Using our own online petitioning site, Twitition.com, we utilised a sample of its 7.6m signatures to gather data on the value of tweets on SERPs positioning, and found that the more tweets a URL receives, the higher up the rankings it sits.

If you’ve ever used Twitition.com, you’ll know that when you sign a Twitition, you send a tweet out containing the Twitition’s URL, so we can assume that a Twitition signature equals a tweet.

Our study found that URLs received a significant boost in Google rankings up to 50 tweets, when the effect seems to level out.

The subsequent benefit of gaining tweets is fairly minimal until around 5,000 tweets, when the average ranking of a URL is 31. URLs with over 7,500 tweets enjoy an average Google ranking of 5, whilst URLs over 10,000 tweets are almost guaranteed first page rankings.

Of course, there could be many factors at play here and we only used Google for this study, but what the results have conclusively shown us is that there is a correlation between number of tweets and Google rankings.

Take a look at the post on Branded3’s B3Labs for more information, and get in touch if you’d like to know more about this and how it could affect your SEO strategy.

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Branded3’s study proves tweets do affect rankings

Check out the full post on the Branded3 site here.

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New Google Link Algorithm – Unnatural Links & More

Everyone enjoys scouring the net or rifling through newspapers on April 1 to determine what’s real and what’s blatantly just creative writing, so here are few examples of April Fool’s jokes that caught our eye at Branded3.

• Sony. The arrival of VAIO Q, hailed as the world’s smallest Ultrabook, created a stir among techies and Sony also released a YouTube video that has been viewed over 140,000 times in little over 24 hours.
• Interflora. The guys at Interflora revealed two new types of flowers – the Tiger Rose and the Leopard Rose – via a blog post complete with convincing pictures.
• Google. A flurry of activity from Google HQ raised plenty of eyebrows. A new function on Google Maps surfaced for the first time yesterday that allows users to see an 8-bit version of the world by clicking the ‘Quest’ button in the top right-hand corner. Google and NASCAR also announced the launch of Google Racing, which was a concept of self-driving cars.
• ThinkGeek.com. The idea of an iPad version of Hungry Hungry Hippos that has all the frantic fun of the original board game proved immensely popular, although visitors to ThinkGeek.com will be left disappointed after clicking ‘buy now’.
• The Observer. One of the more obvious April Fool’s stories revolved around Shaun Ryder becoming a special advisor to David Cameron. Stranger things, though, have happened in the world of politics! Staying on theme of politics, the Mail on Sunday claimed the Government were set to tax chilled champagne following the ‘pastygate’ farce.
• The ECB. The England Wales Cricket Board publicised plans to station ‘Balldogs’ around the boundary rope at certain games to help fetch the balls whenever a four or six is hit.
• YouTube. The powers that be at YouTube fittingly made a video that has gone viral and had over 1.4million views after giving people the chance to own ever video uploaded to the site.
• 02. To address the issue of smartphones with a short battery life, 02 released the 02 Jet, which offers 1,000 hours of talk time and can be left on standby for 92 days.
• Time Out. Time Out reported that the London Eye will rotate five times faster than usual during the Olympics in order to keep up with the increase in visitors to one of the city’s major attractions.
• Mashable. Pete Cashmore was ousted as Mashable CEO for a few hours by comedian Conan O’Brien, who wasted little time in revealing the future of Twitter before resigning in a series of video clips.

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April Fool’s Day frenzy 2012

Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links to http://www.yoursite.com

Dear site owner or webmaster of http://www.yoursite.com/,
We’ve detected that some of your site’s pages may be using techniques that are outside Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.
Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes.
We encourage you to make changes to your site so that it meets our quality guidelines. Once you’ve made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google’s search results.
If you find unnatural links to your site that you are unable to control or remove, please provide the details in your reconsideration request.
If you have any questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support.
Sincerely,
Google Search Quality Team

We’ve had a few people contacting us asking what to do about this message recently (Google has sent 700,000 messages in the past 2 months). The answer is pretty straightforward – you need to remove all the bad links ASAP and then submit a reconsideration request. We don’t recommend that you ignore this message.

Actually doing this can be very hard if you don’t have the contact details for all the links you have built. Lots of spam sites have no way of getting in touch with them to remove the links.

If you would like help identifying and removing the bad links or consultancy on how best to manage this situation please get in touch. We’ve had experience dealing with this issue and can help make sure you remove the right links and don’t lose rankings.

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Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links

This seems to have been a bit hasty because Firefox has just announced they are testing https with a view to rolling it out as the default. This would mean that another 25% of users would be “not provided”.

“We are currently testing the change to use SSL for built-in Google searches in our Firefox nightly channel,” a Mozilla spokesperson said via email. “If no issues are uncovered, it will move through our Aurora and Beta release channels before eventually shipping to all our Firefox users. This will include migrating the changes to our non-English version of Firefox, as well.”

Google has so far not said that they will roll out https for Chrome but you can bet that if Microsoft follows Firefox then Google won’t be far behind. They would hate to be the only browser that didn’t do https by default.

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Firefox to block all keyword data using HTTPS by default

To promote both its three-hour delivery service and their mobile website, Interflora has put up a number of interactive flower displays across Central London where commuters can create a display that’s to their liking. Another key part of their Mother’s Day marketing push is the installation of large flower displays alongside big canvases, all of which will have QR codes that commuters can scan using their smartphones, thus demonstrating how easy it is to use Interflora’s mobile service.

Elsewhere, Interflora’s Mercury Man, their Messenger God, will be making an appearance near the displays at Paddington, Liverpool Street, Euston and Waterloo train stations. People are being encouraged to tweet him at @MercuryMan to tell him why their mother is worthy of a bespoke bouquet of flowers worth £1,000. The campaign is set to run from the 8th to 17th March.

The unparalleled growth of the smartphone market has seen QR codes become increasingly popular. Many companies are using them to appeal to consumers who work long hours and find themselves with very little time to shop for their products, and Interflora have recognised that.

Interflora’s marketing director Michael Barringer confirmed that Mercury Man will be around for the foreseeable future to help people in need, citing the long list of special occasions that happen during the year. MG OMD’s campaign was created after they were appointed to Interflora UK’s £1m media planning and buying account.

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Mother’s Day Marketing from Interflora

Taking place on Wednesday 18^th April, ionSearch is a chance to get up to speed with the latest search updates and developments, and to network with some of the most influential and leading professionals (and myself) in the search and social media industry.

The Carriageworks in Leeds is hosting the event, with three suites dedicated to one-to-one sessions and workshops, as well as a large theatre for the main talks.

I’ll be talking in the main auditorium at 11am on ‘Link-building in competitive industries’, where I’ll be covering a wide range of strategies, including social media techniques and manual link-building.

You can also catch me a bit earlier on at 9:55am in the Expert Panels Suite, where I’ll be joining Daniel Bianchini, the Senior SEO Consultant of SEOptimise; Stu Owens, Bloom Agency’s Head of SEO; and Jonathan Alderson, the SEO and Data Insight Manager at Twentysix; to talk about SEO for E-commerce.

With in-depth presentations, master-classes, and a chance to speak to top SEO professionals; ionSearch should be perfect for anyone wanting to learn more about the industry, or perfect their search strategies.

I’ll be around all day in-between talks to chat to you about your SEO needs or answer any questions you may have. Register for your place now to book the early-bird tickets and get £20 off the price.

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Don’t miss ionSearch Leeds 2012 – get your tickets now

Improvements to ranking for local search results. [launch codename “Venice”] This improvement improves the triggering of Local Universal results by relying more on the ranking of our main search results as a signal.

Basically if you search for “plumbers” the organic results will now show you organic results related to your location rather than just general results for that keyword. This has never been the case before on Google (outside of the Google Local & Places results).

This means that every site offering a geographical service needs to have a geographical SEO strategy. If you don’t then sites with a more relevant geographical page will rank higher than you for generic keywords.

The screenshot below was taken from a search for “plumbers” in Google Chrome incognito. Normally only a search for “plumbers in leeds” would bring up results like this.

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Google Venice update showing locally targeted organic results

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Using social media to improve your SEO

You can find them in the VIP area where they’ll be on-hand to talk about any SEO, social media or other digital requirements you may have.

Tim will be taking to the stage twice during the event at Earls Court 2 tomorrow, to deliver some expert talks. Firstly, if you get to the event early enough you can catch Tim talking in the Social Media Theatre on ‘How to use social media to improve your SEO’.

This talk is essential for any search enthusiasts wondering how social media affects SEO, and the following topics will be covered:

• Maximising link potential through social media
• How Social Media & SEO are joined
• What is Social Link Building?
• Using Twitter to build links and followers
• Social media tools and services
• And last but not least, our very own award-winning social media phenomenon, Twitition

Head to the Search Marketing Theatre later on tomorrow afternoon at 4pm, to hear Tim’s talk on ‘Advanced SEO Strategies for 2012’.

Tim will cover the following in this talk:

• Developing natural link signals
• Developing ROI from your SEO campaigns
• International SEO
• Plus much more…

Come and talk to Branded3 in the VIP area tomorrow, or if you can’t make it – get in touch with us for any SEO or social media advice, or if you’d like to receive the presentation slides.

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Branded3 at TFM&A tomorrow