Over recent weeks, Ph HQ has seen its fair share of ailments.  From Swine Flu, seasonal migraines to severe tonsillitis – which turned out to be just a sore throat (OK, yes, that was me, but it felt a lot worse at the time.) 

With flu season looming, it’s only natural that at the first sign of an niggling headache or prickly throat, that our defence mechanism kicks in and we suffer a 20 second panic that we too have succumbed to the office exposed virus.  Call in: Dr. Google.  Today, one in seven people search the web for information on illnesses. As a self-confessed Hypochondriac, this is the perfect solution for busy professionals – no time taken out of the office, waiting days for an appointment or sitting around in a waiting room full of spluttering OAP’s. We do our shopping, book holidays and even socialise on the web, so it’s common sense that we use the web to monitor our health.  And we are now never more than a few clicks away from that panic relieving diagnosis.  But are search engine health checks actually making us worse? 

Last week, throat gripped with pain and sipping despondently on a Lemsip (thanks Charlie), I found myself compelled to check out my illness for myself.  Tapping in ‘sore throat’ to a search engine, from the results that flood the screen, I have a sudden panic that Halls Soothers aren’t my answer… Throat Cancer, Swine Flu and Dengue Fever are listed on the first page.  

As a nation, we are becoming increasingly shocked by the search engine results found when searching for our self-diagnosis.  Though there may well be actually nothing wrong we opt for thinking the worst, as we trust that these sites are accurate in their findings.  Introducing… Cyberchondria.  

On further research I found that a recent study by Microsoft showed that search engine diagnosis leads us to believe that despite simply having a mild headache or a bout of sniffles, we are actually at death’s door.  In a search for ‘Headache’, rather than highlighting common causes such as tiredness or caffeine overload, 25% of results point to…Brain Tumours.   

The problem here is that search engines have no ‘probability’ filter, so serious conditions will continue to come up as often as simple complaints.  So, if we believe all we read from our online GP, headaches tell us we have brain tumours, back pain is a sign of osteoporosis and swollen glands suggest the cancer, Lymphoma.

Microsoft are planning to create a smarter search engine, which will spot a medical query and direct it to the right site. 

In the meantime (it may take a while!), for all the Cyberchondriacs out there, my advice is to stick to sites with credentials, that have been recently updated and don’t steer you with one-sided advice.  And watch out for websites sponsored by companies trying to flog you their ‘miracle products’. If you do have a brain tumour, it will take more than a £50 miracle cream, a magnetic heat pack or ‘free shipping’ herbal remedies to fix it.

I have previously written an article about the top SEO hints and tips you should implement into your search engine strategy to rank high in search engines amongst your competitors. Now I am about to tell you the major “don’ts” of SEO so you can avoid those crucial mistakes so your website can carry on succeeding in the world of search engine optimization.

• Firstly, do not leave SEO from your website for too long. You should always be considering your SEO strategy from the beginning of your website development. SEO plays one of the most important parts in your website and needs to be thought about from the start.
• Do not waste your time submitting your website to countless search engines. Crawler-based search engines will find your website more quickly as soon as you get a link from another website that is already being crawled. Search engine submission is a thing of the past.
• Never make your website un-crawlable. You should always make sure that your website can be crawled by search engine spiders, because if it cannot be crawled then the search engines will not find you. An un-crawlable website can be due to having a convoluted navigation menu that spiders can’t follow, developing an all flash site, or even simply too many variables in your domain name.
• Make sure you don’t target keywords that are too ‘general’. If you want the best chance to rank high, then don’t target keywords that are crowded with competition. You need to do keyword research on your website and find out the best keywords, with a fair amount of competition, this will give you a chance of ranking for number one!
• Don’t ignore usability. You should always make your website user friendly and efficient for users and search engine spiders. This can be achieved with proper site structure, local navigation and sitemaps. So avoid over complicating your website and making it harder to use and navigate.
• You should never give up on creating good content for your website. As I have said before, content is key. The less content you have, then the less chance you have to fill your website with keywords which gives you less chance of being linked to by search engines. That is why the more content you have, the more search engines will link to you because your website would be more relevant because of more keywords. Simple.
• Never spam to help your website get found. This will NOT work. Search engines disapprove of websites that use spam to rank higher, so this will not work to improve your rank on search engines. So you should avoid posting your link on blog comments, guestbook’s ECT, stuffing META tags with keywords and also putting keywords into your footer with lightly coloured or hidden text.
• Patience is a virtue; don’t give up on SEO once started. SEO is a long, time-consuming process and demands time, attention and commitment. You need to be patient when doing SEO work on your website, because it may take months to see the results.

Well there you have it. I have just told you what NOT to do if you wish to succeed in the search engine world. If you read my previous blog then you will also know what you SHOULD do if you want to succeed. Thank you for reading; I hope I helped you understand the fundamentals of SEO success!

If you would like more information about SEO success, please read my other blog.

Top SEO Hints and Tips

When it comes to getting your email to the necessary person, it is no longer the case of contending with the PA. Unfortunately the biggest problem you’re going to have now is that your email will be automatically flagged as spam.

Luckily for you, I’ve come up with ten tips so you can try to make your email bulletproof.

1. If you get no response to your email, how can you ever be sure it was really delivered? Instead of sending a follow-up, which is usually going to get on the recipients’ nerves, ask the recipient in the first email to get back to you with a quick note. Just letting you know that they have received the email indicates that no instant reply to your email is necessary.

2. Always keep the senders name and email the same, if you change it suddenly then you might not be recognised and consequently you will be named as spam. This means you won’t be able to contact them again.

3. Never put a link before the important information, otherwise they’ll be sent to a page and they’ll have no idea why. As soon as they get back to your message they may report you as spam.

4. Follow up your email with a letter to their postal address. In the letter, refer back your email with the date and time it was sent. This will establish contact and hopefully start building a relationship.

5. Always communicate with your recipient personally. Spam-filters will automatically award emails without a name with spam score points (By default, this spam filter flags messages with a score greater than 5 as spam.) So make sure you provide your recipient with an exact name and contact information.

6. Offer subscription to your newsletter and let the recipient know when to expect it. That way they know when your emails are coming and they will know what it is straight way. They will also become accustomed to receiving your emails at that specific time every week.

7. Always insert the current date in the content. When the date isn’t mentioned or it is provided incorrectly, the newsletter will be given spam score points.

8. Make sure you verify your subscribers with signup confirmation. This means that when your user subscribes to your mailing list, they will be sent an automatic email to confirm their subscription. This way you avoid contacting incorrect email addresses, which may lead to being reported as spam.

9. If your newsletter has too many closed tags, too many graphic images or structural tables then it is going to score many spam points. Besides which, many readers use Outlook, which automatically blocks images. If the users don’t understand the mail then they’re most likely to report is as spam. Therefore keep your newsletter simple. Colorful backgrounds, tables, JavaScript’s and web forms shouldn’t be in newsletters.

10. Finally, check out some of tools and services available online to test your spam score. They’ll be able to check through the content of your email and report back with your score. It will take a bit of time but if your email has over 5 points, you can be sure it won’t even reach your recipient’s inbox.

Microsoft and Yahoo have both agreed to sign a 10 year deal for Microsoft’s Bing to power Yahoo’s searches. Their main goal is at “changing the search landscape.” This deal means that Bing will be powering Yahoo’s searches and Yahoo, in return, will be selling premium advertising for both Yahoo and Microsoft and sharing the revenue between them.

Microsoft has big plans for the future of Bing and Yahoo through this deal and wants to make searching on the web more efficient and better value for advertising.

"Through this agreement with Yahoo, we will create more innovation in search, better value for advertisers, and real consumer choice in a market currently dominated by a single company,” says Ballmer.

"Success in search requires both innovation and scale. This agreement with Yahoo will provide the scale we need to deliver even more rapid advances in relevancy and usefulness." he concludes. The financial details of the deal are not clear; however neither company had anything bad to say about the implications.

However, this is not the first time that Microsoft has tried to buy Yahoo! They tried to make them an offer of a huge sum of $44.6 billion back in February 2008, but their former chief executive Jerry Yang declined their proposal and the deal seemed to fade away. Since then, Yang has been replaced with Carol Bartz and claimed that any partner trying to make a search deal, they are going to need “boat loads of money and solid technology”.

Microsoft now has the technology to carry this deal through, which leaves the money. When reports of the deal first became public, there were rumours that Microsoft would offer Yahoo $3 billion, however there has been no mention by the companies of money being exchanged upfront.

Analysts have warned that antitrust regulators could possibly stop the merging of the second and third ranked search engines in the world. For example, Google and Yahoo had to drop plans of forming an advertising partnership in 2008 due to the US Department of Justice.

Hopefully this will be a step forward in the search engine world!