Blogging Semantic

SEO from the Horse's Mouth (Google)

13 November 2008

Here's some welcome news from the Common Sense Desk. Google have released a free PDF ebook called the SEO Starter Guide. We'd like to recommend it to all our Clients.

To be fair this information won't be news to anyone who reads Google's Webmaster blog, but pulling it together is a great victory for common sense, and will help demystify a subject people can obsess over. Go ahead and take a look, it will take you half-an-hour to read at the most.

The secret to SEO (of course there is no secret)

The guide deals with around a dozen basic topics for sites that want to achieve good organic search engine rankings... and they boil down to this:

• Create great content that is easy to use, share and index.

Hmmm... does that sound familiar to anyone? I think the thing that will surprise you is how simple most of this stuff is. There's no black magic, no keyword shenanigans, and (unsuprisingly) no attempt to game the system. This is about making your content as great as possible for the user, and as easy as possible for Search Engines to index. That's it.

Creating compelling and useful content will likely influence your website more than any of the other factors discussed here. Users know good content when they see it and will likely want to direct other
users to it. This could be through blog posts, social media services, email, forums, or other means. Organic or word-of-mouth buzz is what helps build your site's reputation with both users and Google,
and it rarely comes without quality content.

Google Simple SEO Guide

Of course this isn't to say that SEO is easy. Creating great content is always going to take work. But it does allow us, and you, to focus on what matters. A welcome break from the smoke and mirrors of some SEO companies.

But what about professional SEOs?

Just to be clear, I'm not saying that there is no place for SEO companies. There are plenty of things Google aren't telling us here... and that means that there will always be a place for genuine experts.

But I do hope that this guide helps shift the conversation back towards the users of websites, and away from the less-savoury end of Search Engine Optimisation.

Not surprisingly, as a business that creates accessible, content-rich websites, we'd welcome that :-)

Posted by Nick Warren at 10:09 AM 0 comments

Lets Recap...

20 October 2008

Last week turned out to be a hugely busy week for us Semantians. We put three major projects live.



• Foxhills healthspa went live on Wednesday.





• Merlin Annual Pass went live on Thursday.





• DeepSeaWorld went live on Friday.



But don't worry, we still got home in time for tea :-)

Posted by Nick Warren at 3:15 PM 1 comments

The great rubber-band ball challenge!

16 October 2008

UPDATE: See our progress on the Semantic BallCam page!

Nearly every morning, with the morning post, we usually find a free gift from the postman in the shape of a rubber-band. The accustomed ritual (until recently) has been to flick them at each other or use them for target practice on the toys that line the top shelf of our book cabinet.

Posted by The Mossolator at 9:24 AM 1 comments

The Magnificent Four-And-A-Half!

10 October 2008

Great news... Semantic is growing again. We are really happy to welcome David O'Hara as the fifth member of the team. Well almost.



Some of you may remember David (right), an impressive fellow whose been on our case for a couple of years now, and came in to do work experience earlier in the year.

Thankfully David is still pursuing his education (which means he won't be putting us out of business quite yet), but outside of that he's continued to look at, test, and occasionally break our sites.

(A problem spotted is a problem solved).

Anyway, we've decided it's about time we officially recognise his contribution, bring him onto the payroll in a small way, and generally make him part of the team.

Right now David is focusing on testing our work, but it wouldn't surprise us at all if he gets involved in building things as time goes by.

So if you happen to see David (david@semantic.co.uk) copied into emails from time to time do not be alarmed. He's one of us.

Posted by Nick Warren at 10:00 AM 0 comments

Happy Birthday Neil!

06 October 2008

Just a quick note to wish Neil a happy twenty-third birthday today. Happy Birthday mate! Roll on lunchtime.

Posted by Nick Warren at 8:00 AM 0 comments

Travel Back in Time

01 October 2008

Seven years is a long time in the history of the web, do you remember when Yahoo reined supreme... and Google were barely a blip on the map.

Google do, which is why to celebrate their tenth anniversary they have brought their oldest available index back to life. You can see it here... but only for a limited period.

http://www.google.com/search2001.html

Of course you won't find YouTube, Facebook or MySpace in this index... but blow me down... you will find us. Bless. We are number eight (on a search for "Semantic") out of only 426,000 matches.

Today, seven years later, we are still there, at about the same position in Google's latest index... on a search of 23,400,000 matches!

Posted by Nick Warren at 6:51 AM 0 comments

Semantic welcomes Rhinegold Publishing

25 September 2008

Good news, we are really proud to welcome our latest client, Rhinegold Publishing, and their new Semantic designed website: www.rhinegold.co.uk.

Rhinegold is a leading UK publisher for music and the performing arts. They produce specialist magazines for the music industry including Classical Music and Opera Now, as well as a large number of educational titles in music, drama and performing arts.

They represent a great coup for Semantic, and have really been an exemplary client. In return we have developed a full e-commerce, content-managed website that includes a product catalogue, magazine subscriptions, complex special offers, data capture, magazine micro-site, an order management system and more.

We hope you take a moment to look over the site. As ever, if you have any feedback on our work email us at incoming@semantic.co.uk.

Posted by Nick Warren at 9:40 AM 0 comments

Strategy for publishers

23 September 2008

Just recently something fairly unusual has happened... I've changed my mind about something :-)

We work with a lot of publishers and I've always believed that their core product, the book, was reasonably safe in it's current form. Yes there would be digital nibbling round the edges, but by and large we would all continue to want the convenience, comfort and sheer damn friendliness of paper.

But I don't believe that any more. I think the days of paper are numbered.

Of course people will still read paper, but in five years time everyone over the age of about thirteen is going to have a device perfectly capable of reading online books... we'll call it a phone but really it's a computer... and it will be almost as powerful as the laptop I am typing on now. Then, as the digital reading tools get better, and the mobile phone generation* get older, people who want to read paper books will end up paying a premium for that privilege.

Within a few years we'll be at a point where digital reading (this isn't really about books) will have the platform penetration to reach a tipping point, and explode... and there aren't many places it won't touch.

Then there's the forthcoming killer app.

At some point Amazon (or someone) will launch a service that will allow subscribers to read as many digital books as they like for a fixed monthly fee. That's a killer service for digital reading and something which traditional publishing will not be able to answer.

You may say that reading digital books may never be as comfortable as reading paper... but that's missing the point. It doesn't have to be... it just has to be a better overall experience. Things like access to unlimited books, bookmarking, annotations, web links, sharing, embeded audio, video, and so on... will tip the balance in time. I think that's more a matter of when than if.

It's a clear threat to anyone in the paper business, but a phenomenal opportunity for anyone in the content business.




*Mobile phone generation. The one that came after us thirty-eight years olds... the one to whom reading onscreen is totally natural.

Posted by Nick Warren at 7:19 AM 0 comments

A Sad Confession

26 July 2008

I have a horrible confession to make I've been looking at ways to create a web site WITHOUT SEMANTIC. I know, but before you turn away in disgust, let me explain...

My wife Wendy is a brilliant Wildlife Artist who has recently begun painting again. Thus Wendy Warren Wildlife Art was born, and needs a web site... and of course everyone seems to think that Semantic will just knock her up a great one.

But life is not so simple. Semantic doesn't just work with anyone. We have a number of criteria which potential clients must meet in order to be eligible and, to be blunt, Wendy's startup business fails most of them. This was never going to be a Semantic project. We were on our own.

False modesty aside, I know what I am doing with web sites. I have a natural aptitude for certain parts of the process and almost fifteen years experience leading project teams. However I am not and have never been a web designer or programmer. It's not where my strengths lie.

So here I was, just like everyone else who needs a web site (and can't hire Semantic)... stuck looking for a solution. Only in my case it was worse, because I knew what was possible.

But let's be realistic, all we needed was a simple, content managed solution that would give us enough flexibility to make Wendy and I happy. We looked at:

• www.squarespace.com

• www.goodbarry.com

• Sandvox from Karelia Software

• www.apple.com/iweb

And loads more.

Let me be clear here. These are great great services, and GoodBarry in particular is very impressive... but I am spoilt. Spoilt by working with talented flexible designers and coders, spoiled by web sites that are easy to amend, Google friendly, and compliant. Everyone of these other solutions felt like a straight-jacket in comparison.

So... of course, I cheated. The Wendy Warren Wildlife site is a Semantic site in all but name. It's based on our code and run using our rules. Sure the design would be much better if one of the guys had done it... but this is a great start for Wendy, and a reminder (to me) of why bespoke design and development is worth it's weight in gold.

If you have an interest in Wildlife Art, or know someone who does, check it out. And in return I promise to learn my lesson :-)

Nick

P.S. Thanks to Truly Ace for tipping me the wink.

Posted by Nick Warren at 11:53 AM 0 comments

Please welcome Katherine Rose Gillett

25 July 2008

Just a quick note to say huge congratulations to Mike, Alison and little Matthew on the birth (yesterday) of their daughter/younger sister, Katherine Rose Gillett.

Naturally Mike will be absent for a while as he and Alison grapple with the question that plagues all parents of two children... how is it that we are so hopelessly outnumbered?


Much love to you all from Semantic.

Posted by Nick Warren at 7:08 PM 1 comments