This process has massively evolved over that time, with more tasks required more frequently than at the start of my career, but despite the evolution of what the process is, it has remained at the forefront of how we manage campaigns.

By having evolved this process, what it enables us to do, is to ensure that all campaigns get a bare minimum of attention on certain aspects – either at the start of the campaign, when you are going through the initial setup stages, where there is a lot of work, to the on-going review and implementation of the strategies being employed.

It ensures that nothing slips through the cracks in terms of the attention each individual campaign gets over your time working on it.

The actual detail of each individual task is not part of the process plan. Every website we have ever worked on is a unique “animal”, with unique needs, be that from an on page perspective, or having very specific link acquisition needs. These elements need to remain flexible to ensure that you are delivering the service that each specific website needs as opposed to a “paint by numbers” SEO approach that may be delivered otherwise.

A good process here lets customers have an insight into what they will be receiving throughout their time with you. You let them know the reporting cycles that they will be receiving in depth information from, you let them know what keywords you are targeting  and broad timetables to be reviewing the success of these strategies further down the line.

Our process also ensures that the people that manage their campaign get in contact with them on a regular basis. It’s all too easy to get blasé about the performance of a campaign looking at key performance indicators that search engine marketers like to review – be that link acquisition numbers, rankings achieved and traffic generated to the website. Hopefully they will be looking at online conversion metrics too!

But the real performance of a campaign is not determined by those managing it – it’s down to those that are paying for it to make that judgement! By enforcing regular contact points, and opening lines of communication to those decision makers, and forming relationships with them, it becomes a lot easier to gauge how successful search marketing campaign really is proving to be in the eyes that really matter.

If you are managing a handful of clients each with specific needs, and tailored packages, then perhaps a process for delivery is less important. However, if you or your company are working with hundreds of customers, then you need to ensure that all of those people are getting the same levels of service across the board, consistent quality of attention, and hopefully gaining positive results at the end.

The process makes this sort of approach scalable to greater levels and across a wider portfolio of websites essentially. Without having such a process when being involved with managing a large number of campaigns, it is difficult to ensure that you are actually delivering the same service across all of your customers. Some may get specific items pertinent to their needs, whilst others who equally need that sort of attention do not get that element of the service, just because the individual working on that campaign was not as strong at looking at elements.

Process is at the heart of everything that I do as a search marketer, working with a myriad of sites in a wealth of different industries. The detail of what is delivered to each client is absolutely pertinent to their needs, but without the fear that certain elements that need to be addressed get missed.

The Importance of Process for SEO Campaigns is a post from Scott McLay's SEO Blog - Scott McLay is a SEO Consultant from Falkirk, Scotland.

Google has been obsessed with trying to get webmasters to speed up their website for the last year or so, saying that faster websites generates a higher click through rate and reduces bounce rates for users visiting your website. With their new service Google reports that it will improve the speed of your website by 25 to 60 percent, with this in mind I thought I would use the test which Google suggests to benchmark my website and see how much of an improvement I would get.

The Results

As you can see from the test results, the optimised version of my website is actually 0.9 seconds slower than it is now, but I have worked hard on my website to get it to load as fast as possible so  I was expecting the figures to be similar.

Server Location

The test above was done using a server based within the UK, and since my hosting is UK based I wanted to run a second test from a US based test server which gave me a 0.9 second improvement which suggests that Geo targeting servers will reduce load times for visitors abroad:

Personally I think this could be a great service for businesses which target multiple countries if you don’t have the resources to recode your website, but this will not be a service I will use myself as having already optimised my website for speed I get little or no improvement from this.

If you want more information about this service, or if you would like to run the test for yourself then you can find everything you need here. It is important to mention that the test which Google suggests that you run may give a completely accurate result.

Site Speed – Googles New Ploy To Speed Up Sites is a post from Scott McLay's SEO Blog - Scott McLay is a SEO Consultant from Falkirk, Scotland.

More and more websites flock the internet every day, as the competition turns fierce businesses and individuals are trying to get the most stand out websites. Every business wants its virtual face to look the best. The landing page of your website is the first to make an impression. If your landing page creates a good impression your visitor will stay and try to explore more of your website. If he explores more of your website, it means he starts to explore more of you.

Now when I talk about your landing page creating a lasting impression it does not mean that you have to have a page that is loaded with flash. You do not need an all flashy homepage for a visitor to stay on. What you need is a landing page that is properly set up which provides necessary information to the user. Let me elaborate and tell you what kind of a landing page you need in order for it to be a money spinner for your company.

Do not crowd your homepage with too much information, but at the same time it must carry a glimpse of what your company is about. Make sure that you company logo is there on your homepage. Give a reason to your prospective clients to browse through your website i.e. include relevant and required information on your homepage. Another important point is to have a good navigation system interlinking each page in a proper way.

Next thing that your homepage should have is proper headlines. Your headlines should accomplish a dual purpose. They should communicate to the viewer what the page is about and they should provide continuity from wherever the viewer initially clicked to your landing page. You can test various color schemes, but try to keep viewers oriented by using some of the same colors used in the ad hook or link description that convinced them to click in the first place. It is advisable to choose colors based on your company logo.  In short have some sort of uniformity in the color schemes.

Your homepage should always carry a Call To Action button. It is a very important part of your homepage. Security symbols can make a huge difference in whether a customer trusts you enough to give you his credit card information, there are other elements that can influence consumer trust as well. By having reassuring text near points of action your customers and have more reassurance. Even though you have all these information on your homepage it should not look cluttered. Launch of new products must be mentioned on the homepage linking back to the particular page on the website. This way you can attract your target audience.

These are some the features that you need to have on your landing page. The face of your company should impress the users enough to earn you money.

Landing Page Design Tricks to Improve Your ROI is a post from Scott McLay's SEO Blog - Scott McLay is a SEO Consultant from Falkirk, Scotland.

Because there are no real rules and regulations many SEO companies have been set up by people with little or no experience expecting easy money, for example I had a phone conversation with someone in December asking me how easy SEO and link building was and how easy would is to get started within the industry – these guys really annoy me! how does he expect to run an SEO angency with no experience of SEO?

Are SEO’s To Blame?

Some SEO’s I feel are to blame for creating the minefield we find ourselves in, just take a look around some of the top rated SEO blogs / communities and you will see a great number of articles giving misleading information or information that could be misinterpreted – this gives newcomers to the industry the wrong message which then gets passed onto clients and can lead to them losing a great deal of money.

On top of this problem there quite a few spam sites setup offering SEO qualifications like “Search Engine Ambassador” stuff like this could edge a business to go for the “qualified” company instead of a genuine SEO company who could actually give them ROI.

What About the Newspapaers?

There have been 2 major news stories surrounding SEO, take the JCPenny story for example, this story in my eyes gives people the wrong impression of what we actually do for our clients and it could lead to many businesses running away from their SEO contracts.

At the end of the day what’s done is done and I feel it’s going to be a vicious circle of SEO newbie reads blog post full of misleading information, starts working for a client, client gets banned or sees no results, client rants in public spaces and the SEO industry takes another blow.

-Rant Over-

The Problem With SEO is a post from Scott McLay's SEO Blog - Scott McLay is a SEO Consultant from Falkirk, Scotland.

It’s tempting to think that a monolingual approach will suffice when it comes to your online presence, especially if your native language happens to be English. Widely regarded as the lingua franca or ‘common language’ of the business world, English is also the most commonly used language online, according Internet World Stats.

Look closer at those statistics, however, and you’ll find that, while it is the single most commonly used language, it still only represents just over a quarter of all internet usage.

Additionally, the growth in English usage online stands at just over 281% over the past decade – far less than Spanish (743%), Chinese (1,277%), Russian (1,826%) or Arabic (showing a massive growth of 2,501% over the same period).

There are many social, economic and technological factors that may affect the incidence of internet usage within certain territories but, should these trends continue, the proportion of English speaking internet users will naturally fall further. With internet penetration standing at 33% in Chinese and 37% in Spanish speaking markets (as opposed to 42% in English) there is also still a lot of scope for this potential growth in foreign language markets to continue.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that many English speakers use English only as a second language. While such people might well be able to understand an English-only website, studies have shown that multilingual internet users put far more trust in sites written in their native language, especially when it comes to making a purchase online. 85% of all consumers report that they would require information in their own native language before making a purchase.

Clearly, a monolingual approach to online marketing would severely limit both the inroads you are able to make into foreign language markets and the conversion rates (that is, the proportion of visitors who also go on to make a purchase) within those markets.

Once you’ve decided to take the plunge with a localised or internationalised website (localisation is the adaptation of an existing website to match the culture and language of a particular market. whereas internationalisation is the process of designing a site able to operate in and appeal to different markets from the start), you should notice benefits in your search engine marketing (SEM) results.

The simple reason for this is that, with English being the most widely used language online, there is less competition for rankings in any other single language.

A large part of search engine optimisation (SEO) revolves around identifying popular keywords. As the most commonly used keywords – basically the terms web users type into a search engine – are also the ones most likely to be used by competitors, there’s always a balance to be struck between popular, broad ‘short tail’ keywords and more specific ‘long tail’ keywords. When working in foreign languages online, there will be less competition on both types, making well researched keywords more likely to be successful.

Similarly, fewer inbound links are required in order to boost rankings and, with less competition, ads on local versions of global brand search engines such as Google and Yahoo and on local competitors such as Yandex and Seznam (the market leaders in Russia and the Czech Republic respectively) are likely to cost less.

The importance of successful SEM can’t be overstated. The top Google ranked site for any given search claims 35% of traffic, which is almost as much as the next four slots combined. As it is easier to achieve high rankings for a foreign language site than one in English, this translates as a higher return on investment in foreign language SEM.

The foreign language internet is an often neglected resource but it offers great opportunities for almost any business and these opportunities look set to grow in the foreseeable future.

About the author

Christian Arno is the founder of Lingo24, one of the world’s fastest growing translation companies. Launched in the UK in 2001, Lingo24 now spans three continents and has clients in more than sixty countries. Lingo24 has translated for businesses in every industry sector. Follow Christian (@l24ca) and Lingo24 (@Lingo24) on Twitter.

The foreign language internet is good for business is a post from Scott McLay's SEO Blog - Scott McLay is a SEO Consultant from Falkirk, Scotland.

Via: iPad Deals

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Bargain-Tracking iPad Price Infographic is a post from Scott McLay's SEO Blog - Scott McLay is a SEO Consultant from Falkirk, Scotland.

Image via Wikipedia

Since this is a post about Windows 7 Mobile devices I thought it would be fitting to actually try and write it on my device, but sadly that idea failed at around 2am this morning after writing most of this post on a touch screen – the problem will be stated later on in this post.

The love relationship I have with Windows mobile devices spans back to the Windows PDA’s  (running Windows CE) and from there I went on to own 5 different Windows mobile (Cell to you Americans out there) phones – all of which made by HTC (the best mobile device manufacturer in my opinion), but never have I felt such exclusivity when owning a mobile than I do with my Windows 7 mobile – why? Because everyone has iPhones or Android powered devices.

The first time I realised just how exclusive the Win 7 Mobile actually is was when I was at PubCon (Internet Marketing conference) in Vegas where in the closing session Mr Google (Matt Cutts) took the stage and started asking the 3000+ crowd what mobile phone they had – first up was the iPhone which had around 65% of the crowd raising their hand, followed by Android which received the around 45.03% and then Windows 7 got the shout and I proudly put my had up and looked around – I was the only one, that’s 1 in 3000 that actually owns these devices.

There are many reasons why I love this phone so much, but at the same time there are things that leave me asking questions of the dev team over at Microsoft so let’s dive in and find out why I like the phone so much that I want to throw it at a wall every day.

The Good Stuff

• Great UI design
• Microsoft Office pre-installed – life saver
• Outlook pre-installed with the ability to have separate apps for each email account
• Zune Player pre-installed – great media player
• High quality HD Camera
• You don’t get told your holding it wrong when trying to get a signal
• Xbox Live gaming platform – genius move!
• Bing maps fused with GPS – it’s so accurate that I don’t need specialised GPS software now
• Exclusivity (1 in 3000)
• Standardised design for all apps – no more trying to work out how an app works
• I.E Mobile – it actually works!
• Its built around the Cloud – stuff backs up to Windows SkyDrive automatically
• Calendar auto syncs with Exchange – keeps me on track
• No system lag – it’s so responsive at all times

The Bad Stuff

• Screen lock disables half the screen since the last OS update (can be annoying trying to unlock the phone)
• When writing this blog post via my phone the app didn’t auto save and I hit the Bing search button by accident which led to me losing the first draft of this post
• The SD card cannot be upgraded and is located within the guts of the phone
• Lack of apps when compared to other platforms
• It chews data and can lead to huge phone bills – using around 300Mb per month with 2 email accounts auto pushing mail (now got 300Mb free usage on my contract)
• It uses Bing as its primary search engine – meh
• Battery life is a bit random

So if you’re looking for a mobile device that makes you feel, special, confused, entertained,  angry, happy and poor look no further than the Windows 7 mobile device.

Windows 7 Mobile – The Love / Hate Relationship is a post from Scott McLay's SEO Blog - Scott McLay is a SEO Consultant from Falkirk, Scotland.

The Raspberry Pi

The Raspberry Pi Prototype

The Raspberry Pi (prototype at the moment) is a fully functioning Linux PC around the size of a USB memory stick; this is being developed to help youngsters get involved with

computer programming without the fears of damaging their home PC. At the retail price of around £15 if it breaks or gets lost there is a simple solution – buy a new one.

The specs of this miniature PC are not too bad, using basically the same architecture as Smartphones used a few years back:

• 700MHz ARM11
• 128MB of SDRAM
• OpenGL ES 2.0
• 1080p30 H.264 high-profile decode
• Composite and HDMI video output
• USB 2.0
• SD/MMC/SDIO memory card slot
• General-purpose I/O

The Raspberry Pi will also come with a range Open Software installed, including the Ubuntu OS, Iceweasel, KOffice and Python.

Once problem I see with this device is that due to its low cost and mobility it could become the PC of choice for hackers around the globe and would leave no traces, for this to be done all you would need is an Android pay as you go phone (for internet sharing) which retail at around £30 and you are sorted – hack a few websites pay another £65 and then hack some more.

Anyway getting back to the point, the Raspberry Pi looks like a great little machine at a great price and should help produce some of our future programming geniuses.

The ChromeBook

Upcoming Acer ChromeBook

The ChromeBook is Google’s answer to the Windows / Linux powered netbooks, but with one main advantage – cloud computing. Cloud computing does have one small disadvantage – you need to be online to operate apps and store / open files, to get around this they have added two things to their feature list – 3G connectivity and a 16 Gb HDD to store the OS and copies of the files you store on the could.

The full spec list for these machines is:

• Dual-core Atom 1.66GHz N570 processor
• 16GB solid-state drive (mSATA)
• HDMI port
• 11-inch and 12-inch class displays
• All-day battery life (about 8 hours)
• Instant-on
• Instant Web connectivity
• 3G connectivity, pay as you go

At the moment retail price being talked about is around the £250 mark which is in line with the current NetBook market, but will the consumers prefer the ChromeBook to a NetBook? Acer and Samsung seem to think so as they have signed up to produce these, although I am currently unsure if they will continue to produce their existing line of netbooks which has been very popular with those looking to get on the mobile computing ladder.

If there is anything I’ve missed about these two new products please feel free to comment and I will add it into my post.

New Advances in Mobile Computing is a post from Scott McLay's SEO Blog - Scott McLay is a SEO Consultant from Falkirk, Scotland.

• Must be written to a decent level of quality
• Must have some relevance to SEO, Web Development or Web Design
• Minimum of 350 words with no maximum
• No duplicate posts
• Controversial posts are fine but will be marked with a disclaimer
• Links are allowed but will be quality checked before publication

In return for guest posting on my blog, the links will be left as do-follow unless they link to low quality websites, if this happens then I may nofollow the links or remove them completely.

Calling Out for Guest Posts is a post from Scott McLay's SEO Blog - Scott McLay is a SEO Consultant from Falkirk, Scotland.

Plug-ins Installed

• Google XML Sitemap
• Majestic SEO Dashboard Widget
• nStatistics
• RSS Footer
• Feed2tweet
• Tweet old post
• WP OnlyWire Auto Poster

Google XML Sitemap

Does exactly what you think it does, auto generates a new XML sitemap and pings search engines with the updated version.

Majestic SEO Dashboard Widget

This is a great plug-in from Dan Taylor that displays Majestic’s link growth graphs within your WordPress Dashboard, giving you a good idea of how your blog is growing over time without having to leave your website – this is something which will be important for me during testing the new setup

nStatistics

If you want a plug-in which will display crawler activity on your blog then look no further, install this plug-in and get pretty graphs displaying both user and crawler activity over time

RSS Footer

I have been doing a bit of work with RSS directories recently and wanted a way to put static links at the bottom of every post in my RSS feed – job done

Feed2tweet

Just your every day auto Tweeter for your new posts.

Tweet old post

Ok so everyone has been wondering what plug-in Michael Grey has been using to display his archived posts, it’s just most people couldn’t be bothered to search for this obvious plug-in (says allot for the SEO community).

WP OnlyWire Auto Poster

Most SEO’s have an OnlyWire account for getting those bookmarks quickly – now you can auto post to OnlyWire via this plug-in every time you publish a blog post.

I’ve Done The Plug-ins Now The Fun Bit

As some people know I have been setting up quite a few profiles recently, most of which have ways to aggregate either your Twitter feed or your blog RSS feed, some of which will even accept your social bookmarking accounts (Example Here) and then give you an additional RSS feed output – which ten leads to some fun with RSS directories and so on.

With this in mind and the fact I’m auto posting links to OnlyWire (which sends out to quite a few places) you can imagine the 1000’s of links that could instantly be built to your new blog post as soon as you hit that publish button .

Now The Boring Bit

Now because I have just suggested a way to fully automate link building for a WordPress blog I thought I should put in a little disclaimer – In no way am I saying go out and do this, as most people know I test things with this blog and sometimes I will blog about these tests, I have not fully tested the above and would never use this technique for any clients. There are people who do this kind of thing already, out of which some make mistakes and get penalties, so be warned!

My Perfect WordPress Install – Will it Work? is a post from Scott McLay's SEO Blog - Scott McLay is a SEO Consultant from Falkirk, Scotland.