Blogs
In the run up to Black Friday, when there’s a notorious spike in retail sales with shoppers making their Christmas purchases, we decided to take a look at the ecommerce landscape and how it looks to be affected by the burgeoning phenomenon that is social commerce.
October saw the biggest month in Microsoft history, with a number of high profile releases and the culmination of many years of product development which has reshaped Microsoft from the software giant of old, into a devices and services company looking to the future with their bold new design philosophy. They’re so serious about their new focus, that they’ve even updated the title tag of their website to reflect this.
Over the weekend I got the usual few dozen spam emails from foreign SEO companies wanting to do some SEO for us. If the emails make it past our spam filter I sometimes read them just to see what they are saying.
Recently I’ve seen these emails starting to sound more and more legitimate and it’s reached the stage where the only thing that a layman would notice is the fact the language isn’t native English and they are emailing from a gmail address most of the time.
The email below talks about all the same things that an SEO agency might talk about in a pitch from domain authority to anchor text variation and even link strategies that are Penguin safe – the difference is that if you were to hire the agency below you will get a definite penalty from Google.
One interesting (and very common) misconception is the one explaining that Penguin causes traffic to drop because sites linking to you were hit by Penguin. This isn’t correct at all – Penguin didn’t devalue links it just penalised sites that had been engaging in overly aggressive optimisation tactics.
They even talk about measuring domain authority using Open Site Explorer which is great apart from the bit where they want to build links on DA 15+ sites which is pretty low.
Our advice is to always ignore emails like this and never work with a company unless you are 100% sure they are reputable. Most of the penalties Google has handed out recently are due to people outsourcing their link-building to spammy companies outside the UK.
Hello
With frequent search engine algorithm updates like Panda, penguin in Google,link building has become even more critical.But we can use effective ways of creating authority links for enhanced link building results
Ranking or Traffic drop in the webmaster tools graph is not due to the penalty sometimes but rather due to value of links which were being or has been discounted.
This is why Google has begun saying that Penguin isn’t a penalty but rather just an algorithmic change,where the algorithm is detecting low quality links or votes and not counting them. If you were a site with a lot of low links or votes, then you’re going to be hit harder than sites that have only a few of them among all the legitimate ones.
“Put your focus on building good quality links rather than trying to fix all of your crappy ones. Eventually, you’ll have a higher ratio, and you’ll get rewarded”
Link building criteria we follow to avoid spammy tactics that can be harmful after panda and penguin
• Domain Authority
After Google Penguin update, to build high quality authority links, we have made a database of quality websites for linking and all sites has been added with checking domain authority from http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/.
• Anchor Text variation
You can use the Junk Anchor text for link if required.After latest Google updates, you should try building your link profile with Junk/universal anchors, Naked URLs, and Branded Anchors texts.We are offering Post Penguin Services to gain high quality links to your web site, All our packages are based to submit in sites which have Domain Authority of 15+ in http://www.opensiteexplorer.org
So if you would be interested please email me back. I will send you some packages along with price.
Hope to have a positive response soon from you
Thanks and Regards,
Thomas
Microformats (microdata, rich snippets, and RDFa) have been around for sometime. They are the basic building blocks of the “semantic web” – formats that make it possible to create meta-content which can be understood by machines. In this post, I’ll be going over the basics of what microformats are and what they’re used for.
It’s official: President Barack Obama will continue his journey on the long, steep road to recovery with America for four more years after brushing aside Republican candidate Mitt Romney in the 2012 US Election.
With blocks and bricks in his callused hands, Obama built a modern campaign that yet again relied heavily on the power of social media to keep his Democratic administration in the White House.
Social media delivers hope
If 2008’s US election was the most prolifically ‘social’ political event ever, this year was something else. It has famously been the most expensive election campaign ever, totalling $2 billion, with both candidates harnessing every resource available in their race to the White House.
Let’s take a quick look at how they have harnessed the ever-growing potential of social media over the course of their campaigns:
With the ever-increasing popularity of smart phones and mobile devices, it’s essential to consider the use of them in your digital and online marketing strategies, because not doing so could cut out a massive proportion of your potential audience.
The use of mobile devices also has a big part to play on the SEO side of things, certainly factoring in local search intent. Recently, we’ve been asked a lot about the best approach for working with smart phones, so with regards to developing a mobile presence, here are the three key approaches we use to deliver the content:
Friday 30th November
Our brand new calendar of Brunch with Branded3 sessions launches this month with an hour’s long Google+ Hangout led by SEO industry experts Patrick Altoft and Tim Grice.
We’re giving the chance for up to nine Google+ users to take part in the Hangout and get their SEO questions answered by Patrick and Tim, and we’ll also be taking questions live from those watching.
Our first Brunch with Branded3 session is at 11:30am on Friday 30th November, and all you need to do to be involved is send over your burning SEO question to brunch@branded3.com, and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.
If you’re not participating in the Hangout however, don’t forget you can watch the session live as it happens on our Google+ page, and you can still be in with a chance of getting your question answered by commenting right there on our G+ page, by tweeting us, by emailing us, or by commenting on our Facebook wall.
So, if you can’t wait to get involved on Friday 30th November and you have an SEO question, send it on over to brunch@branded3.com, and we’ll see you for a spot of brunch at the end of the month!
Earlier this week, the Royal British Legion revealed plans for an innovative way for Twitter and Facebook users to get involved in this year’s Remembrance Sunday by instigating a two-minute social silence.
Update 14/11/12: Well, as I predicted (not that I’m gloating or anything …) it appears as though Comet has lost a lot of visibility this week for its terms.
Since my original post, Comet has been moving about which pages are displaying, originally a splash page on another domain was being used to inform users of the situation. Currently, a subdomain on comet.co.uk is being used to display legal notices.
Comet no longer ranks in the top 200 for washing machines, cookers or dishwasher where it did rank p1 before. It could well be that some of the rankings have transferred to the new subdomain which search metrics hasn’t picked up at the moment, but unfortunately Google is already losing trust in the domain.
We’ll keep an eye on the situation so keep coming back for regular updates.
Fake blood and white face paint aplenty, the Branded3 team have truly embraced Halloween and come to work today in all their gory glory!
Yep, the sight of a giant pumpkin in a wig sat typing and a zombie receptionist making tea is definitely one for the Branded3 memory bank, but just so you can all see our spooky efforts (and so we can forever be reminded of this surreal day) here’s a few snaps of our scary costumes:
It’s that time of the year again, and with the launch of Windows 8, Microsoft has brought their dashboard for Xbox 360 in-line with their other offerings.
So, lets look at some of the highlights:
We swapped our lively office in Leeds last Thursday for the luxurious Cumberland Hotel in London for the annual Chartered Institute of Marketing National conference, which boasted an itinerary packed full of marketing insights and advice from the most experienced and skilful marketers in the country.
Based around a theme of ‘Survive, Adapt, Thrive’; talks at the conference focused on the continuous struggle marketing teams face in the wake of the economic crisis, and increasing expectations from superiors who want everything ‘quicker, cheaper, better.’
As marketing enthusiasts, the CIM conference gave us the chance to keep our finger on the pulse of the marketing industry, giving us a better understanding of the challenges facing it, and more excitingly, the ways in which we can change and evolve to maximise our efforts and ultimately deliver better results.
All too often, brands involve agencies without a clear goal in mind and equally want more KPI’s than is necessary for indicating performance. In terms of SEO, brand marketing is something which is only coming in front of people this year now that the Penguin update has finally caught up with dodgy quick-win tactics.
We feel that quite often, outreach is overlooked as part of a brand’s messaging strategy, and equally brands are not using the value (20% according to Mike Ashton) of their brand to successfully impact their SEO.
So, after surplus amounts of coffee (and a few sneaky biscuits…) it was over to Anne Godfrey, the recently appointed Chief Executive of the CIM, to set the scene for the theme and structure of the day, and to introduce the much-anticipated speakers. With a wealth of experience and plenty of anecdotal advice; much of what the speakers told us was valuable guidance, but here are just a few of our best bits of the day, and the quotes which really stood out for us:
Latest from B3Labs
- Another milestone reached for Branded3 as it’s acquired by the
St Ives Group - The latest media consumer findings & what they mean for digital marketers
- Talk to Branded3 at @BuyYorkshire in Leeds next week!
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