Coast Digital Blog

In recent discussion in SEO forums there are rumours of Google dropping the PageRank tool from its toolbar.

As highlighted originally on http://www.searchenginejournal.com/goodbye-google-pagerank/5465/ Google PageRank's future is definitely under the microscope.

The main reason Google are considering chopping the PageRank tool appears to be due to the incentive it presents to trade links with high ranking websites.

Removing the Google PageRank will inevitably hide one of the indicators of Google’s perception of a particular website and its potential strength in the SERPs.

There are many search marketers who are not guided by PageRank due to its average 3-month-old data; but some may be disappointed to see it go and the prospect of no longer seeing a full green bar.

The emergence of web 2.0 has become a vital part of our everyday lives; allowing consumers to become reporters, publishers, and journalists; bringing opinions together for the benefit of fellow online readers.

This week I was interested to learn that new consumer website www.sutori.co.uk has launched an online community allowing consumers to share experiences of products and services, offering a real-time barometer of attitudes towards companies and brands.

In turn, the community also allows brands to voice their own feedback and engage in conversation with their customers. The transparency of this site is a fantastic way of uniting brands and consumers, enabling them to exchange points of view and encouraging conversation.

Consumers now have the opportunity to influence each other in the context of their experience of products and brands. The online community at Sutori enables brand perceptions to be influenced by the many, rather than by the narrower experience of a very few.

I think it’s great that customers have a voice online. But it’s equally important for organizations to have the opportunity to respond and listen to what their customers have to say. It’s good to hear both sides of the story.

Google has announced that it has started showing video ads while you’re watching videos on YouTube. The ads will be shown 15 seconds into the video you are watching but will only fill 20% of the screen. If after 10 seconds you haven’t clicked the ad, it will disappear.

Google are obviously realising the potential revenues they are missing out on, and projections suggest that these videos ads could generate $4.3bn dollars for Google in the US alone by 2011. That’s not bad, for a site that had no proven revenue model and was bought by Google for $1.65bn!

The only question is, how frustrating are these ads going to be? We all find TV ads annoying, and they don’t appear in the corner of the screen, distracting you from what you’re watching. I guess we’ll have to wait and see!

Anyone who works in search marketing will tell you that UK companies spend a vast amount of money on pay per click (PPC) every year due to the clearly measurable ROI and market coverage.

However, according to e-consultancy spending on search engine optimisation (SEO) will surpass paid search this year in the UK. Although SEO and PPC are set to grow by more than 50%, it seems that people are concerned with click fraud and keyword inflation. As a result this is driving more people toward organic search according to e-consultancy's 'Search Engine Marketing - A Buyer's Guide' report.

Although SEO is more complex and tends to cost more up front than paid search, it nearly always proves more cost-effective in the long term. This once again reminds us of the importance of targeting both PPC and SEO in our online marketing strategy and not putting all our eggs in one basket.

Search engine marketing is set to increase by 65% this year in Europe, with over €1.4bn being spent on paid search and search engine optimisation.

With the search market growing at such a rate it’s important that we set an industry standard. The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) have partnered with the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) to put a Search Marketing Charter in place, which will eventually lead to a set of best practice search marketing guidelines.

Personally I welcome the move; in fact I would have expected it to happen sooner. Producing an industry standard guide will do no end of good for the market.

But with the market moving and changing as it does, keeping the best practice guidelines up-to-date will be another challenge altogether.

The past six months has seen a phenomenal growth in social networking. This latest craze is huge. It’s being talked about in the media, amongst friends and family, work colleagues, as a part of everyday conversation. It’s become an extension of the real world. It’s certainly part of my world!

The latest headlines to hit the media this week reported that Bebo have hit the top spot, attracting a phenomenal 10.6 million unique visitors from within the UK in July. This was closely followed by rival, MySpace, which enjoyed a 25 percent increase in traffic, reaching 10.1 million unique visitors. But the fastest growing social networking website, Facebook, has grown 366 percent since the start of the year to attract an audience of 7.6 million unique visitors in July 2007.

Facebook has also very cleverly taken a leap into the mobile web and joined iPhone by creating a new Facebook mobile site for them. iPhone hasn't even been out for two months yet, but it has already changed the way people think about the mobile web.

I’m pretty confident by the end of this year Facebook will knock Bebo off the top spot…. Watch this space!

After browsing a few articles on the BBC this morning, I spotted a new addition to the main template: 

A Bookmark With: field is now in place on every single article on the BBC’s website giving users the choice to bookmark each article at Delicious, Digg, Reddit, Facebook and StumbleUpon.

This is a good move by the BBC and will undoubtedly help get their articles more exposure across the web. Not only socially, but the back links generated from these social sites will also provide a great boost for popular articles in the natural search results as well.

The social marketing scene has really gone into hyper speed over the last few months, and with a huge web presence like the BBC picking up on the buzz, we can be pretty sure it’s here to stay.

For all that’s good and pure in SEO you have the white hat, for those who look towards the dark side there is the black hat. For everything else that’s uncertain it’s the grey hat.

There’s no doubt that performing search engine optimisation on a website can raise lots of questions and doubts as to what is best for the brand and for delivering results.

When dealing with brands and SEO, the choices are limited as to what can be performed on and off-site. The well-documented BMW saga obviously delivered a glaring example of black hat and a consequent big no-no from Google.

Black hat or unethical SEO practice is frequently profiled and dissected in SEO forums so there really is no excuse for an SEO'er to use it and not be aware of the damage it can cause to a domain.

The majority of SEO strategies involve common sense; delivering content people and search engines will love. Search engines essentially read content as any normal person would, so if you are cramming keywords into a footer, or redirecting via a keyword-stuffed page, you should ask yourself would I want to read that? The robots and spiders of the search engine world certainly won’t, and will eventually reward right from wrong.

So, having chosen to use good SEO practice, you find your domain tearing up the natural listings. You think great; all my good work is finally paying off. Then one day your ranking starts to slip. This is the point where grey hat practices may start to creep in. As any good SEO'er would, you care about the domain and achieving results. You may consider using the odd redirect here, or more keyword stuffing there, and before you know it you’re walking about with the grey hat on. The grey hat opens doors to many more SEO options, but common sense prevails in most cases.

This only leaves the white hat. White hat SEO is focused on delivering the right message to the search engines. But with most online brands it can be hard to deliver targeted content to the end user; this is where logical thinking should come into play.

SEO shouldn't be a case of delivering 20 similar pages about one keyword topic. If you are on page one for a competitive term then Google and the other search engines will have placed you there for a reason. The reason, in most cases, is that you are delivering relevant content that users want to read.

Three or four years ago search engines would rank your site based on frequency of keyword, among other factors. Today the clear focus on is on content relevancy. Continually focusing on the end user will make sure you are wearing the right hat for SEO.

The issue of online advertising appearing alongside inappropriate material isn’t about to go away. The web, by its very nature, is dynamic and ever-changing. Ads are served into a web page in real-time so there is no easy way to editorially control how a page will look once it is generated, as has recently been the case with Facebook.

1. Buyers beware - know what you are getting into

When buying online media on behalf of advertisers both you and they need to be aware of where advertising could show. Media planners and their clients need to be clear that ‘run of site’ or ‘run of network’ media placements, while often cheaper, could result in adverts appearing anywhere on a website.

2. You get what you pay for

If an advertiser has concerns over where adverts display then their campaign plan should state that their advertising should only appear on certain areas of a website.

This will almost definitely result in the advertiser receiving less ad views for their money – not so good for branding campaigns – but, with the reassurance of knowing within which channels of a website their adverts will appear. Unfortunately they will still not know the exact content of those channels.
 
3. Read and question the Terms and Conditions

When placing advertising ask the sales team: "How is your content controlled?" and "How do you ensure my adverts will not be displayed alongside drugs, violence, pornographic etc content?" 

The sales representative should be able to give you a clear statement on how content is moderated as part of their terms and conditions. If they have no such mechanism, negotiate, if they do, get your requirements added to the media placement contract.

By their very nature social media websites rely on user generated content (UGC). But the terms and conditions of a website's usage should stipulate what content can and can't be generated and shown on a UGC website.

On social media websites – where users generate the content – the users need to be trusted and given authority to flag content as 'adult', 'indecent' or 'inappropriate.'

UGC websites are reliant on advertising revenue – as such they need to take steps to re-assure advertisers that their content is legal and they have control mechanisms in place. If an advertiser's trust is broken this will seriously hamper a major revenue stream.

4. Contextual advertising

Contextual advertising solutions are a step forward; with analysis of web pages to select adverts to display based on the copy used. Advertisers should be able to add negative keywords to campaigns to limit where their ads display.

Another solution is advertising on websites where the content is subject to control, with flagging of pages possibly containing illicit material. Where necessary, advertising should cease to be shown on webpages flagged as containing inappropriate content, or on pages that have been submitted for editorial (flagged as potentially containing inappopriate content) review by the UGC community.