Time To Get Serious

Enough pondering - time to get busy. That is exactly what I intend to do. I have made the plunge into the web 2.0 thing. Social Media is fun, it makes business fun and I am now learning as much as I possibly can learn and, combining it with my previous experience of marketing and customer services - can't wait to dive in head first.

Website Review of Addhere.co.uk

Addhere is a load of rubbish - SEF NOT

I saw an advert. I clicked the advert. Thought I'd found an affordable advertising place where I could build a link or two and get some traffic for my clients' websites... But how wrong I was. How very wrong I was. In fact, I couldn't have been more wrong.

An absolute load of bollocks.

I know a girl shouldn't talk like that but what a load of absolute.. you know.

The website is NOT search engine friendly. It claims to be the fastest growing search engine friendly directory, providing traffic and link value (that's for search engines).

Well guys, I have to tell you that even a relative newcomer to the technical side of website design and coding, even I know that you haven't got a clue.

The links, URLs. The link text, URLs. What the heck is search engine friendly about that? The only search engine friendly content on your business pages is the tags. Not the paying customers' links.

• Where's the relevant content text?
• Where's the anchor text?
• Where's the title tag in the hyperlink?

What is search engine friendly about those links?

You guys need some help. Most of my clients get a detailed website review before they launch a website on the Internet public. Perhaps you should do too. Your website has massive massive potential. But right now it does not deliver what it claims.

Reviewing Websites Makes Your Eyes Hurt

It is so amazing what website designers convince clients to do. Would they really put such bad ideas into action in their own brochures, news paper ads, TV ads etc., I doubt it. So why do they do such user 'unfriendly' things on their websites?

Since I started my new job as a web site review consultant I have been absolutely amazed. I had always had thins 'thing' for keeping things simple - and I don't mean my hair, the shoes I wear or the blouse I'm pulling out of the wardrobe - I mean business.

Business is should be kept simple.

The problem is that a lot of websites are designed by simple people. People who have not one clue about the user who is supposed to be a genius - well, at least the designer thinks they are else he/she wouldn't design such terrible websites.

Last week, we (well, I mean the reviewers, not me personally) did this web site review of a site that had just cost a lot of dosh (that's cash in the UK). They had just published a new catalogue that had also cost thousands of pounds - and promoted their fantastic new website in it, on it, all over it... But, oh my gooooooood!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What crap!

Crappology at it's very very finest.

It was God awful. Did I blaspheme then? I don't know. Gosh it was awful.

They had misspellings in it, they had empty template pages accessible to the user, they had cream text on white backgrounds, they had absolutely stupid and pointless features that no-one since the 90s have used, they had some content that just didn't appear unless you selected it with a mouse...

Did I mention how awful it was.

Shame that, for non-disclosure reasons, I cannot reveal who it was or what the website was. But I'm sure we'll show a few clips of the review in our vault.

Cheers for now. Anna.

Twittering, Google and now Facebook

Well I have been a busy girl today. Just finished setting up the blog, now I've set-up my Google Profile (Anna-Louise Hilton).

It doesn't say mich but, since everyone is doing all their profiles and bookmark pages etc., blah blah, etc., I figured I better do one.

What next... oh, I know, I'll have a bit of MySpace!

My New Twitter Account

I'd heard all the rage about 'Twitter' but never really understood it. What was it all about, what's the use, what's the benefit of using it. Well... That was until a few days ago.

On Wednesday I setup my first Twitter account and waited... Nothing. I followed a few people who were 'chatting' about things that I found interesting and then... bang... loads of people started following me. I wasn't saying much so I figured these people must be quite sad.

I followed those people who were following me - I guess that makes me very sad too - and whadayaknow, loads more people started following me.

24 hours later, I have over a hundred twitterers following me, and within 48 hours I had about 250 followers. I've only communicated with maybe 50 of them to say thanks and not had a single actual conversation with any of them - I find there's not a lot of 'real' conversations going on.

So, into my third day on twitter and nearly 300 followers, I still don't really 'get it'.

You can find me on twitter at: "http://twitter.com/annalouiseh"

See you there sometime.