Some of us are old enough to remember the early days of the World Wide Web, when we had to hand-code our websites and there were no such things as ‘grid layouts’ or ‘responsive design’.

In this stone age of web development, many companies launched so-called WYSIWYG HTML editors that allowed you to build websites in a more intuitive (i.e. less code-heavy) way. One of the earliest WYSIWYG editors was Microsoft’s FrontPage.

During its 7-year lifespan as a software product FrontPage went from being a time-saving darling of budding web developers to being widely despised and ridiculed for the bloated code it churned out.

It’s been nearly 10 years since Microsoft quietly retired the FrontPage brand name, but it still sees widespread use today. In fact, some developers use it daily. Because, believe it or not, FrontPage still has many uses.

 
Build HTML Emails
First and foremost, FrontPage is hands-down, bar none, the most effective HTML editor for emails. Due to the wide variety of email clients out there, each with their own peculiar HTML rendering engines, it is notoriously difficult to code HTML emails in such a way that they display correctly in all email clients.

But a HTML email coded in FrontPage is very likely to render correctly in pretty much all email clients out there. That’s because the code generated by FrontPage is so arse-backwards – virtually no CSS, layouts based on tables, and font tags up the wazoo – that even the most pernickety rendering engine will be beaten in to submission by the tsunami of bloated and redundant HTML so that it has no choice but to display the email exactly as intended.

When it comes to building HTML emails, there really is no better editor out there than FrontPage.

 
Test Websites for IE6
Secondly, FrontPage has a built-in preview function that allows you to view the page you’re building as if it was rendered in a browser. That browser being Internet Explorer 6.

Yes, FrontPage 2003 uses the IE6 rendering engine for its preview function. (Or, if you’re lucky enough to use the older 2000 version of FrontPage, it might even be IE5!) That means it’s basically a perfect IE6 browser testing tool. Now why on earth you’d need to test webpages in IE6 is an entirely different question.

But if for some inexplicable and most likely utterly retarded reason you did need to build webpages to function correctly in IE6, FrontPage is an ideal testing tool. If it works in FrontPage’s preview, it’ll work in IE6.

 
Slow Down Your PC
It will come to no surprise to anyone that FrontPage, being the product of Microsoft’s Office division in the late nineties and early naughties, is a hopelessly inefficiently-coded monstrosity that will severely slow down even the most modern of PCs.

Now, you may not see this as a useful feature, but trust me it is! Whenever you need to convince your company’s IT department that your PC needs an upgrade, just run FrontPage on it and show your IT guys how horrendously slow your PC responds to even the most basic of interactions.

Your IT department will be unable to comprehend how a modern PC running only one piece of office software can behave as if it’s trying to calculate Pi to the 10 billionth decimal and simultaneously converting a thousand PSDs in to PDFs with Photoshop. The only logical conclusion is that your hardware is outdated and an upgrade is required. Voila, a brand new upgraded office PC will be all yours, courtesy of Microsoft FrontPage!

 
So there you have it, three highly convenient use cases for Microsoft’s ancient FrontPage product. Just because it’s old doesn’t mean it’s not handy to have! If you know of any other effective uses for FrontPage, please do share them with us in the comments.

Barry Adams is a seasoned SEO pro whose experience includes consulting for dozens of SMEs and in-house SEO work for two massive multinational corporations and a large regional newspaper. Currently he’s the Senior SEO guy at Pierce Communications in Belfast, where he deploys his skills in aid of some of the Emerald Isle’s biggest brands.

Guest post by Lior Levin

Are you having problems with your WordPress installation? The great thing about WordPress is that there’s a plugin fix for almost any problem you have. Here’s a list of plugins that solve common problems we had with our blog at Kitchen Stools Direct.

1. Search engine optimization (SEO)
Some WordPress themes are ready search engine optimized but there are still quite a few that don’t get it right. If you have one of those and don’t want to fork out for an expert to solve your problems then a popular plugin has the solution you are looking for. It’s called the All In One SEO Pack, and as its name suggests it provides a quick fix for all your search engine optimization problems. Out of the box it will give you a perfectly optimized WordPress site; and with a few tweaks you can take SEO to the next level. No blog should be without it.

2. Backup
What if your blog disappeared overnight? How would you retrieve all the posts and comments that it has taken years to put together? Believe it or not, this happens more often than you might think and once again, the solution is simple. WP DB Backup backs up all of the critical mySQL tables that comprise your blog. With this installed, not only can you make a quick on-the-fly backup but you can also arrange for daily or weekly backups to be e-mailed to you. If something happens to your blog, restore your last backup and you’re back in business. Also consider VaultPress, though you will have to pay for this.

3. Slow sites
If you’ve got a site that takes ages to load then you’re probably losing visitors. The web attention span is very short and if your site loading time is more than a few seconds readers will go elsewhere. The fix is to install a caching plugin. The best around at the moment is WP Super Cache. This loads static versions of often accessed pages to reduce loading time and has a number of other useful functions.

4. Going mobile
Hundreds of thousands of people now access your website via mobile devices. If you want to make it easy for them to see a mobile friendly site then there’s an easy way to do this without having to spend money on a special theme. You can simply install the WP Touch iPhone theme, and with one click you will have a mobile friendly site. Also consider MobilePress, which keeps the server load to a minimum.

5. Making contact
Do you want a nice easy contact form so that readers can get in touch with you? Do you want to be able to put your contact form anywhere on your site, including sidebars? If your answer to both those questions is yes then consider installing Contact Form 7. This allows you to install multiple contact forms very easily and includes different types of spam protection.
These plugins will help you to optimize your WordPress installation. Download them today and there are at least five WordPress problems you will never have to worry about again.

This was a post by Lior Levin who is an online consultant for Kitchen Stools Direct, a bar stools and kitchen stools online store.

Recently I was conducting a piece of work on one of my WordPress sites that involved setting up lots of redirects. Rather than installing ANOTHER plugin I decided I wanted to do it properly, using .htaccess, rather than slow my site down some more!

Unfortunately, although this initially seemed like it would be a rather quick thing to do I realised that WordPress already had lots of redirects built into it from where I had renamed pages after publishing them, and because of the permalinks that were implemented post-launch.

There are numerous issues implementing further redirects could cause, here are just a couple:

• Redirect loops (search engines, and users, will get stuck in a never ending redirect loop and therefore the page will never be accessible)
• Replacing a correct redirect with an incorrect one, for example:
  Original URL http://www.domain.com/index.php?cat=3&pid=10

  WordPress redirects too http://www.domain.com/category-3/product-10

  However, as a catch-all on pages that have been removed I may place a redirect in my .htaccess to catch anything with cat=3 and redirect it too http://www.domain.com/category-3/ and as such losing the value that could be gained from this redirect.

I’m not going to go in any further details than the above, I’m sure if you’re reading this post you’re more than aware of the various issues that can be caused with redirects; so, I’ll get straight into how I got around this issue…

The first thing I wanted to look at was to get all the pages that are indexed, have links to them, or get traffic of any sort. To do this I used a combination of:
- Using Google Spreadsheets to look at indexation (here is an example I pulled together)
- Using an advanced report on Majestic SEO to have a look at the pages that have links to them. This isn’t the only source you could use whatever you want to get this information, for example:

• Google Webmaster Tools,
• Open Site Explorer or
• Yahoo Site Explorer

- Reviewing analytics and/or server logs to attain any pages that have had traffic since the changes

Once I had a list of all the pages of the site that I would want to redirect for any reason, I crawled these URLs (you can use whatever tool you want, I used one of my own scripts) to determine the http response codes for all the pages (and the destination page if it is being redirected).

Here is the “clever” bit that you’ve all been waiting for, getting the list of all the redirects that are in the WordPress database already. To do this I spent a while researching and reading lots of sites, unfortunately I couldn’t really find a decent way to do this without installing plugins (which, if you remember back to the start of the post, is why I started this whole mini-project). Because of this I decided to write my own SQL query which enabled me to pull back all the information I needed:

SELECT
wp_posts.post_type,
wp_posts.post_date,
wp_posts.post_name AS current_slug,
IFNULL(
(
SELECT
GROUP_CONCAT(wp_postmeta.meta_value SEPARATOR ” ==> “)
FROM
wp_postmeta
WHERE
wp_postmeta.post_id = wp_posts.ID
AND
wp_postmeta.meta_key = “_wp_old_slug”
ORDER BY
NULL)
,”") AS old_slugs,
wp_posts.guid AS url_without_permalinks
FROM
wp_posts
WHERE
wp_posts.post_type != “revision”
ORDER BY
wp_posts.post_date ASC

This query is actually relatively simple when you know where you’re supposed to be looking for the information so sorry if it’s not ground-breaking for all you developers out there
For all of those out there that aren’t developers, here is what the query does in English:

Select these base columns from the wp_posts table (where all the normal WordPress things are saved):

• Type (page, post, attachment, revision)
• Date of creation
• The current search engine friendly page relative URL
• What the pages URL would be if permalinks were turned off

Then look at the wp_postmeta table (where all the background information about the posts, pages, etc. are stored and:

• Select all the old page relative URLs and concatenate them into one long string (separated by =>). If they don’t exist return a blank cell.

This is all filtered to remove anything where the post-type is “revision” meaning where anything has been altered or is in draft
(Hopefully that makes sense – harder for me to explain what it does in English which is quite depressing!)

So now let’s review… where we are:

• We have a list of all the pages we want to keep
• We have extended information about all the pages and what response codes they are returning
• We have a list of all the current redirects in WordPress

With all this information you can then use whatever method you want to work out what redirects are in WordPress already that you want to leave (or if you’re like me, what you want to take away from WordPress altogether and handle in your .htaccess file). Then you can go ahead and make your .htaccess file with all your redirects based query strings, etc.
Just to give you one example, I’ll use the case I used before when explaining the possible issues:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^cat=3
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !^pid=10
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/category-3/ [R=301]

I’m by no means, in any of this saying this is the best way to go about this, there are plenty of quicker ways to do all this analysis I’m sure. This is the method I used though and hopefully this blog post gives lots of tips that can be used standalone as well as part of the process I followed. In the next post I will be covering how you can use the data in terms of actually migrating the site.

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

This is a guest post from Paul Madden (aka @seoidiot – and one of the nominees for most influential) further to the fun and games from last weeks automated voting. These weren’t done particularly well, so as a result we thought we would get in the experts for next time ….

Some of you may know that I have a slightly dodgy past as far as spam goes so it was no great surprise when people blamed me for gaming the poll. I find that offensive and I am saddened that you would think that of me. So did I game it?

Well yes of course I did, Pete wouldn’t have expected any less. The difference with me is I wont do it in a way that causes your server problems and I wont do it to win, I did it simply to point out the vulnerability of the voting method used. So I have been asked to share with you the thought process and code that allowed the poll to be gamed so you too can game polls, sorry I mean so you too can avoid being gamed on your own polls.
As soon as I saw Pete had a poll running I took a look at the source of the page and heres what I found: -

<div id=”polls-9″>

So Pete is using WP-Polls to run his poll. OK well lets have a look at how that system prevents vote rigging…
Just a note, always prevent me from browsing to your plugins directories to confirm the plugin is in place – http://www.holisticsearch.co.uk/wp-content/plugins/wp-polls/

(If you add ‘Options All -Indexes’ to your .htaccess file you will stop me doing this easily)
It appears that it simply places a cookie on your machine and prevents posting from the same IP again and again. Here is the handy cookie view in Chrome (Preferences > content settings > show cookies and other site data)

Nice how Google help you spam things sometimes isn’t it

So what we need is a method to hold a cookie and a way of using lots of IP’s

Step forward cURL and PHP once again!

So with cURL you can set all sorts of things like the user_agent and accept cookies and spoof pi’s. Ideal for us. Now it would have taken about half an hour to code up something to do the task for us but in our case there was already a script I had that does the job. You can find it here:

http://www.criticalsecurity.net/index.php/topic/32474-wordpress-wp-polls-post-data/

OK so all we need now is to tell this script what the poll id is (`name=”poll_id” value=”52″` from the source of the page) and who we want to vote for (65 was my option in the vote, again found in the source). Then we will upload this script to one of our servers and get ready to play. Normally you could use proxies to do this (Tor or a service like http://www.yourprivateproxy.com/ would work well) but as we are ‘blind posting’ we don’t need a proxy at all.

What? How does that work?

OK so if you are posting and getting back information with cURL you have to use a proxy as if you spoof an ip the information will get returned to that fake IP. If we are simply posting to a form though we can do that with a fake IP.

One note of warning, the real IP will still be there if you look at the raw log files I think. We are simply telling the server that we are forwarding from a fake IP using the line: -

Make a fake IP up

Telling wordpress what IP we are from

So now we have all we need to spam the vote, we simply do it in little bursts of votes over an extended period (http://www.seoidiot.co.uk/projected-cron-jobs/) and if we wanted to we could quickly extend this script to check who was winning the vote before voting itself and then make sure we always stayed just above them. In this case I would worry that Mr Naylor might also have done that and it would become an arms race pretty quickly..

Some notes on doing this in a way that doesn’t hurt the site in question. Don’t post 1000 votes at a time (one or two have done this -> editor;), don’t just vote for yourself (couple of people have done that -> editor), don’t write a follow up post explaining how to do it (Whoops)

Disclaimer – Following Paul’s advise above is done so at your own risk. Holistic Search and Paul do not accept any responsibility for any actions you may take as a result of reading the above post

This was supposed to be the accompanying post to the post last year, but for a number of reasons (primarily work related) this never got done. This year the work is still there, but I promised myself I would get this done. From the start this isn’t going to include any of the obvious ones, ones, people have on the follow lists as a matter of course – these are ones I have got to know from Twitter, and ones I have learn’t bits (and in some cases a lot from) in that time.

Please note, these are not in any particular order, nor are they the obvious tweeters, who frequent most of the major conferences – however they are people who I have found to be either greatly personable and engaging or very knowledgeable in terms of their search marketing experience

David Harry
Company: Realiable SEO
WHO?: The man behind SEO Dojo aka The Gypsy
WHY: Someone I have learn’t a hell of a lot from during the course of 2009, and the first on my list of people you should be following without fail. If you aren’t following him, my advice would be to change that – NOW!
WHERE: http://twitter.com/thegypsy

Bas Van Den Beld
Company: Nettraject / State of Search
WHO?: Owner of Nettraject, Co-owner and Chief Editor of Search Cowboys and presenter at Webmaster Radio
WHY: If many people had been asked who Bas was 2 years back, many of us would not have been able to answer, however now Bas’s stock is high, very high – and a really nice bloke to boot. That and he has an acute awareness of what is going on in this crazy world we call search….
WHERE: http://twitter.com/basvandenbeld

Sebastian
Company: Smart IT Consulting
WHO?: Owner/Blogger at Sebastians Pamphlets
WHY: Great posts, great tweets – highly recommended follow
WHERE: http://twitter.com/SebastianX

Darren Slatten aka SEO Mofo
Company: –
WHO?: Worlds greatest SEO (OK thats open to debate)
WHY: Not for his highly entertaining tweets, nor for his highly commendable rationale in the recent SEOMoz nofollow debate but because he has the best SERP description of anyone I know

WHERE: http://twitter.com/seomofo

Bryan Eisenberg
Company: Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg & Associates
WHO?: aka The Grok
WHY: Saw him at SES 2008, and thought he was fantastic. Engaging, funny and highly intelligent – backed up by a hugely impressive CV.
WHERE: http://twitter.com/thegrok

Ann Smarty
Company: Search and Social
WHO?: Search Geek, Social Media addict and synonymous with Search and Social
WHY: A name I often associate with Search Engine Journal, Ann has compiled a significant number of posts on the SEJ blog – many which must be in the top 20 top 20 posts
WHERE: http://twitter.com/seosmarty

Susan Gray
Company: -
WHO?: Head of Search from Cape Town, South Africa
WHY: As if I was going to do a post like this and not include someone from my homeland? Seems to have a finger on the pulse, and doesn’t seem to ever be away from twitter (apart from 2 hours of deep tissue massage)
WHERE: http://www.twitter.com/Sznq

Brent D. Payne
Company: Tribune
WHO?: SEO Director at the Tribune
WHY: Some of the issues Brent faces, most people only dream of (or have nightmares about).
WHERE: http://www.twitter.com/BrentDPayne

Justin Parks
Company: Freelance
WHO?: Spanish based, Northern Ireland SEO
WHY: Supremely funny, but behind it a hugely capable search marketeer.
WHERE: http://www.twitter.com/justinparks

Brett Pringle
Company: MediaVision
WHO?: Director of Search at MediaVision with Louis Venter
WHY: Another South African, but don’t let that hold you back – but well worth following.
WHERE: http://www.twitter.com/brettpringle

About this time last year, I did a post on 10 search marketing people you should be following on Twitter, which was very well received. Twitter is now a year older – and significantly more popular – and I thought it would be an interesting post to revisit that initial post and include people I have got to know and respect during the course of 2009. I will also be doing an World one of this – something I meant to do last time but for some reason never got round to.

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dhammza/204690293/

This year I have tried not to go for the quite as obvious choices who often dominate these types of lists but instead focus on people who I have learnt from during the course of the year, or debated with during the past year

Joanna Butler
Company: Latitude Group
WHO?: SEO & online marketing consultant currently based in London, UK
WHY: Joanna has had an awesome 2009, including a number of well received speaking sessions including A4U in London.
WHERE: http://twitter.com/joannabutler

Richard Baxter
Company: SEO Gadget
WHO?: Ex European SEO Manager for Cheapflights
WHY: RIchard has not only contributed to a number of interesting discussions on Twitter, but also on his SEO Gadget blog and via a number of presentations including SMX 2009 in London
WHERE: http://twitter.com/richardbaxter

Rishi Lakhani
Company: -
WHO?: Ex-Search Marketing Strategies at Bourne Leisure
WHY: Rishi was unlucky not to be on my 2009 list, so I have made sure he has made the 2010 list. Hugely popular online, and a must follow for your Twitter account.
WHERE: http://twitter.com/rishil

Sarah Goodwin
Company: Bloom Media
WHO?: Digital Marketing Manager at Bloom Media and recent addition to SEO Chicks
WHY: Sarah is never short of something to say or to voice her opinion. Her recent addition to the SEO Chicks bloglist is testament to her increasing influence within the industry.
WHERE: http://twitter.com/Yoshimi_S

Malcolm Coles
Company: –
WHO?: Internet content consultant: an experienced editor who also advises on SEO
WHY: Malcolm has had a number of well received posts on his blog including a number of pieces on the use of SEO by 3am in particular. His Tweets are just as good, and well worth following.
WHERE: http://twitter.com/malcolmcoles

Lyndon Atcliff
Company: Cornwall SEO
WHO?: Social Media Buzz Marketing Expert
WHY: Controversial definitely, knowledgeable maybe (:) ), boring never.
WHERE: http://twitter.com/lyndoman

Jaamit Durrani
Company: Fresh Egg
WHO?: SEO Bod at Fresh Egg and Gooner (how unfortunate )
WHY: Always has something to say, and often quick of the mark when stories break. Certainly one to keep an eye on.
WHERE: http://twitter.com/jaamit

SharkSEO
Company: iCrossing
WHO?: SEO at iCrossing
WHY: David has had a great year both on his blog and on Twitter. His posts and response relating to Vince in particular were impressive and he has continued to go from strength to strength in 2009. Does a more impressive 2010 follow?
WHERE: http://twitter.com/sharkSEO

Ben McKay
Company: MediaEdge:CIA
WHO?: SEO Manager at MediaEdge:CIA
WHY: Increasing popularity online follows a busy year. Blogs at his blog “Just me and my”, regular guest posts including Search Engine Journal as well as helping run industry events such as Manchester SEO (with myself & Shane Jones – next one January 28th btw) and SasCon (Further details following soon)
WHERE: http://twitter.com/yetanotherben

Dom Hodgson
Company: HodgeTastic
WHO?: Conference Organiser, Blogger, Entrepreneur, Moaning Bastard and Huggable Bloke
WHY: Organiser of the increasingly popular Think Visibility conferences (next one March 13th 2010), Dom is hugely entertaining both via Twitter and via his blog
WHERE: http://twitter.com/thehodge

Before I start with this post, I will caveat the below with the fact I used to be one of the organisations offering SEO for £200 a month, and this post represents the fact it is not possible to outsource SEO in a competitive sector without paying a reasonable amount of money. I am under no illusions, there are cowboys out there – just like there are in any other sector – even advertising and PR suffer from these idiots.

However I do get tired with stories like one I read in the Crains Manchester Business, something I until recently thought was a half-decent publication. It read as follows:

Website owners are being charged up to 30 times too much for work to improve their Google rankings, according to one Manchester-based search engine optimisation provider.

Colin Bell, operations director of Modern World Media, said he knew of one case in which an advertising agency quoted £25,000 to carry out a three-month test contract for a Manchester-based healthcare provider. The client shopped around and got the work done for £850.

Bell said such cases of “scandalous overcharging” were creating a mistrust of the industry, which he believes should have a higher degree of self-regulation.

“Many clients do not know how much they should be paying and they are being taken advantage of in some cases,” said Bell, who set up the Albion Wharf-based company with brothers Simon and Piers Vaughan in October.

Now dont get me wrong, £25000 is a lot of money. However lets evaluate the facts. THe sector happens to be healthcare, lets assume its health insurance which includes a number of high profile organisations who have been undertaking SEO for a number of years. These include health insurance specialist Bupa, finance aggregator Moneysupermarket and Insurance companies Prudential and AXA PPP, four organisations you are not going to shift for £850.

Further to that, lets do the commercials. Lets suppose you are offering your SEO for around (£25 an hour (to be honest I think thats low but lets keep it simple for illustration purposes) – lets remember this is a three month trial). That is 34 hours of allocated work without including any other commercials into the mix such as Directory submissions or third party costs for article or PR distribution or for copywriting.  Further to that – that sort of activity is not going to get to you to a competitive edge with the likes of the afore mentioned organisations.

I would also add it may also be worth considering the potential renumeration of undertaking such a project. Any project undertaken should have commercial justification and should the costings (and choice of vendor) should reflect this. Spending that volume of money, should it deliver a significant return on investment would be money well spent. Is £25000 spent on a successful test, better than £850 spent on a moderately successful trial?

If you are considering SEO however you may want to consider the following:

• Do your research. Have an idea of what you are purchasing before you purchase it. You wouldn’t go and buy a car without looking at it (well not if you had any sense) – so why do it with SEO.
• Have an idea of what needs doing. By understanding the terminology you stand less of a chance of being undone by an unscrupulous organisation
• Don’t base your decision purely on cost. I got told once that you will never lose a sale purely on price (something I argued you would), and that you didn’t sell hard enough. However if you do base a decision purely on price, you are putting yourself in line for a potential fall, as by doing so you are not looking at the bigger picture.
• Ask your potential agencies of a breakdown of their proposed strategy, project plan and costings. Any potential vendor should be able to provide a reasonably clear breakdown of this. Anyone proposing a massive budget without any such justification could be potentially ropey and in such cases having this breakdown will at least rationalise such costings.
• Spend time on the decision. Don’t just do it because you have to. A good SEO that is well nourished will flourish. At the end of the day SEO is often what you put in you get out. Put in nothing – and you will often get nothing back….

[These are the views of Peter Young and not necessarily those of his employers]

I recently noticed some traffic starting to come though from AdAge albeit from a fairly lowly 700+ position at present which got me thinking as to who my fellow UK search marketeers were within the Adage list – but to be honest playing in the upper echolons of the Adage framework – with some interesting results.

1 ) EConsultancy
URL: http://econsultancy.com
Adage Position: 11
It seems the US move has paid dividends for EConsultancy with the digital marketing site now occupying the top UK spot. Regular contributors include Kevin Gibbons, Patricio Robbles and Graham Charlton

2 ) Freshnetworks blog
URL: http://blog.freshnetworks.com/
Adage Position: 28
Coming in at position 28, the Fresh Networks blog occupies a more prominent no.2 in the UK blog list according to the Adage stats. Regular contributors include Matt Rhodes, Helen Trim and Timothy Fowler

3 ) Crenk
URL: http://crenk.com
Adage Position: 35
Crenk, founded by Aussie Steven Finch on September 22, 2007, is a weblog dedicated to reviewing some of the newest and best web and mobile apps on the web. Additionally, we have insights and analysis on some of the hotest topics from around the net.

4 ) Blogstorm
URL: http://www.blogstorm.co.uk
Adage Position: 40
According to the site description, “Blogstorm is the UK’s largest blog about search engine optimisation & social media marketing. It’s edited by Patrick Altoft, one of the UK’s leading SEO” who works for agency Branded 3 based in Leeds. Sound bloke and a great blog

5 ) David Airey
URL: www.davidairey.com
Adage Position: 42
With around 14000 regular readers of his blog, David Airey must be doing something write. For those not familiar with David (many search engine marketeers may not be aware of him) – David is a graphic designer passionate about brand identity who authors both the above link and http://www.logodesignlove.com/

Other Honourable mentions
6 ) Neville Hobson
URL: www.nevillehobson.com
Adage Position: 45

7 ) Chris Garrett on new media
URL: http://www.chrisg.com/
Adage Position: 81

8 ) Jims Marketing Blog
URL: http://jimsmarketingblog.com/
Adage Position: 98

9 ) Adliterate
URL: http://www.adliterate.com
Adage Position: 100

10 ) We are social
URL: http://wearesocial.net/
Adage Position: 108

11) Hobo UK SEO Company Blog (119) – http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/
12) Nick Burcher (124) – http://www.nickburcher.com/
13) Only Dead Fish (140) – http://neilperkin.typepad.com/only_dead_fish/
14) PR Blogger (147) – http://www.prblogger.com/
15) Russell Davies (153) – http://russelldavies.typepad.com/planning
16) SEO Gadget (by Richard Baxter) (170) – http://seogadget.co.uk/
17) Crack Unit (179) – http://www.crackunit.com/
18) Drew B’s take on Tech PR (185) – http://theblogconsultancy.typepad.com/
19) SEOptimise (from Kevin Gibbons) (196) – http://www.seoptimise.com/blog
20) Welcome to Optimism (200) – http://wklondon.typepad.com/welcome_to_optimism
21) Connect from iCrossing (211) – http://connect.icrossing.co.uk/
22) HERD (219) – http://herd.typepad.com/
23) Technobabble 2.0 (233) – http://technobabble2dot0.wordpress.com/
24) PR Media Blog (242) – http://pr-media-blog.co.uk/
25) UK Affiliate Marketing Blog (246) – http://www.here.org.uk/

Its always interesting doing bits of analysis such as this, as you often don’t find the results you expect. Prominent UK bloggers such as Andrew Girdwood from Bigmouthmedia (good blog btw) do appear within the list (Girdwood’s blog is around the 230 mark), however they are outside of the top 200 and in terms of search related blogs it is only really the likes of BlogStorm, SEOptimise, Connect (iCrossing), SEO Gadget and Hobo-Web (Shaun Anderson) that get any significant traction against particularly the US based websites.

Further to Lyndon’s recent post regarding the lack of UK visibility on the panels, perhaps this is symbolic of the lack of authoritive figures within the search market or perhaps its merely a sign that our marketeers are busier working than blogging.
What are your thoughts?

As many advertisers are probably now aware Google have been testing a new set of functionality within the paid search ads whereby products associated with an advertiser can be retrieved via clicking on a plus icon next to the paid search ads – refered to (you will be amazed to know) as the Google Plus Box. Currently this is in beta in the UK, and was in the US until recently however I understand this has now been pulled.

Google plus box on entry

On entry, paid search ads which incorporate Google plus box results, show as normal bar a + icon and link to click for the enhanced results. Users clicking on this link will then be presenting with around three results taken from the advertiser, which have a significant impact on browser experience and obviously the impact of any organic results which may be appearing on the page as a result.

Google plus box result activated. Note the impact of the result

So how do you optimise for these results. As you may know Google Product results are often ‘populated’ by XML feeds from Google Base.

1) Have a high quality Google Base Feed (and obviously remember to submit it). Make sure this is accurate, comprehensive thus ensuring you have current prices, no out of stock items, real images etc)

2) Within your paid search campaign, ensure you have a range of product related terms, not just brand, core generic and long tail terms. Google Plus box results often appear on these types and terms, and above all are likely to be far more successful in terms of conversion.

3) Use analytics such as GA to measure your conversions on product pages. By doing so you can focus your attention on those keywords that really drive you the conversion/visibility.

4) Make sure your campaign receives a lot of search impressions. IF your campaign is not receiving a high volume of impressions, it is unlikely you will get much traction from this.

I would add to conclude, this has already been stopped in the US, and one would suggest that it is only a matter of time before this is stopped in the UK (although knowing Google it is likely this will be back at some point in the future. Thus I would suggest any work on this should be considered, however with Google Product results already incorporated into main blended (product-related) searches and thus this is really an extention of any Base related optimisation.

Maybe I should have expected given the nature of the newspaper, however it is always disappointing to see this type of stuff written (regarding SEO) in public forums with big followings. In the Penland and Sommerlad series on the Mirror blog, Nick Sommerlad discusses a ‘new businesses’ email received a company called Leadbank offering him their ‘ethical’ SEO services, and report to have “achieved over 90000 1st page positions and over 27000 number one positions for our clients across all industries and on all major search engines.”. To be honest (on a personal note) any company that throws those figures in a new business email deserves to be flamed publically (my rationale being you can have all the “desert snowman Vietnam” type terms in the world, but ultimately one ‘secured loan’ result is far more impressive).

This leads me onto the second point. The company above got flamed not for the above, but for the fact they didn’t appear in the first page (or even the next four) for the term ‘search engine optimisation’. I would add at this point – perhaps controversially that anyone that does choose a company for the reason they are top of SEO or search engine optimisation is taking a chance – use it as a research tool to find potential search partners however don’t base a business decision of it.

I will use the top five of the current Google results for ‘search engine optimization’ as an example. This isn’t an outing session, so I certainly won’t be mentioning any names, however there are two organisations tactics in their whose tactics are a likely to come awry at some point due to the questionable nature of particularly their link acquisition. I would also add there are a number of good search (and SEO) agencies that do not come in the first couple of pages of results for terms such as SEO but have delivered a number of quality projects and campaigns.

However if you are looking what should you do , I would suggest a REACH type approach is probably worth taking.

R – Research. Probably the most important thing you can do. If you don’t have a miniscule understanding of what SEO is or what is involved, you are more expose. Further to that research the market, place like SEOVendor (from Andy Beal) and SEOMoz both have areas which which you can look at potential search partners, and publications such as NMA in the UK have both the editorial and the marketplace section which will give you an idea of players in the market.

E – Evaluate. Do a bit of homework on them (don’t just look at whether their first page for SEO, Search Engine Optimisation etc). Ask them for examples of their previous work, and results achieved for their clients. I would suggest the old saying ‘cobblers shoes’ applies to a lot of agencies, hence why I would always suggest you looking at client results rather than previous results. This to me means too much time on your hands ….

A – Ask questions. Don’t ever go into a SEO contract blind. My favourite clients are the ones that ask questions right from the beginning. I personally often find an educated client is more likely to buy into new ideas or changes far easier, as they understand the rationale and timescales. The types of questions you should be asking should be along the lines of

• What sort of results can I expect and can you give me potential timescales. Here I would be looking for two answers. One – any mention of guaranteed results and I would generally run a mile. Two, Significant results in Google in a very short time period (ie We will get you top in four weeks), I would always be wary of.
• What happens if I can’t implement something you recommend. Are you going to carry on sending it through, or not doing anything. Any decent agency should work with you, and any limitations you may have – or at the very least explain the implications
• Ask for references and testimonials. Who better to ask than people they have previously worked with – oh and actually follow these up
• How do you develop links. Do they undertake any paid linkage for seo purposes only (if you are Ok with taken a chance with paid links that is your own prerogative – however it is worth understanding the role and thus the risk)
• Expect them to ask questions. SEO is a two way thing. It shouldn’t be a case of just going away and giving you a list of high trafficked keywords. At the end of the day, you (as the client) understand your product far better than we do, however we know how we can get that product found, so it needs both parties to work in harmony. Make sure you know answers to questions such as Average Order Value, Target Cost Per Lead/Acquisition etc. This will ultimately help you get a solutions that is targeted towards your requirements.
• Ask about KPI’s. A campaign without KPI’s is just flying blind – they should have an objective whether this is ROI or traffic led.
• Tracking. What tools does your agency have in place to measure the effectiveness. Have they got any ways of deduping data so you get a clearer channel breakdown. Is their any form of search path analysis in place?

C – Contracts. Make sure you understand your contract. Many agencies don’t work to defined long term contracts, others do. Thats not to say there is anything with being tied into a longer term contract, but just make sure you have some caveats (built into the contract), should contracted hours not be done, or agreed KPI’s not be hit. It is possibly worth understanding as well as to what happens when you leave, going back to the examples above, should you leave I would suggest the vast majority of your linkage is likely to disappear as well.

H – Have an understanding of whats happening. Don’t let the evaluation process end, when you sign the contract. Make sure you understand what your agency is doing for you via regular reports and reviews (monthly should do). Take an interest in the SEO campaign – theres nothing worse from an agency perspective than merely just being thrown something with little or no client support. Te best campaigns have total client buy-in = and with search becoming more and more intertwined with more traditional marketing (lets use PR which can be used for SEO purposes) buy in and involvement is more important than ever.Flip side to this, make sure your agency is pro-active, and suggesting things which are suitable for you.

Like any sector, there are good search agencies and their are bad search agencies. However if you do your homework, and take an interest in your SEO you will be very surprised at how effective it can be.

SES London is coming, in just a smattering over three weeks time. SES London is always a good mix of Search Engine Marketing professionals from both the UK and the US, including (but not limited to:)

• Jon Myers – Head of Search/Associate Director – MVi  (MediaVest Manchester) – If anything his landing page talks are always worth catching – however I think he is on just the 5 panels this year.
• David Naylor – Bronco/DavidNaylor.co.uk – Always worth listening to if you get the chance – the ‘Brand and Reputation Management’ session in particular will be worth attending
• Rand Fishkin – SEOMoz – The people over at ‘Moz have had a great year, and Rand has been involved in search since year dot. Well worth catching his talk on Day 2
  
• Frank Watson (aka AussieWebmaster) – Again day 2 – and a name I don’t remember seeing last year – saying that he has always been AussieWebmaster to me
• and a range of others including Mike Grehan (does Mike have  a Twitter account), Brett Tabke, Mel Carson, Fellow SearchCowboy Lisa Ditlefsen, Jill Whalen, Judith Lewis, Brian Turner, Dixon Jones and  Andrew Goodman – however it doesn’t look like Girdy (Andrew Girdwood) or any of the BigmouthMedia team will be talking this time round.

So what do you need to remember for this years SES London

1. Business Cards – Whilst I doubt for the vast majority of you that any significant business opportunities will come out of SES (very much more OM bods attend these events), it is still a great place to meet not only the SEO ‘weblebrities’ (such as those mentioned above), but also other peers in the industry. Lunch between the late morning and afternoon sessions is always great to meet new people
2. Pen and Paper – or even better your laptop – These events are getting more and more coverage thanks to the advent of things like Twitter, however they have always been well covered in terms of online coverage. Many of the sessions have a fantastic array of SEO talent, and I would be suprised if you didn’t pick up a think or five from one of the sessions. At the very least you may see a spike in traffic to your blog (should you be covering the event – I seem to remember there is wireless there – however someone may want to confirm that)
3. Agenda – In my opinion, to get the best out of SES (from a learning perspective) , you need to know what you are doing before you go. Most panels are often crowded – and as such getting a good position is essential. Do your research and know which panels you want to go on. There is that much on – and so many people round that it will help you get the maximum out of it.Its also worth knowing the places to go. Last year, Will Graham (the Online Manager at Connectpoint (my previous agency) – now at Lake Star Media) and myself ended up in some dingy hotel near Kings Cross – not something I plan to do again….
4. Money – After a hard day at the conference, there is often the opportunity to join other search marketing peeps for a drink (or five – more if you are lucky/unlucky enough to be with Rob Kerry (Ayima). Mines a Mojito if your offering
5. Your ticket/Yourselves - Just go and enjoy. We only have the two dedicated SEM conferences these days – although Ad-Tech, TFM and the Internet Marketing Show are also worth attending should finance etc allow

Whatever your reason/agenda SES always delivers a good show, and I doubt this year will be any different.

As the second part of the Twitter series here on Holistic, I thought I would suggest some of the people I am, and would recommend following on Twitter, and being a SEO in the UK, obviously all these are UK based.

Dave Naylor (DaveN)

Company: Bronco

WHO?: One of the ‘big dogs’ of UK search marketing, Dave started working in the SEO industry over 10 years ago.

WHY: Hugely popular, highly respected and well worth following

WHERE: http://twitter.com/DaveNaylor

Company: MediaVest/MVi

WHO?: Head of Search at MediaVest. Industry veteran (sorry Jon)

WHY: Widely respected and a regular speaker on both the SMX and SES speaking circuits. Amongst other things – he’s my boss.

WHERE: http://twitter.com/JonDMyers

Company: BigmouthMedia

WHO?: Head of Search at Bigmouthmedia.

WHY: Hardcore Search Marketeer – and ‘face’ of Bigmouthmedia (erm ). Passionate about all things search, and if that bores you, theres always his gaming.

WHERE: http://twitter.com/AndrewGirdwood

Company: Blogstorm/Branded3

WHO?: Director of Search at Branded3.

WHY: Been a magic year for Patrick and the Blogstorm blog.

WHERE: http://twitter.com/patrickaltoft

Company:

WHO?: Marketing Expert @ jimsmarketingblog.com

WHY: Hugely experienced marketeer and VERY well connected (Over 16000 followers on Twitter)

WHERE: http://twitter.com/Jimconnolly

Company: Altogether Digital

WHO?: SEO and Social Media Director at Altogether Digital

WHY: Entertaining blogger, and if that fails theres always the music commentary.

WHERE: http://twitter.com/ciaranj

Company: SEOptimise

WHO?: Director of Search at SEOptimise

WHY: Some great posts coming out of SEOptimise at the moment. Worth following for that alone.

WHERE: http://twitter.com/kevgibbo

Company: Microsoft/MSN

WHO?: Microsoft Adcentre’s Community Manager

WHY: Works for Microsoft apart from anything else (Who would turn down the chance of winning an ‘I’m a PC tshirt). Apart from that his regular commentary is hugely entertaining

WHERE: http://twitter.com/MelCarson

Company: Distilled

WHO?: Founder of Distilled with Duncan Morris

WHY: His involvement with SEOMoz is well known, however the site itself is a wealth of information.

WHERE: http://twitter.com/willcritchlow

Company: Ayima Search Marketing

WHO?: One of the Ayima Gang

WHY: Entertaining Blogger, and hugely entertaining twitter read not just in terms of latest on hangovers….

WHERE: http://twitter.com/evilgreenmonkey

Matt Sawyer – DataDial -Online Marketeer, SEO and Social Media Junkie – http://twitter.com/mattuk

Rob Watts – Latitude – SEO – Stephen Pavlovich – Bonytoad – http://twitter.com/bonytoad

Jane Copland – SEOMoz/Ayima – Only here as she isn’t 100% in the UK yet- http://twitter.com/coplandmj

Judith Lewis – I-Level – Search Director at I-Level – http://twitter.com/JudithLewis

Lisa Ditlefsen – Base One – Head of Search at BaseOne – http://twitter.com/LisaDitlefsen

George Hopkin – Johnston Press – SEO Evangelist – http://twitter.com/GeorgeHopkin

Paul Walsh – Various – http://twitter.com/PaulWalsh

Nikki Pilkington – http://twitter.com/nikkipilkington

Dave Davis – RedFly Marketing – http://twitter.com/daveredfly

Dan Alderson – Amaze PLC – http://twitter.com/pinje

and the final one

Peter Young

Company: MediaVest / Holistic Search

WHO?: SEO Manager at MediaVest.

WHY: Why not?

WHERE: http://twitter.com/peteyoung

Thats just some of my recommendations, Please feel free to add yours…

According to a recent Specific Media study using Comscore data, Display Advertising and Search Marketing are directly correlated. In particular brand and segment related searches jumped by over 100% in a number of areas where consumers were exposed to both display ads and search ads.

The impact of display ads on search – emarketer.com

The report went on to say that search clickers exposed to brand advertising were 22% more likely to produce a sale than those that did not view a display ad. It should be noted that such increases in performance are not merely limited to areas where just display and search are used. The recent Enquiro/Google study suggested that where priority visibility on both paid and organic search were occupied – brand association and purchase intent increased by circa 16%.

Further to this Microsoft’s Young-Bean Song said in a recent article on Clickz that the study results highlighted that search alone was not a standalone solution to customer acquisition

“The issue we have with navigational search is that it completely obliterates the value we’re creating from other digital marketing we’re doing,” Mr. Song told ClickZ. “The idea that search is this magical fountain of customer acquisition—in many cases it’s not.”

There is no doubting that search is reliant on other forms of advertising, one only has to look at other bits of research published over the last couple of years, such as the iProspect Search influencers study, which highlighted that two-thirds (67%) of search engine users are driven to search by an offline channel (37% of them because of TV advertising), and 39% of those offline-influenced search users ultimately make a purchase from the company that prompted their initial search – to see how much more effective search is as part of a multichannel marketing mix.

As budgets become tighter, marketing spends will have to work far harder – however online does have a significant advantage in terms of accountability, key in an environment where ever bit counts. That doesn’t mean however that other channels should be ignored…

Brand Reputation is becoming a big word in marketing circles. Warfare is taken place on the search engine results pages for many brands, and is becoming an important part of the Search Marketing professionals armoury. However what should you have in your brand reputation toolkit.

1) Know where you stand

It is very difficult to understand how and where to react to an issue if you do not know what is being said about you, and there is really no reason why you shouldn’t be able to setup even the simplest of monitoring tools without spending hundreds or thousands of pounds on brand reputation software.

Simply implementing a Google Alert on your brand will give you some sort of idea of who, what and where your brand is being talked about. I would add however there are some fantastic brand reputation monitoring tools out there that do pick up a wide variety of content, across a range of different channels, and if you are considering some of these tools some of the better ones are:

• Magpie Brandwatch
• Radian 6
• Market Sentinel
• Sentiment Metrics
• Asomo
• and even Trackur from Andy Beal.

2) Dominate your brand search.

Thomas Cook - Dominating brand

There are various ways of doing this, however it is imperative you make it as difficult for a potential brand detractor to influence any searcher, by reducing visibility below the fold. The example above shows an organisation that does this very well by utilising a mixture of subdomains and domains to dominate the top 10 of searches for ‘Thomas Cook’.

3) Use your paid search tactically

Often a lot of brand reputation issues will arise in public forums such as blogs and forums. A large proportion of these sites will carry various forms of online advertising such as Google Adsense advertising, or other forms of online advertising as a way of monetising their sites.

Use of sponsored search for brand reputation

Where particular issues may arise on a suitable site, it is possible to tailor adverts to particular sites – such as Google Adwords – site placement. These ads may carry creative developed particularly for a particular issue advising browsers of where they may be able to find more applicable factual data.

4) Use your offline channels online

Modern day search pages allow search marketeers to influence a far greater proportion of the search engine results page than ever before including

• Video
• PR
• Product Feeds
• Local Listings
• and Images

Blended search allows greater brand infiltration than ever before

Using the example above, for the iPhone, advertisers are able to use a variety of channels to attract potential custom, including

• the traditional organic listings – where Apple (as you would expect dominate)
• the Paid Listings – allowing advertisers such as Carphone Warehouse and Vodaphone to advertise on these terms

but also

• PR – Taken from Google trusted news sources
• Products – taken from advertisers who have submitted Google Base Feeds.

All these channels allow a far wider variety of usage outside of pure search results, for example the video used above is obviously pulled from Youtube – and has already received nearly 6 million views since it went live.

They also tend to dominate key areas of the page, for example

• Google Products – often visible between positions 1-4 (above the fold of the screen)
• Local – Generally the first result – and highly prominent in terms of eye catchment
• PR – Often within positions 1-5
• Video – Depends but normally anywhere between 1-10

They are in many cases ‘eyeline breakers’, often breaking the natural browse of a results page, and meaning users spend more time on search pages – something Enquiro looked into recently.

5) Use Your affiliates

This is obviously going to be more pertinant to some advertisers more than others, however it is worth noting how much real estate can be taken up by affiliates. Whilst this may be a more expensive way of taking up search page real estate, it can result in some significant coverage, all of which is likely (as long as you treat them right) to result in good brand (and sales focussed) coverage.

The role of affiliates on brand searches

And more:

• Use social media (Will cover this in a later post)
• Is Wikipedia relevant – WHilst you aren’t likely to get any link juice – this does take up valuable real estate
• Create a Squidoo lens

One thing is for sure – don’t just ignore the problem. There are a number of high profile examples out there in, that highlight what happens if things are simply left to fester. Certainly people like Dell have developed a brand reputation response learned from the ‘Dell Hell’ days.

No, your eyes do not deceive you.

Google has released its very own guide to SEO, the aptly named ‘Search Engine Optimization
Starter Guide’. Developed by Google’s very own search quality team, it goes into a lot of the on-page SEO considerations such as:

• Title Optimisation
• Page Naming
• Navigation
• Content
• Page Structure
• Image Optimisation
• Robots Management

All in all a decent starting point, however it is interesting to see one major aspect of modern day SEO missing or more precisely hidden and not at all prominent.

Surely some more detailed referencs to linkage, and the role it plays in the optimisation process. The only real references to ‘promotion’ in the document are:

Good practices for promoting your website
• Blog about new content or services – A blog post on your own site letting your visitor base
know that you added something new is a great way to get the word out about new content or
services. Other webmasters who follow your site or RSS feed could pick the story up as well.
• Don’t forget about offline promotion – Putting effort into the offline promotion of your
company or site can also be rewarding. For example, if you have a business site, make sure
its URL is listed on your business cards, letterhead, posters, etc. You could also send out
recurring newsletters to clients through the mail letting them know about new content on the
company’s website.
• Know about social media sites – Sites built around user interaction and sharing have made
it easier to match interested groups of people up with relevant content.
Avoid:
-  attempting to promote each new, small piece of content you create; go for big,
interesting items
-  involving your site in schemes where your content is artificially promoted to the
top of these services
• Add your business to Google’s Local Business Center – If you run a local business,
adding its information to Google’s Local Business Center will help you reach customers on
Google Maps and web search. The Webmaster Help Center has more tips on promoting
your local business.
• Reach out to those in your site’s related community – Chances are, there are a number
of sites that cover topic areas similar to yours. Opening up communication with these sites is
usually beneficial. Hot topics in your niche or community could spark additional ideas for
content or building a good community resource.
Avoid:
-  spamming link requests out to all sites related to your topic area
-  purchasing links

Source: Google Search Engine Starters Guide

Whilst it does refer to a number of methods of acquiring linkage to the site, I can’t help thinking this may provide a slightly lobsided view of the importance of off-page in the SEO process to beginners. Yes on-page is important but lets face it MoneySupermarket would be nothing without the million odd links it has pointing to it, neither would Tesco etc etc, and thus anyone reading this could be forgiven for thinking merely implementing such tactics without any offpage would give them a reasonable chance of competing (which on non-competitive terms/sectors – such as rarest baseball cards – may be the case – but not likely when we are talking casino, car insurance or the like). I guess the real worry here is many DIY-SEO’ers may (continue) to look at SEO as merely an on-page exercise with little consideration to the promotion/off-page aspect of the process.

I will finish with the fact It is a good document, and certainly worth a read (would suggest if you are a intermediate to expert SEO there is very little you will get out of it). Its not really going to tell you anything amazing, however it is good to see Google out there, and at last having more of a say in SEO.

Twitter has become the new bloggers playground, with Andy Murray (Tennis Player) and even Obama twittering on a fairly regular basis (although I would suggest the Obama postings may become slightly less frequent ). However it has also become a commercial tool recently with brands like ComScore, Dell and even the likes of Oracle and IBM getting to grips with the Twitter phenomenon.

However, why do so many brands suck at Twitter?

Size

As many of us know, large organisations often have more defined rules and regulations than smaller organisations and individuals. This lack of flexibility often restricts brands from either

• Responding quickly to potential issues
• Corporate guidelines can sometimmes restrict the level/tone of response particularly in larger organisations
• Senior decision makes sometimes don’t have the familiarity with new technologies and can sometimes be wary of new technologies, and thus slow to adopt

Late to the show

As highlighted on the above point, larger organisations in particular are often slow to react to new technologies, and thus often can be beaten to the punch by competitors or just keen admirers. For example @disney is owned by Cherie Thomas from Los Gatos, California – https://twitter.com/Disney

Those that do adopt, come in two guises

1. Those that embrace, brands such as Dell and Comscore are perfect examples of this and…
2. Those that merely sit and do nothing, reserved with little or nothing to say, unsure on how to deal with the new guest to the party – such as Microsoft – twitter.com/microsoft

Intention

Lets face it, nearly all of us hate being preached to. Thats one of the beauties of the web. We invite who we want in, in particular search. Twitter is a very personal channel, if people don’t like you they will just stop following you – and thus your Twitter activity will go unnoticed. This lack of direct business return, can often restrict just what activity occurs – and for those that do go down the direct sales channel, can often end in disappointment unless done correctly (The Dell outlet example being a reasonably good example of this.

The Big Brother aspect

There are a number of brands out there following individuals, some as a direct response to previous follows (Starbucks for example returned in kind a follow for me), however others go out directly and follow indivuals in the hope of getting a follow recipricated. However there are a lot of Twitterers who do not like bing followed by corporate followers, and thus such tactics can fall on deaf ears.

Lack of familiarity with brands

With some brands such as IBM and Oracle, individuals have created so called hybrid profiles, such as RichardATDell. Whilst Dell do actually have a brand persona, there are a number of brands out there where hybrid accounts operate, and where these operate without brand compliment, can potentially mean a disassociation with the brand.

The other potential issue can be job migration. People don’t stay in jobs forever and these hybrid accounts can often become obselete very quickly – OracleJulio being one such example.

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound

With big brands it is likely that people will naturally search for that brand, however this isn’t often the case with smaller brands. For this reason, active commercial use of Twitter in these instances can merely result in lots of effort with little or no return.

Lack of buy-in

Whilst brand monitoring is become more popular by the day, there is still a long way to go. Many brands do not follow what is being said about them online, even by simple devices such as Google Alerts. Without knowing what is being said, it is unlikely some brands will have a justifiable reason to operate in the Blogosphere, let alone Twitter.

There is no doubt the effect Twitter has had within search circles, one only has to look at the people using it (most of the UK and US search welebrity circuit (term coined from Ciaran Norris) are on there including Matt Cutts, Jill Whalen, Jason Calacanis, Danny Sullivan, Lee Odden, Will Critchlow and Richard Scoble,

As an individual, are you on Twitter – if not, why not?

If you are a brand – what are you doing on Twitter. Its not for everyone, however if you are going to enter the brave new world, take your time, do your homework and enter it with your eyes wide open

Further to my post last week regarding a busy week for many search marketeers, it seemed appropriate to follow it up with a beginners guide to getting the most out of whatever conference you are attending. Most conferences these day are not cheap affairs, so heres my guide to getting the most out of them.

Have a clear motive.

There is no point in attending any of these conferences without a clear objective. It doesn’t necessarily need to be the attendance of a key speaker, it could just as easily be:

• New Business – This obviously depends on which conference you are attending however many of these conferences provide a wealth of new business ops whether they be:
  • Speed Dating sessions – For example Business NorthWest at the GMEX in Manchester is providing a number of speed dating sessions for potential new business or business partnerships
  • Interaction with key decision makers – This will depend on show to show however these events can be great for making contact with a key new business target – for example SES tends to more industry focussed, whereas AdTech/InternetWorld show often see a higher number of client types in attendance
  • Displays – Many of these conferences allow vendors to highlight their goods and services. Certainly the likes of InternetWorld can be a great place to get your suppliers into line – whether it be your 3rd party bid management tool, analytics or even recruitment.
• on that note – Recruitment. SES and some of the other more focussed conferences and shows can be a great place for recruitment. Whilst this is sort of unwritten, there is no doubting it goes on – and it can be a good time for getting the foundations in place for potential collaboration at a later date. (Just look what happened to me )
• Learning – Probably why 90% of us go to manyof these conferences. If you learn one good thing from the conference it can often be worth the attendance fee alone. Certainly there are some conferences that are better than others, certainly I was very impressed by the level and tone of the presentations at SES in London this year and the SMX line up is looking very good too. On that note I would highly recommend the following speakers
  • Bryan Eisenberg – FutureNow Inc
  • Jon Myers – MediaVest Manchester
  • any of the ComScore/Hitwise stuff – Normally some good titbits in there
  • Kevin Ryan
  • Matt Cutts or any of the other Google lot tbh – Mylie at SES was very good
  • Dixon Jones (Receptional)
  • Dave Naylor – never seen him personally but many people seem to talk very highly in terms of speaking
  • Erica Schmidt – Isobar
  • ….and please feel free to suggest any others below….

Don’t just focus on what happens during the day.

Think Rob Kerry put this best in his post “The Search Engine Groupie”

The majority of conference pass paying punters that attend these events are purely there to learn; many unaware of what’s happening in the background. The quiet whispers of idea exchanges over pints of black gold, and games of business card top trumps. For beginners, Search Engine Strategies offers a valuable selection of sessions to learn more about search marketing. For those who have reached the next level up though, such an occasion is even more valuable.

Thousands of Black Hats, White Hats, PPC Pink Hats and “Suits” gather in one place to get drunk together and network. I’ve still learnt things at the sessions of each SES I’ve attended (such as Video Search SEO tips at SES Chicago); but casually discussing new ways to build links, harness social media and further our part in keeping Matt Cutts’ team busy (Black Hat SEO = Googler Job Security) is worth the price of a conference ticket alone.

At many of these conferences many of the attendees will often congregate in the same places, certainly SES London and Hilton are always synonymous – however I would add dont just go harrasing who ever it is you want to talk to – be focussed, brief and polite. Certainly you will knmow if they want to continue the conversation further.

Be Prepared

Maybe its just the Boy Scout in me coming to the fore, however it certainly helps to be prepared at the conferences. This will help you get the best out of the conference and help you reach whatever objectives you may have

• Random attendance probably isn’t the best approach – knowing which speakers you want to see, when you want to see them is probably a better course of action, and will ensure your trip doesn’t end in disappointment.
• If you can try and leave a days grace either side of the conference dates when booking a hotel and flight. The best networking events tend to be on the day before the conference and on the last day.
• Check the forums and blogs regularly and well in advance. Each major conference event will usually have an official thread or even Twitter trail detailing what parties are happening and where.
• Mingle with major and niche search engines in the expo hall, they may have an invitation-only party for existing and potential clients that you could attend – (thanks rob)
• Enjoy it – These conferences are not all business.

There have been a number of these top ten tips recently in various guises, so given the new blog I thought it time we started the Ten Tips section to the blog, where we will cover a range of topics from SEO, Tools, PPC and the like

First up however is Search Engine Optimisation ( SEO ), as that is whereand the two other Pavilion Communications lads have our heritage.

1) Do you Keyword Research properly

Probably the most fundamental part of SEO. Good keyword research is essential before going ahead with any campaign. Research should be focussed around:

• Relevance – The amount of misfocussed campaigns out there is staggering. Yes the main focus is often about getting traffic into the site, however SEO is often used as a direct response tool rather than a brand awareness tool (and hence tactical usage is going to be affected accordingly) – and thus your use of keywords should reflect this. High volume often means generic phrases and loss of relevancy. This is not to say don’t go after them – but keyword choice should be based on ROI, rather than just traffic.
• ROI – Mentioned above – however a good target keyword list should include a combination of generic and product/service specific. To use the process of conversion for a recent LCD TV I purchased. Initial searches focussed around what LCD/Plasma TV’s I could buy. This involved searches such as plasma tv, lcd tv with little or no consideration for brand. By the next stage of my buying stage – I knew I wanted a 37′ LCD, meaning that the focus of my search was that much more focussed, and the propensity to buy that much higher.By the time I puchased a shortlist had been decided on, and we ultimately decided on a
  Toshiba 37XV555DB- 37″ Widescreen 1080P Full HD LCD TV – With Freeview.
  By this time my propensity to buy is at its highest. However by having visibility at all points in this buying cycle I am increasing my chance as a TV vendor to sell my product to you (all other things being equal). It should also be noted that 36% of searchers associate top listings in search engines with brand leaders – so whilst there is a direct response angle here – it is worth noting the brand angle here.

2) Tailor your SEO round your requirements

Possibly could have put this one in the option above, however its a question I often ask clients – that is.

What do you want to get out of your SEO campaign ?

• Increased conversions
• Increased traffic
• Increased rankings

Yes increased rankings can and often do result in increased traffic, however this may not necessarily result in increased conversions – thus the motive behind any SEO campaign needs to be established early in order to guide the SEO activity in the right direction

3) Understand the channels at your disposal

Blended Search (or universal search) has significantly increased the amount of different assets at a marketeers disposal. New channels such as

• Video
• Images
• PR
• Products
• Books
• Finance
• Flight information
• Local Search/Maps
• Merchant Search

are all part of the mainstream SERPs and thus should be considered alongside your traditional search engine optimisation activity. The activity of integration optimising with these channels in mind has been dubbed digital asset optimisation or DAO

These channels are often used in particular contexts for example

• Maps results are often returned on geographic searches -’advertising agency manchester’ will return MVMediagroup or Mediavest Manchester as one of the searches.
• Products results will be returned on more specific product searches. For example LCD TV, Toshiba TV etc. These results are pulled from the Google Products section of Google and are populated via XML feeds
  

  Google Products Page

• Video/Image results often returned on more generic or Brand focussed terms. I used to do some work with Lexus Cars and this was one area where considered during initial planning in particular.

These results when included in the SERPs have a considerable effect on user behaviour, as highlighted during the Enquiro research from earlier this year (Gord Hotchkiss (one of my favourite bloggers). However it is not just the effect these have had on CTR and SERP behaviour, but also the effect it has on time spent on the Search engine results pages themselves. Time spent on blended search pages can be up to 3x times higher effectively meaning your landing page starts on the SERP’s themselves.

4) Know what your competitors are doing

This can be important in a number of ways.

• Know what your competitors are focussing on – you will have a steer on where potential keyword opportunities may exist.
• Understand where there activity is focussed. Generally I would suggest most campaigns have a weakpoint whether it is the on-page or the off-page activity. Understanding where these factors lie will give you an indication of where, where and how much activity needs to be focussed.
• Understand if they have any weakpoints. If your competitor is using blackhat/greyhat techniques its best to understand this now – and plan accordingly..

5) Benchmark, compare analyse and re-optimise

Possibly going more long term on this one – however at the start of your search engine optimisation campaign

• Benchmark your current performance – this gives you a basis for future analysis (dont forget to logout for these – or at least have a commonality for measurement
• Set KPI’s and try and stick to them.
• Analyse your performance against your benchmark and KPI’s.
• Adjust your campaign accordingly if required.
• Be creative – if your campaign has stagnated be creative try new channels or alter the focus

Above all enjoy it. Search Engine Optimisation is not a short term win – it takes a long time, however if you do the initial steps well, you give yourself a far better chance of succeeding