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Use FAQs on Your Website
15 October 2009
Why use an FAQ?Because it allows you to anticipate, and then answer your visitors questions right there and then and you can save your visitor hunting around for the answer to commonly asked questions...more info>>>

Pay-for-Review Directories Help Your Search Engine Rankings
11 October 2009
Pay-for-review directories are a great way to increase your search engine rankings, since they are reviewed by humans, and if you fail the review, your site is not included. That sounds risky, but it...more info>>>

New Keyword Suggestion Tool
28 September 2009
Another tool added to the (completely free) puresilva toolbox:- Keyword Suggestion Tool This tool allows you to find alternative keywords that are being used by searchers to find things. These ...more info>>>

Quick and Easy Way to Find Popular Keywords in Google
25 September 2009
Just type the first few letters of a root keyword you're targeting into Google like the image above. Google will suggest keywords based on those first few letters. You will often find a few surprise...more info>>>

puresilva Voted Best Banner Maker on makeuseof.com
22 September 2009
My personal favorite to make your own banner is PureSilva’s BannerMaker. Although there are a ton of available options, the interface remains relatively simple. The BannerMaker website hosts a ton ...more info>>>

Lazy Marketing
18 September 2009
I get a load of emails everyday from SEO "companies" asking me to sign up to their services. The problem is - the vast majority never even leave a link to a website, or proof of previous work. They ...more info>>>

New Advertisements Module For The Template
9 September 2009
A new facility allows puresilva template owners to make money from visitor-published adverts on their website. These come in the form of text ads, and site owners can choose how much they charge for ...more info>>>

The Art of Mediocrity
4 September 2009
A great article by Jeff Atwood over at codinghorror.com on the error of applying "business-speak" to your website:- It's a shame that this misguided sense of professionalism is sometimes used as an...more info>>>

Use Google Adwords to Discover the Best Keywords
2 September 2009
It's easy to focus too much on quantity of visitors coming to your website, and not so much on the QUALITY. After all, quantity is very easy to measure, quality a little less so. Search engine vi...more info>>>

Questions you should ask your hosting company
28 August 2009
Hosting is an important aspect of your online business. It's often an afterthought for many people, with the assumption being that there's no real difference between the various hosting companies, un...more info>>>

5 Years Ago Today....
27 July 2009
Five years ago today (27th July 2004), I launched the shoptemplate.co.uk demo shop. This has now evolved into puresilva.com (v2.76 as of today). Click to enlargeClick to enlarge...more info>>>

£20 a month offer ends on 1st September 2009
25 July 2009
I've been offering the puresilva template to people for a monthly flat fee of £20. It's not the first time I've experimented with a low monthly price. It seems I introduce a monthly payment plan eve...more info>>>

Now You Can Sell Affiliate Products on puresilva
23 July 2009
It's now possible to sell affilaite products on puresilva for any outlet (Amazon, John Lewis, any website). More information in updates....more info>>>

Bing Referral Spam / False Visitor Stats
19 July 2009
Microsoft are doing it again regarding referral spam. They are sending false "visitors" to your site who supposedly found your site on the Bing search engine using single keyword searches like "item"...more info>>>

Formal or Informal?
17 July 2009
A biased look at what it is to be formal and informal :) Formal/OrthodoxYou adopt well-worn phrases when describing your services - a lexicon of commonly understood jargon, and you follow the well wo...more info>>>

Even more plans for puresilva!
14 July 2009
Here are planned updates to the puresilva website template - planned to implemented (all of them) by end of 2009:- Ability to sell affiliate productsThis will allow the site owner to add a product ...more info>>>

Alexa Rank More Important Than PageRank
5 June 2009
PageRank is fast becoming meaningless as a way to judge the value of a page. It doesn't take into account the amount of traffic the page gets, which I think is a big signal for a search engine. Tra...more info>>>

Simpler Backoffice and Future Plans
25 May 2009
The backoffice of the puresilva website template is going to undergo some big updates over the next month or so. To start off, the "variables" section has had a long overdue update:- Click to enla...more info>>>

Optimal Web Design
14 May 2009
Probably the most contentious issue I face with web development is aesthetics : the "look and feel" of a website. Ask 10 people what's a good colour scheme, layout, font etc and you'll get back 11 op...more info>>>

Short-Term and Long-Term Trust
13 May 2009
A couple of years ago I wrote an article about trust (How to look like a trusted website). The article title seems a bit dodgy - surely if you ARE trustworthy, then you will LOOK trustworthy? Not al...more info>>>

Expired domain name evaluator tool
20 April 2009
Expired domains are a great way to jump start a new online business, or even give an extra push to an existing business. How so? Well, Expired domains are interesting for two reasons:- Arguably, al...more info>>>

puresilva template now auto-tweets updates
17 April 2009
Now on the puresilva template when you add a new article or product to your website you can check a box that says "auto tweet" and it will automatically add a message to Twitter with the title of your...more info>>>

Good news: Selling online isn't easy
11 April 2009
The following article assumes you don't have wheelbarrows of cash to throw at Google Adwords and advertising to bring traffic to your website (even if you do, this is a useful article for increasing y...more info>>>

Deleted tweets still showing on Twitter search
7 April 2009
Twitter's search facility still displays messages you've deleted even up to 3 days ago (as of today, test messages I made 3 days ago are still visible in the Twitter search). I can only guess the...more info>>>

Forums are more useful than Twitter
8 April 2009
It seems we are being dragged into the "Twittersphere" by our collar these days:- .....and I kind of agree with the cynic in the cartoon - it seems there's a lot of noise on Twitter and not muc...more info>>>

Simple Solution to Twitter's URL Problem
5 April 2009
Twitter is becoming an extremely popular means of communicating online, but a constant problem people have when sending a "tweet" (a message) are URLs - URLs take up too much of that precious 140 char...more info>>>

puresilva now has WYSIWYG editor with resizeable images
12 March 2009
WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors are nothing new, but the annoying thing with all the ones we've tried is they don't resize image files when you resize the physical size of them in the e...more info>>>

New price set for the puresilva website template
2 March 2009
We've set the price of the puresilva website template to £250. This gives you the full template, including e-commerce facilities. This is quite a significant reduction from the previous price (which ...more info>>>

Interview: Helena from nutritionfriend.com
14 February 2009
Capitalising on the poor state of health the average UK citizen seems to find themselves in these days (blame the weather), nutritionfriend.com offer health advice online and offline, particularly Pre...more info>>>

Speed up your site
5 February 2009
An interesting experiment conducted by Google shows users notice even half a second delay in page loads, and this results in a reduction in traffic and revenue by 20%:- After a bit of looking, Mari...more info>>>

puresilva spider let loose
29 January 2009
We've launched our own site crawler which crawls all 100+ puresilva websites and finds the latest products / articles added and lists them here. Each site is crawled once per 3 hours 24/7, so our own...more info>>>

Interview: Geoff from canvastown.com
27 January 2009
canvastown.com have been running for over 3 years, and in the last 18 months or so, have specialised in selling Banksy canvas art. A physical shop in the financial district of London has sprung up on...more info>>>

Interview: Jason from walkinbackrub.co.uk
26 January 2009
Walk-in Backrub have 5 London massage Centres, where they offer no appointment massage and a great range of massage products. They have been selling massage tools and Back Massagers sourced from all ...more info>>>

Why are you running a business?
19 January 2009
The assumption is that everyone is in business for money. The assumption is a pretty good one, since it's true much of the time. We do / sell things in exchange for money. In fact, some people will...more info>>>

What is an autodidact?
16 January 2009
If you don't know what an autodidact is, but your first impulse is to find out yourself, YOU may be an autodidact. I'll save you the search:- autodidact – noun a person who has learned a subject ...more info>>>

Further improvements to the banner maker
13 December 2008
I've had time to do some updates to the banner maker:-You can now preview both background and foreground images (makes things much quicker since you can see the images you are using before previewing,...more info>>>

What are they talking about?! news channel launched
4 December 2008
You can see at the top of this page a new link: "What are they talking about?!". Here's an FAQ about it...... What is "What are they talking about?!"It's a news aggregator - it takes a selection...more info>>>

Google's FREE keyword tool
1 December 2008
This is a great free tool to find keywords (from Google):- Google Search-based Keyword Tool. Enter your website domain name, and the facility lists keyphrases that people are actually using to f...more info>>>

puresilva t-shirts, caps and even mugs for sale!
29 November 2008
I've set-up a puresilva shop at cafepress.com where you can buy all kinds of merchandise with our logo embossed on it. I think it's more a case of me liking the logo on nice looking gear than anyone ...more info>>>

puresilva now has a youtube channel!
27 November 2008
At last puresilva now has a youtube channel, and I have uploaded 16 tutorial videos (on how to use the website template) to it:- youtube.com/puresilva I'll be uploading a lot more videos in the ...more info>>>

Has Google Adsense jumped the shark?
11 November 2008
Our own experience and feedback from some of our clients shows that Google Adsense is paying out very little these days - talking about 10 cents a click typically, no matter what the content on the pa...more info>>>

Contextual links: quick and easy boost to search engine rankings
9 November 2008
Here is an example of contextual links:- The green underlined text are contextual links - links within a body of text. Search engines love these types of links and for that love, they reward s...more info>>>

Predicting how it will be for businesses in the next few years
5 November 2008
Here are my predictions for the next few years. These are all generalisations. And guesses. So take with a pinch of salt and enjoy:- More people will go self-employed/start up their own businesses...more info>>>

Late runner in the US Election!
3 November 2008
Looks like Obama all the way......but wait, what's this?! ...more info>>>

Search Engine Optimization in 2008
27 October 2008
I've written a lot about search engine optimization on this blog, but I think it's about time to consolidate the latest SEO techniques into one convenient article! The purpose of this article is to te...more info>>>

Free Google sitemap creation and submission with all templates
11 October 2008
We now offer a free service for all of our customers - a Google sitemap of their website created and submitted to Google. This helps Google understand the structure of their website and in turn has a...more info>>>

Further updates planned for puresilva website template
22 September 2008
Many updates are scheduled for the puresilva website template are planned over the next few months (in no particular order):- PollsFacility to allow you to add polling questions to website visitors. ...more info>>>

Improvements to Banner Maker
14 September 2008
Our Banner Maker has recently gone through a number of improvements:- You can apply bordering effects to imagesDither filterAlter opacity of imagesFor images, you can saturate, super-staturate, or ma...more info>>>

Google Suggest
27 August 2008
Google have rolled out the new Suggest feature on Google.com (see screenshot). This COULD impact search in the following ways:- Less misspelled searchesLess long tail searches as people opt for su...more info>>>

Photo Editor Tool
25 August 2008
We've just launched our new photo editor tool:- Photo Editor Tool Here you can resize, re-color, apply filters, watermark and write text on top of any of your photos!...more info>>>

Dofollow blogs - great way to link build and share advice
23 August 2008
Dofollow blogs are blogs which do not use the rel="nofollow" tag. In other words, if you get a link from a Dofollow blog to your website, search engines will count this link toward your own website's...more info>>>

Inbound Link Evaluator Tool
17 August 2008
A new web tool is available on puresilva.com :- Inbound Link Evaluator Tool This tool allows you to view the value of inbound links to any website. It's free for anyone to use and you can fin...more info>>>

New upsell facility for the template
20 July 2008
A new "upsell" facility has been added to the puresilva website template. This allows online sellers to "upsell" items in a number of different ways:- Volume discounts, or even promotions like two f...more info>>>

Over 1000 links pages listed on our links search engine
16 July 2008
Our links pages search engine now lists over 1000 quality links pages. This is a great archive for those looking for quality links pages to add their link to. We determine quality by:- How many cl...more info>>>

Planned updates to the puresilva website template
15 July 2008
These are the planned new features to be installed over the coming months to the puresilva website template:- "Best Of The Web" FeatureJust select your favourite website RSS feeds, and this facilit...more info>>>

New non e-commerce version of puresilva sells at just £195
20 June 2008
First, a quick history lesson about the puresilva website template:- Back on July 27th 2004, "shoptemplate" was launched (http://www.shoptemplate.co.uk/). It was a robust e-commerce template that...more info>>>

Import Facility for puresilva
19 June 2008
It is now possible for puresilva website template owners to import unlimited products to their website via a text file. This means the possibility of importing thousands of products in just a few min...more info>>>

Google Analytics v puresilva Stats
16 June 2008
Our own website template comes with its own website visitor metrics, but it does allow site owners to easily plug-in Google Analytics and Site Meter stats packages. This article is a comparison betwe...more info>>>

A more experienced market is good news for enthusiasts
25 May 2008
With the ever-increasing volume of affiliate, re-seller and spam websites appearing online, people are getting more cynical and discerning as to which sites they are willing to spend their time and mo...more info>>>

Converting complete strangers into repeat customers
22 April 2008
There are 5 basic steps to converting a complete stranger into a repeat customer:- 1. Effective Marketing - which brings visitors to your website 2. Quality Content - your marketing works, and y...more info>>>

puresilva's 2nd birthday!
9 April 2008
puresilva was launched 2 years ago today. During this time, puresilva has evolved through a series of continual updates, with over 100 websites now running under the template. We are looking forward...more info>>>

Common complaints about web developers
7 March 2008
We get a lot of enquiries from people who already own a website, and are interested in our website template. Generally speaking, people want to change their website when they're not satisfied with th...more info>>>

puresilva template updates now listed on puresilva.com
24 February 2008
We are now showing all the latest updates to our website template here - or from the link just below our logo at the top of this page ("see what's new!"). We will refresh this list every time there's...more info>>>

Quality link pages search engine launched
13 February 2008
We've just launched our link pages search engine allowing you to find genuine quality link pages to place your link on. These link pages have scored 7 (out of 10) or higher using our link page checke...more info>>>

puresilva Affiliate Program launched
1 February 2008
We've launched a new Affiliate Program allowing you to earn a nice residual income. All you have to do is sign-up here (for free) and then link to our site. Any referrals from your link(s) that resu...more info>>>

Link Verifier Tool
21 January 2008
A new tool has been added to our website "toolbox" - the Link Verifier. This is to save you time browsing link partner pages to see if your link is present. Just enter the URL of the page you want...more info>>>

Google Webmaster Tools and keyword analysis
17 January 2008
This article talks about Google Webmaster Tools. You'll need a Google account to use GWT - you can sign up to a free Google account here if you haven't already done so. If you're already logged in...more info>>>

Turn first-time visitors into repeat visitors
11 January 2008
It's easy to concentrate too much on search engine rankings while ignoring the value of repeat traffic - those who find your site for the first time, LIKE it, and subscribe to your RSS feed, bookmark ...more info>>>

Plans for 2008 - and how did I do in 2007?
4 January 2008
First off, I wrote a news entry at the beginning of January 2007 citing all the plans for the puresilva template and the puresilva.com website. How did it go? Well v2.0 of the template was rele...more info>>>

The importance of deep links
12 December 2007
This article assumes you have SOME knowledge regarding link popularity and link building for your website. It's an introduction to deep links. What is a "deep link"?Quite simply, a deep link is a lin...more info>>>

puresilva now supports Google Checkout
10 December 2007
Google Checkout has been included as a means for shoppers to pay on a puresilva website. The puresilva website owner must first make sure he/she has a Google Checkout account. Shoppers must also hav...more info>>>

meanshopper.com Shopping Portal
27 October 2007
We have just launched a new shopping portal (meanshopper.com). The portal will display a large range of items from a number of different sellers, from electric bikes to pashminas to handbags. Shoppe...more info>>>

Google video units for Adsense
10 October 2007
From today, website owners in the US who make money from Google Ads can also install "video ads" onto their website. The videos are taken from youtube.com, and ads are placed above and below the vide...more info>>>

Free one-way links
6 October 2007
Our Recommended Links Pages Directory was launched some time ago, but without much promotion. So, we'd like to remind you again of this because you can get yourself multiple free one-way links by...more info>>>

Product reviews / digital products and other updates
5 October 2007
New features have been added to the 2nd version of the puresilva website template:- Product Reviews Digital Products Also we've greatly updated the 'Make an Offer' facility to include counter...more info>>>

Preview of puresilva v2
2 September 2007
Since our last post, we have been busy adding new features to our new website template release - which will now be full-blown "version 2" of our puresilva template. We'll launch it towards the end of...more info>>>

Up-and-coming new developments
25 July 2007
The news has been quiet here as we have been deep in development, creating a new service which will launch sometime in Autumn 2007 - it's a kind of hybrid between our freeform service and our e-commer...more info>>>

'Make an Offer' facility piloted on planetfashionsuk.com
9 July 2007
We have just developed a new facility - now being trialled on planetfashionsuk.com - allowing website visitors to bid on items being sold. More details here....more info>>>

Page Rank Checker Tool
4 July 2007
This facility allows you to check the Page Rank of any web page. Nothing new there, but there's more! It generates an image that can be placed on the page that's being checked, proving the PR val...more info>>>

Recommended Link Partners Directory
16 June 2007
We've launched our new recommended link partners directory here. You can add your own links page to our directory if you score 6/10 or higher according to our link page checker tool - giving you f...more info>>>

Links page checker tool
9 June 2007
We have just developed a new tool to check the value of a prospective link partner's link page - you can find this facility here :- Link page checker tool. ExplanationWhen considering a website to ex...more info>>>

Tabbed browsing for puresilva e-commerce websites
29 May 2007
We have just released a new option available to puresilva e-commerce websites - the ability to add tabbed navigation to the website (see above image as example). For puresilva website owners, this...more info>>>

Manual directory submission service launched
21 May 2007
We have just launched our own manual directory submission service - a quick way to get 62 one-way links to your site for just £29.95. All web directories have a minimum PageRank (PR) of 4 (home page ...more info>>>

Recommended directories for link building
19 May 2007
Below is a list of directories we recommend for link building. We've found that links within each directory get indexed by search engines (an obvious necessity), and also the links themselves feature...more info>>>

A quick way to measure search engine rankings
18 May 2007
This site offers a very fast way to see where you (and your competitors) rank in a variety of keywords:- http://www.seodigger.com/...more info>>>

Monitor your website's link equity
13 May 2007
It's a good idea to understand how your PR (PageRank) value spreads throughout the pages of your site. The page with the highest PR on your website is most likely to be the home page as this is the p...more info>>>

Social search engines
7 May 2007
The following are search engines that rely on humans (not algorithms) to determine the ranking of results. TallStreet.com AfterVote.com tallstreet.com What is Tall Street? Tall Street is ...more info>>>

Blue sky thinking about search engines
28 April 2007
When people talk about search engines in 2007, they might give a passing reference to Yahoo! and MSN, but really they are talking about Google, because that's where the majority of searchers are to be...more info>>>

Backlink checker tool
15 April 2007
A good backlink checker tool we found:- http://www.backlinkwatch.com/ It's a little slow, but that's because it's thorough. You get the page rank of each link to your site and the anchor text u...more info>>>

How to look like a trusted website
11 April 2007
The more websites you visit, the more accurate your 'trust radar' gets. You can see if a website owner is enthusiastic or not about his business. You can see the signs that a site is no longer being...more info>>>

Help search engines identify your page
3 April 2007
A follow-on from the previous post about Google Adsense, here's a summary of how to help search engines categorise and identify the nature of your page's content (remember, spiders want to identify in...more info>>>

How to get a higher click through rate for Google Adsense
25 March 2007
If you are running Google Adsense on your website, and aren't getting a high click through rate (CTR), it's probably because the ads are on a page that doesn't have a strong theme - which can lead to ...more info>>>

Identifying good link partners
23 March 2007
Following up from our previous entry about reciprocal linking, here's a quick check-list to appraise potential website link partners (i.e. websites to swap links with):- Prospective link partner ha...more info>>>

Reciprocal linking: the good, the bad and the ugly
16 March 2007
Reciprocal linking is a big part of your SEO (search engine optimization) campaign for your website. Here we list some do's and don'ts to encourage quality, relevant websites to link to you. The fol...more info>>>

puresilva e-commerce now supports multiple currencies
28 February 2007
Our e-commerce solution now supports multiple currencies. Visitors will see product prices in their local currency automatically like this:- £1.95 (136.52 THB) The above example shows an item p...more info>>>

Preventing spam without CAPTCHA
6 February 2007
Earlier we wrote about CAPTCHA as a way to prevent automated posting for online forms. The obvious disadvantage to CAPTCHA is it requires a further action from the user, and CAPTCHA text is not al...more info>>>

Google, Pay-per-click, and click fraud
1 February 2007
If you are running Google Ads, you may be wondering WHO is clicking on your adverts. Here is an interesting article on 'click fraud':- Click fraud continues to be an issue for search engine advert...more info>>>

Give it to them direct
31 January 2007
Some websites are like meandering anecdotes, when you just want to know the punchline. Often it's a price you're looking for, or whether they stock a specific item or do a particular service. Can yo...more info>>>

Can I copy your business?
29 January 2007
Easy business models tempt a lot of people. By 'easy', they usually mean most or all of the following:- product / service with obvious mass market demand low cost to set-up and run the business ...more info>>>

Top-5 'less is more' tips for your website
26 January 2007
The less vertical space for the 'header area', the better. In plain-English, the header area is the top part of the page that normally holds your company logo and the main navigation of the site (jus...more info>>>

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