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Blog Details for "Seo Blog"
Seo BlogSeo BlogVertical Leap's very own blog for lots of information and opinion from the UKmarket leader for Managed Search Engine Marketing Articles
Live search cashback
2008-06-04 14:55:00 Back in October 2007 Microsoft bought Jellyfish.com- an affiliate marketing cash-back comparison engine. This brings their current acquisition total to 119 (Farecast Computer reservations were the latest in April '08). We guessed they bought Jellyfish to harness some of that web 2.0 goodness, rather than the revenues that Jellyfish was bringing in- and we guessed right... ...last month (May 22nd '08) MS launched Live Search cashback. The deal is that they make money from advertising revenues, and then pass some of that revenue on to customers, by means of rebates on purchases. So someone shopping via Live Search cashback gets a kickback on every purchase they make- similar to online-coupon, and cashback sites like FatWallet or Ebates, except that the delivery of the reward/cashback is a little slicker. In practice a shopper uses MS' cashback search to find products provided from a range of online stores, and those stores pay to be listed. Its up to the shopper to pic... More About: Affiliate Marketing , Cashback
Organic SEO - Top tips for Choosing an SEO Company
2008-05-30 15:40:00 Choosing an SEO company can be a confusing with so many companies claiming to be able to optimise your site. Here are our top 5 tips for choosing an SEO Company . Getting Results Don't believe claims that you are guaranteed #1 on Google - no one can guarantee this for you, although some companies might do this for terms that no one is searching on - getting this kind of #1 ranking is worth nothing to you as it won't drive traffic to your website Do listen to companies who tell you they can guarantee improved results on your site - particularly if they are talking about your conversion rate. SEO companies who are looking to drive more targeted traffic to your site and make the site easier to use and navigate are worth talking to. You site should, ideally, get better with an SEO company working on it, and your site certainly shouldn't be worse off following the appointment of an SEO company. Setting clear KPIs for your SEO company and making sure they understand these per... More About: Tips , Organic
Selecting Keywords with Commercial Intent
2008-05-28 13:57:00 Keyword research and analysis is one of the fundamental aspects in search engine marketing (both SEO and PPC). There a number of techniques and tools that can be used to help find the right keywords for a website/business - but there are many flaws in the process that must be addresses both at the time of selection and on an on-going basis. Sometimes keywords are selected because they appear to have high levels of search volume. Search volume can be misreported by the tools used in keyword research. This is often caused by automated software performing searches disguised as human searchers that will totally skew the results for some keywords and industries. Furthermore, search volume does not necessarily mean high levels of site traffic once decent rankings are achieved. If the PPC ad or the site's page title and snippet with Organic/SEO is not providing a compelling reason to click, many searchers will simply "step over" the high ranking site.... More About: Commercial , Keywords
Top Tips for an SEO Friendly CMS
2008-05-21 18:42:00 Many CMS' do not allow the level of manipulation and editing necessary for website search engine optimisation. This is not a criticism of CMS developers, it's just that there are so many factors to consider when building a CMS that the SEO-friendly components are sometimes overlooked. The benefits of building an SEO friendly CMS are three-fold: 1. SEO is a continually growing area- building SEO friendly websites improves your profile 2. Once the key topics are understood you can apply them to other sites in your portfolio 3. The client gets a search-ready site from the off So, by referring to this wish-list, and implementing its recommendations, you will be able to build an even better CMS. 1. Allow the addition/inclusion of pages This might seem obvious, but it is something that allows an optimiser to specify non-standard pages, such as: *Custom 404 error page *Links pages that are used for linking and presenting links *Sitemap page These help increase search visibility an... More About: Tips , Friendly
New free SEO service for bloggers
2008-05-21 16:28:00 We're launching a new service today that will offer bloggers with expert SEO advice... for free. Blogging is becoming increasingly popular for both individuals and companies and many are using standard blogging platforms such aswordpress or blogger. By default, most blogs are not SEO friendly and there are various tips, tricks and tweaks that could be made to improve theblog's structure for the search engines. Our new service will review your blog and make site specific recommendations to help you overcome these issues. Furthermore, SEO is more about "on-page" optimisation and you should also look at building authority/credibility online in the way that a site is interlinked with other web pages. Our new service will assess your current linking profile and provide "real world" advice on how you can enhance your online profile which in turn will have a positive impact on you search engine rankings. In order to take advantage of ... More About: Service , Free , Bloggers
How to see country specific search results in MSN/Live Search
2008-05-09 17:46:00 Back in January, Matt blogged about how to see Google.com results as seen from America and I’ve just discovered that a similar functionality is available on the new Live Search interface, whilst troubleshooting a geolocation issue for one of my clients: Live results Australia http://www.live.com/?scope=web&mkt=en -AU Live results USA http://www.live.com/?scope=web&mkt=en -US Live results United Kingdom http://www.live.com/?scope=web&mkt=en -GB and what about Live results USA in Spanish http://www.live.com/?scope=web&mkt=es -US Live results Spain in Spanish http://www.live.com/?scope=web&mkt=es -ES or perhaps a different alphabet Live results Greece in English http://www.live.com/?scope=web&mkt=en -GR Live results Greece in Greek http://www.live.com/?scope=web&mkt=gr -GR I didn't test whether every ISO country code/language version worked, but this was a nice cross section! Have fun... Kerry DyeCampaign Delivery Manager More About: Country , Results , Specific
MSN/Live Search Engine gets new facelift
2008-05-08 10:53:00 There is something strangely familiar about the new live.com interface.. and a clear sign that Microsoft are starting to look at Google and see where they can emulate their success. For me, this is definitely good news.. not enough to make me switch search engines yet.. but encouraging. The problem with MSN / Live .com was never really with the interface. In fact, I'd say that Yahoo has a greater interface problem than any of the others. The Yahoo home page is still stuck in the late 90's search engine "portal" concept. The simplicity of Google's interface was one of its original attractions. It seems that Microsoft are finally starting to understand this. Further improvements to the SERPs (search engine results pages) were announce Back in October by Microsoft, with better snippets, a larger index and improved spam control. All good things. It is true the the MSN / Live.com search is getting better and if you look at t... More About: Search , Search Engine , Facelift , Engine
Bad Linking and the Worlds Worst SERP Snippet
2008-05-06 14:48:00 Last week I blogged about spam factory websites. This week I'm still in the mood for some spam (yum yum etc.), so when my vanity search for "spam factory websites" brought this back I just had to share it: If I had a site that allowed snippets like this I'd go berserk- it says, very clearly, that the site is spam- big style! The original blog was about fixing micro-site SEO issues, and used some text in an example (read the SEO blog, it makes sense in context): "Aircraft abrasives provided by ACorp.com, suppliers to the aircraft industry." The blog mentions aircraft just twice- in that sentence alone- and clearly has very little else to do with aircraft. Looking at the cached page you see the message: "These terms only appear in links pointing to this page: spam factory websites", so it's not a direct link, but that's not the point. The point is that link building can have serious consequences, and if it's not managed it can cause n... More About: Worlds , Linking , Snippet
Spam Factory Websites
2008-05-02 16:16:00 Web developers and search engine optimizers work with the same basic commodities- web applications and the internet. Web developers (usually) create sites that look good, deliver the right information and exceed their clients' expectations. More and more they are also attuned to the requirement that a site should be able to achieve high search visibility. This means making key components search engine friendly. Building a 100% bespoke site is becoming a rarity- sure, design look and feel, architecture and content are pretty unique factors, but the content management system (CMS) sitting in the background, and/or the database that feeds it are frequently the same. So, your designer/developer may make you a one-off web 2.0 beauty, but chances are its management system is the same as for all their other clients. I'm not about to beat-up on this approach, it allows scale-economies that (should) get passed on to you. It also means that your tech support (should) be top-notch. If t... More About: Spam , Factory , Websites
3 Way Link Exchange Being Abused by Unethical SEOs
2008-05-02 15:22:00 A colleague passed me this recent discussion on Webmaster World which discusses how a lot of SEO experts think that 3 Way link exchange can now be detected algorithmically. 3 way links were developed by the SEO industry in order to create an alternate linking strategy when two-way (or reciprocal) links were ‘devalued'. The idea was that by creating a triangular structure, the links were undetectable. The Webmaster World discussion would seem to imply that more recent thinking is that they are still found. What it highlights perhaps more is that three way links were specifically created to ‘game' the search engines, and perhaps that has made them a target for detection. Aside from the fact that the reciprocal link is not as dead as people think, what I have seen more recently is an increase in link exchange requests that are three way, but offer a poor link in exchange for a quality one. e.g. Dear Webmaster I know you are interested in boosting traff... More About: Link Exchange , Exchange , Link , Unethical , Abused
Warning: Two Ways of Killing Your Organic Rankings in Google
2008-04-30 17:14:00 There is some debate about how much Google uses the clickthough rate of the organic listings to affect where you are listed. However, with two recent examples for our clients giving demonstrable results, one dramatic and one less so, I certainly believe that the clickthrough rate is used for determining your position on a page. In our dramatic example, a UK based holiday company gained a Google Local Map result attached to their listing. Unfortunately it was not their map listing, but some random hotel in the USA. As a result, they experienced a dramatic slide off of page 1 for the majority of their search terms over a period of 1 to 2 weeks. As nothing else had changed, the only explanation for this is that the US address put UK based searchers off clicking on their link. (Thanks Google, that error is a pain to fix). The second site is one that has good organic rankings for a competitive phrase, and is on the first page, but does not seem to be able to move higher. Desp... More About: Warning , Organic , Killing
How Local Search will change how we use the Internet
2008-04-29 16:29:00 Most studies show that a vast majority (something like 60%+) of all searches have what is called "local intent". This means that sometimes the searcher adds a local geographical indicator (e.g. "seo company portsmouth"). But sometimes they search with local intent without being specific about geography - e.g. it is likely that a search for "dentist" has local intent even without being specific about location. The problem however is that the information that forms the foundation for local content searches is spread across a number of unrelated sources such as yellow pages, newspapers, local review sites, local directories and of course, search engines. Additionally, the information in a lot of these sources is either incomplete or out of date and information relating to smaller towns and villages may not exist at all. Major search engines such as Google, MSN and Yahoo are aware of these issues and are investing engineering resources t... More About: Internet , Change , Search , Local , The Internet
Disturbing Google Universal Image Result
2008-04-15 15:28:00 About 6 months ago, Searchengineland.com did a piece about how Google Image Universal Search was no longer family friendly, with an illustration of how a search for "raccoon" brought up an image of a raccoon and a dog being rather..... inappropriate? Matt Cutts later said that the Google Image team had dealt with the issue. Well, when searching for some clients keywords earlier this week, I think that I found an example, that is frankly worse - I searched for "office chair" on Google.com and was greeted with: As Vertical Leap is a family friendly organisation, I have taken the decision to censor the most "offensive" part of the image in question, but you can surely see why I was so surprised by the "illustration". I checked the other major search engines, and saw no sign of this image, so perhaps this has been optimised specifically to appear in Google. The painting in question is called "office chair", but perhaps... More About: Result
Reverse SEO: Kill The Competition And Fill The Void
2008-04-14 11:57:00 As competition in search continues to grow and grow, so to do the efforts of crooks and miscreants to hijack, damage or destroy the legitimately gained rankings of their competitors. We've seen many instances of malicious link insertion and now there are increasing examples of other attacks being used to tar the reputation of targeted websites. If you can create a scenario in which your competitors sites are seen by the search engines as hosting a bunch of spam/malicious links, your site can perform well in the void that is created. The techniques simply insert spam links into the target site. Once Google crawls that site and sees the spam it will see it is untrustworthy- once marked as spam the site may disappear altogether from the rankings. This type of activity has been labeled "evil SEO", but that's way too simplistic a view. It is an attack, in the same way that a defacement is an attack. What is interesting is that the value of search has reached such a peak ... More About: Competition , Fill , Kill
Meta Robots Tag Syntax for SEO
2008-03-20 14:07:00 I just wanted to post a quick blog about the Meta Robots tag. Quite often, we in the SEO world try to make sure that the code element of a page is small in comparison to the amount of visible text on the page. So we move CSS formatting and JavaScript off the page into external files, and we encourage the use of "table-less design". However, we can be less than frugal with the meta robots tag, especially as each tag can be added in a separate line. Therefore, amalgamating them all on one line gives you: <meta name="robots" content ="index, follow, noodp, noydir"> But there is an even shorter syntax, using the "all" reference instead of index and follow. <meta name="robots" content ="all, noodp, noydir"> But remember, if you are writing it for an XHTML site, then you'll need a training slash to make it validate! <meta name="robots" content ="all, noodp, noydir"... More About: Syntax
SEO specialists - we're recruiting
2008-03-12 10:52:00 As one of the UK's largest and most successful search engine marketing companies, demand for our services based on our unique approach called TotalPropulsion is growing at a record pace. We are therefore recruiting for one of our key positions - the Campaign Delivery Manager. This particular role is primarily based around Organic SEO and involves managing a portfolio of new and existing Search Engine Marketing campaigns that are based on long term contracts and ensuring that they are delivered to a very high standard. This is a varied, absorbing and rewarding position. Essentially, you will ensure that your clients' campaigns are operating efficiently and effectively, overseeing a team of SEO technicians, web developers and link builders through the process, troubleshooting where necessary, and most of all ensuring that client web sites are generating business from the major search engines. This position also includes the following core responsibilities: Manage organ... More About: Recruiting
Nice tool to help understand site performance and loading time
2008-03-10 16:48:00 Last week I wrote a blog on Google's introduction of load time as a factor in determining quality score in Adwords. As this may effect all our clients, we needed to look for something easy to use to better assess the impact of this change. I discovered a nice little tool from a site monitoring company called pingdom. The tool is called "Full Page Test" and it very visually demonstrates the size and loading time of all elements on your website (css, images, javascript). This is a much better approach to many alternatives out there as it more accurately simulates the loading time that would exist in a browser/client. Here's how a typical result will look: In our own tests, loading time for our clients' landing pages ranged from 1.1 seconds to 21.2 seconds. Naturally, we will be speaking to the slower sites to see what can be done to tweak their site. Usually it is down to images that have not been reduced or optimised for the web and so ... More About: Performance , Time , Site , Tool , Nice
Load-time can now influence your Adwords quality score
2008-03-05 08:31:00 Someone over at a webmaster world forum noticed that since 8 February, Adwords is now using load time as a factor in determining the quality score for your Adwords account. This change appears to be so recent that Google has not updated their help system. I tried to find more information about this topic before writing this blog post and could not.. and then clicked on the link to get the full FAQ in one page - https://adwords.google.com/support/?fulld ump=1. What I found was this: How does website load time affect my landing page quality? Beginning in February 2008, you'll be able to see a grade for your website's load time in your AdWords account. 'Load time' refers to the amount of time it takes for a user to arrive at your functional landing page after clicking your ad. Several weeks after your load time grade becomes visible, it will begin to impact your landing page quality and, therefore, your Quality Score . We recommend working to improve your load... More About: Time , Influence
Top 5 SEO Plugins for WordPress
2008-02-28 16:40:00 If you're looking to start up a new blog — or switch from an existing blog software — then I can't recommend WordPress enough. In my opinion it's the best open source blogging platform out there, it's easy to use and highly flexible. There are so many great aspects to WordPress that I could write about it all day, but maybe another time. Today I will be focusing on it's Plugins feature and how you can customise your blog with third party tools. There are thousands of plugins for WordPress, so I couldn't comment on them all, I'll just be looking at the top 5 SEO plugins and how these can benefit your blog. 1. All-in-One SEO Pack To kick things off, I give you the All-in-One SEO Pack. This is a great place to start because it covers all the basics with a whole range of new options for you to play around with. The most important section gives you the ability to manually create a page title, meta description and meta keywords for each individual blog post. Cl... More About: Wordpress
SEO for Travel Sites Brings Extra Dividends in January
2008-02-28 13:21:00 I worked in a company previously that had a travel arm, and throughout the period I was there we noticed a trend towards people booking holidays later instead of the traditional rush in January . So what is surprising to me moving in to the SEO arena, where we monitor and drive traffic for quite a few travel industry clients, is how important January still is for travel. For retail clients, November and December are the big months, where they rake in a considerable amount of their takings. For business to business clients and for travel, they wait eagerly for Christmas to pass, because come the New Year, that is when they start getting the extra visitors to their site and the extra sales. And even despite the “credit crunch” and spending fears, many of our clients still recorded record traffic months in January 2008. A little search in Google Trends brings up the result for travel that we would expect from this, but we can also clearly see that there is a build up over... More About: Travel , Sites , Dividends , Extra
Yahoo Opens Search Results
2008-02-27 17:23:00 Embracing a more open source philosophy, after their Hadoop roll out, Yahoo has also announced that they will be opening their search results. Whilst as several people have pointed out, this is similar to Google's Subscribed Links it won't necessarily require people to explicitly sign up - some of them will show to normal searchers. After the continuing furore over the Microsoft Bid for Yahoo it is an interesting slant that this openness of content would make the search more interesting, using the power of user-generated content, which is very un Microsoft! Wikia Search is one response to this trend and follows on from previous user-generated content successes like Wikipedia and Open Directory - albeit that both have their problems with the open nature. We will be watching how this develops with great interest! Kerry DyeCampaign Delivery Manager More About: Results , Yahoo!
Google Mobile: Portable Local Search
2008-02-26 15:09:00 As Matt reported on 31 Jan 2008, Google released enhanced mobile search in the UK. Since the official release of the application on February 21 I've been playing with the Symbian S60 incarnation on a Nokia n95 8gb. Here's what I found: The claim by Robert Hamilton (Google Mobile 's Product Manager) that using the ‘phone app, rather than opening a web browser, reduces the initial search time by 40% is bang on- comparably it is incredibly fast. Installing it is a doddle. From your ‘phone go to Google Mobile and download it. Once installed there's a default option to use a screen shortcut: ...but I preferred to disable it and place a shortcut in the active standby apps toolbar (I found that the screen shortcut can get in the way if you've a long list of reminders): If you're a geek, like me, there's a certain amount of satisfaction from seeing that little ‘G' logo on your ‘phone. But does it justify it's existence? In use it has so far pe... More About: Portable , Search , Local
Yahoo! Uses Distributed Computing to Speed up Search Index Processing
2008-02-26 11:18:00 After wading through the official blogs http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/00052 1.html on this subject, which mainly deal with the fact it is the world's largest Hadoop installations, I've got a few interesting facts from the SEO point of view. The Webmap (which is the database that feeds their algorithm) now generates in a third less time than it did before It keeps track of roughly 1 trillion links It uses 10,000 Linux cores (which doesn't mean 10,000 computers or even 10,000 processors, as processors are multi-core, but I guess it makes a nice round number) So hopefully that's some information that might actually be of use when talking to someone non-technical or if you have a need to discuss it with a client. Kerry DyeCampaign Delivery Manager More About: Yahoo , Search , Computing , Speed , Index
Google Testing Adsense (PPC Ads) in Videos
2008-02-22 08:32:00 Google has recently launched its public beta of Adsense for videos in the US. This will not be video ads - but a new system to embed adwords/adsense text ads into videos on blogging sites and yes, sites similar to YouTube.com (which currently has its own format). As a viewer, I may find these ads intrusive - despite how relatively low-key they are. As an advertiser, I would be salivating. The new system is currently only available in the US and only in English. It will also only be made available to sites streaming more than a million videos per month. That's the restriction for the publishers, I don't believe that there will be restrictions for advertisers. When someone is watching a video - you have their attention. They are not scanning a page, they are watching. The ads at the bottom of the video will be seen by the viewer - without a doubt. This should be a very effective - but I suspect expensive way to achieve better... More About: Videos , Google , Testing , Adwords
How is Google SEO Different to Regular SEO?
2008-02-21 13:54:00 This blog is actually a result of me misremembering a possible blog title that was on our list of suggestions. I’ve actually concatenated two titles, but it should do the trick in covering what I wanted to talk about. So, in thinking about the title that I remembered wrong, my answer to the question was at first "It isn’t!" and then I considered my answer a bit more carefully, and realised that whilst when we do a site optimisation we don’t specifically do anything to target Google above other engines (more on this from Rand at SEOMoz), at least initially. But there are things that we do that we know impacts mostly on the Google rankings, or perhaps with a more marked result on the Google rankings. And after all, with Google having such a large slice of the search pie they are the best engine to concentrate on for incremental gains because the website traffic boost is considerable. Now that the Supplemental Index is no longer in existence it is more di... More About: Regular
5 Insights into Live Search SEO
2008-02-20 17:22:00 I've written several times now over the last few months about MSN/Live Search , and they have been pretty popular blogs on our website, with traffic from search engines, Sphinn and StumbleUpon among others. This is just a quick post to tie them all together all in one place. What Everybody Ought to Know About MSN/Live Search and 301 Redirects If You Don't Rank in MSN/ Live Search How Much Traffic Are You Missing Out On? 5 Ways to Get More SEO Help on Live/MSN Search Results Live Search Results Update January 2008 Recent Changes in Live Search Engine October 2007 Have fun, and I hope these SEO tips for Live Search are useful to you. Kerry DyeCampaign Delivery Manager More About: Insights
SEO Benefits of Website Forms
2008-02-20 10:56:00 When you contact someone/make a request/post a comment etc etc through a website form you are likely to be seeking a response- otherwise why bother? It could be that (e.g.): -someone will get back to you -your words will appear on the site -you'll get to download that plugin you've been jonesing for ...whatever the response, it is utterly reliant on the form mechanism. Forms can be great- if they're well constructed, meet the expectations of your visitor and actually work that is. For example they can increase your conversion rates, get you talking with more people, give you a managed distribution platform, gather information etc. However (you knew that was coming, right?), a bad form is worse than none. Typically a bad form is one that allows you to submit it with null data, or is too long, or is not intuitive, or doesn't let the visitor have a (little) bit of leeway over what they can enter (e.g. restrictive address fields). I'm an advocate of the humble form, and reg... More About: Website , Benefits
What Everybody Ought to Know About MSN/Live Search and 301 Redirects
2008-02-19 13:49:00 It has been reported for quite some time that MSN/Live does not handle 301 redirects gracefully. Whilst putting in a 301 redirect is picked up in Google within days and Yahoo within a few weeks, on MSN it might never be interpreted correctly. As search engine optimizers something we often do is recommend 301 redirects - perhaps because a page has moved, or search engine friendly URLs have been implemented using rewrites. It is a key tool in the SEO armoury. There is some additional discussion at Sphinn from various SEOs, but if you are moving a site, or considering moving one, here is a great guide from SEO Book How to Move a Website... Should You Fear 301 Redirects Hurting Your Rankings? This post goes through the process in detail. Clearly there was a traffic loss from MSN, but then again, how much traffic are you going to miss out on anyway? This was addressed in my previous blog: If You Don't Rank in MSN/ Live Search How Much Traffic Are You Missing Out On? Generally, t... More About: Live Search
New SEO Keyword Game Launched
2008-02-15 16:12:00 If you show a simple image to a group of people and ask them to write down what keywords they would use in a search engine like Google to find the object, you'd be amazed at how varied the responses will be. We typically use this technique to help people understand that not everyone thinks like they do. I know - it shocks me too sometimes. Take the following image: This has been shown to dozens of people today and here's the verdict (from our "straw poll"): perfume (33.33%) chanel perfume (18.52%) chanel (14.81%) chanel eau de parfum (3.70%) 150ml channel no 19 (3.70%) bottle of perfume (3.70%) chanel number 19 perfume (3.70%) chanel no 19 (3.70%) chanel number 19 (3.70%) number 19 channel (3.70%) no 19 chanel (3.70%) number 19 chanel (3.70%) So - the obvious choice of perfume hits #1, but you sta... More About: Keyword , Game , Launched
The No 1 UK Local Search Query is?
More articles from this author:2008-02-14 14:03:00 I was reading Matt McGee's excellent post on local search queries when I was researching for my local search in the UK post. Whilst it isn't relevant for the UK (Craigslist exists in some UK localities but hasn't taken off), I was spurred to do some research to find the answers to similar questions in the UK, because it is of interest for our local SEO clients. Using Keyword Discovery, but restricted to the UK Database, I checked on 7 places in the UK of varying sizes to see what the top queries were using the city/town name. These are the results that I discovered correlated between the cities using the top 20 results. Football Club (I should have seen that one coming given the conversations in this office on a Monday morning) Airport University Hotels Jobs Other correlations included venues (e.g. arenas, cinemas and theatres), tourist destinations, and local news sources (e.g. newspapers). What is perhaps curious is that although these searches have local inte... More About: Search , Local , Query 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 |
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