Mobile Optimised version of the Brisbane Airport website launches

The first of a few mobile projects in the pipeline for BAC here at Bluewire Media, has officially launched or “taken off” if you can excuse the pun. Quietly tonight, while the usual busy Brisbane Airport slows down just a tad, the launch button on their new Mobile Optimised Website was pushed.

We’re pretty of proud of this project here at Bluewire and if you’re anything like me I think you’ll agree this will be a very handy addition to the online presence of Brisbane Airport. How many times have you been sitting in the domestic terminal pick up area, getting those glaring looks from security guards, just wishing you knew when your partners plane was landing?? (I know I have…)

Anyway, check it out using the QR-Code below or by visting bne.com.au on your mobile device.

We’d love to hear any feedback you have and if you think your website could benefit from having a mobile friendly version, get in touch, we’d love to hear from you.

Are you the company Shmoo? (CMO) Is your social media presence entrusted to the intern?

The ROI of Social Media is that your business still exists in 5 years…

Interesting take. Is that a fair statement or just more BS?

I’d love to hear what you think…

Facebook has recently launched the “Facebook for Business” website which is aimed at providing a step-by-step guide to help small businesses use and make the most of the social networking site. If you’re struggling with the basics or even just after some new ideas to improve how your using it at the moment, I suggest you check it out.

Facebook joins Twitter who has had a “Twitter for Business” resource for a little while now. Both websites are a handy resource for how you can make the most of your foray into Social Media Marketing.

The timing of Facebook’s release is also interesting as it comes in the same week Google has copped a lot of flack over deleting business profiles from the new Google Plus.

Rest assured Google Plus business pages/profiles are coming soon and I’m sure I’ll be able to update this post with a link to Google own version of “Google Plus for Business“.

It’s interesting times indeed.

How are you as a business owner finding the social networking landscape at the moment?

Do resources like these help and make it easy enough for you to get involved? Or is it still a bit overwhelming?

Seeing the below in my profile screen inside Google + has made the little +1 button make a whole lot more sense and seem that much more of an important addition to your website. All your +1′s while not only having an impact on search results*, will show up in the streams and profiles of everyone using Google +.

So, how do I add it to my website?

It’s super simple, visit the +1 Webmaster’s page and follow the simple instructions. Basically you’ll need to add some code (a script tag and another custom tag where you want it displayed) to your websites html.
NB. You’ll need to be able to edit a page’s html source so if you need some help, contact your website developers (or us) for some help.

For more info about the +1 Button – Watch the intro

The Interactive Tour is also quite cool and worth a look.

* From the +1 FAQ

The +1 button and search results

+1 helps people discover relevant content—a website, a Google search result, or an ad—from the people they already know and trust. Adding the +1 button to your pages lets users recommend your content, knowing that their friends and contacts will see their recommendation when it’s most relevant—in the context of Google search results.

When a signed-in Google user is searching, your Google search result snippet may be annotated with the names of the user’s connections who’ve +1′d your page. If none of a user’s connections has +1′d your page, your snippet may display the aggregate number of +1′s your page has received.

More FAQ’s

What do you think, do you think Google has come up with a decent answer to Facebook? Will you add the +1 button alongside the Facebook Like & Tweet buttons?

P.S I’m out of invites so sorry, you’ll have to wait or find someone else….

P.P.S – I know, we haven’t even added the +1 button to our own blog yet but it’s coming don’t worry… be sure to +1 our home page though…

If you’re not convinced your business needs to have a twitter account, continue reading. I’d like to share a story about a recent interaction I’ve had that might help to see the value you can add to your customers.

I’m off to Japan snowboarding next week (yes that’s me rubbing it in!) and needed to organise my Travel Insurance last night. I’ve used World Nomads before which meant I had an account already and figured I would just stick with them. My last overseas trip was so long ago that I had forgotten my user-name. Now World Nomads allows you to retrieve passwords but not your user-name. They also don’t let you sign up again with the same email address. Frustrated, I used the online enquiry form, ticking the box that I’d forgotten my user-name and explained the issue.

At the same time, I had twitter open and thought why not tweet about it:

Is there a way to retrieve your @WorldNomads username? I’m stumped and can’t sign up again with the same email #fail

I didn’t really expect anything to come of it and was just hoping I’d get a response from the form I had filled out before next week. However, because I had mentioned @WorldNomads in my tweet, a few hours later, I had an email from Chris Nobel, the General Manager of the company with my user-name and the exact details I needed to make a purchase. He also included a note saying they were working on upgrading their user-name retrieval in a few weeks. Now that’s customer service!

We’ve posted before on the power of social media to create brand advocates and Chris’ timely response has certainly had that effect on me. So much so I thought it was worth sharing with you…

I’ve told mine now you tell me yours! Do you have any good/bad social media stories you can share?

Capital Finance was founded in 1995. Since then they’ve become one of Australia’s leading finance companies. They’re in the business of helping companies and individuals achieve their commercial goals and personal dreams. Your business is their business.

Visit the Capital Finance website to find out more »

See what else Bluewire Media has launched recently in our Web Design Portfolio or call us on 1300 258 394.

Price: FREE                                                      Get it from iTunes

This FREE app is a must-have for any website owner, business owner or web designer looking to ensure their site is SEO friendly.

Developed by our very own SEO partners Reload Media, this handy little app will show you in a flash a number of important search engine optimisation (SEO) factors including:

• Google® PageRank
• Indexed Pages
• Backlinks
• Keyword, Title & Description Relevancy
• Robots
• Page Load Times
• H1, H2, H3 and Image alt tags
• XML Sitemaps
• Google Analytics
• Domain Age
• W3C Compatibility
• Server Location

Based on these important SEO factors, the app then calculates your site’s SEO score. What’s more, you can also check the rankings of your important keywords in Google.

Audits that are run can be saved for later, or sent to Reload Media for analysis.

This month I bring you another great iPhone game from some more guys I studied with at QUT. Yes my course included some talented individuals as you’ll remember my last iPhone review (BW News Feb 2010) also mentioned fellow course mates, The Voxel Agents, who created Train Conductor.

This month however, it’s all about Fruit Ninja! Developed here in Brisbane by Halfbrick Studios, Fruit Ninja is an amazingly simple swipe and slash game that just works. It looks beautiful and while the game’s premise may be simple, the mechanics of it are so polished and executed brilliantly, that it makes for the perfect time passer.

But don’t take my word for it, watch the trailer below from their website or download today to see for yourself. You’ll be craving fruit salad in no time…

Fruit Ninja is fun, fun, fun. It’s an instant pleasure.”IGN.com “It’s simple, fun and best of all challenging.” – toucharcade.com

It details how the main pages for these various products stacked up in their own search results and how they fair across a number of common SEO topics. It was designed to provide the product teams with ideas on how they can improve their products’ pages using simple and accepted optimisations. These optimisations were intended to not only help search engines understand the content of their pages better, but also to improve the users’ experience when visiting their sites.

What did I learn?

• Google, arguably the biggest & best search engine, still has to consciously think about search engine optimisation.
• By following simple rules you can greatly improve both your search engine rankings and your users experience of your website.

They’ve released the report card publicly so other companies and webmasters can learn from the report, which is filled with a heap of great examples taken straight from their products’ pages. It’s an interesting read, and shows that even the Google team make mistakes when it comes to some of the simple rules of SEO.

SEO Brisbane: If you’d like some help optimising your website and getting found on Google, call Bluewire Media on 1300 258 394.

Disclaimer: The C+ image was created and added to give my post a little colour. Google and their products don’t necessarily deserve a c+, this was merely added for illustration purposes. Google, you get a A+ in my books, keep up the great work and keep releasing these great resources and products!

But one particular area of knowledge has helped me immensely, not only with the work I do here, but also with my side projects – search engine optimisation.

About six months ago the team had a quarterly priority to take on and participate in some P.D - The goal was to learn something new or extend our knowledge in a topic. I picked SEO.

There was an ulterior motive in this selection since my partner and I had just  launched the website for Home Spa, a mobile beauty & day spa business servicing the Brisbane area. Starting from scratch and having no real client base to build from, we really needed to be found in search engines before any business came our way.

Just today I’ve noticed we have improved the rankings for a couple of our targeted keywords which has increased the number of leads, and eventually appointments, we get through the website. I was proud of my ongoing efforts so thought I’d share some of the useful tools I’ve used along the way.

While they won’t necessarily help you get to #1, (I’ll leave that to the experts), these tools are super useful in tracking your progress:

Analytics gives you a plethora of information about how your users are finding your website, what they’re doing there and what they had for breakfast the morning they visited (well almost).  I’ve recently found creating custom reports to be particularly useful. With these we’re able to pull out quality information like which particular keywords are resulting in turning visits into conversions (or appointment requests in our case).

Another Google product – (yes I love them) is Google Webmaster Tools. It gives you a whole lot more specific information on what your website looks like to Google and where you appear in the index. If you can see the world through the Google Bots‘ eyes it will go a long way in helping to understand why certain tweaks to your code & copy help your rankings.

A great tip I got from a  friend over at Reload Media was to check out the SEOMoz.org website. It has a number of free SEO tools you can use along with a heap of quality information on their blog on SEO in general. You have to create an account but a basic account is free.

Rank Tracker is one of such free tools on the site, allowing you to track your ranking in various search engines for particular keywords. It also keeps a history of your searches so you can view your progress over time.

The above screenshot is the rank history for ‘Home Spa’ for the keyword phrase ‘mobile beauty Brisbane’.

The results I found using Rank Tracker:

• When I first checked in November, we were nowhere to be seen and outside the top 50.
• By January 19 we had improved and moved to #8
• This week we’ve hit #4!

What SEO tools do you use?

SEO Brisbane: If you’d like some help optimising your website and getting found on Google, call Bluewire Media on 1300 258 394.