SEO Blog Posts

Beautiful People’s Ugly Linkbait

Monday, June 20th, 2011

Link Building, Marketing, Online PR, SEO

As I headed into work this morning, I heard a story on BBC News about the online dating site BeautifulPeople.com. Apparently they have been hit by a virus which allowed ‘tens of thousands of ugly people’ to access the site. In light of the recent Sony Playstation hacks, this story, to most people, including the mainstream media, is just another cyber-security story.

Of course, anyone involved in search should see right through this. Beautiful People is well known for its elaborate PR / hoax style linkbait, probably the most famous of which was BeautifulPeople.com axes holiday weight gain members. With coverage – and more importantly links – from high quality sources such as the BBC (including priceless quotes such as “Letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business model”) – and many other reputable news sources, this was undoubtedly a massive success! So much so that Dixon of Majestic SEO regularly references this in his conference presentations! (more…)

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How Compare the Market Could Use Their TV Campaign to Improve Rankings

Thursday, June 16th, 2011

Link Building, SEO

A brilliant integrated marketing campaign by Compare the Market, the ‘Compare the Meerkat’ adverts, in which Aleksandr Orlov and his family struggle against mistaken identity, has muscled their way into everyday parlance (“simples!”) and even toy stores/seaside arcades.

The most fascinating aspect has been its integration with the online marketing of Compare the Market, due to the creation and promotion of the website that was the seed of the TV campaign concept: Comparethemeerkat.com.

This blog attempts to find out what impact this TV ad campaign has had on related searches, plus how successfully it has been used to support the SEO strategy of Comparethemarket.com. (more…)

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What Powers More Than 85,000 Sites and is Trusted by Brands Like Sony, Sandisk, Microsoft and Ford?

Friday, June 10th, 2011

SEO, Web Development

Umbraco is a super-flexible, mature, fast and easy to use Content Management System (CMS) that powers more than 85,000 websites, including sites for international brands and Fortune 500 companies like Tesco, Ford, Peugeot, Sony and Microsoft.

It’s based on Microsoft’s flagship product – the .NET Framework, used by more than 90% of all PCs worldwide and by over 27 million active websites (ASP.NET).

Umbraco is massively popular with downloads passing the 800,000 mark, 31 per cent of which were directly through Microsofts Web App Gallery. (more…)

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All the Bells but None of the Basics – SEO Friendly CMS Fundamentals

Thursday, June 9th, 2011

SEO, Web Development, Word Press

“And here is your new all-singing all-dancing website running on our new CMS. You name it, it has got it! HTML5, JQuery, Flash, The Works!”

“Can I change the page titles?”

“Erm…. No!”

SEO isn’t a dark art. Yes some strategies and techniques must stay behind closed doors for paying customers, but there is still a core part of SEO that is well documented and can be done by anyone with a basic understanding of the web and more importantly a CMS that will let them. (more…)

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Bank Holidays and Search Marketing

Wednesday, April 27th, 2011

E-Commerce, SEO

The Bank Holiday season is upon us, with its traditions of barbecues, traffic jams on the M1 and wall-to-wall family films on the TV.

One of these traditions is wild variations in your search traffic, but is this really true? And if so, should you be expecting your traffic to skyrocket, or plummet?

It’s certainly the case that Bank Holidays are big business for the high street. According to the British Retail Consortium, the ‘eight days of Easter’ will be worth £8Bn to UK retailers, but should retailers expect this spike to be reflected on their websites, or will online sales actually fall as a result? (more…)

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