The NSS Mystery Surfer trawls the internet to find the latest website developments by companies involved in the stone industry. This month he presents an overview of the development of business on the internet.

Sorry to have been away for a while. I hope you have missed me. At least it has allowed me a little extra time to surf the net.

Firstly, I must respond to readers who have complained I am a bit harsh on the sites I visit. I have always tried to be fair, but I have never regarded this column as being like a book review that might encourage or discourage people from visiting any particular site. I have always thought of it as using the examples of websites I have visited to highlight what I consider has been done well and what has not, so that readers might like to consider those points when they are developing their own websites.

It is why I have mentioned changes such as Google’s Panda and Penguin revisions to its algorithms that affect search engine optimisation (SEO) by concentrating on aspects such as social media and penalising copied content. But Panda and Penguin were just the two main changes. Google is tweaking its algorithm continually – it did it at least 500 times last year.

You can’t keep up with all those changes and run your business at the same time, so you are better off ignoring most of what Google (or any other search engine) does and just trying to make your website as

user-friendly and attractive to customers as you can, not pinching material from other websites, and publishing original material on social media sites that incorporates your key words.

It has been said that half of all traffic on the internet is created by Facebook. But Facebook is a party, not a presentation. It is good for dialogue, not so good for monologue – and businesses are more used to monologues. You don’t go to a party, introduce yourself and then shut up. So don’t go to Facebook until you are ready to party – or, as we usually call it, network.

A more business oriented social network site is Linked-In. I read recently that 95% of companies in America are now using Linked-In for their recruitment. Where the USA leads, the UK is sure to follow.

A good blog on something like blogspot.co.uk can typically increase the traffic on your website by 50% but, again, to do so it has to be consistent and that takes time and consideration, so ask yourself if you really can devote that much time to it. If you can’t, you are better off not starting it.

You might also like to ask yourself what is (in the jargon) the opportunity cost of blogging. In other words, what else could you be doing with the time you spend blogging and would that alternative bring you more business than a possible extra 50% of traffic on your website.

In reality, for the directors of a lot of small companies, writing a blog would be in addition to everything else you already do because there is nothing you are currently doing that does not need to be done. Writing a blog could mean burning more of the midnight oil.

Blogs are important, and are becoming more important all the time, not least as platforms for videos. People like videos. I’m not always keen on them because they require too much time, whereas text can be zipped through at a rate of knots. But it seems I am not typical in that.

There is not much chance of a video you put on YouTube going viral because, apparently, 24hours of video are being uploaded to YouTube every minute. Nevertheless, you can relatively easily embed a video you have put on YouTube into your website by following the YouTube instructions. So if you want a video on your website this is an easy way of doing it.

There is some generally accepted wisdom evolving about what makes an effective website. It is summed up by what the IT world calls PIE. PIE stands for: Personality; Interest; Entertainment.

That acronym bears interpretation for business sites. What I want when I visit a website is clarity. I want to be able to find what I am looking for, get it, and leave with the minimum amount of onstructions. By all means try to interest me in other goods and services you have, but don’t let them get in the way of my principal purpose.

Now, it was my intention to review a new website selling conservation products in this column this month but as I have run out of space I will return to it in the New Year.

In the meantime, let me wish you a most enjoyable holiday.