But just why are they so important and how valuable can a simple name be? The answer? Very, very important! It’s all to do with that little phenomenon called SEO and usability! Since the start of 2009 a staggering 192 million domains have been registered, marking a rise of 15 million since 2008. These huge figures show just how important and valuable domains have become in the big-bucks land of the internet. It also means businesses now have even more choice and factors to consider when searching for that oh-so-important domain.

Think of a simple domain – let’s take sex.com as an example. A simple name so it can’t be worth much right? Wrong! This domain is due to go up for auction next month with bids expected to start at a lowly $1 million! All that for a name, huh? The domain’s so expensive because “sex sells”. Only when you think about how many adult websites there are out there who would love this domain can you start to imagine just how crazy the bidding will be on 18th March.

The domain’s also fairly old – 1994  - so is well established in the eyes of Google. It was last sold in 2006 for around $14 million in a deal which was described at the time as “among the most significant domain transactions in history”. Since then the domain’s been the subject on several bitter law suits, amid allegations of theft and back-stabbing. Despite this, the domain is likely to go for much more than the previous $14 million it attracted.

Similarly another simple domain; pizza.com attracted bids of more than $2.5 million in 2008.

Who’d have thought a few simple words could make such good money? Hmm, how times have changed! The big question now is how do you choose a valuable domain which won’t lose value over the years?

The first thing to look at is date; if it’s been registered for at least 10 years, it’s likely to have been indexed by Google, meaning you probably won’t have to work to hard to get it re-indexed. While you might prefer an original, unique domain for whatever reason; you have to consider it’s functionality. It’s going to be new which means it’ll probably take a while to be indexed, which needs to be done to encourage traffic – can you really afford to wait?!

Another thing to consider is functionality and simplicity. As you can see, simple really does sell! The domain needs to be simple so people can remember it and use it time and time again. It should be catchy and the best domains can be sold on year after year.

Once you decide on a domain you need to check who owns it and the price. New research out this week shows that might be harder than you think! Nearly 28% of websites are registered with false or incorrect information, with 7% being completely bogus. This means you need to be extremely careful to avoid being burnt by the domain sharks!

So in answer to my question, domains are just as important, if not more important than the functionality and design of your website. After all, how are you supposed to do well if someone can’t find you?! If you take anything away from this blog, let it be this; sex really does sell!

Lets explore the scenario.

I, as a director of the company, am toying with the idea of using a cult comedian in the UK to appear on the home page of the redsauce.com website.  The comedian in question has a few screws loose, and comes across as a mad-scientist (points go to those that have guessed the comedian).  This means that he fits our brand – very clever, salt of the earth, but bafflingly strange.

We think that he would be a good fit, anyway.  Maybe just appearing in image form – or maybe a clever interwoven video – of the man ranting and raving about the virtues of content, SEO and authority.

For those people that visit the site, they will (may) recognise the comedian hopefully and it may just go on and get us some new business, which is obviously what we want it to do.

Also, however, is the possibility of inbound linking occurring from both the online marketing media and websites that review comedians.  Its not everyday that a) a celebrity appears on a website, advertising the product, or b) that an SEO company would do such a thing, so hopefully, that will lead to some nice inbound linking and a bit of promotion for the brand.

Any thoughts on the idea?

By the way, it is NOT Jim Davidson!  I have nothing against Jim by the way.  Listen, its definitely NOT Jim Davidson!

Since the launch of the social media phenomenon it’s gone from strength to strength with a growing number of users accessing all platforms every day. The study by Burson-Martseller found Twitter was the most popular social media tool, followed by Facebook and YouTube. So, what’s the draw to social media sites? It’s all about communication and laziness! Social media sites allow users to communicate in the easiest possible way; from the comfort of their own computer.

Sites like Facebook allow users to share pictures, comments and even allows for the stalking of potential employees or partners! Don’t look at me like that….we’ve all done it, haven’t we?! It’s the easy format, speed and comfort of social media sites that makes users come back day after day. Gone are the days of waiting by the phone or letterbox for a correspondence – it’s all about getting a response right now!

Now social media sites are such a huge part of our world, it makes me wonder what we did before them….. Surely we must’ve been lazier and less communicative? Or maybe we weren’t – maybe we just functioned differently? I think it was probably a bit of both, although I’m obviously far too young to remember a time before social media sites!

Every time a new technological brainwave appears, we embrace it with everything we have. Take the mobile phone for example…OK, so the early brick models were only popular with 90’s business men but once the models were given a makeover, everyone wanted one. Today, it’s highly unlikely to see someone without a mobile phone – I’ve even seen kids as young as 7 texting away!

My point is that once we grow dependent on something, we rely on it on a daily basis and become panicked at the thought of losing it. We’ve all felt that feeling of dread and sickness when we think we’ve lost our mobile. Although we become dependent on technology; be it the mobile phone or social media sites, advances and new innovations in this technology mean we have to roll with the times and learn to relax.

The big question is what’s going to be the new phenomenon that replaces social media sites? And once, it arrives will we wonder how we ever lived without it? I think so!

Yep indeedy, the British institution has cottoned on to the benefits of search engine jiggery-pokery to give its news articles extra clout in the Googleometer.

From the end of 2009 the BBC has started a new initiative to stretch the titles of headlines on the BBC News website to increase their traffic via unpaid SEO. The geeks at redsauce.com can’t help but think that this is an exciting step in the right direction for SEO marketing in general and hope that more companies wise up and follow suit.

Journalists working on the news site will double up their headlines – one shorter one between 31 and 33 characters for the front page and website indexes and a longer one of up to 55 characters to get plenty of search engine results. It is fast becoming industry standard for news producers to sprinkle a little SEO magic on their work.

To the merry band of geeks at redsauce.com that’s newsworthy stuff, but this technique is just a teeny fragment of what we do. Facilitating long tail searches are just the tip of the iceberg. The real powerhouse of our SEO is content.

Great! Now let’s talk about bears.

If you were lost in the forest and a ginormous, slobbering bear was after you, you’d want something to give yourself a fighting chance, right? Now, the bear represents the world of online competition, and make no mistake, it wants to smother you with its giant paws until you choke your last feeble breath. Companies with big bucks go out and buy tanks with swivelly guns that could make even the hairiest, scariest bear do its business in the woods. In order to be numero uno they spend all their money on expensive SEO tactics, and yes they do work, but only to a point.

But for all the smaller companies out there, they have to do battle with whatever they can get their hands on, without forking out the GDP of a small country. They make the best of what they’ve got and pick up a stick – this is where unpaid SEO comes into it. Writing lots of content is one way to get yourself a stick. The more content you churn out, the bigger the stick and the better your chance of coming out on top.

Not only do companies like the BBC want to make the best content, but they want to make more of it to maximise their search rankings and readership.  This is precisely what floats redsauce.com’s boat and makes our means of marketing so darn marvellous!

But should you genuinely happen upon a bear, make your physical presence as large as possible, speak in deep, low noises and avoid eye contact. They’re real charmers.

Recently, redsauce.com embarked upon a project in a particular industry online where the leading player is over 10 years old.  The site in question has 100,000 pages indexed and is in the first 3 or 4 results on Google for most short-to-medium tail searches.

Whilst this site has the most pages indexed in the industry and the most content on those pages, the content itself is quite threadbare still.  This is where time comes in to this post.

Content can speed up the ageing process of any website.  If you build a site of comparable size to another, yet include much more content, then you can attain many more search phrases, especially in the long tail.  So, when people are browsing around at the various stages of the search phase, the site should appear for various terms.  Why? Because of the content that has been written about all of the niche terms.  This is where the site accrues age quicker than a site with a ‘normal’ amount of content.

A site with ‘age’ will appear for many searches before the searcher goes on to make the final search that will lead him to the site that he or she wants.  Think, when you are searching for something on the web, wikipedia appears a lot, Amazon will when looking for books, IMDB will when looking for films and so on.  In the ‘query sphere’ that your business may operate in, you need to be the Amazon, the wikipedia.  You need to be the aged site.

So, can you speed up time with content? YES, you can.  For example, we mentioned the site in a particular industry further up the post.  We have, in the past 2 months, built a site of greater size and greater content than that site, in the same industry.  We have ‘aged’ our site by a number of years – perhaps even 5, compared with the competition.  Have we travelled through time?  I think so.  Will we start to dominate that industry soon?  Yes, for sure.

The new method suggests using an escape character after the hash (#!),by using this instead of the hash Google will now be aware that you are refering to an AJAX url and will follow and crawl the information inside.

This is indeed good news for developers who favor AJAX applications for their users, and will also benefit the SEO efforts of tool builders across the web.

A lot of business’s especially new ones, think that all they have to do to be a success on the web is to throw up a site and pump money into SEO until they have their desired rankings. This is all fine and dandy and will probably generate quiet a bit of business but by ignoring usability and design you will be missing thousands upon thousands of pounds of business every month.

A sites usability is as important as its existence, when designing a site its so important to consider type of users your will be having (typical demographics, tech, non tech  etc) and then mix a little science and physiology our design to get the right reaction from your users. Where do you want your users to focus? How do i get them to look at the form? There are so many questions you should be asking when deciding the design for a site.

In the past changing the color or the wording slightly on a form has increased custom dramatically. If you run a site or are thinking of developing a site , I suggest you invest in some web usability and human computer interaction books and tweaks things on your site as if you were a  scientist and measure the results.

So what can you do? Read on…

Start with a decent theme – If you understand CSS etc really well you can make your own, if you’re a complete novice, shop around online for themes you can buy  and install yourself. It’s really easy to do, and there are loads of tutorials online to show you how. If you’re in between a newbie and a pro, then take the most simple theme going and adapt it, that way you wont have to write any new code and but there is a wide scope to play about. Just make sure it looks unique and memorable, brand it for yourself.

Be careful with background images – Obviously this will be determined by the design of your theme, but the best thing to remember is to keep it uncluttered and light. White or pale colours work best, there’s nothing more horrific to human retinas than white text on a black background. Don’t use photos or busy patterns with the text directly on it. If you want to use a photo or pattern background make sure the text etc has its own background so it is easy to read your content.

Stop widgeting so much - games and other widgets on a blog are all well and good until it becomes like some sort of drugs habit. Keep them and adverts to a minimum, don’t crowd your blog with rubbish, as the main focus should be the content. Lots of adverts and widgets make a blog look spam-tastic, terrible and quickly forgotten!

Content, content, content, content, content, content, content, (mushroom mushroom) – No but seriously i know we go on about it all the time, the most important thing on any site is content. Read pretty much every post we write about for tips on writing the content. As for design, make sure your content is the main focus. Don’t crowd it with rubbish!

(Text) size matters – Use decent font sizes, colours etc and make it easy to read without a nuclear microscope. No-one has one of those, and if they do they aren’t going to set it up to read your blog.

Scrolling - Should be up and down, not across. It’s a blog not the Bayeux Tapestry!

Distracting animations – should be banned. There’s nothing that makes anyone click the ‘X’ in the top corner of the window quicker than a blog full of  blinking text and ten million glittering gifs looping around. And cursors which turn into something designed by a pre-teen who’s had too many sweets should be banned on punishment of having ‘I love High School Musical’ tattooed on your forehead. You are excused if you are under-12, but then they probably know better.

Keep things tidy – Use the HMTL code to keep everything neat and tidy, make sure text doesn’t overlap out of various areas and keep everything clean. And have a bath, nobody likes an unclean blogger.

Identity – If you have followed all the other rules your blog will have one. If not you’re doing it wrong! Start again.

Google flatly deny this is the case, saying that it’s algorithm is designed to produce the best and most relevant results. Foundem claimed that Google was penalising it’s website in favour of it’s own price comparison results, known as Google product search. Trying to get to the bottom of all this is Chris Lake of E-consultancy who has written a superb article, citing many reasons why Foundem might not rank well in Google. The principle reason (which whole heatedly supported by redsauce.com) why they may not be appearing as prominently as they wish is that they have thousands of pages of duplicate content, as E-consultancy point out. So whilst Foundem and others may shout from the sidelines, in reality if they are not adhering to Google’s own guidelines on what makes a site perform well in its index, they really don’t have much to complain about. Moreover Google is not a publicly funded search platform. although they produce the best and more relevant results, they are under no obligation to do so. If they want to show their own product comparison results at the top of the main SERPs, that is entirely a matter for them.

This might be a touch cynical but are Foundem really on a massive PR stunt to gain inbound links…look who has been linking to them in response to their complaint…

http://blogs.ft.com/gapperblog/

http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/google-in-eu-antitrust-investigation.html

http://econsultancy.com/blog/4456-foundem-vs-google-a-case-study-in-seo-fail

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/19/google_hand_of_god/print.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/aug/17/google-search-baffles-internet-firm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8533551.stm

Who would turn their nose up at these sites?!

The newspaper industry are up in arms over the decision to deliver quality content, such as news services and the popular iPlayer TV service, straight to mobile devices. The Newspapers Publishers Association are so incensed they’re set to complain to ministers and the BBC Trust. Their complaint? They believe the latest smartphone app will “distort the market”. Nothing to do with their greedy plans to start charging for online content then?!

The app was announced at last week’s Mobile World Congress and is set to be available for iPhone users and other mobile devices, such as Blackberry and Google’s Android, by the end of the year.

The move comes as part of the BBC’s plans to increase their presence in the ever popular smartphone industry but has angered many other media companies who are looking to create revenue from digital content.

Along with the BBC, other news organisations such as Sky and The Telegraph have also launched free smartphone apps. Other outlets have paid for apps, such as The Guardian which costs £2.39.

“At a time when the BBC is facing unprecedented levels of criticism over its expansion, and when the wider industry is investing in new models, it is extremely disappointing that the corporation plans to launch services that would throw into serious doubt the commercial sector’s ability to make a return on its investment, and therefore its ability to support quality journalism,” said NPA’s director David Newell.

The NPA have even gone as far to say the plans are “damaging” and that they “threaten to strangle an important market for news and information”.

Harsh words but the BBC are refusing to be bullied into backing out of their plans. They’ve hit back by saying the content is already available on some mobile devices. Currently the BBC has one of the most popular websites in the UK and already launched a number of successful mobile services, such as the iPlayer on selected handsets.

So is the BBC in the wrong? In my opinion, not at all! The BBC have a responsibility to provide quality news and content to license fee payers, whether that’s on the TV, internet or on mobile phone. The world of news consumption is changing and players need to change and adapt to keep up. There are already many questions about the rights media organisations have to charge for online content and it seems this latest announcement by the BBC might help to add fuel to the fire for those campaigning against the proposed charges.