Wednesday 10 September 2008

SEO and Google Adwords


Hi pop-pickers. Another busy day in and out of the office. One random event of note was my dilapidated car reach a milestone...

Or 150,000 of them to be precise. This was en-route to Barncleuch, Irongray in Dumfries and Galloway to consult with Chairman of the Dumfries and Galloway Arts Festival about a number of issues.

On my return I found that a swarm of SEO jobs had come into my mailbox along with some hosting requests. I do love administration!

Friday 5 September 2008

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.

Thursday 4 September 2008

Somewhere to dig for gold

I was thinking that there's gold in them there hills. Just not enough to warrant spending £1 million setting up a small mine to extract £0.9 million worth of gold. Some smart alec will find a cute way of making it worthwhile.

Not me though, I was too busy optimising the website for the Central Hotel in Annan. A freelancer of some local repute had passed on the work so I was happy to help. It was 6am, how could I refuse? The Basement bar/venue sounds interesting though so I should sample it someday.

SEO on many levels

I spent some of this afternoon thinking about sheep. Not because I'm surrounded by Scotland. The latest client has a number of web sites and the latest online presence is for pedigree Suffolk sheep.

There are some interesting facts to be found when researching for writing web-copy, and it wasn't something I could have predicted last week. Still, trawling through the DEFRA website for information on MV and Scrapie had it's neuronal pleasures...

Some kind of rural filmscape theme was trying to tie itself together in my head since the morning phone call from a travelling developer, wandering wild in hills near Keswick.

Windows DRM

The nightmare that is Windows DRM. Here's the challenge: go and find a definitive website that shows a list of compatible devices for Windows DRM.

Remember there's Windows Media Player DRM and the 3GP DRM (.dcf) files that will only play on compatible mobile phones (see manufacturer's specifications for details, hehe). I'll give you a fiver if you find a page or site that lists this clearly.

Monday 1 September 2008

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.

User testing or website usability

I'm not even sure if usability is actually a word beyond the realms of websites and graphical user interfaces. Anyhow, user testing is a research component of the website usability consultancy service offered by Callisti.

A client's website is examined in several ways: what does the unassuming user discover unprompted when visiting the website; how does the user navigate through the site and what is her experience of this; how does the client intend the website to work; etc.

By compiling the findings we can report back on a convergence strategy that aims to improve ROI and goal conversion from the client's point of view while simultaneously improving user feedback.