A new tag to manage International / Multilingual websites from Google
Value: [rating=5]
Our commentary: A new asset this week for large multilingual sites or for those thinking of targeting new audiences was launched by the Google Webmaster team. It's great to see a constant stream of new features recently from this team.
The new feature is a language specifc tag "hreflang" aimed at websites / businesses that target users in various languages but under one domain (usually by using subdomains or folders - e.g. http://es.example.com or www.example.com/es/). There are often complicated issues with duplicate content with such setups that this new tool allows you to manage more efficiently. This is the format for the "hreflang" directive which will have to implemented within a CMS so will typically require bespoke coding.
<link rel="€alternate"€ hreflang="a-different-language" href="http://url-of-the-different-language-page" />
The best example within this post from the Google Webmaster blog being centred around a spanish page where…
Our selection of the best 5 hacks from 17 presented by Wordstream
Value: [rating=5]
Our commentary: The purpose of this alert is to point you to a great collection of techniques you may not have considered for advanced analysis to diagnose opportunities to improve your marketing and in particular Search engine Marketing within Google Analytics. It's a classic linkbait example, but nothing wrong with that and it has clearly taken a lot of effort to compile through contacting 17 Google Analytics specialists. I think it's proved popular through it's clear layout with screengrabs explaining each technique.
Marketing implications: These are my picks of the techniques covered which I thought were particularly useful for advanced review of search marketing effectiveness:
1 Will Critchlow - using custom variables to determine the referring traffic source for the first visit. By default, Google Analytics only records the first visit.
2 David Harry - using custom reports to drill-down…
How to gain high-quality links
Value: [rating=4]
Our commentary: A recent post on Search Engine Land (see recommended link at the end) draws out the tactics you may want to consider if you are facing the challenge or opportunity of a client that already has 10,000's of incoming links and is a well known brand in its market.
The article focuses most of its ideas around high quality & high volume links. The first being links from authority sites such as key newspaper sites or government / education related websites for example. The second is much more about volume links from lots of websites to yours, very social media & advertising orientated.
Clearly the two options I have mentioned there will be on any link building task list, where this blog adds some good value is how you should then leverage your brand & other marketing activities to accelerate & improve the effectiveness of…
Using Google Analytics to Audit and Improve SEO
Here is a post explaining a simple way to add some extra info to your Google Analytics data to help improve your natural search traffic. In this post I hope to show you...
An explanation of what's missing from Google Analytics in terms of actionable SEO data.
How to fix it.
A free excel template so that you can play about with it yourself.
A tutorial to accompany the excel spreadsheet.
The actions to take as a result of the data.
Some suggestions for extending this further.
(more…)…
How will Google Instant affect SEO and Google Adwords
Value: [rating=5]
Our commentary: These brief comments on search are based on my initial comments in Twitter while listening to the announcement by Marissa Mayer Vice President of Search Product and User Experience at Google - before I went to get my tea!
For the full-analysis on search implications I always turn to Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land which is the link below. Then the more technical SEO blogs.
When she promised "A fundamental shift in search" at the start of her talk I expected to be underwhelmed. When I initially hear about I thought, this is actually a fundamental shift, the most significant change since the 2007 Universal Search / Google Onebox incorporation of images/news/video into the SERPS. Having now seen it live, I think it's more important - it is a "game changer" for…
Keyword Research Process Tips
Value: [rating=4]
Our commentary: Keyword research is a little bit like marmite: some love it, a lot hate it. However tools have made the whole research & analysis of keywords a much easier task and to help we have a compilation of other keyword analysis tools for assessing customer demand for products. However, we don't mention Google Suggest...
The blog post below is a great little guide to making the most of Google Suggest using spreadsheets and other tools.
Suggest is a tool which can make keyword research a lot of fun and more interesting! It makes the whole experience much more human which a lot of the automated tools obviously don't and they often leave you with the tiresome job of removing irrelevant keywords. This method and tool really helps with focussing on your keywords and building your tail orientated terms
Marketing implications: If you are just starting your…
If you don't know it, Think Visibility, "#Thinkvis" is a great "unconference" set in Leeds which has grown from 80 to 250 attendees; not bad for a Saturday. I attended the first conference which I liveblogged and was back for the fourth over the weekend. Thanks to Dom Hodgson and the other organisers for putting together a great lineup of speakers which featured the SEO nitty-gritty you don't see at other conferences.
So straight onto the topics.
These are the sessions I've covered, I've included the slides where possible:
International / Multilingual SEO with Rob Kerry
Social media for SEO with Lisa Myers
Linkbuilding for SEO with Jaamit Duranni
How to gain market dominance in any sector" with Dave Naylor
1. International SEO with Rob Kerry
See speaker background
Rob works for an agency specialising in international SEO. To start with he covered the basics which I get asked often, so…
An introduction to on-page optimisation for SEO
Many of the posts or articles on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) that you find on the web today will talk about emerging trends or the latest tools to manage this or analyze that, it can become too easy to lose sight of the core building blocks that help shape a successful online business.
Working closely with Dr. Dave Chaffey, we have created the first of many 'back to basics' guides that we hope will help companies who lack outside or internal expertise review their own digital marketing effectiveness - a DIY approach.
You can download the on-page SEO template at the end of this post.
We hope that anyone who writes or reviews copy who isn't an SEO expert will find the guidelines and examples useful.
What is on-page optimisation?
On-page optimization is an essential tool in your natural search-marketing toolbox. Each page of your…
I was recently putting the digital world to rights with digital marketing consultant James Gurd (James on Linked In, James on Twitter). We were talking about the ongoing need for straightforward advice on SEO for small and medium businesses who are new to SEO. We both felt there is still too much complexity and too many myths. James finds that when talking to clients that many still want to get to grips with SEO essentials so they can can focus their investment working with their SEO agency on advanced strategy.
So I'm delighted that James has offered to share his approach to cutting through the complexity - I hope it provides useful frameworks and interesting reading for marketers grappling with the basic success factors for SEO and also for consultants and agencies grappling with explaining it.
[caption id="attachment_2960" align="aligncenter" width="504" caption="A five step SEO Strategy framework"]…
Like many I've switched to Chrome as my main browser this year for the speed and stability.
If you haven't made the switch yet, there's almost nothing to stop you now although I'm still missing the SEO Book plug-ins for Firefox, although SEO Quake is an adequate competitor.
I've found great interest in these new tools on my Advanced SEO course, so "due to popular demand" I've created a page of the ones I recommend. I've started with the simplest ones which marketers on the course might use, onto the more advanced ones for the SEOs.
1. PageRank Status
A simple tool for showing Google PageRank.
2. Nofollow checker
…
