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Actually she raised it (I expect as a hint to get her one)

As with anything time it will take time to really show what it can do. I for one have not seen any results but I actually do see only potential. I heard a friend talking about Google already seen some TV ads for Google Plus Local although I cant confirm this.

I primarily use twitter for discounts, blog updates or articles that have been written. I think the real SEO value is people then bookmarking the the information you share via twitter. If you can write about something that really interests your followers you could get a lot of retweets, lots of bookmarks and literally give your SEO a huge boost in 1 swift go (obviously the benefits of this will take longer to appear)

Oops i definitely do/have done 2 of those, lessons learnt

Seems like now tickets which were held by the 'Olympic family' have been sold on despite the strict no reselling policy. It's disgusting to see people who get a ticket for no reason still try to make money that we have to pay for

Hi william04, i have been waiting over six months for my posting onto DMOZ. Shouldn't worry, use the wait to build other strong backlinks

Being an SEO amateur myself (only just got into to it really) I am more inclined to take the hard road, I think I just prefer the control of where I am placing the links so they are relevant to what my business does

Mine was spawned from my wife (perhaps you are able to find out why!)

I seem to have 2 completely different music tastes for different times of the day. Early morning will be anything that is upbeat and late at night its anything that can help me off to sleep

Guess I better wade in considering this is my field. Most small businesses I come into contact with generally have waited until something has gone wrong before identifying that they do need some support with their compliance with employment law.

Generally 3 reasons for this

1) The primary reason is cost, especially for startups with low or no investment money is tight and they literally cannot fund the money for the support. Rarely do I get asked to go for a consultation where they have less than 4 employees. Most HR consultancies (not us I am glad to say) will charge a minimum amount as they look short term. We charge by the head, no minimum as we see a relationship as a longer term thing, we charge less now in the hope that our strong service will retain a company when they have a larger budget allocated at HR. Its a shame more HR consultancies don't work like this as they are really pushing the smaller SMEs out of options to get this necessary support

2) Bad PR for HR. This is a horrid one to say but Human Resources as a field has only more recently started to work on how it is seen by others and demonstrating the value that a good HR department can provide. Up until recently HR was an obstructive admin department when really their benefit (especially financially) is huge if your HR department works preventatively and proactively.

3) Lack of knowledge. I wanted to use the word ignorant to describe this one but it did seem a bit extreme. A lot of people fail to get the support they need as they just don't care to find out and then continue working in a way that puts them at high risk. In previous years this was fine as if someone got fired they got a new job the next day as the market was so affluent. Now we have hit on hard times the jobs are harder to find and people are more likely to raise a tribunal claim as they cant jump into something else the next day.

I don't want this to be an oversell of using consultancies but the reality is HR is now splitting into specialities (a necessary evil due to employment law being so expansive) and even when you can hire an internal HR person they will still lack the skills or experience to cover everything, at least an HR consultancy will be able to draw on the experience from its consultants at no additional cost to you (hopefully)