Rocking the Empire

Playing at the Empire Hotel, Annandale, Warren’s band Rock and Soul Revue are having a ball performing material by Joe Cocker, Tina Turner and Aretha Franklin. Pictured here is front singer Jade da’ Silva doing a Tina impression. Shot on the 5D, using the Lensbaby 2.0.

21.11.2008 / Annandale, Sydney

Just in – Yang out!

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang is no more. This could potentially mean the biggest shake-up in the search advertising market. Is Microsoft going to be #2? Or do they manage pole position? Do they purchase Yahoo now?

Let’s keep in mind, though, that Yang remains in the position of “Chief Yahoo! and Board Member”.

Mosso uses wireless mice

Made my day… Mosso, our hosting provider in the States, is obviously using wireless mice for their customer service staff…

On a side note, Mosso still amazes me as far as customer service is concerned. I just wish their servers were that little bit more stable… but I think they are in fact improving on the status quo.

Balmain Cottage website live

Balmain Cottage is a cosy accommodation option for visitors to Sydney. It’s located in walking distance from our office and features 2 bedrooms to accommodate up to 4 guests.

We have created the website using NomisPro™ and it includes an availability calendar, which is controlled through the owners’ Google Calendar account. This mechanism allows the client to update their vacancies easily and conveniently.

The website features imagery by Sue Murray, an architecture and real-estate photographer and close friend.

Traffic’s up

I’m pleased to report that the efforts in terms of SEO for villages.com.au have more than paid off. Since  relaunching on 1 October, average daily visits have quadrupled, and as above graph indicates, the additional traffic is pretty much based on organic search engine results only. While Villages Publishing is still running their Google Adwords campaign, it is now no longer their predominant source of traffic, resulting in lower cost per visit for Villages Publishing.

Note also, that we’re in the initial stages of villages.com.au being indexed – many pages have not received a proper “value” yet, so we expect traffic to increase further.

“Is my website relevant in the industry that I am trying to target?”

Full version of the article published in the upcoming issue of “The Source”, a magazine for retirement industry professionals produced by Villages Publishing.

Simon Jansen, web developer and partner at Cubus Design, talks with our own web editor, Deborah Huff, about the strategy behind the Villages.com.au website and what steps have been taken to optimise it for search engines.

“The ‘old’ Villages site felt quite clunky, and access to actual information was rather laborious”, says Deborah. “To get from the home page to the village listings involved three or four clicks, for example.” The website also did not have any facility to include editorial content, such as interviews with residents and village managers. “We believe that is a really important offering so that people can learn about villages, and what it means to be living in a village.”

Villages’ previous website had been developed using an existing real estate software platform, which was more targeted towards the traditional real-estate market. “This didn’t translate well enough to the specific requirements of our industry”, says Deborah.

“Based on those observations, we started with a very simple concept – to make it obvious what the site was about”, explains Simon. “The primary focus was the search for retirement villages, which we placed in the position where people tend to look first – the upper left third of a website.” The search facility was to be straightforward, he continues, so that website visitors could use their own preferred search terms – a suburb or village name, for instance – and get relevant results. “The search also includes a place name recommendation, because many Australian place names are difficult to spell.”

Updated website

We have just re-launched the website for F&P magazine, a fundraising and philantropy magazine for the Australiasian market. It now contains all editorial content since its first issue in 2004, as well as industry resources, suppliers and more.

The website runs our latest incarnation of NomisPro, our content management system, and is managed by the staff in-house.

Photoshoot

Chris took a photograph of me for a story in the upcoming issue of The Source, a retirement-professionals industry publication, about my take on Search Engine Optimisation and strategy for the villages.com.au website. Using Toni’s 100mm lens and the 5D, Chris used the natural light at home to get this shot. I’ll post the story as soon as production had finalised.

3.11.2008 / Rozelle, Sydney