Where shall we start… Before we go any further this article is not legal advice, it’s comment on the current situation and a nudge to get people to take notice of what is happening…

What are cookies?

Cookies are a small text file placed on a vistors computer (or alternative device) designed to overcome the fact that web pages are ‘stateless’ having no memory and so struggle to pass information from one page to another, imagine a shopping cart that forgot what you put in the basket, or a website that forgot if you were logged in so never logged you in – that’s life without cookies!

Aside from functionality, cookies are used by site owners to track your visits around their sites to improve their sites and the user experience for their visitors, they can also be used to track between websites to identify your interests and tailor web pages to you (this is the one that tends to annoy people – known as ‘behavioural advertising’).

In general cookies aren’t a bad thing and actually make the internet more than just the flat pages of a book on your screen!

What does the EU Cookie Law say?

The law actually came into effect in May 2011 but a years grace period was given, meaning people are only starting to look at this now. It’s best if you read it yourself as we don’t want to go down the route of interpreting the law for you, essentially it says that for all but the most necessary cookies (neccesary is defined as to make a site work e.g. our shopping cart example) before the cookie is set you have to gain consent from the user (the definitions of consent have also come under scrutiny as part of this).

How does this affect my site?

Cookies come in a range of categories with varying levels of privacy intrusion, and the guide defines these, however the big one that’s playing on most business/website owners minds is the use of analytics (mostly Google Analytics), Analytics are a great way to track your visitors (their data is anonymized) to improve your site and a lot of sites use them.

Unfortunately when given the choice to not accept cookies before entering a site many users will decline consent and site owners will be left completely in the dark about their visitors, or users faced with a barrage of questions from a site about what they do and don’t consent to will simply go elsewhere.

The Information Commissioner, Christopher Graham stated that the enforcement of analytics cookies is not the “top priority for the ICO”, that said it could be one day and you’re still breaking the (current) law if you don’t gain consent for them.

Whilst as a user this is all going to sound great for your privacy, if every website you visit asks you whether you want to accept cookies then you’re soon going to get pretty bored with not being able to see what you want to see on a site until you agree to cookies!

On 1 May 2012 the French Data Protection Authority (CNIL) issued revised guidance on cookies, stating that analytics cookies will be exempt from the new rules if publishers provide clear notice to visitors about their use of cookies, the user’s right to access information is ensured, and information is not linked to identifiable users. We’re really hoping to see something like that here.

Why should I do anything?

This is an interesting one, for the most part the general course of action we’ve heard from most people is that they will do nothing and wait to see what happens. It’s an interesting approach as this is law and has been since 26 May 2011, the ICO will be responsible for checking cookie compliance and are able to impose fines of up to £500,000.

The law was deferred for one year in recognition of the technical challenges involved in compliance, and the ICO has said they expect websites to start moving towards being compliant before the new deadline of 25 May 2012, and when looking at complaints, they will take into account whether or not organisations have tried to become compliant ahead of the deadline.

The UK government seemed to hope that this could all be done through browser controls (setting your web browser to not allow cookies etc), this simply isn’t in place and is a long way off given the amount of old web browsers that are out there. The government has also pointed out that it doesn’t wholly agree with the EU directive but has passed the law anyway, and the EU has already said it’s not going to accept countries simply ignoring the rules.

There’s some fairly widespread “noise” on why the law makes no sense, one of the biggest being No Cookie Law we recommend keeping an eye on the news in the coming weeks as this is changing very regularly!

How do I get compliant?

There isn’t an easy answer to this, and nor (currently) is there a single piece of software you can install to make your site compliant (for most sites), do a cookie audit (try Firefox: View cookies,  Chrome: Attacat, TRUSTe Cookie Audit  or Tagcert for a start) work out what cookies you are setting and then start to look at solutions for the type of software you use.

Note: This is a regularly changing situation

One particularly important piece of information appeared last month(and it didn’t come from the ICO!) this came from the International Chamber of Commerce who have produced the ICC UK Cookie Guide, like us they are quick to point out that their guide is not legal advice, but it does say about Category 2 performance cookies (which providing no re-targeting is done analytics fall into) that consent could we gained in the terms and conditions of the site, so if you’re just using analytics you may be able to use Terms & Conditions to gain consent.

The ICC UK Cookie Guide is really good providing case studies and methods of consent for each of the four categories of cookies.

Where does all this leave us? In a bit of a mess really, the law is pretty much unworkable in it’s current form and because of that most people will choose to ignore it, those that do comply face putting visitors off their website!

However, the topic for today is the Olympics, this London Games are less than 100 days away now and for many the excitement is building, but unless you are a sponsor don’t get any ideas about seeing this sporting event as a marketing opportunity!

The Olympic logo became protected by law in 1995, and the legislation around the event is set out in the London Olympic Games & Paralympic Games Act 2006, amongst other things this includes rules to protect the official sponsors of the Games.

There are lots of rules about advertising near the Olympics and trading within ‘event zones’ (unless you already have a shop there – and even then there are some strict ruules), but the one’s we’ll concern ourselves with here are the one most website owners might be considering..

You must not:

• Use the Olympic symbol
• Use the five ring Olympic symbol
• Use the 2012 logo
• Use the words ‘games’, ’2012′,’ two thousand and twelve’ in combination with London, gold, silver, bronze or medals.

Failure to comply with these rules could you get you into trouble with LOCOG (the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games) and a fine up to £20,000.

• From January 14th 2012 the price for a .com, and .net registration, renewal or transfer will increase to £11.49 per year.
• From January 31st 2012 the price for a .biz registration, renewal or transfer will increase to £10.99 per year.

You can renew your domains now to save money, if your domain is not in it’s renewal period and you would like us to add more years to your domains please contact us for a custom invoice for adding multiple years and where possible we’ll be happy to do this for you.

Win tickets to Britain’s best events

For a limited period of time, when you register or renew a .uk domain before 28th November 2011 you can be entered into a free prize draw to win tickets to some authentically British events.

Just by registering or renewing your .uk domain with us, you could be cheering on England in a Six Nations match. Alternatively, you could enjoy world class tennis (together with the obligatory strawberries and cream) at Wimbledon. Or maybe you’ll spend a night in London’s West End with a theatre experience.

Win daily prizes

It doesn’t end just with the big events. There are also daily ticketmaster vouchers to be won for your choice of events across the UK, together with an additional prize for the best tweet about .uk. It couldn’t be easier.

So you see; there’s never been a better time to be proudly .uk. It really is the best of British! Renew or Register a .uk domain today!

*Domain name industry report 2010: “When users were asked if they would choose to visit a .uk site over a .com site when presented with a search result, 80% said that they would click on the .uk website”

The Periodic Table of SEO Ranking Factors offers a really good insight into it for anyone that hasn’t got the time to read the mountains of resources on the net and wants a quick reference card. The website does dig a lot deeper into each element if you’re interested.

What we have noticed is a couple of people who’ve already made the update have found themselves with blank screens for their blog pages! Generally they think it’s a problem with WordPress itself, but we’ve found it’s mostly due to incompatible themes and plugins.

There are two options:

1. If it’s the theme that’s broken it’s probably worth changing themes or getting the current theme fixed.
2. If it’s a plugin causing the problem, you could disable the plugin or wait before upgrading. Contact the developer of the plugin and find out if they intend to release an updated version.

This is really easy to do, open up the .htaccess in the public_html folder of your site and add:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.your_domain.com$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.your_domain.com/$1 [R=301]

This will redirect any requests that don’t match the www version of your site to the www version. It will use a 301 Permanent redirect.

So what does SEO really mean these days?

SEO is something that seems never to be far from the conscious mind of the website owner or manager. In simple terms to them it means coming up top of the search engines, whenever anyone types in any keyword relating to their business.

Wall of confusion around SEO

In my view the big problem with the whole business of SEO, is the wall of confusion that has built up around it. Web site owners often believe it is something that is very complicated and definitly not something they could do themselves.

Unrealistic expectations on both sides

However they often have an unrealistic impression of what an SEO consultant can achieve for them (whether this is engendered by the SEO consultant or not) and the likely cost involved.So I thought I’d write a few words to try help the website owner to understand SEO a little better and also see it in relation to other website marketing activity.

The term SEO has gained a wider meaning

SEO stands for search engine optimisation, but the term SEO really seems to have gained a much wider meaning, and can often encompass a whole range of website marketing activity.I think this actually has some bearing in reality. Traditionally the SEO consultant will be focusing on researching qualified keywords and getting them into the web page text and tags in one form or another.

Difference between on-page and off-page SEO

This is known as on-page SEO and is something that most website owners think is important. What is not so well known is that as much as 70% of your web page’s search engine position can come from what is known as off-page SEO and this is something that the website owner may be much better at than anyone else (to learn more about it read my short guide).

Things you are doing anyway may help SEO

So a lot of the thing you might be doing anyway to promote your business are likely to be helping with SEO as well. For example when you go to a networking meeting, you tell people about you business and point them to the website, often when they get back they will search for your company in a search engine. All these sorts of activities help with SEO and search engine ranking, especially in the longer term.

Search engines are also looking at your social media interactions

Likewise with social media. Obviously there are very good reasons to promote your business through channels such as Facebook Pages and Twitter. You’ll hopefully gain followers, friends and Likes on your Facebook Pages. You might review how many of these you have now and then. But it will not only be you counting these. The search engines are also looking at them and the more interactions you’re getting with social media the more it will be helping with your website’s position.

Could you do on-page SEO yourself?

Sooner or later you will need to think about the on-page SEO, that will involve editing the keywords and then putting them on the page (this is the type of SEO people generally don’t like very much). Is this something you should do in-house, or is it better to outsource? Certainly hiring a search marketing consultant, should get the job done to a reasonable standard. Be prepared to pay for this though as there is a certain amount of skill involved and does take quite a bit of time.
But if either yourself or someone else in your company is willing to learn how to do SEO, there is no reason why you can’t do at least as good a job as the professional, if not better, as you’ll know your products and services very well and will likely have a good idea of the keywords people are going to use. You’ll also save quite a bit of money as well. The difficult bit may be finding the time in a busy day, but you can often do SEO tasks inbetween other jobs.

SEO is not as complicated as people think

The simple truth is SEO is not half as complicated or difficult as people think and more importantly once you learn how it’s done, and why, there is a good chance you can build it into your working day without making any major changes. One this is for sure, not thinking about it at all is not an option.

SEO Lessons coming soon with online support

I’m currently working on a range of SEO Lessons, coming soon in the ReallySimpleSEO E-learning Centre. Access to them will cost just £25/month, with full online support. Visit the E-learning Centre for more.

Special Offer

To celebrate we have a special offer (and no it’s not an April fools joke!) from 1st April to 8th April (midnight BST) if you order a UK hosting package with a .co.uk domain name we’ll let you have the .co.uk domain name for just 7 pounds*! To take advantage of this just enter the code: BWSREG0411 at the checkout!

* The domain name will renew in future years at full price. You can make multiple orders taking advantage of this offer but it will only be applied once per order. This offer is available to both new and existing clients.

We generally tell people that there are two answers to this:

1. You pay Google to be there (see Google Adwords), or
2. You become “popular” enough to be there (see below).

Google is trying to mimic human thought and interaction in a lot of ways, presenting the most popular and relevant information for any given search at the top of it’s results. For a long while I’ve used a playground analogy to explain this as it’s something everyone understands….

Google and The Playground

Being Popular (LinkBuilding)

• If you’re the new kid in the playground, you have no popularity whatsoever and nobody knows who you are, this is the same as having no links to your website. Nobody knows you exist and so people are unlikely to visit you!
• If you start talking to the other kids, you’ll gain some popularity (probably!) and hopefully they’ll start talking about you to their other friends (in a good way).
  
  In this scenario the other kids are owners of websites and are providing links on their websites to you.
  
  The alternative here is to stand on a box and shout, this is advertising yourself (whether free in the form of Twitter/Facebook, or paid) and will help attract attention.
• However not all friends are equal (see how close to real life this all is?), making friends with a popular kid is like getting a link from the BBC or some other very popular website, this will really help your site!

Being Relevant (SEO)

If to all these new friends in the playground all you talk about is things they’re not interested in, then they probably will stop listening to you. Sites won’t link to you, and Google will realise you’re not relevant as well.

Make your contact relevant using your keywords, sensible content and structuring your site well to help Google crawl it.

Finally : Cheating

Nobody likes a cheat, least of all school children! Cheat the system at your peril, the other kids may ignore it or may report it to the Headteacher (Google!) and generally there’s no right to appeal when Google puts you in detention!

Paying for Friends!

There are companies who will both make sure your content is well structured, relevant and will get links for you from other sites for you. We’ve just partnered up with one who will be doing this for our customers at very reasonable* rates. Contact us if you want more information on this.

* Reasonable we’ve added a note to, this is manual labour intensive work it doesn’t come cheap!

Anyone that is offering to do this for you at low cost (and is probably promising you the earth!) may be using automated tools (this is the same as putting posters all around the playground saying what a great guy you are – everyone will eventually ignore them!) or is cheating on your behalf, and if they’re cheating on your behalf it’s you that will end up detention!

photo credit: rachaelvoorhees