Alan Clements, Metafocus MD recently returned from a business trip to Southwest China. He was part of the East Midlands Trade Mission organised by the Leicester based East Midlands- China Business Bureau and UK Trade and Investment  (UKTI). Councillor David Parsons, chair of East Midlands Regional Assembly and leader of Leicestershire County Council and Brian Jackson, chair of EMDA were part of business matchmaking events in the cities of Chongqing and Chengdu, Sichuan province.

On his way to Chongqing, Alan flew into Shanghai and visited the Pudong Technology Park and was met by a delegation of Chinese IT companies. (photographed above) He was exploring the possibilities of cooperation with Chinese website agencies and software companies to outsource software.

In Chengdu, Alan attended the EU-China (Chengdu) SMEs Business Matchmaking Event and had discussions with fourteen local IT companies based in what is now known as the up and coming “Silicon Valley” of China. A number of global internet marketing projects were discussed.

On his journey, Alan stopped over in Xian to see the Terracotta Warriors. The stadiums which housed the thousands of terracotta warriors were truly spectacular.

In partnership with a Chinese web agency, Metafocus is now in the position to help both English and Chinese companies create a global Internet presence. We can now create websites in both English and Chinese and optimise them for both Western and Chinese search engines

As part of the first step in this project, Monica has been recruited in the Nottingham office. Monica is fluent in Mandarin and English, and brings a fascinating, new element of Oriental culture into the Metafocus team!

 

Holly Cottage is a traditional English B&B in Derbyshire. The romantic bed and breakfast is located on the Chatsworth Estate just one mile from Chatsworth House in the unspoilt village of Pilsley. The village has many old traditional limestone cottages, some lovely gardens, the popular Devonshire Arms pub and the Chatsworth Farm Shop.

We have recently redesigned the Holly Cottage website and also enrolled the Peak District B&B on to our monthly search engine optimisation program. We have optimised the website for a number of key phrases which are specific to their business. Each month we spend time building external links to their site and making on page amendments to make it more search engine friendly. The website is already beginning to climb up the search engine rankings, which in turn will generate traffic to the site, and more guests for the B&B. 

The bed and breakfast near Chatsworth has 3 cosy and well furnished en suite rooms. After a recent AA inspection the B&B was awarded a 4 star status and they described the rooms as “impeccably clean”. The twin rooms are priced from £55 and double rooms are priced from £60 per room.�
 

October 15th is Blog Action Day. This years theme is the Environment, where people are asked to blog about something relating to any environmental issues. We’d like to take the opportunity to tell you about an environmentally friendly event which is taking place in Nottingham this weekend.

Planet Nottingham is an event focussed on raising some of the most important environmental issues that affect 18-30 years old today. Not only the major worldwide issues of climate change and global warming but more individually pertinent issues such as recycling, reducing consumption and local environmental issues

Nothing new you say? Well this event is going to put its money where its mouth is and in doing so will become the world’s first ever green club event.

Aims of the Event:

1. To be carbon neutral (using carbon offsetting)
2. To be advertised using recycled materials and more non-paper based methods
3. To showcase artwork of all descriptions from green inspired artists
4. To showcase film shorts with an environmental theme
5. To promote major issues that affect 18-30 year olds and inspire them to change
6. Recycle or reuse all materials used on the night
7. To sign up people on the night to make pledges to improve their eco-footprint
8. To show that is it possible for young adults to have a great time and make a positive difference at the same time.

All of the profits from the last Planet Nottingham event that took place in June were donated to green community projects working in deprived areas of the city.

The plan is replicate this event across the UK in the near future in the hope of raising awareness of environmental issues, helping people understand what they can do to make a positive difference and also to provide finances for interesting local environmental projects.

This time the ante is upped in spectacular fashion with one of the UK’s most recognisable DJs. Famed for his “How to Cut and Paste Series” and his awesome audio visual projects we have the mighty DJ Yoda for company.

Friday 12th October2007 Planet Nottingham @ Marcus Garvey Ballroom

DJ Yoda
Pete Jordan (Spectrum)
The Chosen Ones
Sliders from Mars
Spamchop

Advanced tickets (on recycled paper) are available at: UNU Box Office / Bag of Nails / Café El Gordos / Happy Return / Golden Fleece / Funky Monkey / Selectadisc / Planet Nottingham Reps

For more information please see: myspace.com/planetevents

One website we’ve recently started visiting regularly in the office is vouchermania.com. We all like a bargain every now and again! The site is “designed specifically to help you make savings, whilst at the same time promoting the products and services of local and national businesses.” The site originally started off in Nottingham and Derby but has now branched out across other cities in the UK.

In the past websites like this have always tended not to live up to expectations, but the interface and content of Vouchermania is really impressive. The site allows businesses to advertise and promote any special offers. From a bargain hunter’s point of view, you select the area you live in and then you can search through a range of money off and discount vouchers.

The site caters for a wide selection of different business sectors and offers an extensive range of vouchers for any perspective bargain hunter. You can find money off anything from alternative therapies, estate agents, florists, restaurants, tattoos or taxis!

Some of our clients who are already using the site include:

Cascades Gardens – A luxury bed and breakfast near Chatsworth in Bonsall, Derbyshire

Southwell Racecourse – The Nottingham Racecourse who also have wedding and conference facilities

The Adrenaline Jungle – An Outdoor activities centre in Nottingham

The Olde Barn – A luxury hotel retreat set in the beautiful countryside of Grantham

The website is really easy to use. Once you’ve found a voucher that you’d like to use you simply fill in all the contact details on the form and print it out. Simple eh? If you need it, you can even click on the map to find out exactly where you need to take your voucher!

So, what are you waiting for? Get on the site and saving money!

We are seeking an experienced web production person. You will be fluent in X/HTML and structural CSS and able to build sites conforming to W3C and WAI Level 2 standards. Experience with Javascript and working with content management and e-commerce systems is also required. Experience of working within ASP and PHP development environments would be a distinct advantage.

The role will initially be to take Photoshop layouts from the design team and convert them to HTML/CSS templates suitable for standalone site or use in e-commerce or content management systems, and then build the site around the existing software framework. The right candidate will be encouraged to progress into a full programming development role should they wish.

Please include with your application a list of URLs you’ve worked on detailing your level of involvement.

Closing date for applications: 5 October 2007

Send your CV including URLs and cover letter to pete@metafocus.co.uk

One of our client’s websites that has recently undergone a bit of a transformation and update is Liberty Industrial. Liberty Industrial is a Mansfield recruitment agency who also have an offices in Redditch. In the past the company have mainly focussed on helping organisations recruit for jobs in Nottingham and jobs in Redditch.

Due to the recent changes in European legislation many Polish and Eastern European workers have been moving to the UK to find better paid work. The influx of Polish worker to the UK is high and is highlighted by this recent article in the Irish paper, the Mayo News. The Polish Government is having to issue special work permits to workers from other eastern European countries to help fill labour shortages within the country.

Liberty have decided to specialise in the supply of Eastern Europe workers to UK companies. In particular the Mansfield employment agency is to focus on providing polish workers, polish construction workers, eastern European workers and migrant workers to companies in the East Midlands and Redditch areas. Using overseas partners the agency has access to thousands of workers in the UK and across Europe who are available for work with just a few days notice.

The Liberty Industrial website is now much more focussed to reflect the services that the company offers. Liberty are enrolled on our monthly search engine optimisation program. We have optimised their website for a range of key phrases including polish workers, polish construction workers and migrant workers. The site is already beginning to rank highly in the search engine results pages after only a few weeks.

The improvements to the Liberty site have affected both sides of their business: people seeking employment and employers seeking people. It is much easier for people, especially polish people, who are seeking work to find the site through the search engines.

One thing we noticed online recently has been the launch of mahalo.com. What’s that then? Well, it’s a new “human powered” search engine. Launched in May 2007, the idea behind it is that by using human editors it will make search results that are more relevant to the end user. Mahalo describe themselves as “a human-powered search engine that creates organized, comprehensive, and spam free search results for the most popular search terms”.

The Mahalo site has certainly been generating lots of interest in the media over the last few weeks. It would seem that the jury isn’t quite out yet on how useful or successful people think the site will prove to be.

Reading through the FAQ’s on the Mahalo site it would seem that it’s everything I could possibly want! I’d like to discover new content. I want to spend more time enjoying new content rather than waste time looking for it! I’d love to wave goodbye to spam, mediocre content and deceptive sites! However, in practice I don’t think Mahalo can live up to this just yet.

I thought that I would try the site out with a few random searches using some of our clients key phrases. I tried the following terms: SEO Nottingham, Blog Nottingham, Luxury b&b, and Avoid repossession. Unfortunately none of these terms had any results written for them. The site is aiming to write results pages for the 20,000 most popular search terms on the net, and are focusing on the most popular first.

Next I decided to check out the list for search terms they want people to write search terms for. The most wanted list for hobbies has some interesting ones! For any of you who would like to write content for the site, some current unclaimed topics include Charades, Laser Tag, Morse Code and Tanuki! I felt slightly disappointed that somebody had already done Jousting and Whale Watching!

So, overall what do I think? Mahalo might mean “Thank you” in Hawaiian, but for now at least I think I’ll give it an unconvinced “err, you what?”

Now, on a personal level, I’m a big fan of Wikipedia. I think it is one of the most organised and accessible information sites out there but because of the very nature of its editability, it is very open to abuse. However, the scale of abuse appears to be somewhat larger than expected!!

An American student, Virgil Griffith has developed a program called the Wikipedia Scanner which scans the IP addresses of those who have editted pages within Wikipedia and then cross-references them against a directory of IP address owners. Some of the findings are a little alarming:

- Apple edit Microsoft entries and Microsoft edits Apple entries, adding more negative comments about each other

- In the 9/11 Wikipedia article, the NRA added that “Iraq was involved in 9/11�

- The Vatican edits Irish Catholic politician Gerry Adams page

- UN address calls journalist Oriana Fallaci a racist ‘prostitute’

- FBI edits Guantanamo Bay, removing numerous pictures

Griffith has admitted that it’s impossible to be sure if the edits were made by someone working at one of the organizations, although the I.P. address reveals that they were made by someone with access to their network, he says.

“If the edit occurred during working hours, then we can reasonably assume that the person is either an agent of that company or a guest that was allowed access to their network,” he wrote.

To find out more, click here for the original article at MaltaStar.com.

There has been a lot of discussion recently regarding double-standards and even corruption from both Wikipedia and Google. To read some controversial comments, have a look at Ross Dunn’s recent article about Wikipedia and also Aaron Wall’s Google-based tirade. Both of these make strong cases questioning the working practices of each company, highlighting double standards and dubious practices.

Here at Metafocus, we deal with both Wikipedia and Google on an almost daily basis when working on both search engine optimisation (SEO Nottingham) and Pay Per Click advertising (PPC Nottingham). In both cases we have, at times, fallen foul of their somewhat over zealous and strict moderation. This in itself is not a problem, rules are rules, but if they are not adhering to those rules themselves, it can make things a little difficult to swallow.

How about some examples?

One of our clients is Belvoir Castle which is the official residence of David Manners, the 11th Duke of Rutland. The Duke also owns the Manners Arms Country Hotel and Restaurant so you would imagine that it would be acceptable to link from the Belvoir Castle page to either a Manners Arms page or even their website. Oh no, “too spammy” apparently, so we’ve had to work around this issue with eventually some success. We now have a link to Manners Arms website from the David Manners page, which links through to the Dukes of Rutland page which in turn links to a Belvoir Castle page! Phew, a lot of links there but as (currently) Wikipedia has such a high page ranking, it seems worth the effort. Throughout the process however we found ourselves pandering to the Wikipedia administrator to get their approval, which is understandable but a little frustrating also. (Is it just me or is Wikipedia being considered a more and more unreliable source by the day almost?)

A far more straight forward problem occured whilst setting up a Pay Per Click campaign for Duckworth Land Rover, an APPROVED new and used Land Rover dealership in Lincoln. The problem that we had was the use of terms like ‘Land Rover’, ‘Freelander’ and ‘Range Rover’ as these are trademarked names. Now, if you search for, for example: “second hand land rover uk” in Google you will see all kinds of ads, most of which are NOT for official Land Rover dealerships. We however had to provide official evidence that our client is allowed to use such terms. It didn’t stop there however. Every single use of those words in our keyword list had to be approved before the ads would display, causing a delay in getting the PPC running which lasted weeks rather than hours. Not exactly the instant results one would expect!

What conclusions can we draw?

At the end of the day, whether Google and Wikipedia abide by their own rules is by-the-by, it is us, the end user or online marketeer who has to jump through their hoops. It reminds me somewhat of my experinces with forums over the years. Those with Moderator status are afforded some kind of near-deity status which must be respected! Well, at the very least you must appease their wishes if you want to use their medium. My advice, learn the rules and abide by them wherever you can. If things don’t go smoothly, learn to be a little creative, it all pays off in the end.

We’ve all heard about Google Vertical Search and no doubt you will have seen items like videos appearing in your Google search results. We’re using that to our advantage now by adding videos to YouTube for our clients wherever we can. Our latest efforts can bee seen below for www.adrenalinjungle.com and www.paintball-jungle.co.uk. Luckily both these sites are video-rich which makes everything so much easier!

Go Karts at Adrenalin Jungle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Em5dzIfEFGQ

Paintball Jungle Nottingham: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ldWSFAtuDY