How they rank - the main Irish Political Parties

Damien Mulley recently lamented how little politicians were using the Internet to promote themselves and engage with the electorate in the upcoming General Election (#GE11) - and in particular networking sites like Facebook. Not that I expected them to much better on SEO/SEM, I thought I'd take a little peek to see how they were at least managing their brand in the Google SERPs.

It seems that Fianna Fail have quite a strong Brand SERP result - most of the results are either their own or at least "brand friendly". Nobody is running any AdWords on their name - including themselves.

Fine Gael have a similarly strong brand performance in the SERP's but they're also targeting their name through AdWords. If nobody else is targeting your brand in AdWords and you own the top Organic spots, then it may seem redundant and a little costly but it will also give you quite a lot of ancillary information: Just how popular is your brand (not if nobody is targeting it) and also how many searches actually take place (assuming AdWords is a lot more accurate than the Webmasters CTR tool - which, given its related to financial charges, AdWords should be more accurate). Because of the close relationship between the site linked in the AdWord, the Quality Score should be high and the CPC quite low, even if being targeted by a competitor.

The most interesting is however Labour. The difference between Labour and the other main parties is that Labour is a generic English word - so the other sites returned are related to instruments of the state involved in Labour policy and management. Interesting that Fianna Fail is targeting "Labour" but also so is Pampers (???)

Nobody seems to be currently targeting either Sinn Fein or the Greens....Draw your own conclusions!

Google accuses Bing of copying it's search results

Today Google has claimed that Bing is now using Google's Search Results in its own search engine. The claim - and that it is denied by Microsoft - was asserted on the Google Webmaster blog. Bing have posted a reply.

The evidence produced by Google is for a search for [torsorophy], which is a misspelling of a surgical term ("tarsorrhaphy"). But this resulted in a very narrow result set (just 2 pages or results are returned) which Bing returned (although only 1 of the 2 URL's matched Google's - so hardly concrete evidence).

Incidently, a single or two word phrase that returns just 2 results is known as a Googlewhack and are very rare.

My reading of this is that Google is accusing Bing of using it's toolbar to help it crawl the web and develop search suggestions. The argument it is putting forward is that it discovers these pages through it's web crawling and indexing systems "organically" whereas Bing is just copying them from the results gathered by the IE 8 toolbar.

It's not stating that Bing is just using Google's results or result order in it's searches. Interesting to see how this pans out.

What URL shortener do you use?

URL shorteners are very handy little utilities that shorten URL's. There's a good choice and I usually opt for http://Short.ie but experienced a few issues. Google launched theirs in 2009 but they recently opened it up (it used to only work on Feedburner and the Google Toolbar) and because it produces stats (when logged in) - it's become my favourite.

Instead of using, for example: http://primaryposition.blogspot.com/2011/01/seo-and-internet-marketing-training-and.html , you can shorten it to this http://goo.gl/RIcAV. This URL is much easier and shorter to share in places like twitter, linkedin and facebook where space is limited - or on e-mail where it can get concatenated and stop working (if the URL isn't whole, it mightn't take the user to the desired spot).

Essentially all that happens is that Google have purchased GOO.GL - a play on "Google". GL is the ccTLD (Country Code Top Level Domain - ccTLD) for Greenland. This software then translates the short address into the long address, and also provides a fast lookup so that sites can show the target URL when you mouseover

It also gives amazing real time stats about how many people follow your link, when they clicked and from what country and platform.The shortener can be used without logging in - handy but then it doesn't store any details. As per usual with web visitor stats, the information tracked is not personal and doesn't identify any individuals at all.

The main dashboard gives you an overview of the URL's you've shortened

The Shortener detail screen shows the user platform, application, age and the number of clicks

This makes it very handy when sharing on twitter - so you can see who finds which links interesting (by country) and how many people following you are actually engaging with you. This should hopefully improve your blogging and tweeting content!SimplyZesty blogged about tracking twitter RT Click-through-Rates here, which I thought was interesting and relevant.

SEO and Internet Marketing - Training and Tools

Just a note that we've updated our page on the the training that we provide in SEO and Internet Marketing.

The tools we train people to use include

• Google Analytics
• Google WebMasters
• Google Places, Alerts and Profiles
• Some AdWords
• Keyword Selection
• Site Architecture

WebCare.ie, our e-Commerce support partner is currently hiring e-commerce support engineers.

SEO - the devils in the detail

Of all the tools I've used over the years, the Google SK tool is the most useless. It looks really good and really easy to use - and perhaps that's the problem. It just doesn't give nearly enough information. Too little detail. And with SEO - that's where it all happens.

SEO is a strategy. PageRank, SERP's (Search Engine Rank Positions), Alexa scores, Website valuations, keywords and titles - these are all symptoms of the implementation of a strategy. SEO isn't a checklist of things you need or have to do. Some of them are accidental or even intentional red herrings.

When you read all the many blog posts and news articles on SEO (and Internet Marketing), many of them are just written by people who want to be good or think that if 10 websites say the same thing, it must be true. Many are just looking for a website that can grow extra income on the side. "Work from home" ads in the classifieds were huge in the 1980's and 1990's and they're still going strong online.

Stop looking for a checklist - develop a strategy.

Google AdWords - Is a higher spend good for you?

The User Interfaces in Google Analytics and Google AdWords have become much more similar in recent years, although some stark differences are visible. I noticed this a while back and I just couldn't resist blogging about it - it's a rather curious way Google reports on the metrics in AdWords.

In both, when viewing a comparison report (for example last month to this month or last 7 days or this month compared to the same time last year), increases and decreases are shown by a percentage change and then colour-coded - red if the change was negative and green if positive. For example, if your traffic grew 100% in the December over November, then the 100% is green. If, unfortunately, the bounce rate increased from 50% to 55%, then the 5% increase is noted in Red - because this is a negative metric change. You don't want your bounce rate to go up, just like you dont' want your page views to go down.

A client asked me to look at their AdWords campaign, as we often do. What's curious to me is that Google denotes an increase in spend in Green - so this is positive!?! Sure, if you have the right formula, and then you were returning €10 profit for every €1 spent, why wouldn't you drop €50k or even more - but just to have the up in spend regardless of the conversion rate as a green made me smile.

Leak Detection - An announcement from Smart Energy Systems

We've been asked to help spread an announcement on behalf of one of our clients, SmartEnergySystems.ie, who are keen to raise awareness about the issue of leaking pipes over the Christmas period. Not only are leaking pipes an environmental hazard, it’s a huge drain on our limited safe drinking water supply. Frozen pipes can burst in extremely cold weather which only exacerbates the problem. Undetected water leaks are the main reasons for loss of water supply at this time of year. The public's cooperation in conserving water use (including not allowing taps to run continuously) is also greatly appreciated to allow water levels to return to normal. Water is our most valuable natural resource and we must conserve it. Smart Energy Systems have an emergency response number, 0818 288 050 and are available 24/7 for urgent leak detection. The company is operating right throughout the Christmas period and can be reached at any time to deal with emergency leak detection situations.

Alan Treacy, Director, has this to add:

Remember: Leaks on your premises are your responsibility, and will not be repaired by the council or water providers. Insurance companies will only settle claims once the leak is found and repaired, and subsequent leaks may not be covered by insurance. Underground leaks will require specialist leak detection equipment in order to be found. An undetected leak can cost a business thousands of euro and it is in a companies own interest to detect and repair them as fast as possible. Leaking water =leaking money. We would recommend carrying out a simple water audit on your supply to establish if a leak is present which can be done in under 5 minutes.

For instructions on how to carry out the simple check visit http://www.smartenergysystems.ie/simple-water-audit/

For leak detection enquires/concerns contact Smart Energy Systems Ltd (SES Ltd) on 0818 288 050 or email info@smartenergysystems.ie for a no obligation free consultation/advise.

Leak Detection Waterless Urinals