Also, while I think of it is that clients like or do they actually have those clients? Really bad advert that.

Another spot courtesy of Eloi below. Barclays Bank (of all people) making some bad mistakes with DKI!

When DKI Goes Wrong

Click image to enlarge.

Ones that I am looking at adding and playing with include…

Bruce Clay SEM Toolbar

I wasn’t a big fan of SEO for Firefox but I definitely plan to take a look at SEO Book Toolbar and I use Rank Checker on a regular basis.

So what does your Firefox “Ad Ons” menu look like? Any other suggestions are most welcomed and will be included in a follow up post with links etc.

Firefox SEO Tools

Last night I was on Twitter and read a comment from the dudes over at WebmasterRadio.FM informing me that their show was streaming live in audio / visual over at Ustream.TV. I think they have actually been doing this for a little while now. Anyhow, I thought it was pretty cool, so I stayed a little while, had a chat and thought I would write this post. Here is the link too the WebmasterRadio Channel on Ustream. Go check them out.

As you can see from the screen grab above, it is a nice layout and design, but at the moment the chat room is pretty quiet. So why not head over there and join in the chat. Please note that the shows are broadcast from the USA so are about 5 hours behind UK time.

All the best,

Allan Stewart

WebmasterRadio on Upstream

Update, 03 April 2008

To any remaining followers, thank you very much for sticking with us and our apologies that FireflySEO blog has been so quiet recently. Both David and I have been very / ridiculously busy. To give those of you who might be interested a quick update.

Allan Stewart is currently working in the recruitment industry over at PULSE Jobs helping them out with their Recruitment SEO and David Fairhurst is currently working full time over at Intelligent Retail who supply industry leading EPoS Software integrated with Ebay, heading up their SEO department where they sell in to their existing client base. David continues to work with the FireflySEO client base. Allan travel’s quite a lot to conferences such as Ad:Tech, SMX, SES, writes magazine articles for CAP and manages a number of affiliate websites.

Goals for the future…

Allan Stewart

• Speaking at Conferences: To take on some speaking engagements
• PULSE: To make PULSE Jobs the best darn website in the recruitment industry
• Affiliate: Well I gotta make some money right!

David Fairhurst

• Knowledge: To increase knowledge of the industry and use his skills to promote both the businesses he works for and those of his employer
• To be the best damn SEO he can be

Think that is about it, for now anyway.

Once again, genuinely thank you to those remaining followers and we promise to post some interesting articles and make some positive changes to the website very soon.

Allan Stewart and David Fairhurst

A Quick Update on Life at FireflySEO

Step 1 - Follow

Follow all who follow you use - Social Too

Step 2 - Get Retweets

More Re-Tweets the better use Retweetist

Step 3 - Get more followers

Try Twitter Counter to see how many people are following others.

Try alltop.com and StumbleUpon. to find strange things and then Adjix.com to twitter them, there is also a Firefox plug in to use it.

Step 4 - Monitor

search.twitter.com to search for mentions of you company brand, you name, your segment.

Step 5 - Copy

Twibs.com website of all the businesses on Twitter, use it to copy some ideas.

Jet blue, Comcast, Amazon Deals, CirqueLasVegas do a good job of using Twitter, copy them.

Step 6 - Search

Use search to find you customers i.e. search for XXX XXX XXX etc, and then contact them. Use the advanced search with the Geo region and you can start to track your customers down by location.

Example advanced search…

Seo near:XXX XXX within:100mi

Learn how to use the search features of Twitter.

Step 7 - Tools

TweetDeck is great to use
Twhirl is a great tool to monitor more than 1 account.
CoTweet, the assumption is that you have multiple accounts and multiple people, can be used in an organisation with lots of accounts.
Tynt is good tool for copy and paste with the link back to you web page.

Step 8 - Squeeze the trigger

TwitterHawk allows you to set up searches and then automatically sent a twitter reply to that search, Guy describes as “Ultimate Spamming Tool”.

Do a search on “Britney Spears” for example (or when ever you do) then do an auto-tweet that sends a link to you website back to the search.

Use Twitter Hawk but use the management features so it doesn’t repeat spam people.

Step 9 - Share

Make sure to have the Twitter share option on you website. Just having Twitter share will be better than having 100’s of buttons to different share options. Twitter is best and then all the other stuff is just noise.

Twitter Feed, grabs feeds and then pushes twitters into your Twitter account also gets people to sign up for you and allow you to use their twitter accounts to publish your tweets. Basically you set up a TwitterFeed account and then people will sign up and give you access to their accounts.

Guy Kawasaki on Twitter (Controversial)

Hi Mr Cutts,

Your example is a good one, however, how can you with anything above 70% of accuracy decide what blogs are writing paid for reviews and what blogs are genuinely writing an article about something which the author finds interesting?

First port of call of course is relevancy. My concern is that some authors may wish to write about something a bit off-peast as it were, and they may wish to drop a link not because they have been paid, but because it interests them or perhaps because they want to “spread the word”. Take Mr Naylor’s post on the Leaked Oscar winners list as mentioned, this is off peast a bit as its not really about SEO, well it is sort of, but lets me fair it’s a bit tenuous (no offense Dave). No link in this post, but assume for a moment there was a link, would this be considered unorthodox?

My point is, there doesn’t seem to be any accuracy in this process and there fore as a blogger my self this comes as a deep concern that actually STOP’s me and potentially other bloggers from writing what we want to write about, linking to what we want to link to, in fear that we will be labelled as spammers or money making tyrants capitalising on Spammers attempts to pollute the blogosphere.

Can you please confirm or deny whether the blogging community should indeed be filled with fear?

Paid for Post Reviews, Question to Mr Cutts

Intelligent Retail have been producing top quality EPOS software for years now, rivalling the likes of Actinic and JSA’s own offerings. Some of you with (very!) long memories might remember that many years ago Firefly (then Firefly I.T.) tied together an Actinic website and a JSA EPOS system to produce a totally integrated selling solution - the system Intelligent Retail have created is far more sophisticated than this though, as it has the addition of true multi-channel selling via Ebay!

The Intelligent Retail EPoS software is written in .JSP and can be housed in any make of electronic till, although it is reccommended that the firm’s own combination of cash till and touch screen be used for ease of use. At the moment, the e-commerce website store can only be used in conjunction with a website framework from Intelligent Retail, but future iterations will be able to be ‘tagged onto’ an existing static, or even dynamic website, giving true multi-channel selling opportunities to anyone.

Intelligent Retail’s spread throughout the retail sector for their EPoS system is growing all the time, with a wide variety of retail clients currently using the multichannel EPoS software and hardware system plus e-commerce website. Clients love the multichannel selling tool, with the ability to easily list on Ebay being a boon to busy retailers. We here at FireflySEO think this sort of multi-channel selling is bound to be the future of online selling, and with the Intelligent Retail system growing from strength to strength, the company has a very rosy future!

EPoS Software

SearchWiki is explained in this short video from Google on YouTube, found here and shown below for your convenience.

This new feature of the Google account allows users to not only add, but delete and modify search results at will, but only if that user is signed into their own Google account. This all sounds fine and dandy (and to be honest, as it allows you to delete completely irrelevant results from your searches I think everyone will agree probably a good thing!) but I can see why the gathering of this sort of data by Google is disconcerting to a lot of people in the SEO industry.

Personally, I tend to agree with Ian McIntosh in his article yesterday which suggests that the use of this type of data by Google is at an early stage, and adoption is neither guaranteed or imminent. But then again…

Did anyone see the news article on the BBC last week about a very bubbly young woman from Tyneside who has taken YouTube by storm with her series of make-up tips? The point is, viral videos like this drive search results, and you can be damn sure that if this particular youTube reference didn’t come up in a search for ‘make-up tips’ in Google, with widespread adoption of SearchWiki there would soon be plenty of data streaming through Google accounts world wide to say it should be.

Seems to me that as the overtly viral nature of online communities continue to push the boundaries of knowledge sharing so the continuing success of Google (and for that matter any online business) will be dependant upon this information, and that’s exactly what SearchWiki has been developed to address, the only thing is, has Google got it all wrong? Will anyone actually bother to re-arrange search results? Does anyone really have the time (or the inclination) to help out poor old Google with some more data to feed the algorithm dev department? Probably not!

Google probably does care what it’s users want included in search results and rightly so… but this particular SEO bod thinks it may all be a HUGE waste of time and effort given human nature as it is!

SearchWiki and the viral effect of YouTube

Yes, yes, we eat our words! For now anyway, Twitter seems to be a good pleace to get chatting with your fellow SEO bods, dare I even say it, gain a bit of an interest.

Give it a go your self. Or Follow us first to see what it is all about!

FireflySEO on Twitter

Okay here is where it becomes controversial. Check the small print on that form “where the advertiser has a valid licence”. Okay, so lets just be clear here. At the current time, what Google appears to be gearing up to allow is Gambling Related PPC but only for white listed gambling companies who have a licence.

Kind of sucks if you are an online casino or general gambling affiliate because you guys can not get a licence!!

No piece of the PPC pie for you!! In addition to which all those natural rankings that you spent the last 5 years building up are going to become much less effective at driving clicks.

Lots of annoyed affiliates over on sphinn and also affiliates4u forum.

Surely if Google are opening up gambling phrases they should just allow it to all UK companies who market to UK audiences. For one thing it will drive them more revenues through higher CPC’s and more varied long tail. In addition to this, blocking affiliates or NON Licence holders is just plain unfair and totally unreasonable!

Why, why, oh why Google!!??

Affiliate, have your say, this WILL effect you!! The louder we shout the more likelly we are to be heard!!

Google, sort it out!!!!! Not on.

Google Slams Gambling Affiliates

• David Naylor - Director - Bronco

  Well what can I say!? Everyone knows him but perhaps better by his alter ego DaveN. He’s probably the biggest personality in the UK SEO Industry. I’ve not actually met DaveN yet in person, (although I suspect I will at SES London 2008), but I read and comment on his blog regularly. Dave is an affiliate marketing bloke, runs a web design agency called Bronco and is a frequent contributer on many forums. He is well know for his direct personality, oh and I think he knows Theo Paphitis from Dragons Den. Lucky him!

• Tim Nash - Venture Skills

  Very funny and satirical writer. Not sure he realises he is satirical but none the less his posts tend to be bloody funny. Tim runs Venture Skills, a SERP control & reputation management company, plus he does the odd bit of SEO training as well. Tim likes to “sneak into universities and try to corrupt the innocent” apparently… not sure what that means, but it sounds like good clean fun to me

• Shaun Anderson - Director - Hobo Web

  Allan has known of Shaun and Hobo for years, but until recently they were little known. Their business and website appears to be making big waves in the Search industry and its very nice to see a small and hard working Scottish SEO company go far. Oyster Web did the same. Us to, FireflySEO formally Firefly I.T. were from Scotland! You can take our country but you can never take our Freeeeee Search. Sorry that was really bad!!

• Edward Cowell - Digital Marketing Director - Guava

  Former Technical director at Neutralize, a company who Allan has had dealings with on several occasions whilst working with Pulse and always found to have a very good, straightforward and having a creative approach to search. Allan was very impressed with Neutralize, particularly their PPC campaign model. Neutralize are now known as Guava, a full service agency of which Edward is the Digital marketing Director.

• Warren Cowan - CEO - Green Light

  Well, good old Warren, he’s been knocking about Search for a number of years now. Allegedly he used to work at WebOptimiser, over in the City of London, before starting up his own company Green Light. Warren has a nice way about him and a great knowledge of search, particularly for corporates.

  Warren gets around a bit, regularly speaking at Ad:tech and Search Engine Strategies in London and many other SEO related conferences

• Craig Mytton - Search Group Head - Cheeze

  Allan met Craig at the Online Marketing Show 2007 in London Business Design Centre, a very-good show by the way! Apparently Chatted to him for a while about Web 2.0 and PPC. Again, seems to know his stuff, but they are BIG time expensive. I think their business is focused on the corporate markets, which would explain why they have plush offices in that there centre of busyness and fun that is London.

• Allan Stewart - Pulse

  Former partner of FireflySEO, Allan helped to start the company way back in 2001 whilst still at Stirling University. Allan now heads the SEO efforts for a large medical recruitment company, having previously worked in online gambling for one of the UK’s leading companies in that area, massively improving returns in their online efforts. Allan spends his time in between hours at the PC completely wrecking finely tuned race engines whenever the chance presents itself (don’t let this man borrow your car!) and jetting off on ski holidays (he used to be an instructor in Whistler, BC no less!) Seriously, the hardest working bloke in the Universe, bar none, and a great friend of mine.

• Paul Steven - NorthSouthMedia

  Paul runs NorthSouthMedia up in Ayrshire, Scotland. Paul seems to think like me about SEO, and writes a mean blog! Paul had the great idea of running a competition on his blog for any SEO company to get top ten placement for a variety of terms.. not sure what this accomplishes but I’m sure it gets NorthSouthMedia lots of backlinks and makes for an interesting read! His article on SEO superheroes was highly amusing… I’m still wishing I didn’t move back down from Scotland… the lack of fresh air and clean water in and around London is just not funny!

• Lyndon Antcliff - Cornwall SEO

  Lyndon (like many of us) is getting, by the sounds of it, a little fed up with being called an SEO expert, probably because of all the negative publicity caused by scam merchants popping onto the scene, so now says “I no longer call myself an SEO and have not done for a long time, (if I ever was one) and I now the pursue the path of viral content creator”. I’ve not met Lyndon myself, but from all the comments from the last post we did all you lovely people out there seem to like his witty approach on life, so that’s as good a vote as any in our book! Lyndon seems to know a thing or three about Linkbaiting and has been quoted in the Sunday Times no less!

• Glen Allsopp - Viperchill

  Don’t know if Glen qualifies as a UK SEO anymore as he now lives in South Africa apparently, but it’s obvious from reading his blog that he knows what he is talking about where social networks are concerned. Glen has worked for some pretty impressively big companies in his time, including that giant of automotive boxyness Nissan. Good that Glen got into the SEO scene at such an early age (I only managed it in my mid thirties cos I was too busy enjoying myself!), and good on him for getting so far in such a short space of time!

• Tom Critchlow - Distilled

  I enjoy reading Tom’s blog posts… he digs up some very leftfield but neverthless interesting ideas from blog posts around the web, the sort of things that make you say.. Eureka! It’s clear that Tom has an analytical mind (I suppose doing maths and stats at Uni does that to you!) and it really comes through in the blog. Tom works with his brother Will at Distilled in the city of London, with a whole host of other like minded individuals who look like (from their smiling faces on their team page) they actually enjoy SEO… or was that a picture from University guys?

• Lisa Ditlefsen - SEO Chicks

  We’ve not met any of the SEO Chicks crew, but they look like a lot of fun as well as knowing what they are talking about. Lisa currently works for BaseOne Interactive as head of search. LisaD as she is more commonly known, is now engaged to Jon Myers (formerly of Latitude we believe), and we wish them all the best.

  Lisa got voted as ‘best looking SEO‘ last year on David Naylors blog by the SEO community, well deserved I’m sure.

  FireflySEO will be running (if I have anything to do with it) a ‘weirdest looking SEO in a Dracula costume’, for which I have some very… er… interesting pictures of a Mr.Allan Stewart…

• Ciaran Norris - AltogetherDigital

  Ciaran was mentioned in our last post comments in February, but being a bit of a donkey I forgot to include him into the updated list, so here goes…Ciaran works for AltogetherDigital, a full service agency in that lovely City of London. Having got into the game in 2000, Ciaran has worked on some pretty impressive contracts for companies such as Vonage and Brylcreem. I’ve just read some of Ciaran’s blog and it’s a riot… I especially liked the post lampooning Julie Moult of the Daily Mail… very amusing! Not sure we would bother to increase a Daily Mail employees profile by posting images on our own website though… as they say in the business ‘there’s no such thing as bad publicity’…

• Andrew Girdwood - BigMouthMedia

  Self confessed geek Andrew works for those stalwarts of the SEO community Big Mouth Media in their Edinburgh offices we believe. Andrew wears his hair long - probably because he’s too busy working for the biggest independant marketing agency on the planet to bother with trivialities like fashion, and hey, why not! Anyone who knows me will know that overexuberance of hair is one of my past looks…

  Andrew, in true fashion of one who takes his job seriously writes a lot of technical articles and is a prolific blogger

• Jon Myers - MediaVest

  Jon works for Manchester based MediaVest, having previously worked for Latitude. Has been in and around search since the rocks cooled on earth, so knows just about everything there is to know about SEO and SEM, speaking regularly at expo’s and conferences around the planet. Jon is engaged to LisaD, another SEO in our list above and founder of SEO Chicks.

  …

  …

• Rob Kerry - EvilGreenMonkey

  With a company name like Evil Green Monkey we just HAD to put Rob in our list…Rob is a face at many conferences at home and abroad and has just lauched a new business Amiya Search Marketing. Rob is also moderator on a number of forms, he is a moderator on sphinn and he writes his own blog.

UK SEO Professionals

IE8 has some new features, some useful and some not so useful, especially if you don’t use the Windows Operating System.

IE8 will ship with a clone of the Mozilla Firefox integrated search bar to search for previously searched for phrases, but unlike the Mozilla offering, these searches are not stored in an integrated database, but in ‘windows desktop search’, so if you are not one of those ‘windblows’ fans, you won’t get full functionality from this one I’m afraid.

IE8 is also offering an enhanced security browsing mode which will automatically scrub search history, cookies and browser cache at the end of a session. Pity they could not integrate a full on proxy mode, could have coaxed hackers out there away from Linux based browsers… maybe!

The new browser from Microsoft apparently carries enhanced security including anti-malware and protection from some cross-site scripting attacks, which are becoming more and more prevalent out there in cyberland.

We wait with baited breath (no sarcasm intended) for the new offering from Microsoft, however as there are still apparently today 25% of Internet users plodding along with IE6, we don’t think that this new browser is going to be taken up with the majority of Internet users any time soon!

IE8 Download Launch Just Around the Corner