SEO Blog

When the founder, or co-founder of any company leaves, it usually marks a pretty significant turning point. Either they have become out of touch with the company as a whole or new bosses are seeking a completely fresh start. In the case of Jerry Yang’s departure from Yahoo, it’s difficult to see which is the most likely scenario.

Let’s not forget that it was Yang who decided, catastrophically as it turned out, not to sell to Microsoft back in 2008, when they bid $31 per share – 62% above the market price at the time. That valued Yahoo at $44.6 billion. As things stand, the share price has spluttered and fallen to half of Microsoft’s valuation, leaving a lot of investors out of pocket.
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It’s the start of a new year, and in an industry like this, it’s time to predict what the year ahead has in store. SEO is notorious for its malleability, keeping up to date with changes and fluctuations is part and parcel of its survival, so it’s important to have a clear understanding of what could be coming up in the months ahead.

That said, 2012 appears to be a year in which online privacy will take centre stage, especially in Europe. You only have to look at the number of legal battles involving Google and a number of European countries, including Germany and Switzerland, to understand that it’s a hot topic. But why is this the case?
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Each year Google compile the most searched for terms of the year, with 2011 throwing up some fantastic insights into the UK’s search behaviour. Amongst the winners this year was the Royal Wedding as well as the fabled iPhone 5.

The Search Engine giant, which dominates the UK search market, have also revealed various other categories, such as the fastest rising people, movies, TV and sports terms as well as the most searched for ‘how to’ and ‘what is’. So who topped the lists in each category? Here are the highlights….
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On Friday I wrote about the problems that online retailers face at this time of year when trying to promote their businesses online. Today those issues really come to the fore with the arrival of ‘Mega Monday’, supposedly the busiest day of the year for ecommerce sites.

With the world pouring online to buy Christmas goodies, you want to make sure that your site isn’t left behind. So whilst this advice might come a little late for some, there’s no harm in learning lessons from the mistakes and triumphs of this year’s big players.
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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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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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As with any new system where the results are ordered by popularity, it doesn’t take long before people start to find a way to manipulate the rankings. With Digg people will offer to ‘digg’ your content and with StumbleUpon people can ‘stumble’ your content, and in both occasions there are services that let you pay people to promote your content on these platforms in this way. Now it seems Google+ is next.

In the case of Digg and StumbleUpon, the more people who promote your content the more chance it has of being seen by other users, or appearing at the top of various lists of information. The higher you appear, the more people will read your content and this helps to spread awareness of a brand online. So it’s easy to see how people could be tempted to pay strangers to manipulate these platforms.

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For any retailer that either isn’t online or isn’t taking advantage of SEO, the latest figures from the Online Retail Monitor should encourage you to do exactly that. Whilst the outlook on the high street is looking grim, it’s online and in particular through search engines where activity is booming.

The research conducted by the Retail Monitor group is a joint venture between the British Retail Consortium (BRC) and the search giant Google. The figures have revealed that online retail search has increased by 27% in the second quarter of 2011 compared to the same time last year.
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It’s been on the cards for a while, but now the social networking giant has finally agreed a deal to add an extra layer to its service. Facebook and the Microsoft-owned Skype will begin collaborating to offer users video call functionality.

This has been widely seen as a coup by both sides. Firstly Facebook get to develop their service offering, effectively licensing the existing software, and its extensive user base, to provide a quick, cheap integration.

For Microsoft, and possibly Bing as a consequence, it represents the first major roll out of their new acquisition (albeit the deal is still awaiting final ratification). Whilst they have maintained strong links with Facebook, including providing search functionality and previously managing advertising, this is another huge step. Whether it will claw back any of the $8.5 billion they have spent on acquiring Skype remains to be seen.
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I’m all for recommendations from stores that you shop with regularly. It shows an understanding of your interests and helps to identify items that you may never have know existed otherwise.

It takes a clever algorithmto connect past purchases with potential interest. Unfortunately Amazon appears to be having a few issues with its system at the moment, at least where I’m concerned. As you may already be aware, I have authored two popular books on SEO. Whilst I’m very happy with the books and would whole heartedly recommend them to anybody starting out in Search Engine Optimisation, it comes as quite a surprise when Amazon suggests that I should by it.

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