SEO & Social Media Summary April 2012

Posted by Hayden Allen-Vercoe on May 03 2012
Filed in Online Marketing Tips and Advice, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Social Media Marketing

April 2012 has seen dramatic changes to Search, both for SEO and Social. This has been a month of Panda refreshes and Penguin (‘web spam’) updates from Google. For an increasing number of site owners, the underlying thought with these updates is ‘If only their search results would improve along with their guidelines’…..

SEO April 2012

Updates, updates, updates! Search Engine Land looks at the more important changes to search Google implemented in March. This is equally important reading.

Vertical Media discuss the potential of Google+ for SEO in this video (there is massive potential). We agree.

Chris Crum picks up on sites dropping in traffic over the Easter weekend, possibly due to the Panda refresh update.

Meanwhile Spam Free search engine Blekko sees a 400% rise in search according to Search Engine Land.

Search engine Journal ask if personalised search results are becoming too personal? Their infographic suggests it is.

Easter and April fools showed Google’s funny side. This prompted Portent to list Google’s 101 best pranks and tricks. If you have a little time to kill, you could do worse!

Web Pro News issue Rand Fishkin’s challenge to all-comers to take down SEOmoz site rankings with negative SEO. For the benefit of all, good work Mr Fishkin. If anyone is capable of reducing rankings to the ‘clean’ SEOmoz site, this will be reported to Google and addressed. 

Distinguished Google Engineer Matt Cutts (that’s his title now!) posted an article ‘Another step to reward high-quality sites’, regarding the anti webspam Penguin update. The text examples of sites that will be targeted should not impact on anyone that is implementing an online content strategy that offers unique value and relevant content to your industry and customers (We can help with that, by the way).

If you are worried about that troublesome Penguin update, web pro news has a good guide on what to do next.

The 50 Google changes in March listed links as ‘something Google would be looking at’. The SEO industry still regards anchor text links as the most important ranking factor, as detailed by Search Engine Watch.

Social Media April 2012

Battle of the newcomers! Do you adopt the SEO power of Google plus or the mass audience and growing interest of Pinterest? Or both? Hubspot details the Social Media’s newbies and why they are individually and equally important for brands.

Hubspot take this further with 35 stats regarding the two new high performing networks.

Top Rank Blog list three Pinterest tools that are worth looking at and why they are useful for brands.

Google+ and Pinterest may be growing rapidly, but what about those ‘active’ 20 million Foursquare users? Read Write Web look at how Foursquare is doing and what Foursquare is not doing that it probably should be, um, doing.

Hate facebook Timeline? Well don’t. Marketing Land comment on Timeline for brand pages gives 46% higher engagement per post. Who knew?!!

Still not happy with Timeline? Social Media Examiner highlight 5 brands getting it right, for your inspiration.

Marketing Land discuss the recent aesthetic changes to Google+ and its navigation. Timeline-esque?

Social Media Examiner does what it does best and gives us the lowdown on just how to track social media traffic in Google analytics. Recommended.

The Daily Mail report on the commercial power of a facebook Like. It may be time to get that tired old facebook page working for you company again.

Orbital Media continue to deliver successful SEO and Social Media campaigns for clients this year. If you want higher visibility in search or social, why not call us today? 0203 411 9111.

SEO and Google Plus – Why ‘Search Plus Your World’ changes everything

Posted by Hayden Allen-Vercoe on May 01 2012
Filed in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Social Media Marketing

Search Engine Optimisation was always about using sensible keywords, creating great content (including those keywords) and linking. Not so much anymore, especially since the launch of Google’s social search – ‘Search Plus Your World’ (SPYW)

Social signals have been influencing search engines since 2005, but SPYW has taken social search to a new level. Google’s introduction of SPYW has changed how SEO is executed.

Now, SEO and Google Plus should be applied in conjunction of each other. Search results are affected by the users own social experiences with results greatly influenced by their circles of friends.

Google +1’s, shares and comments by someone within your circles in Google+ will be highlighted in relevant search results. Products / brands that have been given the Google social treatment by someone in your circles will appear higher than those that haven’t.

SPYW has made Google+ possibly the most important SEO tool and one that we should all adopt. Fast.

SEO and Google Plus now has to be more conversational, that is – content has to be more social (Fresh, interesting, useful, shareable) - to be well represented in Google’s most recent algorithmic shifts.

So SPYW is forcing more fresh, interesting, useful and shareable content online. This is no bad thing.

Searchers can opt out of SPYW and the new set of social based results. Your personalised results can be disabled permanently or temporarily using a new toggle.

However, even if you are logged out of Google, Google+ recommendations will still show up in Google search results. (http://marketingland.com/faq-google-search-plus-your-world-3533)

Just in case you missed the point, Google Plus should now be at the forefront of your social strategy. SEO and Google Plus have become the new Batman and Robin, the ever dynamic duo.

One new aspect of SPYW is a new ‘People and Pages on Google’ search results box. This, for me, is key to using SPYW from an SEO standpoint. Being listed in this box within the search results should be a priority aim.

So, how do you get to feature in ‘People and Pages on Google’? Google have offered some advice on this http://www.google.com/insidesearch/features/plus/relatedpeople.html and it is something every SEO and brand should read, understand and execute.

Any social media strategy should include points two and three, but with SPYW you should really treat Google+ as your number one social network for ‘social SEO’.

Still not sure? Well, you should be. Google+ will grow, you need to make sure your brand on Google+ page grows accordingly.

Just think of the power of facebook with its 800+ million users. I bet you have a facebook brand page. Why would you even think of ignoring Google, with its billions of daily searches?

For more help on this, Orbital Media have a step by step guide to creating a Google+ brand page.

And, Search Engine Land have a really useful, in depth article on SPYW.

SEO & Social Media Summary March 2012

Posted by Hayden Allen-Vercoe on April 02 2012
Filed in Online Marketing Tips and Advice, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Social Media Marketing

The independent list the top 10 most influential Twitter users in the UK – some unexpected names here.

The Next Web discusses Google’s plans for a comment box for G+ similar to facebook’s commenting system. What this does for Edgerank will be interesting to see. The Next Web also talks about G+ plans for vanity URL’s, which are ‘coming soon’.

Social Media Today showcases 3 small businesses that are making it big on G+ and more importantly, how. If your brand is floating around G+ in limbo, you must read this.

Social Media Examiner talks about Google analytics now with social reports
Charlie, Come and bite MY finger! The cute YouTube video is the second most watched video on YouTube. It has also made $500,000 in 5 years!
Yahoo makes good on its promise and sues facebook. Possibly perceived by some as a little desperate on Yahoo’s behalf, but regardless of this, Yahoo are suing facebook over a total of 10 patents….watch this one roll on.

Social Media Today also reveals the 3 attributes required for Pinterest brand success – Quality, passion, fun. Sounds basic, but next time you are uploading onto Pinterest ask yourself is this what you are giving your followers?

Want to know all about facebook Insights? Nan Dawkins at Marketing Land delivers 3 killer metrics from Insights. This needs to be read.

Sticking with facebook, Laila Strong of Search Engine Watch gives 4 ways a brand can get creative with the new Timeline.

Mashable ask ‘is facebook building a search engine?’ According to a Business week report, a team of more than 20 Facebook engineers are working on a vastly improved search engine within the site.

SEO Summary March 2012

Mashable comment on China’s firewall being temporarily down and the rush for Chinese population to get on G+ and FB.

Apple to launch new search engine! Yes that headline got my attention too! Search Engine Land report on Apple’s acquisition of Chomp. It is a search engine, but Google, Bing and all can relax – this is just for apps.

Guess what? SEO is dead…again! Matt Cutts buzzwords this month have been “level the playing ground a little bit”, “over optimization” and “overly doing their SEO”. SEO is not dead (again), but these changes could / will shake things up. Search Engine Land has this in full.

Reported in Web Pro News, the Wall Street Journal has revealed Google’s plans to improve their own search – which in turn may decrease traffic to 3rd party sites. Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land also discusses at the new semantic search in great length. Is this a big deal? Consider this quote from “one person briefed on Google’s plans” as saying the changes could directly impact 10% to 20% of all search queries or “tens of billions per month”….Ouch.

Google’s too much SEO issue is again picked up by Search Engine Land again and discusses whether this is just a fight against spam or SEO. When you look at Google’s own SEO PDF, it seems strange that Google would be penalising genuine white hat SEO tactics.

Shelley Kramer from V3 offers some good advice to counter the above along with V3’s take on Google’s new semantic search.
 
So how about ‘Un-SEOing’? Ted Ives of Coconut Headphones delivers a compelling article on when to un-optimise your copy and how. Sounds madness, yes. Read it though and it becomes an interesting method of optimisation of your copy.

Social Search advice came in the form of 8 strategies to follow (right now) from Search Engine Land. Danny Sullivan also reports that Google is now highlighting the latest posts from Google+ pages and profiles in its search results, at Search Engine Land.

Eric Siu from PR Web sums up what we all should have taken from Google’s Panda update. I totally agree here, follow this one question and you are getting close to some Google love. Simply put, when publishing online can we all, from now on ask ‘Am I adding value?’

The Link issue rages on (should we / shouldn’t we?), Web Pro News deliver a great article on Blog paid networks and the resulting links, stating it is time to stop obsessing over links. An interesting Matt Cutts video also reveals Google do not count most links. W P N summarise exactly what you should be doing to appeal to Google’s ever changing algorithm and is sensible, sound advice;

“Search visibility these days is much more about who’s sharing/discussing your content (especially on Google+), who you are as an author, how fresh your content is, and how in-depth it is compared to your competition”

SEO & Social Media Summary February 2012

Posted by Hayden Allen-Vercoe on March 01 2012
Filed in Online Marketing Tips and Advice, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Social Media Marketing

The first part of February was relatively quiet by the standards of this industry, however towards the end of the month things get a lot more interesting – especially the news of Google’s latest algorithm update, with no less than 40 changes listed, and news of Facebook timeline for brands….

Here’s what happened in February 2012 in the world of Social Media and SEO.

SEO
• Danny Goodwin from Search Engine Watch details just how much Google loves Wikipedia. In a recent test by Intelligent Positioning, Wikipedia is placed on page 1 of Google for 99% of 1,000 unique one-word searches. When you consider the quality of content on some Wiki entries, maybe this percentage is a little too high perhaps?

• Rand Fishkin at SEOMoz highlights a ‘glitch’ in using Google’s Adwords for finding keywords. If you regularly run keyword researches, you need to read this. You could be missing out on some valuable keywords.

• Staying with Keyword Research, Jenny Halasz at Search Engine Land has written a great guide on how to find keywords relative to client, some great advice on Keyword ‘seeds’…and how to make them grow. 

Now for that interesting stuff I mentioned that happened at the back end of February.

• SEO Generation list the 40 changes Google have announced to maintain search quality. These include Improvements to freshness and fresher images. For bloggers, this is great news. Get that fresh, original content out there! Importance of local search is also key here.

• Search Engine Land’s Matt McGee highlights possibly the most important change, the fact that Google are looking at how they evaluate links. What this exactly means at present, is unclear, but perhaps cause for concern.

• Finally, State Of Search has an excellent infographic on how to optimise your website. ‘What would Googlebot do?’ is amusing and factually correct – worth a look!

Social Media

• Josh Constine at Techcrunch discusses the growth of Pinterest, the latest social media platform that is receiving huge interest (hitting 10m monthly uniques in US). What is Pinterest? How to use Pinterest for Business? Both questions will be covered in detail on the Orbital Media Blog next week.

• Fresh from its Social Network battle with Facebook, Google now seems to want a piece of Foursquare action too. Mashable detail Leaderboard, which works with Google Latitude where you earn points for check ins. Sound familiar?

• Google + and the Plus 1 button are also enjoying impressive growth according to Greg Finn of Marketing Land. A timely reminder that we cannot ignore Google Plus. If you haven’t managed to do so yet, here is a useful guide to create your Google Plus brand page.

• On the other side of the G+ fence sits Gabriella Sannino, whose negative appraisal of Google’s social network and social search function may actually get you to question the facts and numbers that are being thrown at us on a regular basis. Interesting reading.

• And Mashable’s Todd Wasserman has some numbers of his own. He very recently claimed G+ users spent 3.3 minutes on Google+ in January. In comparison, Facebook user spent 7.5 HOURS,according to a new comScore report. Ouch.

• LinkedIn is to introduce a ‘Follow Company’ button. Social Media Today ran with this and included a quote from a LinkedIn rep - “This marks the first phase of LinkedIn’s follower ecosystem strategy that will unfold over the coming weeks”. With a similar function to a Facebook ‘Like’, this surely is a good time to polish up your LinkedIn Company profile.

• Facebook Timeline for Facebook Brand pages will be available at the end of February, according to Gina Dietrich from SpinSucks (She was right!). Orbital media cover the importance of Facebook Timeline design for brands.

• Chris Crum at Web Pro News backed up the release date for Facebook Timeline for brands, and discusses possibilities of cross-brand promotions and app usage for Brand’s Timelines.

• Chris Crum also reports on Facebook’s ‘sponsored stories’ and raises the question, is this the way for Brands to succeed on Facebook.

• Social Media Examiner look at Twitter ads for small businesses in their weekly Social Media update, some interesting reading here.

• The ‘New Yahoo’ came out fighting…and this could pave the way for a very big scrap between all social networks. Yahoo claims it holds patents for ‘various internet technologies’ used by Facebook and it wants them to start paying for the privelidge. The message to the NY times was clear – comply or there will be consequences (“We must insist that Facebook either enter into a licensing agreement or we will be compelled to move forward unilaterally to protect our rights.”) One to watch….

Social Media & SEO Summary January 2012

Posted by Hayden Allen-Vercoe on February 02 2012
Filed in Blog Network News, Online Marketing Tips and Advice, Online PR, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Social Media Analytics, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Research, Social Networking

What a month! Dominated by the launch of Google ‘Search plus your world’ (and the other Social Network’s discontent of this Google – centric search), and the SOPA Blackout, with the big guns in full support.

Here’s what happened in January 2012 in the world of Social Media and SEO.

SEO Summary January 2012

* Google’s social search, incorporating G+ in its search results, are discussed by Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land.

* Mashable’s Sarah Kessler comments it is too much, too soon – I agree.

* Erin Everhart, also from Mashable, comments on the SEO perspective of this new Social based search

This could all kick off - The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), has called for the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) to investigate the recent search changes. There are concerns that the new features favour Google’s own services over those of competitors.

CNN Money even reported that Google may be sued for the new ‘Search plus your world’.

We need to remember that, according to Google, facebook & Twitter did not want Google to crawl their content, if this had been agreed search plus your world would have been so much more relevant.

And as far as SEO goes, I think it is important to highlight these personalised results are only visible if you are logged into Google. With G+ gaining more ground daily (see below!), more people are likely to be logged in to Google – which may become an SEO issue for the future.

But….Google said facebook and Twitter did not allow access to their social graphs and that’s why Search plus your world results are steered towards purely Google listings.

By the looks of it, not true. Engineers at Facebook, Twitter and MySpace have got together and produced a tool that shows clearly that Google’s new search could have been more driven to the user and not to Google. The new bookmarklet tool, ‘Don’t Be Evil’ goes beyond G+ search results. Search Engine Land have a full write up and install instructions.

Social Search as it should have been?

Meanwhile….

* WebProNews led with Google’s stunning announcement Larry Page claimed whilst discussing their results for the 2011 fiscal year; “Google had a really strong quarter ending a great year. Full year revenue was up 29%, and our quarterly revenue blew past the $10 billion mark for the first time. I am super excited about the growth of Android, Gmail, and Google+, which now has 90 million users globally – well over double what I announced just three months ago.”

This was posted by WebProNews on 19th Jan. To really see how fast this Social Network is growing, the same site also revealed that G+ users have now reached an estimated 100 million users. That’s an extra 10% growth in less than 2 weeks. Is Mr Zuckerberg concerned? I know I would be, G+ now looks to be a really viable contender to facebook.

* It’s not all good for Google though. Concerns over the new privacy settings may seem searchers adopt a new approach. Microsoft capitalized on this with a blog post ‘Google doesn’t put people first’. Google responded to these claims in their own blog post.

* The huge internet campaign led by the big players saw sites blacking out sections of their pages (or even complete sites) in support of anti SOPA. Examples of Google, Wikipedia and others during the ‘SOPA Blackout’ can be found here.

Not sure what all the fuss is about? You need to know – it affects each and every one of us. Mashable cover why SOPA is dangerous very effectively. Scary reading.

But, the blackouts seem to have worked! (For now). Mashable report on Lamar Smith, the chief sponsor of SOPA, pulling the bill. SOPA is dead.

Social Media Summary January 2012

* Social Media Examiner mentions Google’s new social integration, as well as highlighting Twitters new embeddable tweets and a really interesting, useful and free email tool for Gmail users – Brand My Mail, where you can add blog posts, Twitter or facebook updates and much more to your emails.

* Hubspot’s Pamela Vaughan also talks about Google’s “biggest social search update yet”.

* Bharati Ahuja discusses Google+ “as a complete blogging platform” at WebPro Tech.

* Brian Solis shares 10 social media strategies for defining a successful 2012 at his blog.

* Pinterest continues to grow, with Etsy being the latest to add a pin it button.

* More social growth? Danny Goodwin of Search Engine Watch  reports that YouTube is now serving 4 billion videos a day. If you are a stat freak, click the link, there are some more YouTube related stats there!

* Pen.io continues to grow as the fastest online content publisher. Although basic, it is also very effective at publishing a web page online quickly. We like.

* Too many Social Networks to handle?!! Macworld report that Twitter have acquired social media feed condenser Summify. Summify summarizes Social content in people’s Google, Facebook and Twitter social media feeds and delivers a daily summarized version via email, a website or an iPhone.

* Google were not the only ones to reveal good financial results for 2011. Facebook has just filed its IPO for 2011 with a figure of $3.71 Billion.

So in the first month of 2012, although Google has reported huge success, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft have all expressed some negative views. This year is going to be interesting, with a few more scraps to come.

I cannot wait!