I mentioned in a previous post that I was going to update the design of this blog. Well I’ve just done that. I like to keep things minimal as you may have guessed so the theme is very sparse. I created the theme myself.

Some people like to mirror the exact design of their website on their blog and there is nothing wrong with that. I personally like a blog to be a bit more distinct and perhaps more about information than design. Hence the minimalism.

I did however add the word ‘blog!’ to our logo above in red – just in case there was any confusion!

For my weekend blog I needed to check on the winners of the aforesaid Golden Spiders so I googled Golden Spider Winners 2008 and was delighted to see John Breslin’s blog as the only available source of this info. Checked again today and yes the Golden spiders site has been updated…..but only a small text link to the results – according to the landing page you can still enter for 2008, according to the linked page they will be announcing the winners shortly. And the Google listing has been joined by John Breslin on Twitter.

Is this not just the antethisis of a dynamic web presence! Does anyone else think it rather odd that the venerable organisation making awards to the industry is not even able to keep its own website up to date.  A good argument guys for ditching it and blogging or twittering instead!

Running a training day for Westmeath County Enterprise Board in Athlone today and decided to give the guys the chance to respond to the new challenges that the new interactive ‘read and write’ web environment poses.  Those in the accommodation sector are well aware of Trip Advisor et al but its a new concept to many and ewe are spending the afternoon exploring new channels and their relevance for businesses present

Thanks to the two people who spotted some broken links on an article linked to the GiftGallery.  It often happens when you are at your busiest the simple stuff gets missed and it set me to thinking about the tools we use every day to check stuff, in addition to our more specialist auditing software.  All I need to do is use them myself occasionally!

W3c has a range of tools including their Link checker 

I like this page size checker although it is rather draconian on advisory sizes ( I am not today going to talk about the state of Irish broadband!) but page size has an effect on search performance as this recent article on why heavy web pages can cost you business shows

And my latest fad is the new Google Alerts Service right now I am beta testing it against the media search service we use – it could save me a packet! And when I publish this blog I know I will get an alert for GiftGallery within hours. Ever felt you were being watched? Is this good? Of course it is for SEO and for watching others but… anyone else feel this has a privacy implication?

More useful web marketing links can be found here

This week finally I responded to almost 12 months’ worth of requests from Linked In participants to ‘link’. Why? Well Albert suggested I added him to my list of contacts. And Albert is a very special person.

 Within a day I had contact from 8 people who I had lost contact with. None were business contacts, but somehow in my early days I had registered and forgotten about this sort of grown up myspace. So please if you want to talk to me this week please check this out. And I will report back if business transpires!

Barely a week passes that some geek seems to be urging us all to write business blogs. Should SMEs blog? Will it help grow business?

Often blogs seem to be sold as a means of providing dynamic content when a website is static, neglected and never updated. But is it not better to keep your website up to date and interesting and then , if you have time and energy left (and something interesting to blog about) think about starting a blog.

Should you use a free blog on a site like www.wordpress.com  or set one up within your own domain? Search Engine Optimisers tend to recommend the latter but there are two schools of thought:

• Blogging within a community domain like WordPress can provide valuable backlinks and drive traffic to your website
• Blogging within your own domain can increase the ranking of your domain through dynamic content – whether or not you regularly change your main website content. But you do need to work separately on promoting your blog within blogging communities

So with this in mind we decided at last to create a WordPress add-on to SitesToGo. This blog is the first of those to go live and several clients are considering blogs currently. 

The acid test is whether blogs get used regularly and whether they do attract the interactivity they promised. The challenge is not a technical one – rather to help clients develop a strategy for sustainable blogging so that their new tool does not wither and die….