An excellent opportunity has arisen within our Blackpool based office as a Junior SEO Executive / Online Marketer. You will be part of a small but growing team where full training will be provided.
This is an ideal position for a University graduate that looking to get a foot on the ladder. Ideally from a computing based degree though all candidates with a good technical knowledge and a passion for Internet marketing will fit the bill.
Initially the chosen individual will be an all rounder, helping out with the day to day running of the business, dealing with enquires and support calls while you get a feel of the job. Long term the candidate will be trained to be a specialist in whatever area they are strongest in though a link builder would be preferred.
Key skills desired (though not all essential) include:
Duties will include:
If you have the skills other potential duties include:
We don’t expect the applicant to be a master of all the above and training will be given.
Salary is negotiable and based on skills/experience/education, a pay review will be made in 6 months and will reflect your improved skill set. Normal holidays and the hours will be 9-5 Monday - Friday though working hours can be flexible.
Please email a covering letter and CV to jobs@dolphinpromotions.co.uk
The job will be located in our new offices in the centre of town which is close to the main train station and all the main bus routes.
There may also be opportunities for University Students wanting part time work on days off (1 or 2 days a week) and summer vacancies.
No agencies please. No freelancers we do not out-source. The job is strictly based from our offices.
North South Media have been doing an SEO league table over the past few months based on the rankings each company achieves within the search engines. As part of our on going SEO on our own site we have gradually moved up in the table and finally been ranked at No 1 for the UK results and No 2 for the International Results. While the league is not official or even that serious it is nice to be identified as one of the top SEO companies in the UK. Congratulations to Hobo Web and Just Searching for achieving No 1 in the Scottish and International results.
Regional results as follows:
| Company | Dec 07 |
Nov 07
|
Alexa
|
|
| 1 | Hobo Web | 152 pts |
154 pts
|
182,102 |
| 2 | Internet Marketing Scotland | 148 pts |
154 pts
|
1,127,223 |
| 3 | Web Designer Scotland | 108 pts |
68 pts
|
1,481,525 |
| 4 | Design Insite | 95 pts |
123 pts
|
854,201 |
| 5 | 360innovate | 69 pts |
69 pts
|
564,863 |
| 6 | NLP Scotland | 59 pts |
80 pts
|
559,499 |
| 7 | Breeze Media | 43 pts |
–
|
764,540 |
| 8 | Scotland SEO Blog | 39 pts |
–
|
790,247 |
| 9 | Spider Writing SEO | 36 pts |
40 pts
|
378,159 |
| 10 | North South Media | 34 pts |
45 pts
|
213,165 |
UK National results as follows:
| Company | Dec 07 |
Nov 07
|
Alexa
|
|
| 1 | Dolphin Promotions | 71 pts | 70 pts | 226,288 |
| 2 | Submit Express | 60 pts | 62 pts | 500,545 |
| 3 | Blue Claw | 60 pts |
58 pts
|
311,878 |
| 4 | Kruse | 56 pts |
53 pts
|
494,745 |
| 5 | Mister Web | 54 pts |
54 pts
|
667,685 |
| 6 | Vertical Leap | 48 pts | 70 pts | 230,015 |
| 7 | BigMouthMedia | 40 pts |
–
|
49,070 |
| 8 | SEO Company UK | 38 pts |
47 pts
|
1,222,332 |
| 9 | EHL Online | 38 pts |
–
|
1,042,939 |
| 10 | Beyonder | 34 pts |
33 pts
|
8,639,296 |
International results as follows:
| Company | Dec 07 |
Nov 07
|
Alexa
|
|
| 1 | Just Searching | 75 pts |
45 pts
|
32,892
|
| 2 | Dolphin Promotions | 73 pts |
75 pts
|
226,288
|
| 3 | I Have A Website Now What | 73 pts |
71 pts
|
221,852
|
| 4 | WebLinx | 71 pts |
87 pts
|
216,436
|
| 5 | SEOCO | 70 pts |
84 pts
|
134,943
|
| 6 | Search Engine Optimising | 56 pts |
30 pts
|
150,679
|
| 7 | White Hat Media | 47 pts |
42 pts
|
528,457
|
| 8 | Big Mouth Media | 42 pts |
62 pts
|
49,070
|
| 9 | North South Media | 34 pts |
44 pts
|
213,165
|
| 10 | SEO London | 34 pts |
–
|
1,252,657
|
I’m easing myself into work by doing a couple of blog posts before I start work on our clients! Along with neglecting blogging have have neglected reading Sphinn and other blogs recently. One of the Sphinn topics I noticed was by Copy Brighter on SEO techniques Google has smashed in 2007. One of the reasons I like posts like this is because I see so many SEO companies still practicing these techniques or advising their clients to use them. I have no doubt many of these companies will continue using the techniques throughout 2008 and onwards. One of the key jobs as an SEO is to actively read Blogs, Forums and other information sites in order to keep on top of the regular changes search engines make to their algorithms/rules. While it is impossible to know the exact Google algorithm it is often publicly announced when Google make an important change. Some of these changes include:
Unfortunately the drink and debauchery has had to come to an end and we are now back at work, though not at full capacity until Monday.
First of all I will apologise for the lack of posts recently, December is a bit of a hectic month at the best of times but we have also taken on 3 new clients, and been looking for new larger offices.
I will be trying to spend a little more time blogging over the next few weeks.
Hopefully we can also have the new offices sorted by the end of this month, but we will be keeping the postal address the same in order to avoid confusion for our clients.
I hope every one had a good break over Christmas and hope we all have a profitable year!
After a previous post regarding Tindall Marsh & Co using our design we are in discussion about resolving the situation. I have spoken to the owner and hopefully the problem will be sorted without too much incident. It would appear the situation occurred due to a rather foolish designer whom has now left the company, and the owner has expressed his apologies. So thank you for the quick resolution.
Ok I am being petty again, but I have decided that I am going to create a page dedicated to all the crap SEO spam emails we get. If I remember correctly another SEO company was listing them on their own site, so if anyone remembers the site let me know and I will give them some link love for the idea.
My main reason behind this is because it is funny how stupid SEOs make themselves look when they spam other SEOs with SEO services. I assume they are automated requests so I guess they can’t help it, but then using an automated technique is pretty stupid too.
Today WebSearchPR.Com were kind enough to take some time out of their day to send me an email. Apparently my site only has 155 links in Google, and that they used the Google link count because that is the most important.
“A higher number of links will help me achieve far higher rankings on Google.”
Really? Links are important? Why did no one tell me?
Apparently they have achieved excellent results for their clients and they have increased profits for 100’s of their clients.
Strangely enough they do not seem to have any links in Google themselves, Yahoo shows seven and MSN (+link:) shows none. Maybe they should spend more time building their own links rather than spamming other SEO companies.
Ok so I know they are not going to stop spamming but I am still going to moan about it.
Approximately 2 days every month we get an email from this seoedge.com, either through our main email or our contact form. Every single email has been regarding buying links on one of their sites or link exchanges. One email even apologised for disturbing me and they will not do it again!
One of the amusing things I noticed many of the links they were trying to sell is on their own site seoedge.com, apparently it used to be a PR6 but it now appears to be PR0. Guess no one told them selling links is not allowed in Google’s eyes.
If an SEO can not keep up to date with correct practices for their own site what hope do their clients have? I suppose the fact that their SEO packages cost $99 and $199 a month goes to show you get what you pay for. At least they do not guarantee 1000s of top ten listings within X days and they seem quite honest about the service you pay for.
SEO Edge are not the only culprit and they are probably not the worst it is just that I noticed they were repeat offenders.
While this is some what of a pointless rant it is partly due to the fact that companies like this make winning clients more difficult. Certainly in the UK, SEO is still quite an un-developed industry, there is a very mixed bag or good SEOs and awful SEOs with very little in between.
Unfortunately I find that many small firms / SMEs are quite uneducated about the industry and will go to the cheapest SEO possible. I am happy to to lose a potential client to a better SEO or at least a good SEO that undercut me/presented themselves better than me. If you are paying £50 a month and targeting a competitive industry my personal opinion is that the money would be better spent on buying SEOBook and maybe a member ship to SEOMoz and do the SEO yourself. Both them resources will probably make your more skilled at SEO than the SEO company that charges £50 a month for SEO that is way out of date.
If you are considering paying for SEO then no matter how much the company charges I think you should always read up about some of the techniques to avoid, look at the clients the company has had and the results they have achieved. If any of the techniques used on the site look suspicious then it is probably best to stay away from them. Techniques to look out for and avoid include:
There are many other things to avoid I just listed a few that came to me. There are also loads of good SEOs in the UK but unfortunately a few seem to give the rest of the industry a bad name. I hope as the demand for SEO increases the overall awareness about the techniques that should and should not be used will increase too.
Well it has been a few weeks now since Microsoft opened the Webmaster tools and also made the Link command work again and I have been trying out both of them.
Firstly the Live Search Link commands, this now works by using + in front of the command then the URL you want to check. Therefore instead of link:dolphinpromotions.co.uk it is now +link:dolphinpromotions.co.uk. Joost de Valk pointed out that Live Search appears to obey NoFollows which is pretty useful as Yahoo is quite frustrating when showing all the NoFollow links. It also groups together the sitewide links well and the tool is usable through the API. Overall it is quite good news, it appears to be more accurate than Yahoo and obviously the Google one is not very accurate.
Next up is Live Webmaster, the equivalent to Google Webmaster Tools or the Yahoo Site Explorer. At the moment I think it is still in Beta, while I could sign in and try to add a site the tool kept creating a validation error. On further research I had to email lswmp@microsoft.com to request my account to be activated. My first thoughts were that it is defiantly more advanced than Site Explorer. Some of the features include:
While there are more functions than Site Explorer, it definitely seems buggy (it is beta though). The main things I noticed were:
Overall I think there is plenty of potential there, though to be honest I do not use Site Explorer or Webmaster tools a lot. I find Site Explorer a bit crap and it does not seem to provide much benefit to my sites. Webmaster tools is definitely the best of the bunch but it has been around for quite a while now so hopefully Live will develop plenty of useful feature in the future.
After my investigation into what websites used valid markup I thought it would be interesting to check how accessible some of the sites are based on the W3C WAI Guidelines. In the UK it is, in theory, against the law to not have an accessible website as it discriminates against the Disabled.
Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA) does not refer explicitly to website accessibility, but makes it illegal to discriminate against people with disabilities. The DDA applies to anyone providing a service; public, private and voluntary sectors. The Code of Practice: Rights of Access - Goods, Facilities, Services and Premises document published by the government’s Disability Rights Commission to accompany the Act does refer explicitly to websites as one of the “services to the public” which should be considered covered by the Act.
Source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_accessibility
While I do not think any Webmasters have been prosecuted for this I do think it is important that certain websites conform to the W3C WAI Guidelines. These would include websites for Universities and the Government.
As a quick, and not very scientific, investigation I have decided to check the Top 20 Universities to see if they conform to the W3C WAI Guidelines. As I am not an Accessibility specialist I am keeping it quite simple, I will be checking the home page of each University and running the automated checks from Watchfire WebXact. Just for reference I will also include the results from the W3C Markup validation from my previous tests.
*Ok so either Live Writer is useless or I am a moron and can’t do posts with tables very well. I have quickly done screen shots of the info and posted that, if I get some time later I will redo it all*
So my last post was a bit of a rant about my Blog not validating and that I have decided to check some other sites around the Internet to see how popular developing websites with valid markup actually is.
My first lot of checks were Blogs from around the Internet, most of them are listed in Technorti’s Popular Blogs list however I have added several other ones that either I read frequently or I perceive to be quite big.