SEO Blog - Search Engine Consultants

Is the distinction between PPC,SEO and social media Fact or fantasy?

martyn — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 18:27:24 +0000

Having spoken at length to clients and generally to friends in the market I wonder whether we create false barriers between what are really iterations of the same routes to market? I have a suspicion that this is often done to perpetuate the (false?) belief that we can then keep the budgets separate, therefore enabling us (Agencies) to justify to those (clients) the often exhorbitant overheads associated with multiple, and often competing Agencies.
It is also seems to me that the larger the organsiation, the more they seem to kowtow to the beliefs that these are distinctly different streams, requiring entirely different skills. However just glancing at Googles Quality Score should tell us that Google is expecting convergence of these streams sooner rather than later.
I look forward to comments.

Is the SEO Emperor not actually not wearing any clothes?

martyn — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 22:37:42 +0000

I was asked to reply yesterday on Linkedin about how to get hard phrases high. I was just about to give loads of (mainly) useful advice when I started to think that this has always been one of those oddities. why do we care about broad generic phrases that are likely to drive loads of (largely) irrelevent traffic to a clients site, with the likelihood of conversion set into the .000000something% which then seems to sound accetoabel as the ‘norm’ for the industry.

Isn’t this just perpetuating the widely held view that SEO is largely irreverent and doesn’t want to particpate in the true game…..of adding value to your client by actually achieiving something of value-REVENUE, AND ENQUIRY OR BETTER STILL PROFIT. Is it me or is the emporer not wearing any clothes?

Welcome to a New Year of SEO

martyn — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 18:01:09 +0000

I have often thought that this media in which all ‘new Media’ companies play is often misquoted and misunderstood. We are in quite possibly the easiest marketing environment to measure and yet, how do you measure the success of something like SEO?

Personally i believe this to a broken or at the very least an unfinished process, after all if your only measurement is that of counting the position on a search engine, whilst ignoring that all our customers are actually desparate for something more measureable and identified as something related to their bottom line, then it it must be mustn’t it?

Page rank and traffic correlation?

admin — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 16:29:58 +0000

Does having a high page rank mean you will get the traffic it deserves? The simple answer is no. I can have a high page rank and hardly any visits. I could have high page rank, top adsense optimisation, with little traffic and make no money on my site.

A goal of your site shouldnt be to get high page rank. Infact, a goal should be to get good traffic. In turn, you will find that page rank will follow due to people linking to your interesting content.

WRS Podcasting

admin — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 15:10:40 +0000

This is an example podcasting post. Podcasts coming soon.

PPC Tip – Improve ROI with Long Tail Ads

admin — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 12:54:24 +0000

This one will help you improve your ROI by a significant amount.

When researching your key phrases, use a similar principle to the normal SEO long tail technique. Instead of just trying to get the generic phrases and a few items or statements, produce a list of longer tail phrases and write an ad specifically for the phrase.

Example: generic phrases – ‘holiday cottages’, ‘uk cottage holidays’, ’self catering’
long tail phrases – ‘holiday cottages north wales’, ‘4 star uk cottage holidays’, ’self catering holiday cottages uk’

If we take the long tail phrases and make them an ad group each, using the above example this would give us 3 ad groups. Eventhough it would be possible to write an ad that would cover all 3 long tail phrases, this is laziness and will reduce your effectiveness and ultimately your ROI.

The best way is to take the phrase and write your ad variations for the phrase. Initially this is much more work than just throwing some ads up but it will pay off.

The general rule is to use the key phrase in the 1st line of the ad, then use lines 2 and 3 for the call to action, in long tail PPC work you can’t always get all the phrase in the 1st line. One of the methods I use is to make it read like a short sentence. Doing this means that if you get in the central shaded section just above the natural listings, these ads are displayed horizontaly and then your ad will be very strong.

Example ad for the phrase ‘holiday cottages north wales’

Holiday Cottages
North Wales Self Catering
4 Star, heated indoor pool

Google Analytics – Verdict

admin — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 15:33:03 +0000

Having used this tool now for a few weeks, I am overall very impressed with it. It certainly offers some fantastic features to the user. A paid tool would be shamed at the depth of this system.

I particularly like the timeline comparrison which is so easy to set up and manipulate. It can show in an instant how the sites have been fairing, improvements are then easily highlighted for customer reports. The option I like is the calendar for the dates but then I use the timeline tab to slide the date block backwards to a different time period. Very easy and very effective for customers.

They have moved the settings around and when I first started to use the tool it looked like it was a much reduced version that had been boosted by graphics. what they have done is made it more iterative. So when you start looking at the stats, the questions asked and the info found can be followed along by adjusting the drop down sections in the centre of the screen. This is as opposed to having to drill down by using the right menu in the first place from a selection of many and then clicking into things that were not obvious ‘clickable’ options.

The useability is a massive improvement on the previous version. The way you can export to pdf then print is very quick and easy.

Anyone looking to ‘buy’ a new analytics package should take a look at this first. If you are looking to use a tool to help with your ‘search engine rankings‘ then this can provide the golden nuggets for you to work on. Getting the right phrases with this tool is easy.

Well done Google Analytics team.

Google Analytics New Dashboard

admin — Mon, 14 May 2007 00:42:19 +0000

Google have now amended their dashboard on the analytics. This is a totally new structure giving an easy on the eye approach. So far it looks good, but how good is it? Time will tell.

New Adwords Webmaster Section

admin — Tue, 08 May 2007 23:28:14 +0000

Google are continuing their work with Adwords. There is a new section which allows you to test out varies page settings and different layout options. You will a little bit of coding knowledge and naturally the access to the site to be able to get this to work. For people who just look after adwords accounts through a client centre this will not work as you have to be logged into the account for the url directly.

The feature will allow you to set tags up in the source code of your pages and these are place holders for the adwords system to place various defined tags and images. You may have an image of a person as opposed to the actual product you are selling and you can monitor your experiment through the adwords.

I have not gone into much depth here as it is fully covered in the Google adwords setup.

This is a great addition to the adwords world but you will need knowledge and the access to the account other than through the client centre.

Webmaster tools

admin — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 00:40:57 +0000

The webmaster tools on Google have been undergoing some heavy development, the latest addition being the back links counter. This section of Google has had some great little features added to it and should be used regularly for monitoring the progress of your site.

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/