Mon, 29 Sep 2008 by Matt Hopkins
Not many people are currently aware that you can search for products by barcode (UPC or EAN) in GoogleBase - but as mobile search use increases, this type of search will become increasingly common. In this post, I'll show you how to ensure that your productbarcodes are also included in GoogleBase so that they appear for searches of this type.
Take a look at the following barcode for a pack of DVD-Rs:
If you type the full bar code number into Google (Shopping), here's what you get:
... Read More.
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Fri, 26 Sep 2008 by Pete Handley
Google announced a year and a half ago that traffic information reports were being added as a feature to Google Maps, and this has now been rolled out to the UK!
I tried this out, as trying to get out of Portsmouth around this time of day on a Friday afternoon isn't always that simple:
Fortunately, it appears that the coast is clear to get out of Portsmouth today! There is a system in place that colour codes the main roads in the area you search for, and green means decent traffic moving spe... Read More.
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by Emily Mace
I'm having a great day today - following some of the work I've been doing on one of my clients' website I today received the below gift from them.
Top Optimiser and in chocolate no less. I am really happy about this as the customer facing side of the work I do is so rewarding, so getting good feedback makes this even better, even if it's in an email or on a phonecall, but the chocolate is an added bonus!
As part of the work I am doing with all of my clients I regularly call them to... Read More.
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by James Daniels
Whilst Google ages on past the decade mark, you have to rememeber that Google Adwords has been around for nearly 8 years. Lauched back in October 2000 with just 350 customers, Google Adwords promised keyword targeting and performance feedback. So what's happen since then?
In February 2002 the first major overhaul for Adwords took place with the addition of the new Cost-Per-Click pricing platform. In April 2005 Adwords released Site Targeting as an additional feature giving advertisers th... Read More.
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Thu, 25 Sep 2008 by Joe Bursell
The first time I used a computer to share or spread a message I was utterly unaware of the things that went to produce the results I saw. Now that I understand technologies and marketing better I can share what I know about computers and building business with others. As an SEO my main mission is to get rankings, traffic and improve web-generated business.
But I've never forgotten that I have other skills. It's not an ego trip, it's altruistic- the more you know the more you can share, and t... Read More.
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by Kerry Dye
Over the past year, we’ve blogged a few times about search engine optimisation for travel sites.
Most recently Emily talked about SEO Blogging tips for travel sites.
And I talked about how the peak search engine traffic for travel related sites is still in January.
Last year I wrote extensively about how travel and tourism sites are turning to SEO for promotion.
There was some disillusion amongst the users of travel sites highlighted last year, but travel searches on the internet cont... Read More.
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by Joe Bursell
According to PricewaterhouseCoopers (using data from the Advertising Association) spending on Search by UK businesses is set to rise by 30% this year- that's compared with the 20% predicted for the whole internet advertising sector.
It is unclear whether this covers paid search alone, organic/SEO, banner ads, affiliates etc. or a blended approach- although the fact that they compare "Search" to "internet advertising" suggests that they're referring to SEO.
I think... Read More.
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by Emily Mace
There has been a lot of talk recently about the use of Dynamic URLs and their impact on the Search Engine Optimisation of a website.
Google recently blogged about the use of dynamic URLs and they recommend that rewriting URLs is not needed to enhance your rankings in Search Engines and help the Googlebot to crawl your site more efficiently.
In this Blog Google stats the following reasons for not rewriting your URLs
Dynamic URLs can be crawled by Googlebot so there is no need - Google sta... Read More.
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Mon, 22 Sep 2008 by Matt Hopkins
Did you know that Google offers the capability to view all adverts currently active for specific keywords in Adwords? Its a great tool to see both how competitive a certain phrase is and to review the types of messages that are being used by others.
There's two ways that you can get to this capability:
1. Click on the "More sponsored links" link at the bottom of the ads being displayed on Google
2. Go to this link - www.google.com/sponsoredlinks
From here, you can ent... Read More.
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by David Thomas
After recently insisting that a new Pay Per Click e commerce client of mine add conversion tracking to his site to track and justify the Google Adwords campaign was returning a good rate of sales for him, I was asked this question..
Why does the tracking code leave a visable tag on the page that it has been attached to when a conversion through a PPC campaign has occured and can this be removed?
My answer was, until now a small piece of text that read Google Site Stats would pop up on th... Read More.
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Fri, 19 Sep 2008 by Matt Hopkins
Ahoy maties! As Joe mentioned earlier, its "talk like a pirate day" and so I thought I'd show you how to set Google to display text in "Pirate" -- take a look at my Google home page:
Here's how you can set yours too:
1. Click on Preferences (next to the search tab on the google home page)
2. Then change your "Interface Langage" to "Pirate"
3. Press Save
Now - shiver me timbers... you're a pirate!... Read More.
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by Joe Bursell
As it’s September 19th it would be remiss of me not to comment on the annual International Talk Like A Pirate Day.
It’s been on the go for 7 years or so, and is good old fashioned childish fun- probably why I love it so much. As talking like a pirate comes quite naturally to me (that’s talking like a pirate NOT writing like one- pirates aren’t renowned as good writers) I can happily blether with the best of them. Maybe it’s something to do with the sea air here&he... Read More.
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Wed, 17 Sep 2008 by Matt Hopkins
I am proud to announce that Vertical Leap is now a fully certified Google Adwords Qualified Company.
Google awards the "Qualified Company" status as a way of distinguishing certain partners as "skilled professionals." It is granted to those companies that have demonstrated advanced knowledge of and expertise in Google's advertising techniques with the Adwords platform while consistently meeting a certain level of advertising expenditure. The company's staff memb... Read More.
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by Emily Mace
Google Chrome developments are still taking place and there are now some bookmarks you can set up in Chrome that enable you to perform some SEOQuake and Google Toolbar Functions.
Google Chrome still doesn't include an API so these bookmarks are an easy way to get some of the search engine tools we are used to using in Firefox into the Chrome browser. However these bookmarks must be set up manually within the browser and so code strings have been provided in the Google Chrome Forums.
Some ... Read More.
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Tue, 16 Sep 2008 by Matt Hopkins
We recently commissioned a study to better understand the nature of the search engine market in the UK. With a growing number of companies offering search engine optimisation services, I wanted to know how many of them were actually specialists - offering search engine marketing services only. The results were not surprising, but it is nice to have some concrete numbers.
The researchers analysed the top 300 pages reported by Google for the phrase "search engine optimisati... Read More.
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by David Thomas
I seem to spend a vast majority of my time as an Adwords Professional optimizing my Pay Per Click campaigns for clients to improve their quality score, boosting their ad positions and fending off less tuned in advertisers who fall short of the recommendations laid down by Google.
This week sees the release of new improvements to the Google Adwords quality score system. Which I can't stress enough how much will help advertisers in the future to "get it right" and navigate and optimize ... Read More.
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by Joe Bursell
For those who don't know (and why would you, really?) comScore is an Internet information provider of consumer behavior insight. They released a report yesterday that covers the growth of mobile search.
I'm not normally a fan of stats for the sake of stats, but these mobile search findings indicate a shift in usage trends- especially here in the UK. Rather than simply "more people using mobile search", it is apparent that "more people use mobile search, more often", pointin... Read More.
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Mon, 15 Sep 2008 by Kerry Dye
I’ve increasingly noticed search results with weird search terms appearing in the indexed results for some of my clients. Historically, we have never automatically prevented search results from being indexed, because it is usually only accessible by a form submission. However, it is something that is routinely monitored by looking at what pages of the site are indexed.
We’ve known for a while that (a) Google doesn’t like indexing search results and (b) it often adds a lot of pages with ... Read More.
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by Emily Mace
The home page of your website is the equivalent of the high street store front for your company. Making sure that your homepage is optimised and aimed at the visitor will encourage more people to visit more pages on your site and ensures Google will crawl the site as well. Statistics show that the homepage of a website is the most common entry point for visitors, so like your conventional store front, you want your homepage to sell to your visitors and make them want to read more.
There are ... Read More.
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Fri, 12 Sep 2008 by Joe Bursell
Now that we've covered the key elements of mobile search (browser technologies, screen size and search intent) we can delve a bit deeper into how to optimise for mobile search.
The slickest method for creating a mobile site is to create a mobile-dedicated style sheet to present the site in the right format for their device/browser. For guidance have a look at w3c's advice. Typically the mobile css can be implemented like this:
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" ... Read More.
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by Matt Hopkins
According to many estimates, more than 600 million unique visitors (i.e. people) search just Google and Yahoo each month with local intent. Local search is already huge. And it is getting bigger - fast.
According to researcher Marchex, local search queries increased by 24 percent in 2007, faster than general searches, which increased by only 14 percent. In fact, Google believes that at least 40% of ALL searches have local intent currently.
Why is loca... Read More.
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Wed, 10 Sep 2008 by Pete Handley
There is a lot of discussion ongoing within the SEO community about the importance of rankings as a metric for a Search Engine Optimisation campaign. Many are saying that rankings are no longer a relevant SEO success metric.
In some ways I agree with this. Certainly companies that are purely working on improving rankings as the only measurement of success for a campaign are decidedly flawed in their approach.
At Vertical Leap, rankings are one of a number of factors that we review... Read More.
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Tue, 09 Sep 2008 by Kerry Dye
I promised in my earlier blog about local search keyword choice that I would look in more detail at London terms specifically, which is useful for London SEO.
Apart from looking for [searchterm London], which is often fairly broad (and very competitive for SEO), web users in London also search by the first part of the postcode:
Dentist NW1
Dentist in NW1
Borough names are also popular:
Hairdresser in Kentish Town
Kentish Town Hairdresser
Hairdresser Kentish Town
People also search by thei... Read More.
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Mon, 08 Sep 2008 by Emily Mace
How do you get your travel site to the top when the competition is so strong?
If you run a Travel website, you're not alone! Travel is one of the fastest growing online sectors and new sites are coming online all the time - taking advantage of some of the travel trends taking place worldwide, such as the Olympics.
So how do you use SEO to get your site noticed amongst all the others?
One way to help your site optimise well for search engines, try writing a blog. Writing a regular blog ... Read More.
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by James Daniels
It was announced it June that Google and Yahoo had agreed upon a deal where Google would have the rights to sell search and other text ads on Yahoo sites, sharing the revenue generated with Yahoo. Today the deal has been challenged by some of the world’s biggest marketers.
Google currently have a 76.6% share of the search market whilst Yahoo has 17.9% and MSN have just 5.5%. The deal could generate an extra $800 million for Yahoo who were planning to sell their search marketin... Read More.
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by David Thomas
A study collated a few years back showed that in the
electronic and gaming markets over 90% of searchers trawled the net and found
specific product information online, but then bought offline. The trend was to
visit a local store or pick up the phone and purchase.
As a Pay Per Click Campaign delivery Manager this is
one of the biggest hurdles that I come across on a day to day basis. Many
clients have raised concerns regarding a low conversion rate but have been too
busy on the phone with new... Read More.
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by James Daniels
Microsoft is giving away a free month of search ads to both new and current customers. The free ads can be placed on any of Microsoft's Live services including Messenger, Hotmail and the MSN search engine. The reason for this action is to make brands/businesses/agencies realise that MSN can deliver better results than competitors like Google.
MSN may deliver quality results but the quantity is definitely still with Google. Is this a strategic way forward for MSN or just a desp... Read More.
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Thu, 04 Sep 2008 by Emily Mace
Now Google Chrome is available I thought I'd follow up on my blog earlier this week about the performance of Google's new browser.
Google's big claim on the launch of their Chrome browser is that it's fast when browsing the web, and it certainly is that. It's a very light browser with none of the normal tool bar options you get in Internet Explorer and Firefox which makes it easier to run however, there's currently no Java plug-in built into the browser and when trying to load a Java plug-in ... Read More.
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Tue, 02 Sep 2008 by Kerry Dye
Recently, Google made a change to the HTML that displays the search engine results. A side effect was that a lot of the automated ranking checkers broke (as did the autonumbering of search results much to our temporary dismay).
However, an interesting offshoot was the amount of buzz in the blogosphere about whether ranking reports were important or not. Now I’d seen this before - SEOMoz’s Rand Fishkin famously commented some time ago that “rank checking is so 1999”.
But it is somet... Read More.
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by Emily Mace
On Monday Google announced that they are launching a new browser called Chrome.
The browser will be available in 100 countries from Tuesday and is billed by Google as being a competitor to both Microsoft Internet Explorer and Firefox. The browser will be cross platform working with Windows, Mac and Linux and is the first software release for Linux that Google has released. The developers at Google who have been working on this new browser started with a blank page - looking at what the guys a... Read More.
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