Apple’s iPad hit the UK market today

Yesterday afternoon, the crowds started to gather near the Apple Stores on Regent Street in order to catch the release of Apple’s iPad in Britain.

The launch of the iPad in the US created a much more buzz than the launch of the iPhone, and the numbers say it all : 1 million iPhones sold in 78 days, 1 million iPads sold in 28 days. The same could happen in the UK while large numbers of people shared their interest in this device.

However, people waiting for the store to open its doors have not been the first UK’s owners of the iPad, there are many folks that already bought it from US market or even pre-ordered the device and received it yesterday, one day before the official launch. The social networks like Twitter and Facebook were bombed yesterday with messages from the ones that already received it. It seems that due to the large demand of this gadget, numerous people standing at the line to buy one will leave disappointed since the supplies will run out in a short time.

The iPad, with a 9.7 inch screen, comes with a 16GB of storage, for the entry-level model, with a £429 price. On the other hand, the most expensive model, featuring a 64GB of storage and 3G mobile phone network comes with a price of £699.

For this « mobile phones and laptops gap filler », as Steve Jobs called the iPad, the biggest mobile phone operators in the UK like Orange and Vodafone have released some special data fees so that users can enjoy the 3G features everywhere, of course, with the high-end iPads that support this connection.

UK is not the single place where iPad hit the shelves, similar crowds also taking place in Berlin, Sydney, Tokyo or Paris, ensuring another success story for the creator of iPhone, Apple.

The iPad was also launched in many other countries around the world today, with similar queues being seen in Berlin, Paris Tokyo and Sydney.

Free SEO Tools Kit from Microsoft (useful only if you use IIS)

Free SEO Tools Kit from Microsoft

Microsoft released a tool kit to help you optimise your website for search engines in last month. Their way of helping webmasters make their website display better in organic search engine results. In a blog announcing the release of the free SEO tool kit, the blog announcing it list some of the following as part of what you can do with the SEO tool kit:

• Increase website traffic and revenue: analyse your website and find ways to boost your number of hits. Use SEO recommendations to improve traffic and increase your revenue stream.
• Influence and update search engines: control the access and display of your content in search results. Keep search engines current with the latest information from your website.
• Improve customer experience: discover and solve common problems in your website content and design to enhance your end user experience. Make it easy for your customers to find what they’re looking for.

You can download the SEO tool kit directory from Microsoft website by going to: http://www.microsoft.com/web/seo/

Like with most Microsoft products, things are never straigt forward. The SEO tool kit you are invited to download contains SEO tool kit and several dozens of other Microsoft tools, initially I actually though I downloaded the wrong product. After 5 minutes of so of messing about I eventually found where I can choose to install the SEO tool kit.

Haven install the SEO tool kit i found out that its a pointless exercises, the tool is for users of Microsoft platform with I am not so it was a complete waste of time for me and I suspect most webmasters as most people do not use Microsoft IIS to develop their website.

UK Web Directory Submission – Low cost way to drive traffic to your site

Drive traffic to your site with UK web directories

Getting website to your site using organic search engine ranking is becoming increasingly difficult, even if you are ranked number 1 on page 1 of any of the major search engines, getting clicks from your natural ranking is very difficult. On Google search engine result pages there are three sponsored link before organic results are displayed and sponsored links from to to bottom of the right hand side of result pages.

Microsoft’s Bing even goes a step further than Google when it comes to displaying sponsored links on search result pages, it displayed 4 sponsored link at the top of result pages for some keywords, reducing your changes of getting clicks even if you are number 1 for that keyword in organic SERPS.

UK Web Directories for Low Cost Clicks

Given that it is so tight and competitive to get traffic from natural organic search engine result, PPC which tend to cost and arm and a leg is the only alternative, one other source of traffic is web directories. For some reason most webmasters do not explore the possibilities of generating traffic from web directories, perhaps because it is time consuming and unlike traffic from search engines, it does not come in large quantities but when compared with traffic from PPC, the cost is negligible.

If you have the time and resources, it may be worth investing in getting your site listed on most of the high quality UK web directories. There isn’t that many of them there so if you choose about ten and submit your site the traffic you will get will certainly pay for itself, beside, it give you advantage over your competitors as most webmasters do not use web directories this days.

Some UK web directories

The list below give a brief description and link to some of UK leading online web directories.

* Ozami Web Directory
Ozami web directory is a hand coded directory, by this it means that listing is added to HTML pages using good old fashion hard coding. Listing in Ozami cost a one-off fee. Ozami is hosted in the UK so despite its .com domain extension its a UK web directory.

* FX1 Directory
FX1 is one of the oldest directories in the UK. There is nothing special about it, it is just a plain old directory, listing in FX1.coo.uk cost £20 for a year.

Other UK web directories includes:

• ABR Directory
• This Is UK Business
• Haabaa Web Directory
• Wura Web Directory
• ThisIsUKBusiness
• Directory.velnetsearch

You can discuss web directory related issue at the directory section of webmaster serve. You can find more information about manual UK directory submission here.

10 Quick SEO tips to help your site rank better

10 Quick SEO tips to help your site rank better

Getting your site to rank high on search engines using natural search result, ( also called organic search engine ranking) can be a moving target. You have a higher chances of hitting the target if you stay on top of the search engine ranking algo trends that if you use outdated ranking methods.
Search engines regularly update the algorithm they use to rank one site higher than the other for one keyword or the other so what help you achieve a higher ranking last year may not necessarily help you this year. To help your site rank well for your target keywords, a 10 point list of some of the factors that can help you is compiled and can be found below.

10 Quick SEO tips to help your site rank better

Getting your site to rank high on search engines using natural search result, ( also called organic search engine ranking) can be a moving target. You have a higher chances of hitting the target if you stay on top of the search engine ranking algo trends that if you use outdated ranking methods.
Search engines regularly update the algorithm they use to rank one site higher than the other for one keyword or the other so what help you achieve a higher ranking last year may not necessarily help you this year. To help your site rank well for your target keywords, a 10 point list of some of the factors that can help you is compiled and can be found below.

1. A domain name with the desired keywords in the domain name rank better than a domain name that has nothing to do with the target keywords. For example if you are targeting the keywords “yurts” a site called “Yurtsandtipis.co.uk will rank better than a domain name called “nothingToDoWithYurts.com”
2. When you buy or negotiate link exchange, the higher your link is placed on the page, the better SEO benefit the link passes on to your site. As a rule of thum, ensure link you buy or exchange are above the fold. Link on footer are not very valuable.
3. Get involved in social media site such as Twitter, setup a twitter page, customise it and link to your site from the twitter page, it is said to influence ranking on search engine result pages.
4. Create a Facebook page for your business or site using your desired keywords, this does not directly affect you site ranking but they keywords rich page you create on Facebook will get you more traffic and you are well placed should Facebook link start influencing SERPS.
5. When creating title tag, the keywords that are most valuable to you should lead for example if you are targeting the keyword “Press Release Distribution” and your site is called Newsmakers.co.uk . Your title tag should be something like this: Press Release Distribution – Newsmakers and NOT Newsmakers – Press Release Distribution.
6. You should add images to your text and and keyword rich Alt tag to your images.
7. Ensure you use the keywords you are targeting in your title tag, body and if possible footer of your page.
8. Ensure you page does not contain unnecessary text and images, the faster your page load the better for your ranking.
9. Ensure your site is hosted on a fast serve. Sites hosted on slow servers are penalised by search engines.
10. Ensure your copy is written in quality English with no spelling mistakes and avoid copying and pasting text that has already been used once before on any site on the Internet.

Online fraud – 24automove.com a genuine UK company?

A friend who lives in mainland Europe sent me am email today asking about a “London” based company that was going to ship car to him. He was supposed to pay 50% of the cost of the car and the remaining 50% on delivery, the company in question is called 24automove.com . I was to have a quick look at the company just to ensure its a reputable company. The moment I got to the homepage on 24automove.com I could tell it cannot be anything but a fraudulent company, for a start, a company that claimed it has been trading since 1954 does not even have a telephone number.

It claimed to have its head office in UK, a quick search at companies house show the company with the registration number on its website (MC249800) does not exist, that is not even the format of a UK company registration number. If has a registration page which was supposed to be secured by SSL, no padlock appears when you try registering.

I did a whois on the domain name, there was an interesting result, website was registered only a few months ago, its hosted on a Romanian server. This website is definitely a fraud.
If you come across this website, you want to run a mile from them, don’t give your money to them, here is and email send by one of the fraudsters behind the site:

————————
Hello,
The payment has to be sent to the shipping company using bank
transfer.After the deposit is sent to them the shipping will start.
When you get the car you will have 5 days to test it…If you like the
car you can keep it and pay the rest of the money.
If you don’t like the car you can tell them to take it back and they
will give you a full refound.Also they can deliver the car at any
address you want.
If you are ready to start this transaction go to
http://24automove.com/ check the shipping company web site and let me
know after that so I can start the transaction, after the transaction
is started you will receive all details about the payment and
shipping.
You can use this link to register with them : http://24automove.com/register.php
—————————————–

Some clarifications I got from the friend who almost use them follows:

I found them one on a popular German car selling site www.mobile.de
and also on polish www.otomoto.pl
On mobile.de initial contact is with 999pkw@gmail.com which was later changed.

But on both site the story if this
1, You’ll get offered a car at a price far below what any other is offering
2, You get told the story that they had to move to the UK an as such
the left-hand steering car is not convenient
3, They send you a picture of the car
4, You are given a car moving company to register with through which
the transaction can be completed.
5, They offer you 50% payment up front after which the car will be
brought to you.
6, 5 or 6 day test driving of the car after which if you like it you
pay the rest of the fee or you call the auto move company to came and
take it back and you will be fully refunded.

I am sure they are using other car selling sites also to defraud others.

I found other names which they have used on this site

http://escrow-fraud.com/index.php?page=gallery&layout=61

They always use the same professional looking web page but with different names

Once you’ve paid they just take the site of line and you are left hanging.

I hope this helps.

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