Railway Sleepers - From Track to Garden

So a client of ours asks what we can do to promote the sale of railway sleepers. Naturally my curiosity is piqued - "As in what you put railway tracks on?" asked a rather niave and puzzled looking me. "Erm yes, as opposed to what other kind?". OK, fair come back I thought but the question still remained unanswered. How the heck and who on earth would buy railway sleepers?

Enter John Lessels Landscaping, my friend Andrew, and probably the rest of christendom, apparently it's not uncommon for treated and untreated railway sleepers to be reused/recycled into chique new garden design. Popping round to my pal Andrew's garden and he points out that his monster lawn is fringed with trimmed down railway sleepers which had been placed upright, like mini- Easter Island men between his patio and his lawn, quite a cool way of clearly demarking the start and end of the patio, but in his case because they dug the patio out a little way and this resulted in an 18" difference in height. It transpired that his landscaper new an Railway Sleepers seller in Edinburgh which turned out to be a couple of hundred poind cheaper that a reinforced dwarf wall which would need to have foundations, supporting brickwork etc to make it hold back even a tiny eighteen inches of lawn (apparently it gets quite mobile when very wet - every day's a school day huh?)

John Lessels, a leading landscaping and garden maintenance company in Midlothian also employ railway sleepers which they use to great effect for making raised beds for people in nursing homes and people with disabilities who can't get down to ground level too well. They thought, if they can't reach the ground, let's bring it up! So with some cheap railway sleepers, they have created a number of raised beds and even a fish pool using railway sleepers as the structural decoration and support for both beds and pond.

So there you have it, my lesson learned, railway sleepers, treated and untreated are particularly good for landscaping and contemporary garden design and layout as they can be shaped and trimmed to not only provide the muscle needed to support any beds or hold back lawns, but also to look really quite nice!

Getting your website listed on Google

As a business owner, if you afford importance to your website then applying a close eye to marketing on Google is a vital first step. Not only is Google one of the most heavily used websites accessed on the internet, it plays a huge part in your marketing plan. Many articles and tipsters offer specialist insight into how to get Google to feature your website above the rest, but the truth is much more simple than that - if you play by the rules within Google's framework you will be on the correct path

We've offered a few ideas about how to get started in Google.

Create a Google Account - this doesn't need to be a chore, just go to the Google home page and click on the sign in link top right and you can create a new account in there using your existing email address, nothing easier than that (apart from the activation).
First step done!

Tell Google you're out there - this needs to be done in the right procedure. Firstly let Google know you are the site owner so when you sign into Google, click your name top right on Google and then the account link to take you to your Google account dashboard. On the left you should see a "products" link follow this to see what products you have in your personal Google portfolio and if you can't see the icon for the webmaster tools, go here to sign up https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ . You should see a red box offering you to add a site, click on this and you will be able to add the full URL (web address) of your website. Now Google will ask you to verify the website is actually yours (really a formal acknowledgement that you have access to the website!) by either uploading a meta tag or, and easier, to upload a confirmation html file. This will be something like google71b4e3e3f40eaab543.html simply transfer this onto your website (or ask your web contact to do this is you don't know how to do this)
Second step done!

Webmaster Dashboard - the next steps, creating a site map
Now you need to tell Google what pages to look for. You may have 5 or 500 web pages knocking around your website, more if you run database-driven catalogues or the like. It's important you let Google know what pages to expect to see and this is guided normally by a sitemap. (Quick history lesson: a sitemap used to be a nicely laid out HTML file which acted as a directory for human visitors - these have largely been superseded by XML versions which provide search engines with a clear map of pages). Unless you know XML, we recommend popping over to the http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ site and creating your own free one there. Simply enter your full URL into the box and select how often you update the website (or leave it as none). If this is the first time you're uploading a sitemap, then you don't need to worry about modifications or priorities, they will come later on (in another blog update to follow). Let the process run on the XML-sitemaps website (they have a nice progress monitor) and the site will let you download the final XML file. Save it locally and upload it into the root of your website (normally www/httpdocs/public_html folder).
Now pop back to the webmaster tools and click on your website and then on the Optimization link on the left to expand it to see sitemaps etc. on the submenu. Click on the Sitemaps and click the red button top right to add/test a sitemap. You should be presented with a popup which has your website address followed by a small box which you will add the name of your sitemap into. Typically the file is called sitemap.xml and this is what you would enter in there. Click the submit sitemap and your page will reload. Now we wait for Google to process the XML file which can take a few hours, so we can keep ourselves busy with a few more tasks.
Step Three Complete

Fetching as Google.
One thing which has been added quite recently is to request that the Googlebot (the software used by Google to trawl the web for new information) come to your website and that the internal pages are indexed and stored in Google for searching.
To do this, click on the webmaster tools and the Health category. Expand this to see the menu sub-items and you will see Fetch as Google which will permit you a limited number of round trips to your website from Google. Click the red fetch button and the page will tell you that it is pending and the page will refresh itself whilst it queues up the fetch exercise. If it's quite a quiet time of day (tip: do this early morning UK time as the US is sleeping and it works faster then!) you will see the Fetch Status as pending and you may be given an option to fetch URL and linked pages. Click this and this will queue up a complete index of your website.
Step Four Complete.

Please come and see us...
Adding to Google. Back in the early days of webmaster tools it used to be necessary to tell Google to please come see me by visiting http://www.google.co.uk/addurl . Whilst this is largely overtaken by webmaster tools, it's still worth doing as I've experienced better uptake of websites when running through this measure than skipping it. It's simply a case of submitting your URL with some hideous captcha images and you're done.
Step Five Complete

Add Analytics.
This could have been done at any stage, but we tend to put it at this point in the list for no other reason than it's just another part of the process. There are occasions when you may want to tie webmaster tools into analytics for commercial reasons, but for simple steps let's proceed.
Easiest thing it to get your way back to the Google home page > Your Name > Account > Products or browse to www.google.co.uk/analytics/ if it's your first time setting up Google analytics.
You will need to add your website as a new account (follow the steps for single domain set up) and then you will be presented with tracking code which you will need to add within the section of your website. Your website designer can assist with this, you will need to add it onto each and every page you want to track visitor access to, as gaps can appear which make for awkward results.
Step Six Complete

Submit your website to Google Places
Once this is done, you can now finish your set up with a final visit to Google Places at www.google.com/business/placesforbusiness/ and submit your business into the new Google maps for businesses which (depending on how central your business is within a town or city being searched) will eventually (there's a verification step in here, use your mobile phone to activate the listing, you can remove this number later) be listed in Google Places, the place to be found for businesses seeking to use the entire Google toolbox.

And that pretty much sums up the potted process to start getting your site listed in Google. The next steps are getting your website found in Google which is a much tougher battle.

Happy Promoting

Dental Implant Surgery in Edinburgh

Dental implant surgery is often the last stage of most dental hygiene treatments - having to get dental implants would suggest that it's the only option open to remedial work performed by oral surgeons. A lof people are a little daunted by the prospect probably because this type of medical procedure usually involves having to receive some level of sedation. In a a large number of cases, the patient is put into a light sleep which enables the surgeon to work more easily without causing a great deal of distress and discomfort for the patient.

We have seen that most general dental practitioners will refer the patient to an oral surgeon, typically one specialising in dental implants when other treatments such as endodontic treatment and periodontic treatments have been less than successful. This why you would probably want to check out the practice where the surgery would be performed. Whilst all leading surgeries have th necessary experience, you'd really want to know that you are in safe hands.
You should also find out as much of the information as you can about dental implant surgery as a procedure and your surgeon should be both available and amendable to this. You want reassurances about the level of care you will expect to get during the surgery and what to expect during the recovery period following your departure from the clinic.
Whilst Dental Implant Surgery is surgery, it's not classed or considered to be major surgery, this is a planned procedure performed at a state of the art clinic by highly skilled dental professionals

David Offord and his team at Vermilion have all the pedigree, experience and training you would need to ensure that your dental implant surgery would be carried out in both the safest and highest quality surroundings possible. The Vermilion clinic on St Johns Road in Edinburgh is equipped with such high end technology as is demanded by discerning patients and by the leading and respected oral surgery referral partner in Edinburgh and the Lothians.

For more information about Edinburgh-based Dental Implant Surgery Referral Clinic follow the link

Edinburgh-based Health & Safety Consultant

We recently started working with an Edinburgh-based Health & Safety Consultant, Colin Watt Associates. Located near Bilston on the outskirts of Edinburgh, they have been working in the construction industry for many a year and have some hair-raising and scarcely believable stories to report on.

Anecdotes aside, Colin says the whilst serious injuries can still occur, the overall rate of mortality and life-affecting injuries has been reduced by some very good advances in technology which make for working at heights (an area of their expertise) something which can be very well managed and overseen.

There are all sorts of fall-arrest harnesses, special floor coverings and specialist ropes and pulleys for many types of work which are the mainstay of your regular steeplejack but the key, in Colin's view starts at the very top, figuratively and literally.

With competitive tendering meaning that many companies have to trim down costs for many construction projects, but if, like me you see the sheer array of notices and protective measure demanded around constructions sites you will see that companies never sacrifice safety measures. As a somewhat flippant side-comment (by us) it doesn't do to be lax about these things as good staff and team members are a lot harder to find than state of the art equipment! Back onto the serious note, I'm impressed with the ingenuity of the design and development of equipment which has been brought into the mainstream for everyday use to keep the workforce safe and its testament to the powers that be in major (and not so major) companies that they embrace this technology to keep their construction sites safe places of work.

Colin Watt Associates are ATLAS members and provide consultancy support for CDM projects and for long term staff health and safety training for all things height-based. For more information contact them on 0845 338 7038