Link Domain Tools on Bing

Adventures with Bing's link domain tools

Courtesy of an article from SEOmoz I have been introduced to three new tools on Bing using the linkdomain command.

• linkfromdomain:matchmakermarketing.co.uk (returns pages linked from our website);
• linkfromdomain:matchmakermarketing.co.uk intitle:seo (filters to SEO services offered by us);
• linkfromdomain:matchmakermarketing.co.uk search engines (searches for search engines anywhere on the linked-to page).

The basic linkfromdomain command returns pages linked from our website with the most relevant results displayed first. The second one returns pages linking to our site where SEO is mentioned. Finally, the third option returns results from other pages where 'search engines' is mentioned anywhere within the website itself.

I would recommend using this command on larger websites with extensive content or weblogs to get the best out of this tool.

S.V., 08 December 2009.

An on-line business in the literal sense

Matchmaker Marketing's connection with the internet of the 1860s.

150 years ago, the equivalent of today's SEO consultants would have been gainfully employed by the railways, which had their equivalent of the dot.com boom in 1846.  They would have been the builders and the dreamers of many a rail scheme successful or unsuccessful. For the fate of the Atmospheric Railway in Dawlish, one could also find parallels with the demise of Pets.com, whereas the nascent Great Western would have been the equivalent of Amazon.com till its nationalisation in 1948.

Readers of this article would be wondering where Matchmaker Marketing comes into this, and would be thinking this a railway history piece. Well, you are half right. Matchmaker Marketing has two offices which are both near railway lines and buildings past and present.

Our Manchester office on Peter Street is close to the site of the Great Northern Railway Goods Depot and the neighbouring Central Station. The Edwardian goods depot has in recent years seen extensive refurbishment with a variety of shops, the AMC cinema, a gym and Bar 38. Central Station was opened in 1880 by the Cheshire Lines Committee, closing in May 1969. After lying derelict for years, and serving as a car park, it was tastefully renovated and reopened as the G-Mex in April 1986.

Had Matchmaker Marketing existed before 1969, it would have been possible to get from Manchester to Altrincham without having to walk a great distance to A and from B. A train from Manchester Central to Chester Northgate would have got us to Altrincham in about 30 minutes - likewise with the present day service between the two cities (albeit from Manchester Piccadilly). Today, Deansgate and G-Mex Metrolink station is a short walk from Matchmaker Marketing's Manchester HQ, with a service every 7 minutes (which some would say is 'allegedly' given recent engineering works).

Matchmaker Marketing's Altrincham office is on the side of the railway line to Chester. This is served by an hourly service (every 2 hours on Sunday) linking the two Roman cities taking in the sylvan setting of Delamere Forest, views of rural Cheshire, and a chemical works on Lostock Gralam. A regular working along this line is the Tunstead - Oakleigh goods train which passes our office at about 4.30pm. As a result of this, our cups and PCs rattle due to the passing of this heavy train.

The section closest to our office used to have a branch leading to a depot. This was built to house Manchester, South Junction and Altrincham Railway's electric trains which were in service from 1931 to 1971. These followed the current Metrolink service to Manchester Piccadilly via Oxford Road. The depot closed in 1971 as standard 25kV electric trains took over. A Sainsburys store exists on the site of the former depot.

Further reading:
Wikpedia has a detailed history of the Manchester, South Junction and Altrincham railway including maps and a list of recommended books.

S.V., 07 December 2009.

Met Police Clamps Down on Hooky Gear Online

“…No income tax, no VAT, no money-back guarantee (2.0)”

According to the Technology section of the BBC website, a major operation by the Metropolitan Police has seen the closure of 1,219 websites selling knock-off goods online.

The phoney websites claimed to sell designer clothing online at lower prices than High Street retailers. However, it turned out that the goods were counterfeit, and that in some instances, customers received nothing or had their bank accounts emptied. This has led to complaints about fake Ugg Boots rising threefold.

To avoid falling foul of the counterfeiters, I recommend shopping on trusted websites like Amazon.co.uk and Play.com. Always check if the payment section of your favoured online retailer is hosted on a secure domain (often seen with a padlock on the browser’s address bar and with ‘https’ rather than ‘http’). If you are unsure of any other online shopping sites, feel free to ask your friends for recommended sites.

Like the real High Streets, tread carefully. Instead of keeping your purse or wallet with you at all times, be careful with your passwords, update your anti-virus software and most importantly, stick to trusted shopping websites.

You know it makes sense!

S.V., 04 December 2009.

Depreciated Web Techniques

Acceptable in the '90's?

Cast your mind back to 1996. In a galaxy far far away when 56k dial-up was blisteringly fast, the internet was dubbed the World Wide Wait. It was de rigeur for flashing graphics and spinning email icons to be seen on websites of that era. Menus that could be done with CSS today used Java and JavaScript, text was formatted using <FONT> tags, and there was this great revelation in web coding known as the frameset.

How much of the World Wide Wait could have been attributed to (now obsolescent) coding techniques? A lot of code was taken up by font tags, breaking/non-breaking spaces and tables. Heaven knows why it used to take minutes to load the more modest of pages; some budding coder probably used animated GIFs and Java menus!


1. Java menus
Java (not to be confused with JavaScript) was a proprietary technology developed by Sun Microsystems in 1995 which became an open source technology 11 years later. A bastard offspring of this is the Java Applet menu.

The Java Applet menu was quite a common factor of websites designed using Microsoft Frontpage. Though they worked well on Internet Explorer as a form of navigation, this was less so on anything other. With search engines, Java Applet menus were less navigable than standard HTML hyperlinks. It also posed problems for persons who disallowed Java from their web browsers as the site would be unnavigable.

When to use Java: embedded computer games and 360° views would constitute Java's rightful purpose. This usage is being depreciated by Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight technologies.

When not to use Java: as part of a navigation menu. Always use standard HTML to create your links.


2. Non-breaking spaces/breaking spaces and Break
Before CSS was used for formatting and presentational mark-up, the crudest way to add spaces was by adding a non-breaking space (seen as nbsp prefaced by '&' and suffixed by a ';'). The source code would look messy with several of these used to position the text.

Though effective yet obsolete, the <br> is commonly used by web designers to place text on a new line.

When to use Non-breaking spaces/breaking spaces and Break: older websites built up to the HTML 4.01 Transitional Document Type Definition or earlier; CSS support may be patchy.

When not to use Non-breaking spaces/breaking spaces and Break: any site from HTML 4.01 and later. Use CSS coding techniques to define margins and padding.


3. Framesets
Launched in 1996 by Netscape, the frameset was created to allow for a consistent layout throughout each website, by splitting the browser window into a given number of sections.

The downside with frameset created websites are: the use of typically three or more pages to create the framework of the site; being lost on inner pages without navigation; and, reduced opportunities for search engine directories to index your site thoroughly.

When to use framesets: user interface design; control panels for internal use.

When not to use framesets: any newly built website; frameset effects can also be mimicked using CSS positioning techniques and scrolling <div> tags. Framesets (apart from iframes) will cease to be supported by the HTML 5 document type definition.


4. <FONT> tags
Till recent years, <FONT> tags was a common part of presentational mark-up in web design. A typical tag would read in the source code: <FONT FACE="Arial" SIZE="3" COLOR="#FF0000">I'm an obsolescent chunk of HTML coding</FONT>.

This would be used in addition to, or in place of text within <p>, <h1>, or <pre> tags. Result: a long chunk of code for the smallest of words or most modest of sentences.

When to use <FONT> tags: older pre-HTML 4.01 websites.
When not to use <FONT> tags: any modern website post HTML 4.01. CSS coding can do the same in a more truncated form with skillful use of classes, especially so if the CSS code is sourced to your page as an external file.


5. Transparent GIFs for positioning
Along with the non-breaking space and break commands, transparent GIFs were another technique used for positioning website content.

When to use transparent GIFs: older pre-HTML 4.01 websites where CSS positioning isn't supported.
When not to use transparent GIFs: on any website. CSS margin and padding commands are a better less memory hogging replacement.


6. Using tables for formatting
Up until recent times, web designers would create their website using tables to format each page. This process is unwieldy in terms of the amount of code each table creates. A simple table would require this amount of coding seen below:

<table width="346" bgcolor="#666666">
<tr>
<td>
<p>I'm a little table - and quite heavy on the code</p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>

Compare the previous example with this one:

<div id="box">
<p>I'm a little DIV - and quite light on my feet!</p>
</div>

Spot the difference. The latter would use externalised CSS code to govern the positioning.

When to use tables: solely for displaying tabular data. Even in the pre-Internet Explorer age, they were never designed for formatting whole pages (some people never listen) - and never should be used for that purpose.
When not to use tables: for formatting whole pages. This method is eschewed in favour of using CSS to create containers, complete with margin, padding, textual formatting and so forth.


7. 'Best viewed in...' notices
Before 1997, one web browser ruled the roost: Netscape Navigator. Two years later, a Redmond based company hit upon the idea of bundling its web browser [Internet Explorer] with a new operating system [Windows 98]. The result saw Netscape heading toward cyberobscurity and Internet Explorer being seen as the de facto standard among some web developers. For a time, accessibility and cross-browser compatibility took a back seat.

Around that time came "Best viewed in..." notices, which would typically read "Best viewed in Internet Explorer" or "Best viewed in 800x600 pixels". This now archaic approach was based on the assumption the site was only suited to one browser and/or screen resolution. Though cross-browser compatibility has become legion with such notices banished from contemporary websites, there are still websites to this day which stubbornly refuse to work in Firefox, Opera, Chrome or Safari.

When to use the 'Best Viewed in...' notice: never.
When not to use the 'Best Viewed in...' notice: never. All new sites should be coded to allow for cross-browser compatibility and ideally use CSS fluid positioning/elastic design.


S.V., 25 November 2009.

Neine Tracken Sie Google!

Could Google Analytics be outlawed in Germany?

The way we could view our results through Google Analytics could change forever if the German government have their way.

Due to issues regarding personal data usage, Google Analytics could be outlawed on sites hosted with the .de extension to their domain name. According to Zeit Online, companies could be fined over the misuse of personal data gleaned from Google's tracking codes. Companies could be fined up to €50,000.

Some 13% of German web users add Google Analytics tracking code to their website. It is feared that Google could create profiles of millions of Internet surfers with their interests, lifestyles and preferences in political and sexual terms. The ban could also extend to other tracking systems and statistics packages.

We find Google Analytics a useful tool for monitoring web statistics throughout the world, website bounce rates, and how it records which resolution each site was viewed on among other things. Whether Germany's decision on Google Analytics is beneficial to webmasters or its citizens remains to be seen.

S.V., 25 November 2009.

If You Tolerate This, Then Your Downloads Will Be Next

Anger at Lord Mandelson's Digital Economy Bill

Without the World Wide Web, businesses like Matchmaker Marketing would not exist. Our shopping would be much harder, requiring x amount of man hours to trawl each store for the cheapest clothing, stereo systems or the like. Our clients probably wont benefit from being found on Google, Yahoo! or Bing.

Now, it seems that Vox Populi 2.0 are up in arms over the fact it threatens net neutrality. The law will encourage Internet Service Providers to act as Copyright Police - a role which the likes of Virgin have objected to. The ruling could also go against Tim Berners-Lee's original vision for the internet.

The most controversial part of the bill involves the confiscation of internet access to any IP address which has supposedly infringed copyright. With the amount of web traffic, we at Matchmaker Marketing reckon this aspect would be unenforceable with ISPs playing whack-a-mole with copyright infringers.

There are chances that peer to peer networks could be affected. What if the downloader caught for copyright infringement was legally downloading a Linux distro from Bit Torrent?

Unlike Finland where internet access is classed as a human right along with utilities, the bill (which awaits its second reading) has been regarded as 'narrow minded' and a sop to preserving the interests of the music industry (in a Digital Millennium Copyright Act kind of stylie).

Should the bill gain Royal Assent (possibly by around 2010/2011), the Government will also have powers to clamp down on domain names that have been used for spyware, phishing and spamming.

In the main, the bill is less about improving digital access to all, but more about stifling the role internet businesses have to offer. Before long, Britain could see another RIAA/MPAA lawsuit on homeless citizens! However, the clauses on spamming, phishing and spyware are welcome, though a few years too late.

Information on Lord Mandelson's bill is available on www.parliament.uk for your perusal.

S.V., 23 November 2009.

W3C Compliance and YouTube Embedding

A fascinating article indeed --- but seriously, some of us are quite keen to maintain W3C compliance standards in our site coding, then we want to incorporate a nice embedded video from YouTube or Vimeo and everything screws up.

Here is the solution for the YouTube embedding: I will use our holding video as an example.


This is You Tube’s non valid embedding code:-

To make this fully compliant and slightly simplified to boot, we remove the embedding tags and some of the parameter tags then simply ‘install’ the item as if it were a standard flash object (which of course it is)  :-

All you need to do when embedding other videos (from YouTube) is to take note of the video URL i.e.  (http://www.youtube.com/v/pFW2Vkg6OsU&hl=en_GB&fs=1&) above and replace it with the new one shown in the relevant automatically generated YouTube embedding code.


O.W. 19th November 2009

Matchmaker Marketing – A Day Out of The Rain

It’s a very busy day at Matchmaker; at least we in the SEO team, or should that be duo :) appear to be getting a fair amount of work to do which is encouraging to say the least, especially in the current economic climate. SEO services have in fact, continued to be buoyant even in the recession and of course businesses always need publicity, probably even more so in the current climate!

Our little office is quite a hot bed of ideas, thoughts and research on all manner of  SEO, design and general internet related shenanigans and new ‘directions’ projects and methods are being mooted on an almost daily basis now. We are striving for a much greater level of integration with our state of the art design team which should lead to some interesting SEO friendly video / motion graphics projects soon.  Some may have noticed that Matchmaker Marketing is generally beginning to put a lot of emphasis on social media optimisation which is rapidly becoming a major vector for ‘off site’ link love as well as a stand alone publicity tool. We are also trialling and reporting on software and hardware developments. M’ Colleague Stu recently wrote a provocative article on Win 7’s advertising features.

O.W., 18th November 2009

To W3C or Not To W3C that is the question.

W3C or the World Wide Web Consortium is a body concerned with Internet standards as they relate to the ‘wellformedness’ of web-page coding, usability concerns and cross browser compatibility. They have laid down certain standards for the syntactical structure of XHTML and CSS Coding with a view to the promotion of a worldwide standard with which all website’s should comply; the reality is of course that most do not.

W3C compliance has long been a grey area in SEO circles and the cause of some heated debate. There is no overall consensus with a 50/50 split between those who feel it to be vital and those who think of it as nothing more than an anally retentive exercise in unnecessary orderliness.

I have to admit that I have been an avid supporter of compliant code for some time and will not let any page near my server until it is given the green light (header) by the W3C ‘validator’. Recent Google trends would appear to suggest that more weight is being given to page load times than ever before. Compliant code makes a page far easier to parse as it tends to conform to a more logical (and predictable) tag and attribute structure thus decreasing the load time.

However, it is important to note thatW3C code compliance is not (yet) an absolute operator in the Google algorithm. This would not make sense in the ‘real’ world as most of the worlds online content is in fact, non compliant and many sites run by large corporations such as the BBC do not get the green light treatment from the ‘validator’.

In spite of this I still feel that it is worth considering an application of the W3C methodology to small sites and those which need an extra boost in the search engines. It is all about relative advantage and the exploitation of brownie points when we are considering sites that operate at the level of SMEs or private individuals. Having a compliant, fast loading site with a high content to code ratio will definitely help to increase or accelerate your rankings.

For more information visit the W3C compliance site and the online ‘validator’.

N.B. don’t be alarmed if your site does not pass the test and appears to have a slew of ‘warnings’ or errors, this does not mean that it is broken or malfunctioning as these warnings are only relative to the ‘validator’s’ essential remit --- as above.

Making a large amount of seriously messy code comply with the W3C stipulations is a not really a job for those who are  unfamiliar with HTML, XHTML and CSS as much of the tweaking has to be done by hand even though good online ‘tidy’s’ are available. Embedding is another headache for W3C fanatics as the code provided by just about every embedded source from YouTube to Vimeo and Sound Cloud is seriously non-compliant and requires a completely different syntax but there are fixes and hacks --- more later.

O.W. 18th November 2009

Windows 7: The Next Advertising Medium?

Life within electronic billboards, less so 'life without walls'

So far, Windows 7 has already captured the imagination of PC users, with some claiming it to be everything that Windows Vista wasn't though should have been.  Some of our team members at Matchmaker Marketing have installed Windows 7 onto their computers and waxed lyrical over its performance.  These include driver compatibility issues, which have been addressed, its user interface and a less nagging User Account Control system.

If the news according to Web User magazine is anything to go by, we could see the end of its honeymoon period arriving shortly.  The decision by Microsoft to allow advertising on your Windows 7 desktop could become as popular as whooping cough, bubonic plague and a marathon run of Eldorado on BBC Three.

This move will allow advertisers like Coca Cola and 20th Century Fox to turn your PC's desktop into an advertising hoarding.  As well as on your desktop, adverts will appear on your desktop's taskbar and as an add-on within Internet Explorer 8.  The themes are available as optional downloads within the Microsoft website's Personalization Gallery.

In our honest opinion, we feel this could deviate from the original aim of making Windows 7 a more lightweight operating system.  Turning your desktop into advertising space is akin to bloatware, which at best is an annoyance, and at worst, could mutate into adware.  What would happen if an unprotected (or even protected) Windows 7 box with Pepsi adverts is hijacked by a trojan or rootkit?  Unscrupulous types could find the source code and turn it into a marketplace for dodgy prescription remedies.

In the last decade, we have seen various advertising schemes launched to 'personalise' their PCs.  1999 saw defunct PC retailer Tiny launch a range of free PCs with internet access, so long as users were prepared to sit through adverts.  Gator's ad aggregation saw the unscrupulous side with spyware infecting many a PC.  More recently and most controversially, BT tried to do the same with Phorm.  Who knows if we could see more of the same from our very desktop?

Our choice of desktop wallpaper should be down to us, which remains so at this moment in time.  I doubt as if this form of personalisation would catch on.  Who wants to be interrupted by adverts whilst building websites or working with Photoshop?  We have pop-up blockers and plug-ins like NoScript to eradicate this.

Only choose the advertising option if you like to have your PC slowed down for the sake of a few adverts.  Everybody else must avoid.


S.V., 17 November 2009

Dude? Where's My Top Ten Organic Listings?

The addition of local business listings as well as sponsored listings have become a source of confusion with Google and its users.  For some popular search strings, it is no longer unusual to see at the top left a Google Map and 10 classified listings on the right hand side of it.

This has resulted in the organic listings being displayed below the fold with sponsored listings sharing the spot above the fold with the classified listings.  Result: confusion as to whether their Top Ten listing is within the classified results or (its correct position) below them as the organic listings. 

Aaron Wall has eloquently committed this to HTML via SEOBook with the article Excuse Me, But Where Did Google's Organic Search Results Go?. This article is a detailed exposé of how typing San Francisco Dentists resulted in seeing a little map and sponsored links before the organic results.

Not a good plan, eh Google, especially if you are viewing the results on an iPhone or a netbook.

S.V., 16 November 2009.

Pay Per View Internet News: bad for SEO?

"...And finally, an Australian-American media mogul wishes to change the way we look at news stories on the web. If the News Corporation have their own way, it will cost you to look at Page 3 of The Sun Online, or to read Court Circular on The Times' own website..."

Could they [News Corporation] be slitting their own throats in doing this? So far, they have cemented their defiance to keeping the internet free by pulling their results off Google in the coming months. Google is at present the most popular search engine going, and this move would inconvenience the average Sun reader who wants to look at Page 3 or their fantasy football listings.

Paid for news provision goes against the original ethos of the internet envisaged by Sir Tim Berners-Lee. This could set a unhealthy precedent paving the way for corporate bodies to introduced paid for content. It is also a nightmare in terms of site accessibility and would have a negative impact on their organic search engine listings.

Will they be complaining if no one's reading their website? This could also be bad for advertisers, whose reach among people browsing the website would be diminished. Could the old yet dependable dead tree version be revived? One wonders.

SV, 13 November 2009

Another brief guide to entry-level SEO services.

Basic SEO - All you need to know

Entry level is a term we use at Matchmaker Marketing to refer to natural or ‘organic’ SEO which is specifically intended to meet the requirements of the SME market. These services are often extremely cheap in the context of business to business products and SEOs offering this level of service will rarely charge more than £50 GBP per month for their work. It is important to understand exactly how such a service can benefit your business and also you need to have a realistic set of expectations for the scope of this level of search engine optimisation.

Firstly, good rankings in Google will help you to find new business and on a local or geographically specific search a first page Google listing is much more cost effective than any other form of local or regional advertising.

Entry level SEO is designed to promote local scale businesses on a local or countywide basis. It can not bring you to the top of Google for highly generic and competitive searches aimed at generalised words or phrases such as “driving instructor” or “wedding dresses” and in many cases such an achievement would be strategically useless anyway. The level of work that would be required to achieve these unhelpful results would cost thousands per month as whole teams of people would be required just to manage a social network presence that may even require viral marketing strategies.

Despite the apparent simplicity of entry level SEO, the Matchmaker Marketing SEO team often find that they have to carry out quite extensive remedial work on websites, hosting and back-link status in order to even begin the job in hand. This is one reason why such activity is best handed to those who are confident in the techniques and disciplines involved. There are also complex issues to do with content and the provision of keyword rich text content that will not raise issues with Google’s Latent Semantic Indexing process.

In summary the key points and questions to bare in mind are:-

• Ask yourself if the small fee for entry level SEO is more cost effective than running adds in the local press and other journals 365 days a year?
• Your company reputation will benefit from a good online presence.
• You will have a much more effective channel to communicate information to your clientele.

Other things that we would like you to consider:-

• The technicalities of SEO will require our technicians to have access to your site server via FTP or a CMS login for content managed sites.
• Matchmaker has access to fully corroborated Google traffic data that enables us to ascertain the very best keywords for your business.
• We will need to make modest changes to the text content of your site and possibly some of the coding as well.
• In very rare cases we may also consider some form of site rebuild in order to help you obtain the results you need.
• Rankings will take a little time to come to fruition as other off site activities are required and we will have to wait for Google to index new links and content on your site.
• You should not overwrite or make changes to the optimised content of your site during this indexing period.
• We continue to monitor the site behaviour in the search engines and will establish our own Google analytics monitoring path.
• We will keep you updated with the aid of comprehensive ranking reports.

There are on occasion a very limited number of sites that we are unable to work with due to certain technical anomalies or where re-directs are involved that we are unable to resolve due to access problems. Our technicians and consultants at Matchmaker Marketing will be able to advise on these.

O.W., 9th November 2009

Basic 'natural' SEO Criteria

Considering SEO? What are the essential criteria that should be borne in mind?

Again the answer to this question is reasonably straightforward, at least on the surface.

Firstly, consider your prospective audience / clientele and how they are likely to interact with your site in the context of the business type. Design vernacular is an important aspect of web marketing. An Accountant offering a local service would not really get any benefit from having a site based on a model for a graphic design agency and vice versa. Your site needs to have a quality of styling and usability which is best suited to your business model and the needs of your clientele.

Content is a very important aspect of web design and it is also vital to the processes of ‘organic’ SEO. At Matchmaker Marketing we put great emphasis on this aspect and we use dedicated SEO professionals to research keywords and content that are most appropriate for your business. This is a technique, which helps to guarantee good traffic flows bringing visitors to your site who are more likely to interact with it in a favorable way.

Can Google (and others) see your content? Your site will never get indexed for anything if it fails to allow search engines access. Believe it or not we often encounter sites that are virtually invisible to search engines. Our SEO consultants can rectify these technical difficulties and help your site to grow in stature on the search engine results page.

Are your images optimised? There are a range of commonly understood techniques for achieving this but we are endeavoring to keep abreast of changes in this area. Image indexing appears to be more of a grey area with Google but being well represented on both text and image search will do wonders for your traffic.

Obviously we need to consider back links though again this is becoming a contentious topic in SEO. Our experts will be able to provide the most effective link building strategy. In some cases it may also be useful to consider a form of social network optimisation though this is quite a specialist strategy that may not be appropriate for all business types.

O.W., 6th November 2009

Proposed copyright ruling in the US could radically change the face of the internet.

Some serious concerns have been raised by the recent leaking of a “secret copyright treaty” in the US which could constitute a considerable though inadvertent threat to the internet as we know it today.
Those of us with a vested interest in creativity and online publishing (which includes materials that we would like to protect with copyright) will understand how important the basic tenets of copyright law are. However, the recent leaked article discusses the possibility of highly draconian penalties which will adversely effect a range of internet services not least the social network community. You can read more here. Boingboing

O.W., 4th November 2009