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Adverts in PDF Documents - New Yahoo and Adobe Tie Up
1970-01-01 00:59:00
I've just been reading the latest technology news on the BBC site and have found that Yahoo will be putting adverts into PDF files. This is the first time that Adobe have let dynamic adverts appear in this useful universal document format, and it could spell an interesting change for marketers. I haven't been able to find a great deal of information on how this work yet, but from the brief report on the BBC site is seems that it will be the people that publish the PDF that choose whether or not an advert appears in it. I suppose that this opens up a new market for people that are regularly publishing PDFs, perhaps giving them away for free and are now looking for a new revenue stream. I know that most PPC marketers that I speak to are wary about putting too much budget into any form of content network, so it may be interesting to see who targets their ads for these locations. We'll keep our eyes peeled to see how this pan's up and I'll maybe do an update in the future w...
More About: Adverts , Yahoo! , Documents

How do broken links affect SEO?
1970-01-01 00:59:00
There is not a lot of information around about how broken links affect your web site's performance in the search engines. Search engine specialists routinely check their customer sites for broken links as part of a comprehensive service, but there isn't any concrete data on it. There's plenty of anecdotal evidence to say that they do have a negative impact, and it's certainly the case that getting listed in reviewed directories such as Open Directory is harder (or impossible) if you have broken links on your site. PageRank-wise a broken internal link is always going to have a negative impact - you are wasting the "vote" that you have to pass link juice on to another of your pages. After all, a mis-typed link is a connection that you were wanting to make. Additionally it is worse for the user trying to follow it than it is for the search engines. Personally, I don't think the odd one is going to make any difference to your site rankings, but in the interests of y...
More About: Links , Broken

We're Number One in a Top 10 SEO Company List
1970-01-01 00:59:00
Props to the guys over at NorthSouthMedia who have ranked Vertical Leap as the top SEO company for the National/UK rankings in their November 07 "league table".  Take a look at their latest results or see the extract below: UK National results as follows:   Company Nov 07 Oct 07 Alexa 1 Vertical Leap 70 pts 78 pts 265,731 2 Dolphin Promotions 70 pts 69 pts 249,087 3 Submit Express 62 pts 42 pts 361,365 4 Blue Claw 58 pts 55 pts 274,004 5 Mister Web 54 pts 52 pts 632,391 6 Kruse 53 pts 56 pts 446,539 7 SEO Company UK 47 pts 47 pts 1,179,574 8 BW Services 37 pts 45 pts 1,636,306 9 Daedal 33 pts 37 pts 2,563,386 10 ...
More About: List , Number

The true value of SEO KPIs
1970-01-01 00:59:00
When we are chosen by a client to manage their SEO there is always a conversation about expected results. Amongst our Key Performance Indicators (measured against percentage increases or target numbers) are: 1. Improving rankings 2. Increasing site traffic 3. Delivering relevant visitors to the site These 3 KPIs are essential to the success of a campaign, but they don't always address the über specific 'success' factors for a campaign. For example, your site may have the option to: * subscribe to a feed or newsletter * download a trial * request a quote * make a purchase * a mixture of all the above Which of these 5 options would hold the most value for your business? Which is going to provide the biggest benefit or serve a longer-term goal? Of course, your answer will depend on your business needs and associated requirements at one particular moment in time. Obviously visitors need to do something to make investing in getting them to your site worthwhile. But w...
More About: True

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

Linking Out to Spam Sites Hurts Your Rankings
1970-01-01 00:59:00
I came across the SEO Checklist blog when looking for an SEO checker to examine the outbound links from a site. I was very interested in the article Does Linking to Spam Sites Hurt Your Rankings? Due to the recent parasitic spam-attacks that we discovered last year on our clients' sites, (see the press releases) the answer to this question is not no, as Mariella Moon concludes, but a definite YES. We have comprehensive proof that our clients' search engine positions suffered as a result - one in particular lost all placements in Yahoo, which recovered immediately after removing the inserted links (well the next time there was an update after a crawler visit). Google positions also improved, as did the Toolbar Page Rank of the site. Additionally, another one of our clients had a temporary problem with spam comments after installing a blog, and that too hit rankings in Google - whilst Google was obviously clever enough to realise what was going on, the site ranked several plac...

Website Identity Theft
1970-01-01 00:59:00
I recently came across a case of a website design being stolen, where the duplicate site was being used to host affiliate links. I am presuming, because the site was a top 10 result in Google for a high traffic keyphrase, that the expectation of the copier was that the site would rank for the same phrase and thus gain traffic intended for the original site.  The problem with that sort of masquerade is that (as anyone with any SEO knowledge knows) the backlinks for a site make up a pretty fair amount of the Google ranking algorithm. It is highly unlikely that just copying the site and hosting it on a brand new domain is going to get you anywhere at all. There are scraper sites out there that steal copy in an attempt to rank high for searches, and partly because of this, there is a duplicate content penalty. Sometimes this creates false positives, and hits the original site as well as the scraper (presumably what has happened to SEO expert Sugarrae). But usually, the engines ...
More About: Website , Identity Theft , Theft , Identity

Submission Service From Hell
1970-01-01 00:59:00
I quite like "retro"; I've got a boxfresh pair of black Air Jordan V's, Tetris is still my favourite game and Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture remains brilliant 60plus years on. What these things have in common is that they are still functional and enjoyable, they were created in the past yet people like me still enjoy them today. Clearly this doesn't apply across the board. As the world and it's contents evolve there is a natural order, whereby the dysfunctional is often swept aside and occasionally "new" really does mean "better". In web terms "retro" may have its place in design look-and-feel, but its not really a good idea to use it as a credo for anything else. Where is this going? Its going down a big, dark, lonely hole that's where- or rather it is if you use crappy submission services to promote your site. In the year dot it might have been a vaguely good idea to perform multiple manual submissions to search engines and direct...
More About: Service , Submission , Hell , Missi

Which industries are getting the most traffic from search
1970-01-01 00:59:00
Recently, Advertising Age released their Search Marketing Fact Pack for 2007.  This is a great document to download and keep by your computer for casual reference as it is jam-packed with little factoids. One of the sections provides the top industry categories that are getting the most traffic from search.  At first, I was pretty surprised by the results and so conducted a straw poll around theVL office to find that we were all were guessing similar industries - travel, news, sports, etc.  But we were all wrong. Here's the top 10 industry categories who are getting the highest percentage of their traffic (visits) from search engines: Rank Industry Percent of Traffic from Search Engines 1 Education 44.64% 2 Health and medical 44.43% 3 Food and beverage 39.74% 4 Music 39.16% 5 Community 34.73% 6 Travel 32.51% 7 Government 31.78% 8 Sho...
More About: Industries

Internet Marketing Generalists lack synthesis
1970-01-01 00:59:00
That old adage - jack of all trades, master of none - is true with many things and none more so than with search engine marketing.  Its not an issue of capability.  Many web designers have fantastic skills that would also make them great search marketers or optimisers.  The same is true of many copywriters, web developers, etc. The issue is with consistency of approach, experience and the time required to learn and keep up with best practice in one of the fastest changing industries on the planet.  If your staff (or your agency's staff) are required to be web developers, web designers, analytics specialists and optimisers - there is not enough time in the day to become good let alone great at any of them. This is an industry where specialists really do make a difference and in order to get anyone to become a true expert requires the implementation of a system and hands-on experience. Reading books, blogs and other material on search engine optimisation prov...
More About: Marketing , Internet , Internet Marketing , Lack

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

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

SEO Tip for making Blogger pages more Search Engine Friendly
1970-01-01 00:59:00
Of all the different blogging environments, I've found Blogger  to be one of the best for most of my clients when adding company blogs to their web site. Some of the things that I like about it - its easy to set up, its free, and you can have it generate pages and upload them directly to your website.  This is an important feature as you need your blog to help promote and build your existing web site (www.yourcompany.com/blog/) and not be presented on a separate domain name (yourcompany.blogspot.com).  One of the other benefits is that you can modify the templates for the blogs and change the look and feel so that they blend into your existing web site seamlessly.   In addition to adjusting the style of the blog pages in these templates, you can also implement a few tweaks that will make your blogs more search engine friendly. By default, the blogger template does not create unique page titles for each blog page.  As you probably...
More About: Blogging , Search , Search Engine , Engine

Google Checkout - The Pay Per Click Advantage!
1970-01-01 00:59:00
Google Checkout has been around for a good year now but I'm still rarely seeing online retailers use it. It's highly recommended that all online retailers using Google Adwords should sign up to Google Checkout. The main reason is that the Google Checkout graphic is the only colourful graphic on any Google SERP and reports suggest that CTR can increase by as much as 20%-30% by having this logo displayed next to your ad. What are you waiting for?   James DanielsPPC Campaign Delivery Manager
More About: Google , Pay Per Click , Click , Pay-per-click , Advanta

How to see Google.com USA results from a different country
1970-01-01 00:59:00
If you or your clients have a global or international market, then it can be difficult to understand how your SEO is performing in those countries due to the localisation of search results in Google . Over the past few years, Google has worked to "regionalise" most of its search results.  This means that with each search request, it takes into account which Google domain you are using (e.g. google.co.uk), where you are physically located (usually based on your IP address), any geographical indicators in your search (e.g. Portsmouth), etc. We have a few clients who are marketing their services globally.  This used to be simpler.  Google.com was always the "international" or "global" search engine.  If you wanted UK companies, you searched Google.co.uk.  If you wanted to see how you were doing internationally, then you searched Google.com  - because all the results in Google.com used to be the same - no matter where you were...
More About: Country , Results , Diff

UK Online Ad Spend to Eclipse TV in 2009
1970-01-01 00:59:00
A recent report by Group M demonstrates that they have read their crystal ball and determined that given current growth patterns in spending on TV advertising and internet, there will be more spent online by 2009. There is a good breakdown of the data by eMarketer and a really nice analysis of why this should happen in the UK particularly. The TV market in the UK certainly seems to be anomalous, which is what is giving rise to the potential overtaking in spend, compared to the rest of the world.  Karin von Abrams, the analyst, also points out that in the UK we have had good, concrete examples of online spending that has worked, and this breeds further investment.  I know that in terms of website marketing, the UK is a mature market; it has always been amongst the top countries for internet penetration, use and spending. The National Statistics site has some great up to date information from 2007 about how many UK households have internet access, which is now up to 61%....
More About: Online , Eclipse

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Google Adwords Trademark Issues
1970-01-01 00:59:00
More and more companies are trade marking their personal and product names these days. For people like me who build campaigns for clients, it’s becoming a real pain. If the client is a distributor of a certain trademarked product, there should be an easier way of being accepted when using certain keywords. At present it takes around 4-6 months to receive a trademark acceptance note from Google and that’s before you spoken with the client/company. By this time the client has decided to go elsewhere.   Google needs to be more user friendly with behind the scene actions James DanielsPPC Campaign Delivery Manager
More About: Issues , Google Adwords , Adwords , Trademark

Link Buying - Should You or Shouldn't You?
1970-01-01 00:59:00
Link buying for SEO purposes is a dangerous game. First and foremost: Google says no. It’s wrong. It’s forbidden. It pollutes the natural search listings and violates Google’s search engines’ quality guidelines. On the other hand, however, link buying is a secret art of ‘gaming’ Google and achieving highly relevant search rankings. While the risk of getting caught is too much for most SEOers; reaping the benefits can be worth it. It’s a risky business. Link buying is the practice of paying someone to display a text link to your website from theirs. The idea is to buy links on websites that are relevant to your own and are usually regarded as a trusted and stable source of information. The purpose is to allow you to choose a keyword and link back to your own website which—when updated by Google—will receive the benefits of the link from the higher source. As previously mentioned, however, Google doesn’t believe in link buyi...
More About: Buying , Link

Writing Press Releases for Off-Page Optimisation
1970-01-01 00:59:00
One of the things that we always recommend to our clients is that if they write press releases, then it is (a) a good way to get new fresh content and (b) we can distribute them for additional SEO opportunities. Whilst it is important that your press release contains some of your key phrases, given that you are writing about your own company, this is a fairly natural thing that will happen. So whilst writing you can refer to your keyword list, but don't agonise about getting all of them in. Of course, getting started on a press release is one of the things that many people find difficult. It's that "staring at a blank piece of paper" feeling! So here are a few ideas to get your creative juices flowing on what you could write a press release about: New staff joining Move of office Good sales month New client / renewing client Comment on an industry report that has just been released Charity activity, either for the company or a staff member Starting an eco-fr...
More About: Writing , Press , Press Releases , Page , Misa

NOODP Tagging Makes For 'Truer' Googling
1970-01-01 00:59:00
The "snippet" that Googl e displays below a found page title is taken from DMOZ's Open Directory Project (ODP) or the META DESCRIPTION tag on the page, or from the page contents itself: If your web site is listed in the ODP then Google (and MSN) will regularly use the ODP's description text to describe your web site in their search results. This can be problematic as ODP descriptions are often woefully out of date, not reflecting your current (read: preferred) messaging. It used to be the case that you were forced to suffer this anachronistic data being returned, and take it on the chin... ...that was until May of this year (2007). Google did the decent thing and introduced a Google-specific META robots tag value. The NOODP (No Open Directory Project) robots tag prevents Google from using DMOZ's description. There is a comprehensive practical instruction from Google on how to implement it here, but as a brief overview here are the basics: To prevent all s...
More About: Tagging , Googling

HTML Entities and SEO
1970-01-01 00:59:00
HTML entities I hear you say - what are those? Well, you will almost certainly have used them if you have written any HTML code. They are the little codes that you use to make sure that characters appear correctly when seen in an HTML rendering engine. The most common one you will have come across is probably & - used because the ampersand character does not render in HTML. Other common ones include " for a quotation mark   for a non-breaking space, and in the UK, the useful £ to make sure that your pound signs appear correctly. They are also really useful when you are writing web pages in other languages - you need them for the French character c cedilla (ç) for instance. So what use are these to a search engine optimiser then? Well, the particular one that made me pick up my virtual pen about was ™ - this renders a trademark sign into HTML thus™. Cool eh? Well yes, but this particular symbol is underused on the w...
More About: Html