March 2008
Monthly Archive
“SEO Resistant Search” – does the Social Graph hold the future of Search?
Posted by Katia Pereria on 14 Mar 2008 | Tagged as: SEO Strategy, Social Media
What is “SEO Resistant Search” you ask? Scoble has coined this term to refer to a search engine powered by the social graph which isn’t subject to the same SEO manipulation that Google is.
“Social graph” meaning “the global mapping of everybody and how they’re related”
With the recent rise and proliferation of social networks, the social graph comes into the spotlight. Unlike the one that scientists have been studying, this one is digital and defined explicitly by connections in all social networks.
Duplicate content in laymen’s terms
Posted by Dylan Brent on 13 Mar 2008 | Tagged as: Copywriting
Duplicate content is often seen as substantial chunks of content across two or more domains that are identical to each other or noticeably similar. The reason search engines frown upon duplicate content is that when bringing up results it would be best for there to be as many diverse interlinking pieces of content as possible, without having several of the same or obviously similar pages of content popping up in the SERPs.
Crouching tiger, hidden tail
Posted by Caitlin Smythe on 12 Mar 2008 | Tagged as: SEO Strategy
The long tail of a key term ranks for words that appear in the top 10 to 20 keywords. In aggregation, long tail searches generate the left over chunk of traffic that primary keywords disregard. Thorough SEOs will sculpt your groups of key terms by sifting through AdWords or other keyword tools, and selecting the highly relevant from the whole group, sometimes including synonyms. But many don’t take into account the invisible long tail, which comprises of words that keyword tools don’t supply. Mimicking the hidden long tail in your site is underground guesswork. It’s like playing golf in the dark and still hitting a hole-in-one. But it can be done.
Google’s new Benchmarking Feature - only available if you opt to share your data anonymously
Posted by Melissa Fillau on 12 Mar 2008 | Tagged as: Analytics, Hot off the Press
Google has a new Benchmarking feature! At last you can compare your data to that of the rest of your industry, or any other industry for that matter.
You can evaluate data such as number of visits to your site, number of page views, number of pages per visit, bounce rate, average time spent on your site, and new visits.
To obtain this information though, you have to be willing to share your data anonymously. See the message below that would have appeared in your AdWords and/or Analytics accounts.
DAO makes for easy armchair searching
Posted by Sandra Cosser on 12 Mar 2008 | Tagged as: SEO Strategy
Articles and blog posts on the longevity of SEO abound. Experts argue whether it’ll be able to evolve sufficiently in relation to increasingly sophisticated user needs. Some people already see it as an archaic system designed to suit search engine algorithms and spiders, without fully considering or understanding searchers themselves.
Undermining analytics is just plain stubborn
Posted by Phil Smulian on 12 Mar 2008 | Tagged as: Analytics, SEO Strategy
SEO, landing pages, goal performance, conversion analysis. Where does a business start to progress from one side to the other? Going from a vague web representation of a business model to an efficient online machine, effectively attracting visitors through wide visibility and presence, determining their intent, and boldly directing them to their ultimate satisfaction, is a reasonable evolution for a business to aspire to.
Using web analytics is not a fun extramural activity to browse over and gloat about after the sales have been brokered or the service has been delivered. It is a dedicated reporting and analysis methodology focusing on KPI for improving the efficacy of a business model that is expressed online in some way.
Strategic corporate partnerships build a solid grounding for success
Posted by Kim Gordon on 12 Mar 2008 | Tagged as: Online PR
According to market leaders there are three winning strategies when networking with affiliates. These are achieved through implementing visionary and daring strategies, having a winning organisation with people working together for the same goal, and finally, relentless innovation. At certain strategic times it is necessary for two companies to partner up and combine their skills and resources to build a thriving functional business network.
Don’t want to get blacklisted? Don’t game the system
Posted by Katia Pereria on 12 Mar 2008 | Tagged as: SEO Strategy
Recently, Google picked up the fact that insurance comparison website GoCompare.com site was using irregular links, causing it to plunge down the rankings.
Robin Goad, head of research at Hitwise, explains that the current trend in ‘car insurance’ searches increased the share of searches by 31% since the end 29th December.
In January, GoCompare.com was at the top of the SERPs for the term `car insurance`, drawing 49% of the all search traffic from the term. The term accounted for more traffic even than the brand term ‘go compare’.
Keyword research, have you covered all bases?
Posted by Melissa Fillau on 12 Mar 2008 | Tagged as: Common SEO Topics
Are you finding that the search terms you have selected for your campaign are not performing as well as expected or that your competitor’s performance is far superior to yours?
Then make sure you have at the very least considered all of the following possible variations of your key terms:-
* Plurals
* Hyphenated words
* Synonyms
* Acronyms
* Misspellings
* Variations of the associated verbs (Flats to Rent, Flats to Let)
* One word vs. two word spellings (AdText vs. Ad Text)
Google make up for Universal Search distraction from sponsored results?
Posted by Phil Smulian on 10 Mar 2008 | Tagged as: PPC, Search Engine News
I recently read of Google’s release of a search feature update of including video ads in search results. VP of search product and user experience, Marissa Mayer commented how Google used text ads to flow with the format of search, but now with universal results, video results are common and definitely attract the eyes of searchers, who by now have adopted the condition of “banner blindness” for text ads.
