In this first session of the brilliant Brighton SEO, we were lucky enough to get the opportunity to hear some ex-Google employees answer questions posed by the audience.
Hearing details about Google’s processes straight from the horse’s mouth is like gold-dust to SEOs but for an up-to-date understanding of the direction that the industry is headed, you can’t beat our Mobile SEO Course!
Google Team Structure
First up they were asked about the structure of the teams at Google.
The teams are split into algorithmic and manualsearch engineers. The algorithmic side take a big-picture approach while the manual side (in which our ex-Googlers were working) take a more detailed and case-specific approach.
Last night Facebook announcedFacebook Graph Search, putting to rest the many rumours surrounding the cryptic launch event in Los Angeles.
These rumours included Facebook Mobile & an external search engine, but the most popular rumour turned out to be spot on – Facebook has radically overhauled their internal search function in a move that should frighten other social networks, traditional search engines and privacy advocates alike.
There are already tons of posts about the new search function and very few people have access yet (you can sign up for beta here), so instead we are going to focus on how brands (and individuals) can optimise to appear higher and more frequently in search results. One of those lucky few to get early access was Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land, so head over there for a full run down of how Facebook Graph Search works.
It’s very interesting that Facebook is the first social network to bring out a search engine like this. On our SEO courses and social media workshops we emphasise how you can use social media to help rank better in search engines, maybe now we’ll have to include a section on using SEO to rank better in social networks!
How Does Visibility Work with Facebook Graph Search?
Mark Zuckerberg may claim that Graph Search isn’t a direct competitor to Google, but it’s still a search engine and so there will always be ways to rank higher. Facebook have managed to produce something that Google have been working on for a while – an Internet of Things. Instead of a database of web pages, they have a database of information on things – likes, photos, businesses, people, jobs, locations and many more – and can distinguish between these items.
Your visibility rests on how your business is connected to searchers – the more of their friends have connected with you, the more visible you are in their search results. But this can be just one of many factors affecting your visibility, including:
Total number of likes
Total number of check-ins
The level of engagement on your page
How often people talk about your business
The frequency that people check in/ engage
The recency of check-ins/ engagement
Your location
Your potential reach (are your likes/check-ins just local or are people coming from further afield?)
There are likely to be many more I haven’t thought of, and the impact of each is determined by the type of search performed.
If a searcher is looking for businesses their friends like, then that will be the major factor. If they’re looking for businesses in their area then total likes and of course location will have more of an impact.
But it’s not just friends! You can search using an overwhelming number of factors. My favourite example of this is again from Danny Sullivan – “Search for Restaurants run by employees of a particular cooking school”. So it’s not just about number of connections, but about the type and value of those connections. Read the rest of "Optimising Business Pages for Facebook Graph Search"
Today we’re at the first Content Marketing Show at Conway Hall in London enjoying a day dedicated to content marketing, now linked closely to SEO and social. Throughout the day we’ll be writing up our favourite talks and getting them up on the blog as quick as possible!
First up was Philip Sheldrake, who believes we’re all influential, even if most of the room didn’t think they were when asked (except one brave soul at the front).
If you don’t feel influential, then consider that we are more influenced by 150 of our nearest and dearest than by the other 7 billion people in the world combined. So you’re influential after all!
Going back 100 years, Philip took us through a history of content, from early newspapers up to the modern day which he describes as thousands of monkeys churning out words. Reminds me of a few guest post requests we’ve received…
Something a lot of marketers will agree with is that you can’t ‘do’ viral content, no matter how much a client or stakeholder wants you to. Things either go viral or don’t, it’s up to us to look at what does go viral and what doesn’t and work out what can be repeated to make viral more likely. But you can’t just make something go viral.
You must be looking at content outcome metrics – how has content helped the business? This is needed to communicate the benefits of content to those not in content – saying tweets have increased by 3 times in the past years doesn’t help anyone.
Highlighting a growing trend, not all content marketing is ‘human-to-human’, machined media has growing potential influence. Content sourced, presented and published by machines for humans. Think the BBC Olympics coverage – all auto-generated, but humans interacted with it by reading, sharing and engaging with it.
This new approach could be a possible way of producing content for businesses who don’t believe they have the resources to generate enough human created content.
Actionable takeaways:
Content should be for humans and for machines
You can’t ‘do’ viral, it either happens or doesn’t
If your site(s) aren’t sticking to those rules, then look back to the first print out – “Google doesn’t own you anything”. Read the first few lines very carefully:
“Even if you choose not to implement any of these suggestions, we strongly encourage you to pay very close attention to the “Quality Guidelines,” which outline some of the illicit practices that may lead to a site being removed entirely from the Google index or otherwise impacted by an algorithmic or manual spam action.”
If you break the guidelines, you risk a penalty.
You may be wondering why we’ve chosen to publish such seemingly obvious advice, especially as the guidelines have been around for years and years. It’s something we teach on our SEO courses, and seems to be common sense.
The reason is articles like this and comments like this that essentially boil down to individuals and companies who are either venting their anger or seeking damages against Google.
Read through the other comments on that second post to get an idea of the anger felt towards Google by large portions of the search industry. So why is everyone so angry? Read the rest of "Google Doesn’t Owe You Anything"
Recently, while testing out some new titles and markup for our Photoshop courses using Google’s Rich Snippet Testing Tool, I was surprised to notice a new addition to the preview:
This will be a familiar sight to those who have marked up their blogs with rel=author already, which we highly recommend. Author info in SERPs is highly visible and many sites (big and small) are seeing a marked increase in click through since implementing author markup. Pages with author markup look similar in the testing tool but usually show the author info on the left of the result in SERPs:
As yet, I haven’t found any example of Publisher information appearing in SERPs but if Google is showing it in Rich Snippets previews it can only be a matter of time before they go live.
On Friday 13th April, 1000 SEOs from around the world for BrightonSEO 2012. The event was a real success with a huge range of topics covered, some arguments started and a good time had by all. On Friday we wrote up the ‘Ask the Engines’ discussion panel but now that we’ve had the weekend to digest the day in full and watch back the videos of all the talks. As there is so much to cover we have split our round up into three parts – the morning session, afternoon session and 20×20 presentations. We have now also added a write up and discussion of James Carson’s Author Rank 20×20.
We have decided to do a BrightonSEO Round Up with a difference: for each and every talk we have picked out 5 Key Takeaways. These are a mix of the most actionable, quotable or jaw dropping points made by the speakers at BrightonSEO 2012.
It was certainly a great way to start the day with a chance for SEOs to ask their questions to the people that matter – Bing and Google. Answering questions and trying to stoke a heated debate were:
SEO will never die but is always evolving. (Pierre Far) SEOs are like magicians, they have skills that are alien to the rest of the world and must keep it that way, always staying one step ahead. (Dave Coplin)
Stop complaining about penalisation, if you stick to the Webmaster Guidelines, you won’t be punished. Try and be white hat, not matter how tempting paid links are. (Pierre Far)
Speed of sharing is a big social signal for Bing – perhaps even more important than number of fans. Buying likes and fans has little benefit as there is no guarantee they will share your content.
Rich media is probably a ranking factor (Martin MacDonald) but it ‘doesn’t matter if it’s a ranking factor’ – SEO is not a checklist, signals should come naturally. (Pierre Far)
Bing believes that Google really are just trying to protect user privacy with encrypted search. The 1000 SEOs in attendance believe otherwise.
As you can tell from those takeaways, the panel touched on some controversial points regarding paid links, social sharing and whether Google likes SEO or not.
Make sure you read our full write of the ‘Ask the Engines’ panel at Brighton SEO for a more in-depth insight into what Google and Bing are looking for from SEOs.
Google handles 80% of European web searches, according to ComScore, compared to 65% in the US. Does this give Google a Monopoly over search – and more importantly the advertising revenue that search engines attract?
It’s impossible not to consider Google as a marketing professional. Google is the main search engine we look at on our 1-day SEO course and as the most popular paid search tool we only offer AdWords courses.We also run beginners and advanced Google Analytics training for measuring your campaigns.
This week there has been a enquiry by the European Commission into three separate allegations that Google’s ‘so called’ democratic style search is being adapted by Google. They claim that Google are demoting competing websites in favour of their own services in the search results. Google will sometimes insert links into results offering its own specialist services – news, price comparison, maps or book search. Competitors claim this diverts traffic away from rival services.
The commission has sent out questionnaires seeking information about complaints from a British vertical search company called Foundem, a French legal search engine called eJustice and the shopping site, Ciao, which is owned by Microsoft.
Many SEO and Search companies will be rejoicing in the fact that the commission is taking the issue seriously. This enquiry should shake up Google – who will be aware that the commission has previously levied huge financial penalties on Microsoft and Intel in recent years for using tactics to squash competing software.
Google is claiming that the attack has been orchestrated by Microsoft, which recently merged its search business with Yahoo’s in an effort to challenge Google. They have pointed out Microsoft’s interest in Foundem - which is part of a trade grouping sponsored by Microsoft called the “Initiative for a Competitive Online Marketplace” – and also their ownership of Ciao. Read the rest of "Google Monopoly Questioned By the European Commission"
Today we’re at the first 
