Rural Business Services – Caught in the Crossfire

“Rural Business Services – Caught in the Crossfire” was first written by Paul Mackenzie Ross for the is4profit.com small business blog

Will remote SMEs cope with the privatisation of Royal Mail and can superfast broadband be good enough for them?

Rural postboxThis morning I was listening to Evan Davis’ guests on the Today Programme on BBC Radio 4. Speaking about the imminent privatisation of Royal Mail this coming Autumn, one of the guests from a workers’ union pointed out that the Royal Mail is a universal service and that deliveries in high-density urban areas effectively subsidised those in rural areas.

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Google’s New Over Optimisation Game Changer

So, it’s been a few weeks since Matt Cutts let it slip that Google will be penalising sites for “over optimisation” when he spoke at a Q&A session at SXSW 2012.

In a panel, hosted by Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineLand, and including Duane Forrester, Senior Product Manager at Bing’s webmaster program, Cutts said big G would be “levelling the playing field”. Rather than just regurgitate Matt’s quote, you can read and listen to what he said here.

I’m not going to add to the speculation as to what the details of this new cull may be but as a bread-and-butter SEO and webmaster I’m in two minds about this change. Here’s why:

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Is Your Business Still “Nervous” about Social Media?

I was chatting with Mick Dickinson of BuzzedUp.co.uk yesterday, discussing how the landscape has changed in marketing trends, particularly with regards to social media. Mick’s particular case, from a few months back, was of an “old skool” marketing guy failing to keep up with the times. This resonated with an  experience I’ve had just this … Read more

Shyster SEO

I recently received an unsolicited email from someone at a website that I’ve noticed has been quite proactive in promoting itself recently. The business seems to have had a fairly good amount of media attention in the last couple of years, so their brand-building exercises are quite effective. They have good links from, and good … Read more

22i Design – 10 Years

When a little London agency tweeted the other week something along the lines of “Hooray – we’ve been doing business for 10 years!” it suddenly dawned on me… …22i Design, my little Farnborough web design business, was 10 years old on the 5th September 2010! I’d been so incredibly busy that the date plain slipped me … Read more

foursquare

As with so many things in this accelerated world, getting into foursquare was one of those moments that I don’t recall exactly where/when/how/why I got into it. It was probably the twitter updates from a friend along the lines of “Joe D. has just become the Mayor of Bur Gerking (Maida Vale)” which piqued my … Read more