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Content is King - Especially on the Home page
2008-02-11 17:10:00
“Content is King ” is a common term used by search engine optimisation companies and internet marketers and is especially true of a websites home page. I had been encouraging one of my clients to add some content to the home page for over a year, and there are some clear statistics on how this has improved things. For a long time, I was battling with “extra text doesn’t work with the home page design”, or “there is no room to put the text” – but deeper in the site there were always some good content pages built from the same template that could handle this amount of text content. Eventually I convinced them to add an extra 450 words (there had only been about 50 on the page prior to this – everything else was in a graphic) “below the fold”, so in an area where the users of a “standard” resolution browser would have to scroll down the page to read it. 6 months on I have been reviewing the effect on ...
More About: Home , Page , Home Page

Search marketers beware - new EU law to ban fake reviews
2008-02-07 10:18:00
Businesses, business owners, hoteliers, restaurateurs, search marketers, social media marketers, authors, bloggers and so on who create any online review where they pretend to be a consumer of the product or service could face criminal prosecution when a new EU law starts to be enforced later this year. Increasingly, search engines and other aggregators of "user-generated content" are starting to rely on reviews as an indicator of quality and relevance.  Amazon have been using this concept for years and most travelers will check sites such asTripAdvisor.com before making any hotel reservation. Recent research by The Sunday Times found that a large percentage of positive reviews on travel sites were submitted by the actual hotel or restaurant owner - posing as guests or patrons.  The EU believes that this type of behaviour is essentially misleading consumers and in recognition of the increasing role that user reviews play in marketing a business, it needed to p...
More About: Reviews , Search , Fake , Beware , Marketers

Here is a Quick Guide to Local Search Engine Optimisation in the UK
2008-01-31 15:51:00
As our Managing Director, Matt Hopkins said the other day "Local search is the Next Big Thing". The curious thing is that whilst everyone agrees it seems to be a slow burn and not a quick one. Back in July it was reported that the majority of searches have local intent and then in August that local search is growing faster than traditional search. The strange thing is that despite Google's foray into mobile search offerings and Yahoo's Sponsored Local Search listing availability, small business owners in the UK are still not quite catching on that they can use the internet to promote a business locally. Still, as I recently pointed out optimising now will get you ahead of the competition. Local searches are not competitive in the same way as the big terms, and the visitors will be highly targeted. Search engines are getting better all the time at targeting locally, whether you call it personalised search or whatever. Apart from the odd hiccup, such as the Google ...
More About: Search Engine , Guide , Quick

Google releases enhanced mobile search in the UK
2008-01-31 09:28:00
Mobile search is the "next big thing" and all search engines are investing heavily in their technology to deliver search services in better ways to a mobile/local user. Yesterday, Google announced the release of an improved mobile search interface for the UK market. One of its main features is the ability to remember your location for certain types of searches.  This means that you don't need to add the location in the search term (e.g. bike shopPortsmouth ).  In other words, once you have entered your post code or city as your location, any searches that Google considers to have "local intent" will be restricted to businesses closest to you.  This is great news as we have been anticipating this type of behaviour when working with our Local SEO clients for some time.  But it's interesting to see what Google currently considers as a "local" type of search. First of all, you can't set your "local" location in the &quo...
More About: Mobile , Search , Mobile Search

Top 5 Tips to Make a Content Management System SEO Friendlier
2008-01-30 15:38:00
I am constantly working with various different content management systems (CMS). I totted up this morning and over 75% of the websites that I work on use some form of system to manage content on their website, either for adding content to specific pages/areas of the site, or for managing the content of the entire site. These also include shopping carts in my mind - although not a content management system in the strictest sense, they are used to add pages and words to websites so I in this regard I am ignoring their other facilities. Of these 75% of my sites, only 2 use the same system - and even then they are using different releases and have different capabilities and methods for implementing site changes. Each system has different strengths and weaknesses, but only one or two of these systems were developed with any consideration of search engine optimisation in mind, and even those that have been designed to consider this also have their own problems. I think that there ar...
More About: System , Management , Tips , Content , Make

If You Don't Optimise for Local Now, You'll Hate Yourself Later
2008-01-29 10:09:00
Local searchers  might not be the same volume of website traffic as ranking for big terms, but the users searching locally are using more specific search terms and tend to convert better as a result. As Matt mentioned the other day, there is a lot of experimentation going on in the search engines for increasing relevance for local searchers. And local online advertising is predicted to grow at 13% per year which means that increasingly, users are turning to local options. With the increasing use of mobile search (which uses GPS or antenna location) being visible is becoming ever more important, and it is essential that the search engines know where you are and where your customers are. Here are some ways that you can attract this local traffic for an organic SEO campaign: Make sure your physical address is on your website. If you have a local premises that you receive customers/clients at, you should use it prominently, perhaps in the footer of pages. Note that it i...
More About: Hate , Local

Who do you link to - time to check your outbound links
2008-01-23 16:05:00
Who you link to can have a negative effect on your search engine rankings.  You can't control who links to you, but you should be in control of the sites that you are linking out to.  If your web site links to sites that are known to spam the search engines or those in "bad neighbourhoods", then this can have an adverse effect on your rankings.   We've just added an external links report to our seo tools section of our web site which can help you better understand your outbound linking profile. We added this tool primarily as a result of the recent hacking incidents that have been reported by our SEO team.  These links were not visible without looking at the page source code and as they effected the pages on a shared web host, they were not in local copies of the site that would normally be used to report this information. If you have a relatively static site, then you should be able to use your web development tools such as Dreamweaver to ...
More About: Time , Links , Link , Check

Local.com opens in UK but is still US-centric and not very Local
2007-10-16 19:41:00
Momentum for local search services is growing and one of the major players in the US market has recently opened a UK office and sub-site which can be found at http://uk.local.com/. From an initial review, it looks like they have purchased some data to get them started here as there is actually no way to add a UK based business to their site via the "free basic listing" mechanism that they promote.  If you perform a search and then notice that you (or your client) is not listed and proceed to click on the "Advertise your business on UK.Loca l .com!" link, you are ultimately taken to a form that demands the US state in which your business is located.. uh, isn't this suppose to be a "local" search engine?  Local search is hot and many believe that combined with mobile search, a new "killer app" will emerge.... but despite the numbers and the potential, its always disappointing to see companies trying to expand their reach oversea...

Yahoo's Paid Inclusion - Is it worth it? Are there Risks in dropping it?
2007-10-16 18:30:00
I'll be honest. I thought paid inclusion for listings in search engines had gone away, and then one of my customers asked me for some advice about it. It seems that they have been paying for Yahoo's paid inclusion program for a substantial amount of time and were asking me about its uses and benefits. My instant response as I would imagine most good SEO's would be that paid inclusion really isn't worth it. After all, paying for inclusion carries no guarantee of a particular placement in that index - so what are you paying for? After all, it's not that difficult to get listed in any search engine - which is what you are paying for here - the tricky part is achieving a ranking. To get listed all you need are some credible links and a half decent website structure and you are away. In the past search engines were harder to get listed in, in part because the crawl rate was slow. Also because of a slower crawl rate, it took longer for search engines to take account of the c...
More About: Paid , Worth , Inclusion , Drop , Wort

Google Adwords Content Network - Pointless
2007-10-16 12:46:00
The thought of using content network at the beginning of the “adwords” saga seemed to be a great idea. You build a new campaign and expect it to drive masses of quality traffic to your site. WRONG. All it really provides us nowadays is useless “impressions” and no clicks. You look at your latest AVG “CTR” and it displays 0.01% which is becoming ever more frequent across the board with individuals and agencies. This figure is obviously poor and more so damaging your campaigns “quality score”. “Quality score” is like a credit score. The better it is, the more there is available to you. Over time the quality score reflects how much you pay when positioning your ads. Poor “Quality Score” = Higher “CPC” prices - higher ad positioning Great “Quality Score” = Lower “CPC” prices - higher ad positioning The conclusion here is why use “Content Network ”. It doesn&rsquo...
More About: Google , Google Adwords , Adwords

Déjà vu on internet linking can of worms
2007-10-12 12:21:00
In my Inbox this morning popped a report about how Associated Press is suing Moreover (owned by Verisign) for using content from their site. Straight away on reading it I was reminded of something that happened way back when here in the UK, when I first started working full time on web projects in 1996. The Shetland Times sued the Shetland News for linking to its news stories without permission. The nascent Internet held its collective breath as the concept of linking to other sites threatened the whole concept of websites, and especially search engines and news aggregator sites. Settled out of court, this was followed by another threat the following year (1997), where news aggregator site News Index received a legal notice from The Times about using its content without consent. This too, endangered the whole concept of linking on the Internet. Obviously, ten years later, we know that everything turned out OK, and the "old media" way of looking at things didn't prev...
More About: Worms , Linking , Linkin

Google experimenting with Local Search Ads
1970-01-01 00:59:00
It seems that Google is really experimenting with their local business ads to better understand the Loca l Search user and how they utilise search. In the past few weeks, I've seen full addresses appear for businesses in the sponsored listings (PPC) section of the SERPs (as you can see in this example): I've also seen Google playing with the placement of their Local Business OneBox by moving it within the search results and not just at the top as this screen shot clearly shows: It is very clear that the local search market is starting to heat up.  I predict that local search will be the fastest growing segment of online marketing this year and all the major search engines are investing large sums instrengthening their services, improving search relevance and with mobile/GPS products.  If your target market is limited to a geographical area of 25 miles or less, then you should also be considering your Local Search options. Matt HopkinsManaging Director

Google Announces the Death of the Supplemental Index
1970-01-01 00:59:00
In a what is probably an incredible feat of engineering, Google has announced that the Supplemental index is no more. Whilst we had an inkling of this earlier in the year when they removed the "Supplemental Result" label, it is still a significant milestone. On the other hand, the issues that used to cause a page to "go supplemental" or into "Google Hell" as it has been coined for the process, have not entirely gone away. For an SEO the identification of these issues is one of the processes we go though, and that isn't going to change. Your site still has a better chance of attracting search engine traffic if those elements that used to make a page appear in the Supplemental Index are dealt with. Supplemental acted as a flag for Googlebot to visit a page less often - one of the reasons getting out was relatively time consuming. There still have to be some flags for Googlebot to use to determine a revisit frequency - it would be a monumental task to...
More About: Death , Anno

Search Engine Demographics - Google, Yahoo and MSN
1970-01-01 00:59:00
It’s amazing to think that search engines can calculate the gender % of users and their age.  But it’s true and recent studies have shown interesting statistics. A recent study carried out by Hitwise showed that 55% of Google users are male, whereas 58% of MSN users were female. Did you know that paid search listings are most likely to be clicked on my females and organic ads are most likely by males.         ;      &nbs p;      &nb sp;       Click on Organic Ads      Cl icked on Paid Ads Women               ;  56.9%               ;      &nbs p;      &nb sp;    43.1% Men     &nbs...
More About: Yahoo , Search , Search Engine , Engine

Link farm SEO Hacking Reaches Australia
1970-01-01 00:59:00
An Australia n company MD Webhosting has admitted being a victim to a similar hacking incident that resulted in hidden links being inserted into clients' sites to the one we reported earlier this month. The ISP has admitted that their security was not up to scratch and that not all their customers were affected. If it is like the hacking we have been tracking, then only those customers with a high Google PageRank will have been targeted. Although the compromise doesn't have the same visibility as stealing credit card data, the effect on a company's business that relies on organic search engine traffic can be dramatic, as they become innocent victims to bad-neighbourhood algorithm checks.  Kerry DyeCampaign Delivery Manager
More About: Link , Farm

Facebook - Pay Per Click Advertising Now Available..
1970-01-01 00:59:00
The famous social network has recently released its own pay-per-click program with cost-per-click and cost-per-impression pricing structures. The great thing about advertising with Facebook is that you can accurately work out what type of audience you want to target you ads towards and Facebook will also assist you on this Facebook’s Pay Per Click reporting interface includes many different features like demographic data, clicks, ad performance and trends. Conversion tracking is not available but this can be obtained by using Google Analytics. If Facebook can do it, how long do you think it will take for other networks to catch on? James DanielsPPC Campaign Delivery Manager
More About: Advertising , Pay-per-click

Christmas Number Ones
1970-01-01 00:59:00
Forget Band Aid, or Slade, the Christmas number ones that I'm interested in are the search engine chart toppers. By searching for "Christmas" in the big 3 engines (Google , MSN and Yahoo ) you would think it would bring back heart warming, chestnut roasting results. ...and you'd be right. Top of Google's results is www.northpole.com , a "family-oriented Christmas site for children and families to share together"- an oasis of festive frivolity. Yahoo counters that with the modern classic that is Wikipedia. Luckily Wikipedia doesn't over promise and under-deliver with its hard facts- "Christmas is an annual holiday that celebrates the birth of Jesus". MSN however seems to have missed out on the Christmassy vibe, delivering NewsShopper at the top slot- it does have a picture of Santa- which is nice. MSN (unsurprisingly) serves up Encarta Encyclopedia as a prefix to its rankings- with a big snippet that totally trumps Wikipedia's feeble result- "...
More About: Number

Video Google Sitemaps, is this the start of Google indexing video content f
1970-01-01 00:59:00
Google recently announced in its webmaster tools blog, that they are extending the sitemaps protocol to include Video . Now I say extending, what I actually mean is that you can upload a second sitemap containing information about the locations of Video on your website. At the moment, the only ways to get your videos appearing directly in search results pages is to have them listed on one of a number of sites like YouTube, Metacafe, Google Video, MySpace etc, and this sitemap protocol is likely to be the first stage of indexing videos directly from sites rather than social media sites or other aggregators. I suspect that it will still be some time before video from a site begins to appear in video search results, and probably even longer (if at all) until it starts to appear in the main index in the Universal Search way (see below): (p.s. that Zero 7 Video is really good, but anyway, I digress...)  The blog making this announcement also says that you can ...
More About: Google , Content , Start , Google Sitemaps

Are you leaving your search engine rankings to chance?
1970-01-01 00:59:00
No matter how you look at it, there are only two ways to achieve decent rankings in the search engines - by chance or by optimisation. It is totally possible that your site accidentally meets the needs of the search engine's algorithm for your targeted keywords and phrases.  If you have decent content, your site isorganised and well-structured, and you have people linking to you because they like you, your site, and your content then you may be doing pretty well on your own.  So when people say that SEO is irrelevant, this is what they are referring to - the fact that some people out there are getting rankings without optimisation.  But they are the lucky ones.  The fact is, that very few websites are without a number of impediments to their search engine rankings..  these may be minor or they may require a complete overhaul - but like with the national lottery, although it is true that "anyone can win" - the reality is that only a handful get ...
More About: Search , Search Engine , Chance , Engine , Leaving

Search Engine Optimisation and Search Engine Friendly, What is the Differen
1970-01-01 00:59:00
This blog topic is really about a pet peeve of mine (well it's a pet peeve of most Organic Search CDM's at Vertical Leap too and probably every other reputable Search Engine Optimisation company) and that is Web Designers that offer SEO. Well, maybe not all of them, but a large number of web designers that I am aware of claim to offer SEO as a package bundled in with web design (and sometimes charged on top off the web design fee) but don't actually know what is required for SEO. In the most part, I consider that most web designers that offer SEO probably are actually constructing a search engine friendly website but NOT optimising it. I have been told of some people billing it as its expected and then not actually doing anything for that additional money. I'm not really a web designer, despite the fact that there are many elements of web design that I am aware of and am capable of implementing. I can and have built websites, but I am primarily a search engine optimiser. ...
More About: Friendly , Search Engine Optimisation

Travel Websites Losing Consumer Interest?
1970-01-01 00:59:00
I've blogged before about how travel sites are turning to SEO because they are in such a competitive industry. Therefore I was interested to read that they have recently been slated for not giving the consumer what they want. I firmly believe that the Internet was a revelation for booking travel and it seems unlikely now that someone would turn to a telephone booking service rather than a website for booking a flight. However, Forrester Research's data seems to indicate that they are somehow missing the point in meeting consumer needs. Some of the problems (11 per cent of US online leisure hotel guests say it's more difficult to shop for travel online now than when they started) are almost certainly down to the proliferation of choices on the Internet, making the array of options more confusing. What is more surprising is that 15 per cent feel the Internet doesn't help them save money. Now originally, that was usually the driver for booking online; but have those savings be...
More About: Travel , Consumer , Websites , Interest , Eres

Google's New Service: Google "Knol"
1970-01-01 00:59:00
If Google has its way the likes of Wikipedia and Squidoo are set to face some stiff competition. Yesterday they announced that they have begun building the groundwork for a serious contender. Google Knol (apparently it means a unit of knowledge- who am I to judge?) is intended to provide a resource that will be the first thing that someone who searches for a particular topic- for the first time- will want to read. The concept is that because the web allows information to be disseminated so freely there is no way to maintain the association between an author and their original work. For authors Google Knol would be a step in the right direction, but I'm concerned with how Google would go about actually ‘hiring' or selecting authors for a topic (maybe I've missed something- if I have please comment). It is possible that in picking the author for a Knol Google will by default be able to decide the tone and balance of a Knol. The claim that they will not edit any content is l...
More About: Service

Adding Pages to robots.txt Takes Time to Work
1970-01-01 00:59:00
I wrote a while ago about ways to exclude parts of your site from the search engines. In the section about robots.txt removal I noted that the response was not instant, but I didn't elaborate any more than that, so I thought I would revisit that subject having observed the response to some of my robots.txt changes over the last few months. In Google, the bottom line on removals is that the page won't get removed until the spider revisits the page. On a small site that is visited often, this happens really quickly. However on a larger site with many pages, it may be months before the spider revisits the page. You might have thought that it would work in a different way - that if you added a directory to the robots.txt file, then the first time that robots.txt file was downloaded, Google would go "Aha!" and remove from its index anything that matched that rule. But that isn't what happens; it is done on a page by page basis as the spider finds the page, which is then ...
More About: Robots , Time , Work , Pages , Ages

Affiliates Annoy Searchers
1970-01-01 00:59:00
I've noticed more and more postings about how best to avoid seeing affiliate search results appearing when you're looking for something. Initially I couldn't see why it was a topic worth blogging about, but then I realized that I'm one of those uptight anally-retentive searchers that usually stuff their search terms with operators. Not a day goes by that I don't use at least three or four insite:'s or filetype:'s when I'm Googling. However most people don't bother with operators, so when "Average Searcher" gets looking for a wireless mouse they will encounter a results page stuffed with affiliate and referrer results from the likes of Kelkoo and Amazon. While this might not be a problem it can offer so many choices as to make searching a painful process- once you've performed the search you still have to filter each result (based on its snippet or the familiarity of the URL, or whatever criteria you may employ) to evaluate if its worth your time clic...
More About: Affiliates

Google Search Bug Update
1970-01-01 00:59:00
Update: In December last year I blogged about a bug I found in Google 's local search. The issue was that a search for "brighton hotels" was bringing back results for Brighton in Massachusetts USA, rather than UK focused results. In interest of fairness I thought I'd go back and re-check the search, and it looks to have been fixed: "brighton hotels" Joe BursellCampaign Delivery Manager
More About: Portsmouth , Search , Google Search , Update

Wikia Search Launch - What are the results like?
1970-01-01 00:59:00
Well, this is one we have all been waiting for here in the Vertical Leap UK office. Plenty of people are aware of the Wikipedia, whether you are an Internet Marketer like the staff here at VL, or whether if you are a normal searcher. Wikipedia is widely used as an information resource, I even used it when I was doing some initial research for my dissertation when I was at uni - I wasn't able to cite it directly because it was not considered of proven integrity, although I believe there is some debate as to whether or not this should continue as articles are becoming better cited, although I digress. The point is that the Wikipedia has been a dominant force in the search engine results pages (SERPs), I think that it probably appears in the top 5 for at least 1/3 of the things that I am ever searching the internet for (although I suspect that my browsing patterns are somewhat different from a normal browser). As a result of the prominence of the Wikipedia, there are high hopes...
More About: Results , Search , Launch , Wikia , Wikia Search

Innovation at Google Video with Google CIO Douglas Merrill
1970-01-01 00:59:00
I just watched this video presentation on YouTube by Googl e 's CIO and VP of Engineering, Douglas Merrill.  It has some really interesting content and gives a great insight into Google and how it is trying to nurture a culture of innovation.  I read an interesting comment for this video on YouTube that likened Google to a "for-Profit University" rather than a regular corporate behemoth - which I thought was an interesting view. Anyway, if you have the 50+ minutes to invest and don't mind Google Adwords being compared to the evolutionary impact of an opposable thumb, then this is well worth it. Matt HopkinsManaging Director
More About: Video , Google Video , Innovation

Kaizen and SEO
1970-01-01 00:59:00
Kaizen is a Japanese term that effectively means continuous, incremental improvement.  This is a large part of our company ethos and features heavily in how we manage both SEO and PPC campaigns. The Kaizen philosophy was brought to light during the 1980's when the success of Japanese manufacturing was leading the world in terms of quality.  It is part of a larger qualityimprovement process, but the basic notion is that small, incremental improvements are always more successful than large, "big bang" initiatives.   There are many reasons for this, some to do with human behaviour and the difficulty in changing people's working practices.  Another reason is that it is empowering.  Sometimes, it is the smallest change suggested on the "shop floor" that can have the greatest impact and these sorts of changes are often overlooked with large process optimisations. There was a time when you could get away with a "big bang", "do...
More About: Process

Live Search Results Update
1970-01-01 00:59:00
This blog is a bit of an update on what has occurred with our Live Search results since I wrote a blog back last Autumn on the Live Search Recent Changes: Pete also wrote this one on Live Search Webmaster Center - it is working now for me, although the information is light on detail. (Find some reviews of Live Search Webmaster Center here). Regarding the results we have seen lately from Live Search here are some bits and pieces.  Sites are still not listed in Live Search that were not before, so there is no improvement there. In the webmaster center they just show "Last crawled date 00/00/0000" which isn't very useful. Our sites either showed a general rise or general fall initially, but since then it has been mixed the same as it was before, until the last couple of weeks when there has been a big update. UK sites first showed differences by making gains in MSN UK, followed by gains in the .com version and the regional versions (e.g France, Spain, Germany). ...
More About: Results , Update

5 Ways to Get More SEO Help on Live/MSN Search Results
1970-01-01 00:59:00
I've previously written about the major update introducing Live Search and about the results we have seen so far. Because I have been looking closely at the resources provided recently, I thought I would blog on the ways that you can find out more information about SEO for MSN and Live Search. Microsoft has tried hard to make themselves more accessible for Webmasters. They are still a little lacking when trying to "self help" - sometimes one source refers you to another, which refers you to a third and the third source refers you back to the first place you looked, none of which help answer your question. However, here is an overview of the 5 ways that you can troubleshoot a problem ranking in MSN or find out more about the MSN/Live Search algorithm. Live Search Webmaster Center Blog - this is maintained by the three people that Live has allocated to this project. It looks to become a useful resource, but it is interesting that the last post (11th January) is deali...
More About: Results