Those of you who are paying attention will remember our quick and easy guide to link baiting – it was quick, and fairly easy, but didn’t really roll it’s sleeves up and tell you the types of content you might consider creating for link-baiting. Fret not, Econsultancy have published 15 types of content for link-baiting, which is well worth a read if you’re responsible for creating content for a web site.

The types of content they suggest are:

1. Lists
2. Create a great infographic
3. Have an argument
4. Say something controversial
5. Be a contrarian
6. Build tools
7. Launch a competition
8. Get an exclusive
9. Release a whitepaper
10. Be helpful
11. Amuse an dentertain
12. Involve the crowd
13. Say something bad about Apple
14. Write killer headlines
15. Do something new

While the list delivers some great food for thought, it is just that – food. Sorry, I mean thought. These are ideas on how your content could become great link-bait material, not the final content itself. Some of these ideas should be used almost all the time (choose one of: Be helpful, Amuse and entertain, Write killer headlines), whilst others may not fit into your own site’s content strategy. That’s fine, you don’t need them all, you just need to make sure whatever content your site is producing is relevant to your products or services, and it’s interesting. If you can’t do that, say something controversial.

If you’re struggling for content ideas, hopefully you’ll find something useful to dislodge that writers block…

Last week I wrote how site speed was starting to play a greater role in Google Rankings. I wrestled with myself a little over whether or not to publish that post because I knew that the bpodr site wasn’t as well optimised for speed as it could have been (WARNING: Low flying excuses incoming…) The site had only recently been re-launched under tight timescales, we have a lot of client work on at the moment, and the page speed of bpodr.co.uk wasn’t as important as getting the site up-and-running, and publishing useful content. However, the speed of a website is important, and this website is no different.

I decided to post it anyway, and use it as an opportunity to ease my embarrassment about bpodr.co.uk’s speed issues – I’d set myself a 7-day challenge: Improve the speed and performance of bpodr.co.uk.

I knew what I needed to do, I knew how to do it, but I was struggling to find the time. A public announcement that I was going to improve things seemed the perfect piece of pressure, and it proved to be exactly what was needed (of course, there’s also the danger that I could have failed miserably, and shattered any trace of credibility I may have). Anyway, here’s the results of my 7-day page speed challenge:

bpodr.co.uk: Now 60% Slimmer and 33% Faster!

How we did it…

The last post outlined a few techniques for improving the speed of a website, so I started my speed improvements there. I decided to implement these small changes to the bpodr.co.uk home page, and ensured none of the changes affected the look or the content on the page. I documented the size of the page, and the number of objects (images, files, scripts) that are requested when the page is loaded, at the start of the challenge and after each round of changes. This showed me what gains (or losses) I made for each speed enhancement.

N.B. I didn’t measure the speed after each change – it’s a fair conclusion that speed, although relative to each user (based on their computer speed, browser used, connection speed, etc), would improve as the page got lighter, and the number of images downloaded decreased.

Before we started…

Firstly, I wanted to know how things were before I started making changes, so I benchmarked the speed and size of bpodr.co.uk using Browsermob.com.

The results were: Size: 431kb, Average Speed: 2.30 seconds, Number of Objects:32.

Compared to Google’s published web averages, this made us about 25% larger than the average website waddling around in cyberspace, with a few extra objects being loaded. A little bloat around MY waist I can handle, but I’m not prepared to accept it on a website of mine, and so I needed to draw up a plan to shed those extra kilobytes, and take bpodr.co.uk from overweight to fighting weight (cue rocky music…)

The website weight loss programme begins…

1. Combine JS and CSS files

I started with a quick win: Reduce the number of files that the browser has to load for the page to work correctly. A lot of sites call multiple Javascript files, some of which are hosted externally to the site that’s loading, as well as multiple CSS files (CSS files control the way your web site looks). By reducing the number of files that need to be loaded, there’s less trips between the server and the user’s browser, saving precious nano-seconds! I managed to reduce the number of files on bpodr.co.uk from 5 to 2, and also moved a file from loading on an external server to our own server.

2. Compress Image Sizes

Compressing image sizes takes a little longer than reducing the number of scripts loaded on a page. The benefit here is in reducing the size of each image your page is loading (as long as you’re not compromising the quality of the images). There were 10 images that were in need of a good compression on the bpodr.co.uk site…

3. Turned images to Sprites

Creating sprite images can be a time-consuming task – it’s basically converting multiple background images from a page into just one image. That one image then loads once, but displays a different portion of itself to show the various images contained within it (uncross your eyes now!). The page benefits from having to load less separate images from the server – less trips to the server = faster loading, yippee!

There are other compression techniques that were already implemented on the bpodr.co.uk site, such as file compression, and some caching of files and images. If I hadn’t implemented these on the site during the build, I’m confident we would have seen some extra improvement to the size and
speed of the site.

We already know that I reduced the waistline of the page by around 60%, but let’s see it in a fancy table:

So what was the final result on the speed test?

From 2.30 seconds to 1.53 seconds average loading time: a 33% increase in speed! It also means we’ve got a significantly smaller size, and less images loading than the web’s page average (according to Google). So the page is now slimmer and faster, and better than your average page – a true athlete amongst web pages. bpodr.co.uk snr would be proud.

These improvements show us that big gains can be made to the size of a site, and therefore it’s size, using some fairly basic techniques. We can draw some conclusions from this 7-day challenge:

• The biggest size reduction came from compressing images,
• All of the above activity improved the size of the site,
• Less visits to the server and smaller file sizes equals faster loading times for sites.

How optimised is your site for speed? Remember, if it’s not well optimised, and below the ‘Google average’ you could be doing your site rankings some harm. It’s not going to result in jail time, but it may mean your site isn’t working as hard as it could be.

Why not set your web developer the 7-day page speed challenge, and trim some weight off of your web pages…

What is Link Baiting?

Links are an essential currency online. the more you have, the higher you rank. But how do you get links? Link Baiting is a technique that can help.

Link Baiting is the process of creating content for your site that stands a good chance of attracting links from other sites. It’s hard work going ‘door-to-door’ for links: knocking down site owner’s doors, asking nicely for links is arduous and it takes a long time (and a lot of effort) if you’d like hundreds or thousands of links. Putting that effort into creating content which attracts links all by itself is much smarter. Your content acts like ‘bait’. That’s Link Bait.

Not just any old content makes great link bait, though. Content that attracts links from other site owners, bloggers, publishers, and so on, has to be compelling, interesting, useful, funny, informative, or all of these things (this post doesn’t lay claim to be any of those things – I deliberately left badly written off the list). Link Bait content has to be great.

Why should I care about great content?

Great content attracts links (didn’t you read what I said just know?). Links equal better rankings, which equals more traffic. This is why great sites care about producing great content, and why you should too.

Just take a look and see how great content can act as link bait:

Infographic courtesy of Elliance – Power of Link Baiting Infographic

What types of content could I use as Link Bait?

What types of content would your customers enjoy or find useful?  What would you enjoy writing about, talking about, or singing about? Use that type of content. It could be an article, a rant, a video, a full blown west-end musical. But it has to be amusing, interesting or useful.

Infographic courtesy of Elliance – Type of Link Bait Infographic

Link baiting is a very important part of building an online presence that works. There are a huge variety and type of content that can be used, the infographics above are a prime example – I thought they would be interesting and informative, so I’ve displayed them on my site, with a link back to the source site. You could choose to sing, dance, write, or tap-dance to create great content – it doesn’t matter, as long as it’s remarkable to some of your audience.

[I've added Link Baiting to the bpodr SEO glossary]

If you’re wondering whether the PPC your SEO consultant has recommended is a marketing term or a type of swim-related strain injury, we’ve got just the thing for you: Our new SEO Glossary – written in Plain English.

There’s no requirement to understand everything that comes out of your web guru’s gob, but you need to make sure he’s not making up random terms to make himself look clever and justify all the money he’s charging you each month. Well, like the helpful chaps we are, we thought we’d put together a handy guide to the most common terms, words, phrases, and acronyms you’re likely to encounter when you kick off an SEO campaign. Not sure what SEO means? No worries, now you can look it up in our super-handy Glossary – what is: SEO. Think of our glossary as a handy little translation guide that you can refer to when the words your consultant is saying at you turn into one big blaaaaaah…

We think we’ve covered the important stuff, but if you hear a term that isn’t included in our glossary, don’t immediately sack your SEO company for lying and making up words; It may be we forgot to add it. Send us an email and we’ll gladly explain the term to you, and include it in our glossary.

So, without further ado – check out our super-handy, travel-sized, web-geek translation guide (or SEO Glossary, for short.)

“Hurrah!” was my thought as the DHL van pulled up outside – knowing the order I’d placed 3 days earlier on Moo.com was being walked towards my front door was (almost) getting me excited – a sad admission, I agree, but (almost) excited I was.

There aren’t many experiences when you order on-line that gives you a sense of excitement, but ever since I ordered my first batch of business cards from Moo, they haven’t failed to impress me with their service and the experience they create around ordering from them. It’s an experience that makes you happy to repeat it to others (much like I’m doing right now), and that has to be a holy grail for most businesses that sell to people.

The experience starts when you reach the Moo.com web site: it’s easy to choose what you want, you upload the images you’d like printed, or select from some default ones (you can also pull photos from Flickr, which is a smart move), choose some text for the reverse, and click order. A simple process that’s quite fun. You then get the pleasure of meeting their “little MOO print robot“, who helpfully writes you an email confirming your order, and another to let you know it’s been printed and dispatched. The emails have been written by someone who cares about MOO, and who cares about their customers – and it shows. It’s extremely rare (too rare, if you ask me) that I read an email from a company that makes me smile. Little MOO has got personality, and personality goes a long way!

The experience of ordering from MOO finishes with your order arriving at your door (cue mild excitement!): From the ‘Yay!‘ sticker on the box, to the tongue-in-cheek messages that welcome you as you make your way to your printed goodies. It builds some anticipation, gives MOO a very personable voice, and makes the experience of opening new business cards that little bit more enjoyable.

But it wasn’t just business cards that I was excited to see trudging up my garden path – I ordered a couple hundred postcards, too. We’re offering businesses quick, 3-minute web site reviews at a couple of upcoming events, and wanted to make it a bit of an experience. Not being clever enough to design, build, and keep oiled our very own little web review robot, we decided to give reviews to people on the back of postcards with a memorable caption on it. We drafted up around a dozen phrases we thought might work, and settled on the following 6:

We’re really happy with how they came out (and I was excited to see them arrive!), I hope it adds just a little something to help businesses remember us by when we chat to them over the next couple of events.

If you’d like a review postcard, with some quick thoughts about your site, complete the Quick (and free) web site review form on the right-hand side, and we’ll email you to find out which card you’d prefer, and where you’d like us to send it. You may not get over-excited to see the postman delivering your web review postcard, but it’ll hopefully give you a few tips on how to improve your site!

We’re making some changes around here.

Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll be changing the focus of the site and concentrating on information that helps small businesses make the most of the web. There will be regular content going up – in the form of blog posts and articles – about analytics, AdWords, SEO, blogging, Twitter, and a slew of other tools and tactics to help small businesses gain competitive advantage through the most efficient and productive use of the web.

You’ll also see some changes to the layout of the site. We hope this makes it easier to navigate and to find the tools and information you need.

This will be an evolutionary process. Rather like the strategies we recommend to our clients, it’s a matter of try it, check it, and refine. It may take time but we’re sure we’ll end up with a site that meets your business needs.

Let us know at any time how we’re doing. And if there are any particular issues or problems you want us to cover – from installing web analytics through SEO best practice to how to use Twitter for business – just tell us.

That’s not all…… but it’s enough for now.

(And apologies to Adam for using that shot of him I promised never to put on the web.)

We’ve decided to eat our own dog food, and that’s pretty pointless if we don’t share how sweet it tastes, so here’s a quick overview of how bpodr has been getting it’s fill in the last month…

Popular Posts. Our Google analytics shows us that our two most popular posts of the month were those introducing and discussing Socialprise. We posted these in response to a press release we read, and within 24 hours found ourselves on the front page of Google when searching for Socialprise, which then drove traffic for these posts, and our web site in general. (Notably, our blog attracted over 82% of all our traffic in March)

Extending our Reach. We’ve been busy adding new features to our blog to make it easier for our readers to er, read, and to further our blog tools to broaden our readership. These features include:

• Technorati Tags. We now let Technorati know more about our content, and allow our readers to find similar content of interest.
• Subscribe by Email. We added the ability for our readers to get email alerts when we post new content. Thank you Feedburner.
• More useful RSS feeds. Feedburner has also helped us add more features to our RSS feeds, which allow readers to easily email our posts, digg posts, or add posts to their social bookmarks.
• WordPress Stats. We have also installed a wordpress stats plugin, which has started gathering accurate information about our post views, we will soon know which are our most popular posts by number of times they have been viewed.
• Graham’s Twitter Feed. You can now catch Graham’s ‘tweets’ (what’s this?) from right here on the blog.

So a lot of house-keeping on our blog, but all should lead to a better experience for our visitors, and wider exposure on the Net for us.

Twitter, Twitter. Grahams Twitter activity has led to him being quoted by a well known Social Media thought-leader from the States. Although of no direct benefit, each referral helps us in building credibility for bpodr as a valuable resource for businesses here in the UK. (Follow Graham on Twitter here)

LinkedIn. Graham’s LinkedIn profile lead to an old work colleague who was interested in how our services could help them re-invigorate his business, which led to a business meeting, which led to drinks, which may lead to…

We may share future success – both ours, and our customers’ – in this series of ‘should-be-about-once-a-month-but-may-not-be’ posts. If you want to stay tuned, easily, then just subscribe to our RSS feed on the right-hand side (that little orange icon… up a bit… that’s it!) and have future posts delivered to you.

You don’t have to eat any dog food, but you may develop a taste for engaging with your customers – and the Web – in new and exciting ways.

Social media can seem extremely anti-social at times. For those looking in from the outside who have yet to fully comprehend the benefits or who simply choose not to ‘get it’, messiahs of connectivity and conversation can often appear lost with their heads buried up to their shoulders in their lower intestines. That’s not a position that inspires confidence.

The tsunami of blog posts and a Karakatoa of social networking tools – accompanied by commentary and e-books aplenty – can leave even those most tempted by the apparent common-sense approach of engaging your customers feeling alienated and most definitely running well behind the curve. When the word ‘conversation’ starts coming up repeatedly in what, at first sight, appear to be monologues, accompanying social media terminolgy starts to lose its credibility.

These feelings can be exacerbated here in the UK. It’s partly a cultural thing, which still rewards reticence over ebullience even at the CEO level, and partly a market thing: viewed parochially, the market size for any UK-focused business is vastly smaller than the equivalent US market. Add to this an inbuilt distrust of anything that smacks of ‘relationships’ and ‘getting to know the customer’, and pitching social media to an established enterprise here in the UK can seem a Sisyphean task.

So what to do?

Clarify the message, for a start. That’s hard, though. Why? Because the social media solution for every business is as unique as the combination of that business and its audience. Sure, the overarching sentiment and the ultimate aim may be common but nobody makes a sale by talking generics.

Then we need to show social media in action. Case studies are good. But better still is being able to say, ‘this is what we did for ourselves and look what happened!’

We’ve been lucky since we started bpodr at the end of last year. We’re involved with a number of start-ups who already knew they wanted what we were selling. On top of that, we have a couple of clients who already knew that without change they would stall. Stall and disappear. So, in a way, we haven’t had to sell too hard. We just turned up and made the most of contacts. Nice work if you can get it, of course but it leads to complacency.

We think we need to start eating our own dog food. In bigger amounts. To a certain extent we have, of course because we embrace many of the ‘typical’ social media tools. But it’s time to talk directly about results and how they could relate to situations within your business. That’s what this new series of posts will be about. Whenever you see a [Dog Food] prefix, you’ll know what’s coming: a story about a success – or failure – in our own use of the tools out there. With a bit of luck, the successes will outnumber the failures or it could be a short series!

Meanwhile, if there are social media tools you’re struggling to come to terms with or which you cannot see offering any advantage to your business whatsoever, leave a comment or send us an email at ask AT bpodr DOT co DOT uk.

I received a press release this morning that put in physical terms the way the relationship between businesses and customers is changing. Here’s the gist of the release:

A new poll has revealed that 35% of Brits no longer want to receive printed business directories at home – preferring instead to look up information on the Internet or better still receive recommendations from friends. The results of the poll commissioned by local search website http://www.welovelocal.com and conducted by YouGov revealed that 67% trust word of mouth more than advertising.

Max Jennings, founder of local listings web-site http://www.welovelocal.com, commented: “more than 17.5 million(i) unwanted directories are produced every year, the waste is staggering, particularly when this survey demonstrates that 51% of all British adults are now using the Internet to find local businesses.”

The most telling number in the poll, however, is this: 67% of the British public trust word of mouth more than an advert when trying to find local businesses. Think about that when you next wonder about the ROI of placing an ad in your local directory or free newspaper. It’s no longer even about reaching an audience off-line: it’s about reaching an audience that trusts what it reads or hears.

Word of mouth is fine for small businesses with low capacity in a local market. As this scales – or as your business grows – you still need the trust factor of word of mouth but you meed more voices, more ears, and a wider geographic spread. That’s where on-line conversations take over. That’s when word of mouse begins to make a real difference to your business. Now, and in the future.