The basis of how good a website’s SEO value is is judged on many aspects, but most consider the most important factor to be the SEO ‘equity’ passed to the site from external linking sources. These ‘backlinks’ are monitored to try and gain an understanding of the value that they are passing to the site. There are many tools that allow you to measure these values, one of which is Majestic SEO.

Yesterday Majestic SEO announced two new link metrics, Citation Flow and Trust Flow, for measuring the perceived quality of a domain, subdomain or page.

Google.co.uk

Over the last couple of years the use of Google’s PageRank measurement has seen a decline and SEOMoz’s MozRank has taken over as the go-to measurement of value. Majestic SEO are now claiming that their new metrics are the successor, with a much more useful set of measures.

Citation Flow – This number predicts how influential a URL might be based on the number of sites linking to it. The more links that the site has, the higher it’s Citation Flow.
Trust Flow – This number predicts how trustworthy a URL might be based on a backlink’s proximity to trusted domains. Links from within trusted neighbourhoods are more trustworthy than links from spammy neighbourhoods. Read more…

A recent report published by social media analytics experts Simply Measured unveiled that automotive, electronics and luxury are the top 3 industries on Google+ user engagement within the Interbrand Top 100 brands. According to Simply Measured CEO Adam Schoenfeld  ”luxury and automotive brands are clearly finding Google+ to be an effective way to connect with consumers”.

Brands like Ferrari, GUCCI and Burberry appear to be in the top of the Interbrand Top 100 list in the number Google+ circlers (followers). Read more…

The brightonSEO conference earlier this month came and went with a flurry of insight and opinion, and a hadouken.

Those returning after a classic sun-drenched Brighton lunch hour were treated to a presentation from iCrossing’s very own Charlie Peverett. He told a tale of innocence, how he spent his days as an editor blissfully oblivious to the intricacies of SEO. However, when the curtain was pulled back he peered into a murky world that revealed the true reason why nobody was reading his content

The presentation is now available to view in all its glory, where you’ll discover why ‘great content’ is more than just a check box on a SEO to do list (an issue discussed in greater depth in our latest ebook, How to Plan a Content Strategy).

If you pay attention you may spot a random satsuma. Read more…

After 2 somewhat unpredicatble and very compelling races here are the results for the last 2. Apologies for the slight delay on these it has been a manic couple of weeks for Creative HQ!

We particularly like the look of Shanghai!

Read more…

Today Eloqua published The Blog Tree: UK Edition, their latest infographic centering on bloggers in the UK. It shows the most influential marketing-related blogs in the UK, and we’re thrilled that Connect has been included!

Read more…

Mobile platforms such as smartphones and tablets continue to grow in importance at a rapid pace. Below we’ve look at 10 statistics that show how quickly mobile is growing and why it’s important for you to have a solid mobile strategy in place right now.

1. 15% of UK search happens on a mobile device, 3 years ago that figure was down at 2%

In Nov 2011 15% of UK Christmas related search happened on a mobile device and this figure is growing rapidly. In countries with less developed network infrastructure that figure is even higher, for example in India 40% of search happens on a mobile device. If you don’t have mobile strategy in place you’re potentially missing out on 15% of the search market in the UK.

2. Mobile accounts for 10% of ecommerce

10% of visits to ecommerce websites now come from mobile devices. According to the IAB “marketers and retailers are losing hundreds of thousands of pounds by failing to grasp the opportunities presented by mobile devices.”

3. 48% of users start their search on a mobile device and finish on a desktop – Ipsos, March 2011

If you have no mobile strategy in place you are potentially losing out on half of your audience.
Read more…

Last week it was Friday the 13^th, so according to cliché it would be sombre day involving a lot of bad luck. This time though it was a lovely sunny day… and of course the day of BrightonSEO April 2012. Read more…

I’m participating in an event next Wednesday which iCrossing is hosting in association with Travolution called When Travel Brands Fight Back. I felt it would be great to set the scene a little ahead of times and maybe even start the debate early!

So, what prompted us to choose this particular topic? Here’s a perspective on where the online travel sector is now and how we got there for big travel brands like legacy airlines and major tour operators. It’s intentionally simplified to make a point and, I hope, to catalyse the discussion.

Cutting costs, cutting service?
It starts about a decade ago when online purchasing technology really started to work. Suddenly websites could be much more than just a bit of window dressing. These technical advances offered huge opportunities for achieving economies of scale. You could now service lots of people at the same time – who needs telesales people or travel agents if a customer can query the booking database themselves and book their own flight or holiday? Cue big investment in web dev and cutting back on traditional customer service and sales channels like travel agents, brochures and telesales agents.

In the short term it probably worked – margins improved, the finance team were happy. But the technology wasn’t as good as it first appeared. (I often think we forget how maddeningly slow it was and how often it fell over in the early days.) From feeling like they were in control (and liking that feeling) customers began to sometimes feel powerless. And that made them really frustrated.

A customer service vacuum developed. The new technology promised more than it delivered – but when it went wrong, companies often weren’t well enough resourced to deal with the problems. Read more…

For those of you that are not familiar with the Search Alliance, it is an initiative that Yahoo! and Microsoft are taking to create a competitive choice for both advertisers and users in the marketplace.

Essentially, paid search results on Yahoo! are now going to be powered by Microsoft.  This means that our current Yahoo! accounts will cease to exist once the transition is complete.  The accounts that we have set up in BING will supply the search results in Yahoo!

To prepare for this transition, I have created suggestions and tips on how to make sure you safe guard your accounts from experiencing negative effects from the search alliance.

Actions that need to be taken before and during the transition of your accounts:

1. Advertisers should make sure that their clients know what the search alliance is. Make sure to communicate possible changes in the accounts before the transition occurs.
2. Yahoo representatives will now be managing the BING Accounts.  If you do not have a BING account set up in adCenter, get this account established and open an IO with your Yahoo representative.  Make sure that you discuss any discounts that you previously had with BING.  You will not be receiving the same discount after the alliance and you will need to start a dialogue with your representatives about what changes you should expect.
3. Have your Yahoo! representative perform a gap analysis between your Yahoo! and BING accounts and use this analysis to add keywords into your BING account. It might be good to mirror over your best performing Google accounts into MSN before the alliance so that you capture any traffic that could be lost.
4. Think about the possibilities of beginning or re-engaging SEO efforts in MSN and Google to counter any negative effects on traffic and performance.
5. As the transition occurs, increase your adCenter budgets.  Your Yahoo! and BING accounts will now be serving from one account, so you will need to allocate what you would be spending previously in Yahoo! and BING to your BING budgets.
6. Download the new version of the Desktop tool (8.3)
7. Continue to monitor your accounts for the changes that occur after the alliance and communicate the changes and trends that you are seeing to your account manager at Yahoo! and to your internal team.
8. Use search query reports (found on the reports tab in the engine) before and after migration. Read more…