As the Operations Manager for the SME division of one of the UK’s leading digital marketing agencies i thought i would share my thoughts of why outsourcing SEO as a small business is key.
You can find my blog post on small business seo over at the Latitude blog.
Key points I covered off include:
1 Price
2 Resource
3 Contracts
4 Specialist Teams
5 Accreditations
6 Tools
Hope you fond my info if use.
Ciao for now.
As dawn breaks over the fast paced world of drinking on a park bench – chatting with the cutting edge of the digitul media world, SEO Tramp finds that the nearby phone box is ringing…
“SEO Tramp here, excuse the noise, the lads are sorting out a whip round for some more bevy.”
“I’ve been liasing with the board of direrctor and we have a few points that we wish to raise with you regarding the work done on our campaign.”
Fucking hell, here we go. Someone’s been reading SEOMoz.
“Now don’t get me wrong, we’re happy with the progress on the rankings”
“Ah, would that be the fact that you now have 5 terms on page one, in a competitive vertical, with high search terms n all that?”
“But we feel that we’re not seeing the benefit and the lads have been having a few discussions”
“Our crack” pot “IT Team have been discussing moving resource in house as they feel they especially” have absolutely no bloody idea what they’re doing “but in reviewing the current back link profile they have a few concerns. Would you mind responding to the following…”
“Sorry mate, missed most of that…guys keep it down”
“We’re concerned that our original target of 10,000 of the dirtiest, spam has not been achieved despite the fact that you’ve had the campaign for over 7 months.”
“It’s like looking after a fine lady…you want to be treating her with a can of Tennants Super rather than Holsten Pils. Quality mate. Quality. Not quantity. Besides, you’ll see that it’s all a good mix, using various tactics i.e Lambrini and Monster Munch for dinner. Can’t always stack all your cans on the best shelf in the offie. Know what I mean.”
“Well I can’t find half the directories that you said we have been submitted to”
“Listen mate. You get a full breakdown of everything I do. If you can’t find it then I suggest you start bloody looking properly. Plus, I take no responsibility for that shit you were doing before I started. Fucks sake.”
“But some are in the wrong category?”
“Ain’t my doing that”
“Well, we’re unhappy that you’ve specified the Domain PageRank of each link and not the actual Page Rank. We’re thinking of resourcing all our dirty link strategy in house so that we can get as many PR12 links as possible. “
“Good luck contacting NASA with that one”
“and some of the links are not in what we consider the best place”
“It’s not a perfect world. Internet less so. I’ve been doing this game for a while mate and let me tell you something, I…hang on a sec….Didn’t you say that you were happy with the ranking performance?”
“What? Oh yes.”
“and that you’re non brand organic traffic, quotes and conversions are steadily increasing – as detailed in every bloody report I get sent to you?”
“err yes but…”
“and that you still haven’t implemented the recommendations that I told you to do months ago. You know the ones – which would remove the duplicate pages and canonical issue, look to improve the CTR of your site and get you more traffic…those changes been done yet?”
“Well we’re discussing that as an internal resource problem but…”
“So let me get this straight. You’re questioning all the work that I’ve recommended or done on your website rather than actually focusing on doing what I’ve told you?”
“Well we feel that….”
“You feel that you’ve read a few blogs and want to cut you’re costs because some cocky shit has decided this lark’s all really easy. That’s what you’ve decided.”
“I’m putting you in touch with Spinning Danny at Shit & Click Media. Now fuck off and stop wasting my time.”
“
A recent post by bigmouthmedia here is saying Google Mobile Goes Instant, I quickly jumped onto my iPhone 4 to check and it seems that the suggest feature is what is showing not instant, as the background SERP’s don’t change upon searching:
I’ll keep my eyes peeled to see if instant is rolled out on iPhone mobile.
This is available on google.com as my default is .co.uk that’s why not seeing.
Ciao for now!
As per my previous post about the Manchester SEO SAScon Mini Conference, here is a brief overview of the conference with links to the slides to follow:
2:10 – 2:55 Nichola Stott – The Business of Search: An Insider Perspective on the Search Engine Business and How This Shapes Our Approach
Mainly talked about estimating RPM for Google, lot’s of calculations, the slides do all the talking as my brain got a bit fried, main takeaway point was Google are looking likely to break the $1 billion revenue figure from the UK.
3:00 – 3:45 Barry Adams – Optimising for Google News
Barry talked about how to optimise websites for placement in Google News. Place target keyphrases in the news story, headline so the story can appear in search results for up to three days in the news results on less competitive terms.
3:50 – 4:35 Kevin Newman – The psychology of successful link building
Applied mainly for industries that are thought leadership and information sharing led. E.g. get links for SEO related sites.
4:40 – 5:25 Neil Walker – Forecasting for SEO
Neil declared himself as a self-confessed Excel enthusiast, nice use of spreadsheets and pivot tables using client data, he explained for SEO forecasting that gives a general benchmark for forecasting client revenue, visits etc for a top 10 result in Google. There were themes that could be taken from the presentation that may help to improve SEO forecasting.
All in all a good conference with good point to take away from all talks.
Currently on train back from London and wanted to share the programme and profiles of todays #mancseo mini conference at the Hive in Manchester.
1400 – Welcome to Manchester SEO by Pete Young
1410 – The Business of Search: An Insider Perspective on the Search – Nichola Stott
1500 – Optimising for Google News – Barry Adams
1550 – The Psychology of Successful Link Building – Kelvin Newman
1640 – Forecasting for SEO – Neil Walker
MANCSEO SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES
Nichola Stott: theMediaFlow
Nichola has over a decade of experience in online marketing and has worked for some of the worlds’ largest digital media and communications companies, including PR Newswire and most recently Yahoo! where she was head of commercial search partnerships (UK). Nichola left Yahoo! in 2009 to found theMediaFlow, a Hampshire based search and social media agency. Nichola is passionate about SEO and has a regular column at SearchEngineWatch, SEO-Chicks, State of Search and also contributes to Econsultancy blog.
Nichola’s Twitter: @NicholaStott
Barry Adams: Pierce Communications
Barry Adams is the Senior Internet Marketer for Search at Pierce Communications in Belfast, where he works for a wide range of clients including some of Northern Ireland’s biggest brands. Starting out his career in the mid-’90s in all things online as an intranet content manager, Barry has worked in a wide variety of positions, including corporate webmaster, in-house SEO specialist for a large regional newspaper, and web consultant for SMEs.
He is an avid blogger and regular contributor to leading search blogs State of Search and Search News Central, and in the past has written for Search Engine People, Searchcowboys, and the WordStream blog.
Barry’s Twitter: @badams
Kelvin Newman: SiteVisibility
Kelvin Newman, Creative Director at SiteVisibility, specialises in SEO research and development and producing link-worthy online content; working with a variety of brands including Gumtree, FindaProperty, Gala Casinos & uSwitch.
In addition to this experience and client work Kelvin, is a lead contributor to the UK’s most popular internet marketing podcast on iTunes (Which is #2 in the States) and has been published in number of widely read online marketing blogs.
Kelvin also regularly produces popular search and digital marketing strategy whitepapers for the Recruitment, eCommerce and Publishing sectors. He also delivered sessions at industry events including SMX London, the UKs leading search conference, arranges #brightonseo mini-conferences and is a regular contributor to Econsultancy and State of Search.
Before joining SV, Kelvin worked for Emap consumer media working across high profile magazine titles & websites including Zoo, Arena & Empire with a period spent blogging about gadgets & technology for Zoo. In the past, he has also written for a number of offline publications & websites including the NME.
Kelvin’s Twitter: @kelvinnewman
Neil Walker: SEO MAD
Neil joined Just Search when it was founded in 2003 and has seen the business grow from a team of five to its current size of 62. He began his career as an SEO manager and was responsible for a small team and positioning the Just Search website as number one under search engine optimisation (SEO) and search marketing related keywords. Successfully achieved, Neil was promoted to head of SEO in 2006 to oversee the whole search engine optimisation team and develop the implementation and deployment of Just Search’s technological offering. In this role, Neil was responsible for helping clients achieve top search engine results and positioning Just Search as a leader in the industry.
After just one year and great success in the role, Neil was promoted to chief technical officer, where he currently oversees SEO, pay-per-click (PPC), and research and development. A specialist in internet marketing strategies, Neil is responsible for a team of 26 technicians, content editors and link builders, to develop technologies and delivery of the company’s products.
Neil’s Twitter: @TheUKSEO
The event is being sponsored by Manual Link Building end The E Word
Latest webmaster video from Matt Cutts explains that the site:domain search only shows 3 significant digits or pages indexed, for example if your site: query returns over a thousand pages then only the 1st 3 are indicative of the actual number.
Watch the video:
Ciao for now
Ok so I recently splashed put an an iPad. I thought about which model to get and weighed up the pro’s and cons between the wifi an the wifi+3G option.
I had already decided on. 32gb model at this point.
Firstly I considered the 3G model for the web browsing, it would be good on the road at friends houses with no wifi etc but i also thought is it worth an additional £100?
I the looked into the cost of getting mobile broadband but not many options to connect to the iPad without wifi. After my research I found a mifi option with Three mobile for £69 with 3gb of data usage over 3 months. And £10 per 1gb to top up thereafter.
So decision was made get the 32gb wifi iPad and the mifi modem to surf the web. Saving me £21 and also a 3% cashback via quidco.
So after waiting for the iPad to arrive of course the courier service used left a calling card “sorry we missed you blah blah…..” so a trip to UPS Eccles to collect followed that evening.
So now I am the owner of a shiny new 32gb iPad, let the fun begin!
The OS of current models is 3.1 so no multitasking, folders et al at present but Apple have announced iOS 4.2 is coming in November and developers have already got their hands on it.
Ciao for now
Ok so all the latest noise on Twitter and around the web is about the new Google Instant search results now live as of yesterday.
So i thought why not add to all the noise with another post.
On a more serious note, as an SEO i have tinkered with the new interface and to be honest didn’t help me with the SERP’s i was looking for as i tend to know what i want to see, however i have asked my wife to try it out as a general day to day user.
Her findings are quite interesting and as follows:
Just used it to search for ‘ghost walks in Edinburgh’ and then added ‘need to pre book’.
- it was much the same as the predictive search box, if you see something come up at the top that is what you want you can click that and save time searching
- above only useful if you are a good touch typer as otherwise you have typed your search looking at the keyboard and not whilst looking at the screen so no different than normal Google by then!
- would be good if you’re randomly searching the internet in free time as something interesting may catch your eye but otherwise i can’t see it being much more useful than the predictive search box?
Didn’t seem to save me any time getting to what i wanted, i still typed in full search term.
Also just noticed that some of the things it suggested e.g. when i searched for ‘hen do’ it came up with Henry (hoover) before i typed the whole phrase, these are now on my history as if that is what I’ve searched for! Could be dangerous if something dodgy came up at the top of the search?!
Here is the new search function in action:
Interesting thoughts, i would welcome any other users input on the new toy from Google.
Ciao for now!
May not be teaching old dogs new tricks, but here is a quick post about utilising the querystring parameters in Google search. The Google search url is made up of a number of parameters, the & symbol is used to add parameters as shown in the following example: http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=football+world+cup&btnG=Search
These are very basic parameter strings, now let’s take a look at how we can manipulate the result set coming back:
Now for a few advanced querystrings: as_qdr=x - Replace the x to one of the following to show when files had been first indexed:
So just a few ways to manipulate the results in the Google, for a full list visit the SEOmoz ultimate guide.
A new algorithmic change has been implemented by Google, affectionately know as the May Day update as it happened around 1st May 2010. Matt Cutts explains that the change is not temporary and the update is looking to improve the quality of the SERP’s that is effecting long tail terms opposed to the head of searches.
Cutts explains that this update is independent to Google Caffeine which is preceding at pace. The update is assessing which sites are the best match for long tail queries. No human involvement in this update and it is purely algorithmic.
Is your SEO affected?
Think about your site, do you have a high quality site, good content and make sure that your site can be viewed as an authority for the search query so not matching off topic queries.
Watch the full video below: