Blogs

Earlier this month the Guardian claimed that Google “has tired of its old friend SEO and is instead cosying-up to the new kid on the block, content marketing.” SEO is still a friend to Google and one it can’t live without, no matter how much it thinks it can…and content marketing is no “new kid on the block” – it’s just new on the search engine circuit.

Despite the author of the Guardian article (Jonathan Piggins of DBD Media) suggesting that “SEO now requires a much more varied skill set…something more akin to high quality writing and PR,” this is not necessarily the truth. Search engines still want to rank sound websites and plenty of massive brands would benefit more from some canonical tags on their website than a content marketing strategy that amounts to the same bill.

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The social scene was busy across the board this week with buyouts, upgrades, new functions and even a chance for a little social media flutter. Here’s our round-up of the social highlights from the last 7 days:

Yahoo! buys Tumblr

• Details –  Interactive blog platform Tumblr has been bought out by multi-faceted web giant Yahoo!
• What does this mean? – There is a lot behind the move in terms of revenue for Yahooo! You can read more about the acquisition in our full blog post from Tuesday.

Ladbrokes gives odds on the next Yahoo! buy out

• Details –  In a tongue in cheek entry, UK betting giant Ladbrokes have issued odds for the next company Yahoo! are expected to buy out.

 
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That’s right; those of us brave enough in B3 Towers are taking on the challenge of the Leeds 10k on Sunday 14^th July to raise money for a local cause, the Jane Tomlinson Appeal.

We love a good challenge here and with just seven weeks to go until the big day; we’re getting healthy at the office and donning our running shoes.

Nineteen members of the team have signed up to the run so far, and with your support and donations; you could spur us on to complete the full 10k. Plus, your money will go towards a fantastic cause.

The Jane Tomlinson Appeal was set up by the late amateur athlete and fundraiser Jane Tomlinson CBE in 2002, and offers support and funds for children’s and cancer charities.

Leeds-born Jane Tomlinson captured the hearts of the nation in the years before her tragic death as she defied all odds to complete many arduous challenges to raise money for charity, all whilst battling terminal cancer.

Her determination has inspired the country, and her legacy; the Leeds 10k ‘Run For All’ has attracted thousands of fundraisers in the six years it’s taken place.

Since her death in 2007, the Jane Tomlinson Appeal has continued to raise millions of pounds for local charities such as the Martin House Hospice and Yorkshire Cancer Centre, so if you sponsor us today, you can be assured your money is helping to support some of the most deserving and inspiring causes in Yorkshire.

So if you’d like to show your support for this worthy appeal and donate today, we promise to try our very best to run the whole 10k as fast as we can, and to brighten your Monday morning after the event with some hilarious action shots!

So the web spam team at Google have finally pulled their finger out and unleashed a world of hurt on link spammers with Penguin 2.0. I was in two minds when thinking about putting this post together, a) because it’s too early to fully understand the impact, and b) I didn’t want to regurgitate the same thing as everybody else out there.

If you have been living on a desert island for the past two years and know nothing about Penguin, you can read up on it here and here. The main takeaways:

1 – The new version of Penguin is more aggressive

2 – It targets lower level pages of a site and not just the top level.

You might want to watch this again as well:

What I really wanted to do was go over some of the trends we are seeing, and what you can do if you are being badly affected by the updates.

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Have you ever seen this message in your Google webmaster tools?

If you have, you’ll know about the panic that ensues. Maybe you know you’ve done some link-building in the past that’s outside of Google’s guidelines, or perhaps you hired an SEO firm which wasn’t honest with their link-building tactics.

Either way, these links have to come down.

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We’ve talked before about link devaluation and from what we can see the pattern is still going strong five months later. Pretty much every week since the end of November, Google has devalued large numbers of links of one type or another resulting in brands losing positions gradually week after week for months.

One of the biggest devaluations Google has done was last week, shortly after Matt Cutts tweeted about taking action on a major link seller network.

In fact, we took action on several thousand linksellers in a paid-link-that-passes-PageRank network earlier today.

— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) May 15, 2013

Searchmetrics has not updated this week yet but when it does you will see lots of sites taking a big decline, we tend to monitor dozens of sites every week that we have noticed to have a spammy link profile but that were not hit by any penalties in the past year or so. Loads of these were wiped out at the end of last week by link devaluation.

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Image http://www.digitaltrends.com

In case you hadn’t heard, multi-national internet corporation Yahoo! has acquired content creation platform Tumblr in a billion dollar deal yesterday that not only sent any other start-up owner into an envious dither over the 26-year-old billionaire’s new fortune, but left the rest of us pondering Yahoo!’s long-term strategy.

This is mainly a revenue generating exercise for Yahoo!, since being over taken by Google in terms of the online advertising go-to site, CEO Marissa Mayer has been searching for a sturdy foundation to strengthen Yahoo!’s otherwise crumbling content bastion in a constantly changing digital climate.

By tying down Tumblr’s giant audience; a collective monthly page view number of 17.5 billion; Yahoo! had this to say,

“The two companies will work together to create advertising opportunities that are seamless and enhance the user experience.”

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From time to time, members of the SEO community will publicly ask: “does X tactic still work?”

Cue people from all ends of the colour spectrum (that’s black to white) throwing their hat into the ring and proclaiming that Google has no right to do this; they’re still getting results from that; they expect everything to be less valuable in future and you should be on Google+ just to be safe, like that little red +1 on your website’s door will make Penguin walk on by like some sort of SEO Passover.

The question that gets asked far too rarely is: “should this tactic still work?” and, in the case of press releases, I’m not sure that answer is in the affirmative.

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The world of social media saw plenty of action last week with many updates but the Google I/O 2013 event in San Francisco seemed to have taken the main stage across the board in digital marketing industry so let’s take a look at what it was all about:

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We love our comedy here at Branded3, which is why we’re very excited today about the launch of YouTube’s first ever comedy week this weekend.

The online event kicks off with a global YouTube livestream, The Big Live Comedy Show, at 1am on Monday morning (5pm Pacific Time) and will continue for entire week, right up until Sat 25 May. You can also catch a pre-show an hour before the official launch.

Here’s a little word about the event from The Governor himself, Arnold Schwarzenegger!:

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B3 Towers is abuzz with excitement today as it has been announced that Branded3 has been acquired by the St Ives Group; the UK’s leading publishing and marketing solutions group; in what will prove to be a momentous step for our agency.

Adding to what has already been a fantastic year for us with the launch of our first London office and appointment of a new MD, David Crawford; this strategic move further boosts our agency towards achieving our ambitious growth plans.

So what does this mean for Branded3? Well, not much on the face of it, we’ll still operate independently as a standalone business led by the existing senior management team of CEO Vin Chinnaraja, Director of Search Patrick Altoft and Managing Director David Crawford.

This means that our insight-focused and innovative culture built up over the last decade will still remain. There’ll be no changes to the team structure, day-to-day running of the company or the office locations.

Put simply, this exciting move gives us an extra push towards our vision; to be the ‘go-to’ agency for Fortune 500 companies.

Plus, we’re in great company; St Ives Group owns an impressive portfolio of marketing companies, and so the acquisition generates a lot of opportunities for Branded3 to collaborate with some truly forward-thinking businesses.

One man whose excitement resonates through the entire team is Branded3 CEO Vin Chinnaraja, who had this to say:

“I am really proud of my team and what they have helped Patrick and me to achieve.  The success of Branded3 is really a credit to them. 

“We are focused on being the best and doing the best for our clients and the support of St Ives will strengthen our mission here for both existing and new clients.”

Patrick Altoft shares Vin’s delight and commented:

“This exciting move means that we can continue to grow and expand both in the UK and internationally, whilst still retaining our known and well-respected reputation in the industry.

“Reaching this major milestone is testament to what our team has achieved, and we can’t wait to see what the future brings for our agency.”

So today is a significant day for Branded3 and all those working for it, as we move another step closer to world domination reaching our vision. We hope you’ll join us in celebrating this day and continue to support Branded3 as we approach an exciting future.

On Friday 31^st May, armed forces charity Scotty’s Little Soldiers will be attempting to break the world record for the longest game of rugby union at Leicester Tigers stadium, lasting a staggering 25 hours.

Two squads of 22 players – the armed forces Tri Services team and Scotty’s team – will be taking to the home ground of Premiership rugby team, Leicester Tigers, on Friday 31^st May to battle it out on the pitch until the next day; and Branded3 will be right behind them!

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