Search Marketing & SEO Blog

Investigating Panda & Duplicate Content Issues


By On August 2, 2012 In link building, Panda update, seo With 12 Comments

During a recent analysis of a website (blog with less than 50k visitors a week), we came across some interesting factors that led to us taking a different approach to investigation.

The Problem:

  • The site faced 20-40% drop in traffic corresponding with periods in roll outs of the Panda Algorithm.
  • The site saw a loss in rankings, but no consistency across them – some keywords moved down a few positions, while others went off the first 2-3 pages of the SERPs.
  • The site is a blog, and as a result most of the content written was original and unique, and written by a single person based on their research and experience.
  • The site has been in existence for over 6 years and attracts a lot of natural links – in fact no link building to the site has ever been carried out.

From the above, this doesn’t seem like your typical target for Panda, but the dates of the traffic drops were too much of a coincidence.

Facebook on Limited Run’s Facebook Advertising Claims


By On July 31, 2012 In facebook, ppc With 3 Comments

Following reports over Limited Run’s Facebook ad tests and their need to spend a minimum advertising budget of $2,000 a month in order to change their Facebook page name from Limited Pressing to Limited Run, we’ve been getting many inquiries from our clients.

We contacted Facebook and a spokesperson for the social network responded with the following:

Remarketing Is Now Simpler


By On July 27, 2012 In google, google adwords, google analytics, ppc With 1 Comment

Google’s made some exciting announcements about remarketing.

  1. You can use one AdWords remarketing tag on all pages of your site, and then create as many remarketing audiences as you like from it. The audiences are then defined according to the URL of visited pages.
  2. You can (after “a small edit”) use a Google Analytics tag to make remarketing audiences for a linked AdWords account. This is being rolled out “in waves by the end of the summer”, so keep an eye on your Analytics account for the remarketing option!

Why is this exciting?

PPC Hints for Excel 2: The Array Formula and Negative Keyword Checking


By On July 25, 2012 In google adwords, ppc, tools With 2 Comments

Last February I gave you some handy Excel tips – here’s some more! Today I’m talking about array formulae.

{ heart }

Content Strategy for Small Businesses


By On July 13, 2012 In blogging, content creation, Copywriting, seo With 8 Comments

Content strategy has always been a valued part of SEO and, with Google’s recent updates, it’s become increasingly important. No matter what size your business is, having a regular flow of good quality content on your site is essential.

However, content does take time to produce and, when you’re a small business, it can be hard to find the time or people to produce regular content for your site.

There are several options for small businesses to make the most of their resources and create a site with a steady stream of relevant, useful content. We’ll go through some of them here in order to help those of you who are finding it difficult to know where to start.

What is “?gclid=” & Why is The Analytics Cookie (Not Set)?


By On July 12, 2012 In google adwords, google analytics, ppc, search engine marketing With 4 Comments

Recently we were a little stumped with gclid and the Google Analytics cookie that’s placed on user’s computers. We were asked:

“I went to my website through an ad, and the Analytics cookie set on my computer says: utmgclid=StrangeGibberishHere456|utmccn=(not%20set)|utmcmd=(not%20set) )|utmctr=my%20search%20term – why are the medium and campaign not set?”

So we did a little digging around to figure out why ‘utmccn’ was ‘not set’ and thought it was appropriate that we share it with all of you too. So here’s the low down on what we’ve learnt:

6 Simple Tips to Make Your Blog More Engaging


By On July 11, 2012 In blogging, content creation, seo With 4 Comments

Getting visitors to go through your blog and enjoy what you have written isn’t the easiest thing on the planet. It requires time, patience and a lot of practice. To see evidence of visitor engagement you should see signs of regular activity and so should the visitor.

Here is some simple advice which might help keep your visitors engaged with your site and encourage them to come back for more.

Your goals should be:

  1. Receiving relevant comments
  2. People linking to & sharing your content
  3. Repeat visitors to your blog
  4. Build relationships

The real aim is to keep your content interesting and be proactive. Here are some tips for achieving these goals:

Connecting AdWords and Analytics


By On July 9, 2012 In google adwords, google analytics, ppc With No Comments

Why link AdWords and Analytics?

Traffic from AdWords will be automatically tracked as such in Analytics. You can see information such as bounce rate and pages per visit for different campaigns, ad groups, keywords, search terms and so on. You’ll also be able to incorporate AdWords information, like clicks and impressions, into Analytics reports.

Also, goal completions in Analytics can be imported into AdWords to define conversions. This means you can:

  • Define conversions that aren’t page views, by using a goal that’s defined by an event (eg clicking a link to download a pdf).
  • Have conversion tracking without having to put extra code up on the site.
  • If you’ve got an ecommerce site with Analytics ecommerce tracking set up, then if you import transactions as conversions into AdWords it will automatically import the transactions’ values.

Callum Haywood – An Interview With The Brain Behind “We Know What You’re Doing”


By On July 5, 2012 In facebook, online privacy, social media, Viral Marketing With 5 Comments

According to Facebook, users upload more than 300 million photos, generate over 3.2 billion ‘likes’/'comments’, and have 526 million active users on average per day. But do we stop to think about where our information is being shared and what happens after an image or a post has been uploaded? To show users just how easy it is to access user’s status updates and share it to the world, 18 year old Callum Haywood set up a website called ‘We Know What You’re Doing‘, pulling public status updates via Facebook’s Graph API that contain references to hating your boss, getting drunk, using drugs and changes to your personal phone numbers. The site created a massive media stir with questions being asked once again about online safety on social networks. We caught up with Callum to find out more about the man behind the website, and to ask what inspired him to set up the site as well as what users can do to ensure online safety.

Callum Haywood

Hey Callum, firstly, congratulations on your experiment, it’s gotten you worldwide recognition; did you ever envision that this project would get you this much media attention? Thank you, I had never envisioned that the site would get anywhere close to the number of visitors it has had in its entire online life. I had certainly not expected the media to pick up on it.

Could you tell us a little bit about your career background and how and when you got into coding and web development? I’ve recently finished my A level studies, and will be starting university later this year. I started coding when I was about 13 years old, just learning basic HTML out of an old book. I then got into web design using CSS, and this lead me onto PHP which is what the site is written in.

What inspired you to set up “We know what you’re doing?” Two things inspired me. First was Tom Scott’s video “I Know What You Did Five Minutes Ago” in which he demonstrates, using live data, the amount of personal information that people put online. Secondly is the simplicity in which this information can be obtained; within a few lines of code you can query Facebook’s Graph API for public posts and output them.

Will Publishing Reviews Destroy Your Brand?


By On July 3, 2012 In content creation, Copywriting, online marketing, seo With 1 Comment

Online reviews can be a divisive idea among marketers. Some welcome the user-generated keyword-rich content and increased transparency. Others argue that they have to be censored or you risk negative comments and even legal challenges.

So who’s right? This article takes a look at why you’d benefit from publishing reviews, what the risks are and how to mitigate them.

The rise and rise of UGC

UGC, or user-generated content is a fairly recent phenomenon of web marketing, and serves several of the major demands of SEO (at least in terms of how Google defines ‘optimised’ website content).

For a start, reviews are helpful to other visitors to your website – as long as they are honest. They offer an independent assessment of the quality of a product or service. No material written directly for marketing purposes can inspire that much trust.

Updating a page by posting a new review onto it shows Google (and other search engines) that the page and the website as a whole are still ‘alive’. Regularly updating a website is still one of the best ways to get it to the top of the search rankings.

On top of all of these things, like any text content added to your website, reviews contain plain, search-visible text; it may not be professionally keyworded or optimised, but it can still help you to rank higher for product names, and associated technical terms and phrases.

What are the risks?

One of the reasons why UGC is so popular is that it seems very low-risk – once you’ve added the capability to write reviews to your website, each user who posts their opinion is effectively providing you with search-visible content for free.

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →