Posts by

Social Influence Scoring, Big Data and Why ‘Author Rank’ May Never Exist

I recently produced The Ultimate Guide to Social Scoring – a project that took extensive research into the role of social influence scoring and measurement. Whatever your opinion of Klout, I soon realised that the concept of what they do is going to be incredibly important in the context of SEO. If we think about it rationally, Klout is basically a social measurement of what’s being called ‘Author Rank’.

“Klout analyses public data to measure a person’s influence. The best way to think of this in relation to how Google analyses public websites to generate PageRank” (more…)

Interflora, Brand Building and the New Role of the Search Agency

interflora-logo-white

Last week Interflora was quite humiliatingly outed for its use of advertorials and unnatural link building; even for its own brand name, the site all but disappeared from the SERPs. Without speaking about Interflora or a collection of newspaper sites that were clearly selling advertorials directly, Matt Cutts wrote a statement reiterating Google’s position on paid links: it’s bad, don’t do it. While that position has been clear for some time, it’s not been clear that Google was prepared to act quite so abruptly on punishing major brands. With the dust from the hit still floating around, it appears that this is another step by Google to clean up Search Engine Optimisation, and another notch in what has been a tumultuous two years for the industry since the first Panda Update in April 2011.

With advertorial link building now clearly presenting higher risk, some SEOs must be wondering where to pivot. Inevitably, brand building will seem a likely option, and building credibility through quality content and inbound methods is the future. I’ve read and heard this rhetoric many times before, but I’ve often wondered how suitable the wedding of SEO and brand building will actually be. (more…)

Assessing the Non-Financial Benefits of Social Media Investment

internet-money

On Thursday I’m speaking at Digital Content Monetization Europe on a topic that regularly dumbfounds marketers: social media monetisation. My research for the presentation took me down three possible benefits of social media when it comes to Return on Investment:

  • Making Money – Conversions and advertising
  • Non-Financial Impacts – Traffic increases, acquiring more followers/Likes etc
  • Cost Saving –Savings on media spend, business process and customer service (more…)

Measuring Success in 2013: Assigning Real Value & Tracking Every Click with Google Analytics

steps-sand-source-flickr-3079523821

In every company I’ve worked for or with, I’ll confess that I’ve often been a little confused about the tracking setup. I’ve seen plenty of reports that simply don’t make sense, but once these got sorted out, I usually found that we were putting developments live with only having a top level understanding of their effect – basically ‘improving’ a product based on conjecture. But speaking to quite a few experienced analysts led me to believe that this problem wasn’t just following me around – it was everywhere! So I learnt what I needed to do about it, and I thought I’d share that knowledge here. (more…)

In-house and Bored? 3 Causes and Cures of In-house SEO Syndrome

Bored teenage computer nerd

A few weeks ago I met up with some old colleagues of mine. Three years before, we had all worked for the same search agency, but had since moved on to in-house roles. Typically we talked about what we’re doing now and how it used to be, but this little meeting took an interesting turn. One of my friends was now working at a well-known High Street retailer, another for one of ‘the big’ portals. They had both been in SEO roles for the past five years, but both appeared incontrovertibly fed up. I wouldn’t say I’ve really felt like this recently, but all jobs have ups and downs and I could relate to it. I thought of it as some sort of career condition – a general malaise that probably affects a good proportion of in-house SEO workers. (more…)

From Affiliate to Merchant

A4U NEW

Dom Hodgson finished the first day of A4U off with his story of selling pick and mix online; an amusing tale of just doing it, rather than getting over cautious around having a business plan. For anyone who went to BrightonSEO in April 2012, then this talk would have been familiar.

Dom set up clicknmix.co.uk about a year ago, simply to sell sweets online. With the task of ‘making buying sweets actually fun’, he chose to go down a merchant route, rather than be an affiliate for two key reasons:

  • He would own the inventory
  • He could custom build the experience from the ground up.

Basically, being a merchant gave him far more control – the most important ingredient since he wanted to change people’s attitude towards buying sweets.

Rather than do much in the way of forecasting or a business plan, he built the site in two days and launched it over a weekend. Initial traffic was strong, but they experienced some problems:

  • For all the traffic, no one converted in the first few hours. Dom soon realised they were in sandbox mode and people couldn’t check out. He switched this and gained 5 orders.
  • People started complaining almost from the off – with ‘problems’ such as being confused about his squirrel mascot, and there not being enough selection (he had 17 varieties of sweets).

(more…)

Get Your Mobile Search in Order!

A4U NEW

My highlight talks from day one at A4U were during the session ‘Consumers are Socially Mobile: Get Your Mobile Search in Order’, with State of Search’s very own Bas van den Beld and Shri Sharma of Net Media Planet.

Bas opened the session explaining that we should no longer be talking about ‘the year of mobile’ – we’ve been talking about that since 2007, and mobile is something we should have focused on for years. Smart phone usage has become so ubiquitous, that apparently 36% of young people check social media on a mobile device after sex (a statistic that has existed since 2009!). Mobiles have become a social media enabler – with multi-player apps and games, along with increased access to social networks.

(more…)

Google Analytics for Publishers

A4U NEW

The second to last session of the day at A4U Expo in London focused on setting goals devising action points and fully utilising the Google Analytics platform from the publisher’s viewpoint. It was delivered by Doug Hall and Russell Sutton from ConversionWorks.

Analytics for publishers is a fairly confusing area. Most don’t sell anything, so assigning monetary value for goals becomes difficult, whereas it’s somewhat easier to measure in e-commerce. What usually occurs is the publisher does not properly define value in their goals, and instead focuses on reporting rather than forecasting. The problem with this approach is that you should be using analytics to inform what you should be doing, rather than simply reporting on what you have done. Everyone with a website should be looking at data to size their opportunities, rather than looking at it from a rear view mirror.

(more…)

Performance Marketing Ranking Factors: Search, Social, Video, Mobile

A4U NEW

This session had three quick fire talks on what were the key methods of getting noticed through social media, mobile and local search and SEO.

The three speakers were:

  • Martin McDonald, Expedia Affiliate Network
  • Niels Doerje, Tandler Doerje Partner
  • David Naylo, Bronco

The session was aimed at SEO’s and webmasters and anyone who wanted to hear more about search marketing across the different areas of Performance Marketing.
(more…)

Changing Consumer Habits

A4U NEW

One of two opening A4U London sessions was ‘Changing Consumer Habits’, a panel reviewing the growth of new technology and what this meant for the consumer over the next two years. It featured:

This session was moderated by Andrew Copeland, the Head of Affiliates at Tradedoubler. (more…)