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Mum’s Best Fruity Chicken Curry Recipe – Easy Quick

May07
2009 8 Comments Written by Clayton Wignall



I don’t usually put recipes on this blog particularly as this site focuses on internet seo and online marketing.   However, after years of trying to get this simple recipe from my mother, actually getting it a few times and then loosing it twice, I figured the best place for it was the WWW.   At least now it will always be handy and I wont ever lose it again, it will just sit here always ready to give me culinary inspiration.  Nice work Mum…..I have always looked forward to this dish, by far my favorite childhood din dins.

Ingredients (feeds 4):

  • 1 x Onion finely chopped.
  • 1 x Sweet apple (eg Golden Delicious) chopped
  • 2 x Red Tomatoes.
  • Curry Power.
  • 2x tablespoons of raisins.
  • Mashed banana (optional if want it more fruity).
  • Small amount of Tomato puree (optional see how you go without)
  • 500g Chicken breast.
  • 1x Chicken stock cube.

Put a small amount of Margarine, Butter, or Olive Oil in a saucepan and melt.  I like to use a little butter and olive oil.

Finely chop your onion and sweat them.  Sweaty onions hmmm I had to ask what this meant, it means cook then on a very low heat with the saucepan lid on stirring occasionally.

After a few minutes add the apple.  You can either dice the apple, cut it into thin strips or chorsley chop it.  I like dice it into 1cm size cubes.  (I do not actually measure them – unless I have consumed a large quantity of wine).

Now repeat the sweat with the Onions & Apples again for a few more minutes.

While you are sweating the above you need to de-skin a few tomatoes.  I tried to convince my mother that peeled tomatoes out of the can was a quick alternative, but ….well lets just say my mother does it this way and that is how it’s done…MR WIGNALL.

To de-skin tomatoes put them in a bowl and cover them with boiling water and let them sit for a few minutes.  The skin will come off very easily.  You also need to de-seed the tomatoes and the seeds can add a bitter taste to the curry.

Now, add the de-skinned/de-seeded tomatoes, along with a teaspoon of tomatoes puree to the saucepan with the Apples and Onions and cook on a low to medium heat for a few more minutes.

Add tablespoon of curry powder to the saucepan, more or less depending on how hot you like it.  If your unsure start with a teaspoon and move up.  I like a good healthy tablespoon.  Cook this some more for a few minutes.

Then add half a cup of boiling water and a chicken stock cube to the saucepan, along with two tablespoons of raisens and simmer, stirring occasionally.

While you are doing the above, you also need to find the time to dice and brown your chicken breast.  Add a small amount of butter and olive oil to a clean saucepan on a low heat.  Once that has melted add your chicken and slightly brown it all over.  Should take about 10 minutes.  Don’t cook the chicken so it looks dark brown.  You are looking for a light tan colour.

Once the Chicken has been browned, add it to the onion and apples and cook the lot on a low heat for about 5 more minutes, then turn it off and take off heat.  Have a taste, if you want the curry a little more fruity add a small amount of mashed banana.

And that’s it.  We have always served it with White Rice and a bowl of Natural Yoghurt with chopped cucumber mixed in.  If you want to go the distance get some popudums – you can do them in the microwave nowadays which is great as you don’t have to deal with the hot oil.

This is my first go at cooking directions – I hope it has been ok.  Enjoy…..

Posted in Home Renovating, Miscellenous Topics - Tagged , ,

Web Marketing Basics – How to be Successful

May03
2009 3 Comments Written by Clayton Wignall





Succeed OnlineHow to add a custom "vanity url" to your facebook Pages page. Here is how Facebook describes Page usernames: “Usernames allow public entities to easily promote your presence on Facebook with a short URL. This username can be used in your marketing communications, company website and business cards.” If you pick the username “AHFXnet,” then your Page’s URL becomes “facebook.com/ahfxnet.” It is important to note that you need at least 25 fans before you can create a custom URL for your Facebook page. You must also be an admin of the Page in order to secure its custom URL. Facebook also says, “Usernames can only contain alphanumeric characters (A-Z, 0-9) or a period (".").” We recommend picking a short and memorable username that reflects your company name or brand. You cannot change your username, so think wisely and ask for a second opinion when deciding on your page’s permanent username. For branding purposes we would suggest you use the same name as your twitter account. Here are the steps to create your custom Facebook URL. Login to Facebook, with the account that administers your Facebook Page Go to http://www.facebook.com/username/ You will see in a yellow box, the username for your PERSONAL profile. This is not related to your Page username. Below, you will see a link that says, “Set a username for you Pages” Click on that link A box will appear, and if you have more than one Facebook Page which you administer, you will see a drop down menu with all of your Pages displayed. Pick the desired Page from the list. If you are eligible for a username, meaning you have at least 25 fans and have not yet set your username, you will see a box that says “Enter Desired Username” If you select a page that does not have 25 fans, Facebook will tell you that you are not eligible. If you pick a page with already has a username, Facebook will display the current username, which cannot be changed. Once you enter a username, you can click “Check Availability.” If your desired username is available, you will see a box reminding you that you cannot change your username once it has been set.   If you are ready to set your username, click “Confirm.” Now you have a custom Facebook URL! Share it on your other social networks, and you can even have it printed on your business cards. Test your custom facebook pages url by going to www.facebook.com/ahfxnet (replace ahfxnet with your new custom url). This page also lets you claim your own cus...



Succeed Online  Eliminating questions allows you to achieve better web usability and quicker navigation making your site much more effective. Today you can do almost anything in a minute or less, more specifically when it comes to the web, it is important to create web sites so that they can be quickly navigated. A user comes to a site for a specific purpose. They want to find what they're looking for and get out with as little thinking as possible. Making the elements of your site self-evident creates better usability as you start to eliminate questions such as, "Where is the navigation?" "Can I click on that?" or "How do I search?" Another way to eliminate questions and create fast navigation is to be concise. Users won't read everything on your site. Instead they will scan until they find what they are looking for. By eliminating needless words you are creating a cleaner page and allowing the user to find the elements that they want quickly, making for an effective visit. Constructing page elements that look like what they are creates better usability. If you are creating a button make it look like a button; if you are making a search bar make it look like a search bar and so on. This is another way to reduce questions. When the user can find the submit button because it looks like a button then you are allowing them to quickly use your site, without any deep thought. Creating better web usability with self-evident elements will make your site much more effective. Usability is very important to think about when designing a website. Being conscious about the user and the questions they will have will help you to create a more effective site that is easier to navigate.  This article is from the AH Digital FX Studios website design blog:: Helping your business succeed on the web, and can be found at http://www.ahfx.net/weblog/184


Posted in Internet & SEO - Tagged , , ,

Add Auto Updating Content to your Website – RSS

Mar29
2009 2 Comments Written by Clayton Wignall



I have been doing a fair bit of research lately into Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to brush up on my knowledge before I jump into posts.  During my travels I have become aware of the amazing possibilities of RSS feeds and what they can do for your site.

An RSS feed (an abbreviation for Really Simple Syndication) is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated Internet material, such as a blog, news headlines and even audio and video.  People who subscribe to RSS feeds are automatically aware as soon as something changes on the site that they have subscribed to.

For example if you subscribe to my blog (which runs an RSS feed, click the icon to subscribe to my RSS feed mini_rss1 ) you will know as soon as one of my cracking articles is published online, you can even read it without having to go to the site, by using an RSS reader.  I have placed a FREE RSS reader on my FREE Stuff Page. <—–Click There

The benefit of an RSS feed is that it is always changing.  So how can you use this ever changing RSS content, to benefit your website and make you money?  Why would you want to have someone elses content on your website anyway?

It all comes back to the search engines, and offering your readers fresh new content.  Search engine prefer those websites with constant changing content.  If your site is changing all the time, Google for example has to keep sending their spiders to your site.  This is good for you and promotes you site ranking significantly.

So what would you have to do to get a RSS feed displayed on your blog for example.  Well first of all you would have to go through the process of converting the RSS feed into HTML (very difficult coding issues to over come here) so it could be displayed on your site.  It would then need to be formatted, and re formatted each time the feed changed.  Sounds difficult and time consuming yes?

Well, it is, believe me to convert and RSS feed being a .XML  file type to correctly formatted HTML is very difficult.  However, there is a little program out there that does all this for you, simply and effectively…it is really quite an amazing achievement on the programmers part.

If you can get an ever changing RSS feed displayed on your site, the search engines will love you.  I have struggled about whether I should do a post about this program because it gives a website such an advantage over others or if I should keep it all for my self.  However, as you can read I decided to spill the beans and tell all…..

rss

Have a look at an entire website I have created using only RSS feeds – its called Dawi News and focuses on World Business News and Finance.  I never have to change this site because it is updated automatically as soon as a feed is updated.  Fresh new content is placed on the site all the time.  It is a very popular site and works very well indeed.

dawi_news_homepage

Adding your own RSS feed (duly converted into HTML) on your own site is also a very beneficial trick.  Not only will it display different parts of my blog to you the reader, but doubles up on my content and keywords, and tells the search engines my site is changing again and again…….

If your interested in doing the same I would strongly recommend you download the below guide all about RSS feeds and how to turn RSS in money;  it is a great read, easy to follow (even if your not a wizard with HTML etc).   I simply love this product and hope you will too!!!  Any questions on it then post a comment.

Got go get my plane now…..UK here I come…..thanks for reading

Download the RSS Guide here – Downlad Here

Posted in eBay Tips & Help, Internet & SEO, Miscellenous Topics - Tagged , , , ,

Road to Website SEO Bliss Part 2- Keyword Density

Mar28
2009 1 Comment Written by Clayton Wignall



This is part two of my series on SEO bliss.  Part one can be found here, and talks about using eBay pulse as a keyword generator.

Continuing on from that post…..

Following my few weeks of trying out different keywords on my website from eBay pulse, I ventured over to Google Trends and went through the same sort of process.  As I have said previously, Google Trends is a bloogers ultimate tool because it tells you what is current and what people want to know about, right now!! So if you want traffic and want to make an impact, whether you use your own blog, digg, facebook, Yahoo 360, Blogger.com or whatever, Google Trends can help you get your two cents out there.

There isn’t really one thing that you can do to improve your traffic. The search engine algorithms are far to complex for that;  its not about just doing as much optimizing as you can and hope you get noticed.  The scatter gun approach wont yield you enough results for the effort you will have to put in.  What is important is doing a few things well !!!

We all know about keywords, and as a novice website owner I thought that if I just used the hottest keywords, as lots and lots of then I would get more traffic.  Well is just doesn’t work like that – not anymore (if it ever did).  You cant simply go to Google Trends, see what the world is buzzing about, enter the top 10 or 20 keyword searches from Google Trends into your site and wait for your traffic to spike.

If your going to use keywords, just use a few, and use keyword phrases……like “Internet Marketing” or “Website Optimization” or “eBay Powerseller” (if that’s your area), what I mean is use keyword phrases 2 or 3 words.

Once you have picked your keywords use them throughout your website.  I can’t stress enough how absolutely important this is.  If you run a website on selling pet food, and think if you enter some of the top searched keywords like  “Paris Hilton”, “Kylie”, “Google”, (as these are usually pretty popular keywords) your will get better search results, well I’m sorry to say you are wrong and your certainly not tricking the search engines.

It’s all about the density, page relevance and inward and outward links.  Google Trends is great for telling you what the world is searching for, its also great for telling you what the world is searching for in your particular niche.

For example if we stick to the “Pet Food” example, the main worldwide searches as specified by Google Trends for the last 90 days (these were my search parameters) were as follows: -

trends_pet11

As you can see from the above results, people are searching for the keyword phrase “dog food” and “cat food“, pretty much as one would expect as they are the most popular domestic animals worldwide.  You can also see that in these phrases the word “food” is more prominent in the search than the word “pet“.

trends_pet2

This search details those keyword phrases over the past 90 days (again part of my search parameters) that have showed significant prominence.  This does not necessarily mean they are the top keywords, more that there has been a spike in there use.  This may be from a recent advertising campaign, news event (which is really just advertising at a set time) or discovery.

Google defines a “Rising Search” as: -

Rising searches highlight searches that have experienced significant growth in a given time period, with respect to the preceding time period. So if you’re comparing data for a search term during 2006, the time period serving as the basis of comparison is 2005. Similarly, if you’re comparing searches for that term during May of 2006, the basis of comparison is April of 2006. (Click here for the full definition by Google)

trends_pet31

Last of all is the geographical regions;  as we can see most searches for “pet food” important and products are coming from the United States.  I can further tell you from going further into the search results that the bulk of searches for the keyword phrase “Pet Food” in the US and UK are coming from:

  1. Poplar, England in he UK; and
  2. Madison, Wisconsin in the United States

There must be a lot of pets in these areas, or someone is really interested in Pet Food.  You can have an field day with Google Trends data!!! The amount of information available to the general public is just amazing.  Imagine what information isn’t available to the public.  Ahh the conspiracy theorist in me…that’s another series of posts (perhaps)!

Ok, so I’ll get back on topic.  The above Google Trend search has told us that people in the US are searching for Pet Food more than anyone else in the world and the most popular keyword phrase used is “dog food“, followed by “cat food” and “natural pet supplies“.

If you were to use these keyword phrases as you keywords, and did nothing else with them, your chances of increasing traffic to your site would be next to zero (this is assuming you didn’t have these words throughout your page content – see below on this point).

Search engines like keyword density, they calculate the density of the keywords you have used in your site/ page and this translates to the page relevance.  Search engines don’t want there customer finding websites that have no relevance to the search that was performed.

So to give you ever chance of getting your site up the ranks, you would want to get the word “Pet Food“, “dog food“, and “cat food” in your title, as your keywords, as well as mentioning them as many times as you can throughout your site/ content.  I say site or page as Word Press for example lets you set keywords for each blog post, and so do many other web programs.

Search engines want accurate page relevance, and sparing use of keywords (that is the old habit of keyword stuffing is dead).  Pre 1998 you would usually enter a keyword meta tag on every web page, and webmaster got in the habit of entering the same keyword over and over again – hence the phrase “keyword stuffing”.  Back then this seemed to work, however now all search engines have dropped support for the meta keyword tag, so using this technique will do nothing for you.  If you have a keyword meta tag, this part of your page will still be indexed by the search engines, yet they don’t do anything with it.

Indexing: This is where the search engine effectively makes a copy of your page by storing all the HTML content it finds.

I would recommend you try not to use more than 8 keywords or keyword phrases per page, I know its hard but your page relevance will be all the better for it.  Also, try and mention you keyword phrases at least 5 times minimum on the page, and use at least one of your keyword phrases in your title.  This promotes your page relevance with the search engines and will get you moving up the ranks to SEO bliss.  Also underline words and bold them, this shows the search engine spiders that, that particular word has emphasis, further “quotation marks” also promote keyword relavance.  Hence bolding a few of your keywords is a very handly little tip.  This again doesnt mean that you get your keyword such as “dog food and bold, underline and put it in quotations: “dog food“  Again it needs to be relevant, even gramatically relevant to assist your rankings.

The next part of this series on SEO I will be taking about some excellent FREE SEO tools on the net to seek out top keywords, submit your site to Search Engines and optimize each page of your site.  But for now remember:

  1. Use your keywords as many times as you can within your page content
  2. Try and get your keyword phrases into your titles
  3. Use bold, underline, and quotation marks to promote keywords, but do it relevantly
  4. Keep your pages on topic and or cover only a few topics per page, this helps you stay focused on your keywords.

That’s it for now thanks for reading……I know it was long.  If you liked this post, why not subscribe and get loads of free advice and ebooks or follow me on Twitter.

Posted in Internet & SEO - Tagged , , ,

The Two most important eBay Seller tips you will ever read!!

Mar23
2009 9 Comments Written by Clayton Wignall

 


I spent this morning creating a Video Tutorial to add to my guide on how to install Google Analytics to your Word Press Blog, I will upload it later today.  In the meantime I thought I would mention the two most important aspects of eBay selling you need to know!

The two most important tips for selling on eBay I can offer is: -

  1. How to create an eBay title; and
  2. The duration of an Auction.

No 1 eBay Listing Tips – eBay Title

The eBay title is how your bidders find your item, it is therefore very important that you get this part of your listing right!  When I started listing on eBay back in 1998, eBay didn’t have the automatic tool built into their search engine which would suggest listings if you spelt the name wrong when you searched for something.  Back then it was up to your to get it right.  Now however, just like Google if you search for something popular and spell it wrong, the eBay search engine will list suggestions for you.  For example, I searched for “ecomerce” spelt with only one “M” and eBay suggested and listed  “ecommerce” items with two “M’s” .  This only works properly for popular items however, if you are listing something outside the norm then you may have trouble.

ebay_search

Ultimately you want as many people as possible to find your listing, you want to stand out from the other twenty thousand sellers listing the same type of item;  so how do you do that?

The first thing you need to do is to find out what are the Keywords in your category of product.  Lets say you want to list an ebook on the history of the monitors  (I know what your thinking, yet it was the best I could come up with).  We will use eBay US of this post. To find out the Keywords for this type of item,  I would go to eBay pulse at www.ebay.com/pulse and click the category drop down menu until I find monitors and projectors.  Here we can see that the top keywords searched in this category are:  lcd monitor, monitor, computer monitor, projector, lcd, touch screen, monitors, computer monitors, touchscreen and flat screen monitor.

pulse1

Next we want to see what are the keywords used for “eBooks“.  You can either go to “Books” or “Information Products“.  We will use books, and I won’t go right down to the sub catergory of books, just keep it at the top category “books”.  As you can see by the below image, the top keywords in the books category are: twilight, computer, books, easton press, harry potter, stephen king, 1st edition, nancy drew, bible and chess. Notice that eBook is not a keyword in the books category.

pulse2

So now we have our keywords.

lcd monitor, monitor, computer monitor, projector, lcd, touch screen, monitors, computer monitors, touchscreen, flat screen monitor.

twilight, computer, books, easton press, harry potter, stephen king, 1st edition, nancy drew, bible and chess

So what would our listing title be?  Now eBook are predominately .pdf files which means they will work on PC, Mac, Linux (I think) etc.  You could go back to eBay pulse and repeat the above, using these words also.  For example Mac would become Macbook, iMac, iBook, Powerbook etc.  However, I will not go nuts and for this post just stick with PC Mac and Apple.  Obviously you could continue to pulse keywords.

We are listing an eBook on the history of monitors.   eBay gives you 55 characters to use in your title, so using common abbreviations like NIB, NR etc significantly helps describe your item without using up precious characters.

MIB: Mint in box

OOP: Out of print

NIB:New in box

LN: Like new

HTF: Hard to find

LTD: Limited edition

NR: No reserve

BN:  Brand new

Also, avoid using silly wasteful words like Look, Wow, Cool etc.  Buyers don’t search for these words and they really don’t entice Buyers to click on your item.  You want to get your Buyers attention and to do that you describe your item the best you can, using as many keywords as you can squeeze in, while not appearing to just through up keywords.  Further, don’t worry above creating a grammatically pleasing Titles.  You want IMPACT and DESCRIPTION. For example if your selling an iPod don’t put iPod New for Mac Apple iBook Powerbook.  There are so many of these silly titles that Buyers just turn off.

So using the above keywords we obtained through eBay Pulse and the few simple rules I have mentioned, our title could be: -

Limited 1st edition books – History Flat Screen Computer Monitor OR

BN 1st Edition Book Bible of LCD Computer Monitors NR

And that’s it.  Remember, don’t use wasteful words, check your pulse keywords, don’t over Capitalise words, use a few abbreviations (but not too many) and don’t worry about your Grammar.

No 2 eBay Listing Tips – Listing Duration

I started listing on eBay in 1998, to get some extra money while I was at university, and after it turned it into a business I noticed that there were certain days of the week that I sold more things and I had spikes in the number is watchers on my listings.  This was very important information as it told me what days I should have my listings out there; a sort of eBay analytics.

Thursday, Saturday and Monday were the busiest days.  Now the longest duration you can list an item for on eBay is 10 days.  In order to get the most exposure, (and forget about 3 or 7 days auctions), list your items on a Thursday.  Why?  If you list your item on a Thursday, for 10 days your listing will be current for two Thursdays and two Saturdays, significantly increasing your chances of being seen and getting bids.

Also start your listing at a time when people are at home.  Don’t start it a 5pm or 6pm when people are leaving work and are going to miss the end of the auction if they wanted to drop a bid in at the last minute.  Start the auction at 8.00pm.  This is after dinner (tea, supper….whatever you call it), people are home from work, and are starting to have some free time…..perfect time to remember to hop on the Internet and place that bid.  If you start your item on a Thursday at 8.00pm it will end at 8.00pm on Saturday.

Now if your item doesn’t sell or meet the reserve, don’t just re list with the same title.  Change the title a little!!!!! Google, Yahoo, MSN love fresh new content not old content.  If you use a new title when you re list, your more likely to get picked up by the search engines again.   Also, if you check your original source code of your listing you will find that the original end date will be the same as the first time around (IE before you re-listed) and hence another reason why the search engines won’t pick your listing up.

Hope these tips works for you….more coming soon so why not subscribe to this blog…..and get a bunch of free eBooks, on SEO and eBay.  Until next time……………………..

Posted in eBay Tips & Help - Tagged , ,

Minimizing eBay Selling Fees

Mar19
2009 7 Comments Written by Clayton Wignall




eBay selling fees have always been a little steep, more so now as they put them up (and lost a load of users in the process).  One of the most frustrating things when selling on eBay is that your get slugged three times.  Once when you list the item, once when you sell the item, and then as you get paid (as you are now required to accept Paypal,).   Even more so is when an item doesn’t sell!

Working out exactly what your profit will be when your selling many items on eBay is a rather trying procedure.  When you really start to list many items on eBay and your eBay business starts to take formation, calculating the bottom line is paramount to your starting price.  Auctions make this difficult, however setting your happy price for all your auctions will certainly help with this calculation pickle.

During my eBay days I had at times 150 items running (and that’s not eBooks), physical items that had to be packed, photographed and taken to the post office.  Very time consuming.  Working out the bottom line (my happy price) was very important so I decided to design my own eBay calculator using a combination of Excel and Visual Basic Pro.  It took hours and hours to do……..The final product wasn’t as polished as I had hoped, yet it did the job and gave me a nice neat figure at the end, calculated my eBay fees, Paypal fees (if the winning bidder used Paypal) and it certainly took away a lot of my pain.

I’m not saying that you should go out and design your own eBay selling calculator (I will be offering free online access to mine to all my subscribers in the coming weeks), I’m just making a point that if your selling on eBay for profit, knowing all costs associated with the sale is crucial.  Just because your business is on eBay doesn’t mean it is not governed by the same general principles of accounting and good business management.

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Turn your RSS feeds into money on your site – with auto updating web content – Start Now This is by far the best program I have found to date to increase traffic to one’s website.  Highly recommended.

Posted in eBay Tips & Help - Tagged , , ,

Free e-book on managing websites

Mar12
2009 1 Comment Written by Clayton Wignall



Subscriptions to Clayton Wignall.com – Free website resource.

Getting information out takes time, and I have a lot of information I would like to share about all things internet and SEO etc;   so I thought I would offer all new and existing subscribers to the ClaytonWignall.com blog a free 130 page ebook to help.

The e-book is all about organizing, building and maintaining websites;  it also contains loads of tips, tricks and ideas to help you get results.

This e-book will be offered for a limited time only and will be emailed to you once you have subscribed.  Please note that I am a firm believer in personal privacy, and hence will not disclose any of your subscription information (name & email address is all you need to subscribe) to any third parties whatsoever.  This information is used for my purposes only to identify my audience spread etc.  Subscription to this blog is free.

All existing subscribers will be emailed this e-book over the next few days.  Hope you find it as much use as I did.  Enjoy……

the-internet-in-2005-croppe

The above image is a wicked representation of the internet in 2003, pretty amazing stuff, courtesy of The OPTE Project who have been mapping the internet for years.  Excellent work guys.

High resolution images available below.

Internet in 2003 – 700×700 resolution

Internet in 2005 – 1024×1024 resolution

Posted in eBay Tips & Help, Internet & SEO - Tagged , , ,

Driving Massive Traffic to your Site – Search the Searchers

Mar12
2009 1 Comment Written by Clayton Wignall



For those of you that blog about current affairs or perhaps sell the latest gizmo’s, computers, or need a comprehensive Internet research tool, there is no better way to stay on the cutting edge than utilizing the advanced features offered by Google Trends.

Google Trends is a simple concept.  It tells the users what people throughout the world are searching for.  Google Insights is Google trends’ big brother that has advanced filters that allow you to identify search trends by time, geographical location, keyword, and even compare interest in a particular keyword or phrase based on two different years.

Image if you could find out what each individual city in the world is interested in, and could then go off and write about what people in that particular city want to read about or you could perhaps sell those products that people wanted.

Maybe you want to beat your competition and find out when people start searching for Christmas decorations, presents etc.   If you knew this information you could start selling your products when the consumer is ready to buy it.  Google Trends gives you just this ability.

Today for example to top ten highest searched phases on Google for the USA: -

 

It’s interesting that the topic of 10 people being gunned down in German didn’t get a mention in the top 10 highest searches phrases in USA.  It didn’t even get a mention in the top 100.  However the terrible shooting in the US did get a mention (No 6).

Google trends can also give you search trends on the most popular websites.  In the US the 10 ten websites by traffic today are: -

 

1. eatability.com.au
2. truelocal.com.au
3. bom.gov.au
4. jbhifi.com.au
5. coles.com.au
6. australiannewsweekly.com
7. metlinkmelbourne.com.au
8. jbhifionline.com.au
9. officeworks.com.au
10. bigw.com.au


You can filter these searches by any country, and it will even give you a graph of recent activity.  In UK the most popular websites are: -

 

1. yelp.co.uk
2. amazon.co.uk
3. tfl.gov.uk
4. nhs.uk
5. tvguide.co.uk
6. nationaltrust.org.uk
7. thisismoney.co.uk
8. rspb.org.uk
9. allinlondon.co.uk
10. nationalrail.co.uk


Based on the above information, the National Health Service is working over time as usual.

Say your in London and you want to open a new store.  Google trends would be able to show you what the top searched phrases/ products or keywords people in Sydney are searching for, whether there is a seasonal habit to this search, and if there is a dip in interested over time (such as January) and even how 2008′s interest compared to 2005.

Google trends gives you an insight into what people want and can really assist in increasing traffic for your blog, product or service.  If you use iGoogle as you homepage, add the Google Trends gadget to your iGoogle page and stay informed on the hot topics every day – click here to get the gadget.  If you don’t have an iGoogle homepage yet, I would highly recommend getting one.  Click here for more information on iGoogle and how to open a new iGoogle account.

There is an alternative to the Google trends site, and it is called OneRiot.com.  One Riot is similar to Google Trends, it is nowhere near as advanced as google trends yet is more graphically pleasing than Google Trends.  OneRiot is really more of a search engine than a research tool like Google Trends;  OneRiot indexes there website differently to other search engines by basing the hierarchical index in popularity, this popularity it calls the “pulse”.  By basing indexing on interest/ popularity OneRiot is more up to date that other search engines because it focuses more on what is current and give less attention to the achieved websites that sit and fester with no love.  Have a look at OneRiot.com by clicking here.

We are all aware of the credit crunch and the problems with mortgages, so I thought it would be interesting to see what the trends were in the search phrase “home loans”.

The results showed that towards the end of 2008 when things were really getting bad, people started searching less and less for this phrase (which is understandable), in fact October, November represented the worst months for the last two years for the search phrase “home loans”.

However, wouldn’t it be reasonable to think that the searching for this phrase would go up in these last months of 2008, as home loans became more difficult to secure due to a lack of credit available from banks.  Maybe, the public were sick of hearing about how bad things are going to get and just switched off, or maybe we all just thought there was no point searching for a home loans in these awful economic times.  Interestingly, it appears that Australian’s were the most concerned about home loans, despite Australia being in a better than average economic position.

The below graph shows the search trends in the phrase “home loans”.   As you can see interest in home loans is starting to rise, which must be a good sign……..

google-trends

Do research on Google recently I came across this site which talks about how to get hundreds and hundreds of dollars worth of Google ads for free,  a very interesting concept indeed.  I thought it worth a read – click here.

Have a look at this great video on Google Trends and how to interpret and use the data……great stuff.





Posted in Internet & SEO - Tagged , , , ,

How to back up your Blogger.com blog

Mar10
2009 1 Comment Written by Clayton Wignall



Backing up your Blogger.com blog is very easy and should really be done once a month, or if you are going to add Google Analytics, or any major gadgets, customizations etc.

To backup your Blogger.com blog do the following: -

  • Login into your Blogger.com page
  • Click Dashboard, then Layout
  • At the top of this page you will see various header titles one being Edit HTML
  • Click Edit HTML
  • Once in this page you will see “Before editing your template, you may want to save a copy of it. Download Full Template“
  • Click Download Full Template
  • Blogger will now download the full blog in an xml format.
  • To restore a blog in the event of failure etc do the same yet click the Upload button.
Posted in Internet & SEO - Tagged , ,

Adding Google Analytics to your Blogger.com blog

Mar10
2009 Leave a Comment Written by Clayton Wignall




Blogger.com is Google’s free online community blog and the features it offers are rather good indeed. It is very easy to setup and use, and offers a host of extra gadgets (plugins) one can add to your blog, such as Nasa’s picture of the day, finance news, a blogroll, AdSense adds, pretty much anything you can think of.

The selection of themes you can pick is a little dull and the layout and settings aren’t as customizable as having your own say WordPress blog; yet you don’t have to worry about hosting, or domain renewal, you can still incorporate your Clickbank ads, AdSense, custom header etc, and you get to sign up using your existing Google account, so it’s not all that bad.   I have started to mirror this blog at my blogger.com page claytonwignall.blogspot.com

As with any blog, Google analytics has a place behind the scenes.  If you want to add google AdSense to your blogger.com page (which you really should) then this is how to do it: -

  • Sign up for Blogger.com and configure as required;
  • Sign up for Google analytics (for more information on Google Analytics configuration and sign see my previous post – click here)
  • Once you have sign up for Google Analytics you will be presented with the Google Analytics code (under the New Code Tab);
  • Copy this code (all of it);
  • Log in to your Blogger.com blog;
  • From the Dashboard click Layout;
  • Online the top of the Layout page there are several headers: * Page Elements * Fonts and Colors * Edit HTML * Pick New Template
    * Monetize;
  • Click Edit HTML;
  • In the Edit Template window you will see a bunch of code
  • Scroll down to the bottom to where you see the close body tag </body>
  • Immediately before the </body> tag paste your Google Analytics code in;
  • Click Save Template
  • Google Analytics will shortly send you an email advising you that Blogger.com has requested access to your Google Analytics.  Once you click the verification link within that email your done.
  • Wait approximately 24 hours and data shall flow.

If you have a large Blogger.com site it is probably best that your backup your site before doing the above.  For more information on how to do this – click here.

blogger

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