David | SEO Plymouth Devon UK

What is Pinterest

February 4, 2012 By David Leave a Comment

What is Pinterest?

Pinterest is a virtual pinboard. Pinterest allows you to organise and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. You can browse pinboards created by other people to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests.

People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and share their favorite recipes.

Need help with anything SEO or Internet Marketing related? Call (07538) 199 694

7 Tips for Planning a Wedding on Pinterest (mashable.com)

Filed Under: SEO Plymouth Tagged With: Internet marketing, pinterest, Search engine optimization

On Page SEO – Plymouth and Exeter

January 28, 2012 By David Leave a Comment

Need help? Google PPC / Adwords – Organic SEO ? Call (07538) 199694

There are key areas of your website that you can control to ensure you get the best results from search engines.

This is all about creating a ‘map’ of your website using a computer language called XML (try www.xml-sitemaps.com). When you’ve built this map, search engines like Google can find out what pages you’ve got and what’s changed recently – helping you rank higher.

It’s also worthwhile when creating this map to make sure you have a shallow navigation structure – keeping any page on your site within 2 clicks of the homepage.

You should know your business best – and what potential purchasers are looking for. Use the keywords that are relevant to your business in URLs, titles, headings, image tags (captions for pictures) and repeatedly across your site.

Search engines like Google use things called ‘spiders’ to crawl through vast amounts of internet content and pick out what’s most relevant to the search terms used. What really stands out to them is regularly updated content – like a blog. And the more useful and interesting that content is, the more likely it is to be shared by web browsers, leading to more internet traffic.

There are some things spiders can’t see like videos, flash animation and images. Having lots of these on your site might make it look great but won’t do anything for your ranking, unless descriptive text appears alongside or you have an ‘alt-tag’.

Filed Under: SEO Exeter, SEO Plymouth Tagged With: seo exeter, SEO Plymouth

SEO Basics

January 28, 2012 By David Leave a Comment

Need help in Plymouth and Area? Call the experts (07538) 199694

Search engines like Google use complicated techniques to assess how relevant your website, and the pages on it, are to the searches being made.

SEO is all about making sure your website uses all the tricks of the trade to make itself relevant to those searches and ultimately help to bring in more visitors.

When done well it really pays off – because the sites that appear on the first page of a search result are often the only ones that get looked at.

But it’s a competitive game – so if your rivals are doing it better than you they’ll push you down the rankings.

The things you can do to improve your search ranking basically fall into two categories:

On-page factors, or put more simply what’s actually on each of your web pages.

Off-page factors, or the links that go to your site from other websites.

Filed Under: Google, SEO Exeter, SEO Plymouth

Foursquare and location based business

January 16, 2012 By David Leave a Comment

Foursquare for business

Need help? Call (07538) 199694

Foursquare is a location-based deals tool. You create your business page on Foursquare, publish deals, and when people check-in to your business’ physical location or follow specific promotion-related instructions, they can receive special discounts and offers. In other words, Foursquare is a true geo-marketing, mobile tool that adds another way to reach consumers at the exact time when they’re making purchase decisions.

Foursquare can be used to boost new business and build brand loyalty. You can get creative with deals, and integrate them into your Facebook Page and other online and offline marketing initiatives. Marketing your local business using Foursquare doesn’t have to be time-consuming or expensive, but it is worth a try. Over 15 million people are using Foursquare to find real-time, local deals, and many businesses are finding great success with it for increasing per-customer spending and developing innovative rewards programs.

Foursquare the new Social Search Engine? (abfabseo.com)

Filed Under: SEO Exeter, SEO Plymouth Tagged With: Foursquare, seo exeter, SEO Plymouth

What is Google+

January 15, 2012 By David Leave a Comment

Need help with Google+ / SEO in Plymouth, Exeter and Area? Call the recognised expert in Devon and Cornwall

David (07538) 199694

What is Google+

Google+ is a social networking service operated by Google Inc. The service launched on June 28, 2011, in an invite-only testing phase. The following day, existing users were allowed to invite friends, who are above 18 years of age, to the service to create their own accounts. However, this was quickly suspended in a day after there was “insane demand” for accounts.

Google+ will be built as a layer that not only integrates different Google social services, such as Google Profiles and Google Buzz, but also introduces many new features including Circles, Hangouts, Sparks and Huddles. Google+ will also be available as a desktop application and as an application on Android and iOS operating systems.

Sources such as The New York Times have declared it Google’s biggest attempt to rival the social network Facebook, which had over three quarters of a billion users in 2011.

Filed Under: Google +1, SEO Devon Tagged With: Google, seo exeter, SEO Plymouth

Link Building is Dead – Plymouth – Exeter

January 15, 2012 By David Leave a Comment

SEO Plymouth

SEO? Easy! Call us in Plymouth (07538) 199694

Link building is dead – long live social signals and user intent!

I’m sure everyone is tired with the constant flood of link building emails and telephone calls that will supposedly boost your business…

I said about two or three years ago that this was an almost dead tactic. My tactical SEO mind works like this “What would Google do?” (heck there’s even a great book called just that!)

So with all the burgeoning bull and constant noise on the subject of link building it just had to end…

Google appears to be constantly in search of additional signals to help provide better data on the best results to return for a given search query, and to make it harder for spammers to succeed in ranking lower quality sites with shed loads of links.

The increase in the use of social signals by Google has been a part of that effort. You just need to look at the SERPS to see WordPress, Flickr, Smugmug, Picasa and Google+ tags showing to know that link building is no more. On these sites I like the occasional anchor text link but no need to sweat it!

I will concede to a few clever links such as on the superb Linked In, Qype and such but in general they are now pretty much dead in the water.

Yes the ‘phone will continue to ring, the emails will flood in and the “big SEO companies” will tout it as a viable tactic….

Me? No link building is dead. Tags and social signals are in! Embrace it!

Need help? Call David or Liz in Plymouth (07538) 199694

Filed Under: google plymouth, SEO Exeter, SEO Plymouth Tagged With: Google, seo exeter, SEO Plymouth

Win a prize and SEO in Plymouth

January 15, 2012 By David Leave a Comment

Win a prize!

No not for reading this…..

It’s amazing really. So many businesses want your help, advice and feedback yet offer nothing for your time.

Tesco ask “How did we do?” on each register receipt yet offer nothing for free if you do go to their website and help them. My advice? Offer the real chance of a prize.

Boots ask random shoppers to go online and let them know about the service they received in stores. I have won an iPod in the past.

Make it worthwhile for people to join your email list, follow you on Twitter, like you on Facebook or join you on Google+

The latest, soon to be massive, online craze will be checking in to a location and having a quick “Twitter like” say on what you think – the next really big thing? Foursquare – if you have a business get on it now and get people checking in – but offer the chance to win a prize!

Need help with it all? We are the experts with Google, PPC / Adwords, Google+ Search My World, Foursquare, Twitter, Facebook and so many more ways for you to win online

Call David or Liz (07538) 199694

Plymouth, Exeter, Devon and Cornwall

Twitter for Business in Plymouth (abfabseo.com)
Google Adwords Help in Plymouth (abfabseo.com)
SEO – Plymouth, Devon & Cornwall (abfabseo.com)

Filed Under: SEO Exeter, SEO Plymouth Tagged With: Exeter, Foursquare, Google, Twitter

Foursquare the new Social Search Engine?

January 14, 2012 By David Leave a Comment

Foursquare the Social Search Engine? Ab Fab Internet Marketing and SEO predicts the rise of Foursquare as a Social Search Engine.

Foursquare just took another step with local recommendations by launching a new web version of Foursquare Explore this gives clear intentions and signals that Foursquare will indeed be a Social Search Engine. Just what we need really! David

Need help? Call (07538) 199694

The first time you use Foursquare to check in to a location you’ll earn a Newbie badge. This is just one of several badges in Foursquare. It’s not hard to figure out how to earn some of the badges. For example, visit the same spot several times in a month and you’ll earn the Local badge. But others may be more of a challenge. The founders plan to add more badges to the service over time and solicit user suggestions.

One of the ways you earn badges is by visiting locations that have been tagged with specific traits. Let’s say you visit several places in your town that are known to be popular with fraternity members — you may earn yourself the Animal House badge. The founders depend upon the input of the community to tag locations accurately. It’s possible that a location’s features could change over time — if it does you may earn a different badge after a few visits.

Users can also submit tips and notes about locations. Let’s say you’ve decided to visit your favorite burger joint. You happen to know their mushroom bacon burger is amazing. You can check in using Foursquare and add in a tip to let others know about your favorite burger.

Since users submit the tips, you could end up seeing all sorts of information about different locations. It doesn’t all have to be positive either. If you think the music a certain club plays is six months behind the times, you can pop into Foursquare and share your thoughts. The service has the potential to be both a social networking application and a review application.

The founders of Foursquare hope to form partnerships with various restaurants, clubs and other sites to offer special benefits to Foursquare members. For example, a restaurant might offer up a free appetizer to its Foursquare mayor. One potential obstacle for this approach is that it would be easy to game the system. While the Foursquare app on the iPhone and Android platforms can use the GPS receiver in phones to search for nearby locations, you don’t have to rely on GPS to check in. You could be sitting at home while remotely checking in to locations around the city. If restaurants and other companies hand out real rewards to Foursquare members, you can expect some people will cheat.

Foursquare: The Web’s Newest Local Search Engine (But There’s One Big Question) (smallbusinesssem.com)

Filed Under: SEO Exeter, SEO Plymouth, Social Media Plymouth Tagged With: Foursquare, Global Positioning System

Google + The Benefits form the Experts

January 13, 2012 By David Leave a Comment

SEO, Google PPC or Adwords? Call (07538) 199694

Don’t doubt the excellence of Google+

Rocky Agrawal, VentureBeat, January 11, 2012

“People have been doing a form of social search in a very inefficient way by using Facebook status updates to pose questions to friends. . . . With SPYW, Google automates this process and makes it instantaneous. Instead of relying on users to actively respond to my request, I get access to all of the previous activity they’ve shared. If a second- or third-degree friend shares content about a topic, I instantly have access to it. Think of it as word-of-mouth on steroids. . . . SPYW is a great product and represents a very important milestone in search.”

Clint Boulton, eWeek, January 10, 2012

“Google finally managed to fashion a credible social search solution, using its Google+ network to include Picasa photos, posts and other personalized content in users’ search results…The new feature is a way to combat the “faceless Web” problem of highly impersonal search results Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and the rest of the search vendors have provided for the last decade and a half.”

Jeff Roberts, paidContent.org, January 10, 2012

“From a design perspective, the product looks good. . . . The product also makes sense from a conceptual point of view. People value Google’s all-powerful search algorithm and will likely enjoy applying it to their own online lives. ”

Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Land, January 10, 2012

“Overall, I like the integration that allows for searching through private and public material. As I’ve said, I think many people will find it useful.”

Jolie O’Dell, Venture Beat, January 10, 2012

“If you, like your curmudgeonly correspondent here, bristle at the thought of yet another change to what was once a simple, beautiful product, remember that short months and years ago, image and shopping and news results were not included in the basic web search, either.”

Chris Crum, WebProNews, January 11, 2012

“Part of the reason I use multiple products from Google is because I expect there to be integration. It’s often disappointing when that integration is lacking. It makes things less usable. If I’m signed in to my Google account, I want easy access to content that’s related to my Google account. If I want things from Facebook or Twitter, I know where to look.”