SEO Blog

Thoughts and tips from the expert minds of our team

24 Feb 2010

Google in EU Antitrust Investigation

Contrary to tabloid legend, the European Union isn’t just there to make sure our bananas are straight and that goats are properly labelled. It is also our vanguard against such horrors as Microsoft bundling its browser with its OS and other unconscionable acts of evil. Thanks to them, you now have to sit through 14 option screens whenever you upgrade IE and might soon have to do the same when a website wants to drop a cookie.

Today, the European Commission has written to Google to ask for an explanation into how its algorithm works (we didn’t we think of that? D’oh!) as part of preliminary investigation into whether Google’s size is distorting the market and effectively acting as a brake on competitors in the online sphere. We can’t help but think that this was always going to happen some day, given the EU’s instinctive distrust of large technology companies.

What prompted the move? Complaints from what you might think are some of the “usual suspects” – i.e., people who can’t rank in Google. Ciao, a German shopping comparison site (owned by Microsoft – the irony!) some French website concerning legal matters and… Foundem.

Ahem.

Foundem are a price comparison site who have been complaining long and loud to anyone who will listen that their site is so good that Google should be ranking them by right. Their story has been covered in greater depth elsewhere, but really the site has no content of its own and many pages are literally nothing but links (check out the source of http://www.foundem.co.uk/search/books.jsp or http://www.foundem.co.uk/search/computing/L/Peripherals.jsp for example). If you’re an SEO, the subtext of this is “we don’t understand how to channel the equity we have” – which is madness when you have a solid PR5 domain that has had a lot of news media links on the back of its fight against Google. There’s also an apparent reluctance to do the little things like invest in a little content. In fact, once you turn off Javascript and CSS all you have a series of pages that are more or less exactly the same and don’t actually do anything.

In effect, like a lot of comparison sites, they are a content scraper and aggregator. Unlike the best comparison sites, they haven’t really brought much to the table beyond a labyrinthine navigation and tonne of affiliate links. In this market that kind of comes with the territory, but sites like Money Supermarket have invested heavily in branding and community building in order to offset those problems and the result is pretty clear.

You can hear a little hint of exasperation in Julie Holtz’s post on the Google Publicity blog.

“Though each case raises slightly different issues, the question they ultimately pose is whether Google is doing anything to choke off competition or hurt our users and partners. This is not the case. We always try to listen carefully if someone has a real concern and we work hard to put our users’ interests first and to compete fair and square in the market. We believe our business practices reflect those commitments.”

The fact is that Google is really only competitive in the search sphere. It has interesting offers in various markets (I use Google Docs at home, have a Gmail account etc) but while many of the company’s product launches are accompanied by a blitz of hype, I don’t see Orkut threatening Facebook any time soon and my Google Wave account is mainly full of tumbleweeds.

So is Google’s 80% share of the European search market a monopoly as such? Technically, it probably is. But is it really the EU’s job to define what the market should be? After all, Bing is only over there and Microsoft aren’t exactly short of marketing muscle. If Bing’s excellent vertical search services work well in Europe then people will start to migrate across. By contemplating an investigation in Google, it’s hard not to feel that the EU is in thrall to special-interest pleading from people who would like lots of traffic thanks, but aren’t prepared to work with the standards that Google sets for itself.

Mind you, given their past track record, don’t be surprised to see a legally enforced banner on Google’s homepage saying “try Bing!” in five years time.

paul carpenter

19 Feb 2010

Google Analytics Book: Get One for your Bookshelf

Mostly, people from different fields love the chance to get into a pissing contest about which is the superior art. CSS is better than development… PPC is better than SEO… MySQL is better than sex. You might notice however, that almost no-one says “**** is better than Analytics”.

SEO has its fair share of gurus, would-be gurus augmented by a smattering of charlatans and fools. Partly that’s because there’s a lot of ‘known unknowns’ in SEO which gives leeway for people to make unsubstantiated claims and parade around, chests puffed out claiming to the hardest man on the estate because they totally dominate this one market which is SO SECRET they can’t tell you.

Analytics to many is far less mysterious and therefore maybe less sexy. After all, the numbers are all there in black and white, so what you need to read the runes are patience, an eye for figures and statistical understanding. Consequently, there aren’t perhaps as many people talking puffery in the Analytics field – just people getting on and doing a great job. And yet as we discover with surprising frequency when we take on a new client, there is a metric tonne of stuff you can learn from just looking at your visitors without even starting to consider your headline rankings.

Anyway, Dave came back from SES London talking a lot about Brian Clifton, who is author of the book “Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics“. He’s one of the most well respected Analytics experts around at the moment, along with Avinash Kaushik and Jim Sterne (the Godfather of Analytics).

Brian Clifton author Google Analytics Book

In Dave’s opinion Avinash is one of the most well promoted of Analytics experts on the SEO blogs, but we love Brian the best cos he’s English (stand up, salute the flag, sing Rule Britannia etc) and in our opinion a damn smart guy.

The Gauntlet Has Been Thrown Down

Naturally enough given that Dave can never turn down a bet or challenge, a few drinks later him and Brian started a friendly competition over who can rank highest for the term “Google Analytics Book”. The thing is though, Brian is an Analytics expert, not an SEO. Here is the difference between an SEO and an analytics guru…

Brian hasn’t registered googleanalyticsbook.com or googleanalyticsbook.co.uk! But we have!

Brian has written an update to his first Google Analytics book and the second edition is due to be released next month (March 2010 if you’re reading this post from the future!). Anyways, Brian has sent us a sneak preview of chapters 1 and 10, as well as the foreword by Avinash, and I must say, it is not only interesting but I can see how it could really be valuable to a lot of people. Basically it provides a number of ways of using Google Analytics, largely to improve conversion rates, but also to measure various metrics etc. Here is a sneak preview of what is in the book:

Part I: Measuring Success

Chapter 1: Why Understanding Your Web Traffic Is Important to Your Business
Chapter 2: Available Methodologies and Their Accuracy
Chapter 3: Google Analytics Features, Benefits and Limitations

Part II: Using Google Analytics Reports

Chapter 4: Using the Google Analytics Interface
Chapter 5: Reports Explained

Part III: Implementing Google Analytics

Chapter 6: Getting Up and Running with Google Analytics
Chapter 7: Advanced Implementation
Chapter 8: Best-Practices Configuration Guide
Chapter 9: Google Analytics Hacks

Part IV: Using Visitor Data to Drive Website Improvement

Chapter 10: Focusing on Key Performance Indicators
Chapter 11: Real-World Tasks
Chapter 12: Integrating Google Analytics with Third-Party Applications

So he starts off with an introduction, telling you why you should take analytics so seriously, then he goes on to Google Analytics and runs you through everything, to make sure you know how it works etc. then he goes on to show you how to apply it (including explaining those darned Motion Charts!) He then goes through how to setup Google Analytics properly, so you get all the data like AdWords/AdSense and URL tagging ad campaigns from email etc.

Then he starts to go into the real money makers, defining KPI’s – linking analytics to real world tasks, tracking offline marketing etc. He also introduces Google Website Optimizer and getting started doing multivariate testing, finally he talks about integrating Google Analytics with Third-Party Applications and Call tracking.

Some people will you tell that it’s all about the traffic, but you could also make the case that it’s all about the conversions. Analytics guys love tables, so here’s a demonstration.

Why You Should Buy This Google Analytics Book by Brian

	If you don’t buy this book	If you do buy this book
Number of visitors	30,000	30,000
Cost per visit	£1	£1
Total Cost of Traffic	£30,000	£30,000
Conversion Rate	3%	4%
Conversions	900	1200
Revenue per conversion	£100	£100
Total revenue	£90,000	£120,000

Non-Marketing Profit Margin	50%	50%
Non-Marketing Costs	£45,000	£60,000
Marketing Costs	£30,000	£30,000
Cost of book	£0	£17.54
Total Costs	£75,000	£90,017.54

Total Profit	£15,000	£29,982.46
Total Marketing ROI	50%	99.94%

So in the grand scheme of things, this book suddenly looks a lot more appealing, right? OK so the above example is fake, but to achieve the same effect through traffic alone you’d have to double traffic, instantly. That’s quite difficult to do with established sites, so if you want to increase profits from your site’s existing traffic, pre-order Brian’s book on Amazon now (not an affiliate link )

Recently we’ve done a few interesting things with Google Analytics, but as you’d expect from an SEO one of them was How to use Google Analytics Annotations to secretly tell people you hate them and using Google Analytics Advanced Segmentation to measure qualified visits. We’ve also more recently used Google Analytics to measure average page speed times. We’re still collecting data on this at the moment to see how strongly it correlates with rankings.

Analytics as part of SEO

If you’re diligently checking your rankings every morning but not stopping to look at what visitors are actually doing on your site then really, you’re wasting half the benefit that SEO has probably delivered. You’ve spent the last year chasing that #1spot for “tights for men” and think that now you’re there you can just relax and watch the spondoolies roll in.

Bong!

If your bounce rate is 70% for that term, you’ve got problems and opportunities. Black and white stats prove that either your keyword choice was wrong or you have problems with your presentation or price point. If you’re not looking at that stuff then the person at two or three is the one making more from their ranking.

David Whitehouse

18 Feb 2010

Poker.org sells for $1 million. Wow!

It’s pretty evident that any ranking signal that Google uses creates value where previously there was none. Links, for example, change hand for cash – no matter how hard Google tries to stuff that particular genie back in the bottle. Google said that ranking was partly determined by links and so everything quickly boiled down to what individual links are worth.

The same holds true for domain names. A domain itself is worth a couple of quid, as any fool knows. But any fool will also tell you that people search for brands and that online brands are almost without exception tied in with a domain name.
brand searches

So Google has to try and figure out what the intent is behind any search term. Is someone looking for a brand? A domain? General information about a subject? And where do those three things often converge? A keyword domain.

Taken together, that gives Google a powerful impetus to rank keyword domains. Search for something like ‘ghd’. With the exception of eBay and Amazon, the top results all have ‘ghd’ in their domain name – and you can probably think of similar examples in markets you know. As with links, that creates a premium for domains – a story that dates all the way back to that epic, multi-million dollar, decade-long battle for sex.com.

So will the purchase of the poker.org domain prove to be money well spent?

Well any such strategy is basically an attempt to short circuit the long hard slog that’s necessary to establish a proper brand. When you’re a brand, you’re almost exempt from the normal requirements of an SEO campaign. I could point you right now to sites with a first place ranking for pretty competitive keywords. Those keywords bring a fraction of the traffic that branded searches do. And the rankings themselves are in the face of poor on-site optimisation, no content and a barely-there backlink profile. The conclusion has to be that – pace Vince – brand is a big factor in ranking.

That makes a brand a far more powerful thing to have than a keyword domain. Taking the example of the poker market, someone like 888 will happily buy out another brand to get a lockdown on the market. The top 10 isn’t full of keyword domains – but a variety of brands. And f***ing Wikipedia, of course. This dominance by brand makes it difficult for keyword domains to easily slip into the top 10 as if by right.

Once the buyers of poker.org start linkbuilding, they will have natural keyword anchor text for most of their links, but the same could have been said about many of other domain names they could have chosen. One thing they have got is headlines about their purchase. No doubt that newspaper editors and bloggers are unthinkingly handing out headlines and keyword links to the domain – which in itself begins to create a brand. Hell, I’m contributing to that right now myself.

In the final analysis, like any other strategy buying a keyword domain will only take you so far. You still have to establish authority, backlinks, content and brand presence to rank in competitive fields. If you’ve got a million bucks to spare, there’s a lot of ways you could use it to get what you want beyond just sinking it into a domain name. Like give us a ring, for example

paul carpenter

18 Feb 2010

Wordpress For Android

Checking your Wordpress Blog on your mobile phone can be bit of a pain if your Smartphone is on the Android platform.

The easiest way I have found is to bookmark each blog, but then writing the post is awkward because you’re only getting a mobile view of the page, so it often involves a lot of scrolling around a page.

Last night I was looking through the Android Market and saw the Wordpress Logo as a featured application.

After installing the app you get to put the address of your Blog in the setup and put in your username and password in, (you will need to make sure XML-RPC is ticked in settings).
You can have multiple blogs setup as well which I find really handy, you can choose which blog you want to work on as soon as the app loads, as you will get a list of the configured blogs.

When you first configure your blog it may take a minute or two to retrieve the comments and posts especially if you have an established blog with frequent commenter’s.
Adding posts is simple and easy, as to is adding media from your mobile and linking to others, you can even select your category and or tags. The only thing you can’t appear to do is time stamp your post for release in the future. You even get the option as saving the post as a draft if you need to close the application.

Editing an old post is easy with Wordpress for Android, the only issue I have found here is that there is no option to switch between HTML and Visual, so if you have any html in your post this will be displayed as well as any ordinary text.

Wordpress for Android is a great app if you need to do a post while you’re away from your laptop or desk, and makes Wordpress truly mobile.

If you’re looking to try Wordpress for Android then all you need to do is search the Android market for Wordpress you you’ll see the official Wordpress Logo.

rory

15 Feb 2010

You spam me, I spam you

I was so sick of people scrapping MSN and adding me I decide to make a game out of it

This game lasted 3 mins ..

spammer says:
hi

DaveN says:
hi

spammer says:
how r u

DaveN says:
ok

spammer says:
I am spammer from India
added u in ma frnd list bcoz i work in internet marketing

DaveN says:
ok

spammer says:
what are u into?

DaveN says:
I sell fake drugs online

spammer says:
ok

DaveN says:
you wanna buy some drugs

spammer says:
no sir
let me know u need help in marketing ur sites

DaveN says:
nah we do email spam mainly thats why we accept anyone on IM, for their email and IM details

spammer says:
ok

DaveN says:
you sure don’t need any drugs we are cheap, and they wouldn’t make you go blind like some of the really cheap ones

spammer says:
no sir m fine
thank u

DaveN says:
we have PORN as well
you into porn

spammer says:
thank u no

DaveN says:
you sure,, it’s cheap like 29.99 usd a month
I can give you 1 month free .. how does that sound
I can just use the IM email address
I don’t mind

spammer says:
nope thank u tc
c ya

DaveN says:
got some really good stuff … last chance

Then he quickly went offline and I guess blocked me..
Dave

DaveN

15 Feb 2010

Social Media Whitepaper

Microsoft have a pretty interesting white paper on social media on their Adcenter Blog right now. Actually, they call it a white paper but it’s more of an account of how Microsoft have approached the social media sphere and their own experiences. It’s pretty interesting reading – and if you still think that ’social media’ is some kind of fad you ignore (hey – it’s only 2010, ferchrissakes) then maybe this will disabuse you.

Commitment and Focus

The first important point they make is that a social media campaign involves commitment. It’s hardly a new observation but empty accounts, infrequent updates and lack of interaction are the real death knells for any social media work. It means putting dedicated resources into social media, just as any company would put resources into PR or other marketing activity. Social media accounts are free to sign up to, but require regular engagement in order to deliver benefit.

Of course, Microsoft probably have got less budget constraints than you (if not – give us a ring!), but lots of companies still happily throw thousands at their hard-copy PR whilst ignoring thousands of unhappy blog posts and forum threads which are having far more effect on actual customers.

The second point they make is that your account should have a definite focus. The Adcenter team’s social media activity was geared towards a program of education. They recognised that existing customers were asking questions not just at Microsoft, but at online communities in the hope that some anonymous stranger might have an answer. Also, without an official presence, PR for Adcenter was effectively devolved to independent bloggers, anonymous Tweeters and random people on forums. All that meant that falsehoods could perpetuate unchecked.

Strategy

Taking those two factors together suggests a natural strategy to approach the social sphere: a central blog in which information can be imparted in a timely fashion and the ongoing use of social media to promote that content and answer queries as they arise in the wild. This naturally establishes a two-way conversation – with the social media team actively seeking out forum threads, tweets and blog posts in which Adcenter is mentioned and actively engaging with these people.

They also arrived at the conclusion that they would have to present themselves as who they really were. When you’re Microsoft, you don’t want to be outed as a sockpuppet.

KPIs

Finally, some people shy away from this arena because the KPIs seem somehow vague. But look at any report from your marketing or PR – it’s all couched with a degree of uncertainty. Microsoft simplified their reporting by saying that an answered Tweet would count as, perhaps, a support call that cost $30. Using Analytics, they were also able to measure impressions and clickthroughs on various bits of information and by ascribing a value to them were able to give some notional value to their work. The real figure is, of course, priceless. Who can ever know how many have taken up Adcenter because of the work of the social media team? Certainly more than would have done in its absence.

All this is the kind of stuff that various people have been saying for years. Maybe you’re even shouting at the screen saying “but that’s sooo obvious!” The truth is though that the vast majority of companies are still failing to engage properly with the opportunities presented by social media.

Oh… and SEO

We probably shouldn’t have to point out that this is all inextricably linked with SEO but as that’s our area of expertise let’s just reiterate. When you become an established brand, people will search for your brand directly. Top 10 SERPs full of other people’s content instead of yours (bad) or half full of unanswered complaints (worse) can easily work to negate that #1 ranking for some headline search term you’re obsessing over.

And if anyone’s going to link to something related to you – better your own content than some blogger with an axe to grind.

paul carpenter

12 Feb 2010

What will be your last tweet ?

The fashion world was stunned by the suicide of Lee Alexander McQueen yesterday, and even though Twitter has pulled down his twitter profile you can see from the image below that he was having a hard time coming to terms with the passing of his Mum, but his last tweet was :

im here with my girl annie tinkerbell wishing kerry the slag ,happy birthday in NY ,your 40 now girl time to slow it down we think.

Personally that’s not the last tweet I would have liked, I still remember some of the last things Martin said only days before the Plane crash that he died in:

Just passed someone who was pulled over, reminded me of when we were pulled over on north end road at 120 mph, good times

and his final tweet:

@shinkazewent well, pulled about 2.5 G though so a bit dissy

then on the 28th he went for a ride in an Italian stunt plane with Paulo Emanuele (pilot), As the Marchetti started to takeoff, the engine stopped the plane crashed into the tarmac and burst into flames.

The Alexander McQueen tweets brought it back today and maybe we should all create a program that tweets out a final message from the grave……

Dave

DaveN

11 Feb 2010

Paperchase Alleged Copyright Theft

The big news on Twitter at the moment is how an artist on The Hidden World of Eloise has had some of their artwork copied and then distributed by Paperchase. Apparently they’ve contacted Paperchase who have promptly ignored them, they’ve also found taking them on too costly and so now they have resorted to the viral nature of Twitter and social media to spread their story and gain support. It is working.

I’ve been looking at the search term on Twitter and so far whilst typing this there are 84 more about Paperchase and how they are allegedly stealing artwork and selling it.

What is worse, when I jumped on the bandwagon to complain through their contact form, I made sure that I did not opt-in to their newsletter, yet they seem to have added me anyways. So they are also spamming!

If you check out their brand term, paperchase, you will see that the Hidden World of Eloise is currently number 6 for the term, but after today and all the links it will get, I wouldn’t be surprised if it gets to number 3.

So Paperchase, you have a real reputation management issue on your hands, well done

Update: 20 minutes later and the complaint website is now ranking at #3 and “Paperchase” is now a Worldwide trending topic on Twitter, lets hope its not a fake like the whole Save Jon fiasco.

David Whitehouse