However, I do appreciate my followers, and don’t want them to think of myself as some sorta ignoramus (which I’m not, I’m quite a gentle person that just gets grumpy from time-to-time), so I have devised this post, where instead of participating in the Twitter FollowFriday link orgy, I thought, come each and every Friday, I’d send them here, instead, a list of people/organisations/businesses which I give my glowing recommendation to following on Twitter.

I have broken the peeps that I follow into various categories, I’m sure there is something for everyone. This list is not final, I will be adding to it and posting its updates each and every Friday…

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) Peeps to Follow on Twitter

Shane offers plenty of insightful SEO tweets mixed with intriguing posts, always up for a conversation, which is highly appealing.

@ShaneJones

Doesn’t post frequently, but when he does it always adds something to the day … if you like knowing how seo stuff works then follow Jeffrey.

@JeffreySmith

Anne is a welcome breeze on a hot summers day, always welcome, always refreshing and always worth following.

@SEOSmarty

This boy is well worth the follow, finds stuff and promotes it likes nobody’s business, keeps me well entertained.

@CreativeSEO

Patrick is part of the uber successful outfit Branded3, his blog ‘Blogstorm’ is a highly rated resource centre and if he retweets a post of yours be prepared for some serious traffic.

@PatrickAltoft

If your into SEO then you seriously need to follow the Godfather of this industry, if you call youself an SEO and you don’t follow Dave then tbh ‘who you kidding?’

@DaveNaylor

Hardcore SEO geek, Ralph is one of those cuddly, scary guys that you just can’t stop staring at …

@fantomaster

There are few people within the UK whom I read as bible, Kevin is one of them, his posts and endurance in replying is a testament to this seo rockstar in-the-making.

@kevgibbo

Shaun is just up the road from myself, and an absolute A1 guy, he speaks multiple levels of sense when it comes to SEO, so pull yer britches up and seriously start following Hobo web!

@Hobo_Web

As far as I’m concerned Edward is the ’shiznit’ when it comes to twittering about SEO and all its hanger-ons, undoubtedly a man of his time.

@PageOneResults

My one time prodigy, and now his own man, highly talented and creative person whom I have the most deepest of respect for, part of the talented Polr team.

@CalumMacleod

If I haven’t added you just yet, don’t worry, my seo list is long and frayed and I will be adding to this each week…

Social Media

I really haven’t had much interaction with Adam, but he does offer some really rich and interesting tweets that I find it really hard to keep off my list.

@AppleMacBookPro

Andrew is one of those guys that I have been championing since we first met online and it ain’t going to stop now, this guy has a massive future ahead of him in social media and beyond.

@theEmecks

Lyndon is a unique person, a rarity almost, his tweets are always interesting, insightful and never, never, dull!

@Lyndoman

Networking

A young man with a very bright future, if there were someone whom I were to say who has a finger on the pulse of the online community, then it is Graham.

@gCharlton

The site that offers it all to anyone serious about being found online, nuff said!

@eConsultancy

Dom or ‘Hodge’ is one part of the brains behind so many networking meet-ups here in the UK, alongside Tim Nash amongst a few others, follow Dom for tons of blogging, seo, social media chat.

@TheHodge

Affiliate Marketing

Al is an awesome person and affiliate marketer, his tweets are protected so if you fit into Al’s world you might, just might, fit into his timeline as well.

@AlCarlton

I think I have read everything Kieron has posted about twice, as I progress further into affiliate marketing, I actually met him for about 5 minutes in Leeds without knowing it, as he made his way home from Think Viz I.

@KieronDonoghue

Anybody who travels half the world away to watch rugby is well worth a follow in my book, very clever marketer and resounding individual also Scottish which just adds to his persona.

@ChrisClarkson

Please if I do follow you on Twitter and we do interact don’t be despondent if I haven’t featured you yet, It takes time to build these lists and I will feature YOU in the up-and-coming weeks.

And so the day toiled on, without me really needing the services of a search engine, I had clients work to get on with and one of them was a nice bit of php/mysql that kept me occupied for some time. Then came the blog posts. I like to research before I write, sometimes not at all, but today needed some background info that I wasn’t confident about, so I turned my attention to Bing.

It didn’t take me long to find the info I was after, I wasn’t timing myself against my recent activity with Google against Bing because my search term brought up what I was after in the first page. Even when I was hunting down images for the post Bing served them up to me a treat.

However, I can be a stickler for checking out how my sites (clients) are getting on and I also like to monitor conversions, esp. on ecomm carts. That’s where the whole ‘Give Up Google For A Day’ fell flat on its face. So many of my sites have Google wrapped around them for analytics, data feeds, webmaster tools etc … that my efforts were doomed from the beginning.

I won’t say searching with Bing was like ‘Taking A Bath With Your Socks On’ because it wasn’t, really. Bing delivered! I got my posts out and my research was a doddle. However, my reliance on Google for finding out the data about how the sites were behaving was way too much to ever even contemplate walking away from Google, even just for a day.

All in all, it was a good excercise, that also opened up to myself just how dependent for information, on the day-to-day running of my business do I owe to big G.

Now, for myself and North South Media is the time to implement some in-house administration where we have more control about who is sucking link juice from our site. I noticed earlier about the way certain Blogs accredited link juice to their users who offer the most in the terms of conversation. Dave Naylor, Blogstorm and Hobo Web have either had something in place or have been uber quick to address the problem. However, it is the readiness of Hobo that have impressed myself, not long after twittering about having the existence of a wordpress plugin have the boys from Hobo listened to our calls and released : Custom Link Love fae Hobo.

So for future readers and ongoing contributors I have set the bar at a generous 3 posts, reach this and you’ll get a link back from this site, complete with anchor text, I’m an easyossy guy, but I do admin this blog very tightly and if you think this is a licence to spam, think again.

Download Hobo Link Love here

Facebook announce Vanity URL’s
What was annoying about Facebook previously was the way they displayed a users profile url. It was querystring mode, which basically means it was a variable equal to a number id in their vast database. Someone, must have had a word in the right ear at Facebook because they now have search friendly url’s in place, where a user can stipulate what they want as their own unique url.

Example : My former profile was something like : http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=5544332211 which can now be accessed as http://www.facebook.com/paulsteven70 you can grab your own unique username by signing into Facebook and going to this page : http://www.facebook.com/username/

Facebook Going Public With User Updates
This one has caused quite a stir, because many Facebook users are stating that the reason they signed onto Facebook was its strict privacy settings in only allowing certain people to see their status updates. Well this is still the case you can set who gets to see your updates pretty simply. Another thing I’ll add is that if you don’t want people reading your updates then don’t post them online. That’s what email and messenger services are there for!

Having being online and posting my thoughts (see rants) for nearly a decade and a massive fan of Twitter into the bargain, then I can conclude I have made a few slip-ups along the way, but such is life, and if your way too paranoid about posting your thoughts then perhaps you better try buying a diary and placing them in there. Quite frankly, I’m glad Facebook have allowed for this feature, it sets them apart from that teenage angst site Bebo (which I detest to the max).

Facebook’s Advertising Has Tripled in the Last Year
If there is any indication as to the success of a website it is their ad revenue. When you read that Facebook have tripled their ad sales in less than a year, that’s an impressive claim, especially in the financial turmoil The World has been suffering in for nigh on a year now. ( source ).

According to Facebook’s director of product marketing, Tim Kendall, it’s all about diversity … when your tripling your ad revenue, when all around, including Google Inc, is experiencing declining online ad growth, you must be doing something – very, very right. Also consider this, a Russian company paid $200million last month for a less than 2 percent share of Facebook, instantly valuing the company at around $10 billion. Not bad, huh?

How Facebook is battering all and nearest rivals inc. Google, according to Google Trends…

My advice to anyone, individual, group, organisation or business brand is to crank up your Facebook activity, because this is one social media platform that looks like the ultimate pedigree.

From SEOptimise, to the Search Cowboys, to SEO Design Solutions … each trying to work out why Google would dilute UK businesses from their own geo-targetted Data Centre. Some even came up with quite interesting conspiracy theories like the guys from Fresh Egg.

However, this aint something new and bold from Google, as a similar, but not as largescale (or as widely commented) occurence happened last year as this Webmaster World post indicates.

When things like this happen I like to think in analogies to try and understand the situation better. It’s my own little trick and I’m sure there are many others like myself which apply simplified imagination to help understand a problem better.

This time I have morphed Google into a ‘Game Show Host’, inside my tiny mind. And us poor boys and girls working, finger-to-the-bone, optimising sites for our clients are Google’s contestants. Google as the ‘Game Show Host’ is a cross between Jim Bowen and Bruce Forsyth, combover included.

At every twist and turn the ‘Game Show Host’ is in complete control, toying with the poor competitor (optimiser, webmaster) as they speed up or slow down the conveyor belt full of prizes. He’ll ask you to jump through hoops, build a site to the rules of the game, then tell you to do it again blindfolded while they litter the place full of Hot Spots, all the time your chances of spinning off The Big Wheel, grow greater with each cycle.

Remember, the principle of the ‘Game Show Host’ is to make the contestants take chances of winning bigger that way the show becomes much more emotionaly charged. In the end Google never say, “Smashing, Super, Great … Didn’t he do well?” Nah, it’s much more fun to reveal, “Here’s, what you Could Have Won!”

Please fill in the Blanks to find out MY answer to the recent .com Google UK Serp invasion…

Because its Google’s search engine and they can do what the [blank] they like.

OK, its not ground breaking as both Yahoo! and Google have offered this for some time but it’s the positioning which is impressive : top left of the page under a nice eye catching orange header, Bada Bing, I feel Microsoft have created the first Teflon Don Search Engine by creating a spiffy, smart and unfearless appearance to display its results within.

I also played around with bing.com/webmaster tools last night, and while it does try to be its own model you get the feeling that its just Google webmaster tools laced up in a strait jacket. However, back to the Bada Bing Search Engine. Will it be a serious contender to Google? Probably not. Will it help gain more searchers to its engine? Yep, it’s got me for starters, that’s 1 more at least than Live had last week.

Microsoft’s marketing arm is at full pelt at this moment in time, reminding us all it’s a ‘descision engine’ and not a ’search engine’, their even rumours that their about to throw $80m to $100m to hook people on that term. You say ‘Tomato Sauce’, I’ll say, ‘Red Sauce’ please.

I’m not 100% sold on the little descriptive box that appears to the right of a vertical result, its a tad annoying but interesting at the same time, much like a 6 year old hyped on fizzy juice. To end, I’m liking this new fresh look from MS, I only hope the public like it too.

Update : Thanks to Joe Hall of Search Engine Journal fame, who brought to everyone’s attention the manners of Bing in changing its SERP title tags to adequate the search query to help increase click through rates. Seemingly, it is taking the most specific anchor text to a domain as a semantic relational query. My initial analogy of Bing in a friendly mobster manner is holding true. This is one search engine who ain’t happy with its current territory grounds and will play hard to increase its reach. Bing is no mild mannered crooner, it’s a serious approach by Microsoft to eventually take a decent share of the search engine market and yes, I still like it, even more so now.

If your well-crafted content is ever going to be noticed then you need to give adequate attention to the most important of soft-hooks to reel them in. Headlines in blogs, articles, press releases and social media content should not always rely on SEO keyword stuffing. Sure, if you can fit the keyword of your choice within your catchy headline then all the better. But to-be-honest, keyword placement should never take the shine of a well-crafted headline.

I’m going to list 5 tips, to help you gain a better understanding as to why headline writing should be at the forefront of any future content generation.

1. There are people out there already that can mentor yourself into becoming a perfected content writer and foremost a unique headline writer. They are people whom I have followed online for a matter of years and ultimately respect their work deeply. One such person, is none other than Lyndon Antcliff an incredible writer and diverse thinker. If you are going to learn from someone about headline creation then why not learn from the best-in-the-business, is what I say.

2. Don’t shy from controversy within your headline! Obviously, try and stay within the boundaries of good taste but a controversial headline will always catch the eye. Don’t be controversial just for controversial’s sake. If your going on a rant then fine, but remember that people will read it for what it is, a rant is a rant, if your going to be controversial then your going to need more substance within your content than just your own opinion.

3. Don’t start your headline with, “Secrets of [your choice keywords] Revealed”. It’s old, it has been done a squillion, million times and any marketing guru tring to tell you otherwise is lying. Fact is, people that fall for this type of headline is probably not going to subscribe, link, buy, sign-up to your content anyway … their tyre-kickers, time-waters, or most probably, content scrapers looking for a trackback link to your content.

4. Try and get into the head of your reader. No, I’m not talking any voodoo, psychobabble, just trying to understand the relationship better of whom your target audience might be. Your headline is the exposed pulse between a future reader and yourself, if you manage it correctly, a person will revisit your content over and over again. If you alienate from the get-go, then it is a near certainty they’ll give you and your site a wide-berth. Understand what type of reader your communicating with and also which type of reader you wish to hang around.

5. Avoid critisism of your headlines like the plaugue, once they are drafted onto the social media sites such as digg, reddit and the rest, your headline and content is now fair game for both appraisal and ridicule in the same breath. Don’t take scathing attacks personally, you can’t please everyone nor should you even attempt to try, remember your goal is to attract readers that you wish to hang around, everything else is just a potential knotch-up in your bounce rate ratio.

What happened? Difficult to put your finger on the exact reason, but a large majority of blame lies at the way the 3D Secure payment pages work.

The above image represents the timeline of when the 3D Secure payment feature was switched on and when it was turned off. On average, day-to-day sales fell by around 60%. The traffic flow was constant during this period, and the flow charts show that the number going through the payment channels remained constant. It was when the customer was in the payment processing page they abondoned the sale. Quite a journey to abandon just at that moment, much like just scarpering at the checkout when your goods are being scanned at the local supermarket.

Sagepay themselves contributed a recent article where they touched on the problems of 3D Secure …

“3D Secure makes online payment safer than simply matching the AVS and CVV/Cv2 mechanism; however, the current system is perceived to be unfriendly to buyers, as it involves an extra step in the payment process which can involve redirecting them to an unfamiliar domain name. Not only can this result in delays, but it has also raised concerns about fraud, as it can be difficult for the consumer to differentiate between legitimate pop-up windows and fraudulent phishing sites.

Similarly, many customers have compained that they weren’t aware when registering with the system that they would need to enter the selected password on every use of the card, meaning that many did not note down the selected password for future use.

All this, however, is just a matter of customer education…”

Sagepay go onto advise that online sellers participating in 3D secure pre-warn their customers in some form of the procedure, thus educating in the process.

At some point I will retry 3D Secure payments once again with this clients site but only when the current economic climate has improved slightly as a repeat of a 60% decline in sales is not an option in the meantime.

I have noticed an increased awareness program being used by Google to help promote Chrome. The latest ad I caught online was the one stationed to the right of Sky News’ popular video page, as below highlights…

It does just go to show that offline advertising is still a powerful medium, even for an online based company. At the moment there is no word ‘if or when’ the ads will be shown here in the UK. Here’s the Google Chrome ad that is being viewed by American audiences…

Astronauts are now Tweeting from Space! The crew aboard space shuttle Atlantis’s, high-risk mission to service the Hubble telescope, are keeping their followers updated.

Astronaut, Mike Massimino, has said he will use his Twitter account : @Astro_Mike to tweet from Space. I have already followed him, not that I’m even thinking about communicating with him, but just so that I can see my first ever Tweet from space when he does. Sad? Yes, probably. But 227,616 people are also onboard for this huge event.

Atlantis is due to come into contact with Hubble, on Wednesday afternoon.

Update :
At just over 9pm GMT, Astronaut, Mike Massimino a.k.a Astro_Mike made the first ever tweet from space and his following has jumped to 234,069 … Now all we need Mike to do is post a picture onto TwitPic from the Atlantis space shuttle and watch Twitter go into hyperdrive.