NComp@ss e-Cafe

The End of Google's 'Do No Evil' Mantra

2012-02-24T10:43:00.001+01:00

In a few days Google will change all it's 64 privacy policies into a single big one. I am no expert in the legal affairs of these giant corporation, but these are my comments for what they are worth.

We as Google users, whether we are using Search, Gmail, or any of Google plethora of services, we actually have very little choice. If we want to carry on benefiting from Google, they we have to agree. If we do not agree, we will not get the full benefit of Google. It's pretty black and white.

So what do you do if you don't agree with this. And what's it all about anyway.

Google's made no secret they have stated that the purpose of a single privacy policy is to make things easier for us, we can use all Google's services without having to agree to any extra demands on our Data (we've already agreed to give that away). Secondly, Google have stated that they plan to share our data across their services. If we're searching for a digital camera to buy, then we might want to see photos of it, or perhaps get emailed about digital cameras. Certainly we would be announcing the fact we're interested in a digital camera to our connections on Google.

So Google's plan is use our data to benefit ourselves and our friends, this of course appeals to advertisers because Google will share some of our data with them too... (That digital camera). But it does raise massive questions about intrusive Google plans to be.

What can you do - very little in my opinion... sign up and don't worry about it. If you want to carry on using Gmail, Google Apps, Blogger, Picasa you'll have to agree to it anyway. So live with it.

But the caveat is this... support those that are fighting your corner. There is a growing industry of user-awareness groups that are examining every angle of these privacy policies, the same goes for all the Mega Corporations, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Amazon and so on. These user-awareness groups set out to protect our rights and ensure that the Googles of the world don't actually take over our lives.

Spare some time for these people, because they need our support, the WikiLeaks, Anonymous, and other so called 'cyber-terrorists' might actually be on our side.

I do now believe that Google's Mantra to 'Do No Evil' is now officially dead, Eric Schmidt's reorganisation of the Google top management in the middle of 2011 is not truly coming to light, Google has hugely high aspirations and it would appear there is little we can do to stop them.

Keeping Up -How to stay on top of things

2012-02-18T12:54:00.001+01:00

The idea of 'keeping on top of things' is an incredibly important concept in terms of the Internet. I cannot stress it enough. Once you've started a project you just have to keep going and going and going.

It's a flaw in the Internet or perhaps is a flaw in Google's algorithms, if you want to stay on top you have to keep on top of things. This is both urgent and all to often under estimated.

Some examples:

Blogging - I did a series of articles between mid December (6) and January (11) - never has my Blog been more popular, 1500 visitors in January. Having relaxed a bit in February, I've lost a third of that traffic.

Client Haxnicks - I can identify a consistent trend between Sales and Blogging, the more blogging the more sales we get - it's as simple as that.
Social Media - The new measurement for good or bad in Social Media is called Influence. How influential you are matters, when I do lots of Tweeting and Facebook updates - it is noticeable that my Twitter Followers expand, people notice, maybe just a few, but they notice, but if I relax and take a few days off. Pow, I lose that influence.

Client X - We did a huge SMO campaign around September-November - plenty of interaction and activity generating decent buzz - now that it's stopped the activity has been reduced massively. The core component for this client was Sales - these did not materialise in the form required. But had things been kept going, the question is what would have happened.
SEO - The two core activities that are needed to keep on top are article submissions and link building, these are ongoing month after month jobs, - stop and after just a month or two you can see the results as you drop down the search engines.

Client Skyschool UK - We've worked on and off with Skyschool regularly boosting their SEO, we drive it up the Google rankings then pause, it falls and the client returns for a bit more SEO. It's fine to do this in a patchy on/off way, but it would be better to just keep going.

So how do you 'keep on top of things'. The core is the Marketing Plan, I now seen others writing about this very subject. If you have even a basic Marketing Plan, then you have something to refer to. It's a good base to work from. Set your goals, perhaps a timeline and work to that.

For myself I also set reminder, or tasks, use any software you like, a Calendar, Task Tool, Outlook, it does not matter, so long as it sends you an email about doing something. Then leave that email in your Inbox until you've done something.

That's exactly how I write this Blog, I set myself a reminder task for 2 weeks post my last article. That means I have a annoying email in my Inbox that's reminding me to write something.

Task lists and Reminders are the key method for 'keeping on top of things'. They make you do it and you have to persevere.

The next most important part is to allocate a time period, it can be as little as 10 minutes, or a full hour. But set yourself a minimum and then allow yourself to overshoot. It should be daily as well. Time is what most people lack, so you have to set yourself time and then make good use of it.

Now before I get off my high horse, I'd like to put out that my own marketing is a shambles... all I am trying to do is make clients consider their own positions and to see what may or may not work for them. If you have ideas that are simple to implement and easy to stay on top, then I'm all ears. Let me know, because there has to be a way to make this easy.

Copyright Law is the future for Piracy

2012-02-03T11:02:00.000+01:00

Few things get me more uptight than Piracy and the invasion of our freedoms by the authorities. Recently we've had two laws attempt to pass the the US Congress, 20+ Euro countries have signed up to some EU law, we've a cookie law on it's way, a UK student is being extradited under US Terrorism laws for creating a dodgy website and we've closed down a quasi New Zealand/German/Indonesian website for running 14% of the Internet.

All in the name of stopping piracy. When will it stop and how many of our freedoms have to go before Governments start taxing our internet use to pay for all the laws we're creating.

The truth is the horse has left the stable and no amount of door closing is going to induce it to return... The Internet is changing the world before our very eyes and new ideas need to be looked at.

My idea (as yet I've not read anything about this) - my idea - is that Copyright Law need to be looked at in much greater detail and updated accordingly. Who says spending 30 minutes writing a best selling song should earn you millions. Sometimes it can take a musician 30 years to write that magical song. Authors, Screen Writers, Actors, all creative people spend a lot of time climbing to the top - all most all of it is unrewarded and as any artist will tell you for every success story there are plenty of artist who work all their lives unrewarded.

In what other walks of life does the situation exist whereby you slave day in day out for often years and then in five minutes you get your break and that's it, you're on the front cover of every magazine.

No - in almost every other profession you work diligently earning as you go a suitable sum for your endeavours and always towards an incrementally larger goal. You don't walk into being the CEO of a multi-national company - you work your whole life towards.

The difference is you're paid all the way up to the top... Not so in an artist profession, not so in an actor career where the top paid success stories vastly out weigh the slave labour at the bottom.

All of this hinges on one thing alone - Copyright Law - the right of the individual to be paid for their conceptual idea ever after. And in huge amounts.

Now I hear a few defences of the current situation - but it's no good - the Steve Jobs or James Dyson's worked hard - but still they were grossly over-paid for their contribution to humanity.

What we need is a new system that pays our copyright holders more fairly (rewarding the creators themselves and not those around them) - we need a system that pays out over time, small amounts to encourage these geniuses to produce more good ideas and we need those surrounding copyright holders to be severely curtailed in their rights to bits of the pie.

Only then will the costs of the material be reduced to an acceptable level that people will be prepared to pay - And when you manage to get things down to that level then and only then will you succeed in combating piracy. You have to make it meaningless for the pirate to bother.

I reckon a track of music should cost no more than 4p, a digital book less than 20p, a photograph pennies.

So how does this affect you - ask yourself what action you would take if someone copied your idea, song, story... would it matter, do you feel honoured, put out - I suspect you'll only ever feel miffed is that someone made money out of your idea - and that's not a very noble thought.

Google Adwords Revisited

2012-02-01T10:11:00.003+01:00

I am going to write this even though I'm on shaky ground with the flurry of changes Google brings us this winter.

I have compiled data on clients performance on Google Adwords over the last 4 years and two things I have known are happening have been proven:

1) The cost of Google Adwords is going up
There is no doubt in my mind that the cost per click is being driven upwards - this is what Google wants obviously and there are numerous factors contributing to it.

Google's own desire to get more out of us
Increased competition between advertisers
Google 'quality score' through which they charge more if an advert is deemed unsuitable.

What this means for us advertisers is simple - we're paying either more money for the same number of clicks or the same money for fewer clicks.

Example (the data is real):
Client A in 2008 was operating a budget of £100 per month and getting 590 clicks. In 2011 this same budget brought them just 434 clicks - a drop of 35%.

You easily say that's actually a price hike of 35% in four years... wow.

2) The cost of Conversions is going down.

The truth is clicks don't matter - what matters is the cost of Conversions - getting someone to do want you want them to do on your website - be that buying something, enquiring about something, requesting something. Google Adwords in this area is proving remarkably resilient. But only if you know what you're doing.

Big updates in Google Adwords make it much more complicated to use and get the most from
Your keywords and Adverts matter more than ever - they are what drive conversions
Your website landing pages have to match a users expectations to increase the likelihood of a Conversion

The bottom line is the Conversion matter and it is the cost of conversions that counts.

Example (the data is real):

Client B in 2008 was operating a £300 monthly budget and we managed to get 1046 'Conversions' in 12 months. In 2011 that number went up to 2043... a 49% rise in Conversions - this lead to a reduction is cost per conversion of 57% - from £1.76 to £1.02 per conversion.

For this client Google Adwords has been a success story - their website and budget remained virtually the same through out the period and the Advertising has paid off again and again.

Another Client C has had a Budget of about £300 per month and has seen the cost of clicks rise from £0.52 to £0.72 (38%) - but their cost of conversion has fallen from £90.69 to £49.42 (down 54%). So even though Google costs more - it's very much worth it because the results are costing less.

This all matters to you - because it means Google Adwords is still have very effect way to advertise. At the moment Google are getting bad press and people are thinking about leaving the system, perhaps spending more on SEO and other techniques to get their websites up on the search engines. But Google Adwords still offers one of the fastest and most cost effective ways to advertise on the web.

My maxine holds true - if you are in any doubt about any advertising service compare it to Google Adwords and decide which one your money would be better spent on - Google Adwords wins every time in my book.

SEO Reports for Free - Limited Offer

2012-01-30T19:33:00.000+01:00

I don't normally plug my services on this Blog - but we're doing such a good job on SEO for clients at the moment that I thought I'd rattle this out.

Basically, for whatever reason I can rattle out two comprehensive and separate full SEO reports for any website you like. These reports will give you enough information to really work out what you need to do next. They are full professional and one offers a complete guide on what to do next.

Because they're free I am only offering this service until Friday 5th February.

Conditions - you must supply me with 10 keywords that you think are relevant to your website. Send an email to guyh@ncompass.co.uk.

Is there still life in Google Adwords

2012-01-26T15:00:00.000+01:00

Google missing an earnings expectation this week (www.wsj.com) and from my prospective Google Adwords is becoming a lot more complicated. I have Chris however to help out and in our weekly reviews of all the accounts we run I am often astounded by the amount of work we have to do to keep to budget and stay on top of things.

The Very Very Old Days
Google Adwords built it's strength on the idea that the more you pay the higher up the listing you went. A simple auction system... who ever pays the most gets to the top... easy.

The Very Old Days
But - said many advertisers - I don't want to pay at the weekend, or after 8pm or for France/another country, so Google gradually introduced more functionality to allow people to set their own criteria... That was awesome - because now you could advertise only between the hours of 9am and 2pm, Monday, Tuesdays and Fridays and only in the UK, and later London and later still SW19.

That power for the Advertiser was truly magnificent.

The Old Days
Google however weren't quite so happy - rather I might say Google 'big-spenders' weren't quite so happy... Now real spenders like eBay, Amazon and Walmart had to compete with every Tom Dick and Harry pays much higher prices depending on when and where there were advertising.

Googles response was to introduce a Quality Score system - this effectively and very largely handed a lot of control back to Google. Quality Score takes into account, who you are, how much you spend, the quality of your keywords, brand and adverts and defines the cost you'll pay based on this.

You can see that if Google decide they like eBay or Amazon (because they spend a lot) then there Adverts would take precedence over yours.

Today
These days Google Adwords is a complex and gigantic beast of a machine... many people would feel daunted to start using it and Google have a scaled down version for beginners, the result is beginners often pay more faster and with less result.

Meanwhile big organisations have Google employees to help them out, doing a lot of the day to day work... but they also have to employee dedicated people or commonly specialist agencies to do the actual work. Imagine your Marks and Spencers doing your Christmas Specials - Google Adwords becomes a huge undertaking very quickly.

And that leaves us middle men - we know that to get the best from Google Adwords, we know you need to run a lean and efficient account, we also know how to do it (at least I assume Chris am not alone in this respect). But we know there is much work to be done.

The question is who does Google think is doing the work and how does Google think they are going to be paid. So I leave you with the following thoughts:

For your website - you could do it yourself - but that would be daunting, complicated and take too much time potentially without result
If you have the money and are big enough you could employ a proper agency to do it... but the starting budget for this is probably £5,000 per month...
You could use your website designer - but is it worth it for the work they have to do (and be paid for)

If there is anything to learnt from this analysis it's this... What does Google think it's doing? I'm going to be watching Google Adwords carefully over the next few months, this isn't the last you'll have heard from me.

10 Biggest Brands in the UK

2012-01-23T09:43:00.000+01:00

There is something daunting about working in the Web Design industry. That well know brand the Daily Telegraph announced the UK's 10 top brands.

10) Microsoft

9) Facebook

6) Twitter

4) Amazon

3) Google

1) Apple

Others in the list include Marks & Spencers, The Co-Op, John Lewis and oddly Innocent Drinks... However there's a major lesson to be learnt here. (list source: Telegraph.co.uk)

Daunting at the Internet might be - it is the future of your business. Many clients of ours still think if they have a website that will do - it won't and it doesn't - when's the last time you checked your stats and not only looked at the numbers but also considered the question 'What can I do to get more visitors'.

When I see a list of Brands like this - my anger spills as I think of all the lost opportunities clients of mine have had. This should be a wake up call to anyone running any business anywhere. You need to put your website at the centre of everything you do.

Lastly, just a small note - Marks & Spencers, Co-Op, John Lewis and Innocent all put major emphasis on their website/internet presence...When's the last time you thought of visiting Kodak's website?

Price Hikes 2012 - e-Newsletters

2012-01-16T13:36:00.001+01:00

This is the traditional time of year for price hikes and unfortunately 2012 must be no different from previous years.

Each year we only increase prices in a single area of our services, so one year it might be Hosting, the next it might be Website Maintenance, the next PPC services (Google Adwords) and so on.

This year I have chosen e-Newsletters... The theory is excellent, a regular, effective and simple way for you to keep your customers up to date with your latest news, special offers and promotions. All customers should enjoy hearing from you and take note of what you have to say.

The truth is not rosy, most newsletters are considered Spam, customers don't want to hear from you, but would rather find you when they need you and for me the biggest issue of all is the work involved to get that newsletter out on time and in a professional manner.

The result is that prices will now be:

£120 per email for the first 2000 names.
£20 per '000 names there after.

For big senders this will actually better value as the old flat rate of £80 per '000 names is gone...

Moving on, I thought I'd give a brief defence against these prices, first the key to e-Newsletters is:

Regular - the success rate is dramatic if the newsletter is sent at specific intervals, your customers will respond far better if they know when it is coming
Brief - a Newsletter needs one core message and perhaps two sideline messages... the aim is not to give them news, but to make them go to the websites and 'do' something like buying product
Personal - You need to know who you're sending to and address them personally. The chances of them responding will increase dramatically

All these issues have to be taken into account... Now consider the maths a little bit - you need to come up with the theme or message for the mailer it might take 15 minutes, but if you write the content you might spend an hour or two on it, costs money!

I then have to create the email in some 'programme' that we will have signed up, www.mailchimp.com, www.madmimi.com are my current favourites... having spent 1 or 2 hours creating the newsletter, we have to go through the database - adding all the new names, maybe another hour... then we have to fully test it and make sure it looks good on iPhones, Macs, PC's and Gmail before we can schedule the best time to send it.

You're looking at a realistic time frame of between 5 and 6 hours work (yours or mine) to get this ready... Now look at the response rates... The industry average is around a 20% open rate. If your list is 3000 names that is 600 reading it, and if the industry average is 10% clicks then you're looking at 60 people actually visiting your website... and if you use your website conversion rate of say 5% of the original 3000 people you aimed the newsletter at - you're looking at 3 conversions.

The numbers just do not add up... often which ever way you look at it.

Our View

Newsletter have their place and we're happy to send them, but proper evaluation of their work involved verses the result achieved is hugely important... we need to raise my prices for the work that goes into Newsletters - clients need to evaluate their worth - otherwise we're just subsiding your losses.

Thank you and comments welcome.

The Google Plus Bandwagon

2012-01-12T10:09:00.001+01:00

Well I wondered how far Google Plus would go and it's going all the way... you better get aboard and fast, I can't put it simpler.

Click on the above image to see it all - but you can clearly see what Google has done... You get a new personal search tool bar, with images and personal results. Then you get lots of info on 'me' and then you get some search results.

That's if you looking your self up... Now if you look someone else you 'know' up...

You're going to find out a lot more about that person activities pretty quickly... whether a personal or business contact you're going to see a lot about them.

Now if you look up a Google Plus Company...

So what does all this mean you to... well we should re-cap and get acquainted with Google's core values once again. They simply want to provide the fast way to get you the information you want.

Google Plus is their way of organising data that is most relevant to you personally and that is the key here. Their thinking is simply if you like Cheese then you are more likely to want to; a) find out more about it and b) respond to your friends and contacts opinions about it.

The Google Plus Button
Now we can start to see why the Google Plus Button matters so much... On your website you need a way for people interested in your products and services to show that interest. On the old fashioned Internet they'd do that by calling you up, sending an enquiry or email or even booking marking your websites.

These days - they click a button - a Plus button... done, easy simple. Now all their 'friends' know they liked your website, there's no quibbling, no depth to the interest, just a simple statement that they showed an interest.

But without that button - you'd never know and nor would their friends and nor would their friends friends and so on. The power of the 'reach' is massive... it only takes one friends friend to take a modicum of interest and the whole snowball starts again.

Your Opinion Matters
The concept goes further - if you show your interest in something you tell your friends automatically, and when they want to look up their holiday snaps in Turkey they see your name, your photos, your holiday in Turkey and your opinion.

This goes well beyond Facebook's closed loop sharing of content and data... If you've plus'ed a Holiday Brochure website, you put that website in the hands of your friends for whenever they look up Holidays.

So what next:
It fairly obvious you need two things urgently:

1) You need to complete and fill out your Google Profile as much as possible... Personal or Business it needs to be done and done properly. Give people the Information they need to contact you, your website, your Blog and your business.

Go the extra distance and ensure your company has a full Google Page like mine... get on the bandwagon.

2) Get a Google Plus button onto every page of your website - give the power of sharing to your users quickly and immediately and encourage them to make use of it.

Remember - when searching Google people will see their friends activities first. Before your company's.

I think that is about it - I haven't even touched on the social media concepts of Google Plus, this Blog is about the effects the latest changes at Google Search will have on your website and business.

Repost.us: Website Hosting

2012-01-10T10:28:00.001+01:00

Website Hosting (via Online Marketing)

Flowchart for Social Media

2012-01-09T16:00:00.000+01:00

Click to Enlarge

A Twitter Strategy for 2012

2012-01-07T20:08:00.000+01:00

In early 2011 I realised I had been using Twitter for FOUR whole years! Yikes, I had well under 100 followers (I think it was about 60) and here I was propounding the brilliance of Twitter (See Blogs posts in Jan, Feb, Mar and April 2011)... Twitter for this and Twitter for that, customer services, news, customers and all the rest.

I set about getting more followers, my realistic aim was to follow two people for every person that followed me... I would go to that a new followers account and manually follow two of their followers... (having read quickly a small amount about them)... This believe it on not work well... by February I had 700 followers, it was exponential, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 and so on... it was working...

I would also say that during this time I signed up for every Twitter program I could find from the brilliant www.manageflitter.com to the less impressive www.hubspot.com. You can see the remnants of this work on my LinkedIn Group 'Twitter Tools' and to be fair much of this group remains valid today.

When I reached about 900 followers I stopped my strategy of adding two for one follower... I was inundated and indeed I have today 2356 new Twitter followers that I have not responded to. So I stopped... In the course of April, May, June, I let things flow and they did I was gaining lots of followers and through using a site like www.twittercounter.com I was able to monitor my growth... by July I was about 1600 up.

Then I went through a period of 'what's it all for' - call it my mid-life Twitter crisis, I certainly wasn't gaining any new business and looking at my stream just bored me to tears... it seemed Twitter consisted of millions of stall holders in a giant marketplace with no customers. I tweeted 'Twitter - one giant marketing place where everyones a stall holder and there are no customers'. Zero response was naturally achieved.

And now for the crux of the matter, I of course was not really alone and plenty of my customers experienced the same sort of thing. Very little response. The ROI on using something like Twitter and Social Media seems further away then ever, I wrote about how you might measure ROI, but all to no response, from anyone, my clients or my followers.

Then along came www.klout.com (Don't worry I'm not going to say anything nice about them), and the whole web marketing community suddenly had a measuring stick. A Yard stick that you could say x was doing better than Y... there was/is still not the remotest concept of an actual ROI within all this, but people were now able to say I moved your scrore from 11 out of 100 to 32... result...

But, it's not the case is it... it means nothing, being influential does not equal sales, plenty of companies get by just fine without any influence and in this case the measuring tools can only be described flaky at the very best... But I'm going off subject here, what we need is a Twitter Strategy.

I strongly believe I had the right basics in place. Follow your followers followers. It's easy, if manual, but you can vet every person you follow and through the exponential rule of 2, 4, 8, 16 you will quickly form a following of about 1000 people...

The next 1000 people will be slower, but more naturally, people will follow you largely for the sake of it and not because they are interested... However when you have around 2000 people you need to start (or rather for that ROI in question) you can start to take Twitter a little bit more seriously. it starts becoming worth you effort to make something out of it.

So one year on and now that I have been on Twitter for FIVE years - my next strategy is to improve the quality of my Twitter Following... I need to remove the trash and beef up the quality people that are useful to me... whereas I started following news and media Twitters and minor celebs I need to move on and follow people that effect me... largely that is suppliers, journalists, people I read about, website designers, clients, and people that I think will have a positive contribution to make to my day and my Twitter Stream.

Things have changed and 2012 will see an even greater take up of Twitter in general, it's going to grow, so my recommendation now is - get a decent sized account, 2000, or even 4000, followers should be about right, and then go for quality... remove the blatant marketeers and spammers and make sure when ever you read a news story, or articles, or blog or website - add that person to Twitter... Because they will be very likely to follow you back and then their 'followers' will see you news.

Sound good? Comments welcome!

Bloggers - take heart

2012-01-06T14:09:00.000+01:00

Do you slightly wonder whose reading your hard work... who is actually looking at your Blog and investigating and even taking things to the next step. Let's not forget a primary reason for having a Blog is to engage with your customer base.

Fact is most customers won't be reading your Blog, fact is even those that are subscribed to the Blog won't read it or the email that was sent or the RSS feed they are following.

I suspect the only two groups who will be reading your Blog are:

Search Engines and therefore for SEO purposes your Blog is very valuable and
Random customers/user - people who see the Blog on the home page of your website or newsletter or some other place.

This is very exciting and presents a big challenge to you, firstly though the target is always to gain more subscribers, because even if most don't read it - at least you'll be on call if they do want to know more.

However the next opportunity is to get your content read elsewhere. The key difference between a Blog and say the 'news' page of your website is that with a Blog you can actually do something with it. That is a massive difference because it means others can feed off your expertise and you can actively go out and get people to talk about it.

Do not think people will come along and say - oh you're writing some great articles - it's like waiting for the number 73 - you'll be lucky if it comes at all.

Instead think how you can republish your news in other places. An example:

www.repost.us - this website syndicates your Blog to other publishers. Even big news websites are looking for content - they need to see and find yours...

Finding these websites that allow syndication of your content is hard to do... and at first might seem daunting a little, but if you can get your articles on 10, 20, 30 other websites - that would be a significant amount of extra coverage you would receive.

Learning English the Frenchmans way!

2012-01-06T11:24:00.002+01:00

If you can pronounce correctly every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world.

After trying the verses, a Frenchman said he’d prefer six months of hard labour to reading six lines aloud.

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Fe0ffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation (think of Psyche!)
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

English Pronunciation by G. Nolst Trenité

2012 - Who will you be employing this year?

2012-01-02T12:02:00.000+01:00

And so we march into the New Year, I hope it will be a happy and prosperous one for everyone.

No predictions from me, I'm afraid, but instead I have list of Jobs you should be employing someone for this year:

Blogging - this is getting serious now, having a Blog is now defacto and essential to your website presence, but why stick at one, there's WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, SquareSpace, TypePad to name just a few... your SEO and website should be on all of them!

Hire someone to run your blogs, because it's now becoming a full time job.
Social Media - This was last years news, but it sticks ever more to the top of a corporate agenda, with the introduction of Google + it's more important than ever. Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn remain the three biggies, but Google + is right there and there are going to be some major moves in this direction.

Hire someone to run your social media, it remains essential to backing up your whole on-line effort.
Mobile - The rise of the mobile phone and iPhone, iPad and Android is relentless, but you cannot just stick your website on it, it won't cut it... you need tailored, relevant and immediate content for the Mobile phone. Running an iPad is almost harder than making it.

Hire someone to manage your mobile content, it will pay dividends this year and may even transform the way you do business all together.
Archiving - For years you've been gathering photos, creating content, writing brochures, newsletters... why do companies let all that hard work go to waste... yes times move on, but without a historical caretaker you are wasting so much effort.

Hire someone to sort out the old photos, organise your content, sort your address book out and manage a strategy to make all this information useful.
Content Management - Separated from and archivist, you need strategy and direction for the future needs of the company - whose going to take what photos, planning the Christmas Product Launch, the Summer Sale - it can't be done last minute any more, it has to be factored into the plan.

Hire someone to form, manage and enact a full content strategy for the website and all of the above.

All of the above could be full time jobs in their own right and there is no limit to any of their jobs, save the Archivist if you haven't gathered very much content to date.

The real issue though is that at the heart of your Internet Strategy you to produce collective, relevant and frequent content about your product or service to stay in the main stream of the Internet. Things have gotten way beyond leaving it at just a website and the web is going to favour those that invest now!

Free Hosting for 6 months

2011-12-19T17:53:00.000+01:00

Recommend a Friend and we'll give you 6 months free website hosting. This Christmas we've a great offer for you worth up to £474.00 on our top package.

All you need to do is recommend a friend and as soon as they sign up to NCompass Hosting we'll give you and them 6 months free website hosting.

Small Print:

We'll add six months to your renewal date, so if you renew annually, there'll be nothing to pay for an extra 6 months.
If you recommend 2 friends will give you 12 months, 3 friends 18 months and so on. The sky is the limit.
Eligible only after your recommendation is signed up
Closing date 31st March 2012.

It's a fairly simple offer, but if you can persuade people to transfer their hosting you us, we hope they'll be pleasantly surprised.

Superb Customer Service - via telephone, email or helpdesk
Great Value for money
Fully customisable hosting, Linux, Windows you name it.
Every type of hosting available from help with AWS through to basic website hosting

And then there's our other expertise within webdesign, email services, SEO, Social Media, marketing, consulting, maintenance and much much more. No website hosting company will ever provide the range of services that we do.

A proper Back Up Solution for Websites

2011-12-16T18:21:00.000+01:00

If you are still not following my Blog then please start now, just add your email address in the right hand column.

Now, it's Christmas Time again, something like 25% of all eCommerce is taking place in these 3 fraught weeks and the impact across the Internet is under severe duress. When you read that Amazon Cyber Monday sales have risen from 2.3million orders last year to 3 million this year you know the Internet is picking up steam.

What then happens if you website goes down... As some of mine have done today... What do you do?

Most hosting companies have a 99.5-99.9% uptime agreement, but this invariably only covers you over a previous 30day period, but even at 99.9% that still leaves a possible hour per month of downtime, which at Christmas is critical. Couple this with the fact that most hosting companies only consider refunding a proportion of the fees you pay them... and that's pennies these days.

I've encountered this problem ever since I started web design almost 15 years ago... the Internet is inherently not built for this... Let me explain briefly:

Your Domain Name maps onto an IP address that is assigned to a specific server/computer somewhere, there about about 9 computers around that world that control this mapping system, it's complicated...

But in that single sentence you can see the issue, the IP address is assigned to a single server and that cannot be changed... mores the problem, if there is a problem with the server - you access it to alter the IP address. And because there are only a limited number of computers in the world that do this domain name to IP mapping it takes time for them to update, usually we call this propagation and this can take up to 72 hours to happen around the world.

These days you're looking at propagation taking 2 hours minimum, but more usually 24 hours (or over night)... by them everything will be working properly again and any changes you made will have been pointless because you just have to change it all back.

The system is flawed.

There are other complications, especially with databases... you can effectively only have a one database being updated by your website at a time, changes made to it are not replicated in real time to another database... that's a headache because now it means if you do revert to some sort of back system... the data you need is often not there.

The Solution

Launching an all new service at NComp@ss we're going to make this story a thing of the past for you. We're going to offer the ultimate back up solution so that this problem will never happen again. We not going to cure your host of their problems or change any SLA agreements, but we're going to set up your website in such a way that in less than 10 minutes you can swap over your Website to a completely backuped up system.

It'll be a manual request - it has to be, you will need to contact us and say - swap - but we'll handle all the nitty gritty.

Roughly this is how it will work.

You host your Domain Name with us on a specific DNS - where we can independently control where your website resides.
Next we will back up your entire website - daily and fully, we will also back up your database. We will be able to set the frequency of this back up process, for example you might want the database backed up every 30 minutes
A third layer of back up can be requested if required.
Unlike hosting companies we will have access to multiple host, DNS services, your actual website and any other tools we might need.
Back up email will be available as well if required or effected.

A note - this is not cloud hosting - much of the cloud hosting services today still tie you to the 99.5% uptime guarantee, they still link your domain name to an IP address and thus to a specific server or service.

And finally a note of costs, it is envisaged that every website will have it's own needs and it's own requirements, so costs can be worked out accordingly, but in reality we're looking at about £10 per month, or slightly more for bigger websites. Contact us directly for a quote.

We can give you the ultimate fail safe solution (something hosting cannot), but a manual decision to 'goto backup' is still required and that allows you to control your website and give you complete piece of mind for your website.

Happy Christmas Shopping.

Google Adwords Remarketing Explained

2011-12-15T16:42:00.001+01:00

The concept of remarketing is an age old one, advertise to the people who have already shown interest before... let's take an example.

You're a shop owner - people walk in and browse your shop... but maybe they don't buy anything... Wouldn't it be nice if once they have left the shop they see a bill board or other advert showing the very thing there were looking at only moments before, or maybe even a few days before.

Imagine you could infiltrate their television with a Advert with products related to what they were looking at in your shop.

Or maybe - if they actually brought something, a TV for example, you could advertise a CD player, speakers, home cinema, films to watch and so on.

Of course all that is impossible. No shop owner can advertise to such a precise level. But for good or bad the same is not true on-line. And indeed if someone visits your website and if they purchase something... well scarily Google can track it... Especially if they found you via Google Adwords in the first place.

Let's go back a few steps and see what is happening here. Because we should be clear this is not some sort of stalking or cyber spying, Google and others have gort around that stumbling block, this is about a user actively responding to an advert you (the shop owner) have placed on Google. Normal activities do not count. Google's only tracking you if you click an advert.

At this point Google can track the whole process, for years they have collected data on time, location, keywords used, ads responded to, and so on... it was only a matter of time that Google would allow us advertisers to use this data.

So when you switch on Google Adwords Remarketing (under Audiences in your account) - you're actually just using the data you are already collecting.

What happens is the following:

Potential customer clicks/responds to your advert
They are tracked through your website, products shown or bought
They leave your website, but Google remembers that user has visited your website
Now when the potential customer visits other websites that display Google Adverts it puts two and two together...
Your adverts are shown repeated (within reason) until the user responds again and look sat your website a second or third time, or they make a purchase.

The pros from a marketeers point of view are massive, the opportunity to advertise only to those that are already interested is great.

The cons however exists as well, repeat adverts can annoy, offend or even harass people.

For now the numbers speak for themselves, remarketing is garnering huge interest because quite simply it works.

With a caveat - and this is important - it will work much better for some people than others, particularly business with a long lead to sale time... to reassure, increase brand awareness and emphasis commitment to prospects is vital to long lead time to sale customers. So these are likely to be the Adwords customers Google are aiming for.

Blogging - what's it for?

2011-12-15T13:41:00.000+01:00

I thought I'd refocus attention on the Blog for a bit... Why do we do it, why do we recommend scratching heads, thinking of ideas, jotting things down, planning what to say, creating stories, digging out news and the odd photo. What is the point of a Blog.

The answer is as always with the Internet thee days, it's complicated. The Blog however should be seen as a massively useful tool for your on-line presence, here then are a few top reasons in my view.

Interaction - Blogs allow your customers and target audience to publicly interact with your company, service or personal ideas. Customers can comment directly on your articles and say what they think of you. I always recommend answering them however negative their views might be.
Responsiveness - Blogs allow you to be flexible - you don't have to stick to the corporate Branding... if anything I don't self promote enough, in fact I rarely promote anything at all. Blogs give freedom to express your ideas beyond the website.
Planning - Blogs are essential to planning your campaigns, if you put a Blog at the very centre of your marketing strategy, then it makes newsletters, mailing lists, social media, website content much much easier - no longer do you need to think up 3 stories for the e-Blast, no longer do you need to find a home for that Video you made the other day.
Technical - it really is easier to update a Blog than having to constantly edit your website, it's also extremely search engine friendly, often articles in Blogs appear on Google within days. You can also customise Blogs easily adapting to your latest logo and colour scheme.
Fun - I'm going to add this, because there is nothing better than getting real feedback for what you're doing... encourage comment, ask for opinions, ask questions, encourage debate and participate... just as you want people to contribute to your block, write on other peoples Blogs to. It all adds the fun.

Now for a couple of hints and tips... whose reading your Blog anyway?

A major goal should be to encourage people to 'subscribe' to the Blog... if they subscribe they will get email updates (just like newsletters) each time you update the blog... This can almost replace the need for separate newsletters.
RSS Feeds - you can use the data from the Blog feed in many different ways, form allowing people to follow you, to publishing your Blog on Facebook and Twitter, you can add Blog content to your website and manipulate the data as you see fit.

The answer to whose reading your Blog is as many people as possible, the more the better... But like everything this has to be encouraged and promoted. But the more relevant and thought provoking content you can provide and the wider you can distribute this content the bigger your readership will be, which in turn makes it all extremely relevant to your overall web presence.

Please subscribe to my Blog in the right hand column.

Blatant Advertising - But what is the family for?

2011-12-12T19:58:00.001+01:00

If any one is looking for a Christmas Present this year - my sister has written a lovely straight down the line, top notch and delicious book called 'Plot to Pot' and it is a great book about vegetables and cooking.

Proper book, and really good Christmas Present for anyone anywhere.

Another friend has written 'Land of Later On' it reached 3rd on Amazon and has been doing really well, so it must be good. If fiction is more your thing, then this too will make a great Christmas book for someone.

And thirdly, if you after a book that is more boyish there's Who Pays the Piper. Thsi book has been on the shelves for a while now and is still doing really well.

If only I could write a book!

Your Telephone Number

2011-12-08T10:14:00.001+01:00

I'm worried - on a recent UK trip I only took my phone with me, I used it to look up everything I needed, from train times to clients telephone numbers. I looked up plenty of websites on my mobile.

I was staggered at how many websites incorrectly displayed their telephone number. My phone as does I am sure most people's has the ability to link and call, all I have to do is press the number and I'll dialling the person/company I need to. Why then do so many of us get this wrong.

Let's cut to the chase - the ONLY format your telephone number should be displayed in is +442071938278. No spaces, no brackets, hyphens, or leading zeros... put your number as you expect a a phone to use it.

What not to do:

44 (0) 207 193 8278 - no plus sign no calling
0207 193 8278 - people cannot call from abroad
+44 (0)207 193 8278 - that zero really gets in the way.

About the only thing you might get away with are spaces... most phone will ignore these at least. But by far the biggest problem is having the leading zero.

If I don't earn at least £200 from changing various clients website to reflect this - I shall be very disappointed. My advice is to try call your organisation from your mobile website, if you get through then you have a better phone than me.

Has SEO been reduced to Article Submission

2011-11-27T11:33:00.024+01:00

A question to throw out there, I am constantly offered Search Engine Optimisation services, tips, hints and tricks, as I am sure most of the readers of this blog are. But my question is - is it all about Article Submission?

Just to explain quickly 'Article Submission' is the posting of articles on 3rd party websites that are relevant to your business. Without any real self-promotion these articles are subtlety linked back to your website. When Google trawls these articles their 'Bots' make a positive connection between the content in the article and your website thereby given your website 'authority' on the subject matter you are writing about.

If you're promoting a ski chalet you might writer about choosing ski chalets, Google will then boost your website as a result of the association.

There are now thousands of Article Submission websites available where you might post these articles and Google in turn have taken to ignoring some, allowing others and generally confusing the quality. Google argument there is no point in a Tennis website promoting articles on Ski Chalets for example. The content has to be relevant all round.

The problem is that with regard to 'off-site' SEO - what more can you do? Linking Building is still very effective, but harder work than ever before, websites that have links to your website leak SEO and also have to be related to your subject and business, but the incentive to link is becoming less and less.

The other hot topic is Social Media - having a Facebook Page or Twitter account both help SEO, as does almost any other social activity, but these need to come from the heart of a company, they are proving very difficult to outsource to marketing people.

So Article Submission - is the only remaining 'easy' option for off-site SEO that can be outsourced to an agency, that does not bode very well for either the concept of Article Submission or 'off-site' SEO.

Does anyone else have any ideas?

New Email Servers

2011-11-23T11:07:00.001+01:00

Further to our last post - some more news on our Hosting - which is receiving a major boost in order to improve the performance and reliability of your hosting services.

Migration Date: Sunday 27th November 2011 - 23.30 - 6.00
Some websites hosted will be unavailable periodically while a migration takes place

The MS-SQL Server - which hosts most of our databases - will be migrated to much more powerful hardware running the latest MS-SQL Server 2008 R2.

Migration Date: Thursday 24th November 2011 - 23.30 - 6.00
Expected downtime for SQL Server 2008 databases is up to 4hrs

We will also be replacing more servers this year including those that effect; Helm Control Panel, FTP, Statistics and database management tools and mail servers.

All our web servers will have the same software configuration and as such no changes will needed to be made to website code.

New Servers - New Services

2011-11-16T16:12:00.001+01:00

You'll have noticed that Google are updating virtually everything, from their search engine results through to this very Blog that I am writing on. Soon to be announced will be the end of Blogger and Picasa as these trade names may well be 'retired' - don't worry not that much will change, you'll still be able to thank Google for hosting your Photos and so on, but things will be renamed.

So to at NComp@ss things are changing, in 2010 we expanded the Marketing aspects of the business, concentrating on SEO and Google Adwords, early 2011 saw a big push on our ability to provide Social Media Marketing services and we've done a lot of work around that.

This autumn it is the turn of Website Hosting, we look after and manage many clients websites for them and this rather forgotten end of the business has had a major over haul. The result should be much faster websites, just let us know if you want to upgrade.

What's in it for you:

Faster website - more conversions or sales
Better email, peripheral services
More Backups - run daily/nightly - more secure
Wider range of services

What have we learnt doing this:

I wanted to touch on this - partly because this Blog might start feature more techie articles, but we've learnt a lot, the world of Cloud Computing, Servers, Security, Linux/Windows, and a whole host of chase-phase terminology has been opened to us.

If you ever need help understand about trend subjects like 'Cloud Computing' or 'Data Services' then just give us a call and we'll explain the ins and outs.

Estimating your ROI on Social Media

2011-10-14T13:03:00.001+02:00

This month I just want to focus on ROI and how to work them out on your Twitter and Facebook efforts.

I appreciate the difficulties in this area and it is frustrating, you offer a vast array of information and often it seems like few people take notice and even fewer buy anything, just why bother. Well you won't know unless you can work out the ROI.

First, quick aside - the most successful companies engage with their customers they do not sell to them. The real target is to persuade customers to come to you.

Three Rules for ROI:

Define your goals - you can just say - 'dollars' - you need to offer something to social media users that they can share and in the longer term buy into.
Define your Social Media return based on your goals. - this is the tough one - how do you know that a goal was reached because of social media, was it a newsletter, an advert or from some other source.
Define how you attribute actual 'dollars' to your social media return.

An example seems in order:
Let's say our goal is actual sales (more dollars) - we need to pick out the real sales that might have been generated through social media. There seem to me two ways to do this:

Using specific campaigns and promotional codes for social media, maybe having a landing page specific to social media, that sort of thing
Law of averages - let's say you use social media to encourage people to download your brochure, or fill out a booking form. You know that 2% of people that see your brochure buy something. You might also know that 50 people asked for the brochure through social media - therefore you might safely say 1 sales was placed due to social media.

Equally you know that 20% of all website visitors buy something, and social media suppliers 10% of all your traffic - you can then attribute 2% of all web sales to social media - actually you can measure this far more accurately if you choose.

The final step is to workout either your average order value in dollars or attribute real 'dollars' to each sale.

Finding an ROI for social media is possible and it needed be a lot of extra work either. It just a question of organisation.