Blog Archive from February 2007


Yahoo Search Cache - Highlighting Keywords
Wed, 28 Feb 2007 16:59:19 by Pete Handley

Seeing as Hannah started the habit, if we are looking further afield than Google, Yahoo have now started highlighting the key terms you are looking for on a page when you look at the cached version they have stored on their database!
Pete HandleyCampaign Delivery Manager...

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Search Engine Guidelines, Are They Bluffing?
Tue, 27 Feb 2007 23:57:20 by Jessica Faltot

 
With all the latest news pouring out of the Google and online touting the future of social media in the search market - only to have next week's flavor being how everyone must jump on the blog bandwagon or last month's news that talked about nothing but the importance of inbound links and Page Rank -  it's a wonder anyone can ...

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Can Businesses Afford Not To Optimize for Search Engines?
Tue, 27 Feb 2007 23:31:24 by Jessica Faltot

Search is the consumers most widely used online tool.  Activity in search is second only to e-mail.  That means people are looking, learning, seeking solutions for business, the home and personally.  Anything from finding the best recipes from Southern Living Magazine to researching the best search engine optimization companies.
Clearly if you have a product or service and are l...

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MSN does good stuff too though.
Tue, 27 Feb 2007 15:08:17 by Hannah Parker

Afternoon all.
I'm being too Google centric. I've looked at all my posts and they're all about Google. The other search engines deserve a turn.
MSN has its adlabs - which is (currently) a beta feature that it has provided to support its Pay Per Click (PPC) model adCenter.
The Search Funnel in adlabs is my favourite. By default, it shows the top 5 outgoing funnels - i.e. the ...

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To outsource or Not to outsource?
Tue, 27 Feb 2007 07:17:08 by Jayson Munday

The question has bee raging since the dawn of SEO, should companies outsource their SEO needs or handle the project in-house? The debate rages on both sides, yet still there is no clear definitive answer. The question I put forward to you is, “Why do you outsource your marketing and advertising?” Why is it that day after day companies outsource this necessity? Is it because the adv...

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SEO conferences
Tue, 27 Feb 2007 06:58:54 by Cameron Winslow

Here is a link to an upcoming Australian SEO conference that looks very good:  http://www.searchsummit.com.au/.

 



Cameron Winslow
Managing Director Australia

Stickers for Google Maps in the UK
Mon, 26 Feb 2007 17:06:29 by Pete Handley

Google have started distributing stickers to some clients as part of a marketing strategy in the UK. Thought this looked quite good!



Pete Handley
Campaign Delivery Manager

Google Image Labeller
Mon, 26 Feb 2007 16:40:22 by Hannah Parker

Another short one from me. If you've got 5 mintues spare - go and play with Google Image Labeller..
http://images.google.com/imagelabeler/
It's addictive so beware. You get automatically paired with another player. You both get shown the same picture which you both try to label. If you both come up with the same term then you score a point and move on to the next picture. You have 90 secon...

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Search is Sexy
Sat, 24 Feb 2007 09:18:59 by Matt Hopkins


Here's something that you wouldn't necessarily expect to hear - but according to Hitwise, search engines have now overtaken porn sites in UK market share.
It seems that search is a growth industry and the seemingly ubiquitous adult-content web sites are now in decline. In January, search engines had a 21% year-on-year growth in terms of market share compared with a 14% decline by adult w...

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Getting Started With Social Media Bookmarking
Fri, 23 Feb 2007 14:47:09 by Pete Handley

One of my clients recently asked me about utilising social bookmarking to help articles and press releases on their site to get more coverage on the web and ultimately gain more traffic.
 
Sites such as Del.icio.us, Digg, Technorati, Blinklist, Furl, Reddit and many others are springing up which is what is causing this phenomenon.
 
Social bookmarking, is where users cli...

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Search Marketing in Australia
Fri, 23 Feb 2007 01:21:38 by Mary-Ann Dick

The latest edition of BRW featured a section called ?Australia Online?. Generally it showcased the Top 10 Digital Media Companies in Australia, Corporate Blogging and Travel just to name a few.
 
It?s interesting to know that Google Australia launched in December 2002 and now has more than 100 Australian employees. Managing Director for Google AU Richard Kimber, says that this past ye...

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Does the Sandbox exist?
Thu, 22 Feb 2007 12:12:05 by Pete Handley

Many people in the Search Engine Optimisation world still talk about the phenomenon that may or not be the Google Sandbox.
This is where Google treat new sites differently from other sites that have been established, penalising the rankings and not allowing them visibility in the search engine rankings until such time as a series of factors is met that allow them to begin rankings for the...

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Google Base for selling stuff
Thu, 22 Feb 2007 09:13:06 by Hannah Parker

As Matt has talked about Google Maps - I thought maybe I?d do Google Base.
 
If you?re ecommerce enabled then you?re missing a big opportunity if you?re not in Google Base.
 
Google Base might not do anything for your organic rankings but it can really help your traffic - often listing your products right at the top of the organic search. Furthermore it feeds its product...

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Google Sitemaps - Don't Need to be Verified
Thu, 22 Feb 2007 08:05:14 by Matt Hopkins


There's been a lot of discussion lately on various forums about Google Sitemaps and whether or not they should actually be submitted.
If you don't know - Google provides a service called "Google Webmaster Tools" (http://www.google.com/webmasters/) to help website owners with indexing and SERPs. Various graphs and diagnostic tools are provided to allow you to see what Google see's on your ...

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The Value of Good Website Content
Thu, 22 Feb 2007 02:23:49 by Mary-Ann Dick

On the internet everything is fast paced and with so much information and very little available time, it?s too easy to lose your website visitor in a matter of seconds.  You only have several seconds to capture the reader?s attention. So if you want your website to stand out from the crowd then you have to give the reader something of value to them, and to do so you need to ensure you write o...

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Google dropping DMOZ!
Wed, 21 Feb 2007 13:45:42 by Joe Ogden

Hi Guys,
I have just read an SEO article about Google and the DMOZ directory (handy for search engine optimisation!). According to the article, Google have removed all links to the Open Directory Project from its results pages, which has some implication in relation to SEO and search engine marketing as a whole.
Obviously there is still great value to be had in being included in the DMOZ ...

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CSS and Google
Wed, 21 Feb 2007 10:27:09 by Pete Handley

CSS is used by web designers to style various elements of websites, from fonts to page layouts.
It is good for reducing the code to content ratio on a site, which is always good for optimisation purposes.
However, there are some unethical designers and optimisers who will use CSS for the purpose of hiding content on their site from viewers, stuffing the pages of a site full of keywords, a...

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Common reasons why sites do not get indexed
Wed, 21 Feb 2007 09:20:16 by Hannah Parker

Sometimes we evaluate sites which are not indexed in some search engines or are ranking very poorly.
 
This MIGHT be because they?ve been banned for dastardly  spamming techniques like heavy interlinking between domains or it might be because the site is brand new - alternatively it might be due to technical issues which we can advise on.
 
A big problem is sites tha...

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How long does it take for 301 redirects to transfer PageRank?
Tue, 20 Feb 2007 10:13:53 by Pete Handley

As many people who work in or around SEO, or who own website may know, the correct method for transfering the PageRank of one page to another is through the use of the 301 redirect.
We all know that using a 302 redirect can cause no end of problems for transfering this, but this often seems the standard method with hosting companies as well as many web designers who are ignorant of SEO.Read More.


Site Up-time is Important for your Search Engine Rankings
Tue, 20 Feb 2007 09:41:50 by Matt Hopkins

Over the past year, I have had a couple of problems with hosting providers for a few of our sites.   It happens ? and to be fair, sometimes it is out of the hands of the hosting provider when hard drives fail or servers crash (in fact recently Google has released a report on the hard drive failures in their data centres with an average failure rate of 8-10% from hard drives at least 2 ye...

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Google - showing 100 results per page.
Tue, 20 Feb 2007 09:22:41 by Hannah Parker


My next favourite thing is showing lots of results per page in Google - up to 100 in fact.
To do this without delving into Google Advanced Search is simply a matter of changing the URL slightly after you search.
Say, for example, you are searching for "chocolate chicken" on Google...
Your URL would look like this:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?num=71&hl=en&q=chocolate...

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Get into the Google Maps for Free!
Mon, 19 Feb 2007 14:53:04 by Matt Hopkins

You may have noticed that Google sometimes displays "local" businesses in its results pages for some search terms along with a map reference.  Have you ever wished that your company could appear in these results (right at the top of the page)?
Unlike most things with Google... the good news is that getting yourself displayed in this area is actually free!
Yep - no kidding.
C...

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A w3c Valid Version of Google?
Mon, 19 Feb 2007 10:23:54 by Pete Handley

I came across a slightly changed version of Google that was designed for accessibilty (web search for the visually impaired) at http://labs.google.com/accessible/
Having used this version, although there was some variance in results from the standard international version of Google, I found it really refreshing to use a search engine that did not have any paid for ads visible on the results p...

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Google - Search History affects organic results
Mon, 19 Feb 2007 09:27:10 by Hannah Parker

Morning all - quick one.


 http://searchengineland.com/070202-224617.php (Danny Sullivan 2 Feb 07)

The upshot of this is that if your search history is enabled and you are logged into your Google account then Google notes the type of sites you select from search results and gives them a boost in the rankings. 

Just something to be aware of if sea...

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Site search for Supplemental Results
Fri, 16 Feb 2007 16:57:46 by Hannah Parker

Did you know...

You know when you're looking for how many pages of a site are indexed so do a search for:

site:www.vertical-leap.co.uk

Well did you know you can restrict it to the supplementals? Yes? Of course you did. But in case you forgot - here's the syntax:

site:www.google.com *** -view



Hannah Parker
Campaign Delivery Manager

SEO is website marketing?
Fri, 16 Feb 2007 11:22:29 by Cameron Winslow

What is SEO? What is Search Engine Marketing?  What is website marketing and promotion?  How can I make the search engines work for my business?
These are questions we all hear everyday from companies to corporations that are trying to untangle the internet marketing jargon that is being thrown around authoritatively.  Let's try to keep the language simple and message clear.&nbs...

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