Micrositez are a multi award winning digital marketing agency, with offices in the UK, UAE and the USA.
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Comments off · Posted by micrositez in Clients
Micrositez Digital is delighted to announce that we will continue working with Excel Clothing throughout 2012.
Our partnership with Excel Clothing, the online designer clothes store, began in 2011. After seeing their site – which specialises in designer labels like Hugo Boss UK and Tommy Hilfiger UK – thrive in partnership with us they have decided to stick with Micrositez Digital.
As an online retailer with ambition, Excel Clothing knows that our partnership can help them become the go-to site for must-have designer items, like Barbour Jackets. Their collection of high-quality brand-name apparel is available now at: www.excelclothing.com.
Micrositez Digital: SEO and PPC.
Barbour Jackets, Excel Clothing, Hugo Boss UK, PPC, SEO, Tommy Hilfiger UK
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Comments off · Posted by micrositez in pay per click, SEO
Search engine marketing and SEO went from strength to strength in 2011. It’s been a big year for developments in search, with increased social media marketing integration, and plenty of changes from search engines themselves. Here at Micrositez Digital, we’ve been taking a look at the key trends that shaped our year.
1. The sad passing of Yahoo Site Explorer
Yahoo Site Explorer closed down in November, and integrated most of its services with Bing Webmaster Tools. SEO professionals and webmasters everywhere were sad to see it go. Yahoo’s free analysis tools for webmasters were unrivalled, and Site Explorer’s ability to check rival websites was a huge advantage. A number of similar services have benifitted from its passing, but as yet there’s no frontrunner for the title of natural successor to the popular service.
2. Google’s caffeine injection
The Panda update in February 2011 was big news; up to 12% of searches were impacted as Google got tough on content farms and low-quality content. This was nothing compared to what they had up their sleeves for later in the year. Google’s move to the caffeine infrastructure in 2010 was an indicator of the move toward fresh and relevant results, and in November this year they took some of that caffeine buzz and implemented a massive algorithm update. Up to 35% of searches were impacted by the update, which rewarded new, up-to-date and relevant content. The message to webmasters was clear: freshness matters.
3. The social boom
It would have been impossible to miss the social media boom this year. Facebook and twitter saw record users, updates and traffic, social sharing sites like StumbleUpon and Reddit soared in popularity, and photo sharing from mobile devices took off in a big way thanks to Instagram. The biggest social impact on search is still in its infancy: Google+. Google+ is a new player on the social field, but with 25 million users, Google search integration, business pages and the “+1” button, it’s a force to be reckoned with. Google’s integration of the “+1” button into search results is an indicator that influence on Google+ may well impact on search engine rankings. We’ll be keeping a close eye on this one.
At Micrositez Digital, the big search engine marketing trend this year has been success. More clients than ever are enjoying soaring search engine rankings, and even number one rankings. Our small company has grown into an international digital marketing agency, and continues to work hard to achieve the best results and increase traffic to our customers.
We’d like to thank all our clients for sticking with us through 2011. We’re excited about 2012, and look forward to continuing our successful relationships, and seeing all our customers’ search engine rankings climb.
Micrositez Digital: SEO and PPC.
Google, Google Panda, PPC, SEO, social media, Yahoo! Site Explorer
This week’s ‘What’s Next’ blog will take a look at what’s current and what’s still to come for SEO in 2012. We can’t cover it all, but we will offer up a few snapshots of what’s taking place within the world of SEO and worthwhile keeping an eye on for 2011 going into 2012. If you’re a business with a website, then an SEO campaign is something you should either be aware of and weighing up, or something you already participate in.
As usual, over the course of today and tomorrow we will highlight just a few important SEO topics we believe you should be aware of. Today, we will cover:
SEO v social media
The integration between search and social data will continue to be a big part of SEO’s future, as the power of social search in power networks such as Facebook, Twitter and open source content management systems like WordPress and other blogging platforms puts pressure on search engines to produce the freshest, most relevant results in real time.
Just a few weeks ago, search giant Google announced a bunch of algorithm changes which reward fresher content – A clear move by Google to ‘adapt to survive’ from the rising power of social rivals such as Facebook and Twitter as ticker and timeline feeds becoming an favourable alternative to search.
Does this mean the end for SEO? Not at all, statistics have shown that people are still more likely to buy in to search results offered up by old timer search engines such as Bing, Yahoo and Google. That being said, as the integration between SEO and Social media continues to merge search engines will be pressured to make changes much like Google are introducing at the moment, and more.
Still wondering what Google means by raising the bar for fresher content?
Ultimately, this will be relevant for bloggers and businesses that should all by now have a blog integrated within their website. We should all be striving to produce fresh and engaging content as good practice anyway, which ultimately impacts your rankings too. Google has been building on its on-going effort to make recent events, and more popular content appear higher up in search results. Demanding higher quality of content from our CMS will also mean less risk of your fresh content being duplicated too.
This is definitely new ground for search and social as the pair can no longer be separated. Both hold exceptional influence over search rankings and as we move towards a world that’s much more consumer-driven both will hold equal importance when trying to achieve a personalised online experience.
Join us tomorrow for part 2 in our ‘What’s Next for SEO in 2012’ blog series, where we will be looking at Search v Display and Mobile Search.
Micrositez: SEO Marketing Company
search engine optimisation, Search Engine Optimization, search engines, SEO, seo packages
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Comments off · Posted by micrositez in link building, SEO
Visitors to Yahoo! Site Explorer are now greeted with the message below, confirming that the service is no more. Although plans to discontinue YSE had been public knowledge for around five months, search engine marketers have noted its passing with some sadness. As a leading provider of Search Engine Marketing solutions, here at Micrositez we know the value YSE provided.
(screenprint of http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/index.php taken today, 23 November 2011)
The move follows completion of the algorithmic transition to Bing across global markets (excluding Korea), and YSE itself has now been merged into Bing Webmaster Tools. The YSE page recommends that webmasters use Bing’s tools for search traffic monitoring, but there are alternatives out there. While Google Analytics and Bing Webmaster Tools give you a wealth of information about your own site, they aren’t as helpful to companies doing an initial report for a client or checking out competitors.
Free alternatives include SEOMoz’s ‘Open Site Explorer’ (although information is restricted without a paid subscription) and ‘Searchmetrics’. Toolbar plugins like ‘SEOBook’ and ‘SEO for Firefox’ are also helpful. More information, as expected can be found in paid tools, such as ‘Link Research Tools’, ‘Linkdex’ and ‘Who Links To Me’.
SEO resource sites such as Search Engine Watch and SEO Round Table have also expressed their disappointment at the loss of YSE. Writing for Search Engine Watch, Frank Watson expressed hope that Bing would repackage YSE under the Bing brand and relaunch the tool.
Micrositez provides award winning Link Building Services.
Bing Webmaster Tools, Google Analytics, search engine marketing, SEO, Yahoo! Site Explorer
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Comments off · Posted by micrositez in Clients
Micrositez are pleased to announce an extension to their successful working relationship with Key Retirement solutions.
Key Retirement Solutions are the UK’s number 1 choice for independent advice on equity release, annuities and other retirement solutions. They have been offering independent advice since 1998, helping over 809,000 people with their retirement options. They compare annuity and equity release deals from the best UK providers to give customers an impartial and friendly service.
We are pleased to continue working with Key Retirement Solutions, and look forward to seeing their search engine rankings soar in the coming months!
Adobe Systems announced in an e-mail to partners last night that it will cease development of its Flash plugins for mobile browsers. The news appears to signal a shift in focus for Adobe’s mobile strategy; when it launched flash 10.1 in June 2010, the company had lofty plans to have Flash pre-installed on more than half of all mobile devices by 2012. Companies such as Motorola and RIM who heavily promoted the Flash functionality on their products may feel let down by Adobe’s shift in tactic, but will have to accept that mobile browser Flash just wasn’t working.
Mobile-optimised Flash has been desirable to smartphone and tablet users for some time, but has been plagued by problems since its initial launch on Android devices. Development of the plugins had been promised and delayed since 2008, and when it finally did arrive it was only available on devices running Android 2.2 and above. Smartphone users who could not download Flash were frustrated by the lack of availability, while users who did have Flash expressed frustration at bugs and functionality issues.
The news from Adobe may well have a larger impact on another company: Apple. Steve Jobs famously took issue with Flash technology, stating in his widely circulated ‘Thoughts on Flash’ message in April 2010 that “Flash has not performed well on mobile devices. We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it.” Apple’s decision not to support Flash on the iPhone’s iOS software has been criticised in the past, and has been credited with driving some users to purchase alternative smartphones. Now that Flash on mobile is being put to rest, Apple may well have proven that they made the right decision about the technology.
A statement has been promised from Adobe, but analysts are already suggesting that Adobe’s focus will shift to development of HTML5, and focus packaging apps with Adobe AIR. People will also be watching Adobe closely to see whether this could signal the beginning of the end for Flash player on desktop browsers too.
Micrositez: SEO and Social Media.
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Comments off · Posted by micrositez in link building, SEO, Social Media
Google has announced that changes have been made to search algorithms that could impact 35% of searches. The changes were announced yesterday on Google’s blog, and reflect one of the biggest tweaks they have made recently. By comparison, the recent Panda update was estimated to only affect 12% of search queries. The last major algorithm change in February was designed to distinguish between high and low quality websites, and award less authority to sites it deemed to be “content farms”.
The latest algorithm changes have been made in response to the increase of social media use in delivering the most recent and up to date news and events on the web. The search engine giant hopes to compete with Twitter and Facebook as the go-to page for updates on the latest news and events, and redirect some of that social media traffic back to search. In order to do this, Google recognised that it had to amend the algorithm to freshen up some stale searches. Google also need to maintain market dominance over Bing, who already include more Twitter feeds and Facebook updates in their search results.
Google Fellow Amit Singhal blogged: “Given the incredibly fast pace at which information moves in today’s world, the most recent information can be from the last week, day or even minute, and depending on the search terms, the algorithm needs to be able to figure out if a result from a week ago about a TV show is recent, or if a result from a week ago about breaking news is too old.”
In Google’s blog, Amit wrote that changes will affect searches relating to the following:
In order to ensure they are not compromised by “freshness spam” (websites re-posting stories to ensure they are the latest word on a topic to boost rankings) the freshness will be determined by the time the page is first crawled. The usual rules of quality and topicality will also apply, so making sure your content is relevant and well-written is key to maintaining rankings.
Micrositez: SEO and Link Building
facebook, Google, link building, search algorithm, SEO, twitter
Micrositez is delighted to announce a new partnership with the UK’s leading Hair Replacement company, eMPower Hair Solutions. A professional, dedicated and well-respected specialist in their field, eMPower are a company we are thrilled to be working with.
eMPower have been providing quality Hair Loss solutions for over a decade. At their clinics in London, Manchester and Glasgow they have transformed the confidence and self-esteem of clients suffering hair loss.
They pride themselves in offering a caring, personal and professional service to men and women all over the country, and believe in eMPowering every single client. This is the kind of service we believe in and aspire to here at Micrositez.
We are excited about this partnership and look forward to using our expertise and experience to help eMPower gain the best possible position in search engines.
Micrositez: SEO and Link Building.
Head of Google’s web spam team, Matt Cutts recently clarified Google’s thoughts on SEO during one of his recent video blogs, (as featured below).
“SEO is not spam,” Matt said.
His statement was welcomed by many digital marketers who are already aware of this, but often spend a large majority of their time explaining the value of SEO to those led to believe differently. For anyone who doesn’t work in the SEO industry, SEO can often be linked directly with the term spam. As Matt explains in his video, this is not the case.
SEO, otherwise known as search engine optimisation is a great way to get your website performing across search engine platforms. Some of ways in which Micrositez operate, Matt outlines in this video. For example;
These are just some of the white hat tactics adopted by Micrositez. Although we are not denying back hats tactics used within the field of SEO, Micrositez are proud to not be one of them. The obvious differences are black hat swap search engine results pages, (SERPS) where white hats don’t.
Matt on goes on make some valid points, including the following statement, (one we are extremely passionate about) that is; “SEO can be enormously useful.”
Micrositez: Digital Marketing Agency and SEO.
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Comments off · Posted by micrositez in Clients, SEO, Uncategorized
Micrositez have maintained their on-going and successful partnership with Trade Blinds for almost 13 months now.
The UK supplier in made to measure blinds, roller blinds, wooden blinds, blackout roller blinds and any other kind of blind you can imagine, offer an exceptional service and product to meet your household needs.
The roller blinds company, which offers up to 12 months guarantee for every customer seeking a high quality product, has proved a great fit for Micrositez, and we are delighted to have worked with them.
We would like to extend a warm thankfulness to Trade Blinds for choosing one of our SEO packages, and are delighted in the progress made since starting this campaign.
Micrositez: SEO packages, Seo, Web Design Agency
search engine optimisation, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, trade blinds
When the first Panda update was launched, its aim was apparently to reduce the rankings for low quality website. Although Google claimed only 11.8% of US queries were affected, there were losses of up to 80% in organic traffic reported.
The second Panda update hit the UK quite severely with rankings dropping all over the place. That was in April and, just as the top UK SEO firms were getting to grips with it, Google launched the 2.4 update in May
As is synoptic with Google, it was and still is (and probably will be in future with algorithmic changes) all very cloak and dagger regarding the Panda updates. We are offered very little information on these algorithmic changes which to many, just seems like Google flexing its corporate muscle to shake things up. At Micrositez, we noted, that making your traffic more diverse, fixing usability issues, and writing high-quality content (which is what Google says the Panda update aims to reward), helped revive a lot of rankings. We have always believed “content is king” and all you have to do is look at the search results for most things to prove this. Wikipedia for example is either first or thereabouts in most queries – and how content rich is Wikipedia?
Search Engine Watch reported “Top Google Result Gets 36.4% of Clicks”, and Optify’s data showed that, on average, a site sitting in fourth position gets nearly 8 percent of clicks. Once you fall off Page 1, you’re looking at an average of 2.6 percent click-through rate at the top of Page 2, but any results beyond that quickly fall into irrelevance.
Google has rolled out more than a dozen additional tweaks since Panda was first rolled out. They left only one month between the Panda update last time, and now the whole SEO and Digital Marketing arena waits with bated breath for the introduction of the next Panda update.
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Comments off · Posted by micrositez in pay per click, SEO, Social Media
With the advent of Google Analytics Real Time, it seems hard to fathom how any competition in the reporting market will be able to grow their market share. With Google Analytics Real Time, you can get a whole host of new reports as well as the stock of reports as most of us knew it. We now have reports to measure the impact blogs, facebook and tweets can impact on site traffic. Social Media is here to stay and now we have the tools to know what happens to site traffic when we indulge in Social Media.
Another couple of factors about Real Time are that within seconds we know if we are getting the data we want from Google Analytics. Real Time, however, is only available in the new version of Google Analytics. Very soon everyone will have access to Real Time but for those eager beavers out there, you can sign up for early access here.
Obviously with Real Time analytics, the face of PPC management may be about to be shaken up quite a bit. No longer will it be sufficient to log into an account 2 or 3 times per day, you will be able to see things going on as they happen. You will know instantly whether or not to pause, stop or time ads as the Real Time traffic reports will tell you. One thing to be sure of is that PPC will be different now, and very different in the future.
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Comments off · Posted by micrositez in SEO, Social Media
The ability for any brand to introduce an element of gameplay to the methods of interaction with it’s target market is not necessarily a new thing. Foursquare have managed this in an almost subversive manner to increase brand loyalty/usage, for Facebook it’s all about the money, but for Google+ it’s all about getting people to spend more time on site.
Sean Ryan Joined Facebook earlier this year after a long campaign to draw him into a position left open with the title director of gaming partnerships. There was no secret that the position was his as an when he deemed the time right to leave news corp. Having made his mark on Facebook he has been quick to question the quality of Google+ as a suitable social network for game development but that could have something to do with the rapid announcement by Google that it has enticed some massive gaming phenomenon’s such as angry birds to promote their products on Google+. Facebook take 30% game developers proceeds with Google only taking 5%, Mr Ryan is fairly confident that their rates will not impact on new releases going forward as he believes Facebook are in the process of improving their support for developers to give them the upper hand.
Online interaction in gaming actually predates any recognisable form of social network but the explosion of social network use has presented game developers with the perfect opportunity to pitch their products at a largely captive market.
Micrositez: Digital Marketing Agency
LinkedIn unfazed by Google plus on the horizon
LinkedIn has reported April to June revenue increases of over 120%. Crucially Google+ has not yet show it’s hand in how it plans to deal with commercial presences on the social network, or how ads will be fully integrated either.
Indeed the good news for LinkedIn alongside better than expected US employment stats seemed to fly in the face of stock market turmoil. Rarely is there such dominance in the search terms shown by Google trends (USA) with over 50% of the top searched for topics covering areas which are concerned with economic issues.
Indeed many analysts had predicted a drop in revenue for the quarter instead of a rise, with huge investment planned over the next 12 months in an attempt to cement its position in the social networking sector, investors have already been warned that the same level of success should not be expected in the immediate future.
Micrositez: Digital Agency, SEO
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Comments off · Posted by micrositez in SEO, Social Media
Randi Zuckerberg opens the book on a new career
Randi, Mark Zuckerbergs sister and former marketing director at Facebook is leaving the social media site to focus her attention on establishing a company with close ties to her previous role.
It would appear that Randi has seen an opportunity to use her experiences at Facebook to establish a consultancy firm which aims to steer companies in the right direction in terms of being more social online.
The website Randi will be spearheading is believed to go by the name of RtoZ media . There can be no denying that in partnering with Randi’s new venture, any business looking for publicity will certainly gain a lot of mentions.
This news comes as Google+ signups top 25 million and have thoroughly obliterated the time elapsed in reaching that figure of any previous social network.
On another day of relentless social media related news, with reports that Google’s real time results could make a comeback using recent posts on Google+ related to events trending online and in the news, Randi could hardly have picked a better time to leave Facebook and state her intention to establish a revolutionary service of her own.
Micrositez: Digital Agency, SEO
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Comments off · Posted by micrositez in pay per click, SEO, Social Media, Uncategorized
Google Hotel Finder Experiment
Even if you’re not trying to find a hotel in the US at the moment, it’s worth having a look at Googles new hotel finder experiment as yet more evidence that no online service is safe from the ambitious outreach on display from the search engine giant.
Google’s social strategy seems to involve encompassing whatever its users may need to do, within a comfortable platform to reaffirm the importance of intelligent search results in providing you with the very thing you’re looking for without having to waste your precious time while looking for it.
Now it is fairly obvious that Hotel Finder has been designed to slip neatly into the Google family of products, Google Maps, Google AdWords, Google+ and Google Offers alongside Google Places to name a few. Google have just bought the deal map in a move which must be seen as a statement of intent to dominate the location based promotions market. The potential ability to offer room rates to users within the vicinity of a hotel must be good news for the consumer looking for a discount as well as the hotel operator seeking full occupancy and you would imagine that Google are well placed to provide the best service in that regard.
You can certainly see why this particular offering will be of great assistance in expanding the social realm of Google’s services while helping its ever increasing advertising network.
There are plenty of similar services which are possibly more comprehensive than the initial experiment of hotel finder. However, there can be no denying that this will be of great interest to businesses of premium service but without the budget of the most established hotels in their class.
Watch for Googles Hotel Finder to be introduced in more countries in the near future, and don’t be surprised to see some nervous competition improving their hotel search services.
Micrositez: Digital Agency, SEO
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Comments off · Posted by micrositez in pay per click, SEO
According to recently published results of a study conducted by Google from October 2010 to March 2011, paid search in addition to organic SEO can generate 89% more traffic. What’s most surprising about the study is that Google claim the strength of the individual brand and organic position held make these figures hard to quantify as a general rule for all campaigns, the majority of the clicks are performed on the organic listing when an advert is placed in close proximity to its organic search position.
So a little testing on your own campaigns could surely provide you with your own set of results relevant to your industry and website. For example, by picking a strong keyword for which your site ranks in the first 3 position of Google’s SERPs, then by using a separate profile and applying custom filters to your analytics account you can get an approximate position of the organic listing from which the users reached your site using the same keyword you’re bidding on. You could then run tests over a couple of months alternating times to turn on or off a pay per click ad for the same term, monitoring impressions of your paid search ad against clicks on your organic listing and look for significant trends to appear which would suggest organic traffic increases while the adverts are being shown.
Indeed, it may be that the presence of your ad at the top of the page and again further down in the organic listings has the effect for the most part of being clicked on in the organic section with the user having been influenced by the advert and reminded by the second placement, but the most important thing to be learned from Google’s study, is that to find out if indeed their claims apply to your site for certain keywords, you should test yourself and learn to optimise your PPC campaigns alongside your organic SEO in whatever way will deliver the best results overall.
Micrositez: Digital Agency, PPC
In a mutually advantageous move to strengthen Microsoft’s search presence in China and Baidus profile in the U.S.
Microsoft’s Bing and Chinas search giant Baidu are set to share aspects of their services with searches in English redirected from Baidu being generated by Bing. Similarly Baidu, reputed to command up to 83% market share of search engine use in China, will look to Bing as the vehicle to expand their global reach in to the U.S.
According to a source at Microsoft “The search results powered by Bing will begin appearing on Baidu search result Web pages starting in July 2011,” they went on to say, “We’ve been working with Baidu on the advertising front for some time. In China, Baidu’s ad platform is used and is similar to adCenter in the U.S.”
With the long running saga of Google’s issues in China over censorship of search results and regular statements inferring state involvement in hacking attempts on its users email accounts. The relationship[ being sought by Bing with Baidu in China could prove to be key in attempting to prise some search users away from Google’s global stranglehold.
Micrositez: SEO
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Comments off · Posted by micrositez in pay per click, SEO
Well goodbye, fair well, bon voyage and I hope we’ll meet again some sunny day.
The wonder wheel has been a good friend to me and provided much need love and support in times of need.
wonder wheel missing
The wonder wheel has indeed been such an important part of my work the last couple of years in sparking creativity in keyword research, or as a tool to provide inspiration when bulking up on ad groups in pay per click campaigns.
It will be sorely missed, but knowing how change happens in the world of google, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it return as suddenly and unexpectedly as it disappeared in the first place. I certainly hope so as it’s left a hole in my usual process for several regular tasks.
Having introduced circles in google plus, perhaps there was a concern that there could only be room for one edgeless wonder in the portfolio.
What is it with our world of digital marketing that invites such an absurdly diverse range of acronyms? They’re used to apparently abbreviate what would otherwise be sentences of dry jargon and written primarily for people who share an interest in the subject surrounding the jargon within.
The replacement of this jargon, with equally misunderstood acronyms, is never more evident than in the many attempts to summarize the umbrella term of search engine marketing (SEM), where more often than not the acronym is introduced initially following the aforementioned jargon term, in this case, search engine marketing (SEM!).
What then becomes more confusing to the information seeker is the assumed knowledge of the reader, which can change from country to country and from time to time.
So in seeking to clarify on this assumed knowledge by either stating the assumed beforehand, therefore unassuming the assumed and possibly adding to the confusion of an otherwise simple post on why digital marketing must involve so many acronyms, almost as if it’s grown from the lessons of Information technology (IT) where acronyms are necessary purely as a result of the nonsensical situations where the abbreviated phrase seemed to make more sense than the language it replaced, see SQL (structured query language), AKA sequel, or, what’s next?
This brings me to my next point in acronyms. I’m sure if you are an SEO and you tell your friends that you’re an SEO, you’ve had that look, the look of utter contempt as you go on to extract a little more dislike from what was previously someone you could count on to answer the phone when you tried to call. That dislike will inevitably arise from the use of the acronyms that you begin to insert into conversation without any reference to the meaning of the phrase it represents, SEM and PPC (pay per click) and the complexities of CPA (cost per action, or cost per acquisition depending on the circumstance), then as we get stuck in the “dig a hole” subject of explaining pay per click (PPC), with CTR, CPC, and CPM, you could be forgiven for skipping through to the next sentence without defining the acronym you just shoehorned in, as is the case here.
It can be difficult to get back to normal conversation without reaching for an easier to explain acronym, such as KPI (key performance indicators) or SERP (search engine results page) when it seems too much effort to ever explain the use of our acronyms again. Hence it would appear that these acronyms are here to stay, because those that use them, are fed up trying to explain a little about them without needing to use even more.
Micrositez: Digital Marketing Agency, SEO, PPC and Web Design
