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The great Top SEO Trumps Blog Off has begun!
We have been slaving away creating the top SEO Game of the Decade. To get your hands on one of these limited edition Top SEO Trumps packs we are inviting you to take part in our Top SEO Trumps Blog Off!
Here’s a preview of how the cards look:
Simply write a blog post that meets the conditions below to be in for a chance to win.
There are 46 Top SEO Faces from the SEO world, each ranked by:
- Popularity on the web
- Twitter followers
- Google+ contacts
- Fanciablility (we are keeping our judges a secret for this category)
- Geek Cred
Can you guess who is hiding behind Danny Sullivan? If you can’t guess or want to see the other 45 Top SEOs then you can follow all those who made it into to pack by creating your own SEO circle from this one we made earlier, just click on the image to view or add this circle in Google+:
35 Limited Edition Top SEO Trumps packs are up for grabs.
Anyone can enter: SEOs, marketing people, social media specialists, bloggers, content marketers, and students, anyone who thinks they can write a good blog.
There are so many ways of winning that the playing field is wide open, there is a really good chance of winning so it’s worth a go. As all great SEO’s and Content marketers know, generating great content is just par for the course anyway. What have you got to lose?
Not only that, if you are one of our 35 finalists we will publicise your fine post using our many social media accounts, and link to it from all of our resources and blogs, as well as on our own well ranked site, so it would be good for your SEO too.
All you have to do is what you do best: write a great blog post.
How to win
- Write a blog post that contains a link either to one of these links
http://www.siliconbeachtraining.co.uk/blog/seo-top-trumps OR http://www.siliconbeachtraining.co.uk/seo/
- Tweet a link to your post to: @sbttraining with the message: “My SEO Trumps entry” and the Hashtag #seotoptrumps
It’s as easy as that!
For example if this was my entry I would tweet:
@sbttraining My Top SEO Trumps entry http://www.siliconbeachtraining.co.uk/blog/seo-top-trumps (or shortened version) #seotoptrumps
You can publish your blog post anywhere (not necessarily on your own blog) as long as you identify yourself as the author somewhere in the post and tweet the link with hashtag as above.
After the closing date April 1st 2012
Votes will be counted and verified and prizes will go to the authors of the winners of the following categories:
- The 5 funniest posts
- The 5 most original posts
- The 5 most useful posts
- The top 5 posts that drive the most traffic to the destination link.
- The 5 top most liked posts on Facebook – where that information is available
- The 5 most +1’s on Google Plus
- The 5 most tweeted posts – where that information is available
Good luck and get blogging!
Become a future top SEO trump with our many SEO related courses. SEO training will provide you with the best practice approach to optimising websites and content for higher rankings, you can then use the knowledge learnt on our Social Media course to market your website and build strong brand identity. If you want to measure how your site is doing (and your social media efforts) then Google Analytics training is essential, while Advanced Google Analytics training is available for those who already use it on a regular basis. Don’t forget, we also now provide Content Marketing training – great for building brand and author identity whilst gaining valuable backlinks!
Posted by Heather Buckley in Competitions, Facebook Tips and Tricks, Google+, Guest Blogs, News, Offers, SEO, Social Media on January 25th, 2012| No Comments »
Brighton-based car share website Catch-a-ride have just launched their photography competition and it is being judged by Silicon Beach Training‘s co-founder and photographer, Heather Buckley.
Catch-a-ride is set up to encourage people to car share by connecting drivers and passengers. This is a great idea to reduce travel costs, emissions and traffic!
Read more about the competition at Catch-a-ride’s blog or we’ve provided all the info below…
The Competition
The competition theme is ‘Car Share’ so send in your most interesting photo of people car sharing for a chance to win a fantastic prize. You can interpret that as you like but the most interesting one wins! Just don’t break the law of the road or your entry will be discounted.
The Prize
Up for grabs is a 16-megapixel Nikon Coolpix compact camera, perfect for taking more photos of your car sharing adventures!
The Rules
1) Only UK residents may enter
2) All entries must show a car share journey but must not include any activities that go against road safety
3) By entering, you agree that www.catcharide.co.uk may use your photo on their website. Photos will not be used for any other purpose.
4) Photos must be in JPEG format and a maximum of 1MB.
The Entry
To enter, send your car share photo to: contact@catcharide.co.uk
The Closing Date
All entries must be in by 15th March 2012. Read the rest of "Car Share Photo Competition"
Posted by Heather Buckley in Brighton, Competitions, News, Photography on January 19th, 2012| No Comments »
Christmas Cards – the first form of mass communication?
Sir Henry Cole commissioned the first Christmas card in London in 1843. He was a busy and rich businessman who had tired of the practice of writing letters to friends and family every festive season (which was traditional then for those who could afford postage costs).
He came up with the idea and commissioned illustrator John Callcott Horsley to design it. The illustration of a family with a child drinking wine proved controversial but turned out to be a phenomenal success. How many business ideas still remain popular after 100 years?
First Christmas card
So what has that got to do with Social Media?
Well, Cole had helped introduce the Penny Post three years earlier. This allowed people living in Great Britain and Ireland to send letters weighing 1/2 ounce or less to anywhere within the kingdom for one penny. Sir Henry Cole had played a leading role in pushing for the Penny Post, believing cheap and easy communication was needed for the growth of business. The masses took advantage of this to send Christmas cards; it was no longer only for the rich and aristocratic. So you see the Christmas card was the first commercial mass communication system, designed as a way to offer seasonal greetings without having to write out hundreds of personal messages.
Make something special and original
How do you feel when someone makes something just for you? A homemade Christmas card, a hand knitted scarf, a Christmas bouquet made from hand picked holly tied with a crimson satin ribbon. You feel special. Successful social media marketing is all about making people feel special, it’s about appealing to what makes us human, it’s about personalisation, connectivity and conversation. Read the rest of "Social Media Marketing, It’s Christmas Every Day"
Posted by Heather Buckley in News, Social Media on December 20th, 2011| No Comments »
Image by gnuckx on flickr
If you are regularly guest blogging and publishing content in order to get quality back-links and provide fresh content for your website, then we think you are doing a great service for your SEO and Social Media strategy.
After the lastest Google freshness update, content marketing has become the most powerful weapon in your artillery, the most respected authorities in the world of SEO are all agreed on this one. Looking for the best and most popular posts on the web is a must if you want to keep up with what’s hot and what’s popular (this is all important for those vital media shares) but what is acceptable and what amounts to simple plagiarism? It’s not just a moral dilema, Google will penalise duplicate content.
If you need more help with your SEO and social media then we offer some great deals on SEO Training, Google Analytics courses and social media training. Below Christopher Fielden, a published author, offers his opinions on the subject of plagiarism - all in his own words!
Plagiarism Definition
If you nick someone else’s idea and pretend it is your own, that’s plagiarism.
Inspiration Definition
If you see something which tickles your imagination enough to write an original story, that’s inspiration.
Examples of the Differences Between Plagiarism & Inspiration
If you went to see Lord of the Rings in the cinema and then decided it ‘inspired’ you to write a book about Rodeo Shaggins and his landscape designer, Jan-Flys Ganges, who discover a magical toe ring which has been imbued with the wrath of the dark lord Flower-on and will bring an end to all that is peaceful by covering the land with the unholy stench of ghastly garlic gases unless the ring is transported across Middle Birth and thrown into the fiery belly of Mount Bloom, that is stealing someone else’s ideas. That is plagiarism.
Read the rest of "Why Inspiration Should Never Party With Plagiarism"
Posted by Heather Buckley in New Free Resources, News, SEO, Social Media on November 21st, 2011| No Comments »
Yesterday, Google unveiled Business Pages for Google+, a feature they’ve been promising for months. At first only a handful of businesses were able to create a page but it now seems (at least for us!) that Google have opened up business pages to the public and business pages are springing up left, right and centre.
Before you do anything else – circle our page on Google+ by clicking this button:
Google+ Business Page Layout
Here’s how our brand new Google+ business page looks:
As the page is similar to a personal profile you can use our guide to pimping your Google+ profile on business pages too. Make sure you stand out from the crowd!
The business page concept will be very familiar to those who use Facebook Pages. Even the way you switch between personal and business profiles with a drop down menu is straight from Facebook: Read the rest of "Google+ Business Pages Comprehensive Guide"
Posted by Heather Buckley in Google+, News, Social Media on November 8th, 2011| 1 Comment »
Facebook has officially announced the new Facebook Profile changes that will radically change the way we see and use Facebook. They demonstrated it earlier this week at the f8 conference.
Update: Due to an attempted law suit by Chicago-based Timelines.com Facebook have postponed the launch of Facebook timeline. Timelines.com’s plea for a temporary restraining order has been denied by a federal judge but Facebook have agreed to hold back on a full timeline launch until the parties meet in court on Tuesday. Interestingly the case has revealed that as of Friday over 1 million Facebook users have used the developer workaround to get the timeline early with 100-200 thousand extra sign ups per day.
The “Timeline” interface is more than just a surface redesign of the Facebook Profile.
The Timeline begins by showing users images in order of date. Newest information is presented in a Ticker on profile page, including “stories” about games that users have played, music listened to from Spotify and films watched from Netflix.
Below you can see Andy’s profile after he installed the preview:
Andy's Facebook Timeline in action.
Sean Corcoran a research analyst from Forrester called it “word of mouth on steroids”.
“This won’t look like the behavioural data some of us are used to in the display advertising market but eventually it could be even better if activity patterns are included – simply because it can be more relevant. Just imagine Ticketmaster sending you a custom offer for Radiohead tickets for you and your friend because you listened to their music together.”
Will timelines help Facebook regain it’s lead as the preferred Social Networking site?
Chris Saad, Echo co-founder, said after the announcement:
“Before f8 it was clear that Google+ was 1 or 2 years behind FB. Now they are 3 or 4,”
He went on to say that Facebook wields the ultimate “attention management platform” online.
Google have been the master data collectors for years, (see Why Google will rule the World). Sean Corcoran points out that Facebook enhanced user engagement data will provide more detail about a user’s content, behaviour and tastes over several years. I think that it’s good that Facebook have decided to do something radically different from Google+, it will become more about using both in different ways than about using one or the other.
Whilst Timeline is not yet available to everyone, we have found a quick fix for those not afraid of a bit of tech jiggery pokery there is an early preview available for developers. Don’t blame me if you don’t know what you are doing though.
How to install Timeline on your Facebook account:
- Click this link https://developers.facebook.com/apps
- Click on +Create New App
- Add the App display name and namespace, call it anything you like.
- The next page shows the App ID and Secret and other details.
- Click on Open Graph on the left sidebar
- Simply define what your dummy app is capable of, like ‘Making my first App’ and click Get Started
- The next page allows you to select Action Types
- Scroll down and click Save Changes and Next
- The next page allows you to select Time Aggregrations, scroll down and click Save and Finish.
Go you! You have created a dummy Facebook app using Open Graph.
Now when you visit your Facebook profile, Facebook will give you the option to switch to Timeline view.
If you need help to sharpen your skills in SEO, Social Media, Google Analytics, JavaScript, or Web Design take a look at the courses.
Posted by Heather Buckley in Facebook Tips and Tricks, Google+, News, Social Media on September 26th, 2011| 3 Comments »
Android takes over the world
Smartphones now dominate the mobile market – IDC expects nearly 1B smartphones to ship in 2015. They recently published a press release stating that smartphones outstrip feature phones for first time in Western Europe.
Is your website ready for mobile? If not, take a look at our our new 1-day Mobile Web Design Training course and comprehensive 5-day Mobile Web Design Course Package
Once you have your website fully optimised, consider building an app for your business. iPhone apps alone are expected to produce $15.1 billion revenue in 2011 so make sure you receive a part of this with our iOS 5 App Training course.
Android is growing faster than ever (nice one Google) and is the undisputed King of mobile OS today. I have already written about how google is taking over the world, now they have an even greater stronghold on the fastest growing industry today – Mobile. Just looking at our own web stats in Google Analytics, comparing the last two months of web traffic from mobile mobile users with last years stats, you can see this happening:
- Mobile Visitors are up 230%
- iPhone users are up 148%
- Android users are up 465%
Whilst with only a small screen, designs must be kept simple the capabilites of the latest smartphones provide lots of opportunites for createtive design and development ideas.
Anyone with a background in web design is capable of producing a working mobile website, there is simply a new set of rules for mobile phone optimisation. Read the rest of "Mobile Web Design – What web developers need to know"
Posted by Heather Buckley in Mobile App Development, News, Web Design on September 26th, 2011| 17 Comments »
