Around most industries you will find businesses scavenging at the less-savoury edges, often making quite a good return while they’re at it. Very often those businesses operate in ways regular people might consider to be unethical, and sometimes deceptive and/or illegal. In many cases governments are forced to regulate to keep order. The Premium Rate phone segment, in my opinion, is a great example of why regulation is needed.

Here’s a case of a very small change in Google that will likely be noticed by lots and lots of Irish sites.

No SEO in this post, and for a change a look at some of the airport advertising and announcement screens I happened upon on a recent journey.

I’ve been watching lots of change over at Google the past few weeks, and some of these changes lead me to think that geotargeting, both the tool within GWT and the way we search on Google, is about to change.

Quick apology to any email subscribers – you may have received a large number of email alerts, and this was due to migrating the site to a new server.

Bet you cant guess! Tonight I’m training at DMI in Dublin again.

A look at a very honest marketing campaign for a product that seems to “do exactly what it says on the tin”. Absolutely no SEO, but certainly an approach you don’t often see online or off.

Very interesting presentation about designing websites for sign-ups looking at some of the pshycological and emotional engagements required to pull visitors through sign-up. Well worth a view.

A follow-up post explaining some Google Local search results in Irish SERPs, along with reference material describing best practice for boosting local search rankings for your business.

Google Local Search One Box listings have finally landed in Google.ie. I’ve written up some info on what these are and how you can get your site listed ion Local search results.

Rant about Houston Search Engine Optimization and how certain morons use inane comment spam to promote their own service. In this case someone left comments promoting a site at thehoustonseo.com, but of course I cant say that it was indeed this company that left the comment spam.

Another recognised Irish marketer offers E2,000 worth of free online marketing to one lucky website owner. More details inside.

Today GoCompare no longer rank for their own brand. Interesting turn, and maybe completely unrelated to the emails they are sending around offering free link-bearing content to webmasters.

I was evaluating the Irish insurance SERPs recently and found a great example of how a negative Point of Action assurance might be having a very negative impact on the conversion rate of a particularly strong promo. I wonder will you agree with me?

Beware of large corporations offering free “unique content” with “a single unobtrusive text link” back to their site. They may dress it up that “You would benefit from some unique, relevant content to which the search engines seem to be attributing ever more value” and “a relevant outbound link, would also be potentially helpful to you from a search engine perspective”, but all their offer does is place your site under a risk of penalty or worse. There’s only one side that can benefit from an offer like this…

If you’re an Irish site owner, and you’d like to see how conversion optimisation testing can significantly improve your conversion rate without paying a single cent, then you have until Friday April 17 to apply for the free offer. More details inside.

Some more information about Conversion Rate Optimisation and how it can help your site. This is a follow up to my previous offer of free testing for 5 Irish websites.

I’ve been playing with this idea for quite a while, and I’ve taken the plunge to offer 5 sites free Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) campaigns. IMO testing will be the next big mainstream “thing” for online marketers. By working with 5 site owners and publicising the results I hope to show people the real power of CRO.

How to recruit in-house SEOs – questions to ask, expectations to set, and salaries to offer.

I had the great pleasure of instructing the Digital Marketing Institute course this past Thursday, and I have to admit I had a great time delivering the Website Architecture session twice on the day. I was worried that I’d run out of steam – delivering the same presentation over concerned me. It turned out very […]

Latest research showing how Irish users are utilising Search Engines, which search engines they favour and how they perceive and use PPC ads in search results.

This is pretty big in my opinion. Google has announced two changes to SERPs, the first being an update to Search Refinements, but for me the bigger change is to the snippet display: When you enter a longer query, with more than three words, regular-length snippets may not give you enough information and context. In […]

Links are important. Everyone knows this. So when a directory I paid money to moves my links from gTLD to UK ccTLD I’m a little miffed. But when the same directory also seems to subjugate Ireland under the UK it ruffles more than a few feathers. If you curious then please read on…

I spent the weekend in Cork for the Irish Blog Awards. Great time, fantastic night, lovely people and cool place. Blacknight were the worthy winners of the Best Business Blog category sponsored by Red Cardinal.

Well done to the shortlisted blogs in the Best Blog of a Business category. Details inside

An interesting case of how simple mistakes can lead to your site dropping out of Search Engine indices. And

RedCardinal.ie is sponsoring the Best Blog of a Business category at the forthcoming Irish Blog Awards 2009. I’ll be in Cork on the night to award the winner his/her prize, and I’m delighted to publish the shortlist here. See inside for more…

What I think will happen to SEO/SEM in 2009.

Just wanted to wish everyone a very happy holiday season, and very best wishes for a healthy and prosperous New Year

A look at how Google can sometimes be its own worst enemy, and how universal search doesn’t always bring benefits to users.

My slides from a recent lecture given at the Fitzwilliam Institute, Dublin Ireland.

An acknowledgement from Google that IFRAME content is used by spam classifiers. Well in this isolated case anyhow…

Maybe I’m wrong, but I’ve always believed that people buy benefits. So as a marketer it’s important to quickly portray your product’s benefits to your target audience.

Initial thoughts on advanced segmentation within Google Analytics. Watch out Omniture and Click Tracks…

Search engines want to index as much content as possible. It’s not unheard of for Google to come knocking within minutes of launching a new site. And yet we still have “SEO’s” offering Search Engine Submission as a paid service.

Google has recently released some interesting videos via its Google Technology RoundTable series. All the videos are embedded inside the post, and if you’re into SEO then the first video is well worth a watch.

People who know me would, I hope, consider me to be straight-talking – I call it as I see it. But I can say hand-on-heart that self-interest doesn’t particularly drive me, so I hope people read my general commentaries in that light. But back to calling at I see it. I’m not completely bereft of […]

A short post to congratulate the winner of the IWA08 Best Online Publication Award – The Irish Times.

Interesting study into recent UK search activity around Irish banks. The report highlights the impact the Irish bank guarantee is having on grass-roots banking consumers in the UK.

Red Cardinal is sponsoring the upcoming Irish Web Awards. I’ve been missing for a while, and it’s long overdue for me to make a mention here about the awards. Hopefully I’ll return to blogging about SEO shortly (has anyone seen my mojo?).