number of times, then that site will start to appear higher up in the search rankings for that visitor, with the user’s search and click activity being stored for 180 days. This will mean that you don’t need to be logged in and have search history enabled for search results to be tailored to your habits and preferred sites, which will result in more more relevant searches in the long term for more people.

But this is bad news for web site owners who care about search engine optimisation: you can no longer be certain where your site will rank. You can have an idea, but if searchers click on other sites, your link might be pushed from page one to page two without you knowing about it.

Region

Another useful one for users if they want to know at a glance which country a web site is based. Web site owners that are registered with Google Webmaster Tools can now set their geographical location, which is displayed next to the page URL.

The region is only shown for results that don’t have country top level domains (for example .com and .net), and the region you are searching from isn’t shown (so if you’re searching from the UK, web sites set as being from there won’t show the UK region name).

This feature, however, could also be confusing if it doesn’t work properly. If a site owner sets their site to be based in the United States but it’s got worldwide appeal, potential visitors from other countries might be turned away before they even visit. So this is a great feature, but it’s certainly one to be used wisely, to ensure you get the right target audience and don’t turn anybody away who might otherwise be interested in your site.

If you want to set your web site’s region, you can do this in Google Webmaster Tools by selecting Site Configuration > Settings > Geographic Target.

Search features in search bar

Those handy search features that Google provide are now available in the search bar of the google.com homepage.

Search for “london weather” and get the weather in London for the next four days. Enter for “diaphanous” and find out what it means. Type in a unit conversion or maths sum and get the answer. All displayed at the top of the auto-suggest box without having to wait for the results page. You can also type some site names such as “Twitter” and the twitter homepage is suggested at the top of the list.

This update is only available on google.com, so if you’re not based in the United States you’ll have to click on the “go to google.com” link before this works.

In addition to this, the “Google Search” and “I’m Feeling Lucky” buttons are now displayed inside the auto-suggest box. This is a tiny update you barely notice, but it’s also an update which makes usability that little bit better. For those who don’t press the return key to perform a search, the buttons are now visible and selectable straight away, rather than hidden underneath a drop down box that needs to be closed before they can be clicked.

Anchor links in results

For those pages with internal anchor links, Google have started to show these on search result pages. In addition to this, a “Jump to” link is also shown in the result if the relevant area of the page is after an anchor.

It’s hard to say how Google decides which listings to show these with, but chances of having them for your site’s listings are higher if you use semantic anchor names, show a table of contents, and logically split the sections.

Local public transit next to location

For major attractions, the location and map details are starting to show nearest public transit details.

There probably isn’t much you can do to influence your business or premises containing these details, obviously it’s very location specific. But it wouldn’t harm to submit your site and business details to Google Maps and ensure your full location details are completed.

Bigger image results thumbnails

This is a small change to the image thumbnails that appear on the main search results page. There’s now a new layout which includes larger images, depending on the quality of the thumbnails.

(Information sourced from Becky Jones)

Interesting meeting today with two people i know through 4Networking. We discussed a great project that we’ve been mulling over for weeks but finally getting the ball rolling. Clever people involved with good drive so these should be exciting times. Off the back of this i’ll be launching a new service for Beach Software that’ll put my clients in control of their SEO which will cut down on their costs long term and allow them to control their own online growth. Watch this space…

Started developing a new website today for a client as well; www.gowerplaceholidaycottage.co.uk – a beautiful holiday cottage in Mumbles.

Met some great students last night at a ‘Dinner with Industry’ event, some of them were really keen on progressing their careers.

It’s another great example of how getting to meet people and know people makes great business especially on a local basis.

I network lots because of two reasons, firstly i enjoy meeting people and i believe better business is done when a relationship is formed. Secondly, in my line of work relationships are important, the client will get more out of their website and their online presence if there is a good relationship with their website developer.

If i can help witrh you bespoke website design or bespoke website development, please get in touch!

Great day yesterday at the Towers – the people that came were seriously looking for companies they needed and we did well – thats the power of networking and getting out there – people buy from people and we want people to get to know us and have trust in us to work with us.

Come and meet us at a 4N, LBF or other networking event in and around Swansea.

Ben Wheeler
Beach Software,
Web Design in Swansea, South Wales

We’ve done a project this week that involved e-mail marketing and SMS marketing, if you’d like to know more – get in touch!

Ben Wheeler
Beach Software,
Web Design in Swansea, South Wales

In the world there are nasty people, on the internet these are spammers and hackers, they use loopholes in browser security and code to cause mallicious damage to your computer and you – for example installing a keyboard tracker to steal your credit card details!

So, the answer, used by more and more individuals and businesses is to turn on more browser security settings and block more internet traffic – but how does this effect your website?

Example 1 – A customer of ours, their old website didn’t work for one of their friends at work (NHS), this was because the website was built badly and utilised a lot of flash, this was blocked for security and the WHOLE website didn’t work at all – completely wasted. Now the new website works, we created this one, there are certain aspects (films and animations) that are still blocked, but these are minor parts of the website, users can still go to the website use 95% of it and do what they normally need to do. This example of the NHS security implications can be extended to many other corporate networks: DVLA, Land Registry, Government departments.

Example 2 – I went to a presentation at the Welsh Assembly, on a government network, the website we were shown, the navigation didn’t work – ooops, the reason, images were used solely – not a good idea – website redundant!

So in summary, your website development company should be aware of these issues, they should develop for you and advise you on the implications and options available to your website.

Ben Wheeler
Beach Software,
Web Design in Swansea, South Wales

In one of our industry magazines this month there has been a discussion on working for free. It’s a tricky one, you have to do some free work to do the paid work, but here are our thoughts on the topic.

When pitching, we will prepare proposals and designs for free at no obligation to the customer – but that is dependant on the project value, over £500 in value we’ll do it as a matter of course, under we won’t because of the budget and type of site typically required. But designs we produce are just concepts, there has to be discussion with the customer before a design is completed.

On the other side of things, we do a project a quarter for free, completely free. This will be a joint venture or charity work. Not only it is helpful for the party involved, but it helps promote the company at the same time.

We also got asked the other day to respond to a tender for a small company, this was a first and i imagine a last. Typically tenders come to us for large projects from big companies with big budgets, not from small companies with small budgets. We responded to the company appropiately, but we would not complete a tender response formally as it would have been a complete waste of time – it comes down to the fact that every project is different and is looked at individually. We want to create the right solution at the right price, the longer we spend dealing with the formalities the more that time has to be recouped elsewhere.

Beach Software,
Web Design in Swansea, South Wales