Cornwall SEO

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Social Media Training in Cornwall

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I’ve been asked by a few local businesses to put on some kind of social media training and I’m going to test the water for such an event. If you are interested, subscribe to the newsletter opposite and I will let you know when it happens.

Getting savvy social media training in Cornwall is a bit tricky for a number of reasons: It’s a peninsular, meaning it’s long and thin and does not have a large catchment area, and it’s a long way away from large population centres and so economics of scale are not there.

Not that there isn’t a need, there is. But, it’s all about making the event worthwhile. In the past I have presented training seminars at online marketing conferences in London where the concentration of people interested make it worth doing. Also, large companies have brought me in to personally coach employees in the art of social media marketing.

Having been involved in social media marketing for about five years now, although it really depends how you define social media, I’ve built up quite a lot of real experience and consulting with some of the biggest companies and brands in the land I have been able to see how business implements social media. Mostly they get it wrong, in fact only a tiny percentage get it right. And when I say get it right I mean it adds to their bottom line.

So, I’m dipping my toe in the water and I will access the feedback. In the meantime, sign up to the newsletter and I will keep you informed

How much will it cost? It’s going to be attractive to small businesses in Cornwall, so it wont be the usual fee of around £200 per person.
When will it be? Probably in the Autumn.
Where will it be? Possibly Truro, or a nice beachside cafe that turns out a tasty burger.

For those of you who are not residents of Cornwall (you don’t know what you are missing) I may take the show on the road and hold the seminar/presentation/workshop around the UK.

How to Get Lots of Links Very Quickly

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Want links?

Set up a site that panders to a certain prejudice and creates a suspension of disbelief. Provide the usual pointers that linkers and journalists need to pass the test and bada bing.

Of course it’s not as easy as that, it’s a lot of work and you really, really have to know what you are doing.

Hoaxing for links.

I’m a big fan of hoaxing for links and this one popped up on the radar today.

Titled, “Is Internet Explorer For The Dumb? A New Study Suggests Exactly That.”

Someone set up a website that looks and feels like a proper research type site and published what looked to be an authentic report. A lot of people retweeted and linked to it, including the BBC and the Freakonomics crew.

We all get hoaxed every once in a while and it’s mostly harmless and just a bit of fun.

But, it can get you an asssack full of links.

If you look at this story you will soon realise that an SEO would never get hoaxed by this as the PR of the site is zero.

+1 Button

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I have not yet put the +1 Google goodness button on my site. But, I think it’s definitely worth it. Although there have been rumblings that a + 1 is going to influence SERPS, I wouldn’t get too excited as I haven’t seen anywhere that says it happens when you are logged out.

My advice, let the first movers expend time and resources on figuring out if G + is worth it, then simply modify accordingly. If you are a business you really do not have to worry about G+ or G+1 or whatever it’s called.

Some commentators are hooked on change, rather than efficiency or adapting to the environment. This is the nature of the new social media landscape. Every few months a new network/website comes out and has people running around as if robotic cockroaches are in their pants nibbling at their bits screaming, “we must change now or we get left behind”.

I think I understand where this thinking comes from when looking at places like Myspace and others and noting how they were not developed. Facebook and Twitter (old web 2.0 media) continue to innovate and develop, therefore it’s a different landscape.

I don’t use FB much, but have found Twitter extremely useful following #hackgate #notw, as all journalists and most politicians Tweet. As far as I can tell they will continue to do so. Their thinking seems to be along the lines of, “Twitter does what we need it to do, why change?”

I look at the feed in G+ and it’s mostly a river of garbage. LOLcats, music videos, the odd politico rant against socialism. You may like such stuff, but my focus is elsewhere on more serious stuff.

Sure I can spend time organising my feed into different circles and stuff, and make sure I only get stuff from people I want. The thing is, in real life when you organise something you don’t expect to have to reorganise a few months later and this is exactly what will happen.

But, some people love to organise and move avatars of friends into and out of boxes and good luck to them. These types of people probably find comfort from the harsh world in doing such inefficient tasks.

And anyway, you can just hire these people for very little money to go build a +1 empire. For what little good it’s going to do.

You can’t automate the social process, it has to be organic.

It’s not a better system you need. It’s better implementation.

Feeling like crap from a bad cold, which may make this post more rambly than usual.

What will +1 result in for small business

Not Really a Top Ten Tips on How to Make Money Online with G+

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I remember when Twitter started and I was following/being followed by about 200-300. The signal to noise ratio was very high. Because you couldn’t add pictures/video/music into the stream there was little distraction.

Things were focussed on the the business of SEO and Social Media Manipulation. All good stuff. Of course the “drinking coffee” Tweets started to seep in and things increasingly got tedious and banal.

But then an interesting thing happened to Twitter, normal people started to join it. The BBC and other mainstream media organisations came to the party. And it became a powerful tool for a marketer.

Looking at my G+ stream right now, there are pictures of cars, funny videos, reviews on TV shows and so forth. Very little of what I really want, which is SEO and social media and other media stuff. Now, you could say just create a circle and blah blah blah. Problem is, it’s not the people I need to separate, it’s the topics of the posts.

I am sure there are people have a lot of time on their hands to be able to tweak and learn a new social media system. I’m trying to be polite about this, but there seems to be a lot of “look at me I’m a first mover” kinda business going on.

If your business is built around telling me what social media tool to use in exchange for piles of cash, then it makes a lot of sense to be here.

But, I look at my stream in G+ and just see a bunch of distraction and just like Twitter can be, it’s a bit banal, a bit childish and a bit crap. Sorry if this offends, but my job is to write what I think, not to give borderline personality types the warm fuzzies.

I have my Google Reader, I have Twitter, I have Facebook, I have Google Alerts, I have Linked in, I have email. I very much doubt I will miss something if I don’t squat on G+ as client work ends up being late (as it mostly does, but that’s another story).

There is a big bag of reason to be on G+ and check it out. But if it does not fit my strategy it ends up being a big bag of wank. I think there are reasons to keep tabs on the system as these things tend to morph into something that wasn’t initially expected. But the idea of sitting here, eating carrot cake and ingesting the stream of G+ leaves me a bit queasy. Much better to go and read my copy of the Guardian which I bought in a pique of righteous indignation whilst tutting at the piles of unsold copies of the Sun.

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Will Google +1 Result in the End of Small Business Online?

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It’s very simple.

Either Google +1 will affect the search engine results or it will not.

What if it does?

Will the frenetic dash that Digital Media Agencies mean that they then resell their networks to Corporate big gits to help crush the small independent, just as they have on the high street?

A little emotive perhaps.

But what does Google say?

When your ad is shared, Google notes its final landing page URL. When the same URL appears in an organic search listing, the organic listing will include the same personal annotations as would an ad.

Similarly, if a user +1’s one of your organic listings, ads with the same final landing page URL will include the same personal annotations, increasing the chance of your ads getting noticed.

+1’s (whatever their source — organic search, ads, or +1 buttons on publisher sites) is a signal that affects organic search ranking, but +1’s do not change quality scores for ads and ad ranking

How will the +1 button affect my organic search listings?

I had to read it a few times before it sunk in.

Rankings are not going to be affected. It’s just that some hairy seo/social-media-manipulator is going to have their mug next to the search results. As long as you are logged into Google and you circle/follow/adore the hairy seo/social-media-manipulator who has taken the valuable seconds of his existence to +1 it.

My point is this. Is the potential buyer of a cordless power drill, when searching for a Makita 18v going to see and then be influenced by the hairy seo/social-media-manipulator? Or is it going to only other hairy seo/social-media-manipulators who see the results.

I think the latter.

As a commercial persuasion proposition, the Google +1 button will be mostly worthless. The majority of the human effort going into the +1 will stay in the goldfish bowl which the hairy seo/social-media-manipulator lives.

Sometimes the hairy seo/social-media-manipulator does stuff not because it’s going to be of great benefit to the client, but because they have something to sell and the I-don’t-want-to-be-left-behind part of the brain gets excited.

People mistake influence in the hairy seo/social-media-manipulator bubble with an increase in wealth.

I’m not anti social media/social signals/crowd sourcing etc. far from it. But, most of what you hear about it these days is garbage, people need to sell books, fill conferences and get endorsed by the latest over invested fad and so desire has to be created.

It’s as if a food is being sold to hungry people which only increases their hunger.

Stop eating the empty calories.

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