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Now I don’t get out much so I’m incredibly slow on the uptake with new things in London. However, I was in the capital the other weekend doing the tourist thing; visiting the sites, getting squashed on Oxford Street and travelling on the city’s arterial transport routes. So there I am travelling around on a […]

This week Google launched their new ‘insight’ tool – and amazingly insightful it is too. I am absolutely hooked. Okay, I am a bit of a stato at heart so these sorts of tools really interest me. You will see in the following screenshot that I’ve run some SEO agency-related search phrases. Within seconds you […]

Over the past couple of months I’ve been tracking the fallout from the changes made by Google to their trademark policy. A couple of you have posted comments on our blog about this issue – Google trademark decision: 1 month on. Thanks for your responses; I’ll try and give some quick answers. A comment posted […]

The Google trademark update has been in place since the 5 May 2008. A month on I thought it would be useful to review the effects of the change. Firstly I’ll take a look at paid search (PPC) activity on Google Adwords and how it’s affected my clients. Here’s a summary my observations: As predicted, […]

From 5 May any advertiser will be able to bid on trademarked single words in the UK and Ireland. Previously companies could ask Google to protect single word trademarks. Multiple word searches have always been subject to open bidding. Many commentators – including the team here – have observed that this might be bad news […]

Websites aren’t just brochures. They should have calls-to-actions and goals. In my opinion, there’s little point in developing a web presence with no clear measure of success. Some will argue that recording an increase in the number of visitors to your website is a success, but in my book success isn’t achieved until your visitors […]

This post has one essential theme for you to take on board…. People use search engines using words. Search engines find and index relevant content using words. Design and develop your website using words not images. Put words at the centre of everything you do when designing and building a website and the signs are […]

1. Remember a sitemap has a dual purpose At Coast Digital we’ve always advocated the use of website sitemaps. As a sitemap.html/.xml file has historically been the best way to inform search engine robots of all – or at least, the most important – web pages on a site. Placing a sitemap link in the […]

Here are my musings on the relative merits of quantitative versus qualitative research in web development. I hope you’ll find the information of value to your daily work. I’ve conducted various types of research online but it should be clear which method I think adds the most value to our clients’ businesses. If this post […]

The issue of online advertising appearing alongside inappropriate material isn’t about to go away. The web, by its very nature, is dynamic and ever-changing. Ads are served into a web page in real-time so there is no easy way to editorially control how a page will look once it is generated, as has recently been […]