Posts Tagged ‘SEO’

Google SSL update and its impact on SEO, SEM and more.

November 8th, 2011

At Reform lively debate and conversation is encouraged as we develop our take on the latest developments in the ever-changing world of digital. Digital marketing is far from black or white (no search-related hat pun intended!), and through these debates we believe that we can better relay our thoughts on both sides of the fence to our clients and colleagues.

This week we’ve been discussing the latest Google SSL update, how Google Analytics now reports some SEO traffic as ‘(not provided)’ and the potential user / privacy issues driving the change.

Here are different takes on this development from two members of our team – one positive, about what Google can do as the innovative leader in this field, the other perhaps more pessimistic about what Google has become.

Niall Madden, Director at Reform says…

The big story here is that when a user logged into Google (Gmail for example) does a search, they are being taken through an encrypted query on Google’s https website, stripping out all the tracking parameters in the process, resulting in that traffic showing in Google Analytics as ‘(not provided)’.

This means that Google, and ONLY Google, know not only what keyword was used, but where the listing ranked in the SERPS (the “cd=” parameter correlates with the SEO rank in all occasions).  Why I hear you ask? Apparently this is due to a concern about protecting the privacy of Google users.

Since the change, if you’re logged in and in the US, you can’t even enter a search query with JavaScript turned off any more (UPDATE – NOV 18 – This is no longer the case, as now we can search with JS off, even when logged in, though some interesting features include one where the sub-links are shrunken into the older link only versions). Combine this with the recent announcement about the algorithm tweak emphasising content freshness (affecting around 35% of results) and there’s a lot of buzz within the SEO industry.

But the big issue is Google Analytics, a free service that’s been great for SEO practitioners over the past few years. Many users started seeing a few SEO visits listed as ‘(not provided)’ in the keyword list, and even a few days ago shrugged it off as overhyped news – since they only saw it affect 1-2% of traffic, people weren’t concerned, life went on.

Then, by last Friday, that 1-2% hit as much as10% on a couple of sites, and people started getting concerned.

There is potentially another layer to this story.

Google recently launched Google Analytics Premier, which it is aggressively pushing to larger scale clients. The introductory price of $150,000 per year provides a service which, according to the brochure will enable you to ‘track more than ever’, ‘own your customer data’ and ‘analyse ALL of your data’.

To me this sounds like music to the ears of clients worried about losing keyword data for 10-20% of SEO traffic to their site, and it has caused many to think that Google might be using this data exclusively like many third party ad providers do theirs.

However, this statement has not been accepted by Google, and their reps and other parties have informed us that this is not currently the case, (so conspiracy theorists can rest, for now). Still, it seems like the logical next step if Google is going to be selling their product, and many people have said that the answers they receive from Google on this subject are vague at best.

Face it, Google has changed. The data is valuable, and they need to generate revenue beyond AdWords. Hey, call me a cynic, but it just seems like the path that Google is taking, regardless of what Google tells me. I mean, really, who’s going to pay $150k when 10-20% of the keyword data is missing!?

And as for user privacy, consumers tend to complain more about targeted advertising, like remarketing perhaps, not SEO results. Ironically for PPC – “If you choose to click on an ad appearing on our search results page, your browser will continue to send the relevant query over the network to enable advertisers to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns and to improve the ads and offers they present to you.”

So where’s that valued privacy now?

Richard Fergie, Consultant at Reform says…

Yes, you are a cynic. As far as I know, it’s all speculation and conspiracy theory at best.

Firstly, I think it is important to be clear that Google *could* do everything that Niall is talking about; there is no technical barrier to them operating an exclusive web analytics service in this way. My argument is not that Google can’t, but that Google won’t.

What will Google gain from this? If this change increases uptake of their premium analytics product so that it grows to twice the size of Omniture it will increase Google’s revenues by only 2% (based on 2010 figures).

Not the type of return shareholders are looking for.

2% at Google’s scale is still a lot of money but I think this reward is not worth the anti-trust risk for Google. Google are already walking a fine line in the anti-trust courts; I say that using their dominance in search to help them dominate the premium web analytics space will put them so far on the wrong side of the line that the US Government will have to take action.

So what is the real reason why Google have made this change? I genuinely believe that they are doing it to protect user data. Not because they care about user privacy but because user data is being used to compete with Google in the online advertising space.

Google Remarketing is an excellent retargeting solution but it is nowhere near being the best in the space. Giving these ad networks additional data in the form of the user’s search query makes their targeting even more efficient and harder to compete with. Google can reduce the effectiveness of their competition and gain brownie points with organisations who care about user privacy – win/win.

So who is right?

Only time will tell (though at this moment Google have claimed that the data will currently NOT be added to Google Analytics Premium). In the mean time, this surely provides an opportunity for innovation and development within the SEO industry.

Every business in every industry suffers setbacks at some point, and from an SEO practitioner point of view, this certainly feels like a step backwards for SEOs that analyse keyword data as a key sign of the overall project’s value.

However, workarounds will be developed, new KPIs will emerge, and the industry will continue to grow. This isn’t the first time data has been closed off, and presumably it won’t be the last.

Blog post by Niall Madden, SEO Director of Reform

Yandex – Yet ANother inDEX?

September 26th, 2011

There are parts of the world where Google is not dominant. In Russia the search engine Yandex is the market leader with a market share of over 60%. Helped by rapidly growing internet usage in Russia, the search engine doubled the number of searches it handles between 2008 and 2009. For online businesses operating in Russia there is no question about the importance of Yandex (for more about search engine marketing in Russia read our Internation Search Review post) but since the launch of an English language search engine in 2010 should the rest of the world be thinking about Yandex?

There are two aspects to this question:
1. Will Yandex gain a large worldwide market share?

2. Are there other reasons to observe what Yandex is doing?

Will Yandex gain a large worldwide market share?
In my opinion, no. Right now people have no reason to use Yandex. It is not integrated with any of the online services commonly used in the West, nor is it the default search engine on any of the main browsers. The only ways Yandex can increase market share are either by spending a lot of money on advertising (this is working, but very slowly, for Bing) or by being better at search than Google. Unfortunately for Yandex, they can’t just be a little bit better they need to be a lot better; studies (by Microsoft) show that people say the quality of results from Bing are equal to those of Google, but only when the Bing results are wrapped in Google branding. Any new search engine that wants to dominate the market needs to be an order of magnitude better, just as Google was in 1998.

The search technology behind Yandex
Google beat the competition with their PageRank algorithm. Page and Brin realised that strong webpages were more likely to be linked to from other strong webpages. In other words, they picked a feature that they thought good webpages should have and then built their search engine to rank pages with this feature.

Yandex’s MatrixNet algorithm is very different; given a list of good pages for a queryspace, MatrixNet uses machine learning to decide which features distinguish them from the average. Then they rank pages with similar features in that queryspace. This method is a great defence against spammers because any feature that becomes common is no longer a powerful ranking signal. For example, if everyone has an optimised title tag then having an optimised title tag is not a signal of quality.

The main weakness with the MatrixNet approach is getting the list of good pages to begin with. The internet is too large for this to be manually curated so there has to be another algorithm to generate the list of quality sites. This algorithm must be very conservative in the sites it selects, otherwise results quality will suffer a lot; imagine if having a large number of AdSense ads became a positive ranking factor!

Google’s recent Panda updates use a similar approach. Matt Cutts (Head of Web Spam at Google) has said that they “came up with a classifier to say, okay, IRS or Wikipedia or New York Times is over on this side, and the low-quality sites are over on this side”. However, this algorithm update can only reduce rankings, not increase them so Google do not need to be as conservative with how it is applied (some site owners say they should have been a lot more careful).

As evidenced by their Panda update (and many other projects), Google has the technical ability to do machine learning at web scale. Should Yandex’s approach begin producing SERPs of amazing quality then Google can copy their approach before Yandex’s market share reaches critical mass. This is why Yandex need an order of magnitude improvement over Google; they need to capture a large amount of market share before Google improve their algorithm to match.

Why you should pay attention to Yandex
Like Yandex, the browser Opera also has a large market share in Russia without being a big player in the West. Opera introduced features like tabbed browsing and “speed dial” that have since been imitated by Firefox, Chrome and others. Web designers watch how Opera are innovating because some new features will cross over into the mainstream.

Similarly, you should keep an eye on what Yandex are doing because they take a different approach to search and successful features from their algorithm are likely to appear in other places.

Blog post by Richard Fergie, Consultant at Reform

The new domain name game

September 12th, 2011

Starting in January 2012, companies will have the opportunity to register new tailored domain names. Traditional naming conventions such as .com and .net will continue to exist, but brands will be able to use other words or phrases, such as their own brand name, as their domain name. For example, Reform.com could use reform.reform and other variations thereof using the .reform structure.

What will the cost for this new domain structure be? There’s an application fee which costs around £180,000, plus an annual running cost around £25,000. So, for many businesses, this kind of investment will prove cost prohibitive.

At Reform we’ll be monitoring what effect, if any, these new naming conventions have on search optimisation best practices. Will Google and other search engines favour one domain name over the other, and if so, could it lead to an unfair advantage in preserving top rankings? This will be an interesting space that we’ll be keeping an eye on for our clients.

Additionally, the new domain naming convention .xxx has been approved by ICANN after eleven years. Although some countries, such as India, have already started banning the new naming convention, brands and individuals now have less than a fifty day window to register to ensure their assets are not used in the adult online industry.

While the benefits of the .xxx domain include heightened parental control, as well as the hope that people will be less likely to unwittingly stumble across adult content, the 15,000 domain names that have been reserved are almost certainly not enough to protect all the people that may be affected. What about everyone else’s reputations?

ICM Registry’s chief executive Stuart Lawley said, “Regardless of what your personal views are on the existence of pornography on the internet, at least .xxx will give people the information they need to make a choice.”

Reform provides a bespoke brand monitoring service that can help you to ensure your brand is not misrepresented. With these new developments, it is more important than ever to invest in the right amount of diligence to protect your brand. Get in touch if you would like to know more.

Blog post by Anthony Dobson, Business Development Executive at Reform

How businesses should (or shouldn’t) react to Google’s latest update

May 20th, 2011

SEO has come a long way in the past decade, with companies focusing on search as a key component of their digital marketing strategy. And while you can probably guess I would be in the position to say such a thing, the truth is that SEO can indeed make or break a business on the web, leveling the playing field in this day and age between big names and local startups.

Companies around the world have started to use a good portion of their overall marketing resource based on how they perform in search. This is great, but it seems to me as still less of a “plan to action”, and more of a “knee jerk reaction”. The recent Google Panda / Farmer update was a major example of this – with companies “reacting” left and right wondering what they did wrong. While we love the fact that in today’s marketplace, many businesses are watching their search engine marketing performance much more closely – unfortunately, many are also believing everything they hear! So yes, SEO has indeed come a long way – and companies won’t fall for just anything, but there are certainly are still a fair bit of misconceptions going around the industry.

One recent example was the Overstock.com SEO Spam incident that you may have heard about on both the major news sites like CNN, or industry sites such as Search Engine Land where the major US retailer was penalised in the Google algorithm – supposedly (but this reason was never fully confirmed) for having a link building strategy that consisted of bulk .edu links. Weeks later, Overstock itself issued a statement saying that they had made the fixes Google required and sure enough they were back in the index – and all was well.

Some people simply assumed that Overstock had simply fixed things up, while some people complained that it was unfair that the big companies get such an advantage and got reinstated (not bothering to check why), while most companies only remembered the first part of the Overstock story, spending the time since chasing their SEO team, consultant or agency about some other new story that made the rounds in the industry or mainstream press. Perhaps direct competitors did look a bit closer at the overall situation, but we cannot confirm this, and thats not the issue here anyway.

Either way, it seemed like no one from any of the groups above double checked the story. If Google says no to bulk link acquisition and Overstock got banned from Google, does that mean Overstock’s bulk link acquisition got them in trouble? No. It was a poor misconception, an assumption that A+B=C. Clients should expect more from an agency, consultant or in house team, especially when monitoring competitor activity. We in this industry should be looking at the full answer and not taking other people’s word all the time. The EDU links by the way are still quite active in many places (example: http://www.alumni.ncsu.edu/s/1209/index.aspx?sid=1209&gid=1&pgid=632) – and so what changed then? Well, on the pages that got penalised for generic terms such as “living room furniture” – Overstock.com had pop-up/expandable text coded within the tags of their page. The pop-up text was filled with keywords and was in Google’s cache and visible to text browsers (screenshot of this example below).

The text strategy was reported by a competitor and got penalised shortly after. Yet, when Overstock was allowed back in, what changed? The links stayed, yet the hidden text is no longer there. Could this have been the “real” reason why the penalty was imposed in the first place?

No one will know for sure, but the point is that many companies will go by what they hear/read and that there are still many misconceptions about SEO as a whole. Here at Reform we make sure we try to not just throw some excuse about why sites perform the way that they do, but examine closer into it and find out what the real reason may be – instead of a “one size fits all” answer. With this extra insight and custom approach to your overall digital marketing strategy, SEO can become more of a natural approach, rather than a mystery. Not necessarily the wrong answer or right answer, but exploring multiple answers and possibilities and avoiding any potential misconceptions is key to any project we take on.

Google testing a redesigned search results page for US search users

May 7th, 2011

In the U.S. Google users are seeing a different look and feel to their search results page. This is the latest of several “tests” on Google.com – such as some users seeing “Google Voice Search” earlier this week.

New Google Search Result Test - May 2011

As seen above (click the image to see a full size version) – the search results page has more white space, a sort of muted colour tone, and PPC ads are not as obvious as before, since the colour of the PPC ads shaded much lighter.

Several users will notice the “cache” option has been removed from Google, much to the chagrin of SEO’s and users who want to check out a page before it loads in its entirety. However, they have replaced this from a visual standpoint, with “Google preview” – though this shows a page that one can hardly delve much information from.

Each result is also split by a dotted line, so that one can see where result one ends and two begins. And there is space between the result link and the snippet below. Overall, many people are guessing that this spacing below and above the title / link text may be a space for Google to later put their “+1″ button and various other social networking based aspects.

Last but not least, the results are not underlined anymore, which also has received mixed reactions. Unlike the recent layout changes on Google, this seems a bit more drastic. Several sites covered the story immediately with many users reacting to the change so shocked, that they thought it was a virus!

Let us know what you think.

Google updates: Panda/Farmer

April 21st, 2011

Over recent weeks the internet has been alive with commentary on Google’s recent changes to its search algorithms, labelled by some as “farmer” and others as “panda”. The changes that were initiated in the USA are now permeating Google sites worldwide with changes now evident on google.co.uk. Some of these changes are perceived to be having a devastating effect on websites who are seeing traffic levels fall by up to 90%.

The SEO implications

For a bit of background, “farmer” and “panda” are the same thing, explained in detail here – http://searchengineland.com/google-forecloses-on-content-farms-with-farmer-algorithm-update-66071 and http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/03/the-panda-that-hates-farms/ (Summary: “content farms” were the initial target, hence the name “farmer” while “panda” was Google’s code name for the very same update).  However, in the UK, it is often referred to as the latter.

The principal impact of the changes appears to be a downgrading of many of the most used article repositories, such as Ezine articles and Suite101, which has in turn had a knock-on effect on businesses that interact with these sites as part of their SEO strategy. For years, the SEO mantra has been ‘content is king’, which lead many sites to add as much templated content as possible to their site (and towards their site), often overlooking the quality of the source. This artificial inflation of a site’s amount of content now leaves them vulnerable to plummeting rankings and the associated ramifications.

Our take on the Panda update (Reform UK)

With the advent of the Panda update, we’ve seen a considerable shift in the type of sites being affected. Even those sites with significant brand authority have seen a large drop in visibility, resulting in a drop in traffic. For information sites this is problematic, but for e-commerce sites, this can be catastrophic.

The primary targeting has been towards uniform content on sites, such as articles that have been syndicated on sites which have no other content. However, it’s not just the sites that syndicate, it’s also their primary sources of content, the articles sites which have taken significant hits. Even for those sites that do not syndicate content, sites that rely solely on strategies like this for link building and that use templates for elements like product pages seem to be suffering as well.

Well known sites like Play.com have lost around 10% of their visibility and the associated level of traffic. This is possibly a very low level indicator that the real world weight of brands could be having less of an impact on their search rankings. There have also been a large number of well-regarded tech sites seeing significantly decreased rankings, such as Techworld & Techradar.

Our take on the Farmer / Panda update (Reform USA)

Names aside, all of these updates (Farmer, Panda, Caffeine, even Google Florida) are similar in many ways but from an SEO perspective it is important to understand that the changes will impact on a number of strategies.

Many websites rely on “tried and true” strategies and continue with them because they have brought positive results in the past.  In particular site owners have a had a penchant for allowing users to add content at will, which in turn helps make the site larger / more content rich and therefore more favourable to Google.

Other sites will automate content and templates to bulk up the site and catch keywords.  Another possibility is that they will see that a certain link strategy (whether ethical or not is not the question here for once) brings them good returns and stick with it.

However the recent changes to at Google suggest that while content may still be king, they are taking a much more qualitative view on the value of content and so webmasters and their SEO advises need to wise up to the changes.

How to counter the losses – 5 key points:

  1. Think long term strategy, not short term fixes
  2. Don’t keep using out-dated strategies
  3. Do your research thoroughly
  4. Constantly innovate in your optimization
  5. Audit your content

Reform has worked with a number of clients around the world developing long term and flexible strategies that maximise the benefit of existing content and infrastructure while providing an ability to move with the times.

Reform can also help you to move forwards with a balanced and ethical SEO approach that is in tune with your strategic goals in other marketing channels including profile building and social media.

Is It Good To Be Bad In SEO?

December 2nd, 2010

There’s an old saying that all publicity, even bad publicity, is good publicity. In a recent article from The New York Times, Search Engine Optimization through search juggernaut Google proves that the old saying may be the current truth in ecommerce.

The story details a consumer who purchased a pair of Lafont sunglasses from DecorMyEyes.com, a website ranked at the top of Google’s search results. While she believed that the high Google ranking and the look of the site brought assurances, she had no idea of the nightmare to follow.

Within a few weeks, she received the glasses in the mail, but, a loyal follower to the brand, she immediately spotted them as counterfeit. In investigating the purchase, she discovered that she was also overcharged by 125 dollars. When she called the website support to inquire about the purchase and ask for a refund, she was berated by the owner of the site, who called her a bitch and threatened her with graphic sexual violence. He also told her he knew where she lived and sent her a picture of her front door.

The consumer immediately called her credit card company but unfortunately, they also gave her trouble in investigating the matter and getting a refund.  Her requests for refunds landed her more harassment from the owner of the site, including calls at three in the morning and e-mail threats against her.

How then did this website get such high status from Google? The answer, according to the article, is simple. Many times consumers expect a smooth transaction and when they receive it, they don’t leave feedback. But when they get a horrible transaction, they need a place to vent their frustrations and the jilted consumer will go a review based website to describe their experience, throw caution to other consumers and link to the website to show where to consumers must avoid. The problem: This actually helps them.

DecorMyEyes saw that while consumers left feedback and provided links to their site on reputable sites on Google’s augustness scale, their Google ranking would increase… and so their sales would follow. They realized that bad publicity is not only good publicity, it’s also free publicity.

Since the Google algorithm may not be able to discern sentimentality, the search engine looks at the added content on a reputable as a benefit and gives DecorMyEyes a greater ranking. The website, seeing the potential, has taken the SEO philosophy and run with it, spurring on more comments by frustrating reviewers on websites into even more action. According to the article, their goal is “NEGATIVE advertisement” and that goal is garnering SEO great dividends.

A Google ranking leading to productivity of the site, even with bad reviews and now a scathing New York Times article about it, reaffirms the great power that SEO has on ecommerce business. Getting a high Google ranking, DecorMyEyes has built an ecommerce site that the owner claims to be “fantastically profitable.” Yet his completely unethical and terrifying business practices show that, in the wrong hands, SEO could be a powerful tool for unlawful sites intending on trapping consumers.

As of Tuesday night, Google was yet to comment on the article but many replies commented on how the search engine algorithm should be altered to punish sites receiving bad reviews, protecting consumers from sites that use SEO to prey on them. Google have now responded on their official blog, announcing that they have developed an algorithmic solution in an initial response to this problem, but they can’t guarantee that people won’t find further loopholes in the algorithm.

The outcry over the site has spread significantly throughout the week and one may wonder if the owner of DecorMyEyes is already relishing the profits of getting his website in the very prominent online version of The New York Times.

Read the full article at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/business/28borker.html

Search Engine Marketing in India – International Search Review Issue Number 4

October 29th, 2010

Reform has published issue number four of the “International Search Review”. After a run of Google-unfriendly markets like China, Korea and Russia, we’ve moved to an Asian market that loves Google (and the feeling among users in India perhaps is mutual)!

It’s also one of the most untapped internet markets in the world, and one where a good portion of the population speaks English, which is good news for North American and British marketers. Indeed, India recently moved up in to the fourth place on the list of largest internet markets, with 81 million users. This figure becomes even more interesting when looking at the overall population of India:those 81 million internet users account for less than 7% of the overall population, meaning that India could one day be ahead of the US market in terms of volumes, even chasing China for the top spot. Sources such as The Boston Consulting Group estimate close to 250 million internet users in India by 2015.

Download the full “Search Marketing in India” review in PDF format here

Key stats and findings to take from our review of the India search market include:

- This is a market where only 10% of internet users have broadband at home

- If you rank top in PPC and SEO, expect a greater share from PPC when it comes to click-throughs

- India is the 2nd largest mobile internet market after the US, but 96% of mobile users are male

- Search market share cited by various sources puts Google in the 80-95% range. One source had Google 95%, Yahoo 3%, Bing 1%, Other 1%. And from our own research sample of over 10,000 visits in 2010 on various sites, we had Google at a 97% of search traffic in India (Yahoo 2% and Bing 1%)!

- PPC is cheap (even for competitive markets), and converts well, but English is the primary language of this marketing channel

- Google-owned Orkut was big in India (like it is in Brazil), but Facebook has caught up fast and taken over as the top social network in India with 20.9 million visitors in July 2010. Twitter however, has yet to take off here.

- Link building is key to the offering for a lot of SEO agencies in India, though the quality can be hit and miss.

To find out more about the search marketing landscape in India, download a copy of the white paper here – and let us know any comments/feedback. Contact us, and we’ll send you the next issue of our International Search Review before anyone else.

You’ve got the most beautiful and intelligent and relevant online brand presence – but nobody knows you’re there…

September 3rd, 2010

I am constant amazed that some of the most intelligent people I know believe in the power of Google to such an extent, that they even credit it with the ability to discern between ‘good’ and ‘bad’. Google does have it’s own in-built ‘quality control’ i.e. human beings looking at stuff, but the algorithm and spiders are as yet unable to make any genuine decisions about whose online web presence is more relevant and interesting to you, the user.

Take my personal example. My household is what’s technically known as ‘in market’ for a replacement for our five year old 4×4. However, recently I have become increasingly concerned about our carbon footprint, and feel that any new car that we buy needs to be as environmentally friendly (as well as comfortable, fuel efficient, able to take the six of us plus suitcases, have an iPod stand, fully adjustable seats and as many safety features that you can shake a stick at) as possible.

However my primary criteria, before any of the others, is the new car’s environmental credentials. How can my current marque know this, unless I go out of my way to tell them? Online car brands that want my business need to have a presence when I am looking for information on environmental cars of course, but I don’t want a ppc ad for my local dealer – its annoying and irrelevant. I want quality information that is going to persuade me that their marque are ticking all my new eco-friendly boxes, as well as tickling my brand loyalty mojo… In a nutshell, they need a ppc, seo and social content dissemination strategy that makes sure all that beautiful, interesting and intelligent stuff they have online is findable – and better still, they have to make sure that it can find me.

Blog post by Mary Keane-Dawson, non-Executive Director of Reform

The SEO community starts to test social media search optimisation strategies

July 2nd, 2010

When we think of search we think of external search i.e. search engines like Google that act as windows onto the web. From these windows we can find and access news, videos, social media forums, maps – as well as a wealth of branded content and information about businesses, products & services.

But of course people search elsewhere on the web. After email communication search is the primary web behaviour. And there is another kind of search engine: internal or enterprise search. In the US in March of 2010 Facebook’s internal search engine, for example, saw its usage soar by 48% to total 2.7% of all US searches carried out on the Web in that month. OK, so compared to Google’s 64% share of the US search market that might not seem to impressive. Still, that’s a whole lotta searching going on – and mostly for people’s names.

As brands and businesses start to saturate social media properties like Facebook, SEOs are already trying to fathom what the ranking factors are, so that they can lend their services to help brands become more visible in social media search. This article by Marty Weintraub entitled “Facebook SEO Ranking Factors, 2010 Study Results” suggests that criteria such as the Facebook Suggest Box, inserting generic keywords into name fields, population of the Interests field, encouraging as many Fans and “Likes”, might become the focus of SEO test strategies.

However, as Weintraub points out it’s early days in terms of cracking the social media search algorithms. But that won’t stop the more innovative and curious SEOs from having a go!

Blog post by Amanda Davie, Managing Director of Reform

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