On Sunday 15th April Tor Leisure Centre in Glastonbury will see the arrival of 200 motorcycles from all over the South West to ride together in support of Martha Care. 

Bikes will start arriving from 9.30am ready for being sent off by Graham Coles, Glastonbury Town Crier, at 11.00am. The ride will take in about 60 miles of glorious Somerset roads, starting with one of the country's best High Streets - Glastonbury!  Then onto biking favourites like Cheddar Gorge and Burrington Coombe.  All levels of rider are welcome and we're sure everyone will get something out of the ride and the day. We pride ourselves on rider safety and are pleased to have Somerset Road Safety in attendance to provide advice for riders of all abilities.

Bikes will return to the leisure centre at about 1pm where there will be a hog roast, live music from Fraser Road Race and lots of motorbike oggling and discussion by riders and spectators!  There will be a bouncy castle to keep the children amused too. Every rider will receive a goody bag with a commemorative pin badge, other goodies and information for riders. 

The riders who have gone to the most effort by making either themselves or their bike as bright and yellow as possible will be presented with a sash by Graham Coles to wear on the ride out.

Pel Crosby, photographer from Weston Bike Night, will be in attendance taking on the move pictures of all the bikes in various locations.  The pictures will be available to purchase with the proceeds going to Martha Care. Check the Martha Care Ride Out page for details.

We have lots of amazing raffle prizes; including our top prize of a pair of weekend tickets to any round of British Superbikes, including two hoodies courtesy of Sorrymate.com, another great prize of a Max Rider training day worth over £100 thanks to Somerset Road Safety, tee shirts, hoodies and lots more!

Organisations supporting the Martha Care Ride Out include:

Shire Integrated Systems (Sponsor)

Somerset Road Safety
Sorrymate.com
Cheddar Valley Advanced Motorcyclists
THE BIKER GUIDE
Wells Classic Motorcycle
Weston Bike Night
Urban Glow
Taunton MAG
Freewheelers
Biker FM
4 Counties Bikers

This year riders can pay in advance using our Q-Jump facility on out website. 

The date for next years ride out has already been set for Sunday 7th April 2013.  Updates can be found on our facebook page Bikers 4 Martha or following the ride out on Twitter @bikers4martha.

We very much look forward to meeting everyone on the day!

www.marthacare.co.uk

Formally The Welsh International Motorcycle Show and now in its 2nd year, with a title to emphasise its location and also status as a serious 'Rockfest'.
 
The organiser, Dragon Events Ltd are hoping to attract a wider and more diverse audience as well as the traditional attendee, with an excellent line-up of over 30 bands, featuring headliners, Think Floyd, Furyon, Rammlied and Eric Unseen.
 
Also in the outdoor arena, see the fantastic Steve Colley trials exhibition and colossus Jet trike, that is sure to excite the audience.
 
The event in 2011, had an excellent exhibition of Classic & Custom Motorcycles and Trikes, in fact in excess of 170 and they are now looking to attract other bike entries.... Those bikes which are accepted as an entry, will not only have the opportunity to win potential cash prizes and trophies, they will also be given two free show passes.

Located in a beautiful part of the world with some of the best roads you will ever experience to get there or to enjoy a ride-out from the event. The site facilities are second to none, with clean brick built toilet and shower blocks, along with excellent flat camping facilities. All of the band entertainment and the bike show are undercover, so you can enjoy the show no matter what the weather! 

Tickets are now on sale for just £30 pre-book or £40 OTG, with children 13 and under free when accompanied by a parent. Weekend parking for bikes and trikes is free and  weekend parking for carsis £5, vans £10, car and caravan combinations and motorhomes £20. 

To pre-book your tickets go to:  www.builthfest.co.uk  
 
If you wish to enter your Bike or Trike, simply e-mail a request to [email protected]

Responding to our customer demand Compass Expeditions is branching out, in its own backyard, Australia.

Compass Expeditions is pleased to announce that it is offering a rental fleet of “outback” ready bikes to travel the vast interior of Australia. These bikes will consist of the BMW Sertao, F 650, 800 & R1200 GS along with some Suzuki DRs.

“Our outback ready bikes are ideal for those who simply want to get a bike and travel off-road into the interior of Australia” says Mick McDonald Compass Expeditions director. “After all most visitors want to see the 80% or the country that isn’t on paved roads, to address this all bikes will come equipped with a full luggage & camping kit along with certain safety features, ideal for those who don’t wish to purchase all the equipment needed for one trip” continues Mick.

In conjunction with the new rental fleet Compass Expeditions is also offering two superb rides from Melbourne to Darwin, via the iconic Birdsville Track, and Darwin to Melbourne, via Ayres Rock and the Oodnadatta Track, either on clients own bikes or on our rentals.

These two journeys will take in all that Australia is famous for, the legendary wilderness, unique wildlife, epic coastal scenery and UNESCO listed national parks to name but a few highlights.

For more information on Australia’s newest rental fleet and our expanding range of “Aussie” rides contact 1300 887 327 (within Australia) or +61 3 5368 2113 (outside Australia) [email protected]  or visit www.compassexpeditions.com

What is the difference between hits and visitors?
 
It is a common mistake and in some cases, one which is used to misguide you into thinking that a website has more actual people looking on the web-site than there actually is.
 
There is a lot of terminologies that are quoted by the SEO Professional and sales people, trying to get you to place a listing on their website, and some unscrupulous people (and goodness knows, there's plenty of those around!) will be quite happy to take advantage of your ignorance of the terms they are using.
 
A clever (and dishonest) sales person or SEO specialist will proudly proclaim, "We will get you a thousand hits per day," trusting that you are unaware of what that actually means. A non-savvy website owner will think to himself, "Wow! A thousand visitors per day! That's a lot!"

But here's the trick. Let's say your home page has a header image, 5 menu images, a couple other pictures somewhere on the page, plus a style sheet that gets called by the page. That works out to a total of 10 hits per page: the page itself, the style sheet, and eight images.

Now let's suppose that your site is interesting and well designed, so every visitor who comes to it sticks around long enough to read five pages. That's a total of 50 hits per visitor.

So when the SEO company brags that they're going to get your 1000 hits per day, they really mean that they're going to give you 20 visitors per day.

All of a sudden their promises don't seem so golden, do they?
 
What is important

Simple... The number of visitors to the site, and to be pedantic, not just the visitor, but the  unique visitor.
 
What is a Hit, Visitor and the Unique Visitor?
 
A "hit" is counted every single time your website sends a page or graphic to a visitor. So, if one visitor looks at your homepage, that counts as one hit. If your homepage links to nine graphics - logos, photographs etc. - that counts as nine more "hits", giving a total of 10 hits overall. If your visitor leaves your site at this point without looking at any more pages, they have still registered 10 "hits" - this means that hits alone don't give you a very clear idea about how popular your website is. 

A visitor is every time a person (computer terminal) visits your website.
 
A unique visitor is how many times that person (computer terminal) visits your website.
 
Counters

The problem with using counters to track visitors is they are set up to measure page views, not unique visitors. Every time someone views your page, whether it's the first time or the twentieth, that visitor is counted. And if the page times out for some reason and they "Reload," it counts them again. And if someone just wants to have fun with your counter, they can exit and enter the site several times and are counted as a visitor each time... even if they never look at product.

So if you cannot count hits and you cannot use a counter, how do you track the traffic on your site?
 
Install visitor tracking code on your website, such as Google Analytics (see link in Resources at the bottom).
 
A web traffic analysis program will give you vital information about the traffic coming to your site, including where visitors are coming from, including which keywords they used, which search engines, what countries they are situated in, what paths your visitors are taking whilst on the website and which pages are the main exit points of your site... In fact it is full of all sorts of information... and for Google Analytics it is free.
 
This information is private and only available to you, the account owner. It is best to install the tracking code as soon as possible to start building history. If you are using Google Adwords (you pay to advertise your website) or Google Adsense (you place advertising on your website for profit) then you may already have access to Google Analytics.
 
How do I find out how many visitors a website gets if I am not the owner?
 
There are many cases where you may not be the website owner, but want to find out how well another website performs. However, since you do not own the site then you will not be able to see the full-blown traffic stats displayed by Google Analytics. Now it is time to do some investigation...
 
You may be curious about how much traffic any website generates, or you want to find out how well your competitor's website is performing.

Alexa is the top web information authority which is also free (see link in Resources at the bottom). Search for a website address and see how a website ranks compared to all other websites in the world. 

You can search for any website address that you are interested in finding its traffic rank. Alexa also provides other neat graphs and handy info. Although it does not show you the exact number of visitors, you can get a general idea of the website's performance. By comparing the traffic rank of your website to your competitor's website, you can estimate who gets more traffic. For example, YouTube.com ranks higher than Weather.com. Please note, although this is another great tools to use they are sometimes a bit behind with keywords and the amount of links, linked in.
 
THE BIKER GUIDE summing up...
 
We hope this article will help understand the difference between hits and visitors and hopefully to help you choose wisely where you place any advertising or your business on the World Wide Web!
 
If you would like any further advise of hits, visitors and anything else included in this information, do not hesitate to ask.
 
If you already knew all of the above, please accept our apologies and welcoming you to our world of seo geekness!

• Google Analytics www.google.com/analytics/
• Google Adwords www. Google.co.uk/ AdWords
• Alexa www.alexa.com

THE BIKER GUIDE
 
Bringing the Biker Community together!
 
www.thebikerguide.co.uk
 
 PS: Did you know when someone is quoting a site ranking of 1 that is 1 out of 10!

The Ducati Roadshow will again be travelling the length and breadth of the country to bring the Ducati UK demonstrator fleet to a venue near you in 2012.