Specialists in digital marketing, web applications and web design.
A more effective way to utilise online paid media spend? Since we’re still firmly in the midst of a recession, it is still the challenge for businesses to grow and invest wisely. Hopefully this doesn’t mean you have stopped testing new ideas / channels. While this post isn’t covering anything amazingly ... | Read more →
A reminder about the importance of Google’s 2012 Venice update and Google+ Local for local business services Did you notice how, earlier in the year, the results Google produced for local queries changed dramatically to give even more prominence to local search? We thought it was worth a reminder, because quite ... | Read more →
Google Shopping US shows new strategic plays from Google You may have read my post introducing Google Shopping last week on the changes coming to what is currently called Google Product. It has been interesting to watch the noise unfold on the subject. Google is already rolling out their user experience updates in ... | Read more →
Introducing Google’s new retail strategies If you’re a veteran of “Internet marketing”, you’ll remember Froogle, Google’s shopping search engine which presented products freely submitted by retailers using XML feeds. In 2007, this became Google Product Search and you may have heard this is now being rebranded to Google Shopping. The Google announcement explains: “We ... | Read more →
Using RACE to structure your social analytics Social analytics is still relatively new and yet there are already many tools offering to give you the insights to empower your marketing. Often, these tools won’t give you a full picture of how your social media marketing is contributing to your business since they ... | Read more →
4 techniques to reduce duplicate site content Although we still hear a lot of recommendations on how to optimise pages and the importance of links from other sites to improve rankings, we don’t hear so many recommendations about reducing the amount of duplicate content. This seems to be a neglected area ... | Read more →
Bing Updates Webmaster Tools & Brings Back Site Explorer Value/Importance: ★★★★ Recommended link: Bing Webmaster Tools Our commentary Bing have made a huge number of updates to their webmaster platform in an update they have called Phoenix (original). The changes cover the following areas of their platform: New : Link Explorer New: User Experience New: SEO Reports New: SEO Analyzer New: ... | Read more →
Our summary of the new advice from Google on SEO for startups and small sites You’ve probably heard of the Penguin series of updates that have negatively affected rankings for many companies. It’s worth being aware that last week we had the release of Penguin 3.8 which impacts 1% of global ... | Read more →
New Research Shows Key Ranking Factors for the UK Value/Importance: ★★★★ Recommended link: Search Metrics 2012 Ranking Factor Report Our commentary The volume of data and number crunching to form this guide is remarkable. It’s based on analysis of 10,000 selected top-keywords, 300,000 websites and millions of links, shares and tweets from within the Searchmetrics database. It ... | Read more →
Ideas to improve the effectiveness of your AdWords creative In a traditional advertising sense, your AdWords text is your creative, your broadcast to the world aimed at helping (or is that interrupting) people on their journey as they use Google. As you’ll know, copy in AdWords is so important since it affects ... | Read more →
“The first major update since 2007″ Well, that’s what Google say, so it’s an indication of how important this could be for digital marketers. It was 2007 when Google launched Universal Search, how time flies. 2012 sees the launch of a new upgrade called Knowledge Graph. In this alert we’ve summarised what ... | Read more →
A new look and less features for GWT Importance: ★★ Recommended link: Google Webmaster Blog announcing the new design Our commentary In the past 3-4 weeks Google have made various changes to the Google Webmaster Tool platform, including, more recently, updates to the design. The new design implementation is focused on bringing the platform into ... | Read more →
Google Targets Low Quality Sites Again Source : Google Inside Search Blog Importance : ★★★★ Our Commentary Google has started the rollout of a small algorithm update targeting poor quality websites. It’s been dubbed Penguin by SearchEngineLand. The techniques Google are targeting as part of this update are not new and Google has been combating them for ... | Read more →
A tutorial on reviewing consumer search behaviour in the 2nd Largest Search Engine in the World As you’ll know, YouTube is the second largest search engine behind Google in many countries. It’s the number one ranked entertainment site and 3rd most visited in the UK by Hitwise. Given this and since popular videos ... | Read more →
Not Provided search queries will affect how your report on your search engine marketing Source : Google Inside Search Blog Importance : ★★★★ Our Commentary A recent announcment on the Google Inside Search blog post confirmed Google’s plans to roll out encrypted search across local Google services (.co.uk, .fr, .de etc). You may recall this ... | Read more →
Are free press release websites worth using? The question of whether to use free press release websites is a common one amongst many hands-on marketers trying to get a benefit for SEO and PR… Quickly followed by how many of these should we use and is it worth paying? To help answer ... | Read more →
4 Social Hub Examples As the number of social networks increases, brands have started to look at ways in which they can bring all their social networks into their brand owned websites. Contrast this with the more common situation where the only reference to social media on the main site are ... | Read more →
If you’re thinking of hiring an SEO or are an SEO – this is a must browse Earlier in January, you may have seen a useful piece of research completed by SEOmoz that looked into the costs and service structure of SEO agencies. I’ve included that below, but the main reason for ... | Read more →
Interesting online media trends for 2011 & 2012 Value/Importance: ★★★★ Recommended link: eFrontier Our commentary A fantastic report from eFrontier, looking back over 2011 and with an interesting outlook on 2012. The report covers, in great detail, the spending patterns globally and across multiple platforms (Google vs Facebook for example) for their client base. ... | Read more →
Our round-up of the best advice on how marketers should respond to the Google Search plus Your World integration Most are dubbing the latest changes to Google’s search engine as some of the largest since its launch. The integration of Google+ with the the new Search plus Your World certainly has ... | Read more →
8 practical techniques you can apply today to increase your online audience There’s much talk and some great examples, around how to best use social media to grow your reach online. But, how do you tackle boosting the audience you reach in a planned, structured way. We’ve picked what we feel ... | Read more →
5 ideas to start your brand revolution in 2012 We’re still in the midst of 2012 predictions, they’re everywhere at the moment, mostly describing what’s already out there. I’m not a futurologist, and if I am honest, I prefer to plan for the less predictable since that’s what usually happens. One trend ... | Read more →
A roundup of what the experts say photo from UTC.edu It’s the end of the first week January and most of the influential bloggers / “experts” have published their predictions for what will change in the world of SEO in 2012. Rather than add to the noise and because most of the authors are ... | Read more →
5 DIY options for identifying duplicate content to improve SEO SEOs talk a lot about why duplicate content matters and what to do about it, marketers don’t tend to. I think an understanding of duplicate content is important to all marketers who manage SEO so they can ask the right questions of ... | Read more →
4 Things to consider when writing page titles In our recent post giving 21 simple SEO ideas we said how important titles are. Here we go into a bit more depth to show how non SEO specialists writing web copy can improve SEO through refining their page titles within the SERPs. Titles are ... | Read more →
Covering Basic SEO, Social and Mobile SEO Value: ★★★★ Source: Internet Advertising Bureau Guide for Retailers Our commentary: Running online retail sites presents a whole raft of specific complexities for businesses, whether its systems, process or marketing related . While only focusing on the marketing (specifically SEO, PPC & Social aspects of running a ... | Read more →
New way of reviewing keyword and landing page relevance Value/Importance: ★★★★ Recommended link: Source – Official Google Announcement Our commentary Yet another algorithm update from Google, this time relating to Pay Per Click. The new updates are to help Google set a better Quality Score based on keyword relevance & landing page relevance. Just as a reminder, ... | Read more →
7 must-check questions for your acquisition strategy All site owners are looking to reach more prospects, existing customers and raise awareness about their products through a website or other online presence. So, there is plenty of advice on how to increase site traffic through the 6 main online communications channels. Although you ... | Read more →
3 tools to find out the most popular and relevant topics Before we look at tools for finding the best hashtags for twitter growth, I thought it best to explain what a hashtag is (I still often get asked this when talking to clients): A hash tag is simply a way for ... | Read more →
There are countless blogs & online resources that exist now but sometimes its great to disconnect from the world wide web & read a book! There are three books I would personally recommend to anyone new to marketing online & for those in need of inspiration... Search Engine Optimization: An Hour ... | Read more →
A new in-depth guide from Distilled Value/Importance: ★★★★ Recommended link: http://www.distilled.net/linkbait-guide/ Our commentary We think this is one of one of the most useful free guides and workbooks for marketers published this year. Particularly relevant to SEO and E-PR it’s an in-depth guide from Distilled, complete with a workbook for running brainstorm sessions specifically for ... | Read more →
Yahoo now using Bing search results in UK and Europe Importance: ★★★ (Given the dominance of Google) Recommended link: Summary of countries affected Our commentary The Yahoo & Bing alliance is old news from this time last year, but it is only recently that the affects of the alliance has started to make its ... | Read more →
The third report from the Pivot Conference and Brian Solis Pivot have surveyed 230 brand managers and marketing professionals, this is their third report from that research. The report of course is helping promote something, an event that is pitched as providing tactical methods to effectively market to the evolving social ... | Read more →
How do you act on the different SEO ranking factors? Did you see the recent guide to SEO ranking factors from Search Engine Land? It prompted me to think of search slightly differently & highlighted 3 areas that business often get wrong. Checkout the graphic below and overlay your own thoughts, ... | Read more →