I use Blogger to power this section of my website. Blogger seemed like a good choice: it is owned by Google, it’s free, and it’s easy to use.

But I have a few gripes about Blogger.

It’s missing some pretty basic things that I think blog software should offer, no brainer.

My top 3 gripes:

• I want to be able to categorise my listings, so you could click on an index link and find everything I wrote, say, about Press Releases or SEO.
• I want to be able to write an article, and then have it automatically published at some date in the future. So, I can sit down, write a bunch of stuff, and then have it drip feed into my blog automatically.
• And I want you to be able to choose which themes you want to subscribe to. Only interested in Online PR? Then you should be able to get only those articles.

Are these serious enough faults to switch to different blogging software, like TypePad or WordPress? Maybe….

Date: 10th May 2006

Time:

Audiences Central is an agency that aims to work with and inspire arts organisations, agencies, practitioners and audiences in order to increase and diversify the market for the arts in the West Midlands.

Susan Hallam will be leading a breakout sesssion on emarketing and new technologies at their forthcoming conference on 10 May 2006.

Audiences Central’s Annual Conference will be looking at the delicate balance of meeting the needs of core and new audiences. It will explore the idea that one person‘s ‘anorak‘ is another person‘s ‘innovator’, and look at the different types of audience from niche markets to mainstream enthusiasts, from absolute beginners to aficionados.

This conference will be of interest to arts and cultural professionals at every stage of their career, including those who specialise in marketing, programming, education, outreach and anyone who needs to know about their organisation‘s audiences. We welcome delegates from arts organisations of different sizes including visual and performing arts, venues, touring companies, local authorities, development agencies and creative industries.
How much?
Subscriber Rate – £65 +VAT, Non Subscriber Rate – £95 +VAT. Payment by credit/debit card or by invoice.

How can I book?
To book your place please request a booking form by emailing events@audiencescentral.co.uk or by calling 0121 685 2600.

Need further information?
Please feel free to call Audiences Central on 0121 685 2600 or email events@audiencescentral.co.uk

78% of small businesses in Greater Nottingham are invisible to the search engines.

We’ve just completed a research project assessing the websites of 100 small and medium sized businesses in Greater Nottingham, and to be blunt the news wasn’t good.

Only 22% of the businesses achieved a score of 50% or above, meaning the remaining sizable majority of websites cannot be found easily by the search engines.

The attributes we were looking for were quite straightforward: amongst the 7 factors assessed were Title tags, quality of the content, site map, and Page Rank.

Take a look at the findings from our Search Engine Findability Report for Small Businesses in Greater Nottingham.

The number of active UK Internet users at home fell in March 2006 as reported by Nielsen//Netratings.

Of the countries tracked, only 2 showed a decline: the UK and Germany.

The UK lost nearly 123,000 users, approximately a .5% drop. There are about 24 million home Internet users in the UK.

I reckon its due to angry NTL customers cancelling their lousy service – of course that is purely personal point of view.

Around the world there were 6.7 million new users, in a total home Internet user population of 317 million people.

Title Tags play a crucial role in optimising your site for the search engines. Of course there are other factors as well, but fixing your Title Tag has got to be the easiest and quickest way to improve your search engine rankings.

I have produced a Internet Marketing: Title Tags Factsheet in PDF format for your to download, but here’s the summary:

1. Put your keywords first in your title tag
There’s no place for vanity when it comes to your title tags – what you do is more important than the name of your company.

Bad: Hallam Communications Ltd – quality Internet marketing consultancy since 1999
Better: Internet marketing training – Hallam Communications – Nottingham UK

2. Get rid of words that aren’t helping the search engines to understand what you do
Search engines just don’t care about those marketing buzzwords like “quality” and “professional.” Stick to those key words that users are going to type in to try to find your company.

And you certainly are not helping your efforts with words like “Welcome” or “Home” or “About Us”

3. Give each page on your website it’s own hand crafted Title Tag.
This is particularly true if you have a different page for each product or service. Optimise the tag for the content on the page. For example, I would have a different Title Tag for each of the courses I run:

Search engine optimisation by Hallam
Email marketing training by Hallam
Online Press Release services by Hallam

4. Don’t forget the Human Beings
The Title Tag serves two purposes:

• to assist the search engine spiders to index your page
• to act as Call to Action to click on your site in the Search Engines results page

I don’t think there is any conflict here – a good description of what you do should serve the spiders well, and encourage people to click on your link.

As I said earlier, Title Tags are just part of the equation. I’ll be writing more SEO tips later.