Stop Parking Your Domains
I have spent a lot of time over the last few weeks looking for good domains for a number of projects for One Result and nothing annoys me more than not only finding the perfect domain name is registered but that it is being pointed at a worthless domain parked page.
Recently domain expert Gary Taylor of 3AC joined One Result as our new operations director and we have been discussing parked domains in great detail.
I understand why people buy domains and sit on them, I have experienced first hand the return on investment purchasing a great domain can provide but why oh why in this day and age with numerous hosted CMS options and pretty much anyone being able to build semi decent looking web presence do people not put some effort into developing their domain.
Even if you just built a 5-7 page micro site based on wordpress with some good content themed around your domains topic you will be building some level of trust and authority with Google that will ultimately increase the value of your domain further.
In my opinion there is no excuse for not developing domains in your portfolio and anyone with half a brain looking to purchase domains will value the fact there has been an actual web site on the domain for the previous x years rather than a parking page that will have probably only earned you 32 pence per year.
We have recently taken on a Trainee Web Developer at One Result and he has spent the last month learning the basics of building sites and is now building out our domain portfolio into cross linked micro sites at an alarmingly quick rate.
So domainers get building and add another 30% to the value of your portfolio.
Blogging via iPhone
Just checking at the wordpress iPhone app seems very good.
Can write posts and pages as well as editing existing ones. You can also manage all comments.
Good job, might actually write a few more posts now but I doubt it.
Google Launches Search Wiki – Customise your search results
Yesterday Google Launched SearchWiki a tool that allows you to manipulate search engine rankings for any keyword search just for searches you perform on Google. So for example if you type in Live Football Results you may actually want the result that is number 5 to come up as number 1, well now you can do this if you have a Google Account
Each search result now has a up and down arrow next to it allowing you to personalise your search results for any search term. Really taking search to a brand new level.
Even more powerful than that is the fact that you can now add any web page into the search results simply by going to the footer and clicking Add a result - see the screen shot below for an example where Audi now appear above BMW - I am sure you could play a couple of tricks on Corporate marketing departments with this one.
More importantly than all this is you can also see what other users have suggested or bumped up the search rankings for the search term you are looking at just by click See all notes for this SearchWiki.
It is going to be very interesting to see on where Google takes this technology and how much it will affect the natural search listings over time. In the same way sites like Digg and Sphinn take user votes and authority into consideration when ranking search results, is Google handing some of this power back to the Users is Google search going social?
What impact will this have one SEO as industry probably not much short term but long term it does pose some interesting questions.
Check out the SearchWiki demo by Google Engineer Amay below
Imagine Real Life was like Facebook
A really really funny video from the BBC about what real life was like if it was Facebook.
Its quite old now but still woth a look - checkout the guys who made it at http://www.idiotsofants.com
Evernote.com the coolest web app of 2008
Just discovered Evernote.com and it is most definitely the coolest new web app I have come across for ages.
Evernote allows you to easily capture information in any environment using whatever device or platform you find most convenient, and makes this information accessible and searchable at any time, from anywhere.
Check it out at www.evernote.com or watch the video below.
Building a community using Twitter
Great blog post from Sarah Evans on Mashable about how to use Twitter to Build a Community.
This has got me thinking lots about how to best use twitter for me and my clients, so I have set a challenge to try and get 100 followers in 7 days.
Its Twittering time 
Blogging…Seriously Where do you find the time
It always amazes me how much great content there are on peoples blogs. Some of my favourite blogs include www.seomoz.org , www.holymoly.co.uk and www.marketingpilgrim.com but the big question I have to ask is where do people get the time to blog.
In between twittering, being poked, emails, sms oh and doing work for clients where do people find the time!