Social Media – So where did it all begin? Do you remember ‘SixDegrees’ in the late 1990’s, I can’t say it was really that popular but the concept was ‘six degrees of separation’ on the basis of linking people together in terms of who knew each other, but the bulk of credit really comes down to a site called ‘Friendster’ that was launched in 2002, (this site is still active as a social gaming site after it was re-designed). Then sites like MySpace and LinkedIn followed. It was however the launch of Mark Zuckerburg’s Facebook in 2004 that really set the social media world on course.

Today Facebook and Twitter dominate the social space with other social media net working sites creating a buzz as social networking is constantly on the move. Recent trends also mean that cross platform networking has become an essential part of us expanding our social networking online. The landscape is also changing with social media application based sites like ‘Foursquare’, where they enable you to use the GPS location to ‘check in’ and show your friends where you are on the map!

This video, if you haven’t already seen it is well worth watching as the facts really hit home the enormity of social media today for instance if Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 4^th largest.

Some social media interesting facts for you:

• People spend over 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook
• The average Facebook user has 130 friends
• People that access Facebook via mobile are twice as active than non-mobile users (think about that when designing your Facebook page)
• The average Facebook user is connected to 60 pages, groups and events
• There are more than 1 million entrepreneurs and developers from 180 countries on Facebook
• Twitter gets more than 300,000 new users every day.
• Twitter receives 180 million unique visits each month
• Twitter started as a simple SMS-text service
• LinkedIn is older than Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, having been created on May 5 2003
• The very first video uploaded on YouTube was called “Me at the Zoo”, on 23rd April 2005

Social Media in Business

Two years ago social media was very new for companies to know really what to do with social media in their marketing strategy. Today it is still very new but we are embracing it more and we are not being so scared of it. No longer are we saying ‘Quick our competitors are doing it we must do it! NOW!!’ We are asking questions of why we want to do it and what we actually want to gain from this. Eg –

• What are my social media objectives?
• Do I just want to create brand awareness?
• How do I show my ROI in terms of time and resource spend on social media?
• How do I measure the effect of social media marketing in my business?
• How do I integrate and manage all of my social media marketing activities?
• How do I effectively find my target audience with social media?

These are only some of the questions that you should be asking yourself when it comes to social media in marketing and if your not – start asking!

Have a plan, build a strategy, even if your strategy is something as simple as – I want to gain more ‘Likes’ then that’s fine as a short-term strategy. This is still a brand building exercise and then once you have your followers you can build your longer-term strategy around this. Once you have a plan in place monitoring is essential to see what your customers are saying about your brand, there are lots of tools out there for monitoring social media, (not just Google social media monitoring). Radian 6, Hootsuite & Tweetdeck are just a few, this article on social media monitoring tools has reviewed some and is worth a read.

Make sure you keep an eye on what your competitors are doing, just because they are doing certain things within their marketing social media plan doesn’t always mean they are doing it well, or that that is the path for you. Keep on brand your competitors might be doing competitions or social exercises that just don’t suit or fit your brand?

The Shape of our World today and tomorrow…

These articles below are not about social media but I wanted to include them as they really made me think about the way the world is changing and how the future is shaping up in how we interact and go about our daily lives. Companies are getting smarter giving us less to do and less to think about, devices are also doing more for us – technology is going beyond anything my gran could have ever imagined! She used to be too scared to even touch the ‘Betamax’ video – incase she broke the buttons, (the buttons were bigger than the first mobile phone by the way, it would have taken a tank to do any kind of damage). All amazing stuff and where will it all end? That’s the point.. it won’t as long a we are evolving, so will social media and technology, lets not be scared of it lets get on with it! Maybe one day we will have one site that we login to that will hold every piece of information about us from medical records, our DNA to our family tree and we will login with our eye’s or finger print being scanned?

Vodafone lets customers use their mobiles to pay taxi fares.

A fingerprint reader on the Motorola Atrix allows you to unlock the phone with the swipe of a finger, ensuring can only be used by the owner, read the full article.

Have you found anything new in this blog that was useful? Please comment below, add a link to it or send the link to a friend – Many Thanks!

Twitter: AngeTodd
Linkedin: Find Angela Todd on LinkedIn

Internet and website marketing companies from all over the region have turned up en masse at the University of Salford as part of an initiative to combat recent cost cutting announcements.

Under the guise of an intensive training course in SEO and search engine marketing, the University of Salford is selling .ac.uk backlinks to companies for £2000 a pop!

Enduring several 4 hour gruelling sessions, companies specialising in SEO in Manchester and the surrounding areas are holding out until the bitter end to bag one of these highly prized links and, while complaining about the amount of homework, have been happy to part with their hard earned wonga in order to jump on the backlink bandwagon.

One Leeds SEO firm camped outside for three days to make sure of a place on this so called course and told me . . .

“We really need high quality inbound links to complete an internet marketing assignment for a company specialising in van hire Leeds and also a well known mens shoes brand so we’ll do whatever it takes”.

I have to say that I enthusiastically enrolled to ensure that I wasn’t left behind by my colleagues and competitors but very soon began to forget the prize which was waiting and became engrossed with the excellent content of the SEO course itself.

Top SEO training tips and techniques

From the ground rules for keyword research and selection through advanced link building techniques to the latest thinking in social media marketing, both the superb core team and their excellent keynote speakers really managed to get their ideas across and moved my understanding and my ability to apply my learning right across my client base immensely. High end benefits for my clients and a more effective approach by my team will really mean more business and a more enhanced reputation for my company in the dynamic and competitive world of internet and website marketing.

Not sure how ethical this backlink sale is, although I do think the Search and Social Media Marketing Course is actually extremely good and I would definitely recommend you enrol for the next sessions. Hats off though to the guys at the University of Salford, Search and Social Media Course for thinking outside the box with this innovate if somewhat extortionate way to plug the funding gap and keep themselves and their mates in a job.

As a post script I would urge you to register early for this university SEO training course as places are selling like hot cakes and there are only a limited number of .ac.uk backlinks available – Good Luck and Bon Voyage!

I am writing this based on experience from my company’s first foray into the world of Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising (using Google Adwords) and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). I am the sole marketing person for an independent manufacturing business – Alker Fibre Optics – and when I joined I was made aware that we intended to commit a large slice of the marketing budget to PPC.  I explained I had little experience with this but was told not to worry:

The experience taught us a rather expensive lesson, but we also saw glimpses of how it could work and gain us a lot of business, but at the time we just did not have the skills in-house. So, what have we learned from this?

Adword for Dummies – it did actually work!

I should also mention that prior to hiring an agency to help with our account, our Director, armed only with an ‘Adword for Dummies’ book got stuck in and set up some Adword campaigns, and I have to say, it did actually work! There was a real pick-up in enquiries and business almost immediately. However, it quickly became clear that the campaigns were not the most economical, we were spending far more than necessary to achieve our targets not to mention the countless hours spent googling for keywords! At the time, outsourcing to someone with the know-how and time we lacked seemed a better option – and it might have been, had we ourselves been better informed before choosing our agency.

I do believe we have to take some responsibility for not having a clear understanding of what to expect, but I also think that there are agencies and consultants out there who are more than happy to take your monthly fee and then run and hide behind Skype and email once you start asking questions.

So if you are intending to outsource your Adwords campaign here are my top ten things to ask agencies before you commit – but with the caveat that you should also do some research and find out more about search engine marketing and what it means to your business before going ahead.

You can skip the intro and go straight to ‘Top ten questions…’ if you have already done some research on the power of Google, SEO and Adwords.

Why is ranking high on Google so important?

I have built on my experience at Alker by attending the excellent Search and Social Media Marketing (SSMM) course at Salford University, so below follows a little information on where to start your research.

A little on Search Engine Optimisation first.

How many times have you clicked past page one when searching with Google? Not many I bet. If you don’t go past page one why would your potential customers? This link from SEOBook.com illustrates the point beautifully:

• The reason so few people click past page one is because Google is very good at what it does. It simply wants the person searching to find exactly what they want in the shortest space of time. Google therefore rewards websites which are relevant to the search by placing them towards the top of page one. This is why ensuring that your website is optimised for search engines is so important.
• For Adwords or Pay Per Click, the same is true. Relevancy is king and Google will reward you by charging you less per click if the pages you direct your adverts to are highly relevant to the search term. They do this by allocating a score to each of your keywords used in your campaigns and your chosen agency should make sure your scores are relatively high (no lower than 5 out of 10).

This is a very basic overview and as I said before I highly recommend you familiarise yourself with the field further. A good starting point to find out more about Search Engine Optimisation and Search Engine Marketing is as always Wikipedia – SEO / SEM, but I can also recommend Avinash Kaushik’s web analytics blog.

10 questions to ask before outsourcing SEO and Adwords

So, born from expensive experience, here is what I should have asked, and what I believe you should expect from a good Search Engine Marketing/Adwords company or consultant – but don’t forget to do some homework first!

1. How long do I need to do this ‘optimising’ for?

   The first thing to bear in mind is that Search Engine Marketing is not just for Christmas – it is for life. A long-term strategy is therefore important. If you are relatively certain that you want to outsource both the organic optimisation and the paid for search for the foreseeable future, then budget for it and agree a long-term strategy with tangible outcomes and regular updates.

2. Is there any training offered?

   If your longer-term strategy involves bringing the skills in-house or making sure your staff have some core skills around search marketing, ask your shortlisted companies if they offer training and on-going support (and if they have run any courses so far). If you want to train your staff independently of your chosen SEO company I can highly recommend the Search and Social Media course at Salford University.

3. Will you understand their reports or is it one big alphabet soup?

     Ask to see examples of client reports (without the client data of course) and if there is something you don’t understand – ask.  A good digital marketing company should be able to explain what all the terms mean and why they are important in such a way that you understand it. Most search engine optimisation is not about technical know-how. It is about ensuring you have good, relevant copy that is easy for the search engines to find and understand. It is about increasing your web-presence and authority with an all-round strategy.

4. How will they build you good, authoritative links?

   This is a key part of getting your website up the rankings and unfortunately also an area where less reputable companies will take shortcuts that can seriously damage your business (to the point where you no longer show up at all on Google searches). Instead of going for someone promising you 100 links a day, choose the company that will take the time to talk to you about who your customers are, or what the online trade journals and directories relevant to your business are and if you can gain links back to your website from these. As an example, my company, alker fibre optics, has a number of Universities as clients. Getting backlinks from these around work we have done with them was far more valuable to us than random links from irrelevant websites, and also unlikely to land us in trouble with Google!

5. How will they communicate with you?

   Decide if you want regular face-to-face meetings. It may seem a small point, but some companies will prefer to deal mainly on email and phone.  Personally, I prefer to know I have someone’s full attention when discussing my business and did find it frustrating when regular meetings were difficult to arrange, particularly for the first few months when there is a lot of new jargon to take in.

6. Who do you liaise with and vice versa?

   This goes both ways. Your chosen company should ensure you have key contact people you can easily get in touch with and, likewise, you should champion the SEO and Adwords work from the top of your own company. Make sure that it becomes part of someone’s job to manage the day-to-day work. If, for instance, you are implementing customer feedback on your website there is nothing worse for your business than to then ignore it because you haven’t got time. The same goes if your digital strategy involves using social media platforms (like Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter). If you’re going to do it, make sure you do it consistently.

7. Who will have access to and work on my website?

   Does your shortlisted companies outsource the work or do they have the staff in-house? Outsourcing isn’t necessarily a negative, but I would find out if they regularly use the same consultants and that your work will be assigned to mainly one contractor to ensure a consistent approach.

8. Who else do they work with? 

   A good digital media agency should have current or previous clients that they are happy for you to get in touch with. 

9. Their website looks great, but…?

   Do all the basic checks you would do if you were making any substantial financial commitment. It is amazing how a great looking website can dazzle you into thinking everything is hunky-dory. Check their registration with companies house, ask them about staff turnover, how long they have been in business etc. NB: A lot of SEO/Adwords companies are relatively young – don’t immediately count this against them!

10. Manage your expectations.

    There are no magic widgets that you can buy that will propel you to the top of Google’s organic listing and no one can guarantee you this using SEO alone. If you are starting from scratch you should allow three months for the work to start making an impact. If you are also implementing Adwords, this will have more immediate results and you should expect to see your adverts appearing on Google in the first week of going live. How long the work takes leading up to this depends on the complexity of your business, but I would expect it to take at least 4-6 weeks.

I would be interested to hear feedback from the excellent agencies that have contributed to the SSMM course  about their experiences – are expectations from clients too high? Have I missed any obvious points in my list?

Find me on LinkedIn/AnneGrondahl or @annegrondahl.

My recent foray into the world of Search Engine Optimisation, PPC and Social Media with the Manchester digital agency Fast Web Media has been an intense and enlightening experience. 

And the Search and Social Media Marketing course at Salford has allowed me to refresh and expand my SSMM knowledge. So I thought I would use this opportunity to share a little about my experiences of starting out a career in SEO with regards to the Salford course for those who may be considering a similar path.

Getting a taste for SEO

Prior to my role with Fast Web Media, I had, like the majority, been an avid consumer of “the internet” for work, rest and play. A Wikipedia addict, a Facebook user, a mocker of Tweeters, a LiveJournal dabbler and a Geocities resident way back when, my online world previously revolved around university work, amusing memes, stalking friends on Facebook and Googling for cheap gig tickets.

I had relied heavily, if not solely, on Google over recent years to help me navigate the digital seas; although I had rather naively shown little regard as to how search engines manufactured their results pages (as a science graduate, I look back and find lack of curiosity really rather shameful!) However, my role at Fast Web Media threw me in the deep end, opening my eyes to a brave new world.

The ever expanding Google empire, the Social Revolution…

along with the maturation of mobile technology and the digitalisation of the almost everything seem to correlate with the evolution and expansion of SEO. There is so much to learn and so much to take in all the time. To bastardise a Douglas Adams’ quote (forgive me), my initial impression was that

“SEO is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is.” 

The Foundation course at Salford allowed me to refresh the basics of what I had already learnt “on the job”, as well as gaining a general overview week on week. The course broke down all this information before my brain resembled something like a smashed bowl of petunias.

As SEO strategy is generally comprised of many smaller strategies and tactics, it is important to explore the different options and keep an eye on how existing methodologies are changing, lest you wish to fall behind the frontrunners. As any SEO will tell you, we are constantly learning all the time.

The Spice of Life

So, what do I like about working in digital media, in particular is SEO? One short-tail, high competition keyword can probably sum it up: Variety.

Variety with clients; variety in my day-to-day tasks; variety in my professional relationships. Fast Web Media has a great range of clients, big and small, which I’ve been allowed to sink my teeth into. Work can vary between Carling, Bravissimo and The Premier League (or “Beer, Boobs and Balls”, as I like to quip) in a single day. The benefit of doing the Salford course is that I have been allowed to explore the intricacies involved in the different theory and disciplines whilst then seeing and employing their practical applications on a wide variety of client work and the bespoke strategies we use.

Day to day in the office will always be different: from linkbuilding to pondering cunning new tactics for linkbaiting; from approaching new clients to constantly re-assessing existing clients and keeping them abreast of new developments in SEO. I might spend a morning getting lost in Google Analytics or stalking potential new leads on Twitter, or reading the countless brilliant blogs that make up the ever-expanding knowledge database for inspiration, advice and often educational amusement.

The main draw to the world of SEO, PPC and social media is that it allows me the chance to be analytical and creative in equal measures. And not being afraid of being wrong is pretty much the best advice I’ve had. It’s all about testing, learning, reviewing and creating.

A Bitter Taste

Being new to the industry, you cannot fail to notice the variety of attitudes towards the SEO as an industry. We certainly have a name for ourselves – the recent JCPenny fiasco has been the most recent case whereby the debates around the ethics of SEO have been fired up again. I personally find the whole Blackhat/Whitehat debate fascinating, amusing summarised in this video from SES London 2009:

I think it’s true to say that the forerunners of any industry or discipline are often the ones challenging its boundaries and pushing the limits as far as they can go. Although, please don’t take that as a commendation of such “immoral” practices – but it is the existence of such a spectrum and wide variety of methods and talent which so enamours me to the industry.

Google is a powerhouse of the internet world. It professes that it constantly amends its algorithm so as to “enhance the user experience”. It is that algorithm that SEOs are constantly puzzling over, trying to manipulate the results for various ends. Google says it has a responsibility to its users to have the most relevant content in its SERPs, and recent changes to the algorithm such as the Panda Update have seen the life of an SEO become that all a bit trickier.

However, in some ways, I see value in SEO reach beyond the financial. I think it is the responsibility of SEOs to constantly challenge Google’s algorithm since Google acts as an authority on knowledge and dictates what is relevant content. Any authority which has such power and financial, social and political influence should be questioned, challenged and held to account. Experimenting with Google’s algorithm and the SERPs is to exercise the right to question its results; Google promotes content which Google has attributed quantitative value to, and as mass consumers of this mass knowledge, we should question their methodologies and intentions. They say “content is king” – but I think it’s important to challenge the “natural order” if it is Google dictating who the monarch is.

What’s Your Flavour?

As such a colourful industry, involving so many different skillsets, I’ve been fascinated by the winding tales as to how people have ended up in the SEO/digital media world – including the wide spectrum of people on the SSMM course, from port to ponies!

After divulging a bit about mine (we can talk more here), I’d be very interested to hear more about you – so, what’s the story about you and SEO?

As the co-owner of Smithfield Wine, a local wine merchant based in Manchester, I have had to deal with web developers and so called “SEO experts” to ensure that smithfieldwine.com is returned in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) and that the online business grows. As we specialise in niche wine markets such as:

• Vegetarian wine
• Vegan wine
• Fairtade wine
• and Kosher wine

this should be possible.

www.smithfieldwine.com – SEO case study

Our web developer offered us 6 months of free SEO if we would go with them. Sounded like a good idea so we did.

Before we launched the reworked web site smithfieldwine.com had a page rank of 5 and we were on the first page of Google for the majority of our products and all of our niche categories. We now have a page rank of 3 and the restaurants and bars that we supply are ranking higher than us for our products merely by including their wine lists on their websites!

As our 6 months of free SEO was up our developer asked us to consider taking up an annual contract and offered this proposal:

This really got our interest! I started to look at what we had got in terms of SEO over the last 6 months:

• The online wine gift shop category did not have a page title
• None of our 16 categories had any content
• A number of pages had the same page title and description
• There were over 700 Google crawl errors generated by the “bespoke” software

I decide that we needed help. I googled “manchester seo courses” and after sifting through much dross found the Salford University Business School course on Search and Social Media Marketing (SSMM).

After attending the taster evening in January we decided that this course was an essential part of our future development as online marketeers.

Having completed the four day introduction course I know that, after completing the Professional course, if we are not capable of handling our own SEO and SMM we will be more than adequately equipped to find expert SEO companies, which we know are out there and specify what we need and be able to monitor the results of our investment.

My “SEO foundation” results:

Having completed the first four evenings of the SEO Foundation course, which looked at keyword research, basic on site optimisation and off page optimisation, here are some of the observations in relation to the smithfieldwine.com website:

Writing of clearly focused title pages

For example, “Vegan Wines” being the primary keyword on the Vegan Wines page, the title for this page should clearly show the reader and the search engine the content of the page. The reader will be better placed to make a decision when seeing the page title in the SERPS and the search engine will be better able to index the page in its index.

At the moment the Vegan Wines page has the title “Vegan Wine | Smithfield Wine Merchants UK | Buy Vegan Wine Online”. However, the content on the page lists Vegan Wines from around the world etc.

Using the SEOBook toolbar we can see here the Title and the Description tag of the page:

Importance of keyword research

Having done some keyword research we can see what it is that the buyers are searching for; using a tool such as Google Keyword Suggestion Tool, we can see that the term “Vegan Wines” – plural of  “Vegan Wine” seems to be more popular with search engine users. By simply adding an “s” to the “Wine”, the potential number of visitor is increased by nearly 800 per month globally and 120 locally.

The keyword “Buy vegan wines online” – which is prominently featured in the current title and the description tag – has little or no traffic logged according to Google. This is a problem which many businesses can face where SEO professionals suggest that they will optimise a page for certain keywords to make sure that we are on page number one of SERP, but if this term is not used by the customers none of them will find us!

The same applies to the “Smithfield Wine Merchants UK” keyword – which is also prominently featured on the page title. The brand name of the website should really be easy to optimise for and hence there is no reason to include it on every single title page. If anything, this dilutes the focus of the web page to any other visitor who is only interested in vegan wine in the first instance. This is not to say that there should be no pages that have the brand name in the title tag.

A word of warning to any customer of SEO services: – check that the keyword terms selected for optimisation are working for you – if you are number one but nobody is searching for that keyword – it is not going to be of much benefit to the business although some “so-called SEOs” will be happy to point out that they did their job well!

We can also see related keywords to the primary keyword “Vegan Wines”, which are in relation to the web page that lists a number of different wines, these are:

“Vegan wine list”, and “Vegan friendly wine”. Bearing in mind that these are complementary terms, the optimised title which would target the primary keyword – “Vegan wines” – and two secondary terms – “Vegan wine list”, and “Vegan friendly wine” – could be combined into the following title text:

“Vegan wines – vegan wine list for vegan friendly wine lovers”

With this title we are still within the 62 characters that are the recommend length for a title tag.

Now, using the same keyword the META description tag for the page could be optimised from the existing text of:

“META description: Smithfield vegan wine. A stunning selction of great value fine vegan wines from around the world. Buy vegan wine online for home wine delivery.”

To something that provides a better summary of the individual page:

“META description: Choose from a selection of specially selected vegan wines a vegan wine list for vegan friendly wine lovers. From Argentinian to Uruguayan we have tasted and hand picked vegan red, white and sparkling wines for you!”

The new title includes the use of keywords that we researched and summarises the content of the page with more focus on vegan wines and also removes the typing mistake of “selction” in the original description text. Although the keyword tag is no longer used by search engines, there is still some merit if only for the benefit of future SEO page maintenance to remind the editors of what the keywords were that were used to focus this work.

Use of heading on the vegan wines page

The current web page has a heading “Vegan Wines” – which is the new keyword that we found to be more popular with the search results and was selected as the primary keyword for this page. The good news is that it is clearly labelled for the visitor using heading 1 formatting.

The headings hierarchy should show to the search engine and the reader what is important on the page. Therefore, heading 1 should be used for the primary keyword only. But, in our case we can see that the website design template also uses heading 1 for “Search Our Wines” and “Wine Departments” sections of the web page. This sends a conflicting message to Google or any other robot that tries to index this page. It has to understand which text is more important and therefore the two additional heading one selections as highlighted in the following screenshot on the left hand side of the web page do not help in providing focus:

Moreover, heading 2 – which is the second most significant heading of the page is showing the text of “Your Shopping Cart Contains” – this confuses Google indexing bots even further, since this text sends a signal to the bot that the second most important bit of information on the page is something related to a shopping cart! Only at heading 3 level do we see the important keyword for the results of the Vegan Wines – these are the selections of wines classified by their regions. So, to improve this page from an SEO perspective and to focus on Vegan Wines it is important to re-design the website infrastructure which would de-grade the less relevant heading to a lower level and upgrade the headings that provide content to a higher level: For example in this case:

• Vegan Wines – keep at heading 1
• Argentinian vegan wines – could be heading 2
• Australian vegan wines – could be also heading 2 ….
• Search Our Wines – could be heading 3
• Wine Departments  – could be heading 3
• Your Shopping Card Contains – could be heading 4

The incorrect use of headings shows a fundamental flaw in the current bespoke e-commerce web page.

Another lesson learned – if you get a bespoke website it must deliver what is needed for your SEO and not only for the site graphic design!

Thematic breakdown of the website sections

The page file names are also important for SEO and the structure that is developed to help Google and other search engines to show the structure of a site give a meaning of what is important.

For example, now if you click on Argentinian wines the following web page name is used:

www.smithfieldwine.com/Argentinian-Vegan-Wines-C-99

However, a better like naming convention, which helps to show that this one is one of many other “vegan wines”, is:

www.smithfieldwine.com/vegan-wines/Argentinian/

This structure would follow the category of the individual bottle of wine further down the hierarchy of the different wines, for example instead of having this page for Santa Luisa Malbec 2007:

www.smithfieldwine.com/Santa-Luisa-Malbec-2007-PID-1

A better file name convention would be:

www.smithfieldwine.com/vegan-wines/Argentinian/Santa-Luisa-Malbec-2007

This file shows the search engine very clearly that this wine is part of vegan wines from Argentina and is called Santa Luisa Malbec 2007. This naming convention could also be replicated in the page title, page description and page heading 1.

Social media optimisation

Currently at Smithfield wines we use Twitter and Facebook for communication with our customers. However, in order to talk to us on Twitter or Facebook the visitors have to leave smithfieldwines.com. This means that PageRank is being lost to the external websites from every page. To prevent the PageRank leakage the attribute in the link Meta tag rel=”nofollow” should be used.

Moreover, the use of social media is only maximised on the blog and not on the main sales focused website. For example, here we can see that a page can be liked by Facebook users and once they like something it automatically shows their friends that they found something interesting providing an opportunity for “viral” marketing. In the same way, the more people like a particular wine dedicated web page, the more they are passing on a recommendation to others which then helps to increase their trust and so they are more likely to purchase it. The image below shows the Tweet and Like plugin installed on the http://www.smithfieldwine.co.uk blog:

The link to the Facebook page is currently linking to my personal page and the web designers didn’t recommend changing the personal page to the company page – which is very simple to do and creates another opportunity to offer more interaction with customers.

Hmmm, what could be the strategy for the Facebook page?

Please share your recommendations below!

What is the importance of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) to the University of Salford and specifically to Salford Business School? The University has approximately 250 websites and the main websites receive hundreds and thousands of visits every year. So why should we worry about SEO and what is the point in Social Media and Social Media Marketing? They can never be monetized. Time is a precious commodity, Social Media Marketing eats time and we need to use our time where it will most benefit the University of Salford and Salford Business School. Right?

Right if you are only interested in website traffic but if you are interested in meeting the needs of your customers, students, stakeholders and research partners, then SEO and Social Media Marketing are fundamental:

• SEO, when used properly, and in the context of meeting the needs of stakeholders and business school students is powerful.
• SEO enables the correct visitor to find the most relevant content quickly.
• The use of appropriate header tags, title tags, alt tags, keyword density and linking strategy not only improve the ranking of the University of Salford’s content but also better meets the needs of the Business Schools student or research partner.
• This is the start of a productive online relationship.

Social Media is the means through which relationships are developed and enhanced. The Business School at the University of Salford has a number of Facebook pages run by the School or by students to enable shared experience, tips, services and commentary. Whilst SEO helps to raise awareness, the Social Media platforms when used as part of a multichannel and integrated engagement solution create the engagement, the conversation, the loyalty and the advocacy.

And what about those 250 websites? We are currently working to reduce the number and increase the quality of websites across the University of Salford. Promoting 250 websites, not only spreads effort but it also results in the cannibalisation of web traffic and dilutes the impact of the SEO and the engagement.

So choose the content most needed and wanted by your audience, map the channels most likely to reach your target audience and focus your SEO and Social Media efforts in those areas. This is a win win for the Business School, the University, the students and other interested parties. Best practice in SEO and Social Media is taught at the Business School in a pragmatic and relevant manner. As Head of Digital at the University, I am keen to ensure my skills are current in this rapidly evolving field and experts in user journey, SEO, Analytics and conversion are hard to find. That is why I am taking the course.

Presentation slides at the “Effective use of social media” themed open evening of the Search & Social Media Marketing course held on 20th January 2011 at the Hive.

Special thanks are due to the #SSMM panel: @Psychobel
@SmartRich @Alastairw99 @alexmossSEO @and TimTheGuest

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) jobs Manchester – an industry overview

My name is Tim Guest, @TimTheGuest on Twitter, and I’ve been invited to write this Blog post based on my recent presentation – “How and why to get a job in SEO and Social Media” – at the Search & Social Media Marketing open day, organised by the University of Salford, on 20th January 2011. I run a Digital recruitment business called Quantica Technology, @QuanticaTech Quantica Technology on Twitter, and Digital Marketing is one of our specialisms:

Stats on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) employment in Manchester:

Four years ago 3% of ALL IT jobs advertised contained the term “SEO”, today over 10% of ALL IT jobs contain the term “SEO” – This shows how important SEO is becoming in all areas of technology.

There are currently 90 jobs containing the term “SEO” advertised within a 30 mile radius of Manchester here are some of the main themes and average salaries:

• 30 of these jobs are SEO Executive, SEO Consultant, SEO Account Exec. Average salaries are £23,000 – £25,000 and up to £28,000 dependent on experience.
• 9 are SEO Manager, SEO Account Manager, Senior SEO Consultant. Average salaries are £30,000 – £40,000 dependent on experience.
• 14 are Head of SEO, Head of e-Commerce, Head of Digital. Average salaries are £45,000 – £60,000 dependent on experience but could even be higher for top people.

The remainder are a mixture of front & back end web development jobs & general marketing roles.

These figures are from: Jobserve.com, Totaljobs.co.uk, CWjobs.co.uk, Creativepool.co.uk, ITJobswatch.co.uk

What skills do employers look for in an SEO or Social Media employee?

The generic SEO skills are a mix of social and technical and you need to see the specifics of a job. Dependent upon the company, your role can be more focused and be primarily based on optimised content development or on the technical implementation of the content: 

• Knowledge of Google Analytics / Webtrends
• Ability to speak “non technical” to sell to board members
• Knowledge of White, Grey & Black hat SEO techniques
• Knowledge and experience of Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
• SEO link building
• Creating monitoring & improving Google Adwords campaigns
• An online presence, minimum Twitter / Facebook / Tumbler / Posterous
• A portfolio of work even if done for “free” to show interest and ability
• Knowledge of Hyper Text Mark-up Language (HTML)
• Knowledge of Content Management Systems (CMS) like Drupal / WordPress
• Understanding of server software and technical elements of websites
• Involvement in out of work groups like SMC Mcr, SEO Manchester etc

How to get a job in SEO / Social Media?

Have a strong Social Media presence; let people know WHO you are and WHAT you do. What to post / not to post on Twitter & Facebook is a debate for another time but a good mix of industry stuff and personal (not too personal) posts works best!

Get to know who’s who in top agencies and end clients by doing research on LinkedIn etc. Follow them on Twitter, interact with them so when they are looking to hire they already know you.

Keep an eye on job boards Jobserve.com, jobsite.co.uk, totaljobs.co.uk

Register with SPECIALIST agencies like Quantica Technology

I’m happy to speak impartially to anyone if you want more advice on this

Tim Guest
@TimTheGuest
@QuanticaTech
Quantica Technology
07798 634538
www.quantica-technology.co.uk  

Women in SEO

Do you know what got me thinking lately? Are women not as interested in search engine optimisation (SEO) as men? Being the only women doing the Search and Social Media Marketing course, I started to wonder why there are few women in SEO despite the fact that it’s not really that technical as women think it is. I mean there has certainly been a rise in women SEOs but women are still taking a back seat.

I find it quite surprising that most of the SEO firms are male dominated furthermore even when I attended the SAScon conference held in Manchester on 29th October 2010 the ratio between men to women was quite significant. While reviewing the SAScon Manchester delegate list I was quite amazed with the difference. Out of approximately 157 people in the conference 125 were male and only 32 females.  In addition looking at the 30 most influential people in UK SEO – The Results show only 3 women out of 30 that are most influential, now as a women I feel there need to be more SEO women in that list and more and more women in SEO need to come forward and take a lead!

However, on a positive note, I am proud to say that the most influential and popular SEO business, SEOmoz is owned by a women. Also SEO Chicks play a big role as top Women in SEO. The most popular women in SEO industry that are at the top of the field are Judith Lewis, Dana Lookadoo, Ann Smarty, Donna Fontenot, Lisa Myers and Nichola Stott.  I am sure you have heard some of these names before and the list will expand further as more women join SEO like social media or search engine marketing.

Reasons for fewer SEO women

Here are two opinions from Mindy Gofton and Ben McKay about the reason behind fewer women in SEO:

“People either don’t understand what SEO is or feel it’s primarily a technical role – it’s not yet seen as an arm of marketing – and for whatever reason, women don’t tend to gravitate towards technical careers”. Head of SEO at I-COM Mindy Gofton

Ben McKay, Justmeandmy.com “I say sadly, as I think it’s a real shame that it seems like a techy, male-orientated industry…there are too many niches that are male / female orientated. So what can we do to sell the idea to get more women SEOs? Do we need to sell the idea to women some more? After all, SEO does rock! The women that I know in Search tend to be PPC / Display / Business Dev / PR / Social Media…not many in SEO though. From the people that I know, maybe 1 in 10 might describe their responsibilities to include SEO”

How to encourage women to join SEO?

“I think including SEO into marketing curricula and treating it as a marketing discipline while working basic web development into digital marketing courses would probably encourage women. I also think more women being vocal and involved in more high profile positions within the industry and even in local networking groups and events would help too. Or maybe grants/internships directed at women might encourage women who would maybe gravitate towards advertising or more traditional marketing to get into SEO”. Mindy Gofton, I-COM

I certainly hope that more women take the Search and Social Media Marketing course starting again in February 2011; it has allowed me to enhance my SEO knowledge and skills and with SEO you never have enough, there is always something new to learn every day. Furthermore, I believe it is a great field to work in for men or women I would recommend and encourage everyone to take this course if you are interested and enthusiastic about online marketing, it’s an exciting world to be in!

@lailanaqvi

Well, compiling effective link building strategies is just one area of what can only be described as a minefield when it comes to Search Engine Optimization. PJ Web Solutions are a company for whom I currently work. Whilst they have always known how important link building is, PJ Web Solutions are only now attempting to become more proactive in their approach rather than being reactive and look for a source of information that separates the "wood from the trees" when looking to develop an effective link building strategy. It is for this reason why this blog post was born, it will separate the mindless array of junk that is posted on various websites and spam emails detailing ways of building links and will focus on what I regard as the ‘Top 5 effective link building strategies .

5) Effective Link Building Strategy : Internal Links

When a lot of people think of link building strategies they tend to always think about links that link back to their website. Which is fine, however it is integral that the way your own website links to other pages within your site, are structured logically and create content silo’s which ensures that new pages you create are crawled by Google and indexed correctly.

4) Effective Link Building Strategy : Manual Link Submission

Manual link submission is important when developing an effective link building strategy, especially, if you can use non-financial methods of persuasion. It involves manually navigating to relevant websites in your industry and finding a point of contact to request a link to your website. A good starting point is to search for your targeted terms and choose non-competitive websites to request a link from.

3) Effective Link Building Strategy : SEO Directories

Mindlessly submitting your website to as many directories is not a good element of an effective link building strategy and it can be argued that it could even have harmful effects on search rankings. Unfortunately, I am very much in agreement with the idea that if the directory is free then it is not likely to be worth submitting your website to. There are, however, directories worth submitting your site to such as Yahoo and Dmoz.

2) Effective Link Building Strategy : Linkbait and Viral Campaigns

Viral content, if done properly, can be a powerhouse in creating an effective link building strategy. It attracts links by other sites referencing the piece of code which provides the back links to your website. For example free code such as calendars etc that people like to embed on their websites can create links back to you! Twitter, Facebook, Youtube etc increase the effectiveness of link viral campaigns, as if people like the piece it will be ‘retweeted’ ‘liked’ and discussed gaining more and more exposure.

1) Effective Link Building Strategy : Content

My opinion is that whilst there is no doubt there are many ways to attract links to your site, some free, others paid for, the most effective way of building links is to prepare good, relevant content that people want to read. Content is king and if written well, it will appear on sites such as Digg, it will be retweeted and cause discussions amongst communities and social media channels. If content is written regularly and well, you can build a kind of social empire that people talk about and look forward to reading. Good ways of generating discussion could be, being slightly controversial, or playing devil’s advocate about a topic in your industry.

Always remember that building an effective link strategy takes time and is very much an ongoing process. If you dedicate the time to do things right there is no doubt you can succeed. Make link building fun, enjoy what you’re writing about and rather than it being a marketing chore, you can enjoy building links and driving your site up the search engine results page rankings (SERPS)!