SEO Blog - UK Search Engine Marketing News & Tips

Google loves us after all. Or, at least, it cautiously approves of us.

The search engine publishes guidance for webmasters and, until recently, the only information it carried on SEO agencies was a warning about the terrible scams many use to try and trick a site into high rankings.

Such advice cannot have helped the SEO reputation in a world where those of us using best practice are often tarred with the same brush as those using nefarious and short-term tactics.

Black-hatters may sometimes achieve high results but will ultimately damage their client’s ranking (not that they care, they will have scarpered with the cash by then), and it is these firms many people think of when discussing SEO.

Anyway, Google has now admitted that ethical SEO has benefits.

A post on its Webmaster Central blog reveals the advice has been updated to note a list of the ways in which we can help. This includes content and structure development, technical advice and keyword research.

All right, it isn’t gushing, but it is certainly a start!

Relying on spreading a website’s address to consumers has never been a good way to market online.

Unless a firm is the lucky holder of a truly simple domain name (Hotels.com, Diet.co.uk and so on), it cannot hope to make enough consumers remember its address to keep it in work.

The majority of online business is directed through search engines. A buyer does not open a browser and try to remember the address of Inter Flora, they open Google or Yahoo! and search for “buy flowers online”.

However, ICANN’s latest decision to massively expand the number of top level domains available is going to make the battle for online audiences even harder.

As the number of variations increases and the complexity of web addresses grow, consumers will become even less likely to remember them, making the importance of decent SEO even more pronounced.

Furthermore, the ICANN move will create considerably more scope for cybersquatting and brand infringement, as unscrupulous people aim to cash in on a firm’s reputation by purchasing its name within a new top level domain.

There exist ways for brands to challenge such developments, but it is vital firms are in a strong ranking position in anticipation of such a threat. The last thing a brand needs is to be outranked in search results by the cybercrook hijacking its identity.

Secure high visibility for your domain now, use paid ads if necessary. Just make sure your corporate space is easily found before the internet expands even further.

A few months ago, I flagged up a study released by Ofcom which expressed concern that useful public resources, like online news services, were being buried through an SEO “arms race”.

Now, it is a closely held belief of mine that SEO work makes a website better for consumers as well as raising its profile. Pages become easier to navigate, information is presented more clearly and keyword-rich content – such as a blog – is added to the pages.

The newly-published European Digital Journalism Study cements my opinion. It shows that in Europe, one-third of journalists admit using only blogs to source their stories. SEO is at least partly responsible for the deluge of corporate blogs the World Wide Web is awash with and these are helping reporters write more thoroughly and across more sectors.

So blogs can help businesses gain press exposure as well as search engine visibility. Aside from sourcing news and keeping abreast of rumour, a journalist wanting sector-specific comment on an event is increasingly likely to contact the company with the most up-to-date, relevant and pertinent blog.

Most internet marketing efforts achieve more than simple visibility or brand awareness. By participating in the online community, businesses appear more well-rounded, well-informed and well-intentioned. Many SEO efforts do more for a firm than its increase traffic.

And they’re off… Again. More soap opera and cynicism erupts from three of the top performing search engines as Yahoo! sheds executives almost as fast as share value and Microsoft grumbles about Google being “anti-competitive”. Who needs WWE when you have giants like this wrestling each day?

Last week, Yahoo! lost even more top executives; Joshua Schachter (he of Delicious origin) and Brad Garlinghouse – this follows recent announcements from Caterina Fake and Steward Butterfield (of Flickr foundings), as well as search advertising exec Qi Lu and senior vice-president of search Vish Makhijani.

These names may mean little to anyone who does not follow the search scene but one thing which should be pretty obvious is that such a brain drain happening so quickly is unlikely to bode well for the engine. I would go so far as to say that Yahoo! is breaking apart and - without fast action soon - could lose its edge and its long-secure place as the world’s second most popular search engine.

It interests me, however, that the disintegration of Yahoo! is not being caused by any drop off in search engine figures. The number of people using search engines rises steadily; if Yahoo! ceases to be a main portal then MSN and Google will mop up their traffic. Search tools remain the best way for consumers to find their way around the web and if Yahoo! breaks, it will be as a result of self-destruction.

Recent headlines have highlighted yet again that Britain is in for a rough economic period. A combination of worried head-shaking from the Bank of England and screaming sensationalist headlines have understandably caused consumers concern.

Furthermore, economic fears have provoked a wave of blog posts from the SEO sector about the best ways to buckle down and survive a slump – many of which have been filled with a strained optimism which does not quite ring true.

However, I am not worried. I know that a gloomy economic environment (dare I mention the R-word?) is actually a fantastic time for a firm to focus on online marketing. Here is a brief summary of my reasons why.

Reason Number One: Consumers still need to shop
Yes, it is more than likely that consumers will not be consuming with the free abandonment which characterised the last few years – but they still need to make purchases. From food to footballs to financial services, people still need to buy things, even if the inflation genie squeezes itself out of the bottle. Businesses must ensure they are highly visible to gain the biggest possible share of the market.

Reason Number Two: Cash-strapped consumers research purchases
When people have limited cash, they consider their purchases more carefully. They go online, they research thoroughly, they read reviews - they research. Now is the time for businesses to ensure their websites can be easily found through search engines. It is also a good time to consider online reputation management - where every potential purchase counts, a business cannot afford to have uncontested negative content regarding their product or service circulating the web.

Reason Number Three: It is a good time to outpace the competition
If a firm’s competitors have outranked them online for years, now is a great time for it to exert its search engine optimisation (SEO) efforts and overtake them. If the competition has panicked and reduced its marketing budget, then a company which thinks ahead can dramatically increase its online audience and traffic. Cutting budgets is a short-term financial strategy which will impact future sales and profitability and hurt a firm even once the economy recovers.

Reason Number Four: Consumer awareness is a long-term concern
Marketing in general is about increasing consumer awareness as well as driving sales. Even when they are not in the market for a product or service, firms need to ensure people are aware of them so that, when they do finally decide to buy, their brand is first choice. A gloomy economic period will not last forever and firms need to ensure brand awareness remains strong so that they are best-placed to generate sales when spending picks up.

Reason Number Five: Firms must not be left behind
The internet is a developing marketing medium and the last thing any firm wants is to be playing catch-up once the slump stops. From SEO to email marketing and viral messages to reputation management - all online marketing develops all the time and a savvy company will want to be involved. Dated marketing can have a negative effect on a brand, meaning businesses cannot stop all promotional activity now and hope to pick it up in three months time. The internet is a fast-paced environment and dipping in and out is both costly and hard.

Should search engine optimisation (SEO) efforts be regulated by the Advertising Standards Agency? Recent discussions over whether or not the UK Code of Advertising Practice should apply to SEO have interested me considerably, because the existing rules simply cannot cater for the sector. Furthermore, while much of the recent debate has centred on whether or not the sector should impose self-regulating standards, I have seen considerably less debate about what those standards should be.

Kerry Nielson, the director of legal and public affairs with the Periodical Publishers Association, told the Association of Online Publishers that it is becoming “increasingly apparent” that some advertising platforms do not fall under the jurisdiction of the code and therefore cannot be investigated or regulated by the ASA. She called upon the online advertising sector to decide whether it wants self regulation or new, targeted legislation and makes some interesting points about the benefits and issues resulting from each possibility.

The ASA itself admits that, while paid-for advertising on the pages of search results fall under its remit, it cannot issue edicts on content which is not in paid-for online space.

However, it is hard to see how any regulator could exercise control on something as all-encompassing as search. The purpose of SEO is not to make wild claims about the brilliance of a product or service; it is, very simply, to shout down the competition. Well done SEO means drowning out all competing online voices, it means raising one company’s visibility at the expense of other firms.

This makes it a pretty unique form of marketing. When Coca Cola advertises its pop it does not follow that Pepsi has to make fewer adverts. There is no limited print space for advertising studenty food over which Pot Noodle and Supernoodles must wrestle. I believe this means that Ofcom or the ASA are unable to effectively monitor the sector, which suggests to me that self-regulation is necessary, if just to stop less-informed groups from imposing rules.

However, I also think that some fairly extensive debate and round table discussion should take place regarding precisely what those rules ought to be. Regulation is coming and we the industry need to act first.

Google has expanded its share of the UK market even further, managing to attract an incredible 87 per cent of visits in May alone, new research shows.

Analysis published by Hitwise has shown that, while Google properties accounted for a substantial 68 per cent of all US searches last month, the search behemoth was responsible for almost nine in ten UK queries.

This represents an increase of 12 per cent on last year’s healthy figures. Google really is the search engine of choice for Brits – and here in the UK, we make an astounding number of searches. In April alone, UK consumers made more than 4.1 billion searches, according to comScore research.

Now, to me and many others, this suggests (Continue Reading…)

A recent conversation with a friend has made me think about how the public perceive search engines.

Readers may have noticed that I often express my amazement at how little the average person considers how their engine of choice selects the websites it offers them, but lately I realised that some people believe search engines have undergone no major changes or evolutions for years. That search portals might in fact be as good as they are going to get.

It was one of those Sunday afternoon chats in a beer garden, where - having mocked each other’s careers for a while – we began to chat about the SEO sector. My friend remarked that it is odd that search engines have failed to improve their accessibility for the end user.

I expressed amazement that he would think this (Continue Reading…)

• Your competitors have never heard of you.
• Your boss thinks a search engine is a mountain rescue helicopter.
• The majority of your clients communicate with you by post.
• Your corporate website includes the legend “.angelfire”.
• Your marketing budget is entirely spent on printing coupons on the back of bus tickets.
• You have no clients in their twenties, thirties or even forties.
• Your IT worker leaves for a job in McDonalds because they want more of a challenge.
• Your marketing executive has taken to drink.
• Your sales figures resemble a graph plotting Gordon Brown’s popularity.
• You think the word blog is something to do with the Flower Pot Men.

Coming shortly after speculation from both Kevin and myself as to how firms would react to the change in Google’s keyword policy, a number of businesses are reportedly considering a legal challenge to the change.

The search engine’s decision to allow businesses to bid for their rivals’ trademarks is widely expected to drive up the cost of pay-per-click advertising in all sectors. Furthermore, in addition to the high cost, firms face the threat that if they fail to buy the advertising space, their loyal consumer will receive a dose of competition awareness, even if they do not choose to click the paid ad.

It was reported that Tesco pledged not to bid on competitors’ trademarks and urged its peers not to either. This certainly seems to be the case at the moment; Googling Tesco or Sainsbury’s throws up no paid ads, although slight misspellings such as Tescos and Sainsburys have pay-per-click ads for BeatThatQuote.com.

Now, though, Marketing Week reports that a “heavyweight” consortium of brands – which it understands includes Lastminute.com and Saga, and which definitely included the Association of British Travel Agents – have met to discuss raising a legal challenge to the change.