As the second part of the Twitter series here on Holistic, I thought I would suggest some of the people I am, and would recommend following on Twitter, and being a SEO in the UK, obviously all these are UK based.

Dave Naylor (DaveN)

Company: Bronco

WHO?: One of the ‘big dogs’ of UK search marketing, Dave started working in the SEO industry over 10 years ago.

WHY: Hugely popular, highly respected and well worth following

WHERE: http://twitter.com/DaveNaylor

Company: MediaVest/MVi

WHO?: Head of Search at MediaVest. Industry veteran (sorry Jon)

WHY: Widely respected and a regular speaker on both the SMX and SES speaking circuits. Amongst other things - he’s my boss.

WHERE: http://twitter.com/JonDMyers

Company: BigmouthMedia

WHO?: Head of Search at Bigmouthmedia.

WHY: Hardcore Search Marketeer - and ‘face’ of Bigmouthmedia (erm :)). Passionate about all things search, and if that bores you, theres always his gaming.

WHERE: http://twitter.com/AndrewGirdwood

Company: Blogstorm/Branded3

WHO?: Director of Search at Branded3.

WHY: Been a magic year for Patrick and the Blogstorm blog.

WHERE: http://twitter.com/patrickaltoft

Company:

WHO?: Marketing Expert @ jimsmarketingblog.com

WHY: Hugely experienced marketeer and VERY well connected (Over 16000 followers on Twitter)

WHERE: http://twitter.com/Jimconnolly

Company: Altogether Digital

WHO?: SEO and Social Media Director at Altogether Digital

WHY: Entertaining blogger, and if that fails theres always the music commentary.

WHERE: http://twitter.com/ciaranj

Company: SEOptimise

WHO?: Director of Search at SEOptimise

WHY: Some great posts coming out of SEOptimise at the moment. Worth following for that alone.

WHERE: http://twitter.com/kevgibbo

Company: Microsoft/MSN

WHO?: Microsoft Adcentre’s Community Manager

WHY: Works for Microsoft apart from anything else (Who would turn down the chance of winning an ‘I’m a PC tshirt). Apart from that his regular commentary is hugely entertaining

WHERE: http://twitter.com/MelCarson

Company: Distilled

WHO?: Founder of Distilled with Duncan Morris

WHY: His involvement with SEOMoz is well known, however the site itself is a wealth of information.

WHERE: http://twitter.com/willcritchlow

Company: Ayima Search Marketing

WHO?: One of the Ayima Gang

WHY: Entertaining Blogger, and hugely entertaining twitter read not just in terms of latest on hangovers….

WHERE: http://twitter.com/evilgreenmonkey

Matt Sawyer - DataDial -Online Marketeer, SEO and Social Media Junkie - http://twitter.com/mattuk

Rob Watts - Latitude - SEO - Stephen Pavlovich - Bonytoad - http://twitter.com/bonytoad

Jane Copland - SEOMoz/Ayima - Only here as she isn’t 100% in the UK yet- http://twitter.com/coplandmj

Judith Lewis - I-Level - Search Director at I-Level - http://twitter.com/JudithLewis

Lisa Ditlefsen - Base One - Head of Search at BaseOne - http://twitter.com/LisaDitlefsen

George Hopkin - Johnston Press - SEO Evangelist - http://twitter.com/GeorgeHopkin

Paul Walsh - Various - http://twitter.com/PaulWalsh

Nikki Pilkington - http://twitter.com/nikkipilkington

Dave Davis - RedFly Marketing - http://twitter.com/daveredfly

Dan Alderson - Amaze PLC - http://twitter.com/pinje

and the final one

Peter Young

Company: MediaVest / Holistic Search

WHO?: SEO Manager at MediaVest.

WHY: Why not?

WHERE: http://twitter.com/peteyoung

Thats just some of my recommendations, Please feel free to add yours…

71% of people are unaware of how Internet search engine results are compiled - thats the figure that has come from a study from Fasthosts called “Online Search Matters.”. Interesting for many search marketeers particularly those actively employing SEO or PPC campaigns.

Search Page Overview

The study went on to say that the majority of UK browsers either have no idea or an inaccurate view of how online search results are generated perhaps indicative of the level of understanding regarding SEO within the general public. Of the 97 percent of respondants who said that they frequently use search engines, only 29 percent are aware that search results are generated based on the search terms and optimisation techniques used by the individual website owners.

Further to this 24 percent of respondents believe that the search results cannot be affected, while 22 percent suspect that results are ordered entirely according to how much has been paid by the websites listed. The report also stated that:

• 19% say they have no idea at all how results are compiled
• 5% believe that search listings are arranged completely at random.

Staggering…..

Further to this, browsers continued to favour organic search rankings over that of its sponsored partners - with 38% of respondants saying they typically ignore sponsored listings. I personally would caveat such a statement by suggesting this figure is likely to change significantly the more brand or product focussed the search term is - and you would typically see clickthroughs on PPC increase significantly in these circumstances.

However the survery highlighted that 33% of respondents believe the sponsored listings to be ‘less worthy’ and ‘less useful’ than main search results, whilst to other 66% report that they always pay attention first to main results. In terms of demographic breakdown, there was also a significant slant with:

• 40% of women vs 34 % of men will ignore sponsored links whenever they appear as standard
• East England seemed to be the most sceptical towards sponsored listings with 45% of Norwich residents and 43% of Nottingham residents not clicking on them - compared against just 12% from Northern Ireland.

Whilst it should be highlighted this was quite  a small study, with only 1636 people surveyed - it does give us an indication as to the level of awareness out there in relation to search - and in particular the importance of an integrated search marketing approach comprising both SEO and Paid Search.

According to a recent Specific Media study using Comscore data, Display Advertising and Search Marketing are directly correlated. In particular brand and segment related searches jumped by over 100% in a number of areas where consumers were exposed to both display ads and search ads.

The impact of display ads on search - emarketer.com

The report went on to say that search clickers exposed to brand advertising were 22% more likely to produce a sale than those that did not view a display ad. It should be noted that such increases in performance are not merely limited to areas where just display and search are used. The recent Enquiro/Google study suggested that where priority visibility on both paid and organic search were occupied - brand association and purchase intent increased by circa 16%.

Further to this Microsoft’s Young-Bean Song said in a recent article on Clickz that the study results highlighted that search alone was not a standalone solution to customer acquisition

“The issue we have with navigational search is that it completely obliterates the value we’re creating from other digital marketing we’re doing,” Mr. Song told ClickZ. “The idea that search is this magical fountain of customer acquisition—in many cases it’s not.”

There is no doubting that search is reliant on other forms of advertising, one only has to look at other bits of research published over the last couple of years, such as the iProspect Search influencers study, which highlighted that two-thirds (67%) of search engine users are driven to search by an offline channel (37% of them because of TV advertising), and 39% of those offline-influenced search users ultimately make a purchase from the company that prompted their initial search - to see how much more effective search is as part of a multichannel marketing mix.

As budgets become tighter, marketing spends will have to work far harder - however online does have a significant advantage in terms of accountability, key in an environment where ever bit counts. That doesn’t mean however that other channels should be ignored…

Brand Reputation is becoming a big word in marketing circles. Warfare is taken place on the search engine results pages for many brands, and is becoming an important part of the Search Marketing professionals armoury. However what should you have in your brand reputation toolkit.

1) Know where you stand

It is very difficult to understand how and where to react to an issue if you do not know what is being said about you, and there is really no reason why you shouldn’t be able to setup even the simplest of monitoring tools without spending hundreds or thousands of pounds on brand reputation software.

Simply implementing a Google Alert on your brand will give you some sort of idea of who, what and where your brand is being talked about. I would add however there are some fantastic brand reputation monitoring tools out there that do pick up a wide variety of content, across a range of different channels, and if you are considering some of these tools some of the better ones are:

• Magpie Brandwatch
• Radian 6
• Market Sentinel
• Sentiment Metrics
• Asomo
• and even Trackur from Andy Beal.

2) Dominate your brand search.

Thomas Cook - Dominating brand

There are various ways of doing this, however it is imperative you make it as difficult for a potential brand detractor to influence any searcher, by reducing visibility below the fold. The example above shows an organisation that does this very well by utilising a mixture of subdomains and domains to dominate the top 10 of searches for ‘Thomas Cook’.

3) Use your paid search tactically

Often a lot of brand reputation issues will arise in public forums such as blogs and forums. A large proportion of these sites will carry various forms of online advertising such as Google Adsense advertising, or other forms of online advertising as a way of monetising their sites.

Use of sponsored search for brand reputation

Where particular issues may arise on a suitable site, it is possible to tailor adverts to particular sites - such as Google Adwords - site placement. These ads may carry creative developed particularly for a particular issue advising browsers of where they may be able to find more applicable factual data.

4) Use your offline channels online

Modern day search pages allow search marketeers to influence a far greater proportion of the search engine results page than ever before including

• Video
• PR
• Product Feeds
• Local Listings
• and Images

Blended search allows greater brand infiltration than ever before

Using the example above, for the iPhone, advertisers are able to use a variety of channels to attract potential custom, including

• the traditional organic listings - where Apple (as you would expect dominate)
• the Paid Listings - allowing advertisers such as Carphone Warehouse and Vodaphone to advertise on these terms

but also

• PR - Taken from Google trusted news sources
• Products - taken from advertisers who have submitted Google Base Feeds.

All these channels allow a far wider variety of usage outside of pure search results, for example the video used above is obviously pulled from Youtube - and has already received nearly 6 million views since it went live.

They also tend to dominate key areas of the page, for example

• Google Products - often visible between positions 1-4 (above the fold of the screen)
• Local - Generally the first result - and highly prominent in terms of eye catchment
• PR - Often within positions 1-5
• Video - Depends but normally anywhere between 1-10

They are in many cases ‘eyeline breakers’, often breaking the natural browse of a results page, and meaning users spend more time on search pages - something Enquiro looked into recently.

5) Use Your affiliates

This is obviously going to be more pertinant to some advertisers more than others, however it is worth noting how much real estate can be taken up by affiliates. Whilst this may be a more expensive way of taking up search page real estate, it can result in some significant coverage, all of which is likely (as long as you treat them right) to result in good brand (and sales focussed) coverage.

The role of affiliates on brand searches

And more:

• Use social media (Will cover this in a later post)
• Is Wikipedia relevant - WHilst you aren’t likely to get any link juice - this does take up valuable real estate
• Create a Squidoo lens

One thing is for sure - don’t just ignore the problem. There are a number of high profile examples out there in, that highlight what happens if things are simply left to fester. Certainly people like Dell have developed a brand reputation response learned from the ‘Dell Hell’ days.

This is a slightly off kilter conversation following a post I read on the Vertical Leap blog today, regarding ‘SEO for £35 per month????’. . It certainly does remind of earlier SEO ventures, where the likelihood of coming up against said competitors was far higher, however I think it helps to lookat why and where this perception comes from.

Now I may be reading between the lines here (and no offence meant here Gina), however I would suggest the organisation in question here is reasonably small, certainly not FTSE 250. Certainly my experience within the marketplace would suggest awareness and perception of SEO is greatest in startups/smaller organisations and the larger enterprise level organisations, with a middle tier that often garners a mixed response (I would add at this point - and at the time of writing I have absolutely no physical back up for that comment bar personal experience). So why does this perception exist.

Whilst the marketplace is becoming more digital/search savvy there is a lot of ignorance/lack of awareness out there as regards what search and in particular SEO can do and where it fits in. With such a wide range of services available - and lets face it a lack of benchmarks on which to base a decision - it can often be difficult to seperate Joe Bloggs from Enterprise level SEO organisation.

There is also the issue of web development company vs search specialist. Many web development agencies these days offer SEO services as part of their remit. Whilst I think they are personally well placed to do so, I unfortunately also have experiences of a very one sided service, certainly more focussed on search engine friendly design, rather than search engine optimisation, persay - however that is a personal sidenote.

Read a forum or blog, and you are bound to see some reference to shady goings on, or SEO campaigns that haven’t worked. Whilst SEO has come along way from the ’snake oil salesman’ perception it had, it still has some way to go, and I would certainly say this is more the case the further down the enterprise ladder you go.

With larger organisations, it is often the case that terms of business and SLA’s are in place, and rewards are higher both for said organisation and the search agency. Whilst it is not always the case, it is very much a enterprise service with the associated time dedicated to the account. That point alone is bound to get some feedback - however let me caveat that.

How on earth, is a good job meant to be done on a site for £35 a month. On a minium wage that would equate to around 6 hours a month. Now he is going to have to source links (or alternatively outsource -which would take up around half that budget if he outsourced cheaply overseas), so your looking at a minute amount on which to develop a campaign.

I don’t mean to be rude but - How can a proper job be done on that amount of money. And if you do decide to use said vendor, how can you be suprised if it doesn’t deliver the quantifiable results you wanted instead of some obscure 5 word phrase that no man ever has or ever will search for?

In a modern day search landscape where search isn’t just about optimising your meta descriptions and keywords, where rewards are so much greater, and competition so much more fierce - is it really worth taking a chance and basing such a potentially lucrative decision merely on price. In a landscape where link acquisition is far more complicated (who had used nofollow to not pass linkvalue 2 years ago - or didn’t use either directories or paid links as part of their link building strategies), on-page is not a case of meta tags, but a mix of technical and content based optimisation (lets think geotargeting for a start here), SEO is far more complicated, and far more lucrative than ever. Just look at the stats, In April 2008, over 31 million UK adults (15+) searched on the Internet thats:

• 93% of the UK ‘Net population
• 4.1 billion search queries
• 10 searches per usage day
• 30 visits per month
• 5 searches per visit

Thats a huge potential marketplace

I once had a trainer say to me, you will never lose a sale on price. If you do - you just haven’t sold well enough. I would turn that comment round, and say - If you base a purchasing decision solely on price - then you havent considered your options well enough - and you run a far higher risk of that decision not being the right one.

[ This post from Peter Young's blog contains only his personal opinions. ]

Yes, we are looking for you to contribute content to the Holistic Search blog. Whilst this will not be an opportunitity for an unashamed linkfest and plug ofyour latest product or service, it will be an opportunity for the lucky contributors to share the views with the wider public.

I will be approaching a number of prominent search marketeers to try and get their views, however we are not just looking for the Andrew Girdwood’s and Danny Sullivan’s of the world on this, but also some budding up and coming bloggers.

If you are interested in contributing to the cause, drop us a line, dm or email with an outline of the topic. Thanks and happy writing….

According to an E-Consultancy report, spend on search marketing in the UK is set to slow considerably over the coming year. The report (the annual ‘Search Engine Marketing Buyer’s Guide 2008) predicted that search spend will rise by 24% in 2008, down from 58% year on year growth in 2007 and 65 percent growth in 2006, which in laymens terms would equate to £2.75 billion ($4.9 billion) this year, up from a £2.2 billion ($3.9 billion) spend in 2007. The report predictions are based on the total amount spent on search engine marketing in the U.K., including media spend and money spent on agency services such as paid search management.

Chris Lake from E-Consultancy suggested that this slowdown was not merely down to the economic slow-down but also to a matured UK search market. The report stated:
“Although there is significant room for further growth in spending, the sector is now becoming more established and, as such, cannot keep on such a steep curve indefinitely,” whilst going on to say
“While there remains strong growth in the market, the upward trajectory of search has begun to flatten as the industry has become more mature, as has happened in the United States”.

According to the report the majority of the spend was earmarked for paid search (approximately £2.4 Billion or 88%), with organic search engine optimisation accounting for around a mere £330 million (circa 12%). It should however be noted that year on year SEO spend is expected to increase by 32% this year. That is hardly suprising in my opinion given the saturation of many of the paid search verticals, where cost per click can make entry to the market prohibitive to a certain extent. Whilst there are certain verticals within the organic framework that are certainly as saturated I personally feel there is significantly more growth within the sector, particularly given the greater integration of blended search within the search engine results themselves.

Finally after months of planning (and minutes) of implementation the Holistic Search blog is now live. In the coming months (and years), the plan is to get a number of high profile industry specialists involved in the blog, as well as share the viewpoints of a couple of seasoned Search Experts, and Dan.

I myself am currently the SEO Manager for Mediavest (the UK’s leading independent media agency), something I thoroughly enjoy. This forum merely allows us to merely talk about my thoughts relating to Search, where its going and how I feel about it, with no holes (well maybe a few) barred. Search is something I am passionate about, and blogging something I thoroughly enjoy, especially following serious blogging time at both E-Gain New Media, Connectpoint/Pavilion/Amaze and my regular pieces over at E-Consultancy.

I have invited a couple of colleagues and industry friends to get involved and will introduce as they come on board.

In the meantime… Enjoy