SEO | Internet Marketing Blog

Business blogging FAQs

faq Last week, Blogware's Chris Baggott and I participated in a webinar about business blogging. As is so often the case with these things, we received more questions from the participants than we were able to respond to. Moreover, many of the questions are ones I've frequently heard over the years when presenting on business blogging at conferences and from readers.

So herewith, the FAQs on business blogging I hear most often...along with answers that will, hopefully, help move things along at organizations that want to blog, but are stymied by confusion, doubt and uncertainty around issues both technical and content-oriented.

by Rebecca Lieb 09 November 2009 16:53pm 2 comments

The Guardian makes its comments search engine friendly

The Guardian has introduced some welcome updates to its comments system, with comments now handled server-side instead of client side.

This means that the newspaper is not using javascript to display comments anymore, which brings with it a number of benefits, as pointed out by Malcolm Coles:

by Graham Charlton 05 November 2009 10:08am 3 comments

The ‘Vince’ update unravelled: does Google recognise brand equity? (pt 3)

Could this be the smoking gun, the SEO equivalent to 'CCTV' evidence of Google's manual intervention? I'll let you decide. My place is only to present the evidence.

Without wanting to sound sensationalist, I found this evidence quite shocking because as we all know, Google would never hand manipulate a SERP... would it?

by Paul Reilly 02 November 2009 10:40am 4 comments

The ‘Vince’ update unravelled – does Google recognise brand equity? (pt 2)

Yesterday we took a retrospective look at the 'Vince' update, exampling the 'Poker' and 'Life Insurance' SERPs, and how Google has cleverly managed to identify and apply corrective adjustments to a small number of rankings for big brands.

Today we're looking at the 'Holidays' and 'Betting' SERPs and the possible methods behind these adjustments, as well as introducing data from the Stickyeyes data set, enabling us to dig deeper into the back-link profiles of these movers and shakers.

by Paul Reilly 29 October 2009 11:53am 3 comments

The ‘Vince’ update unravelled: does Google recognise brand equity? (pt 1)

Four months after Google’s so called Vince update, and there’s still talk amongst SEOs of brand building being the new link building. The following three-part blog series aims only to present evidence for you to draw your own conclusions on what really happened, what Google is now looking for and how to effectively deploy your natural search campaign post Vince.

by Paul Reilly 28 October 2009 09:46am 4 comments

Four tips for analysing SEO Google Analytics style

Having spent time improving your SEO, building natural links and optimising on site elements then I bet you cannot wait to see the results. If you're anything like most people (including yours truly), you'd look at traffic to your site as an indication of how well you've done. Although the end result is higher numbers of visitors to your site due to better ranking, it might be while before your ranking will improve.

On the other hand by using Google Analytics it's easier to see short term improvement in your SEO by extracting hidden data gems so it's really a question of knowing where to look. Here are four tips...

by Ran Nir 21 October 2009 10:33am 14 comments

Buying or selling SEO links? Look at the trouble you’re causing

How many times have you sat through an SEO presentation and heard 'it’s all about links, and one link from the BBC is worth more than 1,000 low level directories.'

Google relies on media links to calculate PageRank, a gauge of website authority. These links bring order to search results, which is why everyone uses Google, which is why they make so much money. Brands therefore need media links to achieve SEO success in Google, which is fair enough.

But what do media owners get for providing the authority map behind Google’s meteoric rise? Plummeting advertising revenues as Google hoovers up the lot. This seems a bit of a kick in the teeth, but what can they do about it?

by Jack Hubbard 07 October 2009 09:39am 24 comments

Where should you spend your online budget?

The amount spent advertising online has finally exceeded that amount spent on TV promotions. So, if you're planning to dedicate more marketing money to the web platform, where should you spend that cash?

People are spending more online, both shoppers and advertisers. That means your customers are on the web but it also means your competitors have upped their game.

So you probably plan to increase the amount you spend, but where should you spend that cash? Should you boost your email marketing or ramp up your paid ads?

by Kevin Gibbons 05 October 2009 10:52am 12 comments

Cervical cancer jab: Please help inject some sensible advice into Google's results

Google risks undermining the cervical cancer vaccine program with the negative, scaremongering slant of its search results. Any parents searching for information on the vaccine in the light of the tragic death of Natalie Morton are presented with a page of negative and alarming stories.

There's something we can all do about this - that's link to the relevant NHS page and try to get that in the top 10 results for relevant Google searches. Here's how YOU can help.

by Malcolm Coles 02 October 2009 11:36am 13 comments

Why 'quality not quantity' matters online

Too often online marketing is characterised by quantity rather than quality. There's a pervasive idea that quality is too hard but sheer volume will have the same effect.

Let me give you a shining example of what I mean. I was recently browsing a forum when I found, without a doubt, the dumbest attempt at marketing I've seen in a while.

by Kevin Gibbons 25 September 2009 10:06am 4 comments