An alert popped up on my screen today that looked interesting. Wait, I understate: it looked, well, world-changing, at least within in the environs of the SEO community. Google were to enter the SEO business, charging a cool US $25,000 per month to optimise websites.

The woman who wrote the piece was concerned – very concerned. So were her commenters. And me? Well, I just couldn’t understand why news like this wouldn’t have been on the front page of every news site across the net.

A bit of searching brought the answer. 27 days previously – April 1st, to be precise – an SEO company posted a story that turned out to be just that little bit too believable. Thankfully for all of us (for small SEO companies like us, and for the clients who don’t want to pay hefty amounts for their SEO) it really was just an April Fool’s joke that someone took a little bit too seriously.

What can we learn from this? Well, first, the oft-repeated lesson that you shouldn’t believe everything you read online. Second, that humour has to be very broadly signposted online, or it will be missed. And third, we should all be grateful that small agencies such as ourselves exist, and will charge you much, much less than 25K for your SEO needs.

I’ve seen casual mentions ofGroupon for a while now, in a number of the blogs I read – but only the American ones. Phrases such as “I took advantage of a groupon for a spa day today” or “I can’t believe this photographer can afford to charge such a low groupon price” have become commonplace; and now they’re about to populate the blog posts – and conversation, no doubt – of Londoners too.

Groupon is one of those simple but brilliant Internet phenomena. A business puts up a special offer price, but that price is only honoured if the set number of people commit to it. As a business owner, you can see the benefit: you can attract new custom, get your place buzzing, and perhaps deal with folk who will go on to become loyal customers. Plus, as the service has plenty of subscribers, you’re getting your name known. Being able to set a minimum number means that you can do your maths and make sure you don’t lose too much on the deal.

Starting off in the States, the Internet company has now widened its net to our capital city – and presumably, if we Brits take to it, it’ll roll out to other major cities too. It could be time to drop by and see if Groupon might work for your business.

The best websites are those which appear simple – the most-often cited example being, of course, the Google website, with its plain search box. Of course, like the duck (serene on top; legs paddling frantically below the water), even the barest sites can have a lot of code beneath the surface.

Here’s proof. Twitter, often praised for the way that with its 140 character limit it forces users to be succinct, might be thought of as one of the simplest sites of all. This week, the BBC reproduced the image above, showing the huge amount of code required by a single tweet. Pretty, isn’t it?

Thanks to Google, many of us are familiar with the concept of online document sharing – a saviour for businesses with geographically diverse workforces. Documents are stored in ‘the cloud’ (is that term catching on, do we think? I see it a lot in posts like this one, but I have never yet referred to ‘the cloud’ in conversation with a colleague, other than when the view outside our window moves me to comment that it looks like rain), allowing for collaboration across the miles.

None but the most zealous Google fan would claim that the system is perfect, though: it’s not entirely intuitive, and documents often lose their formatting. Now Facebook announces that you will be able to share your documents through their system, too. Docs.com uses Microsoft Office technology to allow you to create and share documents, using those familiar Office interfaces, across the Facebook platform.

If you’re finding it hard to visualise just how this will work, think of how photos are uploaded and shared on Facebook: apparently this uses much the same technology. It could be useful for small businesses who have an existing Facebook network – but, just as you need to be careful that your great aunt Em doesn’t see the wrong kind of photos of you, you’ll also need to make sure you have the right filters in place to keep any business-sensitive documents as private as you want them to be.

The news is full of comment on Facebook’s latest innovation. That familiar ‘like’ button has escaped the bounds of Facebook itself, and can now be found across the web on all sorts of other sites, from news providers to film directories to – of course – consumer product sites.

See this My Deco page for an example of how it could work (via Channel 4).

Most of the stories are concerned about inadvertent privacy lapses that this could bring about. Do you want the whole world to know about your choice of underwear, or your preferred pudding? If not, as a consumer, the choice is simple – just don’t press that ‘like’ button, however used you may be to doing so within the Facebook environment.

As a retailer, though, you may be wondering whether to integrate this feature. We’d say it seems to be a feature with a lot of benefits for business – it’s free word-of-mouth advertising, or “increased eyeballs” as the phrase has it. However, if you’re a cautious type, you may wish to wait until the hype has died down a bit, and then reassess.

(If you’re not so cautious, and you want in on this feature NOW, give us a call!)

We’ve proclaimed the benefits of social media many times: we’ve also warned small business owners to update their status with some degree of caution. With online services that you use in your own private life, it’s all too easy to lapse into an unprofessional tone on the business profile. Before you know it, you can besmirch your company’s good name, just like Habitat and Nestle, to name two recent cases.

That said, up until now, there has always been the safety net of time. As the weeks pass, your tweets and your Facebook updates disappear from the page, replaced by more recent messages. In the fast-moving online world, mistakes can be forgotten.

Or so we thought. This week, the library of Congress in the US has announced that it will be archiving every single public tweet, considering them to be a valuable historic record of public opinion. At the same time, Google unveiled its ‘live search’ timeline, which at the moment allows you to go back to February of this year – and soon will go back to the very day Twitter launched (21st March 2006, as it happens) – and search all public tweets.

Now that your tweets are saved for posterity, it makes sound sense to give thought to what you type, both on your business AND personal accounts. However, if you’re looking for consolation, it might be found in the fact that Twitter this month signed up its 100 millionth user. Finding your minor indiscretion in a sea of tweets that size… well, let’s just say it might be easier to find a needle in a haystack.

We learned this week that the police inadvertently tried to launch a new service under a domain name that already exists.

The news does not really surprise us. As the Internet constantly proliferates, the fact is that simple or obvious domain names will have been snapped up. That’s bad news for those who wish to use them, and good news for those who bought them and stand to make a profit if they decide to sell.

You may wish to consider purchasing variants of your company name before anyone else does – be that a competitor who wants to divert your business, or simply an unknowing business with a similar name.

Don’t forget that for your customers, it is not always easy to remember whether they should put a .com, .co.uk, .org, or .biz at the end of your URL. You can help them out by buying all of the options, and redirecting them to your site. It needn’t be expensive, and many would consider it a valid business cost.

If it sounds a bit complicated, we here at Notting Hill Internet Services can help both with the domain purchasing and the redirects. Just don’t find yourself in the position of the police, having to decide whether to change your website’s name all together, or buy out someone who got there first.

Following the news that Ordnance Survey have released their map data, we’ll be watching with interest to see how they compare with the omnipresent Google Maps.

Google Maps have been open-source from the beginning, meaning that they have been ‘mashed up’ and used in online projects from the sublime to the ridiculous. Council websites use them to show where their public loos are situated; holiday rentals websites can show local attractions and amenities; one enterprising soul is also mapping the cost of a Cadbury Twirl in shops across London. In short, there are few projects which cannot be illustrated with one of Google’s familiar rectangles of cartography, small or large scale, satellite or street view.

Ordnance Survey, which held out against unauthorised usage of its data for so long, has a long way to catch up. However, they are still the best-known name in mapping, in this country at least, and that noteriety will stand them in good stead.

At the end of the day, it will be about how easy the data is to use, and how the end results compare with a Google map. One thing is for sure – it’s always good to have more than one option.

Is your customer base made up of more women than men? Many are: there are the obvious examples such as women’s clothes shops, beauticians and spas – and there are also those areas where, for some reason, women seem to do the final decision-making, like house-buying, grocery shopping, and kitchen fitting. Well, you will know your own customers best – have you noticed that they are predominantly female?

If so, you might be interested in research from the University of California which has found that women, more than men, value their online communities. Women, apparently, are more prone to forge relationships online, leading to lasting, valued friendships.

What does that mean for you? Well, a canny business owner who wants to target women would do well to remember that Facebook advertising allows you to segment by a number of factors, including gender. In other words, you can deliver your advertisements directly to the people most likely to need your services. And because women are online more, they are ripe for marketing.

If you don’t fancy paying for your advertising, don’t forget the massive value on setting up a Facebook page, which is free to do. By providing a space for customers to chat, comment, and even socialise, you might just find you’re tapping in to the ‘female effect’ anyway.

Web design companies are not all the same. Unfortunately, what is an art for some is just a way of making money quickly for others. Do be wary of folk who have no portfolio to show you, and no qualifications to their name: web design is a serious practice that needs years of experience to get right.

A good designer will understand usability, accessibility, search engine optimisation, all the latest HTML protocols, and browser compatibility, among many other considerations that you may never even have thought about.

Here at Notting Hill Internet Services, we have a full range of options when it comes to website design for small businesses. Whether you choose one of our off-the-peg designs, or take advantage of our bespoke design service, you can be sure that our designers understand everything that goes into making a design both attractive and practical.

Read more on our website design page.