25 May, 2011

Websites now have to comply with Advertising Standards - what does this mean?

More Rules now apply to web sites and blogs - is this going to cost businesses more money to comply?

The simplest answer is No, it shouldn't, because the things you are no longer allowed to do or say are exactly the things you shouldn't have been doing or saying in any case!

You shouldn't lie or make claims that are misleading or untrue. It applies to any content for which you have control - your web site, your blog, your sponsored ads, etc.

In the interests of not duplicating content on the Internet, the basics are covered at business link.

19 May, 2011

Thinking about Linking.

A few tips:
  • When you are linking between pages of your website, use meaningful keywords as the link text,  e.g. "See our page on keys, locks and door chains", which describe the content of the page the link goes to.
  • When linking from your blog to your website, use different meaningful keywords as the link text (i.e. NOT 'click here') and ensure that the web page you choose to land on resembles the general content of the blog post.
  • As a general guideline, if you have more than one link per blog post, set the other links to 'rel=nofollow' so that Google doesn't think you are 'spamming'.
  • When linking from your blog or website to a third party, set the target to open in a new tab or window because when that tab or window is closed, your blog or website will still be in front of the browser.
  • And remember, the objective is usually to bring traffic to your website so don't send people off-site unless there is a reason (e.g. if possible, feed your blog or tweets onto your site rather than link people to a separate blog or twitter.com).

03 May, 2011

Blogger Blogging Tips

Do you have difficulty making your blog post look the way it should?

At The BPc, we have set up a number of blogs for our clients which have some degree of customisation. We contribute to some of these blogs and some of our clients also post information or news to their own blogs.

Whenever clients run into difficulty, it usually comes down to the same problem - preparing the copy using MicroSoft Word. Word has hidden built-in formatting. Here is an illustration and a tip about creating blog posts that have been drafted in a formatted medium (including emails):

Let's take a simple phrase: Bold bit followed by normal bit.
The HTML should look like this:

This is the HTML generated by the same phrase if you copy it from Word and paste it into Blogger under the Compose tab:

You can see why it may not produce the results you wanted.

The best way to copy text from Word to Blogger is to paste the text under the Edit HTML tab. You can then go to the Compose tab to add formatting.

We hope that helps!