Go back 10 years and search results on Google were vastly different to what they are today. Gone are the days of page after page of bland text; instead searchers are now bombarded with an assortment of results - from news to maps, images and videos. Google refers to this as "universal search" as it combines their separate search tools to provide improved results for searches. However, universal search is just the tip of the iceberg with regards to maximising your brand’s exposure within the search results. Whilst not all options may be relevant to your brand, there are many which are easy to implement and allow you to increase visibility and traffic (whilst helping to bury your competitors further down the page). 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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Ask someone what Online PR is and the usual response refers to distributing press releases online via a newswire service, possibly with some keywords included. But in truth, true online PR is much more than this and if done well it can have an incredible impact, not just on the traditional benefits of PR around brand awareness, but on the measureable and definable benefits of your search engine rankings, advocacy, traffic and sales. In this seminar from Internet World 2010 Lucy talks about how we've achieved long lasting creative editorial links for our clients on authoritative sites like the telegraph.co.uk, bbc.co.uk, ivillage.co.uk, dailymail.co.uk and guardian.co.uk. Lucy also delves into the realm of media mapping, persona targeting, building strong relationships journalists and how important it is to develop expertise in these areas to guarantee a positive impact on your search rankings, ultimately driving brand awareness and additional revenue. Read the rest of...

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A creative approach to link development will form an essential part of any successful SEO strategy. Using case study examples, Gary talks about how to effectively prioritise your keyword targets and then delves into how you can capture that keyword revenue potential, through a creative link development strategy. To watch the video you will have to register for a FREE account with SeminarStreams.com. The register process will start when you click on the play button. Read the rest of this entry...

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This month Propellernet will be exhibiting at Internet World from 27th – 29th April, where we are set to challenge people’s perceptions of Online PR. Our team will be sharing some of its valuable SEO, creative link development and online PR expertise with Internet World visitors, on-stand and at two talks by members of the team. We will invite people to ‘explore the vast galaxy of SEO-PR’ and challenge visitors on their perceptions of Online PR. Read the rest of this entry...

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On Monday 15th of March a few of the Propellernet team travelled to the Sheraton Park Lane Hotel in London for an evening of glamour, cocktails and posh nosh and came home with a cube-shaped bright pink Travel Marketing Award (which happens to look completely at home in our colourful office.) Judged by movers and shakers in the travel, creative and marketing industries; the Travel Marketing Awards recognise, reward and showcase the best and most innovative work across the sector. The Flourishing Family campaign we ran for Sovereign Luxury Holidays was the winning entry in the Search Engine Optimisation category and judges were impressed with the results we achieved with our unique blend of SEO PR. In a nutshell, here’s what we did… Read the rest of this entry...

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“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...

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The 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...

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This week saw myself and Stu Bowker presenting on behalf of Propellernet at the MDHub 100 SEO & Google tools seminar, at the Sussex County Cricket ground. Our presentation gave a basic overview of SEO, exploring some link building tactics and the role good online PR can play. We also touched upon the power of conversion optimisation and detailed lots of free tools available to get you started. One of the key themes that came out of the session was that Google wants to provide the most relevant search results to users, offering the best user experience possible, encouraging searchers to come back time and time again. So how does Google decide who gets the top spot and ensure results stay relevant...? Well Google's search algorithm looks at a host of factors, but particularly important ones include good and relevant on page content mentioning the keywords you are targeting, as well as relevant and authoritative external links to that content. Read the rest of this entry...

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Media mogul Rupert Murdoch has been causing quite a stir recently by threatening to block Google from News Corp sites. The reason for doing so is that he believes search engines are effectively stealing his content by displaying headlines in search results. However, according to Google they send news organisations “about 100,000 clicks every minute”, whilst Hitwise also claim that 25% of WSJ.com’s traffic is from Google, so can News Corp really afford to lose this huge source of traffic and revenue? According to Murdoch they can, and in a recent interview with Sky News he said: “What's the point of having someone come occasionally, who likes the headline they see in Google, come to us? Sure, we can go out and say we have so many millions of visitors, you'd better advertise, and so on. The fact is, there's not enough advertising in the world to go around to make all the web sites profitable. We'd rather have fewer people coming to our web sites but paying.” Read the...

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