talkmagic.co.uk

Hi Folks,
Just a quick post to announce that the Blackpool Magicians' Club brand new website is now live at http://www.blackpoolmagic.com

I have been developing it for the past few months and look forward to keeping everyone up to date on the latest Blackpool Conventions news and artiste listings.

Please subscribe to the free newsletter via the website to have the latest news posted straight to your inbox.

Magical Wishes
Andrew Green - BMC
http://www.blackpoolmagic.com
http://www.modernmysteries.co.uk
http://www.inspiredeventsuk.com

Hi Andrew, welcome to TM. Great website and, dare I say it, a considerable improvement over the previous version !

Many thanks!!
Make sure you sign up for the newsletter!!!
Regards
Andrew
http://www.blackpoolmagic.com
http://www.modernmysteries.co.uk
http://www.inspiredeventsuk.com

Andrew Green wrote:Hi Folks,
Just a quick post to announce that the Blackpool Magicians' Club brand new website is now live at http://www.blackpoolmagic.com

I have been developing it for the past few months and look forward to keeping everyone up to date on the latest Blackpool Conventions news and artiste listings.

Please subscribe to the free newsletter via the website to have the latest news posted straight to your inbox.

Magical Wishes
Andrew Green - BMC
http://www.blackpoolmagic.com
http://www.modernmysteries.co.uk
http://www.inspiredeventsuk.com

Few unasked for criticisms, if you care...

The apostrophe is in the wrong place in the header! Unless you only have one magician in the club! Should be Magicians' not magician's.

You shouldn't use the same title tags on every page. SEO experts say to use a different title tag for each page.

Also, whilst on SEO, I would make the NEWS section a blog. Literally have it running wordpress or whatever. Couple of reasons. One, it will look better to have reverse chronological posts for a news section. Second, google LOVES blogs. It will really help SEO.

In terms of comprehension, I would opt for aligning the text 'ragged right' and not as you've done it. There have been lots of research projects into how people read online, and they scan, and don't read at all. So I wouldl add in an H1 Headline, and H2 sub head explaining what the page is about too.

This needs to be the same across the site. Some pages are centred, some are not. For example the convention page follows a different format. It also has this:

"Sign up for our free newsletter for updates on the

2010 Blackpool Convention line Up"

Which is underlined and one would therefore think it's clickable. But it isn't. Don't make your visitors guess about navigation, don't underline things that aren't links. Use bold or strong tags instead. And it should be line up, not line Up.

My main work is email marketing, and your harvesting box is not working for me. Why should I sign up for the newsletter? What will I get? "SUBSCRIBE NEWSLETTER" is not only not proper English, it makes little sense and doesn't sell me the benefits of giving you my email address.

Finally, there are some mistakes:

Blackpool Magicians' Club are proud to announce a brand new bricks and mortar Magic Shop named after one of it's very own founder members and famous magician MURRAY!!

Should be its, not it's.

I'd go through the site carefully to avoid these mistakes.



Aside from that, it looks very good. Clean design, easy to navigate, all the information you could want.

mrgoat wrote:The apostrophe is in the wrong place in the header! Unless you only have one magician in the club! Should be Magicians' not magician's.

I would actually say it was "magicians club", since the magicians don't own the club, more it's used and populated by magicians. But apostrophe positioning is tricky and I'm sure someone will come along and tell me that I am wrong

Also, whilst on SEO, I would make the NEWS section a blog. Literally have it running wordpress or whatever. Couple of reasons. One, it will look better to have reverse chronological posts for a news section. Second, google LOVES blogs. It will really help SEO.

What's your source for this? It's the first time I've heard this

I like the site and I like MrGoat's comments as he is clearly keen to make the best of it. I subscribed since I need to be nagged this year to go

I too am interested to learn more about blogs and google.

As for the apostrophe, if the club is a membership organisation then it is for the members,in which case use the plural possessive in the way that MrGoat outlines.

Shame I missed it this year, the pictures look great.

kolm wrote:

mrgoat wrote:The apostrophe is in the wrong place in the header! Unless you only have one magician in the club! Should be Magicians' not magician's.

I would actually say it was "magicians club", since the magicians don't own the club, more it's used and populated by magicians. But apostrophe positioning is tricky and I'm sure someone will come along and tell me that I am wrong

You're wrong. . It is the club belonging to more than one magician. If it were belonging to only one magi it would be "magician's club". However, it's the club belonging to more than one magician, therefore the apostrophe goes after the s.

kolm wrote:

Also, whilst on SEO, I would make the NEWS section a blog. Literally have it running wordpress or whatever. Couple of reasons. One, it will look better to have reverse chronological posts for a news section. Second, google LOVES blogs. It will really help SEO.

What's your source for this? It's the first time I've heard this

It's really very common knowledge. Google likes sites with frequently updated, relevant content. It also likes wordpress site structure etc as it spiders it very effectively.

Here are thousands of links that explain it in more detail

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&clie ... tnG=Search

Specifically:

t's no secret that blogs are great for helping to boost your seo rankings. You can use a blog to get a new site ranked quickly and ahead of your main site if you are dedicated to posting on a frequent basis.

While the main goal of your blog may be to express your thoughts, talk back to your customers or as a vehicle to promote your product or services, there is another critical element to blogging.

Search Engine Optimization & Marketing.

Because of the frequency of active blogs (daily - or at least 5 times a week) the search engines have put high weight on blogs that are focused and tend to stay on topic.

It's the freshness of content (in a perfect world) that a search engine is craving and rewarding to the blogs. The ideal situation is that the blog would provide for tiny snippets of information that over time build up to a greater whole. (Almost like a blook)

But the most overloooked element of a blog is that once you've established a frequent pattern of posting and you have the Googlebot coming to your site every few days, you can then use that to link to other sites, sub-domains or any deep links that you need to get crawled. While most blog postings may not have direct links to any sites in particular, you could always format your blog with some permanent links on the side.

Another mistake made by the amatuer blogger is that they don't realize that you can optimize your blog. True, most blogs only have a few areas, namely the "home" page and the "archive" page. But depending on the tool being used to post the blog, there are some places where you can take advantage seo-wise.

The title of your blog should be thought of as a headline - grab the reader's attention - but also be sure that your blog title is also what gets archived - that way your titles can become search queries as well.

While the main objective of a blog should be to get your message out, don't forget to take a little time for SEO and you should see your efforts payoff in the search engine results pages.

From http://seoarticles.seoforgoogle.com/blo ... or-seo.cfm

blogs are helpful in SEO if you know how o run them properly and what to do with them... half of my sites run blogs plus a 'little extra' to get them higher up and more interesting to google..

others dont run blogs, but also have something that makes them appeal to google more...

a blog, run properly will increase your google appeal... but run incorrectly.. it wont really help at all...

mrgoat wrote:You're wrong. . It is the club belonging to more than one magician. If it were belonging to only one magi it would be "magician's club". However, it's the club belonging to more than one magician, therefore the apostrophe goes after the s.

I never mentioned ownership. The members of the club don't own it, it's a club ran for its membership. No possessive apostrophe because nothing is owned

It's really very common knowledge. Google likes sites with frequently updated, relevant content. It also likes wordpress site structure etc as it spiders it very effectively.

Yeah, any frequently updated page will work, it doesn't have to be "a blog". Just update it frequently and use valid HTML and you'll be fine.

Good God! Some of the older members look even more decrepit than when I was a member. I was thrown out of the Blackpool Magicians Club years ago.

I left Blackpool about thirty years ago and I am stunned to see so many of the old faces. And they REALLY look old! Tom Owen looks positively ancient although Bill Lamb seems to have weathered time fairly well. I am amazed that old b***** Geoffrey Longden is still alive. Still I suppose I can't have everything I want I suppose. He must be about 105 by now. He certainly looks it.

I remember all of the members being quite incompetent and they knew as much about magic as I do about the care and breeding of Japanese butterflies. And of course they all spoke with incomprehensible Lancashire accents.

I expect they are all as useless as ever.

I remember organising a magic competition in Blackpool in order to bring in revenue for one of my nefarious schemes or other. All the participants came from the Blackpool Magician's club and naturally they were all quite talentless. I overheard one passerby say "what idiot organised this rubbish?" I didn't tell him it was me.

I got that old rogue Murray to be a judge along with two other people. One was the manager of Ripley's Odditorium and the other was the organiser of the venue where we held the competion. Murray promptly fell asleep and when I asked him about this afterwards saying "how can you judge them fairly if you fall asleep?" he said "oh, I've seen them all before" which of course I couldn't argue with. Another judge kept wandering off during the show out of boredom and coming back at intervals. He was hardly a fair judge either. The only decent judge was the manager of Ripley's who had to pay attention since he was the one who donated the prize whatever the hell it was.

David Davis a local magician wanted me to bribe the judges so that he would be the winner and I would split the prize money with him. He told me that Murray would definitely go along with since he was as crooked as they came. I always admired Murray for this trait of great wickedness and have mentioned him in my upcoming book with great affection.

I had to rebuff David although naturally I was tempted. I forget who won. I do remember one incompetent did the zombie and dropped the cloth accidentally on the floor leaving him with the stick and the ball in his hand.

I have written two whole chapters about Blackpool in my memoirs. One is entitled "The University of Evil" and the other is "More Evil at the University"

The chapter headings should give you some idea what kind of place Blackpool was in those days.

kolm wrote:

mrgoat wrote:You're wrong. . It is the club belonging to more than one magician. If it were belonging to only one magi it would be "magician's club". However, it's the club belonging to more than one magician, therefore the apostrophe goes after the s.

I never mentioned ownership. The members of the club don't own it, it's a club ran for its membership. No possessive apostrophe because nothing is owned

I think you're wrong. It is the club belonging to more than one magician. But whatever, it's not really discussing further.

kolm wrote:

It's really very common knowledge. Google likes sites with frequently updated, relevant content. It also likes wordpress site structure etc as it spiders it very effectively.

Yeah, any frequently updated page will work, it doesn't have to be "a blog". Just update it frequently and use valid HTML and you'll be fine.

Citation needed.

Again, I'm afraid you're wrong. There are many advantages to using proper blog software. This is why blogs use blog software, not HTML. Just one is that the site structure is easier for spiders to read.

But I'm sure you can provide links to SEO experts saying you don't need to run a blog on a blogging platform and can just use HTML to get the same effect?

Hi Folks,
Man! You guys can talk!!

But I hope the new site will become a good central source of info for our convention along with all of the good work Duncan Trillo and Andrew Webb do.

SEO is a topic people can argue about forever as it changes all the time. With regards to Blogging apparently Google is changing some of it's criteria for ranking blog pages and is starting to lean more towards article submission and a few other gems...

But with regards to the BMC site, we don't need to rank highly in Google as we are not openly advertising on the web and so don't need people to come accross us neccesarily in searches. People come to us directly through word of mouth. Also so many sites accross the web link to us anyway so we do ok.

Enjoy the site and we hope to see you at our convention soon!!
(By the way I am not 105 years old, although I do feel it some mornings!!)

Cheers
Andrew
http://www.blackpoolmagic.com
http://www.modernmysteries.co.uk