Almost one month ago I received in my inbox an email from Google related to the Gmail Search Field Trial. This is a Google experiment presenting results from Gmail and Google Drive when you do a search in the Google search engine.
Google started the beta phase of at the end of August, with this update adding new features, like presenting results from your calendar and from your docs in Drive. (more…)
With over 530 million internet users, China is a huge online market and one that is becoming increasingly attractive to businesses looking to grow internationally. It is also one of most, if not the most, complicated markets to target, with factors from language to bureaucracy, censorship to culture providing search marketers with some interesting challenges to overcome if they want to succeed there.
And we can’t even rely on our trusty friend Google to help us navigate the Chinese search maze, as its search share is less than 10%, but instead must look to home grown search engine Baidu to spread our message to the Chinese audience.
Baidu is the undisputed leader in Chinese search, and until recently claimed almost 80% of the search share. It took a hit in August this year when Qihoo, a local security vendor and internet provider, launched its own search engine and gained around 10% share almost immediately but it still handles 60-70% of all web searches in China. So if you want to succeed in China, you need to optimise for Baidu or you’re losing access to around 65% of 500 million users ( you do the maths!) (more…)
The last week I was managing a big migration for a client when the development team was very short on time. Needless to say it wasn’t smooth which made me think that there needs to be more communication between SEOs and developers for both our sakes but that is probably a discussion for another day.
What I think will be more useful right now is to cover a few of the essential elements and strategies when planning a migration and issues that I’ve picked up along the way. (more…)
It’s not often that I actually do an opinion piece, for those who have seen my first few blogs on state of search or seen my presentations or seminars over the years will know that I like strategy, facts, figures and of course add my opinion or experience to that but I rarely actually put out a heartfelt blog post, well this year has made me feel like I’ve had a hard paper round!
If you’re not familiar with my background I started in Search about 2003, a little wet behind the ears and no clue about how a Search Engine worked, I delved in and like a lot of my generation of marketers learnt by trial and error. By 2005 I took the company I work for to rank basically number one for the phrase “SEO” in Google UK. I was still young and maybe even a little cocky thinking that I must be so good at what I do because I ranked top of Google for SEO.
With an ever changing landscape, SEO in 2012 has seen a significant shift in dynamics. We have seen the rise of content marketing and inbound marketing agencies, the decreasing influence of affiliates on the organic search landscape.
As such there are a number of things that we can no longer take for granted. (more…)
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…)
Back when dinosaurs still walked the earth I did a marketing qualification in Direct & Interactive Marketing. Whilst the course was definitely really useful most of the stuff I learned back then I don’t use very much and as a result it languishes half-forgotten somewhere in the recesses of my brain.
The SWOT Analysis was one such technique I’d forgotten I knew until Phil Nottingham (who works with me at Distilled) was asked to complete one for a client… and it all came flooding back. (more…)
New job. New conference adventures. More search education. More Avios BA points.
This was the first time I had gone to a non UK / US search conference and overall my three days in Stockholm was highly enjoyable.
A good mixture of European based search practioneers attended the fifth edition of SMX Stockholm with around 100 folks in all at the Munchen Brewery.
In terms of my main highlights from the two days of talks, I particularly enjoyed the insight from Jon Quinton from SEO Gadget. His talk focused on Linkbuilding Do’s and Don’ts.
As ever the questions about Penguin update quickly rose as Jon asked the audience “Has anyone had a site hit by Penguin? ….(silence)…ok I’ll rephrase that – anyone know a friend who has had a site hit by Penguin? 
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:
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…)
This month I’ve chosen to delve into the world of online rebranding, specifically in the charity sector. SEO now plays a critical role for any company wishing to rebrand as the new identity of a company will need to be reflected in the keywords it wants to rank for online. Even small changes in a rebranding exercise can have big a big effect on website traffic.
Let’s take Prostate Cancer UK as an example. In June 2012 The Prostate Cancer Charity became Prostate Cancer UK. According to the company website this change in identity was done to get away from the association of a fundraising charity and rebrand as a leading research authority:
“Our research has shown that only three of the top hundred UK charities use the word ‘Charity’ in the name and that the word is associated with fundraising, children, and dependency – not with authority, research, or expertise. Prostate Cancer UK is clear, simple, has authority, and importantly still communicates who we are.” (more…)
We’ve all read dozens – if not hundreds – of them before: the “What [insert totally irrelevant thing here] has taught me about [insert digital marketing discipline here]“. These types of blog fluff are threatening to displace the ubiquitous ‘top 10 lists’ as the most common form of meaningless waffling. It’s an entire subgenre of the blogosphere.
So I figured it was about time I wrote my own take on the genre. Call it a homage. (more…)
This weekend Dom Hodgson, amongst others well known for organising Thinkvisibility, and who is currently doing a special don’t tweet the bride, decided to do his own personal ‘hack day weekend’ and create something special. What came out of the weekend is a new game to play for SEOs: LinkDAQ.
What it basically is, is a trading game, buying and selling stocks. But instead of using ‘real stocks’ LinkDAQ lets you trade links. (more…)
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