Share There’s a number of reasons a webmaster might want to markup structured content in a way that can render a data-type more clearly to search engines. Whilst this doesn’t have a causal effect on rank improvements, that more of your content can be “understood” more clearly, must be a positive right? Whilst there is some concern that marking-up your page content with Microdata, Microformats or RDFa may in some cases permit search engines to know enough about your page content and comparative data elements to bypass your page entirely; serving comparative results in-SERP, in most cases this seems somewhat alarmist when there are significant benefits to be had. This isn’t a how-to post, as I wanted to focus more [...]
Archive for the ‘SEO’ Category
- October 18th 2011
- 8 Comments »
Book Review – SEO ROI: Rules and Tactics of Advanced SEOs
Share I’ve been feeling a little SEOfatigued of late. Sick of hearing the same old regurgitated advice and seeing the same old presentation. I’ve found myself withdrawing from Twitter and retreating to smaller communities where the discussion is much more specific and emerges from real, in-the-field observations and results. And you know what? I’m learning more, much faster, and in a shorter amount of time. So, this isn’t a Twitter-diss; but more a natural evolution of my own approach to (constantly) learning SEO. I was pleasantly surprised and pleased when this book landed in my inbox reason being the content is very much of the insider-perspective, using situational examples as opposed to any grand SEO theory. About the Author, Editor [...]
How to Choose a Search Engine Optimisation Agency
Share I keep hearing horror stories about SEO companies ripping off the very people they are meant to help. While there are some excellent search companies out there dedicated to helping customers and going above and beyond, there are others who, like cowboy builders, want to take the cash and run. This can often leave the client out of pocket but also unsure of who to turn to for help when something of this nature happens. When I attended SES London some six or so years ago, I remember hearing the story of a charity who had paid an SEO firm five-figures and gotten nothing for it. Whether this was their perception or reality is always difficult to know but [...]
- August 29th 2011
- 2 Comments »
How To Create a Social Strategy
Share Habitat UK, Skittles, Nestle, Asus, and more are all tales of woe and warning for anyone going in to social media. Getting it wrong seems easier than getting it right at times. This is often because of lack of planning as opposed to level of difficulty. As important as it is for SEO, planning your social media strategy is important to ensure minimal brand damage from mistakes. Social media, with its low barriers to entry, may seem easy to do. Many think ‘how hard can it be to tweet and update Facebook’? Well, as Nestle learned when the tit-for-tat between an angry consumer and one of its marketing team on Nestle’s public wall got paraded out by some media [...]
- August 15th 2011
- No Comments »
How to Do Keyword Research
Share One of the things I think is most difficult to get right and yet is the most important factor for SEO is keyword research. The research that is done for SEO is quite different from the type done for PPC even though both are for search engines. This means while your PPC agency may have done some ‘keyword research’ it needs to be focused and refined for your SEO efforts. Good keyword research is important because of the number of other critical SEO elements it affects (as well as PPC). The on-page targeting for non-cannibalised keywords is important. That is, don’t target the same keyword on lots of pages. The link building anchor text is important. Internal links and [...]
- August 1st 2011
- 4 Comments »
How To Measure Success
Share One of the things I frequently get in trouble for is giving away too much information. I think that giving away too much insider information is what I am about to do below. My argument for sharing is that knowledge is power and by giving companies the skills and ability to understand what I do and how I do it, not only will they will better understand, appreciate and purchase services. One of the things I get asked most often, next to “how do you choose an agency” is “how do you know if what they are measuring means anything”? Understanding what is being measured, how it is measured and how you can double check the measurements yourself if [...]