Category Archives: Other SEO and SEM articles

Bullet Lists for Listings in Google SERPs

Recently I’ve seen some info from Google mentioning they did about 500 algorithm adjustments during last year to improve quality of searches.

I would say we’ve seen a lot of effort during last months whether we can call it always “improvements” or “nightmares” is up for users to judge and decide in the long term. However I must admit I was surprised they mention only 500 adjustments we could easily see about 100 visual changes in Google interface and usability and each of these brought new functionality which had impact on how search algorithm works.

Let’s concentrate on one of the recent ones – Bullet Lists.

New Search Engines Result Pages addition of bullet list on Google is extracted from website landing page. The most relevant for particular query page content is no longer string of text in some cases. Google decided now the most relevant is matching offer and inserted just under URL list of items available on this page. On the front of this list we have greyed out prefix in the form of information how many items relevant for our keyword we can expect on particular webpage.

Bullet Lists in SERPs - New Change to Google Algorithm 2011

New SERPs feature easy to spot - duplicate content from Premier Inn? Not really - Look at their prices £30 off now visible on Google SERP - Well done Google :-)

So there are some direct positives for user from this feature already. Of course if you plan to stay in London City Hotel your click is more then likely to go to listing one however this dosen’t put Premier Inn in Good light – does it? After all URL with £30 more expensive offer says “Budget” and there you go guys in Premier Inn marketing vocabulary there is £30 gap between “Cheap” and “Budget”.

Google “Bullet List Feature” on SERPs Summary:

This is an important update for all ecommerce websites putting travel industry, gift shops, any kind of directories, affiliates and vertical search engines in the spot.
Check your setup we’ve seen within lists <li>,<div>,<tables> – Google has them all is only one way to check which is better…
Onsite Optimisation of Landing pages more relevant then ever before – Google SERPs one stop shop is closer then ever before – imagine links activated on these babies.
SEO architecture – big changes ahead for your category pages – homepage won’t do the job the way.

Instant Previews in Webmaster Tools

My Experience of the New Google Analytics Interface

Police Restricted To 140 Characters

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If you were to log onto twitter on Thursday 14th of October you might be surprised to find that one of the trending topics is #gmp24, you might be wondering just what this means.

In an attempt to show the greater public just how tough it is to be a cop Greater Manchester Police have been Tweeting every 999 call they receive in the space of 24 hours.

So far they have made over 1200 tweets since 5:30AM and had three of their accounts temporarily suspended due to ‘spamming’ the micro-blogging site.

However this has not been without any controversy. Fake accounts were made by pranksters which featured tweets such as;

Call 025 – Reported burglary by man with lettuce on his head.#gmp24

Call 36 Police officer down. Police officer down. Ambulance with box of donuts required stat #gmp24

GMP responded quickly threatening the pranksters to remove the official GMP logo.

Although some of the official tweets were just as humorous;

Call 384 report of man holding baby over bridge – police immediately attended and it was man carrying dog that doesn’t like bridges #gmp24

While the whole thing may seem trivial to some Chief constable Peter Fahy claims the point is to let the general public as well as the politicians see what police have to deal with every day, and possibly re-consider budget cuts that have been proposed in the Government’s upcoming spending review.

Joaquin Phoenix fools Bloggers with ‘I’m Still Here’

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Joaquin Phoenix famously appeared as a supporting actor in Gladiator, as Commodus, and as the lead in Walk the Line, playing Johnny Cash. Despite being Academy Award nominated for both roles, Joaquin decided to ditch his successful career in film to become an insular cringe worthy rapper.

This became apparent to the world when he announced it on the famous David Letterman Show, last year.

He came across as a jaded, washed up star, looking to escape the trappings of celebrity life. This was all indeed a hoax to rouse interest in a mocumentary, directed by Ben Affleck’s brother: Casey Affleck.

Although many people questioned the change in him as being real, he managed to get an extreme amount of free publicity online from bloggers and news sites. He was a trending topic on Twitter for a long while and left many people completely unsure if it was real or not. I unfortunately fell for the stunt myself as he kept it up for a year and a half. He became the subject of thousands of blog posts, probably the biggest celebrity break down in history.

Films continue to lead the way in getting bloggers to generate free publicity. You can see the film: I’m Still Here in UK cinemas now.

Revolution – Search Engine Algorithms and Tools 2009

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UFF! We now there – I mean on the other side.

SEO and Online Marketing is never going to be same again.

- New AdWords with better layout and compleatly new tools

- Real Time Search in Search Engines

- Social Media based CRM systems

- Google Wave

- Google Chrome and soon OS

- Another face of Microsoft – Bing

- Yahoo! step away from Search Engine

- Another generation of iPhone/iPod related products

- More…

- and More, and More

So if you were Search Engines Commentator this year you had hands full of work but how this whole thing is going to change live of civile user or business online marketing?

Perhaps we will see new generation of social media service aggregators which will help manage customers and your presence online. Micro-targeting will have a new meaning as you will be able on world scale and micro-target users of multiple networks. Currently managing social media is a pain in back side as smaller businesses are simply unable to cope with keeping their accounts updated – Effect – dead accounts all over the place.

And SEO (I doubt something like that still exists in the form of keyword optimisation but if yeas there is a challange:

- Google AdWords on the top of Natural search taking more and more space especially with Maps in AdWords and Portal Links in Adwords too

- Google Maps on the top of of almost all local searches – Universal Search properly taking over

- Real time Search on the first page of Google pushing SEO even further

- Search Options button to split General, Forum, Blog etc search

- and more and more coming with back to basics (keyword tags and description tag)

I believe we can manage very well as these are great opportunities but it needs a lot of effort especially from Online Marketers point of view to convince their clients mostly medium to small business that being on twitter is the way to go

We can do it, can we?

First Googlenet then the World? No, thank you we tried this with MS

Tough times – Credit Crunch Marketing Solution

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I recently had an enquiry from luxury goods company…

They thought their client base was rich customers with high disposable incomes which they could spend on their “luxury high quality goods” (a.k.a impractical yet pretty looking products)

In reality their customers were just the same as any online shopper, they want something cheaper than they can buy it for in a physical shop.

If you want to do well online the solution simple

- learn the word SALE (very useful these days)
- create unique content that will bring people to your site