Archive for October, 2010

Excel For SEOs – Vlookup, Pivot Tables in SEO

How To Use VLookup Function in Excel

I hate excel. It has to be said. However we use excel everyday for everything, simple calculations, records of rankings, doing keyword research etc. One of the things that I had to do this week is compare monthly search volume on certain keywords and plot it against current rankings into a graph.
Sounds easy, and it IS easy and there are resources like Rich Baxter’s tutorial that shows you how to do it - but I just wasn’t following half way. :( It is no doubt an awesome tutorial that probably took ages to do and I appreciate that - this post on the other hand, is kinda like an extension of that post, if you will, but for really slow folks like me who need to go through every single step slowly, understand it and then have screenshots in front of my face for every click.

Attract More Local Customers With Google Boost!

More people use online search engines such as Google and any other media to find local information. If you want your online advertising to be more effective, you should take control over your listings on Google and let customers know what you are all about.

Google diluting organic search results in favour of Local listings

Yesterday Google made a pretty huge announcement in regards to local search queries. Traditionally local listings would appear at the top of the search engine however they will soon integrate these listings within the main organic results as one.

Don’t understand? Here is the official experiment zone:

Google Local Listing

The integration of the listings has moved the map to the right hand side above the sponsored links. Leaving the Google places listings covering seven listings within the typical organic area. There are traditional organic listings but they fall below this and the likelihood of these being clicked has diminished with preference placed on the pushing local businesses.

Our Top Ten Tips For A Very Profitable Christmas

Christmas songs on the radio, festive decorations in the shops- every year it seems to get earlier. Analysis from Google’s Insights for Search however shows that the inflection point for Christmas- related searches begins between September and October. Is your website ready for Christmas?

Last year was another record for online sales over Christmas. Figures from the IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index showed that UK shoppers spent £5.46 billion online in December 2009 – an equivalent of £88.93 for every person in the UK – 17% up on December 2008. The peak week for online Christmas shopping was the second week in December. This year sales are projected to be even higher.

So what should be done to make sure that you take advantage of this? Here are a few ideas:

HTML5 Not for SEO Says Google

In a recent Google Webmaster Central forum thread, Google Employee John Mu was quizzed by user Nathan Sweet about whether the new HTML5 standard would provide any additional benefit to on-page SEO and in particular whether Google would pay any attention to HTML5 semantic tags. John’s response basically states that at the moment Google does not use HTML5 tags in its ranking algorithm and that until there is sufficient up-take of this new standard (and the browser support to go with it), that Google had no plans to do so stating.