Search is evolving. More and more marketers understand that the technical configuration part of SEO, although essential, is not the entirety of any good SEO strategy. But there’s one thing that hasn’t evolved and shows little sign of changing yet – initial contract duration.   It will be interesting to see if this changes as knowledge of SEO best practice becomes widespread within marketing departments. While a contract lasting 12 months may have seemed sensible when companies were focusing almost exclusively on the technical configuration part of SEO, the landscape is completely different now, and yet a typical initial agreement is likely still to be for only 12 months.  There are a number of reasons why I think this will inevitably change, to the benefit of both agency and client: 1. SEO is a creative discipline There is a large amount of creative work required to deliver top-quality SEO, both to deliver authoritative external content and to increase...

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The big news in the travel industry this week was that the official star ratings for hotels is expected to be superseded by online review scores. According to John Penrose, the Tourism Minister, the current system is out of date and does not accurately reflect holidaymakers' concerns.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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It’s coming to the end of the academic year and I’ve got results on my mind, so when a colleague forwarded to me a copy of Conductor’s report on Natural Search Trends of the Internet Retailer 500 Q2/2010 (full of statistics and grades) I immediately got excited. You can get your copy of the report here. It’s well worth picking up and certainly contains some food for thought (and much that I agree with) but parts of it left me baffled, particularly its grading system. Read the rest of this entry...

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For years now, the success of online traffic sources has relied solely on the principle that the ‘last click wins’. This has been a major flaw in web analytics as customer journeys are often a lot more drawn out and complex that just one visit. In fact, leading web analytics company DC Storm, found that 70% of all sales consist of more than one traffic source. Their research in December 2008 also revealed that there’s an average of 3.36 visits per sale. When creating reports and performing analysis, the winning emphasis is often solely with those last clicks, and so the remaining 70% are effectively ignored. But in reality, that 70% play a vital role in the customer journey and that ever important final conversion event. Read the rest of this entry...

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