Why Is Blogger In German?

I’m a regular user of blogger and have seen it throw a few funnies every now and again. The latest is that it obviously thinks I’m based in Germany (well the last time I looked The Wirral was in the UK) because I keep seeing messages like (link changed to google):

in einem neuen Fenste

which I’m fairly certain means in a new window

Anybody else experiencing this or is it just me?

Product Placement Reaches youtube.com

The latest email from springwise covers an interesting new service. A possibly unique service from new Canadian outfit brandfame.com is aiming to bring advertisers and social video producers together in order for the advertiser to pay for product placements in videos aired on social video sites such as youtube, grouper, metacafe and the like. Take a look at the guided tours for a little more info.

Whilst it’s early days I think there might be some mileage in this idea. Well worth watching for progress.

I’d recommend subscribing to springwise by the way – they cover some great new business ideas.

google Video Alerts

google announces that you can now create alerts relating to video content hosted on google video, youtube and elsewhere.

I’m a fan of google alerts and find them quite useful for keeping tabs on various things – just wish they’d offer an easy way of updating the email address on each existing alert …you currently have to delete and re-add.

Any suggestions as to what search marketers could use video alerts for?

Google Trends Everyday

Ionut Alex Chitu reports that google is allocating more resource to the google trends product and that the data is to be updated daily.

Here’s hoping that at some point they’ll show actual numbers of searches – now that would be useful.

No Comment

What can you do when you’re not able to comment upon a blog post?

For instance, I’ve stumbled upon a new blog entitled The Travel Affiliate, a new blog by a fellow affiliate marketer covering the travel industry. It looks like it could be worth following so I’ve subscribed to the feed. Although we’re not currently that active within the travel and holiday industry we do have our online travel tickets site that we could (and should) do more with.

But as the Travel Affiliate blog requires you to login to comment and I don’t have a login ID I’m unable to post a comment to say hello or whatever. Now this may be entirely intentional by the blog author as some writers simply don’t want all and sundry commenting upon what’s been said. I suspect though that’s not the case in this instance – search marketers who blog tend to enjoy the benefits of online networking that blogging offers.

Now, as The Travel Affiliate uses wordpress as his blogging platform he may notice this post of mine in his reported incoming links and get in touch. Let’s see what happens.

Is Your Home Page Exactly That?

It is very common for websites to have a sitewide link (a link on every page) pointing back to the home page. If for no other reason, it gives your sites users an easy navigational route back to the (presumably) starting point of your site. More often that not users expect to easily find a link back to the home page.

But just what is your home page? Is it the same as your domain name or is it something like www.mysite.com/default or www.mysite.com/index.htm? Whilst the content and therefore visual appearance is no different you are creating a mixed message if your home page isn’t just your domain name.

By not pointing back to your domain name you are making the search engines decide for themselves what your homepage is and this could be detrimental to your search rankings, possibly causing duplicate content issues. So wherever possible, always refer to your homepage as www.mysite.com when you link your pages yourself and when other people link to your home page.

Vanessa Fox (ex google) shares the same advice over in a recent blog post where she says:

But the home page? I think that?s better off resolving to the domain, in this case, www.jonestshirts.com. As before, if you do have other URLs for your home page, you should 301 redirect everything to one URL, and for the home page, I would keep things simple and do all of that resolving back to the domain. Make sure all internal links are to that one URL and encourage external linking to do the same.

One additional issue to consider is the use of www. To avoid what the search engines call canonical issues you should ensure that (if you can) you configure your website so that www.mysite.com and just mysite.com (without the www.) are one and the same . You can simply tell google whether your site uses the www prefix or not within their webmaster central services.

FaveSaves.com Joins Our Portfolio

We’re in the very early stages of development on our brand new discount codes site FaveSaves.com

We’ll be posting news about the latest online discount codes that are made available by your favourite UK shops. Discount codes or promo codes (that’s short for promotional codes) are extremely common in the USA and are now steadily becoming common in the UK too.

A UK retailer will publish a discount code, typically giving money off in the form of a % discount or perhaps a free p&p offer. The discount code usually expires after a short period of time. To use a code you simply shop online and enter the code in a box when you checkout.

So, don’t forget to add FaveSaves to your favourites!

My Running Blog

Aside from running our search marketing company I try and keep fit by going running. As part of the motivation to putting my trainers on I maintain a blog (no blog posts mean no running!). So, feel free to read about my running exploits around west Wirral at my appropriately named Running Outside blog.

If you do a bit of running yourself, feel free to drop me a line about it, especially if you maintain your own running blog.

Lost Army Mates Update

Go take a look on my domaining blog.

zavvi.co.uk Will Be The New Virgin

In a move that should spark some efforts within the UK affiliate marketing industry, Richard Bransons Virgin Megastores business has been sold to a management buyout and is to rename itself as Zavvi according to an ITN news report.

If you are looking to buy CDs, DVDs, games, etc then online retailers such as play.com offer stacks of products at competitive prices and free UK delivery.

As it’s a new brand name with no internet presence as such, I’d expect to see some pro-active affiliates building some landing pages around the brand name. We’re not really into this particular market ourselves at the moment so we’ll be leaving Zavvi to other affiliates who do operate in that marketplace.

As a high street business, music retailing is finding it tough going, with competition coming from both online downloads and from the mighty supermarkets. One of the biggest players in the market, hmv for instance has recently updated its image and managed to acquire the domain hmv.com as it attempts to regain market share.

Click here to visit Zavvi

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