This weekend the best and brightest Irish Internet folk will gather at the 2009 Realex Irish Web Awards. Red Cardinal are sponsoring the Best New Web Application/Service category, and want to wish good luck to all the great apps/sites short listed this year for an award.

Very off topic post today about a new BMW advert that got my attention. No SEO here, but it’s always nice to look at the offline world once in a blue moon.

The Irish Web Awards really are the “web awards”. Where all other awards function to generate returns for their oganisers, IWA functions to applaud the those Irish websites that truly deserve kudos. No strings, no ulterior motives, just the best of the best. Get nominating today!

No SEO in this post, and for a change a look at some of the airport advertising and announcement screens I happened upon on a recent journey.

A look at a very honest marketing campaign for a product that seems to “do exactly what it says on the tin”. Absolutely no SEO, but certainly an approach you don’t often see online or off.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I’ve always believed that people buy benefits. So as a marketer it’s important to quickly portray your product’s benefits to your target audience.

A long post about the corporate site of VHI (vhi.ie), Ireland’s largest private health insurance company, in which I suggest 5 improvements of their front-end to improve their User eXperience 100% (well actually 4 front-end changes and one tincey-winsey server configuration change). Continue reading to find out what they are…

Some interesting figures about Online marketing spends in Europe during 2007.

If you work Online in Europe I imagine you have a good idea of the main findings…

Good God… more Golden Spiders…

The hotel space is just about as competitive an online niche as you’re likely to find. This study presents some interesting facts and figures that should be of interest to anyone in that space.

ShareIT is a free day-long training session happening in Cork on Saturday March 24 2007.

I’ll be running a session on SEO and Internet Marketing.

53% of Irish firms are not leveraging the power of search engine marketing. Actually, I imagine the figure is far higher. But everybody loves a statistic.

But just who are the elusive Captivate Digital that released this study?

Well done to all the nominees for the Irish Blog Awards. And thank you to everyone who voted me onto three category shortlists.

If you are a fellow nominee then this is an exclusive free consulting offer available only to you. But hurry, it’s for a limited time only.

Roam4Free eh? Sounds compelling – something that everyone who roams wants.

I think Pat is on to an absolute winner. And with a couple of tweaks to the website I think this will become even more of a no-brainer for customers.

But is my advice any good? You decide (and there’s a free link for anyone who can figure out what I’m thinking at the end :mrgreen:)

Did you know that the META Description tag can be one of the most important factors dictating whether searchers will actually visit your website?

But META descriptions aren’t useful for attracting search engines, they’re useful for attracting the people who use search engines. Read on to learn how your META tags can get you more traffic (and I’m pretty sure you aren’t thinking what I’m thinking).

Irish Blog Awards – do I deserve a nomination?

Here comes the iPhone. It looks great, Apple are fated for their customer-centric products, and the feature set may revolutionise how we interact with our phones.

But could the iPhone herald the genesis of the Mobile Internet we are waiting to get?

As the title suggests, this is A Really Simple Guide to RSS.

ready for a new day?

Er, um, well, maybe. I’m not so sure Microsoft was though.

the Golden Spider was awarded to Moviestar.ie for its performance, as a functioning site in addition to design, innovation, content, navigation, technology, interactivity and ease of use.

Hmmm….

Should we be taking far more interest in Internet and Mobile video?

Well, according to an ICM poll for the BBC TV, time is being forfeited for these new emerging technologies.

The entries this year were outstanding and testament to the strength of the Irish internet industry. These awards provide an important opportunity to recognise and showcase online excellence.

Mr. Cathal Magee, MD eircom

What would you give for a free interview on national radio with Pat Kenny to pitch your latest product? As they say, you couldn’t pay for media like that. Not to mention that it’s free.

And let’s say the primary sale channel was your website – would you try to ensure that this cutting-edge product was heavily promoted on your site?

Two interesting pieces of news from Google today – universal Sitemaps and Mobile Ads come to Ireland.

What you do with your private website is entirely up to you.

But what happens when it’s a public website we’re talking about?

Do you use Google Adwords to promote your website? Could you be spending large sums of money with no chance of making a return?

Quite a lot of sites are you know…

The full results from the accessibility and standards compliance analysis of all websites short-listed for the 2006 Golden Spiders awards.

Marketing your on-line property has never been so important. Think about it for a minute – if people cant find your website they cant find you and they cant buy your products.

Rich interactive media is fast becoming common-place on the Internet. Low cost bandwidth coupled with the rising penetration of the Web globally is driving marketers to look toward new media to get their message across.

Don’t you just love it when you can have it your own way? Getting things on your terms is the best way, isn’t it?

Well that’s the beauty of RSS – giving your readers the content they want when and how they want it benefits you and benefits your audience.

The biggest Internet companies on the globe are busy creating online services to organise our lives.

And then there’s a David that might just be the future. This could be serious…

Unconditional Google love is something we all want. Let’s face it, Google is one of the top referrers in the world so keeping her happy has to be one of the most important jobs of any webmaster.

Here are my 10 top tips to getting and keeping that Google love.

If you use SEM to promote your site then you could do a lot worse than check out this recent post from the Hitwise blog.

Well this is definitely my last post about Dublin Coastal Development and Funda Ireland, whose website finally went live today without a bang.

Well the buzz about Dublin Property Company is certainly taking off. Well done to Funda Ireland and their marketing folk for putting together a great campaign.

By far and away the best example of viral marketing I have seen come out of Ireland recently, The Dublin Coastal Development is a very slick on-line marketing campaign that is being talked about quite a bit on Irish blogs.

I frequent many webmaster and SE forums which are great places to keep in touch with and learn about the ever changing SEO world. While the largest and best known forums provide exceptional information, the biggest problem I have is getting information specific to the Irish web market. The work I do (which, yes I […]

You may have heard recent stories about a number of Merrill Lynch employees being fired for transmitting offensive material over the corporate E-mail system. Well a thread over at Irish Webmaster Forum contains a link to a page on the website of YourCar.ie [please note that the page contains offensive material], an Irish on-line car […]

Via Ajaxian: I noticed that in the original post, as well as including a neat article about AJAX, the author makes reference to job vacancies at the company he works for. While he probably didn’t write the guide specifically as link bait for those positions (but who knows?), it very certainly has helped create free […]