June 5, 2009

Defendmyname.com spamming forums

by Brian Turner

There are a number of Online Reputation Management (ORM) companies out there – you’ll hardly ever notice most of them in action.
However, defendmyname.com claims to be able to help protect brands, and showcases a number of big brands, as if implying that this is a high end company that knows what they’re doing.
Instead, I found [...]




December 22, 2008

New Google Toolbar plays down PageRank

by Brian Turner

The Google Toolbar on my IE install has just updated – and the PageRank bar has been really shrunk down.

As you can see, that’s a radical shrinkage, and almost certainly is a continuation of Google’s policy to try and diminish how PageRank is used and abused by webmasters.
Interestingly enough, most commercial SEO’s see little importance [...]




December 15, 2008

Makes affiliate programs pass link juice

by Brian Turner

An excellent guide on how to ensure your affiliate program passes link juice on blogstorm.
This is something I try recommending to companies I work with, but unfortunately, is usually not taken up.
Companies who do leverage this do really well in the SERPs – just run a few finance terms and see how often MoneySupermarket [...]




December 11, 2008

Buy.at suffers tracking issues

by Brian Turner

Any affiliates with buy.at will have had a few emails this week warning of tracking issues and programme suspensions brought about because of this.
Campaigns I’ve seen suspension emails for include the RAC, Prudential home insurance, and Legal and General.
Interestingly enough, a number of affiliate programs moved to buy.at after tracking issues with Tradedoubler last year, [...]




December 2, 2008

Social Media profiles: the next internet economy

by Brian Turner

Ben McKay asks Could you Buy or Sell Social Media Profiles like Business Assets? – to which the resounding answer has to be “yes!”.
The growth of social media has meant that tapping into this market has become a lucrative business, and while at present most try and buy favours from the influencers, it’s obvious the [...]




RankNet and fRank as an indicator of search future

by Brian Turner

Marios Alexandrou takes a look at an older Microsoft fpaper and compares it to PageRank, but what I find interesting in the reading is human user indicators Google could already have in play.

* Popularity as measured by the number of times it was visited by users over time via the toolbar
[...]




November 13, 2008

6 Big Marketing Mistakes

by Brian Turner

Adam Broitman at iMedia Connection posts a list of 6 Stupid Marketing Mistakes, and I’ll expand on these here – with an adjective swap of “Big” because these can be pretty fundamental.
(As an aside, iMedia Connection is a site covering a range of wider marketing topics, and whether you’ve come to IB as a SEO [...]




November 11, 2008

There are no free permanent links

by Brian Turner

We know that Google is a links driven search engine, therefore some form of link building as part of a wider marketing strategy can reap literal dividends.
So why is it so many people approach link building as something to be suspicious of, and aim to put the least budget into it?
It’s pretty mad really – [...]




August 26, 2008

Indian Spammers blame Brits

by Brian Turner

In one of the most contentious posts I’ve ever read, someone actually argues that Indian SEO spam should be blamed on British companies:

as an SEO we need to depend mainly on US, UK, and Australian markets.
The equation is simple – these things exist because there is a need in the market, and you have your [...]




August 23, 2008

Seth Godin confused about click marketing

by Brian Turner

Seth Godin has created a backlash among search marketers for advocating what many see as clickfraud.
Seth suggested that surfers could “tip” websites they liked by clicking on ads – for which the website would be paid for – as a means of thanks.
As many have rightly pointed out, at best this is clickfraud – and [...]




August 16, 2008

Cheap SEO: you get what you pay for

by Brian Turner

I’ve railed before on the pitfalls of cheap SEO, trying to underline the point that the phrase “you get what you pay for” is true to business, but especially SEO.
Well, here’s a sad thread from the DigitalPoint forums – starts out with an attractive offer for services, that sounds reasonably cheap but comprehensive.
Unfortunately, it [...]




August 14, 2008

City of Birmingham confuses UK with US

by Brian Turner

From the BBC: Chiefs admit Brum skyline mix-up

Birmingham City Council has admitted sending out leaflets which showed its US namesake’s skyline instead.
About 720,000 pamphlets praising Brummies for their recycling were sent around the city at a cost of £15,000.
But instead of showing landmarks such as the Rotunda and the new Selfridges building, it [...]




July 27, 2008

The Secret Truth about Social Networking

by Brian Turner

Networking:
“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




July 14, 2008

YOU are an asset!

by Brian Turner

Your 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 [...]




July 10, 2008

New problems with Adwords Quality Scoring?

by Brian Turner

Barry 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 [...]




July 8, 2008

Google reveals search volume figures

by Brian Turner

UPDATE: 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. [...]




Why you need to understand bounce rates

by Brian Turner

Bounce 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), [...]




July 7, 2008

Google FriendRank: fire ads at your friends

by Brian Turner

Hat 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 [...]




How many Adwords accounts does Thomson have?

by Brian Turner

Multiple Adwords accounts, or a technical glitch with Adsense?
Shame I didn’t try testing to see whether both ads paid the same, differently, or half as much of the other ads. :)




Dr Who misses marketing opportunity

by Brian Turner

Added to the “Marketing opportunities lost” file.
The Doctor Who finale to Season 4 was exciting as hell, ending in the two-part episode “The Stolen Earth” and “Journey’s End”.
However, in Stolen Earth various people try and call Doctor Who on a special mobile phone number, which is displayed visibly to the viewers.
According to Techwatch, the mobile [...]




Next Page »