SEO Blog

Google’s Executive Chairman, Eric Schmidt, recently visited Edinburgh to speak at the International TV Festival, and it’s sparked a revived interest into the ailing Google TV project. During his address to the MacTaggart lecture theatre he announced plans to release Google TV across Europe within six months. ‘TV Meets Web. Web Meets TV’ so the tagline goes, but what is it and what does it mean for the SEO industry?

It’s not the first time that the world of SEO has asked this question. Google TV was launched last October in the US, and in Schmidt’s own words “[it’s ]not been a huge success”. This was largely due to the slow uptake from networks to broadcast their content through the new Google TV set top box.
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According to Google, mobile search increased four times faster than PC search in 2010, making it one of the fastest growing areas of technology, whilst the increasing popularity of tablet computing only adds to that prominence.

But whilst an understanding of the technicalities of mobile SEO is important, it’s not as important as an understanding of the mobile user and ensuring we meet the needs of an increasingly savvy audience.

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Whilst it would be nice if you could always be ahead of the curve, sometimes you have to react to trends as they happen. This is particularly true for businesses with blogs, however ecommerce site owners should take note too.

An online trend can come from seemingly nowhere and engulf the searches of millions of users on Google and Twitter. When people start seeking further information, it can be hugely beneficial if you’re on hand to provide it. This doesn’t mean that you should write about celebrity culture daily or on world news; however, a broader awareness of what is going on can certainly prove beneficial.
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If you mention a press release to most businesses, they will immediately turn off. That’s the domain of newspapers, large PR firms and global corporations, surely? Well, actually, this simply isn’t the case – not any more anyway.

Anybody can write and publish a press release. It can be about the biggest news story for a generation, or can simply be a small development within a company. As long as it is newsworthy, it can get published – although don’t expect it to end up in The Times.
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Content marketing has become something of a buzzword within the SEO industry. On Monday Laura Hampton wrote an excellent guest post on why the two go hand in hand together. But a big issue facing many site owners, webmasters and marketers is what exactly they should send out and what they should host on their own site.

If you host a blog, then you want to make sure that you regularly publish quality posts to keep visitors returning and give them a reason to link to you. As such you want to make sure that if you take the time to write good content, it ends up on a site that you control. However, does that mean that only lower grade copy should go on external sites?
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Link bait is a funny old thing. Sometimes you’ll create something that you never envisaged would take off, other times you’ll develop content with the sole intention of getting links and receive nothing in return. The online community can be fickle when it comes to providing free links.

One technique that many have mastered is to simply create a unique inforgraphic. It almost sounds too easy and maybe even a little abstract, but it can and does work. Major media outlets, such as the BBC, invest a huge amount in creating the most informative and unique graphics for their sites. Not only does this help to support stories, but it can help bring in huge volumes of traffic to the page and attract vital links too.
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A common misconception with SEO, particularly when talking to businesses looking for an SEO agency, is that it’s all about the on-page factors. People seek tangible inputs – they want to see their page titles optimised and their meta-descriptions dealt with. They believe the addition of more keywords in their content will be their gateway to SERP success.

But they’re not. In fact, these days the on-page factors we would previously have championed bear little relevance to our positioning on search engines like Google.

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There’s always been a bit of controversy surrounding the ability to shop a competitor to Google if you find that they’re breaking the rules. Some suggest that this is unfair, particularly if you don’t at least contact the perpetrator first, others believe that site owners should pay the consequences of their actions – particularly if they’re unduly benefitting from their activities.

So what is the answer? If you’ve seen that another site has bought links, should you keep quiet or say something to the authorities?
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Sitelinks have been a part of Google’s organic and PPC results for some time now. They appear just below the Meta title or initial listing on results pages and generally lead to popular pages deeper within the site. However, earlier in the week Google took them to a whole new level, unveiling mega sitelinks.

Is essence, this concept provides brands with the chance to get prime real estate for their name. Organic results are now dominated by up to 10 links listed beneath the primary home page. So if you were to search for Sony, Vodafone, Thomas Cook or any other brand (major or minor) you can expect to see SERPs much like that shown below.
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It would be an exaggeration to suggest that you have to be excessively positive when optimising a site. However, when you’re negative or even passive, this can have an adverse effect on how effective your SEO is.

That might sound a little bogus, after all your personal misgivings shouldn’t really be projected on a whole business, should they? The trouble is, negativity spreads. If you’re not sure that you’re doing the right thing or that writing copy is just a waste of time, this will almost certainly show in your work and efforts.
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