PPC & SEO Services in the UK
June 30, 2007
Last week, I had several interviews for some rather tasty PPC & SEO jobs in London, UK. It really does appear that the demand for skilled SEM employees is incredibly high at the moment. A common and unsurprising question often asked by recruiters and potential employers was to give a brief concise definition of SEO.
The simple answer that I gave is that it is the practise of optimising a web site both internally and externally to increase the volume of targeted traffic. With search engines especially looking at two key factors, results that are both relevant and popular to its users.
Relevance (on-page SEO) - the actual content on the page; this can be the text that a visitor can see and also the source code that search engines (& visitors) can read. The relevance of a page relates to the keyphrase that a user queries in a search engine and the search engine matching that with key elements on a page such as the title tag, header tags and the actual content of the page.
Popularity (off-page SEO) "“ every time another site references/links to your site, search engines perceive this as a vote that your site is important. The more links, the more votes "“ the more popularity search engines credit the site as having. The popularity increases every time your site acquires a new link, although not all links pass equal value (it depends on how much popularity/authority the linking web page has, as well as to how much relevance it has in relation to the page receiving the link).
Off-page SEO can also impact relevancy "“ with the keywords in the anchor text and surrounding area of the inbound link playing a major role.
Here is a very simple ranking formula:
Increased Relevance + Increased Popularity = Search Engine Trust + Higher Rankings
A more thorough ranking formula was discussed last year.
White Hat Vs Black Hat SEO
Another common question asked was to give my view on white & black hat SEO. This is a tricky question in an interview scenario "“ for those of you who are new to the terms white hate SEO is following practises that are accepted and encouraged by search engines, whereas black haters spam & manipulate the content (both on-page and off page) to achieve higher rankings.
Dave Chaffery notes that there are many shades of grey of SEO:
Its really about the combination of how proactive and how ethical you aim to be with SEO.
It can be very difficult to compete by being an 100% white hat SEO for very competitive keywords. You need to be aggressive and also appear natural in your link acquisition, but at the same time have a significant degree of ethical best practises.
In the 'shades of grey SEO' article I would not feel at all comfortable trying on hats 1 to 4, and explaining which hats I would try on in an interview scenario is not easy as many agencies perceive and publicise themselves as being 100% white hat - although I think most SEOs are neither one extreme or the other and fall somewhere in between. What colour hat are you?
Interesting SEM Posts You May Have Missed
June 16, 2007
I am feeling a little guilty of late as I haven’t made many posts for a while, so I thought I would post an arrangement of links that you may find useful and have recently found their way on my bookmark list (not all new):
- Stepping Stones of User Conversions.
- 6 Steps to Creating a Perfect Landing Page.
- 10 Tips for Product Landing Pages.
- If You Build it, Links will Come.
- SEO, Meets SMM.
- Web Broswer Stats - I.E. 6 is still top dog (just), although you will see F.F. is snapping at its heels.
- Web Developer’s Handbook - lots of cool tools.
- Google Hot Trends - only for the US at the moment - it is kind of a mashup of Google Zeitgeist and Google Trends.
SEM Link Love for Charities
June 5, 2007
Kevin Gibbons recently tagged me in sharing some link juice with a few worthy courses. Who can doubt the value of passing on a little link love to some great charities?
So without further ado, here are a few:
- Nature Charity - www.wildlifetrusts.org: Local wildlife trusts across the whole of the UK.
- Children's Charity - www.nspcc.org.uk: Stop cruelty to children.
- Cancer Research UK - www.cancerresearchuk.org: The UK’s leading cancer research charity.
- Sponsor a Child - www.soschildrensvillages.org.uk: The world’s largest orphan charity.
- International Wildlife Conservation Trust - www.worldlandtrust.org: Help save rainforests and other biologically important lands.
This is where I tag some fellow SEM bloggers "“ Karl Ribas, Keith Bond, Lisa Ditlefsen, Rob Kerry & Todd Malicoat. Hope you guys at SMX are having fun, all the pictures are great "“ keep 'em coming!
