In February this year, Mark Zuckerberg posted this photo to his Facebook profile. Have a look at the MacBook and the Facebook page it displays. Can you make out what appears to be the first sign of a revamped functionality – an elongated search box?
There have been many blog posts and articles written on the subject since. Most make the reasonable conclusion that Facebook’s developments in search, and SERPs, will be limited to the walls of its own site. This is fuelled by strong rumours that appear to stem from within the Facebook camp that say that Facebook is indeed working on a major improvement to its search, and that the project is lead by ex-Google engineer Lars Rasmussen. Rasmussen himself has expressed interest in the past about the link between social media and search.
Some, like the Daily Mail, have gone as far as to say that Facebook is trying to come up with a search engine to rival Google – which is almost certainly not true. What is certain is that Facebook’s priorities to date have not been in search. The existing search function is basic at best, frustrating at worst. A search for a company name gives you a mix of related pages and a jumbled mix of locations, current and ex-staff profiles, website ‘likes’ and mentions.
Custom variables allow you to get more details and tailored results Google Analytics, allowing you to define additional segments to apply to your visitors other than the ones already provided by Analytics.
Custom variables are taught as part of our Advanced Google Analytics Training course. If you are new to Analytics and think custom variables are a bit out of your depth then our beginners’ Google Analytics course may be better suited to your needs. Many of our delegates benefit for attending both the courses in tandem to get a complete picture of how to use Analytics and what it can do for their marketing campaigns.
We also offer our Google Analytics courses as part of an SEO package. Books with your choice of SEO, Social Media, Content Marketing, WordPress and Email Marketing courses to create your own custom 5 day training package and save over £500.
What is interesting to Google Analytics specialists is that Custom Variables allow you to set session level segments, which will stick to the visitor while they are active on the site, and page level segments, which correspond to pageviews and events on the site.
This allows you to get much more detailed with the information you’re gathering and storing in the custom variable. For example, you could separate different sections of the site by using the page level scope, or you could track if a visitor has completed a particular action during their session with the session level scope.
The different levels of interaction that can be used to find out more about your users behaviour are:
The Visitor; such as the browser or mobile phone operated by a person.
The Session; what happens during the period of time during which the visitor is active on the site.
The Page; activity on a page like a click on a movie button or an add to a shopping cart
Examples of when custom variables would be useful include:
Monitoring the actions of logged in users against logged out users
Monitoring the activity of different membership levels (paid, free, advanced etc.)
Categorising content by topic
Comparing new and existing users – which products did the look and how did they use the site.
Limitations of custom variables:
There are only 5 slots available to contain custom variables
A visitor takes up one slot forever
A session takes up another slot for the time spent on site
A page takes up slots page by page. The slot empties after a pageview.
To add custom variables you simply need to add some a new line to your existing GA tracking code.
Index (required) - Determines a custom variable slot. 5 slots are available, numbered 1-5. Single variables should be placed in single slots.
Name (required) - the name of the variable. this will appear in your Google Analytics reports when viewing custom variables.
Value (optional) - the value of the variable paired with name. For example, if the Name was ‘User-type’ then the value could be ‘regular-user;
Opt_Scope (optional) - a level within which a custom variable functions. You can assign the custom variable to three levels; 1 (visitor level), 2 (session-level) and 3 (page-level). If you leave this clear then Analytics will use the default level 3.
Here’s an example of custom variables in Google Analytics given by our trainer Nikki at BrightonSEO.
Recently, one social media campaign has found it hard to stay out of the news for all the wrong reasons. What started off as an attempt to raise awareness of worrying problems Africa soon spiralled into something very different. A lot has been written about what went wrong on the Kony 2012 campaign. However, there is a more light hearted story of social media success at the moment involving a pub in Southampton called The Hobbit.
We can learn two things from this story. Firstly that the internet makes it easier for rights holders to find copy right infringement, and secondly that social media can be a powerful weapon if wielded properly.
If you are looking to increase your presence on the web then we recommend our Social Media training and Content Marketing training courses. As well as teaching you how to use the tools at your disposal, the courses are also designed to help you create and manage a successful marketing strategy.
The Hobbit Pub, Southampton
Nestled in the shire of Bevois Valley, Southampton is The Hobbit pub, popular with students. It is a place I visited regularly as a University of Southampton student and is well known for its ‘Fellowship’ cocktails named after Lord of the Rings characters.
The pub has traded under the name The Hobbit for over 20 years and as well as the cocktails features Tolkein-inspired wall murals in the beer garden and a characters from the films on its signs and loyalty cards.
In the words of Tolkein it’s “Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it is a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.”
Saul Zaentz Company Sue The Hobbit
In early 2012, the pub received a letter from the Saul Zaentz Company (SZC) which owns the rights to several J.R.R. Tolkein associated brands. SZC asked The Hobbit to remove all reference to the characters in The Hobbit and Lord of The Rings.
At the time, landlady Stella Mary Roberts claimed:
“We were absolutely stunned. It was completely unexpected, we never intended to infringe anyone’s copyright. Are we doing any harm? I don’t think so. We’re bringing people to the books and the stories who haven’t heard of JRR Tolkien.”
“We don’t have the financial resources to fight it – I can’t fight Hollywood.”
Things seemed doomed for The Hobbit, but not for long. In stepped University of Southampton student Heather Cartwright and the power of social media.
Last week, at an SXSW panel called ‘Dear Google & Bing: Help Me Rank Better’, Matt Cutts of Google and Duane Forrester of Bing answered a question about what search engines do to help ’Mom and Pop’ sites compete against companies that spends thousands on SEO agencies. You can hear the full audio from the panel below, thanks Barry Schwartz at SE Round Table for posting it. Danny Sullivan was also fielding questions and is the third voice in the audio. Skip to around a third of the way in to hear Matt Cutts talking about the update.
The main questions on the ‘Mom and Pop’ topic were:
How does a small site with limited resources compete against a large company?
How does a White Hat SEO compete against a Black Hat SEO?
What are search engines doing about market saturation thanks to SEO?
As a result of these questions we gained a great insight into what Google and Bing plan to do this year with their algorithms regarding SEO, Social Media, and Content Marketing.
Don’t forget that BrightonSEO will soon be upon us! We hope to get a great insight into SEO in 2012 from the many speakers on the day. We are proud to be sponsoring the event this year so come to our stand to say hello if you have tickets. If you missed out (tickets sold out in 13 minutes!) then read our blog post on how to get the last few BrightonSEO tickets.
Google Search in 2012 – Over Optimisation Penalties
In an unprecedented move by Google, Matt Cutts announced a future algorithm change. This never happens, we normally receive an official update long after people have noticed the changes.
Asked what Google are doing to combat over optimisation, Cutts said:
Normally we don’t pre-announce changes but there is something we’ve been working on and in the next couple of months or so we hope to release it. The idea is to level the playing field for all those people who have been doing, for lack of a better word, over optimisation or overly doing their SEO compared to the people who are just making great content and trying to make a fantastic site. We try to make the GoogleBot smarter, we try to make our relevance more adaptive and we also start to look at the people who sort of abuse it, who throw too many keywords on the page or exchange way too many links or whatever they’re doing to go beyond what a normal person would expect. It is an active area where we have several engineers working on that right now.
Coming after recent changes which have seen personal and local search results become default on Google, this announcement is unlikely to go down well with a large portion of the SEO community – notably those who like it easy.
This guest post is from fellow Brighton business FDM. Digital marketing analyst Jonathan Verrall writes about his Top 5 Tools for SEO. Jonathan’s opening sentence also works in reverse: You may have the best SEO tools on the planet, but unless you know what you’re doing or why you are using them they will be useless. Combine the tools with strong SEO knowledge gained on our SEO Training course for search success and then attend our Social Media Workshop for a powerful skill set for internet marketing.
I believe a good search engine marketer is only as good as his tool-kit. My conclusion is based on one factor, admission to data! You may be the best SEO on the planet, but unless you’re able to access data about a given market, competitor or website you are currently optimising for, you may as well be taking a stab in the dark.
Each search engine marketer uses a different array of tools depending on what they originally learnt to use or what they feel are the most appropriate for the job.
Unfortunately, SEO tools don’t come cheap – this makes search engine optimisation rather difficult for freelance SEOs who don’t have a huge budget to spend on research purposes.
Fear not! There is an arsenal of FREE tools out there to help search engine marketer’s drive their online marketing campaigns forward without having to part with a single penny! Read the rest of "Top 5 Free SEO Tools"
As of March 30th, all Facebook business pages will switch to a new Timeline layout to personal profiles. This has been expected since Facebook first unveiled Timeline back in 2011 but nobody thought it would come so soon after the personal Timeline rolled out.
Although the changes will be mandatory from March 30th, businesses can preview and publish their Timeline right now!
Use this guide to ease yourself in to the new page layout and update your page accordingly. For a more comprehensive guide to social media marketing, come down to Brighton for Social Media Training. Book with SEO Training, Google Analytics Training and Content Marketing Training for a full week of internet marketing training and save money in the process.
For a more comprehensive look at the latest Facebook features and a free cover photo template use our Complete Facebook Timeline Guide.
Step by step guide to setting up Timeline for Facebook Businesses
From today, page owners will be greeted with this message when they log in to Facebook:
You have three options here:
Preview how your page will look (gives you a chance to get it looking right)
Publish the Timeline straight away (you can edit it afterwards)
Ignore it and hope it goes away (not a great idea for marketers!)
The first thing we noticed is a new admin area:
This is the new hub for business page owners for monitoring page performance and check recent activity. There are three tabs to get you started with improving your page before it goes live:
We recommend you spend a bit of time using the manage tab before the build audience tab so that you are inviting people to view a finished page. ‘Help’ is useful for learning about all the new features and how best to use them. The ‘Pages Product Guide’ is an 8 page guide written by Facebook and is well worth a read. Then you can begin editing how your page looks.
Our favourite SEO conference – BrightonSEO – is back! Bigger and stronger than ever before, BrightonSEO (April 13th 2012) sold out in under 13 minutes this year. But don’t fret! You can still get tickets by attending a BrightonSEO Workshop. Book now before all the places run out.
We always enjoy attending, participating in, and writing about BrightonSEO. This year we have decided to go a step further and sponsor the event!
As well as attending, we will be manning a stall at BrightonSEO so please come find us for a chat about search or to enquire about our training! We run many courses that would be advantageous to your marketing efforts, including our iPhone App Training and Android App Training courses. Mobile marketing is something that every digital marketer should get involved with, but few have the right skills.
BrightonSEO 2012
This year BrightonSEO is bigger and better than ever before – Kelvin has outdone himself. The event has moved to the Brighton Dome, upping the capacity to 1000 eager search marketers looking to learn from the search experts.
As well as the 16 talks there are also 5 workshops before the conference and a trip to the pub after.
Thanks to all of you who have entered our SEO Top Trumps competition so far. However, it seems to have got more of you talking rather than writing!
WIN UP TO £708 WORTH OF TRAINING!
So to give you the added impetus to flex your writing skills, we’ve decided to spice up our blogging competition with a new top prize! Now when you enter you don’t only have the chance to win one of 35 limited edition packs of SEO Trump cards you’ll be in with a chance to win a place on a scheduledtraining course in Brighton of your choosing! (maximum two days). Depending on what you choose to do that’s a prize value of up to £708. Not only that you still get your SEO Top Trumps pack! Also on offer is the promise to promote all of the best entries using our well subscribed social media accounts, and our many well ranked websites, all great for your SEO.
Now we know that many of you do not live in the UK, but if you want to visit a European city, you cannot get much better than Brighton for art, culture and night life. The winner however, must pay for travel and accommodation. Alternatively you can pass your prize on to a third party. We are very accommodating.
If you are desperate to know who made it into the top seo trumps look at the SEO circle we made on Google+, in fact if you are interested in SEO then it’s a good idea to add this to your existing circles, just click on the image or link to view this circle in Google+:
How to enter
The rules are the same; simply write a blog post. The post can be about anything so anyone can enter and the choices are practically endless! To be eligible for the competition all you have to do is include a link in your article to either:
Once you have written and put your post live on any site of your choosing let us know about it by emailing info@siliconbeachtraining.co.uk or tweeting a link to your post to @sbttraining with the message “My blogging competition entry” with the Hashtag #seotoptrumps.
Posts will be judged on:
How funny they are
How original they are
Number of Facebook Likes
How useful they are
By the amount of traffic their links receive
Number of +1’s on Google Plus
Number of Tweets and Retweets
Closing Date
The competition closing date is April 30th 2012.
What have you got to lose? Enter to be in with a chance of winning a delightful training and trumps combo! We will be promoting all 35 winning articles through our large social media followings, so you can grab some attention and traffic for yourself. So make sure you are following us on our Facebook and Twitter accounts to see who has entered and who gets any special mentions.
In February this year, Mark Zuckerberg posted this photo to his Facebook profile. Have a look at the MacBook and the Facebook page it displays. Can you make out what appears to be the first sign of a revamped functionality – an elongated search box?
The different levels of interaction that can be used to find out more about your users behaviour are:
In an unprecedented move by Google, Matt Cutts announced a future algorithm change. This never happens, we normally receive an official update long after people have noticed the changes.
We always enjoy attending, participating in, and writing about 
