Here is a really simple way to search through someone's Twitter feed / stream with Google, to find a specific word or phrase.
To search a Twitter stream or feed simply type " site:twitter.com/USERNAME " into the normal Google search box - without the quotation marks and replacing 'username' with the Twitter address of the person or organisation your're interested in.
After this type the word or phrase you're searching for.
For example, to find what I have been saying about the climate on my Twitter account you'd type into a Google search: site:twitter.com/christiandunn climate
For most feeds Google seems to have around a two week delay in indexing tweets, but other than that it works pretty well.
Showing posts with label Web-SEO. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Web-SEO. Show all posts
Tuesday, 10 January 2012
Tuesday, 18 January 2011
Start an online business with £10 – or less
Google’s legendary Matt Cutts recently explained how he would start an online business with just £10.
Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s webspam team, gave the advice to future entrepreneurs on a Google Webmaster help video published on YouTube.
In answer to a question on how £10 could be used to start a business Matt Cutts said he would use the money to buy a domain name and as much hosting as possible – probably about one month, he estimated.
The SEO guru then said he would create a website, aiming to make money through Google Adwords or affiliate schemes.
He would then add content to attract visitors making sure, of course, any content on the site was non-spammy, relevant and useful.
In response to the video I thought I’d add another few extra tips for starting an online business for a tenner.
1. Get a free website
To start your online business off you don’t even need £10. Why not use a free blogging site such as Blogger or Wordpress.com?
Blogger is incredibly easy to set up and Adwords and Amazon Associates can be automatically incorporated into it – earning you money straight away.
2. Use a free CMS
Eventually you’re going to need a more comprehensive website and nowadays you don’t need to be an expert web-designer to produce a professional-looking site.
There are plenty of free content management systems (CMS) out there which allow you to create fully functional websites without knowing any special code or design skills.
You simply need to download one of these CMS onto your server and you can start building your website - don’t worry if this doesn’t make sense though tip 4 explains a simple way to do this.
In my opinion the best CMS is Wordpress, it’s incredibly powerful and the huge number of plugins (most of them free) will ensure your website has whatever features your online business needs.
3. Get a good Wordpress template
If you use Wordpress as your sites’ CMS you’ll want to make sure it looks good, so you’ll need a template or theme for your site.
You can download plenty of free Wordpress templates or themes to use for your site which is ideal if you only have £10 to start your online business – but if you have a bit more money to spend I recommend paying for a really good looking, user and SEO friendly theme.
I always use the StudioPress Wordpress themes as I’ve found them to be both the simplest to use and also the most flexible.
Whatever I’m working on, from a news-based website to brochure site, there’s always a StudioPress theme I can use.
They also offer fantastic help on their user and support forums which allow you to tweak and alter the templates as much as you like.
4. Get cheap hosting
You’re going to need to get somewhere to host your new website and to start with you really don’t need to pay for your expensive servers or anything like that.
Many web hosting companies offer cheap hosting deals and even include a free domain name in the package.
I personally recommend Web Hosting UK as they’ve always given me great customer service.
You can contact them 24/7 on the phone or even better, I find, on their live web chat – one time I spent nearly three hours chatting to them on this getting a number of problems sorted out, and it didn’t cost me a penny.
Whichever hosting company you use I’d make sure it offers cPanel hosting, this lets you upload a CMS like Wordpress very easily and means you don’t have to work out how to upload files to your server to get started.
5. Learn some basic SEO
Knowing a bit about Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO, is essential if you’re going to attract visitors to your website.
Basically SEO refers to how to make sure the content on your website is picked up by search engines such as Google.
It’s a pretty huge topic but don’t let this scare you – just get stuck in and you’ll be amazed how quickly you pick things up.
To get started I recommend reading Google’s very own SEO starter guide, visiting Google Webmaster’s YouTube channel and try and grab a copy of a good old dead-tree book called Get to the Top on Google by David Viney
Plus, make sure you keep visiting this blog where I’ll be posting plenty of useful, practical SEO tips.
Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s webspam team, gave the advice to future entrepreneurs on a Google Webmaster help video published on YouTube.
In answer to a question on how £10 could be used to start a business Matt Cutts said he would use the money to buy a domain name and as much hosting as possible – probably about one month, he estimated.
The SEO guru then said he would create a website, aiming to make money through Google Adwords or affiliate schemes.
He would then add content to attract visitors making sure, of course, any content on the site was non-spammy, relevant and useful.
In response to the video I thought I’d add another few extra tips for starting an online business for a tenner.
1. Get a free website
To start your online business off you don’t even need £10. Why not use a free blogging site such as Blogger or Wordpress.com?
Blogger is incredibly easy to set up and Adwords and Amazon Associates can be automatically incorporated into it – earning you money straight away.
2. Use a free CMS
Eventually you’re going to need a more comprehensive website and nowadays you don’t need to be an expert web-designer to produce a professional-looking site.
There are plenty of free content management systems (CMS) out there which allow you to create fully functional websites without knowing any special code or design skills.
You simply need to download one of these CMS onto your server and you can start building your website - don’t worry if this doesn’t make sense though tip 4 explains a simple way to do this.
In my opinion the best CMS is Wordpress, it’s incredibly powerful and the huge number of plugins (most of them free) will ensure your website has whatever features your online business needs.
3. Get a good Wordpress template
If you use Wordpress as your sites’ CMS you’ll want to make sure it looks good, so you’ll need a template or theme for your site.
You can download plenty of free Wordpress templates or themes to use for your site which is ideal if you only have £10 to start your online business – but if you have a bit more money to spend I recommend paying for a really good looking, user and SEO friendly theme.
I always use the StudioPress Wordpress themes as I’ve found them to be both the simplest to use and also the most flexible.
Whatever I’m working on, from a news-based website to brochure site, there’s always a StudioPress theme I can use.
They also offer fantastic help on their user and support forums which allow you to tweak and alter the templates as much as you like.
4. Get cheap hosting
You’re going to need to get somewhere to host your new website and to start with you really don’t need to pay for your expensive servers or anything like that.
Many web hosting companies offer cheap hosting deals and even include a free domain name in the package.
I personally recommend Web Hosting UK as they’ve always given me great customer service.
You can contact them 24/7 on the phone or even better, I find, on their live web chat – one time I spent nearly three hours chatting to them on this getting a number of problems sorted out, and it didn’t cost me a penny.
Whichever hosting company you use I’d make sure it offers cPanel hosting, this lets you upload a CMS like Wordpress very easily and means you don’t have to work out how to upload files to your server to get started.
5. Learn some basic SEO
Knowing a bit about Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO, is essential if you’re going to attract visitors to your website.
Basically SEO refers to how to make sure the content on your website is picked up by search engines such as Google.
It’s a pretty huge topic but don’t let this scare you – just get stuck in and you’ll be amazed how quickly you pick things up.
To get started I recommend reading Google’s very own SEO starter guide, visiting Google Webmaster’s YouTube channel and try and grab a copy of a good old dead-tree book called Get to the Top on Google by David Viney
Plus, make sure you keep visiting this blog where I’ll be posting plenty of useful, practical SEO tips.
Tuesday, 11 January 2011
Huge improvements to Google's Blogger
It's been quite a while since I've logged in to my Blogspot dashboard and I'm really impressed at the developments.
The most important improvement, at first glance, seems to be that you can now easily create and link to static pages.
The templates also seem to be a lot cleaner with the most important widgets, or gadgets, fitting seamlessly into them.
I'm sure these developments have been out for a long time but I've been so engrossed in Wordpress I seem to have let news about Blogger pass me by.
Google's Blogger or Blogspot (I'm never quite sure what they want to be called) still lacks the features which makes Wordpress such a flexible content management system, but they are certainly making progress.
I'm looking forward to digging a bit deeper into Blogger to see what else it can do.
The most important improvement, at first glance, seems to be that you can now easily create and link to static pages.
The templates also seem to be a lot cleaner with the most important widgets, or gadgets, fitting seamlessly into them.
I'm sure these developments have been out for a long time but I've been so engrossed in Wordpress I seem to have let news about Blogger pass me by.
Google's Blogger or Blogspot (I'm never quite sure what they want to be called) still lacks the features which makes Wordpress such a flexible content management system, but they are certainly making progress.
I'm looking forward to digging a bit deeper into Blogger to see what else it can do.
Friday, 6 August 2010
Google Wave stopped - why didn't it work?
Google is abandoning its much-hyped Google Wave service after launching it just a year ago - but with a lack of any integration with Google's other services, it's not hard to see why Wave failed.
In their own words Google Wave was a “web app for real-time communication and collaboration”.
It promised to be a new way of emailing and sharing online content, all within your normal web browser.
When it launched people – including myself – went mad for invites to try the project out before it went live for everyone.
It soon became clear though that Wave just wasn’t catching on, and in a statement earlier this week Google announced they were stopping developing Wave as a standalone product and would be likely to switch off the site next year.
But why hasn’t Google Wave worked out?
Well, I don’t think the fault of Google Wave is that the product itself wasn’t very good. The problem was Goolge. And as a die-hard Google-fan that hurts to say.
Google just didn’t seem to offer Wave the support it needed.
For starters, I always found it difficult to actually find Google Wave - let alone use it.
There wasn’t a clear link to it from Gmail or iGoogle, I could never remember whether it was wave.google.co.uk, wave.google.com or whatever and it was never flagged-up on Google’s other services.
This made the whole thing seem a very separate or “standalone product”, which I think really was the main problem with Wave.
It desperately needed some kind of obvious integration with Google’s other services such as Gmail or Google Docs.
Google Wave had some incredible features, many of them ahead of their time - it could do just about anything and be used for just about anything.
Of course this meant it was quite complicated to use – even for geeks – and with no familiar starting point, such as email, it was just seemed too daunting to for everyday use.
To become a success, the main fetures of Google Wave should have been slowly integrated into Google services the majority of users were already used to, such as email.
Instead, Google threw them all together in one complicated, alien-looking product.
Perhaps if Google had used a more inclusive yet informal approach to introducing people to Wave it really could have taken over email – almost with people noticing they were Waving.
I do expect this is the way Google will now be going with the best parts of Wave and I’m sure they will (thankfully) never stop thinking big or trying to push the boundaries.
However, I do hope they remember that not everyone that uses the internet is a geek and it’s often worth remembering the adage “keep it simple” when trying to completely change people’s habits.
In their own words Google Wave was a “web app for real-time communication and collaboration”.
It promised to be a new way of emailing and sharing online content, all within your normal web browser.
When it launched people – including myself – went mad for invites to try the project out before it went live for everyone.
It soon became clear though that Wave just wasn’t catching on, and in a statement earlier this week Google announced they were stopping developing Wave as a standalone product and would be likely to switch off the site next year.
But why hasn’t Google Wave worked out?
Well, I don’t think the fault of Google Wave is that the product itself wasn’t very good. The problem was Goolge. And as a die-hard Google-fan that hurts to say.
Google just didn’t seem to offer Wave the support it needed.
For starters, I always found it difficult to actually find Google Wave - let alone use it.
There wasn’t a clear link to it from Gmail or iGoogle, I could never remember whether it was wave.google.co.uk, wave.google.com or whatever and it was never flagged-up on Google’s other services.
This made the whole thing seem a very separate or “standalone product”, which I think really was the main problem with Wave.
It desperately needed some kind of obvious integration with Google’s other services such as Gmail or Google Docs.
Google Wave had some incredible features, many of them ahead of their time - it could do just about anything and be used for just about anything.
Of course this meant it was quite complicated to use – even for geeks – and with no familiar starting point, such as email, it was just seemed too daunting to for everyday use.
To become a success, the main fetures of Google Wave should have been slowly integrated into Google services the majority of users were already used to, such as email.
Instead, Google threw them all together in one complicated, alien-looking product.
Perhaps if Google had used a more inclusive yet informal approach to introducing people to Wave it really could have taken over email – almost with people noticing they were Waving.
I do expect this is the way Google will now be going with the best parts of Wave and I’m sure they will (thankfully) never stop thinking big or trying to push the boundaries.
However, I do hope they remember that not everyone that uses the internet is a geek and it’s often worth remembering the adage “keep it simple” when trying to completely change people’s habits.
Sunday, 25 January 2009
New PhotoActive site - personal plug!
Please excuse the plug - but as part of my expanding web management portfolio I’ve just re-launched the PhotoActive website for former Sunday Times photographer Philip Dunn.
We’ve completely changed the look of the website, www.photoactive.co.uk, and it now has a blog and forum integrated into it, as well as a far clearer navigational system.
We’ve set up various affiliate packages with companies such as Amazon and Waterstones – which are now bringing in a steady additional revenue.
Much to Philip Dunn’s delight we’ve also slashed the amount of spam he is getting, but still managed to simplify how potential customers contact him.
Of course, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and what matters to Philip is an increase in the number of visitors to www.photoactive.co.uk, leading to a greater number customers buying his photography DVDs and signing up for his photography courses and holidays.
Well, so far so good.
Careful search engine friendly tweaking of Philip’s online copy and a bit of ‘under the hood’ work has helped the site move up the Google rankings for all of the keywords and phrases we decided on.
And despite the fact the site has only been live in its present format for a few weeks, the forum even less, we’ve already more than quadrupled the average number of visitors and Philip says he’s seen a definite spike in sales. Not bad considering we’re in a recession.
Of course the whole site is still a work in progress and there's loads more ideas and improvements still to make - so if you've got any ideas then let me have them!
As many of you will be able to tell we used the magnificent Wordpress as the site’s content management system and I’ll go through some of the process about setting in it up, including the plugins we used and various modifications we made, in future posts.
If you’re interested in talking to me about any aspects of web management for your business then just drop me a line by contacting me through the blog or emailing cdunn09 AT googlemail DOT com
Wednesday, 17 December 2008
Adding Google Friend Connect to Blogger
After a few minutes playing around I've found out how to add Google Friend Connect to my blog on Google's Blogger site.
It was really simple after I found this video on http://googlingsocial.com explaining that you don't have to use the code that Google says to add to your site - as it's already on your Blogger site.
For my Blogger template I changed the width to 200 pixels and the height to 345 pixels - though I might alter this to make it a little shorter.
Google Friend Connect has been out for a while now and has been popping up on a number of blogs and websites.
Like many things I come across on the web, I know that it could be a really powerful tool for online journalism and for promoting businesses on the web , but only if I can figure out how to make the most of it.
Now it's on my blog I'm going to have a play with it and see how I can adapt it for our newspaper site.
It was really simple after I found this video on http://googlingsocial.com explaining that you don't have to use the code that Google says to add to your site - as it's already on your Blogger site.
For my Blogger template I changed the width to 200 pixels and the height to 345 pixels - though I might alter this to make it a little shorter.
Google Friend Connect has been out for a while now and has been popping up on a number of blogs and websites.
Like many things I come across on the web, I know that it could be a really powerful tool for online journalism and for promoting businesses on the web , but only if I can figure out how to make the most of it.
Now it's on my blog I'm going to have a play with it and see how I can adapt it for our newspaper site.
Sunday, 17 February 2008
Google phone heralds scramble for mobile web - Times Online
Google phone heralds scramble for mobile web - Times Online
Interesting article from the Times about the web on mobile phones.
Interesting article from the Times about the web on mobile phones.
Sunday, 25 November 2007
Turn your video viral
Ever wanted one of your videos to go 'viral'?
This article has some really good advice on how to engineer thousands of views for a video.
Most news providers now have YouTube account which can be used to attract visitors back to the main site.
If you can brand the video with your website and leave viewers wanting more there's a chance some of them will investigate further.
Some of the best we've found for this so far are anything ghost or UFO related - people love them.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/22/the-secret-strategies-behind-many-viral-videos/
This article has some really good advice on how to engineer thousands of views for a video.
Most news providers now have YouTube account which can be used to attract visitors back to the main site.
If you can brand the video with your website and leave viewers wanting more there's a chance some of them will investigate further.
Some of the best we've found for this so far are anything ghost or UFO related - people love them.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/22/the-secret-strategies-behind-many-viral-videos/
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