1. Page titles

A vital key to search engine ranking are well written page title tags. The tags must contain a good keyword density for targeted phrases and accurately represent what is to be found on that page. Page titles should be unique for each page.

2. Navigation

There must be clear navigational paths for spiders to follow through the whole site. These paths must use plain, well written HTML as opposed to javascript or flash (which is invisible to spiders). This is achieved with footer navigation link blocks and other similar methods.

3. On page Optimisation

Every page needs to have a good amount of targeted keywords on it. HTML images need to have well written alt tags. HTML formatting needs to be made as clean as possible. And most importantly, the page’s content must be analyzed for correct keyword density and other factors.

4. New content creation

An important factor in good SEO is well written copy, ideally with fresh content being added all the time so that when search engines crawl the website it appears fresh, updated and vibrant. Depending on the existing site content we would consider such additions as blogs, auto-updating news feed content and language translation to increase the website’s visibility. Some of these additions may incur extra costs to the client, so at this stage, we are only recommending these options.

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Finally. After a long spell of high pressure, no new snow and warm temperatures. Finally the storm clouds are gathering and the skiers are looking up to the summits with baited breath waiting for the new snow.

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So says the news today. No shit. It works just fine for the particular purpose it’s designed for – it’s just that it heavily over prescribed to people who don’t need it. If you don’t need it it, it’ll do nothing. That’s the beauty of it. Unlike the old skool tricyclic antidepressants which had terrible side effects.

Don’t listen to the hype – fluoxetine and all the SRI anti depressants out there that are based on it are great drugs. Life enhancing, useful and quite frankly one of the best chemical compounds humans have developed since CnH2n+1OH. Just treat them both with respect, don’t get addicted and enjoy their life-enhancing benefits.

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Some changes are going to be needed to any website starting the SEO process. Websites are crawled by search engines on a regular basis once they are included in the engine’s index and there are many basic ways to make a website as attractive as possible.

To do this we have to consider how a website looks to the spider robots used by the search engines and adapt the website to help it as much as possible. There follows a short, but not exhaustive list of the things we will look for and change on a website as part of this step.

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Bored of Firefox running really slowly? I am. The same flash application on a PC on IE7, Firefox and even in Apple’s Safari browser runs twice as quickly.

It’s probably because I’m a flash developer, building and testing heavy flash applications, but Firefox 2’s slowness has been bothering me for a while.  But even if you’re not a geek  you might get frustrated looking at videos on Youtube in Firefox, or waiting for new tabs to open and sort themselves out. If so, I have something that’ll make your day.

Why is it slow? Because the official releases of Firefox for OSX are not yet optimised for the Intel based systems. They will be soon no doubt, but for the moment there is another solution…. A very nice ubergeek called Neil Bruce Lee, who obviously knows what he’s doing, has created an unofficial release of Firefox called BonEcho which IS optimised for Intel machines and can be downloaded from here.

It’s brilliant – it’s just the same as your other Firefox (with the exception of the icons etc because although Firefox is open source, the official branding can’t be used on un-official releases) – you’ll still have your favourites/plug-ins/whatever else you use, it’s just that your Internet browser will be twice as quick! Brilliant!

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Ceros. Being a part of the original development team of the Ceros product has certainly been one of the high points of my career. Even though I’m only loosely involved with it these days, it still gives me a great feeling to see it go from strength to strength.

A recent article on mequoda.com

talks about ceros’s leading position in the market and outlines a vision of the future for digital magazines in general. Here’s an excerpt

How Ceros Media is creating digital editions that “draw upon the best qualities of the Web”.

Digital editions are quickly creeping up on the magazine industry. If you are a magazine publisher and haven’t looked down this avenue, you might have another thing coming. You might think that users prefer paper, but you’d be surprised to know that users now prefer to have both, and you don’t really have a choice unless you’re prepared to be the underdog.

The 2007 BPA-Certified Digital Magazine Reader Survey found that:

* Digital magazine reader satisfaction rates remain high, 88% of readers are “very satisfied” or “satisfied” with their digital edition, an increase of 3% from 2006.
* Digital magazine readers are highly engaged with the digital edition; 89% read the digital edition the same week and 42% read it immediately or the same day.
* Digital magazine readers are reducing their use of print, making digital magazines critical for reaching these readers. Over 44% of respondents have decreased their use of print in the last twelve months. This is an 11% rise from the 2006 survey in which 33% of respondents had decreased their use of print.

Today we’d like to introduce you to one of the larger digital magazine providers, Ceros Media. They publish the digital editions for clients such as Marie Claire, BBC, and National Magazine Company. To see specific examples, read the interview.

With their platform, all individual pages of each magazine are optimized for search. If you google “miss gobbledegook”, you’ll find that the number one result is page five in Monkey Magazine. According to New Media Age, Monkey Magazine has recorded an increase in its ABCe figures to a new high of 271,667, up 10.7% month on month. It is the third successive month Monkey’s ABCe has climbed.

Something else we’ve noticed about the Ceros platform, in comparison to other digital magazine providers, is that their look is extremely clean and their interface is intuitive. Not only is it search engine optimized, easy to browse and delivered digitally, it is as classy and elegant as the brand it is representing.

We had a chance to talk to Dominic Duffy, co-founder of Ceros Media to ask him about Ceros and the future of digital magazines…..

read more here >>

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It almost feels like summer here in the French Alps today. I’m sure it’ll start snowing again soon, and hopefully the blisters on my heels an muscle-ache I have from ski touring recently will have healed by the time it does. In the meantime I’ll enjoy a bit of sunshine out in the office garden.

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Kaffee Klatch is a German word.

(KAH-fee klach): noun (from German Kaffee = coffee + Klatch = gossip): a casual gathering for coffee and conversation, usually accompanied by pastry.

Not here in Chamonix, though. Here the gossip and conversation is accompanied by hard-core skiing.

I skied with the Chamonix Girls today. Lisa, Ali, Genviere & Sarah. We skied off the Midi, ski-touring for a couple of hours up to the entrance of the Entreves coulouir – a very steep and gnarly ski down to the village of Entreves in Italy which has just made my must-do list of runs I want to do this winter. Then the decent. Sublime. Skiing fresh tracks in glorious sunshine all down the pictch we’d skinned up and then back down the Vallee Blanche on a new route to the right of the glacier I’ve never done before.

A brilliant day’s skiing – I’m so glad the girls invited me along.

pics. comme dab.

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I’ve been addicted to many things at various points in my life. Booze, fags, weed; the list goes on. But when I got down from the mountain today I realised that I can add skiing to that list. I am addict.

I haven’t been up skiing for nearly a week. The snow’s been rubbish and I’ve been waiting for more, doing some work and well…. just not skiing. I was starting to feel sad, anxious and unhappy. Then I went skiing again today with a bunch of friends and what do you know? I grinned all day and feel amazing this evening. The French have an expression for it, which I love. ‘On a la banane‘. Literally meaning ‘I’ve got a banana’, it means I’ve got a grin on my face the size of a banana.

I guess there’s worse things to be addicted to.

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Now the pooter’s fixed I spent the day making the film I was trying to make on Sunday. It’s a much improved version of the All Mountain Performance promotional video. So much better. the editing, the sound, everything. It’s visually better too, with some newly learned techie tricks, but more importantly it has a better narrative and holds together more as a film. Well chuffed I am :)

I’m even in it! That’s me in the yellow trousers about half ay through. There’s work to do still, but I’m feeling like I’m starting to get the hang of this now…

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