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There’s something wrong about that picture, I have to admit. But when I got invited to a round-table style conference at MS, I could hardly refuse. I actually had a good time too. They were discussing their web products, to a small group of start ups. I’ll give a quick roundup of what they discussed.

SQL

I don’t really need to discuss this, I mean who uses MS SQL?

Azure

I can see where/when Azure would be useful, but again, just go Open Source for more control and more options.

Silverlight

Silverlight 3 is actually looking quite cool and is set to release by the end of July (shh ). Silverlight currently works on Windows Mobile, when they’ve tested it – but it just hasn’t been implemented yet. Expect to see this in Windows Mobile 7.

MS brag about the cross-platform, cross-browser compatibility of Silverlight, but at the same time they offer no support to Novell with the Moonlight project (to get Silverlight compatibility in Linux).

IE8

There were few IE6 jokes of course, but that’s to be expected. At least MS can laugh at themselves – because the rest of us already are – IE8 offers some interesting features, I just don’t know how useful they are;

Slices allow the user to save a section of the site, like a bookmark but not-quite. It’s almost RSS replacement, but it’s something that I can’t really see taking off on a large-scale. The biggest down-fall of this feature is that it needs hard-coding in the HTML to be able to work, so a user can’t ‘Slice’ any content, only content that has been tagged in the source code.

Accelerators are more interesting, this is the tool that cuts down Copy&Paste steps in the browser. Simply right-click on selected text and you have the option to search that text in Google, Bing *groan* (yes it’s good, but I don’t have to keep admitting it!), Amazon and all other site that you’d expect with this feature. You can also e-mail the text, useful stuff like that. Unfortunately for Microsoft, Firefox already provides a much better plugin (more feature complete. Accelerators doesn’t even have an eBay search).

Deep Zoom

Apart from the goofy name, this software was actually pretty cool. Huge image rendering through Silverlight. Visit the Hard Rock Cafe Memorabilia page and hit the magic ‘v’ button, then just keep zooming out – you’ll see a nice demonstration.

ASP.NET

People still use ASP? All jokes aside, .NET is a good idea. One development environment for all your applications, whether they are web or desktop. With Mono, it’s almost Open Source friendly too. But ASP? Really? … Just go Java.

–

So I went into this meeting thinking ‘Apache + Java > IIS + .NET’, and I came out with ‘FF > IE8′. The Microsoft guys were really friendly, we had a good chat. I didn’t rebel too much, although I was the only one in the room with a MacBook Pro and iPhone, and I may have been the only one asking Open Source questions – but that’s not rebellious, that’s just tech-savvy. MS offer no innovation, they are a bore to the market. People moan that Apple provided no Copy&Paste, it could be said that Microsoft give us too much Copy&Paste.

Quote of the Day: “We’d never try to make our tools the only tools you could use”

Disadvantages: It is a specialized field and attempting to do it delays the inevitable and allows your competition to gain an edge on you; also you may end up with more problems in the future by getting it wrong. You will need to have an intimate knowledge of your website, how it works, HTML and possibly any scripting languages that the website uses, like PHP. Also, you will need to buy some commercial tools to use, like WordTracker, WebPosition and SEO Elite. WordTracker allows you to effectively research Keywords, WebPosition allows you to track your websites ranking in the search results for given keyword phrases and SEO Elite allows you to track all links to your website. Purchasing these three necessary pieces of software will cost you around USD$900. Also, you will need to have a lot of time to read about SEO, take online courses, like StomperNet, listen to podcasts, like MrSEO podcast and read as much SEO material as you possibly can. For the StomperNet course you are looking at about USD$3000 and miscellaneous of books is likely to run up to another USD$1000. Total for In-house DIY, roughly USD$1500 to USD$4900. Not being experienced enough to know when and what to change. Not knowing how to link build effectively. Not having any time to study and learn enough to make the correct changes and modifications to your website – estimated at about 200 hours of study, learning and analyzing. As SEO takes time to see any results in the search engines it is important to not only learn the required knowledge to implement SEO but also give yourself the time to make tweaks and ongoing analysis. So to setup and configure an average website with 10 static pages it will take you probably 2 days and ongoing link building will be many, many countless days. Also, you need to take your time so that you do not overdo your SEO, spamming and stuffing keywords into pages as this can be as detrimental as not doing anything to the website in the first place.

Hiring an SEO Company
Advantages : You don’t have to use internal staff resources or alter the focus of your business. Hiring a specialized online marketing and SEO Company will mean you have instant access to experts in the field who have a wealth of knowledge and resources. An SEO Company will know the lay of the land without you having to learn what they already know to expert levels. The Online Marketing Company will be your best partner in working towards achieving your online Internet marketing objectives.

Disadvantages: Using an Expert SEO Company will cost you money. It is important to realize that even though you have hired a firm to implement your Search Engine Optimisation you will still need to work in consultation with them in order to market your website online correctly – explaining your internet marketing goals, objectives, deadlines and budgets. Do your research, look at the SEO Firm and its portfolio, case studies and history of successes, ensure it is a reputable firm and don’t be scared to ask questions.

While the advantages and disadvantages of optimizing your own website and employing an SEO Company are diverse I think it important to point out that no matter how good you think you are an SEO firm will always be better at SEO. So if you really want to see results, you have very little time then hiring an SEO company is the only way to go. If you have time and some website expertise then you may be willing to put in the time and try doing it yourself. My only thought on this is that you wouldn’t hire a plumber to fix a problem with your car.

When all is said and done, good Search Engine Optimisation will get your website results. It is important to make sure you are making the right decisions in your online marketing as this may well be the lifeblood of your business and is certainly an effective way to promote your business and generate sales leads.

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Fuse from Hannah Slaytor on Vimeo.

We’ll be blogging here about our past, present and future projects,  as well as anything interesting we may find around.

Enjoy.