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Google cares about your hacked website- kind of
2008-06-06 15:27:00
If you've been keeping up with our security comments and news you'll be aware that not only have we offered advice to the information security community , but we're more than happy to spread the love in all directions. In the same vein Matt Cutts has explained how Google helps hacked sites. His definition of "help" is a bit flaky, but the intention is good- and "no", the road to hell isn't always paved with good intentions- in Google's case they're doing the right thing, but calling it the wrong name. They're not helping hacked sites, they're protecting the rest of us from the fallout of hacked sites, which is substantially different. What they do which is pretty cool is that they notify you when they have banned your site, and why. So, if you're oblivious to the attack Google are doing you a favour- they're absolutely not obliged to, so be grateful- seriously. Google also provide self-help resources so that you can pick yourself up again: ...
More About: Website , Hacked

Internet Sales: Top Five tips to convert your website visitors
2008-05-23 15:55:00
Website Conversions as important as traffic to websites and page rankings When working on the promotion of your website, one thing you need to consider is that the traffic you receive and your presence on the major search engines is not the whole story! You need to ensure that all that extra traffic is converting to sales for you. There is no benefit to your business if you're not making the sales/generating the business. Firstly you need to decide what your goal is with the website - what actions do you want your visitors to take? Use your analytics tool to find out what your visitors are doing - are they interacting with your services like buying products or signing up for your newsletter? Or do your visitors leave the site without interacting with it in any way? Doing this research enables you to find out if your website has enough "hooks" to keep visitors interested. So, you now know what you want from your site and what your visitors are currently doing. If ...
More About: Internet , Website , Tips , Sales , Visitors

Online Marketing with Yahoo! Buzz
2008-05-14 17:45:00
Yahoo! have introduced Yahoo! Buzz (Y!Buzz) into the highly popular social media arena. Similar to Digg and Reddit, Yahoo! Buzz allows web users to rate articles and blogs creating a list of popular content. Recent trend results on the Internet show that Yahoo! Buzz is dramatically increasing the volume of their users and the amount of time these users are spending on the site. Due to the rise in popularity of Y! Buzz there are some real opportunities to get more traffic to your site using their services. How Yahoo! Buzz works Taking rankings from popular searches on Yahoo! as a start point, Yahoo! Buzz then factors into their rankings the number of times an article or blog entry has been "Buzzed" or sent to a friend to create a list of the most popular items. Stories that get the most "Buzz" using these factors may be included on the Yahoo! homepage. Yahoo! Buzz is currently in Beta testing on the main Yahoo! US site so the number of Publishers is currently ...
More About: Marketing , Yahoo , Online Marketing

Inbound Link Penalty Issues in Google
2008-05-14 14:19:00
I was reading Web Optimist’s blog on being penalised for someone else’s paid links (which isn’t very optimistic!) and I had to read it through a couple of times to get the gist of what he was saying. This is the paragraph that caused me to pause “This is where Google ’s minus 60 penalty appears to be unjust. It has the potential of penalizing the innocent. Say someone linking to you has bought text links and Google penalizes them. That means you are going to indirectly be penalized as well because that #1 link to you is now at #61. If several sites linking to you get penalized, it could really hurt.” Whilst that’s true in essence I’m not sure where the unjust bit comes into it. The World Wide Web is a whole network of links, which is the basis of many of Google’s ranking factors. Every link has a value, and the fact that one has been devalued is just another element in the process of SEO. Link s get devalued for lots of reasons...
More About: Issues , Penalty

Google's Website Optimizer Tool Now Available to All
2008-04-21 16:39:00
Do you want to know if a new version of a landing or content page will out-perform the current version?   Does your marketing manager think that a red "call to action" button would outperform the current blue one?  Wouldn't it be nice to have some way of testing the potential impact of changes like this before you actually replace a design or page completely?  For the past year or so, Google has had a tool called Website Optimizer that provides this sort of testing (A/B and multi-variant) but it has been available only to Adwords accounts.  Last week, Google made it publicly available. This is a truly excellent tool and I highly recommend that you try it out.  You simply sign up with an existing Google account and create one of two types of "experiments": 1. A/B Testing.  This is useful when you want to compare the performance of two or more content pages (e.g. landing pages).  We recently ran tests on our landing p...
More About: Tool

Useful SEO FireFox Extensions
2008-04-11 13:11:00
I was an IE user for a decade or more but have now been using FireFox exclusively for well over a year.  Personally, I don't like the font rendering in FireFox - when viewing a page in IE, the font smoothing makes a real impact and sites look much better... but there are enough improvements over IE for me that I can live with this issue. FireFox has a couple of great features that are the driving force for me to have made a permanent switch in browser: 1. Error Console - this has been an invaluable feature to me for debugging issues with JavaScript. 2. Extensions - MS missed the boat with IE by trying to force their plug-in technology around ActiveX.  FireFox extensions are simpler.  They are small software programs that literally extend the function of FireFox.  There are hundreds of them created for all sorts of reasons.. and just about all of them are free.  From an SEO point of view, there are several that are really useful.  And so I though...
More About: Firefox

SEO hackers - the three ways to tell if your site has been link hacked
2008-04-04 13:43:00
If you've followed our blog over the past few months, you will have noticed a lot of posts relating to sites being hacked for the purposes of search engine optimisation.   This is a relatively new phenomenon and gaining in frequency. One of our SEO CDM's (Kerry Dye) has just had an article published in the March issue of Network Security Newsletter - called "Website abuse for search engine optimisation".  You can register to get a free issue on their website or you can view the specific article on ScienceDirect.com. In case you may be concerned about your own site, here are three ways that will help you tell if you have been "link hacked": 1. Visual check - obvious perhaps, but regularly check your site's homepage and make sure that nothing is out of place.  One of our clients recently was the victim of an attack that did not involve their own site at all, but the tracking code of their 3rd party analytics tool.  The javascript was ...
More About: Site , Link , Hackers , Hacked

PPC Management Team Expansion
2008-04-04 12:55:00
A big welcome to Jayne Wiltshire who joined our sales team this week.  Jayne joins Vertical Leap from our Portsmouth neighbours at IBM HQ where she was part of the media sales team (sometimes seems like half of the company worked at IBM at some point in their careers).  Jayne's primary focus will be with our PPC Management team offering both sales and account management.  Our PPC service is growing at an amazing pace on the back of a solid track record of client success; in fact, we have an 85% renewal rate for PPC contracts with our clients. I'm very excited to have Jayne join our team. Matt HopkinsManaging Director
More About: Team , Expansion

Trademarks and PPC-the legal landscape unfolds
2008-04-01 08:25:00
We often have Clients inquire regarding what actions to take when a competitor "steals" their brand name or trademarked products/services.  I came across an article (http://searchengineland.com/070903-15002 1.php) that summarizes several important cases of recent past.  These would provide an excellent point of reference allowing for research in greater detail on a number of issues relevant to Companies today trying to protect their hard won Brand Reputation. There is a great deal more than initially incorporated in determining the rights of a trademark holder and as with most aspects of the law-there are still many shades of grey that have yet to be clarified.  This is an area of the Search Engine Marketing and Pay-per-Click industry that will be unfolding for years to come and represents the interests of many companies that have either already incorporated Search Engine Marketing into their Integrated Marketing Mix and those who have yet to put their t...
More About: Landscape , Legal , Trademarks

Comscore reports yet another drop in Sponsored Listings (PPC)
2008-03-28 05:28:00
With Pay Per Click Advertising continuing to drop every month since November 2007, where could things be going.  It is difficult to judge without an annual set of data, but by analysing the changes per month there are several conclusions that could be drawn. Fewer consumers are clicking on sponsored listings?  Google had 12.7% clicks of overall searches in November 2007 but this had decreased to 10.6% in February 2008.  That is nearly a 16.5% decrease in market share three months later.  Perhaps they are becoming more relevant?  This argument is always used to justify the never ending increases in Pay Per Click costs to the end user while not explaining the diminishing returns. The Sponsored listings have a reduced click area since November so that explains it?  This is an easy answer that has been thrown around since late last year but doesn't carry as much relavance or weight as time goes on. What this does seem to support is ...
More About: Listings , Drop

How many number one search engine rankings?
2008-03-27 10:20:00
I was looking at a competitor's site for SEO services the other day and they made a few boasts in their landing page about their track record.  One of the bullet points said that they had 200 clients which was not too bad. As a comparison, we currently have over 100 campaigns under active management.  But another claim stated that they had achieved "500 number one rankings" for these clients (an average of 2.5 per client).  Well this didn't seem to many to me - and so I thought I'd review our current portfolio of campaigns to see what our numbers are. If we look at all the major and regional search engines that we track for our current campaigns only, we currently have achieved 3,214 number one rankings (an average of 32+ per client).  If we looked at Google alone - we currently have 417 number one rankings (an average of 4+ per client).  No too shabby. If we expand that to top 10 rankings - the number goes to 2,193 in Google and reaches 17,...
More About: Search , Search Engine , Engine , Number

Local results in Google maps added by users
2008-03-17 15:51:00
It is being reported in a number of blogs that Google are adding the ability for any user to add a place into Google maps. Currently, in order to add or edit a place/business in Google maps you need to register with Google Local Business Centre.  The registration involves a process that verifies that the business details (address, phone number, etc) are correct and can take anywhere from a few days (register by phone) to a few weeks (by post). The recent reports say that Google is implementing functionality to allow anyone to add a place into Google Maps and that these will be available to all search users (globally) within a few hours.  Although only available at the moment in the USA, apparently a new option is available on the left hand side when performing a search that says "Can't find what you're looking for? Add a place to the map."  As the following images demonstrate: I really am curious how this will be "policed" and ver...
More About: Results

Search Within a Site on Google Results
2008-03-06 11:23:00
Google has recently launched a new "onebox" feature, where a site gets not only their sitelinks and a stock quote if they have one, but also a search box that searches the site. Here's an example:   Whilst the technology to do this search isn't ground breaking (it does a site: search with your search term appended), it is interesting that they have chosen to do it. According to Google, it is an extension of the Site links and deals with secondary searching of a site. So those sites that people search for and then search again using that term. Apparently, it came out of their study of "teleporting" - a name they use for the user behaviour of searching for a company name.  Again, like Sitelinks, the need for them is generated algorithmically, based on the liklihood of a user doing a secondary search. Interestingly though, it's adding more "clutter" to the Google interface, and pushing the second and subsequent results further dow...
More About: Google , Results , Search

Google's New Conversion Optimizer - The Worst Tool Ever....
2008-02-14 18:00:00
In recent times Google have released many new tools to help assist people like me manage PPC campaigns productively. A new tool called the conversion optimizer caught my interest as I manage quite a few CPA target driven campaigns. To actually use this tool, the campaign that you wish to test needs to accumulate 200 conversions within 30 days. I managed to achieve this and was ready to use the Google conversion optimizer. The way it works is that instead of entering in a CPC bid price you enter a CPA target price. My target was £6.00 as the campaign was currently operating at £11.00. Everyone wants a better return on investment (ROI) right. Well if so don’t use Google conversion optimizer. As good as it may sound, after just two days of using this tool my overall CPA had shot up from £11.00 to £32.57. After all the excitement of being able to use this tool I soon realised that managing the campaign’s CPA targets myself was a far better option. ...
More About: Tool , Conversion , Optimizer

Google local search OneBox now displaying 10 results
2008-02-06 10:27:00
Google has recently implemented a change to how they display the local search results map in the main web results (aka the "OneBox").   When Google detects that your search query may have "local intent" and is related to a single location (e.g. The London Eye) or local business or service, it will display a map at the top of the results along with a company or location that it has determined to match your request.   This section in the Google search engine results pages (SERPS) is also known as the "OneBox" - and comes in a number of variations - maps, local businesses, movies, video, etc. Single Result in Local OneBox For quite some time, these results were similar to the one above - limited to a single result or at most five results.  Multiple Results in Local OneBox But now, Google has expanded this and is listing as many as 10 companies in the results - along with their web site and phone number.   This is...
More About: Google , Search , Google Local

Google comments on Microsoft's bid for Yahoo
2008-02-04 14:29:00
Yesterday Google came out with a full, sanctioned, comment on the possibility of Microsoft 's takeover of Yahoo ! The Microsoft bid has been interpreted by Google as hostile, and the tone of Steve Balmer's email to Yahoo! 's board doesn't suggest otherwise. In fact the email of January 31st refers to a letter that he received in February 2007 from Yahoo!'s chairman Roy Bostock, Bostock is reported to have said "now is not the right time from the perspective of our shareholders to enter into discussions regarding an acquisition transaction"- so, has anything changed since then? In a word "no". Ballmer bangs on about the commercial benefits to both parties, but after a thorough read its clear that Microsoft would act with hostility should their softly-softly approach fall on deaf ears: "Depending on the nature of your response, Microsoft reserves the right to pursue all necessary steps to ensure that Yahoo!'s shareholders are provided with the ...
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The Next Installation To The Ever Expanding Google Adwords Product - Google
1970-01-01 00:59:00
In Google 's quest to take over the marketing world, their next venture is called Google Print Ads. The Time of London has reported that the service would employ a method similar to an auction. Customers/Businesses would be able to choose a newspaper online through Google and place a bid for advertising space. The bids that are made through Google Print Ads would be on a day-to-day and page-by-page basis. Bidders would offer the price they are willing to pay for the ads, and newspaper publishers would then decide whether to accept the offer. Google stands to take a piece of the advertising sales from every deal between advertisers and publishers. There looks to be no end to the ever expanding Google Adwords product.... James DanielsPPC Campaign Delivery Manager
More About: Product , Alla

SEO is a waste of effort
1970-01-01 00:59:00
SEO is a waste of effort - at least that's what some people will lead you to believe.  Every now and then, waves of debates erupt on various blogs, forums and other online discussion groups with statements that search engine optimisation is over-rated, dead, outdated or simply an impossible goal.  I frequently watch these from the sidelines and silently chuckle to myself.  Usually, the SEO "nay-sayer" is involved in another form of online marketing such as web design, affiliate marketing, or banner advertising.  What usually tickles me is that these folks typically offer "alternative" approaches that work "way better than SEO".  These "anti-SEO" approaches include - developing a content-rich site, networking online to get others to link to your content, making sure that your site is well-structured and standards compliant, etc, etc, etc.  What amazes me is that no one ever really points out to them that these...
More About: Waste

Google Search Bug
1970-01-01 00:59:00
Google has evolved to throw up local results when its appropriate, so when you search for e.g. "southampton restaurants" it should bring back a local search result with a map as well as regular web pages. It works for loads of relatively simple searches e.g. "Derby butchers", "York bakers" etc. (sadly no candlestick makers though). Google's geographical response is dependant on your location. If I search the web (rather than pages from the UK) for "portsmouth bagels" it brings back a little map showing the bagel shop just round the corner from us here in Portsmouth on the south coast of England- rather than the Dunkin' Donuts on Lafayette Rd in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, USA. These results should be consistent regardless of your location (assuming you're not using some kind of onion routing), but we've discovered a consistent error when checking hotels. Here's what we found: Search ing "portsmouth hotels" from her...
More About: Google , Google Search

Small Firms Suffering From Rising PPC Costs
1970-01-01 00:59:00
Pay Per Click (PPC) marketing has been around for a good few years now and there's no sign of it slowing down. Back in the early days of PPC companies were bidding on highly generic terms for just £0.10, nowadays its more like £10.00. For this reason many smaller companies are struggling to keep up with the competition. Bigger companies with deep pockets are saturating the markets and leaving no room for the smaller company. This in my eyes is online marketing discrimination and Google is giving out the impression that they are only interested in the big spenders. Come on Google, give the rest of us a chance…. Still I suppose we still have Yahoo and MSN to help, or do we? James DanielsPPC Campaign Delivery Manager
More About: Small , Suffering , Costs , Firms , Erin

Search engine submission services - what a waste of money
1970-01-01 00:59:00
It's the last day of 2007 and I still can't believe that there are companies out there selling "search engine marketing" services that are primarily based on a small amount of SEO and then a monthly submission service.   This is a concept that was considered "old hat" and ineffective even when we first opened our doors back in 2001.  To think that as a new year approaches there are companies still ripping off their clients with these sort of ineffective services is a cause of great frustration for many of us trying to offer legitate and effective search marketing services. You should be aware that you rarely have to submit a site to any search engine at all these days,  but if you do - it is only needed once (when you launch a new site).  Resubmitting your site to the search engines will not help you and your website rankings.  These sorts of services tend to be automated and unmanned and are a complete waste of money.  ...
More About: Services , Money , Search , Search Engine , Engine

Universal Search - Great Example
1970-01-01 00:59:00
There's been lots of discussion about universal search (aka "blended" search) results in Google over the past several months but I rarely see a true example of its use.  I guess that I perform a lot of B2B type of searches and the blended search concept is currently moretargeted at the consumer. But last week, I was searching for information on the new Will Smith movie - I Am Legend - and was presented with a classic example of universal search. As you can see, there are several elements that go beyond the traditional web page results: 1. Film/Movie Information - at the top (below the sponsored listing), you can see that there is a link to the movie trailer and a box to enter your post code so that you can locate cinemas and film times. 2. News - below the film box is a section of news results 3. Web Pages - then you get a few web results (50% of which are wikipedia) 4. YouTube - you then get a YouTube link So this is what universal search is about - search res...
More About: Search , Great , Universal , Univers

Looking to the long tail when seeking topics for your blog
1970-01-01 00:59:00
Many companies are now regularly writing a blog, and Joe talked yesterday about the SEO Benefits of a Company Blog . Once you have that blog, you have to decide what you want to write that blog about. Are you ever stuck for ideas on what to write? At times it seems that there are a never ending amount of topics to choose from, sometimes there can be lots going on in your industry, whilst at other times it can seem that there is nothing new to write about without just rehashing what everyone else might be talking about. One source of ideas for blog topics can be to look at the "long tail" phrases that you perhaps do not rank as prominently as you would like for. You can do some keyword research for this, in the same way as you might when deciding phrases to target with organic search, to ensure that you are targeting something that people might be looking for. This may not work for competitive phrases however, as these are difficult to establish rankings for, but spec...
More About: Topics , Long , Long tail , Seeking

SEO Benefits of a Company Blog
1970-01-01 00:59:00
Here are some questions that website owners often puzzle over when the notion of a company blog is suggested: 1. Why would I go to the trouble of writing yet more content for my already populated website? 2. Why should I create a website and then still have the hassle of finding new and interesting things to publish to it? 3. Why, after I've invested time and money in building my website, am I advised to keep tweaking and changing it- wasn't it good enough in the first place? To answer these questions it is helpful to take a step back, and remind ourselves of the fundamental aspects of website visibility and popularity. No matter how "perfect" a website may seem, its visibility to the search engines is temporal- over time an unmanaged site will drop off the engines radar. One way of contributing to your websites visibility is to regularly provide fresh content. Once your site is indexed the engines will discover that it is a site which constantly changes- with add...
More About: Company , Blog , Benefits

One down, many more to go - SEO Company CEO arrested
1970-01-01 00:59:00
There are a lot of unscrupulous companies out there offering phony or weak SEO services and ultimately ripping off their clients.  For those of us who are trying to contribute to making this industry professional and ethical, it is a source of great frustration.  I came across this posting on Search Engine Watch today - highlighting the arrest of the CEO of one of the more infamous SEO companies - TrafficPower.  This is one of the few search marketing companies that has been "named and shamed" formally by Google and had all of its pages and all of the pages of its customers' websites banned from the Google index (along with Yahoo,MSN, and the rest). I don't know anything about the current trouble Matt Marlon is in, but it seems that his scamming was not limited to the search industry.  It does, however, highlight the need for prospective buyers of SEO services to be cautious.  There are a lot of companies out there offering what appear to b...
More About: Arrested , Company

New Year resolution 2008 - Re-allocate and improve your budget reach withou
1970-01-01 00:59:00
Just where will the savvy marketer be allocating budget this year? Could 2008 present an opportunity to take advantage of an increasing trend for your audience to make the internet their first port of call when looking for the goods and services you sell without the need to increase your overall budget? January is always a long, cold month, but from a business point of view 2008 looks about as inviting as a return trip on a Virgin train. Retailers are already slashing costs after a dismal Christmas and projections are looking bleak all round due in part to a looming credit crunch that makes budget allocation and achieving bang for buck on that nigh on impossible to decide on. And so it is reassuring that WPP's GroupM predicts that internet search is expected to contribute up to three quarters of all advertising revenue growth this year. Overall advertising will grow by 6% in 2008, but without the contribution of Google and other search engines, the rate of improvement across...
More About: New Year , Budget , Reach , Improve , Pay-per-click

Google Toolbar gets Clever with 404 Handling
1970-01-01 00:59:00
The latest version of the Google Toolbar has introduced advanced handling for 404 errors. This involves realising that the page is not going to load, and giving you alternate content in that situation. For a "File not Found" that includes giving you links to alternative places you might want to go: Other activities include showing you the cached version of the page if the site is down and suggestions for mistyped URLs. All of which are designed to improve the web experience. As part of our search engine optimization of a site, we always check that File Not Found pages return the correct header status (404), and we try to implement a custom page for the site that (a) looks like the site and (b) gives a lost searcher some options of where to go to. According to the blog entry on Google Webmaster Central, this will still work, it is only the short versions that will be interpreted as in the screenshot above. It is a nice move to increase usability of the web as a...
More About: Clever , Google Toolbar