SEM News and Free SEO Search Tool Website » Patrick Altoft

Will Google penalise itself for excessive ads above the fold?

Patrick Altoft — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 09:34:45 +0000

Google has released an algorithm update today designed to penalise websites that have too many ads above the fold (in the visible area of the page). This is a great move by Google because nobody wants to see pages full of ads.

The problem is that Google is being very hypocritical here because over the years the amount of ads on the search results pages have been getting bigger and bigger…

Thoughts on Google Search plus Your World

Patrick Altoft — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 08:55:40 +0000

This week Google has announced a major change to their search results called “Search plus Your World” which isn’t a particularly catchy title.

There is an excellent summary of this feature here and examples of how Google favours Google+ here – this post is mainly my thoughts on the service.

When I first tried the system yesterday afternoon I searched for “golf” and Google came up with pictures of myself and some friends on a golf holiday in 2005…

Clever fake New Years Day PPC ads using DailyMail.co.uk as display URL

Patrick Altoft — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 22:52:53 +0000

If you were to click on the Google logo on New Years day it would have taken you to the search results for the phrase “New Year’s Day” as shown in the screenshot below. When I looked at this the dailymail.co.uk advert stood out to me because although the Daily Mail isn’t noted for high level journalism I very much doubt they use PPC to promote stories.

Sure enough when I clicked on the ad it took me straight to a really really clever site about some kind of wrinkle treatment…

iOS 5 Disables Cookies & Breaks Loads of Sites

Patrick Altoft — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 12:20:41 +0000

A little known feature of the latest iOS 5 software for the iPhone is that it disables cookies by default. I wasn’t aware of this until yesterday when I tried to book a hotel and was trying to browse three of the largest travel websites – Premier Inn, Late Rooms and Travelodge and none of them were working.

All these sites detect your user agent, set a cookie and then display the mobile version of the site…

How to Build Conversions Using SEO – Slides from Conversion Conference

Patrick Altoft — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 09:14:52 +0000

Yesterday I was speaking at Conversion Conference about building conversions using SEO. The slides are below.

How to Build Conversions Using SEO
View more presentations from Patrick Altoft

Not getting the rankings you want? Hire us for Search engine optimisationHow to Build Conversions Using SEO – Slides from Conversion Conference

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Google Freshness Update : The real winners & losers

Patrick Altoft — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 10:59:00 +0000

Searchmetrics published some research yesterday showing the winners and losers of the Google Freshness update but in my opinion the issue is a bit more complicated than this.

The freshness update is like an enhanced version of the QDF algorithm. QDF applied to searches that were trending whereas the freshness update applies to searches where a user is likely to need new information.

Brands

The big losers in this update are going to be brands…

Google indexing Facebook Comments behind Iframes

Patrick Altoft — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 09:58:07 +0000

Google is displaying some interesting behavior and is indexing Facebook comments even though they are behind a javascript loaded iframe.

The comments don’t appear in the text only cache but are showing up when you search for strings of text from the comments.

I’ve been searching for a few comments from techcrunch and they are not ranking very well. Certainly not as well as I would expect for such a powerful site…

Baby SEO – A New SEO Company for Small Businesses

Patrick Altoft — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 09:23:13 +0000

Working in the SEO industry for quite a few years now I’ve talked to a lot of small business owners frustrated by their experiences working with SEO companies. Small business SEO is very different to doing SEO for larger brands and we’ve always focused on working with larger businesses at Branded3.

This week I’m pleased to say that we are launching a new business called Baby SEO to service smaller businesses with respect and deliver the sort of good, honest service that small business owners expect from an SEO company…

Supermarket SEO

Patrick Altoft — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 09:03:43 +0000

There is an interesting post in the Grocer today about how Waitrose is struggling with SEO after a £10m website relaunch earlier this year.

“Waitrose.com is so technically hampered it is going to have a problem ranking for anything – it’s terrible,” said Juliette van Rooyen, a consultant from digital consultancy Reform, after analysing SEO measures determining the visibility of Waitrose, Ocado and the big four’s websites to search engines such as Google…

We’re looking for a PHP developer

Patrick Altoft — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 08:43:40 +0000

We are currently hiring for a few SEO & digital jobs in Leeds including a PHP developer. The job advert is below – CV’s to careers@branded3.com (no agencies).

Branded3 is an award-winning digital and SEO agency, working alongside worldwide brands and companies to deliver innovative digital solutions. We’re always on the lookout for experienced and skilled digital experts to add to our growing team; and we’re currently on the search for a talented PHP Developer…

My Link Building Slides from Searchlove 2011

Patrick Altoft — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 17:05:32 +0000

Today I was speaking about link-building at the Searchlove conference. This conference has rapidly become the best SEO conference in the calendar and the quality of tips and information is always excellent. This year was even better than last year.

My slides from the event are below – any questions email me patrick @branded3.com. Please note that these slides have been edited slightly…

Google turns off keyword referrer information for logged in users

Patrick Altoft — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 21:02:13 +0000

Google has today announced that any users that are logged in to Google.com will be automatically sent to the https version of Google. This has the (presumably intentional) side effect that web analytics tools will no longer be able to see data on the keywords that people used to get to websites.

You might need to read that bit twice because it’s a lot to take in.

The net effect of this is that Google Analytics and all the other web traffic & analytics tools are going to get some very big holes in their data…

How to SEO Like a Super Affiliate A4U Expo Presentation

Patrick Altoft — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 20:46:24 +0000

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Last weeks Panda update has hit more ecommerce sites

Patrick Altoft — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 09:05:38 +0000

Panda updates in the past have not really seemed to hurt ecommerce sites as much as content sites and affiliate sites. Last week this seems to have changed a bit and more ecommerce & comparison sites are suffering.

Matt Cutts sent a tweet today saying that we can expect Panda to hit 2% more sites in the near future but there are already quite a few sites contacting us about a major loss in traffic last week…

Branded3 nominated for 8 UK Search awards – including Best Blog & Best Agency

Patrick Altoft — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 10:49:48 +0000

Recognising the high-quality search results we deliver to our clients, Branded3 has been nominated for eight prestigious Search Awards, including Best Blog for Blogstorm.

Honoured to have even been nominated for just one award, our SEO team here at Branded3 are proud to have our hard-work and innovation recognised on such a large scale and have updated our ever growing awards page with the full details…

SEO Clinic at A4U Expo, Speaking at SearchLove & Conversion Conference in October

Patrick Altoft — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 15:35:58 +0000

The next 6 weeks are super busy for Branded3 and I will be speaking at 3 really great conferences in London.

First up is A4U Expo on the 18th & 19th of October where I have an hour to talk about “How to SEO like a super affiliate” which should be great as we have worked and run training for quite a few of the UK’s biggest super affiliate SEO teams so we really know how they work…

European Court rules in favour of Interflora – an end to brand bidding?

Patrick Altoft — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 09:09:44 +0000

The Court of Justice of the EU has today ruled in favour of Interflora in the brand bidding case against Marks & Spencers.

Interflora had argued that M&S shouldn’t be allowed to bid on the keyword “interflora” via Adwords and it seems that the European Court agrees with them.

The ruling is good news for brands because it could (in my personal opinion) eventually spell the end of controversial brand bidding in the UK, assuming that the High Court in London decides to uphold the European Courts ruling sometime in 2012…

Google Analytics Multi Channel Funnels show SEO drives 30% more revenue

Patrick Altoft — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 21:58:02 +0000

Google Analytics took a step forwards in August by launching Multi Channel Funnels to the general public. This allows users to see all the different methods that customers used to find a website in the days & weeks before they made a purchase.

Analytics by default is based on the “last click” so if a user searched for a keyword such as “sofas” and clicked on an organic SEO result one week and then the next week visited your site directly then that would be attributed to a direct traffic visit…

Google partners with Amazon to show “Amazon Results”

Patrick Altoft — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 08:53:14 +0000

The screenshot below is from Google Chrome incognito mode with no plugins. It shows how Google has replaced the standard Shopping results with a set of Amazon Results.

The links don’t look like standard Amazon affiliate links so they must be some kind of partnership links.

This is an example link through to the product page.

I’ve never seen this before but it’s very good for Amazon no doubt…

Google Panda rolls out in new languages

Patrick Altoft — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 12:14:44 +0000

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