Posts

There's bound to be oodles (inc videoclips) if you Google for it ... isn't there?

Re "thoughts" (about the distance learning option) ...

Distance learning suits those who can self-organise and self-motivate.

Very extroverted people can't knuckle down to it very easily (they wander off after half an hour's work looking for someone to talk to ).

The quality of the material is particularly important in distance learning as contact time with the tutor and fellow students is so restricted.

I did my first degree at a conventional university and my second through OU. I enjoyed both but they were different experiences.

Hi diggersjohn33

Although his academic tutors will throw up their hands in horror at what I'm saying, your son needs to think longer term than just the next stage of his education. If he doesn't have a clue what he wants to do career-wise in the medium-term future, then he's very liable to make the wrong decisions about his future study and qualifications.

Schools tend to promote the university route only because (a) that's what they know most about; and (b) parents have tended to rate the schools according to the percentage of their pupils going on to university. The university route may fast track your son's progress in the occupation(s) that appeal to him - or may take him in the wrong direction.

His other options include going through the study / work experience programmes leading to qualifications set by the appropriate professional body; and undertaking work-based learning (NVQs) up to and beyond first degree level. If he chooses the degree route, your son can choose a conventional UK university (for full or part-time study); UK distance learning (OU can't be bettered in my view); or study overseas in a country (eg the Netherlands) where the fees are much cheaper and the tuition is in English.

Would strongly suggest you ask your son to do a bit of careers research in between his college work assignments! The librarian in his college library will be only too pleased to show him the careers guidance software he can access for free, to start him thinking about his future. Encourage him to use the results of the software as a starting point only - he should ask for a one to one session with the careers advisor to explore his thinking further.

Good luck! Linda

The problem's sorted - whatever caused it.

It's possible the title of the page didn't go through properly (though it looked as if it had and my LinkedIn profile picked it up OK). I jiggled round with the title of the piece in a despairing kind of way, left it and then later got a Google notification it had picked up the new item.

When you do a search on the titles of your blog items, Barney, can you pick them up? If you can, it's probably just a case of them being submerged in new / more popular stuff. If you can't, maybe some of the IT and SEO experts here could advise?

I'm experimenting a bit with some of my site pages that have been up a long while but were never properly thought about (no time) or SEO optimised (didn't know how to).

The current "strategy" for each of these pages is:-

-sort out what my target audiences might want to buy from me and what I can deliver (ahem - better late than never????)
- try and find relevant but easy search terms (takes ages and is distinctly hit and miss) and re-write the text accordingly
- try to write at least 2 ezine articles promoting that page

The re-writing (maybe aided a little bit by one very new GoArticle) got one of the new pages half-way up Google pge 2 (UK only) for one of the search terms - encouraging because the old page was invisible.

It'll be interesting to see what movement there is (if any) now I've written 2 GoArticles pointing to that page.

Another post of the "I'm curious to know the reason why but not really troubled" variety.

I've finally got round to producing a new blog item, enticingly(!!!) called "Direct recruitment the way to go?". It's perhaps 24 hours old. Google webmaster tools has found it, Google search can't find it even if I put the whole title with quotation marks around it and then search. Any ideas what's happening, plse?

My gut feel (no data) is that the Google-induced article directories upheaval has now settled and writing articles for directories has some SEO benefit. I no longer feel article writing's my express highway to Google pge 1.

CONGRATS Tomsk!

Thanks fourth-monkey, in future I won't need to wade through 749 duplicate emails! Am very grateful.

Hi all

Just would appreciate an explanation.

I'd thought that if I downloaded emails onto one computer and permanently deleted or filed them as appropriate, the same emails wouldn't then download onto my other PC when I next used it ... but they do. Why, please?