Why I love Chrome

Another flaw with Internet Explorer confirms my preferences for all my clients to avoid using it if possible. Doing a little IT still I have found that by removing IE from the picture along with locking a user's account down to basic rights has a dramatic effect on the change in the number of support calls required. Admittedly the latter is the main cause of the change but running IE has been a bad idea for a very long time. I would suggest being comfortable in the big 4, Chrome, Firefox, Opera and IE then ideally use Chrome with the ability to fall back to the others if a flaw is found in Chrome.

Why Chrome? To me it is simplicity for the user. No admin rights are required so users will always have the latest version, even on a computer where the user has no admin rights. Also, the Flash player is integrated into the browser, this means that the user has the latest version (nearly) of this bug ridden bit of cruft. Finally it also include a PDF reader, this again means the user has the latest/patched version of something to read PDFs with without requiring administrator rights to keep their version of Adobe reader updated (which also downloads and installs extra software unless you are paying attention!).

So whenever someone asks me what browser to use I always say Chrome. Until the other browsers can integrate the main two plugins (flash/adobe reader) that users require, set it up so admin rights aren't required and run as fast as Chrome I have to vote Chrome. But don't forget user access permissions!

Just a note on Windows 8, todays bugbear is that when in the 'Metro interface if I try and scroll to the right and my finger starts to the left of the touchpad I go to the desktop. In a way this is a good discovery, but I was trying to 'immerse' myself in the experience that is Metro but I kept leaving it without meaning to...! Another annoyance... Oh well. Seems to run jolly fast though.

Windows 8 - first impressions

Having tried an in place upgrade to Windows 8 (after a full system image backup thankfully) I had to revert to Windows 7 due to a 3 minute boot time that no one seemed able to resolve (I tried a number of online forums, Microsoft support) so with that and a number of software incompatibilities that meant I couldn't actually do any work I restored from my system image and went and bought a separate hard disk to install Windows 8 onto. So my first impressions were very poor, an in place upgrade was not possible for me despite the press and Microsoft assuring me this would be a painless process from Windows 7... My advice is if you are thinking of upgrading, make sure you have a full system image backup (not just data) so you can go back to where you were.

Anyway, having wasted about 6 hours of my life on my first attempt I had a go with my nice new Samsung SSD hard disk (lovely) for a clean install. I did a data backup to an external hard disk, made sure I had all the software installation files, serial numbers etc, deactivated anything from Adobe, put in the new disk and installed. It was a painless affair that I ran from a USB drive and ran pretty fast. My only quibble was that leaving a USB installation to itself it ended up always booting to the USB stick so after the install it rebooted and went back to the installation screen. The trick was to remove the USB drive and restart but I would argue this isn't idiot proof...

So... I now have my operating system! Everything installed easily and quickly, some experience of Server 2012 helped with IIS setup but it all went smoothly and I was surprised to have a fully functional system in only a few hours. Having Gmail as my email client was a big help (rather than moving .pst files and setting up all my email accounts again...).

What do I think of Windows 8 then? Not a lot to be honest. The task manager is better and I prefer the file copying dialogue (interesting coloured graphics showing actual progress). However, I dislike the metro interface because I don't know what I am meant to do with it. My life is spent in a browser (like everyone else?), why would I want a full screen app for my calendar/weather that is impossible to find my way out of? I just open a new tab in Chrome and click on my preferred weather shortcut/app, surely? People aren't going to use a different email/calendar solution in business, they're all going to stay in Outlook (or possibly Google Apps), Facebook works better on their mobile apps or even their website, avid tweeters will be using their mobile devices, possibly the website.

For me my metro interface now has ~100 icons that I don't ever want to look at because for each app I have installed there are 3,4 or even 5 extra links to things like uninstall, configuration settings, read me file etc, so with 20 apps installed I have 100 links to stuff I don't want to see. I could tidy it up but why should I?  It should only have the primary apps on it, or things I have chosen to add, not just dump the whole lot.

The charms bar is equally mysterious, why do I need quick access to the device manager? Am I going to be installing new printers every day? The share button is there but nothing can be shared from the desktop so why keep it there or let me click on it? It is difficult to get it to show consistently (it appears/hides easily with gentle mouse movements), I don't know why I would want to use any of the items and it comes up whenever I try to close an application (moving to the top right corner activates it...). Unbelievably irritating. Maybe I'll get used to it but to be honest I would give Windows 8 a bit of a wide berth for now unless you have a touch screen!

So, the Waxwing rating? For standard desktops/laptops I would give it 1/10 and suggest users stick with Windows 7. For anything with a touchscreen I might go up to 2/10... I'll write back again over Christmas once I've been 'immersed' for a couple of weeks, as long as I haven't smashed my laptop to bits because Windows 8 is so annoying....

SEO Primer

I often get asked by clients why their sites aren't at the top of page one of Google for a certain word or phrase. The answer to this question is not desperately straight forward so I felt a blog post outlining the general principles of search engine optimisation (SEO) and how it all fits together.

Overview
Search engines use automated programs to read web pages that they already have in their system, they then follow all the links on those pages to read further pages where they will again follow all the links and so on. The search engine then puts the information about each page into a big database including all the text on that page and which other pages link to and from it in order to work out how relevant each page is.

Each search engine has its own systems and algorithms to work out the relevance of each site but it boils down to two main elements, one is the content on each page and the other is how many other sites link to your page.

Content
The content of your pages is the first port of call for your site, unique, well written, relevant content will always rank well regardless of anything else. If you want to be found for the term 'candle shop' you need to have those words on your page, it is no use writing about 'the flammable ambient lighting solution outlet' if you want to be found for 'candle shop'. The search engines are clever enough to work out how important you think each phrase is by where it is on the page, so if the phrase 'Candle Shop' is in big letters at the top of your page (in an H1 tag ideally) this will help, but it would also be good to repeat this phrase a few times within the copy of the page to reinforce the fact that that is what the page is about. To achieve this you would want a few short, relevant and unique (see unique below) paragraphs about your shop including any phrases you wish to target.

Links
The other core element for SEO is the links to your pages (so links on other sites that point to yours). Why is this important? The reason is that the search engines use this to work out how important other sites think yours is, so the more links to your site, the more important it appears. For instance if I create a new site and no one has ever linked to it, the search engines can only go on the content of your site, which can only be optimised so far, therefore your site won't do as well as anyone else with similar content but a lot of inbound links.

Each 'inbound link' adds weight to your site but not all inbound links are made equal. A link from your cousin's blog doesn't mean a lot to the search engines, it doesn't appear to be that relevant to your site so it doesn't help that much. However if you managed to get a link from the BBC site to your candle shop website then the search engines would sit up and take notice as the BBC site is rated very highly, this one link would help enormously.

A popular practice of reciprocal links (if you link to me, I'll link to you) has died out recently as search engines spotted the trend and have thus reduce the weight of these reciprocal links. There are also sites that just do linking for SEO purposes, however these are now frowned upon and probably won't help you.

Ideally you just want links from related and well rated sites. Examples would be from suppliers, big customers, any associations your company belongs to, local business directories, news websites, industry relevant blogs and anything you can think of that would be relevant to your site.

Other
There are further things one can do to boost page rankings, such as having keyword rich URLs, unique and relevant meta title tags on each page,  fast loading pages etc, all of which we try and build into the sites we make so you just have to worry about the content and links for your business.

Where to go from here
So, you've managed to get some links to your site, you've written the best content in the world but you're still not at the top of the search engines, what do you do? There are many SEO companies out there who can help you to further optimise your content, build links for you, write further unique content for you and generally improve your site's ranking on Google. Ideally check for referrals from other companies before employing anyone and I am happy to recommend a few companies that my clients have used to some success.

Happy SEOing!

FreeAgent loveliness

I feel compelled to write something about www.FreeAgent.com as it has transformed my relationship with money in my company. I have been, let us be polite and say absolutely unbelievably rubbish with managing the finances of my company, in terms of cash flow, regular invoicing, tax returns etc. However this little beauty has changed the way I think about it all and made it accessible by clearing away the nonsense accountancy speak which is pretty unnecessary for the small business person.

When I started Waxwing several years ago there was only one choice given me by my accountants and that was to use Sage, which I dutifully bought, tried to use and (despite having a masters in Physics) was unable to fathom. I tried, and tried but it defied logic and all things to do with sanity, as well as good programming practice (while viewing a report it would sit idly doing nothing but use 100% of my CPU). I caved and called in a variety of book keepers to do it for me. This was not cheap, and on top of paying my accountants was getting extortionate considering the size of the company. There had to be a way...

After reading the review from PC Pro and seeing how one user had got rid of their book keeper and was able to do their monthly books in a few hours I was intrigued to say the least. I also had to do my annual tax return and thus had more than a year of accounts to put in and process. It took me around two days to do a year and a half of book keeping, including adding all of my customers. I was blown away, and so I think have been my accountants. They can access the information instantly, online. They can import into their accountancy system easily and because I am keeping up to date with it all they can process my accounts much earlier than normal (I have been fined a number of times for late filing). I know well in advance what my tax liabilities are, I can budget for corporation tax, customers are automatically emailed when an invoice is overdue, it makes coffee and gives you a cuddle. I love it.

FreeAgent has been very liberating for me, shown me the future and realised my dream of easily managing my own books which I have always wanted to be able to do but software has always got in the way. Viva la revolution!