Archive for February, 2010

Is UGC as we know it under threat?

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

judgeThis week an Italian court surprisingly convicted three Google executives over the uploading of a video in which an autistic teenager was bullied. Despite removing it within a matter of hours after being notified by the Italian police, David Drummond, Peter Fleischer and George Reyes were all found to be guilty of violating Italian privacy laws.

This is not the first time the Google giant has had problems with privacy laws. Just last week Google’s new social networking site Buzz came under fire from The Electronic Privacy Information Centre who lodged a complaint with the US Federal Trade Commission claiming Google breaks consumer protection law. It will be interesting to watch how that develops.

However, this latest development threatens to set a dangerous precedent in Italy in which sites can be held accountable for what’s hosted on their servers. This could have major ramifications for sites which rely on user-generated content such as social networking sites.

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Posted in Content Creation, Social Media | 1 Comment »

SEO for large retailers: prioritise or plummet

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

online_retail“I’ve got 60 product categories. For each of those there is a generic keyword I’d really love to rank for in Google. Each of the keywords is highly competitive in its own right.   Where on earth do I start?”

Sound familiar?

I’m sure you understand which generics you’d like each category page to rank for. You also understand that for each of these generic keywords there will be a host of sites competing for the same keywords.

Maybe you  sell LCD TVs, Women’s Dresses, Men’s Shirts, Vacuum Cleaners, (insert your category here). Obtaining top visibility for such a diverse set of products categories & associated generic keywords is not going to be easy.

Go ahead and type in “LCD Tvs” into Google and you’ll see a variety of sites including LCD specialist shops, department stores as well as guide and review sites.

You’ve probably already setup multiple product categories on your website, each of which is optimised to the core generic keywords associated to that category. You’ve worked hard to ensure you’ve ticked all the boxes with on-site SEO.  Title Tags, ALT text, unique, fresh content and even some clever adaptations to your internal linking architecture to ensure that your most important categories are getting all the link love they need.

It’s all helped and you’ve seen noticeable jumps in position against all your generic terms. Job done? Unfortunately not – if only it were that simple!

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Posted in Natural Search (SEO) | 1 Comment »

Propellernet’s (Brighton to London) Graffiti Mural - Time Lapse Video

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

propellernet_graffitiAs you’ve probably already seen, Propellernet has recently relocated to lovely new and inspirational offices in the centre of Brighton!

One of the things that makes our new office space really unique is the 30-foot graffiti mural, depicting the journey from Brighton to London. We commissioned  Dave Samual, from RareKind to complete our piece. RareKind are a specialist graffiti agency, responsible for some of the UK’s best graffiti artwork.

A few months back, as the graffiti was in the planning stage, we decided we would find someone to help us produce a short time lapse video, capturing the creation of the Mural. We found Brighton-based camera man and video producer Greg Brand, who has done an fantastic job of doing just that!

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Posted in Propellernet | 5 Comments »

Linkbait, your website’s best mate

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

compare_the_meerkatThe holy grail of SEO, a self-feeding SEO machine, and all that jazz…

When the quirky meerkat Aleksandr Orlov appeared on our screens in 2009 to inform us of the difference between Comparethemarket.com and Comparethemeerkat.com, some brilliant linkbait was born.

The spin-off site Comparethemeerkat.com (where you can compare thousands of meerkats), has attracted nearly 10,000 inbound links, from people compelled to spread the meerkat word. By linking the spin-off site to the main price comparison site, Comparethemarket.com will have been able to pass on valuable link-juice and gained some well-earned Google-love. Simples!

So what is linkbait?

According to the head of Google’s Webspan team and SEO-guru Matt Cutts, linkbait is anything “interesting enough to catch people’s attention”. More specifically, linkbait differs from viral content in that it’s not just designed to be spread around, but to be linked to aswell. And while the primary purpose of linkbait is to attract inbound links, it can also help to generate press, create a buzz and drive traffic.

The beauty of linkbait is that once you have created your interesting content and told a few key people about it through any type of media channel, it can quickly snowball around the net and translate into numerous inbound links from blogs, Twitter, social networks, etc … These key people are often referred to as the LINKERATI (a term coined by Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz fame) and carry a lot of weight in the world wide web.

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Posted in Content Creation, Natural Search (SEO) | 3 Comments »