Google’s new Nexus One mobile phone may or may not prove to be that elusive “next iPhone”, but the timing of the expected announcement, on January 5, is undoubtedly significant.

Just 24 hours later, Steve Ballmer, the energetic CEO of Microsoft, will take to the stage in Las Vegas to deliver a keynote address to the annual International Consumer Electronics Show (known as CES), the world’s biggest trade show of its type, which runs for four days from January 7.

Mr Ballmer’s speech is likely to expand on comments he made in an interview with The Times last year. What lies ahead, he said, “are going to be fun, fun years! This is going to be the best three years for users in their home – of all time.”

At the heart of this belief is digital convergence, the idea that as fields such as television, computing, music, video, telephony, video gaming and photography adopt and mature their own digital formats, so we will need fewer and fewer devices to store and play content.

It’s a trend that we have already seen in portable devices, as the separate MP3 players, digital cameras and mobile telephones of the mid-noughties have merged to become the smartphones of today.

Story from ‘The times online’ thought you would like to hear.

London – The cat is finally out of the bag – Google is all set to launch an own-brand smartphone as early as 2010 in its first major attempt to take on Apple’s iPhone.

According to reports flooding the internet highway, the smartphone, code-named Nexus One, has been designed by a handpicked Google team and will be made by Taiwanese electronics giant HTC, exclusively for Google.

The device is expected to boast of features like a capacitive touchscreen; Android 2.1 platform; onboard camera; WiFi; GPRS; EDGE; 3G; Bluetooth; A-GPS (with Google Maps) and 3.5mm audio jack.

However, what we’re most curious about is whether the smartphone will come with a secondary front-facing camera (to support video calls) and whether it will include FM Radio; microUSB port; microSD card slot and a slide-out Qwerty physical keyboard. And, most importantly, whether it will be powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 1GHz processor.

It’s not known still whether Google will take the exclusive route like Apple to market and sell its smartphone or whether it will choose to flood the market with its device by making it available with every possible retail chain and network operator.

But one thing is certain – irrespective of the strategy Google adopts, its smartphone has already caught everybody’s attention and it sure will sell like hotcakes when it launches.

At Acknowledged Web Solutions we offer effective yet affordable professional SEO services for small business website owners.

Many small business owners across the UK, are being charged hugely inflated prices for first page Google results. It is just accepted that you need to pay £1000’s to these ‘Professional SEO Companies’, for often extremely average returns, that may take literally less than a days coding.

Many of these companies employ programmers from India, and there is no personal relationship with the team. We provide clients a personal programmer that will deal with them one to one, its important that you achieve the growth you deserve, as ultimately we will also gain from your success.

Some first page results for Google.co.uk:

In the last fortnight we have setup 3 new one page highly optimised websites for an existing client, and here are the great results we have achieved in this highly competitive keyword area:

1. Nottinghamfloorsanding.co.uk

‘Nottingham floor sanding’ – position 5
‘Nottingham wood floor sanding’ – position 10
‘Nottingham wood floors’ – position 7
‘Nottingham floors sanded’ – position 8
‘Nottingham wood floors sanded’ – position 4

2. Sheffieldfloorsanding.co.uk

‘Sheffield wood floors sanded’ – position 1
‘Sheffield wood floor sanding’ – position 7
‘Sheffield floor sanding’ – position 2
‘Sheffield floor restoration’ – position 7
‘Sheffield floors sanded’ – position 10
‘Sheffield wood floor restoration’ – position 7
‘Sheffield wood floors restored’ – position 4
‘wood floors restored in Sheffield’ – position 4

3. sheffieldfloorrestoration.co.uk

‘Sheffield floor restoration’ – position 1
‘Sheffield wood floor restoration’ – position 6

—

The cost for each new optimized single page website, including Web Hosting, Domain name and guaranteed Google listing was just £199. And these results were achieved in just a couple of weeks.

There is no hidden costs, only a 12 monthly annual hosting for the Web Hosting and Domain of £29.99, the first year is included.

So why not try our Professional SEO Services and see what we can do for your websites search engine placement.

Regards

Ashley Smith
Professional SEO Services
Webmaster
Acknowledged Web Solutions

We have been doing some work for Floor Zone and created several new SEO keyword one page sites:

www.chesterfieldfloorsanding.co.uk
www.leicesterfloorsanding.co.uk
www.sheffieldfloorrestoration.co.uk
www.sheffieldfloorsanding.co.uk
www.nottinghamfloorsanding.co.uk
www.woodfloorsrestored.co.uk

The purpose is to concentrate on increasing Floor Zone’s client base in the major North Midland Cities.

We have been working with Business Link to redesign and enlarge the current website for Safe Lifting Gear Ltd. The new website now incorporates a Flash animated version of an image provided by the company owner Peter Tibble, plus it is built using an easily updatable CMS (Contact Management System).

Safe Lifting Gear Ltd specialises in the Supply, Manufacture, Installation, Repair, Hire, Test and Certification of all forms of Lifting and Access Equipment. Whether the Customer uses simple Lifting Gear or High Capacity Cranes, Eyebolt Anchorages or full Cradle Systems, they can be assured that they are receiving the best service available from trained and qualified engineers who have many years of experience within this industry.

Visit the new website >>

Government grants and support

The government provides support to businesses both financially, in the form of grants, and through access to expert advice, information and services.

However, getting financial support can be tough. There will be strong competition and the criteria for grants are stringent. Criteria vary but are likely to include the location, size and industry sector of the business.

Government grants are almost always awarded for a specific purpose or project and are usually for proposed projects only – not for those that have already started.

There are also strict terms and conditions that apply to all grants. If these aren’t followed, immediate repayment of the grant can be required. However, generally you do not have to repay grants or interest on them unless you break the conditions.

Matching grant funds

Most government grants require you to match the funds you are being awarded. In other words, the grant covers a proportion of the money needed, while you supply the rest. You must also demonstrate that your business can provide its share of the total costs.

The amount of matching funds asked for varies from grant to grant. A research grant may require a business to find 40 per cent of the total cost with 60 per cent provided by the grant. However, a grant to refurbish a factory may require a considerably higher percentage of match funding.

The matching funds may be found from the owners of the business, retained profits, a loan, or from a new investor.

What kind of grants are available?

The main groups who award grants are:

* the government
* the European Union
* Regional Development Agencies in England, Scottish Enterprise, the Welsh Development Agency and Invest Northern Ireland
* local authorities or local councils and local development agencies

For more information, search Grants and Support Directory of grants, advice and other support on Business Link in your area.

Grant for Business Investment (GBI)

A grant under GBI is for the acquisition of key assets such as buildings, machinery and equipment, and to help create new jobs or safeguard existing ones. GBI is part of a range of support offered through the government’s new Solutions for Business portfolio. This portfolio is still being developed.

In Scotland, this is called the Grant for Regional Selective Assistance (RSA). You can read about RSA grants on the Scottish Business Grants website.

In Northern Ireland, this is called the Enterprise NI Loan Fund (ENILF). You can find out about the ENILF on the Enterprise NI website.

Businesses based in areas classified as assisted areas and in other areas as designated by the Regional Development Authorities (in England) may benefit from a grant if they stimulate regional development, urban regeneration or an improvement in employment prospects.

You can find grants that your business might be eligible for and get free information and advice from your local Business Link.

Innovation, research and development

There are numerous grants available to encourage investment in innovation,research and development.
Other government support

The government has developed a portfolio of highly targeted, publicly funded support products and services for businesses in England. Launching from October 2008, the new Solutions for Business portfolio will include support such as grants for business investment, expert advice services and specialist facilities for businesses in all sectors.

Government business support services are different in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Train to Gain

The Train to Gain service operates regionally throughout England. It helps businesses identify their skills needs and source training to meet these.

Some training offered through Train to Gain is subsidised. Find out about services available on the Train to Gain website.

The Wall Street Journal have reported that Microsoft and Yahoo are hours away from announcing a search and online advertising deal. According to Kara Swisher, a blogger for The Wall Street Journal, negotiations have been successfully wrapped up on a deal that is expected to have Microsoft’s search technology used on Yahoo sites.

This new Microsoft-Yahoo partnership could give the two companies some much-needed leverage in their ongoing — and until now, separate — battles to chip away at Google’s stranglehold on the search market. With Carol Bartz still new at the helm of Yahoo and focused on making the onetime online pioneer hip and fresh again, and Microsoft’s Bing search service only a few months old, neither company has been able to make a noticeable dent in Google’s well-polished, and well-funded, armor.

So a strategy that has them pooling their resources and industry might makes a lot of sense, says Dan Olds, an analyst at Gabriel Consulting Group Inc.

“Both Microsoft and Yahoo need this deal if they harbor any hopes of getting back into the lucrative search game,” said Olds. “Search has become the most reliable way of capturing eyeballs on the Internet, and having a popular search engine is the basis for all of Google’s success. Both Microsoft and Yahoo have invested billions of dollars in trying to build search and content portals that would be able to command Google-like ad revenues. But both have failed to blunt Google’s revenue growth individually. Together they might have a better chance.”

Both companies have also been making separate moves in recent months.

In June, Microsoft unveiled its new search engine, Bing, an update to its far-from-beloved Microsoft Live Search. And with Microsoft’s advertising power and a lot of media attention behind it, Bing has shown strong numbers just out of the gate. Early this month, Web analytics firm StatCounter reported that Bing may have nibbled away at Google’s commanding lead in the search arena, but it definitely hasn’t taken a big bite. While Google’s share dipped from 79.07% to 78.48% in June, the share held by Microsoft’s search site grew from 7.21% to 8.23%.

Yahoo is hanging in at a distant second place to Google with 11.04% of the market.

StatCounter CEO Aodhan Cullen described Bing’s progress in the market as “steady, if not spectacular.”

And for its part, Yahoo last week unveiled the beta of a newly overhauled homepage, whose promised features include the ability to integrate with social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Myspace. The changes are an apparent attempt to recapture some of the hip cachet the site had during its heyday.

The problem for Microsoft and Yahoo is that despite their efforts, Google still looms far ahead of both. Olds, however, said they have a much better shot at their shared opponent if they work together.

“Separately, they have small fractions of Google’s viewership. But together, with a well-executed plan and solid cooperation, they have a shot of at least giving Google a run for its money,” he added. “Google needs to take this seriously, which I think they will. Microsoft and Yahoo have a lot of resources to throw at this, and they now have a partnership and a plan.”

Computerworld.com

Very simply if a company offers to have your site listed on the top of the first page of Google within 3 days, 1 week or some other silly amount of time for £99 – it is a lie.

Companies out there are charging anything from £99 upwards for these type of services, and as soon as you sign up they want you to use ridiculous search terms that are never going to be used buy prospective customers. And the keywords you actually want used, will be something to ‘work towards’, a process ‘that will take time’ and so on.

For example if your website is www.davidcomplandaccounts.co and you use the keyword ‘davidcomplandaccounts’ with no spaces, the company who offer this service will consider this achieving their side of the bargain, though of course no one is going to find your site. You are simply not going to get first page listing with the term ‘UK Accounts’, without resubmission, care, time and attention, whatever they tell you.

So how do you actually getting top ranking. Well the easy answer though not very popular one, is that it will take time.

There are several techniques though that are invaluable and will aid the submission, listing and ranking process:

Change your textual content and Meta Tags before each submission. Ranking is simply to do with the importance that Google gives to a website, related to a series of keywords and phrase.

Clear textual navigation will ensure that the Search Engine spiders are able to find, catalogue and list all of the relevant page of your website.

Incoming links from highly ranked sites. This means contacting related sites, though not direct competition to request mutual or ideally exclusive links to your site.

Keyword frequency. Therefore how often your chosen keywords, both in your HTML source and those used on submission to Search Engines occur in the text of your site. More importance is given to keywords in your title tag, headings ( h1, h1, h1 etc), text in bold, plus links.

Always choose a relevant title for your submitted page. The title should reflect both your keywords and URL. Each link page should have a different title.

Imagine heavy web pages are less Search Engine friendly, therefore relevant keyword based text is the most effective.

Try and avoid an extremely image heavy web design, it used to be the case that ‘alt’ tags were given some level of important, other than for image listing on Search Engines this no longer seems to be the case.

So basically Search Engine ranking takes patience, there is no magic wand technique, but if you follow the steps above you can achieve placement and exposure for your website.

by Ashley Smith

Acknowledged Web Design

In these tough economic times, businesses are tested to their limits. Consumers are risk averse: they only want to deal with firms they know and trust. The upside of this is, people will do business with companies if they believe they’re going to stick around for a while.

But if you want to start a business in these unusual time what sector should one choose ? We have compiled the Top 5 best new business models list below….

1. Online retail

Advantages include – low set up costs, low running costs and the potential to garner a broad client base. If done well, it’s virtually immune to economic change.

With no high street overheads to speak of, no geographical or time restrictions and no need to display stock, online retailers are not only the shopkeepers of the future, they’re also the ones cleaning up right now.

2. Pound shop

It’s recession time, and customers are cutting back on expenditure. High street units are emptying across the country. If you want to set up shop and you’re keen to avoid risky ventures, you can’t go wrong opening a store full of bargains.

3. Luxury goods

High-end products, from luxury holidays and designer handbags to artisan ice-creams, are defying the consumer spending slump. Back in the downturn of the nineties, Haagen Dazs did a booming trade; your business could be the surprise luxe success of this recession.

4. Domestic tourism

With the pound down against the euro and the dollar, and job-security at an all-time low, it’s likely holidaying abroad will be a low priority for Britons this year.

Whether you have plans for a budget B&B or your eye on a seaside hotel or campsite, now’s the time to get listed in holiday guide books. Similarly, bus tour operators, historical guides, hiking and adventure organisers – and those running local culture and music fairs – should plan for a busy summer.

5. Green and ethical business

Demand for green goods remains high, and the rising cost of energy and other resources means that eco-friendly business makes good business sense. Investment in green goods, such as energy-saving light bulbs or solar panelling, saves the consumer money in the long run.

So there you have it. We feel that all 5 are realistic options in this current finance and business climate, so maybe its time to take the plunge.

Good Luck and of course if you need a website; you know where to come.

1. Sitemaps
Sitemaps are a great way of telling Google what pages you want to be indexed.

Google will index your site regardless of using a sitemap, however, this tool makes it easier for Google to index those pages you want it to. You can exclude pages if you really want to, but you can use a generator to create the XML formatted file.

Here are some generators

– DMXZone provide a Dreamweaver extension that will build a sitemap for you in the correct format – www.dmxzone.com
– Google provide a long list here code.google.com

– Google talks about Sitemaps here – www.google.com

2. Content Analysis

One of the things Google hates is duplicate content, even worse is duplicate Titles and Descriptions (These are the important Meta Tags)

Webmaster Tools will allow you to see if there are any pages with duplicated titles or duplicated descriptions. This is a very important tool to get the most out of these tags

3. Web Crawl Diagnostic

Once Google has crawled (indexed) your website, you hope all of your pages are visible in the index. This tool can help you find out if Google had problems finding and pages.

Obviously, if Google can find a page, it wont be in the search engine listings.

This can be bad links, moved content or other easily picked up issues.

4. External Links

This shows all of the links into your website from other pages on the internet.

The best thing is the link on the right hand side that allows you to see all of the inbound links.

(Note: this does not show all of the times your website is mentioned, only the working links people can click on to find you)

In basic search engine terms, the more inbound links the better for you

5. Geographic Targeting

This one is bit more advanced and will affect a smaller number of people. One of the key changes in Google’s delivery of search results is the pre filtering that is done when you search.

Google will filter your results, even if you don’t ask it to.

As an example, if you do a search for a topic and DO NOT select the “web pages from this country” button your results are still biased towards the country Google believes you are in.

Alternatively, if you select the “web pages from this country” button, you will get results that Google think are directed to that country.

How does it do this?

It shows results for either websites with a country specific suffix ie .nz for New Zealand, or websites that are hosted in that country.

However, if you have a .com website hosted not in New Zealand, you will not be found in the search results for that country specific search.

The solution is to use Google’s Geographic Target, where you can specify the county you want to target (Only one, though)

There are plenty of other Tools, including Keywords, Search Phrases etc.