UK Search Engine Marketing Blog | B10G

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Over the last 15 years the internet has evolved way beyond anyones wildest dreams and with the proliferation of Bloggers, Forums and Review sites it is no longer the case that todays news is tomorrows chip wrappings.

Bad news now sticks around and due to the pysche of the majority for some reason bad news/negativity always tends to attract more attention or links in the online world.

Take for example two companies aparently leaders in their respective field.

Big Mouth Media - One of the UK’s largest Search Engine Optimisation companies

Foxtons Estate Agents - Londons biggest estate agents

Both have fairly significant Online Reputation issues that if I was CEO of that particular brand would want fixing pretty damn quick.

A search on Google for Big Mouth Media reveals at position 6.

Big Mouth Media Banned for Excessive Hidden Text Spamming …
19 Apr 2006 … Not sure why, but someone threw out the Big Mouth Media site for review. Matt Cutts said that the site was hand removed from Google for …

Now despite Big Mouths attempts to say they were not removed from the index, it was confirmed by Google Spam Legend Matt Cutts on his blog.

I don’t I would risk my brand with a company that have been banned from Google for spamming, despite all their marketing collateral explaining how white hat and pure they are.

Now everyone in London knows Foxtons, they are the biggest and you cant miss them, with a fleet of branded mini’s and advertising boards everywhere. If you have ever tried to rent in London chances are you will have come across them.

Unfortunately despite all this front and bravardo, the customer experience is less than pleasant and that experience has been well publicised online. A google search for Foxtons reveals a plethora of negative results including.

9.
DON’T USE FOXTONS ESTATE AGENTS!!!!
12 Dec 2006 … I’m not against estate agents in general… I just used Lets Do Business in Fulham and had a great experience… but Foxtons is the WORST! …
forums.gumtree.com/topic18437.html - 94k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this
10.
DON’T USE FOXTONS ESTATE AGENTS!!!!
28 Feb 2008 … and not just towards Foxtons. Many estate agents routinely break the law by placing advertising signs without permission on council property …
forums.gumtree.com/about18437-0-asc-25.html - 64k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this
More results from forums.gumtree.com »

and of coure the site wehatefoxtons.com, but it is not just here we see Foxtons taking an online kicking new Social Startup Plebble.com which gives web users a platform to rate companies and also allows companies to engage with positive or negative feedback has Foxtons as the worst company on it’s records, with an average rating of -4.51 which with a maximum of -5 is pretty compelling reading beating the likes of Britsh Gas in second and the everyones favourite The Labour Party also appearing in the top 10.

So Gordon Brown if your reading and you need some help with your online reputation management then please just drop us a line.

Popularity: 13% 

For anyone looking to send out email campaigns, undertake paid search campaigns or banner advertising it is imperative that you track all the links pointing to your site effectively.

By tracking links effectively it enables you to make decisions based on fact rather than anecdotal evidence, something which I think far to many companies do. My personal opinion is that in business, particularly internet based businesses there is no excuse for going with a gut feel when there are s many ways to track success of campaigns effectively.

One of the best tools on the market in my opinion for website stats is Google Analytics, firstly because of the cost (it’s free), but secondly due to the depth of reporting you can delve into.

One of the best features I think is the way you can break any report down by Campaign, Source, Keyword using effective tracking URLS.

To make the task of creating Google Analytics Tracking URL Tool easier google has created a very simple URL tool.

It could not be easier to use.

1. Enter your target URL
2. Fill out the required fields - Campaign Source, Campaign Medium and Campaign Name
3. Fill out any optional fields - Campaign Term (allows you to track paid keywords and Campaign Content ( primarily for differntiating between links e.g. logo link / text link
4. Click Generate URL

Once you have done that you are given a URL that you can just paste into your email/html or whereever it is required.

An example URL for say a Yahoo Paid Search Link would look something like this.

http://www.domain.com/?utm_source=yahoo&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=fishing%2Brod&utm_campaign=Fishing

Here you can see we have added the following details

Campaign Source = Yahoo
Campaign Medium = cpc (This indicates to analytics that this is a cost per click
Campaign Name = Fishing (Typically on Paid Search you would use the campaign/adgroup name)
Campaign Term = Fishing Rod

This allows us to the drill down through our analytics to get specific information on all the visitors that came from the term fishing rod on Yahoo paid search. This is particularly invaluable for ecommerce sites who may be bidding on terms that drive lots of traffic, but rarely convert to sales.

Popularity: 31% 

There is a bit of a debate going on currently regarding the use of no follow on blog comments, worth a read up if you have not already.

Why you should Nofollow your blog comments - Dave Naylor
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Popularity: 67% 

The Sunday Mirror, (yeah I know not the best of papers) has a piece about ‘Has Kate Moss cleaned up her drugs past on Google?‘.

This is an example we commonly refer to when talking to new clients about online reputation Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 74% 

I feel a rant coming on…

When I see SEO blogs at the extreme where they link to their homepage 1 - 4 times A POST in 85% of their blog posts with the anchor text SEO company, online marketing, SEO, PPC (the list Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 69% 

At B10G we like to think of ourselves as an ethical angency that only undertakes white hat techniques to improve our clients organic rankings.

However when you look at a search term that you are trying to rank for and see that the top 2
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Popularity: 100% 

The following post has been authored by Richard Barnes, a new B10G employee employed to learn the full ins and outs of PPC to take over the management of B10G’s clients PPC campaigns. Go easy on Rich as this is his first blog post ever! - Paul

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Popularity: 83% 

Just a quick post to announce the launch of my elder brother & MD’s blog DaveCarruthers.com, its less of a blog about Internet Marketing and more of a blog about anything and everything. I like the theme he’s used for the blog (despite the laziness of using a free theme).

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Popularity: 88% 

I’m in the middle of redesigning the blog as you can see its not quite there yet and there is still plenty more work to do, a few of you noticed that we have had a few issues of late with this blog, this involved a database issue which we have been unable to resolve and subsequently lost a lot of posts.
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Popularity: 99%