Welcome to the O’Brien Media Insider – Your Go-To for Digital Insights and Business Know-How
The O’Brien Media Insider is your behind-the-scenes look at all things digital, creative, and business-focused. From web design trends and SEO tips to small business insights and local Swindon highlights, our blog covers a bit of everything – just like we do at O’Brien Media.
Whether you’re a client, collaborator, or curious visitor, this is the place to catch up on the latest from our team, explore practical advice, and get inspired to grow your digital presence. Dive in and see what’s new!
Google has announced its coveted email client can now be used with the lights turned off, so you’ll be able to sort through a cluttered inbox in Dark Mode – making the app easier on tired eyes.
We’re please to announce that we have been accredited as a Living Wage Employer. Our Living Wage commitment will see everyone working at O’Brien Media receive a minimum hourly wage of £9.00 in the UK or £10.55 in London. Both rates are significantly higher than the government minimum for over 25s, which currently stands at £8.21 per hour.
This past week Google announced that after 15 years, they plan to make a change to the way they handle the nofollow attribute on links. If you publish sponsored content or host forums or comments on your site, consider implementing the new attributes when you are able to make a code change. If you can’t or just don’t want to, there’s no harm in that either.
Savvy marketers and business owners now know that consumers want answers as well as ideas and inspiration. And they want these things fast. Those who can deliver answers to people’s personal needs will have an advantage.
We were approached by Tony at SP1 Bookkeeping to give his website a professional touch. Tony had put together a basic homepage for his website but wanted guidance on the best way to mix promoting his bookkeeping business with making sure that his website was easy to use and on the money (pun intended) from a technical perspective.
You may have heard about Strong Customer Authentication (SCA), a new requirement under European payment law that, in part, aims to make online and mobile payments more secure. It does so by asking customers to provide additional information to complete their transactions.
While SCA will come into effect on 14 September 2019, the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) recently announced it will take a phased approach to enforce SCA obligations over an 18-month period.
A recent malvertising campaign targeting vulnerable plugins is now trying to backdoor sites by creating rogue admin accounts.
Back in July when the campaign was first noticed it was attempting to hijack sites to push popup ads, tech support scams, and malicious Android apps.
WordPress announced an important change to how it will block search engines from indexing websites.
This change abandons the traditional Robots.txt solution in favor of the Robots Meta Tag approach. The change brings WordPress in line with the reason for blocking Google, which is to keep the blocked pages from showing in Google’s search results.
Google has been slowly ramping local search monetisation over time. It introduced local search ads in early 2017, which put ads in local packs, and began putting ads in local Knowledge Panels roughly two years ago. Now, the company is starting to show competitor ads in local business profiles.
