UPSearch are on the look out again for new talent – this time for 2 Junior SEO Engineers, working out of our HQ in the centre of Manchester you will have a passion for all things web and have at least 6 months – 1 year of experience within an online marketing, SEO or at least a web based business environment.

Person Specific  – you will:

• Have a high level of attention to detail.
• Have a good level of understanding of HTML and websites (Understanding of other web languages (example PHP or CMS technologies eg wordpress, magento, modx -  a bonus).
• Be able to work on own initiative and react quickly to changes.
• Be able to work within deadlines.
• Possess excellent communications skills (Both written and spoken)
• Be able to provide examples of any related web work if applicable. E.g. web design, web projects, web promotion etc.
• Be able to learn quickly. SEO and search engine marketing is a constantly evolving market so your ability to learn and pick up things quickly and follow new industry trends is important.

Ideal experience :

• Content marketing – you will have experience or knowledge in writing quality search engine friendly content and have experience in sourcing relevant touch points for submission.
• Link building and off page optimisation – you will have knowledge of building quality back links and understand the key concepts of the different types of ethical link building.
• Onpage Optimisation – you should be able to demonstrate good on-page optimisation and able to guide web developers on implementing SEO friendly features.
• Keyword research – you should be able to demonstrate a good methodology in keyword research and data sourcing.
• Market and Trend Research – you will have the ability to think fast and conduct research to gain an efficient overview of new trends and markets for clients.
• You will have a good grasp of Social Media Marketing and understand its use within online marketing.
• An understanding of Adwords and Pay Per Click marketing and it’s role within online marketing.

If you are a bit quirky, not boring, and want to build a career in online marketing and SEO with a leading Manchester SEO company, send us a covering letter and CV to recruitment@upsearch.co.uk. If you don’t have any professional experience but you are passionate about this industry and have done some work in your own time that supports your passion, please include this in your covering letter.

Strictly NO AGENCIES please!

There seems to be a lot of change going on recently with Google in an attempt to further improve their search results. It appears that the shift is moving towards “branding” and putting your name to anything you produce online.

If you think about it, by putting your name to your content you are going to make sure that what you put out is quality and not some rehashed rubbish that the Internet is now littered with. Well let’s face it, if you don’t produce quality content and your name is associated with it then people will lose interest in you and your brand very quickly.

This is exactly what Google wants . . . for you to produce quality content that people are looking for and enjoy and therefore share with their friends and link back to.

Personally I’m all for this because the Internet seems to have got to a stage where there is actually too much content! Although I rarely have a problem with finding what I’m looking for with Google, there are still poor quality sites and content, making their way to the first page that get there through pure gaming of the search engine.

Google are constantly battling against this in a seemingly never ending war with the SEO and marketing world . . . so what’s one of the latest developments from the big G?

Google Authorship!

Through Google+ you are able to link your profile to your content which lets searchers and Google know that you are the author. Now there are rumours that this could be worked into the ranking algorithm at some point but despite the potential effects of that, your click through rate from the search results should increase meaning more eyeballs on your content and product offering which means more sales!

The reason for this is that by linking your content and adding the sites to your Google+ profile, your picture appears next to the search results adding credibility, trust and authority to the searchers perception.

The theories for the integration into the ranking algorithm is that Google could analyze all your content and see how people interact with it. Think social sharing, time on site, bounce rate, followers etc. Makes sense but like I say, it is important to note that this is all theory at the moment.

So Is Google Authorship The Next Big Thing?

Although I am in favour of it, I very much doubt it unless a lot of ground is gained by Google. Google+ only has about 90million users at the time of this writing and it is estimated only a small percentage of those are actually active users. (Facebook has around 895 million ACTIVE users!).

Also there’s another issue in the fact that the responsiveness to content is often niche and business specific.

For example a weight loss content/advisory site will get a lot more attention and interaction and benefit more from this sort of content branding than an e commerce site that sells fitness equipment.

So is it worth bothering with then? . . Yes I believe so. Well click through rate, trust, authority, brand awareness and a potentially better following can only be good things regardless of if and when it will affect your rankings.

On a final note, this is what generally happens in the online marketing world:

• The search engines update and make changes to how they rank sites – usually small changes at a time although people talk as if the changes are HUGE!

• Good SEO consultants adapt and embrace these changes, learn the new skills and techniques and suffer little to no negative effects from the updates.

• Poor SEO consultants panic that the sky is falling and they are losing all their rankings for their clients.

• Good SEO consultants continue to create great content and share and promote it around the web through “natural” techniques which is what they have always done even though the “techniques” need to be updated in line with the search engine updates.

• Poor SEO consultants look for the next quick fix to be released to game the system once more . . . until the next update which will usually kill their rankings and unfortunately many clients businesses.

Most professional industries have CPD – continual professional development – to ensure employee’s skills are up to speed and in line with the latest industry standards etc.

Internet marketing is a bit different as the search engines, quite rightly, don’t tell you what you need to do otherwise they would be gamed and lose their ability to show you the best results. This means that it is down to people thinking outside the box and taking the initiative to implement testing, underground studying and general good practice to continually achieve the page 1 results for clients that stand the test of time.

Shameless Plug:

If we sound like the type of people you would like to speak to about improving the SEO of your business then get in touch!

We are a Manchester based SEO company covering the whole of the UK and are happy to work with small one man band tradesman to huge multinational corporations.

Pete Cashmore @mashable

The guy behind my favourite tech blog mashable.com – covers all sorts from social media to gadgets to gaming to dev, etc… He posts pretty much all day and it’s mainly articles that have just been posted on the site but it’s a great way to keep up without having to check the site all the time.

Titanic Voyage @TitanicRealTime

Seeing as it’s almost 100 years since the Titanic sank on 15^th April 1912, The History Press have set up a Twitter account delivering real time tweets about what was going on before, during and after the sinking. 10^th April is when it’ll properly get going as that’s when the ship left Southampton!

The 90s Life @The90sLife

For all you cool kids born in the 80s who grew up with Pogs, Sylvanian families, Gameboys, Noels house party & scratch art, this one is teaming with memories & pictures of everything from boy bands to rug rats to mouse trap to bring back those forgotten memories. Good for reminiscing of a time pre-smart phones/ iPods/ iPads.

Uber Facts @UberFacts

Tweets throughout the day with random little facts you’d never have thought to ask. From “Nineteen letters long” is 19 letters long to The name “Nintendo” is often translated as “leave luck to heaven.”, it’s all about the most random obscure facts.

Smashing Magazine @smashingmag

From the online magazine for web designers and developers www.smashingmagazine.com. They post all day with links to articles on the site with everything from HTML5 snippets to photoshop grid templates to polls on the weirdest bug you’ve ever come across. A great designers resource.

Tech Radar @techradar

Technology news and reviews of the latest gadgets such as mobile phones, cameras, tablets, tvs, etc. They tweet a few times a day so it’s not ridiculous. Their sister account @techradarreview tweets their reviews as they’re added to the site.

The Poke @ThePoke

All the latest random & hilarious spoof news from around the world. Everything from ‘Scientists convinced defrosting alien is safe ’ to ‘Coldplay annouce massive UK supermarket tour ’, it’s all about the weird, wacky & funny. Penned by a group of freelance comedy writers & producers, they tweet all day so there’s always something new to look at.

And that’s all folks! hope you find some of these as funny and useful as I do. Ta ta for now!

The truth is that SEO isn’t rocket science, it just takes a bit of thought, time and creativity. As a professional Manchester SEO company we always promote and practice ethical techniques of doing SEO; techniques that search engine spiders like.

Perhaps your SEO isn’t working or at least it should be working harder for you? Here are 5 things you should check and ensure you are getting right:

1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. Content: Shallow, Duplicated or Over-optimised.
                  2. Wrong Keywords: Are you targeting the wrong kind of keywords?
                  3. Poor linkbuilding strategy
                  4. Time and Money: Not spending enough of it on SEO
                  5. Traffic isn’t converting: Get your conversion optimisation hat on

1. Content: Shallow, Duplicated or Over-optimised.

Content has always been the key factor in search engine optimisation, particularly since Google entered the market with its intelligent algorithms of differentiating relevance.

Don’t Duplicate On Page Content

If any of the content on your own site is duplicated to any degree, this could be harmful to your rankings. Search engines like to see unique content throughout your site; don’t simply copy a piece of content from one page to another and change a few words about. When search engine spiders see this duplicated or spun content (that is content that is rewritten but has the same meaning) it devalues the importance of those pages and perhaps sees your site in a more negative light.

Keep your Off Page Content Unique

With regards to off page content, (blogs, articles and other content that is external of your website) that link back to your site, it is again important to keep the blog or article unique. Don’t copy and paste anything from anywhere else (of course if you are quoting someone that’s fine to an extent) but the bulk of your text should be uniquely written. Search engines don’t like duplication or plagiarism and will penalise offending pages/sites.

Make Your Content Informative and Engaging

Although it’s important to keep content unique, it’s also important to keep it interesting and detailed enough to properly cover the topic you have in your content title and this means having sufficient word count. No don’t cram words in for the sake of bulking out the content, but try to go in to a little detail so that the search engine (and human reader for that matter) has a good grasp of what you are trying to say in your content.

Don’t Keyword-Stuff You Content

Keyword density has probably been one of the longest running myths of SEO and some so called SEO experts swear by a certain formula in which they have a particular percentage density of their chosen keywords in their content. What this leads to is content that reads like a robot has written it

Whilst it’s important to have your keywords and some of its variations within your text there isn’t a proven formula and search engines would rather your content is well written, and reads easily. Remember search engines have powerful and intelligent algorithms to read and understand your content so simply plugging in keywords 5, 10, 20 times in your text isn’t called SEO – it’s called keyword stuffing.

2. Wrong Keywords: Are you targeting the wrong kind of keywords?

Let’s say you have an online book store and you specialise in selling cook books. You’ve dabbled in Google AdWords and you’ve used the Keywood Tool to look at keyword volumes and you think the word “Books” or “Book Store” or “Online Book Store” are the best keywords to do SEO on because they all carry HUGE amounts of search volume, so you set about throwing in loads of time and money to get these keywords to the top of the search engines.

Loads of Traffic – No Sales

Great! With blood, sweat and tears you’ve finally got your keywords to the first page of the search engines (Well done you by the way), you look at your analytics and you can see the traffic literally cramming itself through the doors of your website – fantastic!

But then you realise that the sales haven’t really increased as much as the traffic suggests…”WHY?! Why is the traffic not converting into sales?!” you ask…afterall the Keyword Tool said these keywords carry with them gazillions of searches each month!

Sure, you’ve got some great keywords with high search volumes, but if they are too generic and not focused enough you’ll just end up with a load of bounced traffic.

Choose Relevancy Over Volume

If you were to optimise for keywords such as “Cook Books” or even something more specific like “Jamie Oliver Cook Books” – you’d stand a much better chance of converting the traffic that comes from these keywords.

Before doing any SEO it’s important to spend time doing keyword research, and by that I don’t mean  finding the keywords with the highest search volumes.

Understand Your Target Market

Understanding your target market is a big part of keyword research; remember the way you (an expert in your industry) would describe your products or services maybe different from how your  customers would.

If you get this part right from the beginning, you could save yourself time and money later on.

3. Poor linkbuilding strategy

When Google entered the search engine market, it redefined the way it ranked websites and as well as content relevancy  it also looked at who was recommending  your site in the form of links.

If someone was linking to your site, Google would see this as a recommendation.  Some people took this quite literally and started spamming the web with links from all kinds of sites.

Overtime, as Google refined it’s algorithms making them more intelligent in looking for relevancy, many of these links became redundant and meaningless since most of them were links on sites that had nothing to do the sites that they were linking to.

The key to linkbuilding isn’t how many links you build, it’s how relevant or authoritative the site that is linking to is.

Here’s a short video explaining this:

4. Time and Money: Not spending enough of it on SEO

Unfortunately there aren’t any shortcuts with SEO, yes there are black hat techniques out there that can shave off a lot of time but over time they get caught out by search engines and end up getting penalised and sometimes completely removed from the search engine indexes.

The only way to build a good SEO campaign that is sustainable and doesn’t upset search engines is to spend time on it and to be consistent but if you don’t have time then you’ll need to spend money on hiring a decent SEO company.

If you don’t have the time and you are on a budget, then you have to lower your expectations on the type of keywords you optimise for. Having a lower budget doesn’t mean you can’t do SEO it just means you have to select more carefully the kinds of keywords that will bring you conversions/sales early on and limiting yourself to keywords that are less competitive.

5. Traffic isn’t converting: Get your conversion optimisation hat on

Imagine spending loads of money on rent for a shop premises on a busy high street and then hiding all the products right at the back of the shop where people can’t see them and then putting the checkout desk where no one can see it.

You wouldn’t right? But Unfortunately this happens a lot online, there are thousands of websites out there that put their best selling points, products or services below the fold (not in the immediately visible space when you land on the site) where people can’t see straight away, or even worse putting their contact details and call to actions at the bottom of the page.

Put the things people expect in places where they expect them to be

In the above sections we’ve talked about how to choose highly focused conversion keywords and how to get them ranking by using ethical and sustainable linkbuilding techniques. So you’ve got highly targeted traffic coming to your site by the boat load now but unless they see the right things in the right places, they’ll all bounce and go to another site.

Conversion optimisation is quite simple (no matter what some people tell you); put the things people would expect to see in the places where people expect them to be.

If you are attracting a predominately English speaking audience, you can be confident that they read from left to right or in  Z fashion.

Place Call to Actions when people are more likely to respond.

You need make sure that if you are operating a lead generation site, that your Call to Action (Telephone Number, Enquiry Form, Download Button etc) is there after they’ve finished reading the wonderful benefits of your product or service. Ofcourse place your telephone number and contact details elsewhere too but don’t make your customers look for it – hand it to them on a plate.

If you are operating an ecommerce site, make sure your Buy or Checkout button is placed at the top and bottom of your product description, don’t make people have to scroll back up after reading the product description just to Buy.

Don’t overload your customers with information in one go

Giving your visitor information is great but don’t overload them, appeal to both those who are simply browsing and those who are in serious fact find mode. For those who are simply browsing, take out the most important (selling) points from you text and present it in a way that can be digested in 20 seconds. For those ready to absorb a little more of your content, break it up into manageable chunks with a summary headline.

Not sure how well your site is optimised for SEO or conversion? Let us run a Free detailed SEO Site Analysis on your site here.

1) Subtle Patterns (http://subtlepatterns.com)

I like to use very subtle textures on elements in my designs to breathe a bit of life into them. Using plain colours & a minimalistic design approach can be good at times but can make page seem very monochrome & flat. Using textures can bring a retro feel to a design or give it a more lifelike quality and make it much more exciting!

2) HTML 5 boilerplate (http://html5boilerplate.com)

HTML5 boilerplate gives you a starting point to begin coding HTML5 from. Included as standard is Modernizr, a 404 error page, fav icons, CSS to reset everything & render all your HTML 5 elements correctly & folders for CSS, scripts & images. You can also include jQuery, a .htaccess file,  Google Analytics, IE6 & PNG fixes amongst others. I customise this futher by adding a folder for php functions, php includes & fonts.

3) WordPress (http://wordpress.org)

Free and open source blogging tool that has morphed over the years into a fully-fledged content management system. I find myself using this for anything from small news sections on websites through to controlling all the page content & functionality of the whole website through it. There are thousands of plugins you can add to create further functionality. Some of the most recent ones I’ve used are – All in One SEO Pack (http://semperfiwebdesign.com/wordpress-plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/), Gallery plugin (http://bestwebsoft.com/plugin/gallery-plugin/), Nivo Slider (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/nivo-slider-for-wordpress/screenshots/) & Google Analytics (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/googleanalytics/)

4) Font Squirrel (http://www.fontsquirrel.com)

Great resource for free fonts. There’s a font-face generator which produces the files (TTF, EOT, WOFF & SVG) needed to embed the fonts in a website. This works with any TTF file but just make sure you have the permissions to use the font first.

5) CSS 3 generator (http://css3generator.com)

Fantastic site for easily producing the code for many CSS3 features such as rounded corners, box/text shadows, gradients, RGBA, font faces & multiple columns. I’m always going on here to use the gradient generator as it’s fantastic!

6) Fav Icon Generator (http://www.favicon.co.uk)

Plain & simple, creates fav icons (the little icon at the top of your browser next to the website address) for your website. Upload to your root directory & Bob’s your uncle.

7) HT Access Tools (http://www.htaccesstools.com)

Simple little site for creating various HT access scripts. I frequently use it for creating htaccess and htpasswd files to password protect directories. Protects especially well against zombie attacks…

Anyway,  I hope some of these are of use to you!

Think about what’s important in your message and your brand, have a sense of clarity, don’t be afraid of WHITE SPACE, be ruthless, think about the visual and emotive experience, make it a pleasure to visit your domain! Keep it minimal clean and most of all think about the simplicity and usability for your potential customers.

Here at Upsearch we love and embrace white space, and we think you could too.

Some fine examples that hit the spot…

www.minimalsites.com

www.mrporter.com

Ok so we all know how big and important social media is. I can’t actually remember a day when I have not heard the words “Twitter” and “Facebook” mentioned in the media. . . . hang on I thought you said this post was about mobile marketing?

. . . It is, just bear with me on this and you’ll see where I’m going with it.

Anyway thanks to the social media explosion, people now have the power to “vote” and “share” your content in their social networks. Is this important? . . You bet it is! This now counts towards your SEO and rankings and it is only predicted to grow and become even more prevalent and intertwined in the search engine algorithms.

So basically there is no question about the influence of social media to SEO and therefore the results your website brings you.

Ok think about this for a moment . .

When people (you included) are logging into Facebook and Twitter etc what do they (you) usually use to check your accounts?

YOUR MOBILE!!!!

Aaaand the penny drops!

Important: Just because you can see your site using a mobile does NOT mean that you have a mobile optimised site.

This Is Why Mobile Marketing Is So Important:

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Searches from a mobile device have Quadrupled in the last 12 months!

By 2013 is is predicted that more people will access the Internet via mobiles and tablets than desktops and laptops.

1/3 of all mobile searches are local with 61% calling and 59% actually visiting your business after the search – your future customers are searching for your type of business, located close to where they are RIGHT NOW!

In the last 12 months, customers have ordered more than $1billion dollars worth of products from Amazon using a mobile device.

71% of users expect your site to load just as fast from a mobile as it does from a desktop.

81% of people prefer a mobile site to an app for for researching prices and 50% of mobile searches lead to a purchase.

57% of people would not recommend a business with a poor mobile site with 40% going to a competitor after visiting a poor mobile site.

79% of businesses on the web do NOT have a mobile optimised site. Get in now and secure your position before everyone else decides to ride the wave.

Source: Google’s howtogomo

If users don’t like your site when using a mobile device they will BOUNCE quickly and this negatively affects your SEO and rankings. If you have effectively implemented a mobile marketing strategy then your mobile visitors will stay and explore your site and possibly share your content in their social media accounts (often easier on a mobile). This will lead to low bounce rates and more social shares which means improved all round SEO for your entire site – mobile and desktop.

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So How Do You Properly Optimise Your Website For Mobile Users?

Keep it quick and simple – many mobile users are on the move when they search so fast load times, simple navigation, clear back and home buttons and clear and concise copy that is straight to the point and easily “scannable”.

Make sure it converts – if you want your customers to get in touch or buy a product then make sure that this is easy to do from a mobile device. As few steps as possible, short data capture forms and easy selection and checkout are all key to conversions.

Integrate local features if applicable – if your business has local appeal where people may want to find and visit your premisis then make it easy to find you. Maps and even a GPS can go a long way.

Be mindful of “thumbs” – people are using their thumb to browse so make sure anything clickable or scrollable is large enough and easy enough to do using a thumb so as not to click on anything by mistake.

The essential bit – make sure your site directs visitors coming to it from a mobile device, to the mobile version of the site.

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The team here at UPSearch have been involved in mobile marketing for quite some time now and can ensure your website is fully mobile optimised so you don’t get left behind. In fact the time to get this done is now so you are in front of the trend then simply sit back and ride the wave!

P.S . . We can also create bespoke mobile and tablet apps and implement effective pay per click mobile and tablet marketing campaigns and way more than we can mention in this blog post so if you want to get in on this game changing trend then get in touch!

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The increased attention Google is paying to social signals has clearly been demonstrated by their recent entry to the social network scene. You’ve picked a good time to start.

This article covers a range of tasks that you should embark on before you make your first tweet or post your first status update let alone let somebody else do it for you.

Remember your social media activity is a direct reflection of how people will see your brand, consider the following points before starting a social campaign:

1. Brand Character – This should be the first step you embark on before doing anything else. You need to create a written description of the personal attributes of your brand. Essentially if your business was a person what kind of person would they be?  Typically this description will reflect your target audience however in certain circumstances your persona may need to take on more standardized characteristics. For example when creating a brand character for a Doctor’s advice website, you’re dealing with a massively broad target audience that will have a defined idea of the character and qualities of a doctor, 40-50 years old highly educated etc. Your task here is to accurately identify the unifying traits, characteristics and beliefs of your audience and create a persona that appeals to all.

2. Taboo topics – What topics don’t you want to bring into conversation, besides the usual top shelf type items there may be some other areas that you need to consider. For example indicating your brand has a specific political stance, again each industry will have different topics that are out of bounds.

3. Connections (Twitterati, LinkedIn Power Users etc) – Who are important people in your industry that have social media presence, influence and a large following? This is your target list, to reap the maximum rewards for your work you need these people onside to retweet, share and like your posts giving you audience to thousands of their followers.  Once you’ve exhausted your little black book there are various free and paid tools available online that can point out who they are, give them all a try and see which ones give the most relevant accurate results.

4. Frequency – How frequently do you need to interact, every hour, every day, every week. Again this is highly dependent on your target audience. A bar brand for example may be fairly dormant through the week but step up their activities towards the party days of the week. Thursday, Friday, Saturday.

A quick disclaimer, your social media guide is a document that can be as long or as short as you want it to be, the ideas we’ve listed are just examples to get you going. Although we would recommend that if you have employed a social media agency to manage your social accounts for you there should be a clear enough guideline to prevent some of the huge recent social media blunders we’ve seen recently (Google Top Twitter Blunders).

Of course your social guidelines will grow and adapt to the changing circumstances of the environment and the business it’s self. As new social platforms emerge, put aside some time to see if the platform can blend into your current social guide, if not adapt and change as necessary.

Why Do I Need To Blog?

Once your site has been built and your content has been written, you are unlikely to want or need to change that content any time soon, right? This is fine and your website can still work well for your visitors, but after some time in the view of the search engines, you website can appear out dated. So how can you overcome this issue without having to change your content frequently?

An easy answer is adding some form of dynamic content, such as a blog or news page. Dynamic content is important for SEO for a number of reasons. It shows search engines, like Google, that your site is fresh and up to date, filled with new and relevant content – which Google loves! Not only does this new addition of content look good to search engines, but it also keeps your website fresh for visitors.

Of course, it is important to keep your blog up to date by writing new content on a regular basis, but there are some points to consider when writing so that your content is not only search engine friendly but actually engages your visitors

Tips for writing an engaging blog post

1. Your target readers – When choosing a topic for your blog post, think about what your target audience are likely to be interested in? What would they read and share with others? If you are stuck for ideas, write something topical that is currently popular, or that people might be looking for.

2. Catchy title – a catchy title can make the difference to whether the visitor reads your blog post or simply passes it by. Your blog title should sum up your blog post in just a few words while catching the visitors attention at the same time. Some popular techniques are to ask a question in your title or use strong wording (‘free’, ‘quick and easy’, ‘discover’, ‘revealed’). Keep it short.

3. Can you scan? – Make your blog post easier to read. People generally read things by scanning the page, reading headings and subheadings. To make your content scannable, format your text by making use of bold and underlining to emphasise important points in your post (although not too much!), add headings and sub headings to break your content up, add images (I will talk about this more below) and use lists.

4. People love lists. Bullet points, top ten, ‘five reasons why… .’ type posts generally catch people’s attention and are much easier to read than paragraph after paragraph.

5. Images, images, images – Images really help to break your content up and engage the visitor. Choose something which is relevant to your blog topic or adds extra value to a point you are making.

6. Get social – One of the main aims of writing a good blog post is to get your readers to share your content, driving more visitors to your site. Make this easy! Add social sharing buttons for people to Tweet, Like and share your blog post (there are many plugins to achieve this, see Scott’s 53 plugins post).  Remember, it’s OK to kindly ask your reader to share your post if they enjoyed it

Now it’s visitor friendly, is your post search engine friendly?

Once you’ve written your blog post, ensure it is SEO friendly. This is a whole different blog post, but here are a few pointers:
1. Include Keyword titles, or search terms in your blog post title
2. A friendly URL helps – can you add your keywords to the post URL?
3. Internal linking – add anchor text links to your blog post to your other blog posts or areas of your site
4. Keywords – make sure you use your keywords in your blog post
Fresh content is important in SEO, and if done well enough, you can make both the search engines and your visitors happy!

As an SEO Manchester Company, we like to keep on top of the latest news from our good friend Google and as Google release a new privacy policy, I will explain what this means for you the user. So here goes…

What Google has to say:

“We’ve been tidying up a little, making our privacy policies and terms more consistent, easier to read and easier to understand. You see while privacy policies, ours included, may not be the most popular read on the internet, we think they’re important. So instead of over 60 policies for different Google products and features we’re introducing just one with fewer words, simpler explanations and less legal gloop to wade through.”

– Google Privacy Policy Update Promotional Video (24-01-2012)

So What Does this Really Mean?

Simply put Google is condensing its privacy policies of its 70 products and from the 1^st March replacing them with just the one. Fusing these together means that they are no longer coupled with the individual free services but to the Google accounts themselves. They will then share the collective data that you provide, through the use of their services, but most importantly they claim not with any third parties.

Why are they doing this?

The big question I can hear you asking is why are they doing this? There are many ideas floating around with the one gaining the most momentum being that they are in a losing battle with the social giant Facebook. This is the part where you are thinking how can these two internet powerhouses be competing since they offer different services? Hang on in a second and I will explain:

For all of the services Google provides, its free business model would cease to exist without its symbiotic relationship with ad providers. Now these ad providers rely on personal digital data which is key to increase their revenue. The more personal data they can acquire on an individual, the healthier position they find themselves in to target and attract potential customers. Is this starting to make sense? If you have a look at Google’s Ads Preferences Manager you will find Google has built a basic profile of you based solely upon your searches. This profile however isn’t reliable, what happens if you are using your laptop for work related purposes or a friend/partner has been using it for the last couple of days? You will probably find that you have been classified as being the wrong sex, age and your general interests are way off the mark. However just for arguments sake let’s say that Google has built a profile that is 100% correct, it only has information on the above factors. Juxtapose this with Facebook and you will find in contrast, it not only correctly knows your sex, age and interests but in addition who your friends are, where you are located at any given time, your social life and personal thoughts though the use of statuses.

We have already seen Google try and fail to compete with Facebook with the launch of Google+ and with the merging of their privacy policies this could be the next step to attempt to shift the power and regain control of the online advertising world.

There are others that argue that Google is doing nothing wrong and this was the next logical step for them to take. Instead of having multiple different products stretched across the board Google are bringing these together to provide a better service. Take Facebook for example if you were to strip it down to its fundamental components you would be left with the social, photo and gaming elements. The only difference here is that Facebook started out its journey as a single unit, while Google is in the process of doing so.

Advantages of unified policy:

Google claim this move will only improve your overall search experience. Over time this shared compilation of data will be used by Google to show results and ads that are relevant and personal to yourself. If you take the word ‘Jaguar’ for example and type it into the search engine you will be confronted with search results for both the car and animal alike. This sort of gray area which is currently presented will be greatly eliminated with the new policy. In addition there is also the fact that the policy itself is easier to understand. Merging 70 policies into one single policy consisting of only 2,046 words leaves less room for misinterpretation. There are those that will be happy to agree to one single policy and then be free to use Google freely without the need to agree to a multitude of various policies for each and every service.

Disadvantages of unified policy:

If you like many others have been using Google’s services for the past few years and are uncomfortable with the convergence of the policies which you feel will violate your privacy then short of closing your account you cannot opt out of the new changes. For those of you ‘lucky’ enough to own an Android phone that makes it compulsory to create a Google account in order to function you will see your private data not only shared across of the Google services but also through the hardware platforms (phones, laptops, computers and tablets). This is quite a scary thought considering the nature of data that these devices will now collectively assemble including your contact books and your email through Gmail.

Conclusion

Personally I feel this is not as big a deal as people are making it out to be. Yes I do agree with those of you out there that say it should be ultimately up to the user to choose which of these services allow access to the aggregated data, but if you are really not happy with the new changes then you have the choice to delete your account and stop using these services…and let’s face it they are free after all and you are not being made to use them.

Over the last few months we have seen parallel situations among companies including TomTom, which has set up a partnership with Motaquote to track our driving in exchange for lower insurance premiums. There is also Amazons latest browser named Silk which collects your web history in exchange for potentially enhanced loading times. Think about the amount of personal data that is already given away so freely by users online on a daily basis using social media sites and signing up to new websites using their email and personal contact information. This trend is likely to continue for the foreseeable future and while the majority of you may not agree with the direction it is currently taking you have to ask yourself is it really all that bad?