There seem to be misconceptions about how e-mail servers work. People seem to think that e-mails work independently from the internet. In order for anyone to be able to send and receive e-mails regardless of the internet connection you’re using you need to have a good internet connection and speed.

Sometimes you’ll find that you are able to connect to the internet but when you click on “send and receive” you don’t get your e-mails. At this point you start to panic thinking your e-mail has been suspended or it is broken. Well sometimes it is suspended or broken but not everybody is aware that the path that the e-mails take while traveling through internet connections is different to that of the website servers.

In layman’s terms both your water pipe and electricity cables run underground, if the electricity cables break it doesn’t mean your water will stop running but if the water pipe bursts, it may affect your electricity. In this case if your internet connection is down, it will affect your e-mails because e-mails use the internet to travel from one address to the next; internet is the mails’ transport. You are asking yourself why don’t I get e-mails even though I have an internet connection.

You may have an internet connection but your signal maybe weak or your connection may be slow losing packets and data on its way to its destination. Because the connection is so bad the mail server takes about 60 seconds to open a session and push the e-mail through. If the 60 seconds are up and the session is still open then a second session is opened. By this time the two sessions are running simultaneously, which slows the connection even more. Every time that you click send/receive it opens the session and therefore delaying the time for the server to close the sessions.
Each session needs to be closed one after the other by the server before your e-mails will come pouring in again.

The best remedy is that as soon as you realise that outlook is hanging and none of your e-mails are coming in, you contact your server provider and find out if there are any internet connection problems that are delaying your e-mails before assuming the worse.

South Africa is currently experiencing severe degradation to international servers due to a cable break on the SAT3 international link. This affects everyone in South Africa because there are services that you will try to get to online but will not be available, hence your internet connection, depending on the routing that it takes may be affected leaving you with a slow internet connection. This means that a great many of us will have trouble either browsing the net or downloading our e-mails as effectively as usual.

According to Telkom, their technicians are presently working on the problem and will be resolved soon.

The clear cut world of advertising and marketing has undertaken a dramatic turn as of late. Traditional marketing methodologies such as the likes of newspapers and other print media are losing market share daily to the more interactive customer-orientated online marketing solutions available. These audiences are both more versatile, accessible and more consumer targeted.

In order to try and keep ahead of this online competition, you need to make an effort in keeping up with the latest SEO trends with regards to your own website.

Mentioned below are a few trends to keep in mind when building a new website or maintaining your current one:

Content is (STILL) king

It does not matter which way you look at it, the quality of content on a website is still as important as it has been since the very beginning – whether you are building new websites or rebuilding old ones. The more relevant the content the better the overall ranking of a site and the higher the traffic and generally the quality of the traffic too. Well written content engages the audience and also promotes the likelihood of quality links from other sites.

HTML vs XML site maps

Matt Cutts (Google Engineer) mentioned recently the importance of html site maps in website structures. According to him if you only have time to do one of the two being HTML or XML, he suggests working on the HTML one as it both increases usability when people search the site for information, and allows Google to easily crawl and index the pages.

Determining Keywords Trends using the Google Trends Application

Implementing a successful result orientated SEO strategy for websites involves good keyword selection. This information can be extracted from the “Google Trends” application – http://www.google.com/trends

Different keywords and keyword phrases related to the content and industry can be entered into this application and the report generated will give an indication as to how often these keywords and phrases are searched for compared to past searches – which can be viewed as daily, monthly or yearly results. Using this application to improve your content can help generate more traffic to your website and improve your rankings on Google. By incorporating the words and phrases in your content that experience high volumes of searches, you are able to keep up to date with current keyword search trends and stay ahead of your competition.

There are a number of ways to use Google Trends information to improve your SEO results

1. Compare the performance of two or more keywords and use the one that performs better within the content of your site. This helps with ranking.
2. Check keyword performance across different user locations and filter the results accordingly. This will help with relevancy.
3. Google Trends gives a summary of keyword performance from 2004 to date. This will enable you to select keywords that have had a history of solid stable performance.
4. Google Trends provides information to identify why certain changes in general search takes place and this will also aid you when choosing relevant reflective keywords.
5. Google Trends provides information for keyword performance across the various languages.
6. Any drop in the traffic to your website can be investigated by checking the search trends results.

For more information on how DiscoverSEO can assist your business in extracting maximum value out of your web solution, contact us TODAY – (011) 807 6149 or visit DiscoverSEO – www.discoverseo.co.za for a free SEO evaluation.

Building a website within SEO best practice guidelines is the first step to getting your site crawled, indexed and ranked by major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing.

The important points here to remember are to :

1. Submit your URL to the search engine (like this for Google)
2. Ensure that your sitemap.xml has been submitted (like this)

These 2 steps ensure that the search engines know that your site is there to be crawled and searched. Once this has been done though it takes a while for the bots to get to your site and actually crawl it.

The process of getting it indexed can take anywhere from between 2 and 4 weeks; but there are a few ways that you can “speed” up this process and take you to the next level.

Ranking, the second step after indexing

Inbound links to your site act as lead ins to your site which Google and other search engines will follow to your site. As soon as they have followed the link and arrived at your site they will begin crawling; indexing and ranking it. Google enjoys finding a website through links as it already confirms popularity of the site (which is closely related to relevancy).

The ranking process is the really important one as this determines where in the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages) you will show up. Apart from on site optimisation techniques such as title tags, H1 tags, keyword relevancy, code, etc. it is the process of link building and marketing your site that will greatly improve where you rank.

Cementing your site rank with link building

By having your site linked to by other sites which are directly related to your site and in fact in the case of article syndication, to article directory sites that are not directly related to your site. These back links are the cement with which the page rank for your site is built and it is this page rank which ultimately determines where you show up in the SERPS.

JD Consulting is an Online Marketing Consultancy based in Johannesburg Gauteng. For over 10 years we have been assisting our clients with their online strategies from the design of their website through to the marketing online thereof. For more information on how JD Consulting can assist you with our online marketing strategy and implementation needs, contact us on business@jdconsulting.co.za or visit our website at www.jdconsulting.co.za

JD Internet Consulting and DiscoverSEO are proud to announce their latest achievement attained by the SEO department.

Over the past couple of weeks, the SEO department consisting of Jonathan Houston (Online Marketing Manager), Megan Trow (SEO Specialist) and Nick Duncan (SEO Specialist), have been hard at work preparing for the Google AdWords Professional Qualification by engaging in the online tutorials, group discussions and working with client accounts.

Recently, the team then completed the GAP exam individually online and qualified with the following results:

Jonothan Houston 92.27%
Nick Duncan 90.91%
Megan Trow 90.61%

Congratulations!

For more information on how JD Internet Consulting can assist your business in extracting maximum value out of your web solution, contact us TODAY – (011) 807 6149, business@jdconsulting.co.za or online at www.jdconsulting.co.za.

If you don’t already know, duplicate content can have a hazardous effect on your SEO efforts, and we were lucky enough for Google to tell us about it in February this year. Google released an article hinting that you should specify your preferred version of your page(s). And when Google “hints” something, you’d be stupid not to make it a standard in your procedures! By using canonical links, you are telling Google which page is the “original” or “preferred” page, of a page that can have multiple variations that are identical or very similar.

What is a canonical link?

A canonical link is a <link> element specified in the <head> section of your duplicate page(s).

<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.example.com/products.php?prod=tyres” />

Give me an example!

If you have a page listing all the tyres you are selling, such as:

http://www.example.com/products.php?prod=tyres

and another page listing the same information, but sorted differently, such as:

http://www.example.com/products.php?prod=tyres&sortedby=brand

You would need to specify your preferred version of the URL on the duplicate page. Therefore, if you would like the first URL to be your preferred page, insert the canonical link pointing to that page into the duplicate page. When I mention the term “preferred page”, this indicates the page that you would want Google to list in the SERPs.

What most don’t understand.

This works perfectly well for the example mentioned above, but did you realise that even if you dont have an e-commerce site and you believe that you do not have any sort of duplicate content on your site. Chances are, you do! The URLs below are all different in the eyes of a Google bot.

http://www.example.co.za

http://example.co.za

http://www.example.co.za/

http://example.co.za/

http://www.example.co.za/index.html

http://example.co.za/index.html

And did you realise, your PageRank™ is probably being spread between some of them? This is due to the fact that others link to you differently. Its a given that you cannot control how others link back to your site, but you need to let Google know what your preferred URL is so they can transfer the properties accordingly. Inserting some code into your .htaccess file to accomplish this is a very good idea. You should also keep in mind not to have contradicting URLs in your sitemap.xml, and using Google Webmaster Tools to specify between “www” and “non www” is another must do.

Conclusion

Google is not the only search engine using this standard, Yahoo! and Bing have both incorporated this into their algorithms and you can read their press releases here and here. So in the hope of increasing the efficacy of your SEO knowledge, keep this listed at the top of your “SEO to do” list.

Having just attended the 2nd Annual Social Media Conference in Johannesburg I thought it pertinent that I blogged about Social Media and how it is affecting people, business and marketers alike.

We have become a society fixated with immediate results and instant gratification…

The evolution of the internet itself has fueled a lot of this transformation in information consumption.

The first “version” of the internet was basically a directory and if you were listed there you were doing well… You spoke; and the masses had little choice but to listen.

Then the Internet changed and people were able to talk back… Conversations started between companies who were ready and willing to engage and their consumers who were more than ready to give them their thoughts…

The third “version” of the internet we find ourselves in at the moment is commonly referred to as the “social web” as it is no longer about 2 way communication between a website and a consumer, but the interaction of the consumers themselves about your company or product  where  most of the time you are not expressly invited to the conversation.

The beauty of social web though is that while you are not being engaged 1 on 1 with your consumers conversations, you are more than welcome, nay, encouraged to listen to what they are saying and then respond.

The key lessons there are ‘listen’ and  ‘respond’…

Censoring and gagging your consumers who are talking about you – especially when it is bad – is possibly the worst thing that you could do for your brand. It shows that you are frightened about what the public generally thinks about you or that you are arrogant in believing that their thoughts are not worth listening to… Listening to your consumers, and more than that, offering them a platform on which to speak about their interactions with your organisation – both good and bad – is the first true step in understanding and utilizing social media to your advantage. Listen to them and learn from them.

Responding is the next and equally important lesson. When people are talking negatively about you it is far, far easier to simply ignore what they are saying and hope like hell that they are going to go away and the issue will be forgotten…

Not Going To Happen..!

As what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, similarly, what happens on the internet, Stays On The Internet…! The negative comments are not going to go away, they are not going to be forgotten and with the advancement of Search Engine Optimisation, and the stance that Search Engines are taking, user generated content, the same content that you are trying to ignore, the search engines are giving value to and are 9 times out of 10 ranking highly on prominent search engines.

Probably higher than your website itself…!

This means that you need to respond quickly and effectively to any negative and indeed, positive comments that are being made about you online.

Claiming ignorance is no longer an option as access into these conversations has never been easier and the information is readily available 24 hours a day, begging and pleading for your attention… And if you are not going to give it your attention, your competitor is and they are going to turn your unhappy customer into their happy customer!

Combining these 2 very important aspects with a way to integrate your social media strategy with the rest of your marketing strategies is a guaranteed way to success, not only in avoiding alienating your current customers, but also in winning new ones.

The realm of social media is still a new and scary place to be, which is why many businesses and marketers are hesitant to get their hands dirty as they relinquish all control that they had by pushing messages one way, and have to succumb to the masses thoughts and opinions.

It is precisely this reason why we need to get involved in social media and be forever vigilant as to what is being said about us online and ensure that  we are adequately prepared to embrace the challenges and successes that social media brings.

I have recently been developing mobi sites for some of our customers and after an immense number of hours researching, I have yet to find a South African mobi website that validates. Can someone point me in the right direction please?

Before we go any further, let’s define the term “Validation“:

1. To declare or make legally valid.
2. To mark with an indication of official sanction.
3. To establish the soundness of; corroborate.

After some time, I managed to validate the 2 mobi websites I have been busy with and to be honest, it was somewhat of a challenge. Rules and guidelines have been laid out by the W3C to ensure (or try to ensure) that websites (including mobi sites) keep to the best standards of practice. This ensures search engines can actually crawl your webpages and it maintains universal understanding between browsers and users. For more information on understanding the phrase “Validating a website” please refer to the first half of this wordpress post.

With mobile validation, your validation score is represented by a number, with the maximum being 100 at the top of the scale, and the opposite side can go into negatives. I have taken a look into some of the most well known SA mobi sites and can say that they do not score well at all, they range between -13 and 77.

Some common errors included the following:

• Extraneous characters (whitespaces or comments),
• The document does not validate against XHTML Basic 1.1 or MP 1.2,
• The Table contains less than 2 tr elements,
• Page weight errors,
• Embedded external resources,
• Nested tables,
• Cache control,
• Incorrect character encoding,
• Incorrect Doctypes,
• Broken links,
• and the list goes on…

It is imperitive to source a web design/mobi design company that complies with the W3C standards. This will ultimately save you thousands in the long-run when you decide to hire a SEO company to market your site online.

For those of you that don’t know how to validate your site, visit the W3C Mobile Validator page to try yourself, but once you have pulled enough of your hair out, consider JD Consulting.

If anyone knows of any valid mobi sites, please send me the details.

To be able to actively generate more traffic to your own site or blog, there are a number of methods you can follow. An important means of creating instant traffic and instant link juice is by firstly, posting relevant articles to your site or adding posts to your blog consistently, and secondly, by submitting these articles / posts to a number of social media and social bookmarking sites.

Social bookmarking (SB) has made this entire process more manageable and successful which results in generating website traffic that is both more consistent and more targeted. By posting your articles to social media and social book marking sites, which have large user bases, you are increasing the exposure to your article or post and thus increasing exposure to your site and its content. This in turn increases direct traffic to your site, improves Alexa ranking and is effective in creating valuable backlinks.

Social bookmarking sites such as digg.com, reddit.com and stumbleupon.com provide quality backlinks as they are deemed important and relevant by Google and come up at the top of searches. So by submitting your articles to these sites, you are indirectly gaining link juice and organic search results from Google searches.

You do however need to be careful as to what bookmarking sites you are submitting to as not all of them will generate traffic even though they provide backlinks. Here we are mainly referring to sites where articles do not get instant exposure once posted.

The social media and bookmarking sites you want to submit to are those where your content appears instantly once submitted under, for example, the “new” or “latest” category – where users can read and then rate or vote on those articles to keep them current. An example of where this occurs is South Africa’s muti.co.za.

Certain social media sites require you to categorize the new submission and / or to submit tags which pertain to the content of the post. Relevancy is of utmost importance here.

You also need to be careful not to be a spammer. This is where you submit irrelevant content or submit the same content over and over. Also your content needs to be of a high quality and standard as well as informative and value adding. If this is not the case your site will lose credibility with readers and will ultimately result in a decrease in traffic to your site.

Take Action Now

So what are you waiting for? Take some time (at few hours at least) and create accounts for all these social media and bookmarking sites to which you wish to publish your new content. You then need to publish posts and articles consistently to your blog or website and then submit the new content to all these social media accounts. This will then in turn increase exposure and traffic to your site.

Alternatively contact us @ DiscoverSEO and we can save you the time and energy by handling everything from writing the relevant keyword dense content to uploading it to your site and then to submitting it to at least 15 social media and bookmarking sites for you. This can be done on a regular basis to ensure optimum results.

Call us now (011 807 6149) or contact us for a quote >>

For a list of links to DoFollow and Nofollow sites and their page ranks refer to this article below:
http://blog.opencircle.co.za/social-networking/dofollow-nofollow-social-bookmarking-list/

http://www.directoryroll.com/social-bookmarking-list.php

JD Internet Consulting is looking for a senior PHP developer to fill a position in our development department.

Requirements:
- Minimum 5 years of proven commercial PHP and MySQL experience
- Strong JavaScript, DHTML, XHTML, CSS and HTML experience
- Ability to develop and support PHP and MySQL technologies
- Develop according to coding standards and best practices
- Ensure that all applications meet business requirements
- Ability to work under pressure, multi task and use your capabilities to proactively implement solutions
- be willing to work flexible hours where necessary

Permanent Position

Remuneration: Negotiable based on ability with experience as a secondary consideration

Please send CV’s to production@jdconsulting.co.za

If you’re in the online marketing industry, be prepared for some big changes. Google recently announced their latest project – Google Caffeine, which is set to change the search world. In essence, Google is rewriting the way they index sites and for the first time, we have a sneak preview of how this will affect our rankings.

For those that think this wont be a big change, think again. Matt Cutts has mentioned that this could compare to the Big Daddy update in late 2005. If you’re wondering how this is going to affect you, take a look at this comparative tool from Sembience which checks your current ranking of a keyword vs the Google Caffeine rank.

Here is a simple example of how rankings are already changing:

Google vs Google Caffeine

One of the most talked about changes with Google Caffeine is the way that Google gives preference to real time events and news and a lot of people are wondering if this is going to sacrifice the relevancy of the results. I’m not convinced about this. I believe that these change are needed to filter out all the irrelevant information that has built up along the years within the Google index. From now on, a lot more work will be needed to maintain your current rankings, meaning that all those untouched, forgotten websites with useless information will be thrown to the bottom of the ranks if it hasn’t been done so already.

In order to maintain a good ranking and keep your business alive you will now have to put as much time into your business online as you are offline.

Visit the Google Caffeine site and start getting prepared for what’s going to be a big change in the online marketing world.