Running concurrently

Ah, the long winter nights.

Recently Callisti has been updating the experimental Dumfries and Galloway Arts Festival wordpress blog site with the provisional festival diary.

Some of the events are tentatively booked so dates and venues may still need to be firmed up.

Updating wordpress blogs can take an age - I hope it's not as slow as that when you have a local server installation.

Anyhow, good to see the search results for "dumfries and galloway arts festival".

Now what was that about PageRank?

Log Cabin Holidays

Callisti is now managing lochanview.com, a self catering log cabin provider in Dumfries and Galloway. Log cabins, Lodges and Chalets - these are all fairly synonymous to some but when you get in the outdoor hottub at lochanview such definitions become unimportant.

Check out the booking calendars for the lodge and log cabin.

Today I have been mostly...

While the dust settles from recent website hiccups for Dumfries and Galloway Arts Festival, Callisti started populating an Arts Festival blog on Wordpress as an experimental resource.

I was also discovering the strangest feelings while learning about the flirtation of getting quotations and prices for potential work. For the quoter it's like buying a house in Scotland - blind bids... and it's true what they say about Rackspace...

Still been checking out the famously cheap films on iLoaded for download - some good titles in the movie download section.

Also our Annan seed potato merchant is now a Callisti SEO number one for "seed potatoes" - how about that!

Still waiting for a PageRank and a re-caching by google is the bat surveys and wildlife consultancy service but you can't get to number one overnight.

Another touchbase was the self catering log cabin down at Kippford which isn't that far from Elm Cottage in Kippford.

Finally the Lockerbie Computer Services persons are getting all multimedia this festive season - we await with mulled breath what Santa will bring.

MyWishWand on Squidoo

Squidoo allows users to create a 'lens' on a subject that is of interest and has become one of the top 300 US sites with over 700, 000 users.

There is an updateable entry on MyWishWand that provides a review of the services of the Gift Wishlist site. This is part of Callisti's ongoing provision of web 2.0 and review services.

Meeting of minds

Callisti is now in talks with ICT Advisor to develop new working relationships for international ecommerce SEO.

After attending a Business Gateway event in Gretna (Dumfries and Galloway) it was clear that more investment in building knowledge and skills would be the true path to illumination.

There are upcoming opportunities for tenders and Callisti says put best foot forward.

Crichton developments

Callisti has recently been active in Chamber of Commerce events and has met with the Crichton Development Company as a spin off to this.

There are a lot of events and initiatives planned for 2009 in Scotland with the Homecoming experience. This should attract media promotion at a national and international level and encourage many Scots to return to their homeland for a time.

Naturally this will have spin-off opportunities for businesses and services all over Scotland.

Enterprise agencies

Cycling about town today in a green sort of way. We had a constructive meeting earlier with the local Scottish Enterprise agency for Dumfries and Galloway where Callisti will be suggested for tenders for new work in the region.

This work will be for clients requiring a suite of services, from search engine optimisation, website design and development, and video editing for the web.

There are other opportunities in conjunction with the creative arts and art events groups in the region which will be followed up in this next quarter.

Players on a stage

We are but players on a stage it has been said. It's strange how the word 'but' is used here. Lesson: remember that a lot of the language we used is expression-based and falls under the evil spell of cliche very easily.

There is a need in Dumfries and Galloway, and Dumfries in particular, for the development of a quality theatre.

A venue that can reach out to the local community and encourage participation with the performing arts as a way point for the talented children of the area, and a theatre performance area that can attract shows to the region during the Arts Festival and throughout the year.

The current venue is that closest fits this bill is the ageing Theatre Royal. We are now in a period of consultation on how best to deliver this, whether by building a new venue or by overhauling the existing theatre. Either way funding will have to be secured.

Callisti supports the performing arts and original artists.

DGCC Annual Lunch

Well that was the first annual lunch Callisti has attended and well attended it was too. Organised mainly by the Dumfries and Galloway Chamber of Commerce and featuring Charan Gill MBE as guest speaker, it was all very entertaining and relaxed.

We got the random tables and discussed the inner workings of the post office and royal mail delivery software - database driven route planning for mail delivery - the post code database is the family jewel.

Also juxtaposed were representatives from the Care Training Consortium so we had a pleasant chat over the creme brulee...

Website revisions

We are embarking on a marketing phase of company development this quarter so the website is going to be designed with a more professional image and better management of content and information.

Some good template sites that are css and xhtml have been made available by Andreas Viklund. This has been adopted by Geodata Solutions, for example, for use in their surveying and digital mapping services resource.

Never one for the bells and whistles approach, Callisti will aim for an efficient, usable website that looks pretty sweet.

SEO what not to do

The mysteries of acquiring a page rank are myriad but here's what not to do.
Traffic for Callisti is being picked up by Google analytics but the site has not been assigned a page-rank as yet.

Some sources say that having AdSense on when the site is launched is deemed questionable by Google but this seems a little bizarre as it's part of their website services.

So with that in mind more time can now be invested in developing the site content and describing the services more informatively.

Directory Listings

Is it good to embark on a link building campaign for when building your website's presence online?

There are numerous directory sites where concepts like relevant directory and page rank, non-reciprocal, reciprocal, all come to the fore. I am currently experimenting with these, especially the ones that don't require payment, but it's a murky business.

I can see that the Callisti website is listed on some of the sites as this shows up in search results. I am slightly concerned that it's wasting energy that could be spent in something more genuine. Being listed in 50 different phone books doesn't seem very substantial for some reason but maybe that's just me.

The more sites that we work on, the more courtesy links point to the site, which I feel better about as it is honourable. Let's face it, on today's date the site is currently indexed but unranked and this can take time.

I'm quite impressed with some of the automated link building systems - a collection of scripts and applications that have gestalt intelligent appearance but no inherent soul. Where am I going with that?

Aberdeen Media Website Development

What a strange day at the office. The morning entailed a rainy trip to the 'Making it Happen' discussion on the alternative futures for theatre provision in Dumfries (and by extension Dumfries and Galloway).

There were many representatives from local authority, theatre trust (involved with the intimate but delapidated Theatre Royal), community organisations, schools, etc. and a few from the Dumfries and Galloway Arts Festival membership. This is a part time interest for me as I am keen to find a practical way of joining up the provision of creative arts and events information for the region and have somehow been co-opted on to the festival board.

Subsequently a London client of Callisti required some research to find an alternative quote for a large scale development (masquerading as another nominal company for NDA reasons) and I was fortunate enough to find AVC Media Enterprises based in Aberdeen.

After a good chat with their project interface character I was well impressed, and he was able to be helpful and informative in a way that I'd like to revisit. Their website is professional and exemplifies some of the clever applications they have put to use. More media oriented than most and, by the way, it was surprisingly hard to find a company (that was accessible) based in Scotland who could come close to providing what was being asked for.

Google Listings

Just tried a speculative search in UK results for 'usability and seo' and callisti comes up in postition 8. Remove the 'and' and it shifts to 3rd or 4th page. Encouraging though all the same. I must update the sitemap now that some content for user testing and seo consultancy has been added in a subdirectory for the website.

Why optimise?

Your corporate or business website is your 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, non-stop marketing and information machine. It can reach a massive audience and relay your products, services and relevant information about your company.

Nobody wants to be misrepresented so it is important to maintain this window into your business. How do you manage your website?

Are you reaching as much of the right audience as you'd expect? All your website development efforts may not be fully realised if your website is hard to find.

We believe that a website isn't just an add-on to your marketing strategy. It can be integrated efficiently into the way you traditionally share information and distribute changing information about products, services and events.

We also know that time spent clarifying your target keywords, updating the web-copy where appropriate and building relevant links, in short 'search engine optimisation' (SEO), can help you get a lot more out of your website and, in some cases, restore your faith in how effective a website can be for your organisation.

Callisti can also help you with sponsored listings, such as Adwords, which is an efficient way to drive traffic to your site especially once your target keywords and SEO has been completed. In cases like this it is good to think about your online marketing budget and the targets you would aim to meet to demonstrate value for money.

So much information is available on the internet, all it costs is your time. You also need some experience and judgement to make sure that you're getting the best information.

Contact Callisti if you are starting to think about SEO and online marketing. We can guide you by principles of good practice and help clarify what you can expect when you have a well managed website.