Link popularity is a measure of how many other sites have links to your site. in a nutshell it’s how many other sites have “voted” for your site by linking to it. Link popularity is an important measure of your web marketing strategy.

Marketleaps Link Popularity checker is a tool which allows you to compare how many inbound links your sites has, as compared against your favourite three competitors.

It’s irresistable – a very satisfying way to prove mine’s bigger than yours, so to speak.

Let me know what you think.

Susan

It’s exciting times for Nottingham as more and more wireless Internet access points crop up around the city. Do you need to send a quick email whilst you have a cup of coffee between meetings? Want to listen again to the Archers during your lunchbreak?

Accelerate Nottingham’s Connected Nottingham project provides wireless Internet access from bars and cafes around the city; access is free to staff and students from the Universities, but also available to visitors to these sites.

There are dozens of WiFi access providers, so it can be difficult to choose which subscription to get.

If you want to find more wireless Internet access points (did you know there are more than 150 hotspots in and around Nottingham?) then visit JiWire’s Directory of WiFi hotspots in the UK.

There’s been lots happening on the Google front in the last month, so I thought a quick round up of some of the latest news would be appropriate.

Google has beta released its Google local search facility here in the UK. It is designed to help customers and prospects find local businesses on the web. Powered by Yell.com, the Google local search is another great way to drive traffic to your website and needs to be an important part of your web marketing strategy.

Those of you linking to a map to your business on your website should consider replacing those less-than-ideal Multimaps with the new Google mapping feature.In addition to highly detailed, zoomable maps it also gives great directions from here to there, and very flexible search by postcode or street name. For all you geeks out there, it even has a satellite imaging facility . And the maps look great. There is a tutorial to learn more about Google maps on the site.

More Google news to follow soon….

Oh dear, poor Tony. Go and search for “liar” on Google and see what you get…

How do these (rather funny) things happen?

Blame it on Googlebomb. Googlebomb is the art of influencing Google search rankings by using consistent anchor text in links to a site. If all the inbound links into my site site say “fabulous American trainer”, then I will get high rankings on that search term even if that phrase doesn’t appear anywhere on my site.

Remember weblogs, like this one? They are a great way of generating keyword rich inbound links to a website. You can use that quite legimately in your marketing to influence your rankings.

ps – wish I could tell you the choice phrase they used to Googlebomb John Prescott… If you can’t find it drop me an email and I’ll let you in on the secret.

News has leaked out that Google and Yahoo have negotiated an agreement to merge.

Subject to investor and regulator approval, this merger would give GooHoo (cool name, but just a joke) an amazing 70% of all “natural” search listings, and virtually all the paid advertising space.

Why would these giants be interested in merging? Anybody worried about Billy over at Microsoft and his new search engine?

Have a look at Danny Sullivan’s article in SearchEngine Watch for his view of the merger.

We are developing a new search engine optimisation course “SEO Training”.

This blog will act as an interesting metric to see how quickly the spider follows the link to the new site.

I’ll keep you posted!

92% of Londoners interviewed were were willing to divulge enough personal information to enable potential fraudsters to steal their identity – just for the chance of winning a £20 theatre voucher.

Researchers conducting the survey by Infosecurity Europe appeared to be one of those market researchers with a clipboard that hound us on street corners, but in fact were demonstrating how easy it is to get their hands on information such as your name and postcode, your mother’s maiden name, your date of birth, and the first school you attended,.

You probably recognise these questions as typical security questions to log on to your online banking…

I’ts a dangerous e-world out there, be careful…

If you need to create PDFs but don’t want to buy the Adobe publishing tools, then why not try PDF995, a free utility enabling you to create professional PDFs. Download a copy of the free software, and when you’re ready to turn that Word document into a PDF, simply hit Print, change your printer to PDF995, and Bob’s your uncle.

Why do you need PDFs?

Adobe® Portable Document Format (PDF) is the number one standard for sharing electronic documents on the web. PDF is a universal file format that “locks up” your content so that your customers can view, print and save your documents exactly as you designed them.

The DTI has produced a very useful action planning document Search Engine Positioning Factsheet covering:

* what is search engine positioning
* how do search engines work
* choosing key words
* search engine optimisation checklist

Well worth reading as a general overview of search engine optimisation.

Search engine spiders love blogs, and the spiders seem to be loving this blog.

That’s why it’s time to link to the brand new pages on the Hallam site: Testimonials from Delighted Customers and Our Projects, which include the new Web Academy web marketing course, our development of bespoke training courses, Project Evaluations, and the development of a Customer Satisfaction Survey Toolkit.

Thus ends the shameless plug, blame it on the spiders.