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IE6 in a Corporate Setting is Malpractice and SEO

There has been a few comments back on our post, from back in March, containing the quote from Ed Bott, who stated that “Any IT professional who is still allowing IE6 to be used in a corporate setting is guilty of malpractice“. One person, who we will not name, offered the comment that IE6 is the basis for a whole developer community, so recommending it’s discontinuance was irresponsible and unprofessional. Besides, the commentator sneeringly pointed out that “hundreds of people had used that expression in web commentary.

Ignoring the obvious response to the “whole developer community” thing, of course we immediately did a quick Google search on the expression, and sure enough there are good number of matches (408 exact matches at time of writing). Does this mean that a large number of people had come to the same conclusion and used the same expression spontaneously, or was there some blatant manipulation of the search ranking by unscrupulous Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experts.

This also poses an interesting observation about the way the search engines, like Google, rank pages. If you search for the phrase Any IT professional who is still allowing IE6 to be used in a corporate setting is guilty of malpractice, the original page from Ed Bott appears fourth, and then does not appear again until page two; that is eighteenth in the results set.

At time of testing, the top three results, beating the original post, are as follows:

  1. LessThanDot (a phpBB powered Bulletin board)
  2. Integrity Technology Group (a Joomla powered site)
  3. A Twitter link (with the exact quote verbatim)

This is interesting, and shows just how important your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be. The Bulletin board beat the Joomla entry by having repetition of the phrase “Any IT professional who is still allowing IE6 to be used in a corporate setting is guilty of malpractice” twice in the body, plus a partial reference in the title.

The Tweet came an honorable third by repeating the exact quote, and due to the limited number of characters available had the highest match to “noise” ratio.

Could it be that “IE6 in a Corporate Setting is Malpractice” proposition, repeated often enough, could get you a top position regardless of the content of the surrounding article?

By the way to avoid this post jumping immediately to the top of Google simply by repeating the full phrase ad nauseum, we have deliberately shortened it to IE6 in a Corporate Setting is Malpractice. However human readers will be able to substitute the full expression unconsciously, and so allow us to sleep at night! The expression we have distilled down to is concise, accurate and meets the requirement for this exercise.

If you want to see for yourself, try the links below to search for the full expression:

As an intellectual exercise, we have dutifully entitled this posting IE6 in a Corporate Setting is Malpractice, and at the time of posting Google returns no results for the exact phrase “IE6 in a Corporate Setting is Malpractice”. Over the next few weeks we will keep searching for the expression and see how many web sites pick it up. Any that do repeat it in their content will become the subject of extra scrutiny to see if they are brilliant SEO expert who we need to model, or cheap rip-off sites to be added to our SEO blacklist.

IE6 in a Corporate Setting is Malpractice
If you are interested in playing the game, and contributing in some small way to the sum of human knowledge, click here to search Google for the exact expression IE6 in a Corporate Setting is Malpractice. Let us know what you think.

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The Battle of Fearlessness Is Released

As announced in the Tweet from Aleksandr Orlov, there is a new epic movie on release from Aleksandr Orlov productions in association with Meermax. Called The Battle of Fearlessness, it depicts the struggle between Aleksandr’s great grandfather Vitaly and the Mongis Khan, the evil Mongolian mongoose and his mongoose army.

In his inimitable style Aleksandr himself announces:
“New movie is now launch! For watching of ultimate display of fearlessness click here http://bit.ly/bAOi7P (not suitable for meerkitten)”

We know how treasures from Aleksandr Orlov are so eagerly awaited, so to assure you that this is not a late April fool’s joke, we are providing an embedded direct link to the source for you to enjoy:

Our verdict: the best Aleksandr Orlov film yet, a must see! The sound track also deserves a special mention, for it’s stirring musical qualities and crescendos. We will not spoil the cliffhanger ending, just watch it for yourself and enjoy. However, also check out the official site which provides links to reviews and a downloadable poster. Click here to visit the official site for The Battle of Fearlessness.

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Boost Your Web Marketing Strategy

Many self proclaimed gurus of Internet marketing will tell you that there are three main steps to your web marketing strategy:

  • Get More People to Your Site
  • Convert More Web Site Visitors to Leads
  • Convert More Qualified Leads to Clients

The problem with these general steps is that they are unqualified and in need of a reality check. In fact some of the activities recommended by some “experts” can serously damage your credibility, and ultimately your on-line business. As Matt Mullenweg pointed out in his post 6 Steps to Kill Your Community, short term measures to increase your traffic through such means may be short-sighted and harmful.

Take the intention to get more people to your website; you could for example write something controversial on your blog, and then advertise it on all your Social Networking sites. You may well get even more visitors by allowing unmoderated comments and ping-backs, so that your blog becomes the centre of a great debate. However, do you think many of those visitors will be interested in your products or services, and turn into clients? Not likely!

So the first step is not just to drive more visitors to your site. The real objective is to attract people who are interested in your products or services.

Next, in order to convert those visitors into leads, who your marketing machine (i.e. you!) call to chase up, the conventional wisdom is to force visitors to access the good stuff via a squeeze page. While this allows the visitor to get email notifications of new stuff, and targeted special offers, if this is too “in your face”, your conversion rate will be low.

The trick is to provide a reason for visitors to sign up for your mailing list. Give them useful information, even if they are not yet ready to commit their email address, to establish the attitude of gratitude, and when they do sign up, give them loads more. This sets the pattern of action leading to reward, and will make the next step easier.

Finally, to convert your qualified leads to clients, give them tasks to do, such as polls or surveys, to establish a pattern of responsiveness. You can also use open ended blog entries to encourage the responses. This increase your user engagement until they are ready to buy.

Remember, the primary purpose of your web site is to get the greatest number of visitors to email you or call you with their contact information, and ultimately to buy your products and services. The purpose of web advertising is to get people who might be interested in buying to visit your web site.

The three step boost for your Web Marketing Strategy is simply this:

  • Attract people who are interested in your products or services
  • Provide a reason to sign up for your mailing list
  • Convert your qualified leads to clients by establishing a pattern of responsiveness

Get more qualified people to contact you, and your sales could skyrocket within weeks.

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TechCo Management Back From Hong Kong

TechCo Management are pleased to announce their return to UK from Hong Kong after crewing and supporting Success Resources, Asia’s largest seminar company, promoting the Platform Skills Intensive from Christopher Howard Training. While there we made lots of new contacts from Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand, while renewing friendships with crew from the USA.

While in the deep immersion environment, we were able to compare, contrast and debate the difference between Associative and Linear thinking, and what it might mean for the future of project management and the creative process. While Western culture ignores or marginalizes non-linear conclusions, Asian thinking encompasses and encourages Associative ideas in order to preserve harmony. For more on this topic, see Coaching and Facilitating Associative Thinking