Newcastle Artisan Bakery

Newcastle has a thriving handmade and artisan scene - we are especially proud of Blackbird Artisan Sourdough - a local enterprise featuring slow made bread with ancient yeasts.  Carolyn Scott was recently featured in Find Handmade, a magazine style website where Australian artisans share their stories about being successful as stallholders at the local weekend markets.

Blackbird Sourdough

Carolyn Scott of Blackbird Sourdough

Carolyn is justly proud of the whole artisan baker’s skill set – a niche specialty of experienced bakers and chefs whom she calls the ‘band of bakers’ – all aware that by sharing their knowledge they are building the core of artisan bakers across Australia.  It is refreshing to hear an handmade artisan like Carolyn not troubled by imitation or competition – the very idea of a competitor learning your secrets is not what most stallholders fear.  But it is not easy to replicate – with high barriers to entry and set up costs mean it is not likely an artisan baker will be setting up shop on every corner anytime soon.

Carolyn’s own set up story is also worth sharing – after 30 odd years working her family business producing quail, partridge and game birds for fine dining restaurants, she used her chef’s and pastry chef’s experience and turned her hand to artisan sourdough baking.  But it was a few years before she sourced the commercial kitchen at Maitland Gaol as a basis for her enterprise.  Now, with a stellar fit out and enough room to fully pursue her interests, Blackbird Artisan Bakery is truly changing people’s lives.

You can read the whole story here, please feel encouraged to comment and make your thoughts known if you are a customer - I know you are out there.

Best Newcastle Website Design 2013

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, I did once partake in the pleasure of the company of the esteemed Internet Marketing Guru – and for a moment there, we made the connection (big deal back in those dial up days).  Yes indeed, haven’t we all met an Internet Marketing Guru? 

So, um yeah, at Newcastle Digital we can spin unique content and have your site zipping with traffic, especially locally and mobile where the biggest growth is forecast.  Crucially, Newcastle Digital fills a local niche and local mobile search is the future.  People want online support for where they are, right now.  No national clunky corporate can offer the specialized individual support we share when you build and manage your search engine optimization program, right here in Newcastle.

The Three Pillars of Wisdom any Internet Guru worth her salt will share with you are Original Unique Content dense with your niche specific keywords.  That means copy written original articles specifically about your niche, about your business and about the topics and issues that are current in your business and affect your customers.  Newcastle Digital has a University trained copywriter and we understand you would expect punchy, sales converting articles to promote your business.

The second Pillar of Wisdom is onsite optimization – that is a website that has all the SEO features that facilitate ease of indexing and findability.  Like seo friendly urls and attention to detail with alt tags and the like.  Onsite optimization is ensuring that your website has all the features that will make is easy to be found.

The Third Pillar of Wisdom, and one that is most difficult to define and track, is off page optimization.  This is where the search engine measures the number of links pointing to your site and measures the inbound links for quality, authority and relevance.  So you want links from respected industry organization ‘s websites and as opposed to links from free for all link farms based in Eastern Europe.  Get the picture?

So as an Internet Marketing Guru, sure, we may not be the High Lord Yogi or whatever, but we have learned enough over the years to propel websites under our management into the first page of the results and more importantly, to convert those website visitors into paying, profitable customers.