While searching Google earlier today I was very surprised to notice that one of the listings returned in the top 10 was an FTP site! Digging a little deeper and I found that there are actually millions of ftp://ftp.domain.com addresses indexed in Google, all of which appear to have read access permissions granted to the [...]

Websites carrying sports news should use search engine optimisation (SEO) to boost their viewing figures, a new report suggests. A study conducted by JupiterResearch concludes sporty websites could become leading internet businesses, as the hardcore fans are “avid consumers” of online video. It asserts websites which rank highly in the search results are likely to see traffic [...]

Users’ expectations of search engines have developed considerably during the short period they have existed, a Google blog post notes. Amit Singhal, a fellow at the search giant, explains that users have moved on from “give me what I said” to a “give me what I want” stance. In response to this, Google has invested massively in [...]

Sadly even in 2008 most SEOs fail at writing, even SEO copywriting. Reading most SEO sites is still awful although the dark ages of too obvious keyword stuffing seem to be gone. So as even I, as a SEO, barely can stand it, imagine your average John Doe search engine optimisation help seeker… That’s why I [...]

There are a lot of ways to market to consumers and sometimes attempting too many can actually damage promotional efforts. A business which tries to engage with clients through print, mobile, web and post will either have a whopping big budget (think mega-brands such as Coke) or fail to successfully reach their audience through any [...]

Online advertising is the most effective means of building brand awareness for retailers, according to a new report. Research conducted on behalf of the Internet Advertising Bureau revealed web-based promotions are the best way for the retail sector to build brand awareness and secure long-term relationships with customers. Despite this, the IAB study expressed surprise at how [...]

You may have noticed that we have moved the SEOptimise blog away from the subdomain blog.seoptimise.com and redirected this to www.seoptimise.com/blog. The reason for this change is because inbound links to subdomains are treated differently to links which point to the main subdomain. Google generally has less trust in subdomains because it’s very easy for people [...]

To succeed with or on social media like del.icio.us, StumbleUpon or Mixx (I leave out social news sites Digg and Reddit as these sites boycott any SEO related topics) so called killer content is needed. It does not suffice but it’s a prerequisite to get to the front-page. Bloggers often call such outstanding content “pillar [...]

I really enjoyed a recent blog post by that most industrious search engine optimisation (SEO) commentator Jill Whalen. Earlier this month, she wrote a diatribe against insidious online thieves, the plagiarists who don’t steal straight copy but rewrite it so it is hard to trace as they pass it off as their own. I imagine everyone who [...]

Despite reading tons of blogs each day it’s actually quite rare that I bookmark posts in FireFox. But by being selective, I’ve managed to build up a nice collection of quality articles and blog posts over the last three or four years about pretty much anything to do with search engine marketing. Seeing that I find [...]

Almost three-quarters of internet users accessed Google in the last seven days, according to a new report. Research released by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising reveals the search engine is the most popular property on the web, among Brits – followed by the BBC’s website and eBay. Furthermore, those people are online to [...]

Over the last couple of weeks many people have noticed several ranking changes in Google.co.uk. Reports so far suggest that the Google algorithm is currently favouring .co.uk domains over .com and other top-level domains. Is this a positive change? Recently Google have appeared to be moving away from heavily relying on TLD information and trusting a wider [...]

Google loves us after all. Or, at least, it cautiously approves of us. The search engine publishes guidance for webmasters and, until recently, the only information it carried on SEO agencies was a warning about the terrible scams many use to try and trick a site into high rankings. Such advice cannot have helped the SEO reputation [...]

One of the major issues at the social media panel I was a speaker of has been online reputation management. While I prefer the more proactive ways of reputation building instead of the emergency like reputation crisis management nonetheless most of the businesses not familiar with blogging and social media need basic advice on how [...]

Relying on spreading a website’s address to consumers has never been a good way to market online. Unless a firm is the lucky holder of a truly simple domain name (Hotels.com, Diet.co.uk and so on), it cannot hope to make enough consumers remember its address to keep it in work. The majority of online business is directed [...]

This Tuesday I spoke at the social media panel of SES Hamburg. While I enjoyed the great session for some people in the audience social media and blogs are not as enjoyable. The contrary seems to be the case. The last question asked at the end of the panel was the most striking. A man [...]

A few months ago, I flagged up a study released by Ofcom which expressed concern that useful public resources, like online news services, were being buried through an SEO “arms race”. Now, it is a closely held belief of mine that SEO work makes a website better for consumers as well as raising its profile. Pages [...]

Last week Google launched Google Trends for Websites, I haven’t experimented with this too much yet but it looks like a great tool to compare website traffic. Anyway, I’ve just done a quick search on SEOptimise and was surprised to see the Google Trends result appearing at #4: As far as I’m aware there are no [...]

During the last few weeks website localisation and internationalisation seem to be a hot topic around the blogosphere. Domain management for multinational websites is a very important SEO factor to consider, this ensures you maximise the amount of referred local search traffic whilst applying the most effective strategy overall. There are several different approaches which [...]

And they’re off… Again. More soap opera and cynicism erupts from three of the top performing search engines as Yahoo! sheds executives almost as fast as share value and Microsoft grumbles about Google being “anti-competitive”. Who needs WWE when you have giants like this wrestling each day? Last week, Yahoo! lost even more top executives; Joshua [...]