Yesterday Majestic SEO announced two new link metrics, Citation Flow and Trust Flow, for measuring the perceived quality of a domain, subdomain or page.

Google.co.uk

Over the last couple of years the use of Google’s PageRank measurement has seen a decline and SEOMoz’s MozRank has taken over as the go-to measurement of value. Majestic SEO are now claiming that their new metrics are the successor, with a much more useful set of measures.

Citation Flow – This number predicts how influential a URL might be based on the number of sites linking to it. The more links that the site has, the higher it’s Citation Flow.
Trust Flow – This number predicts how trustworthy a URL might be based on a backlink’s proximity to trusted domains. Links from within trusted neighbourhoods are more trustworthy than links from spammy neighbourhoods.

BBC.co.uk vs XLPharmacy.com

As Majestic SEO’s Fresh Index is updated daily, Citation and Trust Flow are very useful metrics not only for what they show you, but in their freshness too. Compared to SEOMoz’s metrics which are updated monthly and PageRank which is updated every few months, Trust & Citation Flow can give you daily updates.

The particularly useful aspect about the new metrics is the visual representation of the numbers. The graph lets you quickly gauge a page’s metrics in an easy-to-present format.

As the Trust & Citation Flow numbers are between 0 & 100, the graph uses a 100×100 grid as it’s canvas, and places a square on the relative point on the grid for each backlink. The more squares at a particular point, the darker the square becomes.

The graphs can be shown in 2 formats, Referring Domains and External Backlinks.

Referring Domains

This graph shows the Trust & Citation Flow for each of the domains that link to the site. The closer to the bottom left a square is, the less links and less trust a linking domain has. A square in the middle but near the bottom of the graph represents a domain with a lot of backlinks but very low trust. A square on the top right of the graph signifies a domain with a lot of backlinks and very high trust.

External Backlinks

Switching to the External Backlinks graph shows the Trust & Citation Flow for the individual backlinks linking to your site. As you may notice a lot of the high Trust Flow links have gone, a likely explanation is that even though a highly Trusted & Cited domain may be linking to you, the actual link could be coming from a deep page which doesn’t have as high Trust or as many Citations as the main domain.

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Trust Flow & Citation Flow, MajesticSEO’s New Link Metrics

Brands like Ferrari, GUCCI and Burberry appear to be in the top of the Interbrand Top 100 list in the number Google+ circlers (followers).

Some other useful points include:

• 64% of the Interbrand Top 100 brands now have an active Google+ brand page.
• 22% of the  Interbrand Top 10 brands now have more than 100,000 circlers
• 43% of the brands are posting over 3 times a week

Looking at the the increase in the number of circles between Q1 and Q2 for brands with the bigger Google+ audiences, the growth in most cases is quite impressive:

Google+ Adoption & Engagement

In terms of  brands page adoption between December 2011 and May 2012, there seems to be a very high increase in the number of circlers. Brands, in turn, appear to be becoming more and more active by significantly increasing  the number of weekly publications posted on Google+ during the same period.

With regards to the number of circlers between all active Interbrand 100 brands, growth throughout 2012 Q1 and Q2 has been steady. The overall number of the Interbrand 100 brands Google+ audience has grown from approximately 500,000 consumers back in December 2012 to nearly 10 million in May 2012.

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Luxury, Automotive & Electronics Brands Rank Top In Google+ Engagement

Those returning after a classic sun-drenched Brighton lunch hour were treated to a presentation from iCrossing’s very own Charlie Peverett. He told a tale of innocence, how he spent his days as an editor blissfully oblivious to the intricacies of SEO. However, when the curtain was pulled back he peered into a murky world that revealed the true reason why nobody was reading his content

The presentation is now available to view in all its glory, where you’ll discover why ‘great content’ is more than just a check box on a SEO to do list (an issue discussed in greater depth in our latest ebook, How to Plan a Content Strategy).

If you pay attention you may spot a random satsuma.

Now in the world of content, there is no such thing as a random satsuma. Everything produced has a specific place and purpose, whether you’re creating content to feature on a high-traffic homepage, or choosing imagery to include in a presentation to a rowdy group of internet boffins. As a well versed content strategist, Charlie knows this full well and the subtlety and swiftness with which he moved on from this citrussy slide hinted at a more cryptic meaning:

• Was he referring to the segmented nature of organisations and how content allows the pieces to come together under a single unifying skin?
• Was it a Christmas stocking analogy, suggesting that good content is expensive, as opposed to cheap and dirty (like a piece of coal)
• Was it satsuma at all, or had he tricked us with an image of a tangerine, mandarin or clementine?

Even if the only real purpose was to raise a chuckle from the audience, then it certainly achieved its goal. This is a lesson to heed for all website owners and content producers; you can’t just plonk content into your site and hope that it will do the job. You need to go through a thorough process to determine the right content messages, languages and formats to portray your brand, whilst testing that what you say is helping your audience achieve their reason for being on your site.

In short, if your satsuma isn’t achieving the right results, it might be time to replace it with a guava.

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No such thing as a random satsuma

We particularly like the look of Shanghai!

Bahrain-

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Formula 1: Race Result — Shanghai / China — Sakhir / Bahrain

The Blog Tree: UK Edition comprises of 67 blogs across seven categories (marketing, PR, social media, design, search engine optimization, start-ups and technology). The root system symbolises the news sources that feed the tree with source material. The higher a leaf is placed on the tree, the more influential the corresponding blog with leaf colour representing topic.

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The Blog Tree: UK Edition [Infographic]

Mobile platforms such as smartphones and tablets continue to grow in importance at a rapid pace. Below we’ve look at 10 statistics that show how quickly mobile is growing and why it’s important for you to have a solid mobile strategy in place right now.

1. 15% of UK search happens on a mobile device, 3 years ago that figure was down at 2%

In Nov 2011 15% of UK Christmas related search happened on a mobile device and this figure is growing rapidly. In countries with less developed network infrastructure that figure is even higher, for example in India 40% of search happens on a mobile device. If you don’t have mobile strategy in place you’re potentially missing out on 15% of the search market in the UK.

2. Mobile accounts for 10% of ecommerce

10% of visits to ecommerce websites now come from mobile devices. According to the IAB “marketers and retailers are losing hundreds of thousands of pounds by failing to grasp the opportunities presented by mobile devices.”

3. 48% of users start their search on a mobile device and finish on a desktop – Ipsos, March 2011

If you have no mobile strategy in place you are potentially losing out on half of your audience.

4. In N America 1 in 4 payments made in a StarBucks are done using a mobile device

There’s been a lot of talk about how in the future we’ll pay for items using our mobiles. Well that future is here and happening right now, get involved.

5. Smartphones are no longer a luxury item. In N America the majority (56%) of young people on minimum wage own a smartphone.

If the majority of young people own a smartphone, then it means they are more likely to visit your site using that phone. Make sure you provide them with a good experience when they do.

6. 1 in 3 people would rather give up sex then their mobile

Speaks for itself really.

7. In the UK there are currently 17 million mobile internet users – eMarketer, April 2011

27% of your UK audience is a mobile internet user, ignore them at your peril

8. By 2015 there are expected to be 23 million mobile internet users in the UK which is more than 1/3 of the entire population – eMarketer, April 2011

With 27% of the UK population already using mobile internet and that figure rising to 37% in the next few years having a mobile strategy in place really is a no brainer.

9. In Q4 2010 there were more smartphones shipped than desktop PCs

The IDC expects mobile internet to eclipse wired internet by 2015. If more people are accessing the internet using mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones then it stands to reason that you should have a strategy in place to take full advantage of that.

10. In Q4 2011 Apple sold more iPads than any individual PC maker sold PCs

Tablet PCs are rapidly increasing in popularity, so much so that for many people they are their primary computing device. Ensure that you provide a pleasant experience on a device where people are navigating using fingers rather than a mouse.

Hopefully by now you’ll agree that mobile is already here in a big way and will continue to grow at an impressive pace in the next few years. People are searching and browsing the internet in increasing numbers using mobile devices and making sure they receive a pleasant experience when they reach your site is important if you want to drive sales and increase ROI.

Image credit: Technorati

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Top 10 reasons why you need a solid mobile strategy in place

Last week it was Friday the 13^th, so according to cliché it would be sombre day involving a lot of bad luck. This time though it was a lovely sunny day… and of course the day of BrightonSEO April 2012. iCrossing was well represented, I saw quite a few colleagues there and even a few clients.

I was at BrightonSEO with a purpose, and that purpose was to tweet about the presentations to share the news, views and tips-n-tricks with those who could not attend. And so I did, furiously you could say, as I made 257 tweets that day containing the #brightonSEO hashtag. This resulted in a lot of new followers and over 73 retweets. People actually came up to me in the pub to say hello to me, having noticed this full stream of Tweets from my hand!

That is the power of Twitter and spreading the word if you really go for it. We also wanted to look further into the Tweets made by others; using the Twitter API. Due to the limitations of the Twitter API, we have only been able to harvest 1499 Tweets made that day with the hashtag #brightonSEO. This data is from the second half of the day but gives great insights into how many people were Tweeting, amount of Tweets per hour and so forth.

Many people and will blog about take-away points, summaries and more of what they have learned at BrightonSEO. We wanted to look a bit more into the Tweets and social side of it all. We even found that people were active in the pub, during Beer on the Pier. But what is the breakdown really?

And yes, I am proud to be sitting at the number 1 spot of Top Tweeters. But those are the people who made the majority of Tweets, who was the most spoken to person on Twitter? Who was the most popular? It won’t surprise you that it is the organiser Kelvin Newman (@kelvinnewman).

And here is a wordcloud of what the people were tweeting about. There are no big surprises here. But it still makes a very nice cloud of the most popular words.

-Kevin Ellen is a Natural Search Analyst for iCrossing UK, based in London. He has a keen interest in Social Media and Technical Natural Search. You can follow him at Twitter @Kevin_Ellen_ and say hello to him!

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#brightonSEO Twitter Infographic (April 2012)

So, what prompted us to choose this particular topic? Here’s a perspective on where the online travel sector is now and how we got there for big travel brands like legacy airlines and major tour operators. It’s intentionally simplified to make a point and, I hope, to catalyse the discussion.

Cutting costs, cutting service?
It starts about a decade ago when online purchasing technology really started to work. Suddenly websites could be much more than just a bit of window dressing. These technical advances offered huge opportunities for achieving economies of scale. You could now service lots of people at the same time – who needs telesales people or travel agents if a customer can query the booking database themselves and book their own flight or holiday? Cue big investment in web dev and cutting back on traditional customer service and sales channels like travel agents, brochures and telesales agents.

In the short term it probably worked – margins improved, the finance team were happy. But the technology wasn’t as good as it first appeared. (I often think we forget how maddeningly slow it was and how often it fell over in the early days.) From feeling like they were in control (and liking that feeling) customers began to sometimes feel powerless. And that made them really frustrated.

A customer service vacuum developed. The new technology promised more than it delivered – but when it went wrong, companies often weren’t well enough resourced to deal with the problems.

New competitors
In the meantime a group of challengers innovated with the technology some more. Price comparison and then metasearch sites sprang up – offering customers the chance to compare prices much more easily and to query a host of databases all in one go. These newcomers focussed people remorselessly on price as the only distinguishing factor between similar products. They made a stack of money on referral fees and commission. They ploughed it back into aggressive advertising that pushed the price message even harder. It made the travel brands feel they had to compete on price too. Which they did. In some ways, cutting costs is the easy option too. Who needs to innovate with new, better products when you can just use technology to squeeze the costs out of the supply chain?

The next technical leap forward
Social web was the next big thing to arrive – and it allowed customers to find an outlet for their frustrations. Divorced from those more traditional avenues for help making decisions or answering questions, they resorted to asking their peers on new forums and review sites. (Who’d have imagined a few years go just how powerful Trip Advisor in particular would become in driving bookings?)

The net result? Frustrated customers, focussed on price, increasingly vocal about a company’s occasional mistakes and mishaps, increasingly brand agnostic.

With the benefit of hindsight, maybe just letting the customer choose their own holiday and book it was quite a risky thing to do.

Brands lost control. Other people stepped into that space left behind and started to develop relationships with their customers. And customers started talking online about their products in ways completely at odds with the carefully created expensive brand messages they were broadcasting.

But travel is a complex product. And it’s getting more complex. Customers are becoming more and more demanding too – they want exactly the right holiday for them and increasingly they expect to find it. And yet they still struggle to do this.

There’s huge opportunity for brands to fight back… do you agree and if so, how?

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Has the web killed travel brands?

Take some tips on how to, and how not to, go about working with fashion bloggers from the writers themselves:

Dos

“The best brand collaborations involve working with individuals that respect the fact that blogging is a business – actually compensating bloggers for their time, blog space and the promotional value they give to brands.” Audrey Rogers www.befrassy.com

“One of the best brand collaborations I’ve been involved in was when I was asked to dress the windows of a well-known high fashion store on Bond Street. Seeing my name on the window felt like such amazing recognition.” Carrie Harwood www.wishwishwish.net

“I really enjoyed a high fashion brand’s window-dressing event in Milan last season, and this season’s Lomography follow-up, and loved working with another designer brand to create my dream piece – a biker jacket with a hoodie inside.” Kristin Knox www.theclotheswhisperer.co.uk

“The more relevant information I get and the greater access to the products I have, the better the content I can produce around it.” Laetitia Wajnapel www.mademoisellerobot.com

Don’ts

“Some agencies are woefully behind when it comes to blogger outreach. Anyone still sending those ‘dear blogger’ emails needs a refresher course!” Jen Holmes www.littlebirdfashion.com

“It seems a lot of people who work in PR see bloggers as existing at the very bottom of the industry’s food chain. I don’t collaborate with PR representatives who see bloggers as foolish young girls who will do anything for free clothes.” Audrey Rogers

“I get irritated by online marketing companies who constantly email me asking to place ‘sponsored posts’ on my site, or ‘links to their client’s website’. Some of the people I’ve dealt with have had a very bad attitude towards bloggers.” Laetitia Wajnapel

“One company wanted me to run a giveaway for them but then told me to delete my blog post because they hadn’t got official word that it could go ahead. I found this very unprofessional.” Vicki Harvey www.themagpiegirl.com

For more insight into how fashion brands and bloggers can work together, contact results@icrossing.co.uk for your free eBook. 

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Fashion bloggers: Dos and don’ts

Essentially, paid search results on Yahoo! are now going to be powered by Microsoft.  This means that our current Yahoo! accounts will cease to exist once the transition is complete.  The accounts that we have set up in BING will supply the search results in Yahoo!

To prepare for this transition, I have created suggestions and tips on how to make sure you safe guard your accounts from experiencing negative effects from the search alliance.

Actions that need to be taken before and during the transition of your accounts:

1. Advertisers should make sure that their clients know what the search alliance is. Make sure to communicate possible changes in the accounts before the transition occurs.
2. Yahoo representatives will now be managing the BING Accounts.  If you do not have a BING account set up in adCenter, get this account established and open an IO with your Yahoo representative.  Make sure that you discuss any discounts that you previously had with BING.  You will not be receiving the same discount after the alliance and you will need to start a dialogue with your representatives about what changes you should expect.
3. Have your Yahoo! representative perform a gap analysis between your Yahoo! and BING accounts and use this analysis to add keywords into your BING account. It might be good to mirror over your best performing Google accounts into MSN before the alliance so that you capture any traffic that could be lost.
4. Think about the possibilities of beginning or re-engaging SEO efforts in MSN and Google to counter any negative effects on traffic and performance.
5. As the transition occurs, increase your adCenter budgets.  Your Yahoo! and BING accounts will now be serving from one account, so you will need to allocate what you would be spending previously in Yahoo! and BING to your BING budgets.
6. Download the new version of the Desktop tool (8.3)
7. Continue to monitor your accounts for the changes that occur after the alliance and communicate the changes and trends that you are seeing to your account manager at Yahoo! and to your internal team.
8. Use search query reports (found on the reports tab in the engine) before and after migration.

Because this alliance has already occurred in North America, Yahoo! and BING have released the following results from the transition:

• CPCs spiked initially and click volume had varying results (high spikes vs. drops depending on clients).
• Since the transition, Profitability is increasing in MSN (decreases in CPA and increases in ROI).
• ROI & Revenue per click has increased steadily quarter by quarter
• Advertisers have started to see better results when compared with YHH and MSN’s individual performance before the alliance.  It is important to work closely with the account managers to understand the trends that you are seeing.

The main thing to keep in mind is that this alliance is meant to provide a competitive environment for advertisers, and as a result we should be prepared.  Follow the suggestions to prepare your accounts and monitor changes throughout the transition to ensure that your accounts will experience minimal negative effects.

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How advertisers can profit from the Yahoo and Microsoft search alliance