SEO Blog

Every once in a while Google decides that it needs a change of style. Sometimes the change is a subtle one, other times it’s a little more comprehensive. During the course of the last week or so there have been a number of tweaks, which have now come together to give the SERPs a surprising facelift.

The once bright colours have been replaced by black, grey and red. The left-hand side of the page has seen the most drastic change, with extra space being created, providing a more expansive and clearer set of search options. Within those options are a number of new additions too, including a filter that allows you to search by readability.
(more…)

When Google releases a new product, there is a somewhat inevitable public reaction. Sometimes it’s positive, other times less so, but it rarely slips under the radar – despite a lack of promotion on the search engine’s part.

Social networking though has proven to be a pretty tough nut to crack. Google Wave was released back in 2009 and then quickly dissolved in 2010 following a poor uptake. Buzz was also beset by issues, not least the infringement of various privacy policies. So already, Google + is facing an uphill struggle to convert the Facebook masses.
(more…)

If you’re looking to enter the ecommerce field and list your primary competitor as ‘Amazon’ then you’re probably in for a rude awakening. Apart from the difficulties relating to the competitiveness of pricing, a large, established competitor is likely to have a firm foothold in the search engines – and public psyche. This can make it difficult to breakthrough, especially if you aren’t throwing money at offline advertising.

But this shouldn’t deter smaller businesses from getting involved in online marketing. However, it is a decent reminder that you have to be careful about your expectations and planning. Charging into a new environment without the first clue what you want to do or achieve is unlikely to result in anything other than ignominious failure.
(more…)

If you haven’t already heard, there’s a new type form of universal markup. This has been created under the cumulative watchful gaze of Google, Bing and Yahoo in an effort to bring better standardisation to the Internet and improved understanding of context for search engines.

The news hasn’t exactly been met with comprehensive acclaim though, in fact far from it. Some Webmasters see this as extra unnecessary work, designed to make us all conform to the demands of the ‘big 3′. Whilst there may be a shred of truth in this theory, there is plenty to celebrate about this new code.
(more…)

If you’ve been hit by the Panda update, you’re probably fed up of people telling you that your site needs unique content. It’s a given, we don’t need to keep labouring the point. However, the one thing that some site owners will now be facing is the huge cost of re-writing a site.

Content isn’t, generally speaking, particularly cheap. That isn’t to suggest that you don’t get good value; but more likely than not, you will be spending a fair few pounds/dollars to get each page re-written or updated.
(more…)

It would be a massive mistake to ignore the needs of your human visitors. Search Engine Optimisation is all well and good, but Google aren’t going to be buying your products or signing up for services. So build a site that your visitors can use first and foremost, all else is secondary.

Usability is defined by your audience though. For instance, if you are selling mobility scooters to elderly customers, then it might be advisable to have clear navigation and even a larger font to ensure that even those that aren’t Internet savvy or have poor eyesight can still use it.
(more…)

If you’re glued to your analytics reports to get the latest traffic figures, you’ll be all too aware of how good it feels when you reach another new milestone. Maybe you’ve received 1,000 visits in a week or organic traffic has increased by 20% year on year.

The big Internet companies are no different. Statistical data is analysed relentlessly to find the latest trends and indicate the major growth areas. So no doubt there will be some pretty happy folks at Google after it was announced that they had received over a billion unique users in May.
(more…)

A site without a map is never going to be fully optimised. It will be missing a vital navigation tool, used by both search engines and human visitors alike. If you can’t immediately find what you’re looking for, you turn to the page that lists all areas of the site. It is common sense and it is simple to do.

If you used any form of Content Management System when creating your website, then there should be a clear infrastructure already in place. This can be transported into a standard HTML Sitemap in next to no time; plus you should be able to update it as and when your site changes.
(more…)

Good news, if you’ve always dreamed of dropping the rather uniform .com or restrictive .co.uk, you can now create your own domain. ICANN officially confirmed that it would now be creating unique names for those businesses with the desire and $185,000 to do so.

That’s right, if you want to have your own .domain then you better have a fair amount of money set aside to make your dream come true. The premium cost is likely to deter all but the biggest corporations; however, the impact on the Internet is huge, creating one of the biggest shakeups in well over a decade.
(more…)

If you’ve ever wondered what people are saying about you on the web – perhaps your cyber ears are burning – then Google has come up with a solution. Almost as an evolutionary alternative to their existing Alerts service, Me on the Web has been designed to act as a one stop shop for all mentions you receive.

Therefore if someone mentions your name, number or email on their blog, you can now find out instantly. The new feature will be embedded in the Google Dashboard, and can be easily set up by any individual to provide accurate accounts of when your details are discussed.
(more…)