Creative Agency Secrets

The topic of search engine optimisation (SEO) and google rankings seems to be front of mind this week.  Two of my clients have mentioned the need to do it, revise it or improve on it.

Agencies are now setting up specifically to advise on SEO and of course this is a license for a long term relationship with customers who have to keep coming back for more as the Google algorithm changes over time [invest now….?!]

Anyway, nice article  from the SEOmoz Blog about the key factors involved A Little Piece of the Google Algorithm Revealed .

The main parts are: Key Words, Domain Strength, Inbound LInks, User Data and Content Quality.

Well we could have guessed that…. but here are some things that you can use to check your website is up to scratch on these basic hygiene factors.  For the technically minded the Search Enging Ranking Factors article provides the techhie fix. (or send it to your web designers).

KW Usage Factors:

• KW in title tag
• KW in header tags
• KW in document text
• KW in internal links pointing to the page
• KW in domain and/or URL

Domain Strength

• Registration history
• Domain age
• Strength of links pointing to the domain
• Topical neighborhood of domain based on inlinks & outlinks
• Historical use & links pattern to domain

Inbound Link Score

• Age of links
• Quality of domains sending links
• Quality of pages sending links
• Anchor text of links
• Link quantity/weight metric (Pagerank or a variation)
• Subject matter of linking pages/sites

User Data

• Historical CTR to page in SERPs
• Time users spend on page
• Search requests for URL/domain
• Historical visits/use of URL/domain by users GG can monitor (toolbar, wifi, analytics, etc.)

Content Quality Score

• Potentially given by hand for popular queries/pages
• Provided by Google raters (remember Henk?)
• Machine-algos for rating text quality/readability/etc

Leading to…GoogScore = (KW Usage Score * 0.3) + (Domain
Strength * 0.25) + (Inbound Link Score * 0.25) + (User Data * 0.1)
+ (Content Quality Score * 0.1) + (Manual Boosts) - (Automated &
Manual Penalties)

Rowing on the Web this month

A great dialogue sparked by Kate who was warned by her
dentist to cut down on sugary drinks and is concerned that she drinks 2 litres
of squash and Lucozade while training per day.

And it includes some insight into what extreme marathon runners
who run the

Sahara

use – Honey and rice water!

And what the real contents of Lucozade Sport and Lucozade
Energy are – high calorie sugar water!

[for those too busy to read it, the net advice is drink water
and use a banana for carbs instead].Kate’s teeth problem

I love Lewis PR’s blog - mix of fun and business (a bit like this one, I hope!)
They just published a YouTube Top 5 which had me in stitches….

Clearly, for a serious company, they still find time to watch stuff in the lunch hour.
Keep it up, Chris!

Article published today in Business Startup website Startups.co.uk  on why Small Businesses are failing to capitalise on the opportunities offered by Blogs.

Research from online hosting provider Fasthosts has found that
nearly half of small business believe using a blog to encourage traffic
to their website would increase sales, yet a mere 3% of those polled
said they plan to launch one.

The study also found that over a quarter of small firm said
they need a blog to be updated daily to ensure that potential customers
return to their website.

“In today’s hyper-competitive market, blogs provide a fantastic
way for small businesses to differentiate themselves through
personalising their website and attracting more customers,” said Andrew
Michael, chief executive officer at Fasthosts.

“The corporate blogs of large companies are bound by corporate
guidelines and gatekeepers, so for small businesses there is far
greater opportunity for interesting comment and genuine dialogue with
customers.”

However, just over a third of respondents said that as long as
the blog was informative and interesting, it didn’t matter to them how
regularly it was updated.

So, some mis-conceptions there compared to reality.  Check out the business blog rules search I did Business Blog Rules and decide for yourself what works for your organisation.

Blogger Ergo Sum!

Back from a conference week…. blimey it sure takes time to get back to the grindstone when you’ve been out of the office for a while.

Anyway - interesting reading from McKinsey…..Sustained Organisation Improvements
If you want to get sustained improved performance you have to perform well on a wide range of management initiatives. And that they can be initiated concurrently; the major gains come from complementarities between practices.

• The carrots and sticks of incentives appear to be the least
  effective of the four options commonly used to motivate and encourage
  employees to perform well and stay with a company.
• Applied
  in isolation, KPIs and similar control mechanisms (such as performance
  contracts) are among the least satisfactory options for improving
  accountability.
• Relying on a detailed strategy and plan is far from the most fruitful way to set a company’s direction.
• Command-and-control
  leadership—the still-popular art of telling people what to do and then
  checking up on them to see that they did it—is among the least
  effective ways to direct the efforts of an organization’s people.

Baseline, here’s what Mckinsey suggests
"Accountability, clear direction setting, and a strong culture as the
main foundations of a high-performing company. These outcomes underpin
high levels of organizational performance."

And here’s how the senior team can do it
"Senior executives must provide for clear roles within a structure
matched to the needs of the business (accountability), articulate a
compelling vision of the future (direction), and develop an environment
that encourages openness, trust, and challenge (culture). Each of these
practices, the data tells us, works best in relation to a specific
outcome, but applied in combination they produce much more dramatic
results, for they have a mutually reinforcing dynamic. Increasing the
amount of effort behind any one practice increases the likelihood of
achieving not only its target outcome but also the other target
outcomes, thus making organizations more effective overall."

There is also a useful summary of management and organisational practices at the end of the article.

Easy really!