The best SEO? Good content.

Search Engine Land writes about a recent change in the Google Webmaster Help documentation on search engine rankings. 

This is what Google said before:

"In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages."

... and this is what they say now: 

"In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by creating high-quality sites that users will want to use and share."

... so link building is not as important as writing good content. 

My advice? Focus on your user and the search engine rankings will follow. Do it the other way around (by stuffing your website with keywords and links) and you are likely to have a website that users find less useful and will ultimately lose you business.

You can read the full article here.

Interesting stories from the past week

Yesterday was a day of interesting news stories which I thought worthy of sharing:

Firstly, an article about how businesses can improve their social media engagement.... and where so many seem to be getting it so wrong. It's simple really and can be summed up by the following quote from the article:

"The snag is that customers do not generally just want to interact with marketers. They also want to interact with product designers, customer service, technical support and others who make a difference to their product experience."

The full article can be read here (and it's not a long one).

Secondly, Instagram now includes the ability to shoot videos. 

I tried my first Instagram video on the mornings dog walk (watch it here). Once I realised that you had to hold down the icon for the video to shoot, it worked a treat. It seems to be far more fun to use than my limited experience of its big rival from Twitter, Vine, offers. It has filters and it seems easier to control what you shoot.

Here is a link to a Mashable article on why Instagram video beats Vine...

Some articles of interest

Here are three articles that have caught my eye recently.

The first, by Paul Boag, discusses whether news articles should be given such prominence on your website.

The accepted wisdom is that news articles provide interest to your visitors, show that your website is 'alive' and that it is good for SEO (the search engines like proof that your website is regularly updated).

However, this articles challenges these presumptions. It questions how much news articles are being read and whether they are helping your site visitors achieve their objectives when visiting your website.

Please click here to read 'Do users care about your latest news?' by Paul Boag.

The next two articles were discovered by me good friends at from you to me.

The first article has some surprising information about what you cannot do to market your business using Facebook Pages.

The second article has 13 great tips on how to write a tweet so that it engages your audience.

I hope you find these articles useful.

Inspiration in Milan

I visited Milan a couple of weeks ago and took the opportunity to do two things which I found to be most inspirational. As a designer, it is important to look far and wide for inspiration and to take an interest in how and why great works of art or architecture achieve such greatness.

Milan is home to one of Leonardo Da Vinci's great masterpieces 'The Last Super.' It was painted as a mural on the wall of a refectory in the fifteenth century. It is a special painting to visit because it is only one of two works of art that can be seen at this location.

Unlike other great works of art which invariably hang in a gallery, competing with many other artworks and jostling crowds; this one has your undivided attention.

I spent a wonderful fifteen minutes admiring the perfect composition, piecing together the story and understanding why this painting is so important in the development of our culture.

Moreover, I was sharing this experience with only 20 other people and a guide who spoke in Italian so the painting really was my only focus at that time. It is so rare in these days of global checklist tourism that one gets the chance to give such works such undivided attention.

My second inspirational experience was a climb up the winding stairs to the rooftop of the Duomo in Milan. The Duomo is a beautiful building which I have visited a couple of times before. However, until I watched the excellent Italy Unpacked on BBC2 a couple of weeks before my trip, I was unaware that you could go on the roof.

From there, you not only see wonderful vistas of Milan, but you can also appreciate the beauty of the statues at close quarters. They are indeed heavenly!

Favourite Albums of 2012

Each Christmas, I like to compile a list of my favourite albums of the last year and this year shall be no different.

So, in no particular order:

1) An Awesome Wave by Alt-J

2) Standing At The Sky's Edge by Richard Hawley

3) The Light The Dead See by Soulsavers

4) Four by Bloc Party

5) The Shallows by I Like Trains

6) Given To The Wild by The Maccabees

7) Put Your Back N 2 It by Perfume Genius

8) REWORK_ by Philip Glass

9) Django Django by Django Django

10) Wixiw by Liars

A very honourable mention should go to Public Service Broadcasting who have not yet released an album (it's due next year) but whose EPs deserve a prominent place on this list.

I would also like to add that Kill For Love by Chromatics, Ark by Halls, Trouble by Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs and Tramp by Sharon Von Etten could well have made this list had I bought them earlier in the year. However, they were only bought recently as a result of numerous recommendations in the top albums of 2013 lists that appeared elsewhere.

An article on SEO

Most website owners at some stage will receive an email or phone call from an SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) company promising that they can obtain top rankings with Google etc.

That may or may not be the case.... I normally urge caution when my clients ask whether they should employ such a company.

My recommendations are better articulated in this excellent article by Paul Boag.

In summary, you can achieve the website's long term potential by:

1) Building your website for your users and not for search engines.

2) Focusing on writing good content that will encourage people to visit your website.

3) The best person to write this content is you or someone within your business. You know your business better than any external agency.

Yes, it is important that your website is built with the search engines in mind - that the metatags, keywords and code all work to improve your rankings - but this will only work properly if the content is good in the first place.

You can read the full article here.

Duke of Kent

Yesterday, Wiltshire Music Centre welcomed the Duke of Kent. I was asked to take some photos to record the event as part of an ongoing commission from them.

Being a keen photographer has many advantages and being able to participate in such an event is one of them!

I am returning to the Centre again this evening to photograph both the pre-show reception and Nicola Benedetti's performance to celebrate their 15th Anniversary.

Here are some photos from yesterday: