Category: Work/Technical

  • Links from relative websites for SEO

    Dave and i have been spending a lot of time reading up about SEO and how to build effective links campaigns. We read stuff all the time, many of the things you see on the internet conflict with other things you read, but once you’ve read enough and tried and tested some of the ideas you get a good idea what to do.

    Anyway, the point of this blog post is talk about how google knows if a website you have a link on is in fact a relevant site or not. The reason im talking about this is because we have a “Top Sites” website for the cruise scene  (the modified car cruising scene) and it links to some of the top sites in the scene, and they link back. You all know the ones im talking about! The site has been running for ages, and it has built up a PR2 and as it stands its a pretty decent site to stick a couple of links on to one of our automotive SEO clients.

    As i was adding the link, i noticed the google ads displayed pretty much nothing about cars, and just stuff about caribbean cruises. The domain name and the majority of the content relates to something called cruising and the adwords filter and picked out ads for boat cruises. I guess in a lot of ways its right, but then in the actual sense of the word its not. So does google think its relevant, or not?

    I guess there aren’t many “cruise sites” that would advertise using google, and i dont suppose that many of the car related ads on there have been set to trigger when the word cruise is picked up. If there were some then i guess they would get picked up and used on this particular site, but surely the google filters could figure its relevant content anyway and still display relevant ads?

    I guess much of what google knows is down to what people search for on google its self. So if a word takes on a new meaning then people will be blogging and searching for it so google learns about it and hey presto.

    Im still unsure as to wether or not a link off there will benefit or not, but i guess like publicity – any links a good link (unless iton a site about pr0n or vhagrah. 🙂

  • DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince – Boom Shake the Room Lyrics

    Tonight Gemma, Bonnie and i have been using a cool website called GrooveShark – its a flash based music streaming website, and you can search for and queue tracks to play.

    The speeds are really good, and it seems to find most tracks no matter what the genre. We queued a load to listen to, and one of them was this beauty.

    Here are the totally tubular lyrics in case you forgot’em!

    (more…)

  • I am no longer the internet

    For more years than i can remember, i have had I AM THE INTERNET as my blog title. Now i wasn’t being big headed or anything – ok so maybe i was, but let me explain why…

    I’ve been using the internet for a modest 12 years or so, and it was something i got into quite fast, and i found that i was quite interested and fairly good at “the internet” – for example i made my first site in dreamweaver when i was 13, not too long after i had started using the net in the first place.

    When i was about 15/16 i had used and abused the internet so much, i became some kind of human / google hybrid and i was able to spout website URLs that would provide you with any product or service you required. You name it, i could tell you a website where you could find it.

    It got to a level where people would regularly ring me and ask me what that website was that we saw that thing on. So the title I AM THE INTERNET was created.

    Many years on, and the internet is what makes up 85% of the work me and Dave do now, and the more i use it – and the tools and applications that you can find on it – the more confused i get! Every time i master something, its updated. Every time i learn how to do something, another way to do it comes out.

    I no longer feel comfortable claiming that i am the internet, when there is so much i dont, and will never, know.

    So, to tie in with my project to get my blog to number 1 in google for the term olly, i have renamed my blog I AM OLLY.

    The end of an era. The start of a new day.

  • Olly – The Number 1 0lly – Free Links

    A while back dave and i were speaking about the SEO things we are doing as a business now, and mentioned that it would be funny (and also a bit of an inter-company challenge) to try and each get to the top of google for our names – dave and olly.

    We haven’t mentioned it since, but i got thinking about it earlier, and tried to decide what would be the best (and easiest) method of getting my blog to the top of google if someone searched for olly. Anyone who knows anything about SEO knows that in a nutshell, its all about good content and inbound links (ok, lots of other stuff too but these are the only things i am going to take into consideration for this challenge)

    I already have good UNIQUE content, so what else? I need links in to this site. But mannnn that would take ages and ages and i really cant be arsed to hand pick them, and i don’t want the cost involved in BUYING links.

    Hmm..

    Ding!

    Introducing – 0lly Approves!

    Its basically a free link directory that allows anyone to sign up to it – but i am going to be slightly picky with who i allow access. Simply because i don’t want it to be a general free link directory, we already have one of them! I want it to be a useful, relevant, non spammy directory that will one day hold a bangin pagerank, and be beneficial for all that are on it.

    How it helps me, is in order to add your link – you have to add MY link first. And i have got the recip link pointing to the main page, not the directory. I know one way linking is usually preferred, but we haven’t done too badly with our other directory, and thats only ever had recip links added.

    So sign up now, and start promoting your site, and helping me get to the top of google!

    NB this is for the term olly, not 0lly (with a zero) im already at the top if you spell it with a Zero 🙂