Microsoft's Free Websites..

Edit: We felt the need to revisit this post and be a bit more professional, we were never really intending to find ourselves #2 underneath MS themselves, and so thought some tidying and further inspection wouldn't go amiss before we get the lawyers letters :)

There's a saying "you don't get anything for nothing" that I find holds mostly true. So when the world's richest man's company starts "giving away" free websites my cynical bell is ringing immediately.

Could it be that having made enough money to feed most of the starving people in the world for the rest of their lives if he wanted to, that Mr Gates is finally giving something back to the community in the best way he knows how? ..Well, ..I suppose it could... ?

Anyway, a friend mentioned this to me before the holidays but I havent had a chance to check it until now, so heres our first impressions of what's available for free.

The MS Office Live Basics Package has a glitzy (flash) presentation that seems to offer a packages along the lines of the instant business website packages that register.com and a host of others offer, including all of the below, free. Microsoft say:

Microsoft Office Live Basics is the easy way to get started on the Web. 
If you have always wanted your own Web site, Microsoft Office Live Small 
Business has just made it easier, much easier.   

*Free domain name and Web hosting

*Easy-to-use Web site design tools

*500 MB of Web site storage space

*25 company-branded e-mail accounts 
*Web site reports

*Search advertising tool with $50 credit*

The full page is HERE ....And it actually all looks quite charitable of them, right up until the last paragraph which I have quoted below.

Help customers find your Web site,Promote your site to customers searching for what your business provides with Microsoft Office Live adManager beta.

• Set a budget, select keywords related to your business, and write a brief text ad.
• Your ad may appear to interested customers using Live Search to find your products or services.
• You control how much you spend and pay only when your ad is clicked.

Unfortunately at this point, the business plan seems clear, this is aimed at the very low end of potential website owner, the absolute beginner who:

• Has not managed to get together the money or skills required for a web presence yet
• Believes just having a website will bring them business
• Does not understand that their free website will likely be a nightmare to get to rank highly enough to be any use at all, ever.
• Will then probably then switch to the MS version of Adwords for a time at least, in an attempt to make it work...

And there in our opinion we have the crux of this, it would appear MS are going after Google's revenue by targeting the entry level Adwords people before they ever get to Google, before they even have a website in fact.

We had a quick look at what Microsoft obviously consider good enough examples of homebuilt websites to showcase, here: Sample Free Microsoft Websites .. well, have a look and judge for yourselves.

31.05.08 NOTE ** Since this post was first written these sites have all been redeveloped and are quite nice by comparison to the original efforts **

Although the MS Office integration aspects of the package, email management etc will all no doubt be tempting to those who are currently paper-based, we personally think the only people who need be worried by this are low end web designers knocking out template-based entry level sites for £200 and maybe a few hosting and domain registration companies (who probably never in their wildest dreams imagined that they would ever be in direct competition with Microsoft themselves) may feel a pinch in 2008 as the rest of the world claim their free internet presence.

Its saying something though when domains and hosting get cheap enough to give away, like mobile phones, for the promise of PPC ads revenue (or airtime in the case of phones) further down the line.

Maybe users could just use Google Adwords to attract customers anyway, but we believe MS are banking on their customer staying with them and keeping it all inhouse, and probably think that these people would not have the technical know how to do that, having only built their site using the MS system.

Also, some might say quite cynically, the website setup process will only work with Microsoft's Internet Explorer, a further attemp to flex their muscles in the world browser marketplace, - MS Websites only viewable by MS browsers.

The Microsoft Internet. Free? ..what do you think?

..if we had more time we would sign up for one, build it and try to promote it just for a laugh, but we think it likely would present quite a challenge in a number of ways.

Unless of course you get one of those nofollowed PR5 links to your new site too, like the ones that their three demonstration sites enjoy ;) We are curious, and may sign up for one, and try to build one good enough to get a place on their demo page at some point when time allows.


FURTHER EDIT - we built one..

Part 2 MICROSOFT OFFICE LIVE FREE WEBSITES HERE

SITE IS HERE

Part 3 of this Post is here: SEO Update on Microsoft's Free Websites ..& It's doing OK :)

The Realities of Website Design

This made us smile this morning, from the excellent www.poisonedminds.com

As anyone who has wrestled with cross-browser compatibilty in the past will know there's more involved to website design than choosing which pretty pictures to use and where to put the content.

I believe they've left out a few slices to do with interaction with clients and SEOs but that's another story. The fact is that SEO is much better thought about at the site design stage than afterwards when things may need fairly substantial re-writing or modifications to be Search Engine friendly. Our first post of 2008 will look at this in greater depth, in the meantime we hope you all had a good xmas, and we'd like to wish everyone a happy new year!!

The Dark Side of SEO

SEO (the art, business, call it what you will) and SEOs (the consultants) as they call themselves have been getting a lot of bad press recently.

You can tell it's gotten really bad because SEO's are being substituted with lawyers in the old jokes, and it's well known that they're regarded as the lowest of the low in many cases, even worse than say, estate agents, or perhaps hardcore recruitment consultants. That personally amuses and annoys me because in a different time in my life I was once a successful IT (contract) recruitment consultant for one of the sharkier companies or 4 years or so.

I often envied the contractor's lifestyles and the fact that they didnt have to work 65 hour weeks like we did for comparable money. They also didnt have to use sharp sales practices and lie quite a lot to everybody, as was an everyday part of our business practices. I earnt a lot of money in that time of my life but never have I been so unhappy.

When I started work there through my brother-in-law's referral, (who was extremely successful there and has since become a self-made millionaire through his own recruitment based business) I had no real idea what to expect except that £100k p.a. was easily achievable all I had to do, was do as I was told. This consisted of:

• Stand up and phone people (when you pick up a job from a client you could sit down, until then 8hrs a day on your feet, coldcalling, plus another hour and a half either side of normal business hours where you could sit down again)
• Call 50 people per day
• Read this script to them.

...The money will follow.

And it did. Obviously it wasnt quite that simple or easy in practice, but if you were determined and capable it was indeed possible to achieve £125k p.a. without too much difficulty. Keeping it there once you have reached that level is something else altogether.

But what I had never banked on was the fact that from the first time I opened my mouth to a client on the phone, and then in almost every conversation from that moment onwards, we had to lie. Right from the outset, immediately, convincingly, and constantly. That took quite a lot of geting used to. We lied straight away to clients about having suitable contractors for their roles "just finishing up right next door to you",

We lied immediately on calling contractors about having suitable roles for them, whilst trying to pick their brains about where else they were interviewing, so we could attempt to fill those jobs from underneath them.

After a while you get used to it, although ultimately it was the reason I got out of the business, creeping & ever deepening lack of self respect, through constant daily lying to people.

You could justify it in all sorts of ways, like: we were "helping" clients & contractors by finding the best candidates / jobs for them, you may have to tell a few porkies to break the ice, but ultimately it doesnt matter if you get the deal, Everybody's happy.

Well not everybody, not the contractors who may have given you the lead, but didnt get the job because you had a better fitting candidate, cheaper, whatever. Not other clients who may have thought they had your guy starting on Monday morning, when in fact we had pulled the plug on that and pressure-closed the guy on the Sunday night to take our job instead.

And ultimately, (un)surprisingly, even with all that money, I wasnt happy either. Far from it in fact.

Well, that's where I am from all that these days too, far far away from it, so it grieves me greatly now that these days my lifestyle allows me the freedoms I never had back then, to see similar tactics arising now in this business, and that people may now view me with the same disdain we heard from Telephonists on a daily basis...

"Are you a recruitment agent?" - try to picture saying it the same way as if you'd trodden in dog mess and were currently inspecting it on your shoe.

But yes, here those kinds of tactics are, nasty untrue script, lying about competitors, and ultimately further lying and psycological pressure to try to bully your way to the sale.

SEO Cold calls and then Blackmails Client to try to make the sale.

"Your website will be banned and you will not be able to be found on Google not even with your company name” “You want to be saved PAY ME !!!! 6-8 weeks”

Wow. Just wow. I mean I saw some dirty sneaky tricks in my time from the masters of the game but this takes the biscuit.

I was in recruitment long enough to see a little of the industry's evolution and some of the business cycle. Driven by the global economy when things were good, everybody had it easy and the money was extraordinary. This lead to an influx of anybody & everybody who "needed to earn £100k, and be successful" . Its easy to see where the "barrowboy or used car dealer" image comes from, the place was actually literally half full of them. - All clearing between £3k and £12k per MONTH. Clear, after tax.

Obviously this cannot last forever (critical mass @ about 18months usually) and then some major global event will rock the world economy so badly (earthquakes, planes hitting towers, that kind of thing) and the squeeze was on again. All the wideboys & general rubbish that had come floating in with the tide was quickly swept off out to sea again.

Its a sign of a major market, when everybody and anybody all of a sudden decides they can make some money at this racket, and in come the organised sharks with their formulas and scripts, and away we go. I personally believe that this signals the arrival of the "recruitment mindset" into the world of SEO.

However, from past experience it's also usually just about the time the bubble bursts,

I personally will not be lying to anybody ever again for the sake of making money, (or anything else besides, as ultimately, even if unpleasant, the truth is always better in the long-run) but particularly, I found lying in the name of personal & corporate greed is very much like the "Sell your Soul" analogy, it eats away at you, and even once you have the expensive car, the beautiful apartment, all the toys you ever wanted, theres this void inside where once you used to feel good about yourself, now you feel like a used whore to the £ note.

My best friend, as ever wise far beyond his years put me straight one evening when I was talking the "well, what now? .. I have everything I was aiming at, what's wrong, why arent I happy?"

He said " mate, none of this can ever make you happy."

"Contentment comes from within"

Wise man, that.

Trilingual SEO Work

One of the more interesting and challenging projects we have on currently is that of a trilingual (English, Spanish & Italian) website of :

1) Specialist Property Broker in Ibiza

2) Agentes Inmobilarias Especialistas en Ibiza y las Islas Baleares

3) Agenzia Inmobilaria Specializata in case in Ibiza e Isola Baleare

three times the work, three times the complications and three times the results to work for, and receive. :) ...hence morning reports like this are always good.

You'll see the row of Number "1" s on the Google line, No 1 for Estate Agents Ibiza (Spanish) Property Ibiza (Italian) and Property Broker Ibiza (English)

we still have a long way to go on some of the more competitive terms but it's always good to know G likes what you're doing so far, and to see the huge improvement on enquiries when the website starts to perform as it should.

We're also including a links page (currently only on the English part of the site but will be expanding to Spanish & Italian soon) on this pretty site so if you have any good quality, complementary Property-related links you want to trade, please shout us up.

The page is here http://www.owbalearic.com/en/ibiza/links.php

Google's Algorithm

The mighty Google Algorithm never ceases to surprise and fascinate webmasters and SEOs.
We know the basics of what we need to do and why from the little G make public in their webmaster guidelines, but any further understanding of the huge supercomputer crunching power of the big G is assumed at best, and often nothing more than controversy and pure speculation.

Some people claim to follow the algo in depth and be able to "game it" to get results and charge "brain surgeon" rates to do this for their clients, often with still varied results. For most SEOs though at best we have an educated guess at what Google do, and more like an uneducated guess at how they do it.

Luckily however, we dont really need to know exactly the reason why (as various SEO experts have a million different theories about what the massive collective brainpower behind the Google algorithm have done and are doing) but just that it does work, and that doing what we do works very well as you can see from this morning's report for La Grande Bouffe Catering.

We all have our theories based on what we have seen and done, and the results gained, but our friends at SEOmoz think theyve uncovered some of how it actually works here

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/a-little-piece-of-the-google-algorithm-revealed

so hopefully, that's all clear now then? :) - Good, lets get on with it...

A Good Search Engine Morning in Ibiza

..Certainly for our latest clients La Grande Bouffe Catering in Ibiza

obviously now begins the long task of trying to keep it there on an ongoing basis, but its not a bad start. From virtually unlisted to Google Number 1 in less than 3 weeks.

This was a 2 part Flash site which we've put up a simple accurate CSS/HTML mirror for both sides of the site for viewers without FLASH and visability within the engines.

The overall imagery, look and feel of the FLASH site has been kept as much as possible. The mirrors can be seen here:

www.lagrandebouffecatering.com/catering/

www.lagrandebouffecatering.com/weddings/

on checking just now the site has dropped to 3 again, but we always expect fairly large fluctuations for several months, until we settle nicely in that top spot for good ;)