Dom Hodgson – Hodgetastic

Laurence O’Toole – Owner, Analytics SEO

Teddie Cowell – SEO Director, NetBooster

Malcolm Maybury – Director, 360spin

Chris Johnson – Agency Product Specialist, Google

Mobile Use in Local Search

•  1 in 3 mobile searches are local (local modifier or maps query).

Las Vegas Hotels campaign given as an example:

• Desktop site geared towards out-of-towners/tourists – people who intend to visit Las Vegas.
• Mobile sites are often (or should be) geared towards local search.
• Importance of splitting your campaign between mobile and desktop.

 Google Wallet will become more important (a prediction…)

• With this you can give customers offers through your paid search
• Discounts from vouchers/offers will be discounted automatically upon buying.
• Local targeting will make up a big chunk of these sort of campaigns

Google sitelinks change dynamically dependent on location

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The post SAScon 2012: Increasing Site Engagement appeared first on PushON Ltd.

■Good and useful content needn’t just be a lump of continuous prose (the host of the webinar gives an example of a snowboard buying guide on a hugely successful sports company website – 4000 words with no pics)

■Use of images as diagrams for products with emboldened text so the reader knows where to focus – is a good idea.

■Very wordy content may rank well in Google BUT who is going to share an essay like page of continuous prose? – Making useful content which is attractive or at least accessible will mean people are more likely to share it.

■ Here are some different, more imaginative ways of delivering content:

– Video
– FAQs
– Infographic
– Diagrams
– Illustrations

■Infographics, diagrams, FAQs, videos can be seeded and you can build links to them (the webinar host gives an example of a snowboard binding guide video on YouTube that received 100,000 odd hits).

ADDING A YEAR TO PRODUCT CATEGORIES:

■Using Google Insights – take into consideration your ‘year’ traffic.

■For example: Taking the year ’2012′ – if you add it to the product category within title tags and appropriate places on the page – your traffic could increase dramatically. This is especially important if you are in a fashion or eCommerce type business where trends change rapidly.

■The same tactic applies to videos.

■It makes sense to put in the associated year with eCommerce categories as this highly searched for (the host gives examples of YouTube suggested results).

■Also advocated – the use of iGoogle for keeping an eye on search rankings – Rather than having to go to Google insights all the time – you can set it up as your default page.

SPEED IS A COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE!

For more visit: SEOmoz – http://www.seomoz.org/webinars/head-smacking-content-strategies

The post Some Highlights from the SEOmoz Webinar: "Head Smacking Content Strategies". appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Does Google consider SEO to be spam?

Matt Cutt’s breaks it down for us in his video:
“SEO stands for Search engine optimisation and essentially just means trying to make sure your webpages are well represented within search engines”.

And consider the honest to goodness SEO measures (as Cutts does here) taken by righteous and idealistic optimisers – such as:
1. Making sure your pages are ‘crawlable’, or in other words, accessible to SEs.
2. Including the right search terms.
3. Improving usability through good design and internal linking structure.
One Youtube commenter had this to say:

And Matt’s final thoughts….
“There are many, many valid ways in which people can make the world better with SEO”
So the answer is no then. Cheers Matt.

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BS75vhGO-kk

Google real-time analytics beta:

A new addition to Google Analytics (beta) will allow you to see real-time traffic data for your site. These new metrics include number of users on your site right now, which pages they are reading and referrals. The behaviour of potential customers coming at you live. Knowledge like this could be put to good marketing use.

Source: http://analytics.blogspot.com/2011/09/whats-happening-on-your-site-right-now.html

Useful Takeaways from Day 1 of the SearchLove 2011 conference:

Joost de Valk, Tom Critchlow and Rand Fishkin are just a handful of names from the list of SEO aristocracy who gave speeches at the conference.

Here are some of the best bits:
http://www.koozai.com/blog/events/135-takeaways-from-searchlove-day-1-searchlove/

Adwords ceases to support Internet Explorer 6 and introduces ‘bid-per-call’:

This is a notice to Google Adwords users who browse with IE6. Get yourself a new version by the end of the year.
In addition – Adwords is rolling out a phone call bidding scheme for its users.
Sources: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2011/10/retiring-support-for-internet-explorer_27.html and http://adwords.blogspot.com/2011/10/introducing-bid-per-call-in-adwords.html

Broken link checker plugin for WordPress:

This new WordPress plugin will check all of the content on your site for broken links, redirects and missing images. It will then notify you on your dashboard or by email.
Site: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/broken-link-checker/

Google Maps allows you to see inside a shop!

Now, through the power Google, we can look inside a shop whilst exploring a Google map. The next generation of Street View. It just gets better and better.
I managed to get this far inside the comic store –

That shelf at the back looks a bit overloaded to me.

Site: http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=33.742568,-117.820365&spn=0.004853,0.013561&sll=33.742814,-117.816672&layer=c&cid=7704649002191693046&panoid=qHPoNvOZOYBaFsE0vGCa5A&cbp=13,127.37,,0,11.85&gl=us&hq=comic+book+store+orange+county&t=h&vpsrc=0&cbll=33.742848,-117.816622&z=17

Insights into Google’s rating guidelines:

Dr. (SEOmoz) Pete lays down a few snippets of the recently leaked Google guidelines document; for those of you who missed it.
Source: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/16-insights-into-googles-rating-guidelines

And finally…

Many of you will have heard or seen ‘Take this Lollipop’. No more needs to be said – just go to the link here if you haven’t already and then check out this NY Times review (in that order).
Site: http://www.takethislollipop.com/

* A reference to the film – ‘Withnail and I‘

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‘Absolut Life’ Saver:

The purveyor of fine Swedish vodka, Absolut has come up with a startling drink driving awareness application for Facebook named ‘Absolut Life’ (not yet released).  The app will use data from your Facebook profile to then present you with images of your life ‘flashing before your eyes’.  Do check out the video in the link below.

Source: http://vimeo.com/30458663

‘Why Content for SEO?’ Infographic:

This infographic will remind you of the importance of applying high quality content in your SEO campaigns.  Matt Cutts says so, Duane Forrester says so and we all know this to be true, yet we so easily get bogged down with other things.  Sure enough, content backed by sound research and placed correctly with the right keywords to bolster it takes time; but the value it brings!

Website: http://www.brafton.com/blog/introducing-braftons-infographic-why-content-for-seo

New Gmail User Interface (sneak peek):

When Google accidentally posted a video to their YouTube channel showing the brand new look for Gmail, many were treated to a cheeky glimpse of the UI yet to come.  Buttons have been changed from text to little images (Android Honeycomb style) and the conversation view now resembles that of Facebook.

Source: http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/20/gmail-gives-an-accidental-peek-at-its-upcoming-redesign/

MC Hammer announces his new search engine:

Who would have thunk it? Mr Hammer has been out there promoting his pre-beta phased search engine named WireDoo.  Apparently, WireDoo will serve as a provider of more direct information; a move away from Google’s use of contextual elements when yielding search results. Exciting eh?  I quote a good friend:

“I hope Hammer don’t hurt ‘em. I wonder if his magic talking shoes will help walk me through my search. Though it’s nice to know that Hammer does what he want to do, be who he want to be.”

Quote: Jim Morrow – Risk and Consequence

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/celebritology/post/mc-hammer-is-starting-his-own-search-engine/2011/10/20/gIQA3ciH0L_blog.html

Nothing says you care more than a tin of Heinz soup:

For £1.99 you can order a personalised tin of Heinz cream of tomato (or chicken) to be delivered to the door of your poorly friend.  Your ‘Get Well Soon’ message adorned upon the tin will no doubt put a smile on the face of your ailing chum.  Takes 3-4 days for delivery, however, so they might already have recovered by the time it arrives.

Website: http://mashable.com/2011/10/20/heinz-get-well-soon-facebook-soup/

Google Rail View:

Google street car moves to the rail tracks and down as yet untravelled (by Google) trails on snowmobiles.  Soon we will be able to look at pictures of beautiful scenery from the Alps through Street View.

Source: http://thenextweb.com/google/2011/10/20/know-the-google-street-view-car-say-hello-to-the-street-view-train-video/

That’s it for a short spell, readers.  Do come back soon for more cyber news and maybe a few views.

* OK, not quite ‘kicking off’.

The post SEO Weekly Round-Up #12 appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Raven Blog – Forecasting Traffic by Keyword Rank:

Do you ever feel buried under a mountain of metrics? Are you grabbing data here, there and everywhere in an attempt to wow clients that, most likely, do not appreciate the value of a beautiful looking bounce rate pie chart? And who can blame them?
The gumption-filled SEO team at Raven have come up with a useful approach to compiling reports which cuts out all but the ‘actionable analytics’ needed to expediently and efficiently run an online marketing campaign. Focusing on these three metrics: traffic, ranking and conversions – is sticking right to the point of a worthwhile SEO campaign. This is especially useful, or indeed, absolutely necessary for serving clients with smaller budgets or other time constraints.

Source: http://raventools.com/blog/how-to-forecast-traffic-by-keyword-rank/

And speaking of pie charts…..

Raven have done it again with an interesting post on how to rustle up an accessible backlink data chart. Charts and diagrams are created to enable the client (and us) to visualise certain sets of data. Without them we would have to resort to lengthy, continuous prose on the poor state of some client or others backlink profile. Raven’s backlink explorer tool allows you to classify backlinks by anchor text type (for example) which you can fashion into a useful and legible pie chart for use in the quest to prove the value, if not necessity, of SEO to your customer.

Source: http://raventools.com/blog/how-to-create-an-easy-to-understand-pie-chart-from-backlink-data/

Google’s rolling out changes to PPC quality score:

The new Google AdWords algorithm goes global this week which means quality scoring will change to factor landing page quality. Giving more weight to ads with landing pages most relevant to the search query will enhance the user’s experience as well as enabling PPC enjoyers to rank better for lower cost-per-click bids.

Source: http://searchengineland.com/google-tweaks-adwords-to-give-landing-page-quality-more-weight-95488

Google launches “trusted stores” program: 

Google’s new consumer championing scheme has launched this week and goes by the name of Google Trusted Stores.

Designed as an aid to online shoppers; reliable ecommerce sites with a history of timely shipping and good customer service will be furnished with a Trusted Stores badge for their site. Not only does this scheme highlight the trustworthiness of certain honoured vendors -  it offers protection against errors in billing, unfair or non-existent returns policy and slow shipping.

Source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2114053/Google-Trusted-Stores-Launches-with-Etailer-Grades-Free-Purchase-Protection

Export your social data:

With this tool you can export your tweets or other social media data.

It comes with the following claim: “Free your data! Sometimes social networks can go too far. Overzealous privacy policies and poorly thought out redesigns abound! You have an exit strategy!”

Not bad if you want to see what your Facebook status was from 2007 but it will definitely not liberate your data from the clutches of Mark Zuckerberg.

Website: http://export.synack.me/

Daily Mail publishes pre-written “guilty” story for Amanda Knox:

A massive gaff from the Daily Mail who were all too keen to be the first getting news of Amanda Knox’s guilty verdict out there – they published:

“Amanda Knox looked stunned this evening after she dramatically lost her prison appeal against her murder conviction…”

Over-efficiency has not paid off this time for the newspaper as Knox was found not guilty of murder (on appeal) but guilty of slander. No doubt as soon as the reporter heard the judge say ‘guilty’ – he or she hit the publish button.

Source: http://www.malcolmcoles.co.uk/blog/daily-mail-guuilt/

Linkstant – get notified when your site gets a new backlink:

Brought to us by Tom Critchlow and Rob Ousbey  – the Linkstant code, when placed on your site – will notify you as soon as your sites get any new backlinks. The advantage to using this code is the immediacy of getting live backlink information. This could have many useful applications from motivating your team of link builders  – or in running a reputation management project, as another aid in keeping an eye on reviews or other mentions (provided the critic has put a link to your site in there).  Indexing and crawling can take months, analytics can take several days. However, Linkstant is (probably almost) instant.

Website:  http://www.linkstant.com/

So that was the week that was. Happy online marketing and tune in again right soon for more SEO news, digital reviews and hi-tech tomfoolery.

The post SEO Weekly Round-Up #10 appeared first on PushON Ltd.

This is my introductory blog post – my very first post for the PushON blog will include some facts about me and I hope that you enjoy learning about the trials and trivialities of my life so far.

In July 2011 (only last month!) I was employed by the PushON company as a Search Marketing Consultant. My fellow colleagues have made me feel welcome and eased me into what’s shaping up to be a busy role. They have taught me everything I know, apart from what I knew before.

I was born in a little known East Midlands town called Nottingham: famous for the Xylophone Man (may he rest in peace), Miss England 2010 and a statue of Brian Clough. My years of education, latterly spent at the Nottingham Trent University left me with a first in History and (what I would call) vast research and writing skills as well as an appreciation for the work of David Starkey.   Unfortunately I was run out of town in 2009 by a rival historian and can only return now by the cover of darkness or in a pretty effective disguise. I came to Manchester via Leeds and can honestly say the city of Manchester and its surrounding conurbations are almost as wonderful as my hometown. I do miss some of the Nottingham/East Midlands dialect though – which I was inclined to partake in myself. Here are the top five with translations:

5 .“Yo norrayin no tuffees!” – You can’t have any sweeties
4. “It’s black ovver Bill’s mother’s” – Judging by the blackness of that large cloud over there, it looks like rain
3. “Ayup miduck, yahreet?” – Hello my friend, are you alright?
2. “immazatoadyabaht” – Him that I told you about (before)
1. “Ehyehgorrahwihyeh, er ehyehbihyehsen?” – Have you got her with you or are you by yourself?

Not living in City of Nottingham has made me love it even more. My sense of nostalgia and feelings of affection for the place inspired me to create this photoshopped piece of ‘art’.

But I digress. In Leeds I chanced upon an SEO job at a digital marketing agency where I acquired a great many skills in SEO and in link building in particular. I decided to give up my dreams of becoming a TV historian and focus on the altogether more wholesome calling of online marketeer. My job at PushON is what you would call a lucky break and my salvation from the boredom of working at home. And now I can cycle to work again instead of link building in my pyjamas.

I do hope that I can make myself very useful here and I look forward to a PushON shaped future! Thank you for reading this extremely self-indulgent post.

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Yahoo! Site Explorer is Dead (nearly)…Long Live Bing (?) -

The much prized and incredibly useful SEO tool Yahoo! Site Explorer is on its way to the great Infobahn in the sky. The transition to Microsoft platforms has rendered this much loved competitive analysis link gizmo superfluous and (according to Barry Schwartz) there is very little hope of Microsoft creating an equivalent to site explorer for its webmaster tools. Once market osmosis has occurred later on this year, Yahoo! Site Explorer will be no more.
Source: http://www.seroundtable.com/yahoo-site-explorer-offline-13687.html

Google Directory Shut Down – 

Google’s efforts to rationalise its services and expend more energy on the small but effective components has resulted in the closure of the cumbersome and less useful Google Directory. Google’s support for it has dwindled into nothingness over the past couple of years. With search predominating in our navigation of the web the DMOZ powered directory was something Google did not need. Another ‘death’ on the obituary of internet services but, unlike Yahoo! Site Explorer, it won’t really be missed.
Source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2096661/Google-Directory-Has-Been-Shut-Down

Video extensions for AdWords –

Video ad extensions give the AdWords customer a chance to turn their text ads into a multimedia experience. The word is out, albeit spreading rather slowly, about the huge potential of Youtube for businesses with the will to make a video about their products or services and get it out there to their target audience. These videos will work in much the same way as other ad extensions, running only when the ‘+’ button is hit. This is a much cheaper alternative to TV advertisement campaigns which smaller companies could take advantage of.
Website: http://www.google.com/ads/innovations/videoextensions.html

AdWords Express is Launched –

AdWords Express is made with the small businessperson in mind. This product can be accessed by business owners who aren’t AdWords users and this is the group Google had in mind when they designed AdWords Express. Simplicity and functionality are important features of the system. An advert, a few company details and five minutes of your time are all that’s needed to launch a localised campaign.
Source: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/making-local-online-advertising-easy.html

Photovine Launches –

A social media application for sharing photographs which goes by the name of Photovine is here. It’s from Google’s recent acquisition Slide but you wouldn’t know it by looking at the product website. The ’Photovine’ is created by users uploading pictures of themselves or their interests which are then thematically linked up with those of other, as of yet unknown, users – and this is how the ‘vine’ grows. A bit of prudence is recommended here as these images can be viewed by absolutely anyone. On a lighter note, maybe there is a marketing opportunity here.
Source: http://thenextweb.com/google/2011/07/12/googles-mysterious-photovine-website-is-live-and-it-looks-like-a-social-photo-sharing-service/

Targeting Tablets with AdWords –

Now AdWords advertisers can aim their ads specifically at tablet users with full browser functions. The problem of a campaign which turns out to be ineffective for mobile devices but a hit on tablets can be remedied by selecting to targets tablets specifically in the AdWords settings.

Source: http://www.ppchero.com/tablet-targeting-now-available-in-google-adwords/

SEO Tips for Travel Bloggers –

SeoMoz blogger ‘Randfish’ expresses his astonishment at the popularity for a SEO training session at a travel writing conference. Evidently there is a real enthusiasm out there amongst bloggers for optimising their sites for search engines and it is to this end that the ‘SEO 101 for Travel Bloggers’ has been created. The segment entitled ‘I Don’t Want to Write for SEO; I Want to Write Great Stories’ also rings true for online marketers. We don’t want to put content out there that looks like it’s SEOed to the Nth degree. There is a certain satisfaction in the dissemination of good, wholesome, quality copy. And it works, ask Google.
Source: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/seo-101-for-travel-bloggers

Facebook Updates the ‘Invite Friends’ Recommendation Function -

Businesses with a nice, trendy page on Facebook will benefit from the latest change to the way users can recommend things to their friends. ‘Inviting friends’ will send out a notification via email to the recipient of the invitation – who can then click through directly from their email message. If they haven’t changed their settings to stop these sort of emails, that is.
Source: http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2011/07/19/facebook-introduces-new-invite-friends-marketing-tool-to-pages/

Interesting Google+ Statistics –

This is a fascinating collection of the ten most astounding Google+ stats brought to us by the Experian ‘Hitwise’ blog. According to analysts, the biggest concentration of Google+ users reside in East London.  Will we see a mass migration of disheartened Facebook users onto the new social network?

A must-read for all scholars of Google’s new social network and fans of statistics in general.
Source: http://weblogs.hitwise.com/jamesmurray/2011/07/10_things_you_need_to_know_abo.html

Yoast’s new XML sitemap PHP script –

Joost de Valk’s has cleverly spawned a new XML sitemap PHP script that draws together all static files such as PDFs or PHP on your website – indexing them within the sitemap and saving the bother of having to update this manually. Most importantly, a sitemap lets Google know that the static files are there.
Source: http://yoast.com/xml-sitemap-php-script/

Bing Testing Ads Within Organic Results –

Bing is experimenting with their search engine by sneaking a few adverts within organic results. Possibly the only success to be had by this method is when the SE user accidently clicks on the advertisement link, mistaking it for a desired result of their search. Microsoft’s Director of Search Stefan Weitz assures that they are not paid ads nor will it be something Bing keeps if it turns out to be a flop
Source: http://www.seroundtable.com/bing-ads-mixed-results-13755.html

Bing quality scores -

Now for some PPC news from the SeoMoz team: Microsoft Adcenter have introduced a quality scoring system for keywords selected for campaigns. Gone are the days of setting a keyword to broad-match and letting it go ballistic in the hope of some cheeky extra traffic. ‘Dr Pete’ from the Moz gang ran a little test to see what would happen if he tweaked his campaigns – changing keywords from broad-match to phrase-match. Read the blog post below to find out the results.
Source: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/bing-quality-scores-match-types-magic-wands

Twitter Button Analysis –

Adding this new Tweet gauging button to your site will enable you to monitor who is tweeting about you or your products. Identifying your top tweeters and rewarding them could be an effective marketing manoeuvre.
Website: http://www.wil.lt/

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