Posts by Bas van den Beld

Bas van den Beld is a speaker, trainer and online marketing strategist. Bas is the owner of Stateofsearch.com. -- You can hire Bas to speak, train or consult. -- More articles and bio from Bas van den Beld
Visit Bas van den Beld's website

When Did You Last Google Your Name?

stepmother-snowwhite

Ok, let’s be completely honest here. When was the last time you Googled your own name? Not too long ago, wasn’t it? And how often do you do what they call an ‘ego-search’? Probably more often than you are willing to admit.

Social Media Monitoring tool Trackur asked 725 people if they had Googled themselves within the last 24 hours. The response? A cracking 46% admitted to have done so.

Trackur followed the question up with the question who had Googled themselves in the past month and the number went even higher to a mere 73%. Less than 6% said they had never Googled their own name. (more…)

Yes, Google Was Down, Don’t Panic, Google is Cleaning

carolinelbell-google-down

Some excitement on Social Media this morning, something which rarely happens seemed to be happening at the moment: Google seemed to be down for many. It was first noticed when Gmail couldn’t be reached, but it seems more Google products were down, even Google.com.

The ‘glitch’ took only about five minutes, but there immediately were responses on Social Media of people being worried about what was happening with Google. It showed once again how reliant people are on the Google services. The last time Gmail was down was in April when about 400.000 people were out of Gmail for about 2,5 hours. This time it was just a few minutes.

It could be that the outage had to do with the closing of some products by Google today. (more…)

Friday Talk: Jer Thorp: the Weight of Data

Big Data. There is a lot of talk around that lately. Our friend Bryan Eisenberg talks about it a lot as well and apparently it’s ‘hot’.

But where Big Data focusses on using that data to better target the audience there is much more you can do with data. Just look at this TEDx talk by Jer Thorp about the weight of data. It’s pure art!

Bing ads Facebook photos, Wolfram Alpha Analyzes your Data

wolfram-aplha-facebook-analyze

Facebook and search, there has been said a lot about that topic in the past few years. Could Facebook be a Google competitor? Their search is not good enough for it, but more importantly: people don’t go to Facebook to search, so it doesn’t make sense. The combination between Facebook and Bing makes sense, something they upgraded this week as well (see below).

But combining their social elements with search engines could be a very interesting angle. Facebook already has a deal with Bing and Bing is now making their search results more social with the help of Facebook. Another deal which Facebook has now made is with Wolphram Alpha, the knowledge engine based on structured data. It now lets you analyse your personal data on Facebook. (more…)

Bronco and 10 Yetis to Partner in PR and SEO

Bronco-logo

PR and online are getting integrated more and more. Our bloggers Claire Thompson (PR Expert) and Nichola Stott can tell you all about that. So it makes sense that the two are being combined more and more.

SEO Agency Bronco, owned by our friend and long time SEO celebrity Dave Naylor has also acknowledged that and is now entering a partnership with tech and consumer PR Agency, 10 Yetis.

From the press release:

“In practical terms, the partnership now also sees the two companies opening up their respective offices for each to share, meaning that Bronco can now have a presence in the South West of the UK and the same for 10 Yetis in the Leeds and Yorkshire region. There will also be an employee exchange programme set in place, so that skills and best practice can be shared.

The two companies now collectively employ 37 staff and offers everything needed from a full service digital agency including design, web development, SEO, PR, video production, ad buying & creation, social media and affiliate solutions.”

Dave Naylor himself, who is as hardcore SEO as you will find them, says:

“There are exciting times ahead for the two companies, and it’s been really refreshing working with 10 Yetis over the last few months while we have been getting this all in place. We identified some time ago that we needed to align with a digital PR agency that not only had a clear understanding of the search sector, but had a strong history in delivering online media campaigns and 10 Yetis, fit the bill perfectly”.

We off course wish the friends over at Bronco all the luck with their new found partnership!

 

Want your news about your agency published on the site? Get in touch!

SEO The Game

Some people believe SEO is a game. Others believe it’s all shady tactics and sorcery. It isn’t off course, but it has been like that for centuries: if people don’t understand things they will blame it on ‘black tactics’, whether it’s sorcery or SEO.

This infographic brings things nicely together: the games, the sorcery and the ‘black and white’ technics. Quick Note since there were some responses about this on Twitter, this is NOT my view on SEO or affiliates. In my view this has to do with irony. In fact it’s very much what I say above: if people don’t understand you get that they think it’s a game. SEO is not a game. Look at this with the necessary irony :) .

via

A Next (Small) Step of Google+ Integration in SERPS

Google-happy-birthday-Aleyda

When Google+ rolled out first we all knew it was about more than just a social network. Sooner or later it would be about integration of that social element into the search engine result pages (SERPS). Step by step we have seen that happening and we now know for sure Google+ is more than ‘just’ a social network.

The latest addition to this integration is one which shows how ‘social’ Google has gotten in the past few years. We all are familiar with the birthday reminders you get on Facebook, showing you which of your friends has a birthday. It does help me sometimes to remind me of birthdays I forgot. Now Google is integrating that same functionality. But not ‘just’ into Google+, into Google.com. (more…)

Facebook Getting Marketers To Be Much More Targeted?

target-dartbord

Our good friend Al Carlton had a pleasant find this morning. On his Facebook page he spotted the first signs of a new Facebook roll out: targeted posts.

Facebook announced the new feature late last month calling it the “Page Post Targeting Enhanced” feature”. It is meant for brands specifically to not ‘just’ update to all their fans anymore, but to be much more targeted in who sees what message. It is a sign of Facebook being much more targeted and offering targeting opportunities with it. The question is whether or not it will help marketers take the next step. That remains to be seen, but it’s a start. (more…)

Ten Years of Internet

Ten years ago I was reaching the end of my twenties. And I was already working in the industry business for half a decade before. It seems just like yesterday. But it also seems like the middle ages if you think about what happened in these ten years. We are now using WordPress for example for many bigger and smaller sites. Over ten years ago we were building the first content management systems. All custom made off course.

A lot has changed! So what do you remember from the past ten years? What is the biggest change in your view? Let us know after this (long) infographic which shows some of the changes we have seen in the past ten years. (more…)

German Privacy Fighters Now After Facebook

facebook_privacy

Germany has always been a country in which privacy matters are very important. Some say it’s the result of the countries history, others say it’s just how the Germans are. We’ve seen the Germans ‘fight’ Google over privacy matters the past few years, from Streetview issues up to the point where they almost banned Google Analytics, something which is recently been followed by Norway.

With Google things seem to have calmed down a little after the Hamburg Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information struck a deal with Google, but now another Internet giant seems to be the target: Facebook. (more…)

Multinational and multilingual sites: Google’s Pierre Far discusses

Pierre-Far-Google-Hangout

Google’s engineer Pierre Far has been very active in the past year being an advocate for Google and for ‘Good SEO’. He has been speaking on many different conferences, he has been active on Google+ and he has been doing a lot of Webmaster Central “Office Hours” hangouts.

In these hangouts Pierre (or another Googler) discusses a specific topic. He explains what Google is doing and he answers question. A very informative way of connecting to the search industry. If you ever have the chance on joining one of the hangouts I would suggest you do, it can be informative.

Last week Pierre Far had a Webmastercentral Hangout about a topic which has been on the agenda for many lately: multinational and multilingual sites. You can watch the hangout below. (more…)

Personal Branding in Google: A Person’s Google Results

It’s the ‘ego-search’ everybody does and nobody admits they do: a search for your own name. Do it and you will find which sites mention you, but mostly you will find your social media accounts. For your personal branding, whether it is for finding a job or just becoming famous in your industry, you would want that first page in Google to look good when it comes to what results show.

Did you know however that for most people this isn’t the case at all? Did you know for example that only half of people ‘own’ the first result which shows up when searching on their names? And that one in four doesn’t have positive content at all? Take a look at the infographic below and you might realize that your personal brand within Google might need some attention. (more…)

Page 20 of 117« First...10...17181920212223...3040506070...Last »