Monthly Archives: May 2010

Jonathan Legard – Best No Value Commentator

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I don’t mean to come across as cynical or bitter, but the BBC needs to know that Jonathan Legard is a terrible commentator and offers no value to F1 in general. He has zero understanding of the sport and his commentary is boring and pointless, actually extremely irritating and annoying as he seems to be the master of stating the obvious.

His commentary is pure drivel, I know the BBC have to cater to a wide range of people, but Jesus, if you’re watching F1, you probably know the basics like the cars don’t want to go off the tarmac. I quote: “he’s just gone off the track, he didn’t want to do that”.

The BBC should really improve the show and get rid of him, there is no Chemistry between him and Martin – actually Jonathan thinks he’s the dog’s whatsits and feels that he’s the #1 commentator – so effing arrogant.

It’s clear he’s never driven a lap in anger, actually driven a lap of a racetrack. Ever.

All I can say is Jonathan Legard, you suck and are doing F1 a disservice in the UK; do us and yourself a favour and go back to working in a sport where you are actually an expert.

Castrol Nonsense Rankings

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Castrol – in conjunction with Autosport have recently brought out a ranking tool which lists almost every racing driver and “ranks” them according to certain criteria and weighting theories which they have thought up. Watching the rankings over the last six months or so, I have to publicly state that they are a load of rubbish. Never before have I seen something which is packaged so professionally deliver something of such a biased and seemingly poor quality.

Firstly, there is no way to separate man and machine so that you can measure exactly what the performance is of each component, whether it’s flesh and blood or metal and carbon fibre. This brings me onto the first part of the rankings, which has all the top F1 teams near the top of the rankings, and as the teams performance worsens so do the rankings of a particular driver. Does this mean that moving to a top team automatically makes you one of the best, or if you haven’t really had an opportunity to drive equal machinery, does that mean you are a thousand times worse than some of your counterparts. For example, why is Steven Kane number eight hundred odd when he was Mclaren Autosport winner of the year, he’s an amazing driver in my opinion, however you just can’t compare these types of drivers with one another. According to the list and his talent, he should be placed at least as well as Gary Paffett who is a DTM champion and has won in year old machinery who is placed at number forty five! Or what about Timo Glock – is he really sixty four drivers worse than Mark Webber? How can you really tell even with complex theories and weighting systems. Michael Schumacher is only number two hundred – fifty places behind his brother Ralf whom was known to be better(!). Pffffttt.

The trouble with the ranking system is that it’s done by people who have opinions and preferences, and I’m sure the people compiling the data are probably not totally racing aware or as passionate as the editor of Autosport who has put his name to it.

You can’t compare drivers unless they are in equal machinery and certainly can’t even begin to contemplate comparing drivers across different formula. The data is meaningless and pure nonsense built on rules which have no foundation in reality. Sorry to flame you Autosport and Castol Rankings and I’ll probably be dismissed as an idiotic punter that knows nothing, however, anyone with an ounce of logic can see that this list is nothing but a popularity contest.

www.castroldriverrankings.com & www.autosport.com are the websites if you want to have a look yourself.

The Future of SEO Consultancy

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I run a SEO Company, and I constantly question the future and how stable it is. I personally believe that pure “seo consultancy” is a shrinking market and that if you don’t diversify your business you’ll find yourself without a company in the next year or two. It is truly a frightening place to be at the moment. This is because Google’s algorithm is each day becoming slightly more resilient to people trying to manipulate the results for their own gain this is partly down to: Google is reducing the area within a particular webpage from where it counts and trusts links and has other factors to determine whether a link is trusted or not. I estimate that 97% of links that are “purposely” built do not pass PageRank and only the very best link-builders are able to create links which can reliably pass PageRank in any sort of volume. There is a very fine line between ROI and not when it comes to paid links in any sort of competitive vertical market, I don’t have any moral or ethical issue with paid links, all my decisions are based on the amount of margin I can make and I don’t think that paid linking with aggressive anchor text linking is where it’s at anymore in terms of securing a long-term future.

Around 30% of my new business enquiries are for Viral Marketing and Social Media Marketing and this number is growing quickly, people are starting to look past the “free listings on Google” and are starting to diversify their online marketing budgets. Pure Search Engine Optimisation is so competitive these days and the diminishing ROI from a clients point of view makes them not want to commit such large sums of money chasing some top terms which may or may not ever appear, makes investing in pure SEO not appear very prudent now or tomorrow.

SEO agencies need to diversify into full service agencies that offer a full bouquet of services and make SEO just one of the 4, 5 or 6 main services that they offer. I predict the term “SEO” will die in the next few years and we’ll talk about Google rankings and traffic growth from a far more holistic “Online Marketing” standpoint which will include everything from Google Organics, PPC, Social Media Marketing, Viral Marketing to video marketing. A company wanting to grow with search traffic and social traffic will need to participate in nearly every form of online marketing to stand a reasonable chance of success.

There are more sharks and less fish these days and the trend looks to continue for many years to come.

Sucky Registrars

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My dad since retiring has started a number of micro business and I’ve been delegated the task of building the websites for him; he’s based in South Africa and we’ve been forced to use a South African registrar which sucks big time, it took 5 long distance calls, numerous emails and eventual begging to get them to move the nameservers. Finally the site went up, however, the email to my dads site didn’t work. Now many more long distance telephone calls, repointing name servers and general ball ache to get the most simple of sites up and running properly.

If you’re in South Africa and want to setup a new business, become a registrar and host which half decent customer service and you’ll do very well.

Rant over.