Accountant Cheshire

We are having some real issues trying to find a decent accountant, the first accountant that was recommended to us what pretty useless and turned out not to be a qualified accountant in this country therefore at the most could just offer us expensive book keeping services.

The second Cheshire accountant that was recommended to us by another SEO Company turned out to be the worst prefessional experience I have had in my life! With blatant rudeness and I felt sexist attitude towards myself since he was incredibly condescending to me and my husbands mum who was helping us with bookkeeping but not so bad with my husband.

This accountant would continue to come round for meetings unprepared even though I had specifically emailed him to confirm what needed to be done and brought by him to the meeting. He claimed he never made notes as it was 'all up here' in his head however he didn't listen to us even on the simplest things and I worried he wasn't actually able to do the job.

This seems to have been a valid concern as he messed up some very simple accounting tasks and we are unsure if he set up our PAYE properly. We asked him for 3 weeks to sort the VAT return but in the end my husband ended up doing it as he left it too late then accused us of not giving him the information to do it.

Anyway long story short and we are not using him anymore- after a very unprofessional scene by him on our doorstep!

I'm starting to wonder if the other seo company that recommended him to us to try to sabbotage us as he is soo bad!

Video Animation on North Londonshire

As an old fan of Paddington bear I found this video on You tube and loved it!

Have a look at the full sized version on You tube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wNweSXa1o8
It is about a controversial re branding of the Northamptonshire area to North Londonshire which is about 90 miles from London. It is being promoted as a good place to live with good schools and jobs and if you live in London commutable in an hour. Much cheaper and bigger houses than London.
However people of Northamptonshire aren't to pleased about being called North Londonshire. It doesn't look like it actually is a re brand more a promotion and many people are annoyed that public money is paying for this although after a bit of digging I found that actually it is a Development company paying for the promotion.

I'm not taking sides in this debate but I do love this video so take a look and let me know what you all think.

You can also do a personalised version of this video and sending to your friends at http://www.northlondonshire.co.uk/a-place-for-you

Deleting Posts

I hate deleting posts as I feel they are a good representation of my feelings at the time of writing and if my opinion changes I will happily update the original blog wothout taking it down.

However I have just been forced to remove a blog from this site due to my employers recieving a solicitors letter from a large company who are bullying the into speaking the truth. They wrote a factual blog to which many people viewed and commented and I wrote about it here as it was topical.

They have removed their blog and have forced me to remove mine.
May I remind you that this blog is my opinion and nothing to do with my employers now or in the past.

I love it that a large company will bully a smaller company who merely reported something they were doing which turned out to upset thousands of people.

Good to see propaganda and censorship is still booming!

SASCon

SASCon is Manchesters first proper grown up conference for SEO, Analytics and Social (SAS - get it) and I attended on Wednesday.

This was my first conference of the year and probably the only one I'll have time for this year but I really enjoyed the one day event.

It was really good to meet SEO and Social heroes that I follow on Twitter and hear their points on the changes facing us as Google and users change the way the internet and search engines are used.

The keynote was from You Tube and had some good stats on how video is being used more and more on the web. Got me very enthusiastic about changes to the You tube site and potential opportunities for clients.

I also really enjoyed the black hat white hat panel - unlike other conferences, people spoke openly about tactics and what will continue to work.

I really enjoyed the social media panels there were a few of them but each of the speakers managed to find new points so it never got boring!

I really enjoyed the day and for once decided to be sociable in real life and stayed out for the comedy night and pie and chips mmmm

Was great to meet people in real life and I got very boozy having geeky conversations about the event. For my full review check out my recent SASCon blog.

Ouse Bridge House, Bassenthwaite, nr Cockermouth, Cumbria,

Ouse Bridge House

My sister in law experienced the worst BnB experience in Cumbria last night when she was turned away after 5 1/2 hours on the road stuck in traffic.

Bed and Breakfast Cumbria

I am originally from Cumbria and went to School in Cockermouth and always rave about what a lovely place it is and how friendly the people are! However my Sister in law got a completely different impression of Cumbria from Stephen and Katie.

My sister in law was visiting Cumbria on a business trip to actually take photos of north Cumbria for her work. She had an early start but as she was working the day before had a late start. She set off as soon as she finished work but even with good traffic it is a 3-4 hour drive. Unfortunately it was not good traffic and their were road works and accidents meaning she was running late. She new she would arrive late and had told Katie of Ouse Bridge House that she expected to arrive at 10.30. However with the traffic accidents on the M6 she was running late so rang Ouse Bridge House to let them know she would be around abother 40 mins to an hour so 11.30 at the latest...

Ouse Bridge House - Unacceptable

When she spoke to Katie at Ouse Bridge House, Katie informed her that this was unacceptable and she had to find alternative accomodation. My sister in law had no money - end of the working month and had paid up front. She does not know the area, is tired from driving for over 5 hours already- understandably she is upset!

Arguing with Katie my sister in law got very upset on the phone and raised her voice in distress at which point Ouse Bridge House hung up on her and refused to answer the phone. She left an angry message on their answer phone and proceeded to phone everyone she knew to go online and find accomodation in the area.

She was struggling with her phone signal so her fiancee rang around, everywhere was booked up and time was ticking, the thought of being alone in a place she didn't know with expensive equipment in the car making her feel even more vulnerable was distressing enough and the temperature was dropping.

Luckily she did find alternative accomodation although had to drive an extra 30 miles out of her way.

Ouse Bridge House Reviews

We are all happy she is ok although they emailed a respoinse to her trying to turn this around on her. Well mt sister in law works for a web company who do SEO as well and she knows the value of online reputation. Ouse Bridge House and their complete disregard for her safety obviously don't understand the value of online reputation as she is making sure every Ouse House review has her story on it, she is even blogging about it on a Cockermouth Bed and Breakfast blog .

The Times Disappears from Google

The times is one of the most powerful websites for publishing news and content in the UK and today it disapeared from Google!

Many other internet explorers spotted this and commented as this could be a trial for when the paywall comes up. Murdoch wants Google to stop stealing his websites content.

Having looked at the website their was no obvious tags such as no index in the robots.txt or the METAs which would cause the site to not be crawled. I don't know what happened but this afternoon the times went from having no pages indexed to 250,000 pages indexed. This could be a technical blip, a trial for the paywall, or has Google spat it's dummy out and decided to show the Times how much they really need Google.

The funny thing was Google news was still picking up the stories and some of the subdomains were still getting cached and indexed.

More problems with Fasthosts

After my recent rant about Fasthosts I hoped I wouldn't have to deal with them again, but we built a website for a builders in Staffordshire. We put up an SEO friendly holding page on the domain they had, but throughout development the client decided to use another domain. Webuild the site and sent it live but needded to get the holding page down as there was some duplicate content and the holiding page was actually ranking better than the new site.

This holding page was on a fasthosts server - yes here we go again!

My husband Luke called fasthosts and they said they would call him back - after a week and no call (even though he explained it was urgent as if was affecting the SEO campaign), I advised Twitter as this was how I got my issue resolved. He Tweeted them but no reply.
The client Tweeted Fasthosts - but no reply
I tweeted my annoyance at Fasthosts(to my 600 + followers) and they finally got in touch - 2 weeks aftetr the initial call and still no phone call from Customer service as promised.

My client tweeted the details but nothing happened.

After another week I complined to Fasthosts via Twitter again and the Twitter team got back in contact, my client was getting frustrated and asked they deal directly with my husband.

Yesterday after numerous calls, and Tweets and Emails we finally got the small issue of removing the account and forwarding the domain name to the new site.

Such a small job but took four weeks of constant pestering to get this sorted reinforcing that you should never use fasthosts!!

Tweet you later...

Twitter has revealed there plan to monetise on the popular social media platform and their idea is - promotional tweets and advertising!

Woo hoo!*sarcastic tone*

We were expecting some amazing announcement on a new way to make money but it seems they are following facebook and Google with pay per click style adverts and are now offering businesses the chance to pay people to retweet there comments and posts!

I'm not sure if this will work but I will be pissed off if my timeline on Twitter suddenly gets filled with Starbucks adverts and posts!

Businesses can use Twitter to manage their reputation and engage with their clients, this is a natural progression and has worked well for businesses who have genuine information and informative articles to share. Businesses that do the best will converse with other users and share other peoples posts as well as their own.

We'll see if Twitter makes this work and if the adverts scare off users like they did on MySpace. I hope they make it work and progress from phase one of the buisiness model to omething a bit more elaborate.

Digital Economy Bill

Here is a good video on the Digital Economony Bill, it shows the main issue of Music and Film downloads and how it is the corporations that have pushed this free.

I do agree with some aspects of the Digital Economy Bill, but the biggest issue is pariament and MP's are not listening to the people, but the corporations and this will have a big effect on freedo of speech, social media and the blogosphere.

Have a look at this video and see what you think....

British produce the most web pages than anyone in Europe

Amazingly the British population produce on average 17 pages of content per person! Not sure of the timeframes for this but considering the population this is quite a number especially as many people still do not have internet access or are web savvy!

I expect this to go up as more and more people get blogging and it isn't that surprising as English is the dominant language on the internet. It is also the language most spam is in so the quality of some of these web pages is probably not to be desired!

2nd place in the European content writing race is Germany who produce 10 pages per person (again not sure of timeframes for this) always nice to beat the Germans at something!

April Page Rank Update

This weekend has seen a Google Page Rank update and we are really pleased that all of the sites we do SEO for have seen an increase in their Page Rank.

Also SEO Creative our main website has seen the Page Rank go up to a PR 2, this may not seem great to you but the site only went live in September (we bought the domain and put a holding page up in May) so for a 6 month old site we are really pleased. Especially as we haven't done any aggressive link building for the site- a case of spending more time on clients sites than our own.

Box Pro however has dropped slightly so this quater we will be increasing the work on the Box Pro site to get it back to the level it was. We think this is because we haven't done much work on Box Pro no link building and the site really needs to be updated with recent work.

I had a look at a few competitors and it seems many sites have stayed the same with this update, I have also noticed a poor distribution of PR on some sites, due to cannonical URLs or bad navigation. SEO Creative has seen many inner pages get an even distribution of page rank so we are going to work more on some of our landing pages over the next few months.

Paid Links for SEO

I have worked for a number of SEO companies in the past and experienced results using paid links as well as sourcing links ethically. I consider myself to be a reputable SEO, my clients sites are whiter than white and I am meticulous to detail to on page work. However links to sites will help the rankings and compliment any on page SEO work we do.

Links are like recommendations that you should visit a site and search engines like Google hold some weight on these links, especially if they are relevant to your industry, from other reputable sites, and use a keyword in the anchor text.

The thing is it is against Google guidelines to purchase links for your website, but any competitive industry has obvious paid links. So what do you do?

As an SEO you often look at the competition and replicate or beat their link portfolio, but when a site is using paid links do you do the same?

There are other methods of aquiring links, blog posts can encourage natural links, link bait and viral campaigns can do very well, press releases, article submissions etc but there are no guarantees.

My question is do you buy links to increase the clients back links knowing it is against google guidelines? Or do you carry on in the knowledge you may struggle to compete?

Be interested to know peoples thoughts....

Fasthosts

The past few weeks SEO Creative have been re designing some websites for clients, normally this isn't a big issue and it all runs quite smoothly but 2 of our clients had previously been on Fasthosts servers.

We haven't used Fasthosts for over 18 months as the servers were very slow and they prevented the use of htaccess files meaning that 301 redirects and SEO friendly permalinks were impossible. This is a fundamental functionality. This combined with no proper cpanel meant second rate sites with problems with re designs.

Having lost the will to live after various issues with fasthosts I eventually closed all accounts down and moved everything to another server. We have had no problems with any servers we use now and forgot about our previous issues with fasthosts.... until now!

We tried to rebuild the sites using the current servers but it was clear once the new site went live there were going to be 404 errors all over the place and without htaccess we couldn't 301 redirect them. We decided to move the sites to our own servers but even that was an issue.

I could go on for ages about the technical problems we were having but what really annoyed me was the customer service. Trying to close the accounts you have to ring a premium number give them account details and tell them the problem. Instead of sorting the account however they always say we will get someone to call you back.

After 4 days waiting for a call back and another call to customer service I ranted on my Twitter page. I was quite pleased when Fasthosts Twitter account got back to me. It was an unorthodox way of working but they fixed the first problem quickly.

However the second site we went through the same issue, we called up and were told that this elusive customer service team would call us back... this is now 5 days ago.

I suggested using the Twitter method and 3 days ago tweeted them - nothing....

I have tweeted them again but not a peep from Fasthosts. In the mean time we have a client very angry at us that we can't sort this problem out.

Word to anyone considering using fasthosts- DON'T - Just Don't!

Manchester Offices

Working from home is great but recently we have felt a bit limited as we are not as flexible for client meetings.We are looking at different options for Manchester Offices as we feel this is a good place to be based.

Manchester hosts some of the best creative companies so we would fit in well lol! Depending on how the next few months go we can look into shared offices or serviced offices. Really time will tell how we move forward but it is very exciting!!

Firing a Client

I never thought I'd have to say it but this week we had to fire 2 clients! The reason being that the clients were taking too long to pay, and trying to get us to do work for free. We can be quite generous with our workload and often do a few extra bits as a gesture of good will but these clients were draining and taking valuable time away from the clients who paid on time.

I saw an blog about firing a client and this gave me the added push to do it. I hate to fire clients but in this economy it is better for the business to stick to lovely clients who appreciate the extra effort we go to for them.

Have a look at the article on when to fire a client and ho to do it properly!

SEO Creative Best Month ever

Well SEO Creative was formed in May last year and has had Luke on it full time since September and things have been going well. In October it was going so well that I could leave my job to get better after a Kidney infection.

I joined SEO Creative in December although I did help out a bit before, and this month has been amazing.
January is supposed to be a quiet month but so far I have spent so long doing proposals talking to clients and working on their sites that we are having to work weekends as well as getting more freelancers.

We are really pleased how things are going and hopefully it will continue.
Wich us luck peeps!

The Apple iPad

The Apple iPad was released today and has had more publicity than even they could imagine!
There has always been a cynical love hate battle between Mac users and PC users and the split over the iPad is quite similar.

The choice of name is quite obvious linked to the iPod it is a dissapointing label from such a creative company especially as many have picked up on the reference to sanitary pads and Twitter users have come up with the #itampon, the #iSanitaryPad etc.
This isn't helped by the old funny video showing the iPad 
The PC tablet has been around for years and Apple even had a go themselves a few years back but bever succeeded.The technology and design used in the iPhone has obviously been brought in to the production of the iPad but like the iPhone I can imagine it will be very buggy and replaced in 12 months time with a 2G version.
What this iPad could do is revelutionase the use of e detailing, the pharmaceutical industry have been using PC Tablets for ages for their e detailing aids to show products, use for e learning etc and reps can take these tablets around quite easily.
I hope enough people buy the tablet to reinvest the money Apple will inevitably want before developing a 2G and 3G version that may revolutionise the way we use computers!

Fairy Fun

One of my friends posted this to my facebook page today I thought it was amusing as I am a fairy lover and celebrated hen do by forcing my friends to dress up as fairies.
Thought I'd share it with you guys  :)

Well we've had a great week this week with some exciting new Viral Campaigns coming up this month, I love working on Virals its so much fun but it is hard work getting them to work properly!

I have recently written a blog on the importants of real time analytics in the first days of a viral launch have a look and let me know what you think or if you have anything to add.

I'll be updating this a bit this week as I have 2 Virals, am sorting doing some big PPC builds and Facebook PPC campaigns as well as making sure a few sites go live! January has been a good month our best yet in terms of profit since we started SEO Creative in August (and I joined in November). I am also speaking at a WiRE (Women in Rural Enterprise) event on Tuesday so better have athink about what I'm going to say ha ha.

Bye for Now
SEO Belle x x

Whats going on with Google

In my eyes Google managed to go from hero to zero in less than a day!

Yesterday reports on how Google China reacted to being hacked by showing censored material from its SERPs then offends the English language by reverting to Americanised spelling of British words in the UK SERPs!

China's government is ruled by censorship and although they are trying to give the impression of an evolving modern community, China has to put up with cyber police who ensure any material on censored subjects does not show up.

Apparently Google was hacked into by the Chinese Government, trying to access human rights activists' Gmail accounts and responded by listing material the government had banned in its search engines.

Google China has never had the market share in the Chinese search engines but was still used, apparently by showing such materials Google is risking being banned themselves! I am pleased for Google that they seemed to take a stand against this big brother society (quite ironic due to Google's own dominance in some areas) and also pleased it has drawn attention and awareness to other societies.

Yeah Google!!

Wait, don't get too excited, only hours after these first reports I (and many other Internet explorers) noticed some discrepancies in the Google UK SERPs, if I searched for search engine optimisation I was showed American results for search engine optimization, a small difference in spelling but a big F- You to English language!

This not only degrades our culture but reinforces the opinion of American spelling being the norm whereas in history this is not the case but just colloquial versions of our own standards - Yes I did English A level lol. This is not just Britain but other English speaking countries such as Australia are being pushed into results only relevant to Americans.

This totally contradicts Google's personalised search results and the whole purpose of having geo locations and geo targeting in search engines. Why bother using ip recognition to direct us to correct search engines if you are only going to show us American results any way!? And is this the service you expect to keep a market share in the UK showing irrelevant results to a whole nation!

Having a 70% + Market share is one thing but if you give us random American results then do not expect to keep it! I can see Bing in the corner rubbing their hands saying 'I love it when a plan comes together!'

I hope Google gets this sorted as it is my Search Engine of choice but they have obviously launched new crawlers without testing thoroughly enough in markets other than the US. Simply not good enough!

Perhaps Google china was not a purposeful rebellion against the Chinese government but just standardisation to the good old American way!

Y'all come back now ya hear!!

No sick pay when you work for yourself :(

Working for your self has many perks, I have worked for a few top agencies and by doing that I always put in 100%. I often got burned by employers that didn't appreciate the unpaid overtime I put in but the clients always appreciated it so I didn't stop working this way.

I used to work for a company who were and still are a talented bunch of SEOers, web designers and web developers. And I enjoyed working on the campaigns but unfortunately before I got married I got a Kidney Infection that got quite serious. I couldn't commit to the company as I felt I should and decided to take a career break.

As time went on and my money ran out I had planned to get another job but the infection has proven to be more serious than first thought. I am still having numerous appointments at the doctors therefore could not work at another agency without either compromising my health or not putting the time a company would deserve. I then joined my husband in his venture SEO Creative, helping project manage, look after accounts and do my favourite bits of Internet marketing campaigns. Having the boss as my husband I can choose what is the best use of my time and work how suits me best - even in my PJs sometimes lol :).

However the bad thing about working for yourself is no sick pay, with my Kidney infection I am in pain but I can control that and still work well. I can make up time if I need to go to a hospital appointment and the overtime I do doesn't matter as I get out what I put in. It is also much better as at home I can drink a lot of water and this helps me whereas I wouldn't in a company.

Today however I have flu :(

This is when I could do with having a generous company allow me a few days sick to recover, I am drinking lemsip out of a MyMadEx mug and trying to focus on getting the accounts in order before my meeting with the accountant.

Just goes to show you there are pros and cons to every situation. Right I am off to make some chicken soup.

SEO Creative

WE are working on the seo creative site, and it is in a lot of need, the site we have up was put up in a week as we needed something up when the business first started (who wants a web design and SEO company that don't have a website)!
Its been live about 5 months now and we didn't have the chance to do much on page SEO, quite embarrasing really but client work comes first.
We are going through the site and optimising the pages based on a keyword map we have only just put together ha ha! We are also adding new pages on the services we offer and elaborating a little more about what we do.
We meant to do all of this over Christmas but ended up getting ahead on a client job but hopefully the new site will be live soon and we can practice what we preach!

An SEO Grrrrl!

I am an SEO fanatic who spends too much time online, I have a company called Media Pro where we have various products services and a network of sites. The main site is on SEO and Website Design this is for anyone who needs Internet Marketing for their business. We also have review sites, fun sites, wedding advice sites, and a Boxing Website all of which trade under the Media Pro Umbrella.
Well... that is me but this blog is purely for fun!
Keep updated on my life and the funny things I find online!!