Posts from ‘Online Marketing’
Things To Look Out For In 2009
So it’s a new year and with new years come great challenges but should we expect from the coming year in SEO.
source: jasonshellen
- 1. Changing Search Patterns
By this i mean the way in which people search and the terms and modifiers people are using. With the current economic downturn which is expected to run well into 2009 people are going to be on the look out for more and more bargains. This means people will be searching usings modifiers such as discount and cheap. - 2. Link Building Becomes Harder
This has been the case for some time now with search engines downgrading directory links and links located in various locations on a page. Search engines will also become much more sophisticated and be able to spot paid links more easily. The emphasis is likely to still be on authority and natural links. - 3. More Dependence On Universal Search
I think this will play a particularly heavy roll with bricks and moatar firms and the Google Business centre will become essentially to small and medium businesses. Firms will have to look at regional targeting much more.Google base has also had some really nice updates recently and has started to include some new services in there. So for example you can list SEO services in there now and property rentals. This i would imagine should display a lot more in the natural search results.
- 4. Search Engine Rankings
This has been happening for some time now but more emphasis is likely to be put on conversions and content. It was recently suggested that Google is using bounce rates in determining search engine rankings. This means that site owners need to focus their efforts on usability and conversions. It makes sense for search engines to do this. People after all are looking to perform some sort of function when they do decide to click on to a site.
These are just a few thoughts i had and i am sure there will be many other factors that will play there part. As i always i look forward to the challenge and working through them with you guys.
Earlier this week YouTube launched a new search feature which sees the incorporation of a search bar within an embedded video. At first i was a little worried as when i heard the news i thought the search function may draw users away from the site and back to YouTube when they perform a search. I was relieved to find that this is not the case and in fact YouTube have embedded a really nifty search results display. It pulls back the top 6 results and displays a thumbnail for each. All this and you don’t even have to leave the site or open a new tab.
I very much welcome the new addition but i can see why many people would not want this feature embedded in their videos. So i decided to put a little step by step guide together on home to remove it.
Remove The YouTube Search Feature
1. In the embed code, find the url for the flash player (it is in there twice if you are using the standard YouTube embed code)
2. Add the parameter showsearch=0 (by adding “&showsearch=0″ to the url)
This should result in the search feature being removed.
Hope you find it useful guys!
I had for a long time been reluctant to take up Twitter but in the last few months i have been trying it out and i have to say i can’t praise it enough. It is truly a magnificent tool and despite some criticism it can be extremely useful for business purposes. Despite my love of the service there is an increasing number of scams and frauds that are taking place on the site. This has numerous implications including being sent to unsuspecting websites and giving your details out to imposter’s.
A recent case study on SEOMoz got me thinking just how easy it would be to impersonate a company on Twitter? Rebecca, an SEOMoz regular discussed how she was having problems canceling a sports subscription with a cable company and it resulted her being told she would have to wait till the end of the sports season before she should cancel. This infuriated her as she did not want to watch any of the games and so posted a disgruntled message on Twitter. The company noticed the message (which by the way is great brand monitoring) and tried to resolve the problem through there.
Ok so I changed the title from a famous Stereophonic’s song called Mr Writer but anyway what’s important is, is that its not misleading. Have you ever been on a social book marking site and read a title and thought that sounds interesting so I will take a look. Of course you have but when you arrive on the page its not exactly what you were looking for. In some vague way it’s relevant but in essence you can’t help but feel it’s a wasted click. Creating such titles used to be an effective tactic to drawing readers to you site however in recent times it has almost become frowned upon.
This is not the best example I have come across but at short notice this is the best one I could find. To start with it looks fairly legitimate but when you read the full story you see its very misleading. Effective though as you can see by the number of Digg’s it got.
In recent years we have seen an explosion in the demand for online marketing and SEO services and in order to meet this demand we have seen literally hundreds if not thousands of new SEO startup companies appear. Unfortunately some of these companies use some less than savory tactics to try and improve your search engine rankings. In our industry these people are often referred to as cowboys.
So What Should You Look For?
How can i spot one of those pesky cowboys? Companies use many underhand tactics and some of the most common ones have been listed below so that you know what to look out for.
- Guaranteed No1 Rankings – This is an underhand tactic as people without SEO knowledge will think this is an excellent offer and take up their services. Industry insiders know that this simply isn’t possible as don’t know exactly how the search engines will change.
- Swapping Hundreds Of Links – Many cowboys will gain hundreds of links by swapping links with other sites. These are often irrelvent and damage the reputation of a site. In some cases your site can be seen as a link farm. Cowboys do this as they think that any inbound links are good for a site.
Although it is becoming increasingly difficult these days the power of releasing a story early cannot be under estimated. In my experience this can be one of the most powerful things you can do in terms of getting inbound links and a good steady traffic source. Releasing a story first or at least very early increases your chances of getting ranked highly for the term (probably long tail) and gives you a head start on the competition.
There have been several occasions when i have succesfully made use of this technique and the sites are still feeling the positive effects today. One site i used to run was Just Video Games and at that time Call Of Duty 4 had just been released. On the day of the release i did a quick search for Call of Duty 4 tips and found that Google was only displaying one relevent result. The information on that page was very useful so i used that along with my own knowledge of the game to create a page on Call Of Duty 4 Tips and Tricks. I then did a bit of deep linking between posts in the site and low and behold the page ranked number 1 in the next two days. Continue Reading
