To help you out if you couldn’t make it to Brighton we’ve curated links to each of the speaker’s SEO slides over on Slideshare, so feel free to use this blog post as a point of reference and please share for the benefits of the speakers… we’ve also where applicable noted a key take-away beneath each slide.

Aleyda Solis, SEER Interactive, International SEO

Regrettably I never made it to Aleyda’s conference presentation which is a total shame (I was in the Brighton Dome Studio Theatre). If anyone has any comments on Aleyda’s presentation please leave them below, I would be most grateful. Don’t miss her slides though!

Key Takeaway: Check which pages are attracting your international visitors. Find out the keywords that deliver visitors to your targeted landing pages?

Alex Moss, 3 Door Digital, Social Structured Data

I checked out the slides, certainly very useful and do take up Alex’s recommendation to get Twitter Cards sorted for your account.

Key takeaway: Start using Twitter cards they’re pretty much designed as rich snippets for your Tweets.

Alan Cairns, BozBoz, Mark Up Look Sharp

Marking up your HTML is certainly going to make more of a difference, Alan (from Brighton Digital Agency BozBoz) did a great job of breaking down what it will take to keep your mark-up sharp!

Key takeaway: Schema markup affects your site rankings and will improve your website’s authority.

The smaller venue, Dome Studio Theatre, ably hosted by Bas Van den Beld – we were asked not to leave the theatre whilst the speakers presented due to it causing too much disruption because the hall was a) packed out b) a tad small, or as I call it more of an intimate setting…

1st up in this venue:

Tim Grice, Branded 3, Why you have to integrate SEO

Well presented (even with some unexpected slides!) and a few special nuggets you have to take note of in Tim’s slideshare, I certainly recommend you look at slides 9, 11, 24, 25 and mine that info to develop your own thoughts

Key takeaway: Good SEO is marketing, not manipulation of Search Engines.

Ade Lewis, Teapot Creative, WTF is SEO?

I guess after seeing Ade present well at LinkLove I was expecting far more but I have been administering SEO to sites since 2001 so it might just be I’ve been around longer than most… plus I am just not a fan of swearing in presentations. Seriously folks do you do this in your pitches to clients?! If the answer is no then why is it acceptable to do this whilst speaking at presentations?

Key takeaway: It’s about optimising your business so that it DESERVES to appear at the top of the search engine rankings.

Pete Wailes, SEOGadget, The Link is Dead, Long Live the Link

I did get to ask Pete how much fun was it working on the Ann Summers account, which got a laugh from the audience and to his credit he gave a very good answer connected in detail to his presentation.

Key takeaway: Find the target audience, understand the brand, connect the two.

So after the break (which raced by) I headed over to the Brighton Dome Concert Hall for the second morning session to take us up to lunch.

Hannah Smith, Distilled, Go BIG or Go HOME

My team members really found Hannah’s presentation highly useful, I was certain I had seen this at LinkLove the previous month but good none the less. Still one to miss at your peril in my opinion especially if you are fed up of creating small safe content.

Key takeaway: Investing in BIG content is a major gamble, but get it right and the payout is massive.

Geoff White, Channel 4 News, How to Pitch to Journalists

Brave move from Geoff, not using slides in his very informative speech. I think it was more of his experiences working as a Technology Producer for Channel 4 News (part of a “sniper team”, like it, like it) to ensure the right news is broadcast. He gave up some very useful anecdotes, well worth listening to him speak, would love to see him present at Brighton SEO again. In the meantime I suggest you follow him on Twitter here:

https://twitter.com/geoffwhite247

Key takeaway: You don’t have to use slides to be an informative, entertaining and interesting speaker at Brighton SEO!

I was impressed by the following speaker last year and was looking forward to more thought provoking tips and ideas (she certainly knows her stuff)

Lexi Mills, Dynamo PR, 7 Secret Weapons of Successful Content and Outreach

SEO is blurring towards PR (though I am not advocating releasing poorly executed Press Releases in a bid to gain links) – Lexi really makes things clear, check out slide 7 (Trendsmap), slide 11 (BBC on this day), slide 23, slide 27 and slide 41…

Key takeaway: The BBC On this Day – a great inspirational content tool.

Paul Madden, Manual Link Building, How to Spot a Shitty Link

Hmmmmmmm I’m not a fan of being accused of going out buying really shitty links – I have always been conservative, used a diversified approach and not taken the piss out of Google. This means I have not had to worry about any GWT warnings.

That or when it came to acquiring links I bottled it! (note we still score phenomenal rankings without a vast link network like others)

Key takeaway: Links are STILL the signal.

Meanwhile over in the Corn Exchange during Brighton SEO:

Dara Fitzgerald, Fresh Egg, Next Generation Google Analytics

Lots on multi channel funneling, certainly one to get your teeth into!

Key takeaway: With universal analytics now available in Google Analytics it will be easier to work out each customer’s lifetime value to yours or your clients business.

Alistair White, T W White & Sons Mazda Dealer, How Phone Data Might Change your Keywords

If you are not tracking Call Data from your Website, you should be after seeing Alistair’s slides!

Key takeaway: Do NOT rely on customers to let you know how they found your business…

Nikki Rae, Future Insight, Crunching Cookies

Get geeky over cookies – a very insightful presentation!

Key takeaway: Analytics makes use of 5 types of cookies to track visits and user interactions with your website.

Anna Lewis, Koozai Google Analytics Tool box

Formalise your Event Tracking in Google Analytics – certainly give this slideshare the once over.

Whilst back over in the Dome Studio Theatre we had the following:

Lauren Pope, Brilliant Noise, Bread and Butter Content

Only 16 slides, just as I thought we were getting going it was all over. Certainly a more detailed case study here to back up Lauren’s points would not have gone amiss?

key takeaway: Viral content is short-lived.

Ralf Schwoebel, Tradebit, Information is a Microbrand

I didn’t see this presentation though you really should check out slide 14 from the deck…

key takeaway: Add brand building to your basic conversion goals.

Mark Henshaw and Stefan Hull, Propellornet, Bandwagonesque

Slide 24 nails it for me, this IS SEO (finally someone got it into a Venn Diagram)

Key takeaway: Don’t chase after Google algorithms. Marry your technical SEO insight with content writing.

From 2-30pm onwards we had the following speakers on (please note I got back late from a fantastic lunch with Ammon Johns and Julia Dunlop, thanks to you both)

Dave Coplin, Bing, Future Forward

No slides as yet. As I was not present if anyone knows if there were slides please keep me posted.

Key takeaway: Think of a search engine as a window on the web. It’s an interface, not just a search engine.

Rich Falconer, LBi, SEO as part of a multi-signal search strategy

I got back to hear Rich talk about Grep. Fascinating stuff and glad I got back just in time! Certainly worth checking out Rich’s slides for more info!

Key takeaway: HTML5 is SEO-friendly

Sharon Flaherty, Confused.com, Engaging Content

No slides as yet but an interesting presentation – perhaps slightly too biased towards pitching Confused.com for insurance. I have checked out Confused.com’s content via OSE, one thing we all talk about is outreach for links but they rank well for many phrases without external links. Note internal links do work well for long tail searches that are not overly competitive. Good content wins out this time!

Dixon Jones, Majestic SEO, Using Big Data to predict the future

Dixon spoke about using data to help predict what might happen in the future and how one can predict what could happen. For instanct you could analyse a mining company incident via links and social media and quickly make a decision to buy or sell their stock. Interesting concept from a really good guy in the SEO world.

Key takeaway: Dixon can predict the future

Other slides from Brighton SEO presenters:

Nick Rinylo, Creare, Managing a 1000 SEO Clients

I’d been looking forward to this one from a scalability point of view…

Berian Reed, Autotrader, Automating SEO on Large Websites

Slide 3, check out the stats!

Neil Walker, Quaero Media, Scaleable Post Penguin Link Building

Discover what Neil learnt from over 300 reinclusion requests to Google

Take a look at slide 42 – note not all directory listings will be shafted by Google, you just need to work out which ones are good and which ones are bad (must be pretty obvious to most of us…)

Kev Gibbons, Blueglass UK, Building a Plan to integrate Search, Social, Content and PR in 2013

Kev implored us to stop calling it SEO, I’ve been saying publicly down in Bristol to call it Inbound Analytical Marketing – sounds more accurate as to what I do for clients, generate inbound traffic and analyse it for marketing goodness!

From 4.30pm it was the Lightening Talks round – I’ve included slides here for reference for you all:

Marcus Taylor

Alan Ferguson

Julia Logan, Irish Wonder

Sean Walsh

Pak Hou Chung

Jennifer Begg

*Edit* I’d also recommend you read Ammmon Johns Brighton SEO post – check it out here:

http://www.ammonjohns.com/index.php/2013/brightonseo-changes-expectations/

Please do add your thoughts and comments below on Brighton SEO 2013 – we’d love to hear them!

The post Brighton SEO 2013 Speakers and Slides appeared first on All Things Web Blog.

One of the most effective ways to ensure that social media marketing works for a business and delivers positive ROI – including financial – is to embrace SEO-based blog marketing within social media engagement.

By utilising your industry or commercial niche search terms and keywords into blog posts, you’ll quickly (sometimes almost instantly) generate results for the short and long-term benefit of your social media efforts.

Here’s my Top 7 Tips for successful social media marketing with SEO blogging:

Hire a SEO professional

DIY is all very well with some marketing, but for SEO it’s always best to hire in a professional to assist. Using a trained, experienced web marketing pro such as the All Things Web team provides valuable insight from day one.

Think about Google Juice

SEO is all about being found in the right places online, at the right time, by the right audience. SEO-based blogging delivers towards this critical business goal, by placing your blog and website at the top of relevant core service searches.

Use targeted keyword search terms

Working with a SEO professional gives you the edge on your competitors, as you’ll be getting the very latest, most useful and highly relevant search terms and keywords for your industry or niche, based on actual online searches.

Be consistent with your blog marketing

Writing a sporadic or inconsistent switches search engines off. Ensure that you upload fresh blog content a minimum of (at least) once weekly, to keep grabbing attention and driving your blog posts up the search engine rankings.

Hire a blogging professional

DIY blogging tends to be painful for many, so consider hiring in a professional blogger such as www.bristoleditor.co.uk to write content for you. A poor blog is a quick route to losing new customers. Your blog reflects on your business.

Use social media to help drive traffic from sources other than Google

Social media platforms, in tandem with a well-written, consistent blog, are excellent ways to drive relevant and targeted traffic back to your online home. Use the most relevant social media sites to engage and attract audiences.

Listen to and observe the blog and social media winners

A great way to raise the game of your SEO blogging and social media marketing is to observe those who are doing it well. Follow and Like great blogs and fantastic social media profiles, then learn from them.

The post 7 tips on how to combine SEO blogging and social media for WIN-WIN-WIN marketing results appeared first on All Things Web Blog.

I’ve had the benefit of attending one of Richard’s marketing get togethers in Bristol a few years ago where we found we shared a love of (literally!) all things web, seo and social media.

As Head of Digital Marketing for Nokia’s HERE what’s a typical day like for you?

Right now, I have been on a short but pretty intense journey of discovery. Nokia is one of the most amazing places to work and some of the things I am being introduced to is mind blowing. However it’s also very important that we get the basics right.

I support the HERE ‘suite’ of mapping and mobile applications, this is a pretty new organization so there are a great deal of meetings to be had to listen to the team but also to share my experiences and explain what I hope to do. So there is no typical day for me as such but my themes (identifying and sharing digital marketing best practice through a 6500 strong business unit, that operates within 80,000 Nokians) is pretty constant I guess.

Where is your office based?

In Berlin, right in the middle of things.

Is your position highly office bound or do you get to travel in your role?

We have key marketing offices all over the world, but mostly we are operating around Sunnyvale, Chicago, Boston, Berlin plus the core Nokia digital marketing team for mobile phones and smart devices is in London and Helsinki. I could probably spend the whole of my life in the air travelling from place to place, however I am being careful to keep the miles down for the time being whilst I get my head around my role.

How long have you been in this digital marketing role for Nokia?

Since the beginning of December 2012.

What career path have you taken to reach this position in Nokia’s marketing team?

An early career in database marketing in London, then 9 years in internet marketing/travel/consulting in Bristol, 2 years as CMO of Qype in Hamburg and now Nokia/HERE in Berlin. Along the way I have become a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing.

The BIGGEST challenge you’ve conquered so far in this role?

Getting my head around it all! The range of programs and assets at our disposal is amazing. Every single day I am finding something new that makes me gasp in wonder. There is a line Nokia uses, “The Amazing Every Day” and that is certainly my experience.

With the smartphone market dominated by Apple and Samsung how are Nokia ensuring they stay as an effective competitor in this space:

Three ways: 1.Differentiation, 2. Differentiation, 3. Differentiation.

More on this from my overall boss, Stephen Elop – check it out here:
Nokia is not a ‘me-too’ device maker

and the boss of the part of Nokia I support (Michael Halbherr):

Location-based human behaviour information- “search results for the real world” – Click Here

How many work for you in the digital marketing team for HERE?

Sorry that’s confidential info.

If one was looking to work for Nokia on their marketing team where would the best be to start, what kind of candidates are you looking for?

All the Nokia marketing opportunities are on LinkedIn so worth following the HR guys on there. But also through personal networks (the way I got in, by recommendation). Most people who work for Nokia are big fans of our brand, you need to be smart and curious with an unhealthy obsession for solving human problems using technology!!

Given your experience should companies be focusing on SEO or Social Media?

Both are mutually dependent. So both. You cannot ignore either however in my view SEO is more about acquisition and Social Media about longer term engagement. I am a big fan of loyalty ladder/conversion funnel mechanics.

I note that Nokia use PPC – is this more important to them in terms of capturing internet traffic than SEO?

We take a blended view depending on the acquisition type and longer term strategy. SEO is very important also.

Which 1 thing are companies getting wrong with their marketing?

Not understanding who their customer is and want they actually need (as opposed to what they tell us they want).

Your favourite 3 online marketing tools? <edit: I was hoping for a SEOMoz mention >

This changes all the time, however right now I spend a bit of time on analytics tools, keyword and trend planners, although more and more my focus is pretty strategic.

Nokia’s HERE app – is it going to be a Google Maps killer for Nokia phone users?

Of course it is already! But not just Nokia but now all Windows 8 phones. After that, well that would be telling!

More HERE
And HERE

On a more personal note…

Do you personally use Pinterest or Instagram?

No I don’t really. Not sure why but I don’t really have the need to do so. I am more Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. My kids aren’t bothered by Facebook et al, they are much more engaged with IM and closed community sites.

What’s your favourite marketing conference?

Hm. I went to something amazing last month in Istanbul (Internal to Nokia).
Also EBG had a great event in Paris last year I found really good for networking (check it out here: http://www.ebg.net/mobile-social/) but other than that I only tend to go when I am presenting. Figaro Digital and also the Digital Marketing group on LinkedIn run some good ones too.

Whats the best business/marketing book you’ve read?

Don’t make me think by Steve Krug
Escape Velocity by Geoffrey Moore
Valuable content by Sharon Tanton & Sonya Jefferson (shameless plug but it’s a great book!)

What do you like to do on your (rare) days off from digital marketing for Nokia?

Explore my surroundings, spend time with my family plus living in Germany it’s pretty great for cycling, so I do quite a lot of that during the warmer, lighter months.

I’d like to extend a really warm thank you to Richard for spending the time answering my questions for this interview, I appreciate being Head of Digital Marketing for Nokia takes up an immensely huge amount of his time.

In the meantime I encourage you go to head on over to here.com and have a good play-around with the web city and country mapping that’s there, I like to think its pretty damn awesome!

The post Our Interview with Richard Dennys, Head of Digital Marketing for Nokia’s HERE app! appeared first on All Things Web Blog.

Let us fill you in…

We have been working with Mandy Risso and her team at Rivendell Carpets and Flooring in Bristol since September 2012 and we’ve scored some notable wins, culminating in an increase in enquiries and ultimately a substantial order was secured that originated from being found on Google.

Here’s the SEO testimonial – check it out and see what we planned and implemented for Rivendell Carpets in the SEO case study further below:

“Dear Helen

I wanted to say thank you for all your hard work and support on improving our website – your approach to fulfilling our SEO requirements has been like a breath of fresh air compared to the last company we used.

Its all about “the silly little things” that really matter in business like great communication, face to face meetings, taking time to understand our business, our customers and our needs all adds up to a FANTASTIC service. Silly things do really count…. I feel we work as a team – rather than some dark art.

Previous SEO companies have focused on one area of this, such as Google. You’ve helped us improve every page of our website and our blog.

Just before Christmas we were lucky enough to win a tender for a housing association – the lead source – Google!

Once again thanks again for your efforts. We will recommend your web marketing services to all.

Yours sincerely

Mandy Risso
Rivendell Carpets and Flooring”

Web Marketing SEO Case Study – So what did we do?

First off we benchmarked what had been carried out by the previous SEO company using agency level SEO tools – SEOMoz, Open Site Explorer and Raven SEO to gain an understanding of :

· The effect of previous SEO
· The quality of on page SEO content applied
· Internal link structure (admittedly the site is current made up of 7 pages so not critical)
· Off-page links (to check if Google algorithm updates were penalising the site or potentially putting it at risk)

We assessed the SEO that had been carried out as being poor because unfortunately it would appear the previous web marketing company chose to:

· Update only the home page title tag and meta description rather than all pages
· Build (in our opinion) low quality links – whilst reporting “regular” submission to 1200 directories every month
· Send out a template report (promoted as exclusive!) from Raven showing only traffic & rankings

Rivendell’s site was also found lacking in targeted content. We advised an increase of pages would help target greater numbers of keyword phrases with more visits. Combining this approach with better calls to action to encourage more people to get in touch would then help increase levels of enquiries.

We assessed user behaviour in Google Analytics, looking at bounce rates and exit points to understand what content was failing to funnel visitors to the contact page. This task is still ongoing but by working out which pages were not performing allowed us to make changes to stem the leakage from the site.

We then carried out extensive keyword research – not just with Google Adwords keyword tool and Ubersuggest.org, but also mined Rivendell’s Google Analytics (using advanced segmentation and custom reports) together with digging into Twitter and raiding Quora.com to find people’s questions on flooring and carpets.

This technique allowed us to create an optimized content marketing plan to improve the website by increasing the amount of pages together with a list of suggestions and ideas for blog posts. Super awesome is an understatement here….

Rivendell and All Things Web then worked closely together with us on-site to implement a new website structure that targets visitors by THEIR need, either by room (for residential) or by business type (for commercial) or by manufacturer for either. This allows a greater and more natural internal linking strategy using a mixture of branded and non branded anchor text terms, thus helping to avoid any Google penalties.

Our next task will be to set Rivendell up on Google Plus (mainly using it for Google Author Tags) to announce new blog posts. Google Alerts will also be set up to notify our client of any carpet or floor related news items they can mention on their blog or feed into Twitter and/or Facebook.

An analysis of marketing offers will also be carried out using examples in other fields that typically would not expect to use “marketing” online but have done a superb job (i.e. dentists, doctors, solicitors) etc to show the benefits of how exclusive marketing offers, strong calls to action and marketing goals in place can make another huge difference.

We will then review other social media sites for Rivendell to implement – such as Pinterest in a bid to utilise other channels for online marketing purposes.

At the same time we will be monitoring traffic (notice we do not mention rankings as a KPI) to check traffic increases to the site and review other keyword opportunities for us to implement. Link research, planning and implementation will also be correctly factored in.

Finally as the number of site pages increase we will ensure any keyword self cannibalization is minimised (where 2 pages compete for the same keyword) together with using a robots.txt file to control robots permitting them to only follow and index the pages we want returned in Google’s SERP’s pages.

With all of this we will be working on-site with Rivendell, directly integrating into their team to make sure the company substantially WINS online and moves their SEO into the 21st century. Whilst it will not be “cheap SEO” it will, in our opinion, provide the company with a strong ROI – increasing turnover and meeting company goals in 2013.

Having been let down by their previous SEO company Rivendell Carpet’s testimonial (and corresponding SEO case study) is a source of great pride to us that we can demonstrate to a client “burnt” by our industry that there are good, solid performing web marketing companies out there.

The post Rivendell Carpets SEO Case Study (and Testimonial!) appeared first on All Things Web Blog.

Quite a few clients are worried after reading and sharing “the death of SEO” blog posts that came out end of last year so I thought I’d post my opinion on the future of SEO.

By the way was it me or was there a glut of “death of SEO” posts towards the end of 2012, and what is the fascination of the death of an industry by its own practitioners?

SEO has been around for many, many years, in fact even before I optimized my first website (inadvertantly by the way) back in 2001. SEO has evolved and it will keep evolving. However the basics of search engine optimization will very likely ALWAYS remain – unless Google completely bins organic results in which case many searchers would likely switch to another search engine, a risk Google’s majority shareholders would likely not wish the company to take.

SEO’s are still tasked with the basics like updating title tags, improving meta descriptions, adjusting copy to include targeted phrases and synonyms as well as link building and content marketing. However increasingly we are called in to help with CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation), online PR and increase lead generation from clients sites as well as improve their rankings in Google’s results. We ourselves are being asked far more to work on more “technical” SEO tasks flagged up in Google Webmaster tools such as:

Fixing broken 404′s

Dealing with 301 redirects

Canonical tags

Robots meta tag with Nofollows and noindex

Creating and updating robots.txt files

Competitor SEO analysis

Custom Reports in Analytics

Advanced Segmentation in Analytics

Setting up and managing Adwords campaigns

Looking into my crystal ball I see that technical SEO will certainly continue well into 2013 and beyond BUT the “SEO-in-a-box, budget priced, one size fits all approach” will die. It has to, no question of that.

In my opinion the death of cheap SEO will result in those companies that provide these types of services start selling cheap Adwords management packages to offset lost revenue. It has taken 12+ years for SEO to become a reasonably well known (but little understood) term, it will take a while for the market to catch on to any “death”.

My recommendation for SEO’s for 2013 is to keep an eye on the type of content being produced by the more popular SEO sites/blogs… the end of SEO (more of a gradual decay) will likely be signified by more posts on Social Media, Analytics and Adwords (this type of post especially on traditionally SEO dominated blogs will be a key indicator)

What’s your thoughts on the future of SEO for 2013 and beyond? I’d be interested to hear.

The post The Future of SEO in 2013 appeared first on All Things Web Blog.

Research carried out late last year by Decibel Technology found that more than a third of business people believe that their competitors website is actually better than their own. Even worse 1 in 5 don’t actually think their own website is representative of their brand.

So if your website looks the same in January 2013 as it did in January 2008 then what does this mean for your business? Is it time to seriously sit down and get a better website? If your competitors website is a better looking and higher performing website integrated with a top notch level of on-page SEO (awesome content) and off-page SEO (quality links) then its very likely they are grabbing a greater market share that should give you serious cause for alarm – is this something you want to face?

“46% of respondents to the study stated they would not consider doing business with any firm that had an out of date or difficult to navigate website and a third of people would be put off working for one with a poor web presence.”

Ask yourself this: “Does my website simply and logically get visitors to the enquiry page? Is the navigation quick and easy to use or do I need a degree in using User Experience to get around?” If the answer is yes to either (and if you are not sure ask your colleagues and friends for a no-holds-barred opinion) then be honest and ask yourself again.

30% of respondents put their stale company websites down to clunky, difficult to update Content Management Systems

36% of people stated there is too much complexity surrounding CMS, making choosing and buying a solution a difficult process

With so many CMS solutions available IT IS a difficult decision to choose which website CMS platform to implement. It is important you do not allow any web site provider to rush you into making a rash decision. Ask around your network for their experiences and hang around online forums associated with each CMS (especially Open Source varieties) and get a feel for common problems (are there very many and are they quickly fixed?)

So the truth of the matter is if your website is out of date or sets a poor impression you could be losing new business every day.

Darren’s point of view: As a Web Marketing agency we find many people think SEO is just about making changes to page content (repeat after me it is not about “slapping in new content”) so that Google finds it more relevant and ranks it higher. What is critical is that business owners deal with “web site marketing stuff” realistically – regular reviews, sit-downs with the designers and inhouse marketers, benchmarks against competitors etc. Sticking your head in the sand and “keeping up” by having SEO carried out to your web site that you know is not as good as your competitors is a waste of time, effort and money. A good SEO/digital agency should tell you to consider a refresh of the design and navigation BEFORE they start optimising – no excuses!

It will also pay dividends to have someone in your company take some training in web marketing and design basics – or even just marketing training at the very least so that you can take your website forward and get it to a point where it beats your competitors. If you’re thinking its time to get a better website (or improve your SEO at the same time) then start the process by talking with your current web designer but find a few others to talk to as well.

For more information on Decibel Technology’s eye opening study click here

The post Jealous your competitor’s website is better than your own? appeared first on All Things Web Blog.

If you are a regular user of Google search (and who isn’t?) then you won’t have failed to notice that some results are showing a photo of the writer, associated with a particular piece of content alongside the snippet Google is using in the SERP’s. Something a bit like this:

Strangely (or not) you’ll find your eyes drifting towards the photo in the SERPs (created by use of the Google Author tag) and this can have a beneficial rate on clickthroughs to the site in question.

As you can see for the term “Pallet Racking Glossary” George Ives of Bristol Storage (specialists in warehouse pallet racking) took our advice and now his site sits 2nd on Google for this phrase. Ok that result is not too competitive, on an exact match basis there are only 1000 or so results so maybe not a huge traffic generator BUT I want you to notice that his result also shows “2 Days ago” – this is the day that he posted this content online and it already ranks second in Google organically. Not bad for a half day’s work don’t you think?

Let’s see if we can find another slightly more competitive example that Google indexes and ranks? Here we go – for Dexion Warehouse Storage the website DOMINATES the Serps, maybe not a top ranking but it has (with our added assistance) generated 3 organic listings on the 1st page.

There are a few ways to set up Google authorship markup but as I am writing this for small business users (i.e SME’s in the UK with very likely no more than one contributor to the website) I will stick with the really easy technique to set up Google Rel Author tags.

How to set up the Google Author Tag and boost your rankings:

Firstly you’ll need to set up a Google Plus account – if you are already running Gmail or a Google Analytics account then its just a case of navigating here:

http://plus.google.com

Set up your profile – find me here https://plus.google.com/113192120143222162469 and add me to your circle (I promise I’ll add you back when you do this).

Add a decent photo of yourself – this is required for Google Authorship and I do not recommend you use your company brand or logo here if you want this technique to work for you.

In your profile you’ll also need to add details of the website(s) you contribute to like this (click on the field in YOUR profile that the arrow below in our graphic points to and then add your site):

Once this is set up then head over to your own website (for some of you this will require the help of your web developer) where you will add the Google author tag to your site pages (we recommend you add this markup to new and existing content in either your blog or News section).

Google initially used rel=”me” where you created an author page on your website, linked your blog article to that page and then linked your author page across to your Google Plus profile. A simple concept but one that easily confused non-techy peeps so it was changed to a less elaborate process – usually adding in a line at the end of your blog (or typically you’d find it in the author box at the end of a blog post – you *may* need a plugin to amend your WordPress authorbox):

Connect with <a href="https://plus.google.com/113192120143222162469?rel=author">Darren Moloney</a> on Google Plus


Note the use of ?rel=author at the end of the link to your Google Plus profile, this can be easily missed. You must ensure the Google rel author tag is included for you to get your photo alongside your website listing in Google’s SERP’s.

Once this is complete you should be good to go with the Google Author tag markup – to check it is working we suggest searching Google for keyword phrases you have used in the article you created. A good tip is to look for the title tag keywords, especially if they are longtail, this should help show the results with your Google Plus image listed in the SERP’s).

Any questions let me know, finally don’t forget to post a Google +1 button alongside your article to ensure it gets shared.

The post Make the Google Author Tag Work for you appeared first on All Things Web Blog.

First some background;

When did Google Penguin take place?

Google’s Penguin algorithm update originally took effect in April 2012 although there was another update more recently in July and it is said (via Search Engine Land) that Matt Cutts recently announced ANOTHER new update is due any time soon (and this will be one Google update that many SEO’s won’t like) – see below for more details.

What was this update designed to target?

Google used the Penguin update to target and penalise the following activities:

Keyword Stuffing – repeating the same keyword phrase repeatedly on a page or across the site, shoehorning it into content even when it makes little sense to a visitor

Over Optimisation – essentially too many keyword anchor text links to your domain can cause a ranking penalty

Link Schemes (and Farms) – using a network of links.  This is easily identified by Google (including 3 way link farms)

Re-spinning Content – taking an existing article and using re-spinning techniques in an attempt to pass it off as a unique piece of content

Unfortunately it would seem that Google Penguin also affected sites that have never been involved in any of the above – investigation suggests that a poor link profile to a site when compared to others in a similar niche or sector may be the cause.

Quick Tips on How to Recover from Google Penguin

Whilst this post is not meant to be a complete guide to Google Penguin we hope you find the key actions listed below useful, which if implemented should go towards ensuring the recovery of your rankings in the future:

Prune your Links

Use SEOMoz Open Site Explorer to regularly review your backlink profile and look to get rid of those links you feel are of low value and worthless.   We have heard that some unscrupulous webmasters are actually charging to get rid of such links – in which case you will need to liaise with Google via their Webmaster Tools to help them identify problematic links in your profile.

Ensure your content is Unique to you!

Look at your company history, its team players, its achievements as part of a story that only you have – then blog about it. The more unique and interesting content you have the easier it is to get links from a wide diversity of sites.  Don’t be tempted to “borrow” content for the sake of posting.  A well written, unique, resourceful piece of content will be worth more than a number of poor quality pieces.  Better to go for the quality over quantity!

Remove keyword footer links inside your site.

Keyword phrases are not given much benefit by Google anyway so it’s worth getting rid of them.   In their place rewrite your content to link internally to other relevant pages – these are called contextual links.

For more detailed information on Google Penguin we suggest you read this article direct from Matt Cutts – Distinguished Engineer:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/another-step-to-reward-high-quality.html

If you are having trouble with your site rankings and think it’s because of Penguin (or even Google’s Panda update from last year) – get in touch.  We have the tools and experience to help you identify what is wrong and how to fix the issues you are facing.

Finally, back to that other update…………

Matt Cutts has stated the next update from Google will not be liked by SEO’s – note he has not mentioned other industries so in our opinion they will look at SEO’s operating ethically in the Search community, those that participate will get rewarded!  We will have to wait and see.

The post How to Recover (in brief) from Google Penguin appeared first on All Things Web Blog.

I arrived Thursday and like any Bristol lad spent part of the time wandering around the streets of London trying to find my hotel. I admit I’m more used to strolling around open fields and hills where I can see more and get a better idea of my surroundings. Eventually I reached the hotel after walking past it twice (hmmm), checked in and then hooked up with:

Gianluca Fiorelli of iloveseo.net, an expert in International SEO Services

What a great chap and looks just like his avatar! We had a decent steak dinner and a couple of beers and really had a top level conversation on web marketing/seo techniques, our experiences in life that help us and our approach with customers. A great discussion I’ll certainly remember for a long time and our conversation stoked me enough to share some link building tips we know work well and helps everyone based on a “sharing and caring” society that I believe will become increasingly important.

The next day after a somewhat sleepless night (I was a bit like the kid the night before heading to Disney) I hustled over to the Conference Centre a little earlier than planned. Finding the doors locked I headed off to grab breakfast and by the time I bolted that down and returned the doors were open and entrance was gained.

I’m always nervous in gatherings, never really one for crowds to be honest so I signed in, grabbed coffee, stood on the sidelines, spoke to a lovely chap called Jas and then took someone’s tip on grabbing a seat at the back of the conference room (no change from my school days then) as the last 3 rows had tables which makes it easier to write notes or use a laptop being close to power outlets.

Pleased to see that all of the panel are recognised as experts in their field and their findings on how to get more links via content and other strategies are going to be of immense use (no selling from the stage here). Reassuringly I found them ALL to be highly approachable – so a big thanks to the following:

• Will Critchlow of Distilled
• Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz
• Martin McDonald of Expedia
• Jane Copland of Ayima Internet Marketing
• MIke King (@ipullrank) of iAcquire
• Wil Reynolds of SEER Interactive (I’m already implementing some of your ideas, I’m so JFDI right now lol)
• Branko Rihtman (aka @neyne) of SEO Scientist
• Tom Anthony of Distilled

Rather than write up another post on what was presented, there was way too much to note down (plus my notes were written so fast they are a little hard to decipher, yes i am one of the hard core who use pen and paper, so that I don’t have to rely on battery juice!) I have found and listed below an excellent blog post from Alex Tanner for you to check out on what was discussed by the speakers (cheers Alex!):

Notes on LinkLove London 2012

Overall a great conference on the joys of link building and I am now persuading the other half to let me fly out for MozCon in Seattle but with developments elsewhere with All Things Web growth (watch this space) and family issues upcoming it might be I don’t make it this year. Ah well, I can always buy the video!

In a nutshell Distilled’s LinkLove conference was worth every penny and I would strongly recommend anyone working in the web marketing industry to book onto the next one.

PS At the end of the LinkLove London conference I also met Kath Dawson and Pete Wailes from Strategy Internet Marketing – a fellow Bristol SEO, we had a really fun talk about SEO over dinner and it was extra nice to see there are other dedicated web marketers in Bristol and South West UK.

The post First #LinkLove London Attended in 2012 appeared first on All Things Web Blog.

…becoming a member of SEOMoz’ Customer Advisory Board to help give feedback on their awesome set of SEO Tools!

We can’t say more than that as we are under a NDA and everything we see is confidential but to have been invited on by the team at SEOMoz is a real honour (and we believe shows our dedication to using only the best tools to help our clients get ahead).

So what else has been going on at ATW HQ?

Well as mentioned there is a move to new office space, so you might have noticed that our address has changed as we are moving in tomorrow (February 1st). Our new contact details will be on the website but for those of you who want to know right now they are as follows:

All Things Web
9 High Street
Highworth
Swindon
Wiltshire
SN6 7AG

For now our Wiltshire office telephone will remain the same – 01793 729326.

With expansion very much on the agenda for 2012 we also have plans in place to open a satellite office in Bristol. SEO in this city will never be the same again, though, to be honest, the area has been our primary location for targeting new and existing business for many years. We are also looking forward to increasing our SEO client base in the Swindon and Wiltshire area – as well as London where our rates have been found to be extremely attractive for clients we work with there (part of the NHS and Bank of Ireland to name but a few).

Client Survey

Here at ATW we love working with our clients and are always interested to hear how they rate the work we do and how we can help them further.  So in December we kicked off an independent client survey and the initial results coming back are very positive (so we know we’re doing the right things!).  Once full details are available we will be using the results to help shape our services going forward.  We will share the results of the survey in due course so watch this space for more information.

Guest Posts and MORE Content

This year we are looking to increase our blogging activity and are in the process of sorting out some guest bloggers to share their insites not just on SEO but web marketing as a whole.  Lets just say we’re really excited about what’s in store so stay tuned for more!

LinkLove London

As we grow this year and have additional resources to help us look after our clients I am looking forward to spending more of my time at Industry conferences  and events.  One that stands out at this stage is LinkLove London, being run by the team at Distilled on Friday 30th March. Attending this conference with industry leaders is going to be a highlight of my year so far and I hope to come away with many new link acquiring strategies (on top of a few of my own) to help our clients beat their competition online!

New SEO Projects

With all of the above – phew! – you’d think we wouldn’t have time to take on more SEO work, but guess what? We do! We’ve secured a host of new clients in January already from large multi million pound businesses to start-ups looking for help with their first SEO activity.

For the rest of 2012…

It’s going to be a busy year of growth for us, we continue to invest in the right SEO tools and work towards becoming an active member of our industry – if anyone knows where to start speaking on the SEO conference circuit I’d love to hear from you so do get in touch or leave a comment, I would be most grateful.

The post Some good – wait, no… it’s some Great News! appeared first on All Things Web Blog.