Posts on State of Search about ‘General’

Lessons Link Builders Can Learn From England’s Bungled World Cup 2018 Bid

russia-blatter-bid

Despite the best lobbying efforts of our biggest sporting star, a newly engaged king-to-be and our Prime Minister England failed miserably in their attempts to gain the right to host the 2018 World Cup, I’ll leave the discussion on they whys and the wherefores to the better qualified; what interested me was how convinced everyone seemed to be of the success of the bid despite its impending failure. I don’t think this was naive wishful thinking but the kind of self deceit that often affects un-successful link builders.

So what can we learn from the disastrous bid to help us become better link builders.

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State of Search: our first year ends and the future begins

This post was originally written for the State of Search newsletter. If you want to receive unique content in your mailbox and get an overview of the best posts on State of Search first, subscribe to our newsletter here.

It’s February 2010 when State of Search for the very first time publishes to the world. We chose SES London 2010 to be the place we would tell the world there was a new blog out there. The initiative from me and Lisa was originally meant to be a place where we could publish our own stuff but very soon the first bloggers who wanted to join in showed up. Louis, Sam and Nichola were amongst the first to be part of a team which would grow very rapidly.

The team

Which brings me to the blogging team. There is no doubt whatsoever that the success of this blog has been all made by the bloggers. At State of Search we are not looking at how big the name is from someone who comes to blog with us, we look at their potential. We love to have youngsters eager to share their knowledge and open up to the world. And I think we’ve succeeded in that. The team has produced some fabulous content and has proven itself to also be a real time: we are all friends, even though some of us have never met. Note: in the coming two weeks I will be highlighting the bloggers here on the site, so keep your eyes open for that! (more…)

We’ll miss you Jaamit

This morning we got news that one of the nicest people in search in the UK, Jaamit Durrani, has passed away. We will all miss Jaamit very much and are really devastated by this news. Therefore all the postings which were planned for today and this weekend have been canceled.

Our regards go out to Jaamit’s family. We’ll miss you mate.

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SEO Tools 101 – The most under-utilised tool: Your Clients

I’m always jotting down useful ideas, tools, pointers, thoughts etc. etc. for SEO – everything from chats in the pub to conferences – there’s endless amounts of information out there to help make your life easier and your rankings climb.

However I think there’s a really crucial tool that just doesn’t get used enough by SEOs when working on projects, and that’s communication.  Especially with clients or stakeholders.

Get them on board and it’s amazing the difference it can have on both your stress levels and your keyword positions.

I want to give a couple of examples of this point, as the idea for this post actually came to me from a client a couple of weeks ago.

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Advertising on State of Search: get 20% off until the end of the year

State of Search has rapidly become one of the most read blogs about search engine marketing in the industry. With many high quality writers we always try to deliver high quality content to our readers.

As you may know we only started in February, but we have already managed to get the attention of all the influential websites and people in the industry. The website has built up a solid audience of readers who often return to the website. Plus we get a great amount of traffic from search engines. Visitors come from all over the world to read about what is going on in Search and Social.

In the recent months we have also extensively expanded our event-coverage. Our special event pages are a source for everybody at a conference but also for those at home who want to know what is going on at the conference. But we also extended by bringing you news, a newsletter, a radioshow and a Facebook page with extra content. In the future we will continue this kind of coverage and even extend it. (more…)

Google, the Internet, and Artificial Intelligence

If you’re looking for a valuable SEO insight or a handy tip, you can skip this article. What follows is nothing but pure technophiliac geekery, but it does relate to search engines – albeit in a somewhat roundabout way.

Terminator - SkynetI’ve been fascinated with the concept of Artificial Intelligence – true, self-aware machine intelligence -  for decades. In fact I can tell you exactly when I became fascinated with AI: it was the day I saw the first Terminator film. Aside from it being a superb action flick, it was one of the first mainstream expressions of AI and it instantly captured my imagination.

In those days, the mid 1980′s, there was still a strong expectation that computer scientists would soon crack the magic formula and we’d have true machine intelligence. (more…)

Ways of keeping up to date with (the) State of Search

You can easily say State of Search is everywhere. We write great content here, share other content on Twitter, cover events give you insights, news in our weekly news roundup and we even have our own radioshow on Webmasterradio. Thats a lot to keep track off! But luckily the ‘social web’ has all sorts of possibilities to keep you up to date. But sometimes it can be “handy” to have an overview of all the things you can ‘subscribe’ to. So here’s a quick overview of all the places you can find State of Search delivering great content for you:

RSS:
subscribe in your reader

Twitter: @state_ofsearch
Follow us on Twitter

Facebook:
become a fan of our Facebook page

Google Pages:
ad us to your Google Pages

Our YouTube channel:
Stay up to date with our own videochannel
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State of Search welcomes Sophie Young to this world

Sometimes Search isn’t important and sometimes Social Media isn’t. On July 17th it was one of those days that one of our bloggers, Peter Young, wasn’t looking at social media or search, but at his brand new daughter: Sophie. Off course, all of the State of Search – team wants to congratulate Peter and his wife with the birth of Sophie!

If you want to congratulate Peter on Twitter click here, or just leave a comment, he will find it ;) (more…)

The insane world of “No linking Policy” – what happened to the interNET?

I have been working on a big social media project for one of my clients for the last few weeks, we were going live yesterday but were stopped at the last minute from the clients lawyers “I’m sorry you cannot go live before you have checked that you are allowed to link out to all of these sites”, What the F@~!£??? Seriously, I thought, who in their right mind would prevent someone linking to their site. This is the internet, free speech = free linking, surely!? Or is it?

So, I quite confidenentaly wrote an email to the lawyers saying in essence (although I put it slightly more eloquently of course) “you got to be kidding and don’t be silly there is no UK company that would have a no linking policy”, BOY was I wrong. After a quick question round on twitter, asking my followers whether they had heard of such “no linking policy” for any UK websites, I was shocked to find out there are LOADS of website doing this.

(A big thanks to @rishil @chappers @wiep @nicholastott @mattuk @harrybailey @theEdword and  @tomsmith1984 for your quick replies to my tweet). And most of all thanks to @malcolmcoles who has spent significant time looking into all of these instances of UK “no linking policies”.

Malcolm’s most recent blogpost is a must read, giving you a list of examples of UK websites that has such “no linking polices”. These are all BIG UK businesses that have decided for one reason or another to prevent people from linking to their site.  Malcolm has written several blogpost on this subject, the first one being a list of UK newspapers which has this no linking policy, then the second blogpost gives another list of major UK companies including the AOP (Association of Online Publishers) permitting websites to link to them without permission. Now I find this particularly funny as AOP is of course all about “online publishing”, pah!! (EDIT: After publishing this blogpost it was brought to my attention that the AOP no longer have a “no linking policy” in their T&Cs.

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Are you a State of Search fan? Register, follow and fan!

If we take a look at our statistics we do not only see a steady growth in number of visitors. What we see most is that most of our visitors are returning visitors. Wit the website being only a few months old its obvious that search traffic will grow in time, but the fact that we have so many returning visitors, who on top of returning, all spent quite the amount of time on the website strengthens our vision. Our articles are not only clicked on, they are read fully!

So, all the loyal ‘fans’ out there who aren’t already: you can support us! By becoming a loyal follower on Twitter (and thus get notified of not only new post but also interesting content from around the web), becoming a fan on Facebook or subscribing to our newsletter!

The newsletter (check out the first one we sent two weeks back) will have mostly original content in there, content not (yet) published on the website. So its a must-register!

To help you out a little, you can follow, fan or register right here:

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OH, and while you’re at it, retweet this post to all your followers ;)

Looking For the Perfect Search Client – Must Have Own Car & GSOH

Stand back, please form an orderly queue. I have recently put myself back on the market.

Similar to dating, the early stages of client relationships are filled with wooing, excitement and so many enthusiastic nods of approval that your neck hurts. BUT just like love, it is hard to find that special person. Along the way you have to face some challenging and unsavoury matches, but just like relationships they equip you to deal with the next one better.

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Subscribe to our newsletter (and vote for us!)

As you know State of Search was launched a small three months ago. Since then we have been very successful in creating some great content. Something which has also been noticed by many, like the people from Search and Social. They have Social Marketing: From Offline to Universal (#a4uexpo presentation)

  • 6 killer presentations from #a4uexpo: Advanced Analytics, Information Architecture, Negative SEO & more
  • Launching an Affiliate Business on a ShoeString – A4U Expo London 2010
  • Microformat and Datafeed Optimisation – A4U Expo London 2010
  • Using Your Competitor’s Tactics to Gain a Competitive Edge – A4UExpo London 2010
    • in mediapartnership, plus a nomination for best SEO blog!" href="http://www.stateofsearch.com/state-of-search-and-a4uexpo-in-mediapartnership-plus-a-nomination-for-best-seo-blog/">nominated us for best SEO blog!

    Next to that we also decided to start a newsletter. A (monthly) newsletter with fresh content, so content which has not been published yet on the website! We’ll also highlight the best posts from State of Search and from around the web. You have a change to register now and start receiving the newsletter soon.

    Early registers have a chance on wining a great book about search!

    And while you’re at it, we are off course very proud of our nomination, and since we got the nomination, we’d love to win it too! And you can help. Go to their site, check it out and vote for us! We’d love your support!

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