Tony Attwood’s Blog

1. Create content that relates to the people who will search on google for your details. Some firms put their brand name or product name everywhere and use all the snappy buzzy phrases but this doesn’t help. You need lots and lots of articles that are relevant to people you want on your site.

2. Write well. Not everyone can write in a way that engages readers. Just doing it yourself if you are not a professional writer with a clear style, doesn’t help, because people will read a bit and then leave. The material you put up has to be to the point and well written. Don’t assume that people will read all your material - they will treat it like anything else. If it is not clear, lucid and to the point they go.

3. Don’t just copy all the latest internet ideas. Some audiences go for snappy headlines, click throughs, and pictures, but others want clear information. Decide if you are writing to a reader of the Sun or a reader of the Guardian.

4. Give the reader the chance to find you on every page by having your email, phone, fax and postal address everywhere.

5. Create more and more articles which include the words that people are likely to search for, and then give them the answers in a meaningful way.

If you want that summarised into one simple concept: write a lot about everything you sell in an informative and open way. That way people will find you with searches and you will go up the rankings.

If you would like to talk about this do give me a call on 01536 399 013 or email Tony@hamilton-house.com

Tony Attwood

If you think emails and web sites are coming under attack from the dark side of online activity, then you don’t want to get too close to social networks like Facebook and Twitter. For this is where the cybercrooks are really turning up the heat.

Sophos’ Security Threat Report: 2010 is a huge, significant review of what we really don’t want to think about - the awful mess that resides underneath on line activity.

There were over 70% more spams on social networking sites last year than the year before, and 36% more malware attacks - and the numbers are rising daily. The biggest security risk is seen to be Facebook, followed by MySpace, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Despite the risks it seems that most companies allow staff to use Facebook etc on line at work. And although LinkedIn is not the highest rated risk, this is probably only because fewer people use it. Those in the know say that LinkedIn poses the biggest security risk and Sophos says that by publicly posting information there, companies make it easier for criminals to launch targeted attacks on a corporate directory.

In short, social network use poses a threat to companies, and very few companies have much awareness of how much danger they are in.

Meanwhile, there is widespread awareness that there is a huge threat to companies through the vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer - and yet despite this most firms keep using it - even though it is so simple to switch to Firefox or an alternative free browser.

The overall answer is simple: don’t allow social networking on your firm’s computers, don’t be tempted to join LinkedIn, and delete Internet Explorer from your computers (although do set up an alternative browser before you do!)

These opinions are of course just mine - but if you want some background here is the full report.

Full report: http://www.sophos.com/sophos/docs/eng/papers/sophos-security-threat-report-jan-2010-wpna.pdf

If you would like to know more about Hamilton House and our mailing services, please call 01536 399000

Tony Attwood

If you think emails and web sites are coming under attack from the dark side of online activity, then you don’t want to get too close to social networks like Facebook and Twitter. For this is where the cybercrooks are really turning up the heat.

Sophos’ Security Threat Report: 2010 is a huge, significant review of what we really don’t want to think about - the awful mess that resides underneath on line activity.

There were over 70% more spams on social networking sites last year than the year before, and 36% more malware attacks - and the numbers are rising daily. The biggest security risk is seen to be Facebook, followed by MySpace, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Despite the risks it seems that most companies allow staff to use Facebook etc on line at work. And although LinkedIn is not the highest rated risk, this is probably only because fewer people use it. Those in the know say that LinkedIn poses the biggest security risk and Sophos says that by publicly posting information there, companies make it easier for criminals to launch targeted attacks on a corporate directory.

In short, social network use poses a threat to companies, and very few companies have much awareness of how much danger they are in.

Meanwhile, there is widespread awareness that there is a huge threat to companies through the vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer - and yet despite this most firms keep using it - even though it is so simple to switch to Firefox or an alternative free browser.

The overall answer is simple: don’t allow social networking on your firm’s computers, don’t be tempted to join LinkedIn, and delete Internet Explorer from your computers (although do set up an alternative browser before you do!)

These opinions are of course just mine - but if you want some background here is the full report.

Full report: http://www.sophos.com/sophos/docs/eng/papers/sophos-security-threat-report-jan-2010-wpna.pdf

If you would like to talk about the information here please call me on 01536 399 013 or email Tony@hamilton-house.com

September 2009 I started placing copies of email adverts from some of our company’s clients on one of our web sites. There is nothing else on the site, just the adverts.

By January 2010 we had around 28,000 individual readers of the site for that month. This excludes those people who come on and disappear at a moment’s notice - clearly not having found what they wanted. To be counted these people had to come on and stay there.

There was no marketing for the site - it just exists - and so it is obvious that the reason people pour onto the site each day is the content. They do a Google search and find something on our site and click. The average client of HHM gets around 70 reads of the advert each month. Not a huge number, but we’ve only been running the experiment for a few months and it is very unfocussed. Just imagine what it could be like with a focussed site.

The reason this is such a good idea is that the total worldwide online search market grew 46% in December 2009 compared to December 2008.

During December 2009, internet users conducted 131.3 billion online searches, compared to 89.7 billion online searches in December 2008.

The UK grew by 35% from 4.6 billion to 6.2 billion searches.

The only issue is, what do you put on your web site by way of content. In a separate experiment we set up a blog exactly two years ago, and have published a story on the site each day ever since except for a couple of periods when I went on holiday!

In the first month we got 2,000 individual readers, after one year it was at 60,000 readers a month, and for January 2010 it reached 170,000 individual readers.

If you would like to know more about how to use this method of reaching clients, and potential clients, do drop me a line or give me a call.

Tony Attwood

01536 399 013