I’m now feedback hungary on every aspect of life, especially any products or services via the internet.

I had a look at the bikes on offer and at the extremely low prices and decided to have a nosey about for some reviews and here is what I found.

Direct Bikes Review from Gazza

got my ninja a few weeks ago i still aint ridin it cos the numplates havnt come yet but it looks fresh and sounds gr8 2

Direct Bikes Review from Anton

I got my scooter last week, it comes in a steel frame to prevent damge in delivery. all i had to do was fit the battery. it took around 5 minutes to sort out and then it takes a few hours to charge. im really happy with it, just need to register it. cheap insurance, cheap moped and good quality *****

Direct Bikes Review from James

I live in Spain, wanted a cheap scooter to get around. Although Direct Bikes wouldn’t deliver to Spain I had the scooter delivered to a friend in Northampton. Took it back to Spain on my motorhome. Have been riding it for 6 months now. Perfect for getting me around town.

Good bike at a nice price.

So I bought the bike, it’s good value for the money and the service was ok, nice.

At Nation1, my employer, we like to start all our clients SEO campaigns with a good old audit of what search engines actually think of your website. The audit is sort of like a websites health check and it’s good to know what’s wrong and if there are any issues that may arise.

 Nation1 audit websites on three main criteria: website technology, website content and links. Each section is tackled with direct reference to your website and the visible issues relating to each of these.

Website Technology

The first thing search engines will request and see, before they get to the content of your website, is technological responses from your server. They will then analyse the documents within your website by extracting content and other information within your pages.

Having your technology set up incorrectly can lead to search engines being unable to read your website, extract the content of your website inefficiently extract and analyse your content.

The first stage of any SEO campaign is to ensure that the server, and website, are returning information to the search engines in the best ways possible. This will allow us to have a string technological foundation upon which to develop an effective SEO campaign.

Unspiderable Elements

Within a website there are a number of common elements that search engines are unable to read. The main elements are either image based or technological aspects of a website that cannot be effectively understood.

Images

Images are very popular within websites. They improve the user experience and can enhance the user journey through a site. Unfortunately search engines, and visually impaired users, cannot understand these effectively.

An accessible option is available to improve the usability of images by search engines and visually impaired users. By placing an alt attribute upon images a text narrative to images can be provided. These are used by some search engines as a way to determine relevance for a page, but should also be supplied to ensure that your website complies with Disability Discrimination legislation in the UK.

Javascript

JavaScript is used in many websites to make them more dynamic and exciting. JavaScript runs on the users’ machine, the computer requesting the page.  This means the computer has to be able to process the JavaScript file.

Search engines do not process JavaScript and read only the code provided.

If you have menus in JavaScript or content controlled by JavaScript it can be invisible to search engines and visually impaired users.

The solution to this is to provide an HTML equivalent to all objects that are dynamically included such as flash, or = dynamic menu systems or analytics system. The NoScript convention should be used as an alternative option for these objects . The content that is contained within the <noscript>…</noscript> tags will not be displayed unless a user has JavaScript disabled or not installed.

Flash

Flash is an image based display system for aspects of websites. Flash enhances the user experience if used effectively, but as search engines cannot read images they require an alternative version of the contents.

Flash should be written in JavaScript to ensure that appropriate browsers and website users receive appropriate content. Text only browsers have JavaScript disabled and do not receive the Flash movie as a result.

A NoScript alternative to the Flash should be provided in all instances.

HTTP Headers

HTTP headers are sent by your server to anything that requests the page before the page of HTML code is returned. Search Engines and browsers all analyse these to discover the status of a webpage. Having an incorrect status returned for web pages can lead to devaluing of your website and ineffective search engine spidering.

Vaild HTML Coding

All that a search engine can read is the code that sits behind your website. It cannot see the pictures, it cannot see the layout. All it has is the code to analyse.

Within HTML there are strict rules on how a webpage should be produced, from a coding perspective. Search engines anticipate that web pages will be built using valid coding. If a page contain invalid coding some search engines can have difficulty understanding the intention of your web pages. Invalid code can result in lower search engine positions –the coding issues require to be examined on a case by case basis.

Minimal HTML Coding

Websites filled with dense coding can be difficult for some search engines to spider. By lowering the amount of HTML code in a webpage it can be possible to improve the natural search engine positions of website documents. Web pages that use minimal coding will have a high content to code ratio.

Domain Record

Domain Records tell web browsers and search engines the physical location of your server. If your domain records are incorrect neither will know where to look for your site and will not be able to locate it efficiently.

Bad Neighbourhood Servers

A Bad Neighbourhood server is a server that contains websites that are poorly trusted by the major search engines. For example sharing a host with a lot of spam filled sites or sites that contain pornography or race hate material can injure your search engine rankings.

Website Content

Website content is one of the most important parts of any SEO campaign. The content on your website is what you say about yourself and the products that you are looking to provide to visitors to the website. Content must be friendly to both search engines and to web users for it to perform at its best.

Keyword Targeting

Targeting your website to the correct keywords should be the first stage of any campaign. If you target your website to the correct words the Return on Investment will be higher as prospective customers will be looking for the products you sell in the method appropriate to your website. Currently the website appears to be lacking in keyword focus. We shall explore this issue below.

Title Information

The title of your webpage is the single most important piece of ‘on page’ information. Your title tag will define to users, and search engines, what the page will talk about. It will provide the link within the search engines to pages. As such it must relate to the appropriate keywords and also help to inform consumers of what the page contains.

Meta Information

The Meta information is data within the code of a webpage that is not displayed to a user. It is used to convey information to search engines. Meta data consists of two main types of data: description information and keyword information. The description is often placed below the link to a webpage and is used to help consumers understand the core focus of the webpage within the results. The keywords tag contains a list of terms that the page is targeted towards and is used by some search engines as a way of determining the focus of the webpage.

Body Content Optimisation

Body content is highly important for your website. It is the content that sells your product/service to prospective customer and at the same time affects your search engine positions. For content to be search engine targeted it is important to include the following:

Keyword Density

Pages targeted for keywords talk about those keywords within the copy. The level of your keywords within your content is known as the ‘keyword density’. It is important to have a keyword density that is higher than average for a page of copy but is not so high as to make the web content unintelligible or unreadable.

Keyword Proximity

To achieve the best rankings not only should the keywords appear throughout the document but in key sections, such as the first paragraph, the keywords should appear in proximity to each other.

Sematic Keywords / Keyword Co-occurrence

Within documents search engines seek to determine the relevance of a document. One way this is done is by analysing the use of related keywords with a document. The related keywords are known as semantic keywords. Using semantic content allows us to improve the user experience, as content can be written more naturally, and search engine experience, as it heighten relevance.

Content Formatting

As search engines read the code of your web pages it is important to present the website content in the way that will deliver the maximum relevancy. Content performance can be improved by adapting the code to direct the search engines to the sections of code that are most important.

Header Tags

Header tags are the most important content tags. Header tags determine the focus of the content to follow the tag. The most important of the header tags is the H1 header tag. This tag defines the core focus of all the content within the document.

Content Formatting Tags

If content is not optimally coded the performance of web pages can be reduced within the search engine results. Inappropriate use of content tags can lead to search engines misunderstanding our intention with the webpage content.

Links

Links are the way that we all navigate the web. We click on results in search engines, links in website navigation and links everywhere in the goal of finding the information that will satiate our particular desire. For this reason search engines see links as what binds the web together. The connections between websites are hugely important within the ranking algorithms of the major search engines.

Link Attributes

Search Engines analyse links for the following attributes:

1. What does the link say?
2. Who is saying it?
3. What does the page containing the link say overall?
4. What do other say about the page saying it?

What Does The Link Say?

The keywords you have used within the copy of the website and the keyword focus of the page, should be reinforced in the text of the link. Sites that have content and synchronous links will rank more highly than other documents that are less synchronous.

Who Is Saying It?

All links are not made equal and some links will deliver more strength to your website than other links.

Page Rank

PageRank is the variable used by Google to highlight the ‘importance’ of your web page. Higher PageRank pages will rank higher than other pages (assuming all other factors in the analysis are equal). PageRank is generated by the quantity of links you have pointing to your page and the PageRank of these links.

Trust Rank

Some sites have such a wealth of important information that they develop trust. Highly trusted sites will deliver stronger links than PageRank alone. Sites with string PageRank and TrustRank will rank more effectively than pages with only Trust or Importance alone.

Co-citation

Links can be more important if they are also from pages that contain links to our competitors. This means that the page can be of most use for our linking efforts if competitors are already on the page. Links from these pages will bring us closer to the central hub of link authority for our important key phrases.

What Do The Links Say?

Having links pointing to your website that use the words most appropriate to your search terms can help dramatically to improve the positioning of your website within the natural search engine indices.

What Does The Page Containing The Link Say Overall?

Having a link saying the right thing from an important and trusted page will only get you so far. We also require the page to be talking about something similar to the core focus of the page at which the link points. What do others say about the page saying it?

If the page we get a link from has the same focus as the page at which the link points and the link uses strong link text, it is still not an optimal link. The best links come from pages that also have inbound links containing the same and related anchor texts as our anchor text.

It’s free to list most things, and only £3 to upgrade your listing to Featured which puts it top of your category and adds it to the Town or City homepage.

It also offers blog like advertising for only $15 a month, very cheap indeed when you consider that Bluetrader has been built on wordpress and as far as I can see has all the latest SEO plugins including the Onlywire pluign so you can really help to boost your ad, this site should have your listing in Google, MSN and Yahoo very quickly allowing you to get more visitors to your listing.

These are the locations of BlueTrader.co.uk

Cities: Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Stirling, Inverness, Dundee

Towns: Airdrie, Alloa, Arbroath, Ayr, Barrhead, Bathgate, Bearsden, Bellshill, Berwick, Bishopbriggs, Blantyre, Buckhaven, Calendar, Cambuslang, Clydebank, Coatbridge, Cumbernauld, Dumbarton, Dumfries, Dunfermline, East Kilbride, Erskine, Falkirk, Fort William, Girvan, Glenrothes, Grangemouth, Greenock, Hamilton, Irvine, Johnstone, Kilmarnock, Kilwinning, Kirkcaldy, Kirkintilloch, Lanark, Larkhall, Largs, Livingston, Mallaig, Motherwell, Musselburgh, Newton Mearns, Oban, Paisley, Perth, Peterhead, Port Glasgow, Prestwick, Renfrew, Rutherglen, Saltcoats, Stranraer, Troon, Ullapool, Wishaw

Islands: Arran, Skye, Islay, Orkney, Mull, Lewis, Shetland

If you’ve ever watch Dragons Den you well know that these guys always ask about the numbers and give business owners a really hard time if they don’t know them. That’s probably the first tip: Know your numbers. There’s no point waiting all year to find out that your not making money or going to have a huge tax bill. Avoid “Leave it to us” get your reciepts in order or if your rollin it, your accountant will charge you £25 an hour to get his secretary to sort out your receipts.

Another tip would be to talk to a few accounting companies, you’ll be surprised in the differance of service offered and more importantly the cost. Our first quote was for £1150 for a year and not much business support, they offered to help us out with some things but others would be chargable. Our second quote was for £720 with full “Call us any time” support and they looked interested in our business.

You might also want to get a small local accounting firm, they will be more likily to spent time on your account and help you out small business to small business, larger firms just give you what you pay for, bare minimum.

We’ve now decided to Taxkings based in Glasgow near the West End and City Centre, they’re a small outfit and we’ve already started to see the benefit.

Should you be looking for a new or better accountant give Iain at Taxkings a call, say Colin sent you, you might get something for free.

We’ve helped out a lot of clients over the years to achieve great success for their business and increase sales and leads.

One of the key ingredients to this success has been to always use what’s freely available and then make the most of it and Gumtree is one of those ingredients.

What is Gumtree?

Gumtree is an extensive network of online classifieds and community websites. Private advertisements are free for first appearance only. It is the UK’s biggest website for local community classifieds and one of the top 20 websites in the UK.

What this means is that there are a lot of people using Gumtree to buy and sell products and services.

There are 26 Gumtree websites, one for each major city in the UK.

What we do?

We’ve been using Gumtree for a long time now and have worked out the best way to make it work for your business.

We can write and post ads fast and frequently so your business is exposed to tens of thousands of people per day.

We will:

• Analyze your service or product
• Create a short attractive ad for your service or product
• Manually enter this ad on all 26 Gumtree sites
• Ensure your ad is live for 30 days (or relist)

Gumtree Posting Package:

Your business ad posted on all 26 Gumtree sites.

Price £15

Website URL:

With over 7 years experience within the online marketing world our team of SEO experts know what the best links are and where to get them.

In the past we’ve worked with 26 companies listed in the FTSE 100 stock exchange and are presenting working with clients with a similar caliber.

The reason for us offering this package is that in the past we have had to turn away many clients that don’t have substantial budgets to work with our team and as a business we have decided that we should have an offering for all businesses that want us to work with us.

Many clients that have worked with Zantay in the past know that our aim is also to improve traffic while keeping conversion rates high, we have managed this over the years by maintaining lists of strong back links and most clients know that strong back links are the first step to achieving good natural listings which in turn generate more sales and enquirers.

We are offering 3 monthly link building packages aimed at growing your business and are calculated to increase your rankings naturally over time, as many people know receiving too many back links at once can cause your website to be black listed or penalized in Google. Our packages are designed to avoid this.

Each month we will submit your selected number of directory submissions, blog comments, Edu blog comments, article submissions and RSS submissions(if required) to our list of highly qualified websites.

All the links we provide come from fully Google indexed websites with high page rank to ensure to receive the best value for money.

Bronze Package:

50 Directory Submissions

15 Do Follow Blog Comments

15 .Edu Blog Comments

50 Article Submissions

50 RSS Submissions

Price: £45 per month (0.25p per link)

Your Email:

Your Url:

Silver Package

100 Directory Submissions

35 Do Follow Blog Comments

15 .Edu Blog Comments

100 Article Submissions

50 RSS Submissions

Price: £75 per month (0.25p per link)

Your Email:

Your Url:

Gold Package

200 Directory Submissions

100 Do Follow Blog Comments

25 .Edu Blog Comments
150 Article Submissions

50 RSS Submissions

Price: £130 per month (0.24p per link)

Your Email:

Your Url:

Once you have completed the subscription process we will contact you to find out more about your website and your industry so we can fully understand the market that you are in.

Once we have started work you will receive a full report each and every month detailing where the links were placed and the Url of these links.

]]> http://www.zantay.com/services/monthly-link-building-service/feed/ 1 http://www.zantay.com/lead-story/launched-travel-digger-digg-for-the-travel-industry/ http://www.zantay.com/lead-story/launched-travel-digger-digg-for-the-travel-industry/#comments Thu, 26 Mar 2009 20:05:26 +0000 Colin Boyd http://www.zantay.com/lead-story/launched-travel-digger-digg-for-the-travel-industry/ Today we are please to announce the launch of Travel News website www.traveldigger.co.uk

Travel Digger is a Digg style, community driven news aggregator dedicated to the design industry. Travel Digger aims to collect and organize travel-related content from across the web while letting the community vote the best articles to the top pages of their categories and sink the most irrelevant one’s to the bottom. The ultimate goal of Travel Digger is to, hopefully, categorize the huge amount of travel-related content available on the web into neat and easy to navigate pages of articles in order of importance/relevance as decided by the community. Basically, it’s just a niche version of the highly popular Digg.com.

The site is the first in a long line of community driven news websites in the pipeline for the Zantay Group, with the unique adverting options Travel Digger is set to be a hit with the travel industry.

To find out more about www.traveldigger.co.uk and about advertising opertunities please contact Zantay by using to provided Contact Page

So how does one man run the worlds largest company?

Leadership! that’s how, not management. And of most of the books I’ve read “Leadership” gave me the best insight into Jack Welch’s many years of success.

The basis of success for Jack Welch’s tenure at GE was to let the stars shine through, let the people that do the job make the decisions about the job there doing. All is explained in “Jack Welch on Leadership”
The other book, Jack Welch the GE way, has opened my eyes to presenting particularly as I work in an agency/client environment where your always presenting a pitch, getting a point across or making sure everyone hears about your great idea.

Very good book indeed.

After running some checks across several Google data centers it would seem that an update is on the way.

The last update a few months back caused a slight stir on these same forums with a lot of websites losing some PageRank. This sending some SEO guys in to a panic.

I personally believe that PageRank shouldn’t be classed as important as most people do, keep your links clean and the incoming links at a steady growth and you should stay clear of PageRank drop of and penalties.

It is also important to remember that not all sites increase or decrease in a PageRank update, sometimes staying the same doesn’t do any harm to your ranking positions.