What is the future for SEO?

Danyl Bosomworth suggested, a little light-heartedly, in his recent Smart Insights article ‘SEO is dead’, that one of the ideas for resetting your SEO agenda is to ‘Forget SEO and forget Google’ and in this he is absolutely correct. SEO really only has itself to blame for the predicament in which it finds itself. Daily emails bombarding your inbox promising untold wealth from a number one position on Google, ‘guaranteed’ link building schemes that ‘Google won’t penalize’ and many other ridiculous claims have made SEO a very bad name for itself. Of course it wasn’t always like this. There are many SEO professionals out there who have always had the best interests of clients at heart, have striven to produce good quality content and links and have generally behaved with propriety in a landscape dominated by excess and greed. Even today you can buy…

A great summary of the key decisions you need to take to rank in different countries

Making SEO effective for site(s) in different countries has been a long-standing challenge for ranking in local markets. Google has introduced different tools in recent years to help, but you need to be aware of them. Jimmy McCann summarised these in his checklist of 10 common international SEO mistakes to avoid and we also detail the techniques in our 7 Step Guide to SEO. Now Aleyda Solis, a widely recognised leading International SEO Expert in Spain, who has produced a fantastic summary in this step-by-step SEO checklist of issues to consider in this infographic. We are sharing this as it provides actionable steps for companies growing their overseas traffic in new or existing countries. …

Or is SEO just getting some context? 5 ideas for resetting your SEO agenda

I’m not a fan of lightly making big, idle statements and this one has been made before. I say ‘SEO is dead’ now because the industry and culture of SEO, is fast transitioning. SEO Moz, or as they’re now called ‘Moz’, dropping the SEO element of the brand name. Of course SEO is not dead, it's simply now viewed in context, for what it is - one important practice in digital marketing.

When the SEO Juggernaut, ‘SEO Moz’, goes to the lengths of not only re-branding but changing their URL (that can be cataclysmically bad news for an SEO minded out-fit judging by the impact on Econsultancy when they dropped their hyphen), it illustrates just how important it is for them to move away from the pure ‘SEO’ label, a label that seems so dated now. Note…

A 5 step checklist for reviewing your local SEO Campaign

Thanks to Google's algorithmic changes, many small to medium-sized businesses are finding it increasingly difficult to make their mark on the search engines. Big brands have big budgets, and can pay SEO agencies big monthly fees to optimise their website for competitive keyphrases. But smaller businesses are getting left behind; watching their rankings slip and their conversion rate tumble. But smaller business shouldn’t be competing on the same level as these big players; not right away at least. The first step in any search engine optimisation campaign should see these businesses reaching out to the audience that is most likely to buy from them. And that is the audience on their doorstep.

The importance of local SEO

The customer base in your local area is perhaps the most important tool in your marketing arsenal, and one that every business should be tapping into. By employing a…

Guidance and examples for Buying Guides relevant for other sectors too

‘Buying Guide’ or 'Buyer's Guide' content are a common SEO tactic particularly amongst retailer ecommerce sites, but they can be used in other types of site too such as financial services. They're popular since they tick many of the boxes for effective on page SEO. They're naturally rich in keywords, dense in character count and recognisably original, it’s an easy target to hit on your SEO checklist. They also enable you to link to your main target category and popular product pages with relevant anchor text, so boosting their effectiveness.

Potential customers also love Buying Guides, since, done well, they’re a great research resource in the early ‘information gathering’ stages of the purchasing decision process.

If they provide great advice and a good experience in navigating them,…

A briefing on how 13 of the most significant algorithm changes impact SEO ranking

As you may have heard, Google has released a major update to its algorithm which has seen a significant impact on search results in the UK and the US. Penguin 2.0 released on the 22nd May 2013 is the latest in a long line of updates made by Google aimed at improving search results presented to the user. Although Google has made several changes to its Penguin algorithm over the past year, this latest update is perhaps the most significant and has changed the way Google bots rank all pages on a site not just the homepage. The algorithms are designed to highlight only the best results from a search term and Penguin 2.0 has been created to weed out paid for content that masquerades as ‘real’ content such as advertorials, sponsored content etc so that the user finds…

15 key takeaways from SMX London 2013

The recent SMX search marketing expo in London had a great range of speakers that covered a variety of topics over the two days. In this post, I thought I’d share some takeaways on common best practices described by speakers. I've grouped the best practices under three key themes explored at the conference.

From authorship to authority

As search continues to evolve, a number conditions outside of links and on-page SEO factors will begin to affect a website’s authority within the SERPs. ‘Authority’ will become an increasingly important factor and it’s vital that writers and brands claim their online identities through Google Authorship and 'rel=me' for and build trusted and respected profiles. 1. Best practices for building authority: Keep an author consistent on an article URL Verify mark-up with …

Reaching global customers through your Wordpress blog or company site

Wordpress is a popular blogging and content management tool now used by many businesses for their blog or main site. It's now used by over 60 million websites worldwide according to Forbes, including up to 15% of Alexa’s 'Top 1 million sites'. Builtwith.com, a competitor analysis and business intelligence tool providing technology adoption and usage analytics for the internet, has reported that Wordpress usage has continued to increase in the past year.

Further analysis of the top 100,000 Wordpress sites by builtwith.com shows that while the platform is being used for almost every type of internet activity, Wordpress is an extremely popular tool for business – accounting for around 17% of distribution.

…

An interview with James Collins

As part of our briefings on Big Data and new software services to help marketers, this interview with James Collins at Stickyeyes, introduces their new software and analytics tool called ‘Optimum Inteligence’. The service arises from a need for online marketers (Search specialists, Specialists and Executives) needed help in analysing and understanding their data, the market they operate in and access to technology from Paid and Natural Search Software. James shares his views on ‘Big data’ related to SEO, the benefits for companies and how Optimum Intelligence has evolved and where they are with it’s release.

Q Why do you think Big Data is such a buzz word this Year?

‘Big Data’ is no doubt the marketing buzz word of 2013, and understandably so, given the importance of accountability and report ability of marketing activity. This is…

Using 'Rel=me ' to tell Google you are YOU.

As an online brand,  you would ideally want to have control over your brand name search results pages (SERPs). By control I mean all the results on the first page should ideally be your owned entities, whether it is your website or your company social profile pages. ASOS are a prime example of this. The online fashion powerhouse pretty much owns its brand SERPs (apart from the blended news & Guardian page), as you will see below: ASOS brand SERP Google has little trouble distinguishing that @asos is the genuine ASOS Twitter page because there is an overwhelming number of digital markers indicating that this is the case. The same goes for ASOS’ other profiles that rank on page one. However, not everyone has the authority and…