The headline might be a bit dramatic but when browsing online a number of sites seem to have increasingly psychic powers, knowing what we want, or at least what we are more likely to want. Search engines, social media sites, news sites, etailers... everybody's at it and with good reason. Search engines The search engines are always striving to provide the results that we will want to click on. This is both to provide the best possible user experience possible and also to generate more revenue if that click happens to be on a paid search result. Google personalised search is an effort to improve relevance. Search engines provide personalised search results by collecting data on our usage and behaviour as well as many other factors such as our location and the device we're searching on. Social media sites Social media sites guess what we're searching for, who we might want to connect to, who we're going to want to chat to and see updates from etc....

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When you’re talking with your friends, the last thing you’d expect or even want, is for a stranger to come and interrupt you mid sentence by shouting about how great they are. If they did want to join in with your conversation, their best tactic would be hang round in similar places as you, become familiar with your interests and wait for the right moment to politely introduce themselves. Next they should ask a few questions about you and most importantly LISTEN so they can start to understand your likes and dislikes. Then you probably wouldn’t mind if they started offering useful related stories and information in the flow of the conversation. How about they then used all the information they had learnt and threw a party – where the food and music were exactly to your taste. You’d probably go. And you’d probably bring your like minded mates with you. And during the party you’d also probably be happy to listen to the host with an open mind about what they have to...

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The recently reported news that the Office of Fair Trading is looking to prosecute companies who pay bloggers for positive coverage of their products makes interesting news for all of us at Propellernet. Why would anyone offering quality content need to pay for coverage? Our approach has always been to develop content that offers genuine value to our target media, be that amateur bloggers, professional bloggers, or standard online media.  The fact that we use search personas and that we’re specialists in the travel and retail sectors means that we know the key media contacts well and we’re able to determine which sites are right for our clients’ target audience quickly and easily.   From there we use various inputs to determine what content will prove valuable both to our clients’ target audience and to the media that we’re targeting. The result of this approach is that we value good relations with all our key contacts from bloggers to journalists (regularly...

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Ok, so web content is nothing new; people have been creating new content (good and bad) since the birth of the web. But creating exciting, relevant content for your website... now that is a completely different kettle of fish! In the first instalment of ‘Get Creative in 2011’ we gave an introduction to what it is to produce great content for your website. We also discussed ways of using ‘Design SEO’ to benefit your online audience and produce the best content to boost your search possibilities. In part two, we will discuss why the production of smart, creative and well designed content is SO damn important to your brand and how you can squeeze every last drop from it. Read the rest of this entry...

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With the celebrations of the 1st of January now behind us and with a wealth of ideas for ‘what will be new in 2011’ stated - it is now time to do something big and yes, a little bit clever. Perhaps not as daunting as some would have you believe. Creating new exciting & well designed pieces of content can make all the difference to your search positions. In this blog post I will highlight some great ways of combining graphic design with SEO, a technique that has been used to great acclaim and success in my work with Propellernet. We call it Design SEO and it should change the way you think about content. Read the rest of this entry...

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The big news in the travel industry this week was that the official star ratings for hotels is expected to be superseded by online review scores. According to John Penrose, the Tourism Minister, the current system is out of date and does not accurately reflect holidaymakers' concerns. "We are going to be publishing our tourism strategy next month and in that we back a consumer-led system like Trip Advisor rather than traditional star-rating systems." - Source: Independent.co.uk Despite the fact that the move is expected to be resisted by hoteliers, many of whom have spoken out about review sites in the wake of the TripAdvisor row, I agree with the minister. Read the rest of this entry...

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Having read a very informative study, conducted by Nielsen, concerning the customer process in the UK online travel market, there were lots of interesting facts and figures which I felt compelled to share with our blog readers! The study took approximately 490 travel sites across all categories, and charted a detailed analysis from January to March on their users’ journey, from searching to purchasing. Being an intern at a search agency with one team focused entirely on the travel sector, the study highlighted some very important facts and I hope to explain them in this post. Let’s start with some basic facts: there are over 28.7 million people in the UK online travel market. Of these people, 22 million use search engines in their customer journey, with 92% of those that purchase using search at some point. That’s a huge number of potential customers that should not be ignored by any travel e-tailer wanting to dominate the industry! Read the rest of this entry...

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I firmly believe that we will look back at Christmas 2010 as the moment mobile went from a really interesting topic to a serious tactic within all retailers' marketing mix, and what better way to assist retailers in the build up to Christmas than to put together a mobile wish list. Now what a present that is! Ok, maybe a bit of an exaggeration but below are my top 10 tips and considerations for mobile: 1. Don't think for too long! Mobile is still heavily in the planning stage and everyone seems to be talking about theories rather than proven conclusions. This has lead to many retailers waiting to see what happens with mobile before taking the plunge themselves. Read the rest of this entry...

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2010 is my 8th year in PR and this June will not only see in the World Cup (Come on England!) but it will also be my 18th month in SEO-PR and what a whirlwind those 18 months have been! In those first few hazy months of arriving at Propellernet towers, never did I think that a) mixing the worlds of search and PR would be so exciting and b) that a year and a half down the line the excitement, learning and innovation would still be going strong. Walking into a search agency was a whole new world to me. I was used to crazy PR offices, being surrounded by products and it being quite normal for people to be shouting over banging music, over ringing phones and at each other. So, when I was welcomed in by the cool, calm and collected Propellernet team I knew it was going to be quite a different experience. There was a firm handshake and we were straight to work on sharing, learning, a little heated debating and on to creating what we now know as the real SEO-PR partnership; forming what...

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"...Brands now have a need to consider every online touch-point and how they can influence purchase decisions beyond the virtual front door of their corporate website" Quote from the "The Search and Social Media Report" from the IAB and Microsoft Advertising In a social media obsessed industry the cold hard fact remains that search engines are still the most influential gatekeepers of links (that you can directly influence!) between your brand and consumers. The brilliance of search engine marketing is that behind every search query is a person that fits into a well defined segment based on their motivation to search at that time. As a refresher it's good to think about the concept of the "intent" behind a search query. Read the rest of this entry...

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