The great thing is that it’s now “official” in Google, at least Google UK, for now, the next plan is world online dominance.

I’ve still got various bits and pieces to change and fix on this site, but as I’ve just started a new job as SEO Manager and I have some other projects in development, this blog, unfortunately, has taken a tiny bit of a back seat due to the other projects… Not to worry as I am logging all the stats, data and SEO news, as I am continuously completing online projects.

Once more of my projects are done then that will allow me for some more time to devote to my SEO blogging and general blog maintenance, remember, this is not just coming from some “IdoSEO” dogsbody, it’s real stats, real practice and real results. I work In SEO online and also make a living making my own money online as well as working for various clients.

Thanks for all of the recent emails, marketing requests, and job offers via my blog, I will respond soon.

Ollie

The biggest difference between Twitter marketing and Google marketing is the lack of flexibility that Twitter has. It allows 140 word tweets to be placed on the board and Twitter profiles allow for a unique user name. As an internet business, one of the suggestions made by Twitter SEO advisers is that the name used for the twitter account includes a keyword for your website or product. This will provide more opportunity for your tweet to be ranked on the Google directory when the keyword is searched. That said, getting your primary keyword Twitter username and tweeting fairly regularly at present, seems to ensure a front page spot in the Google SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages). This is very useful for an online marketing specialist or SEO to gain extra traffic to the chosen brand.

However, comparing Twitter to Google, even from a Twitter SEO vs Google SEO stand point, is like comparing apples to oranges. Twitter gained its popularity as a social networking tool that was not designed to provide the functionality of Google. It is attempting to move toward a more standard directory market but its base of popularity has traditionally been individuals who use it from a phone with a 2″ screen have live discussions with each other or get quick information from users of products via a live discussion.

The main issue for Twitter SEO will be to win over a multitude of Google users who have become comfortable with their SEO format and functions and motivate them to use compressed Twitter SEO to accomplish an advertising function that is available through other mediums.

I still believe live search is the way to go, however, we will see how the two (three – not forgetting Facebook) big guns pan out, that is, if Twitter is not sold.

Most internet business owners are very familiar with the term SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). They may have spent thousands of dollars to ensure that their business would rank highly on the Google search engine directories or with one of the other search directories that are used regularly by millions of people. But, as with any market that becomes saturated, SEO is not a panacea for guaranteeing that an internet business with grow and thrive and other methods for reaching a target audience must be explored.

With the growing use of social networking tools such as Facebook, Twitter, etc., a new marketing avenue has been introduced to business owners to reach their audience through Social Media Optimisation. This type of marketing will increase a business’ ability to reach their potential customers on a more individual and personal level and will also provide instant feedback to the owner of what their customers want or need from their products.

Developing an effective marketing strategy using Social Media Optimisation will require internet business owners to learn a new method for connecting with their customers. While articles and advertising work very effectively as marketing tools for SEO, there is a more personalized and targeted method for reaching customers through social media outlets such as Facebook. In order to be effective, an individual will need to search social media blogs, chatrooms, forums, etc., that discuss the specific product or service that is being offered on their website. The social media network is not one that will respond to a global mailing to every source of advertising. The approach is much more personalized and will require a dedicated amount of effort to establish and maintain.

While social media optimization may add an extra tool to the internet business marketing strategy, it has been indicated by Facebook and Twitter advisors that it will be most beneficial when used in tandem with other internet marketing strategies that are employed.

Alexsandr Orlov, is the host of www.comparethemeerkat.com. His creation includes a long family line, a tradition, work ethic, fashionable clothes (for meerkats), and all of the tags that humans subconsciously associate with “life”. This, coupled with Alexs’ personality has created a marketing fever in the UK which has increased the popularity of the car insurance company’s website considerably since his first appearance.

From the introduction of the Alexsandr Orlov campaign by www.comparethenmarket.com, there has been continued growth beginning with a 100% increase in traffic in the first five months of the campaign. Internet advertising costs of the “cost-per-visit” have been reduced by 75% however with the increased traffic, “comparethemarket” has increased their insurance quotes by 100% also. Market share has tripled and continues to rise.

Compare The Market on Google Insights

Besides his world wide popularity and the creation of meerkat cults around the world, the Compare the Market Insurance Company has also become well known and has grown in visibility and popularity as quickly as Alex. When visiting Alexs’ site individuals are directed from the first scene to the last to the www.comparethemarket.com website and encouraged to visit that site following the performance being given by Alex and his staff. In addition, Alex has photos and a page dedicated to his family which draws the observer further into the fun world of meerkat manor.

Alex has a daily following of several thousand fans on both Twitter and Facebook as well as media advertising throughout the UK. But, in conjunction with this popularity and fan following, Compare the Market has also gained fans along with Alex.

One of the main factors in promoting a website or new business is the ability to rank high on search engines. Most people don’t have a clue when it comes to making this happen, so, they go to “experts” who profess to know SEO and will state emphatically that “IdoSEO”. Many of the companies now popping up, or adding SEO to their list of products or services are really doing nothing that you couldn’t do yourself or, at least, a lot cheaper. When you are looking for an SEO Expert you need to ask some important questions that will tell you right away if they are the SEO expert they profess to be.

1. What programming languages do they use or know? A true SEO expert must be able to do some programming and understand code in order to optimise your site. If the person you are talking to does not at least know html, they are not going to be able to perform an effective SEO function for you.
2. Do they use an SEO program? It’s a very simple question. Many companies that do not have the skills or capabilities to perform SEO themselves are buying SEO programs and software. There are two reasons that this is a red flag. One is that this is an indication they cannot do it themselves; and two, is that you can buy the same program and get the same results a lot cheaper for yourself. The results will not be as effective as hiring a real SEO expert, but you will get the same results using SEO software yourself, as the company you’re paying to use it for you.
3. Where does the SEO company or agency you are considering land in the search engine result rankings when you Google them? This is an important indicator of how effective they are. If the SEO company you are considering employing can’t gain ranking for their own website then how are they going to do it for yours?



4. Does the SEO company or “expert” host their website in the target demographic of their customers? This is basic SEO knowledge, however, many “IdoDEO” companies and self proclaimed SEO experts don’t apply this to their site, how can you expect them to help you or your business if they don’t even know how to help themselves?
5. What is the cost vs return ratio average? If you are considering utilizing an SEO expert they should be able to tell you what the average cost vs return ratio is for their customers. Of course they can’t guarantee the ratio for your website, but they should be able to give you an average for their total customers. If they can’t do this, again, you’ve hit a red flag. When a company will not share averages with you they either aren’t keeping track of their products, results and customers or they don’t care. Either way, you need an SEO expert who is familiar with numbers both good and bad so that you can make an intelligent decision about whether the investment will be worthwhile to you at this point.
6. Watch out for the buzzwords. Unfortunately, everybody has access to all the buzzwords for SEO it just takes a few minutes to read a few SEO blogs to get a basic grasp of this. Just because a person can talk about SEO intelligently does not mean they can actually perform the function. Dig deeper, ask for some sites they have done work for and Google them to see where they are ranking in the search engine results pages. Just as with any contractor you should be able to get references and if you can’t, that is another red flag. Buzzwords don’t mean anything if the company you are considering don’t know what they mean. It is important that you have a clear knowledge of what you want, what the words mean, and what to ask for before you commit to an investment with an “oh… IdoSEO” Expert.

Follow these steps and watch out for the pitfalls of entering into something you might not fully understand or you too could get perplexed by the “IdoSEO” man…

Internet world 2009 was held in Earl’s Court two, and packed out the whole of the hall! The show certainly lived up to the hype and expectation from its pre-event marketing.

I was very impressed by the turnout, but unfortunately for me I was only able to visit the show on the very last day due to work commitments, however, I was able to see everything I needed to cover and managed to scale the whole show hall top to bottom, watch some seminars, get some questions answered, and get chatted up by a rather nice promotion girl ha! – It pays to be the Coolest Geek on the net!

I learned a few new hints and tips from the show, and expanded my friends list on linkedIn (note to self – I MUST bring more business cards!). One of the most impressive things in the show overall was the volume of SEO professionals and new SEO start-ups. During this recession, hitting the number one spot in Google has become an absolute priority for most online businesses and it’s evident that SEO is certainly the industry buzzword and marketing product at the moment, that said it’s what the market is hungry for right now, and it’s all about supply and demand!

It was evident at the show there were many new businesses that where a bit of a “bolt-on” SEO start up. That said every single booth offering SEO was rushed off their feet with clients wanting to know much more about what they had to offer. Now, here in the UK, it would be a great time to start up a new company based on SEO! (roll on my business)

There were many CMS (content management system) companies, and to me it’s fascinating the way these are developing. From the back-end it’s as if you’re using a windows application to simply build your website. Personally I prefer to tinker with the code and know what code is actually implemented, but still it’s showing the direction of the CMS platforms.

Internet World 2009 Seminar

I sat in on a seminar about direct marketing, this is a very interesting market to me as it included many hints and tips on direct marketing via e-mail, behavioral marketing and some other sneaky tips to increase conversion rates, that I’ll cover later on in this blog. I was very impressed with the developments in these technologies, however, one thing that seemed to elude the presentation was the capture of the e-mail addresses. I asked the question during the presentation:

“how is it you collect the emails in the first place to be able to direct such specific, targeted emails?”

I was told that you could buy the data from large data houses, that said, I think if you can capture the data directly yourself then you have a much better chance on converting your customers. Very interesting all the same and it’s thrown me many new ideas for my current projects.

One of the most popular seminars at the show seemed to be the social networking talks with the likes of Twitter and co. It’s certainly a hot property at the moment, with that in mind, I’m not sure anyone can claim themselves to be an authority in such a new field. The guys that are the real authority in the likes of social media marketing are the ones that make serious cash at this moment in time, utilizing these tools and techniques currently within their own marketing strategies, not the ones talking about them at shows and giving all the “good” information away, even so, there were a few interesting hints and tips I picked up on the social networking landscape.

There are a few other things I saw at Internet World 2009 that I just had to point out in this post. One of these things was originally an Adobe product which I saw presented on the TED talks on YouTube a few years ago. Fortunately for me the product was only there on the last day and I got to have a little play with this super cool new device “Microsoft Surface” – Brilliant! (filmed this with my LG KU990).

A cool £10,000 will snag you one of these beauties! New coffee table anyone?

Other highlights of the show to me included:
a magician (I’m always wowed by magic), not SEO related however very good all the same.
A group of three dancing girls one of which was dressed in a huge character costume, finally when I was asked if I am a male model, but of course! Ha

All in all Internet World 2009 was a great show! Roll on Internet World 2010!

Lexicon can be found at http://www.facebook.com/lexicon/. You’ll need to log into your Facebook account before being able to use the tool. Lexicon is a Facebook trends search tool that, when used correctly, can be a very powerful SEO tool indeed, you can view the social keyword trending of real conversations across Facebook. The tool scans over what people are writing about on their Facebook walls and displays it in graph format, much like Google Trends does for searches performed in Google.

It’s very interesting to search for buzz trends and breakout keywords. Think you’ve spotted a niche breakout in the market? Why not check it out on Lexicon to see if people are talking about it, if so, optimize for it! Currently you can compare up to five different words or two-word phrases. Either way this is another great tool for your SEO work. The only downside I’d say to watch out for is the time adjustment slider along the x axis of the graph, sometimes it’s a bit slow to respond in Firefox and can lock up, so rather than just zooming straight in to a specific week slowly adjust the bars.

Whether this SEO tool is for the Coolest Geek on the Net! (primarily me ), for all you SEO’s out there, or just folks who wanna see when most people on Facebook are getting lucky this is a very nice fun utility that can be used to supplement to your arsenal of keyword research tools.

My April fools post went down pretty well with my friends cause most of them know what a Twitter geek I am! I did get some red faces as the majority of people believed me, but it’s only once a year, so I should really nail something bigger next year.

I had another plan but unfortunately I didn’t have the time to create it. The idea was to mock up of a “Look into Twitter & their work place” the article would have basically like the one that did the rounds on Google, bragging about Googles amazing working environment. I was going to make Twitter out to be an even more amazing working environment with loads of freebies. I’m sure that would go viral!

Another great April fools I saw yesterday was a forum that had mocked up a 404 error page to be the front page. Classic Anyone else have a favorite?