Transparency is the key to building relationships and a solid business

As part of the ongoing guest bloggers series on Holistic Search, Rob Weatherhead – Operations Director at Latitude Express explores how transparency within the search marketing sector is key to ongoing success

The market for agencies offering search engine marketing over the few years has become increasingly cluttered. Many moons ago when I started on the search marketing career ladder there was very little competition and the number of serious search marketing agencies could be counted on one hand. Since then the market has changed significantly with web developers, hosting companies, media agencies and a growing lists of specialists all competing for the UK’s search marketing budgets. It sometimes seems like each time you speak to a prospect you are faced with a new competitor, somebody you have never come across before, and the list continues to grow.

With this increased competition comes the inevitable focus on price and the margins available for search marketing agencies have been significantly squeezed as competition has increased. Clients have started negotiating harder, and the dreaded procurement team are now a regular participant in the pitch process. On top of this, increased competition puts a natural pressure on agencies to lower or discount their fees in order to secure business.

In this situation I have seen a lot of agencies reducing their fees, sometimes to ridiculous levels, just to win some new business. This approach however does nothing but devalue the services being provided, not just for the agency in question, but the whole market. It also puts the eventual winner of business (assuming they went lowest) at risk once they have to actually deliver for such a low fee. I hate to think how many search contracts are out in the market which are loss making for the incumbent when the maths are done.

I’m pretty sure this trend cannot continue (at least I hope not!) and that competition, and market pricing, will level out. And whilst improved efficiencies, processes, and technology may mean agencies are able to offer services for less, this will not simply be done blindly in an attempt to win new business. But this will only come if the agencies learn that winning loss making business isn’t a long term strategy, and clients are educated and open to the value of the service provided.

Key to this transition is transparency and understanding. If agencies provide transparent pricing models which are built on logic and facts, allowing clients to understand exactly what they are getting for their money, then everybody will be better off. Clients understand more about what they have paid for, and just as importantly, what they haven’t. Whilst agencies can ensure that they are charging a fee for their services that they are comfortable with by providing a “menu” of services and associated costs, thus allowing the client to get more, but at an agreed rate.

And through this level of transparency and understanding you will also foster a greater relationship. Once everybody can see, and is comfortable with, what they are getting from a relationship then on the whole, they will be happier. Non transparent pricing with unclear deliverables are a thing of the past and have been the downfall of many a client relationship, the future is transparent, and the sooner agencies wise up to this fact the better it will be for everyone.

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Google updating results during search – what are the impacts

Rob Ousbey, from Distilled found this interesting test from Google where search results are updated on the fly. This is an interesting development as it could have a number of impacts on search behaviour. Interestingly, Rob Managed to pull together a video of it in action.

The following was observed as part of this latest test:

Perhaps the biggest impact on these latest tests could be on the following

  1. Paid Search CTR. Just imagine, if this works as it looks as though it does. Every time I am typing my phrase in the results update. Every time the paid search result updates, this updates the PPC result. This could mean that my advert could get a significantly higher volume of impressions than it did previously which in turn could have an impact on the performance and accountability of the paid search ads. Let me put this into context. One of the factors which impacts Paid Search Quality Score, is click through rate. By increasing the potential impressions on non-relevant searches – particularly on phrase or broad heavy searches – the likelihood is the quality score may be impacted and thus advertisers may pay more for their ads as their quality score is lower than it would have been on previous incarnations or under the results page current guise.
  2. Search behaviour. Much of the recent research tends to suggest users have been favouring longer tail searches particularly since Google introduced Google Suggest. With the results now impacting on the fly, users may again start to favour much shorter tail terms for entry into the site, as they potentially find the results they want much earlier. Commercially again this may impact the paid search inventory more as much of these results are often more expensive in terms of CPC and thus likely to cost more to potential advertisers as a result.

From a usability perspective, I actually quite like the thought of it, however from an advertiser perspective, I can’t help thinking this could have some quite significant impacts, not least in terms of commercial accountability of the paid search results particularly on accounts where due diligence may not have been placed on the ongoing optimisation of the accounts, or where keyword matching may not have been particularly tight – I would suggest exact/phrase match phrases would be impacted far less.

This is still fairly limited in terms of its rollout however I will certainly be keeping a very close eye on this one

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If Google Places usage is to be extended, then Google Places needs fixing

There have been some very interesting developments with regards to the expanded use of Google Places over the last couple of months, with Google not only increasing the usage of Google Places within their mainstream SERPs but also increasing the number of features within it such as Tags. Further to that – Google Places is POTENTIALLY such a great toolset to have within the Google armoury – HOWEVER that is being tainted by a number of issues at present including

Further to the last point, this was something Lisa Myers blogged about over at SEO Chicks back in January, when one of her clients appeared to have been hijacked and she went through a lot of the pains I am now going through with one of mine in similar circumstances.

Similarly to Lisa, the client in my case operated within the Travel sector, and similarly to Lisa’s example the referenced listing was not owned by the organisation I was working with. In my case this happened to be an affiliate who had managed to get himself/herself associated with the listing. All well and good for the affiliate, not so good for the client.

The repatriation process has been long and painful, with Google themselves not at all able to help in any way – something you would have thought would have been a must do – given the fact this is increasingly looking like a revenue area for them – as demand in local search grows. However try and get something as simple as a rogue listing fixed is not ‘as simple as simply clicking a button’ and unfortunately should you be in a similar situation is likely to mean a long hard slog in order to return your listings to their correct state.

In particular the verification process needs some addressing. The mere fact that it is possible for an organisation to ‘hijack’ another organisations listing is beyond comprehension, whether this be by unscrupulous means on behalf of affiliates, or simply on behalf of incorrect association on behalf of Google it simply shouldnt be allowed to happen.  Let us revisit the example I mentioned earlier and highlight some of the issues

The last point in itself is a concern without taking into account any of the aspects of the Google Places issues. Magnify that issue with the fact now that I have to wait two weeks to verify an account and the problem is increased significantly. I will at this point say the UK staff are generally as helpful as they can be in the circumstances, however the problem would appear to be down to processes within Google as a whole, if looking at the moderation of the Local listings is anything to go by

Looking at the above, Google obviously should have an insight into the fact that the entry in question may not belong to the affiliate site in question. As a result, and given that they moderate affiliate activity for other services such as Base, perhaps , no this should have been picked up earlier.

I will finish by saying, I think Places potentially is a great tool. However if we are to see any further integration of Places, Google needs to get behind it and provide it with the thought, and level of support it gives most of its other products (I would exclude Buzz and Wave off that :) ). Only then will we see a commercially viable and useful solution to integrate into localised campaigns

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Organic Backlinks form Natural Rankings

As part of the ongoing guest bloggers series on Holistic Search, James Grayson discusses role of link building on natural rankings

When meandering through the world of SEO’s ever changing landscape – I am the first to admit, it sometimes becomes easy to lose yourself in the rabbit holes of dis-information and pure SEO speculation. Cutting to the chase and getting one thing straight, this piece is a simple insight into the mind of me @idetcola a professional Google-er and established link builder.

Firstly, my SEO speculation… I come with a few preconceptions of Search Marketing even Digital Marketing, as I see these are two very different things yet both essential to the over goal in our mission, moreover recently I am picking up a shifting vibe in SEO. By this I refer to not only the people, places and budgets powering results, but the SERPs and their timely movements. Hence link building acquisition rates are now more important to your footprint than ever before.

Although I can appreciate world demographics and the recent couple of Google updates here, (the name of such may be a decent clue,) I would like you to take a ‘peak’ at the graph below….

This graph is an illustration of what was my conception of a pre update, ‘new’ websites link building acquisition rate and in turn this graph forms my starting point of a new website (in competitive niches) strategic link building campaign. Understandably the graph reminds us to build based on your competitions link flow… Bearing this in mind and moving into the modern age, I do still see sense and results from this strategy. However recently when moving around the la la, fairly uncompetitive (in terms of skilled anchor-text keyword link building) world of local level SEO and long-er tail SERPs. I now begin to see a sense of just how powerful; even how much ‘juice’ some anchor text links do presently appear to carry.

Enter the beast as we apply this strategy to the scary realm of the generic keyword vertical e.g. “Bingo”. Sometimes with backlinks and SEO, when you’ve built and built and built links — you need to just stop building links… for a while at least. After all you must let your link ‘juice’ catch up with your website — you’ve wound that website up so be sure you’re ready to stand back and let it go! And what with the SEO purse strings tightening there has never been a better time to hold still.

Some of you out there may find this a little odd, and some may wonder why I own a white label link building agency which recommends stopping building links, but it has to be said that over manipulation is perhaps one of the worse things we as optimisers can do, thus your targeted anchor text’s link acquisition rates, amongst other factors form the core elements to be adhered to when maintaining a natural link footprint successfully.

Although it is nonsensical to form a common backlink strategy for all SERP verticals and websites, as is the case with search marketing, it is very unique to the website and keywords involved. The point above simply reminds us to take quality over quantity when dealing in backlinks, we make the point… ’6 months online is just a drop in the ocean’ thus keeping your link acquisitions organic and natural in appearance can still assure you a position one over due time.

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No organic results on local searches – Good or bad?

Some of you over the weekend may have seen the Conversion post regarding Google’s latest test with local search results. The post made particularly interesting reading as this highlighted a huge impact in terms of Google’s approach to local search results, and their usual blended search layout.


Source: converseon.com

In particular though it was the removal of any organic search results from the resultset that was the standout feature of the test, with traditional organic search results removed and replaced solely with the Google Places listings for the particular result. The query used was ‘car rental’ however I understand the results have been seen and trialled on ‘prescription glasses’ (from Gareth Hoyle – Manual Link Building) – and I would not be surprised if this got rolled out to include other local heavy sector such as:

The feedback from the industry thus far has been mixed. Many have said that this is not a good move from Google, whilst others have suggested this is just another move in Google’s quest for greater relevancy. I would however add a degree of scepticism to any feedback here – particularly since the launch of Google Places and the fact that Google are now looking to actively develop Google Places as a revenue earner in its own right (call me a skeptic :) )

It would however throw the cat amongst the pigeons and in my opinion can not be fully rolled out UNTIL Google have fixed the issues with the current Places infrastructure. In particular issues such as:

Would be of immediate concern before undertaking any significant rollout of Local within the mainstream SERPs as highlighted above. Whilst I personally can see the benefit in a higher proportion of non-organic inventory on such pages, whether a full breakout of local results, is the right way to do this is open to debate.

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City Agencies vs. Country Agencies – What’s the Difference?

As part of the ongoing guest post series on Holistic Search, Rhys Wynne compares the experiences of working at a small boutique country agency against that of working in a larger city based organisation

A few months ago I decided I had enough of living in North Wales & decided to up sticks & move to Manchester, I needed a change from my job at the time as head of SEO at a small web design agency, and managed to land myself in a position at a similar sized company based in Altrincham.

Even though by description they are both SEO & Web Design agencies and both are SME’s, there are some noticeable differences between working in a city & working in the country.

Less Competition (in general) in the Country
Working in North Wales I first of all managed to land myself a position in a company at the time that I probably wouldn’t have obtained if I applied in the city, there is a brain drain in most sectors in the country & for cutting edge fields such as IT, finding the right people can be tricky. This is something I was glad for when I was looking for work, but it was terrible when headhunting new staff – least of all my replacement when moving on! I did manage to build a team of competent SEO’s, with the help of a great support network, but it was tough (although I’ve yet to be involved in the recruitment process in the city, so it could be tough here as well).
Furthermore, for the majority of the SEO clients we managed we achieved remarkable results. The reason being is they were only targeting phrases in and around the area. With the exception of the tourism sector, a lot of page one rankings were achievable relatively quickly. Even traditional high value niches such as the financial & legal sectors were achieved with simple on page optimisation.

Less Work in the Country
Of course part of the reason that results were easy to come by was the fact that not every business had a web presence, and not every web presence was effectively optimised. Although this could lead to potentially a lot of work, unfortunately often convincing them to invest in a web site & a link building campaign varied from tricky to nigh on impossible. This was likely due to the area and the way they did business – in fact North Wales did have a number of schemes to boost the web presence of businesses with financial incentives.
Those who did decide to invest did see in general an upturn in business, and whilst it was tricky obtaining the work, retaining it month on month was straightforward as the client often saw a return by being the only optimised site within that industry in the area.

More Varied Work in The City
There were two types of clients I dealt with 80% of the time in my previous position:-

Often in the country you have only one or two different industries which support large swathes of the population, and although it can be fun writing travel guides & tourist information content, it can be a bit monotonous if you do it all the time. Very few clients are in the same niche in my current position, so it helps me become more rounded with knowledge in a number of sectors. SEOs in my eyes make ideal quiz team members!

More Social Events & Access to Knowledge in the City
This was the deciding factor in moving. I had been to a couple of SEO events in Manchester (mainly the Manchester Seo events), and loved them tremendously. There was not as many in North Wales (indeed any!), and although I had attempted to start a North Wales Twestival, it hardly got off the ground (this was probably more my lack of enthusiasm rather than there not being a vibrant Twitter community, as there is). Seemingly every week there’s some sort of digital event happening in Manchester, so as a new face in the city, I am not short of things to do.
Likewise back in North Wales I felt I was a bit of a big fish in a little pond (actually it was more akin to a whale in a teardrop), in that there were very few people I could sit down with, discuss ideas & brainstorm with, without first of all explaining what SEO is and why you cannot just put “britney spears” over and over again in the meta keyword tag. Manchester on the other hand there are always people to talk to. Yes you can do this over MSN, Skype or Twitter no problem, but I’d much prefer doing it over a beer, wouldn’t you?

In Conclusion
Whilst I had a great time working in the country for an agency, I feel that moving to the city has helped my career tremendously. Getting to know some very talented SEOs, as well as the challenge & greater competition has helped me grow into a more competent SEO. With that said I know people who have moved the other way – obtained experience working in the city & applied it successfully to a country-based agency. The experience gained in both fields is invaluable, and whilst a lot of the work is the same, there are differences present in both.

As to which is better? I can’t say really. Both have their place in the industry, targeting different client bases. Of course other factors to consider are external factors such as family & friends should you wish to switch from a country agency to a city agency. Of course, if it’s not too much trouble, you can certainly try both & see which one you prefer.

Rhys Wynne is a SEO Consultant at Manual Link Building. Outside of his day job he posts his ramblings on SEO, Blogging & Social Media at The Gospel According to Rhys.

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Has the Bing Advertising campaign been worth it?

I was watching television over the course of the weekend and noticed the seemingly ongoing Bing adverts.

These were part of a multi-million pound advertising campaign by Bing – and further to those months of testing I revisited the market share data to see whether this has been effective.

These were the stats from March this year (from Hitwise/Experian data)

Rewind back five months and Bing were very much the third in line, sitting behind both Google and Yahoo, with just under 3% of the UK search marketing spend, estimated according to the IAB (as of March this year) to be worth around £2.15 Billion pounds (£2,000,000,000).

Now lets fas forward this to the end of July and take the latest data published by Experien which highlighted a significantly different picture, and one which would which sees, Bing now as the second largest search engine in the UK, however whether this is due to the continuing decline of Yahoo as a search player or the effect of the promotion Bing has undertaken, is open to debate.

I say significant but its not immediately apparent from the images above – however the following were interesting

  1. Bing is now the second largest search engine in the UK – ahead of Yahoo (thats not really surprising) but still way behind Google
  2. Bing has seen an increase of 0.16% market share – you may say thats not much but consider the size of the market
  3. Yahoo has seen a drop of 2.91% with Google seeing a further 1.46% increase in market share
  4. That would thus suggest any increase in market share has been at the expense of Yahoo rather than Google – which ultimately is going to hit revenues again given the Yahoo/Bing alliance.

This may not sound like much until we factor in the potential return of these increases. The figures released by the IAB were for the UK paid search spend of around £2.15 billion, which means every percent means around £20 million revenue to the search engines, so every percent does count have a significant impact in these instances as the table below highlights.

It would seem therefore that the amazing budget allocated for the Bing advertising campaign has not had a hugely significant impact – and would only really break even if they took the entire Yahoo budget into account. That said, it has continued to make gains into the search engine market share over the last year. My personal feelings is that I can’t help thinking Bing may be a little disappointed not to have more of an indent into the search marketing sector at this stage, particularly given the level of awareness.

One has to take into account the 100 odd million advertising budget deployed at the start of the campaign (albeit globally) and when you look at just an incremental return of just over £3 million pounds, one would suggest questions are going to be asked sooner or later.

Whether or not they can compete with the likes of Google is open to debate. When asked whether Bing were a viable alternative to Google, our readers suggested no.

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Google tests credit card serps again – 4th entry inserted on ppc results

During the last couple of years we have got used to Google testing a number of high income super competitive verticals such as secured loans and credit cards. This has come in a number of guises including a drop down box in the first position, first identified a couple of years ago and tested within ‘loans’ related terms

Google now appear to be reviewing this testing within the credit cards section – however in a format I have not seen before, but one I would suggest from a behavioural perspective is likely to see some significant traction

The most interesting thing from this – is that the ‘Google comparison ads’ has been inserted between the 3rd paid search ad, and the first organic result. Why is this interest – well take into account the perceived organic/paid search split + the fact that the final result has sitelinks (and sitelinks increasing uptake. Both would draw attention to the area where the ‘segregated’ paid slot now sits. Given the eyefall thus drawn to the area, this is likely to see a high volume of clicks drawn to the area.

The final landing page remains fairly similar to those used in earlier Merchant Search experiments, an whether or not this will make it out into more long term implementation is still open to debate – particularly given that the previous incarnations didn’t see stay around for long. However given this is slightly more subtle, you never know….

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Google’s social circle – See how Google sees you

I always find it interesting when you come across bits like this – and in all likelihood this may have been round for a while however I thought it worth adding all the same.

During my browsing round today (I have no doubt this has been around for a while) I came across this feature from Google which allows you to view your Social Circle, often integrated into search results and shows areas where people in your circle may have recommended or reviewed a product.

Now with the above information in mind it was then interesting to come across this which highlighted two main features, namely

  1. View your social circle
  2. View your social content

Using the first option, you had the ability to view two options – those from Google assets (such as Buzz, Reader etc) and those from sources affiliated to your Profile such as Twitter, Friendfeed and the like. These are better descripbed by Google as follows

This is the network of connections Google uses to identify relevant social search results. It is based on a combination of the following:

  • Direct connections from your Google chat buddies and contacts (18, 16 with content)
  • Direct connections from links that appear on your Google profile (222)
  • Secondary connections (3663) that are publicly associated with your direct connections

In addition to web pages from your social circle, posts from your Google Reader subscriptions may also appear in your social search results.

This is a recent snapshot of your social circle. Changes you make to your connections will be reflected in the next snapshot. Learn more »

The above image highlights those from my social circle – however should I decide to view those I know via sources via my profile in the main sources from Twitter. This provides a breakdown by both primary and secondary contacts

Google also provide an overview of where they pull their ‘sphere of influence’ in regards to the Social Circle – many of which will not be surprising given that these are provided within your profile.

Whilst I would suggest its not going to tell you anything you dont necessarily know already it was useful to gauge various people/web assets affiliations the profile is able to obtain. Further to this it does provide a more reflective overview of my sphere of influence and potentially in what context the ‘social circle results may be returned in’.

I am of the opinion this is increasingly something that Google will use within their results, given the increasing focus on social within their offerings. This would suggest a continuing blend of search and social – and one that may make many people align their social media and search marketing activity much as they would do with their paid search and SEO activity – an increasing case of Holistic Social Marketing rather than just Holistic Search Marketing.

If you would like to see your ‘Social Circle, click here

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How to Tell If Your Website Is Hacked and How to Fix It!

This is a a guest post from Kevin Strong aka Goosh from the ongoing “guest bloggers” series on Holistic Search

One of the biggest impacts to your online presence is your website being hacked – particularly if it’s earning you money. Depending on the severity of the hack it can have several affects on your presence, your brand and, ultimately, your reputation. Your search engine rankings can suffer, you could lose valuable visitors and potential business and in a variety of cases you could lose face in the online world – your own reputation being associated with the hack.

It’s all well and good checking your own website manually and feeling safe ‘cause your site looks exactly the same, but imagine if you were hacked and you didn’t even know about it? There have been several exploits to open source platforms including WordPress, PHPBB forums etc where a website is leveraged in the hackers favour for a variety of reasons:

There are many more reasons for your site to be hacked without your knowledge, but by utilising some simple techniques you can ensure you that if your website succumbs to a hacking attempt you catch it early and rectify it.

Catch It Early
There are several things you can do to combat hacking attempts on your website. They start with the often recommended, but not often implemented, internet safety recommendations:

Aside from these basic steps, you can utilise several free tools out there to check your website and its contents for signs of a successful hack.

Keyword Significance

Often not utilised as much as it should be, Google Webmaster Tools is a great source of information about your website and content.
The keyword significance feature shows you a huge list of keywords it deems your website to be about. Have a look through them regularly to see if you can spot any keywords that simply don’t belong.

Fetch as Googlebot
You can also utilise a great feature introduced in October 2009 called Fetch as Googlebot. This allows you to take a closer look at what Googlebot sees so you can spot any potential cloaking issues.

This can also be achieved with several Firefox toolbar addons (User Agent Switcher, SEOMoz’s MozBar etc).

Google Alerts
Following on from the GWMT’s keyword significance, you can also setup Google Alerts to let you know the moment your website starts containing any of the usual keywords associated with website hijacking all via a simple email.
An example alert could be: site:goosh.co.uk cialis|porn|viagra|casino|poker
On a side note, as of March 2010 Google Webmaster Tools will also send you an alert if it suspects hacking attempts:

Debugging the Extent of the Hack

Now you know your site has been hacked, it’s time to find out how, and more importantly, what is affected.

Date & Time Stamp Pages

Depending on how much access you have to your website you can give yourself a great way of knowing when the page was truly last updated even if your CMS currently tells you. By utilising your server-side language be it PHP, ASP, .net etc, you can add a commented out piece of code to your page showing the date and time of the last save date.

By looking at the source code of your pages you will be able to see code similar to the above. This is particularly useful if your website is hacked directly from its template and not on an individual page basis (e.g. WordPress) and can be used to pinpoint the date of the hack and cross checking against your server logs/access logs

Google Analytics
Unless you don’t live in Analytics like a lot of search marketers do, it is always a further fountain of knowledge to see if the website has been receiving traffic around the hacked keywords or through referral traffic from other hacked websites. It is often common for your website to be used as part of a cluster with many other websites in the hijack.

Fixing the Website Hack
Unfortunately this can vary depending on the size of the website, the platform it is built upon etc. But several things can be done to restrict and eradicate the threat.

User Access
My first port of call is to check user’s access etc. Are there any users with privileges they shouldn’t have? Promptly remove or restrict them in the CMS as this stops anyone exploiting the access being alerted to your attempt to fix the problem and thusly cutting the chances of them knowing any new information.

Password Changes
Change your hosting configuration password, your FTP password and your CMS access details (also checking the email addresses used).

Version Updates
Once that’s been cleared up you should update the platform version immediately. As mentioned earlier the hack could have been exploiting a previously public exploit.
Funnily enough, if you remember the steps to safeguard from hacks at the beginning of the post, then you will realise that the steps to fix are the same as the steps to prevent. Being cautious can save you a headache when you really don’t need one!

Kev Strong is a senior SEO Consultant for Newcastle upon Tyne based Mediaworks Online Marketing working with national and international brands.


He can often be found posting insightful tips, tricks and search related rants on his personal blog, Goosh.

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