SEOptimise » seo

Tracking Your QR Codes to Bring Offline Marketing Online

Daniel Bianchini — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 12:10:43 +0000

Over the past few years, QR Codes have become more mainstream and can be seen in most day-to-day activities. There are examples of some very good uses of QR Codes as well as some badly thought out QR Codes.

QR Codes are great for getting offline marketing messages online quickly. Adding QR Codes to typical offline marketing material such as posters, flyers, business cards or event badges allows the user to see the message instantly.

With all these offline marketing activities being used, how can the business track what is working and what isn’t? Well, with Google Analytics and I am sure most other analytics packages, you can put tracking codes directly into the QR Code and track when users scan the code.

Below is a step by step guide to tracking QR Codes in Google Analytics.

1. Choose the URL that you would like the QR code that you are generating to return once scanned.

Example: www.oxondigital.co.uk/register/

2. Now create your campaign tracking code that you will use to identify the traffic that you receive from the different marketing activity you are running. You can do that by either using the Google URL Builder tool or my GDocs campaign tracking spreadsheet.

Example:

Campaign Source: University-Flyer
Campaign Medium: QR
*Campaign Content:
Campaign Name: OxonDigital4

This will provide you with the following URL to use:

http://www.oxondigital.co.uk/register/?utm_source=university-flyer&utm_medium=qr&utm_campaign=oxondigital4

*Using the campaign content tag you can differentiate between the ads. In the example above I could have used the Campaign Content to differentiate between the different campuses (Wheatley, Headington, Botley).

3. Now that you have your URL with the correct tracking code, you need to find a QR Code generator or use one of the following:

- http://createqrcode.appspot.com/
- http://qrcode.kaywa.com/
- http://goqr.me/

The example below shows the outcome of what we have just created. Give it a try by scanning the QR Code on your smart phone.

4. Now place the QR code on the relevant marketing material that you are going to distribute.

5. To see the results of the tracking code, you need to go to Traffic Sources > Campaigns

6. Now that you have your campaign data you are more than likely wanting to delve further into your analytics to see metrics such as types of devices and locations.

To do this you will need to create an advanced segment or two. This can be done in a number of ways, two of which I have shown below.

Segment 1

Include > Metric = Medium > Exactly Matches > Campaign Medium (QR)

This segment will bring back results that were generated using the campaign medium name of QR.

Segment 2

If you are using lots of different QR Codes you might want to split them by campaign name and campaign medium to delve into the specific marketing channel at the time.

Include > Metric = Medium > Exactly Matches > Campaign Medium (QR)

AND

Include > Metric = Campaign > Exactly Matches > Campaign Name (OxonDigital4)

Once you have created your segments, you will be able to delve further into the data you have received.

The above shows you how you can track your QR code. So whether you put them on a poster, event ticket, t-shirt or coffee cup, you will be able to see what traffic they have generated to your targeted page and/or website.

How do you use QR Codes? Are you making sure that you are tracking your offline marketing channels with techniques such as QR Codes? I look forward to hearing your thoughts in the comments below or on Twitter @danielbianchini

Thanks to Dan Barker for help on some aspects of this post

The Challenge of Selling SEO & Forgetting the ‘Human Ranking Factor’

Shaad Hamid — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 12:31:23 +0000

As with selling any service, selling SEO services is an extremely challenging task. Here are my observations of two opposite ends of the spectrum of what SEO consultants often experience with selling SEO services.

Give me a two day optimisation strategy

We’ll often get contacted with the following, “We want a two day web optimisation strategy implemented.” Many neophyte consultants lick their lips and pounce on the ‘opportunity’ with alacrity. They start shooting off proposals, buffing up their hallowed methodology, and more.

A more sane, measured and customer-serving response to the request for a two day optimisation precess is, “Why?”

That always stops people in their tracks. “Why do you want a two day strategy implementation for your website and how do you know that’s the right thing for you?”

In the act of asking that question, you start actually consulting. And if you engage in a real dialogue on the basis of those questions you will gain bracing insight into the real issues, challenges and aspirations of the potential client. You may also get a bracing introduction to the assumptions they’re making — many of which are potentially untested.

It may well be that a two day implementation process is like a relatively empty vessel, into which (after suitable diagnostics and appropriate design) you can pour content that will actually serve their needs and best interests. But it may also be that a half day audit would suffice, and the real action needs to take place at their organisational levels, or with a different group of people, or may require preliminary contact with customers or other stakeholders. It could be that a six month process is needed.

My recommendation to companies who put out a request like the one above, and get a proposal back in response, is to disqualify the person or agency from further consideration, as the request has no meaning without further exploration.

And if you are an agency or a freelance consultant and receive a request like the above, differentiate yourself meaningfully by helping to get to the core of what’s driving the request, rather than getting infatuated by the format proposed.

Avoiding the panacea of empty process

Here’s another common challenge. An organisation decides they need to create a SEO strategy or a digital marketing strategy and manage its roll-out. They get an agency with a strategy implementation process, anchored in the balanced scorecard or some other framework. As they proceed, courtesy of this framework, they are deluged with meetings, with process charts, with communiques, and eventually they arrive at what they perceive to be ‘The Holy Grail’. Namely, they have a clear map. All inconsistencies are removed (at least on the charts anyway), and the path forward glitters like a mythical ‘Yellow Brick Road’.

The problem in the map is not the territory, and it never has been. The problem is that underlying the process clarity are dysfunctional relationships, misguided leadership behaviours, poorly aligned teams, social networks that don’t operate well, departmental practices that may be out of kilter with strategic aspirations, information hoarded rather than shared, a culture that is ossified with past practices rather than vitalised by future aspirations. And eventually the ‘knowing/doing gap’ will become that much more profound.

My humble advice is that once you have process clarity, you have to convert that into a more human map: of behaviours-in-action, team composition and alignment, presence of vibrant or nullifying relationships, communication and network effectiveness, leadership role-modeling and relevant efforts at culture-shifting in order to make the processes actually manifest. Until these adaptive elements are infused into the process steps, to humanise and actualise the processes, we run the risk of trying to run the world from an operating manual.

It doesn’t work. In fact, most of us don’t even run our computers from a manual. We get some hands-on experience while drawing on some guidance, then tinkering and adapting based on results. Alas, in an organisation there are many more moving parts, and my ‘tinkering’ can have expensive consequences if not synergised with the learnings and efforts of others.

Process clarity and human engagement must march together. You can see an organisation as a collection of processes and plans. Fair enough. But you can even more meaningfully see it pulsating with human performance. In other words, the subtotal of all the actions, interactions, behaviours, collaboration and communication between all the people who make a difference to the success or failure of the organisation. You can see the organisation as a patchwork quilt of teams, conversations and acted upon commitments. These are human dimensions, or as I’d like to call it, the ‘human ranking factor’ and if not addressed, all the gewgaws and trinkets of process clarity will be fallow and leave your strategic marketing vision unfulfilled.

Image credit: mootown

Will HTML5 Boost My Rankings?

Matthew Taylor — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 12:56:01 +0000

It would be fair to say that pretty much every major change to the online environment is greeted with the same two questions by the vast majority of the SEO community –

What is it?
How can I use it to boost my SEO campaigns?

So with adoption of the next major evolution of HTML becoming more common, and having a growing feeling that it was about to come up in more client meetings, I decided it would be a good time to check how I can potentially make the most of HTML5.

I won’t go into a whole explanation of what HTML5 is now – I will leave that for the web design blogs – but the highlights as I understand them are:

A more descriptive set of markup tags; for example, nav, article, aside and footer
The introduction of Canvas element could be used for rendering graphs or images dynamically without the need for browser plugins
A Video element which will allow videos to be embedded without the need for third-party plugins; for example, Adobe Flash
Sites will be able to geolocate users without having to use IP address detection

It is apparent from this list that there are some pretty big changes between HTML4 and HTML5. For example, I’m guessing that every SEO will spot the third bullet point – video without the need for Flash – and realise the obvious content indexing benefit this will offer as a result.

But will you get any direct benefit from being first to the party (so to speak)? Will changing your site to HTML5 be a quick route to top spot in the rankings? Well, the simple answer is no! And you don’t have to just take my word for it either; Googler John Mu left the following responses to related questions on the Google Webmaster Central Help Forum:

In general, we work hard to understand as much of the web as possible, but I have a feeling that HTML5 markup is not yet as widely in use (and in use correctly) that it would make sense for us to use it as a means of understanding content better. As HTML5 gains in popularity and as we recognize specific markup elements that provide value to our indexing system, this is likely to change, but at the moment I would not assume that you would have an advantage by using HTML5 instead of older variants.
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=2d4592cbb613e42c&hl=en

and

In general, our crawlers are used to not being able to parse all HTML markup – be it from broken HTML, embedded XML content or from the new HTML5 tags. Our general strategy is to wait to see how content is marked up on the web in practice and to adapt to that. If we find that more and more content uses HTML5 markup, that this markup can give us additional information, and that it doesn’t cause problems if webmasters incorrectly use it (which is always a problem in the beginning), then over time we’ll attempt to work that into our algorithms. With that in mind, I definitely wouldn’t want to stand in the way of your implementing parts of your site with HTML5, but I also wouldn’t expect to see special treatment of your content due to the HTML5 markup at the moment. HTML5 is still very much a work in progress, so it’s great to see bleeding-edge sites making use of the new possibilities.
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=1d3850aec4e3dd96&hl=en

Although both of these comments date from late 2010, there doesn’t seem to have been any further opinion put forward to suggest that this is not Google’s current view, or not that I have found anyway.

So does this mean that you should ignore it all together? Well, no. This may sound odd having seen the opinions offered by Google, but there do seem to be some credible theories of the indirect benefits of implementing HTML5.

First, due to the fact that HTML5 is still a relatively “new” technology, a number of people will link to other sites that are using it. This means that an HTML5 site or piece of content (an infographic for example), if implemented well or uniquely, will accumulate links and social signals naturally. Check out this music video from Arcade Fire, which makes use of HTML5 and Google Maps to personalise the video to you. I’m not a fan of their music but I shared the link. Obviously this will only be a benefit until HTML5 becomes commonplace.

As well as this, it is believed that HTML5 will reduce the volume of code required to render a page, so it therefore has two indirect benefits. The first is that it will improve page load speed, which is a minor ranking factor, as well as having an effect on conversion. Secondly, it should increase the likelihood that information would be found by the search engine bots, as a result of them being able to process more site pages (if you believe that the search engines expend a limited amount of resources on a site).

Finally, you will be ‘future proofing’ your site. Even though Google’s current position is that it will not aid rankings, the Webmaster Tools responses imply that it may do in the future once it is more widely adopted.

When HTML5 becomes a web standard, I believe that at some point it will be worked into the algorithm as a result of its wide use. Being an early adopter means there should be an immediate boost if and when it is added to algorithm. It is also safe to assume that this change wouldn’t be publicly announced, so you will get a short competitive advantage until everyone else catches on.

Anyone who has read some of the other posts around on HTML5 and SEO are probably thinking I have missed out one of the most obvious benefits – the new markup. From what I have seen, a lot of people believe that it will indicate to the search engines what type of content is on a page and how important it is, meaning you are really able to draw attention to content.

While this may be the intention, I personally believe the ease with which this may be manipulated to promote low quality sites is such that it is likely only ever going to be a low value ranking factor, if it is one at all. It is very similar to the keywords metatag, which was so easily abused that Google finally discounted it as a ranking factor. If all you have to do is to put content within a certain tag to boost its rankings, everyone will do it.

So overall, while I personally wouldn’t recommend that a site change to HTML5 as some kind of SEO silver bullet, there are enough incidental SEO benefits to make it worthwhile to work into new builds or redesigns, or to use for content generation (such as infographics).

Android Fails to Render URLs with Dashes Via Bit.ly

Chelsea Blacker — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 13:41:44 +0000

Android platform is not able to render URLs shortened by bit.ly, which include dashes in blog post titles. To guarantee all users can read your posts via mobiles, be sure not to utilise dashes in blog post titles.

Last week, a client flagged up to us that their site wasn’t getting Android traffic on certain posts. True, Android traffic is never high, but when it slips to 0 visits, there must be something wrong. When the client looked into the posts, it was evident the titles of these blog posts each had a dash (-) in them. The majority of traffic to these posts comes from Twitter via Bit.ly links.

With the help of my local Orange Shop (HTC Hero Graphite anyone?), and some rigorous testing by @spamhendricks, it can be concluded that Android is not rendering bit.ly links which have dashes in certain instances. Specifically, when a blog post title utilises a dash, a bit.ly link won’t render on the Android platform.

Example

For example, here is an SEOptimise blog post with a dash in the title.

The URL for this blog post is:

http://www.seoptimise.com/blog/2012/01/did-google-just-roll-out-panda-3-2-2012-edition.html

As you can see, dashes are utilised in the URL for two reasons. First, the dash between “roll-out” appears in the URL. Second, all spaces in the title are also accounted for as dashes.

This link is then bit.ly-fied to appear as:

http://bit.ly/xgR9xq

If you have an Android phone, this bit.ly link will not render.

Significance

This issue is most likely to affect blog promotion across the social media sphere. But it can also affect press release promotion, news stories, and essentially anything where a dash is included in the H1, and then promoted via the popular link shortening service of Bit.ly.

Inconsistencies

What I’m struggling to understand is why this Android rendering issue is only valid if the title of the blog post has a dash; the issue is not reflected in the URL.

This URL from the earlier example for the blog post “Did Google Just Roll-Out Panda 3.2 (2012 edition)” includes one dash in the title of the blog post.

http://www.seoptimise.com/blog/2012/01/did-google-just-roll-out-panda-3-2-2012-edition.html

This second URL is for the blog post without any dashes “Foursquare 2012 | Experience, Thoughts and 6 Immense Tips for Your Business”.

http://www.seoptimise.com/blog/2012/01/foursquare-2012-experience-thoughts-and-6-immense-tips-for-your-business.html

In this second example, the URL still utilises dashes to make up for the spaces in the post title. And yet, in this second example the bit.ly link renders on Android platforms just fine. Why?

What do you think? Why does the title of the blog post equate to Android users being able to view the post or not view the post? Is this enough reason to stop utilising bit.ly?

Did Google Just Roll-Out Panda 3.2 (2012 Edition)?

Kevin Gibbons — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 10:26:43 +0000

Yesterday Google announced a new page layout algorithm update – this is a landing page quality update, which looks at “the layout of a webpage and the amount of content you see on the page once you click on a result”. As opposed to having the need for scrolling beneath ads to get to this. Doesn’t this sound very similar to Panda though?

At Pubcon in November last year, Matt Cutts mentioned that:

“If you have ads obscuring your content, you might want to think about it,” asking publishers to consider, “Do they see content or something else that’s distracting or annoying?”

With Danny Sullivan following up to say:

“Many already assume that Google’s Panda algorithm is already penalizing ad heavy pages. This suggests that this either is not part of the Panda algorithm or that it might be made a separate and more specific algorithm in the works.”

So reading into this, I would suggest that if this wasn’t rolled out last year - it just has been!

Google has stated that this isn’t a change which will affect every site that has ads above the fold, just those that have an excessive number of ads which obstruct users from getting to the content that they were searching for:

“This algorithmic change noticeably affects less than 1% of searches globally. That means that in less than one in 100 searches, a typical user might notice a reordering of results on the search page. If you believe that your website has been affected by the page layout algorithm change, consider how your web pages use the area above-the-fold and whether the content on the page is obscured or otherwise hard for users to discern quickly. You can use our Browser Size tool, among many others, to see how your website would look under different screen resolutions.”

So that means that if you’ve been penalised, it should be easy enough to get out of. It’s an algorithmic penalty, not a manual one – so if you fix the layout of your page, Google’s filters will pick this up the next time it’s re-crawled and whatever penalty you had previously will be lifted. We’ve seen this many times with other algorithm penalties – and once you figured out what’s caused the drop in rankings, it’s not too difficult to get out of. It’s the manual penalties you want to avoid, Google take note!

And overall it’s not likely to affect a huge number of sites (1% predicted by Google), but it looks like affiliates and ad monetised sites are those most open to suffering. So is this the latest, unofficial panda update? Maybe Google has just got bored of keeping track of the numbers now that it’s 2012 – what do you think?

Image credit: David Allen

A Collection of 47 Helpful Google Search Operator Queries

Pak Hou Cheung — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 14:19:14 +0000

To be honest, from my school days of using Google right up to today, the search engine giant has not once stopped impressing me. From its algorithmic updates for a better user experience to its cloud based computing services, Google has captured my life and sadly, probably my soul.

Today I will be sharing with you a collection of my favourite Google search operator queries, not only to help open your mind to the powers of Google being much more than a search engine, but also to show you that knowing some of these queries will help you become better in the art of SEO.

6 Starter Operator Search Operator Queries

These queries are particularly helpful because they’re generally quick and easy short cuts in narrowing your search results:

Query	What does it mean?
“best practice seo”	Searches for this exact phrase within “”
mobile -phone	Inclusion of – means searches for the word mobile but nothing following after phone
seo ~glossary	Brings up a glossary of information regarding that word
define:seo	Definition of that word or phrase
OR / \|	Returns search queries with one of the given terms
related:	Helps list web pages related to the URL

5 Basic Mathematics Search Operator Queries

Google search provides users with the ability to calculate simple maths without the need for your calculator:

Query	What does it mean?
+ / – / * //	Simple mathematics rules
% of	Percentage of a number
^ / **	Raise to the power of a number
square root of number	Find the square root of a number
reciprocal of (number)	Find the reciprocal value of a number

4 Advanced Mathematics Search Operator Queries

Surprisingly, Google does not stop at the most simple of mathematics and is there for the more complicated algorithmic-based equations:

Query	What does it mean?
sin, cos, tan	You’re able to use the trigonometric functions within a search
ln(number)	Utilises the natural logarithm of the number
log(number)	Utilises the base 10 logarithm
number!	Returns a factorial number

7 Converting Tool Search Operator Queries

Google offers users the ability in search to convert various units:

Query	An example, search in Google:
Currency converter	36 yuan to dollars
Data converter	Convert 81 Mb to Gb
Distance converter	68m to cm
Speed converter	38mph in kph
Temperature converter	18 Celsius in Fahrenheit
Time converter	89 days in minutes
Weight converter	8 stones in kg

7 Everyday Helpful Search Operator Queries

I find these operator queries particularly useful everyday, and maybe you will too:

Query	What does it mean?	An example, search in Google:
file:	Results show various file type extensions	file:linkbuilding.pdf
movie:	Results show movies in your local area	movie:oxford
weather:	Current weather forecast of that area	weather:oxford
time:	Local time in that country	time:china
sunrise:	Sunrise in that area	sunrise:oxford
map:	Map of that area	map:oxford
safesearch:	Search without any adult content	safesearch: sex education

2 Google News Search Operator Queries

These search operator queries are restricted to only Google News – very useful when you want to find news from a particular country or source-specific articles:

Query	What does it mean?	An example, search in Google news:
location:	Discover news posts from a location	Location:china
source:	Discover news posts from a source	Source:search engine land

4 Blog Search Operator Queries

When searching for particular blog-related links, these operator queries can help you search by author, post type and blog title:

Query	What does it mean?	An example, search in Google:
inpostauthor:	Search for this specific author	inpostauthor:”kevin gibbons”
inblogtitle:	Search for this specific blog title	inblogtitle:seoptimise
inpostitle:	Search for posts with these titles	inpostitle: on page optimisation
blogurl:	Search for blogs under a specific URL	blogurl:seoptimise.com

12 SEO Operator Queries

As an SEO practitioner, one of my most powerful search tools has to be Google itself. Just knowing these search operator queries exist is only quarter of the battle. But understanding how they work and best practices is where you can excel:

Query	What does it mean?
site:URL	Search only one site or domain
site:URL (image search)	Shows results for images on that website
allintitle:	All search results must appear in the title of the page
intitle:	The following keywords must appear in the title of the page
allintext:	The following must appear within the text page
intext:	The search term has to appear in the title of the page
allinurl:	The search term appears in the URL
allinanchor:	The following search terms must all appear in anchor text links with the page
inanchor:	All the following search terms all must appear in anchor text links with the page
cache:	Displays Google’s cached version of a webpage
info:	Provides information on that specific page
link:	Finds the pages that link to that URL

Top Tip to Remember: In Google search you are not restricted to just one query per search. For example, you could have multiple queries in one search – e.g. site:seoptimise.com “web trends” -ppc

Thanks for reading this and please do share some of your favourite search operator queries!

*Image credit: niknack on Flickr.

30 SEO Resolutions for 2012

Tad Chef — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 14:05:14 +0000

Like most people, SEO practitioners reflect on the past year and attempt to improve their skills in the new year.

If you haven’t made up your mind what exactly you want to change in the coming year, check out these suggestions for 30 SEO resolutions for 2012 that draw on modern industry best practices and growing trends.

Content Creation

I will create less shallow content and more quality “one of a kind” pieces of content.
I will create more content using multiple rich media such as images, audio, videos and the like.
I will write shorter, more readable postings instead of long, hard to read ones that nobody can follow.
I will create more content on site and waste less time on third party sites that require me to give away “User Generated Content”.
I will provide less average sales copy and create more outstanding content for inbound marketing purposes.

Link Building

I will perform fewer tedious tasks such as contacting unwitting webmaster about link exchanges and provide more appealing incentives for people to link to me voluntarily.
I will go after more citations and fewer links to get traction on local search and Google Places instead of just the organic index that gets less exposure.
I will make sure my old inbound links are still there and also fix 404 errors on my own site.
I will link out more, not only to get noticed and more links back, but to reach out honestly to like-minded industry professionals – after all, we don’t compete most of time.
I won’t sneak in “free links” anymore on unsuspecting sites that would not voluntarily link to me.

Social Media

I will market less and contribute more in order to become a valuable contributor to social media.
I will get organised while social networking and not just waste time drifting from update to update on Facebook, Twitter or Google+.
I will follow fewer hypes and not just jump in on every social site that web celebrities want me to. I will go where the real value is.
I won’t just share links all the time on social sites but instead use them in a balanced way, adding networking and conversation to my daily habits.
I will schedule times for my social media activity instead of just dropping in and getting distracted all the time during work hours.

Blogging

I will blog more regularly instead of just updating my social media profiles on third party sites.
I will guest blog on other blogs, both the already important ones and the not yet very well known.
I will focus my blog writing on the desired outcome – not just blog for the page views and social shares.
I will socialise with other bloggers both online and in real life to establish lasting relationships.
I won’t check web analytics daily or more often and obsess about metrics that only make sense to check in the long term or every other week.

Tools

I will use fewer tools and more techniques. SEO and SMO are still about how you use them, not how many tools you use.
I will use the tools I prefer more in-depth instead of just scratching the surface of the features.
I will take more time for social media analytics and monitoring and find out what real humans say about me, my contributions and why.
I will not trust tools with everything and make sure to cross check data and compare with other outcomes.
I will recommend only the tools I truly use, not the ones I’m an affiliate of.

SEO

I will perform more SEO tests and publish the results to the benefit of the SEO community, no matter how vague the outcomes are.
I will provide more advice to educate the clients and their teams and make them more self-sufficient.
I will share my techniques, tools and case studies, not just to show off but to get recognition from the SEO community.
I will rant and complain less about Google, other SEOs and bloggers and instead keep on improving my own arsenal.
I will build a recognisable brand instead of just relying on generic rankings on Google.

These resolutions are written in the first person to make it easier for you to identify with them and to apply them yourself. They are not necessarily my personal resolutions.

On a side note: this is my last post on SEOptimise after more than four years. I hope you liked my posts. If you did, you can keep on reading my own blog over at SEO 2.0.

The SEOptimise team will take care of this blog completely from now on, so there won’t be any shortage of posts.

* Creative Common image by Aftab Uzzaman.

How we Identified and Rectified Malicious Linking

Matthew Taylor — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 14:06:59 +0000

Last year, during a chat with one of the @seoptimise twitter followers, they mentioned a post on SEJ about how it is a myth that bad links can get your site penalised (a position that the author later changed after feedback) and asked my opinion on it. The strange thing was that a few months earlier I had to sort out the exact issue for one of our clients. So I thought it would be an idea to write a post it.

The background

We had been working with our client for about a year and, through a sensible link building campaign, had just managed to achieve decent rankings for some of the most competitive and highest converting terms in their industry. Then within a week their previously consistent bottom of page one/top of page two rankings (doesn’t sound great until you see their competitors) dropped to page three and four, at the same time as their link count experiencing a large and very unnatural spike.

Upon investigation of their back links we identified over 80 sites each linking back from ten different pages with exactly the same title tags (which were the same as some pages on our client site), random URLs and the same anchor text. They were remarkably easy to spot.

When we checked the sites it appeared some were adult or other spammy sites, but most of the sites were hacked WordPress sites. They had ten or so pages added that used the HTML code and content from our clients’ site. To make matters worse they had replaced some of the content with links to Viagra, casino and adult sites – not really neighbourhoods we wanted them to be associated with.

So the scale of our problem was 800+ pages linking multiple times to our client, as well as various low quality/spammy/malware sites, using large parts of our clients’ content, effectively creating duplicate content issues.

So if you have a similar problem here is what I suggest doing next…

Step 1 – Identify you have a problem

This is probably step minus one, and it is usually quite easy, but you have to be looking (if you don’t check your own backlinks regularly you should). You do not want your client to find out before you!

Just to show you how easy it can be sometimes, check out the anchor text report for one of our clients competitors – anyone would think they were an online pharmacy!

As a side note – if you have a forum or profile pages make sure they are moderated!!

So the things to look for are:
1. Your rankings take a dive but nobody else’s do
2. You have loads of extra links all of sudden
3. Analytics shows traffic to pages you never knew you had or traffic from odd sites
4. You have an identical number of links for lots of different anchor text variations, especially if you haven’t been link building with those terms
5. There are odd repeating patterns in anchor text and titles of sites linking in
6. Your linked to from sites which have random URLs
7. Probably the most obvious – you have a load of anchor text links for drugs/porn/fake watches but you’re a University

Step 2 – Gather intelligence

The next step is to gather all of the information you can on the links. Ideally you want to end up with a list of all the pages linking to you, at least two ways of contacting the site (email, contact form or telephone number) as well as the whois information for their hosting or domain registrar.

There are a few ways to do this, with the most basic being putting a block of text into Google and then visiting each site individually. But as always there are tools you can use, Open Site Explorer or other back link analysis tools are good to get a list of URLs. If you are feeling particularly techie you can build your own SERP scraper using Google Docs or the Excel SEO Tools extension.

At this point you can start to look for patterns – do they all run the same CMS (e.g. WordPress sites) or are they all owned by the same people. This should give you an indication of if the site owner is aware the links are there or not and if someone has done it deliberately or not.

Step 3 – Tell your client

Now is a good time to sit down with your client and talk about what you have found. This is best done in person or at least on the telephone. This is the time when you need to know your stuff. And by this I don’t just mean having it written down, but actually know the details off by hart to. Now is the time you are going to have to show that you are on top of the situation, and fumbling around for the answer to a question isn’t going to help that.

Try to avoid getting involved in the who’s and why’s and instead just focus on what you have found and what you are going to do – and make sure you have a plan in place before you go.

It is probably worth double checking at this point to see if your client has accidentally done something while trying to “help” with SEO. It is unlikely, but worth asking all the same.

Step 4 – Change your content

If you suffer a similar fate to us and someone has scraped your site and is using your content, I would strongly consider if you can change your on-site content (even just temporarily). This will help with the duplicate content in the short term and will also help you identify if it is an on-going issue (i.e. does the new content get scraped as well). If they are pages with no or few other links you could even consider changing the URLs and then 301 redirect the link target URLs to another domain completely.

Make sure you have screenshots of the old content and can restore it if you need to.

Step 5 – First contact

The next thing to do is to try and get the links removed completely. There will be different approaches to take depending on if the site owner is likely to be aware of the links or not.

As the sites that were linking to our client had obviously been hacked, I started with a polite email to the site owner (to both contact methods) informing them that they had been hacked and asking them to remove the pages as it would be doing neither site any good. I also provided a list of the URLs in question just to help them find them all. This method got about a 40% response rate and all of the site owners removed the pages (always go back and check).

For those who don’t respond to the first email, try again a couple of days later and keep a record of when you emailed. This will be important when you move on to some of the later steps. At this point you can be more insistent that they remove the link, especially if they have used your content as well (copyright is your friend and don’t be afraid to mention it). Again, give the site owner a couple of days to get back to you.

Step 6 – Take the matter further if you can

At this point you will be fairly sure you aren’t going to get a response, so the next step is to bypass the site owner and go higher up the chain.

Most hosts or registrars have terms and conditions and a procedure for reporting site owners who are breaking them. If a site is using your content without permission you can ask the hosting company to take down the site due to breach of copyright. They usually require you to fill in a form with proof and give them URLs to check (but you will have this information in your spreadsheet). It is always good to mention you have already tried to contact the site a couple of times already. They will contact the site and ask for an explanation, but failing good justification most will be taken down. In our case this was obvious as all the pages had our clients copyright information on the bottom.

Another good route to take if sites have obviously been hacked is to point this out to the hosting company. They will then try and contact the site owner and a lot of the time they suspend the site in the meantime.

The very least that will happen is that they will try and contact site owners on your behalf.

By this point hopefully you’ll have got rid of at least 80% of the links.

Step 7 – Contact Google

After exhausting all possible methods of contact, if the links are still there, it’s time to report them to Google via Web Master Tools. Most people think that these reports are ignored, and they very well could be, but it is more so if you have to submit a reconsideration request it shows you have tried to draw their attention to the issue.

Step 8 – Reconsideration Request

If removing the links hasn’t resulted in your rankings starting to move back up, the final step is to send a reconsideration request. There are plenty of resources about how to do this, so I will not go into detail here. But make sure that you draw to their attention that you identified the issue (and that it definitely had nothing to do with you), that you took steps to remove the links and that you reported the links yourself (a good way of showing that you were being completely up front).

So those are the steps that we went through with our client, which did repair some of the damage done, but we are still playing catch up to a certain extent.

It would be good to hear if others have gone through similar stuff and if anyone has any additional steps to add.

UK Search Conference Calendar – 2012

Kevin Gibbons — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 10:11:52 +0000

It’s that time of year again, where everyone is starting to think about which UK search conferences and events to attend.

So for 2012, I’ve put together a conference calendar of search events – let me know if there’s any I’ve missed!

February:

SES London – London, 21-23 February 2012

March:

Think Visibility – Leeds, 3rd March 2012
UK Search Awards Conference – London, 9th March 2012
Distilled – Link Love – London, 30th March 2012

April:

BrightonSEO – Brighton, tbc

May:

International Search Summit – London, 14 May 2012
SMX London - London, 15-16 May 2012
SAScon - Manchester, 17-18 May 2012

June:

a4uexpo Europe – Barcelona, 19-20 June 2012

Oct:

a4uexpo London – London, tbc
Distilled – Search Love – London, tbc

Nov:

Conversion Conference – London, 27-28 November 2012

I’ll be speaking at a couple of these events, more on that once I can confirm them. So which events will you be attending this year?

5 Ways a Client Can Sabotage SEO

Rachel McCombie — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 15:17:55 +0000

Running an SEO project smoothly and effectively requires juggling many skills: creativity, proactivity, effective time management and organisation, to name just a few.

But I would argue that one of the most important attributes of a successful SEO campaign is communication of knowledge – within an agency, of course, but also (perhaps less obviously) with clients. Many clients have little or no knowledge of SEO, and why should they? That’s what we’re here for, after all. But it’s unfortunately a fact of life as an SEO that algorithm updates and other external factors are not the only risk posed to a successful SEO project. Without at least a minimal level of SEO education, actions taken by a client can actually be detrimental to the SEO efforts of their agency or consultant.

One of my SEO New Year’s Resolutions (more Resolutions from SEOptimise in a forthcoming blog post by Matthew Taylor) is to help clients to help us by ensuring they have enough knowledge to understand our work, its aims and methodologies, and what they can do to ensure that we’re able to get them the best results possible. So I thought I’d kick off the New Year by taking a look at the top ways in which an SEO project can be sabotaged by a client. This is not me ranting about my lovely clients by the way – it’s more a retrospective look at some of the bottlenecks I’ve encountered in otherwise smooth SEO projects over the last year or so.

1. Changing the website without telling us
Whether it’s launching a new section, rolling back to an old version of the site, rewriting copy or even a full blown redesign, it’s really important to get the SEO perspective before any changes are made, to ensure that a) new material is optimised from the word go and b) prior SEO efforts are not damaged or lost. There’s nothing worse than finding that your client’s rankings have plummeted because the site has been reverted to an old, unoptimised version without your knowledge.

The solution: emphasise to your client the importance of liaising on potential website changes before they happen, and in plenty of time. If there’s a redesign in the offing, ensure you’re involved from the outset to ensure that the new site is structured in an SEO-friendly way. It’s much easier to make changes in the planning stages than it is to change things once it’s live.

2. CMS that doesn’t allow crucial SEO changes
Not the client’s fault, but a CMS system that doesn’t allow the implementation of such vital elements as title tags is clearly a major spanner in the works. The worst thing is not being prepared for it – you get your title tags written and signed off, then get granted CMS access only to find that you can’t actually implement them because the title tag is taken automatically from the H1 field and can’t be edited separately!

The solution: ascertain before the start of the project whether the CMS has the appropriate functionality. Ask the client to get their web developer to implement it if necessary, so that you have no nasty surprises awaiting you down the line.

3. A cripplingly slow sign-off process
SEO is continually evolving, and dramatic changes can happen overnight, without warning – just look at the Panda update, for example. That means that we have to be quick to react, and we need the flexibility to be able to adjust both strategies and actual on-site optimisation quickly and decisively if necessary. Our ability to do this can be severely hampered by the need to go through lengthy sign-off procedures.

Even in the course of normal, day-to-day SEO work, project delivery can be significantly delayed by slow sign-off on crucial elements of the campaign – for instance, not having approval for targeted keywords means we’re not able to proceed to writing title tags, which would clearly have a big impact on rankings. Similarly, if content for use in link building is slow to be approved, this will obviously limit our ability to build the highest quality links in a timely manner. It’s frustrating when ranking performance is hampered because we’ve done as much of the agreed work as we can, but can’t actually implement it.

The solution: establish a mutually agreeable sign-off process and, where possible, minimise client involvement. For example, once guidelines are in place, ask them to approve the titles of blog posts only rather than reading through every post.

4. Confusing SEO with PR and advertising
What a lot of clients don’t realise is that some SEO methods are nothing to do with their brand. When it comes to building links, for example from guest blog posts, the emphasis is on finding interesting angles that will work well as blog posts. This is particularly important when the client’s company or products are not especially interesting in themselves, meaning that we have to create the interest by looking at wider or related fields in order to gain bloggers’ interest. When clients apply their own brand guidelines to completely external (anonymous) posts, or even insist on us only writing about their products, it can become very difficult to do our job – because often what you’re left with is a salesy piece in a style that simply isn’t suitable for a blog and which will not get accepted for publication.

The solution: give your client a thorough explanation, along with examples, of what your work will entail, showing how and why it’s being done and reassuring them that their brand will not be harmed in any way.

5. ‘Helping out’ with link building
Don’t get me wrong, it’s great when clients take an interest in link building. But not when they get involved by paying a fiver for 10,000 links (this has happened to us). As we’ve previously established here on the SEOptimise blog, this tactic doesn’t work and this sort of activity would seriously undermine a carefully considered link building strategy. Obviously we should be educating clients to aid our efforts by including links in their PR material (for example), but clients should be strongly encouraged to check with you before ‘helping out’ with link building.

The solution: when forming a link building strategy, take the opportunity to educate your client about link building and explain which practices are outdated. Make sure your project plan is clear on who has responsibility for tasks.

What common problems do you encounter in running SEO projects and how do you solve them? Let us know in the comments below!

3 Tips & Tools To Help You Become a Better SEO Project Manager

Gillian Cook — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 15:18:40 +0000

Good project management is the backbone of any successful SEO campaign. With the right planning and execution, good management can keep the project profitable, lower stress and maintain client satisfaction. This blog post will identify three key tips to help you become a better project manager and highlight three tools which can help you along the way.

1. Communication
Communication is central to any good working relationship. It’s important at the project kick off stage to establish this relationship so that you can move forward together. Developing a friendship with your client allows you to manage their expectations. Working in the industry, it’s often easy to forget how alien the topic of SEO can be to some people. Therefore as a project manager it is your job to educate your client on SEO and to explain the nature of SEO as a marketing tool. By improving your client’s understanding of SEO and developing a communicative relationship, you will be able to create realistic goals and will be better equipped to deal with any unexpected problems.

A great tool for managing projects is Basecamp, an online tool which encourages collaboration and communication between you and your client. Set up projects by creating to-do lists; assign them to colleagues, set deadlines and track hours spent on each task. Messaging clients is easy, as all communication is kept in the one place – which saves you from chaotic email ping-pong. You can leave comments on almost anything and can easily track the development of the project as those to-dos get checked off.

2. Set Goals
Setting goals is really important for personal and project development. One of the best pieces of advice my first manager ever gave me was ‘if it’s not measurable then it’s not worth doing’. Steer the direction of your team by making your goals explicit and measurable, with clear deadlines on when they ought to be completed. Remember to evaluate your performance by reviewing goals regularly.

Before deciding what you want to achieve in the future, you have to understand your present situation. A great tool to help with this is Raven Tools for SEO. Keep tabs on rankings and traffic with this tool, which provides keyword, competitor and link intelligence. With the enhanced data it delivers, you can identify areas of weakness to be strengthened. Raven can also help you manage your project, as it allows you to assign tasks and create reports for clients.

3. Visibility
Planning your campaign is crucial in order to make best use of your time and resources. Making sure you do what you’ve outlined in your campaign is essential. Use your leadership skills, delegate tasks and always know where you are with things getting delivered to the client. In my opinion it’s important that the client knows what activities you are doing. Giving the client visibility is not always easy especially considering the nature of SEO where an action you implement may take several weeks to have an effect on rankings.

Give clients visibility with Linkdex, the online task and project manager, which has many attractive features for SEO Consultants. The most interesting feature is being able to track completed tasks against rank changes. Track your client’s website progress against their competitors in terms of links. Find out who’s linking to whom and how influential that link is, and manage and record details of your own link building campaign with dates and costs. Like Raven, you can create reports for clients and give them user access to the software for them to see for themselves.

Picture: New York Public Library on Flickr

SEOptimise’s 58 most awesome blog posts of 2011

Matthew Taylor — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 12:32:20 +0000

*
2011 has been another very busy year on the SEOptimise blog, with nearly 400 posts generating over 400,000 visits and well in excess of half a million pageviews (oh and one best blog award).

With the year drawing to a close, and Christmas just round the corner, I thought it would be a great opportunity to try and summarise the best and most popular posts of the year, and hopefully give you a few early SEO Christmas gifts. While I am personally not a fan of list posts, judging by the most popular posts a lot of you are. So ever eager to please, here is a list of the 58 best/most popular posts of the year.

Our 10 most popular posts

What better place to start than the most popular posts of the year? Between them, the posts below generated almost 100,000 pageviews. So, working on the basis that 100,000 people (ok, maybe not people) can’t be wrong, there must be some awesome SEO gems contained within them.

30 Web Trends You Have to Know About in 2011 – the first post of the year is also the most popular, with Tad’s post about what was going to happen to search and social in 2011 receiving over 17,000 pageviews. As you would expect, there were a few predications that didn’t come true, but a fair few that did.

30 Ways to Use Social Media for Business People – with businesses seemingly falling over themselves to become more social, it’s good to know what you can use it for, and this post rounds it up.
30 (New) Google Ranking Factors You May Over- or Underestimate – a one-stop guide to some of the more misunderstood Google ranking factors: link decay anyone?
What Happens When You Build 10,000 Dodgy Links to a New Domain in 24 Hours? – this post got a fair few mentions at conferences, on other blog posts and even in the mainstream media. While the answer may seem obvious, you never know until you try, and Marcus did.
30 (New) SEO Terms You Have to Know in 2011 – this was the most shared post on our blog in 2011 and, amongst other things, told everyone what a content farm is shortly before Google tried to destroy them all. Still, there are always the 29 other terms.
High Risk SEO: 33 Ways to Get Penalised by Google – a post that summarises ways to get penalised by Google. Best used as a “how not to guide”, but I’m fairly sure people will still try a few and cross their fingers.
36 Must-Read Local SEO/Google Places Resources from 2010/2011 – with Local and Places results becoming ever more prominent in the SERPs, it’s best to know how to master them. This post did the hard work and aggregated lots of the best sources for you.
30 Web Trends for 2012: How SEO, Search, Social Media, Blogging, Web Design & Analytics Will Change – despite only being published in late November this still made the top 10 list. Judging by the accuracy of the one Tad did for 2011, it’s probably worth a read.
Can You Get a New Domain Ranking Using Just Facebook Likes & Tweets? – there was a lot of talk earlier in 2011 about the potential use of social signals in Google’s algorithm, so Marcus tried to find out if there was anything to back up the chat by experimenting.
30 Link Building/Link Baiting Techniques That Work in 2011 – With the Panda update (potentially) devaluing a lot of low quality links, Tad refreshed our memory about some of the great link building tactics that are still available.

The 20 posts that got you sharing

The later half of the year has all been about one thing – social media, largely fuelled by Google’s latest attempt at social media, Google+. Bearing this in mind, we had to check what got our readers sharing during 2011.

30 New SEO Terms You Have To Know in 2011 – shared 1,510 times
30 Ways To Use Social Media for Business People – shared 1,284 times
30 Web Trends For 2012: How SEO Search Social Media Blogging Web Design Analytics Will Change – shared 890 times
30 New Google Ranking Factors You May Over or Underestimate – shared 678 times
How To Write a Social Media Audit – shared 599 times
Can You Get a New Domain Ranking Using Just Facebook Likes Tweets – shared 597 times
High Risk SEO 33 – Ways To Get Penalised by Google – shared 582 times
30 Link Building & Link Baiting Techniques That Work in 2011 – shared 406 times
What Makes a Real SEO Expert – shared 404 times
30 Google Quality/Panda Update Resources for Content Farmers and SEO Practitioners – shared 397 times
30 Efficient Web Tools That Save Time and Make Money For Power Users – shared 369 times
30 Google SERP Changes that Impact Your SEO Strategy – shared 357 times
157 Awesome PubCon 2011 Takeaways – shared 346 times
What Happens When You Build 10,000 Dodgy Links to a New Domain in 24 Hours – shared 322 times
30 Web Trends You Have To Know About in 2011 – shared 285 times
Google Dropping Analytics Keyword Data: What Does This Mean – shared 273 times
30 SEO Myths That Are True or False Depending on Who You Ask – shared 247 times
30 Ways To Optimise Your Site for Speed – shared 235 times
Experiment Do Google+1S Impact Your Rankings – shared 229 times
Social Media Why an SEO Background is Better Than PR – shared 229 times

The three best experiments of the year

Due to the secrecy behind Google’s algorithm, a lot of popular SEO theory is based on anecdotal evidence and guess work. But, every so often Marcus, our resident SEO mad scientist, likes to don his lab coat shark outfit, lock himself away and get experimenting. Below are three of his best experiments from 2011 (no animals were harmed during the making of these posts – but a few sites were).

The 10 greatest SEO tool posts

The one thing common to all SEOs is that we like our tools, whether it’s to crawl a site or just optimise it. In the SEOptimise office we like to try everything out, and the good news for you is that we love to write about them too. So here are the 10 greatest posts about SEO tools we wrote this year.

10 awesome SEO conference posts

As an agency we get like to go to and talk at as many conferences as we can (especially if they are in Vegas). But we also know that not everyone can go to them all, and even if you do there is a lot to remember, so we always try our best to post a round-up of the stuff we hear. So below I have summarised our 10 most viewed conference related posts.

Five wicked polls

We love a good bit of crowdsourcing in the SEOptimise office, and we are very lucky that we have followers who like to get involved and share their opinions. Here are five of the best and most interesting polls we ran this year.

So these are our greatest hits of the year, hope you all found some cool stuff. Next year there will be more of the same, plus hopefully a few more video blogs as well. If there are any blogs that we haven’t included but you think deserve a mention, let me know in the comments section.

Finally, we are always happy to take requests, so if you want us to blog about something in particular you can add those to the comments too.

*Image credit: negatendo on Flickr (I had to use a cat picture once this year).

The Ultimate Guide to Securing a Job in Social Media, SEO & PPC

Shaad Hamid — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 12:01:19 +0000

There are many misconceptions about the kind of skills and traits you need in order to find a job within the Search Engine and Social Media Marketing Industry (hereinafter referred to as ‘SE & SMM Industry’). In order to dispel most of these misconceptions and to provide a guide-like resource to anyone looking to make their first step into the world of search and social, I have listed eight tips that would keep you in good stead in your job search including how to answer the dreaded “what prior experience do you have in Search and Social Media Marketing?” question.

Tip # 1 – Turn the darn news off!

How many of us have heard of how bleak the current climate is in terms of employment for new graduates? Almost every day I see depressing stats thrown about on news sites. So please do yourself a favour and turn a Nelsonian eye on all the negativity regarding current unemployment levels. Why is this important? It’s important because you reflect the state you’re in to potential employers. You want to portray the best version of ‘you’ to them. Negative stories on the media only reinforce the belief that you will not secure a job (which obviously isn’t true).

Tip #2 – Learn industry jargon

The first thing that intimidates most people from absolutely anything is the unfamiliarity of a situation, a place or a group. This is true for the SE & SMM industry as well. We tend to use a lot of industry jargon to sound cleverer than we actually are. So for anyone not familiar with commonly used phrases and terms, this industry may seem quite intimidating.

For example read the following terms:

rel=”canonical”
Sitemaps
301 redirect
Panda update
GWT
Robots.txt

If you don’t have a clue about what these words mean don’t think, “Oh man! This industry isn’t for me!” rather, make a note of these terms and find out their meanings. In times like these, the mantra I take solace in is “every expert was once a beginner”. So even today, there are times when I end up at meetings where I don’t understand what some people say. The key is to not be intimidated but to learn these terms and learn them quick. The beauty of this industry is that everyone’s constantly learning, including the ‘experts’. This is important to know especially when you start off because you will hear lots of new terms and words that are unfamiliar to you. So be comfortable in being in the realm of the unknown and enjoy the exciting but steep learning curve ahead of you.

Tip #3 – Start networking early!

Our Director of search, Kevin Gibbons, mentioned that he met final year university students at Pubcon (a search conference held in Vegas) recently, who were walking around meeting industry leaders and handing out business cards. They were networking even before finding a job, so make sure you attend industry events or even local networking events and build relationships with people within the industry. Once you’ve met with them make sure you continue fostering the relationship via Twitter and LinkedIn.

Tip #4 – Ask and you shall receive:

This links with the previous tip; once you’ve networked and met someone influential within the industry don’t go “could you give me/find me a job please?”, rather ask the right questions. Ask questions about current roles that are in demand, or what skills are valued the most and what’s hot within the industry right now? These questions will give you greater insights into the skills that are in demand and will help you focus on a particular role to go after.

Tip #5 – Find your niche that match your strengths

If you ask me what the best thing about working in the SE & SMM industry is, I’d say it’s the diversity of the individuals who make up this industry. Surprisingly not all of us are geeks, technical, or even tech savvy but we’re good at what we specialise in. no one can be amazing at everything, so there are niches within this big umbrella called Digital Marketing or eMarketing. If you take the SEOptimise team as an example, you will find some with degrees in computer science, business development, classical archaeology & ancient history, physics & philosophy, mathematics, mechanical engineering, business management and the list goes on. So if your degree has absolutely nothing to do with computers, it is perfectly fine! I believe this industry is big enough to accommodate your skills and talents.

Tip #6 – Leverage your existing skills

If you’ve got any of the following skills, make sure you highlight them in your CV:

You have web development and design skills – this is the most natural transition into the world of Search and Social Media. Simply because you know what it takes to build a site, so it’s only logical that you learn how to promote your site to your target audience. Most often these people you target are either searching for something on Google/Bing/Yahoo/Baidu or passing their time on Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn. So the very basic objective of Search and Social Media Marketing is to make sure your website is in the faces of these people.

You are analytical – you love statistics, you love mathematics, you love excel then you might enjoy PPC or Paid Search. This is where you pay search engines and social media platforms to display your adverts and promote your brand, service or any offering.

Writing is your passion – the SEO industry is waking up to the fact that quality content is integral to all marketing activities. Big brands are taking web content really seriously! So if you love writing really engaging, thought provoking, high quality content then you can enter this industry as a copywriter. Tom Critchlow went to the extent of suggesting that every company should appoint a ‘chief content officer’ to manage and maintain quality web content.

You are creative and think out of the box – this trait can be useful in a number of ways. You could be creative in coming up with really interesting blog posts, you could come up with really creative ways of doing link building that others haven’t thought of. If you love expressing your creativity through art or graphics, you could be really good at creating and designing infographics. More importantly you could come up with loads of creative ideas for SEO, PPC or Social Media campaigns (as you would in an advertising agency).

You are a software engineer and programming is your thing – the SEO industry is always looking for new and innovative software and tools to be built in order to make their day to day work easier. So when you network with people within the SE & SMM industry be sure to ask “what kind of tools would you like built to make you work more efficiently?” find out what these are and build them. If you can go to an interview and say you built a tool that your friend (or an agency) uses to manage their Facebook ad campaigns or it helped them manage SEO projects efficiently, I can assure you the agency will be quite interested in you. Having someone in-house to develop tools that improve efficiency and productivity is a competitive advantage for any agency.

If you are a people person – you love a good social gathering and love meeting new people, or you are really good at picking up the phone and striking conversations with strangers, then you could get into link building and do some serious ‘blogger outreach’ activities. Link building is probably the most difficult and time consuming activity in SEO. Therefore, it helps if you are a natural hustler. And trust me; your skills will be worth its weight in gold!

At the top of my head, these were the skills that came to mind, if I have missed anything please do pop down to the comments and share with us what other skills that you think can fit into this massive puzzle called the SE & SMM industry.

Tip #7 – Find out what employers are looking for

Some very famous people within the industry have listed what they look for in a candidate in the post titled How To Recruit An SEO – The SEO Industry Leaders Reveal Their Secrets which I urge you to read. Bear in mind this particular post is aimed at people with a little more experience within the industry, having said that, it’s still a good idea to learn about the thought process of those who actually hire you.

Tip #8 – Answering the dreaded “so what experience do you have in SE & SMM?” question

OK so you must be thinking this is all well and fine. But every time I apply for a job they ask me what experience I have. How do I gain experience if I don’t get an opportunity to build experience? This is actually a great question and I completely share your frustration. But the beauty of the SE & SMM industry is that you don’t need to hold a job or a position in order to demonstrate your skills in SEO, PPC or social media. Yes, you read that right!

Here are some ways you can demonstrate hands on experience:

Be an active member in clubs and societies at university

While at university join a club or a society and put yourself up to be part of these committees. Or if you don’t find any club interesting, you could go ahead and start your own club. Setup a Facebook page and a twitter page and start managing it. This experience will give you loads of insight into how difficult it is to actually manage and promote a Facebook page. Get familiar with tools like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck, learn how to schedule tweets, test out what works on social media and what doesn’t. If you could go into an interview and say I set up a Facebook page for my club and increased its fans from virtually none to 856 within 6 months and list out the activities you undertook in order to increase these numbers, I can assure you they’d be well impressed.

Don’t forget volunteer work, internships and work experience roles

I know there is debate about interns not getting paid and whether it’s ethical or even legal to not get paid for work experience. I shall not comment on the politics or the legality of this practice in this post, but in my case I worked two internships before landing my proper role within the SE & SMM industry. My first internship role was unpaid and the second paid me a very small wage! So at one point I worked two jobs at the same time and worked about 70 hours a week! One job gave me the necessary skills for my career and the second paid my bills. In no way am I encouraging you to follow in my footsteps (seriously, I was out of my mind!) but the fact that I took on internship roles that were directly related to the career I wanted to pursue, helped me look attractive to potential employers. So don’t ever write off doing volunteer and internship roles. Any experience that is relevant is good experience!

Go around asking SMEs if they need a hand with SE & SMM

Recently a couple of friends asked me what they could do to demonstrate their skills in social media. I advised that they go out and find ultra-local businesses such as restaurants, pubs and cafes and suggest setting up Facebook and Twitter profiles for these businesses and offer to manage these. Local business owners don’t have the time to invest in social media and probably even don’t see the point in it. If you can convince them that it’s a great way to retain customers and win new ones, chances are they will let you be their social media guy. Also speak to local charities and offer to do some volunteer work and devise plans on how you could help their fundraising activities through social media. Also make sure to organise events at university and use Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to promote them. All this is work experience and makes your CV look good to potential employers.

Make sure you blog (especially if you want a role as a copywriter)

If you want to get into SE&SMM as a copy writer, make sure you blog regularly and build a decent following. Write about subjects that excite you or are passionate about, such as reviewing movies, albums, books, restaurants and events. Show you can blog about different subject areas and build relationships with other bloggers. One industry where SEO, PPC and Social Media are integral to the success of their business is the travel industry. So make sure you write about traveling, hotels, countries and cities in an exciting and engaging way. Also it would be advantageous if you could demonstrate your ability to write copy in a completely different style to that of your own. This is because most often you will be writing on topics that may be alien to you.

You have your own website

If you know how to develop and design websites, then a really good way to demonstrate first-hand SEO skills is to set up your own website and implement SEO techniques. Test different title tags, landing pages and link building efforts and see how they affect search engines rankings, traffic etc. also include social elements such as the many Facebook, Twitter and Google+ sharing features. Set up Google Analytics, Google webmaster tools and Bing webmaster tools to your site and familiarise yourself with these interfaces and their features. Again, these are all demonstrable skills that are extremely valued by employers. The idea is to show you’re keen, enthusiastic and hungry to learn and improve your skills.

Some words of wisdom from people within the industry:

I asked around from active members of the SE & SMM industry what advice they’d give to someone embarking on a career in this industry. Here’s what they said:

“The biggest piece of advice I can give is two-fold. Always be learning and get involved in the community. There’s so much to learn about search every day and the community is invaluable, people are so helpful and generous and very interesting because so many people came into SEO from so many different backgrounds. It’s a ton of fun to meet and learn from so many diverse people. Don’t ever let your skills get dusty, always test, always challenge what you’ve learned and always be open to learning from other people.” – Michael King (aka iPullRank).

“From my experience, graduates who are looking for jobs in this sector must be able to display some key attributes. Presence on the web – a Facebook profile alone isn’t enough. You have to be active on Twitter, LinkedIn etc. also it’s essential to have some other sort of project. It could be a Youtube channel, a blog or a website. Something you can show that you have an explicit interest in. Once you’ve got your first job you’re going to learn so much. Until then, its enthusiasm that’s going to get you the job you want.” – Gillian Cook

“I would suggest setting up a site of your own and doing SEO for it. It will mean you can demonstrate understanding and you get to have a play. Also, use one of the free AdWords vouchers to learn PPC. I would also consider doing the Analytics and AdWords exams as they aren’t greatly expensive and will give you a really good technical start.” – Matthew Taylor

“Employers can be a lot more selective in their recruitment process nowadays, and as a result, are always on the lookout for the candidates who have something extra to offer. Look for work experience whilst studying; put it on your CV. Look for ways to practice things in your own time; put it on your CV. Just get something that makes you look better on paper than the people around you.” - Daniel Braddock

Here are some additional resources:

beginners guide to SEO: a must read if you are new to SEO.

The Ultimate Guide to Getting a Job & Getting Promoted by Marcus Taylor.

How To Interview for an SEO Job by Chelsea Blacker.

How to impress at an SEO interview by Kevin Gibbons

SEO and Social Media leaders to follow on Twitter, Facebook, Google+….

As with any industry, the SE & SMM industry have within its niche its own experts who have reached celebrity-like status. I have listed some of the biggest names within the industry here as you’re sure to hear their names regularly in conversation with SEOs and Social Media Marketers.

Danny Sullivan (Search Engine Land)
Matt Cutts (Google)
Vanessa Fox (Nine By Blue)
Aaron Wall (SEOBook)
Rand Fishkin (SEOmoz)
Danny Dover (author of SEO secrets)
Richard Baxter (SEOgadget)
Michael King (aka iPullRank)
Will Critchlow (Distilled)
Brian Solis (Altimeter)
Chris Brogan
Jay Baer
Scott Monty (Ford)
David Armano (Edleman)

Conclusion

I’ve tried to make this post as comprehensive and as useful to you as possible. However, if I have missed something, please do feel free to pop down to the comments section and add anything you think is relevant to the topic.

Finally, I wish you all the very best in your job search in the SE & SMM industry. I leave you with one last quote from Richard Baxter who was asked by Matthew Ogston what he bases his decision on when hiring someone new; his head or his heart?

“Most definitely my heart. It’s probably not ideal but genuinely, I look out for people I think will blend in well with the team (a cultural fit) – this can’t be measured with facts and figures, at least not in my experience. Obviously there’s a requirement to demonstrate previous achievements, but I also look for raw intelligence and problem solving over experience. SEO I can teach, attitude and aptitude I cannot.” (emphasis mine)

*Image credit: Tulane Public Relations on Flickr.

What’s Been the Most Significant Change in Search During 2011?

Kevin Gibbons — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 14:16:08 +0000

Last week I setup a Facebook poll to ask people what they considered to be the most significant change in search during 2011. This has received a great response, so here are the results so far (you can still take part on the SEOptimise fan page):

To recap on what these changes were:

Google Panda (37 votes) – if you haven’t heard of Google Panda, I’m not sure where you’ve been. Myself and Daniel Bianchini presented at A4UExpo earlier in the year which may help to explain about the impact of Google Panda.
SSL Search (17 Votes) – as mentioned in the comments, if there was a poll for the most annoying change this would have won hands down – with Google deciding to take away a portion of keyword data from logged-in search for privacy reasons.
Social signals and integration (9 votes) – still debatable over social media’s current impact to search this year, but with the recent Google freshness algorithm update and the launch/continued push of Google+ it’s clearly something which should be high on the agenda for 2012.
Google+ (2 votes) – Google’s most successful attempt at social media to date, Google+.
Siri (1 vote) – thanks Nichola! If anyone else saw the keynote at Pubcon, they’d realise that Google is dead and the future is Siri. I certainly won’t be making any predictions like that myself any time soon!
Removal of Yahoo! Site Explorer (1 vote) – this is big news for SEOs, as many of us have relied on Yahoo! in the past to provide accurate link analysis. Now none of the search engines provide full link data, leaving us to decide which link analysis tool to use?
Roll out of Bing/Yahoo search alliance (0 votes) - of course, the increase in market share by combining Bing/Yahoo was announced last year, but the roll out of this has been in motion (or slow motion?) this year.

So which change do you think will have the biggest impact to search? The poll is still open too, so please take part…

How to Create a Friendlier Forum

Rachel McCombie — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 13:47:48 +0000

Has your brand ever considered setting up a forum on its website for visitors?

The benefits to a brand of a successful online community can be considerable. It builds visitor loyalty, helps generate inbound links and can let you rank for really niche and long-tail keywords and phrases. If it’s successful, a forum can work wonders for a website – but this success depends on it becoming a sociable and useful space. And, among other things, that means no trolls!

So how does one achieve that? Building a successful forum is far from easy. It takes time, investment and enthusiasm. If you’re considering creating one for your visitors, there are things you can do to make it a pleasant online environment – it won’t become a success if it’s antisocial or slanderous.

Here are my golden rules for helping your brand’s forum become a genuinely sociable place.

Set out a specific moderation policy
Although there are many benefits to a forum, there are also real dangers. The main one is that the content is beyond your control, putting you at risk of hosting slander or even negative comments about your brand.

On the other hand, you risk alienating visitors by excessively heavy-handed, biased or inconsistent moderation.

That is why it is so essential to establish a policy on moderating your forum and to stick to it. If you crack down hard on someone insulting your brand but ignore personal attacks on someone else, visitors will question your integrity.

Remember, the way a forum is moderated will set the tone. Make sure you only impose rules that you’d be happy following if the forum was on someone else’s website.

Ensure everyone’s read the rules
Invite everyone to read the moderation rules you’ll be using and post regular reminders. There are plenty of examples available on existing forums, so don’t worry about taking some inspiration from those.

Some of these rules will be obvious – no personal attacks, no spam, no commercial links, for example. However, it’s also worth getting your brand’s legal adviser to take a look at your first draft. These rules are to protect you from legal threats as well as to make your forum a more pleasant place to post.

Ensure that everyone who posts on your forum has been invited to read the rules as part of their sign-up process and then make sure you enforce them consistently.

Reward positive behaviour
You want members to stick around and help one another, even after they have got whatever it is they originally wanted from the forum.

A successful forum is usually based around a core few individuals who support other visitors and provide help, advice or conversation to new members. You need to encourage that kind of core in order to give your online community a backbone.

One way to do that is to reward positive behaviour, for example, people who respond to questions. One way to do that is to give people points for useful replies – inviting other community members to score posts and award points.

By earning points, members could earn additional privileges, such as a greater selection of avatars or more freedom than other members, perhaps to post links or create polls. You should show you value members who are trustworthy and who enhance the community.

Enlist the community
While it’s a good idea for any brand-affiliated forum to moderate the comments being made on its pages, it increases the forum’s integrity if the users themselves are involved in policing it.

This can be done in a number of ways. For example, you can give members the power to flag up posts for moderation – perhaps with a clause that enough votes automatically remove the post. You could also give trustworthy members the power to moderate other visitors. A self-policed community is less likely to be accused of having a corporate bias.

This can also free up some of your time, as moderating a forum can be an endless task. But it’s a good idea to retain top level control. For example, perhaps don’t allow your community moderators to ban other members without your approval.

Don’t allow anonymous posts
Some people may disagree, but I think that the most successful and friendly forums are the ones that require you to register with a valid email address.

Anonymous comments invite trouble, as individuals can respond and comment without any real thought. Yes, requiring visitors to register can take some time and yes, that will put some people off.

However, by demanding visitors invest a few moments supplying an email address before they can participate, you deter them from making snide or flippant comments off the cuff.

This reduces the risk of the forum becoming a hotbed of spam and slander. It also gives you an opportunity to invite them to sign up their email address to a newsletter or marketing email. Don’t automatically enrol them, though, as this could affect their loyalty. As Rand Fishkin advised at SearchLove 2011, keep the self-serving stuff to an absolute minimum and ensure your online community meets the needs of your target audience first and foremost – the rest will take care of itself.

*Image credit: Kicki on Flickr.

30 Web Trends for 2012: How SEO, Search, Social Media, Blogging, Web Design & Analytics Will Change

Tad Chef — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 14:50:40 +0000

It’s this time of year again! In the previous years my web trends lists were very successful, both as predictions and by traffic or number of shares.

People working in the web industries want to know what’s ahead.

So for 2012 I want to tell you again what’s coming up. Basically I’m not predicting anything here; instead I just list trends you can already see and measure, but which will be obvious next year.

SEO

Good bye PageRank and links – links and PageRank matter less and less. In 2012 more ranking factors will probably be about other signals than conventional a href links. Google will use all kinds of other data including feedback human quality raters to overcome the big decade long link buying spree.

Freshness – the latest Google update is perhaps more important than the high quality update dubbed Panda. Nobody cries about it because it wasn’t about penalties for sites but about improvements for searchers this time. This is good news for big news sites and bad news for brands with questionable business practices. The bad news will show up on top.

Quality – the Panda update wasn’t really about pandas, as I hope you know: it was about ”high quality” sites. Thus focusing on quality metrics that entail usability, readability and overall usefulness is key in 2012. Underpaid quality raters are out there to get you, sometimes even without a look on your actual site.

SEO is just a part – SEO isn’t dead in 2012, but it’s more and more part of bigger ideas and concepts. This year it seems it’s not SEO 2.0 or findability anymore. The new en vogue terms are content marketing, inbound marketing, digital marketing or Internet/online marketing (again). SEO practitioners do just stuff meta tags, but their tasks now encompass much more.

SEO marries CRO – The two disciplines, SEO and CRO or conversion optimisation are just two sides of one coin. While SEO focused on getting traffic, CRO concentrates on making this traffic work for you. I’ve watched these two disciplines converge more and more. In 2012 you will rarely have one without the other. I know I predicted this for 2011, but many people still tried to divide the two sides of the same coin.

Search

Google does it again – Google has quickly reacted to competition from small contenders like Blekko, Ixquick and DuckDuckGo. It has appropriated all improvements and features by these faster competitors – be it the removal of content farms by Blekko or the introduction of SSL search by Ixquick or referral blocking by DuckDuckGo, Google offers it all now as well.

Even more confusion – last year I predicted more clutter in Google results and was nevertheless unprepared for the wide range of changes leading to portal-like search results. In particular, many changes on local searches lead to even more information stuffed in the SERPs. Furthermore, the manifold social enhancements such as who +1′ed, shared or authored a post make the SERPs look like a collection of gif clip art. I’m afraid this won’t be the end of this trend of more confusion.

Search without clicking – in 2011 several small moves by Google showed a tendency to show search results as content directly on Google, thus making a click to the actual page not necessary anymore. We will see more of it until people start suing Google for stealing their content.

Google does it already on Google News, Google Places and Google Images. It also owns YouTube, where most video searches end up. They want the same thing for text search as well. They don’t want people to leave Google properties at all. Google+ brand pages just add to it.

Google reads your mind – we already got used to the sometimes annoying instant search results that appear even before you type something meaningful. Google works on more ways to find out what you need and give it to you even before you ask. Just consider the multiple data sources Google now has about you: Google toolbar, Chrome, Profiles, Plus, search history…

Speech recognition – Siri, the speech recognition ”assistant” on the latest iPhone, makes people talk with their phones and it’s extremely popular already. In 2012 we will see Apple’s competitors come up with similar tools so that we don’t need to talk to people or type in search queries anymore. Is this the end of SEO as some journalists assume (just like some suggest after every other major change in the search industry)?

No, it just means different kinds of queries, maybe more colloquial or clumsy ones. Maybe more dialogue with your search engine, for example ”I want something to eat”. I can’t imagine people just saying one, two or three word queries in public without looking silly. So they will talk as they do with other people.

Mobile grows – no surprise here. Mobile search will grow in 2012 again. How big it will become? Some pundits suggest that more than 1/5 of all searches will be conducted via mobile devices.

Social media

Google+ stays tiny – Google+ is being heralded and pushed by Google in search results because it’s still tiny – it hasn’t even reached a social networking market share of 0.5%, while Facebook owns approximately 65% of it.

Facebook losing ground – despite its almost monopolistic position, Facebook is already losing ground. In 2011 Facebook lost 6 million users in the US. The various privacy scandals and annoyances, along with alternatives like Diaspora, Google+ or Tumblr, will accelerate this process in 2012.

Oversaturation – it has been evident for a while already, but in 2011 most people noticed it: people can’t join more social media sites and spend even more time there without spending 24h on social networking and creating user generated content. We witnessed this when Quora appeared and demanded constant attention and production of high quality content.

Also, the emergence of Google+ has shown that most average people already have enough to do with Facebook and the likes. In 2012 it will finally become obvious that the social networking and UGC market is saturated and that creating another site that demands time and effort is not a valid business model anymore.

Social bookmarking vs social saving – last time I predicted the death of social bookmarking. In a way I was right, though luckily Delicious, the original social bookmarking site, has survived. Nonetheless it moved on to a different model of sharing links. Other social bookmarking sites or their competitors have created something that has no name but that I’d like to call social saving.

People are saving snippets or whole webpages using tools like Diigo, Evernote or bo.lt to collect, edit and share them. The future is bright for these type of tools in 2012 as webpages, articles or blog posts you want to bookmark vanish faster than you can look.

Curation – Curation is the collection of resources by an editor or a user who acts as an ad-hoc editor. Search engines like Blekko or Rollyo use curation but also third party services that create “Twitter newspapers”. With the relaunch of Delicious as a curation site for compiling small lists (aka stacks of links), the idea has been given another push. Adding +1 votes to search results is another kind of curation.

Social CRM goes prime time – customer relationship management (CRM) and social media converged for a few years now but there was no perfect solution to merge those two. In 2011 Nimble CRM appeared. This tool is so simple to use and flawlessly combines CRM, email and social media sites Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn in one place, so that you can save lots of time and effort when trying to generate leads right on there on social media sites.

Blogging

Quantity vs quality – in 2011 people blogged less often, but when they blogged they wrote long articles. With the new freshness algorithm Google just introduced, the process might get reversed, as now the latest articles are more likely to show up on top in the top 10.

Tumblr – miniblogging is still growing, at least the market leader Tumblr. Why is Tumblr such a success? It’s a bit like Facebook, a bit like blogging and a bit like Twitter, but it combines the best of all of them. You can like or “heart” postings, you can reblog them and you can use a pseudonym like on Twitter. In 2011 many high level bloggers even moved their blogs from WordPress to Tumblr for the sake of simplicity and ease of use. Also, never underestimate the huge Tumblr audience.

Corporate blogging fails – businesses dump blogging in order to invest in Facebook marketing some statistics suggest. This is like giving up your office and doing business from Starbucks. Despite logic, this seems to be an appealing business model both in real life and online. Why host your own website and practice SEO, networking and advertising to get people to visit it when you can rent a “table” at Facebook. This is quite a short-sighted and risky move but business people tend to follow this trend.

Line breaks – for the sake of readability bloggers use more text-decoration, lists and breaks. Some overdo it though it seems. Not every line needs a break after it, not every post has to be a list and every second word has to be bold.

Web development

No more Flash – there will be no Flash on Android and RIM tablets and smartphones anymore. Thus the original Flash will die finally. Adobe is already working on a HTML5 implementation instead. So Flash will be probably resurrected based on Web Standards.

UX surpasses usability – if you believe Google Insights for search is a reliable statistic, you can see that in 2011 the interest in UX or user experience design has outgrown the dwindling popularity of the keyword usability. Fewer and fewer people are satisfied with usability because it’s too limited. The overall user experience, which includes emotional states of the user in its ideas, is the more important discipline of both.

@font-face usage - I remember it as if it was yesterday, when I first heard about the @font-face CSS method to embedding web-safe fonts to websites around 2004; I couldn’t wait until web browsers started supporting them. It took almost a decade and half a dozen font replacement techniques to make this CSS3 method work in most modern browsers. Now most browsers support it and we already see an abundance of websites using beautiful and readable typography. In 2012 we will probably see this going mainstream.

HTML5 innovation – when HTML5 came up, the hype was huge but I rarely ever noticed some HTML5 that wowed me. Most websites still seemed to look boring. Yes they were readable, usable, maybe even findable but what about the 21st century design I’d expect in 2011? Well, now the sites that really use HTML5 to create a design beyond a few boxes start appearing in larger numbers.

Analytics

Referral keywords - Google proprietary SSL search kills the Google keyword referrer. You can’t even see it on an SSL site, as Google removes the keyword using a script. Thus people will finally look at conversions not keywords.

Klout – no other metric has been so obsessed about both in a positive and a negative way recently. People love and hate Klout as if it was a nation or a religion. Whether you like Klout or not, it’s the elephant in the room. The social media influence measurement may be flawed at the moment, but it’s still the best there is. Also, Google has similar metrics for authors or might acquire Klout in the near future, maybe even in 2012. What’s safe to say is that in 2012 you won’t just measure websites but also people.

Rankings, traffic – simple SEO metrics such as rankings and traffic die a slow death. The search referrer blocking by Google may be only the last nail in the coffin of simplistic SEO metrics. When you can’t even see what keywords people use and thus can’t segment your search traffic properly, this metrics becomes useless.

Real time analytics – Google finally caught up with the competition this year, adding real time features to Google Analytics. At least a dozen of other vendors have been offering real time data for a while, and even better than Google Analytics if you ask me.

ROI – business people finally seem to overcome the ROI frenzy. ROI is important for both SEO and social media campaigns, but you can’t quantify everything by chasing after Return On Investment. It seems that in 2011 this simple truth has dawned on marketers and analysts all over the place so that we can sit back and watch other metrics in the coming year.

Feel free to add more trends you want to get noticed in the comment section or on social media.

* Creative Commons image by Express Monorail.

© SEOptimise - Download our free business guide to blogging whitepaper and sign-up for the SEOptimise monthly newsletter. 30 Web Trends for 2012: How SEO, Search, Social Media, Blogging, Web Design & Analytics Will Change

28 Top Takeaway Tweets From SAScon Mini 2011

Kevin Gibbons — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 13:46:56 +0000

Last week I spoke on the SSL search panel at the SAScon mini conference in Manchester.

This is a great conference, with the main SAScon event taking place in May – and to cover main tips and takeaways from this I’ve listed the top 28 tweets:

Testing products not enough - spend time talking to your customers #sascon

November 24, 2011 3:10 pm via Twitter for iPhone ReplyRetweetFavorite

@kevgibbo

Kevin Gibbons

"@karate_barbie: #sascon social: like link building - look for authority not quantity"

November 24, 2011 3:47 pm via Mobile Web ReplyRetweetFavorite

@seobelle

Sadie Sherran

Split test analysis recommendation: http://t.co/Xm9nEq5o #sascon

November 24, 2011 2:55 pm via Mobile Web ReplyRetweetFavorite

@ChelseaBlacker

Chelsea Blacker

#sascon biggest mistake people make when split testing is not making bold changes

November 24, 2011 2:56 pm via Seesmic ReplyRetweetFavorite

@rhyswynne

Rhys Wynne

Only way to test conversion process = signup/order products! eg @karlblanks testing dating site & weightwatchers #sascon

November 24, 2011 3:07 pm via Twitter for iPhone ReplyRetweetFavorite

@kevgibbo

Kevin Gibbons

There was a quote "50% of ecommerce users are logged into Facebook" made at #SAScon by, I think, @badams. Where did this number come from?

November 28, 2011 12:40 pm via webReply RetweetFavorite

@PG_Martin

Paul Martin

"Everybody clicks on the shopping results so get a feed." Too right! @badams #Sascon

November 24, 2011 5:09 pm via Twitter for Android ReplyRetweetFavorite

@Justhipper

Justhipper

You can't convert if you don't know why users aren't buying - find reasons & reassure them #sascon

November 24, 2011 3:16 pm via Twitter for iPhone ReplyRetweetFavorite

@kevgibbo

Kevin Gibbons

"Your site's internal search is a big, big source of keywords." #sascon

November 24, 2011 5:05 pm via HootSuite ReplyRetweetFavorite

@pushonltd

PushON

#sascon if your site structure sucks, so will your SEO via @badams

November 24, 2011 5:05 pm via HootSuite ReplyRetweetFavorite

@karate_barbie

Tracey Drain

Do NOT leave customers with a thank u page. Push them further. #sascon

November 24, 2011 3:03 pm via Mobile Web ReplyRetweetFavorite

@ChelseaBlacker

Chelsea Blacker

Microdata works on reviews waste of time for anything else via @badams #sascon

November 24, 2011 5:12 pm via Mobile Web ReplyRetweetFavorite

@seobelle

Sadie Sherran

Address objections like xplaining "we hav no phone number to keep costs low and deliver u mega cheap prices" #sascon

November 24, 2011 3:25 pm via Mobile Web ReplyRetweetFavorite

@ChelseaBlacker

Chelsea Blacker

Kampyle, Kiss Insights, Survey Monkey, Google Alerts all recommended for conversion optimisation #sascon

November 24, 2011 3:22 pm via Twitter for iPhone ReplyRetweetFavorite

@kevgibbo

Kevin Gibbons

#sascon get your hands on clients tv & radio advert schedule. Time it with your SEO for optimum results.

November 24, 2011 4:01 pm via HootSuite ReplyRetweetFavorite

@karate_barbie

Tracey Drain

"if your product is out of stock, do.not show a 404. - i will find you and kill you" @badams. #sascon

November 24, 2011 5:09 pm via Seesmic ReplyRetweetFavorite

@danbellj

Dan Bell

After sale think of how you can get users to purchase again or leave feedback. Could be fresh content ;) #sascon

November 24, 2011 3:05 pm via Tweetbot for iPhone ReplyRetweetFavorite

@pinje

Dan Alderson

How did you find us? Open-text results far more insightful/specific than drop-down web field #sascon

November 24, 2011 3:29 pm via Twitter for iPhone ReplyRetweetFavorite

@kevgibbo

Kevin Gibbons

At #SAScon we were told by @majesticseo's @dixon_jones to only use the fresh index when collecting backlink data since it's up2date&accurate

November 28, 2011 3:37 pm via webReply RetweetFavorite

@ChelseaBlacker

Chelsea Blacker

90% of all media consumed starts with search - it is the key to everything says @citizenrobert PR people you need to come to #sascon #prcanc

November 25, 2011 11:00 am via webReply RetweetFavorite

@nickywake

Nicky Wake

@danbarker's @econsultancy article: How to steal some 'not provided' data back from Google http://t.co/BRTCCvZU #SAScon

November 24, 2011 2:49 pm via HootSuite ReplyRetweetFavorite

@joannahalton

Joanna Halton

Why has mobile been left out by this ssl... Mobile is more personal than a PC now ... #sascon

November 24, 2011 2:41 pm via Twitter for iPhone ReplyRetweetFavorite

@TamarUK

Tamar UK

#sascon google have gone a step forward with transparency and gone three steps backwards with the whole SSL stuff.

November 24, 2011 2:26 pm via Echofon ReplyRetweetFavorite

@APSG

Amrit Gill

SSL panel: "There are so many metrics to measure SEO success, not just keywords," says Chelsea Blacker #sascon

November 24, 2011 2:46 pm via HootSuite ReplyRetweetFavorite

@pushonltd

PushON

Panel on SSL search #SAScon: @SamuelCrocker nails it - data accuracy matters.

November 24, 2011 2:25 pm via Twitter for iPad ReplyRetweetFavorite

@badams

Barry Adams

The room believe: SSL search is here to stay and the (not provided) percentage is expected to grow. #SASCON

November 24, 2011 2:45 pm via Twitter for iPhone ReplyRetweetFavorite

@latitudexpress

Latitude Express

Contracts based on the growth of organic non-branded traffic - massive changes in the way we get paid. But not in the way we do work #SAScon

November 24, 2011 2:46 pm via HootSuite ReplyRetweetFavorite

@joannahalton

Joanna Halton

. @kevgibbo says although (not provided) is big in tech industry, in other industries it is a lot smaller #sascon

November 24, 2011 2:23 pm via Seesmic ReplyRetweetFavorite

@rhyswynne

Rhys Wynne

For those who were at the event, what were your favourite bits?

Social media and blogging tips for businesses at OxonDigital

Daniel Bianchini — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 14:19:26 +0000

On 23rd November the SEOptimise team attended OxonDigital, a local digital and networking event that I have created in Oxford for all things digital. The focus of the latest event was Social Media and Blogging for businesses with presentations from Ali Luke and our very own Marcus Taylor.

The event was well attended, with over 40 members in the audience from various backgrounds and coming from as far as Banbury.

Ali started the presentations by talking about the basics to blogging for your business, giving away some great tips to help start or improve your business blog. Following on from Ali’s presentation Marcus discussed Social Media and ROI, providing a different angle on what ROI from Social Media could be. The presentations were followed by a Q&A session where the audience asked some interesting questions based on the presentation given, and from personal experience.

SEOptimise are proud to sponsor local events like OxonDigital and encourage those based in and around Oxford who are interested in all things digital to come along to the next event. To keep up to date, follow OxonDigital on Twitter @OxonDigital or visit www.oxondigital.co.uk

You can view their presentations below.

Ali Luke presented on Blogging for Business

Marcus Taylor presented on Five Ways to Drive Business Using Social Media (Instantly)

OxonDigital – Oxford’s Digital Networking & Social Event

Where is Google Going with Google+ Pages?

Marcus Taylor — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 12:51:00 +0000

Launching a social network is to some extent a bit of a chicken and egg scenario these days, as you need people to encourage the businesses to get involved, but businesses can also attract more people.

This morning Google launched the metaphorical egg in their social network chicken and egg scenario – they launched ‘Google+ Pages’ as a means for businesses to join Google+. The question now is: if businesses join Google+, will it encourage more people to join and utilise the network?

Does Google Have the Power to Make Google+ Successful? Of Course!

If Google ranks Google+ pages highly for branded searches, people will be directed to Google+ from Google’s search engines. If Google integrates Google Places/Local Deals into Google+, then Google may prioritise Google+ Pages for local searches.

Google receive over 400 million search queries a day – that’s a big opportunity that Google are only just beginning to tap into as a means for driving traffic to Google+.

For Google+ to take off, people need to rely on or even need a Google+ account to get the most out of the web. As Google already own a large proportion of the web’s staple services, it makes a lot of sense for Google to integrate those services into Google+ and make them better for people using the network, as an incentive to join Google+. They also need a significant amount of regular traffic, which again is unlikely to be a major problem for Google.

Why Google+ Pages may become beneficial for brands

Currently, Google+ Pages are incredibly similar to Facebook Pages, with very few improvements other than the ability to easily segment who sees your updates (which I think is a pretty cool feature). However, the bigger picture is that beyond all the little features, Google has the ability to make businesses need a page.

If Google integrated other Google Services into Google+ then…
• Google+ could be a localised social network with the integration of Google Places and Local Deals.
• Google+ could integrate Google Analytics into Pages, which is infinitely more powerful and insightful than Facebook Insights.
• Your Google+ page will rank higher than your Facebook Page in Google for your brand name.

So where is Google+ and will it be the next Facebook / Twitter?
There’s no doubting that Google+ have messed up on a lot of the details (no setting for multiple administrators? No branded URLs?), but the bigger picture is that if Google really want to make this work, they can.

Google+ has not taken off yet because there is not enough stickiness. They need to integrate services that offer continued value for the user when they log in. When a social network gets its users to reach a ‘no return point’, the social network has won.

Ask yourself, could you delete your Twitter or Facebook profile today? For the majority of us probably not, because they provide value in one form or another. Google+ just needs to start serving up the value, which will inevitably be in the form of improving the web for people.

SearchLove 2011: Top Trends

Rachel McCombie — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 10:46:07 +0000

Ok so the “Top 20,001 takeaways” type posts have already been done, so I wanted to make this more of a general view of the themes emerging from this year’s SearchLove conference. I suspect that summarising general trends in what was discussed might be a pretty good reflection of where the SEO industry is now and where it’s heading.

I’ll start off by saying that I enjoyed SearchLove a whole lot more than the other SEO conferences I’ve been to, and not just because of the great food and excellent Monday night party! I felt there was a great deal of enthusiasm among those present, and I came away from the conference feeling inspired and eager to try out the new ideas I heard.

The word "awesome" is being used a lot at this conference. Just saying. #searchlove

October 24, 2011 9:09 am via Twitter for iPhone ReplyRetweetFavorite

@RachelsWritings

Rachel McCombie

So, in no particular order, here are some of the main themes emerging from SearchLove this year…

Good content is more important now than ever before
In the light of several iterations of the Panda update, it came as little surprise to hear the importance of great content emphasised by a number of speakers, with Tom Critchlow even advocating the role of ‘Chief Content Officer’ to manage content strategy effectively. Having a strong content strategy in place, he argued, turbo charges your SEO efforts. Low-quality content harms the whole site – whether it’s bad writing (couldn’t agree more with this one!), too many ads or duplicate content.

Giving your users a great experience
The first session of the conference was Rand Fishkin speaking about developing online communities. For a community to be successful, he argued, it has to benefit the users way more than it benefits you. So why is it worth your while? Because users can build your content and do your SEO for you (forums are particularly good for long-tail optimisation). The importance of giving your users a great experience applies to your website as a whole, of course (not just the community element), a point also covered by Richard Baxter’s talk on ‘gamification’ (below).

‘Gamification’ – or the art of getting people to do what you want
I wondered at the time whether I was the only one who hadn’t ever heard this term before, but by the end of the conference it seemed felt normal, as it was referred to a lot. Richard Baxter gave a very interesting talk on it, looking at how you can reward your users for learning more about your brand by using elements such as leaderboards, points systems and other competitive elements usually found in games. You can apply this to a wide range of things to help you achieve your business goals, whether it’s completing a profile or generating reviews. The upshot is that people are motivated by status, and you can use this to encourage people to take the actions you want them to.

Building online and real-life relationships is good for link building
Blogger outreach should be all about building relationships. Don’t contact people out of the blue asking if they want to feature a blog post – engage with them by following them on Twitter and mentioning/retweeting them, and commenting on their blog; only then should you try approaching them about guest blogging. Though more time consuming, your success will be greater because you’ll be a familiar and friendly name, and you’ll have the added advantage of approaching them with a deeper understanding of what they’re trying to achieve with their blog.

LinkedIn is a surprisingly useful (stalking) asset
SEOMoz’s Joanna Lord pointed out that LinkedIn can be great for sussing out the strategies being taken by your competitors (or those of your clients). Checking out who’s been hired and who’s left can show what competitors are doing and strategies they’re taking in terms of what areas of the business they’re putting their budget in. LinkedIn can also be a good medium for approaching people regarding linking opportunities.

The Dislike button won’t happen
It’s Facebook’s most frequently requested feature apparently, but Mat Clayton argued that it won’t ever be implemented because negativity kills sharing. And whether you’re in SEO or social media, we want people to share! If people think that others will react negatively to something they share (i.e. by ‘disliking’ it), they’ll be less likely to share.

Infographics can still work
The phrase “infographics are so 2009” was bandied about a bit, but ultimately the conclusion seemed to be that they can work if you approach it in the right way. The infectiously enthusiastic Wil Reynolds advised having a marketing plan in place and finding relevant audiences by finding out who’s commented on popular long posts along similar lines. If you use HTML 5 they’re more likely to get shared, as it’s new and there aren’t many examples of it – meaning it’ll appeal to HTML 5 geeks as well as your target audience. And don’t forget to use Google Image search to find naughty people who’ve used your infographic without crediting you – they’ll usually be willing to link back if you ask nicely.

Have I missed out any important themes? Leave a comment below and let me know!