Andy Blackburn – SEO Consultant

A search for a place to rest my head near to Exeter Airport (I had an early flight to catch yesterday) led me to perhaps the closest airport hotel, ever! Situated between the two runways at Exeter, this was going to be ultra, or even über-convenient!

Alas, Google Maps had failed me, as a quick look at the postcode of said hotel, and indeed the image which showed no nearby buildings, quickly alerted my suspicions. The Trelawney Hotel is actually in Torquay:

Google Maps, well and truly, failed!

I am always championing Google Analytics as my analytical package of choice, not least because it’s free, but because I feel the functionality you get out of it, as a free package, is second to none when compared to the rest of the free/nearly free products out there. Out of the box, GA works with minimal setup or configuration, and works really bloody well.

Tracking sub-domains with Google Analytics also works, with the minimal of configuration, by simply amending your GA code (this is the most up to date version, just by the way):

_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXXXX-1']);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);

To read:

_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXXXX-1']);
_gaq.push(['_setDomainName', '.yourdomain.com']);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);

Simple enough? Well, here is a a nice tidbit of information, if you have two pages on your primary and sub-domains, that share the same page name (i.e. index.html), then Google Analytics will combine the statistics for these two pages artificially inflating the statistics for index.html on the primary domain. As my good friend Rob put it: “I wonder who decided that this was a sensible default?” Sensible default indeed!

More endless searching led me to information on setting up a filter, which will supposedly split your data and track traffic on both sub-domains and the primary domain:

Unfortunately, this didn’t work out too well either in my tests:

So, calling on the Twitterverse, David Whitehouse from Bronco volunteered to help out and see if we could get this fixed, and came across the following filter configuration from Brian Clifton’s book:

This has now been set up, and I’m running a few more tests on some new pages and will report on results as soon as they’re in…

Update

So it’s the morning after the afternoon before, and I can’t say the results are overly brilliant, especially when I spot the following duplication in my analytics overview:

Furthermore, the subdomain I have been testing is being treated like a subdirectory in the reporting:

So when you hover over the “Visit this page” link in GA, you get the following in your status bar:

Not what I would call perfect, by any means.

What are robots?

Robots, crawlers, spiders or agents are programs which are used to traverse the wobbly world wide web automatically, taking note on which content is where. Search engines use these programs to index content for their indices, spammers use them to scrape content for their own sites, or even to crawl the web for email addresses to spam you even more. Understanding of how search robots work is an intrinsic part of SEO!

What is robots.txt?

Robots.txt is a file which, when placed in the root of a publicly available webserver, tells search engine robots and agents which content they can and cannot/should and shouldn’t access. It can be used to block access to members’ only directories for example, or pages which nobody should really be finding through search engines, or, as I was trying to do earlier today, block search engines from indexing pages which are a part of your affiliate system or associated with an affiliate ID.

What is an affiliate system?

Many e-businesses run affiliate systems, which can be described as an semi-automated process by which the e-business takes referrals from partner websites, and remunerates them for any transactions that result from the referral. Having worked in the online gaming industry for over 10 years now, I’m quite familiar with many of them, as they an intricate part of just about every online gambling business model.

Most affiliate systems use standard html links which contain affiliate ID parameters in order to track referrals from their partner or affiliated sites. Anyone who clicks the link which contains the affiliate parameters will be associated with that affiliate’s account. If they go on to purchase something from the site, the affiliate will take their share of that revenue.

Search engine optimisation and brand protection

This is leading somewhere, I promise!

Many companies, when taking on an SEO consultant, agency or in-house employee, go straight for the proverbial jugular. They want to target the big, juicy keywords which will drive mountains of good, converting, valuable traffic. Because of this, they usually overlook the basics, ensuring you’re dominating the search results for your brand names. Imagine, if you will, the panic in the office this morning, when after no more than a few hours, I spot a discrepancy in our brand term search results: an affiliate tracked URL is ranking in second spot, taking a nice bounty per referral as well as a share of any future revenue from any clients that came through that link!

SEO, brand protection and affiliate URLs

Whoever was in here before me, had not taken the time to ensure that search engines, and especially Google (ye olde search dominator) were not allowed to index URLs tagged with affiliate IDs. Due to the high volume of traffic this affiliate was sending through his affiliate ID, that URL got indexed for our brand name, and is still ranking in second place. I immediately submitted a removal request, and asked for a change to the robots.txt to ensure that affiliate parameters were blocked from this point forward… the reply: “what robots.txt?”

Robots.txt to block affiliate IDs

Given the fact the content/web developer people here hadn’t implemented one, and the urgency required to get this resolved, I quickly typed up a robots.txt file for them to upload… ran it through the nicely-provided-by-Google testing utility:

Allowed by line 5: Disallow:

But what about line 6 you stupid test tool? The one that says:

Disallow: /?affid=*

No amount of fiddling would get it to work! I tried and tried and tried. And then I tested a second URL, one I typed up myself, and not copied and pasted:

Blocked by line 6: Disallow: /?affid=*

And that is when it struck me… affid and affId are two completely, and utterly different things according to robots.txt… why? Because ROBOTS.TXT IS BLOODY CASE SENSITIVE!

I’m looking for someone to fill an SEO job based in London. A bit of a background on the company:

• Based in Canary Wharf
• The world’s leading digital and direct media agency, with more than 650 professionals in 39 offices across 32 countries.
• Part of the second largest communications group in the world
• Fast growing, even in the current economic climate

A bit about the job, you should be proficient in:

• On and offsite optimisation techniques
• Coding in web languages
• Analytical analysis and reporting
• Development of proposals and presentation of such

The ideal candidate should also be proactive (I had to put that in, be thankful I didn’t include: “be a team player” or some other clichéd rubbish) and a team player (hahaha, I crack me up).

No, but seriously now, if you think you fit the bill, please leave a comment with your details and I’ll be in touch! There are plenty of perks in working here:

• We have a bar on the 9th floor, that serves booze, no joke, every day from 5pm. And it’s subsidised. Not free, but cheap, a lot cheaper than anywhere else within the square mile!
• The bar also serves proper coffee, all day, which is also cheap. Think at least half the price of a Costa or Starbucks, and it’s decent, non-instant stuff too (we all know SEO’s run on caffeine and alcohol)
• The rest of the guys here are all awesome, search minded people, just like you and me, and it’s nothing short of BRILLIANT sharing an office with them
• The Bolivian SEO guy buys you coffee and beer when he’s late for work, and that’s quite regular!
• Did I mention the bar?
• With the cheap beer?
• And the free jukebox?
• Which you can plug your ipod into?
• And the free pool table?
• AND THE BEER?

WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?

During a recent project involving a fair few languages for a large technology company, we came up against the fact that the local translation of an acronym, didn’t really make sense to the client. We therefore wanted to ensure that the client was happy (by including our target keyword) as well as we were targeting the localised keyword to ensure we caught the traffic. Our decision: include the local word, followed by the English acronym in parentheses, or brackets.

But does Google display them in the SERPs?

A quick search brought up nothing, so the power of the blog prevailed once more:

Image of SERP showing parentheses in page titles

And there you have it, Google WILL display parentheses in page titles!

The “SEO Blackburn” article I put up received a fair amount of attention, so I thought I would actually put something productive up for those in and around the Blackburn area looking for Search Engine Optimisation services.

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimisation can be defined as the manipulation of a website in order to increase its relevance towards a given keyword or set of keywords. However, as the online space evolves, more and more “social” elements can also have an effect on a website, its performance, and ultimately, its levels of traffic and conversions.

What can affect SEO?

Any online, and in many cases offline, promotional activity could have a positive, or indeed negative effect on a website. This includes:

• Editorial – Online or offline
• Advertorial – Online or offline
• Other forms of press – Especially online
• Social Networking Activity – Do your users, clients, staff, associates use social networks? This could impact your SEO perfomance
• Blogging – As above

As I’ve mentioned before, if you’re looking for SEO in Blackburn, please leave a comment and I’m sure I can point you in the right direction!

In May 2008 I took the SEOmoz.org SEO quiz, and was happy with my 86% ranking of: SEO Master.

I stumbled back across the quiz a few weeks ago, and have been meaning to show off my latest result, so here it is:

SEO Dark Lord – 99%

Are you an SEO Expert?

Blackburn – My Surname
SEO – Search Engine Optimisation, something I did as a consultant in mainland Europe, something I now do as a full time employee of the digital marketing arm a reasonably large marketing firm here in the UK.
Blackburn – Also the name of a reasonably large town in Lancashire, England.

Not having thought of this before, imagine my surprise to find that my blog has started ranking for “SEO Blackburn“.

So, as a concious blogger who knows that people finding my site whilst searching for a Blackburn SEO might not find what they’re looking for at this blog, please leave a message here and I’ll be sure to pass your information on to someone who would be able to help with any or all of your SEO requirements!

2009′s Wimbledon Championships at The All England Club are well underway and I quickly threw “wimbledon” into Google this afternoon to grab the latest scores. Yes, I am one of those people who uses Google as a navigation tool rather than a Search or “Discover” engine at times, and I knew that the single word query would take me straight to what I wanted! Continue reading: Wimbledon Coverage 2009

I’m not going to go HUGELY into this one, but how can the New York Post get away with this: Continue Reading: Buying and Selling Links