Rugby, rugby rugby, rah rah rah!! While beefy students up and down the country dentist chair themselves into oblivion at nine in the morning to support their country, internet marketers are keeping their eyes on different kinds of conversions altogether…

At the same time as Jonny Wilkinson was optimising his foot in 2003 to bring the Web Ellis cup home to England, online marketers were beginning to really uncover the depth and potential that search engine optimisation could bring to a brand. Two things have happened since that incredible victory in Australia – England have gone to shit, and SEO has entered the mainstream as a valuable marketing tool for businesses in any industry.#

The power of conversions
The one thing both rugby and SEO have in common is the importance of conversions. Conversions in rugby win you matches, online conversions earn you money. A simple philosophy, but one that a surprising number of business owners fail to grasp when it comes to a search marketing campaign. They may understand the importance of driving new traffic to their website, but struggle to build the link between getting more hits on their site and shifting their products.
That’s likely through no fault of their own, of course, and certainly not through want of trying. But there are probably a lot of factors and issues relevant to the website in question and campaign as a whole that need addressing before physical products start flying off virtual shelves. One issue we always notice when it comes to conversion rate optimisation is proximity – a lot of business owners are so blinkered by their pre-existing online project that they find it hard to be critical about ‘their baby’.

Employ a ‘Jonny Wilkinson’ attitude
Well, a ‘Jonny Wilkinson 2003’ attitude. If you employ his 2011 attitude then you’ll likely end up in France somewhere and grow barnacles on your bottom from being on the treatment table for too long. The point is that Jonny Wilkinson practised and practised his kicking technique after hours, with the fruits of that extra effort the difference between England being international contenders to world champions. Jonny Wilkinson always took a step back from his current abilities, analysed his level with a perceptive eye and understood there was always room for improvement.

Anybody who wants to succeed online and sell more products via their website has to employ the same mentality if they want success. There is ALWAYS room for improvement when it comes to a website – it will never be perfect. That doesn’t mean that it will never maximise its potential or fully represent your brand online. It just means that there’s always room for growth, change and fine-tuning. Think Jonny Wilkinson kicked a brilliant conversion in training one day then went home? Of course he didn’t, he did it again and again until it became a natural instinct to him.

Stop your search stubbornness!
So, do you think your website is still the best looking in your industry, even though your customers are telling you that it looks like Martin Johnson? You’re going to have to drop that stubborn streak and consider how your website performs from an objective point of view. And there’s probably a lot to dissect! How in-depth are your product descriptions? Are your product images large, clear and crisp? Does your website let customers find related products easily enough? How about the payment gateway you’re using, is it trusted? Would you honestly enter your own credit card details into it as a consumer?
The bottom line is – as England and every world cup winner since will testify – a good, critical eye, practice and positive change is key to increasing your on-site conversions and being successful. Work on your weaknesses, and your customers will notice and appreciate your efforts. You might not go as far as winning the equivalent of a world cup in a matter of months, but it’ll certainly improve the online face of your business and your return on investment (ROI) in the long run.

This post was written by Dan Taylor, Director of Search at SEOwned Limited

Now we have a talk from Jonathan Allen (@jc1000000) about how Search Engine Watch time the distribution of their tweets.

Jonathan admitted that he didn’t like Twitter to begin with he used the analogy “Twitter feels like a party with everyone hanging around in their own groups”. The point he was making was that when he first signed up that there where all these hashtags, followers and RTs going round and found it difficult to engage.

So he researched a number of tools to help tweet and interact not just for himself but for SEWatch. Below are some pointers he learned from using them and how you can apply them to yourself

• Use CoTweet to submit to multiple accounts. This has some cons such as if users follow your multiple accounts then they will get bombarded with the same tweet 3 or 4 times maybe more.
• Use Google analytics to schedule tweets. Look at the times when user visits your site and schedule your tweets accordingly.  Also on scheduling, try to schedule your updates to hit different time zones
• Try to get listed on Topsy or Tweetmeme, this allows you to acquire links to your any of the URLs you tweet.

To shine numbers on their activity Jonathan, showed with good timing you can generate a lot visitors in short period of time. The example he used was when Google changed their doodle to commemorate JFK they received around 4,700 visitors the same was also done for Rosa Parks which received around 26,500 just from timing the distribution of tweets effectively and efficiently.

Twitter Automation – Fantomaster tips

Here are some of the tips from Fantomaster when it comes to automating your Twitter account.

• Surprisingly don’t automate adding contacts, it will just mean you will end up with a lot followers that won’t find your content interesting or engaging.
• Be savvy, if you are going to automate try to be human about it. Use common sense
• Be interesting, offer content that will interest your followers – not surprisingly Youtube videos do very well
• People are not stupid, don’t try to deceive them!
• If you have a large number of followers make use of filters to keep track of various conversations, what’s being retweeted etc.
• Try not to post and peak times i.e. lunch time. It just means  that your competing with other tweets, try to stagger your delivery.
• Don’t automatically assume that everyone reads every single tweet you send out. If some has 5000 followers they are not going to see everything!
• If you are pushing the same link, try to vary the content of that tweet, try and use content spinning tools or if possible try to manually rewrite the same post several times.
• The power of Twitter is in the Retweet. Try not to make the tweets longer than 100 characters, this will allow for retweets. Also try to keep the title short, snappy and attention grabbing.

Some of the tools he recommended to aid with automation where SocialOomph and Pluggio

I’m going to try and provide a live update of the sessions that I attend through out the day.

First up is the Intro to Social Media with Lisa Myers. A great session covering the basics of social media, online pr as well as what tools you can use (free and paid) to monitor the campaign.

Some of the take aways from the talk are:

Before setting up your campaign

• Obey the rules – listen, engage, be honest and ultimately don’t be a d**k (not my words!)
• Use the 3 pillars of social – Viral, Online PR and Networking
• Be aware of your brand and how it is being spoken about, make a list of what you want to achieve from the campaign is it traffic generation? link generation? or conversions?
• Do the research, who are your target audience remember age, gender and location.

When you begin.

Before you begin blogging decide before hand what your main categories are going to be this gives you focus and means that you are not writing for about everything and anything. Decide who is going to blog, having someone who lives and breathes the brand helps and also decide who is going to look after it i.e. technical help, updates of plugins etc. Having this before hand can save you many headaches in the future as you know who is responsible for what.

• Use social media elements such as content marketing and link baiting
• Start by blogging, its a great way to hone your skills.
• Blogging gives you the opportunity to give your product/service a personable voice, it also helps you develop a positive online reputation and thirdly gives a great way to expand the content on your site.

If you are going to do Online PR make sure to give something back as Lisa mentioned that the best responses were when the online pr involved engagement i.e. competitions etc.

Lisa mentioned that if you are going to engage in Online PR she had 3 points that she follows everytime.

• Do your research, Lisa said that it is better to be highly targeted than the throw mud against the wall approach and see what sticks.
• Hunt down the most appropriate contact, this can make the difference between you getting you featured or not
• Tone of voice, customise any letter or response to your contact. Don’t just send a generic email saying “can you post this”
• Relationship, build a relationship with your contacts, this can make getting future content hosted easier!

One last note  don’t just sit and wait to be discovered, engage, engage, engage!

Lisa also ran through a number of tools for the full list and the full presentation you can find it here Lisa Myers Social Media Presentation

Indexing test
In the week following the Christmas break, we were talking in the office about whether Twitter would have an impact on indexing speed. It seemed pretty obvious to us that although Twitter links are nofollow that Google must use the data in some way when indexing webpages – after all, if a link picks up a number of key retweets then it must be interesting to the users that retweet, so therefore must carry some weight?

The tests
After gathering data for the Twitter test, it became obvious that I should be adding some more variants to the test – to see which was the best way of getting content indexed by Google.

The tests I undertook involved creating a number of test pages that were:

1. Linked to from Twitter only with a number of retweets from powerful accounts.
2. Linked to only from the homepage of my site (PR3, DA 33)
3. Linked to only from Sitemap.xml for my site, with a priority of 1 and towards the top of the file. Was also resubmitted to Webmaster Tools.
4. Linked to only from one external link (followed, PR1, DA 35)
5. Linked to only from one external no-followed link (PR3, DA 44)

Notes: all of the pages had a very small amount of unique content on them, and no links on the page.

Expected results
I never really knew what to expect with the Twitter test – but I did expect it to be indexed – just not very quickly.

The order I was expecting the pages to be indexed was:

1. Homepage link
2. External link
3. Twitter
4. XML Sitemap
5. Nofollow link

The Results

Whilst not completely random, the results are somewhat different from what I expected. Why? Twitter links are all nofollow, so tests 1 and 5 are essentially the same, yet these two appear at opposite ends of the table.

This, in my mind, proves that Twitter links (and maybe others, Wikipedia anyone?) are treated somewhat differently by Google in their indexing. With Google obviously applying some sort of social weighting based on number of retweets and the number of followers of the account retweeting.

The homepage link and the followed external link show very similar results – as expected as they are both very similar links in terms of power (DA 33 to DA 35).

Another surprising result (for our team anyway) was the fact that the XML sitemap link got indexed at all. The fact that no links point to this page, either internally or externally and the page can still be indexed does highlight the power of the XML sitemap for sites that have problems with indexing.

Note: very interesting is that GoogleBot visited the Twitter test post almost to the second that the tweet was retweeted.

Conclusion
So which method is best – and which one should you use to get your content indexed quickly?

Well the answer is obviously to give the search engines as many quality signals as possible. For example, for an e-commerce site the best advice would be a latest products section on the homepage and separate sitemaps for each category of products. And tweet about the products too – eBuyer do this very well.

Dan Taylor is a SEO Manager at Just Search. A regular blogger and prolific tweeter, he is also a regular on the Manchester SEO scene.

In the second of the Experts View series, we asked us our experts where they felt the growth area for 2011 was. 2010 certainly saw the potential threat of the social networks rise, consolidation within the search engine marketplace and the growth of Twitter. Two new experts join us today, namely Bas van den Beld from State of Searchand Will Critchlow from Distilled to give us his views on what 2011 may hold for Search.

So where do our experts think the growth area will lie in 2011?

Where do you think the growth area in search will emerge in 2011?

David Harry

Local. Sure, I know it’s already done some extensive growth over the last 18 months, but with (Google’s) Marissa (Mayer) recently moving over there and the subsequent announcement of ‘contextual search’, we will certainly see more movement in this area. Beyond that, I still say there will be further decay in the link obsessed algorithms. To that end I am watching for better semantic analysis, deeper personalization (via social) and more emphasis on meta-data and named entities (non-link citations).

Ben Bisco

Learning to use search intelligently in line with the attribution modelling & retargeting as mentioned above. Attribution modelling has obviously been around for yonks, but the developments in Display remarketing will mean that Search and Display potentially swap roles with Search providing awareness of brands via generic searches and display reaching consumers when they are ready to buy. This changes the game for how we manage our search campaigns. This probably applies most to PPC of course, but will affect SEO to an extent: particularly when it comes to deciding which keywords to focus our efforts on.

Mobile Search & Local – particularly in combination.

Paul Reilly:

Mobile, Location, Hyperlocal, Video, Discovery, Social Recommendation, Social Commerce.

Bas van den Beld

It is obvious that at first sight people will be looking to be putting their time and money into local and social stuff. The recent changes from Google show the local interest of the search engine and many companies will try and act on that. That means more local efforts. They will also still be looking for how to really embed social into search. With Universal at its peak and Google and Bing both actually taking social signals into account companies will look for ways to use that. But I do believe that 2011 will still be a year in which it will be a lot of trial and error on that area. Companies will put more time and money in ‘social search’ but will not find the holy grail just yet…

Nichola Stott

Mobile.

Judith Lewis

Facebook. Have you done a search in Facebook lately? Ya, it’s still kind of crap but more and more businesses are directing people to their web properties from within Facebook. The world is using Facebook as a portal to the web much as AOL used to be and I think it would be foolish to ignore Facebook. You *will* have to launch a unique Facebook strategy to deal with it and goodness me don’t set it up and leave it and ignore the wall posts but you will _have_ to be there in 2011 or your business will suffer.

However I’d also like to point towards something else here and I hope you’ll follow my thinking here. It has nothing to do with data and search and everything about social expectations. Wolfram Alpha would be a smart acquisition by someone to further the expansion of the semantic web and I saw some technology from an Israeli university that was as accurate as a human in understanding sentiment. This technology I feel will become a *must buy* for search engines. They are increasingly being expected to deliver not just the best data-driven result but to make a _value judgement_ for the searcher and deliver the *best* result bot just from an optimisation point of view but from an ethical, moral and value-driven point of view. The case with the glasses company late in the year is the best example. It is not about spam or buying links – it is about the perception of the public that the results that are delivered through search are good, reliable, honest and “the best”. Users have started expecting search engines to make not just data-driven judgements but _value-driven_ judgements. I think that for search engines, this will be their 2011 challenge and one the various governments of the world may collectively force them to make through various methods.

Much as searchers expect businesses to be in search, they are also starting to find them within Facebook.

Will Critchlow
(Answered via Twitter)

the buzzwords will be social (twitter = links etc) but the old stuff will keep working just fine

Andy Beard

Smart solutions to leverage links and conversions. Empowering the influencers to spread your message.

Andy Redfern

Local – We have seen in recent months the local fragmentation of Google. This will mean SEO will become more complex in the way it managed and delivery. Successful campaigns in 2011 will have to operate effectively at a local as well as a national level.

Shaun Anderson

To be honest, I don’t chase the growth areas that much. I stick to ranking in competitive niches for clients and being represented in local verticles, and owning the keywords a client really should be able to own. Not much has changed (for me) in that sense for the last few years, considering all the changes Google has introduced to it’s UI the last year. I’m keeping an eye on social of course – I am really interested (now) in conversion optimisation but I probably need to take a class on it or something. I am even more interested in marketing as a broader subject, than a narrower one in 2011.

Peter Young

Certainly local is going to be a big growth area this year,particularly if you look at the way Google in particular positioned itself towards the latter end of 2010. I would only expect that trend to continue for the early part of 2011. Retargeting is another area where we may see further growth this year, as experience and awareness of this opportunity within paid search increases. Further to that we always include mobile in nearly all of these growth area forecasts but given my first point on local – and new products being talked about such as the Google Newsstand I really think we could see this actually happen this year. However I would suggest we may see vertical search being the biggest growth area in 2011, particularly given the launch of sites like Boutique.com and the impending signoff of the ITA acquisition.

Other parts in the Experts View series:
Q1 : Do you think a viable competitor to Google will emerge in 2011?

Its the start of a bright new year, and rather than give you my personal thoughts on what I thought the new year holds, I thought I would get a couple of friends to join me in sharing their thoughts and opinions on what the new year holds. Due to the sheer nature of the beast, we have broken these down to a regular series of posts which we will be releasing over the coming days.

To get a more holistic picture I asked a number of people from across the search spectrum to get involved including:

• Shaun Anderson – HoboWeb – The most influential SEO in the UK according to a recent poll on Holistic Search and the Telegraph (the Greenock Telegraph that is)
• Paul Reilly – Now Search Director for Mydestinationinfo.com however met him during his days at StickyEyes and have always enjoyed hearing his opinions and thoughts on SEO and the sector as a whole
• Nichola Stott – the Media Flow – Nichola spoke at our recent Sascon Manchester SEO event and as well as being one of the most intelligent people I know is also one of the best laughs
• Ben Bisco – Brilliant Media – My colleague at Brilliant – however hugely knowledgable and a laf to boot
• Andy Redfern – Hitsearch – Someone I have known round the digital scene for a while and MD of search agency Hitsearch.
• Judith Lewis – Well respected in the industry and conference scene, and highly talented to boot.
• Andy Beard – Where do I start, Andy wows me with some of his comments during the Dojo chats, and talks in a language few dare to speak. Highly respected in the industry and very pleased to have him involved
• and last but certainly by no means least David Harry – someone who I was very pleased to have involved in this post – founder of the SEO Dojo and Search News Central. Hugely knowledgable – and one of the people I personally have learnt a hell of a lot of this year.

Do you think a viable competitor to Google will emerge in 2011?

David Harry

And then there were 2. Yup, we lost Yahoo last year so it’s just MS (Bing) left in the game. Unfortunately they will have to do something pretty innovative to make any inroads as far as I see it. Or Google will have to falter in some way. Throwing money at the marketing dept. just doesn’t seem to be cutting it. Will we see someone out of the blue show up and take a chunk of the search market? Not bloody likely. I suppose MS’ relationship with FaceBook might turn into their biggest asset in the search and social game. We shall see…

Ben Bisco

I don’t think there will be a competitor in the traditional search space. Instead, we should think about how search may evolve and look for competitors there.

For instance, Facebook. Google are obviously twitchy about them and this is ostensibly because they trumped Google on traffic and have a more interesting display offering. However, more scary for Google is what would happen if FB strayed towards search territory. We have already seen a tendency for consumers to turn to FB for answers and it the information contained within Facebook is becoming increasingly varied (company pages, fan pages, interest groups etc. And have you noticed how Wikipedia information pages are making an appearance?) so this isn’t that far-fetched.

Also, the growth of really clever remarketing technology using intelligent attribution modelling (Ad Exchanges and Demand Side Platforms etc) will mean that Display has the potential emerge as one of the best ways to reach consumers when they are in the market to buy specific products.

These aren’t so much competitors to Google, as competitors to Search as a whole. I’m not sure what this will mean for search specialists, but it’s great news for us as an integrated agency.

Paul Reilly:

Google own Search, and I don’t believe they will be beaten although the alliance between Yahoo and Bing have made “advertising elsewhere” much more palatable, I do however believe the we’re now in the dusk of the Search Era at least in the sense we’ve know it to date, and I also believe that the dawn of the era of discover is well and truly upon us.

How well Google fair in these new days is likely to depend on how they position themselves over the coming months. They’re already in a very enviable position with Android and are clearly winning the smart phone war, you could argue that they are well positioned to dominate location and hyper local due to the integration with Maps, Latitude and Places.

In terms of threats to Google, Facebook is an obvious one, but we’re living in accelerating times and there’s nothing to stop a threat from gaining adoption from absolutely nowhere and throwing the online world a curve ball.

Nichola Stott

Nope. Not in 2011.

Judith Lewis

Yes and no. I think Bing is a seriously good search engine in the US but it rather sucks in the UK (sorry Bing). I feel if Bing could roll-out world-wide the kind of valuable data in search that it has in the US it could become a contender but unless you start looking at search volumes in Facebook I don’t think 2011 will be the turning point for Google.

Andy Beard

Yep… it is called Google – they are their own enemy now.

Andy Redfern

A viable competitor to Google core search function? No – but in other areas like mobile search, news aggregation, PPC, local advertising will all face increased competition. Google has competitors on many fronts and whilst Google is looking to grow the “mobile” arm of its business in a growing market – other areas will no doubt lose focus. I predict that Google will remain the dominant search engine in the UK (Predictable, Never!) , although Bing and Yahoo will claw back up to 2% of the market share through the course of the year.

Shaun Anderson

Facebook is obviously a big question mark – what FB does this year will probably impact search in a big way but I actually think people are going to get annoyed very quickly with Facebook – I know I am – perhaps falling out of love with it in 2011/2012 because of privacy issues etc. I think Google is the most valuable traffic in the world for the types of clients I work for, and I’d be surprised to see that changing much in 2011. There are other ways of driving traffic to a site, but for me, the main focus for most businesses in 2011 should be and will be Google. I will compliment that by using Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin – oh and Bing.

Peter Young

In my opinion, no. We may however start to see the likes of Bing start to take an increasing stake out of the Google market share both here and across the pond however at this stage Google are still in control of their own destiny to a certain extent. Google’s main concern however will be to see search market share translate into domination elsewhere – perhaps mobile, social or TV. The spectre of Facebook still looms large however I can’t help thinking some further form of consolidation with the likes of Bing may see greater breakthrough within the industry.

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.

Localisation, SEO and Multilingual Marketing

This is a guest post by Christian Amo,founder and Managing Director of Lingo24.

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is perhaps the most valuable and easy to implement of all modern marketing methods. In short, if a company features highly on Google’s search results for relevant key search terms, then the business is far more likely to succeed than if it ranks lowly.

One of the main benefits of SEO is the measurability – you can easily monitor the effects of your PPC and AdWord campaigns through Google Analytics; indeed, most successful websites will use analytics to drive their web design, structure and usability.

Whilst measurability is certainly a plus point from an online marketing perspective, the internet also opens up a whole new world of opportunity for businesses to tap into new or emerging markets. Globalisation was once the territory of big businesses with big budgets. Now, a bedroom business with nothing more than a networked computer and a touch of entrepreneurial savvy can grow abroad. And the process all starts with a fully optimised and localised website.

The majority of the internet is in English, yet most of the world’s internet users’ first language isn’t English, so there’s a clear gap there to exploit. Indeed, because the saturation is nowhere near what it is in the English-speaking market, it’s actually possible to rise very rapidly in foreign search engine rankings.

So how can a company expand its global internet presence into new territories? Well, the first step is to identify the most appropriate target country/countries – this will vary greatly from industry to industry.

You will have to do a little bit of research and recognise any gaps your business can exploit. However, it’s a good sign if there are other similar businesses in operation already as it reveals a demand for your service/product. Though a saturated market can be difficult to penetrate so be wary of too many companies.

The next stage is to buy a locally hosted domain name in the target country. It can just be your usual business name with a local domain extension, for example ‘.at’ in Austria or ‘.ch’ in Switzerland. You also need to ensure that your webhost uses a server located in your target country – search engines considers the IP address of the server in its ranking algorithms.

Some businesses may be tempted to use a free website translation tool, such as the one Google provide. These can be useful if you need to understand the essence of a foreign language website, but you shouldn’t use such a tool to translate your own website. From a content standpoint, you must use a translation company that uses professionally qualified ‘in-country’ translators that only translate INTO their native tongue. This will ensure your website is fully localised for your target market.

It also pays to be wary of the linguistic nuances between dialects. For example, the French spoken in France, Belgium, Switzerland and Canada is largely the same. However, fin de semaine is ‘weekend’ in Canadian French but it’s simply le weekend in France. And dejeuner is ‘lunch’ in France, but ‘breakfast’ in Belgium and Switzerland. There are many such instances from within the relatively small confines of Europe alone that help to highlight the importance of adopting a fully localised marketing strategy.

Online marketing and SEO should always go hand-in-hand with any campaign. With international markets, however, localisation is an obligatory addition, given the cacophony of cultural and linguistic complexities that come into play. To go global, you must think local.

About the author
Christian Arno is founder and Managing Director of Lingo24, a UK translation company that specializes in website localisation. With operations across four continents and clients in over sixty countries, Lingo24 are on course for a turnover of £3.7m in 2009.

As part of the ongoing Guest Bloggers series, Rishi Lakhani, a Search Marketing Strategist strategist in the UK tackles one of the hot topics of the moment – that of brands and search engines

Note: The post below is meant to push your buttons, make you think. There are more questions than answers. But there are times when we need to question, and I think this is one of them.

For time immemorial, there have been secret organisations. Some of these organisations are rumoured to have existed for centuries, descending into a mix between myth and urban legend. (Cue: Illuminati).

However, we least expected to find them in our midst. Meeting in secret with one of the world’s most powerful organisation. An organisation that could take down Economies of several countries at one blow. I am not paranoid – it’s true. These meetings most likely decide how you and I work. They probably influence our strategies for the future. We just didn’t know. These societies are by invite only, and no one except for the members and organisers really knows who attends them.

We don’t see any minutes, any updates, hell, not even the agenda. We don’t know how much of our life is being influenced by them.

No I am not going mad and waxing lyrical pointlessly. I am talking about the company that many of us battle daily. Google.

Yesterday Search Engine Land published Big Brand Media Wants A Google Bailout. One of the more interesting parts of the story is that Google has a Publishers Advisory Council. Did you know it existed? What goes on in these meetings? Why do only the big boys get to know? Is this unfair market advantage?

But the GPAC isn’t the ONLY secret council that google has. In 2007, Darren Rowse published Secret AdSense Online Advisory Council Revealed, which exposed the birth or emergence of the GAOAC. I can’t find a members list, an agenda, or any resolutions or learnings from this council.

In Feb 2009, George Michie from the Rimm Kaufman Group Revealed that he had been invited to join the Google SEM Advisory Panel. That makes GSAP, and number three secret society. I don’t know how many more there are.

My question to all of you out there is – Why not keep it all out in the open? After all, the proudly published the formation of the Google Health Advisory Council. Is this unfair advantage for the big guys? Are these the new Illuminati? Do they impact our work?

I reserve opinion, but I am sure my tone gives you an inkling as to what I think. This is food for though.

As a by note – Yahoo has also joined the ranks in forming secret councils

Rishi Lakhani is a Search Marketing Strategist. Feel free to follow him on twitter.

Taken from my regular guest posts over at Marketing Pilgrim

Mobile marketing is often been forecast as the next big thing, however it has often been the case of ‘always the bridesmaid and never the bride’—as mobile marketing campaigns often failed to deliver.

However in 2008, we have started to see a change. Mobile marketing investment is certainly on the increase. Many organisations previously have been reluctant to invest or merely dipping their toe in the water, now have seen increased traffic volumes and ad networks establishing themselves with media buyers.

To read the full post click here

As part of our Guest Blogger series – Donna Fontenot, aka DazzlinDonna – founder of SEO-Scoop and well respected Internet Marketeer highlights her keys to creating ‘no-fail hot content’.

Would you like your site content to rank well? Would you like your content to draw links like nails to a magnet? There is one strategy you can use to make sure the content you create is almost guaranteed to be a hit – and in the process it gathers backlinks and ranks well. This strategy isn’t some secret ninja tactic that would get your site banned if the search engines found out about it either. In fact, it’s a tactic that the search engines would be happy to recommend to all site owners.
And while the actual creation of the content may take some time and effort, the concept is extremely simple. So what is this awesome strategy?

Give users something they’ve asked for that no one else has provided (or can’t be easily found).

Here’s the process I like to use.

Step One: Monitor your niche. This might mean joining forums and communities within your niche, setting up Google alerts, listening for relevant tweets, or monitoring Q&A sites such as Yahoo Answers to see who is talking about what within your niche.

The Goal of Step One: Discover what people want to know about your niche. What questions are being asked?

Step Two: Search for answers to the questions discovered in Step One. Act like a normal user, and search the search engines and answer sites for content that answers the users’ questions.

The Goal of Step Two: You’ll learn three things. a) Does an answer exist within a reasonable search analysis (first 30 search results)? b) If answers do exist, are they comprehensive? Can they be improved upon? c) What’s missing?

Step Three: Create your new content strategy. After determining which questions need answers, create an outline that groups them into logical sections.

The Goal of Step Three: Having a solid plan to determine what content needs to be created, and how they will be logically grouped together.

Step Four: Create the content that answers the users’ questions.
Some articles will need to be researched. Some will require fancy graphs or charts or other visual aids to make the content stand out as an improvement upon the competitions’ content. Your own research is required to determine what form each piece of content must take.

The Goal of Step Four: Supply UNIQUE content that hasn’t been done before that specifically addresses questions users have had in the past about your niche.

By supplying this unique content, you are almost guaranteed to accomplish the following:

1. Give users exactly what they want, because you are answering the very questions they’ve had.
2. Give search engines UNIQUE content that practically guarantees a good ranking since the competition doesn’t exist.
3. Give other related sites great reasons to link to your site.

Just in case you’ve already forgotten the secret sauce to creating hot content, it was this:

Give users something they’ve asked for that no one else has provided (or can’t be easily found).

About Donna Fontenot:

Donna Fontenot, aka DazzlinDonna, is an Internet Entrepreneur and SEO, who has long utilized search engine optimization and affiliate marketing to create a successful online business. Her goal as an ebusiness coach is to help others make a living online from the comfort of their homes (and in their pajamas). Her motto is “You’ll never shine if you don’t glow.”

Yes, we are looking for you to contribute content to the Holistic Search blog. Whilst this will not be an opportunitity for an unashamed linkfest and plug ofyour latest product or service, it will be an opportunity for the lucky contributors to share the views with the wider public.

I will be approaching a number of prominent search marketeers to try and get their views, however we are not just looking for the Andrew Girdwood’s and Danny Sullivan’s of the world on this, but also some budding up and coming bloggers.

If you are interested in contributing to the cause, drop us a line, dm or email with an outline of the topic. Thanks and happy writing….