The Working Time Directive was introduced in 1993 by The European Commission. It limited the maximum working week to 48 hours unless staff requested to work longer. After a recent review, EU ministers have agreed that Britain can retain its opt out of the legislation.
The opt-out has allowed member states to put in place measures allowing individuals to agree not to be subject to the 48-hour working limit. Employees are basically allowed to work as many hours as they wish now but with a cap at 60 hours over an average of 3 months.
According to the TUC, 3.3 million employees currently work longer than 48 hours a week.
John Hutton, Business Secretary commented : "Flexibility has been critical to our ability to create an extra three million jobs over the past decade. That flexibility has been preserved by ensuring workers can continue to have choice over their working hours in future years".
Industries such as catering, hospitality and recruitment rely heavily on this legislation.
Author:
Chris Crawford is the MD of BD Recruitment, a specialist recruiter for the creative recruitment, marketing recruitment and technical recruitment industries, based in Manchester, UK.
Friday, 13 June 2008
Tuesday, 6 February 2007
Meta Data Description
Google and Yahoo! SERPs both used my page’s Meta data description; this is fantastic, this is what I hoped for when I spent precious time writing the Meta description.
Unfortunately not all search engines are so kind, MSN and ASK didn’t use my Meta data description, no they used a random selection of text from the page. Well to be honest to them when I say in random they did actually use: firstly the 'h1' title of the page, followed by the text from an anchor link (with my initial search term in it), then the search term again highlighted in ‘bold’; you may think this is all well and good, but it’s not - yes it brings up all the search terms searched for, but in a very disjointed way, and the problem with this is that to your potential customer your page link looks like it was written by someone illiterate (unfortunately this loses trust).
When the Meta description is written correctly giving the potential customer a good idea of what is at the other end of the link – yes let them know and if there’s a cost involved let them know that too – you give yourself a head start; why do you think that Adwords on the right hand side of the screen perform so poorly – there’s hardly any room for a description.
But it’s not all that simple, there has to be more than just an initial benefit for clicking your link, there has to be trust; I like it when I see the company title in the 'title' tag, I also like to see a good clear URL (uniform resource locator); I mean how many times have you searched and found the top five or six positions in SERPs have all got dodgy looking URLs, shady titles, or even the whole thing in bold or capitals – I mean where’s that coming from, it’s like opening your door to a salesman who thinks it’s cool to have dressed up like Leatherface.
So I think we’re getting there, that is Google and Yahoo!, MSN and ASK are just not playing ball at the minute. Where was I, oh yes benefits, a benefit is something essential to get someone to click through to your Website – this is the what’s in it for me situation; we covered trust, if you didn’t quite get trust here it is again – keep your page title, and URL looking sane and of course clean and tidy – it’s bad enough what MSN and ASK do before you really spoil it for yourself. Next it’s the trigger, this is what makes someone think – yes this is for me, I will find what I’m after one click from here, so make them pull that trigger.
So you see why I was so pleased when Google and Yahoo! decided to use my Meta data, they used my advert – and a reasonably lengthy one at 122 characters – an advert which says what I want my customers to read, not a keyword packed jumbled up sentence which will be of no consequence because this potential customer has now gone down a position and clicked on another link.
So no matter how good your SEO (search engine optimization) is it all means nothing if you don’t follow it up with a good Meta description and a clean and tidy link – so remember benefit, trust, trigger and stick with Google & Yahoo!
Unfortunately not all search engines are so kind, MSN and ASK didn’t use my Meta data description, no they used a random selection of text from the page. Well to be honest to them when I say in random they did actually use: firstly the 'h1' title of the page, followed by the text from an anchor link (with my initial search term in it), then the search term again highlighted in ‘bold’; you may think this is all well and good, but it’s not - yes it brings up all the search terms searched for, but in a very disjointed way, and the problem with this is that to your potential customer your page link looks like it was written by someone illiterate (unfortunately this loses trust).
When the Meta description is written correctly giving the potential customer a good idea of what is at the other end of the link – yes let them know and if there’s a cost involved let them know that too – you give yourself a head start; why do you think that Adwords on the right hand side of the screen perform so poorly – there’s hardly any room for a description.
But it’s not all that simple, there has to be more than just an initial benefit for clicking your link, there has to be trust; I like it when I see the company title in the 'title' tag, I also like to see a good clear URL (uniform resource locator); I mean how many times have you searched and found the top five or six positions in SERPs have all got dodgy looking URLs, shady titles, or even the whole thing in bold or capitals – I mean where’s that coming from, it’s like opening your door to a salesman who thinks it’s cool to have dressed up like Leatherface.
So I think we’re getting there, that is Google and Yahoo!, MSN and ASK are just not playing ball at the minute. Where was I, oh yes benefits, a benefit is something essential to get someone to click through to your Website – this is the what’s in it for me situation; we covered trust, if you didn’t quite get trust here it is again – keep your page title, and URL looking sane and of course clean and tidy – it’s bad enough what MSN and ASK do before you really spoil it for yourself. Next it’s the trigger, this is what makes someone think – yes this is for me, I will find what I’m after one click from here, so make them pull that trigger.
So you see why I was so pleased when Google and Yahoo! decided to use my Meta data, they used my advert – and a reasonably lengthy one at 122 characters – an advert which says what I want my customers to read, not a keyword packed jumbled up sentence which will be of no consequence because this potential customer has now gone down a position and clicked on another link.
So no matter how good your SEO (search engine optimization) is it all means nothing if you don’t follow it up with a good Meta description and a clean and tidy link – so remember benefit, trust, trigger and stick with Google & Yahoo!
Wednesday, 27 December 2006
Why Companies don’t like SEO
Your job is Search Engine Optimising, the company who employs you want you to search engine optimise their Website; what could be easier then - no I don’t mean the optimising, no that is always a long drawn out task - I wouldn’t say a difficult task, in fact it’s not difficult at all for those with a logical common sense approach.
But that’s not it is it, and all of us who work in SEO & search engine marketing will have come a cross this, no, what the company really want you to do is by almost any means possible get their Website to the number one spot in Google - as if this is similar task to building a house - eventually it will happen.
The same old scenario happens over and over again, we start with a new company and initially they want to play by the rules, in fact they’re adamant in playing by the rules; that is of course until they start to hear you talking about months, rather than weeks before their newly designed and re-launched Website will even start to grace Google’s pages.
What as a search engine optimiser / search engine marketer can we do!
Firstly we try as simple as possible to assure the CEO / MD that their Website is progressing amazingly - but then of course they sit in front of their computer, punch in their most generic trading term and hey presto they’re still not in the top hundred of Google’s pages.
Next they start noticing other Websites (this always catches me on the hop!) that are in the top ten and start asking why / how did they get there, and why can’t we copy what they’re doing. You explain that these are Website not quite playing by the rules and probably won’t be in the same position in a month or two’s time. At first this appeases them, until the next Board meeting - when that generic term still hasn’t waltzed its way into Google’s pages.
Then it comes - “stop thinking and just get me in to the top ten.” How can you answer that one? The thinking they allude to is of course your legitimate ideas at improving their Website.
Basically patience is not a virtue within most businesses wishing to make a success with their Website - especially when the CEO / MD believe in the short period you’ve been with them, they now know more than you about search engine optimising and the plethora of Web analytics.
For me these attempts at tricking the search engines (and internet users) means I will need to be constantly moving on to employment pastures new, because believe it or not I quite agree with Google I believe the Internet should be an honest useful tool.
When I make a search now I seem to spend as much time scrutinizing the results URL’s as I do their titles before I bravely click through. Well what does that tell me - basically companies don’t like SEO.
But that’s not it is it, and all of us who work in SEO & search engine marketing will have come a cross this, no, what the company really want you to do is by almost any means possible get their Website to the number one spot in Google - as if this is similar task to building a house - eventually it will happen.
The same old scenario happens over and over again, we start with a new company and initially they want to play by the rules, in fact they’re adamant in playing by the rules; that is of course until they start to hear you talking about months, rather than weeks before their newly designed and re-launched Website will even start to grace Google’s pages.
What as a search engine optimiser / search engine marketer can we do!
Firstly we try as simple as possible to assure the CEO / MD that their Website is progressing amazingly - but then of course they sit in front of their computer, punch in their most generic trading term and hey presto they’re still not in the top hundred of Google’s pages.
Next they start noticing other Websites (this always catches me on the hop!) that are in the top ten and start asking why / how did they get there, and why can’t we copy what they’re doing. You explain that these are Website not quite playing by the rules and probably won’t be in the same position in a month or two’s time. At first this appeases them, until the next Board meeting - when that generic term still hasn’t waltzed its way into Google’s pages.
Then it comes - “stop thinking and just get me in to the top ten.” How can you answer that one? The thinking they allude to is of course your legitimate ideas at improving their Website.
Basically patience is not a virtue within most businesses wishing to make a success with their Website - especially when the CEO / MD believe in the short period you’ve been with them, they now know more than you about search engine optimising and the plethora of Web analytics.
For me these attempts at tricking the search engines (and internet users) means I will need to be constantly moving on to employment pastures new, because believe it or not I quite agree with Google I believe the Internet should be an honest useful tool.
When I make a search now I seem to spend as much time scrutinizing the results URL’s as I do their titles before I bravely click through. Well what does that tell me - basically companies don’t like SEO.
Friday, 8 December 2006
Latent Semantic Indexing
This is a strange one; there has been a lot of talk lately in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) circles regarding Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI). This is nothing new, there is always something new to talk about. But what I’m concerned about is the almost contradictory elements involved in the whole process. A very brief summing up of LSI - it is a technique of analysing the occurrence of terms in a document – in my field of work the document means the page of a Website.
Ok that seems quite simple, and in this indexing of terms (language-semantics) we find out that the terms or words are broken down to their basic (lowest denominator word) element; so for instance the word ‘edited’ or ‘editor’ would be broken down to the word ‘edit’. This is where it becomes a little tricky because as we know the words ‘edited’ and ‘editor’ mean quite different things to us (one is the final accomplishment of the other).
So how are we meant to integrate this form of semantics into our ‘content’ within our Website; many SEO agencies will inform you that across each page of your Website you should vary your keywords: i.e. flower, flowers, flowering, flowery (I didn’t know if that one would spell right), but I ask why? If the search engines are busily breaking down our words to their basic elements what is the point of spending heinous hours studying the art of the verbose.
Ok that seems quite simple, and in this indexing of terms (language-semantics) we find out that the terms or words are broken down to their basic (lowest denominator word) element; so for instance the word ‘edited’ or ‘editor’ would be broken down to the word ‘edit’. This is where it becomes a little tricky because as we know the words ‘edited’ and ‘editor’ mean quite different things to us (one is the final accomplishment of the other).
So how are we meant to integrate this form of semantics into our ‘content’ within our Website; many SEO agencies will inform you that across each page of your Website you should vary your keywords: i.e. flower, flowers, flowering, flowery (I didn’t know if that one would spell right), but I ask why? If the search engines are busily breaking down our words to their basic elements what is the point of spending heinous hours studying the art of the verbose.
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