The policy continues down the road of Google’s long term goal where they see internet users never having to leave Google when using the internet.

This focus has been seen by many as Google operating a monopoly on the internet after Larry Page launched “Google Plus Your World” earlier in the month.

The new privacy policy incorporates all of Google’s services, including YouTube and Gmail, enabling Google to share data about a user’s behaviour across these different platforms.

This means for example, that if you’re emailing your car insurance provider about renewing your policy from your Gmail account, when you pop over to watch that clip of the funny cat on YouTube, you would be shown adverts for car insurance before the video played.

Or it may be that you are searching for things to do in New York when you visit next month and are presented with hints, tips and photos from recent trips your friends have made that have been posted by them on Google+.

Alternatively you may be navigating through rush hour traffic using Google Maps when Google Calendar suddenly informs you that unless you catch the 8:27am train, you’ll be late for that important board meeting.

According to Google, this collation of data across all of Google’s properties will create a much more relevant internet experience for the user by only showing them adverts and information that is related to their own personal needs, interests and preferences.

In terms of SEO, it is yet to be fully seen how this will impact. However in theory it could force new avenues to be explored.

Search Engine Optimisation could require a far more socially aware aspect to campaigns that interacts with specific user groups across all of Google’s products. Rather than concentrating almost solely on rankings within Google’s search engine, more focus may need to be put on Google+ and YouTube.

A far greater synergy between organic and paid activity may also need to be developed. Aside from just working together to establish maximum visibility within search, SEO and PPC could be required to combine in other ways to ensure that a user’s activity with one of Google’s products is effectively targeted over on another.

What are your thoughts? - @PG_Martin

The most recent change to the algorithm has been geared to punish websites with excessive “above the fold” advertising, sites that stack the top of the page with nothing but advertisements.  According to Google, the changes are to encourage websites to be more user-friendly, stating that “rather than scrolling down the page past a slew of ads, users want to see that content right away.” This could result in Google dropping any ad-heavy sites from its search results.

Although Google states that this change will only affect about one in 100 searches, with only the sites deemed to “go much further to load the top of the page with ads to an excessive degree,” it is still vitally important to consider how these changes could affect your SEO campaign.

The main thing that jumps out with these changes in mind is that banner advertising, although it may still be of some SEO benefit, it may not be as useful to your campaign as it once was and will definitely mean that you will have to be much more selective with which sites you choose to advertise on.  The changes will definitely lead to much more creative approaches to an SEO campaign, and creating interesting and original content that can be promoted by other sites, also ensuring your own website is constantly updated with fresh content, although this was important before will now be even more crucial. This will be important if you are to effectively drive traffic to your site. I wouldn’t heavily rely on banner ads or put any focus on acquiring links Google could deem as irrelevant to the site user, as theses will have less and less effect on your campaign.

If we have learned anything from this latest update from Google, it’s that it is now, more than ever, extremely important to keep up with the algorithm changes and adjust your SEO campaign accordingly.

What are your thoughts? – @gary_greenall

What is SOPA?

SOPA is the Stop Online Piracy Act – a proposed anti-piracy bill that is being debates in the US Congress . SOPA is separate to the existing Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

SOPA has a lot of supporters because it’s trying to tackle copyright in general, which would not only cover the well-discussed film/music piracy issues, but also areas such as fake brands, fake medication, etc.

Some of its supporters include NBC Universal, Comcast, Ford, Pfizer, Xerox, Walmart, News Corp, Estee Lauder, Disney, Visa, Tiffany, Pearson Education and even 3M.

Why Stop SOPA?

There’s also a lot of big names who are against SOPA: Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Bloomberg, Yahoo, AOL, Mozilla, Tumblr, Stack Overflow, OpenDNS, Internews, Reddit. There are also plenty of big-name founders: LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr, Netscape, Alexa, Craigslist, PayPal, Wikipedia and Blogger.

But why try and stop a bill that’s has a ‘good’ purpose – to stop piracy?

Many of the Stop SOPA supporters want to stop piracy, but feel that the bill it not well-defined enough. It’s too generalist and broad, and this means that it could have serious implications on not only the ‘freedom’ of the internet and creativity, but also increase the overheads of their services.

So it’s not that they’re against SOPA’s intent, but many feel that it’s too ill-defined for the bill to be passed in its current state.

Many of the supporters of ‘Stop SOPA’ are participating in today’s SOPA Blackout Day by either revoking access to their services, home pages, or simply creating a ‘black out’ effect on their sites to show their support.

How Can SOPA Affect SEO?

One of the primary objects of SOPA is to have copyright infringing sites ‘processed’ within five days of a request being made by the copyright holder. This means potentially removing the site form SERPs, access via ISPs, freezing any related payment accounts (e.g. PayPal) and generally removing them from the internet.

In a perfect world, right and wrong are black and white and people never make mistakes. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world.

Anyone who’s ever been removed from SERPs by accident knows that it’s not a quick process being ‘put back in’, and getting your SEO status back to where it was pre-ban can be extremely hard work.

What if your site (or a client’s site) is hacked and used to promote copyright infringing material? It can take a while to get Google’s malicious site flag removed sometimes. How long would it take to recover from the effects of a SOPA takedown in this instance?

Additionally, how long will a ban last? How will you appeal against a ban several years later if you need to use a banned (but now free to buy) domain?

What if in five year’s time we find that a huge proportion of URLs are banned under SOPA, reducing the available domain pool even further than it already is?

Additionally, the extra time and money spent on search engines such as Google on applying SOPA will potentially divert funds (and creativity) from improving existing products and developing new ones.

Can SOPA Help SEO?

On the other hand, SOPA could have the potential to directly help SEO by allowing the faster removing of competing (and illegal) sites.

For example, if your main client is a large brand such as Estee Lauder, or works in a small niche with a completely unique (copyrighted) product, SOPA would make it easier for you to ‘takedown’ sites competing in the same space that breach your clients copyright like a site selling illegal Estee Lauder fake products.

This could therefore lead to better visibility in SERPs for long-tail traffic, more visits and potentially more conversions (assuming that they would make the same purchase from the official copyright holder in lieu).

However, I’m not sure that the side effects of SOPA would create an overall benefit for SEO.

Whack-A-Mole

The article on SOPA by Search Engine Land makes an excellent comparison between trying to shut down copyright infringing domains with SOPA to a game of ‘whack-a-mole’ – simply because anyone who gets shut-down can quite easily set up under a new domain name.

Just like spammers can start spamming from other email accounts or freshly compromised SMTP servers, it’s very hard to stop.

Alternatives For SOPA

The ‘whack-a-mole’ comparison makes it obvious that trying to ‘shut down’ the sites by removing them from SERPs and ISP access probably isn’t the right way.

DMCA

DMCA already covers copyright breach, although it’s probably not as ‘fast’ as some people would like, but that’s more of a process/implementation issue. I’m sure DMCA could be amended to make it more effective.

Education

More needs to be done to educate internet users on the topic of copyright infringement. Not only in terms of “it’s bad to download music illegally” but also in the sense that many physical products that breach copyright may not even be close to the real thing. This is one of the main concerns with buying medication online – there’s an awful lot of fake medication on the market at the moment.

So there needs to be a stronger message that copyright infringement can have serious implications for consumers too, especially in relation to pharmaceutical products.

Banks – Payment Processing

More needs to be done to fight infringement from the root of the cause.  Various studies have been carried out to track down the specific banks and financial institutions that are favoured by scammers. In one study, the University of California spent several months infiltrating the three most popular fake Anti-Virus scams to try and determine which financial institutions are used to accept/process card payments – its’ quite a short list.

There’s a reason these banks are favoured. Maybe they’re not as stringent as others or easier to access?

Banks – Payment Charges

On the other side of the coin, Brian Krebs highlights that one of the world’s largest rogue pharmacies had a large proportion of its customers using specific banks. Specifically, 15% of payments were made by customers using a Bank of America card.

Could banks do more to educate their users and put more safeguards in place to check where payments are going?

Domain Authority & Banks

Could more be done to make the domain-purchasing process more secure? At the moment anyone can buy a domain, which is great, but should sites who accept payments (via PayPal or a bank) be put through more stringent security checks before they’re allowed to accept payments?

What are your thoughts? – @MeniroDev

Your blog probably isn’t as big as Jezebel or Gizmodo, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t strive for the same great content and get a heap of links out of it. It’s not going to be a quick fix, but with this handy guide you should see a rise in links month on month.

Publish fresh news as it happens

Following news in your niche is something that you’re probably already doing, but it’s likely you’re getting a lot of it second-hand from other blogs. If you want people to link to you, you’re going to have to leap onto news as soon as it’s published. Set up Google Alerts so that it updates you as and when a story is released so you can act as soon as possible. Sign up to newsletters and RSS feeds of industry leaders in your field and consider signing up to press release distribution channels to be the first to know about new developments.

Put a spin on recent news

If you don’t catch the latest news, then don’t worry, you can still get some great links from putting your own personal spin on developments. Consider writing a ‘top x things you need to know about [news subject]’. Constructing news, especially if it’s complex, into an easy-to-digest format can make people link to your post as an alternative to the original source of the story. You can also post your own opinion on the matter, but note that a controversial opinion is one that’s more likely to be linked to than if you go with popular opinion.

Install social media counters

Most bloggers have social media buttons already installed, but adding a counter to each button will help you track your most shared posts, giving you an indication of what kind of posts are popular with readers. This means that follow-ups and similar posts will likely be well-received and likely gain some links. These counters are relatively easy to install, especially if you’re using WordPress or Blogger.

Interview figures in your niche

Not only will interviews with prominent figures garner interest but they will also add more authority to your blog. You might not think you’re able to get an interview, but you would be surprised. People are always looking for free publicity and taking ten minutes out of their day to do an interview is well worth their time. However, if you’re going to conduct an interview, make sure your questions are interesting. Research interviews that have been carried out in the past with that person and think about questions that haven’t been asked yet. Always try to extract an exclusive out of them. If you don’t ask, you won’t receive and a juicy bit of information is powerful link bait.

Post every blog update on all your social channels

If you’re only uploading blog posts and leaving them sitting there, you’re wasting potential link bait opportunities. Post each update on all your social channels, so Twitter, Facebook and Google+. If you’re only on one or two of these networks, get on the others. The more networks you’re on the higher the probability that your post will be amplified through a Like, Re-tweet or a Share, and the more likely it is that someone that sees it will want to link to is.

Please leave your thoughts below or on Twitter - @scottmalt

Old practises are no longer on the cards and most of us in the industry wouldn’t touch them with a 10ft barge pole with a 50ft barge pole stuck on the end of it. After all, what’s the point in going against the grain when you can be at the forefront of link building innovation? In this article I’m going to run through a few thoughts for you brave pioneers who want to get the best organic links in this tumultuous landscape.

Building Links is an Opportunity for Creativity

The first thing you need to do is cast off any notion that building links is arduous and oftentimes unforgiving. We’re living in a digital age that encourages creativity and innovation over mundaneness. You’re no longer plugging text links wherever you can and article spinning is a thing of the past. Instead, you’re making high quality, original content that will be linked to because it’s actually worth something. I repeat – we’re all pioneers now and it’s our time to experiment and find out what works and what doesn’t. Think of the internet as our laboratory and we’re the scientists, testing and reviewing our methods and putting our results up for peer review on blogs like this.

Use a Variety of Tools

There’s no doubt that we need tools to do out work. The thing is, we often become too reliant on one or two and don’t bother going out and exploring what other options are out there. The obvious downside to this is that most tools can be fairly expensive, but they will usually have a trial so at least you can test it out. Another tip is to try and learn more about the tool that you’re using. By that I mean, you may only use one part of the tool but it could have hidden potential that you’re not currently harnessing. Learn the tool inside out and you may be surprised with what you find.

Be an All-Rounder

It may have been fine back in the day to just plod on throughout the day with standard link building, but nowadays you have to be multifaceted in your approach. On top of being a scientist, you should be a journalist, public relations agent and all round web expert. You should be writing guest posts, press releases and finding out where you can get the best links from for a particular client. Keep your eye on the news to find new opportunities and follow niche media pertaining to your clients to see what is relevant and what you can take advantage of. Read lots of press releases and articles to find out how best to write them. Get a list of blogs and sites on all aspects of SEO and web design, even if it doesn’t come into your day-to-day work – you never know when that kind of knowledge might be needed. Not only that, but having a broad knowledge could allow you to hit on ideas that nobody has ever thought of.

Learn How to Best Utilise Social

You have loads of toys to play with when it comes to social media, but that doesn’t mean you should be relying too heavily on it. You need to learn how best to use social to get the links that you want. This can be down to trial and error, but you need to also use your common sense. Interacting with bloggers on Twitter can be a great way to gain a rapport, but if you’re going crazy and asking for links from ten bloggers at the same time then it not only looks spammy, it also looks insincere. However, taking your time to build up a real relationship that will be valuable in the future for both parties will see that your link building campaign gets the results you want. Similarly, rapid and repeated tweeting of links to your newest infographics may get you exposure to more followers, but it’s annoying and people will pick up on it. As I say, it’s common sense, but I see this time and again. Just learn when it’s appropriate to use social media and you will save yourself a world of hassle.

I hope this has been informative and has inspired you to think of link building as an opportunity rather than a necessity. Let me know how your campaign strategy is standing out in the post-Panda world. I’d love to hear about it. - @scottmalt

We asked our SEO and PPC experts for their thoughts on what the next year will have in store for search marketers. Let us know what your predictions are.

PPC Predictions…

• Images will come into the Google search results on a larger scale to promote products, and the improved merchant center will drive better relevance and options for more shopping oriented results.

We’ve seen Google launch product extensions and now product ads, so it is likely this will continue to grow.

• Mobile spend on paid advertising will continue to grow, and reach a point where it becomes essential to plan a mobile site.

Over the years we’ve been told time and again that it is the year of mobile search, but until recently it has barely been worth splitting out mobile search into separate campaigns because volume was so low.  Now it is common to optimise mobile search separately, and the volumes are increasing to the point where an investment into a mobile site is worthwhile.

• Tracking of social media will improve, and this will start to become a regular part of the digital marketing mix.

We are running more Facebook campaigns than ever before, and actually tracking the impact on brand and sales, so this is going to become a part of many company marketing plans.

Chris Rowett – Head of PPC  @ChrisRowett

• Mobile PPC will become more competitive.

At present, conversion rates are frequently lower, and bids/average positions can reflect this. However, as more people search on mobile devices, it will become increasingly commonplace to split campaigns by device ‘type’. With the increasing popularity of sale attribution across multiple touchpoints, it will become more apparent whether visits via mobile devices result in significant sales volumes via computers – if so, then bidding will become more competitive.

• Google Analytics will take market share away from paid analytics options.

The introduction of conversion path data in Google Analytics is more than just a useful feature – it’s a statement of intent. This feature will be expanded over time, in order to make it more useful and user-friendly (such as allowing users to apply weightings to see adjusted revenue and sales data for different traffic sources). At some point (potentially in 2012), Google will launch a more complete bid management tool – at this point, the value of paid analytics solutions will become very limited.

• Google will continue to ignore the flaws and limitations of Adwords, focusing on new functionality rather than their core product.

Sitelinks will still only be set at campaign level (rather than Ad Group level) with no meaningful tracking, you will still be forced to use the same bids for Google and Search Partners and 50% of Search Queries will still be ‘Other Search Terms’. You still won’t be able to see historical Quality Scores, and contextual targeting on the Display Network will still be spectacularly inaccurate.

Steve Baker – Chief Analyst

• More Visual Search Results

Images and video to be utilised in PPC ads as well as text.

• Google will continue their push to try and automate bidding.

This will includes more effective tools to change bids based on conversions.

• PPC Adverts will be more ‘shop-like’ showing a range of products available in a store front style, rather than the usual listing.

Google will see these improvements as ways to increase click-through rate and improve the amount of advertising revenue it earns.

Matt Buckley –PPC Analyst @matt_buckley

SEO Predictions

• Google to give a much stronger indication that Googlebot can now read pages more like a normal browser than a text-based browser.

We know that Google can now execute Javascript and the instant preview tool shows that it can detect where the fold is – I predict that an announcement that will be made that will lead to usability outwardly becoming a much bigger factor with regards to ‘onpage’ SEO.

• Schema.org to become more widely supported.

The semantic web is on its way and major search engines have made signals for supporting this in the SERPs but an industry wide standard is very much in its infancy. I expect major developments in 2012 with big changes in the way the SERPs look for the three major search engines.

• Further development as to how Google views text within links.

There is definitely more that can be done with this, with regards to improving results by giving more value to natural links. This will go beyond keyword specific links etc. in a more noticeable way. For example you can be 90% sure that image links with an alt attribute that contains the word ‘logo’ (whether combined with a brand term or not) are going to be paid sponsor links and Google’s weighting will (or should!) begin to reflect this.

Richard Lawrence – SEO Manager @richlawre

• Exact match domains (not attached to a brand) will lose favour in Google.

There have been rumblings in the industry regarding the benefits of using an exact match domain (EMD) for years and some minor updates happened in 2011 to reduce the positive effect of using an EMD.

If Google can go further to identifying brands outside of how many searches there are for their brand name (domain name) they should be able to completely remove the benefit of using an EMD in cases where the domain and brand are not aligned.

• Refocus on SPAM.

Google openly admitted that they had taken their eye off the ball with regard to SPAM so expect a surge in anti-SPAM activity in 2012 in terms of content and back-links. If you haven’t already got your house in order you may be in for a bumpy 2012 as new boundaries are applied to penalty filters and links begin to get devalued.

• The shift to social

Google is gathering a huge amount of data from Google Plus and Google +1 button usage. I would but stunned if they don’t attempt to integrate this in some fashion into their ranking algorithm next year. Maybe not full blown social integration but a few under-the-radar tweaks and tests look a dead cert for 2012.

Malcolm Slade – SEO Project Manager @SEOMalc 

• Social monitoring tools will be in demand

All forms or marketing need to be measured in some way and social is no different. Right now social monitoring tools are far from average but as the demand for more data and insight into this area has grown I fully suspect the focus and requirement for these tools will become huge in 2012. With Google Analytics launching ‘social data hub’ which allows you to integrate social data into your analytics this puts social monitoring and measurement tools on a huge number of marketing manger’s radars.

• Cookies will be a hot topic

In May 2012 the UK government will pass an EU directive that outlaws the use of cookies without permission – this is a monumental change to the web. I fully suspect that very few websites will change and the first court cases will make interesting viewing.

• Year of the TABLET

Every year is ‘year of the mobile’ but 2012 could be year of the tablet. With more accessible tables such as the Kindle Fire coming to market this will make web development projects and all online projects consider tablet and mobile use from the start rather than the ‘add-on’ culture we have today.

 Dan Peden – SEO Manager @danpeden

What are your predictions for 2012? Please leave them below or tweet us @epiphanysol

Top 5 Twitter Accounts to follow:

@GarrettFrench – a fountain of link building knowledge can be found via Garrett’s Twitter account. His wealth of knowledge on link building can be measured by his contributions on Search Engine Land and Search Engine Watch, as well as his creation of Ontolo and the later mentioned Citation Labs toolset.

@debramastaler – Debra is a tweeter and re-tweeter of very useful link building information. Worth following if you want to hear from a veteran linkbuilder.

@wilreynolds – Wil doesn’t regularly tweet about link building, but when he does, it’s always great information. I started following him based on an excellent presentation at LinkLove. He apparently “LOVES building links”.

@stuntdubl – I’ve only just started following Todd Malicoat but he has made the list based on the fact that he is considered one of the top link building experts around.

@randfish – despite the fact he tweets about everything SEO and not just link building, every link builder needs to follow Rand. Many consider him to be one of the most influential people in SEO.

Top 5 Blogs to read:

Wiep.net – Wiep Knol is a link marketing consultant from the Netherlands and blogs about a wide range of link building techniques. The very best thing about his blog is the work he puts into creating “link building this month” – which is a list of the top link building posts of a particular month.

Ross Hudgens – You’ll find Ross actually features several times in this guide because he produces some great link building posts. I haven’t been following his blog for long but what I’ve seen so far has been very useful.

Ontolo – As a link building tools company, you’d expect them to produce some useful link building posts. They do produce some great guides. The only downside is a lot of their guides are focused around their own tools (as you’d expect).

The Link Spiel – Although the posts aren’t regular every month, Deborah Mastaler is a veteran in the link building world and writes some excellent posts about all areas of link building. The posts are a lot more personal and approachable than most major SEO websites. I particularly enjoyed Is an image worth a thousand words?

Seargh Engine Land – I wasn’t sure whether to include this in the list or not because to view all the posts you must be a premium member. However, the blog is regularly updated with useful information for both new starters and veterans.

Did I miss any that you’d like to add? Please leave me a comment below or on Twitter - @jakeyrainbow

Top 5 Free Link Building Tools:

SEO for Firefox – an all-in-one tool for every link builder that includes features like PR, cache date, domain age, social data, inbound link metrics and information on top directory listings. By using SEO for Firefox, a link builder can gain a quick snapshot of a site’s quality.

PageRank Checkers – whether it’s a Firefox or Chrome PageRank extension, it is a tool that all link builders use. Despite not being the most important factor when determining a site’s potential power, having a free PageRank toolbar is still essential.

Blekko – by searching for a domain and entering /seo or /domain, a set of data is returned. The data can show how many other sites duplicate the same content (useful for deciding upon the sites quality), the sites using the same adsense code (useful for finding multiple sites or spotting link farms), and the location of the inbound links by country (useful for spotting poor inbound links – Russian or Chinese come to mind). Blekko has also released a toolbar to make this information more accessible.

PageAge Checker – this isn’t the most groundbreaking tool for a link builder. However, it is still very useful for determining the flow of power within a website. A link builder will not want to place an external or an internal link to content within a page that is unlikely to gain power. This can be determined by checking the page’s age. If the page is reasonably old and has no PageRank, low Page Authority and few links, a link builder will know to avoid it.

Google Alerts – this is a tool produced by Google to notify users of the presence of a set keyword or phrase in newly indexed content. Ross Hudgens produced a great guide at http://www.rosshudgens.com/link-building-with-google-alerts-a-guide/.

Top 5 Link Baiting Tools:

My Blog Guest – by signing up to My Blog Guest, a link builder will have access to a range of potential guest blogging opportunities. In short, it is basically a community for those looking for guest posts for their websites and for those looking to place guest posts. Potentially a quick and easy resource for seeding link bait.

Klout – using Klout to find relevant and key influencers within a particular sector is really easy. The simple search function allows users to view the influence score (1 to 100) of internet personalities big and small. This score can be used as a measurement of someone’s influence on the internet. Ideally, link builders would target those with the highest Klout scores. The new and more in depth topics feature can be used to find those most influential within a particular sector.

Tweet Grader – this tool is similar to Klout but has one distinct advantage – a search tool based around hashtags and keywords. The search function allows users to enter a keyword, such as Wesley Snipes, and find the most recently influential people on Twitter.

Follower Wonk – this is a social media tool that allows users to search Twitter bios and analyze a user’s followers. These are very useful for finding and generating lists of relevant Twitter users to contact to help improve link bait visibility.

Addictomatic – this site can be a useful tool for finding topics related to your link bait. Sometimes the best way to find potential partners for your link bait is to look at who is linking to the most recent news related to your link. You can find all the top stories from several resources via Addictomatic.

If you have any tools and resources you feel deserve to be recognized and shared with new link builders, feel free to leave a comment with the resource’s URL.

@jakeyrainbow

It seems that even with such a new technology as this, people have already got bored with the small black and white boxes and decided to put their own spin on the codes.

PR companies have been using creative QR codes for the last few months as a way of getting their clients coverage; this also creates an opportunity for online marketers by using them as linkbait.

Here are some of the best examples I’ve seen over the past few months:

These graphical interpretations of QR codes were created by UK design company Stupid. All of the codes link smartphone users to app stores so that they can download the application. These aren’t ‘official’ and weren’t created for the app developers but they are a great showcase of the design agency’s abilities. So far they have worked well as linkbait, resulting in links from a number of digital marketing blogs including simplyzesty.com.

This is the world’s largest QR code! It’s more than 10,000 square feet and took 20 people a whole day to create. It was created by Skanz, a social media app that links all of your social media profiles into one QR code and can then print them onto t-shirts and wristbands.

The ‘World’s largest QR code’ PR stunt seems to have been replicated on many occasions but it has still been picked up on a number of sites including Mashable and Adweek.

Here’s a video of it being made, which has got more than 25,000 views on YouTube.

It seems like giant QR codes are pretty popular at the moment with another great example from Audi Japan. QR codes have always been very popular in Japan and are a bigger part of life in the eastern hemisphere than they are here. Here’s a video of it being made:

This video was picked up by a large number of blogs and news aggregators but didn’t seem to result in any high profile links. It did however gain more than 50,000 views on YouTube.

Financial services company AXA constructed a QR code using 3,844 paint cans, which was then attached to a giant banner. The 220-square foot code transferred users to AXA’s ‘renovation loan campaign’ mobile site.

This video shows how the code was created:

This was not only a great way of directing people who pass by onto the mobile site, but it was also a very successful PR campaign with coverage from a wide number of QR code blogs including industry experts 2d Code.

Some of the above examples were obviously large scale PR campaigns that have enormous budgets, and would not be able to be replicated by the majority of online marketing agencies. However, as with the examples from design agency Stupid, for it to be successful as link bait, it just needs to be a creative twist on the norm, and can be as simple as an image.

These were some of the best creative QR codes that I have found, but have I left any out? Do you think QR codes can be used as linkbait? Please your comments below or on @stevowalker.

The word from the horse’s mouth?

Perhaps the most obvious place to begin with regards to Panda’s impact on content farms is the publishers themselves. One of the most notorious in this respect was Demand Media, purveyors of the aforementioned water article and owners of eHow and Livestrong.com. Prior to Panda, they were frequently singled out as producing content which was lowering the quality of search results.

In a telling move, the company recently announced to their freelancers that there would likely be a downturn in work given to them.

“Looking ahead, as we continue to publish articles for eHow and our other sites, we want to be sure we are building on what already exists, not replicating it. This is not to say we will stop assigning standard titles in How to and Topic View format for eHow.com. But it does mean that we will have fewer eHow.com assignments for the foreseeable future.”

According to Searchengineland, Demand Media appears to have been forced to take a new approach focusing on fewer, higher quality articles in the face of the successive Panda updates. It’s perhaps hardly surprising for a site that saw an 84% drop in visibility following the first version of Panda, but perhaps not indicative of the overall impact that the algorithmic changes have had.

Impact and exceptions

If you look at the current state of search results, it’s clear that Google is having a harder time controlling content farms than Demand Media’s volte-face might suggest. Indeed looking at the latest figures on the Panda 2.5 update released by Search Metrics, one could even argue that Panda is failing in its stated purpose.

According to the figures, certain high-volume content producers such as PR Newswire and Businesswire have seen a fairly sizeable loss of visibility since the latest update. Yet some publishers, that were initially hit hardest by the changes such as Hubpages, have not only recovered all lost visibility but have in fact exceeded their pre-Panda positions in this respect.

Given that Hubpages’ initial decline was undeniably due to the low quality of content being produced by them, such fluctuation suggests one of two things. 1) that Google is having a harder time eradicating poor quality content than initially thought and 2) that as in the case of Demand Media, publishers are becoming more aware of how to combat the updates and regain lost ground.

Strangely though, one content farm that seems to have suffered no ill effects is Google’s own YouTube, which has seen a 10% increase in visibility since the last Panda update. As Aaron Wall of SEO Book stated on Search Engine Land:

‘Before the first Panda update happened,YouTube was capturing just over 3% of downstream Google traffic. Now they are likely up to [around 9% or 10%]. That means Google is sending YouTube hundreds of millions of referrals every single day.’

If content farms are bad, then why is it that virtually no one is questioning why Google’s content farm keeps going up and up?

It has to a plan for YouTube to grow as a % of overall results. That sort of growth isn’t accidental or driven by an unbiased algorithm (after all, only one site has seen that sort of explosive growth in the SERPs since Panda). I wonder if Google search engineers feel just a tad bit sleazy or if they are just ignorant of what’s in the search results?

Clearly this throws a third and more intriguing possibility into the mix: perhaps certain content farms are seen as less damaging to search quality for whatever reason and thus treated differently. Yet if this is the case, can Panda really be seen as tackling the issue?

Whatever the case, while Panda has had some impact on the practice of content farming, it would be far from true to say that it has managed to eradicate the practice completely. For the time being, it appears that content farms are here to stay. Tech-aware publishers such as Demand Media, have perhaps been squeezed just enough to prompt them to change their ways. However, the algorithm itself clearly seems to be failing in controlling other sites and in some cases, seemingly rewarding content farming. Whatever direction they choose to take, moral confusion and technical hold-ups aside, Google will eventually catch up to the content farmers and when they do, will anyone honestly say that they miss them?

How do you see the current state of Panda? Is it clever content farms, a struggling update or conspiracy? – let me know your thoughts @jameshale88

Top 5 Link Building Resources:

SEOMoz’s Guide to Link Building – this guide covers pretty much everything to do with link building. You’ll find information on why links are important, how to build links, how to find potential sites, how to track your progress and guides to helpful tools.

51 Essential Link Building Tips – a comprehensive list of white hat ways to gain more inbound links to your client’s websites. If you need examples, Kelvin Newman has kindly linked to several.

Link Building with Guest Posts Guide – creating great pieces of written content is one of my favourite ways to acquire links and engage with a community. You can’t get more white hat and useful than a truly amazing piece of content that is unique and of value to the online community. This makes my list because Ben Wills links out to every resource that inspired him to write this complete guide to guest posts.

Link Valuation – this also makes my list because it lays out an in depth, step by step guide to valuing a websites potential. By following Ross Hudgens’ guide, you’re more likely to find high quality and relevant websites that rank highly and pass a relatively large amount of power. It should in theory prevent you from placing links on irrelevant sites that have potentially been penalised.

Advanced Search Operators – this isn’t a master post on link building like most of the other resources, but a helpful set of search operators to make link building that little bit more efficient. By applying advanced search operators, search results can be filtered to a much finer degree – perfect for finding the most relevant content.

Top 5 Premium Link Building Tools:

Open Site Explorer – although there is a free version, it isn’t in anyway as in depth as the full version. Open Site Explorer is the best tool for link builders for three mains reasons: 1) for analyzing competitor backlinks, helping link builders review their best links; 2) it is useful for analyzing potential links partners, to see if they are built around spam. Every link builder wants to avoid bad neighbourhoods; 3) Open Site Explorer can be used for finding quick wins such as ‘No Anchor Text’ on images.

Majestic CliqueHunter – this is a tool I use quite regularly and believe to be a great way of finding potential links. The tool can be used to compare several competitors’ backlinks, identifying any hubs of links – allowing you to see any sites that have two or more links from a single site. This is perfect for finding relevant websites, sites that link out to commercial sites and sites that might be willing to engage with your campaign.

Link Research Tools –a great range of SEO tools that take advantage of various data sources, including SEOmoz and Majestic. For link builders it would be useful first to take a look at the Backlink Profile (BLP), a tool that analyses a site’s backlinks and returns a detailed report. It would also be advisable to check out the Link Alerts (LA) tool. This tool will collect data of new links pointing to a domain and inform you of them, so there’s no need to keep running the same reports. You hsould also check out the Common Backlink Tool (CBLT). A similar tool to CliqueHunter  that returns two or more website matches from a list of domains. Last, but not least, the Strongest Sub-pages Tool (SSPT) is useful for finding internal pages on a domain to link out to a website/client.

SEOMoz Mozbar – the complete Mozbar is an invaluable tool for link builders. SEOMoz has a tool here that can give an adequate representation of a website’s authority, a page’s authority and an indication of the amount of links into a domain. Furthermore, the plugin has excellent tools such as an IP and location checker, link marking (highlighted pink for nofollow etc.) and a full page analysis tool.

Citation Lab’s SEO Tools – this makes my list as probably the most accessible tool for all link builders. It doesn’t cost much to run and is a must-have time saving tool. You can scrape a list of URLs for all outbound links, creating a long list of potential sites. Pop that list into the contact scraping tool and you now have a list of sites and their contact details. See our Head of Link Building’s post, “Two New Tools to Improve Link Building Productivity”.

Look out next week when I will share two more lists – Top 5 Free Link Building Tools and Top 5 Link Baiting Tools. - @jakeyrainbow

Trusted news outlets are powerhouses for links, hence why we try so hard to get them to pick up on quality content we make. When one slaps up a barrier to their readers like The Times and Wall Street Journal have done, only the subscribers are going to see content to link to and so the reader-base is slashed considerably.

Of course, there are a few varying online subscription models used by different publications and each has a different effect on both incoming links and overall business performance. Let’s take a look at a couple of these models and how the paywall has affected their backlink profiles:

The Strict Barrier Model

Here you can see that backlinks for The Times site, which went through a design overhaul in May 2010, faced a drop in June – the same month the paywall went live. Since then, despite a spike in early 2011, backlinks have dried out considerably for the paper. This is due to an incredibly strict model that redirects readers to a subscription page when you try to access an article. Obviously this means that only the 100,000 + subscriber-base is able to link to content.

This model has an even more devastating side-effect on the SERPS. When I enter a big story like “Gaddafi killed” into the search query, The Times is nowhere to be seen in the results. On the first five pages all the major news sites can be found except The Times, because Google can’t index its pages. Search engine seppuku? Right now, it seems that way.

The ‘Freemium’ Model

Similarly, The New York Times went behind a paywall in March 2011. Again, we see a gradual drop, but not to the same lows as The Times. This is likely due to the fact that the NYT has a more porous paywall model where people can access 20 articles a month for free.  Also, unlike The Times, the NYT allows indexing, so at least it will rank for articles.

It’s also worth noting that this model is similar to the one that the Financial Times has been using for a decade, allowing the reader to view five articles before having to subscribe.

It’s clear for SEO purposes the NYT’s model is more successful than erecting a strict barrier against the reader. While backlinks are slowed, they don’t face the catastrophic meltdown that The Times has recently faced. It’s also obvious that blocking Google from your content will mean people won’t be finding your site on the SERPs anytime soon.

What are your thoughts on paywalls? -@scottmalt

PR in SEO is about going further and it’s not just about re-invigorating the approach you use to seed your link in once it’s been created. It’s about tailoring your content so it’s of genuine value and use to the website hosting it in the first place. It’s about reversing the whole links process.

Importantly, it’s not just about sending a copied email to a few hundred contacts on your list. It’s about picking up the phone and calling these people – investing time into building great working relationships which are both genuine and mutually rewarding.

Keeping on top of the game and up to date with current affairs is essential for this approach to work. Emphasis has to be placed on making content newsworthy.

Now, we’re not just talking about the conventional ‘sheep in wolf’s clothing’ PR approach. We’re talking about creating innovative work of genuine interest, and compiling brand new statistics and research which sells itself as a quality piece of content. It’s about being contemporary and relevant.

So what is considered ‘newsworthy’? Well, I think to merit the use of this vague description, it’s necessary to meet five different criteria.

• Timing – News needs to be ‘new’.
• Significance – How big is the story? The fact that your local supermarket ran out of cat food isn’t going to make the headlines.
• Location – What places are your target audience going to have an interest in? This is particularly important when considering regional news sites.
• Relevance – Is it a contemporary issue?
• Public Interest – Is there a genuine public interest in what’s being reported? Or are the public merely interested in what you have to say? Noting the difference between the two is critical when considering whether or not a story has news value.

The SEO advantage of this is simple. Google’s algorithm assigns more weight to links from websites with proven authority in their respective niches. These links don’t come with a price tag – they have to be earned – so why not push a bit harder, and go out and earn them by producing content of genuine news value?

We’re moving towards links that are 100% organic; a move that doesn’t just benefit the client, but also benefits the website linking to your content. There’s a move toward a real symbiosis between those that produce, and those that host content.

There’s a whole universe of new ideas waiting to be tapped into in search marketing. And as for the PR/SEO Big Bang; well, it may just be the next big thing…

What are your thoughts on PR and SEO? Where do you think the lines meet?

Twitter: @amybyard

Ultimately, Google believes that users signed into their Google account deserve privacy with regards to their search activities.

This is a seemingly noble cause, though there has been much speculation as to whether it will continue once the premium version of Google Analytics has been launched. My personal opinion is that the scepticism is ill-founded due to the huge outcry such an obvious contradiction would cause – a company that commands such public interest as Google could not go back on its declared beliefs in pursuit of Analytics dominance…could it?

Whilst debate over Google’s intentions continues, the impact of the change has yet to be fully comprehended – and in some cases it has been miscomprehended.

How does it currently affect the UK?

As mentioned, the change was only announced by Google as being in effect for signed in users on Google.com. This led some to jump to the conclusion that it was only applicable for users in the US. However, the data I have access to seems to show that it is applicable to users signed in to Google.com in around the world – and has been since the 18th of October.

For example, one site with a significant traffic volume has received almost 6000 visits being specified as keyword ‘not provided’ since the 18th of October. These visits have originated from 134 countries.

Towards the end of last week, there were a number of reports that percentage of keyword ‘not provided’ visits was on the increase. Many webmasters in the US (where Google.com is of course very widely used) reported an increase over and above Matt Cutts’ initial prediction of below 10% of organic visits being affected.

The cause behind the increase is unclear. Looking into the data of the same site mentioned above, it can be seen that additional countries started referring keyword ‘not provided’ visits. Previous to the 31st of October, the visits could be attributed to 88 countries, including the UK. Prior to the 31st of October, the visits have been received from 134 countries.

However, the potential conclusion that the change has been rolled out to further countries is probably a red herring. It seems more likely that the SSL certificate was rolled out to a greater overall sample of Google.com users – no matter what their country of origin.

Again, using the same data as before, the number of encrypted visits originating from the UK increased markedly on the 31st of October:

But this was also the same for visits originating Australia:

Therefore in addition to the number of countries referring encrypted visits increasing, the number of visits from each country increased. Rather than new countries being added to the equation, it is more likely that the sample of users being affected was increased across all countries and this led to a greater probability that a user from a ‘new’ country would land on the site.

To conclude, it seems that the encryption currently impacts a sample of users around the world that sign in using Google.com. This sample was increased last week, meaning that it is applicable to a great percentage of users around the world.

It seems likely that the next stage of the ‘roll out’ will involve making encrypted search applicable to domains other than Google.com – including Google.co.uk.

What will the impact be to my website?

Currently, due to the encryption only being applicable to signed-in users on Google.com, the impact on your website is likely to be minor.

Prior to the 31st of October, the average percentage of affected organic visits across 11 websites (with primary UK focus) was just 0.3%. Following the probable increase in sample size on the 31st of October, this percentage has increased to 0.9%.

Webmasters in the US are experience percentages that around 10 time higher, so we should expect the same when the change is rolled out to Google.co.uk.

I believe the impact will eventually be seen to be widely contrasting according to the target audience of the website. For example, a B2B focused website targeting marketing professionals is far more likely to suffer from a significant signed-in user black hole than ecommerce counterparts.

Early indications (according to data that I have access to) support this notion. Though the proportion seems to be still comparatively very low in the UK, a brief study of 4 B2B websites and 4 B2C websites over for a week prior to the 31st of October shows that the percentage of ‘not provided’ searches for the former was just over double the latter – 0.65% compared to 0.32%.

Obviously this study has limitations, for example the comparative popularity of the websites in question, but the wide contrast definitely goes some of the way to show that B2B sites will end up being hit harder.

What can I do to retrieve the lost data?

Unfortunately, unless the premium version of Google Analytics will in fact contain this data, there will be no way to find out what key phrases signed-in users have used to find your website.

However, there are ways to estimate it.

The best way involves modifying your Google Analytics code to include a custom variable focused on recording the ranking of the key phrase referring the visit.

This will then allow you to discover the ranking of key phrase that referred the ‘not provided’ visit – plus the page that the visitor landed on.

This should at least allow you see when a ‘not provided’ term sends a number of visits to a particular landing page from a certain ranking position – and should allow you to attribute them to one of the small number of high traffic volume ‘short tail’ terms that the page ranks for.

For example, if the page is ranking 8th for a particular high volume phrase, and you receive 10 visits from a ‘not provided’ phrase with a ranking of 8th, then you can be almost certain it is the same phrase that is referring the visits.

@richlawre

Press Releases

Do you have newsworthy content that you think people will be interested in? If you own a pet shop and have just opened a new branch in a small city, which publication would find that newsworthy? The Guardian? The Financial Times? Probably not.

However, a local newspaper might though, or a local city guide. These types of sites aren’t publicly well known but they are likely to be high authority domains that your site would benefit receiving a link from. The key to this one is to research your link targets correctly and don’t think too big!

Pros: Very low start-up cost and all you need is the content for the press release.

Cons: Popular sites receive hundreds of spam press releases every week so make sure yours stands out in a crowded inbox.

Interviews

Why don’t you interview a celebrity? Or an industry expert? Depending on the sector you are working in, you should determine the type of link you are targeting and in turn, who you would want to interview. Blogs and news sites always like the idea of getting a ‘scoop’, and this might be an opportunity to offer some new information that people will want to read.

You may think that it would be really hard to get a celebrity/industry expert to partake in an interview; however, you would be surprised how many would be happy to piggyback off your promotion efforts. After all, it benefits both of the parties involved.

Pros: It’s a very underused tactic and websites are surprisingly receptive to it.

Cons: It can sometimes take a while to receive a response from the industry expert/celebrity with the answers from the interview.

Surveys

Have you ever heard of services like surveymonkey.com, smart-survey.co.uk and dotsurvey.com? These are great online services that allow people to create their own surveys which are then published on a bespoke url. News sites love writing about the latest research. Here’s an example from leading UK newspaper The Daily Mail:

Don’t start your diet on a Tuesday! Women who start then most likely to fail.

The research used in the article was commissioned by Tesco Diets, a dieting website owned by Tesco PLC.

It’s important that you choose a topic that is relevant to your industry and that will be interesting enough for people to fill out the questionnaire. As mentioned earlier, the questionnaire is on a bespoke url so you can distribute the survey in emails, social media channels and on your own website. Once you have the results, you can pick out a headline from the data.

Pros: Because the questionnaire is ‘fresh’ information, if the headline is good enough, it can get quite a lot of uptake by newspapers.

Cons: It can be relatively difficult for some industries to get large amounts of people to fill in the questionnaire to generate the data.

Freebies

This is a classic PR method of promoting products and brands, and yet it seems to be underused. It’s relatively easy to organise. All you need to do is create a list of websites that you believe would offer a product review in return for a sample of one of your products. They of course get to keep the sample and in return you ask them to link back to your site.

Pros: People love free stuff!

Cons: What if the company you are promoting doesn’t have physical products or samples that can be given away? E.g. service industries

These are just a few ideas for small businesses to utilise for creative link building. If you think I have forgotten any please leave your comments below or on Twitter -@stevowalker.

There are an overwhelming number of SEO-related WordPress plugins, from the “all in one” solution to a simple sitemap generator. For the purpose of this post, I’ve picked out some of my tried and tested favourites.

W3 Total Cache

With Google’s big push on the importance of page load times and the direct correlation this has on rankings, not to mention the positive impact improved site speed has on a user’s experience, it is now more important than ever to ensure your site is performing at its optimum level.

W3 Total Cache is (in my opinion) the best WordPress caching plugin by far. In their own words, the plugin “improves site performance and user experience via caching: browser, page, object, database, minify and content delivery network support.”

There are a lot of articles already written about installing and setting up the plugin so I won’t repeat that information here. However, what I will say is that at first, the sheer number of options and settings available can seem overwhelming, but it is worth your time to understand how to configure it correctly.

To demonstrate this, I have carried out a quick before and after test, measuring site performance using the Google Page Speed tool and  the Yahoo YSlow tool.

Before

After

As you can see from the above charts taken form YSlow, by installing the  W3 Total Cache Plugin, I have reduced the number of HTTP requests from 71 to 10, a fairly dramatic improvement for only five minutes of work. This improved the overall grade of the site from an F to a B in YSlow and from 32/100 to 72/100 in Goole’s Page Speed tool.

Zemanta

Although not really an SEO plugin in the traditional sense of the word, Zemanta is a great way of improving the quality of the content you produce on your blog, making it more link worthy and also promoting it to other Zemanta users (of which there are more than 75,000).

So what is Zemanata? Once installed, Zemanta analyses the content of your posts as you write them and suggests related content to link to or embed in your post. It also has an internal linking function that links relevant internal articles.

Here’s what Zemanta is reccommending to me as a write this post:

Zemanata also provides a featured service where they will index a large volume of your articles via a feed and provide recommendations to their network of users based on a CPM model; this is an excellent technique for ethical link building.

If you havent already, I strongly reccommend checking out this service.

Poll Daddy

Continuing with the theme of non-traditinal SEO plugins, next up is Poll Daddy. Conducting polls and surveys on your site is a great way to engage with your readers and if done well, can be a great way of attracting links. There are a lot of good poll plugins available for WordPress but the best I have come across is Poll Daddy. It’s easy to setup and install, and has a variety of different great looking styles. Check out the example below:

WP-Touch

With a continual increase of people browsing the web using mobile devices such as the iPhone and iPad, it is now more important than ever to ensure your blog is mobile and touch screen friendly. Again, perhaps not one that would usually be classed as an “SEO plugin”, but ensuring your site is accessible to mobile users should be an essential part of any SEO strategy.

And that’s exactly what WP-Touch does. Simply install and activate the plugin and anybody visiting your blog via a mobile device is served up a mobile app version instead of the standard theme. There is also an option for users to switch back to the original theme.

Responsive Layouts

An even better solution to ensuring your blog is mobile friendly is to use a responsive design. Responsive means that the layout will adapt to the screen that it is viewed on. For example, for a desktop monitor, iPad or mobile phone screen, the layout will intelligently adapt so that no content is lost and there is no need for annoying zooming and pinching.

You can’t use a plugin to achieve this effect but there are some great responsive themes available.

HeadSpace 2

Page titles, meta data and the Headspace 2 Plugin are some examples of the more traditional SEO issues. There are a variety of other meta data management plugins available, but in my experience, Headspace leads the way in terms of features, ease of use and reliability. One thing I would not recommend is  leaving the management of your meta data and page titles up to the default settings of WordPress. The outcome of this is never satisfactory.

Full details of what HeadSpace 2 offers can be found here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/headspace2/

SEO No Duplicate

One SEO issue that WordPress does tend to throw up is that of duplicate content. Due to the category structure of most WordPress sites, posts with multiple categories tend to get duplicated across the category pages as well as on the homepage and in archives.  Thankfully the good people at Omninoggin have created a plugin that makes use of the canonical tag to specify your preferred URL for each post. Its simple to use and does exactly what you need.

With Google’s crack down against duplicate content, it is probably a good time to sort out you own duplicate content issues.

Redirection

Sometimes it’s necessary to move a page or change a URL on your blog. Unfortunately, if the redirect from old to new is not handled correctly, you risk losing search rankings that that page may hold as well as losing any incoming “link juice” to the old page. Left to the native settings of WordPress, moving a page will likely result in the old URL 404ing and not 301ing, an SEO disaster. Redirection solves these issues by allowing you to easily implement 301 redirects as well as capturing a log of 404 errors which can then be corrected. Full details of the features of this plugin can be found here.

SEO Friendly Images

With the ever crowded universal search results of the Google SERPS, making your images accessible and understandable to search engines is key. Although WordPress does allow you to set “title” and “alt” tags to images, if you have an image heavy site, doing this manually for every image can be time consuming and monotonous. This is where SEO Friendly images comes in. The plugin automatically assigns a “title” and “alt” tag to every image you add, according to the options you set. The plug recognises two tags: %title (title of the post)  and %name (filename). By using a combination of the tags, it is possible to create  relevant and unique tags for all images.

Analyticator

If Google Analytics is your web analytics platform of choice then Analyticator is a great plugin to enable tracking of your WordPress sites. Although one of a large number of competing Google Analytics plugins, Analyticator stands head and shoulders above the rest due to its ease of use and great set of features, including a WordPress dashboard widget, site speed tracking, support of advanced tracking code and support of the latest async tracking method. Full details and downloads can be found here.

Sitemap Generator

Sitemaps are good for SEO as they help search engines crawl your site. This plugin does exactly what you would expect of a plugin named Sitemap Generator. Again there are loads of alternatives out there but this one made my list due to the fact that it is much more customizable than most. If you need an XML sitemap for your blog, you could do much worse. A full list of features can be found here.

That’s the end of my list. If you have a great SEO WordPress plugin that I didn’t include, please feel free to let me know about it in the comments.

Attracting links isn’t always about big budget link bait ideas; it can be as simple as exploiting what’s right in front of you and close to hand.

Below is a list of unique selling points that can help create and attract links:

New statistics

Newspapers, magazines and general websites love new statistics, especially when it revolves around current news or controversial areas.

Surveys: if you’re not collecting information regularly, you probably should. Most B2B and B2C websites have a large user base to collect information from – utilise it! Another option is to use a poll company or host your own survey. Try to pre-empt what might interest another site.

Link Source Idea: chose the sites you want to go after and create a survey that might generate the kind of results their audience would be interested in.

Financial figures: a successful business will have growth. If you’re proud of it then flaunt it by making these figures accessible.

Link Source Idea: niche sector websites will see this as publishable news.

Industry statistics: charities, governments and other bodies regularly do their own studies. The results are a gold mine of information; use it to craft your own research.

Link Source Idea: to get the results seeded, all you need to do is run the pages containing the original stats through a backlink analyses tool – finding the sites that linked to them. If your stats are useful it is highly likely you’ll get a link from the same sites.

Breaking news

Every company has something that can be classed as breaking news and it isn’t something you need to go searching for. This is a unique selling point that is just sitting there waiting to be exploited on a regular basis. Breaking news could include:

New employees: well known and influential figure heads that have moved from one company to another, especially combined with a release of their job role and purpose at the company is valuable PR.

Link Source Idea: websites about recruitment and employment. Try looking at the leading companies in your sector and any recent PR pieces they have done around new employments. Run the links through OSE and contact the same sites.

New clients: if you’re a B2B company, then any recent coup in terms of a new client is always worth the same level of publication as a top level new employee. If you’re a B2C company then I’d suggest flaunting a notable customer – a celebrity or well-known figurehead.

Link Source Idea: the internet is full of SME business websites, from part-time bloggers, to full-blown magazines. Run a backlink analysis report on any recent competitor client acquisition PR pieces and look outside your industry for any recent big business news.

Awards: nearly every industry has awards and it’s worth getting it out there, whether you were just nominated or actually won; both are an achievement.

Link Source: They key to showing off awards is via niche industry sites.

Industry experts

Using people of influence within an industry to gain links is great for white hat link building. It is great for three reasons: websites get something useful, you can engage with your customers or user-base, and you get a link!

Interviews: whether you have someone known within your niche industry or not, you’re bound to have an employee, manager or director with enough sector knowledge to answer some thorough questions. A lot of websites would be grateful for free content, but only if it is interesting for their viewers.

Link Source Idea: pretty much anything related to your industry.

Quotes: instead of a full-blown interview, offering an opinion on something via a quote is another method.

Link Source Idea: search for articles related to an employee’s speciality using advanced search operators such as “allinurl:”. Contact the website owner explaining that your expert would like to give their opinion on the subject. If they don’t want to add the quote to the article, they might be interested in doing an interview instead.

Any points I’ve missed or suggestions, please leave me a comment below or on Twitter – @jakeyrainbow

(Photo: seo.com)

Intro

I’m sure you have heard the phrase ‘Content is King’. Well this is becoming more and more the important as the search landscape changes. Content can mean a number of things from product descriptions to blog posts and general page information, but how should you go about making sure your content is sufficient?

First, you have to look at your homepage, which generally follows the simple template (depending on your industry): header, navigation, sidebar, and images linking through to new key products or services, and finally the footer.

In the eyes of a search engine, apart from the section in the middle, this page is duplicated across the entire site and replaced with a list of products and images. There is also no textual content present to give the user more information about your brand and/or your products or to help search engines read your page.

Search engines will just be able to see images (hopefully with alt text in place!) and categories in the main navigation sidebar and generic footer.

Why is this a problem?

If search engines and users are unable to determine your product, brand or service, how are they able to determine whether you are what they are looking for? With regards to spiders crawling the site, textual content helps them to decide on how relevant your page is to specific search queries.

Historically this is the part where people just assumed that placing a paragraph stuffed with relevant keywords was the way forward; however, search engines are much more advanced and can spot this much easier now. It is therefore important to place content that will target the user rather than the search engines. You should also provide good quality information.

How can I improve my sites content?

As stated above, it is important to include homepage content – two to three paragraphs is usually sufficient. However, depending on the strength of your brand and your current brand presence, it is also important to ensure content is present on each category page to introduce the products. A good example of a site with good category content is ASOS.

Although there is no content on the homepage, the category content is sufficient as they are aiming to push visitors directly through to category pages and buy products rather than browsing through the homepage.

Another great example is Compare the Market as they have a very lengthy amount of textual content on their homepage, which is great especially in such a competitive market.

Improving your site’s content is not just down to on page information. There are a number of other ways to help:

1.    Blog

Blogging is a great way to not only improve your sites content, but to engage with your customers, build a following and form community. It is a fantastic asset to any site and helps to build significant fresh and relevant information.

2.    FAQ’s

Customers often have questions which happen to be asked again and again. FAQ’s can eliminate calls and questions and speed up the buying process as well as creating textual content in the product area. In addition to this, it is fantastic for customer service.

3.    Product Reviews

It is great when people give your products a good review, so why not show it off and include product reviews? It is also a good way to inform potential customers about product information from real people whether it is good or bad. Last but not least…..it creates bespoke and unique on page content!

Duplicate content

With content also comes a warning!

Many sites have inserted content which has been duplicated internally across their own site which causes issues, so be careful to ensure you content is unique to every page. In addition to this, many products sold are also sold by a number of other companies online, which results in a huge number of websites placing the same ‘product description’ on their site. Stay away from manufacturers’ descriptions and create your own to ensure that your page is different from the others.

Follow this advice and you will have yourself a bespoke page which is search engine friendly, but more importantly, helpful to your users!

Quality Content

Remember: quality is key and good content attracts good links. Be careful not to write your content for search engines and aim solely for your users by creating a natural and helpful website which will in turn help your search engine visibility.

Any thoughts or questions? Please leave them below or tweet me -@NishaJagpal

They are placing a giant ‘Recycling Tevez’ skip (that is half red half blue) outside Old Trafford before Sunday’s game, and asking angry fans of both City and United to get rid of their Tevez shirts.

Image courtesy of the Daily Mail

Kudos to the team that came up with the idea, which is clever on a number of levels:

• Apart from both being in Manchester, the hatred of Carlos Tevez is probably the only other thing United and City fans have in common due to his previous and more recent exploits. Uniting the red and blue halves of the city together is no mean feat!

• It’s very topical – there is a lot of hype and buzz around Sunday’s game. Not only is it one of the most fiercely contested derby games in the world, it is also a top of the table clash.

• There is a charity angle – Betfair says that all Tevez shirts that are donated will be given to charities in Argentina (Tevez’s home nation). They even estimate the number of shirts could be as high as 75,000!

• Betfair has already managed to use this stunt to associate itself very closely with the game. Being a betting company, this will no doubt prove to be very lucrative for them.

The campaign hit the mainstream press mid-afternoon yesterday, almost exactly three days before the match. The specific timing of this will have been very deliberate – probably having carried out detailed research on the ‘life’ of such a PR stunt, they’ll have known when the coverage of it would likely peak. I don’t doubt for a minute that this coincides with the point at which they start to see a significant increase in the number of bets being placed on the derby.

As I write, less than 24 hours has passed since its launch and the buzz it has generated online is pretty impressive. There are already more than 13,000 (and growing) results in Google for “Trash Tevez”:

An amazingly executed PR campaign.

Well, almost.

The first thing I did when I saw the campaign was think to myself LINKS. Of those 13,000 Google results, you’ll see many instantly recognisable news outlets. Getting search engine friendly links out of  these kinds of websites is like the Holy Grail for many a SEOer. Looking at some of the more powerful sites that have covered the story though, we see:

• Sky Sports – No link to Betfair
• Daily Mail – No link to Betfair
• BBC – No link to Betfair
• Fox Sports – No link to Betfair
• Metro – No link to Betfair

And so on…

So why haven’t they linked to Betfair?

Maybe their policies don’t allow linking to gambling sites, but then the BBC has linked to Betfair before. Even The FT has linked to them in the past, so it’s probably not that. What’s more likely is that SEO and link acquisition just wasn’t a consideration as part of this campaign.

Now my point isn’t that PR activity should necessarily be SEO led. But, for relatively little extra effort, why not make link acquisition a consideration of the  campaign? We know from experience that with the right angle, PR campaigns can generate great links from very powerful sources (that’s a whole other blog post though!).

As Google increasingly looks towards big brands to dominate the SERPs, SEO and public relations need to work in harmony rather than independently and with the gaping void between the two that is often present.

As a final note Betfair, if you happen to read this post any time soon you should probably get a PPC ad up for “trash Tevez” and similar keywords – or your competitors might just get there first

-@andyheaps

At the end of the post I mentioned Schema.org – a standardised set of a Microformats being developed for widespread use across the net, including universal support amongst search engines.

Since my last post, a few updates have been posted on Schema.org, the first since July.

Firstly, there was an announcement regarding the extended support of ‘rNews’, a Microformat created by the International Press Telecommunications Council (ITPC). This is a UK-based consortium of major press/news publishers, and its successful lobbying for rNews support establishes it as big influencer in the development of Schema.org.

The rNews Microformat allows you to specify the article’s print origins (which page and issue of a newpaper the article first appeared, for example) – a very useful link between online and offline media.

Secondly, and more importantly, there is an update detailing a recent ‘workshop’ (perhaps more accurately described as a ‘summit’) involving all the major search engine players and some major content publishers.

According to Semanticweb.com, there was ‘wide agreement’ over a number of points, mainly regarding how best to continue to evolve the Schema.org documentation. These points included continuing open communication between the major search engines plus supporting a variety of Microformat syntaxes until the most efficient, simple contender emerges.

New versions of current Microformats were introduced at the summit, including the ‘rNews’ changes mentioned in the first update (view all the slide decks from the summit here).

Although these updates on the Schema.org blog are hugely encouraging, they also show that a standardised set of Microformats, supported by all search engines, could be a long way off.

The latter update on the Schema.org blog closes by saying there are ‘no concrete plans’ for another, as of yet. This shows how difficult it must be to get everyone under the same roof. Let’s hope this doesn’t stand in the way of the semantic web revolution that we are all waiting for.

What are your thoughts? -@richlawre

One of the most interesting seminars for a couple of reasons was Nicola Stott’s ‘How to Find the Angle’, which explained link building through the media. Getting media links, whether it’s from news and magazine sites or high-profile blogs, is essential for a great SEO campaign. Stott expertly outlined various methods in which to do this; it was a talk which was augmented with smatterings of hilarity.

Here are some of the ideas she had:

Surveys

Surveys are a great way to create news, especially in a sector that isn’t primed to chug out media-friendly information on a regular basis. There are two types of data you can source for these: qualitative and quantitive. Qualitative surveys are great for exclusivity because you’re getting more of an emotional response. However, quantitive data, such as polls, gives definitive statistics for journalists to form a story from.

Competitions

The main piece of advice Stott gave for running a competition is that the prize need not be extravagant. She gave the example of a seven-year-old winning an Easter egg decoration competition. He proudly grinned for the local journalist’s camera with his creation before the story went to print and online. The key here is a focus on human interest, something to which everyone can relate.

News Reassignment

This one requires some creative thinking, but if done correctly, could be a home run in your campaign. Say you or a client has an incredibly niche business, such as selling swimming pool filters (Stott’s example) that creates news that is only fit for Swimming Pool Filter Monthly (I have a subscription, it’s riveting!). It’s good if you can get your news on these niche sites, but it’s also possible to reach a peripheral sector if done well. Suppose your new pool filter is the first one ever to use nano-technology to clean itself (hogwash, but stay with me). This is prime news juice for gadget magazines and sites, as well as science media. Before you know it, you’re being interviewed by New Scientist and you’re drawing link gold.

I did mention before that the seminar was interesting for a couple of reasons, the above advice being one of them. The other reason was the apparent divide in ideas between the digital marketing and public relations sectors. A heated, but enlightening discussion erupted during the session between Stott and a PR practitioner. Said PR agent, from what I could tell, held the philosophy that if the client’s news received media recognition, appearing on news shows etc., but the audience didn’t invest in the client’s products because of it, then it should be deemed a failure. She was also critical of Stott’s approach to press releases, as Stott alluded to banging out fairly mundane releases, which the PR agent would never do.

Clearly PR and digital marketers come from different angle. One is going for exposure for client reputation and the other is aiming for exposure for SEO reasons. There is obviously an overlap in the two disciplines where tactics are concerned, but the criticism highlighted the differences between the two professions’ mind-sets and a need for both parties to understand each other better.

What are your thoughts? How do you think PR and SEO can co-exist? -@scottmalt

What is SEO?

SEO focuses on optimising a website to ensure it is search engine friendly and visible to your audience.

It is a huge area and should not be taken lightly; however, there are a number of basic steps which can be taken to improve your search engine visibility. First, it is key that your website is architecturally correct. Therefore, I have highlighted a few key factors which can help to improve the overall architecture of a website.

Canonicalisation

When you purchase your domain name, you automatically have access to two domain names: http://www.website.com and http://website.com (with the ‘www’ and one without). This can often mean that a search engine may index two different versions of your website which are actually loading the same page. This makes it complicated and forces the spider to choose what it thinks is the most relevant page.

This can also affect link authority as users may choose to link to the wrong page which can in time split the power going into your site between two different domains with duplicate content. This can be fixed by implementing a 301 redirect which redirects one URL to the other eliminating canonicalisation. Another way to avoid this is by using webmaster tools and selecting the URL you wish to use. This can be found by clicking on the domain name followed by ‘site configuration’ and then ‘settings’ on the left hand side.

Robots.txt

The robots.txt file instructs robots on how you would like them to crawl and index pages on your website. The file can be found by typing in www.website.com/robots.txt. This file usually looks like this:

The file states that this section applies to all robots (user-agent: *) and Disallow: means that the Robots have complete access. This can come in handy when there are particular pages on your site which you would prefer not to be indexed.

Titles and Meta

Meta is a specific description given to a web page that explains concisely what the page is about. This is also the excerpt which appears in the search results along with the title.

The title is the title of the page/post and appears above the description in the search results like so:

This is also the title which appears at the top of the browser:

Search engines will use titles to help judge the content and relevance of each page. Therefore it is important to make sure they are accurate. Meta helps to increase click through from the search results, so ensuring this content is user friendly is key.

Many people assume that stuffing titles and meta with keywords is best practice; however, above all it is important to attract visitors and this snippet of information is what lies between a potential customer clicking on to your website. It is therefore key to consider the audience and include your USP, like Free Delivery or Next Day Delivery. Be sure to only include permanent offers and not temporary as this can mislead customers if the offer is not genuine. If you can balance this with a relevant page title, you are on the way to some great page optimisation!

Conclusion

It is important to understand that taking the steps above will not get your site ranking on the first page or even the few first pages, but with a little work you can make your site a little more SEO friendly in order to undertake a further more thorough SEO campaign.

There are a number of other factors but I have picked out my top three just to get started. Once you are confident that these are in place come back and read my next guide!

@NishaJagpal

What amazed me at the time was that very few search experts jumped on this. I saw it as not only a major bodge in terms of thinking about an audience that the company could reach, but also what it would have done to their search visibility. It must have had a major impact on their online business.

When talking to a range of clients back in 2006/7, I recall on more than one occasion warning marketing managers not to “do a River Island”. Even back then, a number of clients I spoke to were more concerned about doing something fancy and ground-breaking in terms of digital (i.e. Flash intros), than they were about making their website contribute to their bottom line.

In 2006, it was very early doors for online retail. ASOS, the pioneering online fashion retailer, was still in its infancy, and many of the big high street brands were still anxious about launching full-blown ebusiness strategies. Online fashion sales in the UK have risen by 152% since 2006, reaching a value of £4.3bn in 2010. Sales are predicted to reach £4.8bn by the end of 2011, and £6.9bn by the end of 2015.

So in today’s competitive fashion marketplace, it’s even more critical to make an impact. What has always been interesting though is the way in which people use online to influence their buying habits. Fashion is always an odd one – do you trust that what you are buying will fit, or do you want to go check the item out in the shops? Amazon does incredibly well as it sells mainly items that require no “pre-purchase check”. You know you want a CD, game or DVD and you go online to check the best price and buy. With clothes, it isn’t really that simple. You want to see, touch, and/or try it.

A recent survey by GSI Commerce shows that 45% of people prefer shopping for clothes online, whilst 64% consult a retailers website before making a purchase in the high street. With consumers’ spends online predicted to grow, the 45% is bound to increase. But how will the gap close between 45% and 64%? How can online retailers drive the purchase online rather than referring the user to the high street? Here are some thoughts:

1. Delivery charge – being upfront about delivery prices is important. It is the number one reason users abandon baskets. Get to the check out pages and be slapped with a massive delivery charge is not ideal.
2. Delivery options – show the user if they order now, when will the item be delivered?
3. Returns – make sure that it is clear to the user what will happen in the unlikely event that the item isn’t right.
4. Sizing guides – make sure users are aware of the size of items.
5. Discounts, offers and online exclusives – use of language and offers like this will always make the user feel like they are getting something special. This is perhaps something that people who use high street shops won’t get.

There are many more ways to drive home conversions online. What isn’t surprising though is that the survey has also revealed that females are more likely to research online and buy offline (71%), compared to 52% of men. Shock horror. Women prefer shopping on the high street to men.

All of this just adds fuel to the fire that if you are not focusing on the online customer, then as a fashion brand you are really missing out. Search marketing is very important to ensuring that consumers can find your brand online and potentially purchase from you. As a search marketing agency, we have forged a strong client base of fashion brands who really benefit from our search marketing strategies.

In addition to this, we work with our clients on optimising their conversion rate, so more of the traffic that is driven to their sites actually converts into business. Even small percentage uplifts in conversion rate will contribute to extra thousands of pounds to the bottom line.

Now, back to reminiscing about 2006…

Any thoughts? -@sbaker81

The idea behind these tools (scraping a page and extracting outbound URLs then finding contact details for said URLs) is nothing new. However, what is different is that unlike previous tools that have promised these functionalities, these actually work but more importantly, they work well.

Let’s start from the beginning though. Why exactly would you need these tools?

As I’m sure anybody who has ever done any link building will know, lists are a link builders friend, and the Internet is full of lists. It’s a safe bet that whatever industry your working in, somebody somewhere will have compiled a list of the top blogs/sites in that industry, and more often than not, they will be annually updated.

The problem with lists, especially long ones, is that it can be very time consuming (not to mention boring) extracting URLs, visiting the sites and finding contact details and site metrics. This is where Outbound Scraper and Contact Finder come in.

I thought the best way to demonstrate how useful these two tools are was to show a real life example. We are currently working on promoting an infographic for a fashion client, a big part of which is conducting blogger outreach into the fashion blog community, so this was my starting point.

The first step is to find a list to scrape. In this instance I have two lists of fashion blogs that I am going to combine:
http://www.vouchercodes.co.uk/most-wanted/fashion-100-the-definitive-list-of-the-most-influential-bloggers-4008.html
and
http://www.customizedgirl.com/blog/?p=9

To use the Outbound Scraper you simply enter the URL of the page you want to scrape, give the job a title and hit the scrape outbound links button. Typically this process will only take a few seconds and will provide you with a CSV file of all that pages outbound link URLs via the “Outbounds” tab.

Click image to view large screenshot

I would recommend quickly opening up, checking and filtering the URL list to get rid of any that are unwanted. Usually you will find Twitter, Facebook and the like showing up on this list.

Now that you have all the scraped URLs, you can now enter them into the Contact Finder tool. Simply copy and paste all the URLs into the Contact Finder tool and start running the report. Again this will typically only take a few seconds to run and will provide you with a CSV of all the URLs with accompanying email addresses and/or contact page URLs. Now obviously, the success rate for finding the correct email address is not perfect. It is however very good. Also, when the tool is unable to find an email address, it will nearly always return a valid contact page/ form URL. In this example the Contact Finder managed to find contact details for 160 out of 252 URLs, and of the 13 reports I have run so far, the tool has had a 68% success rate at finding a contact detail.

So now that you have a long list of target URLs and the relevant contact information, whats next? Well usually I would want to prioritise my list of targets. To do this, I would require accompanying metrics for the sites in my list. This includes things such as number of backlinks and linking domains, Page Rank, DA, PA, and geographic location to name but a few. Collecting these manually for a list of more than a hundred sites would take a very long time. Fortunately this is where another great backlink tool comes i – Backlink Profiler from Link Research Tools.

Although this isn’t really what this tool is designed for, it is very useful. To automatically collect all these metrics, follow these steps:

1. Go back to your scraped list of URLs, copy and paste the list into a new spreadsheet, insert a cell at the top of the list and type “URL” into it. Save this as a .csv file. It should look something like this:
   
2. Now start a Backlink Profiler Report (BPR) in Link Research Tools (LRT).
3. It doesnt matter what you enter in the  URL field as we’re not actually interested in finding any backlinks. You do however need to add a valid URL. For this example I’m going to enter www.epiphanysolutions.co.uk.
4. Click the choose file button and select the CSV we previously created with our list of URL’s. Ensure the “Analyze Uploaded File Only” option is checked. So now instead of retrieving the metrics for the URL we entered, it will only get them for the URLs listed in the CSV.
5. Next select which metrics you wish to use. This is entirely dependant on what you want to acheive. For this example I have chosen Basic SEO Stats, Google Metrics, Link Source Country, SEOmoz metrics and Majestic Metrics.
6. Hit “run report”
   

The tool will now go and collect all the metrics you requested for all the URL’s in your list.

Now all you need to do is export and combine this data with the contact details and you have a comprehensive list of target sites and contact details which can be prioritized however you like. For example, perhaps you only want to target sites hosted in the UK, or maybe you want to prioritise the most authoritative first based on Domain Authority. With all this data, this is easily achievable with some simple Excel filtering. This whole process, from scraping the URLs, to finding contact details and gathering all the site metrics took about ten minutes!

Any thoughts? @alexp622

Google has evolved over the last ten years from just a trusted search engine to a global entity that users are constantly in awe. From acquisitions of Fortune 500 companies to being at the forefront of search innovation, Google has indeed dominated the way we search for services, places…and flights?

Yep that’s right! Google is yet again centre stage in the news with their latest offering for people looking for a competitive price for flights within the United States. The search engine’s official blog, Inside Search, announced its latest service only two days ago and already there is drama amongst travel search engine competitors.

Google acquired ITA Software, a Massachusetts-based company that organises airline data, in April after approval was granted from the US Justice Department. According to a recent Guardian article, the website was not received favourably by the likes of Microsoft and other travel specialists, and an official investigation was launched. However, this did not prevent the deal from going through and Google Flights was born.

As of this week, when you search for flight information through Google, a ”Flights” link will appear in the left-hand column of the results page. Users may have noticed the flight schedule feature in the SERPs earlier this year, which enables those searching for a flight to different times without leaving the search results page.

While this is a helpful feature, the new flight search option allows you to set filters to find the best times and prices for your desired trip. I am not a frequent user of travel search engines or comparison sites so this is a new technology to me. When I searched for a flight from Dallas to Chicago, I was able to filter my search by number of stops, the airline, and many other options that travellers look for in the perfect flight. The interactive map is also helpful for those unfamiliar with US geography.

While the service is currently only available in the US, Google has announced plans to feature more flights, but it is early days. As with most of the company’s launches, there will be many critics but in my opinion, this is a great addition to the powerhouse that is Google. Google Places encountered trouble with Yelp but after resolving this, it has now become an integral part of searching for businesses.

But the question remains….how will this affect the cheap flights industry? At the moment, the list of cities available is still limited to the US and it is mostly the bigger airlines like American Airlines and United that are showing up in the results. Through Google’s acquisition of ITA Software, there should be the capacity to offer competitive data compared to Kayak and Expedia. For the UK, the likes of Cheapflights.co.uk and SkyScanner, who are probably the most used in terms of searches for cheap flights, scan all the relevant and promoted offers from budget airlines like Jet2 and Ryanair, as well as the business class airlines BA and BMI.

The cheaper airlines in the US like Southwest and US Airways are struggling at the moment and have raised their domestic flight prices as a result. In April, Southwest reported a loss in net profit of more than 50% blaming high fuel prices and inclement weather. Will Google Flights include all airlines in its results to give customers the whole package or will its results be tailored around the more elite airlines?

However, Kayak, a leading flight comparison site since 2004, has said that it is not worried, but if Google’s history is anything to go by, it is very likely that they will soar high above the competition.

Do you think you will use Google Flights, or would you prefer to stick with one of the many current services?

Let me know below or on Twitter – @YorkshireTexan

With the use of Microformats, a page can evolve from simply being ‘machine readable’, to being ‘machine understandable’.

It must be stressed that they are not a new language – they are based on adding semantics to existing XHTML mark up. If XML provides the building blocks for XHTML, then XHTML provides the building blocks for Microformats.

Examples of Microformats

You may have been some Microformats for years without knowing it. For example, the rel=”nofollow” attribute is a Microformat:

<a href=”http://www.example.com/” rel=”nofollow”>Link text</a>

Using the definition at the beginning of this post, you can easily see why – search engines don’t just read this XHTML but use it to alter their behaviour i.e. don’t attribute any link weight to this linked page. It is ‘machine understandable’ XHTML.

Over the past few years, Microformats have evolved to specify a far greater range of types of information, allowing search engines to interpret many types of information within a web page.

For example, Microformats can now be used to specify reviews, times, events and addresses, to name but a few.

How Using Microformats Can Benefit Your Web Pages

From a search perspective, Microformats can be used to highlight types of information to a search engine. The search engine can then use this information to create a ‘rich snippet’ for the web page on which they are in use.

This means they can extract the information for use within the results pages on which the web page is listed.

Microformats are now widely in use by search engines in this way. For example, using a Microformat such as hReview, you can successfully communicate to Google that a five star review system is present on the page. Google then uses this to add to the ‘snippet’ of information for the page’s listing within its results pages:

Google’s very own Rich Snippets Tool allows you test to see if your mark-up will be successfully parsed, and what the page’s Google listing will look like as a result.

The Future of Microformats

An exciting development in the use of Microformats occurred in June. Google, Bing and Yahoo! announced Schema.org, which outlines a collection of shared Microformats that all three will recognise and use within their results pages.

Though seemingly slow moving (the Schema.org mark-up seems to have little impact with regards Google snippets at present) this agreement could signal a big step towards a more uniform Semantic Web over the next few years.

What are your thoughts? Please leave them below or on Twitter - @richlawre

Answer: By using the same techniques as you would for traditional Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

According to research, out of the many universal search categories that exist, video appears as the most visible category to appear in Google searches, in comparison to blogs, maps, news, images, shopping and books.

Unsurprisingly Youtube was discovered to be the most prominent of all video sites out there.  As an extremely successful video platform amongst the world of search, YouTube is a worldwide phenomenon, with great potential to become an extremely successful marketing tool.

So how exactly can we optimize videos on YouTube?

• As with traditional SEO, it is essential to pay close attention to titles and descriptions of the videos.
• Titles  should include the most suitable keywords to the subject and title of the video.
• The video’s description is crucial. Use the main keywords spread throughout the description and bring in other related words.
• It is essential to allocate up to at least ten tags ensuring that you reflect the most appropriate keywords.
• Another tip is to maintain a good link profile by ensuring there are decent external links.  According to experts, links from social media are also noted.
• Be sure to keep users continuously watching to ensure that the click-through-rates (CTR) are high. To ensure this, your video should have the potential to engage and attract viewers. The more the video is viewed, the more it will be displayed; quality content is key.
• A useful tool is the YouTube keyword tool which provides the opportunity to examine search volumes for individual keywords.
• Something that cannot be missed is the preview image (thumbnail) for your video, which needs to be distinctively eye-catching as it obviously increases the click-through-rates by a large amount.
• A good preview image (thumbnail) increases click-through-rates enormously.

Are there any points I’ve missed? Please share your thoughts below or on Twitter - @Charl_ps

For simplicity, I’ll be writing my solutions as basic Console applications to make them quick and easy for you to use.

The full downloadable source code will also be available for all my solutions, so you can easily download the solution and just click “Run” to see it in action yourself!

What You’ll Get

- Working SEO utilities

- Easy to follow code examples

- The same utility written in C# and a *nix related language

Round One – Keyword Density

For the first post we’re going to look at a commonly understood metric – keyword density.

Although keyword density no longer takes as big of a role as it used to in rankings, it’s still a good metric to keep track of and can be helpful when researching keyword lists.

The utility will:

- Accept a URL

- Accept a ‘minimum word occurrences’ parameter

- Accept a ‘minimum word length’ parameter

- Exclude any common stop words (e.g. a,the,then,if)

- Return a list of keyword occurrences contained in the body of the page

What You’ll Need For My Solutions

All my solutions will be in C#, so if you haven’t got Visual Studio, go download and install the free Visual Studio Express 2010.

Be sure to check back next week for the first challenge - @MeniroDev

The social trend

One only has to look at the amount of interest generated across industry sites by the release of Google+ to know that we, as marketers, are fascinated by social media. Every aspect of the service has been discussed in minute detail, even prior to its full release – and why not? It is, after all, set to become a part of the digital landscape in which we operate. On the surface, this interest equally seems to have been played out amongst the general public, with social media sites having been announced as the most popular destinations for UK internet users in January of this year. In a single month, Facebook and Twitter collectively registered 2.4 billion visits, accounting for 12.4% of total internet traffic.

Certainly, no one today would doubt social media’s value as a digital channel and this seems to be reflected in the current budgets. In its ‘State of Digital Marketing’ report, Efficient Frontier recently reported that it expects to see Facebook advertising to have the strongest growth of any digital channel in the latter half of 2011, while CPCs on the site rose by 22% from Q1 indicating an increasingly competitive landscape fuelled by increased investment in social media. In contrast, the rate of growth for search has comparatively slowed since this time last year, falling from 17% to 8%.

The elephant in the room

So is this shift in spend a fair and logical development in light of the above figures? According to the latest annual survey of internet habits, the current focus and excitement over social media is perhaps threatening to draw marketers away from a substantial part of their online market. The annual Pew survey, looking at online habits in May 2011, certainly does point to the recent surge in social media usage.

According to the survey, 65% of internet users have interacted with social sites at some point – undeniably a substantial number. However, in comparison with the 92% of respondents who have used search engines it perhaps pales in comparison. The survey equally makes it clear that search use is remarkably consistent and frequent across all demographics:

• Search has remained the second most popular online activity, after email, since 2002.
• 96% of people aged 18 to 29  use search engines online – a figure which only drops below 90% amongst those older than 65 (87%)
• 59% of adults use search on a daily basis, with at least 50% of under 65s searching every day.

Despite the hype however, social media currently falls short in making such significant gains across all levels of society, with only 43% of adults using sites such as Facebook and Twitter on a daily basis. Equally, usage substantially drops off in older age groups with only 50% of those over 50 having ever used social media of any sort.

When it comes to planning new and future spends then, the implications should be relatively clear. Search continues to be the more effective means of reaching the majority of internet users for the time being.

Of course this shouldn’t mean that investment in social channels should be seen as a waste. Indeed, daily usage of these sites has grown from a tiny 13% of users in 2008 and will undeniably continue to rise over the coming years. It is however a warning for those of us who just can’t help but get caught up in the latest social network or trend, that the newest and most exciting channels aren’t always the most effective. The figures don’t lie. Those who let social become too large a distraction at the expense of search, do so at their own peril.

What are your thoughts? Please leave them below or on Twitter - @jhaleseo

The Rise of The Brand

You don’t have to look far to see evidence that brands are doing well in natural search. If we look at the top ten results for “Car Insurance” in Google.co.uk we see:

All ten  natural results are brand as are five (maybe six) of the eight suggested searches.

If we look at a few more competitive search terms we can clearly see brands doing well.

Search Term – Car Insurance
Brands in Top 10 – 10
Brands in Related Searches – 5 (Maybe 6)

Search Term – Mortgages
Brands in Top 10 – 9 + Motley Fool
Brands in Related Searches – 3

Search Term – Loans
Brands in Top 10 – 8
Brands in Related Searches – 2

Search Term – Beds
Brands in Top 10 – 7 (Removed Local)
Brands in Related Searches – 2

I could go on all day but since I always get told off for writing a thesis rather than a blog post, I won’t. I will therefore assume that you agree with me that brands are now heavily entrenched within SERPs.

So why? What’s changed? Why are brands now everywhere?

Ever since the Google Vince update (thought of by many as a brand update), Google has been tweaking their algorithm in an attempt to put more emphasis on trust and influence over PageRank^TM and other link metrics. This trend has followed through Caffeine, Panda and all of the smaller unnamed (and often unnoticed) tweaks in between.

In addition to Google’s move, brands themselves have finally started to take more notice of the online environment and SEO; the sleeping giants are starting to awaken.

Identifying Online Brands

Search engine algorithms don’t watch TV. They don’t walk around shopping centres, read papers or get exposed to the onslaught of in-your-face advertising brands push out to us every day. They can however use the results of all of this to understand how search engine users interact with a brand in an attempt to model what a brand looks like from a domain and data point of view. Some things that may well be used to do this are:

• Brand Name Traffic

Does the brand associated with the domain get searched for in its own right? This is what we sometimes call “type-in traffic.”

• Brand + Keyword Traffic

Does the brand associated with the domain get searched for in conjunction with keywords within the topical niche?

• Brand Links

Do people link to the domain using the brand name?

• Brand Mentions

Is the mentioned (linked to or not) in all the right places?!

• Click Through Rates

When listed in SERPs, does the brand listing act like a black hole generating a disproportional click through rate compared to other listings in the same position?

The Exact Match Domain (EMD) Issue

One of the main issues with Google trying to change anything within its algorithm is the effect it has on other areas that were outside of the target for the change.

Let us presume that Google is in fact using brand keyword volumes, links and mentions as strong signals of a brand. On the understanding that the starting point of an identity is the domain name, exact match domains suddenly gain a lot of brand signals that they may not actually deserve.

Let’s use a fictitious example of http://www.cheap-widgets.whatever

The domain and therefore perceived brand is cheap-widgets. The term cheap widgets is searched for a lot. The cheap-widgets.whatever domain has loads of links pointing to it using the perceived brand name of cheap widgets. The term cheap widgets gets mentioned a lot on other sites.

This bi-product of Google tweaking in favour of brands is likely to be next on Google’s hit list and I have previously spoken (prayed for) an EMD update.

How To Generate An Online Brand

Based on the above (which may or may not be exactly correct), how can we take a website and turn it into a powerful online brand?

• Brand Name / Brand + Keyword Traffic

You need to get your name out there, get people talking about and searching for you; this fundamentally comes down to community engagement and more traditional marketing.

Interact with your community, promote your own opinions, sponsor events, publish authority press releases, generate thought provoking opinionated content and be sure to promote your brand within everything you do.

It also goes without saying that you should leverage your offline media assets such as TV and traditional advertising if you can by promoting your online presence within them.

• Brand Mentions

A strong offline brand generally already has the necessary press coverage but failing this, you need to create a splash within your industry. Create original quality content and be persistent when pitching it to authorities within your industry and the press.

• Brand Links

Nothing special here. Simply build brand anchor text links.

• Click Through Rates

You should already be using USPs and strong messaging to enrich your SERPs listings. If you are not, then hopefully this will inspire you to. Although you can’t recreate the exact effects of a well-known brand, you can go some way toward inflating your click through rate via crafting a solid SERP listing.

Conclusions

Brands are here to stay and rather than moaning about them, you need to step up in an attempt to join them.

Goals need to be set higher than ranking for particular terms. SEO can no longer be an activity that is outsourced and forgotten about. Clients need to make internal resources and knowledge available, and agencies need to be creative in the ways they promote the brand and help the client reach brand status.

Your ultimate goal needs to be to create a branded site capable of ranking for anything rather than four terms you have defined as high value.

Author Background

A large part of my role at Epiphany is to analyse data and draw logical conclusions from it. Although I can’t go in to detail, the data is there to back all of the above up. Also, you can sometimes see brand results being injected in to Google SERPs for short periods of time which is presumably Google testing for the black hole effect.

Yes, turning some of the above into reality is very difficult. I know, we have been doing it for years. It is however the only way to future-proof your online strategy.

-@SEOMalc