Web Skills

Somethings never change.

What was  obvious to Sergey Brin and Larry Page when they started tinkering about in their Garage, was as true then as it is today. The need to communicate; information, experience and knowledge.

The ability to ask questions and get answers. The search for answers.

Targeted quality traffic. The ultimate key needed to open doors to the opportunities that are waiting on the net.

What was not so blindingly obvious though, was how what they were doing would change the way everything gets done. How it would evolve and vest such enormous power and responsibility in the hands of so few.

But  at the same time changes which have also given all of us, almost free access, to every tool we might ever need. Tools to challenge and compete. The means and the ability to influence  everything we do, what we buy and what we think.

So if things are not quite what we would like them to be, we being who we are, are the ones responsible or who are supposed to be responsible, only have ourselves to blame. We can, we should be doing more. Building virtual word of mouth information hubs to share our experience. Where we facilitate the exchange of skills and know how and to do that, the first step is to start sharpening those tools.

To demonstrate that we can change whatever can be changed.

Way out of my depth here.

Am getting mobile usability alerts for one obscure page on On the Coals. Understand it should have something to do with the template and the settings. So I have installed Neve which is supposed to be mobile friendly and have fiddled with the settings under Header layout – Title alignment. Although I am not sure what that does or does not do.   Makes no difference to what I see on the laptop.

At the same time I have installed Neve on Kids at Play and Great British Banger.  As these two sites are on the same server and search console dashboard and have or I think had the same problem. But have not edited any of the settings.

I think had because after interogating the Search Console I see no mention of mobile usability problems. What I did find on Great British Banger were references to the Photographers pages I removed. This prompted me to submit a blanket removal request for /commercial-photographers-in-the-uk/

I also found two urls that ‘have been crawled’ but not indexed.

How, once again, I have absolutely no idea. The one greatbritishbanger.co.uk/premium-cumberland-sausages-in-the-uk/artisan-gourmet-sausages-in-the-south-of-england/ is a double up of two existing urls. Both of which are indexed. However the extension artisan gourmet reads gourmet artisan in the live post.

Similarly  with greatbritishbanger.co.uk/the-english-sausage/legges-of-bromyard-artisan-sausages/ I have no idea where the add on legges-of-bromyard-artisan-sausages/ comes from.

 

 

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Where does this all it take one?How many is too many?

There are too few, who understand that the internet is nothing more than a handy tool that has been left lying around, waiting for someone to use. There are too few, who understand that the key to using the net, is understanding, the importance of a sense of community.

Tick off those two boxes and you will be opening doors in no time

 

You don’t want to be the next Amazon or Facebook or Tik Tok infuencer. Too much pressure. Too much hype, double speak. Far more sensible simply to be you. Free of the burden that comes with being ‘responsible’.

Sales Funnel? An Income Funnel? Terms being bandied about with gay abandon by those with all the answers.

The latest and the greatest internet scoop, if they are to be believed. A strategy anyone can use to accumulate wealth beyond ones wildest dreams.

Sadly I am a slow learner.

Shuffling slowly behind the crowd wondering what the hell is going on. Apparently the “definition of the sales funnel (also known as a revenue funnel or sales process) refers to the buying process that companies lead customers through when purchasing products. A sales funnel is divided into several steps, which differ depending on the particular sales model.”

Nothing particularly remarkable in that.

It is just another reinvented strategy. A sales strategy which I have never been particularly good at and the reason, I am stuck somewhere between points two and three.

The point at which I lose it.

Then there is the fourth phase. The Decision phase. Impulse buying. The point at which I would argue, the internet is supposed to changing lives for the better.

But it is not.

I always understood that the world wide web is supposed to be an information super highway, giving us access to everything we need to make rational decisions. It is not supposed to get mangled and twisted into a modern day version of the age old “Chain Letter” phenomena.

A flaw that can’t be blamed on the internet. Nor the advent of smart phones and technology.

It is us.

It is how we are, how we relate. How we focus and how we use the tools that are available to us that determines the outcome.

If we want to change the way things are, we are the first, that need to change. We need to re-look at and understand what we, so blithely, refer to as free enterprise. What we understand as freedom and what we understand as enterprise. We need to understand the difference between socialism, social enterprise and free markets.

We can easily build a small business that can be run from home with the tools we have. Many have already done it. It is possible to build an online business and wealth beyond ones wildest dreams. But nothing will ever change unless we start making some radical changes to the way we think and we should start by evaluating Googles rather trite dictum of “do no evil”.

Bruce Bartie

073 544 5660 or 044 382 0266