Call us 0800 088 7486
In recent times, search engines have made a number of advancements that allow them to look at and evaluate the content featured on websites in a much more comprehensive manner.
Gareth Owen, writing for Search Engine Watch, has attempted to pinpoint the ten elements of a “perfectly optimised page.”
Here are just a few of the elements highlighted by Owen:
Title Tags – Owens states that while title tags are important, it is vital not to “over optimize them.”
URL – The URL should ideally mention the keywords determined in your overall SEO strategy.
Content – Rather than featuring multiple keyword mentions, Owens states: “Content is now about semantically relevant supporting keywords.”
Using a recipe as an example, he adds: “In order to make béarnaise sauce there are specific ingredients that are 100 per cent relevant to the eventual outcome. One way of checking what keywords Google might consider as relevant is to do a ‘~keyword’ (or tilde) search.”
News brought to you by ClickThrough – a provider of SEO Services & Pay Per Click strategies.
In a landmark case, a judge in USA has allowed the seizure of nearly 700 domain names selling Chanel products, enforced the transfer all the domain names to GoDaddy with a redirection to a notice about seizure, and Google have been asked to “de-index” the sites.
All the sites were allegedly selling counterfeit Chanel goods, but there appears to have been little regard for the international nature of the sites, and in fact some are not registered in the USA and therefore require the international domain registrars to comply with a US ruling. This would appear to be slightly shaky ground, but is proceeding nonetheless, seemingly as an extension of the American “Operation in our Sites“.
The Operation should cause some cause for concern for anyone legitimately dealing in branded goods, as well as for those re-using content where the copyright holders are American. A few instances have come to light of genuine bloggers and sites who were operating with full permission of the rights’ holders but are now embroiled in trying to recover their domains.
One has to question the wisdom of this level of action, as surely it will just push counterfeiters away from .com and .net domains and register their domains in other countries, as well as using less SEO and more social media to avoid simple detection?
The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is due to come in in the USA to try to further prevent such actions such as selling of counterfeit goods and illegal use of intellectual property. However, there is considerable opposition to SOPA, deemed to be censorship, and a threat to free speech.
For anyone selling online or sharing non-original content, the moves being made to close down sites, seize domain names, and prevent search engines indexing specific sites can only be a concern, as undoubtedly the actions taken by those enforcing such laws will also mop up entirely innocent sites in their trawls across the Internet, and not just those based in or accessible by US citizens.
Will this affect your company or product set or content in any way? Let us know your thoughts.
Press releases are not going to go away, whichever new technologies come to the forefront. But there is a methodology to sending to them that will guarantee a higher chance of response and which should become a key part of your marketing strategy.
Firstly, you must build up an audience. This means getting in touch, via whichever means the journalist, publication or promoter prefers, and establishing a rapport. It is no good sending a PR out into the cold. And good relationships take time to establish.
Secondly, your PR must have substance. It needs to be newsworthy, timely and include links to further information to allow the author of any piece relating to that press release a chance to write a piece of value. Press releases should include links to video, audio, references, and if at all possible personalised and in-depth content. So, a Skype contact for a quick video conference, a Twitter handle with hashtag for a broad range of input on the subject matter or event, Youtube URLs, audioboos etc should all be included.
Top Tip: Add a QR code for a personalised page for that journalist. Relate some of your information back to previous pieces they have written to give a background or insight.
Thirdly, you must sell your story. The vast majority of press releases are simply puff pieces because the marcomms department thinks it is time there was a column inch or two about the company. Do not fall into that modus operandi. Only send out stories when there are meat and bones, when timely, and when you have a valid reason to see the company name in print.
But do not miss opportunities. This is where a great PR salesperson will come to the fore. A good marcomms person will be able to spot an opportunity eg when something is trending on Twitter, contact the people with whom they have established relationships, have a great piece that can be customised by the journo to suit their publication (without being yet another “Read similar stories” on Google) and who can push the whys and wherefores of this particular story to a specific publication.
Understanding how Online PR works in this fast moving environment where a story may die in a day is vital. And it requires fast action and slick processes in-house to work correctly, backed up by valuable content that is regularly added to your website. But get it right, and you could be viral for a few hours with a long tail audience for many months to come.
Search engine optimisation is an extremely popular area in the world of Internet marketing. With its popularity comes a huge number of myths and falsehoods that circulate within the industry.
Writing for Search Engine Watch, Garry Przyklenk has attempted to dispel some of the most prevalent of those myths within SEO.
Here is a summarized version of a few of the best provided by Przyklenk:
Content is King –
According to Przyklenk, this is one of the most prevalent myths within SEO. He states that “while content, site architecture, social media and even technical intricacies” all play an important role in achieving an improved ranking, they aren’t as important as links. With this it is vitally important to strike a good balance between content and links in any search engine optimisation strategy.
Your site can’t be hurt by bad links -
While somewhat true – bad inbound links aren’t going to drastically affect rankings – a large amount of bad links, overwhelming the good ones, will cause a great amount of trouble. To nullify this threat, be proactive – measure inbound links and keep practicing good link building techniques on a regular basis.
Onsite SEO doesn’t factor –
Wrong. Przyklenk points out: “Internal links, title tags, semantic mark-up and clean code are just some of the onsite SEO factors that will contribute to significant improvements and rankings, usability and indexing.”
News brought to you by ClickThrough – a provider of SEO Services & Pay Per Click strategies.
The rise of SEO in digital marketing over the past few years has been impressive. It has now become a hugely important factor for large and small businesses a like – helping to gain new custom through high search engine rankings.
Canadian newspaper, the Globe and Mail has produced a list of what they define as the things “standing between you and a page one rank.”
Here is a summarised version, featuring just three of those factors that can improve your SEO strategy:
Social media plays a big part – Just last December (2010) it was announced by both Bing and Google that social media presence would play a role in rankings – factoring in search algorithms. As a result having some kind of meaningful presence on social media sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook has been hugely important to achieving a good SERP (search engine result page) ranking.
It’s a tough market – The Internet is vast; there are billions of pages that you’ll find yourself competing against. Therefore it is vital to employ the use of any number of the SEO tools out there to help provide you with an in-depth and daily update on what your competition is up to.
All about quality content – Ensuring you have good quality content that is displayed, complete with keywords, both on your own website, external blogs and press releases will provide you with a boost. Doing this will prove to Google and other search engines that what you’re doing is relevant and consistent, thus increasing you rank.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – specialists in Search Engine Optimisation and Internet Marketing.
It’s now six months since Google launched its Panda update on search results.
The update was intended to ‘reduce rankings for low-quality sales-sites which are low-value add for users; copy content from other websites; or websites that are just not very useful.’
However, Frank Watson, writing for Search Engine Watch, has revealed that the update initially impacted on a number of genuinely good sites – sites which are only just starting to regain their traffic now.
In order to stay in line with Google’s Panda update, Watson recommends ‘Google’s Webmaster Guidelines’ as a focal starting point for research, arguing ‘if you have not read Google’s Webmaster Guidelines there is a good chance you have not done all your homework.’
Subsequent updates, such as Panda 2.3, have seen the algorithm employed by Google become more forgiving to genuine content sites – as it possesses the ability to differentiate between both topic and language.
Watson has emphasized that Panda can be countered, providing that you know your industry.
He concludes that the original algorithm was similar to that of academic essay referencing – the sources cited most generally being the highest in quality – and ultimately: “Panda is an attempt to return to these early methods, but Google can now apply latent semantics and understands duplicated content better.”
With the introduction of Panda, Google’s algorithm changed and therefore so has the face of SEO. To be successful in the field, it is crucial that these changes are taken into account sooner rather than later.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – a provider of SEO Services & Pay Per Click strategies.
@johnpopham and @digitaldales talking so-me at Kirkby stephen by Lindsey Annison
Your Clickthrough blogger went for a chat about social media, the riots, whether we should shut down networks in a crisis, how to get everyone online, PCphobia, and more. Click on the link above to listen.
The aim of the recording was actually to test a microphone, with common hardware like an iPhone, and freely available software, Soundcloud to create a quick and easy podcast.
Audio and podcasts can add value to any website, company and brand and should form an integral part of your social media strategy. This simple experiment should show that making a few mins of audio (7mins) is a simple task, and although this was spontaneous and not planned, you can create compelling content without breaking the bank.
Your social media content should also include video, photos and text, and you should promote all content through sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and the social bookmarking sites such as Digg, Stumbleupon – see the Wibya.com bar at the bottom of this post for more ideas!
Whether social media tools should be closed down in times of crisis must surely be a matter for intense debate – how do you feel about it?
Would it affect you as a company if Blackberry, Twitter or Facebook suddenly ceased to be available?
Do you have back up strategies for all your social media should one or more of them stop functioning, or do you have all your so-me eggs in one basket? So, for instance, do you have a minimum of two contact addresses for each of your customers – phone, email, Twitter, Facebook, mobile? Are they held in the cloud or offline?
How do you communicate with people who are still scared of computers? Is your target audience au fait with computers or are you directing your marketing strategies through the wrong channels?
We are planning more audio so if you have answers to the above questions, or internet marketing queries to put to our team, please let us know.
Whilst Google+ is the big story of the day, Matt Cutts has just posted on his wall about a blog post that may have fallen under the radar about content creators being credited on search results.
For anyone who creates and authors content, this is a great new way to be recognised, found, and to promote your work in the search results, including with a photo.
There are a couple of very simple steps to being found by the algorithm which will be powering this addition to the SERPs. Full details can be found on the Google Webmaster help pages, but in essence, all you need do is:
Add the content pages where you post content to your Google public profile, and then paste a Google + button onto those pages. Like this:
Your own content will be automatically +1′d so it should create an archive of all your content over time for people to easily access from your public Google profile page. (This profile page is going to become as important as your LinkedIn profile, your Twitter bio etc, so be warned!)
Obviously, it is algorithm driven so your position in the search results and even whether you are listed will be down to good SEO and making sure you are putting out all the right social signals too.
So, it is always a good idea to tweet all of your fresh content, and make sure that it appears on other social networks as well as social bookmark sites such as Digg, Stumbleupon and Delicious too.
We’ll be playing around with this far more in the future to see how we can improve content rankings on behalf of authors and clients to establish a wider range of listings in the SERPS. Content that is well-written should have longevity on certain subjects, and it will be interesting to see how this plays out as a traffic generator.
Just over a month ago, Google Chrome UK showed off how the +1 button will look in the Chrome browser in a TV ad.
The +1 button acts exactly as the Like button on Facebook, permitting users to share and recommend content that they have enjoyed.
Slowly but surely we are seeing more websites add the +1 to their site, but it doesn’t appear yet that any particularly notable and positive results are being seen if the US search engine fora and blogosphere are anything to go by.
By now many people are beginning to ’settle’ into their social networks and have found the network(s) of choice for the way they work, socialise and share. So they are already faced with tweet, Like on Facebook, Digg and so on when they find content they wish to share and they know which place they wish to share it to and who with. An additional choice may simply be plus one too many, and it is apparent from visiting pages where the +1 button is deployed that far fewer people click that than the FB Like button, Tweet or even, depending on audience, the Share on Linkedin Button.
It may also be that people are unsure how it all works, and are somewhat bewildered with the complex choices that a 2011 browser now offers. From watching a variety of users recently, it would seem that the vast majority do not use much of the functionality built into browsers, beyond the basics.
There is also an issue that for anyone who has not already enabled +1 in their public profile, the rest of the +1 world is still invisible in the search results; although it is visible just as the counts for “Likes” and “Tweet This” buttons are on content.
This lack of profile within the search results is not going to make it a simple task to educate users into its usage as many will remain ignorant of it. Until it is on as many pieces of content as possible, as the Facebook Like button is, for all to see, it is unlikely to see mass uptake.
It would also seem that there is a minor issue with load time if the +1 code is placed at the top of an article or near the top of the page. Undoubtedly, Google are working on this, but we all know that users have become ever more impatient over the years with pages that do not load immediately.
So, one could ask if the +1 button has arrived late at the party with so much other competition around ….or is it just that it is still only available on google.com searches that is slowing down its adoption?
It is likely that, as ever, Google has far more tricks up its sleeve to do with social networking than just the +1 button, and perhaps in future, the +1 will become a more commonly used tool for searchers than it would seem to be today.
Our advice: add a +1 button to your content and let’s see what happens when it hits google.co.uk. Watch this space.
On an average day, you may spend time on Twitter, aggregated news sites, dedicated news sites (eg BBC, CNN, NHK), Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, Digg, delicious etc.
What generally happens at the end of the day is you have anywhere up to 100 tabs open that you mean to come back to. But, tomorrow is another day. And the whole round starts again…..open a tab, read a little, click a link, watch a video, tweet, new tab, follow a link, new tab, download a white paper, new tab. ETC.
So, how do you stand out in this endless round of websites and social media impact?
Somewhere, in the recent 1,000 sites I have visited, (ie in the last 3-4 days) is a site that caught my eye. Sadly, because of the insufficiencies of the search engines to revisit the sites I have been to in the last day or two, I cannot lay my hands on it. But it stood out.
Which, you have to admit is rare for a website. Why did it stand out?
Because it behaved exactly the same as an app that I use on the phone – FourSquare. Little pop up saying I’d earned the New Visitor (or similar) badge as I entered and scrolled through the article I had found on one of the major news aggregation sites. It also linked me to others who had found that interesting. Some of whom I know and respect.
Enough to stay? Nope. But the article was good and had links to other related material. So, I clicked within the site links and started reading more. (Good sign – we like sticky sites that help you find other content of interest).
A couple of pages later, I got a new badge and was encouraged to register to the site to keep my badges. And return. By then, I was actually quite interested in the site and knew I would return. So, Sign up- easy, email plus first name.
I kept reading, bookmarked a few items as relevant for my research, and inevitably, eventually, moved on.
No-one from that website has been in touch. My life and requirements for writing have moved on so I haven’t searched for them. I can’t remember where that site is for the life of me. I could go through each day’s bookmarks but I simply don’t have time.
That website has a willing visitor, if I could only remember where it is. I don’t have time to look, but a single email reminder saying:
1 week ago, you looked at the following articles…….. Since then we have added all this related news….
and I’d be there in a flash.
If you create sticky content, add funky functionality, and set up CRM systems that allow you to keep in touch with those who fall over your website….please, please, please use them!!!
