Posts on State of Search about ‘How to’

An outline of a Social Media training plan

Social Media training

I’m a late convert to the social media game. In fact, I wrote some horribly misguided blog posts in years past about how social media was never going to integrate with search and how it was all just ego-masturbatory excrement.

Well, chalk that one up to ‘learning experiences’. I can’t be right all the time. ;)

So yes. We have to take social media seriously. I may be a reluctant adopter, but that doesn’t mean I do it half-arsed. When I choose to do something, I do it as good as I possibly can. Otherwise what’s the point?

When it comes to social media for clients, we genuinely believe that the client is best positioned to take charge of their own social media activity. Nobody knows their business and their customers better than the client itself. (more…)

Getting Things Done? Gold Task Doing? Get To Dynamic? GTD!

mens-gymnastics-team-winning

Whatever you want to call it – task management, time management, productivity – sorting out the million niggly jobs that need doing both in work and in our personal lives can sometimes be overwhelming. This has been a huge issue for me recently as I am currently preparing to move to Sydney in a month while also helping recruit for a number of new positions on the OMD SEO team, sorting out my handover, making time for friends and family, getting excited about the Olympics and generally tearing my hair out. (more…)

How to Scale eCommerce SEO

Paddy

This post was inspired by a question I had via email from Grant Horejsi following my SEOmoz blog post on eCommerce SEO. The question was a great one and related to scaling SEO across an eCommerce website which had thousands and thousands of products. This is a common situation to be in and one which I’ve experienced a lot. So this post is going to go into detail on how to scale SEO recommendations across a large eCommerce site.

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Step by Step Guide to Google Analytics Content Experiments

goal-converted

A recently introduced new feature of Google Analytics is called Content Experiments. With this new feature you can easily test multiple variations of a page to see which version works best on your website or webshop to improve the number of conversions.

Simply said: this way you serve version A to the first visitor and version B to the second visitor. With a goal set you can then find out if for example you have to place that button to request information on the left or on the right, or maybe it’s not a good idea to use big images at the top of the page.

The new feature is for a great part based upon Google Website Optimizer which was always a stand-alone product, for this reason Website Optimizer will be shut down August first. We’ve discussed this at our hangout last week, but let’s take a look into this ‘new’ feature. (more…)

Facebook Gives Social Media Managers A Helping Hand

facebook-login

Facebook has finally implemented some well overdue changes to their ‘Pages’ feature which means that administrators will now be able delegate just that bit more effectively. The two features currently being rolled out are the ability to schedule posts and option to create different tiers of access and control.  Like I said, well overdue :-) (more…)

How To Update Your G+ Profile And Business Page To The New Lay Out

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With the new Google+ design which was launched yesterday we have another profile page which we need to update to keep people who looked at our pages interested.

Updating your page so you are making full use of the new design is not that difficult. I decided with the laptop on the lap (as it is supposed to ;) ) to update my personal profile and the State of Search business page into the new design so it would look more attractive to those visiting my profile, or the State of Search business page. To give you an idea of what you can do to optimize your pages I have described the steps below, just like when I updated the Facebook page. A practical guide, but with some handy tips to make it more profitable for you and your business. It’s time to get to work (again)! (more…)

How to Organise, Market and Promote a Successful Meetup Group

Logo

Back in January, I decided to start my own meetup group with a view to finding more females that work in the Digital Marketing Industry. This was based on my own experiences with the leading SEO conferences in the UK being extremely male dominated.

Arranging meet ups is a great way to help increase awareness of a brand in any industry and if done correctly in the first instance, can be fairly easy to maintain moving forwards.

In this post I want to share some of the things that I learnt from this and provide you with a little checklist to help you create a successful meetup group in whatever niche you are looking to target.

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How to Leave your Job, the Country and Survive

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I am writing this in a flat, with food in my belly and water on tap, instead of a cave with a month long beard and nothing but a rattlesnake for company, so I guess in essence I have survived. And in doing so, I guess I am qualified enough to give some advice if you are thinking of moving to another country to work.

I decided to up sticks and move to Australia in October last year. I always wanted to work abroad and I felt with the job we do it was a perfect opportunity.  Sometimes I feel we don’t appreciate how good our industry is in this sense; not many people can work remotely, or work in an industry as flexible as ours and it took moving abroad for me to realise how fortunate we are.

There are certain questions that need to be answered before and after you move.  In fact, depending on your initial choices there are questions and challenges at every stage, but instead of looking at them as a hardship the right mindset should see them as opportunities. (more…)

How To Switch Off Google’s Search Plus Your World Permanently

off-switch

Last week Google introduced “Search plus Your World” which integrates Google+ in to the search results. With the update Google also placed a new switch at the top right to turn off the personal results so you only see the non-personal results. These personal results are for example posts and pictures from Google+ but also all the recommendations from people within your own social circle and it even hides the +1 button. Unfortunately the big block “People and Pages on Google+” on the right is still shown, that should be hidden to I think.

You can use this switch but when you do a new search query then the personal results are just switched back on. But there is a simple cure for this if you don’t want these personal results or if you just think it clutters the search results to much. You can see the difference in the screenshot below after search for “YouTube”. (more…)

How To Become That Suggested User on Google

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Thats the thing with Google. Suddenly, overnight, things seem to change with the search giant. All of a sudden an SEO, or nowadays even the SMO, the Social Media Optimizer, has to change their strategy because of the change Google made. Right? Well not always, in many cases if you understand the way Google thinks and works your basic strategy can stay the same, you just have to change some of your tactics. Make some minor adjustments and you continue to do well in the SERPS.

Google’s latest integration of Google+ into the SERPS might indicate there are more changes we have to make to our strategy to stay visible in Google. After all, we now have the ‘suggested users’ more prominent appearing in the results. And the results are mixed with social elements coming from Google products. How to make sure we are visible there? And how to become one of those suggested users? That last one I want to focus on here: I want to be one of the suggested users as much as possible. But how? Let’s analyze. (more…)

@State_ofsearch is now @Stateofsearch: How To Get That Twitter Account You Always Wanted

stateofsearch-on-Twitter

Ever since the start of the website about two years ago we have had one thing which was a bit annoying: we didn’t ‘have’ the @stateofsearch Twitter account. That account was taken by an Italian artist who lived in Dublin. We tried contacting her in different ways to try and take the Twitter account of her hands. After all, she had not used the Twitter account since she claimed it in 2009. There was only one tweet on it. We never got in touch with her and were therefor “forced” to use the Twitter account @state_ofsearch, so with the underscore.

We have ‘lived’ like that for two years. Until today. As of today we now own the Twitter account @stateofsearch. All followers of @state_ofsearch have been ‘moved’ to @stateofsearch, so if you were following us already: don’t worry, you will still see the same updates, you only have to keep an eye on the @replies you do towards us, but we’ll keep monitoring that, also because we also own @state_ofsearch. And if you are not following us: what? Do it right now!

The process of getting the Twitter account seems long, in fact it turned out to be quite easy. Within 10 days everything was fixed. Let me explain how I got the account, without actually getting in touch with the account owner. (more…)

Why an editorial calendar is essential for kickass content creation

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As an SEO and content creator, I know how vital it is to keep on top of each of my client’s needs when it comes to blog and web content. There’s nothing quite like missing an opportunity because you were too late to tie in content to a holiday season, a product launch or a pre-planned event to focus the mind on how to work that much smarter…..

It was this post from Lisa Barone back in 2009 that first alerted me to the wonders of the Editorial Calendar, and I’ve been using one ever since. Well, several in fact, for myself, my blogs and all of my client sites.  You might argue that an editorial calendar (EC) takes all of the spontaneity out of blogging, but it actually provides a solid basis for producing and distributing content, still leaving plenty of wiggle room to write those posts that leverage current news stories.  You still get to put your message out there, but in a way that provides your readers (and the search engines) with content that meets their needs on a consistent basis – with the added bonus of ad hoc content as and when required.

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