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SEO ROI vs Social Media ROI

Today marks the day that I finally started to improve my personal brand on a level other than just Twitter & Facbook. From an idea that was thought up in our presentation training to our first video post. Take a look and let us know your thoughts on our very first video blog post.

SEOptimise @ Internet World 2011

Today was the first day of this year’s Internet World Exhibition that SEOptimise have decided to trade at, with the sole intention of improving both brand visibility and the number of clients that we have on our books. As for first days this one had everything from an eventful drive to a comedy finish that actually came from me.

 

The day started with an eventful car drive with Carla Nadin that started a little bit later than scheduled although still early at 7am. After making steady progress down the M40 with the general car banter at that time in the morning, we eventually hit the rush hour traffic in London around 8am. During the London leg of the drive it became apparent that if we were to get anywhere we had to drive like Londoners, so the famous Roman saying became “When in London, drive like a Londener”.

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Product URLs – a Duplicate Content Minefield

This post was originally published on White.net

Over the past few months I have been conducting lots of SEO Audits for a vast range of clients of all sizes. One thing that always seems to come out of the audit as a significant action is to look at the URL structure and duplicate content, with a special note for the product URL.

I find it extremely frustrating that with today’s technology and the skill set of most developers, CMS Platforms still generate multiple URLs for products associated with several categories. This instantly generates duplicate content for a single product, and if this is replicated across hundreds if not thousands of products, a serious duplicate content issue occurs.

To give you an example of what happens with some CMS Platforms (all CMS platforms are different), I have described a scenario below that is from the point of view of both a merchandiser and platform.

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Staying up to Date or Left Behind! You Decide..

Since announcing that I was leaving iThinkMedia, a number of colleagues have asked me how I keep up to date with the latest SEO news, techniques and debate.

For me this was quite a strange question as I have had Google Reader setup with RSS feeds for SEO resources that I regularly read for a VERY long time now. These SEO resources are then delivered to my Google Chrome browser as and when they are updated keeping me up to date all day.

Using Google Reader and Google Chrome I am able to sync my feeds anywhere that I have a computer/smart phone and internet connection. I thoroughly recommend using these tools to deliver your SEO resources direct to your browser instead of having to go looking for your information.

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Top Questions to ask your Potential SEO Agency

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a highly efficient technique when used well and one that is often best left to the professionals. However, it can be very hard to know whether you’re picking the right SEO agency or not to handle your precious campaign. Here are a few questions you can ask to ensure the company you are choosing knows what they are doing.

First, be sure to ask your SEO company what tactics they prefer to use in terms of increasing search rankings and overall visibility. Some agencies could use techniques that take greater risks than you need to be associating yourself with, and broadly speaking for longer term projects, these are not recommended; certainly not without being aware of the risks associated with these activities. It’s important to check if they play by the rules search engines set, or if greater risks are taken – and to be aware of the potential consequences if there are risks involved.

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Communicating with your Clients

Communicating with your client is a key part of any SEO account manager or account executives role. It is essential to clearly communicate on a regular basis with your client, whether it is to provide recommendations, documentation or discuss some development enhancements. Becoming an extension of their marketing team allows you to build a long lasting relationship, which helps with client retention.

I regularly contact the main stakeholders of all my clients, this enables me to build a relationship that allows us to talk about a range of different subjects even stuff away from work, including Saturday’s football game or my forthcoming wedding.

Below I will describe how I communicate with my clients and the tools I use to make sure that I am always available and keep a strong working relationship.

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Link Building: In-house, Out-sourced or Both?

Over the last few weeks I have begun lots of new link building campaigns for some of our clients. During this time I have been looking at how we can improve our offering to improve our efficiency within the business and service in general, across our client base.

I began by looking at our current process and then looking at the pros and cons of running a link building campaign in-house, out-sourced with such companies as Micrositez or using both to provide a much more rounded approach to the campaign.

Below are some of the findings for each potential offering:

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