Ever wondered how the social media graph may affect the search algorithms in the future?

I personally have, and its my view that Google is showing many signs that it is using the “social graph” more and more to influence its ranking algorithm.

Google recently introduced its new product, Google Buzz, which is incorporated into Gmail. Google Buzz is like twitter in that you can share what you are doing, share videos, images and links etc and generally provide your followers with status updates.

I have had a brief play, and I think it will be a big hit.

It’s my personal view that eventually users will move away from search engines. “What?” you say. “You must be mad mate!”. Well a little yes but let me explain.

The world has changed big time in recent years, not only how people interact online but also in terms of trust. Word-of-mouth has always been a great source of leads and information and I personally think this is the way the web is going. People will not be looking on Google or Bing or any other search engine for information. They will be asking their hundreds or thousands of connected followers that they have within the social sphere in order to find what they are looking for, or answers to questions they may have!

What do you think? I would love to hear your point of view. Feel free to send me a tweet, connect on facebook, mail me or leave a comment below.

Below is the latest blog posts from the guys at SeoMoz. Rand speaks about how they think search is changing. Enjoy.

After sitting through yet another SEO webinar and reading more and more posts on the web in recent days, it has become very clear to me that there are a huge amount of new and experienced SEO’s out there who seem to be fixated on trying to reverse engineer the Google ranking algorithm.

Many of them spend hours writing about what they “believe” to be the case but have no substantial evidence to back up their claims. Just visit any SEO forum and you will find hundreds of threads created by people claiming that this is the best approach or this is the best method in building links. What is clear is that a lot of these people spend an awful lot of time hanging out in forums. What is it they say? “advice is the cheapest commodity around”. Everyone has some to share!

Strategies built on speculation and taken from those who either claim to have the knowledge, or listen to the other lemmings, are doomed to failure. So people. Stop trying to read Google’s minds and reverse engineer the algorithm, as you just can’t do it. Even if you can work out that H1 tags are no longer of any value, or that links from a certain site appears to pass link juice, the algorithm is constantly being evolved with Google changing their 200+ signals on a regular basis.

One thing you can take to the bank though is that Google are ALWAYS looking for the signals that reflect trust, authority, relevance and value. Let me say that again “TRUST”, “AUTHORITY”,”RELEVANCE” and “VALUE”!

The key steps to any online marketing strategy are:-

1. Build a site that DOESN’T have all the bells and whistles but serves a purpose, provides great unique, interesting and ground breaking content in the form of blog posts, articles, videos, downloads and other great content.
2. Add a blog to your site with RSS feed, sharing widgets and email subscription.
3. Setup accounts on social sites such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Youtube.
4. Promote your content on these channels by building a community around your brand, products and services. Your site becomes a hub.
5. Bookmark your new posts and content on sites such as digg, reddit and delicious.
6. Contact industry leading bloggers in order to help promote your content further.
7. Make sure you post consistently with well researched content.
   Interact online via social media in order to build trust, transparency, brand awareness and mind share.
8. Monitor and track your progress using your key performance indicators and ascertain and put more effort into best performing channels.

This is what users want! So give it to them and they will love you for it and tell the world just how great you are.

Who knows, you may even get a sale or two.

As ever, please feel free to subscribe to my blog via RSS or via email, comment below, follow me on twitter or become a fan on facebook.

When it comes to measuring the effectiveness of your online marketing campaigns, there are many different KPI’s that can be used, with some providing better insights than others. Some people measure the number of inbound links and indexed pages with others using Google toolbar page rank and keyword rankings.

But before using any metric, it’s important to know WHY you are using it and what each metric actually signifies. For example, you may say, “wow, my site has 10,000 links”, but when those 10,000 links come from 10 domains this doesn’t really measure popularity or reach does it? Besides, Google will probably have de-valued 9,990 of them anyway.

In my last post 7 Must-Do Inbound Marketing Practices For 2010 (and beyond) I spoke about some of the best inbound marketing methods you can use in 2010 and beyond in order to attract more visitors to your website. In this post, I will discuss some of the KPI’s you can use in order to measure the success of those practices and why each is so effective in finding out whether you are truly connecting with your customers.

1. Number Of Organic Keywords Found With
If you have ever looked at your traffic and keyword stats you will notice that approximately 80% of keywords used to find your site are keywords that you most probably didn’t optimise for. This is more commonly referred to as the long tail and is why it is so important that you create a site that has lots of textual content that can be indexed by the search engines.

So, the more content you have, the more keywords and search phrases you will be found with. Another great benefit of being found with these long tail searches is that they are normally very highly targeted and convert much better compared to broad keywords.

So, if the number of individual keywords you are being found with (and you can find this using any analytics program) is rising consistently, this is a good sign that you are creating a content rich site.

2. Number Of Linking Domains
Another great KPI is the number of linking domains. Many people focus on purely the number of links coming into your site from other websites, but this is wrong. It’s very easy to get a link from a site that’s placed in the footer which means that you may have a link on 10,000 pages. Do you think Google will count all of these? Dream on!

This is why a more important KPI is the number of unique domains linking to you, as this is a greater indicator to Google and the other engines that you have great link popularity. 500 unique domains linking to you are far more valuable than 20,000 links from 20 domains. Unless of course the 20 sites are extremely powerful.

3 . Number Of Pages Indexed
Another great KPI which is important to keep track of is the number of pages on your site that are indexed in the major search engines. The more content you have indexed, the more likely it is that you will attract lots of highly targeted long tail traffic.

4. Number Of Branded Searches
A strong indicator that you are starting to gain greater brand awareness are instances of branded searches within your logs and analytics. So, any search that includes your company name in it can be considered a branded search. Make sure you monitor these on a regular basis.

5. Number Of Blog Subscribers
If you have a blog and are using it in order to display your writing talents then you want to keep track of how many people are subscribed to it via RSS. This can be done by using Feedburner and can provide you with regular stats on how many people you have hanging on your every word!

6. Number Of Twitter Followers
Twitter has become a great channel for drawing visitors into your site. It’s a great way to build a community of followers for your business and also a great way of establishing a connection with your clients and becoming more “transparent”. The number of followers you have can be a good indicator of the kind of reach and “mind share” you are starting to build.

7. Number Of Facebook Fans
Like Twitter, Facebook is extremely popular, with hundreds of millions of users logging in every day. By creating a fan/business page on Facebook, you give your existing and potential customers the opportunity to not only get updates on your company, but also give them the opportunity to converse with you directly. Tracking and increasing the number of Facebook fans you have is another signal that you are gaining more influence and mind share within your market.

So remember. If you are tracking any KPI, make sure you know exactly why you are tracking it and what it signifies.

Related Post: 7 Must-Do Inbound Marketing Practices For 2010 (and beyond)



Historically, I have offered core organic SEO services to my clients. But in the new year I will most definitely be incorporating many extra marketing strategies into the mix. Not only is search changing in a big way, but also, the approach I take in order to market my clients services and products.

SEO is great for attracting new organic search traffic and visitors and myself and my clients have had much success, but alone It is not enough. In a changing online world of search a more holistic approach has to be adopted in order to make use of all the channels that are available to marketers.

With the recent introduction of personalised search, universal search and real time search, obtaining top 10 placement on Google is becoming harder and harder, and we all know that languishing on page 2 or more is of no use whatsoever. As Google butchers the results pages more and more, organic results are getting pushed further and further down the pecking order and lets face it, organic search results just don’t pay the bills for Google do they?

This is why the “social web” has become so important. Couple this with an ever increasing need for trust in the world we live in, its important if not vital, that we truly “connect” with our customers and establish more engaging business relationships both online and offline.

So trust, credibility, transparency and UVP (Unique Value Proposition) will become even more important. But how can we adopt such an approach? Simple. By practicing the below and using them as part of your inbound marketing mix.

1. Use Social Media – In the last couple of years social media has seen a huge spike in usage. Facebook now has around 350 million active users 65 million of these are accessing via mobile devices! Then we have Twitter which has a reputed following of 80 million users its easy to see that if utilised ethically, this is a great channel to help increase brand awareness. But unless you have some remarkable content to market (#3 below) you wont get far.
2. Start Blogging – There were 133 million blogs online in January 2009 and I am sure that this number has exceeded 150 million or more over the last 12 months. By creating a blog with an RSS feed you get the opportunity to create regular “remarkable” content and have people subscribe to it automatically using their feed readers. If you use applications such as twitterfeed you can also automatically post to Twitter and Facebook. A blog is a must have for any business and if you don’t have one, you are missing a great opportunity.
3. Create Highly Focused Content – With inbound marketing the main focus is that you are creating a “hub” that draws people into your site and keeps them there by providing great content and ways to “stay connected” (RSS feed, Twitter, FB etc) so that you can keep them coming back. Content can be informative blog posts, interviews with industry leaders, videos, infographics, how to’s, top x lists, industry news or anything else provided by your creative juices. Remember, “You have to give in order to get!”
4. Use Your RSS Feed – As mentioned in #2. If you create a blog you need to allow people to view your posts and content not just directly on your site but indirectly via a blog feed reader such as Google reader.
5. Practice Regular Blog Commenting – As there are so many blogs out there, they provide you with a great way of enforcing your own authority within your field. Most blogs allow you to add a comment at the end of each post, so why not use this opportunity to provide your own opinion. You can agree, disagree, add further resources or info or enforce what the blogger is saying. By blog commenting on a regular basis you start to become “known” within your niche and can help to establish yourself as an authority. Users can then click on your link in order to view your site. It’s a good way to gain extra visitors to your site if done ethically, i.e., not in a spammy fashion. If you follow the blogs via RSS reader, why not make sure that you are always one of the first to comment making sure that everyone gets to read your comment rather than have it buried by dozens of others?
6. Install A Bookmarking Widget – A bookmarking widget is easily integrated into any site and allows users to bookmark, email to a friend or add your page to social media sites. It’s easy to implement and is effective in gaining more links and mind share. So do it! No excuses. I recommend addthis.com
7. Make Sure Your Site Is Mobile Friendly – Apparently there are more mobiles in the world than there are computers and TV’s! 65 million people access Facebook using mobile devices! There are going to be many more in the coming months and years. Mobile web is picking up momentum in a big way. Google has now brought out its own Nexus One smart phone which I am sure will sell like crazy and we also have the Apple iphone and other such devices which are already well established. The “mobile web” is going to be huge and means that owners are going to have to make sure that their websites are “mobile friendly” if they want to garner visits from the more tech savvy user.

I would love to hear your views on this and perhaps even your own tips for marketing online in 2010. As ever, please feel free to comment below, bookmark, subscribe to my feed or connect with me on Twitter.

The web has become the numero uno when it comes to marketing your business. In the early years of the web it was relatively easy to promote your business and make lots of money. I would like to say its “easy” to make money today, but what with the global economic meltdown there is no doubt that there is a lot less money in circulation. Couple this with the fact that the web has become a lot more saturated with companies looking to take advantage of this “new medium” and you can see that things are a lot harder than they were in the past.

But saying that, there are still great opportunities to gain greater exposure for your business and yes, make money. The Internet is still the most cost effective way to make money and gain greater exposure. Don’t believe me? Think about Barack Obama and how he used inbound internet marketing to defeat Hilary Clinton who had a much bigger budget. All thanks to a great web strategy and something that we can all replicate.

The web is changing, search engines are changing and users are changing in the way they interact with each other and in the way they use the internet to carry out everyday tasks.

We have now become so accustomed to “outbound marketing” where you “push” your products and services to people, that we have all become that little bit more adept at blocking out this “noise”. Think of banners for example, when was the last time you really stopped to read what they had to offer? They and many other channels have become far less effective in winning the mind share of website visitors.

When I say search engines are changing, I refer to the fact that possibly over the next 12 months or so, there will be two major search engines, Google and Bing. Yahoo is set to use the Bing search engine which means there will be a 80/20 split between the two engines. “So what”, you say. “How does that affect me and my website marketing?”.

Well, Google are rampant. They are looking to make more and more money(aren’t we all) and they are doing a great job at doing just that. Google are working extremely hard to obtain as much information about us as they can, so that they can use the organic search engines results pages to sell more highly targeted advertising space. Think, PPA(pay per action), universal search, video, images, real time web and god knows what else.

And how are they going to obtain such information? Well they already are. Think Google adwords, your Google account that tracks your surfing and search habits, cookies, Google Chrome browser (soon to be released), Google Toolbar, Googles own smart phone (Nexus One), Gmail and of course their many other web properties where they can monitor the actions of millions of daily visitors. This is just a few I have mentioned. I am sure you can think of many others.

What this means is that your normal organic results will be used far more for well targeted advertising, pushing the normal organic listings down the page and off to the world of page 2 obscurity.

So, for me, the key for the future is an inbound marketing approach. Using your website as a hub and using the social web including Twitter and Facebook, the “blogosphere” and RSS feeds (External sites and apps) etc to drive visitors to your site.

Communities and quality content are also going to be a deciding factor. It is going to be even more beneficial for businesses to create quality content and engaging media in order to help keep users coming back again and again and to establish themselves as the authority within their niche.

The web is changing. If you don’t adapt and start being more creative and start “reaching out” to your customers by offering them something of value, you’re doomed to online failure.

I work closely with the Redline Company who are a leading marketing company here on the Costa del Sol and recently had the privelege of doing a radio interview on Central FM with George Prior where I spoke about SEO and how it can benefit all companies who have an online presence.

The interview is aimed at those who are not familiar with SEO and who maybe considering having some SEO done on their site. So hopefully the interview may provide you with answers to questions you may have in regards to my own services or to SEO in general. Happy listening!!

For those who do not know, article marketing is a term used to describe the practice of writing articles and sometimes distributing articles via distribution services such as isnare.com and articlemarketer.com or just by adding them to article directories such as ezinearticles.com or buzzle.com

The idea behind it is that you write an informative article on your topic/niche, and put it in front of as many eyeballs as possible. Then at the bottom of the article (or sometimes within it), you will have the option to add your little bit of self promotion and link to your website via the resource box.

Article marketing is a real opportunity for you to establish yourself as an authority within your field, although judging by a lot of what gets placed onto most article directories, this is not always the case!

There has been much comment in the past as to the value of article marketing with some citing that “you may as well put the articles on your own site” or “it’s going to be seen as duplicate content if you distribute it to lots of websites”. Although both of these are valid points, there are a number of benefits to article marketing that I would like to mention, including:-

Presenting Yourself As An Expert

Let’s face it, when looking for information we want to read something that is concise, interesting, and is well researched. By writing well crafted articles, you establish yourself as someone who is a trusted expert and source of quality information.

Helping To Build Links

By placing articles on some of the better directories such as Ezinearticles and Buzzle,  you will find that your articles not only rank well (if optimized correctly) but also inherit page rank, which in turn “bleeds” page rank back to your site through your link.

While many believe that distributing articles to more than one website constitutes duplicate content and therefore will not pass any real SEO value, it must not be forgotten that its not JUST about SEO. Distributing your article to hundreds of websites gives your website greater visibility and hopefully, more visits and natural links.

Obtaining Click Throughs

Another obvious benefit is click throughs. By placing information within the resource box at the bottom of your article, you are offering the reader the ability to investigate your services or products further, after all, if I have just read a great article I will be really interested in reading more content from this author or website.

Establishing Trust

Trust is vital, not only in SEO, but in business. By writing good content you are showing the world that you are an expert within your field and what you say is worth listening too. The fact also that a lot of top article directories will only approve quality articles, also adds to your trust brownie points.

So there you have it. A number of reasons why article marketing is still a valuable method for SEO and why you should be using it to establish yourself as a trusted resource.

Many of those new to SEO become almost obsessed at times with the little green bar in their browsers (Google Toolbar) and see it as some kind of victory or trophy that says “Yes, Ive made it” its all down hill from here! If only it were that simple!

So what does pagerank really mean in terms of ranking and SEO?

Pagerank is a Google algorithm that was named after Larry Page one of the two Google founders and is supposed to represent and indicate to a sites visitor the overall link popularity of a page or an indication of the amount of citations/votes (links) there are too that page. Although this is partly correct and it must be stated that this is a rather simplistic view of pagerank, it still does not reflect the true meaning of pagerank and what bearing it has on our sites performance.

If you want to see an example of a site that has massive pagerank on almost all of its 479,000 pages then take a look at http://www.doaj.org/. This was recently highlighted by Eric Wards post titled “Where trust lives”.

As you browse through the site, ask yourself why does this site have so much pagerank?

Ok finished? Well although the site is relatively new (2003) it actually has over 10,000 links from .edu domains (normally highly trusted by Google as they are academic sites) and over 250 links from .gov domains (govermental sites) that are trusted even more by Google and the other search engines.

This brings me onto my next point. In the above paragraph you will notice that I used the word “trusted”. This my friends is what it is all about.

In a web full mostly of crap and spam its even more important that you obtain links from trusted resources and this will only come if you HAVE a trusted resource yourself that people are happy to link too. You see, its not about pagerank, its about “TrustRank”. The more you are trusted by the engines and other sites (links) the better you will fair and the more successful you will become.

If you want to be trusted more, you need to build a site that is easy to navigate and more importantly is full of authorative content within your field that people will find of great use and interest and at the same time will be happy to link to in some way. If you don’t have any interesting or link worthy content on your site, you are fighting an uphill battle, as you won’t have anything of any real value to market and promote.

So don’t be a cowboy. Differentiate yourself from the competition in terms of the value and experience you add to your users lives and eventually you will build more trustrank and in turn better rankings and traffic. Get inside the minds of your users, find out what they really want or the answers to the questions they are looking for and give them just that!

Oh and forget about link building so much. People will do that for you “naturally” the more they see you and your brand as a source of trustworthy and informative content.

For more information on the pagerank formula take a look at the paper written by Brin and Page while at Stanford University http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html Its an old doc but is a great read.

This is a question that unfortunately I am not asked enough by potential clients so normally have to volunteer such info as its important that I manage a clients expectations correctly in order to avoid possible dissatisfaction.

What is clear, is that at the outset of any search engine optimisation agreement or contract, the client MUST be made fully aware of the following:-

1. The competitiveness of their niche

2. The demographic of their potential customers

3.  What they want their visitors to do in terms of actions on the webiste, IE, buy a product, contact them about a service or signup for a monthly newsletter etc.

4. How long it will take to rank for their most competitive search terms.

5. How likely their site is to actually convert any visitors into paying customers.

6. The advantages of SEO over other forms of advertising and promotion.

This is 6, but I am sure I could come up with a few more.

The 4th entry is the one I wanted to bring your attention to and is the subject of this post. How long will it take to rank and receive traffic?

To answer this question we need to understand that not all industries are as competitive as others. Some industries such as real estate, finance, credit cards, mortgages, gaming, hotels and pharmaceuticals are very competitive with a greater return on investment than say a small local plumber. Wherever there is a great potential to make lots of money, you will find plenty of competition.

For a business with limited online competition, for example 50 competitors, the site can ranking well possibly within the first month or two and start competing at the outset of the SEO campaign. The same cannot be said for the more competitive industries.

When you have for example 500 websites competiting for the same keywords and business, its not possible to compete at the outset with organic SEO due to different things including search engine crawling, ageing of links and a sites authority etc which all take time and is not influenced by money. A lot of the competitors will have been established for possibly a number of years and to think that you can compete instantly with them is totally un-realistic.

With a very competitive industry you will normally be looking at around 12 months or more to start seeing good levels of traffic.

“Patience” is definately the watch word with SEO. Slow and steady wins the race as acquiring links too quickly looks un-natural to a search engine and can lead to penalties which is obviously a blow to any online business.

In the long run though, the return on investment for an organic SEO campaign is far greater than using adwords or other forms of advertising.

You need to look at any SEO campaign as a long term investment. Its like growing a tree from a seed. It takes time(keyword research and analytics), a lot of nurturing(on-site optimization) and lots of feeding(links and money).

An oak tree doesn’t grow over night, and neither will your websites online presence and visibility.

Ok, well this is a question that I am asked from time to time and read a lot on the web. “How can I compete with the big boys online with a small budget?”

In terms of business size, bigger isn’t always better. There are some definite advantages to staying small in the business world that in my mind far outway some of the advantages of going BIG. Some of the advantages of remaining small include:

1. More control over the day to day runnings so that you can keep track of whats happening in your business. Just look at some of the most recent news such as Barings and other banks finding out that their traders have been losing billions behind their backs with supposedly nobody knowing a thing about it. Wow, if only I had billions to lose!!

2. The ability to move quickly to the changing market, this cannot be said of larger companies who have a hierarchy and systems in place to make changes to the simplest of things. Being small means that you can make strategic changes within your niche quickly that way staying one step ahead of those big boys.

3. In terms of SEO , you can target the less competitive keywords which may not receive so many searches but are more focused to the services and products that you offer. This means that you can rank quicker and get more “relevant” and “convertable” visitors to your site. Oh and you will not need the same budget that the big boys need to spend to compete with the “broader” search terms.

Take me for example. My industry is extremelly competitve. For me to target “search engine optimization” or “SEO Company” is not realistic as I am a one man band who does not have a team of SEO’s working on their marketing or a larget budget to play with. But hey thats fine, as I target keywords and search terms that are more relevant to my niche, ie spain and the costa del sol. That way I can work at owning my niche area. Yes I get less traffic, but the traffic I do get is more focused and local which helps me to convert more visitors to clients. You can do this too!!

4. Another great thing about staying small is the personal touch. Many customers love the idea of being able to speak to the “main man” when they have questions on a personal level rather than “submit a ticket” or have to go through some chain of command in order to speak to some who “might” no what your talking about or worse still explain your problem too half a dozen different people. I love the fact that working mostly on your own means that the buck stops with me. I am responsible and like the fact that I can have a close and interactive relationship with my clients.

5. You save moneyand that money saving aspect is passed onto your clients which for them represents better value as the cost of SEO is reduced meaning that their ROI (return on investment) is even greater. With the current financial crisis, customers are looking for even greater value and this is something you can provide by staying small and keeping your costs down in order to pass on your savings to your customers. Hell how do you think some of the small airlines run and compete or some of the low cost retailers in the UK such as Primark? They keep the costs down and pass on that saving to the consumer.

So there you have 5 benefits to remaining small. I am sure you can think of many more.

Organic SEO is a great long term strategy that you can implement to help you compete with your larger competitors. Many businesses feel that they are unable to compete or that the market is flooded with competitors but this does not matter. Be creative and there is always an angle you can find in order to work you way into the market.

SEO does not have to cost the earth. I work on an hourly rate so the client always knows how much of my time they will get each month. It doesnt matter if you can only afford 10 hours per month. The main point is that you are consistently investing into your website over the long term and gradually giving your site more exposure and thus getting better ranking and traffic in your targeted niche market. I have a number of clients in different niches including alternative cancer treatments, Spanish Property, Property in North Cyprus, property in Cape Verde, Marbella property and Holiday Rentals. All are competing with some of the major players in their niches.

You can do it!! Its been done before and MANY have prospered! You can to!

Remember, big isn’t always better. Its not the length of the sword, its the swordsman!