Way back in 2003 when we launched our shiny new company, it seemed that very few of our clients had heard of Search Engine Optimisation or the benefits to be obtained by ‘following the rules’ laid down by the likes of Google, Yahoo! and the other search engines. Looking at strategies at the time to gain search engine results, it seemed that everyone was using automated tools to gather reciprocal links from endless directory pages, and all of the frowned upon black hat techniques were being used by webmasters to promote their clients websites, such as background coloured text stuffed with keywords, doorway pages, hugely overstuffed metatags and a complete lack of the overall search engine optimization picture. (more…)

Vancouver, a city that I love. How can I get to live there? Well Vancouver is a fantastic city, of-course its not with out its problems, like all cities. But unlike most cities, in the authors view, Vancouver can offer one of the best life styles on the planet. Nestled right next to the Pacific ocean and the beautiful coastal mountain range Vancouver is situated well for a morning snow skiing up at Grouse followed by an afternoon at Harrison, water skiing, fishing or just relaxing in the hot springs. Truly, my idea of paradise!

So then SEO, how is the Search Engine Optimization market in Vancouver. Is there room for an ambitious, growing and experiences SEO company all the way out West in the beautiful city of Vancouver. Well lets face it, FireflySEO has been around for some time in the UK and we are not about to jump ship in search of a dream. It is of course imperative that we continue to service and offer the best service possible to our UK SEO customers. As a partner of FireflySEO the author must be honest and say that the though of opening up FireflySEO Canada based in Vancouver is certainly going to be top of the must do list for 2008. (more…)

Having recently carried out a full domain name change I wanted to share some of my finding on doing a full domain 301 from one site to another with you. In theory the practice of 301′ing a full site to another new domain is simple in practice however its a little bit more complex and involved than it might at first seem.

Doing the 301’s themselves is ofcourse not to difficult. You can either do them:

1. by writing a series or mod-rewrite or ISAPI rewrite rules, depending on your server
2. Write out individual 301 redirects from one URL to the new URL using the 301 redirect command in .htaccess or equivalent.
3. Write them into a header function in code PHP, ASP, .NET or whatever called before everything else which returns the appropriate header.

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Recently chatting with RustyBrick on WebMasterRadio.FM IRC channel. Mentioned to him about the page rank drop which SE Round Table had experienced due to selling sponsored links on their website. Interesting discussion and of-course a hot topic. Well perhaps not so much now, but it is interesting to get the info direct a little while after the dust has settled. Things he mentioned. (more…)

FireflySEO make a warm welcome to all Firefly IT customers! As you are all probably aware, Firefly I.T. is now FireflySEO, offering the best and latest in search engine friendly web design and search engine optimisation.

Because of our contuinued focus on search engine friendly design and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) we have totally streamlined Firefly I.T. and created FireflySEO, totally focused on getting you results in the search engines, after all, what’s the point in having a website if no-one can find it!

If you are looking for top results in the search engines, make us your first port of call… we can offer you not only the best website design, but also the most up-to-date search engine optimisation and critically the best hosting arrangements to make your website fly up the search engine results.

Come back soon!

Yep, thats right FireflySEO have today decided to go fully free with their award winning Hotel Booking System. Own a small hotel, guest house or B and B, want a booking system, but not the associated purchase cost. Sincerly we here at Firefly SEO hope that our Sure Book Hotel Online Booking System will suit your business needs and thats right it really is 100% totally free. Project can also be found on Freshmeat. Enjoy.

Google release API tools for Social Networks. Make the Web better, make it social, this is Googles new slogan for their recently release API for Social networking. One API that allows you to reach and run application on many social websites. 200 Million Users of social networks. API allows you to program in HTML + JavaScript so no special Google language requirements needed. Sites so far who are using the Open Social standard include Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING.

AJAX Asynchronous call backs of course. A brave and very well considered move by Google. They continue to impress on there ability to influence, control and innovate in markets.

I just downloaded the E-consultancy SEO Best Practice Guide 2007. Just to let you know at first glance it looks very good. 267 pages, very comprehensive yet very clear and well structured. Definitely a recommendation from us here at FireflySEO. If you have a membership as usual it is free, if not you will need to get your self signed up. IIRC its about £200 for a years basic membership but that gives you access to all the white papers you will ever need. I continue to be impressed by E-consultancy and can strongly advise SEO Best Practice Guide 2007 as a good read, even to seasoned SEO professionals as you will pick up something that you didn’t know or had long forgotten. Keep up the good work chaps.

Just to let you all know that we have finally made the change to Feedburner.  At a first glance it seems to be a great system, one strange thing is that SmartFeed doesn’t always seem to work i.e. when you request your feed 4 times out of 5 you simply get an RSS version of the feed with out any of the associated Flare or Smart Feed options which add value to Feedburner proposition.  Can’t really understand why this is, maybe we have a setting wrong or perhaps the settings need to replicate over a server farm?  If anyone can shine any light on this it would be most appreciated.  MyBrand however all seems great.

The clever chaps over at Google Webmaster team appear to have just added a new feature to our tool kit.

“Sitelinks are additional links Google sometimes generates from site contents in order to help users navigate your site. Google generates these sitelinks periodically from your site’s contents.” Extract from Google Webmaster Tools control panel. (more…)