Google Webmaster Tools Search Queries

I just checked in to see search queries listed from my Google Webmaster Tools account for my local website cotswoldpc.com

interestingly these search results have been thrown up

  Query                                Impressions clicks  ctr     avg.position
    seo moreton-in-marsh     106              0     0%     36
    seo stow-on-the-wold       93               0     0%     18
    seo chipping campden     47               0     0%     43
    seo chipping norton        27                0     0%     42

Now i know the amount of impression here are slightly false, i cannot believe there is this volume of search for these keywords, i have popped on to the google adwords account and cannot see any search volume to be found for those types of keywords.

I suspect some kind of foul play here.

To anyone researching for an SEO expert i would strongly advise seeking more than one professional opinion on SEO for your company.

SEO done badly can and will lower ranking for your website, be very careful when opting for an SEO expert. Find examples of their work, google their own name and company to see if you can find a trail of bad practice.

SEO should be thought of as part of a whole package.

The basic rules of successful website SEO

• Decide upon a strategy of what suits your business.
• Create a brand and logo that clients and users will recognise and want to come back to, to revisit you time and time again.
• Create a trust factor that again users and clients will be confident in coming back to you.
• Design your website to a high standard, make sure that your website is mobile friendly too for users with smart phones.
• Consider using social networks in a way that will interest your users in either communicating directly with you or by finding information from your website.
• Market your websites via social networks, blogs and paper adverts

 The rest of the myths that you may get told can be very damming to your business in the long run

SEO Mythbusters

• Building a campaign purely around back-links will harm your website, back-links should be natural, your website should be inspiring enough for other websites to create a link to your website.
• Making statements on social network sites like "what a beautiful day" just to fill space will not enthuse anyone to view your website.
• Do not let companies run social campaigns for you, they simply will not understand your clientèle. 

How to be successful and rank high in the search engines?

It is actually very simple, just forget about them. Concentrate on what is important to you - your customers!!!!!!!

When they are happy the rest will follow.

Can i get Fibre Broadband? If not? Why not?

This last 6 months i have had to learn an awful lot about the reasons behind which BT cabinets are being enabled for FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet).

Living in the Cotswolds has proved to be an interesting learning curb about the problems that are faced in making your nearby cabinet enabled for fibre broadband.

What is fibre broadband and how does it work?

Many of my customers do not understand the basics of how will being superfast broadband to your house.

Simply put a fibre optic cable has to be linked to a new larger fibre cabinet near to the original cabinet where your existing copper line is routed to.

Your existing copper lines then carry the new superfast broadband to your house, using a new type of router (Vdsl) to connect to the new fibre service.

The fibre can either be connected to a phone exchange or a main route of fibre cable nearby that BT own. Many main roads have had fibre cabling in them for years and this can mean that if your village or town has easy access to the road it will be cheaper to connect to that using splicing equipment than link to the main phone exchange.

Why is my cabinet not being enabled with fibre?

This can be quite annoying when you find out that your cabinet is not getting fibre broadband. These are reasons that i found out so far.

In the Cotswolds all projects are council funded with the BDUK scheme.

They may see that there are just not enough clients on the cabinet and it is not worth doing.

The cabinet could be just to old and not enough expansion capacity therefore proving to expensive to upgrade.

There is no easy route for fibre to get there with no ducting underground etc.

I have been told i have an exchange only line and wont get superfast broadband what does that mean?

If you have an exchange only line (eol) that means there is no cabinet for your phone line, it links straight to the telephone exchange. This means in council funded projects that you have to hope they are going to cater for exchange only lines and will put in an cabinet near to the exchange.

We are not getting funding from the council we wont get superfat broadband?

If you have exhausted all avenues and there will be no funding for your area, dont give up, maybe residents in your area share the same interest and you can raise enough finances to contact the BT private funding dept. They have the ability to install FTTC funded directly by you.

My neighbours get superfast fibre broadband why cant i get it?

They can be on a different cabinet to you, their cabinet may be enabled and yours is not. Enter your phone number into this line checker to find out if you are on a cabinet, which cabinet number or if you are an exchnage only line.

 http://dslchecker.bt.com/adsl/ADSLChecker.TelephoneNumberOutput

I am to far away from the cabinet to get FTTC?

Alas you will have to wait for technology to get better over a longer distance.
Fibre seems to work safely about 1500 meters to maybe 2000 meters after that it fades away.

I cant find information about my area for fibre broadband?

If you are not happy with what your local council or fibre broadband info website, then just email the council, they will have all the cabinets listed and a rough time of how long before they get enabled.

I spent many weeks tweeting my local fastershire website and i was not happy with the answers they gave, they always seem to just say refer to the website, you can check on the BT when and where website too. I found the answers directly from the council were a lot more informative.

http://www.superfast-openreach.co.uk/where-and-when/

Good luck to all with their hopes of having superfast FTTC broadband.

SSl Certificate error in latest chrome problem

I thought it would be a good idea, to post a few notes of the current problem we are experiencing with the latest chrome browser error we are getting using our updated ssl cert purchased from rapidssl.

With our updated ssl certificate purchased from rapidssl for another 2 years, our green padlock disappeared from chrome replaced by the warning message instead.

We installed the certificates as usual and tested on all other major browsers, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari. The result in those browsers was the normal padlock secure connection.

Why in chrome was it not working? I contacted rapidssl support via their chat, upon testing the certificate initial tests showed nothing wrong.

They thought it may be my own browser i am using
Version 39.0.2171.71 (64-bit)

We left the error with them and they have emailed back with this reply as of Monday the 1st December 2014.

"The course of the error is domain Vetted SSL certificates. The only certificate type that will not come up with that Error message are EV certificates.

This is Chrome pushing this.

http://www.certificate-transparency.org/

http://www.trustico.com/news/ct/chrome-certificate-transparancy-plan.php

The choice going forward will be that everyone will need to have an EV certificate or have that error message in Chrome.

There is nothing wrong with the certificate itself and the connection is secure and Trustico as stated in Chrome. Just that it gives more information to the customer about the connection now."

and a follow up reply to to my reply

"At the moment just leave it with me in regards to the upgrade and I will certainly let you know the procedure. We are waiting for more information from Chrome and Symantec on the issue before we start forcing customers to upgrade to the EV certificates."

For the moment we are having to wait on the solution i will post as soon as we get a reply, hopefully this may help with anyone else suffering the same fate .

Not all chrome browsers will be displaying this error just the very latest chrome updated versions.

A Further thought has just occurred to me looking at the bigger picture,  Google have in 2014 stated that using https or a ssl website will have a ranking boost for a website.

The question that has gone unanswered is to what level of security would benefit?

Is this the first indication that a website using EV ssl (Extended Validation Certificate) will gain higer ranking and trust than those that do not?

An EV Certificate is where you will actually have your certificate verified by phone confirming your address and company name etc.

This does feel like it is an opportunity for Google to start streamlining out a business owner who are not serious about their website, thus demoting their website easily, compared to someone that is prepared to go the "whole hog".

It is an easy algorithm for them, a verified website paid for by the owner, a "we are who we say we are" algorithm.

Quote from chrome
"HTTPS sites whose certificate chains use SHA-1 and are valid past 1 January 2017 will no longer appear to be fully trustworthy in Chrome’s user interface."

*2015 update*
Latest chrome is now displaying a green padlock will keep an eye on it over coming months, not sure if it has been fixed by chrome or rapidssl

Outlook 2013 empty address book after contacts csv import

Found an unusual problem with outlook 2013.

I had to export contacts from windows live mail in a csv file (comma seperated values).
After importing to outlook 2013 contacts (people folder) the address book was empty.

Tried all suggested methods out there including creating a new profile etc
Also tried using contacts as address book was ticked, still no joy.

Phoned microsoft and found out that importing csv in 64bit outlook on windows 7 will not work only in windows 8, so downloaded 32 bit version of outlook 2013.

Then after the import still no email addresses had gone over to contacts.

So redid it and had to map custom fields

Making sure by dragging from left hand side to right hand side of custom fields box that, name goes to name, first name to first name, middle name to middle name, last name to last name and email address to email address, all then works fine and the contacts now populates with email addresses.

I suspect that Microsoft have change field mapping for csv files in outlook 2013 so that it no longer matches the colums/fields of older csv exports.

Please make sure that when you export contacts as a csv file that you tick first name middle name and last name if you use all these fileds so that you can match them on your import.

Hope this helps somebody, wasted hours on this.

Panasonic ncp500 asterisk sip trunk no audio issue

Just a simple note to myself for the next time i forget, the dsp card, must be given an ip on the same network as panasonic.
In my scenario the ncp500 has a network address of 192.168.17.101
the dsp card should be 192.168.17.102, this will enable the codecs on the same network.

The setting then if a sip extension is setup on the ncp500 for example 404 on the asterisk piaf is as follows

incoming
username=404
type=peer
secret=404
qualify=yes
port=5060
nat=no
insecure=very
host=192.168.17.101
fromuser=403
dtmfmode=rfc2833
dtmf=rfc2833
allow=ulaw
disallow=all
context=from-trunk
canreinvite=no
maxexpiry=3600

outgoing

type=user
secret=404
allow=ulaw
disallow=all
context=from-trunk

then on inbound route for that trunk set
Pause Before Answer to the amount of time to ring before voicemail cuts in eg 17 seconds, about 3-4 rings

Freepbx - Asterisk multiline pstn same number setup

I had to setup a multiline on a asterisk PBX the other day for the 1st time, the VoIP was so bad because of the poor broadband, we decided to opt for the multiline pstn option.

I could not really find much on the internet with any help to setup.

So i installed my new fxo card to sit alongside the other that i already had.

The Important settings.

You have to create two Dahdi  trunks - call them say Mulitiline1 and multiline2

My setup in the PBX was actually for 3 pstn dahdi lines incoming and i had 1 fxs card.

Line 1 FXO - Dahdi trunk = channel 1 (original spare bt number)
Line 2 FXO - Dahdi trunk = channel 2 (1st of the multiline channels)
Line 3 FXS - not used at the moment = channel 3
Line 4 FXO -- Dahdi trunk = channel 4 (2nd of the multiline channels)

On my setup it sends to the ivr then queues the calls to the two office phones.

Actually the owner wanted 3 options on the ivr, you may ask how do you know what the call is for if it rings the same two phones at the same time.

What i did was to make an announcement, for example if one is press by the caller for sales, the announcement  tells either phone sales and they then know what the call is for. Two is for enquiries and information etc etc

The first trunk should go through to the ivr, followed by the second which is automatically switched at the phone exchange.

The outgoing rules are very important  to make this work.

In your outbound route
where the section at the bottom for
Trunk sequence for Matched Routes is
add multiline1 then add multiline2 for your failover.

Finally back to the trunks edit your multiline1 and set max calls to 1
this then tells asterisk that the line is busy when in use and it drops through to multiline2.

Of course to keep the the multiline as free as possible, you may want to use another line for outbound calling or VoIP if your broadband is better than ours.
 

My new Electric Bike, Kudos Tornado e-bike review

Last Saturday - the 24the May, was a day i had really been looking forward to. After spending weeks of trawling for information on electric bikes or e-bikes as they are more adequately named, i had drawn a blank on what exactly to buy.

The terrain in the Cotswolds is extremely hilly, my local areas that i really need to get to may only be 4-5 miles away most of the time and some are actually quite flat to get too.

My need for and electric bike is quite simple, i can no longer drive as i have been diagnosed with macular degeneration and my eyesight no longer meets the visual fields requirements needed for the DVLA.

With an electric bike the simple requirement for not needing a licence is that it can go no faster than 15 mph either by throttle or pedal assist, well let me paste the gov.co.uk regs below

EAPC requirements

The requirements are:

• the bike must have pedals that can be used to propel it
• the electric motor shouldn’t be able to propel the bike when it’s travelling more than 15mph
• the bike (including its battery but not the rider) must not be heavier than 40 kilograms (kg) if it’s a bicycle, or 60kg if it’s a tandem or tricycle
• the motor shouldn’t have a maximum power output of more than 200 watts if it’s a bicycle and 250 watts if it’s a tandem or tricycle
• the bike must have a plate showing the manufacturer, the nominal voltage of the battery, and the motor’s power output.

 Ok thats out the way

I purchased a Kudos Tornado, it has a battery with the samsung cells in, which after research seemed a good idea.

The battery is cheap to replace from Kudos at £200, so thats another bonus.

The Kudos Tornado has 5 speed assist, at the moment because my level of fitness is very low i am using mainly assist level 5, heres the thing though, you have to remember that if you are descending a slight hill the battery cuts out at 15 mph and you can either carry on pedalling or roll, so the battery is not always being used.

I have made 2 journeys so far to the extent of what i want it for, both around 12 miles in total, each journey has used i would say 25% to 35% of the battery. Now if you had bought a throttle e-bike and was not pedalling this would easily use up more, for me the idea is to get fit as well as be able to get to places that i just could not with a normal bike.

The brakes are fantastic, just touch them and i am stopping like i request them to do.

Going up hills so far is not bad, because the tornado is very light, this leaves more power from the motor to help you with the assist you need.

I still have to get used to the saddle, i am sure this is just a bike thing that i am not used to.

Next test is to go a little further afield when i am a bit fitter.

How did i decide on the Kudos Tornado, well i did speak to a few places, i ended up speaking and then going to Fosse Electric Bikes, near Leicester who advised me on what the right e-bike would be right for what i needed it for.

At £1095 it has proven to be excellent value, so much that my fiancée now wants her e-bike, so time to put on our saving hats and get another.  

I will include Fosse Electric Bikes video review until i get my own done.


I will also add that so far my 6.2 mile return journey took 25 minutes and getting there took 30 minutes (slighty uphill) will post results of times as fitness level hopefully rise.