Caught in the Web - our blog

Buying (and Selling) Links to your Website - Don't Do It
published 28 Feb 2013
by Bob Grant
Getting other websites to link to yours is one of the most important tasks in improving your search engine rankings.
Selling advertising space on your website is a great way of generating revenue if you've already got lots of people visiting you.
This makes it very tempting for Webmasters to consider paid links and advertorials.
But from a search engine point of view this is akin to turning to the dark side of the force.

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Google Authorship Or How to Tell the Search Engines I Wrote That
published 21 Feb 2013
by Bob Grant
Have you ever noticed when you do a search on Google that some people manage to get a nice little picture of themselves beside the pages they have written? Wouldn't it be great if you could get the same recognition for your work?
Well, here's the good news. You can, and it's quite easy to set up.
Getting the search engines to recognise who wrote a page is all part of the Google Authorship program. Its purpose is really twofold.

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Don't Get Blinded by Science - Website Design Jargon
published 31 Jan 2013
by Bob Grant
I got an email today from an overseas company offering to help me redesign my website using the latest technologies. I'm sure you've all had at least one of these and they all seem to follow the same basic format.
"We have look through you website and have knowledge you can benefit from our website design services. We are highly experienced in......", followed by an impressively long list of website design jargon.

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How to make money with your website using affiliate marketing
published 24 Jan 2013
by Bob Grant
Your website is a powerful marketing tool. When someone visits one of your pages you have an opportunity to encourage them to take some positive action. You can think of each website visitor as having a potential value. But how do you turn this potential value into hard cash?
The usual way to do this is to market your own products and services.

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2013 - The Year of the Tablet
published 11 Jan 2013
2013 The Year of the Tabletby Bob Grant
Since the introduction of the iPad and iPhone there's been a marked shift in the way people are accessing the Internet. Before smartphones and tablets there really wasn't any alternative to using a full-size laptop or desktop computer. But nowadays there is an endless range of devices that give you a full web experience.

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How to secure your account with a strong password
published 21 Dec 2012
by Bob Grant
"Enter your password here". How many times a day do you have to type in some username and password combination to get access to a website?
"Aha!", I hear you say, "I've got my browser to remember my login details".
But how safe is that? Can't anyone using your computer now access your accounts?
Username/password combinations are the usual way we lock access to personal information on websites.

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5 Ways to Improve Your Productivity
published 23 Nov 2012
by Bob Grant
Running any sort of business takes a lot of effort. Making your business work online just adds to your workload. You need to use your time as effectively as possible so you have a little time to call your own.
If you've been reading my articles for a while you'll know I've discussed what's needed for online success.

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Make sure you build links the natural way
published 19 Oct 2012
by Bob Grant
Links are vital to pushing your website up the search engine results lists. If you can't get other websites to link to you the you're not going to get to the top of the search results.
A couple of posts ago I talked about building SEO links and how you could rate them depending on what sort of website the link was on. In this post I'm going to show you how even "Good" links need to be controlled to keep on the right side of the search engine spam filters.

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6 Top Tips for Targeting Keywords
published 12 Oct 2012
by Bob Grant
Recently I've been talking about how to write webpages that rank well in the search engines. The last few blog posts have been about how this has changed following Google's Panda and Penguin updates. A few people have asked about how this relates to keywords and how we can target them on our pages without triggering Google spam filters.
Keywords are the phrases people actually type into the search engine's search box.

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SEO Linking - The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
published 5 Oct 2012
by Bob Grant
In my last post I looked at how to write your webpage content to keep Google's Panda and Penguin happy. But having great content is only half the story to getting your website to the top of the search engine results pages.
To rank well in the search engines you need links.
Incoming links are when another website mentions your site on one of their pages and provides a hyperlink people can click to view your pages.

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