Archive for the ‘General Marketing’ Category
The UK Search Marketing sector has a great reputation around the world for leadership and innovation as well as quality. Yet in the midst of a financial meltdown, I believe that a good old fashioned quality service will not go out of fashion.
But what underpins a reputation for quality, especially in the world of Search Marketing? When you “lift the hood” off your Search Agency, what is it that drives the consistency of service and reliability of results? Why is it so hard to find a quality assured Search Marketing service in the UK? What justifies a reputation for being a “leading search marketing agency”? The most employees? The highest revenue? The most profitable? The loudest marketing? Or the most satisfied customers?
Read on
With companies such as Thomas Cook going cap in hand to the banks, there has never been a better time to investment in a top flight search strategy. Utilising an SEO agency to promote your online business can mean the difference between literally going to the wall and making a profit.
Looking at the data for the travel sector we can see since the financial crises in 2008, travel related searches have been in steady decline. With consumers tightening their belts it’s clear the first thing to go is luxuries such as the family holiday.
Read on
Your search agency is now charging you £5k per month so it makes sense to invest in your own in-house SEO Manager and pocket the change. It’s not that simple…..
Taking search marketing in-house seems like a logical step for many businesses as an increasing digital marketing spend begins to dwarf the importance and value of other channels, but the reality is that doing so can be time-consuming, expensive and risky. While clients often appreciate the planning, processes and technological innovation of search agencies, I’ve started a list of other factors to consider when evaluating the business case for taking Search in-house.
Cost
Among the most important issues to consider when taking digital marketing in house is cost. Remember to factor in the cost of recruitment, training, personal development and employment costs. Search specialists have an insatiable desire to learn and that requires an ongoing investment if you want to retain your new recruits. Read on
As many of you will know, from March 1st 2011, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) have extended their digital remit to include all marketing messages and communications online. This covers their own websites and includes social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) are the UK’s independent watchdog committed to maintaining high standards in advertising. They are self regulated and funded by the advertising industry who are required to contribute 0.1% of their media spend to regulating the advertising industry. The ASA’s authority is recognised by the Government, the courts, other regulators such as the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) and Office of Communications (Ofcom) as the established means of consumer protection from misleading advertising. Read on
We began today’s Brighton SEO Conference with a panel discussion between Rishi Lakahni, a freelance SEO Strategist, Jamie Freeman from Message, Andy Budd from Clearleft, Nichola Stott from The Media Flow and Samuel Crocker from OMD.
The panel seemed to agree that SEO was in trouble, although they disagreed about the degree to which is was “doomed” and whether it could be saved. Rishi pleaded with the audience (“link junkies”) to “grow up” and “become real marketers” while others like Samuel Crocker and Nichola Stott argued that whilst it’s name might have been tainted it could benefit from some rebranding. The legitmacy of SEO as a practise was brought into question by Jamie Freeman, who argued that there was no “white hat SEO”; only different shades of grey. Andy Budd made comparisons to the financial industry, and agreed that SEO was “morally corrupt”. Read on
Search and social really do go hand in hand, so it’s not surprising search agencies like ours offer social services and, like it not, in many people’s minds social means Twitter. So it got me thinking about what UK’s search agencies Twitter profiles are like. Most like ours are a mixture of sharing stuff we think is interesting with a healthy dose of self promotion but is there much in the way of similarity statistically? Read on
Google News aggregates news headlines from around the world, and displays them according to reader’s interests. It allows readers to look at content by subject rather than source, offering several links for each news story, each produced by different publishers with different perspectives.
It’s great for finding out what’s going on in a particular industry or sector, and submitting your site for inclusion is also a good way to gain traffic and awareness for your site. By producing useful and interesting news content and packaging it in the right way, you can see your blog posts or news stories appear in the search results alongside those from top newspaper websites and news agencies on the Google News pages. Read on
A little while back we had the pleasure of interviewing Tim Ferriss for our Podcast, this post is a follow-up exploring some of the ideas he raised in our chat.
It’s hard to argue with the central theme of Tim Ferriss’s 4-Hour Workweek, that time is your most precious resource. One of Tim’s ideas of how to spend less time on work is to outsource large chunks of it to qualified staff, often overseas. In-house SEOs or small businesses may not have the resources to fund a UK based search agency, so consider other options.
Credit
Can you outsource your SEO in your own geo-arbitrage scheme? I asked Tim in our recent podcast interview about outsourcing marketing and he gave a clear response that almost every task can be outsourced to some extent. He said to keep the mission critical tasks with people you trust and start with low risk and low skill requests.
So if you’ve followed that advice how can you go about outsourcing your search engine marketing?
Read on
As an SEO through and through it pains me to say this but affiliate marketers are better at SEO than search marketers whether they work in-house or agency side.
I don’t think this is because they understand engines any better, or because they are more inventive or creative; it’s because of some of their strengths and opportunity they are more effective at their job.
But why are affiliate marketers better at SEO
Read on
