My Business Credit Card has been used for fraud

Just got off the phone with the Royal Bank of Scotland’s credit card fraud division. They wanted to run through a couple of recent transactions with me.
Fine - I’ve done this a few times before, and it’s always a false alarm, but I don’t mind - it’s nice to know people are looking out.
They run [...]

ReviewMe: Benefits, hazards, and overall use

ReviewMe is one of a number of services that pays bloggers to review websites. Simple.
The aim is to try and generate some kind of buzz for sites leveraging the blogosphere, and there has certainly been no shortage of nervous comments about the potential for commercial corruption of the blogosphere.
Anyway, when Aaron announced discounts on the [...]

Fight complacency: make your websites even better

It’s easy to feel comfortable when a website is successful, but this is an illusion created by a sense of complacency.
Every time you raise a site’s profile and rankings, you are pushing others down. SEO is a zero sum game - winners do so at the expense of losers.
Many SEO’s will look at their client [...]

Opportunities in a multi-tiered internet

With the growth of social media has come a massive fragmentation of the internet into individual tiers which in themselves are microcosms of a larger whole.
These microcosms aren’t necessarily small - YouTube, Digg, Flickr - are all structures built into the internet which are mini-internets unto themselves.
Similar rules apply, similar opportunities apply.
I already knew this [...]

Quality content indicators for human users

I’ve posted before about possible quality indicators for Google, so now we’re going to look at a couple of quality indicators for human users.
Michael Gray posts a nice set of indicators for providing value content for human users:
1. Create a Glossary
2. Use Video and Podcasts
3. Do Interviews
4. Provide Conference Coverage
5. Cover News and Emerging Trends
In [...]

How to make money online

Someone in one of my forums asked how they could legitimately and profitably make money online.
I answered: Seeking a solid scam free/completely LEGITIMATE way to make lots of $$$ on the NET.
I didn’t even begin to address advertising revenues and income from internet and webdevelopment skills, because I’m presuming this is still too much for [...]

How to make a Call To Action work better

The number of links a user has to click between visiting a site and fulfilling an action can have a serious impact on conversions.
I don’t have any live stats on this, though I expect the PPC stats trackers are keenly aware of this.
The difference is that it’s all too easily overlooked in SEO.
For example, when [...]

Adding value for monetising websites

Today I got to thinking a lot more seriously about revenue generation options for monetising websites.
Although I’ve pretty much doubled my Adsense earnings over the past month, it’s still not a huge amount.
And today it really hit me how meagre the revenues are relative to other earning options.
The main reason I have websites is to [...]

Think about Link Equity and Content Value

Link Equity
SEO’s used to talk a lot about preserving PageRank - I used to think of PageRank as like water, and building a good site archtecture was about funneling this into the right sections of the site in the right manner.
PageRank as a useful SEO term is pretty much redundant, but Aaron Wall now speaks [...]

Secret hideout found on property website

So while having lunch I decided to idle time surfing a few property websites.
Found myself looking at Irish property for comparative research, when I happened to note an interesting location on one of the pages:

Someone should inform the Garda about this? ;)
More seriously, though, there are some nasty little formatting errors on the page [...]

Losing out by not using PPC?

The backbone of my business is SEO, but I’ve come to realise that I am completely missing out by not having embraced PPC.
For example, I started my first real affiliate program recently. I can sit and wait for leads via SEO. Or I can push traffic in via PPC and generate instant revenues, and tweak [...]

Someone’s using my brands - time to look into Trademarks

I just tried to sign up with Google Talk in order to chat with Aaron Wall via IM.
A username is required, so my first attempt was for iBrian. Sorry, not available.
Okay, no big deal. It was popular enough to see the .com registered.
So I tried platinax. Sorry, not available. Huh? Platinax is my own unique [...]

Now is the time to have a business plan for your websites

The First Age of The Internet is fast coming to a close, and with that comes the removal of early opportunities and low-hanging fruit.
That means if you have a serious plan for a website, you need to push on getting it out now, and fast.
If you have a website without a business plan, you need [...]

British Telecom just doesn’t get it

I received bills from BT to pay my business line and business broadband services.
Telephone support warned of long delays in answering the phone, but mentioned paying online.
Ok, so I signed up at BT’s website to pay both online, set up a user account, set up my billing accounts for both services, then went to pay.
Oops. [...]

Buying links for mindshare, not search engines

After Aaron gave notice that ReviewMe was going to be offering half-price posts this month, I figured I should give the service a closer look.
We already know Google wants to devalue paid links, and for once I’m not looking at buying ReviewMe posts for direct ranking benefits - instead, I’m looking to buy mindshare.
One of [...]

Examples of why businesses need SEOs

Todd Freisen continues the defence of SEO as a valid and important specialist service for businesses, underlining the points Danny Sullivan made previously that just because a specialist finds their specialist skills easy, doesn’t mean to say everyone else does.
What a lot of people are over-looking, though, is that SEO’s - good SEO’s - are [...]

eyeOS a threat to Google and Microsoft?

I’ve already mentioned before that Google is trying to turn the internet into a customised OS - and that this directly competes with Microsoft’s attempt to focus on remote file hosting.
It seems the future is already laid out - allow internet users to remotely host files online and wall them off in a suite of [...]

Google failures take umbrage

The Register carries a series of letters, that responded for calls for failed applicatants to Google to share their interview experiences.
Now, I’m no Human Resources expert by a mile, but some the replies to me just plain underline unsuitability for employment in any environment, let alone Google.
In most instances, the candidates show exceptional arrogance:
Candidate 2:

The [...]

Marketing Do’s and Don’ts

Todd Malicoat posts one of the best weekly round-ups I’ve seen in a while.
Two key posts stood out:
1. Scoreboard Media on Client Baiting
Evangelises business networking and identification of potential clients - in this instance, CEO’s as risk-takers. The cheeky end line is that investing in a porsche could help sell his business. I’ve heard that [...]

5 Personal & Business New Year Resolutions

Crikey - Jan 5th already!!
I have a couple of resolutions I need to stick to, for my business and personal life, so I’ll post them here as a reference to stick to.
Business
1. Target the local market
I’ve always believed the local market held a lot more business potential, but I’ve roundly failed to market to it. [...]