Many regulations appear from the Europe without a murmur of discontent but one that has caused all sorts of consternation is 2009/136/EC. For no logical reason, the directive requires you ask every single visitor to your website if you can send a cookie. It’s supposed to be a privacy issue but in reality it’s just [...]

Posted in June 2011

Do you worry if your site is performing as well as is could? Do you know how well it converts, why visitors leave or which pages just don’t work? All too often you can’t see the problems because you know your site too well. You miss the obvious mistakes and just can’t understand why people [...]

Posted in May 2010

When you visit a website there’s really only two things you can do: absorb the content or click on links. If you own you own website you really want your visitors to do both. Getting then to absorb your content just needs some good copywriting but getting them to click on your links is another [...]

Posted in May 2009

I’ve sort of shyed away from ecommerce, mainly because I haven’t yet found a application I really like and because I’m completely pants at programming. But a solution has risen like a phoenix from the ashes and I am saved (hallelujah). Secure online payments integrated into any website for the measly sum of £30.00 per [...]

Posted in May 2009

There has been some debate over the length of page titles. The predominant search engine, Google, displays 60 characters but what happens if you go over the limit? To test the theory I added some made up words to my contact page: www.aerin.co.uk/contact.htm. The words are: skriqgy, korziklr and qasdcvgyuh. Google has indexed the page [...]

Posted in January 2009

For ages and ages google advised that you should submit your site to DMOZ, yahoo and industry related directories. This guidance has gone from the google webmaster pages. So all of you that spent hours and hours seeking out directories as part of your link building strategy were wasting your time.

Posted in October 2008

There are certain topics and concepts that keep cropping up during discussions about search engine optimisation (SEO). One of these is the use of metatags. Let’s get one thing clear, there is no SEO advantage in the use of metatags – the search engines may index their contents but they won’t help to improve your [...]

Posted in May 2008

Without really trying I have managed to achieve a very good ranking for the keywords ‘website navigation guidelines’ and it’s variants. I was quite pleased with my achievement until I carried out some analysis on the site. Despite the great ranking, most of the traffic arrives via a strange mix of search terms. Which has [...]

Posted in May 2008