Welcome to BlogStorm, the UK's most popular SEO & online marketing blog.
BlogStorm is written by Patrick Altoft, managing partner at Branded3, a Leeds based digital agency specialising in search engine optimisation, online marketing & web development.
by Patrick Altoft on September 5, 2008
We talk to a lot of companies in the UK about SEO and the number one comment we get is that their web design company has everything under control.
Now I’m fully aware of the fact that lots of web design agencies can create SEO friendly websites (a lot can’t, but that’s another story). But how many web design agencies do you know with dedicated link building departments?
The problem is that most people believe SEO is about on-page factors and keywords, very few people realise that having the most optimised site in the world is useless without links. It’s like setting up a football club, buying a stadium and getting in the Premiership without thinking you need a team of players. Just not going to work.
Somehow the business world needs to be educated that they can’t just tick the SEO box by making sure the design agency is building SEO friendly code.
by Patrick Altoft on September 4, 2008
by Patrick Altoft on September 2, 2008
With the launch of Google Chrome (7pm UK time) the circle is now complete and Google IS the Internet. Of course this isn’t quite true but Google has amassed a huge amount of control over our lives - it’s fair to say if Google had a massive system failure the Internet would grind to a halt.
Read More >>
by Patrick Altoft on September 2, 2008
This might seem like a very bold prediction but I think that by Christmas Google Chrome could have a larger share of the UK browser market than Firefox.
Read More >>
by Patrick Altoft on September 2, 2008
Recruiting talented web designers, SEO consultants, PPC consultants and bloggers isn’t easy in the UK, mainly because the recruitment industry is very fragmented. Putting an advert on the traditional job sites can attract applicants but as most of you well know - talented SEO’s are probably reading sites like BlogStorm every day rather than Monster.com.
Read More >>
by Patrick Altoft on August 31, 2008
I don’t look at the crawl stats in Webmaster Tools very often but it seems like Googlebot has reduced it’s crawl rate significantly on BlogStorm over the summer.
Read More >>
by Patrick Altoft on August 31, 2008
This weekend we’ve been putting the finishing touches to the new BlogStorm design and it’s now live on the website (best viewed in Firefox while we iron out some bugs).
As well as looking a lot better than the previous design the new theme offers increased flexibility for new features. We chose to use the fantastic Thesis Theme because it has a great codebase that you can build from and customise to your hearts content. Wordpress as a CMS doesn’t offer users the ability to modify blog design very easily but Thesis fixes that and the latest version even lets you alter widths and colours from the control panel.
Read More >>
by Patrick Altoft on August 31, 2008
by Patrick Altoft on August 28, 2008
Most people mistakenly assume that creating linkbait means building a Top 10 list and getting it onto the front page of a popular social news website.
In actual fact the best linkbait is to create a useful resource that people reference when they are writing about a particular subject.
Read More >>
by Patrick Altoft on August 27, 2008
