Google might be closing down a lot of features, they are far from throwing away all the work they’ve done. With the official launch of Google Drive last week Google revamped one of their old favorites: Google Wave.
In combination with other Google Products like Google Docs and off course Google+ Google now brings us Google Drive. An collaboration tool which has much in it from Google Wave, but is also another way for Google to get more grip on our lives. (more…)
One of our bloggers, Kelvin Newman, is the organizer and the big man behind Brighton SEO. This event has grown to be the number one free SEO event in the UK and possibly even Europe.
The last Brighton SEO again was a big hit with some great speakers and the fabulous networking opportunities. On Social Media events can go crazy as well. Just how successful and crazy a conference like that can be on social media is shown in this infographic below. (more…)
If something is popular and a lot of people go to a specific place you are certain that that place is going to be the target of those trying to do wrong. A busy shopping street will attract a lot of pick pockets. A busy website will attract hackers and social media sites like Twitter and Facebook will attract spam and hoaxes.
Usually most marketers know when something is a hoax or not and don’t respond to it. Last Friday however we witnessed a hoax attempt on Facebook go viral. The interesting part there was that most of the people who ‘fell for it’ were marketers. A funny side effect here was that they ‘fell’ for what is part of their own strategy: human psychology. (more…)
This Friday we have a talk which is much different from talks we are used to at conferences like SMX, SES or SAScon. This talk is by Guy Winch, who is a psychologist, author, speaker and occasional stand-up comic. He wrote a book called “The Squeaky Wheel: Complaining the Right Way to Get Results, Improve Your Relationships and Enhance Self-Esteem”.
The book is said to be the “first science-based look at our complaining psychology.” Complaints? Yes complaints. Because most things tend to start with complaints. Managing those can really make an impact.
Try and listen to this talk not just as a person who might (sometimes, right 
) complain, but also as a marketer who can use this in a psychological way. (more…)
This interview was originally published December 17th 1020.
Sometimes you get the opportunity to talk to some people within the industry and when a chance like that comes a long you should take it. I had the opportunity to ask some questions to Aaron Wall, founder of SEOBook. Find the questions and answers below.
We do a wide variety of things
- market our websites (content creation & promotion)
- track SEO news & watch for changes in the algorithms
- interact with members of our forums
- email and customer supports
Generally SEOBook is about 80% of my work time…likely about 70 or 80 hours a week. (more…)
Don’t we all want an answer to the question whether or not social media activity indeed boosts organic search ranking? So far its been a lot of guessing and that will probably continue to be so for a while.
Some have tested things, like for example yesterday Branded3 published the results of an interesting study they did. Another who tried to figure it out was Tasty Placement, who created 6 similary-sized US websites in 6 different cities. They tried to capture the average change in rankings when promoting on different social media channels.
The results you can see in the infographic below. According to them Google+ gave them the most ranking boost, even though the numbers are low. (more…)
The +1 button, are you using it a lot? Expressing your appreciation for a specific page you landed on. Just like the Facebook “like” button. It is a nice way of saying you like a page, and it has some other benefits, namely your authority showing up in the SERPS.
But you have to be careful, because it can have a totally different effect as well and you might show up where you don’t want to.
Now with the Facebook button you know that it might show up on your Facebook profile page, which means your friends can see that you’ve liked that specific page and if you go to a specific page you can see which one of your friends liked that page or website. Just look in the sidebar of State of Search and you will see some of your friends who liked this site (hopefully ).
Google Plus largely works in the same way. You won’t see a “+1″ popping up in the G+ stream but you will see on a page if someone has +1-ed that specific page (also see the right sidebar). There is however one extra ‘benefit’ to a +1: they might show up in the search results. (more…)
According to the Guardian Ilya Segalovich, co-founder of Russia’s leading search engine, Yandex, has said Google is “abusing its dominance to shut out competitors in cyberspace”. Segalovich places his remarks in response to comments made by Sergey Brin almost two weeks ago in the same Guardian where he said web freedom is facing big threats.
Interestingly enough Brin apologized for the words he used in that specific interview only a few days after the interview on his Google+ page.
The Yandex’ founders remark is another sign that Google has some hurdles to take in Europe when it comes to the image of their dominance.
The remarks are largely aimed at Android, which has been under fire for the past few days with an Oracle patent case going against them. According to Segalovich Android is a “strange combination of openness and not openness” (more…)
Ever since Larry Page re-took possession of the CEO position at Google we have seen more products and features being killed than developed at Google.
Under the name of “Spring Cleaning” Google announced another few features to be dismissed, this time in the Google Webmaster Tools. In the next two weeks we will be saying goodbye to features like Subscriber Stats, Robots.txt and Site Performance.
The features are mostly features which are not very much used by experienced SEOs. Setting up a robots.txt is basic 101 for most SEOs and they won’t need Google’s help for that. So taking that down makes sense. (more…)
A very special radioshow this time where Bas was joined by Lee Odden. Lee has just published his first book called “Optimize“. Bas asked questions about the process of writing the book but both of them also discussed the content of it and ideas behind it.
It was discussed how important it is to tailor content to the needs of the visitor, how important it is to use the language a visitor uses and how “being optimized” is a state of mind, a strategy and a tactic all in one.
On top of that Lee kindly offered to give away a free copy of the book, what you have to do to get that copy you can read below.
You can listen to the show below.
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If there is one thing people are focussing on with Google in the past few years it is not their social efforts with Google+, it is not their improved search results with all the Panda Updates or the entry of Universal Search. What is it people are focussing on? It is whether or not Google still can hold on to the motto “Do No Evil”.
This motto has haunted Google more than it has benefitted them so it seems. Maybe there are days that Brin and Page wish they had never thought of that motto in the first place, because with every mistake they make when it comes to privacy or Google’s dominance people point at that specific motto.
The question off course is: is it true? Is Google still “no evil” or have they ‘gone to the darkside’? Can we still trust Google? That is a question which is tried to be answered in this infographic. What do you think? (more…)
The webmastertools video Matt Cutts makes are not interesting for everyone. Usually the SEO’s already know the things he is talking about. For marketers who are relatively new to search however the video’s can be helpful for understanding the basics.
This week Matt Cutts again released a, what SEOs would call, “101″-video. In this video he answers a quite extensive question: how does Google’s ranking and website evaluation process works starting with the crawling and analysis of a site, crawling timelines, frequencies, priorities, indexing and filtering processes within the databases. (more…)
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