Adrac Ltd: High street traders reap value of e-commerce and good SEO

February 22, 2011 | Category : Link Building,Online Marketing,PPC Pay Per Click,SEO Search Engine Optimisation | Tags: , , , ,

A balance has been achieved on the world wide web. While many of us recall the Dot Com Boom and Bust the landscape of the net has been altered, made successful and has encouraged traditional retailing into the e-commerce domain.

New research from UK Online Measurement (Ukom, which is powered by Nielsen) shows that half of the top name brands in the UK, for example, are established high street names. They have embraced the new commercial channel the internet offers and are making it work.

These companies, including John Lewis and Argos (according to the BBC’s thus-far exclusive coverage), presumably have really impressive marketing budgets. A quick look around their e-commerce websites reveals virtual architecture of breathtaking proportions, gorgeous photography, clean copywriting, and we assume the hidden aspects of their SEO (we did not conduct an assessment of any depth) are all top notch.

We hear SME’s cry: But We Don’t Have That Kind Of Budget!

Adrac knows from experience of working with large and small companies that budget is actually not a hindrance when it comes to success on the internet, because a huge budget does not automatically equate to good visibility and profit.

Internet marketing, including SEO, can be tailored to any budget and a reputable agency will assess a company’s needs and priorities and structure an internet marketing campaign accordingly. The smallest budgets, used wisely, can increase profits.

Wisely, used in this context, means that this portion of your marketing budget should be used to employ expert help. John Lewis and Argos may keep their SEO in house, or they might outsource it, but you can be sure that they do have someone managing it that knows exactly what they are doing.

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Clinton: social media the ‘new nervous system for our planet’

February 16, 2011 | Category : Google Search Engine,Social Media | Tags: , , , ,

Many newspapers today have exploited the irony of the link between Hillary Clinton’s praise social networks’ support of freedom, on a day when civil rights lawyers are trying to retain the privacy of Twitter accounts operated by WikiLeaks associates from the justice department.

Clinton, the US secretary of state, gave her thoughtful speech at the Newseum, Washington DC, and among the delegates was Charles Overby, the CEO of Freedom Forum.

Here are some soundbites, which have been selected with an attempt at balance.

1. The spread of information networks is forming a new nervous system for our planet.
2. Now, in many respects, information has never been so free.
3. On their own, new technologies do not take sides in the struggle for freedom and progress, but the United States does.
4. As I speak to you today, government censors somewhere are working furiously to erase my words from the records of history.
5. There are, of course, hundreds of millions of people living without the benefits of these technologies.
6. We have taken steps as a government, and as a department, to find diplomatic solutions to strengthen global cyber security.
7. By relying on mobile phones, mapping applications, and other new tools, we can empower citizens and leverage our traditional diplomacy.
8. And let us go forward together to champion these freedoms for our time, for our young people who deserve every opportunity we can give them.

Item 7 seems to echo Eric Schmidt (in this link, Adrac particularly liked the term ‘Google ecosystem’), and indeed Clinton went on to refer to it later on. A cynic might begin to refer to the people’s choice of search engine as the people’s search engine: Search for People – map view, satellite view, close up.

But Adrac are not cynics, we’re playing Devil’s Advocate here.

What is important about the collision of these two events – the WikiLeaks Twitter and Clinton’s address – is that social media privacy may indeed mean something entirely different in six months, a year, 10 years.

The usual warning about tweeting an ambiguous sentence, a joke, when you’ve had a drink, when you’re tired and grumpy … these all apply: always be aware of the information you make public. And if it’s not public now, it might be one day.

Perhaps the new nervous system for the planet should make more than just  governments a little anxious right now.

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Adrac Ltd: Content Farming – is there a solution?

February 9, 2011 | Category : Bing/Microsoft,Blekko,Content Farming,Google Search Engine,Spam | Tags: , , , , ,

There’s been a lot of discussion about how Google’s search results pages are losing their search quality and ranking spammy websites.

Run a search on google.com for ‘nfl jerseys’ and the first 10 websites that load are pretty spamtastic. Do a similar search on google.co.uk for ‘search engine optimisation’ and some of the top 10 websites are using black hat SEO techniques to deceive search rankings.

My examples are numerous and pose the question: is there a solution to the growing level of search spam? Can we filter out farmed content and achieve a purer, quality search result?

Read More

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Adrac Ltd research underlines that organic search complements SEO

February 4, 2011 | Category : Internet Marketing,Link Building,Marketing,Online Marketing,PPC Pay Per Click,SEO Search Engine Optimisation,Web Analytics,Website Design | Tags: , , , , ,

Adrac’s analysis of internet campaign performances for its client websites underlines the importance of a wholistic approach to optimisation.

Natural or organic search positioning uses search term relevance to determine how high a website appears on a results page. Content, optimisation, search engine optimisation and link building all reinforce relevance.

Our recent research reveals how important it is to achieve a page one, top three position; some 95% of search engine users click page one results, and 70% click the top three positions.

- Position #1: 45.46% of all clicks
- Position #2: 15.69% of all clicks
- Position #3: 10.09% of all clicks

Improvements made following client campaigns led directly to quality traffic; in other words, high organic rankings increase their quality traffic thanks to Adrac’s management. Quality traffic offers the best conversion rate – these will be people who want to purchase what you are selling.

This is what we observed:

- A move from #2 to #1 saw a 25% increase in search traffic for the client’s top key term
- The increase in position also saw rise in direct traffic and brand related key terms
- Search traffic doubled when website shifts from bottom half of page one result to top half of page one result

In addition, the analysis revealed that organic search complements non-organic methods of search engine prominence and both are essential for maximum exposure – and a maximum return on investment.

Adrac Ltd has been managing organic search and PPC for clients since 2003. The team are certified Google Accredited Professionals, MSN Ad Excellence members (Bing) and Adrac is a Yahoo Network Certified Agency.

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Google’s rightful claims to its data by Ehsan @ Adrac Ltd

February 2, 2011 | Category : Bing/Microsoft,Google Search Engine | Tags: , , , ,

Following Danny Sullivan’s Search Engine Land blog post, which broke the news of the Bing sting, Google has updated its blog to explain what happened. It makes for interesting reading.

I feel that Google has every right to complain about Bing’s behaviour and boast about its own search results. It defies logic that search engines with allegedly different algorithms and criteria for ranking should be using each other’s data. Imagine what would have happened if Google had been caught snatching data from … oh, hang on … *cough*

Google’s quality team has been the focus of a lot of complaints in the recent months. I’d like to come out in support of them: they are doing an excellent job, especially when you consider how many different ways spammers are trying to manipulate the search giant.

First, it was link farming, which Google was easily able to resolve with the Florida Update. Now, the current level of content farming is really hard to track, because content is the search engine’s power – tricky, eh?

However, I believe that Google will resolve this issue in time. And I also believe that any other search engine would have already collapsed with all the spam that it handles. It has a right to be proud, and to claim for what it has achieved. As do we all.

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