Last week we put out an appeal for questions about SEO that we could answer. Yes, you’re right, we’d run out of things to write about and needed inspiration but you came up trumps and so here’s the first in a series of blogs answering some of those queries.
We start with : “Is there a quick way to find out where your site ranks in google for a specific keyword. e.g. for my site I want to know which page it ranks on for say – Successful Project Management?”
I know that’s an odd number, but when we’re dealing with the web there are some incredible statistics about. For example, did you know that there are estimated to be 255 million websites in the world? That’s a figure from last year, there are probably many millions more now, it just keeps rising. But what has this got to do with anything?
Andy wrote a great blog post yesterday about a family in a dire situation being locked into a contract with LA Fitness. The news spread like wild fire on Twitter. To the point where LA Fitness told them they didn’t have to pay. A little too late though, the corporate image has been severely dented.
In stark contrast, I came across another large brand capturing the voices of social media users. This time it was Sainsburys on Facebook.
As I scrolled through the barrage of messages from friends, I noticed this letter from a 3 year old asking Sainsbury’s why it calls its tiger bread tiger bread when it looks like a giraffe.:
Then straight afterwards, a second letter. This was a reply from Sainsbury’s agreeing with the child and offering £3 giftcard.
When this story was first put on Facebook, it had around 15,000 shares with a few hours. Now there is a Facebook fanpage dedicated to Sainsburys Toger Bread, made by a fan.
People bang on about “making something viral” or “how do we get more likes”… here’s the secret guys… ready ?
It didn’t take long to write the reply to the girl’s letter. But it could have eaily ended up on the ‘to-do’ pile.
Stop thinking about your own company and start thinking how you can overdeliver!! You never know, people might even talk about it.
Google Plus was one of the new things that launched itself last year and within days of it arriving it was being called a failure many reviewers. Because it wasn’t being used by as many people as Facebook and the media had called it “the Facebook killer”, it was written off as another Google cock-up.
But were they too hasty? Read the rest of this entry »
It’s fair to say that 2011 was mental as far as SEO is concerned. Every week something new would be announced that says “hey guys, do this in order to beat Google” and “you’re doing that still? You’re soooooo January, c’mon, it’s the middle of February now, that doesn’t work!”
It’s enough to make the average man in the street (well, the man in the street with a website and the Internet) to think that it’s absolutely impossible to rank on Google anymore because nerds have taken over. Have you seen “SEO For Dummies” on Amazon? Over 400 pages!! Who’s going to read that!!?? Read the rest of this entry »
Here’s a sobering thought. You know that lovely bit of Flash animation you’ve got on your website, you know, the one that shows all the lovely images and things you sell in a neat slide-show with transitions etc, the one you paid a lot for? What if I told you it was actually losing you revenue?
Yep – losing you revenue. Not just ‘not helping’ but ‘losing’.
You really have to keep your eye on the ball these days. If you’re getting or even hoping to get your clients via the web then you need to make sure you’re ready for the “next big thing” whatever that is and as an SEO company we are constantly looking to see what works and what doesn’t with regards attracting customers.
Of course there will always be algorithm changes (the last one caused lots of pain for many) but then there are what I think of as the psychological changes – the changes that make people behave in a different way and there’s just been a whopping great change that you need to take notice of.
Being in the business for as long as I have, I’ve had the pleasure of seeing so many social network failures that I’ve got a healthy understanding of what works and what doesn’t and more importantly, what you should never do, ever, with social networking.
So read on if you want to know what I’ve discovered that can actually mean the difference between getting a job or not and what can get you into big trouble with the boss… Read the rest of this entry »
Google is always changing the way it does things in order to ensure it’s providing people the most relevant results possible for their searches. It’s OK having the biggest database of web sites on the planet, but how does it decide which one should be displayed at the top when someone is looking for “waterproof slippers” for example?
Well, I’ve always maintained that it’s down to links as links are what tells the big G what’s popular, but there are more subtle changes a-coming to the way Google does it’s thing and you can prepare by being ahead of the curve. Here’s how…
Whenever I talk to a business that is considering taking their products online or boosting their current online presence, the first thing I ask is “have you got a blog?” Sometimes the answer is “what’s a blog?” but many times it’s “I started one, but I ran out of things to say.”
