SEO is dead; long live social networking!

We've always had a philosophy at Datapartners that any company who says "we guarantee to get your site to number 1 on Google" is a liar and is not to be trusted. The reason is that the whole SEO game has always been so vague and the masterminds at Google have never revealed any of their dark secrets on how they rank pages so how can anybody guarantee to get a site to number one if all they can do is guess? Also, Google in particular, are well known for changing their algorithms for ranking on a regular basis so even if you are number 1 on Monday, doesn't necessarily mean you'll be there on Tuesday.

Then there is the whole point of keywords. It is more accurate to say "we can get you to number 1 on Google for a particular keyword or phrase". You might be number 1 for the phrase "lying cheat" but you could be number eleventy-million for the phrase "cheating liars" so you have to second guess what punters are more likely to type into the search box to find you. Again note the word "guess".

With the dawn of real-time search, it makes appearing high up in the natural listings even more of a lottery because the results are changing in less time than it takes Internet Explorer to crash. The only way to guarantee a high ranking in Google for particular keywords is to sign up for Google AdWords and get a paid listing.

So what is the point of SEO? Well if you ask me there isn't one. If you want my expert opinion, the social networking boom is going to start making SEO redundant sooner rather than later. With the ability to spread the word so quickly via status updates and the speedy inclusion of blogs, you can target more people in less time.

The trouble is that most of you don't have the time to do this because you're all too busy running your businesses and probably don't have a clue what to tweet on Twitter or write on blogs anyway. This is why Datapartners are offering a "Social Networking" service. We will do it all for you.

Visit the Datapartners Website

To build or not to build; that is the question

One of the worst things about my job is having to explain to people why things cost what they do. The problem is that people only see the finished product and most will not appreciate the complexities behind the scenes. Trying to explain to somebody that what they are asking for is actually quite difficult is about as easy as trying to teach Gordon Brown how to smile without looking creepy.

Content managed websites cost more because they are much more complicated to build and take up more resources once they are up and running. Static websites are a lot cheaper but if you ever need anything changing, muggins here will have to do it and of course there is a charge for that.

And so I come neatly on to our Clickmachine product. This is a content managed website but at static website prices. Basically it is a blank canvas and you can build the pages yourself with various different types of page template from newspaper-style articles, HTML, surveys and lists of downloadable files. All aspects of the design are also controlled by you.

And now for the "however". However, the problem is that to build your own website from a content management system requires a certain aptitude with computers. Most people don’t have this which is why they ask people like me to build websites for them in the first place. Consequently I get quite a few phone calls from people pleading with me to help them or just do all the work for them, which of course there is a charge for and this somewhat defeats the object of the self-content management. The other problem is that most people aren’t designers and therefore will make a website look about as attractive as Ann Widdecombe in a thong.

This may sound like I’m slating a product that I was primarily responsible for building. Well yes and no. My advice is that if you feel you are capable of being a designer and you know how to operate a computer without causing a national blackout, then Clickmachine will work for you. If, however, you haven’t understood a word I’ve said in this article then let us build a site for you.

Planning world domination with Google

Like pretty much everybody else on the planet, I use Google. In fact I'll be posting this very article on Google's Blogger and I'll no doubt soon see how many people have visited it by logging on to my Google Analytics account. Google truly is a wonderful company and I always enjoy beta testing their latest bits of kit and marvelling at the genius behind it.

However, a few weeks ago while I was travelling up to the scum hole that is London on my way to a concert, I was playing around with Google Latitude when a scary thought struck me: Google knew exactly where I was at that moment. That got me thinking. Google know what things I browse for on the web, they know who I email thanks to Gmail, they know who my friends are thanks to Friend Connect, they know what videos I watch thanks to Youtube, they know my credit card details thanks to Checkout, they know the contents of some of my work thanks to Notebook and Docs. Things like Google Reader, Google Groups, Blogger, Picassa and iGoogle mean that they can also get a fair read on my general lifestyle. Streetmap even gives them the chance to look into my house.

Not that I’m a paranoid person or anything but when Google do eventually take over the world, I want to be the first to own up and say I will happily take on the role of evil henchman – I think I'd be good at that job!

The even scarier thought is that Google was founded by two students! Not that I want to try and get one over on them but Datapartners is run by a rock star and a racing driver – that’s much more charismatic!