Posts by Jeroen van Eck

Jeroen van Eck is still a fresh mind in the world of search. In September 2008, after graduating in marketing communication at the University of Twente, he started as a consultant search engine marketing at the online marketing company E-difference in the Netherlands. And now works as an online marketeer for eFocus. More articles and bio from Jeroen van Eck
Visit Jeroen van Eck's website

A few Questions About the New Facebook Search Graph

Facebook-Graph-Search

On Tuesday Facebook announced it was going into search. A long anticipated development with differing expectations. Are they going after Google? Or is it a completely different ball game? There are a lot of posts written about what it is, how it will work and what chances are for Facebook search. Heck, the first posts about SEO for Facebook search are already popping up.

So there’s a huge amount of data which will be accessible with Facebook’s new search. That offers major possibilities. But the amount of data accessible through a search engine is just one requirement for a successful search engine. After I learned about this new development from Facebook a few questions popped up. As everyone is talking about what it is I would like to talk about what I don’t know yet, but I’m very curious about. (more…)

The Future of the Internet: Establishing the Boundaries

boundarie

And now for something completely different.

There is a war going on. A war on the internet. No. The war of the internet.

The internet is growing up. It’s now much more than just the collection of webpages it was before. It has grown more complex, more rich, over the last few years. The amount of information on the web keeps growing at an unbelievable rate and with that growth questions arise of who owns which information. Who are the rights holders of what kind of information? What data can be stored, used and sold by whom? And who is to set the boundaries of this all? It’s all about data nowadays. (more…)

What I learned from the Dutch Cookie Law

cookie-crumbles

For Europe 2012 was the year of cookies. Although the European directive for the use of cookies was already formulated in 2009, most countries applied the law only in 2012. In the Netherlands the law took effect on the 5th of June this year, but the announcement was only properly made on the 1st of June. Result: panic! Although some parts of the law, including active enforcement, will only take effect on the 1st of January 2013. The online world exploded with analysis, opinions, conclusions and solutions. This change gave me some interesting insights about the way we, as an industry, handled this. Which I want to share with you here. (more…)

The Two ways of SEO: Quantity vs. Quality

quality-quantity-source-socializeblog.com

The world of SEO is a world of change.

As I’m typing this I’m having a déjà vu. I think I start almost every post with a quote of this scope. Because it’s true. Our job as SEOs is to anticipate as good on all the changes around as we can.

We need to find the consistencies within these changes and build a strategy around them to be successful. To make it easier for ourselves to adapt to these changes. If we don’t have to reconsider our whole strategy every time something changes we are better able to adapt to essential changes in the world of SEO.

That means our business strategies shouldn’t be fully focused on search and our search strategies shouldn’t be fully focused on one single aspect of SEO, no matter how important it seems. If that aspect is declined in value, you’re basically screwed. (more…)

Authorship: What and How and Why is it so Important to Google?

Authorship

Lately we are spotting all kinds of small developments pointing towards more importance for the authorship markup in Google. We’ve recently spotted Google E-mailing Authors about their Authorship Markups, Google showing authorship markup even when it’s not properly implemented and Google bringing back author stats in webmaster tools. Apparently authorship is important to Google. But why? (more…)

The battle of the SERPs

battle-soldier

The areas of SEO and PPC are awfully close to each other and yet very different in their approach. SEO is about creating as much visibility as possible for relevant search queries. PPC is much more driven by ROI, visibility is not always as valuable as within SEO. Although the underlying techniques have similarities there are also some skills you just need for SEO or PPC. Therefore there are specialists in both disciplines. As a true search marketer though, I believe you should be skilled in both disciplines. And as a search marketer there’s only one place you really have to make the difference: The Search Engine Result Page (SERP).

The SERP is the battleground of search marketing. Although the most effect is clearly created within your website, the SERP is where your first and most important battle takes place. The battle for the visitor. It’s a direct battle with all your competitors. And you have to make sure you’re properly armed to be able to come out on top every time.

In this battle for the visitor there are two main strategies available: SEO and PPC. Some choose to fight this battle by just using SEO, others rely solely on the big guns of PPC. And some choose to bring out their complete arsenal to win the battle over the visitor and focus on a strong combination of SEO and PPC. (more…)

Why you Should be Blogging as an SEO

blog

As an SEO I’ve always been very focused on learning. When I started I realized almost instantly that in a fast developing business like ours you need to be ahead of developments all the time. Therefore I made some choices to make sure I would be obligated to stay on top of the developments and know my stuff. One of the best choices for my development was to start blogging about search (and online marketing).

It all began when I decided to start a blog for my former employer. As the only contributor at the time I was forced to produce something with a certain amount of regularity. Based on the posts I produced there I was asked for some guest posts on different blogs in The Netherlands. Which finally led to me being asked by Bas to blog for State of Search. Which of course I gladly accepted although I knew it was a level of audience that would force me to achieve a higher level of blogging I was used to (and in different language as well). Later on I also picked up blogging on my own blog in Dutch on jeroenvaneck.com.

Almost 200 posts later I realize blogging for all these platforms gave me a lot of benefits. Much more than I expected. I recommend everyone who wants to be good in this business to pick up in blogging. And here are four reasons why you should. (more…)

Be careful of using tools in SEO

computer-tools

At State of Search we get many requests to test and review all kinds of SEO tools. Whether it’s for link building, rank checking or analysing websites. The growth in available SEO tools is enormous and some of them are truly helpful. But tools also create a distance from the stuff that matters. Because they take over a part of the things you normally do manually. Tools can interpret things for you and thus by using tools you could lose the grip on your SEO. I think, if you really want to be a good SEO, you should be as independent from tools as possible. (more…)

Requesting Bing to Board the European market

boarding-pass

Last week Bing announced another major update to their search engine. They announced the New Bing, with integration of more social aspects and more relevant core information. Within the announcement they stated that “In 2009, we launched Bing with a simple proposition: people should expect more from a search engine.” My response to the latest announcement was the following tweet:

I want to use this post to make a request. I want to reach out to Microsoft and ask them to start living up to their ‘simple proposition’ outside the US and take the European Bing more seriously.

Every time I read one of the announcements of new features to Bing my first response is: “hey, that looks pretty cool!”. But my second response sadly almost always is: “Oh, it’s still US-only”. I would be fine with that if within the next few months Bing would roll out these features worldwide. But they just don’t, leaving the rest of the world wondering if this feature was really as cool as it looked.

For example, in May 2011 Bing launched the integration of information from Facebook friends into their search results, similar to how Google+ powered Google’s search results. It looked like a much more relevant way to socialize search, because more information is shared on Facebook than on Google+. But this feature was launched US-only, never to be rolled out in Europe till this very moment.

The difference between Google and Bing here is very clear. When Google announces a new feature you know it will launch in the US most of the time as well, but you also know it will be rolled out in Europe within a few months. With Bing you know you could have to wait even a few years if you see it ever at all. Just compare the Bing services currently offered in The Netherlands, the UK and the US.

I really want to try and use Bing as a user, I really do. And as an SEO I definitely think the search engine market in Europe needs a competitor for Google. 95% market share cannot be healthy for the market. But if Bing wants to take on Google they really need to take things more seriously. And since more people are complaining about Google now than ever before, wouldn’t it be the perfect time for Bing to enter the European market directly with the New Bing and go full power ahead? What are they waiting for?

Facebook Might Be Going After Google, And They Could Just Win

facebook-google-target

Facebook is enormous, the biggest player online in terms of page views, total time spent on site and registered users. At this moment 1 in 4 of all page views in the US are on Facebook.com. But with 845 million monthly active users at the end of 2011 the growth in users has to be slowing down.

It’s simply impossible to keep the numbers of active users growing at least 100% every year, like they did from 2004 to 2010. So where’s the growth now for Facebook? Is it just about getting more revenue per user on Facebook? Or are they going to look further than their social network? (more…)

How to Handle the Declining Status of SEO?

hand writing

As an SEO community we are the scum of the internet, the quacks, the crooks and the swindlers. We have been accused of manipulating the web, destroying the independence of search engines and basically being a virus within the world wide web. To some, we’re like door-to-door salesmen trying to sell stuff to people who don’t want it or need it. We’re manipulating the web so we can lead people to websites where we can lure them into buying all kinds of things they would never have thought of buying if it wasn’t for us.

Of course that’s not how we see ourselves, that’s not how everyone sees us, but some people do. And that’s not just because there’s ‘crooks’ actually trying to make money by manipulating either search engines or ignorant companies wanting to profit from this magical business called SEO.

It’s also because we as a community have a hard time explaining what we actually do. It’s not without reason an important part of being an SEO is about knowing how to convince others, knowing how to persuade. That’s because it’s a difficult business. Heck, not even everyone calling themselves an SEO understands it to the fullest. (more…)

How to Get More Twitter Followers From Your Existing Channels

like this

As a brand you finally decided to start with Twitter, you formulated a good strategy but now you have to wait to get your target audience to start following you. On State of Search we already reported on 10 ways to increase your Twitter followers. But one point I’d like to explain a little deeper. How to get more Twitter followers from your existing marketing channels.

Research shows the most important reasons to start following a brand are an invitation or ad from the brand itself or an invitation or mention from a friend. So why not start with reaching out to the people who already know your brand. Those are the people you can reach directly and those are the people who can reach the other members of your target audience. (more…)

Page 1 of 512345