The Gartner report, on the Hype Cycle 2009, is the latest in the annual series to showcase the hottest technologies of the year and how they are trending.

The reports outline two visual representations for technology maturity – the Hype Cycle and the Priority Matrix. These graphs can help businesses understand a snapshot picture of technology at that moment, and advise about which technologies to adopt and which to reconsider.

The one below, is the ‘Hype Cycle’ (source:reuters)



Cloud computing, one of the hottest emerging technologies of the year, refers to a simple concept – operating off  a shared ‘cloud’ rather than a hard-drive.According to Gartner it is at the height of it’s expectations, but still in it’s early stages with lots of opportunities to be identified.

Other hot topics include the issue of data-centre cooling, which I discussed earlier this year when it was said that 2 Google searches was as environmentally un-friendly as boiling the kettle.  This is apparently on the downward trend of expectations (here referred to as Green IT). With increased concern for the environment booming across first world countries, ‘do no evil’ Google is pouring money into data centre R&D, but it is no longer causing ‘hype’.

Social networking and web 2.0 seems to be well past the highest phase of expectations (according to Gartner), but on the slope of enlightenment, which is odd considering the fact that hype for one of the biggest social networking tools, Twitter, continues unabated, and it hasn’t even yet fulfilled its business potential.

Search-wise, video search seems to be in the ascendency, a ‘technology trigger’.

Jackie Fenn, the report’s lead analyst, gives this overview:

Technologies at the Peak of Inflated Expectations during 2009 include cloud computing, e-books (such as from Amazon and Sony) and internet TV (for example, Hulu), while social software and microblogging sites (such as Twitter) have tipped over the peak and will soon experience disillusionment among corporate users.

Google is working on some changes and updates to their search algorithm and index, which Google’s webmaster blog calls ‘next generation’ search technology.

The changes are being previewed now, although it is all to their ‘back end’, so only web developers or specialist SEO-ers will probably notice any difference.

This is where you can go and test it out - Google Sandbox

I find that terms like my name, our agency, or competitive terms like ‘car insurance’ are showing fairly similar results in the new technology as the old.

SearchEngineLand has found some rearrangement of Google apps, like news and video.

While undoubtedly many SEO-ers will be running around worrying how to optimise for these changes, I dare say that if you have a good quality, relevant site, your position should not change too much, and actually since Google is trying to improve results, if you are a good site, your rankings should improve!

So if, like us, you optimise sites by improving their quality and relevance, as well as improving their site structure, and web presence, then I think you are going to be quite ok….

The thing with SEO is, it takes a lot of time. There is no use waiting to be able to afford an agency if you can’t see it happening in the next month or so. You need to start getting value to your website as soon as possible, because SEO is  a long, slow process.

Google, and other search engines, value age in a website. So the earlier you get your website up on the net, indexed by search engines, and in a search engine friendly format, the better.

In lesson 1, I said that one of the first things you needed to do was to decide on keywords for your website. If you sell bicycles online, then your terms might be things like:

Sydney bikes

Sydney bicycles

Cheap bicycles

Bikes online

There are a few places on site you need to use these terms. One is in your meta data, and below is a great example of  a Google entry with good meta data:blog-pic

The type in blue is called the meta title, and the type in black is called the meta description. Both should contain some keywords where possible, but not too many.

This site uses the terms, but in a user-friendly manner. If they wrote, “Manly bicycle, bike, sydney bike, bike tour, bicycle tour” – this would get a lot of key terms in, but it would look terrible to readers, and could damage the reputation of your brand.  What is written here could mean the difference between someone clicking through to your site or not, so you have to make it look enticing.

Other places to use your key terms are:

    * In your content
    * As part of headers
    * As part of menu items
    * As anchors for images
    * As part of your URLs for appropriate pages

There are many other ways, but for DIY SEO, this is plenty, and you probably wouldn’t have time to look into it in any more detail.

With any of these techniques, you need to use moderation! Don’t stuff your keywords all over the page, just make sure that the words that you did research on and which you found would be useful for getting traffic (relevant, specific and high volume), are used throughout your site in appropriate pages. Any more than that, and you look spammy and if you have too much, you could even get penalised by search engines.

Now, before you start pouring time, effort and money into getting people to your website, you need to make sure you have a website worth visiting.

A good site will have a few very basic things on it, which are essential for almost every business. I wouldn’t bother sending people to your site before you have these basic things under control.

Product information – Make sure you describe your key products – and as many of your other products as possible. Get your friends or family to read your product pages and ask them if there is enough information there for them to make a purchase decision. You might not realise that you are assuming some level of knowledge from your audience. Ensure they have enough information to make informed decisions, or that you can encourage them to contact you for that information.

Contact information – Ensure that people know how to contact you , and give them more than one method to choose from.

    * If you have an online form, make sure you aren’t making too many fields ‘essential’.
    * If you are providing an email address, make sure people can see it, not just a click on to open up their email program (which won’t work for everyone).
    * Have a reliable phone number – it is usually best to have one that is unique to the website, but that isn’t always possible
    * If you have stores, make sure you include an address, directions or map if possible, and a unique phone number for each location.

About Us - Although not essential, an About Us page is important to garner trust from potential clients. This page helps them see who you are, what kind of company you are, and whether you match the kind of company they want to do business with.  People might want to know the size, age and history of your business. They might like to see your key personnel. An About Us page helps build a relationship with a client before you even meet them, because they are learning about you.

Technicalities - Finally, you want to check that all your pages are looking good.

• Do a thorough test of your site to make sure all your links are working.
• View your site in the major browsers (IE, FireFox, Google, etc), to ensure that people using different browsers are seeing your site as you want them to
• Make sure your images aren’t too big and delaying loading
• Install redirects where necessary so people won’t just see blank pages and give up

These are the very basics of what your site should have before you bother trying to get people to it. In a future post we will go into more detail about the finer aspects of conversion design – a discipline which is focussed on helping people do what you want them to do on your site.

Web Analytics - Web analytics is an important thing to set up as early as possible. You need to do this to be able to measure any effects from your marketing campaigns. It will tell you visits, time spent on site, what terms people are coming from, and much more.

However, i have previously written quite a bit on web analytics, so I will just refer to it here as an important thing to do, and you can go and read these earlier posts (Set up and After set up)  from the analytics series for more information.