LinkedIn

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Beginner’s Guide to LinkedIn – Podcast Episode #155

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The main change seems to be that user data will be shared across Google platforms and products. Processing over one billion search requests every day, Google collect a lot of data about its users and now data from search, YouTube, Gmail, Docs and other services will integrated, making it all the more insightful and helpful both to Google and its users, through personalisation.

We’ve been talking about personalisation of search for some time, as already search results are influenced by search history when users are logged in. This is set to continue, with data collected from all of Google services allowing search results to be personalised to an even greater extent. This is why we’ve been talking about attracting visitors at an earlier stage in the buying cycle with informative and useful content, on the basis that visiting once makes a return visit much more likely thanks to personalised search.

So what’s the new privacy policy like? It has some nice illustrations, and some reassurances that data will not be sold. If you’re cynical about the change, take comfort in the fact that user behaviour will play a big part in the story of Google. Google+ as a social network might be gaining momentum, but just look at Google Wave and Buzz – if products and services aren’t used, they will be dropped. It’s impossible to deny that for many users this update gives Google the ability to suggest even more relevant search results.

A cynic’s concerns lie with the way that the algorithm is now likely to prioritise online activity and content on Google networks over any other activity or content online. For example YouTube could impact search rankings in a way that other video hosting sites are unlikely to. It’s impossible to predict what the final outcome of this or the next Google update will be, and that’s why we stay on top of developments in search to better understand the market for our clients.

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Google’s New Privacy Policy

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The site: command will return results from a particular domain. This is useful if you want to search a site that does not offer a search functionality. The link: command will return links to a particular URL. While the backlink results will not be nearly as comprehensive as other backlink tools, it can give you a good general idea of a backlink profile. Putting search terms “in quotes” will mean the search engine will treat it as one search term, and discount search results which do not include it in full. You can exclude keywords from a search by using the –minus symbol. Using these commands and symbols is a great way of tailoring your searches and finding what you are looking for.

When it comes to blogs, there are some even more advanced search queries which can be used. Inpostauthor: will help you find blog posts by a particular author, while inblogtitle: and inpostitle: will return blogs and blog post titles which contain the relevant keywords. Allintitle: allinurl: and allintext: will return results which contain each entered keyword in the page title, URL or body copy, while allinanchor: and inanchor: will return results which have text links which contain the keywords.

These queries are useful for finding out where competitors are getting their links from, but how can they be used to influence SEO strategies and tactics? Queries like allinurl:category/guest can help to identify relevant blogs which accept guest posts. This is a great way of doing efficient work; finding the blogs which accept guest posts before wasting time with a blogger outreach request.

Using these search queries can really help you do SEO, whether it’s reviewing competitor backlinks or finding new link-building opportunities.

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ABC’s of SEO: Q is for Queries

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Facebook

Post from Apple Pie & Custard blog by SiteVisibility - An SEO Agency

Beginners Guide to Facebook – Podcast Episode #154

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We are now in almost a polar opposite position; we are drowning in data but struggling to turn that into strategies to generate links. The radar graph is the secret sauce in determining your link building strategy. Using Radar Graphs and MajesticSEO data you can understand how you compare to specific competitors and the market as a whole. I think this is really important as SEO is relative – it’s not about absolute values but how you compare to your competitors.

What follows is one of the methods my team and I have been using to try and turn the wealth of link data out there into actionable insight.

We start off by making a simplification. Google’s link based algorithms are complex, but they aren’t complicated. (I really recommend reading this article about the difference between complexity and whether something is complicated)

So, we understand the link algorithm is complex but acknowledge that any attempt to understand or model the system would have to be reductive, therefore simplification is inevitable, and actually desirable.

When it comes to links I think a portfolio of links should achieve four measurable aims: Volume; Authority; Velocity; and Anchor text. Or, as we like to shorten it at SiteVisibility: VAVA.

Now these four aims do miss some of the complexity of linking but understanding how you compare to the market and specific competitors on each of these areas gives you a much clearer idea of the mix of tactics required to overtake a competitor.

Why VAVA?

When we look at any website’s link portfolio, we look at four key areas: Link Volume, Link Authority, Link Velocity and Link Anchor Text. No matter what challenges a website faces we will look to improve the values of VAVA.

Link Volume

We can all easily get our heads around the idea that Google and the other search engines like websites with more links. Though the intricacies of link building require a nuanced approach, very often a website can’t go too far wrong with a strategy that results in more links.
Link equity is far more complicated than just volume, and although it is still important, it doesn’t matter if you have a pile of links as big as Ben Nevis Mountain if your competitor’s is as big as Everest.

Link Authority

In real life not all recommendations are created equally; we know which of our friends and acquaintances are experts, and who doesn’t know what they are talking about. If we want advice on a new car, we trust our mechanic friend more than our dentist. Google, when they look at link authority, are trying to achieve something very similar. They make judgments about how much sway any endorsement should have.

Link Velocity

If you’ve looked at the volume and authority of your competitors you might find yourself scared stiff, but there is some good news! Google have realised there is a fault in their algorithm: there is a lag. This lag is between a page being important enough to include in the SERPs and the point when it has received enough links to rank. To rectify this, there is a phenomenon which is sometimes known as a Google Honeymoon Period or officially, “Query Deserves Freshness”. This means new pages don’t need as many links to rank when they are ‘fresh’.

It makes a lot of sense. Imagine two identical sites, one with 1,000 links but static growth vs. another with 500 gained rapidly over the last few months. Which do you think will be the best website to return for a topical search query?

This isn’t the only way link velocity influences rankings, but there is a general trend indicating that if you can engineer a healthy link velocity you will benefit more than your link volume and authority may initially suggest.

Link Anchor Text

A varied and inventive link building campaign will usually deal with authority, velocity and volume factors by default, but are you making sure you get the right anchor text? Anchor text is one of the most complex of the four pillars and one of the areas I’m perceiving recent change..

But what is anchor text? If someone links to you in a piece of text and a few words are underlined and in blue, that’s what is known as anchor text. It’s the words or phrases people use when they link to you.
Google use these words to understand what your website is about. If someone writes the word “fool proof widgets” and makes it a clickable link to your site, the search engine can be reasonably confident that your website is about “fool proof widgets”

How to make the comparison?

I’m a big fan of radar graphs. I think they are a great way of visualising several data points at once but a big part of my affection lies in their importance in Football Manager.

I’m going to take you through how to create a linkbuilding radar graph that simultaneously compares you to a specific competitor and you both to the market as a whole.

To start with you will need an account with MajesticSEO, if it isn’t already; it should be an essential part of your SEO armoury.

Create two rows for each element of VAVA, then one for the score and finally one for the normalised ‘z score’

Then add 11 columns with the first being for your website and then ten of your competitors. At this stage I suggest adding some false data for you and your ten competitors on each of the VAVA elements, take a mean average of the scores and use the spread sheet to work out the standard deviation.

Then you need to work out the z-score. Put simply the z-score works out how many standard deviations you are from the norm, and this has the effect of normalising all the scores whether they are out of a hundred or a hundred thousand.

Now selecting the z-score and one of your competitors, you can plot a radar graph. It will visualise how you compare on each of these four metrics. If your score is positive you are above the average and if it’s negative you are below average.

This understanding will help you choose which tactics you require, e.x. poor anchor text and authority will require a very different approach to a site behind on volume and velocity.

But the insight you have here means nothing so far as it’s based on fake data, so how do we populate it with real data?

We start by creating a sheet for each competitor, into this sheet we paste the Standard Report from Majestic, this contains all the info we need to create our VAVA data.

For volume we use the =count function to total the number of links.

For authority we take a mean average of all the links’ “AC rank” which is Majestic’s authority score.

Velocity is a little more complex, we need to use the COUNTIF function to count only the number of links found by Majestic in the last 12 months. We then take this score and work out what percentage it is of the overall number of links the site has.

And finally anchor text: we do this by using the COUNTIF function in Excel to work out the number of links which do not contain the brand name and then what proportion this number is of the total links.

One very big note of caution here unlike the other four metrics where exceeding the mean is preferable; with non-branded anchor text my goal is to be as close to the mean as possible. (I’m actually working on a revision of this document which shows close proximity to the mean as the ‘best-case scenario’)

Now you add these four formulas to each of the internal sheets, then you take the data from each of these sheets and include them in the summary. Voila! Now your radar diagram is based on real data.

Now the chances are you’ll have you own opinions on what link metrics matter but I wanted to show you that Radar Graphs are an excellent way of visualising link data and that Excel isn’t as daunting as you might think it is…

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VAVA, or How to Use MajesticSEO and Radar Graphs to Determine Link Building Strategies

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We know that someone you were wondering about getting the Internet Marketing Podcast onto to your Android phones, and this is the way to do it. If you go to Stitcher’s website, you’ll be able to download the app (for free!) for your Android phone, your iPad, and your iPod.

If you’re curious, you can have a look here for the podcast page, or you can cut to the chase and download it here.

As always, we love to get feedback so let us know what you think! So email Kelvin or leave us a comment on Stitcher or iTunes.

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Internet Marketing Podcast is now on Stitcher!

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Twitter
Hootsuite
Tweetdeck

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Beginners Guide to Twitter Marketing – Podcast Episode #153

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The problem with online PR in the past is that it has tended to ignore SEO. This means that these company or product mentions are rarely accompanied by the keyword-rich hyperlinks which can help a website gain better visibility in search rankings.

The Google Panda update has seen many SEOs re-evaluate the importance of branded links, as a pose to the keyword-rich links we traditionally target. A new focus on branded links gives the advantage to PR content, as a company can be openly mentioned, recommended or talked about without the risk of turning an editorial piece into an advert.

Online PR still means public relations – but news releases can be utilised for SEO purposes. Following simple best practises such as including keywords and hyperlinks in press release titles, sub-headings and copy can help contribute to an SEO campaign, so PR firms who do not understand the potential SEO benefits of PR activities are missing an opportunity. Kelvin has written for eConsultancy about the PR industry getting into SEO and how PR professionals can make better linkbuilders.

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ABC’s of SEO: O is for Online PR

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SiteVisibility has a proud history of leadership in corporate responsibility having won the “BITC Small Company of the Year” award in 2007 for our CSR Strategy, and since then our CEO Jason Woodford has served on the prestigious BITC South East Leadership Board.

We are currently revising our CSR strategy to bring our objectives up to date with our current business strategy, the needs of our local community and desires of our staff. Everyone in the company is given one day per annum to participate in either company or personal volunteering or charity activities. We’ve also recently appointed an internal Sustainability Officer who’s in charge of making sure we all do our parts to reduce our usage, as well as keep us up to date on any environmental developments that might make us consider redesigning our strategy.

As a company, we like to create opportunities for young people to learn about work via:

• The University of Brighton with work placements and our graduate recruitment / training programme as well as the now seven year old annual SiteVisibility prize for “Best Digital Marketing Student”;
• The Sussex Internship Programme;
• The annual Enterprise Week at Sussex Downs College, and offering a work placement to a winning student;
• Organising the free search marketing training event http://www.brightonseo.com

Personal projects have included one of our team members cycling throughout England to places beginning with “B” for the Bumble Bee Conservation Society. We have also participated in “Movember” for two years now and have raised nearly £1,500 for Prostate Cancer.

From an environmental perspective:

• We support the Sussex Wildlife Trust by designing and distributing their newsletter on a pro-bono basis.
• We monitor energy usage through our Wattson meter with an aim to reduce the amount of energy consumed.
• We recycle all paper, metal, plastic, cardboard and printer cartridges to minimise the amount taken to landfill. During the recent office refurbishment, more than 40% of the waste created by volume was sent for recycling.

We want to have a positive impact on the communities in which we live and work as measured by the triple bottom line of the social, economic and environmental impacts we have as a business. This is especially important in difficult economic times and is why we are involved in the S.E. Leadership Group of BITC so the role of small businesses can be considered as part of the solution.

Some examples:

• Social – improved life opportunities for young people: UoB placements, secondments, Wired Sussex SIP, our own placements programme and internal training ethos, Movember, Lewes, Scope;
• Economic – member of Wired Sussex so we can have an impact on the economic environment for digital business;
• Environment – a better natural environment support SWT with digital communications consultancy

One of the key benefits of this is that we attract the sort of staff and customers who are a pleasure to work with.

Case Study- Sussex Wildlife Trust

We have been producing a newsletter for Sussex Wildlife Trust for a good few years now. SWT were aware that email marketing would be an excellent way of staying in touch with their members and keeping them up to date with news and events, but had no one who could do this for them. By providing them with this service we have helped to create an informative newsletter for their members and have seen the number of subscribers increase from 300 in 2009 to 8900 to date. The enews is also now the 3rd largest referrer source to SWT’s website.

Case Study – Enterprise Week at Sussex Downs College

This year, we participated in Enterprise Week at Sussex Downs College for the second year. This event is organised by the college with the help of lots of local companies and shops so that students in various entrepreneurship and business programmes can participate in activities that real businesses would have to organise. We’ve helped the students with a social media activity, which of course, is a hugely important way of marketing a business. The students have 24 hours to create a social media profile using Twitter of Facebook, and the goal is to have the most fans, likes and followers at the end of that time frame. They get extra points if they have a high engagement score.

This event and challenge we picked were close to our hearts here at SiteVisibility, where we have a Social Media team, and are constantly trying to think of new ways to use social media for the greatest impact. We’re also a company that knows how important training, internships and work placements are to anyone’s future career so we’re really pleased we might have the opportunity to inspire a college student and even more excited a member of the winning team to our office for a week long work placement.

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What Are We Doing at SiteVisibility to try to Give Something Back? Our CSR Activities.

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Then there was Google Buzz and just as I decided to start using it, it seemed to vanish. People found Google Buzz difficult to get into because you couldn’t categorise the people you were following. It also had a big security flaw when it was launched that opened up Google Profiles to outside people so that they could look at who your contacts were and who you were chatting with most, so many people were sceptical about getting involved and it got off to a slow start. Also, with most people already using Facebook and Twitter, a lot of people thought ‘what’s the point?’ Google Buzz was around for a little over a year before Google announced that they were going to shut it down. I’m glad I didn’t waste my time.

And now there is Google+ and I wonder again whether there is any point in spending time setting up circles, uploading photos, making comments etc if it’s just going to be another flop. Especially as I’ve been using Facebook for over 4 years and already connect with so many people. And it looks more ‘techy’ than Facebook and less user-friendly. And I wonder if I’m grownup enough for it.

But this time apparently it is different. Google have introduced Google + slowly this time, concentrating on privacy and control as a fundamental part of the project and it’s looking like this project is here to stay.

Google+’s homepage has all the similar features to Facebook; posts, images, photos, links etc. The main difference is that Google allows you to categorise your friends, so that you can choose who you share information with. When you create a post in Facebook, everyone you are friends with sees it (hence the stories of people getting fired after their boss sees their comment about how boring their job is). Another strongpoint is that uploading your photos is much easier and quicker, and this is something that lots of Facebook users often complain about. Again, you can share your photos with just your family or friends and make sure that your work colleagues don’t see those embarrassing night out pictures, or your friends aren’t bored by photos from a work event.

A few more features that they have been slowly introducing are ‘Huddle’ where you can chat with lots of people in one window and ‘Spark’ where you tell Google your likes and dislikes and Google sends you information on these chosen subjects.

Google +1 is similar to a Facebook ‘Like’ in that when you ‘+1’ a website you are sharing with your circles that you like a website or story. If someone that you know recommends something then you are more likely to visit the site and Google knows this only too well. The real difference in this feature is that Google will be using this data for very different reasons to Facebook, because they can then use this information to give Google+ users the search results that they ‘think’ are most appropriate for them. Of course it is very early days, but it could definitely prove a bit of a headache for us SEOs, seeing as we have no control over who is ‘+1ing’ what. What this does mean for us and our clients though, is that the sooner they have a +1 button on their site, and the more people they get to +1 them, then when Google does start seriously using this data for search, they will definitely be ahead of the game.

And it seems that Google have already started using +1 in their algorithm. In an experiment by Rand Fishkin it seemed that simply by clicking the +1 button for a page, it’s rankings were altered and it went from half way down page 2, to number 6 on page 1.

So I have I answered my question? Is Google+ ‘Facebook for grown-ups? Ana Hoffman (Self-made Internet Marketing, blogging and SEO Specialist) says:

“I would love to see Facebook remain a “family” social network, and Google+ gear more towards business professionals, sort of like LinkedIn, just with more dialogue. From SEO perspective, Google+ is priceless and we can’t afford to ignore that. All the initial signals indicate that G+ actions, like shares, +1, etc. might become an active ranking factor in the near future”

So I think that yes, at the moment that is what Google+ is. I don’t think it will take over Facebook, but it will become more important, especially to professionals and businesses. Especially seeing as Google have announced that they are to release their business pages earlier than originally planned. So I will get into Google+, but at the moment, possibly more with my ‘SEO’ hat on rather than on a personal level. And then we’ll just wait and see.

Sarah has blogged about social media before, here and here.

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Is Google + just ‘Facebook for Grown-ups’?

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They are discussing search trends and the opportunities and threats of exporting your search strategy model to other countries, including whether to translate your site content directly, whether you should have localised domain names, what to do if your analytics data shows that you have a lot of visitors from abroad and the importance of having native speakers who understand the local culture on your team, among many other things.

If you’re interested in this area of search, you can join us on February 7th, 2012, where Graeme is speaking at the Travel Technology Show

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Taking Over the World with International Digital Marketing – Podcast Episode #152

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How do I track my Google Rankings & Other Questions – Podcast Episode #151

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No-follow is an attribute that can be assigned to a link, which instructs search engines that the hyperlink should not contribute towards page authority and rankings. No-followed links are the easiest to get; the type of links you can submit manually in the form of a forum post, blog or social network status update or share. No-follow is often used to preserve authority, or “link juice” on a website.

Inbound
As social media plays an increasingly important role in ranking search results, isn’t it about time we stopped seeing no-followed links as invaluable and started to understand their power? Tweeting a URL is a great way of getting content indexed quickly, and social signals are playing an increasingly important part in ranking search results.

If applied to digital marketing more broadly, no-followed links are not a waste of time providing no value – they can, in the form of answers to questions or engaging commenting on forums or blog posts, be a great source of traffic, sales, engagement and more. Digital marketers are one-dimensional if they don’t understand the importance of no-followed links. In terms of SEO it’s also important to keep a natural-looking link profile; a link profile which only contains followed, keyword-rich links is likely to be seen as suspicious.

Outbound
Some webmasters have used the no-follow tag on internal links on their site, in an attempt to build page rank authority or link equity on specific pages. As Matt Cutts explains in this fairly recent video, page rank can’t be sculpted through applying the no-follow tag to internal links. The conclusion is that it is best to let the link juice flow.

The best times to use no-followed links onsite is when you link out to an external site which you don’t necessarily trust. Linking out to low quality domains can damage domain authority so applying a no-follow tag can protect a site from experiencing any detrimental effects. Remember that many of the best and most well-performing websites out there are “hub sites”, which link out to many different sources of information. Linking out with real, followed links is no bad thing for SEO. Tad Chef wrote this great piece on the SEOptimise blog about how to link out for SEO benefit.

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ABC’s of SEO: N is for No-Follow

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Choosing the best Domain Name for SEO and other Questions – Podcast Episode #150

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We were also joined by our PR man; Craig Peters from Osprey PR, who has helped us gain some great media coverage in 2011.

You can view more photos from the night on our Facebook profile or Flickr account.

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Happy Click-mas! SiteVisibility’s Christmas Party 2011

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But what underpins a reputation for quality, especially in the world of Search Marketing? When you “lift the hood” off your Search Agency, what is it that drives the consistency of service and reliability of results? Why is it so hard to find a quality assured Search Marketing service in the UK? What justifies a reputation for being a “leading search marketing agency”? The most employees? The highest revenue? The most profitable? The loudest marketing? Or the most satisfied customers?

It’s well documented that the world of SEO, PPC and Social Media could benefit from a better reputation for transparency and better quality service. Even before starting my own digital marketing agency in 2001 I’ve been amazed how easy it could be to fall for one’s own hype around being a quality business and that’s always concerned me. So in 2011 we asked the British Standards Institute (BSI) to audit our systems to the ISO 9001 standard and in November, I believe we became the only Search Agency in the NMA Top 30 which can offer Internet Marketing services which are accredited to the prestigious International ISO 9001 quality standard.

But achieving the quality standard didn’t come by chance, it was the result of a 2 year Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) with the University of Brighton which involved an investment of over £100k through the recent recession and resisting the constant temptation to re-allocate the investment elsewhere.
Before the KTP, the culture of the company was informal and lacked rigour or measurement and it was not clear who was responsible for each of the business processes. This led to problems such as re-work, lack of performance improvement and poor customer satisfaction. A cultural shift was achieved by involving employees in mapping the business processes and identifying who was responsible and accountable for each of them. Key achievements included:

Mapping of all company processes and KPIs identified:

• Responsibility and Accountability for all company processes mapped and documented in a “RACI” chart
• The development of new processes and systems to help improve the delivery of SEO, Social Media and Paid Search marketing campaigns for clients
• The development of a Quality Management Systems (QMS) using Wiki technology
• Demonstrable improvement in profitability of running client campaigns and the results achieved
• Cultural change and processes in place to make the rapid scaling of the business more achievable

Some of the tangible benefits we’ve experienced include:

• New starters are productive within weeks rather than months because they train themselves through the Wiki
• Greater ownership of quality and customer satisfaction within the production team has led to increased customer revenue per month.
• Greater transparency of individual capacity and productivity has allowed for a 39% increase in revenue per head from 2007 to 2010
• The “Productivity%” (the proportion of a consultants time which can be charged out to a client) has increased from below 60% to 85% during the period of the KTP.
• Improved profitability – gross profit % has increased from 37% in 2009 to 50% in 2011
  Customer complaints have halved in 2011 compared to 2010

It goes without saying that none of this would have been possible without the on-going and relentless commitment of our team who are the SiteVisibility ThinkTank under the leadership of our Operations Manager Shirin Maurer. Each team member is able to post Wiki updates, and it’s this involvement and collaboration which moulds the team into the strong unit that it is.

Training our staff to be capable of achieving their very best underpins their self-confidence. That, combined with well-documented, and often tailored processes, means everyone throughout the business can take advantage of the latest best practice techniques and this culture of learning brings new starters up to speed at a faster pace – as evidenced by our third IIP re-accreditation during Summer 2011.

The ISO accreditation, Investors in People and our ongoing commitment to ensuring our staff receive the best training in the industry, means we are able to sustain and grow our business and those of our customers by providing an unmatched customer experience.

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A Quality (Search Marketing) Service Never Goes Out of Fashion.

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Online content is being generated at a staggering rate, so just how do you make your company stand out from the crowd? I’ve spent the week at SiteVisibility, to find out more about SEO as part of a skills exchange programme between SiteVisibility and Speed Communications.

As a PR, I’m all too aware of the increasing shift to online media content; an increasing number of people are turning to online news sites, blogs and social networks for their daily news fix rather than relying on the paper. This content remains online long after it has been written – what do you want people to find for your company when they search online?

One thing I have learnt this week is that a lot that goes into planning an SEO campaign. But a key thing to take away for any on-going PR strategy is how to utilise online coverage and content in a company’s overall digital strategy.

PRs generate content for company news pages, corporate blogs as well as any social media profiles. It’s essential that each of these include the correct keyword phrases and anchor text to drive traffic back to the company website, especially if this content is syndicated elsewhere. PR companies need to be clear what keyword phrases the SEO agency is working to in order to maximise SEO.

Linking building is one of the key ways to drive more traffic to your website and something that can easily be implemented in any PR campaign. Some things to bear in mind when doing online outreach:

• Include keywords and links to the company website in relevant (!) tweets, Facebook posts and Linkedin updates
• Get in touch with bloggers or publications that do guest posts and you can include a back link to your company website
• Generate content that people will want to link back to and drive traffic to your website – mix it up with some multimedia content and tools
• Engage in online communities to raise awareness of your brand as well as get a clearer insight into your target audience
• Return the favour and link back to other blogs and publications

Post from Apple Pie & Custard blog by SiteVisibility - An SEO Agency

Guest Post: SEO and Online PR

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ICANN
Business Model Generation by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur.

Post from Apple Pie & Custard blog by SiteVisibility - An SEO Agency

How to Change a Google Local Listing and Other Questions – Podcast Episode #149

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logo tournament
crowd spring

Post from Apple Pie & Custard blog by SiteVisibility - An SEO Agency

Finding a Great Logo for your Company

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SEOBook Rankchecker plug-in for Firefox
AWR: Advanced Web Ranking
RavenTools

Post from Apple Pie & Custard blog by SiteVisibility - An SEO Agency

Will a Website Redesign Ruin my SEO and Other Questions – Podcast Episode #148

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SEO MOZ
Ping-o-Matic
google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ping?sitemap= (then add the url of the page on your site you would like to be indexed)

Post from Apple Pie & Custard blog by SiteVisibility - An SEO Agency

Pinging

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Many in the Search community are debating what this means for search, as asking Siri a simple question will differ from accessing the web and doing a search. We’ve rounded up some articles about the anticipated impact that Siri will have, in particular on local search.

What do you think? We’d love to hear from you. We’ve got a debate here in our LinkedIn Group.

Here are a few that we found interesting.

Siri, Are You Taking Over Mobile Search?

3 Simple Steps To Get Siri & Her Friends To Talk Up Your Local Business

Siri, What Can You Teach Search Marketers?

How Apple’s Siri Could Destroy Local SEO

The End of SEO as We Know It

Post from Apple Pie & Custard blog by SiteVisibility - An SEO Agency

How Will Siri Change Search?

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Looking at the data for the travel sector we can see since the financial crises in 2008, travel related searches have been in steady decline. With consumers tightening their belts it’s clear the first thing to go is luxuries such as the family holiday.

Consequently it’s becoming more and more vital for travel related businesses to increase their ranking in Search Engines and grab the top spots in Google, if they just want to simply maintain their revenue in the coming years. Maintaining your position in the Search Engines will mean as less and less people search for holidays; your revenue will decline even if you keep your current Search Engine positioning.

With the travel market becoming tougher, companies will have to bite into the market share of competitors to survive. One of the key ways of doing this is with a proactive search strategy. Optimise your website for niche long-tail travel terms, increase the diversity of your backlink profile with keyword and brand rich anchor text, get your name out there with a comprehensive social media strategy, all backed up with a PPC campaign.

Post from Apple Pie & Custard blog by SiteVisibility - An SEO Agency

Trends in the Travel Sector

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Post from Apple Pie & Custard blog by SiteVisibility - An SEO Agency

All Change at Google – Podcast Episode #147

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I started here earlier in the year primarily helping Kelvin with the Internet Marketing Podcast, although I was taken through lots of different SEO tactics. It was during that time that the first major BrightonSEO was happening and Kelvin asked me to do more and more things to help him organise the conference. I love organising events so I was quite happy to help. My month-long internship was extended, and just before BrightonSEO I was asked to stay on and join the team full time as the Marketing Coordinator.

I’ve learned so much in the time since I started here, and I couldn’t even begin making a list. One of thing that’s become really clear is how much importance SiteVisibility places on training. I have a background in Media and Cultural Studies which isn’t quite the same thing as Marketing. At SiteVisibility employees have the opportunity to design their own training plans, either in areas that they’d like to become experts in, or training to ensure that they’re up to speed with the latest developments in their fields.

One of the most exciting things about being with a company that has the IIP standards is that focus on training. We know exactly how we’re going to be appraised, we know what targets we have to achieve and there’s a great amount of freedom we have to set our own goals. There’s also a lot of internal communication – we know what direction the company is heading in and how we’re expecting to get there.

As we start to plan again for the next BrightonSEO, the third one I’ll be here for, I’m happy to be part of team that is focused on learning, but more importantly sharing that knowledge amongst ourselves and others.

If you’d like more information on what it’s like to work here at SiteVisibility, please have a look here or check out our jobs page.

Post from Apple Pie & Custard blog by SiteVisibility - An SEO Agency

A SiteVisibility Internship – From Intern to Coordinator

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