SiteVisibility

News: Our Internet Marketing Podcast Is Now Available On Audio Boo

Simon — Tue, 15 May 2012 15:02:44 +0000

Internet Marketing News

Here’s some exciting news for our SiteVisibility and internet marketing podcast fans! You can now enjoy all our fantastic marketing podcasts via audio boo!

Boo Who?

So, you might be asking yourself what’s this? boo who? Don’t cry! it’s a brilliant new audio service which ourselves and many other sites have subscribed to such as ‘Radio Player‘ teaming up with audio boo in January 2012 (a service backed by the BBC and commercial radio with 7 million listeners a month). It allows a more social distribution for our brilliant podcast where you can now leave us comments, share our podcast with friends and even follow our page for the latest in digital marketing trends.

We’ve got several episodes uploaded already on our SiteVisibility profile and we’ll be adding more shortly. This is great news for fans who don’t have iTunes as you’ll have full access to all our podcasts, giving you expert advice on everything there is to know about online marketing.

Facebook Fun

Not only that, all our Facebook fans will be treated to our podcast as soon as it goes live! What’s better is that you won’t even have to leave Facebook to listen to it – simply click directly on the podcast and listen away! Sharing the post with a friend is easy and will allow you all to tune in no matter when!

Listen on the move

One of the best features is that you’ll now be able to listen to our podcast on android as well as iPhone. Simply download the audio boo app to your phone and listen away on the train to work, on your lunch break or whenever you feel the need for some marketing inspiration and tips for your digital marketing campaigns!

Enjoy and get listening!

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News: Our Internet Marketing Podcast Is Now Available On Audio Boo

The Best of BrightonSEO – Podcast Episode #167

Kelvin — Tue, 15 May 2012 08:38:22 +0000

In this episode of the Internet Marketing Podcast, Kelvin and Andy are going through the key message which came through during BrightonSEO. As you might imagine, what Google might do next and the changes they’ve made to Analytics was a hotly debated topic. Additionally, the future of structured data and how it will affect how people use the internet, microformats and schema.org, the importance of authors to content and how to use online PR most effectively were also some of the topics discussed at the April event.

You can read more about BrightonSEO on our blog, and you can watch our top five BrightonSEO videos as well.

If you’d like to attend the next one, you can join the mailing list so you don’t miss any announcements.

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The Best of BrightonSEO – Podcast Episode #167

Help the NSPCC! Order some home made cookies to see in the New Cookie Law

Jo — Mon, 14 May 2012 13:38:35 +0000

Cookies for Cookie Day

We are very excited to be launching our first fundraising activity to help us achieve our goal of raising £1600 for the NSPCC and we will be are raising funds for the NSPCC and awareness for the EU Cookie Law by baking homemade cookies for local Brighton businesses.

If you are based in Brighton and would like to show your support, and treat your office to some sweet treats on a Friday any donations are appreciated and will be going to an amazing cause.

The cookies are available in delicious chocolate chip, oatmeal, and sugar varieties, and 6 cookies will be £10 and 12 will be £15. What better way to comply with the cookie law than to get some chocolate in your mouth at the end of the week!

Cookies will be sold by half dozen or dozen with all the money raised going to towards the goal of £1600 for NSPCC by the end of 2012. Please dig deep and help us make a difference!

If you would like to place an order or more more information, please email Jamila MacLean Homburg.

Orders must be in no later than Monday 21^st May by 5pm to give us plenty of time to bake up a storm! Payments can be made through our Just Giving page: http://www.justgiving.com/sitevisibilityjustgiving.

Get your order in now to avoid disappointment!

SiteVisibility and Sustainability

SiteVisibility recognises the need for sustainable development in business and continually aims to improve the social and environmental impacts of our activities to underpin a healthy, profitable and successful business.

This is not something that just comes from the top down and everyone in the company is given one day per annum to participate in either company or personal volunteering or charity activities and this year we would like to see this happen with everyone working towards assisting with something they are passionate about.

We are members of Business in the Community and Jason our Chief Executive is on the South East Leadership board.

We’ve also recently appointed an internal Sustainability Officer (that’s me!) 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.

We have recently updated our internal company sustainability policy and have set ourselves some challenges and targets this year that will ensure we increase our impact on the local community and reduce our energy consumption.

As a business, we strive to have a positive environmental and social impact on our local community and we currently work closely with 5 key partners; BITC, Sussex Wildlife Trust, University of Brighton, NSPCC and Scope.

The main areas we are dedicated to contributing to are:

Leadership – This involves us working with people in the community and educating and influencing them on the importance of sustainable business practice.

Environment – Ensuring we minimise the effect of our business on the environment and reduce our energy usage and waste.

Employee health and well being - We are committed to providing the best possible working conditions for our employees and have a number of staff benefits as well as an intern training program for all of our trainees to ensure they get the most out of the experience as possible

Community – Giving people opportunities to make the most of their talents so they can realise and achieve their potential”. We are dedicated to giving something back to the local community and work closely with a number of charities, small businesses and have also worked on mentoring and training programmes with community colleges.

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Help the NSPCC! Order some home made cookies to see in the New Cookie Law

ABC’s of SEO – W = What Can You Do With Webmaster Tools?

Lyndsey — Mon, 14 May 2012 08:30:34 +0000

Using webmaster tools is an essential component of daily SEO practises as it contains key information about the visibility of your website in Google. Webmaster tools will display any errors that Google finds when crawling your site so that you can address these errors and fix them to improve SEO on the site.

To set it up, login in to Google webmaster tools with a Google account and verify that sites that you want to manage. You can add up to 1000 websites to manage from one account and Google webmaster tools is offered completely free of charge.
Logging in will take you to your dashboard where you can access a range of information about your website such as:

Site Configuration – preferred domains, crawl rates, redirecting 301’s and user permissions can all be edited here

Health checks – reporting on crawl errors, blocked URLS and any malware that might be present on your site

Traffic – here you’ll find some of the more interesting information with regards to who is visiting your site. You can view the search queries people are using to find your site and links which are coming to the site. Google webmaster tools will break down which websites are linking to your site and which pages they are linking to. This includes highlighting any broken links which you can then address and fix.

Optimisation – Analyses your site map showing the amount of pages indexed and submitted to Google. There is also a valuable section here which explores HTML improvements, highlighting any duplicate title tags.

It allows you to add sitemaps and demote site links which appear in Google but are not relevant

Having webmaster tools set up was particularly important during the recent Google Penguin update where emails were sent to Webmaster tools accounts to let people know that their sites were using unnatural linkbuilding. The mail stated that the sites must remove these unnatural links and then resubmit the site after this is complete.

As with their other platforms, Google are constantly making updates to webmaster tools, which can be both positive and negative. The most recent update being that you can now see up to 90 days of search queries for your site, however some smaller features have been removed. One of these is creating a robots txt file which you will not longer be able to do in GWT.

Keeping track of such updates and regular use of Google Webmaster tools will be beneficial for the all round health of your website.

Finally don’t forget some of the useful tools accessible directly from webmaster tools such as the ‘rich snippets testing tool’ which shows how your URLS appear in search results.

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ABC’s of SEO – W = What Can You Do With Webmaster Tools?

The Cookie Law: Crumbs!

Graeme — Fri, 11 May 2012 08:26:47 +0000

On the 26^th May 2011 the enforcement of DIRECTIVE 2002/58/EC was deferred for one year in the UK. Many of us wondered if it would all just go away… it didn’t, and Cookie Day* is almost upon us.

SiteVisibility has written a Privacy and Cookie policy which all site visitors should read.

How the cookie law crumbles

The ‘Cookie Law’, a tastier synonym of DIRECTIVE 2002/58/EC, is aimed at protecting individuals against the hitherto unregulated use of user behaviour tracking online.

In short the law means that we must now ensure that users are not just aware of the tracking information, such as cookies, that we plan to store on their computers but also that they consent explicitly to us storing that information.

Some cookies are fruitier than others

The controversy around this law stems from the fact that browser cookies are all but essential to the modern web experience, many sites simply wouldn’t function without cookies to remember certain information about the user, such as the contents of an e-commerce basket.

Thankfully the cookie law recognises that some cookies are more necessary and less intrusive than others. Roughly, cookies can be categorised into 3 groups:

Cookies Necessary for Website Functionality

Cookies essential to the smooth running of a modern website are currently exempt from the changes to privacy regulations. Examples of necessary, ‘unintrusive’ cookies include:

Cookies that prevent multiple form submissions

Cookies that maintain load balancing

Transaction specific cookies such as e-commerce basket item tracking

Minimally intrusive cookies

Cookies used to anonymously track user behaviour on a website or those used to store previous configuration may be described as minimally intrusive. Examples of minimally intrusive cookies include:

Cookies used to effectively gather web analytics data

Cookies used to save personalised content or interface options

Minimally intrusive cookies are, strictly speaking, covered by the cookie law and should not be stored on a user’s computer without explicit consent. There does however seem to be some room for interpretation in the ICO’s guidelines and many businesses seem to be settling with a clear notice that they will be setting minimally intrusive cookies unless a user requests otherwise via browser settings.

Moderately intrusive cookies

Moderately intrusive cookies include those that track user behaviour across a number of sites and use this information to deliver unsolicited personalised advertising & content.

Examples of moderately intrusive cookies include:

Embedded third-party content and social media plugin cookies

Advertising campaign optimisation cookies

These cookies will be a top priority for the ICO in terms of regulation and enforcement. If your site is setting moderately intrusive cookies you should ensure that you follow the ICO guidelines carefully.

Can I have my cookie and eat it?

What if you decide to ignore all of this? At worst you could be hit with a £500,000 for serious breaches of the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA) so it’s probably worthwhile taking at least some steps to ensure you are compliant (or, if you take the stance of many businesses, make sure you are not the least compliant).

What you should be dough-ing to remain compliant

The ICO’s guidelines can be simplified to 3 steps

Ascertain what information your site stores on your user’s computers through a cookie audit

Gauge the intrusiveness of each cookie from necessary through to moderately intrusive

Choose a suitable solution to gain user consent to set these cookies

If you sense some ambiguity here you are not alone and although there are a number of suggestions on how you might implement consent mechanics many website owners are still balancing the need to comply with the potential damage that comes from opt-in consent forms interrupting their user’s journey.

Although it is tempting to wait to see what everyone else does in response to the new law it is clear that the ICO will deal with cases on a business by business basis. As such it is up to you to assess the impact of your site’s cookies and to ensure your users are both aware of and consent to you storing information though their browsers.

So what should I actually do??

Make sure your business and its stakeholders are fully aware of the new law

If available, your legal team should be briefed. Many businesses are hiding their heads in the sand. Make sure you are not one of them!

Perform a full cookie audit

To understand the full impact of your cookies you need to know what cookies your site is currently setting.

There are 3 types of cookies to identify:

Client side cookies – e.g. Google Analytics tracking tag

Your web team will be able to use browser privacy settings to identify these cookies. These cookies are often minimally intrusive.

Server Side Cookies – e.g. Shopping basket tracking

Your website developers should be able to provide you with a list of server side cookies. These cookies are often necessary.

3^rd Party container tags – e.g. DoubleClick Advertising Tracking

Your web marketing team should be aware of any services that rely on 3^rd party cookies. These are often the most intrusive cookies.

Provide a privacy policy with a breakdown of the cookies you use

Your audit should be wrapped up in an easy to identify policy. There are a number of templates available online for this step. For example:

http://www.businesslink.gov.uk/bdotg/action/detail?itemId=1076142085&type=RESOURCES

Provide some way for users to consent to cookie usage

As discussed this is the tricky bit! There has been discussion that this mechanism should be on the shoulders of the web browsers rather than the individual site but for the time being this functionality is not ready at browser level.

As stated, the only way to fully comply with the new laws is to refrain from setting any cookies which are not entirely necessary until you have the explicit ‘opt-in’ consent of your users.

However many businesses are using less obstructive methods, especially when no ‘moderately intrusive’ cookies are being set.

One common approach seems to be to explain to users within the privacy policy that by not changing the cookie preferences on their browser they are consenting to the use of cookies. This approach often includes instructions on how to turn cookies off. The BBC currently seems to use this method:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/privacy/bbc-cookies-policy.shtml

Another similar approach and one that is perhaps more in the spirit of the law is to include the same information in a more prominent position on the site, often in a footer or pop-over dialogue. BT provide an excellent example of this method:

http://www.bt.com/

Whilst these approaches seem popular, even with some very high profile sites, it is also fair to say that they not fully compliant with the new law as they still rely on an opt-out mechanism.

Saying that if you are transparent in your cookie usage and go to some measure to help users of your site understand the impact of the information that you store it might be worth taking the risk. You will be in good company!

Have you made a move to comply with the new laws?

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The Cookie Law: Crumbs!

Don’t forget about robots.txt! And other considerations for moving your content

Carla — Thu, 10 May 2012 10:03:05 +0000

The time comes when you need to move your website content; this could be with a new site, a new domain or creating subdomains. It is vital that this process runs smoothly as you don’t want to lose all that SEO goodness that you have worked so hard at achieving.

In the Webmaster Central Blog Google has given some pointers on how you can use webmaster tools to assist you in your move.

As with moving house, a site move needs to be carefully planned. Good planning will remove some of the risk associated with the move. Unfortunately you can’t alleviate all risk; sometimes you can follow all of Google’s recommendations and still you lose your rankings, but being prepared as possible gives you a head start!

There are a number of key SEO considerations when moving content.

It is essential that you use 301 redirects from the old pages to the new ones. This moves the history of the page, the incoming links and tells search engines which page to index. The 301 redirects should be in place as soon as the site/pages are moved. A small delay could have a detrimental effect to your ranking.
In a small number of cases you may not be able to implement 301 redirects. If this is the case you can use cross domain canonicals; Google will then try its best to index the new version and pass the link equity.
Update your xml sitemap and submit to webmaster tools.
If you have moved the website to a completely new domain, make sure you inform Google of the change, using the change of address option in webmaster tools.
Check that Google can crawl your site by using the ‘Fetch as Googlebot’ tool within Google webmaster tools.
When you move your site from the development/testing server to go live make sure that your robots.txt isn’t blocking search engines – you would be amazed at how many times this gets forgotten during the excitement!
Make sure the site isn’t generating loads of broken links.
Ensure that you don’t have duplicate content; either use 301 redirects or the canonical tag.
Geotargeting – if the site is location based select this option in webmaster tools.
Check who’s linking to you and ask if they will change the link to the new content.

This isn’t a comprehensive list of considerations when moving a site, but following Google’s recommendations is a great starting point!

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Don’t forget about robots.txt! And other considerations for moving your content

Our Top 5 #BrightonSEO Videos

Truus — Wed, 09 May 2012 10:10:47 +0000

On Friday April 13, SEO experts from all over the world joined us at the Brighton Dome for BrightonSEO. The day was a huge success and a wide range of topics were discussed, yielding many new insights. Now that we’ve had some time to digest, we would like to share with you our favourite five videos of the day (in no particular order) that attracted our attention.

1. “Ask the Engines”, with Pierre Far, Dave Copin, Martin McDonald, Rishi Lakhani & Tony Goldstone

BrightonSEO kicked off with a Panel Discussion on Search Engines, with Pierre Far from Google UK, Dave Coplin from Bing, Rishi Lakhani (Freelance Online Marketing Consultant), and Martin MacDonald from Expedia EAN debating and discussing the biggest SEO issues at the moment. During the Q&A session, the audience had the chance to ask specific questions to the panel of Search Engine Experts surrounding SEO and search.

What have we learned?

“SEO is not a Checklist”, and there is no particular rule to best practices
The importance of Social Signals for your rankings on Bing
Achieving good rankings on Google requires the creation of good, high-quality and fresh content, written to be shared and engaged around on social platforms.

2. James Carson – “I believe authors are the future”

In his talk about Authorship Markup, James explained AuthorRank and its implications for SEO. He explained how it can help, and how to implement and use rel=”author”.

3. Glenn Jones – “Microformats and SEO”

Glenn discussed the three different ways to markup structured data – using the traditional and predetermined microformats, micro data (for use with HTML5) and RDFa which can be customised – and how they can affect SEO?

4. Lexi Mills -“Getting BIG Links from BIG Media Sites”

Lexi explained how PR can benefit SEO, and the need for great content and PR to get great links. The increasing need for these two departments to work together returned several times during the day.

5. Roland Dunn – “Searchbots: Lost Children or Hungry Psychopaths? What Do Searchbots Actually Do?”

Roland provided some very interesting insights into what Searchbots are actually doing on your site. Searchbots crawl your sites, but do we know exactly which pages they land on? In his talk, Roland explained that Searchbots can become distracted or even lost and therefore we should help them focus. Good URL structures, high quality and unique content on your page can help.

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Our Top 5 #BrightonSEO Videos

International SEO- How to get it right: Interview with Bas van den Beld – Podcast Episode #166

Kelvin — Tue, 08 May 2012 09:36:53 +0000

In this episode of the Internet Marketing Podcast, Kelvin is talking with Bas van den Beld about the do’s and don’ts of international search. They’re going through the importance of remembering the differences between the search engines operating in different countries, as well as how the different markets within Europe require different strategies.

Find out more about Bas.
State of Search

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International SEO- How to get it right: Interview with Bas van den Beld – Podcast Episode #166

SiteVisibility opens for business in Birmingham; bringing new online markets to local businesses.

Jason — Fri, 04 May 2012 14:17:40 +0000

SiteVisibility has been busy in 2012; we’ve grown our customer base, published more SEO and Social Media case studies showing huge RoI for our customers, attracted more top Search talent into the SiteVisibility team, the Internet Marketing Podcast has reached 1 million downloads, BrightonSEO exceeded 1000 delegates for the first time and now we’ve opened up our office in England’s 2nd largest City.

SiteVisibilityKeane is a joint venture with one of the UK’s top creative marketing agencies, Keane Brands whose HQ is in Birmingham. The new venture combines the “digital brains” of SiteVisibility with the “beauty” offering of Keane Brands to provide a full suite of digital services to businesses in the Midlands and in particular to manufacturers and leisure sector operators.

This is particularly exciting for me having spent several years living in the beautiful Ironbridge Gorge and working in the Midlands for Tarmac plc and Carillion plc. I know that the area is full of ambitious and innovative British businesses who would benefit from effective digital marketing. Birmingham has a growing digital community and we look forward to investing in growing the local digital talent base to help local businesses to sell their products and services online.

To launch our Search Marketing services in the Midlands, we are hosting a Search and Display Marketing Seminar on 17th May at our new Birmingham office. Featuring a number of SEO and Display Marketing presentations by our team and a SEO case study from James Little, Partnerships Director of TopCashBack, we’re looking forward to sharing our knowledge with the members of the Midlands business community. If you work in the Midlands or are passing through on the 17th, please register here: http://svksearchinnovationseminar.eventbrite.co.uk

See you in Birmingham!

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SiteVisibility opens for business in Birmingham; bringing new online markets to local businesses.

Kiri Nowak Joins the SiteVisibility Team!

Kiri — Fri, 04 May 2012 09:48:12 +0000

My name’s Kiri and I am the newest member of the SiteVisibility team. I first found out about SiteVisibility when a colleague recommended their podcasts and I went on to attend BrightonSEO, follow their blog posts and discover why they have had made such a big mark on the SEO industry. I knew this was the perfect company for me.

Before moving to SiteVisibility, I worked client side as an SEO Manager in the highly competitive travel sector. I was responsible for overseeing all SEO, social media, content, conversion and video marketing campaigns, whilst managing a team of 6 digital marketers. Prior to this I worked at a digital marketing agency specialising in the recruitment sector, working on SEO campaigns for clients such as Iceland, William Reed, Formula Won and Boots.

My interest in SEO began at my first job after university. I worked for a video production company, where I initiated and grew their online marketing strategy.

When I am not tackling the challenges of SEO, you are most likely to find me at kickboxing training. I also have a passion for writing. I try to write new material whenever I have a spare moment and I am currently in the process of editing my first novel, which I will hopefully be finishing very soon.

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Kiri Nowak Joins the SiteVisibility Team!

No related posts.

Five SEO Tools I Wish Existed

Kelvin — Wed, 02 May 2012 09:33:07 +0000

We’re blessed in the world of SEO at the moment, never have there been more tools available to make our lives easier but at the same time there are still a few missing that would complete my professional life.

Everyone has their own suite of tools that they use to carry out day to day SEO tasks but there are a few particular situations where I either have to do something by hand or not do it at all.

These are the tools that could solve my problem so I hope a few friendly tool developers are listening!

Velocity of Links

I’m a strong believer that in many SERPs, the velocity of link acquisition is playing a part and often may be the cause for some shifts and volitility. There’s a large number of link analysis tools out there but none of them really seem to think about velocity and are much more focuses on volume and quality. Majestic does include some temporal data but that’s when it was last crawled rather than first crawled.

I’d be happy if I could know when they first found the link so I could then sort and see what proportion of links have come in the last month, quarter or year. But if someone really wanted to impress me, they’d try and tell me when that link was first created either by looking for date stamps in the content or when the page was first cached, etc.

Tools that Measure Relatively (vs Absolutely)

Page Rank was a flawed, distracting metric and I’ve welcomed some of the other more transparent and specific link metrics which more recent tools have included, but what would really interest me is if they scored links and websites relative to my industry. An ACrank link of four is very different beast where most are two, but in a marketplace of sixes it’s different again.

This could be merely by suggesting competitors, or better yet, automatically determined by who you’re competing with in the SERPs

Update Identifier

One of the most interesting bits of marketing to the search marketing industry were the reports from SearchMetrics following Google Panda updates. This was an awesome idea and does a pretty good job of illustrating the value of their tool. But they’re not the only people with access to aggregate ranking data, I’d really love it if someone introduced a ticker which gave an indication of the volume of flux in the SERPs. Wouldn’t it be great to have a regularly updating graph that indicated the amount of change. I know any big shifts will be noticed by individuals but I’d love to get a clearer idea of the scale of change and potentially identify some of the changes a bit earlier.

Link Hit List Generator

One of my favourite tools I used to use a lot in the past was created by RustyBrick, I can’t quite remember the name; but the functionality worked a little like this: you inputted up to ten domains and it looked for sites that linked to more than one of those domains. The logic was that someone who links to one of your competitors might link to you, and someone who links to several is even more likely to link.

With the APIs that are available I would love a tool that takes this concept and expands it exponentially. For example, take ten keywords, find the top fifty sites for each of these phrases, de-dup them, explore all their links, and see which link to multiple sites. Then at the same time, cross reference these with sites that link to several but that also link to sites with high rankings suggesting that they are conferring some good value.

I know you can do this using spreadsheets, but a tool would make this so much easier.

Rich Snippet Alerts

Like most people, I’ve struggled and fiddled to get microdata of various types implemented to trigger rich snippets. Once they’re set up right, you end up twiddling your thumbs waiting and hoping for them to appear. A great tool would tell you when they start being triggered.

An even better tool would allow you to insert your keywords and inform you if and when any SERP rivals start triggering rich snippets, which might give you the nudge to convince a skeptical boss or client to sign off the resource to get it implemented.

I think these tools would make life so much easier. I can’t see that all of things can be done with existing tools, but if you think they can please do let me know in the comments!

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Five SEO Tools I Wish Existed

Google’s Penguin Update – Podcast Episode #165

Kelvin — Tue, 01 May 2012 15:36:18 +0000

In this episode of the Internet Marketing Podcast, Kelvin and Andy are talking about the recent update in Google’s algorithm, which as been dubbed Penguin. Google have said they’re trying to pick up on over optimisation, keyword stuffing, black-hat tactics, and use of strategies which are against their guidelines.

We’ve also written a blog post about it, so feel free to comment there or here, or in SiteVisibility’s LinkedIn group if you’ve got any questions or concerns about Google’s latest change.

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Google’s Penguin Update – Podcast Episode #165

Social Media in iGaming: Interview with Nichola Stott – Podcast Episode #164

Kelvin — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 10:07:54 +0000

In this special episode of the Internet Marketing Podcast, Kelvin is interviewing Nichola Stott of the Media Flow. They’re both speaking at this year’s iGaming Super Show. Among other things, they’re talking about the use of social media in the iGaming sector, including whether affiliates understand social media, how to build your brand with the help of social media, and the growing importance of Google+.

The iGaming Super Show is the biggest online gambling events of its kind. With over 2500 delegates attending and four conference streams, this is a great opportunity for marketers to learn the ins and out of this booming industry, including market specific SEO, social, PPC and marketing strategies. Held on the 22nd to the 25th of May in Dublin, Ireland, the event has some great features to help you navigate the iGaming waters, including 1 to 1 workshops with industry professionals, over 100 exhibitors happy to introduce you to the business, speed networking sessions and over 46 confirmed speakers, from the biggest iGaming CEOs to marketing experts of some of the biggest brands. A great opportunity for anyone interested in this growing an exciting sector.

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Social Media in iGaming: Interview with Nichola Stott – Podcast Episode #164

Penguin: Google’s Most Recent Update

Martin — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 09:36:46 +0000

Yesterday Google launched a new algorithm update aimed at targeting webspam. Google has stated that this update will target around 3% of queries.

Only 2 weeks ago at Brighton SEO, Stefan Hull predicted that with content farms being hit in 2011, this year would be the turn of webspam/linkspam to feel the force. And it’s happened already. Google’s change will “decrease rankings for sites that we believe are violating Google’s existing quality guidelines“. Although Google have always made an attempt to target webspam, this algorithm is a further improvement in their efforts to reduce it and promote higher quality content.

This algo change will hit sites that are using strategies such as link schemes, deliberate duplicate content, keyword stuffing and any form of cloaking. And once again, Google have encouraged ‘white hat’ SEO instead of engaging in aggressive webspam tactics.

Oh, and for those worried about the over-optimisation update that Matt Cutts was talking about; it looks like this was it. Matt admitted that over-optimisation wasn’t the best description and emphasised that this update was targeting webspam, not SEO.

So how has this affected your rankings? We’ve seen some non-movers and some sites jumping by pleasing amounts. It’s times like this that make me glad we employ the white hat SEO strategies. I’ve heard numerous speakers warn people over and over about black hat methods at events across the UK but this is just another warning to those using spammy tactics. If you’re still employing black hat methods, you’re running out of options and it’s only a matter of time before your site is hit, if it wasn’t yesterday.

Unfortunately, no catchy names like Panda this time though. Google is calling this one… [drumroll]… the “Webspam Algorithm Update”.

Update (27th April, 2012): Well it was only a matter of time. This update has now been given an official name – Penguin.

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Penguin: Google’s Most Recent Update

Timetabling your way to Seasonal Organic Search Campaign Success

Kelvin — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 09:40:49 +0000

We’re getting close to the Diamond Jubilee which is great news if you’re in the souvenir business, especially if you are ranking for your search terms. Not ranking? It may already be too late! A successful natural search campaign can take a while to plan, some time to kick in and then you’ve got to bear in-mind delivery cut off times.

So if there’s a seasonal peak in your search traffic and business how do you time your campaign perfectly? Below I’m going to discuss a potential calendar based on my experience with a number of our retail and lead generation sites. It’s worth noting in all these cases we were working with the client on an ongoing basis so they weren’t starting from a cold start; most onsite issues were dealt with, they had links being created, etc. Instead, what we did was concentrate our attention in a particular direction where we knew a well timed improvement in rankings would lead a significant improvement in the websites objectives.

Day 0 – The timing of the peak – always start with when the peak in demand in is. For events like the Jubilee, you probably the exact date but I still suggest using tools like Google Insights for Search to try and pinpoint the exact moment when you’re going to see the highest demand. For annual events, you could also look back through your analytics and sales figures for the last few years and work out when the highest demand is.

Mark this date in the diary and everything else works back from here.

Day -14 – in every sector there will be delivery times or lead times that you need to bear in mind. It’s no use for your campaign to deliver you to the top of the result for Valentine’s Day cards on the 14th of February because by that point it’s already too late, and from the 15th of February that search ranking has next to no commercial value.

Month -1 – A month away from Day 0 you need a plan B if things haven’t worked quite as you planned. This might be a hit of Press Release Syndication, a competition to hit ‘comper’ sites or something else. Not every element of your campaign will go to plan, however a with a month to go, a strong Plan B and a bit of brute force might tip you over the edge.

Month -1.5 – Six weeks away from you peak now should be the prime time to be acquiring links. And I mean acquiring them not outreaching. Say you’ve got a guest posting plan, now isn’t the time when you should be approachng people, now is the time when you should be publishing.

Month -2.5 Ten weeks out, your outreach and content production should be in full swing. Never under estimate the time and effort required to get this right. This may need to be further out if you have compliance issues or a lots of people involved in the sign-off of content.

Month -3 – A full quarter before the peak you need a comprehensive plan in place of who is doing what by when. I think project management is one of the most under-appreciated aspects of natural search. I’ve seen campaigns with great tactical execution fail due to poor project management and equally I’ve seen slickly managed projects with average execution achieve amazing results.

Month -4 – Coming up with a plan, this is the brainstorming phase you need bring together people with different experience to come up with new ideas. you want data from last year and this is also the point when you need to work out the commercial implications of your plan. We like to model results at this stage too. There’s no point conducting a campaign which is going to cost X in agency fees and Y in internal resource if the return for the campaign isn’t going to generate profit that far exceeds X+Y. Mature search marketers know when to run a campaign and when not to, and that decision should be driven by the potential return.

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

Timetabling your way to Seasonal Organic Search Campaign Success

ABC’s of SEO – V = SEO Your Video

Lyndsey — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 11:52:05 +0000

Using videos as another means of marketing your brand, product or services is one tactic that many businesses are using. With the growth of YouTube and many other video hosting and sharing sites, there are an increasing number of platforms for your content to reach. Furthermore, Videos will enhance the user experience and also possess the benefit of encouraging a visitor to become more engaged.

Using video SEO can benefit your site in a number of ways including rankings, traffic, conversions, links and enhanced brand image; therefore there is a lot of potential gain.

Creating videos for SEO purposes need to be treated in a certain way. To begin with, it is essential to conduct keyword research to see what terms people are searching for in relation to your topic ideas. You should select keywords with an ample search volume and then perform competitor research to examine if other companies have videos ranking highly in Google for such terms. Based on this research you should be able to determine the best keywords with the lowest amount of competition.

Optimising your video is paramount, as search engines cannot tell what a video is about unless you tell them. There are a number of different points to consider:

Hosting – where are you going to host your video?

As YouTube is the second largest search engine it can be a great place to host your video in order to gain more views as well as to produce positive rankings. However in doing this, the traffic will come to YouTube and not to your website. There are widgets available which give you the option to add a link from the video that will link to your site. It is also possible to put a link in the description of the video; however this will still not bring as much traffic as if the video were to be hosted on your website.

Hosting the video on your own site which should be done through a third party hosting service and will bring search traffic directly through to your site. Additionally, many video hosting companies will offer extra services such as a video sitemap.

A video XML sitemap is a specific sitemap for your video which will help tell Google exactly what your video is about which is where your keyword research will be applied. You can include titles, descriptions and relevant tags to optimise the video best for your chosen terms. This will then be uploaded to your website through webmaster tools. It is also possible to create a video sitemap for a YouTube video embedded on your site; however this can prove to be a more complicated process.

Hosting the video onsite will also give you the opportunity to build backlinks to your site through embedding the video on other sites. This can be done through video embed sites such as myvidster as well as outreach to relevant blogs to gain extra embeds.

Good practises for video SEO:

Name your video carefully – include keywords and a title that entices a visitor to watch it.

Include your keywords in the file upload name of the video

Create content alongside your video explaining what it contains – this is beneficial as it encourages visitors to watch your video as well as getting some love from Google who like unique content.

Promoting your video:

Using SEO combined with social media is essential for promoting new video content as social media has a strong impact on search algorithms and so social shares can help push a video up the SERPS – share your video through different social channels to gain views. Including social share buttons on the hosting page is also essential.

Add your video link in your email newsletter

Use social bookmarking sites to bookmark the videos and add relevant keyword tags

Don’t forget to consider the following before you create your video -

How do you want it to help your business?

Who do you want to watch your video?

This will help determine the content as well as how you are going to specifically promote it.

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

ABC’s of SEO – V = SEO Your Video

Welcome to Adam Aspland and Carla Holcombe: Newest Members of the Think Tank

Mila — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 09:51:29 +0000

We’re really pleased to welcome two new team members so far in 2012, and they wanted to introduce themselves!

Adam Aspland

“Bonj, as they say in Spain”

My name’s Adam, I joined SiteVisibility in the Brighton office in March 2012 after two and half years working for an agency in London. It’s a very different atmosphere in terms of places, although the working environment, friendly staff and metrics are all the same! I am looking forward to working within a fully integrated marketing agency in the heart of Brighton, working on new clients, different and same verticals, more channels than ever before.

So, the last couple of years I worked for another marketing agency in London as an account manager learning and honing my skills across a variety of paid and performance channels, before that working for Flight Centre as a leisure and business international travel consultant. I am qualified by the Chartered Institute of Marketing and Google. My new role here at SiteVisibility is Paid Search and Display Advertising Manager, although I’m sure this is not definitive! I will work on all aspects of paid and performance marketing including Google, Bing, Yahoo, display marketing through agencies and DSPs through to affiliate programmes.

Before this I worked for many different travel companies in Europe, living and working in Val D’Isere, Bodrum, Lemnos to name but a few. I have spent many years travelling the globe including South East Asia, Indonesia, and Australia (who hasn’t these days)!

Outside of work, I enjoy watersports (windsurfing, water-skiing and wakeboarding), football, golf, and I’m currently training for the Great North Run in September – should you see me please send me words of encouragement and not abuse! I accept all forms of money for sponsorship!

Carla Holcombe

My name’s Carla and I joined Site Visibility in April as a Digital Marketing Manager – and what a week to start! After briefly visiting the office for my induction, I had a great couple of days at BrightonSEO. I’ve attended all the previous BrightonSEO conferences but this was extra special as I was proud to be part of the talented Site Visibility team.

For the last five years, I worked for an online marketing agency, managing a wide range of successful campaigns. However, it’s not been all work and no play. I have indulged in my passion for travel and the outdoors; a highlight being hiking the Inca Trail and reaching Machu Piccha for sunrise. In addition to my love of travel, I am known to be a self-confessed DIY nut and a lover of trying new extreme sports, my favourite motto being ‘you have to try everything once’!

The SiteVis team is happy to have these digital experts join us in the Think Tank! You’ll be hearing from them both on the blog, so stay tuned for their upcoming posts!

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

Welcome to Adam Aspland and Carla Holcombe: Newest Members of the Think Tank

#BrightonSEO Big Round-Up — April 13, 2012

Truus — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 18:00:28 +0000

Today was a very exciting day for us here at SiteVisibility! Brighton Dome was completely packed with search marketing enthusiasts, delegates from search agencies, in-house marketing teams and business owners, not only from Brighton, but also from across the UK and even Europe. This year’s first edition of BrightonSEO was bigger and more exciting than ever before.

The best SEO experts and enthusiasts across the UK have devoted their time today to share their detailed and practical knowledge with us.

However, the many talks and presentations throughout the day must have left you all with loads to process, and therefore we have decided to make it easier for you by putting together a quick summary of some of today’s talks and the most striking conclusions. So sit back and enjoy our BrightonSEO Round-up:

1. Phillip Sheldrake: Future SEO Vistas – The Semantic Web and the Internet of Things

Philip Sheldrake (@Sheldrake), founding parnter at Meanwhile, kicked off this edition of BrightonSEO with his take on Web 3.0 or “The Semantic Web”. Here’s a few things to remember from his talk:

We move from ‘web 1.0’ Documentation to ‘web 2.0’ – participation to ‘web 3.0’ – semantics
The definition of an SEO is progressively moving towards someone who improves the presentation, discoverability machinability of data for all stakeholders
The semantic web by definition will ‘understand’ the meaning of its own content and the participation of users
Google is improving its core product by offering extended semantic support using microformats & microdata.
Types of media have expanded as well as paid, owned & earned media we now have machine media, content created on the fly from a number of semantically sourced sources
Social sites who try to protect their networks are doomed to die as the connections are now becoming much more open
As SEOs we will now be part of the flow of influence and our job will now be to manage and direct that flow by understanding the needs of our audiences.

2. Sam Noble – How to launch or re-launch a brand or product online effectively

Launching or re-launching a brand or product online can be a very daunting task. Building up on her experience prior to the launch of Koozai in May 2011, Samantha Noble(@Koozai_Sam) provides us with a overview of tips, suggestions and things to avoid, Moreover, her list of tools and resources will assist you to achieve the best results:

A brand is how people perceive it, rather than how the brand want to be perceived.
Brand confusion is one of the main reasons for re-branding
Make sure you find the right branding agency
When choosing a name, make sure it is easy to spell, memorable, TLDs and social profiles are available and make sure you trademark it
Remember to update everything (bank details, stationary etc)
Update all social profiles, link build to them so that you dominate all SERPS for your new brand name
When launching, make sure you have a PR ready and a Blog post written
Monitor old accounts/old brand mentions so that you can update to new brand

3. Adam Lee – Killer Market Research for Peanuts

Adam Lee (@NoPorkPies) discussed how understanding consumer needs is essential for creating a good marketing strategy. He discussed 3 marketing research processes of people in various positions:

Method 1 – persona creation of niche audience members to create a network map which will determine where your audience can be reached
Method 2 – primary research with polls and questionnaires
Method 3 - Behavioural analysis of customers to learn their habits – habits can results in brand loyalty.

Doing a collection of these activities can give you a wealth of information to produce a tailored strategy. One criticism would be that the low budget example in method 1 would be highly unlikely to invest in Brandwatch as it is not the cheapest!

4. Glenn Jones – Microformats and SEO

Glenn Jones (@glennjones) talked about rich snippets and creation of schema.org, which has brought semantic mark up into sharp focus for the SEO industry:

Rich snippets can be great for displaying additional info in the search results: Eg. Reviews, Products, Contact information. See schema.org
Rich Dnippets are all about building better user search experiences. There are 3 ways to markup structured data: Microformats, Microdata (html5), RDFa
Microformats vs Microdata (html5) and RDFa: Microformats usually used for Simplicity. Others usually used for more complex data. Check out Microformats.org
Useful tools alert!… Google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets
Authorship -Useful for adding the author to rich snippets. Eg. Can interlink a recipe with an author profile/Google social profile.
Rich snippets tend to result in a 10-25% improvement in click through rates.
Be warned – If you trying gaming rich snippets, Google do have the right to stop your site using rich snippets.

5. Roland Dunn – Searchbots: Lost Children or Hungry Psychopaths? What Do Searchbots Actually Do?

Roland Dunn (@roland_dunn) presented his talk entitled Searchbots: Lost Children or Hungry Psychopaths? What Do Searchbots Actually Do?

He wanted to explore how and if we can see how Google searchbots have spent their time, when they visited and where they visited a site.

The conclusion is that there is very little data out there that gives us enough info and so we are left with Webserver Logfiles (a record of all requests from sites) these however are lengthy and difficult to pull data from. So, one of the big questions that we want to know is: do google bots request all URLs served by a website? The simple answer is no. So then, are the Google bots spending their time cost-effectively? Again it appears not. Many examples show that they spend a lot of time on irrelevant pages.

Conclusion: Google bots are not quite a lost child or a hungry psychopath but instead can be described as a distracted teenager. We may in fact need to give them a helping hand when crawling our sites – navigation, robots.txt etc. (see slides) Points: 1. Embrace Logfiles. 2. check searchbot behaviour 3. If they become lost or distracted-help them out.

6. Charlie Peverett – It’s only words? Working with Content Strategy

Charlie Peverett (@cpev) was our first speaker after lunch. In his presentation, he talked about the importance of content strategy for SEO.

It’s not enough to just mention ‘great content’ in an SEO checklist
Content – the assets with which we communicate with users
In 2012 content is: political, expected to achieve multiple objectives, expensive
In the past, pr pieces were only read by journalists, now they are read by everyone. Remember, all content can be seen by everyone.
Brand is also seen as more important now
Use the same language ie don’t use terms such as ‘link bait’ and ‘over-optimised’
Read ‘content strategy for the web
Know your value

7. Lexi Mills – How you can get BIG links from BIG media sites

In her presentation, Lexi Millls (@leximills) has shared some of her top tips and tricks on how to get BIG links from BIG media sites. She also provided some interesting insights on how PR and SEO can be used to work together by building up the level of report and conversation:

Key point about PR is to get the right story to the right person at the right time!
It’s not all about relationships and who you know either, links and stories can be distributed with no previous relationship
Research journalists on twitter and linkedin, find out how they talk and behave
When it comes to targeting a journalist, pick your battles well, make sure its relevant and attainable
In your outreach emails make sure you add specific target keywords
Always make sure from the outset that you are requesting a followed link, this can get confusing if it isn’t agreed early on
If “give us a link” feels a bit spammy or pushed maybe use terms like “could you accredit us?”
NOTHING beats correspondence and relationship building more than using the phone to outreach
Remember any response good or bad is A RESPONSE act upon this don’t just archive it
Lexi recommended a couple of syndication platforms PRNewswire and Businesswire which she had positive results from
When syndicating Lexi uses no more than 3 anchor text links in the PR and directs them to separate pages, important to mix it up!
Remember if your contacting journalists directly they can be funny about non-branded anchor text, so as a rule of thumb stick to branded links
Useful twitter feeds #prwin, #prfail, #journalistrequest

8. James Owen – Maximizing your SEO Agencies

James Owen (@jamesoSEO), SEO Manager at Hotels.com, shared the steps Hotels.com go through in order to maximize their SEO agency success. Some important points:

Essentially 5 stages in the process: preparation, set-up, testing, fine tuning and reporting
Clearly define financial objectives, destination objective (which landing pages do you want
rankings, keywords (branded and non-branded) and theme objectives from the start
Ensure that guidelines are relayed early on to the agency for content production. Will help
efficiency of sign-off procedure
Provide all marketing collateral to the agency that need for their off-page work, delays in this will mean delaying the campaign
When using multiple agencies, utilise the agency according to their best skill-sets and talents, some agencies will be better at optimising and syndication PRs whilst
others may be utilised better for creative link building
Report on your agency and asses how well they are doing by calculating the efficiency rate
and ascertaining what impact they’ve made on profit margin, keyword rankings,
traffic etc. and how long has it taken?
Effective reporting to track CVR/Visits/GBV. Make sure the reporting is done at a branded
and non-branded keyword level, and that keywords that aren’t ranking are also tracking.
James recommends Bright Edge as an efficient reporting tool for monitoring your
agencies’ SEO campaign

9. Stefan Hull – Search marketing – from Panda to Black Swan

Stefan Hull (@stefanjhull) has discussed the ways in which Search Marketing is changing and the consequences that these changes bring to the way we do things. What to remember?

Don’t chase after googles algorithm, chase after your best interpretation of what users want
Content farms were hit in 2011. Link spams turn in 2012?
“Not saying buying links is bad but it’s about managing risk”
What if Google discounted all your bad links tomorrow?
Does your director know what you’re doing?

10. James Carson – I Believe Authors are the Future

In his presentation, James Carson (@mrjamescarson), focused on Authorship mark up, one of the hottest topics in SEO. Here’s what caught our attention:

Social Shares are a long way from replacing link building, but have just added to & personalised results
Requires Google+ account
Author identity adds authority to the source of a link & therefore could effect rankings
Adding author code is fairly simple, ‘just add rel=author code to your post’
Authors can then build up their own personal authority
This creates an issue for agencies who tend to use ‘anonymous personas’
This is good news for journalists, as it reinforces their status as experts
However, this will all take time for Google to recognize!
DO IT NOW! It is likely to have a big effect so get on Google+ & add the code.

11. Dom Hodgson – I appear to have started a sweetshop (and advertising company)

Dom Hodgson (@Thehodge) spoke about his latest quest, his online sweetshop and he told us the story of how it came about. From an idea down the pub to his very own online sweetshop as well as combined office and sweet shop combined.

His idea was that everyone loves pick and mix and so he decided open his very own online store. His concept, to make buying sweets online fun. His first attempt mainly revolved around a winking squirrel. “If you ever put a squirrel on a website, make it wink” was his advice.

He quickly learned that his quest had been slightly shortsighted with many hidden costs. He also received complaints whilst the site had only just gone live!

His second attempt at a site involved more sweets a better design and involved the death of the squirrel. To finish the talk, he took the opportunity to make the second site go live, invited members of the audience up to celebrate the countdown with party poppers.

Quite a way to end the day!

Hope you all enjoyed this year’s first edition and see you all at the next BrightonSEO – that is, if we don’t meet at Horatio’s bar before that!

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

#BrightonSEO Big Round-Up — April 13, 2012

#BrightonSEO is coming – Here’s what not to miss

Simon — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 09:00:33 +0000

Friday 13^th is the big day and it’s just around the corner! We’re excited for Brighton SEO and we know that you are too.

Some of you have attended before, and some of you will be coming for the first time so we’re very excited and happy to have you all on board to experience one of the UK’s most popular and respected natural search conferences. This year the conference is bigger and better with over 1000 of the UK’s finest search marketers heading to the Brighton.

This time we’ll be in the Brighton Dome with attendees coming from search agencies, in-house marketing teams as well as businesses from all over the UK and Europe!

As you know there are lots of talks throughout the day filled with SEO stars sharing their knowledge so take a look at the full Brighton SEO agenda so you don’t miss anything.

So then, with all the details covered we’d like to share with you what we’re looking forward to the most in this year’s best ever Brighton SEO conference!

1) Ask the Engines – A fantastic talk to kick off the event at 9:40am where you will have the rare chance to ask Google and Bing members (Pierre Far, Dave Coplin, Martin McDonald, Rishi Lakhani & Tony Goldstone) about all your SEO queries.

2) It’s only words? Working with Content Strategy – (14:15pm) this talk presented by Charlie Peverett will delve into the world of online content and how to get the best results when accompanied with SEO.

3) How you can get BIG links from BIG media sites – (14:30pm) Lexi Mills will be sharing tips and tricks on how to get those big links by showing how PR can benefit SEO.

4) I believe authors are the future – (17:20pm) James Carson will be explaining what author rank is and how it can affect search, very topical and very interesting!

5) Searchbots: Lost Children or Hungry Psychopaths? What Do Searchbots Actually Do? – (12:25pm) this talk gets the last slot in the morning but will have you wanting to come back for more! Roland Dunn will be diving into the world of Search Engines, explaining how they work, what they do and much much more!

We look forward to seeing all of you on April 13! And be sure to join us for a beer on the pier when it’s all done!

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

#BrightonSEO is coming – Here’s what not to miss

ABC’s of SEO – U = How to create SEO friendly URL structures

Simon — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 09:00:52 +0000

URLs are the building blocks of SEO and by ensuring you get this right, you’re on your way to SEO success.

I’m sure many of you have found that as you look within search engine rankings, sites which possess a hierarchical model including optimal keyword usage within page names tend to come out on top.

Domain

Your address is one of the key elements that you can optimise to help your SEO activities. You want to include your most important keyword for your business here, which is obviously easier if you’re starting from scratch. If that is the case, then by simply performing some keyword research you can target your URL name around your findings. On a side note you want to stick with .com and .org sites as they offer better authority (if you’re feeling insecure about competitors stealing other domains, by all means feel free to buy .net etc.)

Folders

This is something that Google have paid a lot of attention to, preferring a site architecture which pursues the route of methodical category listings. The main idea here is to clearly guide the user through the journey of the site.

Here’s an example -

www.example.com/456749.php

www.example.com/products/jeans-14.html

www.example.com/jumpers/summer-jumpers

Even though it’s important to clearly divide the categories in hierarchical model, do remember to stay within 3 folders of the main site root. By doing this you are clearly showing search engines what you believe to be the most important categories on your site as well as being able to strategically place importance on the keywords you’re focusing on. One last point is to refrain from keyword stuffing, as placing too many keywords won’t help yourself or the search engines.

Names

Here’s an area which we see a lot of mistakes and errors made by site owners forgetting the foundations of the page.

Analyse your keyword research and centre your page name on the top keywords and if you are dealing more so with products then consider a specific term plus the product name.

We do also receive questions as to whether hyphens and underscores in URLs are read by Google. The answer is yes, however we do prefer using hyphens for readability and please remember that leaving spaces, or even none at all will cause great confusion to deciphering the meaning of your page/ category.

File extensions

The best thing here to opt for is to not have file extensions as there is no SEO value in having them. If your site is going to be around for a long time then you will probably end up changing between different languages causing you to place redirects affecting your link equity.

Another point here is that if you are using file extensions, be consistent with your usage by placing it or not on all of your URLs. Finally, make sure you use regular extensions such as .html and .php rather than .dll or .exe as they can be ignored by search engine crawlers.

Numbers

If you plan to insert numbers into your pages then please do note that if the sequence of numbers you intend to use looks like a date, search engines might interpret it as such therefore causing confusion to its actual freshness. Our advice would be to avoid this type of situation if at all possible.

Case sensitivity

As you are well aware, URLs can be constructed using upper-case, lower-case or even a mixture of both. Our advice is to keep things simple by using only lower-case typing as any capitals make things unnecessarily complicated and you run the risk of losing visitors to your site.

Length

URL length is another element to consider, where we truly believe less is more. 5 words is your target limit and if you can get it lower, even better! Remember to avoid using stop words or abbreviations as these will hinder your SEO efforts. It’s important to point out that Google can handle long URLs however from experience it’s better to keep it below 60 characters.

Moving URLs

When your site has been around for a while you’ll probably need or want to make changes to it. One safety net when you do this is to place a 301 redirect from the old page to the new one.

Summary

In short, the idea is all about delivering a clear pathway through your site, one that makes sense with relevant targeted keywords which in the end will provide benefits to your SEO efforts.

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

ABC’s of SEO – U = How to create SEO friendly URL structures

How to Use the New Facebook Timeline Page Layout to Run Promotions

Truus — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 11:46:41 +0000

The new Facebook changes have caused quite a commotion over the past couple of months, especially since the launch of Timeline for Pages Previews earlier this month. This new design poses several challenges for online marketers. The new features as well as limitations of the new Timeline format undoubtedly affects the ways in which brands and companies connect and engage with customers on Facebook. Page owners are advised to get their head around these changes in order to utilize them to their advantage and review their strategies before Timeline is pushed live for all Pages on March 30.

Timeline challenges businesses to create a more expressive and visual identity on Facebook. Page owners will have to think about new creative ways to use the Timeline layout to get the attention of newcomers and engage with their audience. First of all, the new Timeline for pages no longer offers the option to set up a default landing page or welcome tab. Instead, your Page visitors will by default land on your Timeline, challenging the ways in which the visibility of a new promotion, coupon, welcome message or any company announcement can be optimized.

While running our BrightonSEO Facebook Ticket Giveaway I have discovered several new and exciting functionalities that Timeline’s new features for Pages has to offer.

1. Pin posts

First of all, Timeline allows brands to ‘pin’ a specific post to the top of their Page. The post will remain at the top of your Page for seven days after which it will drop down to the date when it was published on your Page Timeline. They can be either images or text and can contain anything from new product announcements to call-to-actions. This new feature is particularly advantageous if you wish to advertise a promotion as this post will be seen first by visiting users. Preferably pin posts that includes images as these are larger and more noticeable.

2. New Page Tabs

Instead of setting up a default landing tab, a feature used very often in the old Facebook Pages, you can now use the boxes right beneath your cover image to help push your promotions or contests. Although there is room for 12 boxes, only four will be displayed by default. You can add tabs and applications of your choice and change their order – except for the Photos View that will always appear first. If you are running any promotions or contests, make sure that these tabs are featured within the top four. Add an appealing page tab icon and pick an engaging tab name, as these are now free of choice.

Moreover, with a width of 810 pixels, Page tabs views have become much wider, allowing for much more content and the possibility to create much more appealing and clever designs. Each of your tabs still has its own unique URL so you can still drive traffic to any landing tab, from within Facebook as well as outside Facebook.

3. Highlight posts

Another new feature that can help you advertise promotions and contests on your Timeline is the option to ‘highlight’ or expand posts. To highlight a post, hover over the top right corner of your post and click the star icon. Since highlighted posts will cover the full width of your Timeline, you should prioritise those messages that you wouldn’t want your Page visitors to miss. By highlighting promotions, contests or other announcements you will increase their visibility to users and potentially drive more interaction. To maximise the effect, add an eye-catching image to your promotional message.

These are only a few of the new features that are now available on Facebook Timeline for Pages. It’s time to start experimenting with the new layout and discover the creative and exciting ways to use its new functionalities to express your identity and engage with your audience.

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

How to Use the New Facebook Timeline Page Layout to Run Promotions

Online PR, Links and Social Media: Interview with Chris Lee – Podcast Episode #163

Kelvin — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 09:49:24 +0000

In this episode of the Internet Marketing Podast, Kelvin is interviewing Chris Lee, MD of Planet Content and a specialist in Online PR. Chris, a specialist in online pr, is leading one of the BrightonSEO workshops “PR: Closing the loop on SEO & social media”. They’re discussing the importance of understanding how SEO works to understand online PR, and why it’s important, as well as how to properly pitch your stories to journalists, knowing what the bigger story is, and the challenging relationship between journalists and PRs. They’re also discussing the effect the introduction of the Facebook timeline will have on businesses.

Chris Lee
BrightonSEO workshops
Toluna
Facebook

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Online PR, Links and Social Media: Interview with Chris Lee – Podcast Episode #163

ABC’s of SEO: T = Travel Trends

Simon — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 15:21:24 +0000

International Keyword Research Trends

The travel industry has enjoyed a huge increase in ecommerce over recent years with the rise of hotel, holiday and flight aggregators. In most recent times this trend has moved towards an influx of holiday and travel price comparison sites.

Some of the major travel providers have had to adapt to the recent economic climate and amplify their keyword profiles with the goal to rank for terms such as cheap holidays, last minute breaks, low cost flights and so on.

Furthermore, large international sites have to apply these keyword strategies and apply them globally in various markets, which have their own languages and keywords.

So, the question is – Can we simply direct translate our keywords? Will high search volumes of certain keywords be reflected within international search engines? Will there be any English terms that remain? And finally, what surprises are there with regards to keyword trends?

This experiment will be based on the terms surrounding ‘cheap flights’ and will include trends in the UK, France, Italy and Spain.

Google UK

Cheap flights (blue)
Low cost flights (red)
Last minute flights (orange)

From the data we can see cheap flights being the most popular searched term in the UK with ‘low cost flights’ having a slightly larger share of searches than ‘last minute flights’. General peaks occur in January and July with the major low point in search trend around December.

Google FR

Vols pas chers (blue)
Vols low cost (orange)
Vols derniere minute (red)

In France we can see that the term ‘low cost flights’ over the last year has overtaken ‘vols pas chers’ in search volumes. This shows that within French search, users have become accustomed to using the English search term alongside the word ‘vols’. However, this logic cannot be applied across the board as our research shows that the French will use the term ‘vols derniere minute’ but won’t use the term ‘last minute flights’. We can also observe that the French term for flight is placed ahead of the adjective and yet in English users place this after.

In terms of seasonality France appears to offer a different trend with March positioning itself as one of the key peaks in cheap flight related search terms. July and December present similar trends but it’s worth noting that March is a key period in the French calendar – something which occurs more so in January within UK search.

Google IT

Low cost voli (red)
Voli low cost (orange)
Voli economici (blue)
Voli last minute (green)

Moving onto the Italian Market and we can obviously note the English terms popping up and once again we can see the term ‘low cost’ featuring at the top of Italian search. However, we can take note that unlike French users, the term is placed before the word ‘voli’ using a similar word order that is familiar amongst UK users. Additionally, we can observe that ‘voli economici’ and ‘voli last minute’ have a far closer search volume than in the previous search markets.

Seasonality within Italy proves to show interesting variation compared to France and the UK. This time rather than July being one of the key periods in search volumes, August is the top month of the year. Once again, March is the other main peak in the year similar to French users.

Google ES

Vuelos baratos (green)
Vuelos economicos (purple)
Vuelos low cost (blue)
Vuelos ultimo minute (red)
Vuelos last minute (orange)

In Spain we see a different scenario again, with the term ‘vuelos baratos’ the stand out term receiving far more search volume than the other key terms. Now let’s analyse the other key terms:

Vuelos low cost (blue)
Vuelos economicos (green)
Vuelos ultimo minuto (red)
Vuelos last minute (orange)

From this data we can obtain that in previous years the term ‘vuelos economicos’ was the highest searched term, however since January last year Spanish users have become much more familiar with the term ‘vuelos low cost’ opting for the English term. What is surprising is that the Spanish translate the term ‘last minute’ receiving almost the same search volume as the English term.

Seasonal trends seem slightly harder to predict in Spain at the beginning of the year. July is the main strong point in the year similar to the UK and France.

Summary

So what have we learnt by this?

Seasonality – One of the main points is the differentiation in seasonality of ‘cheap flight’ related search terms across international markets. This will affect promotions and link building campaigns as different markets possess different times in the year where search activity is at its highest.

Low cost – We have seen the rise of the term ‘low cost’ across the European markets added to home market terms for example ‘voli low cost’. Therefore, it’s always important to bear in mind the possibility of combining English terms with foreign ones rather than simply assuming a complete translation always being preferred in foreign markets.

Word order – As mentioned earlier, word order is important as in Italy placing the phrase ‘low cost’ before ‘voli’ attains a higher search volume, whereas in other markets this doesn’t make sense and is not searched for.

Popular trends – We have also observed in the Spanish & French market terms losing search volume over time as another preferred term gains usage such as ‘vuelos low cost’ overtaking the Spanish equivalent for cheap flights – ‘vuelos economicos’.

Top search terms – One final thing worth noting is the fact that the top spot for ‘cheap flight’ related terms in the UK market is not reflected across the other European markets. In France, and Italy ‘low cost voli’ & ‘vols low cost’ are the top terms. Only in Spain do we see the equivalent term at the top of internet user searches.

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

ABC’s of SEO: T = Travel Trends

ABC’s of SEO: S is for Social Bookmarking

Simon — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 10:47:34 +0000

What is social bookmarking?

Firstly it’s a great way of sharing your top quality content on your site whether it’s a blog post, a report, a video or even a podcast episode, social bookmarking can facilitate your content reaching further exposure as well as increasing readership, comments and votes.

Why would you want to bookmark?

Good question! Well there are several benefits of use social bookmarking sites for sharing your content.

Traffic – You can gain referral traffic back from these bookmarking sites and of course choosing the more popular ones is more likely to gain you more visits.
Indexing – By submitting your content to social bookmarking sites you are in fact increasing the chances of it getting crawled quicker in Google allowing you to get pages on your site indexed quicker in search engines.
Links – Followed links can be achieved by using certain social bookmarking sites which is obviously great for your site as it’s a quick and easy way of gaining links, improving your search engine rankings.
Additional first page listings – If you are looking to get various pages of your site onto the first page on Google then social bookmarking sites can aid you. Posting content to these sites can sometimes rank highly in search engine results.

What social bookmarking sites should I use?

One problem that many users come across is that there are so many sites so it’s often difficult to know where to start bookmarking. Furthermore, some social bookmarking sites often forget your account details and signing-in can often be a problem. Below is our top 10 list of sites that you should be using:

Stumbleupon
Digg
Reddit
Delicious
Blinklist
Folkd
Connotea
Bibsonomy
Netvouz
Misterwong

What and how to bookmark?

There is a lot of freedom when it comes to deciding on what to bookmark, as you could even bookmark every page on your site (not recommended). The focal point to social bookmarking is to share quality content. So save your most in-depth blog posts, interviews, videos and podcasts.

Spend time on creating this content, don’t rush it. Focus on an eye-catching title, keep the sentence structure clear and be sure that your opening sentence provides an interesting and precise insight to your article. Your content needs to have obvious value to the reader and therefore has to be worth a second look.

When you get to the stage of bookmarking you need to remember three key things:

The title
Tags
Description

Arguably the most important element to get right is the title as this serves effectively as the ‘anchor text’. Here you want to try and insert your keyword but make sure your title captures the interest of the reader, how-to guides and top 10 lists are always a great way of doing this. The description needs to explain your content, but don’t overkill it. People don’t want to read an essay so make sure just lay down the key points of what your content is about. Tags as well are important, but don’t go crazy here. 5-7 tags are ample and the optimum amount to describe your content, any more and you’re just confusing your readers as to what the content is really about.

Summary

Obviously not everyone has enough time to spend only on social bookmarking content however it is a task worth undertaking daily as you get followed links back to your domain and your content gets much larger exposure. Finally, try and put your mind-set in that of the reader. Analyse what content gets regularly bookmarked and attempt to create your content accordingly. Build a profile, include bookmarks from various sources and this will get you noticed increasing your chances of getting bookmarked by others.

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

ABC’s of SEO: S is for Social Bookmarking

Getting Mobile Commerce Right: Special Interview with Paul Skelton – Podcast Episode #162

Kelvin — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 09:28:26 +0000

In this episode of the Internet Marketing Podcast, Kelvin is interviewing Paul Skelton from Internet Retailing Expo. This is a special episode as we are media partners of the IRX happening on 21st and 22nd March. If you’re interested in mobile commerce, you can still register for tickets to the show and there is a special mobile track happening the second day of the conference, which is happening at the Birmingham NEC.

Kelvin and Paul are discussing the growth of mobile commerce, and how to get into it, as well as what to evaluate when considering your mobile audience, and whether apps are better then mobile sites, or if responsive website are better.

Internet Retailing Expo, 21st-22nd March

Paul Skelton’s book “M-Commerce”

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

Getting Mobile Commerce Right: Special Interview with Paul Skelton – Podcast Episode #162

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