What are retailers doing about the cookie law? The cookie law deadline arrived on Saturday, and we haven't quite seen the pop-up apocalypse that some had predicted. This may have had something to do with the ICO's last-minute revision of its guidance, but its more likely that many simply aren't prepared to risk harming their business models when it's unclear how the law will be enforced. While news websites like the BBC and Mirror have added some sort of status bar or pop-up, retailers have taken a different approach to compliance.
(I'm certainly not looking to 'out' websites here, so I'll be looking only at those which have taken some action). Online retailers and the cookie law There was understandable concern amongst online retailers about the cookie law. Let's face it, who wants to add any barriers between a customer and a purchase? However, there aren't too many signs of compliance (strict compliance anyway) from most retailers. The ICO has written to 50 websites to ask what steps they are taking towards compliance. SEO for Dentists, Doctors and the Healthcare Industry. For most dentists, local GPs and other healthcare specialists, the rise of the internet has given them an easy means with which to grow their client bases. If you have a well optimised website focused on the keywords people are looking for relating to your business, then chances are people will be able to find you.
It is no longer necessary to take out an expensive and untrackable ad in the local phone book to get found; have a great looking website that’s optimised and focused and you can grow your client base fairly cost effectively. With this in mind, I though I would put together a short guide on SEO for dentists, doctors and other practitioners in the healthcare industry. Website Offering Essential Pages On top of having a home page, most sites in this industry are going need ‘About Us’ and ‘Contact Us’ pages. The advantage of structuring your site in this way is that it enables you to broaden the types of keywords you can target. Mobile Site Keyword Research On-Page Optimisation Profiles. 8 Penguin Friendly SEO Tactics. Google made serious efforts in April to allow the cream to rise to the top, so what have you done to change your site? There is an air of inevitability around an algorithm update, after all Amit Singhal, Google’s Head of Search, has written of “roughly 500 search improvements” rolling out in 2012.
And with the Panda and Penguin updates both being refreshed recently a cat has been sent amongst pigeons or more accurately, put the Reconsideration Requests amongst the newly crowned “spammers”. Here is Koozai’s quick distillation of the Penguin Update Google have assured webmasters (at recent conferences especially) that there is an upside even for people that have felt the pain. When that’ll be felt is a good question.
But in the mean time here are eight on and off page tactics to ensure penguins go on eating fish and not web rankings. Keep It Simple, Stupid; get some value for money out of the hours of keyword research you’ve completed. Brand Is King Quality not quantity. Image Source. 10 Amazingly Clickable Banner Ads. 5 Simple Metrics to Track Your Social Media Efforts. Are you looking for simple, straightforward metrics to measure the impact of your social media efforts? Social networks and blogs continue to dominate Americans’ time online (accounting for nearly a quarter of total time spent on the Internet) according to a recent Nielsen report on social media, .
While we all know how important it is to market through the various social networks, it is vital to track and measure your efforts for success. Here are five simple metrics to find out whether your social media effort is paying dividends. #1: Examine Referring Traffic Google Analytics is a fantastic way to measure how much traffic is being referred to your website from the various social channels. Under the Traffic Sources tab, click on Referring Sites and then type in your social network of choice to see how much traffic is being referred.
Set up goals based on the actions you want your visitors to complete. #2: Review the Quality and Relevance of Content #3: Look at Share of Voice inShare1,267. M.guardian.co.uk. New EU regulations on the use by British websites of cookies have been watered down by the UK's information commissioner just hours before they were due to come into force. But they could mean that Britain is out of step with EU law in its implementation of the continent-wide directives, and lead to fights with European courts. In an updated version of its advice for websites on how to use cookies – small text files that are stored on the user's computer and can identify them – the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has said that websites can assume that users have consented to their use of them. The advice was only updated on Thursday, 48 hours before the deadline for implementing the new rules, and published the next day.
"This is a striking shift," said Stephen Groom, head of marketing and privacy law at the law firm Osborne Clarke. Those required sites to make it clear when they were saving a cookie on the user's computer which many sites complained was simply impractical. Google Releases Penguin Update 1.1. No matter that it’s late Friday night on the start of a three-day holiday weekend in the U.S., Google has just pushed out the first update to its recent webspam-fighting Penguin algorithm.
Let’s call it Penguin 2. Google’s Matt Cutts announced the news a short time ago on Twitter, calling it a “data refresh” that impacts less than one-tenth of a percent of English-language searches. Although webmasters and SEOs have been speculating consistently in recent weeks that Google had already pushed out a Penguin update (or several), Cutts specifically says this is the first update since Penguin launched back on April 24th. Google has described Penguin as an algorithm change that’s aimed at webspam and, more specifically, “sites that we believe are violating Google’s quality guidelines.”
Penguin led to immediate outcries from across the SEO industry, with many questioning if it made search results better or worse. For more about the Penguin update, see the articles listed below. Recovering from an Over Optimization Penalty - A True Story - YouMoz | SEOmoz. As almost anyone reading this post already knows, April 24, 2012 marked a big day in the search industry. Once the initial Penguin update was rolled out (please believe me this is only the beginning and there is much more to come) the SEO industry, as we know it exploded in a flurry of fear and satisfaction.
For those of us that had sites get hit (I'll admit I had several sites dinged by this update) what started out as anger quickly turned to fear and curiosity. Many industry publications jumped the gun and, in my opinion, began publishing tips and processes on how to 'recover from Penguin,' when the truth is, as mentioned by Ian Howells in his recent SEO Podcast, it's really too soon to tell the full effects of these algorithm updates and anyone out there preaching is really just speculating.
The best information I have seen thus far is from The HOTH, and that is DON'T PANIC, and BE PATIENT. The Penguin Smack Here is a screen shot of Google on Friday May 18, 2012. I Had to Change This. Baidu: We Do Semantic Search Better Than Google. SOCIAL MEDIA / How Facebook, Pinterest Compare In Social Commerce - infographic. Goodbye Google+ People & Pages, Hello Knowledge Graph Box. Google’s Knowledge Graph has claimed its first “victim,” if you will: The content box that showed “People and Pages On Google+” is gone. In its place? A variety of Knowledge Graph-related content that will show up differently depending on the search query.
In making the changes to this prime real estate on a search results page, Google is lessening somewhat the visibility of Google+. But it’s still using the space in the upper right of its search results to keep searchers on Google — something well within its rights, but something that may attract criticism in the same way that the Google+ box did.
Let’s look at what’s going on now…. Background: People and Pages On Google+ When Google launched “Search Plus Your World” in January, it made content from Google+ much more visible in the search results. Part of the Google+ push was a content box called “People and Pages on Google+” that would appear adjacent to the top organic results. Now: People and Pages on Google+ Is Gone. How to systemise your link building process (without compromising quality) What does your link building process look like? If it is anything like ours used to be, it is probably a little hit and miss. Building links is a creative business, unfortunately creative processes tend to be very difficult to scale and depend heavily upon the individual carrying them out.
This can frequently lead to inefficiencies and a lack of consistency. Having a structured system is much more effective and consistent. As a manager, if you are simply delegating the task of “getting x links for clients a, b and c” then you aren’t being concise enough and you can’t really hope for efficiency or consistency from your team. You need a link building system. Whilst that system will not be capable of building links automatically by itself, it will be able to run completely independently of a particular person.
In theory, anyone should be able to pick up your training manual and after a short period of time be competent enough to jump straight into your workflow and start being productive. 1. The Mirror's response to EU cookie law compliance. With just a few days left before the ICO begins to enforce the EU e-Privacy Directive, we are starting to see a few sites unveiling their approaches to compliance. Two such sites are FT.com and Mirror Online, which are both using pop-ups to alert visitors to the sites' use of cookies. As well as taking a look at the two news sites' responses to the EU directive, I've been asking Malcolm Coles, Product Director, digital at Trinity Mirror Group, about the Mirror's approach.
How the Mirror and FT are informing customers about cookies The FT has a pop-up which displays for new visitors, which links to the site's cookie policy, as well as information on how to disable them. Rather than asking customers to opt-in, it assumes consent for setting cookies if users close the window, unless they have already disabled them. Mirror Online has a smaller pop-up which appears towards the bottom right of the page: This goes along with the ICO's own advice in its guidance document: Yes. No, not really. Link Building Experts talk about Google Penguin. This last month was all about Google Penguin. Because of that, I thought on asking some of the brightest minds in the SEO industry, to share their opinions on what “Penguin” is and how it affected link building and SEO. It is important to know that none of the interviewees knew who are the other participants to the interview. This makes the interview unique, by sharing the individual opinions regarding the Google “Penguin” update, of each of the link builders.
This is an in-depth interview made of 7 questions answered by 11 13 link building experts. It covers almost everything regarding the “Penguin” update. Here are the questions, our link building experts answered: Ok. And here are the answers to the questions. Question 1: How would you compare the “Penguin” Update to the “Panda” Update? Barry Schwartz Panda was way more of felt update. But more sites were impacted by Panda than Penguin. Ross Hudgens Jon Cooper Dixon Jones Simon Penson John Doherty Michael Martinez Branko Rihtman Krumel David Harry. SEO For The Finance Industry. The finance industry is by far the most competitive sector on the internet.
Premium search results are littered with high street banks, superior websites and black hat ninjas. When it comes to finance, dominating page one on Google can be a frustrating minefield. However, get it done right and you can reap the rewards of a highly profitable campaign. The Industry The pressure for financial companies to generate leads has never been greater. Competition With potential profit comes great competition.
Depending on the sector, you could also be up against some brutal tactics including site scraping, page one domination, DOS attacks and link sabotage. You Can Still Achieve Results Although the market is extremely competitive you can still get remarkable results with the right SEO strategy in place. Keyword Research As with any SEO campaign you need to carry out thorough research. On Page Foundations In an industry balanced on fine margins it is imperative you tick all the on page boxes. Speed Blog. Mobile Advertising for Local Businesses | Yext. Yext Sign In Yext Client Login Forgot Password? Need help? Please email us at support@yext.com Contact Us Call Us! Send us a message Small Business Get Started / Sales: powerlistings@yext.com Support support@yext.com Enterprise & Partners Enterprise Sales: enterprise@yext.com Partners: partners@yext.com General Inquiries Network: publisher@yext.com Affiliates: affiliates@yext.com Press: pr@yext.com Other Info: info@yext.com Yext Inc. 1 Madison Ave, 5th Fl New York, NY 10010.
Crazy Link Building Ideas That Work. Today we welcome a post by Jason Acidre Co-Founder and CEO of Xight Interactive, and blog, Kaiserthesage who is looking at some of the most clever strategies he has ever seen for building links. The world of link building has been a little crazy these past few weeks, with the help of unnatural link penalties and the penguin update being rolled out by Google.
With those game-changing updates, everyone who’s really willing to fight and survive in the SERPs should definitely be thinking more out of the box on how they approach link acquisition. Developing strategies is not easy, but it’s not that hard as well. The key to coming up with a strategy that will really work and fit both in the standards of Google and your site, as a brand, highly depends on your “goals”.
That’s why setting up a goal before attacking is imperative, because that’s where strategies are born. You can see a similar strategy by Rand Fishkin here. Offer premium images and cinemagraphs to bloggers Image Source. Koozai® - Your Intelligent Digital Marketing Agency. Google AdWords Auction Insights Reveals Who You're Competing Against. Google has announced a new AdWords feature promising to provide advertisers with more transparency into the ad auction. The ad auction is the process by which Google determines the cost per click (CPC) amount an advertiser will pay for a click on their ad.
Every time a query is made on Google, they run an auction. This auction determines the ads that will appear, the ad’s position, and the CPC that is paid. For years advertisers have struggled to understand how the auction process works and have asked for more insights into the auction to help optimize for better performance. Currently Google provides competitive reports at category level (in the Opportunities tab) and impression share data, but now they will offer information to show how advertisers are performing in comparison to other advertisers who compete in the same set of auctions.
The new Auction Insights report answers the question about who competes in a given auction. SEO in 2012: The Best of Times or the Worst of Times? The Quick and Dirty Guide to Tumblr for Small Business. Microsoft's social networking site So.cl now open to all users. Google Hack To See If Your Site Was Hit By Penguin? -BRAND. Follow Mark Zuckerberg's Worth on Facebook IPO Day. Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Making more pages load instantly. Twitter Background Design How-To and Best Practices. The Shortlist. Thanks for the mention you lovely person you! Koozai_Mike... Facebook Set for Debut After IPO Seals $104 Billion Value- Bloomberg.
Graeme Benge's Photos. Graeme Benge's Photos. Top 10 Blogs for Bloggers 2012 – the Winners - A-List Blogging Bootcamps. How to be a formidable content curator: a 17-step guide. Graeme Benge's Photos. How to customize facebook cover photos | Fuzapp. CoverCanvas: Facebook Cover Creator. Graeme Benge's Photos. 8 Steps to Facebook Marketing with Limited Time | JonLoomer.com.
Google Search Just Got 1,000 Times Smarter. Ecommerce SEO and Beyond - The Complete Guide. Understanding The True Reach Of Pinterest. How To Get Known In The SEO Industry. How To Offer Free Music Downloads And Press Kits Via Dropbox & Wordpress. Tweets vs Rankings by Branded3 – Landmark Data on How Twitter Affects Rankings. Everything You Need To Be Cookie Law Compliant.
Cleaning your links: A step-by-step guide | B3Labs. Attack takes Soca crime agency website down. Review Of A New SEO Browser - The Browseo Web App - evolvingSEO. SMX London 15th and 16th May 2012 – 15% Discount Code.