Scene On The Net

Pressing Concerns

By Max Brockbank

Filed under: Clients, LinkedIn, Scene News, Technology
Page updated 4:47 pm: July 2, 2009

We’ve been doing some work for up and coming London digital search agency Absorb, on designs for a new web site using good old Wordpress, the platform on which this very site is based.

Wordpress is now in version 2.8 and going strong. It’s trusted by many big names including the BBC, Ford Motors, TIME magazine and even LastMinute.com, the online travel site which will forever be linked with the dot.com boom of the late 90s.

We’re also moving the Association of American Correspondents in London’s theAACL.co.uk web site to Wordpress, giving them a flexible platform to promote a more interactive community. The AACL’s current President, Karla Adam, a London bureau chief with The Washington Post emailed us to say: “Looks good! Much fresher, cleaner. Looking forward to going live soon.”

While Wordpress is not the answer to everything, it is possible to get it up and running quickly and cheaply using one of the many blogging packages offered by reputable hosting companies such as the UK-based 34sp.com, which offers a built-in installer to minimize the effort required to get started in the first place.

There’s plenty more about Wordpress at the Wordpress site, and links to lots of free plug-ins, themes and ideas for blogging success.


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Google News is good news for SEO

By Max Brockbank

Filed under: General, LinkedIn, SEO
Page updated 9:44 am: February 11, 2009

When people think of SEO, the name that inevitably comes to mind is Google.

Around three-quarters of the world’s search traffic comes through Google and many people have it as their home page. Getting your site high on Google’s index is important, and every SEO professional claims they are best at improving your Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) score.

But there is an alternative “search engine” with just as much clout as Google and which is probably more widely seen.

Google News is a regularly updated index of top stories from news sites across the Internet. Google News is still Google, but getting your site indexed by it is a much trickier prospect than ordinary search. Nevertheless, if you’re producing “news”-type items on a regular basis, it’s worth a try.

Succeed and you’ll find yourself listed on XML feeds used by some of the planet’s most-visited websites via plugins for popular CMS platforms such as Google News for Wordpress, or Google’s own targeted feed APIs.

So how do you get in? Google’s official rules for inclusion are …

  • Sites that have news content that is original to the site
  • Sites which do not solely promote their own activities
  • Sites which are written and maintained by a clear organization, one that has multiple writers and editors

Most candidates fail on that last requirement since many news blogs are one-man (or woman) bands. But if you can turn your blog into a “community of newshounds” there is hope.

Having said all this, a quick trawl through Google News throws up all sorts of sites which seemingly flout these rules.

Once again, the mystery of Google is preserved.


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