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  • June 20, 2013

Web design and SEO from Andover IT

Web design Andover | Andover web design | SEO, Marketing & Hosting

Get Listed on Google – Fast

July 1, 2011 by Andover IT Leave a Comment

Firstly a big thank you to Dilbert and his “Dung For Brains” cartoon. A couple of cartoons involved links and SEO so getting a post on Google seemed like a good test for seeing how quickly we could get a post listed.

Not sure we should be telling you this but, here goes…

  1. Optimise The Content
    This is a must! How can you expect to be found if your keywords aren’t in the right places – or there at all? Page Title, Meta Description and Content.
  2. Re-submit Your Sitemap
    To help Google find your pages you need a sitemap – it tells Google what pages you have. You also need a Webmaster login.
  3. Post a Link on Twitter
    Ideally you have an establised Twitter account and haven’t just created it. Even better if you can get it re-tweeted.
  4. Post a Link on Facebook
    If you can get people to share it, even better.
  5. Post a Link on LinkedIn
    It’s another place for a link.
  6. Post a Link on Gumtree
    “Err where?” I hear you ask. Gumtree. Go to the “Services” section and create an ad to link back to your post. It does work and Google seems to like it.

 

So did it work? Yes, with posted to live in around 3 1/2 hours. We did manage to achieve 75 seconds once (seriously – client was there to time it) but that was on a site we’d been blogging daily, and sometimes twice daily, on.

You might now want to do all of this for each blog post – this was done as a test but gave us around 400+ hits in the first 24 hours.

Feel free to try the above ideas and play around with them – try a few posts with just Twitter, maybe just a Gumtree advert.

And if you have any tips you’d like to brag about, add them to the Comments below. They’ll be quite safe as nobody ever reads these posts ;)

Filed Under: Tips & Advice, Website Tips Tagged With: Google Listing, SEO

Get YouTube to Start at a Specific Time

May 19, 2011 by Andover IT 2 Comments

We posted yesterday on How To Get BBC iPlayer to Start at a Specific Time and we’ve also been asked how to get YouTube to start at a specific time.

Again, a nice easy option – just add the following to the video link:

#t=02m56s

In the example we want the video to start at 2 minutes and 57 seconds in:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaMTSOI1Zk4#t=02m57s

Click the link above to see it in action…or watch it from the beginning from here

Video courtesy of Phoenix Fly and Adrenalin Base with music from Hybrid.

 

Filed Under: Tips & Advice, Website Tips

Get BBC iPlayer to Start at a Specific Time

May 18, 2011 by Andover IT 2 Comments

You know the problem – there’s a great article on BBC iPlayer but it’s 45 minutes into a 60 minute broadcast.

So how do you get BBC iPlayer to start at 45 minutes instead of having to watch it or move the slider?

Easier than you think! Just add the following to the end of the link:

?t=11m55s

In this example this is 11 minutes and 55 seconds in. Just adjust the time as required. So your link might look like this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b011ddzy/?t=11m55s

Told you it was easy :)

 

Filed Under: Tips & Advice, Website Tips

Three Tips For Controlling Spam

March 26, 2011 by Andover IT Leave a Comment

The tips below are not foolproof but they seem to have helped control spam for the site and for others using them.

Tip 1 – Use Two Email Addresses
Have a generic email address on your website and a personal one that you give out to clients. This way if your one on the website gets hijacked, you can change it whilst still getting your normal emails through.

Tip 2 – Use A Domain Name
When signing up for a newsletter use their domain name as part of the email address. For example, signing up for the XYZ123.com newsletter you could use xyz123@yourdomain.com so that if they started spamming you, blocking emails addressed to that address should stop them, no matter who they were from.

Tip 3 – Use A Seperate Domain Name
Buy a second domain name and use that for newsletters. If you are www.XYZ123.com then consider buying www.XYZ-123.com as well and using the second address for newsletters etc. If the worst happens and you get a deluge of mail, it doesn’t affect your day to day email.

 

Filed Under: Website Tips

Links to Facebook and Twitter

December 9, 2010 by Andover IT Leave a Comment

Is it a pain to remember your Facebook and Twitter address to give to clients? If so, and you are on an Linux server (check with your host), you could use a redirect.

The way this works is instead of telling friends and clients your Facebook page is www.facebook.com/pages/andover-it/a-long-number-that-you-cant-remember you just tell them to add ‘facebook’ to the end of your website.

Both addresses below are our Facebook page – which is easiest to remember?

www.facebook.com/pages/Andover-IT/205092500750

www.andover-it.co.uk/facebook

Click on them and they both take you to the same place. To do this, create a file called ‘.htaccess’ and add the following code, replacing [TARGET] with the full website address.

redirect 301 /facebook [TARGET]

Our one for Facebook would look as follows:

redirect 301 /facebook http://www.facebook.com/pages/Andover-IT/205092500750

You can then setup for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn…pretty much anything.

Easier to remember and looks a lot better on your business card!

Filed Under: Website Tips

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