Web Hosting Blog From Pixel Internet

Google Search Tips and Tricks

Doug — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 21:25:53 +0000

We all know how to use Google’s basic search functions, but the search engine is far more powerful than most people think, meaning most of us aren’t using it to its’ full potential.

So to give you an idea of the range of search parameters available for you to utilise, here’s a list of some of the most common and lesser known Google search tricks:

1. Restricting Google searches
When you search for a term, Google searches either the entire web or pages from the UK, depending on your selection. However, you can use Google to search for terms in or information on a specific website, using restrictive search parameters.

site:pixelinternet.co.uk
This will restrict Google to searching a specific URL, meaning a search for [hosting site:pixelinternet.co.uk] will return only results mentioning hosting on the Pixel Internet website.
If you want to restrict the search even further to looking for terms only in page titles on a specific website, you can use intitle:hosting site:pixelinternet.co.uk

You can also find relevant information on a website using restrictive searches:

link:pixelinternet.co.uk
This will return a random selection of sites that link to the specified URL. Whilst this is by no means perfect or as useful for SEO purposes as a dedicated link-checker, it does give you an idea of the kind of sites linking to any given domain.

cache:pixelinternet.co.uk
This will return all the pages of a specified website cached by Google. This is useful if you workplace blocks a particular website that you need to see, as viewing Google’s cached pages will bypass this block on the originating site.

2. Finding files and media
You can use a combination of restrictive searches to find numerous different types of file media. For example, if you want to search for a PowerPoint presentation on fuel prices, you could use the following search:

fuel prices filetype:ppt

The first part of the search can be changed depending on the keyphrase you’re search for, with the ‘filetype:’ parameter restricting Google to finding specific types of file. You can search for pdf, doc, ppt, rtf, ans, swf, wks, xls and numerous others.

By combining several restrictive parameters, you can also find specific types of media. For example, if you wanted to search for music by The Beatles, you could use the following search:

-inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:”index of” +”last modified” +”parent directory” +description +size +(wma|mp3) “The Beatles”

Obviously “The Beatles” can be substituted for whatever you’re looking for, and the +(wma|mp3) parameter can be altered to allow you to find videos or any other media format.

3. Adding to the search URL
When you search for something, the results page has a unique URL. For example, a search for Pixel Internet lands on the following page:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=pixel+internet&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a

You can then add to this URL to return slightly different results. For example, you can make Google return 100 results per page instead of ten, which is particularly useful if you want to look through several pages of results. To do this, you would add

&num=100

to the end of the URL, before pressing return. You can also depersonalise the returned results by adding the following tag:

&pws=0

These can also be used in combination, which is particularly useful when checking results for SEO purposes. To do this, you would add the following to the end of the URL:

&num=100&pws=0

You can employ similar approaches with Google image searches. A good example of this is when you’re looking for pictures of a person rather than an object. Say you were searching for ‘dawn’ and you wanted only pictures of people and no pictures of sunsets, etc. you could add this to the end of the search URL:

&imgtype=face

4. Conversions, metrics, etc
Google can also be used as an extremely powerful calculator for mathematics, conversions, etc.
You can perform simple mathematical calculations, simply by inputting the sum. For example:

24+17×9+20

You can also ask conversions questions, such as:

millimetres in a metre

Or currency conversions, for example:

£150 in $

This can be extended to any metric or calculation, making it a very powerful and useful tool. You can also search using addresses (provides Google Maps results) or by phone number.

5. Other uses
There are numerous other little uses for Google’s search bar; you can find out the time anywhere in the world:

time London

You can use the – key to limit searches; for example if you wanted to search for Manchester City but exclude all stories about Roberto Mancini, you could use:

“Manchester City” -mancini

You can also search in specific time periods. For example, if you want to find stories about Oscards awarded in the 1980′s, you could use:

Oscars 1980..1990

Hopefully that gives you a few new tricks to play with, if you’ve got any good ones we’ve missed out, let us know in the comments section!

One click install scripts – version updates

Steve — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 12:26:33 +0000

Just a quick update to let you know we have just upgraded some of our free one click install scripts provide free to our hosting customers…

The following programs have all been updated:
WordPress version 3.0.1
BuddyPress version 1.2.5.2
Zen Cart version 1.3.9f
Drupal version 6.19

You can install these latest scripts any many more via your Host control panel… have fun!

Image By: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

5 Useful DIY SEO Infographics

Tanya — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 09:40:00 +0000

Search Engine Optimisation is a necessary but extremely involved practise, and whilst doing it yourself can save you a lot of money, it’s very easy to get lost in the sea of SEO tactics.

As an art, SEO is constantly changing as major search engines constantly update their algorithms and indexing activity, whilst engineers spend their time trying to decipher how pages are ranked and which approaches are the most successful in terms of increasing rankings for a specific website.

So in order to help with your chances of running a successful DIY SEO campaign, here is a collection of useful SEO infographics:

1. SEO FAQS GUIDE

2. SEO CHECKLIST

3. PAGERANK EXPLAINED

4. THE SOCIAL MEDIA EFFECT

5. SEO VS PPC

Android Overtakes iPhone In Smartphone Battle

Tanya — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 22:34:41 +0000

After a slow start, the popularity of Google’s open source smartphone OS has skyrocketed to overtake Apple’s iPhone in market share, moving to number three in the overall rankings. They both still trail to RIM’s Blackberry in second and Nokia’s Symbian keeping it’s top spot with a formidable 41%. As the infographic beneath illustrates, some comparisons between market share last year and this are shocking.

This drastic increase in popularity has been for several reasons. Whilst Apple has always strictly kept the iPhone OS with Apple products, Google offers theirs to many manufacturers including HTC, Samsung, LG, Sony Ericsson and Motorola. This in turn means that they have a wider platform to sell their phones and can tap into many customer bases. As well as this, Android phones tend to be cheaper, and Google let you design your own apps with their App Maker.

So, Google’s open source smartphone platform appeals to the anti-apple types, but this freedom can come at a cost. Whilst Apple vet their developers to a high degree to make sure spam and harmful code doesn’t get through to the public, Google’s App Inventor lets anyone put their app on sale. Unsurprisingly, when tested a staggering 20% of all Android apps contained sneaky code giving access to third parties to steal sensitive data.

1960′s Social Media Adverts

Doug — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 20:40:13 +0000

Moma Propaganda, an ingenious advertising agency from Brazil, has come up with a series of incredible vintage adverts to demonstrate how social media could have been portrayed in the swinging sixties.

The ad agency produced promotional posters for Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Skype as part of their ‘Everything Ages Fast’ campaign for client Maximidia Seminars.

Artwork copyright: Moma Propoganda

We love these posters; they’re extremely well designed, the typography’s beautiful and they’ve got the vintage elements just right. They’re not the first advertising company or designer to transpose the social networking phenomenon into previous decades however.

Designer Stephane Massa-Bidal came up with these fantastic book covers, demonstrating how social media might have been presented had they been popular 60′s books:

Artwork copyright: Stephane Massa-Bidal

These are extremely good examples of how to leverage the social media networks in order to increase traffic to your website. The above examples are extremely good pieces of effective linkbait; linking the most fondly remembered decade of social movements with the current social media phenomenon is a very good idea and makes for some wonderful artwork.

20 Billionth Tweet Underlines Twitter’s Growth

Tanya — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 17:13:17 +0000

Twitter celebrated is 20 billionth ‘tweet’ yesterday; yet another major milestone for the social networking site.

The tweet was sent by a graphic designer in Tokyo at 3.44 GMT, who upon realising he had sent the landmark message had this to say in another tweet sent minutes later:

It looks like I posted the 20 billionth tweet. I’m getting messages from people all over the world, it’s scary! Is it more amazing than winning the lottery? I thought it was a joke!

The social media platform, which now recieves an incredible 300,000 new users every day, has seen continued to grow exponentially since it’s launch. It took 5 months to get from 10 billion to 20 billion tweets, but took 4 years to get from 0 to 10 billion; highlighting just how quickly the site has grown over the last year.

It seems even Twitter have been surprised by their popularity worldwide, with the demand putting extreme pressure on the companies’ servers. During certain periods this year (the World Cup in particular), millions of users were unable to log in to their accounts as usage of the site exceeded what Twitter’s IT systems could handle. Twitter do look set to address this issue however; opening their first dedicated data centre in Utah later this year.
In a blog post earlier this month, a Twitter spokesperson stated:

We’re fully aware of the problem … increasing the stability, speed and reliability of the service is our number one priority

Despite Twitter’s immense popularity, the problem of monetisation continues to be a pertinent one for the social media giant. A survey amongst Twitter users in the US showed an overwhelming majority of users would simply stop using the service if they started to charge. This puts more weight to the idea that consumers won’t pay for something that they were initally given for free.
How Twitter will address this problem is uncertain, but I’d expect to see a heavier emphasis on third party advertising on the site in the next 6-12 months.

Image Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/carrotcreative/2511539541/

Zuckerburg Urges Users To ‘Trust Facebook’

Tanya — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 09:19:03 +0000

A lot has been said recently about Facebook’s privacy policies, their databases and the fact that Facebook are second only to the US and UK governments in terms of how much personal information they hold.

With Facebook reaching a mammoth 500 million worldwide users (which, if they were a country, would make them the third largest country in the world in terms of population), concerns have been raised once again about what Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerburg could do with that much personal information in the future.

Zuckerburg responded to those concerns this week, stating that Facebook have no intention of selling off that data.

I just think it would be the stupidest thing we could possibly do. Facebook isn’t a set of information, it’s a community of people who are using Facebook to stay connected and share information. They are only going to do that if they trust us.

It’s understandable why people might be cynical about how Facebook will choose to handle its’ data and address user privacy issues. With such a wealth of information over numerous different demographics all over the world, Zuckerburg must realise just how valuable that information is to marketing executives, large corporations and advertising firms. With the majority of people turning away from traditional advertising in favour of peer recommendations, targeted advertising through a key demographics’ primary communication channel seems like an extremely tempting resource.

We’ll see whether or not Zuckerburg stays true to his word; whilst Facebook continues to be part of the zeitgeist, he’ll probably be very protective of that data and attempt to keep that all important trust from Facebook’s user base. Should that change however, and Facebook’s popularity begins to dwindle, we may well see a different approach from the 26 year old CEO.

Image Source: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3074/2696198607_804f72d5fc.jpg

Social Payment – Pay With A Tweet

Doug — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 19:51:35 +0000

Social media’s commercial importance is being more and more recognised by big companies and small businesses alike; with a growing value being placed on an individual’s social network, techniques to leverage this value are becoming increasingly relevant.

‘Pay with a Tweet‘ is being classed as the first ‘social payment system’, allowing users to purchase a single product by tweeting about the brand.

This is an extremely versatile tool and can be used to engage with your target audience through one of their primary mediums. The theory is that everytime someone tweets out about your product, company or brand, that tweet reaches their entire social network. If your product is of a real-world value or has an inherent appeal, it will lead more people to follow the thread and convert using the same method. This would potentially allow you to reach a considerable number of people via social networking, with a percentage of those people turning into website traffic.

Potential uses for the system include:

-Giving away a small product for free
-Giving discount or promotional codes
-Downloading an ebook
-Downloading a new single release for a band
-Download a music video or latest viral advert
-Access to a free article
-Access to a special page on your website

There are numerous potential applications for the system, making it suitable for practically any type of business.

The ‘pay with a tweet’ system is free to use and you can get it on your website very quickly and easily. The website contains customisation steps, where you can edit the button, exit landing page, tweet to be sent out and required information. The site will then generate a html code for you to copy and paste into your website / content management system.

I can imagine this to be the beginning of a wave of ‘social payment’ options, with Twitter and Facebook being a primary focus for the forseeable future.

SEO – 10 Top Tips for Search Engine Friendly Web Builds

Doug — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 17:48:42 +0000

“Ground-Up” SEO – 10 Top Considerations for Search Engine Friendly Web Builds

Implementing SEO recommendations shouldn’t be an after-thought; it should be at the forefront of every web developer or webmaster’s mind. Here guest author PackNet examines some of the most important SEO considerations to make when developing a new website.

Due to unawareness, ignorance or perhaps just lack of consideration when developing new websites, a lot of companies seem to be missing the fundamental basics in terms of search engine optimisation. Implementing search engine friendly ‘best practice’ guidelines is much easier in the initial stages of a project, and even better if they can be done during the development phase.

Features such as page/URL structure shouldn’t be governed by guess work, but should be the result of an in-depth analysis of the opportunities available within a sector. If all new websites took the ‘right’ approach to ensuring the development was done in a search engine friendly manner, then there would be a lot more higher ranking pages for authoritative websites than there currently are.

Below are 10 top SEO considerations to make when developing a new website.

1.Page Structure/Hierarchy – As mentioned above, the structure of a website should not be guess work. Keyword, competitor and industry research should be carried out at the planning stage to understand how users are searching for the data they require, and whether there are any uniformed approaches that you should be taking. Visualise the page structure on paper and then portray this on to the website from the beginning. Having a well-thought out and logical page hierarchy allows the search engines to crawl your content much more efficiently.

2.URL Structure – As with the page structure, considerations have to be given to the structure of the page URLs within a website. For example, a bad URL structure could be:
www.example.com/page/index.php?2312312312

Whereas a much better URL structure would be:

www.example.com/service-type/service
A logical and hierarchical page URL (reflecting the structure) provides both users and search engines with a clear indication of what the content is about. It is also beneficial to include keywords within the URL structure wherever possible.

3.Content Strategy – If you are rebuilding a website, or building it for the first time, then there is a great opportunity to attract a number of users through targeted content which is centred on key phrases (derived from keyword research). Through a content strategy you can understand which pages would benefit most from quality (and quantity) of written content, and can also give you ideas of how to best-cater for visiting users.

4.Internal Linking – A large challenge in optimising a website can be getting all of the content found – especially within larger websites. Links to a website are essentially like ‘votes’, which help to increase the visibility and authority of a specific page – and internal linking works in a similar way. Through the use of internal linking between pages with specific and relevant anchor text, you can boost search engine visibility for each of the core pages on a website.

5.Sitemaps – Sitemaps on websites are a useful way for both search engines and users to see a complete list of all of the pages on a website, especially if there are a lot of them. An XML sitemap should be created and submitted to Google, Yahoo and Bing Webmaster Tools. The XML sitemap doesn’t necessarily have to be linked to from your actual website (except for the in robots.txt file… which we will cover shortly). Along with an XML sitemap, a HTML (or ‘static’) sitemap should be created and linked to from your website (usually in the website footer). This HTML copy of the website is something that should be styled to fit in with the rest of the website theme, and is a place where users can visit to see a complete list of pages.

To be continued…

Yes, this is the point where we leave you all hanging. Part two in our series of ‘ground-up’ SEO will be available very shortly, including more considerations to make when developing a new website with ‘search engine friendliness’ in mind. In part two, we will be looking deeper into the more specific recommendations for on-page optimisation, to improve search engine rankings and visitor retention.

Author: PackNet – A leading provider of VoIP phone systems and VoIP reseller solutions, and have recently redeveloped their existing website with search engine optimisation fundamentals in mind.

Image: graur razvan ionut / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Vuvuzelas – Noooooo

Doug — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 14:17:05 +0000

So I’m watching the first game of the 2010 World Cup only to be greeted with what sounded like a bee on steroids trying to get out of my TV, after a good 5 minutes of repeatedly banging the TV, I find out its all down to a 2 foot horn called a Vuvuzela…..

I must admit my ears have managed to block it out after 18 games so it’s not too bad… However whilst trawling through the web I stumbled across this website…. ‘vuvuzela-time’.

It turns any website into a vuvuzela frenzied football arena! Check out our vuvuzela’d website, or try it for yourself at – vuvuzela-time.co.uk

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