Web directories can be useful for your online presence. They’re also pretty useful for local SEO (more on that later). But when it comes to SEO overall, web directories are not as useful as they once were. Read more
Tech Giants Are Monopsonies So Stop Treating Them Like Monopolies
Over the last hundred years, politicians have been wading into economics and breaking up businesses that have become too big – by becoming monopolies – and lots of laws, regulations and policies have been devised around this. But we’ve entered a new era and in that era, the popular board game we all play once every couple of years wouldn’t be called Monolopy, it would be called Monopsony. Read more
Why Is My SEO Campaign Not Working?
That top spot on Google is a prize most webmasters covet. As well they should since the number one result gets the lion’s share of all the clicks. In theory, if you do everything correctly in your SEO campaign, it shouldn’t be too difficult to achieve better SEO results.
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How Do I Connect With My Customers Using SEO?
If you are a small business owner working all the hours you can to grow your company, or you are an entrepreneur with some great ideas but no route to market, starting out can be a really tough time.
You have this superb product or service that you know everybody will love, you have an all singing and dancing website that you are truly proud of, you have invested heavily in to your ideas, but you just can’t quite put your finger on why you are not yet reaping the rewards for all your hard work.
It’s demoralising, demotivating and down right frustrating.
This is where you need some magic dust sprinkling to kick start your dreams and ambitions, that one lucky break as they say, could turn your dream in to a reality, your small business in to a FTSE 100, and you in to the next Richard Branson flying your own jet.
Well although SEO isn’t magic dust, it can certainly help to open up your business or your ideas to a global audience, giving you the leg up you were hoping for.
Want to know more about SEO can help your brand? Read on… Read more
An Easy Guide To SEO (Infographic)
Are you looking for some quick and easy tips to get your website to rank?
Well checking out our Easy Guide to SEO Infographic will be a good place to start!
Google’s Market Share Down
According to the latest search market share numbers released by ComScore on 14th August 2015, Google’s share of the US search market has dropped slightly. Before we all panic and predict the demise of the search giant though, I must qualify that statement by admitting that the fall is not significant; nevertheless, the latest figures do show a loss of ground on Google’s part, to the benefit of its two largest competitors, Bing and Yahoo.
So, let’s take a closer look at the most recent figures and statistics and see what they’re showing us about the performance of the largest search engines globally. Read more
The Role Of A Freelance SEO Consultant
I’ve talked about the changing role of SEO Consultants a few times in my previous blogs, but I was talking to a client the other day whilst I was doing a quote and it became obvious quite quickly that this client had misunderstood the role that GrowTraffic would play; hence, I thought that I would reiterate the point. Not that any of my clients ever read my blog but hey, I’ve got nothing better to do. Not! Read more
Mobile is driving the future of search: from money to personalisation
I seem to have spent years in agencies, inhouse roles and as a freelance seo consultant saying “when thinking about Google you need to think about the money” and now that line of thought has to be even more pertinent. Read more
The Law of Unintended Consequences: Part 1
Google and the Law of Unintended Consequences
Google and the Law of Unintended ConsequencesIt is a fact of life that every action has a consequence; we’re all aware of this, but mostly we act under the belief that our actions will have a positive impact in one way or another. Unfortunately though, this is not always the case and the law of unintended consequences is an unavoidable and often darkly humorous reality of the human condition (my favourite example of which being the Streisand Effect, when someone’s (usually a celebrity’s) attempts to conceal something about their private life in reality leads to the fact being promoted vociferously accross the internet. Brilliant).
Whilst some of the most ridiculous – or perhaps best publicised – examples of unintended consequences are usually credited to governments (China anyone? The United States? Even the UK has had its moments!), Google seems to be doing its best to give the current reigning champions a run for their money. In fact, the entire dalliance played out between search engines and SEOs seems to be one big round of ‘how do we deal with this unintended consequence now?’. Or maybe I’m just being grumpy about it all; it has been known.
Humble Beginnings…
The giant of search started off its enterprise over 14 years ago with the laudable goal to bring the best possible results to anyone using their search engine for any given search term. Great! That’s exactly what we want, that’s what a search engine should be providing; so how are you going to do it…?
As with any other business, Google’s growth and dominance over the market has been a slow evolution (although slightly more evolutionary, seeing as they’re creating as they’re evolving) and to call it a learning curve would be an understatement, certainly from the point of view of the search engines but also from the point of view of the average folk using the search engines and those of us trying to cunningly manipulate them.
Every link in the evolutionary chain has been forged as the result of the one that went before it; so, there was an issue, Google created a solution, that caused an issue, Google created a solution and on it went, whilst all the while we poor SEOs tried to figure out how to make it work for our clients and look like we know what we were talking about, preferably at the same time.
In the ever changing world of the search engines, the law of unintended consequences is not so much an evolutionary quirk, popping up every now again to give us all a laugh, but rather the primary means of deciding policy and shaping the internet! Read more
Yahoo! Beats Google To The Mozilla Firefox Default
Mozilla released a statement yesterday revealing that their search engine of choice was going to change; starting in December 2014, Yahoo will be the default search engine on the Firefox browser in the US, rather than Google. What’s more, they will no longer have one default search engine worldwide; instead the Firefox browser will use a different search engine depending on the country or continent in which it is being used. Read more