Wiki mentions

Wiki's are all spin off ideas from the original wikipedia.org which as everyone knows is huge and almost represents an internet with the internet.

Anyway we are fortunate to have a growing number of wiki mentions

WikiData - this is a type of Data repository site and we have a listing for Reporting Accounts on wikidata.

WikiVersity - a Sort of WikiUniversity has a Reporting Accounts on Wikiversity listing which is all about credit source and where to go for credit reports.

WikiFurs - a Fun site about Fur related posts

Wikivorce - Divorce related wiki with a mention of Reporting Accounts on wikivorce

Plus of course we have a listing under Steve Baker on Wikipedia which mentions his company that appears in his list of interests at parliament.

So pretty impressive that we are already picking up traction with these are other wiki's, I'll come back soon and update as I pickup more mentions, I track these using SemRush and Ahrefs

Firefox

I used firefox all of the time, and it is great that they have now published our own Firefox addon
This can be seen and found on the Mozilla site here - Reporting Accounts on Firefox

I'll track the users of this as there is only one so far which is me!  But then it only went live in the last 30 mins.

I really love Firefox it has always been faster and slicker than IE and netscape for me, I use Chrome as a secondary browser and hate to admin it but that is growing on me also.

Anyway I like the ethos of Mozilla and the types of products and solutions they have slowly come up with over the years.

I am working on an Theme for Firefox next and should have that up and live in the next month or two also but great progress for now at least!

Play store

We launched our Andorid App on the Google play store this week.  You can find our reporting accounts app here At the moment I am not sure how much potential this channel has, but I kinda think, that it is a separate channel and even if only a handful of people search and download our app, that will represent some new traffic at least.

Also having a link on a Google site such as the play store can't be a bad thing from an SEO point of view, after all if the playstore doesn't have a high DA and Trust rank store who the heck does!

I'll keep this post updated and let you know what sort of metrics I get and if I can detect any general traffic benefit as a result of this link.

Google Chrome

Much as I am unconfortable with Google dominating everything to do with the internet, I have to admit that Google Chrome is a great browers and I am actually writing this post from my bed lying here using my mini Chrome book computer!

Chrome has loads of great plugins, is fast and displays well, at one time I used to use IE but that is now only very occassionally.  My main browser is still firefox but I have to accept that Chrome is growing on me.

I even published an app in their Chrome store this is a webstore for Chrome plugins and accessories.  I sort of figure that the more links you can have from Google's own site even if they are nofollow ones, the better as their is likely to be direct traffic plus I suspect that Google's Trust score concept works based on the profile of sites that link to you and not strictly if they confer ranking benefits.

Anyway good work Google, and keep innovating in the browser and other online niches.

The importance of Domain Authority

Back in the days when Google was newly launched they had a much more webmaster friendly approach to everything including a handy toolbar which showed the ranking score of every page, this was known as Page rank and the toolbar -toolbar PR.  This score used to update every month and you could see the progress you were making.

Higher PR pages and sites performed better than lower ones, so a lot of effort went into attempting to improve you score.  Nowadays Google still uses that system but doesn't make it pubic, an outfit called Moz however has built their own version of it and even have their own toolbar.  It has gone through a few iterations over the years but is now closer to the Google PR score than at any previous time.  Their scoring system us Called Domain Authority or DA and their page version Page Authority or PA.

With the important of getting a great ranking score, I've been building some great links this week including a couple on Google itself!  I figure where could be a higher place to find DA than at the home of PR!

All you need to know about Reporting Accounts is one of them and the other is here about the benefits of finding company information.

To perform well these days it is still very important to build up your Domain Authority score but there are also other factors in the mix now, particularly having good user metrics and by those I mean, a low bounce rate, good time on page and a good click through rate, or at least good in the context of your peer website, ie the ones that appear when you site does for search queries.

I am really enjoying the development of my new website Reporting Accounts and watching its web traffic grow and grow.  It is good to see what I learnt over all those years, still works at least and is relevent to search marketing in 2019 almost as much as it was back in my early days on 2006.

The power of Amazon

I remember when Amazon first appeared on the scene, my brother a teacher (now retired) had started to use them and found that he could get any book he wanted, cheaper faster and more easily than using the old highstreet route of Waterstones.

Things developed and now Amazon is almost an unstoppable force online, their site is actually clunky and not that user friendly but it works and their scale means they can drive huge volume and attract almost any serious online seller.

So great is their scale that they are now classed as a whole sales channel, so Natural Search, Pay per click, Social Media, then Amazon and ebay.

I met with a new potential client recently and was impressed to see they had grown from zero to £200K monthly and a large % of this was Amazon, now this client is savvy and has great product supply contacts, but it shows how a startup can benefit from the strength of an open to all merchant like Amazon and Ebay.

Of course they take a % of all sales which means you need to develop your own brand so you are not dependent on them, and if they choose to kick you off their platform then they have you between a rock and a hard place as the saying goes.

I've spent some time experimenting with my own App listing on Amazon which was launch this week, I've no idea how free products fare on their platform so it is something of a learning experience for me, but I am open to believing that it will help, having a backlink from Amazon is helpful from an SEO point of view and of course hopefully will get a load of sign ups also.

Footfalls and onlne shopping

I read an interesting peace in the news over the weekend, overall footfall is down 10% for shops, but out of town retail parks are actually showing an increase, meaning that the traditional high street is taking the biggest hits.

That really doesn't surprise me, in the UK highstreets are often dirty, poorly maintained and have congestion and high parking charges, so the advantage of buying cheaper online is clear.

Of course there is only so far the transtion to online can go, clothes shopping for example is an area where I don't know what I want and need to physcially see and try things on to help me select.  Maybe AI could do that better for me?  It would be interesting to see how that would work, but there are no signs of that at the moment.

Many years ago I thought if I had all my body dimenstions mapped out then I could order perfect clothes made to measure using that data, but its another concept that never seems to have gotten traction, but with the print to order online services I can't see why made to order can't florish.  I guess it is too much hassle to get the measurements or to keep them up to date.

Anyway I see an equilibrium being reached where online reaches its ideal % then retail online and offline just grow by the same percentages, at what point that time is reach is uncertain, there is still a long way to go and grow for online I suspect.

Living wage and auto enrolment

This year I contributed to the low pay commission on the living wage, like so many accountants I was sceptical that this approach would reduce employment, but interestingly it has not.  Instead companies have adapted and unemployment has continually fallen.

 Naturally you can't increase living wages endlessly as at some point the rate does damage the employment market,  I don't usually agree with the TUC either but they make a good point in that total demand has risen in the economy.

Now our new chancellor has agreed to raise the living wage to the equvalent of 66% of median wages we have a really interesting prospect.

Within 5 years poverty wages will be abolished in the UK, and there will then be a greater incentive to work as pay rates will be far higher working and it will then even more attractive to work than not.  Changes have also been made to income tax rates so mostly this higher min earnings are not taxed either.

If auto-enrolments for pension are increased further from the current 5% employee and 3% employer rates then there is every prospect of pensioner poverty been elimated also - though it will take 40 years or so for the contributions now being made to  benefit future pensioners.

The current rates are far to low to achieve a proper replacement income, but what is needed is for the bands to apply to all earnings which has already been announced though no date confirmed and for the contirbution rates to increase further.

Employer rates need to rise to 5% to match employees which can be spread over two years, then both rates need to rise to be closer to the 14-16% that actuaries say we need to contribute, so moving to 6 % each then 7% is what is needed,

These changes need to be phases in slowly to allow business to adapt, but I am really hopeful of the benefits that will be seen once they are.

If we can combine these social changes with lower taxes for higher earners then I believe society will be transformed and for very much the better.

Facebook under fire over 'outrageous' UK tax bill

Facebook's UK arm paid £28.5m in tax in 2018 as revenues hit a record £797m on the back of strong advertising growth.

The social media firms's latest UK accounts show that profits last year jumped by 54% to £96.6m which is great to see a company like that growing and basing themselves in the UK.

Facebook's total tax charge on those profits almost doubled to £30.4m, but was reduced due to adjustments.

Tax campaigner and MP Margaret Hodge said such a low bill was "outrageous", but Facebook said it pays what it owes, well I can understand Margaret wanting to highlight and bash facebook but the reality is that if taxe rates were much lower then there would not be any need for transfer pricing or other management charges to shift profits away from the UK.

Many countries now have corporation tax rates of 10% or even 0% and the UK really should move to match those, if not in one budget then over a period of years

The UK division spent £356m on research, development and engineering in the UK last year, the accounts filed at Companies House show, which is wonderful to hear.

Steve Hatch, the company's vice president for Northern Europe, said: "The UK is now one of Facebook's most important hubs for global innovation. We continue to grow and invest heavily in the UK and by the end of the year we'll employ 3,000 people here.

"Businesses across the country use our platforms to grow and revenue from customers supported by our UK teams is now recorded here so that any taxable profit is subject to UK corporation tax."  Well I have some sympathy for that view, but we benefit from their presence and the issue is the shocking level of Corporation and personal taxes in the UK.

Sad fate of Thomas Cook

It was somewhat sad to see the fate of Thomas Cook, I actually bought shares and sold them again a few times earlier in the year.

They had a series of profits warnings, but actually there were real problems, they had made aquistions funded by debt at the same time as the market for holidays has moved more and more on line.

Having a network of more than 500 shops meant the brand was strong but that is a lot of overheads to cover and using the internet to book your own holidays is mostly what the team in the shops was doing.

A few years ago travel agents were much more about advice and finding a deal, but now with the advent of trip advisor that and the self service nature of sites like loveholidays then their role has basically vanished.

Anyway there is some hope for the 2,500 staff who worked in those stores as Hays travel ltd the UK's largest independent travel agent has now picked up the stores and their staff.

I actually really liked Thomas Cook holidays, their staff and airline but the problem was a holiday to Cuba cost around £4,000 with them compared to the same deal online coming in at around £2,600

You can see how the situation was earlier in the year and after that it got worse and went bust.

My Portfolio

I've spent the last two years slowly rebuilding my portfolio of websites, most are not that advanced or developed and are really not much beyond concepts.

However two of my sites are very promising,  Article Alley is making a slow recovery and that is a big task I tell you,  but I have high hopes for my company accounting record repository site.  This has 4,5million pages so there is big potential, but so far only 30,000 pages are indexed and perform.

The concept behind Reporting Accounts is to offer free company information supported by Google adsense income.