The Secret Truth about Social Networking
by Brian TurnerNetworking:
“The dark art of pretending to like people in order to advance one’s own self – even though that self has precisely nothing to offer the world barring an extraordinary aptitude for self-advancement.”
From The Encyclopaedia of of Modern Life, aka “Is it just me or is everything shit?” – Steve Lowe and Alan McArthur
Everything you ever needed to know about SEO
by Brian TurnerWhatever you read online relating to SEO, here are the only steps you need to take to learn about SEO:
1. Build a few websites
2. Read SEObook.com
3. Read search engine patents
4. Adjust sites accordingly
5. Observe and adjust
6. Rinse and repeat
Everything else is hubris.
SEO blogs and forums are not a place to learn about SEO:
- at best [...]
July 23, 2008
Investing business funds on the stock market
by Brian TurnerI’ve always had a certain amount of liquidity in the bank, and originally I had planned to keep this as reserves for a rainy day.
However, my growing interest in stocks and shares, and then my business bank calling to suggest increasing my bank account interest rate – which never happened – pushed me into thinking [...]
July 14, 2008
YOU are an asset!
by Brian TurnerYour websites are assets, the wider internet is a galaxy of assets.
But among all of these stars, there is no greater asset than yourself.
This is a fundamental truth in the social web.
It’s taken me a long time to realise it – every facet of marketing depends on your asset value, and your asset value is [...]
Content is SEO: Lyndon
by Brian TurnerLyndon Antcliff makes a bold statement: Content is SEO.
However, this is at the crux:
The specific age demographic who spend the most amount of money grew up with Google
In other words, if you focus on serving the Google Generation, you open up doors that swing both ways.
And a key way to do this is via [...]
July 11, 2008
Evening Standard brain farts URLs
by Brian TurnerThe London Evening Standard is the latest major site I’ve seen to cock up its URLs.
At present, the business news front page looks like this: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard-business/
But if I try to click through the link to the story about the US considering a $2500 billion bail out, I get the following URL – which simply reloads [...]
July 10, 2008
New problems with Adwords Quality Scoring?
by Brian TurnerBarry Schwartz refers to a raft of new complaints about Quality Scoring, stating that there’s a new wave of advertisers being hit on their minimum bids.
It’s not the first time we’ve seen complaints about Google Adwords Quality Scoring – but what is really interesting is the claims by Google in response via Google Groups that [...]
Why In House link building sucks
by Brian TurnerI’ve been reading various discussions online about how good it is to get link building done in house.
I’ve got to come out and say that why I know there are some good in-house link builders, I also know there are an awful lot that suck.
I guess it’s like outsourced link building, really. :)
The problem is [...]
Not every business purchase is tax deductible
by Brian TurnerInteresting thread on the forums: Splitting the cost of a new phone for business & personal use.
Frauke Golding makes some good points in posts 3,8, and 10 about how HMRC doesn’t consider every purchase as tax deductible.
Even a Blackberry is defined as a personal computer, and therefore may not allow for tax concessions.
And even buying [...]
Image copyright infringement: £1200
by Brian TurnerDamn, another brown envelope, another legal notice.
It turns out that on one of my sites I’d used a thumbnail image to accompany an article. Getty Images just wrote to tell me “Oi, thanks, that’s one of ours – remove it and pay £1200 in damages for unauthorised use, please!”.
Another stupid mistake on my part.
The site [...]
July 9, 2008
Different Google algos for different keywords
by Brian TurnerOne of the more interesting points to come out of the Keyword Suggestion Tool is that the numbers are not exact figures – but instead assign keywords to clear sets based on search frequency.
For example, for keyword searches claimed to have a search frequency between 100,000 and 600,000, every single keyword will have only one [...]
July 8, 2008
How to get strong links for free
by Brian TurnerI have never believed in begging for links. I think begging has no place in internet marketing.
And I don’t believe you should ever reverse engineer your competitor links and then try and get links from the same places. Isn’t it better to force your competitors to follow in your own footsteps, rather than be [...]
Links: It’s Quality not Quantity
by Brian TurnerOne of the biggest questions I see raised on business forums is how and where to get good links.
Trouble is, link value is very much a qualitative process, but it’s not just the links – it’s also the target site that determines the ranking impact.
So what you have is this:
Link Value + Domain Value = [...]
How to build an empire of keyword domains
by Brian TurnerAnyone who uses Google can see that for the past 12-18 months at least, keyword domains have been getting some extra love from Google.
There are some general rules I’ve observed, though:
- Google seems to prefer .co.uk over other .uk domain extensions (forget .me.uk for a start)
- Google doesn’t mind limited prefix/suffix use
- Google doesn’t like [...]
Google reveals search volume figures
by Brian TurnerUPDATE: July 9th 2008 – I’m now seeing the figures live myself – here’s a screenshot for a generic search for “insurance”.
Google search data is something we’ve all wanted to see for years, but had to contend with less accurate proxies such as Wordtracker and the Overture keyword suggestion tool. Now Google gives it free. [...]
Bad economic news is good marketing news
by Brian TurnerA big range of negative economic indicators today, all pointing to a UK recession – or at best, a very sharp economic downturn:
Recession ‘looming’ for UK firms
Sharp fall in manufacturing output fuels recession fears
CML: Mortgage lending falls 44pc year-on-year
Banks hike mortgage rates despite fall in borrowing costs
London’s commercial property deals 50% down on last year
Financials [...]
Why you need to understand bounce rates
by Brian TurnerBounce rates were a hot topic at the Edinburgh SEO Class, and the consensus among the SEO’s discussing it was that Google are using bounce rates to re-order search results.
This isn’t a surprise – heck, a few years ago I wrote about how Google could use human user data to modify their results pages (SERPs), [...]
Secrets of Advanced SEO revealed
by Brian TurnerLisa Barone provides excellent detailed coverage on the “Give it up” session at SMX Advanced 2008, where various advanced SEO’s revealed their secret advanced SEO strategies – much of it blackhat.
Speakers who covered this session included Stephan Spencer, Marty Weintraub, Michael Gray, Rob Kerry, Todd Friesen, and Rand Fishkin – some of the real heavyweights [...]
July 7, 2008
SEO is dead: Aaron Wall
by Brian TurnerAaron Wall argues that traditional SEO work not only sucks, but is also doomed in the long-term and he doesn’t see it working after 5 years.
I’ve got to admit, I agree to some extent.
In one regard, I don’t think SEO is a long-term prospect – we are a generation of people who, in a couple [...]
Google FriendRank: fire ads at your friends
by Brian TurnerHat tip to Hugo Guzman for bringing our attention to a Google patent for displaying ads – based on social groups.
A computer-implemented method for displaying advertisements to members of a network comprises identifying one or more communities of members, identifying one or more influencers in the one or more communities, and placing one [...]