Blog Archive from September 2008


SEO Tip for ECommerce Product Sites
Mon, 29 Sep 2008 16:23:43 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 barco...

Read More.


Google Maps now gives you UK Traffic Information
Fri, 26 Sep 2008 16:36:56 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...

Read More.


SEO - The rewards of Good customer service
Fri, 26 Sep 2008 15:40:54 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 ...

Read More.


Google Turns 10
Fri, 26 Sep 2008 11:27:15 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...

Read More.


Why SEO should add up to more than just better business
Thu, 25 Sep 2008 22:14:56 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 forgot...

Read More.


SEO Tips and Trends for Travel Websites
Thu, 25 Sep 2008 17:46:44 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.Read More.


Search engine marketing set to grow and grow
Thu, 25 Sep 2008 17:30:13 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 th...

Read More.


Dynamic URLs and Search Engine Optimisation
Thu, 25 Sep 2008 09:18:42 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 stat...

Read More.


Search Sponsored Links - How to review competing Google Adwords ads (PPC)
Mon, 22 Sep 2008 16:11:42 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 botto...

Read More.


Adwords conversion tracking update
Mon, 22 Sep 2008 09:57:19 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 r...

Read More.


How to Make Google - Talk Like a Pirate
Fri, 19 Sep 2008 12:05:46 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 &q...

Read More.


Arrr! Sink me if it's not International Talk Like A Pirate Day!
Fri, 19 Sep 2008 11:58:30 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...

Read More.


Vertical Leap Achieves Google Qualified Company Certification
Wed, 17 Sep 2008 14:15:55 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 ...

Read More.


Search Engine Optimisation in Google Chrome
Wed, 17 Sep 2008 09:20:53 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 mus...

Read More.


New study reveals that few SEO companies are search specialists
Tue, 16 Sep 2008 16:32:44 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.

Read More.


PPC Quality Score - Adwords Release Improvements
Tue, 16 Sep 2008 12:37:35 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 stres...

Read More.


Mobile Search Growth
Tue, 16 Sep 2008 10:16:12 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 u...

Read More.


Google Crawling Through Forms and Drop Downs: SEO Effects
Mon, 15 Sep 2008 14:09:14 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 k...

Read More.


Search engine optimisation on your home page
Mon, 15 Sep 2008 13:42:13 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 sto...

Read More.


SEO for Mobile Websites- Part 2
Fri, 12 Sep 2008 13:41:51 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...

Read More.


Local SEO - Big and Getting Bigger
Fri, 12 Sep 2008 09:56:55 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.  ...

Read More.


Rankings ARE important for Search Engine Optimisation - For Now
Wed, 10 Sep 2008 15:18:20 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 decidedl...

Read More.


Local Search Engine Optimisation for London Companies
Tue, 9 Sep 2008 12:07:30 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...

Read More.


SEO blog tips for Travel sites
Mon, 8 Sep 2008 13:16:36 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 am...

Read More.


Google-Yahoo Deal/Partnership Challenged!
Mon, 8 Sep 2008 12:23:45 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 hav...

Read More.


Pay Per Click Management-Offline Conversions
Mon, 8 Sep 2008 10:23:52 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 o...

Read More.


Free PPC Ads from Microsoft Adcenter
Mon, 8 Sep 2008 08:58:01 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 ...

Read More.


Google Chrome - First thoughts for SEO
Thu, 4 Sep 2008 12:20:35 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 eas...

Read More.


Ranking Reports in SEO - Extracting the Value
Tue, 2 Sep 2008 12:29:30 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 - SE...

Read More.


Google Launch new browser
Tue, 2 Sep 2008 08:58:55 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 d...

Read More.