Posts About ‘review’

Google Analytics for Mobile: Where Art Thou?

Digital marketing is a very new industry. It is recognised for being dynamic, incredibly face-paced and, some could argue, stays at the forefront of technology and its application to our everyday lives. This causes problems for many of those that consider themselves online (or digital) marketing professionals though.

Put us in a room without a laptop or takeaway our Internet connection and many in-depth conversations that we can have are limited. To a certain degree we’ve become dependent on technology, for our profession, for our livelihoods. (more…)

Test: Fresh Web Explorer

We have tested Fresh Web Explorer, the new mentions tool from SEOMoz. Do we love it?

Fresh Web Explorer (FWE) is the newest addition of SEOMoz tools. It is no secret to the people who know me that I both love, praise and use these tools on a daily basis. Some even accuse me of having a ~~major~~ small crush on Rand Fishkin, the way I go on about “his tools”. In other words, my hopes for this new addition are high.

FWE is a mention tool that ”lets you research and compare mentions and links to your domain using the power of the Freshscape index”, a “30 day index of 4.3 million feeds (and counting).” FWE is not real time, but pretty close, there’s a new Freshscape index every eight hours. (more…)

An External Review of Googles Webspam Team.

The past twelve months have been crazy, Content Marketing seemed to have created a fight between PR people and SEO’s with the result a new hybrid genre of “content marketing specialists”, why? Simply because all those statements Google would make about what you can’t do when link building have started to come true.

In February and March 2012 we saw the first major influx of Unnatural Links warnings this was coupled with the advent of Google’s Penguin Algorithm and we saw sites plummet, businesses close, a mad craze happened while SEO’s across the Globe tried to remove links and then Google introduced the Disavow tool.

But does anyone ever Evaluate the Google WebSpam Team?

Well Rand Fishkin mentioned some ideas back in 2010 and I’ll use his quote before I start this article.

First off, let me just say that there are a lot of people smarter and more experienced in scalably attacking web spam than I am working in the Search Quality division at Google and specifically on the Spam team.

- Rand Fishkin

This article focus’s on some of my work over the past twelve months in particular relation to SERP Penalties and Unnatural Links Warnings. it’s also very timely because of the recent uproar across the industry with Interflora being penalized. (more…)

Book Review: Outsmarting Google – Evan Bailyn

Outsmarting Google
SEO Secrets to Winning New Business
By Evan Bailyn with Bradley Bailyn
Book Website | Amazon UK | Amazon.com

Outsmarting Google is a book that’s been out since 2011, so I’m late with this review. And due to the fast-moving nature of the SEO industry, some parts of the book are expectedly out of date.

In the interests of full disclosure, before I began reading the book I was fully prepared to dislike it. Over the years I’ve developed a mild allergy for what I’d call ‘self-help business speak’. We all recognise this type of hyped-up copywriting when we see it: ‘Killer Strategies to Success’, ‘Hidden Secrets To Become an Instant Millionaire’ – books with such titles are a dime a dozen, and usually worth even less than the paper they’re printed on. (more…)

Video SEO for WordPress Just Became Really Easy

Here on State of Search we have been using WordPress from the start and we have also from the start been using a few of Joost de Valk’s plugins, including his most famous one, the WordPress SEO plugin. Until now all these plugins were free to use. Recently Joost (who for some is better known under the name “Yoast“), launched his first paid plugin: Video SEO for WordPress.

I was fortunate enough to be able to test in the past few weeks in which as it turned out it had some extra use on an unexpected successful post on State of Search. Find below my review of the plugin. (more…)

Five Tips for Five Star Reviews

So you’ve done the hard work of getting someone to review something. Job done? Not at all.

‘This jar of honey may be in a revolting looking pot, but it’s scrumptious”, contains the same information, worded differently, as ‘This jar of honey is scrumptious, but the pot it’s in is revolting”. There’s little to choose between the semantics and the facts. But whilst Google may not differentiate between the two, potential customers can.

And a good review is likely to be placed and promoted more prominently than a bad one. So here are five PR tips for getting to honeypot one. (more…)