Snow? In Scotland?? - I know many folks expect Scotland to be covered in a blanket of snow for much of the year. The truth is different, of course. Scotland benefits from the warmth of the Gulf stream for most of the time - and it's only occasionally that we seem to have a cold winter.
While the forecasters were predicting a severe winter for the UK, it's only in the last few days that we have seen much snow in the west of Scotland. It never lasts long. We had a snowfall of about 8" last Sunday and it had all but disappeared on Tuesday in the low-lying areas. What we have now is a cold easterly wind with occasional flurries of snow blowing around - but again, the general temperature is above freezing point, so the snow is melting quickly.
I'm loving it! This is reminiscent of many winters when I was a kid in the 50s. The quality of the daylight seems much better and I've hardly needed an umbrella at all this winter. (Shiver me timbers, that's bound to bring on a deluge!) The trick to this kind of weather is to wear layers of lightweight clothing so that you can be comfortable outside and when you come back indoors.
I'm away to rediscover the joys of wearing lip salve - and I'm going to walk in the woods later on and find some lovely spring catkins!
Later
M
Thursday, March 16, 2006
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
Link Popularity
Free Link Popularity Checker
Publish your web site and you'll be inundated with more business than you can handle?? Well, maybe not. You can ask yourself (and your web designer) why you're not making money from your web site - and here is some of the information that you need to know to make your web site appear in the top of the search engine results for your chosen key phrase.
The internet is a brilliant tool for marketing your offline business or for making a living entirely online. Countless companies have mastered the art of ecommerce and now receive a substantial portion of their income from the web. But as a start-up company on the internet, that effectively means that the competition is ferocious and getting to the top of the search engines for any keyphrase or word takes a lot of work. Ask yourself how many times you click on a link in the first page of results on one of the search engines - and how infrequently you surf to the results on page 20 or 31 or further.
Publishing your web site is just the start of the strategy of making a living online. I heard someone recently recommend that you choose to spend less money on the design of your web site, leaving more money in your web marketing kitty to promote your web site effectively. I think that this is a masterful piece of advice. The internet is only going to pay dividends for you if you understand that you must get your web site to the top of the results, beating your competition. To do this might take six or more months - so you can not afford to delay taking action.
Search engines "spider" links. In other words, a search engine will read a page of your text (not your images, flash, etc.) and, when they come to a hyperlink to another page or another web site, they will go and read that information as well. If you have links on many other web sites which lead back to YOUR site, then the search engines will consider your site is more important and you will start to improve your rankings in the search engine results.
You should
Now, I promised you a free tool to check your "Link Popularity" - this software runs on PCs. I use it to check and see how many links there are to my web sites - and I can also use it to check on the link popularity of my major competitors. This is REALLY USEFUL!!!! - and is helping me get my sites to the top for my chosen key words.
Margaret
Publish your web site and you'll be inundated with more business than you can handle?? Well, maybe not. You can ask yourself (and your web designer) why you're not making money from your web site - and here is some of the information that you need to know to make your web site appear in the top of the search engine results for your chosen key phrase.
The internet is a brilliant tool for marketing your offline business or for making a living entirely online. Countless companies have mastered the art of ecommerce and now receive a substantial portion of their income from the web. But as a start-up company on the internet, that effectively means that the competition is ferocious and getting to the top of the search engines for any keyphrase or word takes a lot of work. Ask yourself how many times you click on a link in the first page of results on one of the search engines - and how infrequently you surf to the results on page 20 or 31 or further.
Publishing your web site is just the start of the strategy of making a living online. I heard someone recently recommend that you choose to spend less money on the design of your web site, leaving more money in your web marketing kitty to promote your web site effectively. I think that this is a masterful piece of advice. The internet is only going to pay dividends for you if you understand that you must get your web site to the top of the results, beating your competition. To do this might take six or more months - so you can not afford to delay taking action.
What can you do to improve your results?
Search engines "spider" links. In other words, a search engine will read a page of your text (not your images, flash, etc.) and, when they come to a hyperlink to another page or another web site, they will go and read that information as well. If you have links on many other web sites which lead back to YOUR site, then the search engines will consider your site is more important and you will start to improve your rankings in the search engine results.
You should
- Add your web url and your best keyword search terms into web directories.
- Publish articles about your business in article directories - and you will be allowed to leave a link back to your web site in the "resource box" - a profile of you, the author.
- Take part in discussion forums and, depending on the site, edit your signature block in EACH site, so that there is a live hyperlink back to your web site.
- If you arrange a link exchange with another site, you must be aware that linking to a bad web site can hurt you considerably. So try to choose only reputable companies or web sites when you are trying to arrange a link exchange.
- Use Pay-per-click search engines to bring traffic to your web site (this can work very well when you are selling products or services.
Now, I promised you a free tool to check your "Link Popularity" - this software runs on PCs. I use it to check and see how many links there are to my web sites - and I can also use it to check on the link popularity of my major competitors. This is REALLY USEFUL!!!! - and is helping me get my sites to the top for my chosen key words.
Margaret
Saturday, March 04, 2006
Focus on Imaging
Well, Sandy and I escaped for three days; we visited my little sister who lives in Derby. Isn't it strange how taking a three day break can make you feel as if you've been away from home for much longer!
Anyway, Joan is in the honours year in her photography course at Nottingham Trent University; she keeps her finger on the pulse of all things photographic and, consequently, on Tuesday, we found ourselves going to the Focus on Imaging exhibition at the NEC, Birmingham.
I find that I have to work hard to get the best out of exhibitions and trade shows. There are so many stands with such a lot of useful information that a day simply isn't long enough to learn about all new products and to filter the new bits which apply particularly to us.
On several stands, manufacturers have come up with new automatic booths for people wanting to print digital images directly from their camera or cell phone. They look really smart. We're tempted to put one into our shop, but we're not quite sure that we have enough users (the blue rinse brigade, for goodness sake!) who know how to use digital cameras. The customer would end up paying between 20p and 49p per print. Is there enough demand to make the purchase of such a machine profitable??? We're considering it.
More later .....
Margaret
Anyway, Joan is in the honours year in her photography course at Nottingham Trent University; she keeps her finger on the pulse of all things photographic and, consequently, on Tuesday, we found ourselves going to the Focus on Imaging exhibition at the NEC, Birmingham.
I find that I have to work hard to get the best out of exhibitions and trade shows. There are so many stands with such a lot of useful information that a day simply isn't long enough to learn about all new products and to filter the new bits which apply particularly to us.
On several stands, manufacturers have come up with new automatic booths for people wanting to print digital images directly from their camera or cell phone. They look really smart. We're tempted to put one into our shop, but we're not quite sure that we have enough users (the blue rinse brigade, for goodness sake!) who know how to use digital cameras. The customer would end up paying between 20p and 49p per print. Is there enough demand to make the purchase of such a machine profitable??? We're considering it.
More later .....
Margaret
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