Found

Affiliate Report: Feature 2: EXPLOSION marketing!!

Luke Townsend — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 16:53:24 +0000

Affiliate marketing has clawed its way up the agenda with a healthy line up of advertisers now including it on their media plan. However, affiliate marketing is still a turn off for many big-name brand owners: it's complex, resource intensive and requires significant investment, but mostly, it’s just not sexy enough to grab their attention. Revolution investigates what the industry is doing to solve its image problem and make affiliate marketing more compelling to brands. The perception of affiliate marketing has changed over the years – from bedroom affiliates, to search marketing experts, to large voucher code and price comparison sites, to full blown performance agencies. And it’s not only perception – the revenues driven through the channel are continuing to grow. In 2007 the size of the channel was £3.13bn. By 2009, it was expecting to break the £4bn mark (econsultancy), with affiliate ad spend growing 38.2% to £72.6m last year (IAB). With more affiliates driving greater volumes of revenue to merchants (more than 25% of affiliates are generating over £10k a month for merchants) the channel is demanding attention. Affiliates are companies or individuals who are willing to invest their cold hard cash to deliver results for merchants. They are innovative, always seeking out new opportunities, discovering new platforms, targeting new channels and continuing to evolve. Affiliates are always the first to be trying the new big thing – mobile to facebook, from blogging to mobile apps. The problem with affiliate marketing is that not one channel defines it. Social marketing is hip and cool. Micro-blogging is primary communication channel; mobile apps provide immediate sources of fun and information. Affiliate marketing is a channel in its own right, a channel that is defined by how it is rewarded, not how it drives traffic. Affiliate marketers are all different in their approach, their methodologies and their expertise. However the one thing that unites all affiliates – they are all CPA experts in the online marketing field. And how more sexy and attractive is a strategy that enables merchants to fully manage their ROI through multiple channels? Affiliate marketing has had a tendency to be defined by the latest talking point – from spyware to behavioural targeting tools, from cashback offers to voucher codes. If merchants have a sales budget that they can use to motivate and reward affiliates, then the opportunities for the merchants’ brand are endless. How better to test a new search marketing approach than through a CPA affiliate? To trial a Facebook campaign? To understand how to monetise Twitter? See affiliates as partners and then you will see the allure. More and more affiliates have become far better at promoting themselves, creating great websites, collateral, case studies and presentations, to help back-up their figures. There is more transparency n the space than ever before, meaning merchants are less tentative in their steps to embrace affiliates. The IAB has helped to bring merchanrts, networks, affiliates and agencies together – to work together as one voice, to regulate and promote the industry. The future’s bright – the future’s CPA.

Every Click Counts

Tina Judic — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 11:01:03 +0000

With more scrutiny than ever before on every touch point in online marketing campaigns, is it inevitable that affiliates will get squeezed? As merchants improve their understanding who will be the winners and losers? We have to remember what affiliates are and what they represent. Affiliates are paid search experts, SEO specialists, voucher code sites, cash back sites, comparison sites, bloggers, social marketers and more. They are companies or individuals who are successful in working to the return on investment model where they only get paid on the results they deliver (CPA), irrespective of the challenges presented. When Google changed their search algorithms from only allowing one merchant URL to feature in the search results (previously multiple URL’s could be displayed for one merchant as long as the affiliate included (aff) in their ad copy), this impacted search affiliates quite significantly. However, these same affiliates sought new ways to drive traffic through paid search. As social marketing emerged, affiliates were the first to test ways to monetise the channels. If we view affiliates for what they are – CPA experts in the online marketing field – then those who do survive, and continue to thrive, are those who don’t stand still; they innovate, seek out new opportunities, discover new platforms, target new channels and continue to evolve. Furthermore, affiliates are experts at seeing gaps and filling them. As merchants improve their understanding of the online market space, then working with your affiliates to close the gaps (on a CPA basis) can only help the cause. So, who will be the winners? The winners will be the merchants who fully understand their marketing mix and embrace it; those who can apply knowledge and understanding to their customer acquisition strategies. The winners will also be those who are able to budget effectively and pay fairly for new customers. The losers will be those who use their insight to unnecessarily cut costs – yes, we all want to cut costs when possible but those merchants who feel pulling back spend in the hope the same volume of sales will be achieved are deluding themselves. It simply won’t happen. Those who are fair and transparent, and work closely with all of their digital partners, including affiliates, should see a positive return.

NMA Marketing Services Guide 2010

Tina Judic — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 10:41:45 +0000

What makes your agency different? As a performance-marketing agency, based in central London, our experienced team at Found (previously known as Artemis8) pride themselves on delivering highly successful paid search campaigns and innovative web design. We believe successful campaigns are built with conversion in mind and specialise in the return on investment model, so we can give advertisers real returns based on risk-free cost per acquisition (CPA) commercials. To complete the search to conversion journey, our team of experts offer a spectrum of digital performance services, ranging from pure search campaign management to developing microsites and bespoke multi-layered portal sites. Our work ethos has enabled us to partner with some of the UK’s biggest brands, including Vodafone, Premier Inn, Lastminute.com and the Post Office. Our rigid strategic approach to converting visitors into customers saw our campaigns generate over £100m of sales for our clients in 2009. What key market trends are you witnessing? With the decline in the economy, many companies have not only tightened their wallets but they are, rightly, looking for better deals to manage their margins, while still expecting a significant return on investment. Clients are looking for visibility, accountability and cost-effectiveness. With more demands to provide added value, it’s up to search agencies, like Found, to manage campaigns more effectively than ever before; meaning an even greater focus on strategy and tactical campaign management to ensure maximum reach, volume and, ultimately, conversion.

Search Marketing – outsource or not to outsource?

Tina Judic — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 07:51:27 +0000

Search marketing has, and continues to be, one of the key elements of any digital strategy. However, there is seemingly a trend of companies looking to tighten their wallets, to seek out cheaper suppliers and to squeeze the commissions of their existing agencies. Companies are looking for value for money and not just results. The debate rages on – as a brand, should you bring your search marketing efforts in-house? Many companies are wrestling with the decision right now, particularly in light of the current economic downturn, which has resulted in them keeping a watchful eye on budgets versus ROI. It’s not all about managing to an endless sales budget but about identifying the best way to manage costs while providing the greatest reach to secure new customers. While many search agencies are mourning the lower commission demands and the loss of business to budget and performance competitors, companies are also thinking about managing search internally. Bringing search in-house is an attractive proposition for many big spending clients. Spend on search advertising is still very heavily weighted towards high management fees or a percentage of spend metric, So, surely, cutting out the middleman and advertising directly with the search engines is the way to go? For many brands, conducting search marketing in-house certainly has its benefits by helping to reduce the account management fees. However, managing search marketing in-house means campaigns have to be set up and structured, on each independent engine, then key-worded, maintained, optimised and grown. This can take up a considerable amount of time and resource, and there is no guarantee you will make the most out of your search budget. Whereas a specialist search agency already has templates, technologies, strategies, relationships and the right people in place to reduce time spent managing the uploading of keywords titles and descriptors, and using the valuable time to optimise performance. Search technology has moved on over the last few years with multiple tools available to help improve workflow and high-volume keyword management. However, these tolls can be terribly expensive, especially if the use of these tools is for the management of one search campaign, whereas specialist agencies are using these tools day in, day out for a number of varying clients, and always seeking out ways to improve processes and procedures to maximise ROI. Dedicated search marketing agencies get paid to manage each account effectively (or lose their reputation). These companies can also recommend advice on alterations to sites, to make them more search-engine friendly or offer solutions to enable clients to get the most from their campaigns, such as combining various ad formats to achieve a broader audience reach. So, what is the correct way to go? Cheaper agency relationships are an option – and not just relationships that focus on reducing the commissions paid to agencies but a change to the whole structure and approach. If your agency is the expert in search marketing, then challenge them to put their money where their mouth is, and work to a CPA (cost per acquisition) model by only paying them for delivering a sale or lead. This will clearly cause a few concerns for those search agencies who have built their offering around management fees and percentage of spend models, as it forces them to readdress their whole approach. But for other agencies, it will provide a challenge, a desire and a drive to demonstrate exactly what can be delivered through this method. Working to a CPA metric, the winner is the client, who has absolute control of their ROI, and the agency - if they can manage the rollout of a search strategy in a cost-effective and profitable manner. Companies believe they can hire the right people, to develop successful search campaigns. If you can find the right people, provide them with the right training and technology, and retain them. You have a great advantage of a search expert who will truly understand your business and will be solely focused on your campaign alone. Outsourcing your search marketing activity, at the right price, is a great way to save time, effort and costs to free up time to concentrate on core business activities. Or consider a hybrid model of in-house and agency management, as several companies have adopted. Determine your acquisition targets, and then whether you choose to manage this in-house, with an agency or on a hybrid model of agency and in-house management, it is up to you. The question you simply have to ask yourself is – am I achieving the best possible reach and volume to help me achieve my objectives, whilst effectively managing my ROI? If the answer is no, then reassess the opportunities available and turn the answer into yes.

New Media Age “My Current Favourites”

Tina Judic — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 11:04:20 +0000

Lastminute.com (http://www.lastminute.com/site/labs/nru.html) A very cool use of a phone app - wherever you are, the mobile application works out your exact location. It identifies which way you are facing and directs you to the nearest bars, restaurants, cinemas or cafes. Trendsmap.com (http://trendsmap.com/) There are many Twitter mash-ups in the digital space however I particularly like how this site shows real-time mapping of Twitter trends across the world. Using a map, this tool lets you hone in on specific cities, showing the core twitter trends being discussed in that city. Pleaserobme.com (http://pleaserobme.com/) A quirky tool which highlights the dangers of sharing your life with the world in social networking spaces! The site illustrates, very simply, how users should stop and think, before they share details about their life online. Wrangler.com (http://eu.wrangler.com/bluebell/#/collection/0) I was impressed by the speed of the page load considering there's a whole lot of full-browser-width flash/video action on it. It’s also a great opportunity to check out the latest offering from the Wrangler brand. Secretlondon.us (http://secretlondon.us/) A great site for sharing undiscovered ‘gems’ in London. Initially a blog, facebook group and Twitter feed - through the use of social media Secret London reached out to its followers to build their website. Over just one weekend, this site was built with the help of 40 volunteers. Great use of social media to recruit a group of people.

Protecting your Brand

Tina Judic — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 09:06:13 +0000

It’s two years since Google changed the brand rights rules and allowed advertisers to freely bid on each other’s brand terms. But, if the user is looking for that brand then surely they want to find that brand, and not alternatives? When is it about choice, and when is it about competition and spend? Today, brands operate in a crowded marketplace, both online and offline, all jostling for number one position. In order to stand out, advertisers must invest in enhancing the customer experience, giving them choice while protecting their brand online. Search marketing is one of the most powerful weapons in the online marketing armoury. However, with the integration of site links and universal search results, the bulk of natural results are finding themselves being pushed further down the page, meaning even greater eye balls on paid search activity. Search marketing facilitates all aspects of the customer user journey, from research to brand engagement, to, ultimately, purchase intent. Despite many brands now engaging more with understanding the broader mix of advertising, and wanting to understand the contributions made along the user journey, last click is still the primary model adopted. Search marketing galvanises customers who have already made a decision to buy a product, many of whom type in the advertiser’s brand term to make the final purchase. But can that user be drawn away? Even at that last minute when they are ready to buy? The answer is yes. Competition exists on the engines throughout the buying process, and advertisers will gladly pick up your prospective customers, given half a chance, So, if you, as the advertiser, are only able to feature your paid search ad once, this means there are up to nine advertisers potentially vying for ‘your’ customer, on your brand term. So how can you overcome this, and minimise leakage to your competitors? We addressed this exact problem with Premier Inn. By tapping into our strong innovative and technical expertise, we developed a strategy that would involve building a site, to complement Premier Inn’s own site. Once built, the hotel locator site – www.premierinn-hotels.com - offered travellers easy access to location and route information for all of the 570 plus hotels across the UK. Working with Premier Inn we set out to simplify the whole selection process, by providing location and journey-planning information based around one simple destination question. The site is divided between a destination search and a route planner. Information is then provided on both areas for each Premier Inn selected, including price of accommodation, address details, directions as well as a booking link through to the main Premier Inn site. By playing to our strengths in the digital performance arena, Found has been able to provide Premier Inn’s prospective customers with a really useful, innovative tool. And, by providing extra value to the consumer, we are also able to invest in search marketing, bidding on brand, and brand variations, to help secure greater eye balls on Premier Inn. There is always the risk of simply taking sales that would have gone to the brand direct, but the strategy was built to ensure we actually contributed to revenue as well as protecting the brand. The investment was managed tightly, to ensure we did not negatively impact Premier Inn’s search spend, and drove incremental bookings, along with the added value of offering multi-messaging opportunities for Premier Inn. With the site now firmly established, we are looking at how we can broaden the strategy to encompass more generic activity.

Premier Inn Achieve Record Incremental Sales

Tina Judic — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 15:08:10 +0000

Premier Inn has revealed it achieved record incremental sales towards the end of last year, following a focused search strategy being implemented with digital performance marketing specialists Found (previously known as Artemis8). In November alone, the UK’s largest hotel chain saw £1m in additional bookings generated by the new premierinnhotels.co.uk hotel finder site, which was launched to complement Premier Inn’s own site and give users another option for locating and booking their hotel choice. Martin Smith, e-commerce manager for Premier Inn, says: “We operate in a very competitive, crowded market so the aim was to not only protect the brand online, but also provide visitors with a unique booking experience. Tapping into the innovation and technological delivery of the Found team, the strategy centred around building a site which offered something a little different, answering a specific need for quick and easy information on our hotels, with route information to them. The result has been record incremental sales, but also multi-messaging opportunities for the Premier Inn brand during a key booking period.” The site was developed by Found, as part of Premier Inn’s ongoing relationship with Starcom MediaVest Group and buy.at. Tina Judic, managing director of Found, adds: “There is always the risk of simply taking sales that would have gone to the brand direct, but the strategy was built to ensure we actually contributed to revenue as well as protected the brand online. With the site now firmly established, we are looking at how we can broaden the strategy to encompass more generic activity.” Premierinnhotels.co.uk offers travellers easy access to location and route information for all of the 580 plus Premier Inn hotels across the UK. Built around a simple map and route concept, it is aimed at assisting business travellers and those planning a long journey with details about the possible Premier Inn hotels they could use along their journey. Information is then provided for each hotel selected, including price of accommodation, address details, directions as well as a booking link through to the main Premier Inn site.

FOUND Challenges Price Comparison Sector

Tina Judic — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 15:09:34 +0000

Found (previously known as Artemis8) is challenging the price comparison sector with the launch of a new approach which promises the quickest and easiest purchase process for consumers, as well as retailers. Cheapest-in-stock.co.uk goes live this week in time for the Christmas shopping frenzy and is aimed at consumers who have already identified their chosen product and simply want to obtain the best price across the entire web. Tina Judic, managing director of Found, says: “Many of the existing price comparison sites have far too much choice, are populated with lots of distracting information and actually end up confusing the consumer and losing the sale for the retailer. “We’ve pulled the concept apart and rebuilt it to provide an approach which is purely focused on providing the cleanest and quickest transaction journey.” The new cheapest-in-stock site also specifically cuts across only the key electronic and digital product ranges, and is only populated with price comparison information for the key brands that are being actively searched on Google at the time. Broken down into seven clearly distinctive and colour-coded product range groups, consumers can navigate straight from their search to their required product. A clear and easy to read price comparison table is then presented, allowing them a quick link directly to the best priced retailer.

Cashing in on Christmas

Tina Judic — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 12:11:08 +0000

Consumers spent a record £102 million online on Christmas Day 2008, a figure that is set to rocket this year as shoppers turn to the web in search of bargains. As Santa Claus prepares to load up his sleigh, Revolution takes a wholly pragmatic look at what brands and retailers will be doing to part consumers with their hand-earned cash over the festive season. Changing markets require changing strategies and this Christmas advertisers will want to grab as much of the Christmas market as possible. With online spend overtaking TV for the first time (online spend grew 4.6% to £1.752bn in the first half of 2009, while TV spending shrank 16.1% to £1.639bn – IAB), and the knowledge that over 3.8 million UK shoppers spent online on Christmas Day in 2008, this Christmas is shaping up to be a solid one online, and every retailer wants to be the winner. We are still not officially out of recession – these are tough times and brands are under constant pressures. With the disruptions in the market place due to Royal Mail strikes, we have potential Christmas chaos on our hands. The long and short of it is that marketing budgets are on the move and companies need to be prepared to focus greater energies into their online channel. Shoppers are likely to shop online early this year, to ensure their gifts are delivered before Christmas. While many advertisers are reliant on Royal Mail, others are actually using this to their advantage. Take Red Letter Days, for example, they have slashed their next day courier price from £8.75 to £3.95. I Want One Of Those always use couriers in the last week before Christmas but this year they have ramped this up so all post will go via couriers. According to the IMRG major retailers like House of Fraser, John Lewis and Amazon have already switched to alternative providers. But that’s not all that retailers are doing. According to Hitwise, searches for vouchers codes were greater in December last year than searches for sales or offers, and there’s nothing to suggest we will not see a similar trend this year. As a result, advertisers need to get their vouchers ready – general onsite vouchers through to affiliate-specific vouchers to promote your site. This will ensure a greater priority of investment on your brand when affiliates rollout their Christmas ramp-up. Simple actions are to pay affiliates more – of course it needs to fit within your ROI requirements but, if you have the capacity to increase the margins, do it now so affiliates will out activity for you against your competitors. Last year most traditional retailers commenced online sales when stores closed on Christmas Eve, with online retailers starting after the last delivery day deadlines were reached, meaning advertisers need to get their plans nailed for Christmas. Giving any promotional partners a heads up of activity, plans, new potential codes, products, positioning will ensure the right message is in place on Christmas Day and beyond. Christmas will, no doubt, still see heavy traffic numbers this year. However, as shoppers have become savvier and more price-conscious, they will be looking to find the best price available. Firms who have not / do not adopt a solid search, affiliate and price comparison strategy could well be the companies who lose out this Christmas.

Found Expands Team By Over A Third

Luke Townsend — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 10:32:04 +0000

Performance marketers Found (previously known as Artemis8) is bucking the general recruitment trend and has significantly increased its team, bringing four new members of staff onboard as a direct result of ongoing client wins. The specialist search agency sees its team of 11 expand to 15 with: * Andrea Downey joining as senior designer. Andrea moves from ecommerce specialist Digital Stores Ltd and was previously a web designer with Tesco.com * Chee Diep moving over as a developer. UCL graduate, Chee brings even more fresh thinking to the highly-creative Found team * Marcus Tang and Nasreen Cullen joining the busy A8 Analyst team to focus on managing the increasing number of Paid Search clients budgets. Another UCL graduate, Marcus also has exceptional developer skills and was previously in Marketing Comms with Seimens. Nasreen has extensive experience gained through retail as well as music and mobile content licensing businesses. Tina Judic, managing director of Found, says: “The Found team are highly regarded in the market for their innovative thinking and commitment to client delivery. These four new appointments will enable us to continue to respond to growing client demand and ensure we remain a formidable force within the Affiliate & Search sectors.”

Digital relationship marketing is vital when purse strings need to be tightened

Tina Judic — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 15:14:15 +0000

Digital relationship marketing is vital when purse strings need to be tightened. Winning online is about relationships between clients and their key digital agencies. The beauty of digital relationship marketing is that an agency helps pick the best tools according to budget. We were able to demonstrate this principle with Premier Inn. We approached them with the idea of a hotel locator site, offering travellers easy access to location and route information for all of the 570 plus hotels across the UK. For consumers, location remains a key criteria for selecting a hotel, so our aim was to make this information as easy to access as possible. In the current economic downturn, consumers are spending their money more wisely by prioritising their outgoings. They have also become more savvy in terms of wanting choice and flexibility. Working with Premier Inn we set out to simplify the whole selection process, by providing location and journey planning information based around one simple destination question. We helped to create a website - Premierinnhotels.co.uk - which is divided between a destination search and route planner. Information is then provided on both areas for each Premier Inn selected, including price of accommodation, address details, directions as well as a booking link through to the main Premier Inn site. By playing to our strengths in the digital performance arena, Found has been able to ensure Premier Inn provides consumers with a really useful innovative tool, so they get more of the things that matter to them. By converting visitors into customers, we will help Premier Inn to secure maximum ROI.

Red Letter Days' Greenwood Moves Agency-Side To Join New Found Launch

Angela Greenwood — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 09:10:12 +0000

Angela Greenwood, Red Letter Days’ Online Marketing Manager and one of the affiliate marketing industry’s most respected commentators, is taking a senior role with new performance marketing agency, Found. Found, which has just exclusively won the Prezzybox.com and Dobbies paid search accounts, and was formerly known as Artemis8, now pulls together the key online marketing services of search, mobile, social, affiliate management, brand protection and optimisation under a very clear performance remit. As Found’s new Director of Account Management, Angela will be responsible for delivering strategic insight and project fulfilment for the agency’s growing, prestigious client list. She will utilise her extensive knowledge and experience to mastermind digital marketing campaigns which achieve significant ROI for clients across diverse portfolios. Tina Judic, Managing Director of Found, says: “Angela is one of the performance marketing industry’s greatest advocates. She has been instrumental in delivering exponential growth in online business for Red Letter Days, winning numerous awards along the way, and has a reputation for being hugely pro-active with an infectious enthusiasm. She will be pivotal in showcasing Found’s skills and commitment to delivering highly effective performance-based marketing campaigns which push the boundaries across the search, mobile, social and affiliate sectors.” Angela adds: “There aren’t too many places to work that are better than Red Letter Days. Together as a team, we achieved some awesome business and really drove brand awareness online. Found has the same sharpness of thinking and fresh approach, and I’m looking forward to helping it expand its role as a fully-fledged performance marketing agency.”

Voucher code sites are Google Instant's winners

Greg Burgess — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 11:13:17 +0000

Regarding Dale Lovell’s letter (nma 30 September 2010), Google Instant has certainly had an impact on the search space. But is this for the better? Analysis is already illustrating an increased importance on retail keyword terms related to coupons, promotions and vouchers, because these terms are so popular. As a result, Google’s search suggestions have become even more powerful. However, discount-related keyword terms are leading the way in recommendations. Google Instant is already squeezing the long tail, which is likely to drive up the competition and, therefore, costs of popular core brand and generic terms. Who are the winners? Voucher code sites. For example, if you type in ’ASOS’, the first recommendation is for the site, the second is ’ASOS discount code’, and three further discount variants feature in the remaining eight suggestions. A user could end up seeing results for ’ASOS discount’ when they weren’t even looking for it. Not only is Google changing the long-tail search space, it’s highly possible it’s changing user intent, impacting consumers, agencies and, significantly, merchants’ margins. And as voucher searches grow, the inclusion of voucher-related terms in Google’s suggestions will grow, increasing search volume exponentially. Voucher code sites are going to have a great Christmas.

Affiliate Marketing Interview

Tina Judic — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 11:51:25 +0000

How can advertisers retain control, using affiliates to generate the right kind of consumer leads; and reward them appropriately? Affiliate marketing is a fantastic channel to be part of. Defined through its ability and success at driving sales on a highly measurable cost per acquisition (CPA) model, affiliate marketing provides merchants with multiple opportunities to reach a greater audience, through a variety of online mediums – from search marketing to blogs, and price comparison to user reviews. The one thing I always stress to merchants is to work closely with your affiliates. It’s also important to be as transparent as possible, meet with them regularly, understand them, and learn what makes them tick. Don’t treat them the same, as they all require different things. A voucher code affiliate needs to know the latest codes and the latest products you are trying to promote, while a price comparison affiliate wants the best up to date product feed you can possibly provide. So how do you determine how to manage affiliates? Work out what a lead / sale is worth to you and what you are able to pay for it. Then determine where affiliates can produce essential coverage and ensure there are no gaps in your ppc campaigns. Each affiliate will work like any other media owner and give you the coverage or push your campaign based on your brief, as much as the margins will allow. The key is to provide a compelling offer that will make sense to an affiliate, and then refine to the types of affiliates you are working with. In addition, it’s important to work closely with your network too – they know the affiliates inside out and have regular communications with most. Leverage this experience to your advantage. It’s vital that you communicate, communicate, and communicate. While you can use the network’s platform to push out offers, emails and updates, it’s worth speaking directly with your affiliates, or at least your core affiliates, if you are looking to make changes to a programme. If you need to pull back your CPA, make sure your affiliates are aware of this, and you are aware of the impact it will have on their performance. Perhaps you want to offer a bonus – shout about it, so your affiliates can inject more time and effort into your campaign. How should they prioritise where they focus their affiliate marketing? Affiliate marketing is still about the merchant, and how it fits into their overall online marketing. We’re seeing more and more merchants gaining a greater understanding of the contribution of each of their online channels – with affiliate marketing continuing to play an integral part. The focus of affiliate marketing really has to sit with the merchant. From the outset, decide what you are trying to achieve with the campaign. For some, it may simply be sales but for other merchants it may be about solely new customer sign-ups. Affiliates are able to fill specific gaps, particularly in the online arena where you feel you may be lacking in experience or are vulnerable against your competition. Your affiliates have a wealth of knowledge to develop successful campaigns to meet your targets, so brief them accordingly, and this will free-up your time to focus your attention on other business objectives. What is the key to protecting your brand/product, and its value, in an online environment? A brand needs to be protected in many ways – from misrepresentation and from the competition. No one wants to see old adverts and old marketing campaigns across the Internet – there is a need for consistency in messaging. The networks can help with this by enabling you to replace banners on the networks and by communicating new offers. Indeed, some networks have tools that will identify old banners, old vouchers etc. The online environment is highly competitive and protection of your brand is key. Take a look at the recent case of Louis Vuitton v Google, who lost their long-running battle to ban the use of their trademarked keyword in the sponsored listings. What does this mean for the merchant? It means that Google, at any one time is displaying up to nine sponsored ad results on a branded search time. The merchant is only able to feature once on their search term, meaning the opportunity now exists for competitors to jump into the space and try and snatch those customers from your grasp. Affiliates have done a great job in helping to close down this space, by providing branded sites that sit beneath the merchant’s ad, providing the user with a good user journey experience, which ultimately leads to incremental sales.

lastminute.com appoints Found as Search Agency

Tina Judic — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 14:48:19 +0000

lastminute.com has appointed Found (previously known as Artemis8) as its search agency for its lastminute.com Ireland and Travelocity brands, as well as its sole PPC partner for lastminute.com in the UK. As Europe’s leading independent online travel and leisure group, lastminute.com operates directly in 14 European countries with association partners in several other territories. As part of its aim to become the number one travel and lifestyle website for providing great-value inspiration and solutions, the brand is also now looking to grow its presence in Ireland over the coming year with a dedicated search marketing campaign to assist this growth strategy. lastminute.com is one of the most popular travel and leisure sites in Ireland with around half a million people logging on every week to seek out the best deals. Lina Patel, lastminute.com’s Europe Head of Affiliate and Distributed Partnerships, says: “Found has worked hand-in-hand with our search marketing team for the past year, providing us with a consistently high standard of strategic and innovative search marketing support. Their speed and ability to deliver, especially on the harder generic and long tail categories, has meant they have become a valuable resource to us. They will now be an integral part of our search strategy going forwards, as we look to further expand the success of our Travelocity business, and continue to build the lastminute.com brand in Ireland.” Travelocity is the leading provider of consumer-direct travel services, offering a large number of sites in 12 languages, for leisure and business travellers. Found has been tasked with further increasing the coverage, awareness and sales generation through the search-marketing channel. Furthermore, Travelocity markets and distributes travel-related products and services directly to individuals through Travelocity and its various brand websites and contact centres. For business travellers, Travelocity Business^SM provides the integrated online corporate travel technology and full-service offering of their GetThere® product, along with the online expertise of Travelocity. Tina Judic, Managing Director of Found, adds: “We’re delighted that lastminute.com has appointed us to play an integral role in their online marketing strategy. Over the years, we have developed a proven and successful track record, working to a cost per acquisition model, thus ensuring customers, like lastminute,com, have complete transparency of the return on investment we are delivering. The travel search space is particularly crowded so it is imperative that the right strategic approach is taken to not only deliver sales but also maximise brand exposure online.”

Found Shortlisted For Two A4U Awards

Luke Townsend — Mon, 10 May 2010 09:37:25 +0000

Found (previously known as Artemis8) is up for two awards at this year’s hotly-contested a4uAwards. The digital performance marketing agency is shortlisted for the Best Paid Search Partnership Award for its work with the UK’s largest hotel chain, Premier Inn, as well as Best Travel & Leisure Publisher for its innovative work within the sector with Premier Inn as well as its own ground-breaking hotelsnearto.com concept. Its premierinnhotels.co.uk hotel locator site offers travellers easy access to location and route information for all of the 570 plus Premier Inn hotels across the UK. Built around a simple map and route concept, it is aimed at assisting business travellers and those planning a long journey with easy to find information about the possible Premier Inn hotels they could use along their journey. Tina Judic, Managing Director of Found, says: “To be shortlisted for one a4uaward is great, but to be in the running for two, is fantastic. The Found team worked hand-in-hand with Premier Inn to devise and deliver a destination site which complements the client’s own activity, and results already show it answers to a particular customer need very efficiently.” The new hotelsnearto.com site provides information regarding key hotels, and shows them in relation to nearby attractions and events. Visitors can then make an informed decision about the best place for them to stay which worked best with their travel itinerary. The site also targets the considerable long tail search volume on generic terms around place names, tourist sites, theatres, museums and other attractions. Tina adds: “The hotelsnearto site has been live in beta launch for over six months and is already starting to drive fruitful results, focusing on helping users to locate hotels near to attractions they are keen to visit, at the start of their purchase process. The flexibility of the website name has also enabled us to expand on the initial goal of the site, with the ability to focus on SEO and PPC campaigns to drive traffic under the ‘hotels near to...’ search term instigator.” The annual a4uawards showcase the top talent and commitment within the £4bn Affiliate & Performance Marketing sector. Held at The Grosvenor House Hotel in London on June 9, the black tie event also allows the industry to celebrate another year of innovation and delivery. For more information regarding attending this year’s a4uawards, go to www.a4uawards.com

Found Shortlisted For Top Industry Award

Tina Judic — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 10:19:08 +0000

Found (previously known as Artemis8) has been shortlisted for one of the industry’s top accolades at this year’s NMA Effectiveness Awards. The digital performance marketing agency is up for the Best Use of Affiliate Marketing Award for its strategic search marketing and site-build work with the UK’s largest hotel chain, Premier Inn. Its premierinnhotels.co.uk hotel locator site, which is built around a simple map and route concept, offers travellers easy access to location and route information for all of the 570 plus Premier Inn hotels across the UK. It is aimed at assisting those planning a long journey, as well as business travellers, with easy-to-find information about the possible Premier Inn hotels they could use along their route. Tina Judic, Managing Director of Found, says: “We are delighted to have been shortlisted for an NMA Effectiveness Award. It certainly goes a long way in showing how search marketing and affiliate marketing can successfully operate in tandem. To be recognised as a finalist is a fantastic achievement that really pushes Found into the forefront of performance marketing.” The annual NMA Awards will be held at The Grosvenor House Hotel in London on June 24.

Is affiliate marketing ready to embrace a post impression model?

Tina Judic — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 13:09:59 +0000

There is much talk of late, that post impression advertising should be able to work on the CPA model and, thus, within the affiliate channel. However, as much as we've collectively evolved the sector to where it is today, we simply aren’t geared up to embrace this model. For now, anyway. Post impression attribution relates to a consumer being served an ad, though not necessarily taking any action to click through on the ad. Either way, the ad will log an impression, or a view. An advertiser who works to a post impression model will pay for that impression. Post click attribution reflects direct action by the consumer to click on the advert served. Embracing post impression within affiliate marketing could see impressions overwriting clicks. Affiliate marketing, since inception, has focused on a last click model, resulting in affiliates looking at ways to not just initiate a consumer’s interest in a brand or product, but to ensure they complete the journey, ultimately driving the last click. The fact that the purchase path can be so fragmented is one of the reasons that affiliate marketing shines – affiliates are always looking for new ways to secure that final click or, to use a very topical analogy, to be the one who puts the ball in the back of the net. Not surprisingly, the IAB website therefore clearly defines the channel as being about last click referral: ‘If a consumer visiting the affiliate’s site clicks on an advertisement and goes on to perform a predetermined action (usually a purchase) on the advertiser’s site then the affiliate receives a payment. It is this cost per action model that defines affiliate marketing and sets it apart from other channels.’ Okay, maybe in the past, the channel has not rewarded affiliates who contributed to the journey – it was, and still is, very much perceived as being about the striker who claims the goal, not the defender who took the free kick, or the midfielder who knocked it into the striker’s path. But to be fair, this in itself is driving even more discussion, with many feeling that the last click model is flawed. However, post impression is a different model entirely. Although I firmly believe that display advertising does help to encourage a consumer along the purchase path, there is still no explicit distinction between high correlation (a consumer viewing an ad and purchasing from that advertiser)and high causation (a consumer viewing and clicking on an ad, and then purchasing from that advertiser). The latter, at least, illustrates intent. And for those who would argue that a click that resulted in a 30 day lag to sale is equally leaning towards correlation rather than causation, programme-dependant, I agree. The former may have contributed in some form, but it equally may never have been noticed. Now if we take a closer look at the post impression model and its growth in Europe – particularly Germany – there is a greater acceptance of post impression within affiliate marketing. The German affiliate market is largely driven by digital agencies, all of whom embrace post impression as a measurable online metric. And, of course, it is.... but does this mean that this model can fit within the affiliate model, driven by causality? If we embraced post impression within affiliate marketing, are we really working to a CPA model - the defined affiliate model of true action - or basing an assumption on the impression having some impact? CPAHC doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. So is the last click model flawed for CPA? Should we be looking beyond it? In my opinion, not necessarily so. It’s a great reward for innovation and entrepreneurialism – through ever-evolving search marketing initiatives, voucher code and cashback site emergences, social media exploration and more. It rewards flatly on one metric – the striker wins. And through this model, it forces the market to push the boundaries, to seek out new ways of converting clicks into customers. Affiliate marketing is now very much perceived as low-risk marketing - cost per acquisition, easy budgeting, action-oriented and not too difficult to manage. But what risks do post impression campaigns pose? Does this encourage the search affiliate to claim post impression on search adverts that have been viewed but not clicked upon? The content affiliate who wants every impression to be rewarded, no matter how targeted the site is? The voucher code site that drew the consumer in but didn’t have a voucher code to offer? Post impression is open to abuse. Affiliates could loading up a multiude of banners across site inventory which has high unrelated traffic, and then earn on the back of the post impression model. Are the networks even set up to manage this, both technically and administratively? I am all for development and evolvement of the digital marketing landscape; to be able to get to a point where advertisers can truly understand the contribution each media touch-point plays in a consumer journey is a great place to be. However, without true research and understanding, can we really reward on an assumption? It’s a whole new ball game that needs greater exploration, and this exploration shouldn’t’ be solely within the confines of affiliate marketing. As always, affiliate marketing is the pioneering industry – multi-attribution is a hot topic, with some elements of multi-attribution starting to be introduced to the space. But, will the introduction of post impression and multi-attribution modelling simply take everything away from affiliate marketing that’s made it the success it is today - the hunger, desire and passion to always be one step ahead of the opposing team, striking that goal into the back of the net? Possibly so.

TradeDoubler Star Defects To Digital Performance Specialist FOUND.

Tina Judic — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 08:11:26 +0000

TradeDoubler stalwart Wulfric Light-Wilkinson has moved agency-side to become Business Development Director at Digital Performance specialist, Found (previously known as Artemis8). Wulfric, who was with the affiliate network for over 4 years, more recently as Senior Business Development Manager, will report directly to Found Managing Director, Tina Judic, and be responsible for showcasing the skills and passion for delivery of the award-winning Found team to a broader Advertiser mix. Tina says: “Wulfric has an incredible thirst for making deals. He’s helped build the TradeDoubler client portfolio, bringing a number of big brand advertisers onboard across tdSearch and tdAffiliate, so he has an exceptional understanding of the PPC, SEO and Affiliate sectors, as well as the skills to ensure what’s promised is delivered, and more. I’m delighted he wanted to join us.” Wulfric says: “Found has a fantastic industry reputation for delivering highly effective and strategic performance marketing campaigns. The team are known for being focused on finding new ways to build their clients’ businesses online, be it through Google updates, different ways of adapting their technology or simply thinking out of the box to achieve powerful results. I want to be part of this fresh thinking and to help Tina and the team show more clients how to maximise their performance marketing activity much, much further.”

Prezzybox Appoints Found. As Its Paid Search Agency

Tina Judic — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 15:10:57 +0000

Prezzybox has appointed Found. (previously known as Artemis8) as its exclusive Paid Search agency as it gears up for its 10^th birthday celebrations next month. As one of the leading online gift retailers in the UK, Prezzybox is also one of the original early adopters of online retailing and has remained a consistent contender in the massive UK gift market which has grown an impressive 26 per cent year-on-year. Founded by Zak Edwards in 2000, the multi award-winning business has more recently carved itself a niche as a trusted and competitive online department store, appealing to a predominately female gift-buying demographic. Zak says: “The online gift marketplace has changed dramatically over the past 10 years. Because of the ease in which users can swap between companies on the web, it has become increasingly imperative to have an easy-to-use website, with a great product range at competitive prices, plus a broad reaching digital marketing strategy, to ensure we communicate with as many customers as possible.” The tenth birthday is therefore being celebrated with a multi-channel marketing campaign, including a focused push on widening its search base from Digital Performance Specialists, Found, plus wacky birthday campaigns via Facebook and Twitter including the search to find the best giant cup cake bakers. Tina Judic, Managing Director of Found, says: “The gift market is increasingly competitive and, therefore, as performance-based specialists our role is to seek out new ways to ensure we drive increased sales, specifically providing consistent coverage and offering extended reach on generic search terms.” On the actual birthday of September 14th, Prezzybox will also be offering special discounted prices for its top ten products, the standard delivery charge will be just 10p and any customers purchasing on the day who share the same birthday will receive free gifts and vouchers. With a collection of its original products from 2000 available at 2000 prices, Prezzybox will also be re-releasing some of its top sellers from each of the next ten years including the bagpipes starter kit, life size Dalek, full suit of armour and the infamous toothpick man.

Found Party Gets A Big Thumbs Up!!

Luke Townsend — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 09:29:25 +0000

Massive thanks to Stuart Pringle and the good folk over at the A4U for giving us such a great write up on the Affiliates4u site. The original piece can be found here: http://www.affiliates4u.com/news/2010/10/lost-come-and-be-found/ But we think it's so good that we are putting the whole thing up here on our blog... "Last night saw the official launch of Found, the Performance Marketing Agency at the Music Room in West London… And if it’s a case of start as you mean to go on then these guys have definitely found the secret to success

A top notch evening was had by all, with guests treated to champagne reception, nibbles a plenty, excellent band, fun and games and a no-nonsense free bar. It’s not often you get to see famous ‘lost’ moments of history on the circuit with both Lord Lucan and Shergar working the room. A mention has to go to the very impressive magician who even managed to put your card on an i-phone app. Talk about #zeitgeist. Found was formerly Artemis8 and now pulls together the key Online Marketing services of Search, Mobile, Social, Affiliate Management, Brand Protection and Optimisation under a very clear Performance remit. October has been a landmark month for the agency. After making their mark at a4uexpo last week with the Found buses getting everyoneto the Troxy party, last night wasn't just about celebrating a new identity, but also reinforcing market proposition. Tina Judic, MD at Found, explains: “As an award-winning agency, the Artemis8 team had already gained a significant reputation for finding new ways to build its clients’ businesses online; through maximising search engine dynamics, utilising different ways of adapting technology or simply thinking out of the box. We therefore pride ourselves in always staying ahead of the game and the launch of Found gives us the opportunity to extend our knowledge and expertise in an industry that has evolved dramatically over the past year to an industry with a much heavier reliance on Performance-based activity across a whole range of Online channels including Search, Social and Mobile.” Cementing the team’s drive and experience even further, Red Letter Days Online Marketing Manager and one of the Performance Marketing industry’s most respected commentators, Angela Greewood, has also joined Found as Director of Account Management. It was a great opportunity to see so many faces and after looking at the tell-tale tweets in the early hours if I were a betting man, I’d put a few quid on there being some sore heads around this morning! Coffee anyone?" Stu

LOST.

Jamie Brady — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 17:19:34 +0000

This week at Found towers we have a very specific search operation underway. After our glorious Found Party hosted earlier this week (blog post here) our technical director Simon Raybould went missing, presumed... kidnapped. That is, our life size cardboard cutout technical director Simon Raybould. Since then we have launched an online social media campaign asking, nay urging, for your help and support in bringing Simon back home to his rightful place. You can follow our online Twitter campaign here, and keep up to date with our site/Si feed here. Simon is roughly 6ft tall, lightly rugged, with a cool and calm demeanor. He is thought to be held captive by the elusive @cardboardcaptor. Needless to say, this cardboard captor has a truly cold, ruthless and clinical mind, and must be brought to immediate justice. If you have seen or heard of Simon's whereabouts then please don't hesitate to get in touch. There may be a reward in store. Thank you. You can keep up to date with our campaign right here, at Found.co.uk.

Affiliates: Building Traffic with PPC

Angela Greenwood — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 13:55:20 +0000

Achieving maximum exposure across the paid search landscape can be an expensive and risky business for some brands, with many unfortunately having first-hand experience of how possible it is to quickly burn through thousands of pounds in click spend on ultimately unprofitable keywords. With significant Google trademark policy changes taking place over the past two years which allow competitors to both bid on branded search terms and display those terms in their ad text, the problem has been further compounded for brands now facing significant sales leakage to competitor paid search activity. However, this is a classic case where potential threat can actually be turned into a positive asset when brands adopt a more clearly defined strategy to build traffic with PPC. And this is where affiliates or search specialists, who are paid on performance, can be extremely valuable in supplementing current strategy, protecting a brand from competitors, and ensuring that long tail keywords and any other gaps are effectively plugged. In fact, if the answer is ‘yes’ to one or more of the following questions, then this would definitely be a valuable option for any brand to consider: • Am I missing out on reaching some of my potential customers through search? • Does my search budget limit me? Does it run out? • Are there key messages I am unable to communicate to my audience? • Are my competitors continually appearing on my brand and taking my customers away? In addition to the specialist guidance and knowledge an affiliate or search specialist then brings to the table, the key benefit of utilising affiliates to build PPC traffic is that it can be undertaken at no financial risk, as the affiliate isn’t paid unless a sale is made; a lead is generated; or the customer takes whatever action the brand has specified the affiliate will be rewarded for. To be fair, some brands may be concerned how this activity can be carried out without impacting their own search campaigns. But with careful preparation and clear guidelines for affiliates, any potential issues can be easily addressed in the planning phase of any brand protection work - key points that need to be considered being: • Agree a capped CPC rate with affiliates for any brand keyword activity, to ensure your own click prices aren’t inflated • Work with either a single partner or a small group of affiliates that you have carefully screened and who you know will be responsive to requests or new opportunities • Give affiliates a specific remit to cover particular products, categories or keyword types so that they won’t be competing against you in any of their activity • Make sure the rules of play are crystal clear – create a black list of any no-go keywords, outline ad copy restrictions, consider whether you want to restrict affiliates to displaying ads at particular times of the day – and clearly communicate these • Be mindful that you do need to give your PPC affiliates some profitable activity to work on as well as challenging them to boost lower performing opportunities. A frequently used technique is to enable affiliates to work on some brand or brand + generic search phrases, to enable them to reinvest their commissions into covering generic and long-tail search terms • Reward your affiliates for great performance – a loyal affiliate will always go the extra mile for you Here at Found, our brand protection work with Premier Inn won us an a4u Award this year and demonstrates that PPC affiliates are able to supplement a brand’s own paid search activity in innovative ways. By developing a Google mash-up and route map finder to create http://www.premierinnhotels.co.uk, we provided a new experience for booking Premier Inn accommodation via sophisticated location-based search, added multi-messaging to their campaign, and broadened the reach of their paid search activity. So with the right strategy, the right partners and together, the right objectives and goals, paid search activity can deliver very important brand protection and incremental sales. However, affiliates also thrive on innovation and fresh thinking, so why not challenge your paid-on-performance PPC partners (or potential partners) to develop some creative ways to drive more traffic and sales for your brand and you might just uncover a very lucrative new income stream along the way! Comments? Thoughts? Please comment below! Contact Us

Found at NMA Live

Angela Greenwood — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 17:26:41 +0000

Found provided plenty of inspiration for search marketers at the NMA Live event on 21st January, with the theme of 'Making the Latest Developments in Search Work for You'. At the Found-sponsored event, our MD Tina Judic demonstrated the emergence of search as a true performance marketing channel, and the need for greater, more focused integration between search, social media, display advertising and mobile. Business Development Director Wulfric Light-Wilkinson then presented detailed case studies showcasing how we have built effective acquisition funnels for a diverse range of clients. Also featuring speakers from Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, MediaCom and Decipher exploring the latest developments in search, the event provided a cutting edge view of the opportunities and challenges ahead. Congratulations to the NMA Live team for a top event that we were proud to support. [caption id="attachment_157" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="Tina Judic, MD, Found"][/caption] [caption id="attachment_174" align="alignnone" width="225" caption="Lost? Be Found!"][/caption] [caption id="attachment_175" align="alignnone" width="225" caption="Free Found Search Audit - email audit@found.co.uk"][/caption]

Found Shortlisted for Revolution Award

Flo Bundy — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 17:57:08 +0000

Our team has done it again! Found have been shortlisted for another top industry award This time it is for the Revolution awards for ‘Best Use of Affiliate Marketing’ for our work with Premier Inn. We worked closely with Premier Inn to build a site that supported their existing PPC strategy. Aimed at facilitating bookings, premierinnhotels.co.uk gives travellers easy access to route and location information on Premier Inn’s growing empire of hotels across the UK. The site is built around a simple map and route concept guaranteed to give the most relevant information to their search. The latest addition to the site includes a blog designed to keep visitors up to date with the latest Premier Inn news, such as the opening of 2 eco-friendly hotels. Please do check it out! http://www.revolutionawards.com/about http://www.premierinnhotels.co.uk

Fabulous New Found'ers

Flo Bundy — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 10:42:22 +0000

Found welcomes two new members to our team. Mr Matthew ‘the maestro’ Freedman joins as our new Junior Analyst and Mr Guy ‘the great’ Donnelly as our new Head of SEO and Social. As always our Found’ers will have the brief embarrassment of telling us three things about themselves as well as singing a song to the team in our Friday meeting (well, that’s what we tell them they have to do...).

Found Search Predictions For 2011

Tina Judic — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 11:14:16 +0000

Found features in today’s issue of NMA as part of their Search Expert Predictions for 2011. Check out the article here: http://tinyurl.com/6adcndr Here’s my predictions for 2011: 2011 will be the year when search and social media converge (although some might say collide). With ad spend on Facebook tipped to double and Google taking PPC into the display arena (moving display pricing beyond traditional CPM to more performance-based models), we’re already seeing the breakdown of the search, social and display silos. Add to this the unification of Yahoo and Bing, which is likely to lead to increases in click costs, and advertisers will need to further consider where and how to invest their marketing budgets intelligently. The appearance of paid search ads will also change significantly, with maps, products and vouchers being integrated into Google results. Localised targeting will equally continue to increase in importance, along with the use of mobile search and location-based apps such as Foursquare and Google Places, opening up greater opportunities for smaller businesses. However, there’s no denying that Facebook is the longer-term future of search, and potentially the future search engine. As it creates and acquires more data and functionality, such as apps, stores and search results, it’s becoming a micro-worldwide web in its own right. That said, winning in search is, to some extent, all about finding the best strategy for, or moulding existing strategies around, the forever-changing landscape. No matter what 2011 brings, any changes will be gradual and there’ll always be areas to capitalise on. However, advertisers must not forget that search, paid search in particular, is a game based on rules, analytics and algorithms; the biggest winners will continue to be those who play by the simple fundamentals best. Search and mobile will form a warm and close relationship in 2011, with Google Places, Facebook Places and Foursquare vying for the role of best friend. This year will also see mobile play a key role in direct response campaigns, with QR codes becoming more integrated into mobile results, offering the ability to synchronise offers with maps and location-based searches. Tina Judic

Team Smithfield and SuperGames Infamy

Angela Greenwood — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 12:27:01 +0000

A valiant crew of Found and Fusepump representatives, otherwise known as ‘Team Smithfield’, descended upon T47 at London Bridge yesterday for their shot at SuperGames 2011 glory. This hard-fought event, brilliantly organised by Affiliate Window and buy.at, brought together diverse teams from across the industry to test their skill at football, netball, ping-pong, archery and dodgeball. Team Smithfield highlights included a breathtaking draw with Quidco in one of the most thrilling football matches of the day – special mentions have to go to Fusepump’s Rob Durkin and Charlie Hawker for their footwork finesse, Jamie Brady for a particularly tasty backwards pass, Pete Newman for his heroic goalie work and Found’s Luke Townsend for fearsome form that did quite literally leave him breathless: Another special mention has to go to Sean McAuley of Fusepump whose innovative approach to shinpads saw him stuffing two copies of ‘Shortlist’ magazine down his socks – surely a sterling example of Team Smithfield’s unrivalled ingenuity. The rules of netball unfortunately remain a mystery to Team Smithfield, and up against netballing demons and first placed team of the day, Neo Ogilvy, our contribution to the game largely consisted of running up and down the court while having the whistle blown on us constantly for various transgressions – however this did appear to be a common theme across many of the matches! Ping-pong saw us up against UKWebMedia who seem to have recruited a team member who has surely studied table tennis with Chinese masters, and an enormous effort on behalf of Fusepump’s Tom Staveley was unfortunately not enough to see Team Smithfield win through. Let us gloss gently over our dodgeball result and focus on the archery, where Sean ‘Bullseye’ McAuley clawed back much needed points for Team Smithfield to bring us to the not-so-respectable result of being the 16^th placed team on the day. With our dreams of glory lying in tatters like the discarded sweaty netball bibs on the concrete floor, Team Smithfield took solace in a few well deserved beers and pizza followed by some serious ‘networking’ at the after party. Many thanks to Affiliate Window and buy.at for a fantastic event, and to our Fusepump team mates for their heroic efforts. We’re already in training for next year!

Happy Birthday Found - 6 Years Old Today!

Jamie Brady — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 18:22:10 +0000

We've been celebrating a very special occasion in the office today, as Found (formerly Artemis8) turned six years old! But it's not for me to comment too much upon this momentous occasion, so I will hand it over to the man who was there from the very conception.. Found / Artemis8 founder Mr. Leo Harrison Today, our company is 6 years old. A ripe old age in this industry and a timespan that has crossed great changes in performance marketing. It's been a fabulous journey.... Back in the summer of 2004, I was a humble antiquarian book dealer. Dusty old leather tomes, maps, copper etchings, all that stuff. We had a web site which we were looking to monetise through affiliates. I was given 2 lessons in "ppc affiliate marketing" by a wonderful chap called Neil Hutchinson. He'd just struck out on his own as an affiliate, said he was doing "quite well" and the best way to learn the business was to become a publisher myself. Ironically (as it turned out) my first campaign was for uSwitch.com, the energy switching web site. I remember the same sense of wonderment when I saw my first sale appear on the Commission Junction sales report as I did 5 years later when Neil told me he'd bought the uSwitch company!! While my orbit has not nearly been so stratospheric as Neil's (who's has?) like him, I quickly realised I needed financial backing to move the business ahead. Step forward some old friends of mine (I've known these guys since 1982) who also happened to be very clever at business and fairly deep in the pocket department - Sebastian and Lucan Gray. They set me up with a pile of cash and a friendly office space in Holborn. Late one night after a few Riojas, we chose the name Artemis Eight for our company. The Eight bit came from the fact that we are all born in August, Artemis was all about hunting and sounded quite posh... Exciting times followed, taking on staff and developing affiliate campaigns that ranged from holidays in Bali to anti-wrinkle creams! However, behind everything was a vision to create a growing company that would sit at the cutting edge of Performance Marketing. I realised the mistake many small "bedroom affiliates" (god, I hate that expression) made was that they didn't get out there and press the flesh. It's a bit of a chicken and egg situation - you don't get noticed unless you make an impact, but it's hard to make an impact without being noticed. So, donning my best (only) suit, I set off to meet everyone I could. I was actually incredibly surprised at how friendly most people were - that's what I still love about our industry, it hasn't gone all nasty and corporate (and let us all join in solemn prayer that it won't). It was fantastic to hear the words: "what can we do to help you?" and to find people who would let me spout on about my ideas for campaigns. Industry events were also in their infancy. A4U gatherings were held in small pubs in those days. It was at these events I discovered how brilliant some of my competitors were. I talked, a little awestruck, to the likes of Duncan & Rich at eConversions and Jamie & Mark at UK Web. Incredibly bright folk, who knew an awful lot more than I did about the industry, but who were so kind in offering advice. Those early days were still a bit of a free for all, but as industry regulations were tightened and Google rose the bar time and time again, it was inevitable that our business would need to step up to survive. Our staff now needed proper tools of the trade and we began taking on skilled web designers, coders, account managers, search analysts etc. We even had "futurologist" in one staff member's job title!! A skilled team needs skilled management and when Tina Judic joined us as MD in the autumn of 2008, I knew our company would be looked after by one of the very best. Tina was known to me from her days at Commission Junction and as soon as I heard she was interested in the role, there were really no other candidates in my book. In 2010, with Tina at the helm, the company expanded rapidly, even opening a small office in Cape Town. We wanted to grab the talent where we could find it and having worked closely with many people in the industry, it wasn't so difficult to find the perfect people for our organisation. For a number of years we had been sitting on the url Found.co.uk and it seemed like the perfect time to use it in a re-brand. Personally, I had got fed up with people calling us Arteeemis Eight, so that was another good reason... Anyway, we are now FOUND, in name and metaphorically. Many people have got the company to where it is today, in size and reputation. Massive thanks to you all, from our oldest surviving member Keith Horwood (how do you keep doing it Keith?) to our newest recruit Matthew Freedman. Happy Birthday to all at Found! Tina Judic Rob Barnes Ciaran Brady Jamie Brady Florence Bundy Greg Burgess Rahul Chandhyoke Nasreen Cullen Chee Diep Lauren Dodds Guy Donnelly Andrea Downey Matthew Freedman Angela Greenwood Keith Horwood Joe Lee Ashley McVey Peter Newman Simon Raybould Charlie Ryan Luke Townsend Wulfric Light-Wilkinson

FREE PPC & SEO Audit

Pete Newman — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 16:15:28 +0000

In Feb & March, we are currently offering any prospective client a FREE Audit of your current PPC and SEO campaigns. We will show you where we can add value, reduce acquisition costs and increase sales. We also have an SEO Audit Tool to run technical checks on your domain. Please email me on pete@found.co.uk or contact me via LinkedIn for further information.

Google acquires BeatThatQuote

Greg Burgess — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 09:32:05 +0000

Google acquires BeatThatQuote, a UK Finance Comparison Site.

Yesterday beatthatquote.com was acquired by Google for a deal worth £37.7 million. The comparison site compares deals across a variety of financial products including mortgages, insurance and credit cards.

The response to this acquisition has provided two different offshoots of conversation. Firstly being the diversification of Google from an internet gateway to a channel player. Secondly, the ramifications for other comparison sites if Google continues to penalise similar companies for actions that they, through BeatThatQuote, are allegedly endorsing.

We’ve already seen Google introduce Google Shopping Comparison. More wide-spread in the US, Google is featuring more and more in search results for finance terms in the UK such as this example below on the search term ‘credit cards’. Not only do they feature in P1 they also have an additional extension parameter within their ad in the form of a drop down (not available to other Adwords advertisers). Upon clicking through this ad, I do question what is so credible about this site when other sites are so heavily penalised.

SEOBooks.com takes the angle of penalisation and the consistency, or lack of consistency, when taking action against sites.

According to SEOBooks.com, Google has, on multiple occasions, penalised other UK-based finance sites for SEO issues & link buying. However, now that Google owns one of these sites in Beatthatquote, are they now penalizing Peter only to legitimise the same action for Paul? Time will tell how this one unfolds, however it’s certainly going to be interesting to watch.

Think Visibility - a cracking Search & Affiliate conference

Tina Judic — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 15:03:23 +0000

I’ve just returned from Think Visibility 5, a cracking conference on Search and Affiliate Marketing. What makes this conference so much different to the other events in our sector's calendar is not just its quality of speakers, but also their willingness to share so openly their learnings, techniques, hints and tips in an extremely friendly and approachable way - the fact that it's also held on a Saturday also illustrates how special this event is and the following it has. A small conference held in Leeds, organised by the wonderfully entertaining and industry legend Dom Hodgeson, it is very possibly one of the best. With this level of reputation, I was therefore hugely delighted to be invited to speak at the event and willingly obliged. Given it was a Saturday conference, I decided to go for a mix of information and fun, hosting the session – Performance Marketing, it’s a Piece of Cake. Taking the audience through my personal career journey, spotlighting how the Affiliate sector has evolved (including a few toe-curling reminders of some of the industry's least glamorous moments!), I talked about how the industry has truly grown up and professionally matured. So much so, that our Performance-model ethos has now led us to operate in a much wider environment, one of cross digital Performance Marketing. Illustrating the key ingredients for successful Performance Marketing campaigns, I explained how to 'mix' the perfect elements of the right Merchant, Landing Pages, SEO and PPC before showing the icing on the cake of blending Search with Social to deliver true Performance insight and delivery. Taking to the stage post-lunch, I decided to bring a little Saturday Kitchen to the proceedings, bringing the mix of ingredients analogy alive and physically making a cake on stage! I must say, I did wonder what had possessed me to do such a thing as I took to the stage, but thanks to a very willing assistant in Ricki Jones, I think I just about pulled it off! Elsewhere, the programme was packed with some impressive speakers. There were some excellent presentations including Paddy Moogan, providing some hints and tips for link-building, Paul Smith and his one-man twitter world trip and Annabel Hodges, providing insights into reporting and communication. Add to all of this, we also had a few surprises in the form of sweets named after all of the speakers , a supersized scalextric track and a thoroughly entertaining lunchtime quiz; Think Visibility really did have the mix of excellent content and fun. Can’t wait for 2012.

FOUND Shortlisted for five A4UAwards

Tina Judic — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 12:26:29 +0000

Found has been shortlisted for five of this year's coveted a4uAwards which spotlight excellence and innovation in the Affiliate and Performance Marketing industry. We are up for Best Lead Generation Campaign; Best Use of Mobile for our Autoglass campaign; Best Retail Advertiser for myredletterdays.co.uk, Best New Entrant and, with RAC, Best Search Partnership. I’m absolutely delighted for the team – this is another ringing endorsement of Found's proven expertise and commitment to delivery across all of the key Performance Marketing channels. Over the past year, we have continued to instigate some seriously innovative campaigns for our clients for which we are immensely proud. To once more have our successful approach formerly recognised by our industry is the icing on the cake. The hotly-contested a4uAwards shine a spotlight on the businesses and individuals which are delivering inspirational and often ground-breaking activity within the Performance Marketing space. Judges’ comments included: "A really good example of the power of great content relevant to the brand experience and useful to their target consumers" - Best Search Partnership entry for Found and RAC "A 'why didn't I think of that' proposition, with excellent execution and great use of geo-location technology delivering strong results" - Best Use of Mobile entry for Found and Autoglass® Our table is already booked so bring on the awards on May 17^th!

Google +1 marks a real focus on the Social space

Greg Burgess — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 09:16:55 +0000

Social is really starting to take a hold – and Google wants a piece of it. With the recent launch of Google +1, it’s interesting to see Google chasing the tail of someone else, in this instance Facebook. If you have a Google account then you can select the +1 button to publicly give something your stamp of approval, with a view to helping friends, contacts and others on the web find the best results when they search. This is exactly the same as Facebook’s Like button and, through the data it can gather and the reach it offers, it illustrates the importance of social interaction on the internet. Google are continually focusing on the personalisation of search results and they’ve had some fantastic successes with ‘localisation’ but, to date, little success with ‘socialisation’. We’ve recently seen them launch new features within their SERPS, including favourites (with stars) and Google Buzz. Neither of these took off. So, will +1 succeed where other launches didn’t? +1 uses the Google account data of individuals along with all of your contacts within that account, however people aren’t really interacting with their Google account in the same way they are with their Facebook account. It is highly likely that Bing will mimic what Google have done here and, with your Facebook login, something like this is far more likely to work. Surely it won’t be long before Facebook launches a search interface within its platform, whether it’s of their own making or through a Bing partnership? Little wonder then that Google tried to get in there first and buy them!

Why our Head of SEO & Social Media joined Found.

Luke Townsend — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 18:29:06 +0000

Find out why our Head of SEO & Social Media joined Found, what his main responsibilities are and what he feels are the most exciting developments within the industry in this recent interview with NMA. What the article won’t tell you is that Guy hates spiders and heights, his full name is Guy Wayne John Paul Michael Donnelly and his claim to fame is spilling red wine all over Meryl Streep at the film premier of Mamma Mia…

Here's a snippet from the article..

"What attracted you to this role?

I come from a designer/developer background and very early on, I took an interest in SEO and then social media. My experience has shown me that being able to deliver a clearly defined strategy involves hands-on knowledge of the anatomy and growth of a website and how it maintains a strong presence. You can only create the perfect natural search strategy when you understand each area and how they impact and influence each other. Found’s ability to deliver strategic performance marketing campaigns across a wider mix of digital channels really sets it apart. I want to build on its innovative reputation to deliver even more strategic and ground-breaking campaigns....." Read the full story here..

Found at the Revolution Awards

Angela Greenwood — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 09:50:57 +0000

Myself and the lovely Nasreen Cullen, Found Account Manager extraordinaire, pulled our glad rags on and scrubbed up for the Revolution Awards at Grosvenor House last night – and what a night it was. From the stunning art deco venue to the inspiring shortlisted entries, there was enough creative energy to power the hundreds of spotlights illuminating the enormous room. Found were shortlisted in the category of Best Use of Affiliate Marketing for our ground breaking work with Premier Inn, who we worked closely with to build a site that supported their existing paid search strategy. A proven success story in driving high volumes of bookings, http://www.premierinnhotels.co.uk gives travellers easy access to route and location information on Premier Inn’s growing suite of hotels across the UK. The latest addition to the site includes a blog designed to keep visitors up to date with the latest Premier Inn news, such as the opening of 2 eco-friendly hotels. While we were unfortunately pipped at the post by Arena Quantum’s excellent Facebook campaign for Domino’s, the evening was a great opportunity for us Founders to meet a host of interesting new people from across the industry – with a particular shout-out to our friendly table mates at Numiko who were shortlisted for their innovative website http://www.numiko.com Nasreen was also particularly chuffed to have her picture taken with the hilarious host Jack Whitehall who kept us all in stitches throughout the ceremony and even stayed around to chat with all the guests afterwards – clearly he was enjoying mingling with the crème de la crème of the digital marketing industry! Congratulations to all of the winners and we’ll be cracking on with plenty more innovative projects that hopefully will see us sitting in the Revolution Awards audience again next year!

Found Wins Another Award at this Years A4U Awards

Tina Judic — Mon, 23 May 2011 16:25:50 +0000

We’ve gone and done it again! Yes, Found has been recognised for our work as being one of the leading innovators in the search and affiliate space, winning the Best Lead Generation Campaign award at this year’s prestigious a4uAwards. We won the award for our work with bed manufacturer, Tempur; engaging prospective customers online through social marketing channels, including Facebook. Our campaign not only drove incremental sales for the brand but also built a community following for longer term customer acquisition. We were also highly commended for two further awards; Best Search Partnership for our work with RAC and Best Use of Mobile, for our pioneering work for Autoglass® so all in all, it was a very successful night. We had a fantastic evening - 8 Founder’s attended the awards night (hosted by the splendidly funny, Rufus Hound) and, despite the great success, all made it into the office for 9 the next morning with big smiles and clear heads! Photo courtesy of Existem Events

Found at the Red Letter Days Challenge Cup 2011

Luke Townsend — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 14:52:49 +0000

So it was that time of year again, a sunny July day provided that backdrop for the annual Red Letter Days Challenge Cup. Up bright and early, a bleary eyed bunch of digital and network representatives were bundled onto a coach in Kings Cross and whisked off, in comfort, to a semi-secret location somewhere in the vicinity of Milton Keynes. No one really seemed to know what was in store for them, someone had mentioned axe throwing, another seemed to think paint and balls would be involved. All I knew was that the bus driver wasn't 'the Stig' and that he had the most awful collection of hen night style music playing. On arrival it became clear that a) thankfully we weren't very close to Milton Keynes and b) that we were in the 'Spy Academy' HQ, a large shed like structure surrounded by freshly mowed green fields. Lots of intriguing looking activities awaited. Coffee downed, pastries gobbled and before we knew it we were out in our teams and on our way to the first of 16 challenges! Previous RLD Challenge cups had seen me crash a canoe with Kevin Edwards and fracture my wrist wanging wellies, so I wasn't really brimming with confidence for this one. That said the first event involved crawling our way through a maze of lasers which I excelled at, so that perked me up. Other events were scarily titled things like 'Safe cracking', 'Unarmed combat' and 'Radiation', however these were not nearly as dangerous as they sounded and as far as I know, there were no injuries.

Found had two representatives on the day myself and Deepa Arthur, in teams purple and red respectively. At the half way stage team purple were just a few hundred 'Spy Dollars' behind the leading team and we felt fairly confident that we could snatch victory in the remaining events. With team red languishing in an unthreatening fourth or fifth place.

An excellent time was had by all and the winners were announced as we sank beers and prepared to tuck in to the BBQ. Somehow team red had come from nowhere to snatch first place and relegate team purple into a sorry 3rd. I later discovered that assembling a human pyramid had assisted in earning them an extra $2000 Spy Dollars which had made all the difference. Not at all bitter, happy with my 3rd place water pistol and hungrily tucking into my slightly charcoaled burger I reflected on what had been a fun, and exhausting day. Awin had wrestled the trophy from Affilinet. But it wasn't over... The booze got on the bus with us, and for what seemed like hours we trundled back at a slightly slower than leisurely pace, sun-burnt and knackered, sleep not an option despite my futile attempts, most of the bus were fairly tipsy by the time we rolled back into Kings Cross. Straight into a bar and it was all back on for me.. well after a double bourbon and coke it was. A special mention should go to my purple spy team mates Gemma 'Tomahawk' Crozier, Tania 'Happy with a Gun' Ross, 'Killer' Keith Newton, and Delaine 'Gimme the Dollars' Yeoh. A massive thank you to Joshna, Gemma, Gerry and all at Red Letter Days for organising such a fantastic day, and congratulations to Deepa and the rest of Team Red for winning the cup for Awin. Bring on the Red Letter Days Challenge Cup 2012, training starts tomorrow!

Found has been shortlisted for four more awards.

Tina Judic — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 12:42:30 +0000

Following our success at the A4U awards earlier this summer, we’ve been recognised again for our work across search, mobile and affiliate marketing. First up is the DADI awards where found have been shortlisted for Best use of Paid Search and Best use of Affiliate for our work with Tempur. Today we’ve been shortlisted for two additional awards at the inaugural UK Search Awards; for Best Mobile Campaign and Best use of Search – Retail for our work with Autoglass and Red Letter Days. With both award ceremonies taking place within weeks of each other, November is going to be a busy month!

Casino night comes to BIG Studios

Luke Townsend — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 12:46:45 +0000

Last Friday saw the Found office turned, for one night only, into a swanky Casino, courtesy of Big Ideas Group generosity. Found, Spring Digital and ITlab were treated to a little taste of Las Vegas right in the comfort of our office, BIG Studios. On offer to spend our valuable chips were tables for poker, roulette, blackjack and craps. Ok so the money wasn't real, but there were real prizes up for grabs, so many of Found stuck around to see if lady luck was smiling on them. On a night full of incident our very own Keith 'king high' Horwood snatched a prize for having the second most chips at the end of the night. This doesn't tell the whole story though, as at one stage Andrea was teaching the boys a thing or two on the poker table and Deepa was amassing stacks of chips on the roulette. I myself was in a strong position until I took it upon myself to try to wing it on the craps table and lost a bundle. ITlab's own Justin Samuel, as seen on TVs 'Dating in the Dark', was unavailable to comment the following Monday, amidst allegations of currency tampering involving the colour photocopier. A fantastic night was had by all that attended, with the possible exception of Robbie, who managed to get on the wrong side of one of the croupiers and suffered for it all night. Well done to the winners, and a BIG thanks from everyone at Found to all those involved in organising it!

Landing Page Quality Gains More Weighting

Greg Burgess — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 13:28:40 +0000

Google have announced a global roll out of a new algorithm change which will affect Adwords Google Quality Scores from today going forward. Google stated that they have “increased the weight given to relevance and landing page quality in determining Quality Score and how ads are ranked on Google” http://adwords.blogspot.com/2011/10/ads-quality-improvements-rolling-out.html The analysts here at Found will be closely monitoring our campaigns to see by how much this affects us and how we can capitalise on these changes. We have noticed a shift away from Landing Page quality in the quality score algorithm over recent years, with Google showing more of a concern over keyword and ad relevancy at the point of a user’s click. It now seems they are shifting more weighting to what “happens” post click. Google and most advertisers will say that if you align landing page content with the keywords you are bidding on then include these keywords on your landing page, you will attain a good landing page quality score. The Google Adbots (Google spiders) will be able to read this and everyone will be happy. But at Found we don’t think it’s just going to be more weighting applied to what the adbots read. We think they will be adding more weight to what happens after the click and how the users react to your page as this is a key indicator for relevance. So what can Google measure to indicate this - bounce rate. This is a great indicator to how relevant your page is and I would be surprised if it wasn’t already in the quality score algorithm, it just looks like now it’s going to take more control. Google would not openly say the metric is bounce rate due to the potential things you can do to manipulate this, which in time, could actually lead to a worse user experience. So can we monitor how it affects us? We will be monitoring our CPCs and average positions closely over the next week. With Quality score shifts these metrics are the first thing to change. Your adwords quality score shown within the interface is just a general number and is not granular enough to identify fluctuations. It seems Google have only ever included landing page quality as a negative value, but now they are also going to positively use it to increase you adrank. So what’s going to happen if we were going to predict anything? Any large brand especially on pure brand terms should benefit, deeplinking to the most relevant page within a site may gain importance, as will having the landing page reflect your ad text with no cheekily over exaggerated offers. But as always if you try to manipulate quality score it has to closely be tracked against that landing page conversion rate, in order to see if you really are actually making any more profit from your tests.

Found’s cocktails rocked at the A4U party!

Pete Newman — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 14:29:25 +0000

Found has just returned from another excellent A4UExpo conference where Found co-sponsored the official networking party. A new location in central London saw a fantastic turnout from advertisers, networks, affiliates and agencies alike. Coupled with a high calibre of speakers (including our very own @tinajudic and @angegreenwood) and an abundance of discussion topics; even by the end of day 1 I was buzzing like a bee on red bull with ideas, and so many people to contact that the pocket of my purple waistcoat literally bulged with business cards. The infamous after party took place at the very aptly-named Foundation Bar in Langley Street. And in true Found style, we ensured that our sponsorship made some impact along the way! Huge credit must go to our Head of Paid Search, Greg Burgess (@foundgregyet), who, along with myself, agreed to dress up as (in the words of everyone who knew us) rather dapper waiters, complete with a Found twist of bowler hats and white gloves, to hand out tickets to the conference party goers so they got their hands on one of the specially designed ‘Found Cocktails’ (purple of course!) at the party. And to add to the fun, everyone had an opportunity to tweet their favourite cocktail to the @foundbot to find out what their cocktail said about them. With responses ranging from the helpful “I bet you’re a drunk texter – save the apologies and turn off your phone #caringbot’ to the slightly more insulting ‘you’re great at two things. Bad decisions and morning after stories.” A fantastic night was had by all and the following day at the expo did not disappoint, with some excellent sessions from Google and Econsultancy. Here’s to another great year of innovation in performance marketing and thank you a4u!’

Found shortlisted again!

Flo Bundy — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 14:41:21 +0000

It seems November is going to be a very busy month for Found! We have both the Dadi Awards and the UK Search Awards coming up, and now, to add to it, we have the 2011 Effective Mobile Marketing Awards. We have been shortlisted for four awards in the following categories: Most Effective Mobile Advertising Campaign, Most Effective Mobile Sales Promotion/Direct Response Campaign, Most Effective Location-based Service/Campaign and Most Effective Mobile Site - and all for our work with Autoglass. It is extremely exciting that even in this difficult economic climate our efforts are being recognised across the board by our industry. Congratulations to everyone involved and long may it continue!

What does 2012 hold for us?

Tina Judic — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 09:00:40 +0000

I have no doubt 2012 is going to be another fascinating year in the world of digital; from search to social we’re going to experience evolution at a fast pace. The established channel of search will still experience some twists and turns, with social starting to have a greater impact on search results from influence through to customer targeting segmentation. With the array of tools and extensions available to us through the search engines, I fully expect to see click through rates continue to rise, thanks to the volume and richness of data we’re now able to capture. However, this will no doubt lead to an increase in CPC’s, especially CPC’s with ‘local intent’, as SMEs & local business catch up and the engines provide them with dedicated platforms. As Google further develops quality score ranking the historically-strongest advertisers will become even stronger next year and new brands will find it difficult to penetrate the space, unless they execute effective PPC. As mobile becomes a larger piece of the digital pie, there will undoubtedly be a greater focus on mobile search rankings through both PPC and SEO. However, it is essential companies do not neglect the core driver behind SEO rankings; content. Good quality content will continue to reign supreme; through social platforms, everyone can now play the role of the journalist. 2012 will see companies start to leverage this role more strategically. As Google accounts and +1 grows, Adwords will allow advertisers to target search to exact demographic & behavioural data, utilising the great aspects of social as a driver within search results. In turn, I fully expect social media content from +1, Facebook Likes and Tweets to further impact on indexed search results. Companies are starting to crack the social formula, although there is still a long way to go in the development of the channel. We’ll see companies more accurately gauging social media user activity whilst more clever collaborations between companies utilising the increasing open data sets and API’s will facilitate greater action amidst the social noise. On my radar for next year is smarter geo-social plug-ins and platforms emerging, such as hyperlocal services.

Found Wins Best Mobile Campaign at UK Search Awards

Luke Townsend — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 09:00:34 +0000

Found is delighted to announce that we have won another award! On Thursday evening, at the Emirates Stadium, Found were awarded Best Mobile Campaign at the inaugural UK Search Awards for our mobile PPC project for Autoglass ®. With our focus firmly set on delivering tactical and accountable performance campaigns across all of the key digital channels, it is especially pleasing to see our success in the rapidly expanding Mobile sector being recognised. We believe this is a key area of growth for our industry and holds exciting opportunities for brands looking to harness its sales opportunity. On the same night, we were also highly commended in the fiercely contested Most Effective Mobile Direct Response Campaign at the annual Effective Mobile Marketing Awards for the same Autoglass® campaign. Next stop is the DADI awards on Friday 11th, where we will be competing for accolades in two categories for our Tempur lead generation and PPC work.

Found Takes the Double at Dadi Awards

Rob Barnes — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 09:00:56 +0000

On Friday night Found scooped the double at the DADI awards, winning Best use of Paid Search and Best use of Affiliate Marketing for our work across Google and Facebook for leading mattress manufacturer, Tempur. Hot on the heels of our win at the UK Search Awards last week and high commendation at the Effective Mobile Marketing Awards, the cabinet is starting to fill up nicely! The DADI's are impressive awards to win and, once more, spotlight the innovative and ground-breaking approach we take for all of our clients looking to achieve tactical and measurable results across the key digital channels. The awards were held in Leeds at Savileshall, named after Mr Fix It himself. Sir Jim certainly helped to fix it for Found that night! What a fantastic evening!

The Month of Movember

Gareth Olyott — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 11:00:53 +0000

So I’ve traded my carefully sculpted beard for that five o’clock shadow you can see above my lip. For once it’s not a crazy Shoreditch-influenced fashion statement or an attempt to mimic something out of GQ; this time it’s for a real cause. Tuesday marked the start of Movember, in which men let their facial hair overtake their faces to raise both money and awareness for prostate and testicular cancer in men. The office is bound to be a banter minefield with some of us giving Daniel Day-Lewis a run for his money [ahem...] and others resembling a school boy entering puberty. There are some who’ll be quick off the mark to pick out the whisker warriors and give them some stick but, here in BIG Studios, the majority will stand up and support our boys in their quest to raise awareness for men’s health. I’ll be taking regular updates in the form of pictures and verbal accounts and updating the blog – the moustaches are certainly beginning to take shape here at FOUND. So, as men step away from their razors and our women prepare for a bout of stubble burn, it’s all worthwhile and I urge anybody not showcasing a “tash” to give what they can. If this cause is a subject that is close to your heart, because you know someone who has been affected by cancer, then feel free to get involved, even if it’s just by going to our Movember page and donating: http://mosista.co/bigstudios If people require some inspiration or maybe just a little bit of a laugh to brighten their day, be sure to check out [Jo’s Mo Show]. Jo’s Mo Show from the National Portrait Gallery of Australia, is a miscellany compendium of Australia's finest, longest, tallest and shortest of facial foliage. http://www.flickr.com/groups/moshow/pool/show/with/6275064736/ Happy growing growers, see you on the (hairy) lip side. REF: movember.com

Google Moving Side ad Placements

Greg Burgess — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 09:00:26 +0000

At the beginning of this month Google announced that ads shown at the side may now, in some cases, appear below the search results. Google are continuing to work on their ever-evolving interface to deliver a seamless and consistent online experience across all of their products, resulting in them standardising their search functionality and results across all platforms and devices. And this represents their next big change. With desktop search, Google are already moving ads around to give themselves more of the SERP real estate back. Maps, images and biographies related to search terms are already being served as results to user queries. But this is only the beginning - Google now have a new space to experiment with. The decision to move ads to the bottom of results has been a long time coming; for our clients we drive significant volumes of traffic from search partners and 2nd tier engines where this ad placement has always been available. We target “keywords” where we are aware the other PPC and organic results are not fully satisfactory (and fail to fulfil the users search intent). If a searcher has not found what they are looking for by the bottom of the page they are looking for something not offered in the search results. We can target these people and place a relevant ad to this smaller percentage of searchers that has a different message on offer to everything else. What’s interesting here is Google actually do the same - they offer you “related searches” at the bottom of the page as they know your intent is not satisfied from your original search. I would predict some huge changes to the right hand side of our SERPs over the next year, where Google will focus on interaction with their searchers without them ever having to leave the page.

Analysing the New Google Analytics Features for PPC and SEO

Keith Horwood — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 09:00:49 +0000

Google have made huge strides with their Analytics platform over the last few months, introducing new features every few weeks, which are all being placed into the new-look Analytics platform. If you’re using the old Analytics, you can switch to the new version by clicking on the link in the top right of the interface. In this post I will give a brief overview of each new addition and why this could be important for your online presence. Focus on Real-Time Search – Fresh Content Google have reacted to what it has learned from the time they spent using Twitter’s data pipeline to provide real-time search results. It is clear that, with the rise of social sharing, news and content moves incredibly fast, and Google has had to react to this. They announced real-time analytics in September, which has coincided with a recent update to natural search, referred to as the ‘Freshness’ algorithm update. Although still in Beta, it gives a good indication about where traffic is coming from and what the most popular pages are in real time. As fresh, new content becomes an increasingly larger part of your search strategy, this report will be a good resource for monitoring the performance of new content as it is released. Flow Visualisation Something we always aim to do is set up goals for when a user performs an action. The new, beautiful flow visualisation diagrams makes it much easier to decipher what is working on your site. Multi-Channel Funnels Understandably, attributing online sales to the correct channel is very important and marketing budgets can be based upon this performance in many organisations. This feature in Google Analytics allows you to see the channels contributing to the conversion path of your customers over the last 30 days. This should help in determining how effective your combined strategies are, and identify how they are assisting each other to generate conversions. Monitoring this data then allows Analytics to display some eye-catching Venn diagrams, which give you a very intuitive visual representation of the channel attribution. Multi-channel funnels have made Analytics much more powerful. This has put the feature-set on par with many other pay tools in the marketplace, which offer similar features. Greater Focus on Mobile Reporting Google have been focussing its efforts on improving mobile reporting within their Analytics platform for some time now, and there have been several new additions this month. An interesting one, especially for Adwords advertisers is the fact that you can now seemobile ad performance in Google Analytics. The new settings will allow you to choose between different segments, such as smart phones (iPhone, Android) and Tablets (iPads). This feature is being rolled out gradually, and the ability to view this depends on your account type. It is very important to understand the shift towards the use of smart phones and tablet devices to use your site and to adapt your marketing strategy to suit. Combined with the correct set up of goals, this new reporting will enable you to see the effectiveness of ads on different devices. Armed with this information, you can then make the required changes to your site to function correctly on these devices, or even increase/decrease advertising budgets. This includes optimising your site for use on different devices, especially important for web stores. Another interesting point is that you can use Google’s new online site speed analyser, which generates a speed rating out of 100 for your site. This tool will give you suggestions on improving your site performance on mobile devices, as most mobile connections are likely to be slower than desktops, if using 3G to connect. Google have said itself that site speed is a factor in search performance, so it would be wise to optimise your mobile site accordingly. You can even optimise to specific devices, and monitor their performance. It may be that your site is popular with android users, so you would want to test on those devices if possible. Features coming soon to Analytics Google does not simply stop there, it has announced that a PDF report email scheduler will be released shortly; no doubt along with many other features that I am sure will be announced on the Google Analytics blog. Keep your eyes open and your fingers ready.

Found expands senior team, appointing Pete Newman as Partnerships Director

Tina Judic — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 09:00:40 +0000

I’m delighted to announce the promotion of Pete Newman to Partnerships Director for Found, to lead our award-winning agency’s business acquisition plans. For those of you who know Pete, you will know he has been instrumental in our growth programme, with his diligent, innovative and consultative approach to each and every client and prospect he meets. As a hugely likeable character, Pete has established himself as a key player in a very short period of time within Found and the broader industry. Found is now an established player in the digital sector and, just one year after our rebrand, we have not only doubled our client base but also seen rapid expansion of our account management, development and analyst teams. I fully expect 2012 to be another ground-breaking and award-winning year for Found and having Pete at the helm of new business acquisition is a sure step in the right direction.

Movember 2011 - The End...

Gareth Olyott — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 09:00:11 +0000

Admiring glances from passers-by, the occasional knuckle bump and the common high five are just a few experiences I have personally had in support of my Movember tash over the past 30 days. Whether you grew one or not, the ‘Mo’ was back this month with Mo bro’s out in force. Not only was the whole ‘tash’ campaign the discovery of possibly the greatest Saturday night ice breaker, it fulfilled its purpose; bringing a message of men’s health and raising a substantial amount of money. The last couple of days where filled with boisterous question time, “So are you going to keep it?”... “I definitely am” was my answer, others not so keen to carry on. The Movember website was a fine example to other charities, great setup and organisation which meant it displayed information and statistics brilliantly, giving everyone more than enough to create a truly competitive environment. Found’s contribution was, in fact, a good one, managing to raise £1,132 from 8 registered “Mo Bro’s”. Our standout performer was our Technical Director, Si Raybould, head and shoulders above the rest, putting £408 in the pot! Donations came from all over the office with a last minute push from our Mo Sisters [pictured below] who made the effort to get involved, strutting their stuff around the office dressed as “men with moustaches”. As you can see, they definitely didn’t look like men!

Like in every competition there is that front runner. In the premier league right now it’s Manchester City, in Formula 1 it’s Sebastian Vettel. For Movember 2012 the top of the league, with a jaw dropping £46,405, was British Airways. A huge effort from one British Airways Mo bro in particular, Mr Martin Broughton who brought in a total donation of £41,453. A commendable effort, your Mo Bro’s salute you. As far as statistics go, that’s not all the end of this year’s Movember has told us. We learned about the giving and fun-spirited nature of our homeland. Even though the UK is dwarfed in size of population [and land mass] in contrast to many of the other participating nations, our English Mo Bro’s had more registered participants than any other, boasting a staggering 252,501 people. Out of the £62,614,102 raised by Movember, the UK raised 36.6% of the overall total, a sum of £14,334,206.

So, once a year, if we can look past the embarrassment and grow a moustache, we are all making an active contribution to getting one step closer to understanding cancer and how we can beat it! So I would like finish by saying a big thank you to everyone who donated, everyone who pitched in and anyone who helped - your fundraising efforts have helped Movember achieve their most successful year to date. To make a last minute donation or for any more information about Found’s campaign visit: http://mosista.co/bigstudios http://uk.movember.com

Facebook Memology - What topics did we engage most this year?

Gareth Olyott — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 09:00:36 +0000

What do Facebook know about us that we don’t? Well pretty much everything. The average user spends 7:01:41 hours per month on Facebook and 50% of the 800 Million, yes, 800 million users log into the social network each day. With this scale of interaction there is obviously a plethora of data gathered that unlocks all the secrets of human interaction and behaviours, giving a completely new and unrivalled insights which have never been possible before. Not only does it show how we share online but how we monitor and interact with the world outside of Facebook. This data is described as Memology:- “Memology takes the pulse of this global community by comparing this year's status updates to last year's, unearthing the most popular topics and cultural trends - or memes - emerging on Facebook.” - Jonathan Chang , Facebook. On Facebook people are passionate about what they post whether that is with or about their friends or family, or global news of tragedy. By the results posted in the ‘Facebook Memology report of 2011’ it’s hardly surprising to see what topped this years social activity. As you may have predicted, the top global meme was the death of Terrorist Osama bin Laden with almost 10% of all English status’ mentioning this event on May 1st. Death was a hot topic in the realms of Facebook. Peoples passion to engage on such topics pushed the tragic Death of Steve Jobs to Number 5 and the equally sad death of Amy Winehouse to number 7 on the global chart. In the UK there was a huge conversation surrounding the death of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi who was found at number 6 in the UK chart. It wasn't all doom and gloom for social networkers around the globe though; Charlie Sheen and his Tiger Blood antics took centre stage in March with his famous Guinness world record breaking “Fastest Time to Reach 1 Million Followers”. In the meme chart he certainly isn’t “winning”. The marriage of Kate Middleton and Prince William dominated the conversation in April, with mentions of the phrase "Royal Wedding" shooting up nearly 600-fold in the days running up to the day they tied the knot. Their marriage sits at number six on the Global Memology chart for 2011. Online Cultural Phenomena As well as identifying the top ten global topics, Facebook also unveiled the top trending cultural phenomena for the year; Planking. For those that aren’t familiar with the phrase ‘Planking’ this is a game where people lie face down in unusual locations more often than not, taking a picture to share online. As the you can see above, it was more of a fad than a phenomenon making a huge spike in late May when Max Key, the son of New Zealand Prime Minister John Key, posted a Facebook photo of himself planking in the family lounge with his father in the background. After this the social buzz around planking took a nose dive until another sharp spike in July when celebrities such as Tom Green, Chris Brown and Katy Perry contributed with their own planking pictures. Planking took an eventual decline during the winter months. To see memes for countries around the world, along with top trending musicians, actors and songs on Facebook, check out the special tab on the Facebook Page.

SEO - Top Marketing Platform for SMEs

Philip Gamble — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 09:00:45 +0000

The small business networking website Merchant Circle surveyed 2,500 of their members and asked them which single marketing platform they value the most. When asked “If you had to put all your marketing time and budget into only one channel, what would it be?” the top answer, by far, was Search Engine Optimisation. With 32.9% of the votes, almost a third of small business owners picked organic search marketing as the avenue they believed would give them the best return on their investment. New media performed strongly in the survey with only 19.7% of respondents preferring to use traditional media, just ahead of the number who would use social media to promote their company. Almost 10% would prefer to use paid search advertising such as Google Adwords with 4% picking mobile advertising. The report found that 63% of small business polled had marketing budgets of under £1,590 a year. SEO makes it possible for small businesses who use innovative and original content to compete against big names in order to drive highly targeted traffic from relevant search terms. Another reason for its success in the survey may be that unlike paid advertising the benefits of SEO don't immediately end when investment in it ceases.

Higher Positions Don't Necessarily Mean Higher ROI

Ciaran Brady — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 09:00:59 +0000

One of the services that Google offers to agencies is a dedicated account manager to provide assistance, advice, analysis and other words beginning with ‘a’ for specific accounts, particularly for the larger and more complex ones. While it’s not exactly unwelcome to have a third party keeping an eye on things, it should always be considered in context. After all, in this particular case the advice is coming from Google, the very company with whom the majority of clients will be investing their PPC budgets. If a high-spend keyword wasn’t working out for someone, would Google really be the ones to tell them to stop pumping money into it? We recently received a customised report from Google for one of the larger accounts we manage which included suggestions on how we could make improvements. Basing itself mostly on ad positions and predicted volumes, it began with the headline “Higher Positioned Ads Get More Clicks”. Nothing to disagree with there - this has largely been the case for many years. However the very next slide made the altogether more dubious claim that “Better Positions = Better ROI”. Given that the focus of the report elsewhere was on increasing budgets and positions, I think it's safe to assume that although they say "better" it could certainly be read as "higher", even if they have taken care not to explicitly use that word. Indeed, the following slide goes on to tell us that by appearing predominantly in middling positions we have missed out on hundreds of thousands of clicks. [Check out 5 tips for maximising ROI with PPC] Their meaning here is important because it could prove to be misleading. In this case all sales data for the campaign was processed through our third-party tracking tools, meaning that Adwords had no sales metrics upon which Google could base their recommendations. If they were suggesting that higher positions would yield higher ROI then it's nothing more than an assumption that could prove to be either true or false; without sales data there is simply no way of knowing. If they didn't intend to make that link between "better" and "higher" then what was the purpose of the report, given that a statement like "Better Positions = Better ROI", with no statistics-based insight to demonstrate it, is essentially an empty piece of common knowledge? Ultimately the semantics prevent us from knowing for sure. What we are sure about is that higher positions don’t necessarily mean higher ROI. The higher an ad gets on the Google results page the more highly contested the positions become, and bids can quickly skyrocket, particularly for certain high-traffic generic search terms. In addition to this you may have different ways of measuring the ROI of certain keywords; a costly generic may lose you money when considered in isolation, but when placed in the context of the full customer journey it may be brilliant at seeding interest that turns into a sale further down the line. Finding the right position for a keyword requires complex analysis and is not merely a case of trying to place them as high as possible in the SERPs. So, just be careful. Yes better positions will equate to ROI but don’t confuse better with higher. Like what you see? Follow us: @found_online

5 tips for maximising ROI with PPC

Ciaran Brady — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 09:00:06 +0000

Following on from my previous post in which I discussed [Higher Positions Don't Necessarily Mean Higher ROI], I have here put together five of my own simple tips for getting more out of your campaigns. This is by no means a comprehensive look at ROI, but if you bear the below in mind you should start to see a general improvement in your return and have a clearer idea of where more detailed analysis can be carried out. Consider your business goals: If you’re running a campaign on a gap-filling or longtail basis then your goals are clear; you’ll want to have every keyword making you money. However this is not a model that easily transposes to a larger campaign - you may have to bear other considerations in mind. Perhaps the client requires a certain amount of coverage across top-level broad generics, regardless of the return. Perhaps they are looking to invest heavily across various channels to drive brand awareness. Perhaps they are looking to reduce their budget but maintain conversion, lowering their overall cost-per-sale. Ensuring you fully understand the KPIs of a campaign before you begin, and then making those goals your prime focus are the keys to success. Treat each keyword as a single entity: On larger campaigns, if you don’t have access to automated tools that can scour your campaigns at a granular level then you may find yourself making optimisation decisions at ad-group level in an effort to save time. While in some cases this is a valid strategy, you should always try to drill down to keyword level as much as time allows. Perhaps a loss-making ad-group is full of keywords with high ROIs and has been let down by a single broad-match that didn't have sufficient negatives in place. Maybe your killer ad-group had a keyword that lost a lot of money, but was obscured by others in the same group making more. You’ll never get the complete picture until you drill down. [Check out Higher Positions Don't Necessarily Mean Higher ROI] Look at the Bigger picture: On campaigns where you run a mixture of keyword types ranging from the broadest generics right up to brand level, you will have the opportunity to study the relationships between each type and how certain searches can prompt customers to return later on different keywords. While it can be difficult to decide how to assign value to the various points in the customer journey, it will give you a far better idea of the worth of your various keywords in the grand scheme of things. Attribution modelling is a key consideration of modern PPC and any self-respecting agency should be testing and studying a variety of models. It’s not all about the bids: Many agencies base their optimisations solely around bid adjustment, usually according to a pre-defined and automated system. Yet bids alone will only contribute part of the success of a keyword. When aiming for maximum ROI you should also be looking closely at your ad-copy and, by extension, your quality score; two key factors in the success of any keyword. Constantly test new ad copy to try and increase CTR. Consider your copy in relation to competitors on the space; you should aim to be unique or eye-catching in some way. Always try to keep your ad copy relevant to your keywords; with a high relevancy between keyword, ad and landing page your quality score will increase and bring your CPCs down. The best thing about these kinds of optimisations is that they are quick, easy and have a massive impact! Be aware of your time investment: PPC campaign management is a job that never ends. There is always something that can be added, or adjusted, or tested, and you should never really find yourself kicking back with a cup of tea and congratulating yourself on having finished the job. But this doesn’t mean that throwing as many man hours as possible at a campaign is good investment. To truly maximise ROI you need to always consider the cost of spending time with a campaign. Putting ten hours of work into a campaign to obtain an additional £10 of revenue is time wasted, but with the right tools and a bit of planning and foresight you should be able to allocate your time to the changes that will have the most impact. Like what you see? Follow us: @found_online

The Christmas Cookie Run

Gareth Olyott — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 09:00:13 +0000

It’s that time of year again! No, not just Christmas, but it’s time for Found to get Christmassy and get creative. Last year was the year of cupcakes; our clients absolutely loved it which was more than enough to get everyone over here at found back to the drawing board to master another bout of creativity in the name of Christmas. This year, after some deliberation we reached a decision on how to take things to the next level - a cookie run around Central London! The mapping of a viable route was done by Flo which only left the important task of picking our baker and supplier of the cookies. We knew the cookies had to be good, they had to be different and they had to have a Found quality about them. The use of off the shelf mass produced cookies just wasn't going to cut it. To deliver top quality biscuits to give us the edge we were after we linked up withAfternoon Crumbs. Afternoon Crumbs is run by Nicole Dodds, a sibling to one of our analysts Lauren Dodds. Nicole has supplied us with cookies, cakes and other treats in the past, always delicious and boasting the quality and personalisation we were looking for. Based on her good form this was the perfect match for our Christmas cookie run. We got to work with making a list of short personalised messages, one for each of the drop off points; this was that Found touch. The cookie run or as it was known to the world of Twitter ‘#thechristmascookierun’ was a huge success. Conducted by two of our nominated Found Christmas elves, Florence and Gareth, they dressed up in Christmas hats and descended on London with arms full of gifts and sync'd up to all our social accounts to let the world know what was going on and where they were in Central London. A day of laughs, surprise drop offs, and singing that even a typical bout of gridlocked London Christmas traffic couldn’t spoil was all documented on the go as updates went out over Twitter, Facebook and FourSquare whilst the rest of the Found office in Farringdon sat and watched it all unfold. Our elves were met with a great response which was echoed across the internet in the form of tweets, photographs and emails. And so as we wrap up for Christmas and we start to think about going home everyone here at Found would like to wish everybody a wonderful Christmas in true Found style with our Christmas Special video card! http://www.found.co.uk/christmas/merrychristmas/ Like what you see? Share it and Follow us @found_online

2011 - A year in Retrospect

Flo Bundy — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 09:00:04 +0000

It’s been a fantastic year and as the New Year approaches, the office has wound down for some well-deserved rest. There is always a buzz of excitement in the air at this time of year and last week we had our final quarterly review of 2011 followed by a delicious Christmas lunch. I don’t know how much longer we will be able to fit everyone around a table due to the substantial growth over the last year but I’m going to enjoy it whilst I can. This time of year is my favourite, there is an overwhelming sense of positivity surrounding the team and big expectations for the new year as everyone goes off to spend time with their loved ones and recharge their batteries for the new challenges on the horizon. With all of this in mind we decided that we would do some fun awards for the end of the year as well as our usual awards for Best Performance and Best Contribution. The winners were as follows: Best Performance went to the amazing Ash McVey – for many of us it was a final tribute before he makes the trip back to Australia in January. He’s been a real asset to the team and will be missed!

Best Contribution went to the phenomenal Matthew Freedman who consistently smashes targets and is a fantastic team mate. Special mentions went to both Deepa Arthur and Andrea Downey who have been doing a fantastic job! Found’er of the Year went to the brilliant Luke Townsend, one of our longest standing members and a man who gives nothing less than his all in everything that he does which is just one of the reasons we love him!

The winners of the fun awards were as follows: The Vivienne Westwood award for the best dressed: Deepa Arthur The Tom Selleck Award for the best Movember moustache: Rob Barnes The Florence Nightingale Award for the most caring person: Florence Bundy The Smile Award for the person who has an infectious smile: Heeral Shah Bunsen Burner Award for the hottest ideas: Greg Burgess Baby’s Bottom Award for the smoothest in times of crisis: Greg Burgess The Silver Lining Award for the person who is always a positive energy: Peter Newman Kool and the Gang Award for the person who always offers their assistance: Ciaran Brady Just to finish up this festive post, I’d like to say a huge thank-you, not just to Found but to everyone we have worked with this year and to everyone who has been a part of the Found journey so far. It’s been a stellar year and here’s to an even bigger and brighter 2012 for all! Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all.

Found contribute toward Maplin’s Christmas fortunes

Ciaran Brady — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:37:10 +0000

This week, Found were delighted to hear that one of our clients, electronics specialist Maplin, delivered an increase in like-for-like sales of 1.4% over the festive period, with online sales increasing by 21%. Considering how current economic woes are taking their toll on the high-street this is a great achievement and we warmly extend our congratulations to Maplin! We began work on Maplin’s PPC accounts in September of last year, a huge undertaking that saw us overhaul and expand their activity on a large scale while simultaneously streamlining and improving our own processes and methods. It has proven to be a hugely rewarding campaign to work on so we are thrilled that our input has helped contribute toward Maplin’s Christmas fortunes. It serves to highlight the importance of establishing a mutually beneficial partnership between client and agency, one where understanding, transparency and hard work on both sides can make hitting those KPIs a reality. Maplin’s managerial vision and clear-cut strategies over Christmas helped us to focus our own expertise in all the right areas, and together we achieved all that we set out to do. We look forward to the opportunities and challenges that this partnership will bring in the coming year. Check out maplin online here: http://www.maplin.co.uk/ Like what you see? Share it and Follow us @found_online

SOPA & PIPA - The digital blackout

Gareth Olyott — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:23:28 +0000

If you haven't read about SOPA and PIPA then it’s certainly worth doing so. The question is, should YOU get involved in the intervention of the passing of SOPA and PIPA? The fact that you are reading this post tells me you’re a blog reader. From this I can make the assumption that you’re an avid Facebook user, a user of Twitter and a regular user of YouTube too. If you’re anything like me then you probably have 500+ friends online, organise most of your social and business life on social networks and check your notifications at least 5 times a day either on your laptop, workstation, mobile phone or tablet. Perhaps you love discovering new music, reading about the latest fashion trends, or simply enjoy browsing round on a journey with no purpose. Sound familiar? If so the passing of this bill will directly affect your daily life.

This act to control the internet by the US is the first step in a scheme to regulate, control and censor the freedom of the internet by powers that don't fully understand the internet and its architecture. The passing of these bills will see free use of websites severely limited and potentially completely suffocated under a blanket of law will oppress the freedom to share information and content; the key principle upon which the immeasurable success and power of the information super highway has been built. This bills are portrayed as a must-have measurement to stop fraudsters online and the widespread committing of copyright infringement which is costing the music, game and film industries billions each year. In a public protest, the big hitters of the digital world which include the likes of Google and Wikipedia are part of the digital blackout. Temporary shutting down of websites for a 12 hour period show users a “through the looking glass” at what the worlds internet may look like should these bills be passed. Users attempting to access these sites are forced to see a blacked out version, a clear protest which hits home hard with a strong political statement. Wikipedia makes its statement very clear with the bold "Imagine a world without free knowledge." The user-generated news site Reddit provides visitors with multiple options to sign petitions and gives its own users a version of the anti-SOPA/PIPA blackout.

The blackout is a bold, effective way to get the two bills into the public eye. It is of paramount importance that this news goes mainstream so that people outside the tech industry will be made fully aware of just how much their everyday lives could be affected by these acts. Google, Reddit and Wikipedia aren’t the only companies shutting its digital doors according to SOPAStrike.com. It has a full list of the blackout participants. This is not the full article... I have gone on to raise my own personal concerns and give a breakdown of the two bills on the link below. http://www.found.co.uk/sopa-pipa-continued/ Please give it a read and spread awareness about SOPA and PIPA. Like what you see? Share it and Follow us @found_online

Google Exposes 'Your World' to Social Search

Keith Horwood — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 18:04:03 +0000

Yesterday, Google launched Search Plus Your World, which caused quite a stir among the SEO and Social Media world. These new features which are aimed at improving search do so by placing 'your world' within the results meaning much greater personalisation, by including your social connections content related to your search. Below I have briefly outlined the features as well as looking at some thoughts from the industry. Personal Results I won’t go into too much detail with regards to the main features that will be added, but the main addition is the true personalisation of search results. The results will focus on showing relevant Google+ posts from friends within your circles such as photographs, videos and links about any recent goings on from within your social interactions. It doesn't stop here and will also show content from other relevant sources which Google can access. You can search a mix both personal and normal web results, just from within your own world, or the whole web without excluding personal results. Using this looks very intuitive and streamlined even though this feature is very much in its infancy and sure to be refined further. I expect to see additional settings allowing you to only select certain circles that can affect results; this being more useful at certain points of the day you may be interested in different people’s opinion, depending on what you are searching for. Google+ Profiles in Search This feature will allow you to find people’s Google+ profiles easily within Search. Start typing a friend’s name and Google will predict who you mean (Google Instant Technology) and also display information from their Google+ profile. Some prominent people on Google+ can also show up, partly thanks to the Google’s authorship pilot program. This integration enables you to follow interesting users directly from search. Related People and Pages to Search Query Notable Google+ pages and people will show up on related searches, allowing you to connect with whole new communities you may be interested in interacting with. I can see this being evermore important for use with brands in an attempt to get their pages to appear on generic searches above competitors. I can see this as a problematic area and being a real annoyance to the user in some cases, but I will reserve judgement until I have used it properly. What will be interesting to see is how this will affect PPC ads that may appear here. I predict further developments with Adwords being integrated into ‘Your World’ this year too. Additional Search Security, Transparency and Control As previously mentioned, Google have made it simple to distinguish between ‘Search plus Your World’ and no personal results with a button positioned on the top right of the interface. Search has been made much more secure with the incorporation of SSL but it remains to be seen if how this will affect analytics and tracking packages. It will be worth monitoring the growth of Google+ and analysing the percentage of logged in Google users visiting your site. Hopefully the dreaded 'not provided' search term will not increase too rapidly in Google analytics reports . There have been varied reactions regarding the new Google search features, with many SEO’s trying to make sense on how content will be indexed, and trying to gauge the exact size of the opportunity this presents. The good news for SEOs is that this social content is rich (more than 140 characters), indexed and backed by Google, and not behind a private wall as you find with Facebook data. All this is a clear indication that Google+ will be a Social Media platform worth investing in for many. So some seem to have welcomed the changes, and others, such as a little blue bird, do not seem pleased at all. Twitter Lashes Out Twitter criticised the move, being concerned about the fact that users often find breaking news stories on twitter, and how these will not be part of this Google Search addition. Many Twitter employees saw the changes as a 'bad day for the Internet'. Google then responded, with the remark that it was Twitter, in fact, that had backed out of the data pipeline deal last year. Eric Schmidt, the Google Executive chairman, spoke with Danny Sullivan about this ‘war of words’ citing the fact that Google does not have the permissions to access twitter content, so that it can be treated the same as Google Plus Your World content. One way round this could be to syndicate your twitter feed to some other services, such as Friendfeed. Google still indexes lots of tweets anyway, it is just that these are not quite as real-time as when they had access to the Twitter firehose. How Will 'Google Plus Your World' Affect the ‘Filter Bubble’? One thing I found interesting was people wondering about the certain questions regarding social content, such as the ‘Filter Bubble’ concept, which was discussed in a recent TED talk by Eli Parser. The Filter Bubble concept is about online content which is automatically filtered out from in front of our eyes with algorithms, and if this is always a good thing. The point is that sometimes it is worthwhile to be exposed to information that will challenge us and can make us uncomfortable, and for this not to be hidden from view. Steven Levy of wired actually got in touch with Parser regarding the developments. Parser as it turns out, is pleased with the changes due to the apparent transparency and control, all of which addresses his previous concerns. Matt Cutts Demonstrates Search Plus Your World Matt Cutts has wrote about his own experiences with ‘Search Plus Your World’, with an excellent example of what people might expect to see when performing a search with these new features. One thing Matt confirmed was that 'Search Plus Your World' does include public content from the web and not just Google+ posts. Matt gives example of content sourced from Flickr, Quora, Friendfeed and Livejournal. For me, I cannot see examples of 'My World' in search yet, but I look forward to doing some tests when I can. One of the only problems so far is that Google+ still has low usage rates compared to Facebook, although in the digital world there seems to be a high number of regular contributors. If usage breaks through to casual users from these early adopters this year, I predict that we will see an interesting shift in people's search and social behaviour online. Whatever happens, it will certainly be an interesting and exciting year for both Social Media and SEO, and certainly ‘a beautiful journey’. Here’s to 2012. Foundon

SOPA & PIPA Continued...

Gareth Olyott — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:42:04 +0000

If you haven't read about SOPA and PIPA then you should now. Why should YOU get involved in the intervention of the passing of SOPA and PIPA? The fact that you are reading this post tells me you’re a blog reader. From this I can make the assumption that you’re an avid Facebook user, a user of Twitter and a regular user of YouTube too. If you’re anything like me then you probably have 500+ friends online, organise most of your social and business life on social networks and check your notifications at least 5 times a day either on your laptop, workstation, mobile phone or tablet. Sound familiar? If so the passing of this bill will directly affect your daily life. Then again, perhaps you love discovering new music, reading about the latest fashion trends, or simply enjoy browsing round on a journey with no purpose. If so then this bill will affect you too.

This aggressive act to control the internet by the US is the first step in a scheme to regulate, control and censor the freedom of the internet by powers that don't fully understand the internet and its architecture. The passing of these bills will see free use of websites severely limited and potentially completely suffocated under a blanket of law which looks to oppress the freedom to share information and content, the key principle upon which the immeasurable success and power of the information super highway has been built. The proposed bills are long, complex and obscured by a legal jargon comprehensible only to lawyers and law makers. But being someone who has studied Internet sciences, cyberspace law to degree level and who works in digital marketing, I have given what little time I have to read through the bill and try to make sense of it. My specialist area is in social media marketing and management, which is based on the principle of content sharing, peer to peer recommendations and online interaction between brands and their consumers via platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, so my opinions are based on this expertise; I am not simply jumping on the bandwagon as someone uneducated on the matter. This bill is portrayed as a must-have measurement to stop fraudsters online and the widespread committing of copyright infringement which is costing the music, game and film industries billions each year. SOPA and PIPA have been introduced in the Senate and are moving quickly through Congress in the US. Portrayed as the answer to stop piracy, it gives the government and corporations the ability to censor the contents of the internet, in the name of protecting “creativity”. This pair of bills creates an environment whereby the law would let the government or corporations censor entire sites and online functions from the internet so long as they can convince a judge that the site hosts the functionality to facilitate copyright infringement. After reading through there was a clear sense of control, that in the form of a school bully and I have done what I can to make sense and break down the main points for my readers to understand. What it says... IF you’re found guilty of infringement the bill states that there is no requirement that the accused be notified of said accusation, resulting in little to no chance of an opportunity to appeal or counter the decision by acting with a counter-notice. In the unlikely event that the accused is aware of such an accusation the only way to provide said counter-notice is to agree to submit to U.S. jurisdiction (5,A,ii) If the accused website domain owner operates outside of US jurisdiction and in counter claim that they are not in breach of the accused offense under penalty of perjury that your product or service does not fit the definition of: An `Internet site is dedicated to theft of U.S. property’ if [a portion of the site is US-directed] and is used by users within the United States and is primarily designed or operated for the purpose of offering services in a manner that enables or facilitates [copyright violation or circumvention of copyright protection measures] you are in line for committing the offense of perjury – “willful giving of false testimony under oath or affirmation, before a competent tribunal”. Now, in the unrealistic event that you are made aware and you manage to provide a counter-notice, or an ad network or payment provider (such as sagepay) fails to cut off service within five days, then the accusing party can and will initiate a lawsuit based on this infringement. In the event of the domain owner being uncontactable or identified, the law states that they are able to serve an in rem lawsuit against the domain in question. In the event they win the lawsuit (which will be likely in the event of nobody being identified and thus notified to challenge this act), the court will award ownership of said site and domain. At this point only is the accuser required to notify the accused of the action being taken against them. So you may be confused as to why this would affect normal websites that do not facilitate the illegal sharing of pirated software and illegal information. ANY website which has functionality for comments, social shares and the uploading of content of any kind, it is highly likely to be in breach based on the open nature of organic, user generated content and interaction. The only way to actively avoid the possibility of being in breach of these two bills would be to scan, check and audit every single interaction or piece of information, link, image, file and comment placed on the domain. Can you imagine this on the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, not to mention company or personal blogs and websites. By SOPA’s interpretation, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia, Gmail, Dropbox would be “Internet sites…dedicated to theft of U.S. property”. By imposing these laws and sanctions not only does this change the structure of the internet but it creates difficulty in the growth and innovation of the internet at a time when we are experiencing a social boom, it puts power for censorship and the re-engineering of the internet’s architecture into the hands of US governments which directly affects what the United Nations described as “a Human right to the access of information via the internet” We have already seen copyright infringement measures put in place, the best example by Google and how they don’t index top torrent sites, YouTube (owned by Google) whereby software to detect copyrighted songs ban and restrict video postings by any user that is not the copyright holder. This is the gradual evolution we need to stop copyright infringement and bring the little control to the internet that is needed. I am not in support of piracy; I do not condone the illegal hosting and distribution of software and files. I do however support innovation online and growth of the internet. I have deep concern that any bill of this nature will have a massive detrimental effect on both of these and the freedom of information. I hope this paints an easier picture than reading and trying to decipher through the complex structure and details of the formal documents and I hope you now understand why we must STOP SOPA and PIPA. The more understanding the people have, the more power. If you like what you read, share it. Add found and myself on twitter @found_online @gosselott PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

Are Businesses lacking Strategies for Paid Search?

Tina Judic — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:38:08 +0000

I was a little surprised to read the findings of a recent report conducted by the WFA citing that businesses lack strategies for paid search, especially when you acknowledge how advanced we now are in paid search; from the part it has to play in the click path to pure return on investment. Whilst paid search is an established channel, it’s by no means a static channel and if advertisers do not have a firm plan in place then they should consider the impact this could have on their business performance. Paid search is not simply about featuring on a bunch of keywords around a clients’ brand and product offering, it requires a complex strategic approach, highly tailored to the goals of a campaign. It can involve anything from featuring strongly around branded terms due to competition and lack of SEO rankings; an ROI focus on long-tail keywords where the user is closer to purchase; pure branding visibility on generic terms, and much more. Assessing Success on a Paid Search Campaign The report identifies the most common factors used to gauge the success of a PPC campaign were click-through rates and average cost per click, which were assessed by 71% and 65% of respondents respectively. These factors, whilst important, are almost meaningless when used in isolation. This is where this report does perhaps hit home; not so much the lack of strategy but the lack of understanding of paid search in order to implement a clear and concise strategy. We, for example, often find that merchants aren’t quite sure what their core triggers for success are; traffic? ROI? Net profitability? Branding? And, importantly, how each of these triggers impact one another. Paid search strategies require different approaches and it’s important to focus activity on the end goal that’s right for the merchant’s business. Mobile Grows Aggressively in the Paid Search Space Mobile is also growing aggressively in the paid search space. We’re already seeing mobile searches account for up to 20% of paid search clicks and conversion in many sectors. For those who have not considered a mobile search strategy, it’s a huge opportunity missed as the space is only going to keep growing. This, in turn, requires mobile websites or, at least, mobile landing pages to be created in order to aid conversion. A huge positive about mobile is that it can truly represent quick wins at a lower click rate. Paid Search Integration with other Channels Synching paid search with all other marketing channels is a must. From TV and press schedules to the performance of paid search against SEO, it’s imperative to get a handle on when to push and when to pull back. We’ve experienced great uplifts for our clients, thanks to pre-planning and campaign creation ahead of promotional opportunities, resulting in our clients featuring in premium positions, at the right times. With the recent launch of Google’s Search Plus Your World, the search space is taking another step forward, truly personalising search results and including individuals social connections’ content related to search queries. Within the search space, merchants are not just competing for a position; they’re now fighting to feature ahead of maps, localised results, photographs, videos, recommended links and much more. Specialist Search Agency Usage Doubles On the flipside, it was welcoming to read that the respondents said they were increasingly turning to specialist search agencies to help them boost their online presence, rather than their retained agencies, with specialist search agency usage doubling in 2011 to 23%, compared to 2009. Whilst all-encompassing agencies may substitute under-performing search with over-performing sales from other channels, hitting overall targets and retaining clients; specialised search agencies do not have this option and must illustrate clear success every time with each campaign they manage. With the ever-evolving landscape of paid search, managing campaigns requires clear, concise strategies, innovative thinking and confident execution. As Search, Mobile and Social converge, it’s never been more imperative for merchants to get their paid search strategy right.

The EU Cookie Directive Saga

Luke Townsend — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 15:29:03 +0000

As the deadline for compliance with the EU ePrivacy Directive fast approaches, the owners of every web property aimed at consumers here in the UK are frantically developing solutions. Or at least they should be, shouldn’t they? As I write this I have surfed through a few dozen ‘household name’ retailer web sites and have seen no evidence of any of them attempting to get ahead of the game and implement a compliance solution to this regulation early. Maybe I’ve missed all the ones that have, and maybe the ones I haven’t missed have a solution ready to roll out come May. But somehow I doubt it.

So what is this directive thing?

Just in case you haven’t got a clue what I’m talking about I’ll summarise. Nearly all websites use cookies. If you work in online, or are even a tiny bit digital, you are probably aware of these quite badly named packets of digital information. Cookies sit on your hard disk, placed there by the websites you visit as you shop, read, play, learn, and whatever else you do on the Internet. They are the reason Amazon for example knows what you bought and can suggest other products to you. They enable us to analyse the web sites we manage and see how long people spent on them, how many pages they viewed, and what you typed in to get to the site. They are the reason a website remembers what you put in your shopping basket and they are the tracking that enables a vast amount of digital marketers to prove their worth and earn their money. So the ‘EU Privacy Directive’ or the ‘EU Cookie Directive’ as some are dubbing it, is asking that all websites dropping cookies of the intrusive kind (pretty much all of them) get consent from their visitors before dropping any cookies; meaning that (almost) every single site that drops a cookie will have to obtain consent by asking 'Are you happy for us to drop cookies?' or face a possible €500,000 fine! This poses all sorts of problems for all sorts of people. What most of these people are scared of is that when presented with the option to turn off cookies, that users will take it. Thus leaving web publishers, online marketers and digital strategists everywhere; flailing their arms about wildly and screaming loudly about not being able to do their jobs. Surely this is mainly an education piece? If people knew that on the whole cookies do good stuff to make their journey across the web more pleasant and their experience of websites better then, they wouldn’t be so fearful of them.

So where has the fear come from?

I think that part of it harks back to the days of pop up banners, relentless email spam and websites with animated gifs of unicorns. The internet was, and to some degree still is, seen as untrustworthy and predominantly the domain of hackers, scammers, pirates, porn-stars and phishers. However we’ve come a long way since then, even your mum has a Facebook account now, and online shopping is becoming the norm and not just reserved for the geeks and the nerds. Not to mention the massive revenue it generates for the UK economy. The trouble is that an element of online advertising is proliferating this image and potentially making this stereotype worse. You’ve probably experienced this, the feeling that a website is stalking you across the web. Maybe you looked at a pair of shoes on a website, possibly with no intention of buying them, and now everywhere you go that pair of shoes and similar ones appear on banners as you try and read the news or do your grocery shopping. This is called behavioral retargeting and most people get a bit spooked out by it, including me. People who are naturally a little bit suspicious see these banners and ads stalking them across the web and freak out in an anti-1984, ‘they’re all out to get me’ , cookie deleting rage, well I did the first time I experienced them anyway. Don't get me wrong, this is just advertising, done in the right manner behavioral retargeting could be really powerful. If the album I had just read two reviews of was later on in the week brought back to my attention with a decent discount; I would certainly be more likely to make a purchase, and it would almost definitely be more relevant to me than a traditional banner ad. At the moment however, in the way most companies are using it, its too broad and too general to work for me personally.

So back to the problem..

How do you inform users that you are using cookies on your sites in such a way as to not make them want to turn all of them off? And here is where all the debate is at: how far do we have to take our actions to comply? But if the big merchants aren’t complying, why should the little guys? The regulations state that both first party (cookies dropped specifically by and for the website you are visiting) and third party cookies (cookies dropped by the website you are visiting on behalf of another website e.g. google analytics cookies) both need full consent from the website visitor before they are dropped. The only exceptions are likely to be cookies that are needed to make online shopping baskets work and security cookies like those used in online banking. So that leaves a whole lot more in the cookie tin that every website will need to ask consent about before dropping! I have seen solutions ranging from the blatantly obvious drop down bar that appears and describes what each cookie is and what it does, to the discretely located sticker that rolls over to reveal the information. The problem here is that the guidelines are fuzzy and that the potential harm that could be done by a large percentage of users turning off cookies is huge. Can we rely on the browsers to implement a solution in time for us not to act upon this? Put simply – No. The ICO makes it clear that ‘relying on browser settings will not be sufficient’ and even if the browsers implement a solution, getting everyone on those browsers will take time. Implementing a different solution for specific browsers will get messy and fiddly. The stats out there are quite frightening, the ICO’s own website shows this opt-in message at the top of its website (dare I say not really designed with much thought about conversion behind it). This graph courtesy of Vicky Brock, @brockvicky shows what is likely to happen to web analytics if you implement that solution! For affiliate publishers, performance marketing agencies and networks alike the above is a very scary thought. If even half of this kind of drop off in cookies was across the board it would be disastrous. No cookies = no commissions = no jobs?

What can you do?

So the race is on to find a way to comply with the minimum impact, and to educate the world (or at least the UK) about the real positive value of cookies. Videos like this certainly help. How can cookies make your surfing experience convenient? - Explania The big cookie contest - Explania After this directive becomes active I think the worst offenders of the biggest sites will be the ones who will potentially be targeted and fined, if any. You would hope it won’t be Joe Bloggs with his small blog on fly fishing that he has put Google analytics tracking on. But everyone in-between should be looking to at least show that they have in some way tried to comply with these rather harsh and potentially damaging new regulations. So what are we going to do? The responsible thing... as little as possible, but enough to show that we are willing to make an effort to comply. Then we'll watch the big boys and see what they implement, one of them is bound to get it right, and one or two might just be made an example of by the ICO. Interesting times ahead. Interesting related articles: http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/eu-cookies-directive-interactive-guide-to-25th-may-and-what-it-means-for-you.html http://blog.silktide.com/2011/05/cookie-law-makes-most-uk-websites-illegal-what-you-need-to-know/ Helpful Advice: http://www.iabuk.net/blog/reminder-of-the-ico-advice-do-a-cookie-audit-start-planning Regulation guides: http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_organisations/privacy_and_electronic_communications/cookie_rules_prepare.aspx http://www.cookielaw.org/media/2398/eu_directive_published_version.pdf Cookie Monster image courtesy of the excellent ssoosay http://www.flickr.com/photos/ssoosay/

Google: All Your Searches Belong to Plus

Keith Horwood — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 14:44:10 +0000

Google made an interesting update on their Google+ page this week, listing 50 things that a +1 can mean. Google are really pushing more people to think about +1 rather than other social signals, and if it can mean anything, they are casting a wide net. In this post I will look into Google Search plus Your World results, +1s, reactions and even how to optimise Google+ profiles. The Value of a +1 A +1 does not have the exact same value as other social indicators, and they should not really be treated as the same: One thing that interests me is finding out if +1 on a page is persistent. It is not clear if a more recent +1 makes more of a difference than one made a year ago, but it could be that a +1 by a prominent G+ user has value for the long-term traffic, especially if people would be searching for similar content. An example being that if I am searching for certain SEO content, +1'd content by prominent industry SEOs will have an advantage on position, as well as being respected. I have found that I have pressed that +1 button a lot recently and will use it more readily than tweeting something or clicking a Facebook like button, which I may only use in certain circumstances. I may tweet more recent industry articles or a few choice articles I have read, but I will +1 a larger selection, almost using it as a bookmark. Usually, when a new piece of content is shared with a tweet, traffic will spike. A +1 will unlikely have the same instant impact as a tweet, probably much more likely to have an effect if shared on G+ and amplified by prominent users. It is unclear if older tweets will be seen as relevant as a share in Google Search plus Your World, and even if this will be supported. This is where G+ could have an advantage, especially if Google does not rate twitter or facebook shares as highly as a +1. Does Search plus Your World Favour Google+? Talking about social shares having an impact on search results leads us onto the brilliant focusontheuser bookmarklet, ‘don’t be evil’ . This bookmarklet raises a valid point, explained by way of using Jamie Oliver’s social profiles as an example. It is argued that, Jamie Oliver's twitter profile should be rated as much more relevant than his G+ profile, due to more recent activity and the large amount of followers compared to his G+ profile. This bookmarklet takes information that Google already has, and bases the order of these social networks on the profile that ranks highest in a normal Google search. Clever stuff. We have seen many instances where Google uses its power to leverage its own products before others, so this is nothing new, but may be a step too far for many. Some Users don’t Want to Socialise Their Search Results A lot of fuss has been made by people in the industry about these Google Search plus Your World results that are displayed, and rightly so. Many want a pure Google Search experience, and some even explain how Google+ could threaten Google’s core search business, stating that the amount of clutter can disorientate and confuse. Personally, I think many casual users that currently use Facebook will love the features of the new social indicators in Google Search, but only if all their friends are using it too. This might be a stumbling block for Google, as it may take a while for Search plus your World to be heard of, let alone understood by many. We might see a very large advertising campaign on TV and offline promoting the new Google features, in the same vein as Google Chrome. One feature that I think needs to be added, that could solve some of these issues, is setting your default search. Currently the default is ‘Search plus Your World’ but many will want to just use normal search in most cases, and have this set as the default. Making the search you want to use one click away goes against what Google aim to provide – to help people find information they need faster. Recent Google+ Enhancements Google are putting their full weight behind Google+ this year, and there are many small tweaks coming thick and fast; here are several which have happened in the last week or so: - Page Management Features (Multiple owners etc) - Safety Enhancements - G+ now open for Teens to use - Key for Google to get these users on-board. - New badges for businesses – Encouraging businesses to build pages.

What about optimising my G+ profile? As for SEO and optimising business Google+ profiles, This post on blind five year old one of the most comprehensively researched I have come across, and lists some excellent findings on how the Google+ Search algorithm seems to index content. One thing is for sure, that this year search will evolve and soon, all your searches could belong to plus.

What does a +1 Mean to You? In response to Google’s 50 +1’s, here are 10 things a +1 can mean to some Founders: • A +1 can mean I Found you! *groan* • A +1 can mean SKYPUNCH! • A +1 can mean AWESOME JUICE! • A +1 can mean Boom-Ting! • A +1 can mean, that is the BUSINESS! • A +1 can mean ‘I sure do like those Christmas Cookies’ • A +1 can mean ‘Yay, payday pizza!’ • A +1 can mean I adore Found’s new website! • A +1 can mean ‘beer o clock!’ • A +1 can mean ‘that is very interesting, I wish to subscribe to your newsletter' I would love to know what a +1 could mean to you - Let me know in the comments!

Partnerships Team | The Frontline of Found

Pete Newman — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 16:08:25 +0000

‘Right’, I said to myself, eyeing the suspicious guy knocking at my door; ‘if you’re not about to sell me broadband, I’ll eat my ludicrously ambiguous EU cookie directive notes’... A year later and, thankfully, my notes are still here (although somewhat more extensive, and tea-stained) – the guy was actually selling gas & electricity. But we can all relate to this event; when an obvious salesman knocks or calls, we feel intruded on. Put out. “We’re busy enough as it is! Take your plastic name tag and shove it where the...!!” ..... Breathe ..... This image of the ‘salesman’ is downright annoying and, unfortunately, especially prevalent for digital businesses throughout the UK. Leading speakers in the sales world (I strongly suggest reading the latest work from Jill Konrath and Neil Rackham) are preaching firmly against it, and sales teams around the world should listen. Our budgets are tight and ROI is king. No new partnership should be conducted as a “fast sell”. At Found, we have been incredibly mindful to avoid this from day one. Our company is founded on the principles of consultancy, results, integrity and putting our money where our mouth is. So, when I became Sales Director in November 2011, I immediately renamed my team: ‘The Partnerships Team’. I’m a firm believer that the word ‘Partnerships’ is fitting, and does proper justice to our approach to new business. So. I’d like to invite you to sit back, pour yourself a cup of tea, and relax: if you’d like to talk, we’ll work closely with you to ensure your company has considered all the options available to you across your media plan. We’ll give you accurate forecasting and work to performance KPI’s across every digital channel. We want to revel in your successes and be rewarded when we achieve for you. Here’s to the end of the site-to-site ‘salesman’. Here’s to a partnerships-driven, target-smashing 2012.

Notes on an A/B test

Luke Townsend — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 09:02:54 +0000

We often run A/B or multi-variant tests on pages to see if we can maximise our click through rates and banner testing is something we run extensively. Earlier this week one of the hotel merchants we work with was running a 33% off January sale and we decided to push our banner test out to an internal competition to see who could guess which sale banner would perform the best for the client over 2 days. Now, normally we get a lot of correct answers however this test was a little unusual - if only because everybody got it wrong! Here are the three sale banners we rotated:

A) B) C)

Each banner was viewed over 500 times, with varying click through rates - the worst performing at 16% and the best at 21.5%. Normally a test like this would need to run for at least 1000 impressions to get any really conclusive results, but the short time span on this offer meant that we had to go on the clicks that we had. Everyone that answered sent me the same prediction... C - many of them stating that the ‘Ends 31st’ messaging would create more of a sense of urgency and increase CTR. However the test results said different. In 1st place – B) ’2012 Sale – Book by 31st’ – 21.5% CTR In 2nd place – A) ’Jan Sale – Book by 31st’ – 18.9% CTR In 3rd place – C) ’Jan Sale – Ends 31st’ – 16% CTR Now this may have been an anomaly with not enough data to make a sure-fire conclusion but I think that the text in ‘B’ summed up the nature of the offer best: the 33% off Sale was not restricted to bookings in January - the holiday just needed to be booked in January. The 2012 intro to ‘B’ implied that 33% off offers over the whole year would be available. I have no real explanation about why C was the worst performer - perhaps the use of the words ‘Ends 31st Jan’ rather than ‘Book by Jan 31st’ reinforced a perception this offer was only available for bookings in January. We would normally collate a larger volume of clicks to feel confident about the results. However, what it really highlighted to me is that just by running the test in the first place we improved the CTR on the banner, as both variations outperformed our 'original', and that the traditional 'proven' messaging that is often assumed to be high converting should be challenged and tested at every chance you get.

Twitter Brand Pages Hit The UK

Gareth Olyott — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:11:27 +0000

Today is another milestone in the evolution of Twitter as UK brand pages arrive on the computers of British users this morning. The original launch which fixated on American super brands included the likes of Coca-Cola, Disney, Nike and McDonald's. With the launch finally reaching the UK, focus on strong UK household brands such as Cadbury, Asda or Sky HD have adopted the new layout which changes the ways in which users interact and consume information on the micro blogs. Twitter began rolling out the new ‘brand pages’ in December of last year, with a focus on rich content, customizable banner advertisements and the ability to “stick” tweets to the top of the page as a prioritised message to followers of the brand. These "brand pages" keep the micro blogging platform in close functionality with the other online social networking giants Facebook, but more notably in line with the recent brand page roll out from Google+. The redesign allows companies more freedom, giving customisation over the look of their pages with extra design space and the much coveted ability to embed multimedia. How do brands get involved? It’s not free, in fact it’s very far from free; suitors were required to pay a fee of almost £16,000 ($25,000) to advertise in the new format on Twitter. The growing popularity with users and marketers alike, investment in twitter is becoming the norm for brands as their key to marketing insight into their consumer’s habits and brand sentiment as well as being the preference for engagement online. Part of the reasons for the roll out includes a format focussing on ad revenue and the ability to support advertisers online. eMarketer reported that Twitter's global ad revenue is projected to reach $139.5 million in 2011 and approach $399 million in 2013. By creating branded destinations as opposed to just simply aggregating content, advertisers are given a platform whereby they can adopt a more rigid and media driven marketing strategy. The use of embedded media and ‘sticky’ tweets creates the possibility of driving additional engagement with targeted content over longer periods of time and thus creating much needed consistency. Why should a brand embrace the new design and functionality? Customisable Headers enable brands the ability to have consistency of branding across all of the social media channels with the use of a profile image and a customizable header competing as aforementioned with Facebook and Google+. This also contributes to the creation of strong brand identity online. Promoted or ‘sticky’ Tweet gives total control over what the users see on arrival to the new brand page and creates a strong space for the likes of promotion and education without any possibility of targeted tweets being lost in the aggregation of tweets as we have previously found. Embedded Content now goes way beyond simple links to websites and pictures. This functionality opens whole new realms of promotion and education around brands products and services and will give designers and social marketers a platform whereby they can really get creative using the likes of video’s and photographs which can be cleverly used in conjunction with promoted tweets and page design. Optimized Moderation creates an easier to manage environment for those that manage the day-to-day engagement on behalf of brands. This update allows brands to separate the @ replies and mentions. Users also have a nice option to speak directly to the brand with the new layout using the "Tweet to Brand" option located directly under the header. Twitters advertising performance options have experienced dramatic improvements over the 18-months with the evolution seeing the introduction of promoted tweets early last year. The new brand page structure creates much better brand destinations and not just accounts & profiles. By creating additional opportunities for user retention the opportunity to drive additional impressions via interaction becomes much easier. The new redesign for brands is great in principle and really does improve the way in which brands can interact and gather CRM data. However, as a Social Media strategist I am faced with one question. As users become more involved in the online conversation on twitter they become aware of the fact they can only fully interact with the service with the use of a twitter client such as TweetDeck, Hootsuite or Seesmic. The way in which these social media dashboards display the information to be consumed by the user doesn't embrace the new Twitter designs and features which poses the following question - does this mean brands will need to build their campaigns with this in mind; focussing on drawing users away from software and onto Twitter.com in order for their campaigns to have maximum impact? It will be interesting to see if users are driven directly to brand pages in order to benefit from specific promotions and campaigns. (Insight into twitter client user stats http://twitstat.com/twitterclientusers.html)

Top 5 Tips to Keep Your Account Management Partnership Running Smoothly

Nasreen Cullen — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:49:41 +0000

If you work in digital account management, you need to know EVERYTHING. You are involved in all aspects of activity, from signing a deal to rolling out your marketing campaign. We want our business partnerships to work together like bacon and eggs, but sometimes it can feel like you’re trying to play golf with a tennis racquet. So what can we do to make our account management work beautifully for both of us? Here are my top 5 tips to make sure your AM partnership runs like a well oiled engine in a Ferrari 458 Italia. 1) Transparency – We hear this term a lot and understandably so. You need to know what is happening with your search marketing campaign, so we’ll be as transparent as glass with you. But glass is see through on both sides; we need you to make sure your AM has as much up to date data as you can provide. This will enable them to plan the best steps forward in your online strategy and have something to benchmark results against. You will have given us a lot of important information at the start of our partnership. But there will always be more we can use; think about any other marketing activity you are running and any seasonality trends you might have seen. If you think something might be relevant, don’t hesitate to tell us. There is no such thing as too much insight! 2) Share – Every business has a plan for the year, products to focus on, marketing and promotional campaigns; and business KPIs that they will measure success on. Sharing this information with your agency AM will mean we can ensure our activity runs in line with your company messaging and that we can work together to achieve your marketing goals. Sharing this in advance allows for a thorough and timely set up and roll out. Trust me, it works a treat! 3) Active Engagement – Contrary to popular belief, account managers don’t bite. We’re actually quite a friendly bunch and here to help whenever you need us. The best partnerships are the ones where there is a constant flow of communication. Never be afraid to pick up the phone and ask a question and we’ll promise to do the same. Arranging a regular call will help this, but there should be no reasons to stop either side picking up the phone at any point. Remember though, some questions may need a little time to answer so advance notice for information required to present to your MD will be appreciated. A happy Account Manager is one that doesn’t have to stay in the office until 9pm prepping for the client’s meeting the following morning! 4) Be Open Minded – We’re always looking for the best ways to maximise activity and will always have suggestions on ways to improve the work we are doing for you. We understand that in today’s climate, budgets might be tough and we always look at the most cost effective approach to activity. Sometimes we may suggest an increase in spend to help drive additional sales. Remain open to our suggestions and work with us to grow a digital campaign that works for all. 5) Feed Us – Most of the time AM enjoy their home-made ham, cheese and tomato sandwiches (no mayo) at their desks. An invitation to lunch is the preferred form of bribery meeting and a happy Account Manager is an Account Manager that has an excuse to eat lots at lunch and not calorie count.

Sweet! Digital Media is Free!

Karl Brandt — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:32:40 +0000

Apparently, digital is free! Okay, while P&G’s CEO, Robert McDonald, doesn't actually say anything as naive as ‘digital media is free’, the author of a recent article I read does.

My guess is what he means is that some forms of digital media such as Facebook profiles and Twitter have no cost from the publisher. However there are many forms of digital media that certainly do have a cost attached to them: banner ads, pay per click advertising, co-registration, etc. So to make a blanket statement that digital media is free makes no sense at all. However, this article did offer two points of interest Proctor and Gamble, the world’s largest marketer with a $10bn annual marketing budget, are cutting back their marketing forces and budgets and shifting resources towards digital media. This shows the recognition from one of the big boys as to how cost efficient digital marketing is. In many circumstances, digital media is actually free. In the IT industry they use the term Total Cost of Ownership. This is often used in relation to free, open source software such as the operating system, Linux. It is an important concept that can be applied here as it relates to the fact that, although the software is free, the implementation and maintenance of it certainly is not. The same applies with ‘free’ media online. While anyone can set up a free Facebook profile there are costs of implementation attached to this. For example: strategy formation such as how this media will tie in with other marcomms, graphic design for the profile page, analytics and reporting. Social media may not have insertion fees but it does have ‘labour’ costs. Who do you think is going to update your Facebook profile? Even if you use existing staff it still takes a proportion of their day, which costs money. Anyway, maybe starting an article with the headline “It’s Free To Advertise On Facebook” wasn’t the best decision - especially when Facebook has a very ‘un-free’ (that’s paid to those of you not in the industry) pay-per-click advertising system that is keeping their little business in the black. Sorry to get your hopes up, digital media isn’t quite free after all.

Negative Lists - A Better Method of Creation

Karl Brandt — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 10:09:39 +0000

Everyone knows that a key strategy with PPC is the creation of negative lists. You must have a tight list of terms you don’t want your ads to show for or your ROI will plummet. When you first build out an account part of your keyword research should be pre-empting the negative keywords you will need. However you will always miss many terms that are never going to convert (or through trial show they are not profitable). This is why it is best practice to regularly monitor search term reports in Google Adwords for search queries that you should ‘negative out’. Google makes it very easy to simply tick the box next to each keyword and add it as a negative at an ad group or campaign level. By default it will be an exact match negative. Just as with normal keywords negatives can be broad, phrase or exact match. It can take hours to go through search term reports and you are never shown every single query your keywords will show for. However by negative matching a word or small phrase that appears regularly you can ensure you block considerably more keywords thus improving your CTRs even further and bringing down your cost per click. Here’s an example: Lets say your product is the hot new product: Big Purple Donkey (you’ve heard about these right? everybody’s talking about them!). Along with lots of well researched exact match keywords you might want to bid on their phrase and broad match equivalents giving you keywords such as: “big purple donkey” +buy +purple +donkey These should soak up lots of search terms you hadn’t thought of or weren’t worth keywording individually. You have done your research and found lots of negatives such as ‘returns’, ‘faulty’ and so on. However after checking the Adwords search term report and you may see a few keywords you were matching for that you don’t like the look of: purple donkey beach ride buy free big purple donkey etc. Now you could just tick the box and have Google negative exact match them out like this: [purple donkey beach ride] [free big purple donkey] But really there are only 2 words there that are the problem, and they probably appear in lots of other search terms. By negative broad matching 'ride' and 'free' you will exclude lots of other potential search terms you may not have even been aware of such as: ride purple donkey big purple donkey for free However what if it is a combination of words that are always appearing and not just one offending word that always gives away a search term that you know you don't want to match for? Going back to our example, what if the Purple Donkey's full product name is Purple Donkey Toy Ride (I know what a lame name, I have no idea how it became so popular). In this case using negative broad match for 'ride' would prevent lots of relevant search queries from showing. However if we figure out that the phrase 'beach ride' refers to those popular purple donkey rides you can get at the seaside, then simply negative phrase matching that phrase will get rid of all the irrelevant search queries. So using "beach ride" as a negative would prevent: big purple donkey beach ride purple donkey buy beach ride etc But it would allow search terms that are likely to convert such as: big purple donkey toy ride toy ride big purple donkey big purple donkey beach toy etc To do this you can obviously add negatives at ad group or campaign level either through the Adwords web interface or Adwords Editor as normal. Or to save time you can just click on keywords in the search terms report and then edit them in the ‘negative keyword’ boxes before saving. Simply change each search term from its default exact match to phrase or broad match of the exact phrase or word that you want to prevent. So there you have it, another way to make one of the more time consuming elements of PPC’ing a little quicker and more time efficient. For more news, information and tips and tricks follow @found_online

Step Aside Usain Bolt - Social Media is the Fastest Force on the Planet

Ciaran Brady — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 15:06:49 +0000

Today saw an interesting success story unfold in the gaming industry as Double Fine, a developer of leftfield video games who have recently been exploring the possibilities of Microsoft’s Kinect hardware, put forward an appeal on Kickstarter asking for $400,000 from their fans to develop a new adventure game. That appeal went live less than 24 hours ago with a goal to hit the target within 33 days. At the time of writing eager fans have pledged over $650,000, taking Double Fine way over their target in less than a day.

Of course it’s unlikely that many artists or developers will be able to emulate this kind of success. Double Fine are unique in that they possess a number of hugely well known, well respected and influential figures from gaming’s heyday, specifically Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer. While those names may mean little to a younger generation of gamers, to an old man such as myself whose childhood was lost to games like Monkey Island and Grim Fandango they are icons, legends even. With their pedigree and their body of work as their credentials, these two are perfectly placed to find an audience on Kickstarter where other unknown developers would struggle.

But though it may be too early to make assumptions about the validity of the publishing model that Kickstarter presents, one thing that this success story does prove is the power of Social Media. For while there was never any real doubt that Double Fine could raise such a modest sum for the game, the speed with which they hit, and exceeded, their target was incredible. Bare in mind that this particular genre of game was generally considered “dead” by mainstream publishers, with no significant examples having seen release by a major studio in well over a decade. Though an audience for the genre does (evidently) exist, the chances are that they weren’t out there scouring the internet waiting for this kind of announcement; many adventure game fans will have simply stopped waiting and moved on. Yet, despite that, this campaign has not only managed to draw these people to Kickstarter – a site that I imagine few will have previously heard of – but has done so in a matter of hours. Welcome to the power of Social Media, where an idea, an event, a piece of media or anything can spread like wildfire across the internet in a matter of hours.

While there was good coverage of this project on various gaming sites and communities, the big drivers of traffic seem to have been the larger web communities like Reddit and Twitter. These groups now wield immense power, not only in the digital world but the real world, thanks to their ability to spread information to millions of people with incredibly rapidity. This power of voice saw Twitter being labelled a key instrument in the Arab Spring of 2011, so much so that various governments – including our own – have considered banning it outright. It should be pointed out that while this particular story is one of success, most viral “outbreaks” like this have tended to be rather more negative. Consider the case of Lee Steele, the Oxford City striker who was fired after posting a homophobic tweet about former Wales rugby player Gareth Thomas. And it’s not just individuals who can suffer from negative social fallout; Papa John’s found themselves at the centre of controversy when a customer uploaded an image of a receipt which referred to her as “Lady Chinky eyes”, and GoDaddy were more recently the focus of a social media firestorm when images appeared online of their CEO posing over the body of a slaughtered elephant with gun in hand. Even the most careful companies and brands could potentially end up on the wrong end of such criticism and anger, and perhaps not even from quarters that they expect – a number of large companies recently incurred the wrath of millions by publicly supporting the controversial SOPA bill. As such every company with a significant digital presence or of significant size should have a social media strategy and a crisis control plan in place to anticipate and deal with these issues, and monitoring tools that can locate them the moment they come to light. To wait, even for a few hours, will see the damage spread far and wide. As a Digital Marketing Agency, Found have the tools and expertise to monitor the social space and look for areas where a company or brand is being discussed. For more information on how we utilize these tools as part of a social media crisis management strategy, stay tuned to this blog where my colleague Gareth will soon be writing about the subject in more depth.

The Real Reason Behind the Return of MySpace's Users

Keith Horwood — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 17:59:06 +0000

News broke this week that the once fledgling social network, MySpace, has added 1m users in 30 days. Around this time in 2011 it was reported that MySpace was losing 10 million members a month, and that it might even close down within a year. The return of a significant number of users is quite a majestic turnaround for the social network, which was once a bit of a laughing stock. In some places, it was incorrectly reported that this happened as a result of MySpace’s strengthened ties with Twitter and Facebook. I can see where you can now login with Facebook, but you cannot do the same with Twitter. This was the case on the screenshot used by the BBC in this article, back in March 2011. So, if you could have logged in to MySpace using your Facebook details for well over a year, it is hard to say that this is the sole reason for recent sign-ups. Anyway, if it was really joined up with Facebook, shouldn’t it be called MyFace? Has JT Rescued MySpace? There are also a few reports saying ‘Justin Timberlake brings MySpace back from the dead’, but, for me, this is just a catchy headline. Timberlake was apparently one of the key investors who helped Specific Media purchase MySpace from News Corp for $35m last year. It now seems madness that News Corp paid $580m for MySpace back in 2005. It is certainly a wise move to have a well-known music (and now film) figure involved, especially as the site’s focus will be on music. As for what Timberlake actually does, who knows? But the 'trousersnake' is certainly unbeatable for PR. To be honest, MySpace looks the same to me as it did last year. The interface is still clunky, the speed terrible, and not enough has changed that would cause such a dramatic turnaround in fortunes. So why the 1 million users in a month? The real reason that the network is on the up is that it has released a new MySpace music player. It is this player that allows a simple connection to Facebook; with a reported 42 million songs that compares very well with other services such as Spotify or Pandora. When you connect the music player to Facebook, this automatically creates your MySpace profile. This must be the REAL reason there has been a growth in MySpace users. So, really, the growth of MySpace users can be attributed to users of the new music player who have connected to their Facebook account. Funnily enough, I did this just now as a test. Another clever thing about the Facebook/MySpace connection is that it scans your musical likes from Facebook and converts them into friends on MySpace. It could do all of this without you really knowing about it. Listening to music with the MySpace Music Player feeds into the music app on Facebook, alongside Spotify, thus advertising the MySpace music service even further. It remains to be seen whether this impressive rate of growth will continue, but the music player seems to tick a lot of boxes and it is still early days for the service. There are certainly lots of improvements that can be made to the player, especially navigating to it from MySpace itself. So what do you think of the MySpace comeback? Do you still have a MySpace account? Would you try the new music player? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

The Daily Mail Embraces SEO

Philip Gamble — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 12:52:57 +0000

Internet marketing research firm, comScore, has reported that the Daily Mail has become the most visited newspaper website in the world, surpassing the New York Times. Visitor growth in the last year has come mostly from abroad with the site popular in English-speaking countries around the world. Mail Online, as the site is branded, is currently the 80th most visited website in the United States, according to Alexa, and in the top 100 most visited in another 8 countries. The site brought in £19m of online advertising revenue in 2011, up a massive 65% on the previous year. Though, even with this rapid growth, digital advertising revenues won’t be overtaking the £340m a year they earn from print ads anytime soon. The Mail is clearly web-savvy with the BBC citing long keyword rich headlines, the separation of print and web journalism and its mix of news and celebrity gossip as key to its success. Those working within SEO may also recall that a couple of years ago the sites robots.txt file, normally used to ask search engines to exclude certain pages from their index, contained a job advert for an SEO Manager at the paper. All this helped DailyMail.co.uk scoop up 16.26% of all UK visits to print-based News and Media websites in December 2011, according to Hitwise. Whilst some traditional media like the Mail and Guardian have embraced SEO and social media for driving traffic to their advertising monetised sites, others have rejected this openness in favour of paywalls. The effect of a paywall on traffic levels is predictable, though on revenues less so. As a result of their £2 a week paywall, The Times commands only a 0.03% greater share of visits to print media websites than the regional Manchester Evening News or mobile version of the Mirror website. Though, with 100,000 subscribers, overall revenues would be more than half that of the Mail.

It’s easy to see when the paywall went live

With online advertising spend continuing to grow at a rate that outperforms other media channels; in a truly global market that is the Internet, I know which channel I prefer. Photo credit: Newspapers B&W (5) by NS Newsflash (CC BY 2.0)

Rich Snippet Star Ratings – What is Acceptable?

Philip Gamble — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 12:37:45 +0000

Rich snippets, the name given to star ratings and other structured data which can appear on search results pages, have been becoming more prevalent in Google search results since the latter part of last year. The idea behind search engines displaying such data is to provide more in-depth information about the quality of search results to users. For example, recipe sites can use the tag to specify how long it should take to prepare and cook a certain dish, whilst film review sites can give their star rating of the film. A number of different formats of code markup exist which sites can use to present such relevant information about a particular webpage. Schema.org is perhaps the most useful of these sets of standards since it outlines a set of tags which can be interpreted by many of the top global search engines. When they were first introduced back in 2009 Google only displayed rich snippets for a very small subset of sites in their index as inclusion was slowly rolled out. Although the presence of supported structured markup tags on a webpage is no guarantee such data will display under a result, the past few months have seen rich snippets appearing more regularly. As Google appears to be more willing to display the data they contain, the adoption of the relevant tags has increased. There have been a host of case studies showing that the display of rich snippets on Search Engine Results Pages increases click-throughs on listings so it is inevitable that the temptation to add, at best, dubious microdata to webpages is too much for some people. By default Google currently takes on-trust the information you provide on-page, so in theory you could markup all your products as being rated 5 stars and this rating would then be displayed to searchers. The combination of the easy to implement tags, potential big gains and an exceptionally blurry line as to exactly what behaviour with regards to these tags is acceptable has meant that some websites are choosing to ‘game’ the system either covertly or more transparently. A fortnight ago, for instance, the page ranking second in Google.co.uk for the highly competitive term “car insurance” belonged to an affiliate site which is certainly not a well-known brand. Under the site’s title a 5 star rating alongside the phrase “5 votes” appeared. At the time this was the only listing on the first page of results which showed a rich snippet ensuring that this result stood out from the others which, undoubtedly, would have helped the site attracted a greater number of clicks than it otherwise would. Looking at Hitwise data for the proportion of clicks the site received from “car insurance” results pages it is apparent that a large jump occurred two weeks ago. Although Google states that they don’t “use markup for ranking purposes at this time” this doesn’t necessarily mean the presence of rich snippets will not help rankings at all. Rankings could be influenced indirectly as a result of the presence of rich snippets encouraging a higher number of click-throughs, which subsequently lead Google to believe that the site was more attractive to searchers for a particular term. As Google wants to return results that people will find useful, a high CTR could well result in their algorithm bumping up a site’s ranking. This could perhaps explain why this particular site has fallen from such a high ranking position so rapidly at the same time as its 5 star rating snippets disappeared. With the affiliate site’s star rating snippet now disabled in Google (but still present in the page mark-up - as can be tested with Google’s Rich Snippet Testing Tool), the page’s ranking has dramatically fallen with the site only just clinging on to a top 10 position. The rich snippet listing for this site stemmed from code on the homepage surrounding 5 single line reviews which also awarded star ratings to the site. Whilst on-site reviews are an appropriate way to assign a score to products on ecommerce sites there is, of course, no guarantee of any quality control beside that of the trust people have in major brands. When on-site ratings which relate to an entire site rather than a specific product are shown things start to get messy, as explained by David Naylor. Over the past few weeks I’ve come across star ratings in rich snippets taken from a variety of sources. Ranging from genuine looking on or off-site product reviews, rather misleading store wide reviews which show up alongside individual products, dubious looking on-site reviews and even instances where sites have simply awarded themselves a certain score which they have marked up in their own source code without any reference to reviews. By including star rating rich snippets generated entirely on on-site markup Google are effectively bringing the issue of fake reviews straight on to their own search results pages. There is a definite trust issue here that Google will need to address - I believe casual searchers are likely to be persuaded on which site to click through to based on ratings they may believe to be independent. Clearly third party review sites are not able to detect every fake review but I think consumers would rather put the trust in the hands of an independent source of ratings than a site itself. Sites such as Feefo.com, which claim to gather reviews only from genuine customers, are one way which could help to address this. So far there has not been any clear statements or guidance from Google. The form recently announced by Google’s Pierre Far to report the mis-use of microdata markup may help to crack down on abuse of the tags, with Google able to disable the rich snippets of offending sites, though their form for reporting paid links has certainly not been successful in stamping out that practice. With the roll out of rich snippets set to continue, hopefully Google will eventually issue a set of guidelines outlining exactly what is, and what is not, acceptable. This will aid in the regaining of trust from users when using Google star ratings.

PPC Day-Parting Takes Campaigns Further

Matthew Freedman — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 10:02:43 +0000

As a PPC Analyst at Found, I have various strategies for setting keyword or ad group bids at the right level to maximise our clients’ revenue. One of the more advanced elements of this bid strategy is to adjust bids by day of the week with different weightings. Why adjust PPC bids by day? Well, time and time again we’ve found that conversion rates and EPCs (Earnings Per Click) change by day of the week. These trends are usually repeated week on week. Most the time it’s not a huge variation, only by 10%* or so, however on very high volume campaigns it will be worth investigating these trends, as even a small percentage gain can make a big difference to ROI. Google AdWords allows percentage changes of bids by day of the week at Campaign level via the ad scheduling function found under the settings tab. It’s fairly simple within most paid search systems that extract data such as clicks, sales, revenue and EPC segmented by the day of the week. We suggest that you select a period without anomalies that might distort the conversion rate for any particular day of the week. For example, a last minute rush on the last day of a sale may result in a higher conversion rate for that day than usual. Below are two examples of conversion data segmented by day of the week, and a line graph which corresponds to the data gathered. Example 1: Online Retailer The above table and graph shows a clear drop in conversion on Saturday. I wouldn’t focus on the dip on Tuesday. The interesting trend found in this data set is the peak on Friday, followed by a large decline on the Saturday. This would seem a realistic trend, with a last minute rush occurring on Friday for various events on the weekend. The lack of delivery on Sunday probably results in a drop conversion rate on Saturday as people are much more likely to opt to use high street shops. Example 2: Travel Sector

This example shows a substantial difference in conversion rate from the peak to the trough. If coupled with high traffic, this is likely affect the ROI of an account, with a downward trend throughout the week. How do you take advantage of these swings in conversion rate? Well, first of all you calculate the overall conversion rate. . For the above data this is 2.05%. Once you have this figure, you calculate the percentage difference each day from this mean conversion rate.

Again, once you have worked out the recommended percentage multiplier you can interpret it, and perhaps action campaign changes by optimising budgets or bids for the most important days. There are other factors to consider though, one of these being where your clicks interact on the conversion funnel. Now a word of warning; although trends may be apparent, it can be random noise. If you are assigning conversions by the last click, you may under estimate the value of first and middle clicks, which can be an essential route to the final conversion. Click-path analysis is a whole topic of its own, and for now I’ll assume it has no effect. How do you draw out a real trend from statistical noise? There are of course various statistical tests, for example a basic chi squared test. If you want a more human touch, the following advice may help. I suggest that you need a conversion rate or EPC change of above +/- 10% with over 400 sales required for each day. By rule of thumb, if the trends seems unlikely, it can be ruled out. For example if the conversion rate oscillates up and down with peaks throughout the week, then this may seem to be noise. Meanwhile, a clear build up to a peak, perhaps on a Friday or Saturday might be more likely. [caption id="attachment_2645" align="aligncenter" width="630" caption="The data above would seem unlikely."][/caption] If there are logical reasons for the trend and it is repeated across the sector, then this would give you a reason to have confidence in your data. In summary, dayparting isn’t the silver bullet that is going to transform your campaigns, but it can act as an important addition where more obvious strategies have been carried out. I’d be interested in hearing more about your experiences and use of dayparting. *10% up and down on the average, i.e. A conversion rate of 18% would represent a 10% negative change on an average conversion rate of 20%.

AVALANCHE DANGER! Modified Broad Match

Karl Brandt — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 17:30:29 +0000

Google’s been under pressure lately. Q4 results missing forecast, Facebook filing their IPO; it’s getting hotter in the kitchen. Maybe that’s why we’re seeing such suspicious search terms in some of our accounts.

Every good PPC’er should be using modified broad match to soak up all the relevant clicks you don’t reach with exact and phrase match. Sure, there are situations when broad match is a good idea. But if you want to avoid the mind boggling search queries that often show with barely any relevance, you are better off sticking to modified broad. Or so we thought. Lately we’ve been getting avalanched on some of our modified broad keywords (okay I know I'm over reacting! I just liked that picture and couldn’t think of a catchy title okay!). It seems Google has been loosening up its algorithm in order to improve its financials, and taking less experienced PPC’ers lunch money in the process. One of the ways Google recommend using modified broad is a kind of mixture of broad and modified broad match. So for example the keyword ‘formal +shoes’ would match to the following: - smart shoes - dress shoe - shoess for work As you can see the ‘+shoes’ will always match to abbreviations, acronyms, synonyms, misspellings and singular/plurals of shoes. However, by not including the + modifier on ‘formal’, this allows Google to use its formidable algorithm to match to synonyms of ‘formal’. This is a great way to gain lots of additional relevant traffic, in theory. The problem is, lately in some of our accounts with higher CPC bids we are seeing search queries that are essentially full broad matches. Here’s an example of the kind of thing we are seeing: The keyword ‘ +green hat’ shows for searches like: - green - gren - greens This means Google is ignoring the word that is on pure broad match and will just implement modified broad match around the modified broad word. I mean how relevant is just the word ‘green’ to ‘green hats’ anyway? You’d have to really love the colour green to be convinced to buy a green hat when you searched for the colour green! This brings us back to the dilemma of thousands of untargeted searches for terms that will never ever convert. So what’s the solution? Well sorry there isn’t really one that doesn’t involve hard work! One option is to just use the ‘+’broad match modifier and keyword more thoroughly rather than relying on Google to find all the keywords you didn’t input. Going back to our example, ensuring you include ‘+smart +shoes’, ‘+dress +shoes’ etc will make sure you capture the vast majority of relevant clicks.

The other is to very carefully monitor the search term report in Google and see what your keywords are actually matching to and create long lists of negative keywords from these (you should be doing this anyway). The problem with this is it can take lots of time and you are only able to exclude searches once you’ve already spent money showing on them. Plus the Adwords search term report does not list every search term your ads showed for anyway. The ‘other search terms’ row on a search term report shows hundreds or even thousands of searches that didn’t receive a click or weren’t searched by a significant number of users. This means these searches cannot be negative matched as you don’t know what they are! And, while an individual search may only equate to a single impression, thousands of these single impressions can drastically harm your click though rates and therefore your cost per click. So, there’s no easy fix. It seems Google is living up to its “Don’t be evil” mantra a little less these days, and even more than ever ignorance comes at a high price in the pay per click world. However this does provide yet another opportunity for those who aren’t adverse to hard work to capitalise where others either don’t know how or aren’t willing to.

It's official: Found is one of the best places to work in the UK!

Lauren Dodds — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 14:51:02 +0000

Last night Found got glammed up to attend the Sunday Times ‘Top 100 Best Small Companies to Work For’ awards as part of the Big Ideas Group. We were treated to a champagne reception and dinner before getting on with the serious business of the awards. After a tense countdown we were announced as number 33 out of 515 accredited companies - an outstanding personal best for the Big Ideas Group. On top of that we also achieved the top-tier status of 3 stars! Everyone here works incredibly hard to ensure that, as well as achieving fantastic results, we have a brilliant time too and I personally can’t imagine working somewhere with a better group of people. We certainly all had fun last night and after dancing and celebrating into the early hours of the morning we are all very grateful that the monthly Big Ideas Group Pre-Pay Day Pizza falls today...you really are the best company to work for!

Pinterest and the prickly issue of affiliate disclosure

Angela Greenwood — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 17:32:13 +0000

This week I’ve read with interest the commentary posted on the Digital Trends website earlier in February bemoaning Pinterest’s implementation of Skimlinks, an innovative piece of kit which can append affiliate tracking to hyperlinks, to monetise its offering. Well indeed! How selfish for a start-up to find an effective route to market, offer a useful and incredibly popular service, and then have the temerity to actually already be making some cash out of it! The cheek! Particularly, as the writer highlights, when the mighty Twitter itself hasn’t managed to find a way to turn a profit yet! The amount of noise created by this and many similar decrials of Pinterest’s approach led to a rapid denial from Pinterest that Skimlinks was a core element of its business, downplaying its use as ‘more about testing how people used Pinterest rather than a long-term plan for monetisation’ and publically distancing itself from an affiliate approach.

While I may disagree with all of the bloggers who appear to believe that social media should somehow be loss-making in order to retain its cred, the fracas did raise a very valid point around the always-contentious area of affiliate disclosure. Many writers’ main problem with Pinterest’s use of Skimlinks was its failure to be transparent with its users about the fact that it has been earning commission on purchases made by members as a result of clicking on its links.

Certainly it doesn’t seem out of the realms of reasonableness that Pinterest could have popped a wee mention of this somewhere in their t’s and c’s along the way which, let’s face it, wouldn’t have and won’t be read by many other than us pernickety digital industry types looking to create blog posts picking stuff apart. To me, the *shameface* approach and rapid turnaround from Pinterest seems like an opportunity missed to stand up and be counted, to beat their chests and proudly say, “We built this service for you and we tried getting a little something for our efforts. Is that so terrible?” The Digital Trends article helpfully suggested that a route to market which involved placing banner ads rather than affiliate links would somehow have been more honourable. But to paint affiliate links in this light is to suggest that there’s something downright sneaky about building a relevant, targeted and unobtrusive promotional element into what Pinterest does, rather than embracing the standard dull banner noise that generates something like a 0.002% click-through rate and even less in terms of conversion. I say stand up and be counted, Pinterest! Wave the flag for affiliates everywhere and educate your loyal following about why affiliate links have been and can be a viable way to fill your coffers sufficiently to provide a sustainable and ever-improving service that won’t disappear like so many flash in the pan fads.

Want to work for one of the best companies in the UK?

Flo Bundy — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 18:44:01 +0000

So it’s official, we are one of the top 100 companies to work for (number 33 to be precise!) which makes me a very happy bunny as my role here at Found is all about making the team happy and ensuring that they have a great environment to work in. Ultimately, the better the environment, the more productive you’re going to be and the better the team spirit, the more ideas you’re going to share. We are innovative, results-focused, and passionate and we really do care about people. (I’m lucky I get to spend 40 hours a week with a team that inspires me, that encourage me to be myself and to use my strengths as well as letting me be accountable for my own actions). And the great news is that we’re looking to add to our team! We are looking for lovers of all things digital, who always strive to achieve the best results, who want to work for an incredible team and will stand up to our mantra, “be brilliant” (a love of biscuits is also something of a prerequisite!). Do you think you've got what it takes to be one of our fabulous Found’ers? Then head to our careers page to read more about the current vacancies we have open – we’d love to hear from you: Accounts Director SEO Exec SEO interns

Are You Keeping Up with Search? Google Announce 40 Algorithm updates in February Alone

Keith Horwood — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 17:23:19 +0000

SEOs the world over breathed a sigh of relief as Google kicked off 2012 by announcing that they will offer a monthly blog update with details of the latest search algorithm changes. It was good to see Google responding to the feedback and popularity of their past announcements. Previously, Google mostly blogged about the large algorithmic changes, such as Panda and the Freshness updates of last year. All of this extra information is fantastic for search geeks such as myself and those in our Found SEO team. It gives us insight into the cutting edge changes in search and can explain possible performance increases or decreases as different signals affect the SERPs. Many recent algorithmic changes followed on from 2011’s Panda update, which penalised what were considered poor quality content farms. One of the updates in January 2012 focussed on looking at how some sites were far too top-heavy with their advertising, which was obtrusive and distracted from a useful user experience. This update could certainly hit content websites that rely on ads above the fold to generate revenue. This penalty may present an opportunity for brands to gain positions by creating high quality content themselves, as they do not exist purely on advertising revenue. The other major update in January was 'Google Search plus Your World'. I am sure Google's social search will continue to tweaked as Google gathers more data and feedback from users. Many of the 40 adjustments made for February are quite minor, with tweaks in many varied areas of search. As well as additions, Google also disables some query classifiers as they get outdated. Some of the areas highlighted by the recent changes are refinements to freshness rankings, rich snippets, image results, local results, and the usual specific language and country based improvements. I won’t go into details about the better triggering for 'Turkish weather search', but some of the following items caught my eye: • Signals for Spiking Topics This is interesting as this will affect breaking, popular news stories. Google have improved the speed in which these spiking topics are listed in search results. This change, along with the other improvements to freshness, confirms the fact that a new content strategy is essential for future growth of traffic levels. • Improved Local Results Local signals can now affect YouTube results plus there is better detection of a user’s city. • Spam Update and Link Evaluation Google are constantly refining how they evaluate links and what is classed as spam. • Site: Query Update This is always a useful query for SEO and should now show an improved diversity of results. It is essential for online brands to make sure they realise the effect of Google algorithm changes on their web properties, as Google have estimated they will make a whopping 500 adjustments this year alone! One of the jobs of an SEO Agency is to understand these algorithm updates. The next job is to analyse any effect (or future effects) to their clients positions and to adjust strategy accordingly. And the great thing is, this is exactly what we love to do!

The New Found Site Launch

Andrea Downey — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 14:04:34 +0000

It has been a busy couple of months here in the Found Studio. Myself, Luke, Dean, & David have been working our socks off creating a new site for Found. We went out and researched our industry’s best websites, new techniques & technologies and have been designing, coding, wordpress building, copyrighting for some time. And I can now proudly say we have an awesome new site! Considering we only launched the first Found website when we rebranded just over a year ago, why did we decide to re-design the entire site & build from scratch? The original Found site was designed & built as a one page site, which was cool & interesting at the time. It did what it needed but as Found grew we needed more pages added, more content and we were offering more services, which all needed to be added to the site. We had a major problem, it was a one page site, how do we expand this out? Well we couldn't really! We added a few extra pages behind the site that could be reached but it's not the same. We had been posting about great advice, ideas, articles, but we weren't getting much coverage, not many people knowing it was there, so we really needed to push the social side of our website. We have great people working here at Found and everyone has great ideas, advice, knowledge and we wanted to share this with the world! The web industry is constantly changing - as a company we should be keeping up with these changes, whether it's a new technology, new framework or new design technique. Our original site was looking a little dated, even in just a year, so it was time to go back to the drawing board and start again! New Found Website Old Found Website So what have we done? This time round we have a built a site that can be expanded. The entire site was created in Wordpress, so every single page & post can be updated easily and quickly by anyone in the team. This has made the studio team very happy - we do love a bit of Wordpress. All of the articles, advice, ideas we have been posting have got bigger, better with the added bonus of social media integration. So now you can like, tweet, google+ to your heart’s content. There's now so many pages in our site, so much to know about us and what we do - you can now see what that is. Pages for each service we offer, technologies we use, case studies about the companies we work for and what they think about us. You can meet the team with each member of Found having their own page, with information about them and their posts. We have used some new technologies to really show what we can do with the sites we create – for example, the site is now mobile/tablet friendly. We considered the devices when we designed the site, so the site is viewable on these devices as well as your desktop computer. The tiled look on the blog section, especially, was designed with mobile devices in mind - long lists of posts just don't work well, as we found with the previous site. As Found grew the Found brand needed to grow with that, so this is exactly what we have done. This time last week when you thought Found you thought purple, well now I can say we aren't purple anymore, well, not as purple. The site isn't all purple anymore and our Found color palette has changed - purple & pink, please say hello to blue & green! Purple & pink are still Found's main colours but we can now mix it up a little with the blue & green tones. The Found font used on the previous site was 'Gotham Bold'. While this was great at the time, we needed something cleaner and less bulky and easier to read in certain browsers. So I would like to introduce you to a new Found font, 'Copse' – It's a Google web font, so it’s great for the website. We wanted to go with with something a lot cleaner this time in the overall look of the site, using the golden ratio to perfectly align our website. We made the decision early on to make the site a lot less purple and give it more white space. We also used big images to bring more interest to pages and to add some colour in to the pages. Square-looking sites get boring sometimes, so we thought we would shake the site up a bit by introducing diagonal shaping, just because it looks pretty damn cool! We also used some new technologies on the website, things we haven't really used that much before. HTML5 was used in our Wordpress theme - it works perfectly in all browsers, with a script to make it work in older browsers. CSS3 is used a lot on the site - with the use of SVG's, multiple backgrounds, text-shadow and border-radius - and is supported in all the modern browsers, then degrades gracefully for older browsers. We have used some cool new techniques like the Parallax scrolling on the homepage & headers of all pages and j-query and JavaScript for certain functions on the site. As IE6 is finally dying we decided that we would not support this browser on the Found website. Summary The Found site has taken a massive transformation over the last 3 months! A total re-design, expanding the Found brand, new technologies and techniques used plus more social integration. We, as a team, have also grown massively through working on such a huge project - we have learned so much and will be using all of these new techniques and technologies on future projects. Now we just want to know what you think? If you have any feedback or comments on our site, then we’d love to hear them!

Google ignores EU warning and implements privacy policy

Philip Gamble — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 11:51:39 +0000

Despite warnings that the change may violate European laws over the use of data Google has today implemented its new cross-service privacy policy. For the past month the online advertising powerhouse has been informing service users of the forthcoming change on their sites. In an email message sent to users of gmail they described the change as “getting rid of over 60 different privacy policies across Google and replacing them with one that’s a lot shorter and easier to read”. The new worldwide policy also allows Google to share information the company has collected across its range of services from GMail to YouTube and Android phones. CNIL, the French equivalent of the Information Commissioner’s Office, has objected to the changes because it is “deeply concerned about the combination of personal data across services”. By continuing to use any of Google’s services from today surfers have given Google permission to use their data as outlined in the new policy. CNIL says the document is too complex to be understood even by “trained privacy professionals”. In reality however despite email prompts and popups from Google the proportion of normal service users who read the entire 2,200 word document is likely to be very slim as is the case for all privacy policies and software licence agreements. Whilst merging their privacy policies into a single document may well help both Google and users see exactly how data is used and check up on their compliance with data protection law, another real benefit to Google is that they can now use behavioural data collected in one product to effect another. An example alluded to by Google on their Privacy Policy site is that they would be better able to establish the intended meaning of a search query, so a user who watches Pink videos on YouTube is more likely to have results relating to the singer returned when they search on Google.co.uk. This should improve user experience and also enable Google to better target the advertising they display, increasing their revenue per user. As a user of many Google services, who most certainly hadn't read all their individual privacy policies, I assumed my data was already being used in this way. After all when I am logging into multiple services provided by the same company under a single account why shouldn’t they share information about my behaviour between these services. I currently don’t pay a penny to use any Google services and although advertising on YouTube has become more intrusive recently, viewing increasingly relevant and therefore useful advertising in exchange for receiving a suite of free services is a fair swap in my opinion. (google handcuffs image source: http://www.efytimes.com/admin/useradmin/photo/Google-Privacy-Policy-uppdate.jpg)

Found up for 5 Awards at this year's Performance Marketing Awards

Tina Judic — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 10:59:28 +0000

Found’s innovative skills and client results for our Search, Social, Mobile and Affiliate work is once more in the spotlight, following news we are up for five prestigious Performance Marketing Awards!

We’re especially delighted that our Partnerships Director, Pete Newman, has been recognised as one of the industry’s ‘Hotshot Rising Stars’ and rightly so! Each year, our innovative approach and service record is gaining more and more attention. Found is now a very-much recognised and respected agency in this exciting digital scene and, hot on the heels of being acknowledged as one of the UK’s ‘Best Places to Work’ by the Sunday Times, we’re seeing a key member of our team also being identified as someone who’s really achieving within our industry.

In addition to Pete’s short-list position in the Hotshot Rising Star category, we’ve also been shortlisted for: Best Search Campaign for our work with domestic airline, Flybe Best Finance Publisher for our Post Office campaign Best Retail Publisher for our paid search activity for Maplin Best Travel Publisher for our campaigns for Handpicked Hotels Taking place on May 15th, 2012 at London’s Grosvenor House Hotel, we’re hoping for a successful, and undoubtedly, fun night!

Google Affiliate Network: Fashionably Late to the Party

Ciaran Brady — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 17:36:43 +0000

Yesterday I had the pleasure of heading down to Google’s offices in Tottenham Court Road for a presentation on Google Affiliate Network, which launched recently in the UK after finding success in the US. Walking into Google’s offices is like walking into the future. The corridors are wall-to-wall tiles that gleam spotlessly, the occasional LED display breaking up the monotone whiteness. You expect to see small droids scuttling about, not the slightly scruffy employees who amble about giving each other high-fives and saying “dude” a lot, iPads tucked under their arms.

The main presentation room was called “The Town Hall” and looked more like a small nightclub, with vast screens built into the wall and a mixing desk set on a podium in one corner. Every doorway seemed to open on some manner of office paradise, be it a room full of enormous soft chairs set among a jungle of plants, a library section looking like a reading room from Senate House, or a reception area with lovely views of the London skyline and computer displays set into the floor spewing Google propaganda. The one thing that the place didn’t seem to have was actual, traditional office space; you know, with desks and computers and stuff. I’m assuming that they were hidden somewhere out back, Google not wanting the ugly reality of 9 to 5 office work to intrude upon their utopian future vision. But enough about the office; I was there to learn about Google Affiliate Network (henceforth GAN) and, having learned plenty, I’d like to share a bit about it with you. To anyone who has spent any amount of time wrestling with the various interfaces and systems of the established affiliate networks, GAN’s user interface is a definite eye-catcher. Mimicking the tabbed structure of Adwords , it has a clean customisable look that appears to offer up exactly the information you’d want in exactly the place you’d want it. Advertisers, links, products, promotions, vouchers and feeds can all be searched and organised with ease, and extensive filtering tools allow you to look at the performance of not only the areas you have already joined up to, but also those that you haven’t. In this way you can quickly locate programs or links that competitor affiliates are having success on and muscle in on the action. One section of the interface is devoted solely to Top 10 lists, showing best performers across the board based on a variety of criteria. And it’s not just the advertisers who are ranked in this way; the best performing affiliates are granted VIP status, earning them a dedicated AM, bespoke reporting, and more importantly a badge in the UI which can be searched by merchants. In other words, find success on GAN and you can expect merchants to start searching for you. The reporting is pretty standard stuff, though there’s an API with which you can suck out all the data into a third-party system of your choice. One report, however, did strike me as quite impressive; the Benchmarking report was a dense table full of figures and symbols, and it gave your current top level performance data compared against both your previous performance and the performance of other affiliates on the program. Has your performance on a program grown 10% while that of your competitors has grown 80%? Time to take a closer look at the program to see what you’re missing. Overall, even when you look past the carefully stage-managed Google presentation, I got quite a positive impression from GAN, though I did have a few misgivings. Firstly, Google’s current crop of advertisers is slim, though I expect that will change quite quickly. Secondly, the ease with which you can find programs, products, links or even keywords that are proving successful means that it’ll be far more difficult as a publisher to find an overlooked niche; the whole thing seems instead to have been set up to encourage affiliate bid wars. Finally, though Found pride themselves on adhering to Google’s rules concerning site quality, many smaller affiliates may find themselves unable to compete, for with Google as overseers of both Adwords and the network, any unfortunate affiliates finding themselves on the wrong end of a slap may find they possess neither the resources nor the possibility of a “black hat” workaround to get back in the running. Google Affiliate Network has the potential to be a network where competition is fierce, the rules cannot be bent, and the winner takes it all.

Found Welcomes - Kristina Grineva

Nasreen Cullen — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 17:23:19 +0000

This week Found welcomes to the team Kristina Grineva, who joins us as our fantastic new Account Manager.

Kristina has already settled in well with the team and is an amazing addition, sure to keep clients well looked after and the rest of us well fed (if the birthday cookies she brought in are anything to go by).

The Found Grill

What’s your background?

Russian spy...on the side I also have account management experience in insurance and property development before spending the last 3 year in a web design agency.

What will you bring to the team?

Hard work, some good chat, happy vibes and my love of food!

What are you looking forward to the most?

Working with fantastic brands and striving for award winning campaigns while also eating lots of cake and having fun with the other Founders!

What’s your super power?

I could tell you but then I'd have to kill you... goes with the spy territory naturally.

Favourite Food?

Savoury muffins and scones.

Favourite Tipple?

A good g&t with loads of ice and fresh lime

Describe your ideal Sunday...

Columbia Road flower market (or any other great London Market), followed by proper coffee and antipodean brunch with friends and an afternoon movie on the projector at home.

Where would you go if you had a time machine?

Cleopatra's Egypt - a woman to rule a kingdom and have men fall over her!

What’s your karaoke song?

Embarrassing as those are... 'I wanna dance with somebody' – a good old Whitney power ballad.

What is the best thing since sliced bread?

It's got to be an iPhone!

Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance Workshop

Lauren Dodds — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 10:04:43 +0000

Last week I attended the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance Workshop at the fantastic Soho Hotel. This was a chance to learn more about the experience of the Alliance in the US, best practices for the transition and to ask questions from the account managers and Search Alliance team. Thanks to our brilliant Head of Operations here at Found we have the technical aspects of moving accounts and setting up Insertion Orders (IOs) covered. However it was interesting to hear some additional tips for a smooth transition as well as key concerns other advertisers had and I thought I’d share a few here: 1. Budgets: There was some concern at the workshop over whether the creation of additional IOs would lead to overspending. The solution here is to ensure your budgets are well managed. In order to have the most control possible I would recommend setting daily spend budgets, especially in case of traffic and CPC increases. 2. Monitor CPCs: Before the alliance took place in North America there were concerns that we would see a dramatic increase in CPCs. We were assured that despite a slight increase in CPCs, improvements in ROI more than made up for this. While this might be the case I would still be wary and monitor CPCs and ROI even more closely than usual following the transition. One space is often busier than there other and often there are certain advertisers that are only on one engine. These will now all be competing on the same space. For example, on the keyword [pet insurance] there are nine advertisers on Bing:

On Yahoo! there are four advertisers that don’t appear on Bing:

These advertisers will now all be thrown together and the increased competition will increase CPCs and lower conversion rates. New tactics & re-optimisations will have to occur in order to maintain performance and continue growth on our campaigns. 3. Keywords: Along with your Yahoo! Account Manager you should be transferring campaigns, ad groups and keywords not already in your AdCenter accounts over from Yahoo!. Now is a good time to review the accounts, expand keywords and think about importing any changes or new campaigns you have in your Google accounts in to AdCenter. As PPC Analysts it is inevitable, considering its dominance of the market, that most of our time is dedicated to managing our Google campaigns. However, with the Alliance we will now be able to spend less time managing two separate campaigns and invest more time optimising the one. While we will lose the granular ability to analyse each search engine separately I feel that the time saved will more than make up for this. On top of this, Microsoft seem to be taking this opportunity to make changes to AdCenter and the Desktop tool such as making it easier to make bulk changes, import from Google and target users meaning the time we do spend on these campaigns is used even more efficiently. Despite Yahoo! and Bing’s combined market share still being well behind Google’s, with more efficient optimisation and effective tools I predict that more time and attention will be paid to Yahoo! and Bing campaigns in the future and hopefully they will give us some great results in return.

Pete Newman – Shortlisted once again as Rising Star of the Year

Tina Judic — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 11:51:34 +0000

I'm delighted to announce that our fantastic Partnerships Director, Pete Newman, has been shortlisted once again for a Rising Star of the Year award; this time it is for The Drum Marketing Awards. Pete has been a fantastic addition to Found; not only is he one of the nicest people you could meet, he is also exceptionally talented and delivers results time and time again. His entrepreneurial spirit has led to a number of initiatives being launched on the back of his ideas, all of which have had a great impact on the company. Winning the recent internal annual award for Drive & Enthusiasm thoroughly sums Pete up as a remarkably gifted young man who will continue to see his star shine. We’ll all be keeping our fingers crossed on Wednesday, 9^th May, where the events ceremony takes place at the Emirates Stadium – the one time I’ll be hoping for a home win!

UK Search Awards Conference Roundup

Angela Greenwood — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 16:34:45 +0000

After a manic week it’s been great to take a little time to sit back and reflect on the UK Search Awards conference which I was lucky enough to be speaking at last Friday 9^th March, where award winners showcased the innovations which bagged them their lovely shiny trophies. My task was to represent the Found team’s brilliant work in the mobile space for Autoglass, which began in the summer of 2010 when mobile was still a mere twinkle in many search marketers’ eyes. With Autoglass having no mobile optimised presence at the time, Found quickly developed a range of targeted mobile landing pages and implemented detailed mobile click-to-call activity featuring customised phone numbers carried from ad to landing page dependent on referring keyword type, as well as comprehensive geo-targeting to drive calls from customers in need to their local repair centres to enable quick conversion. As a forward-thinking campaign implemented when mobile search was in its infancy, it highlighted Found’s determination to continually remain ahead of the curve when it comes to linking the intelligent use of new technology and consumer need. Keynote speaker and founder of stateofsearch.com, the mighty Bas van den Beld, was a real highlight of the day as he strode the stage with purpose and provided an insightful and humorous take on both the history and future of search. Despite all the noise of new tech and blingy new fads it was interesting to see him highlight that the fundamentals of relevance and genuinely engaging rather than simply ‘shouting at’ the customer will always ring true for any successful search marketer. His example of the Mayor of Obermutten in Switzerland who utilised personal announcements of all their Facebook fans on YouTube to generate more likes than London or Paris truly brought the concept of the power of personalisation to life and fed nicely into an exploration of Google’s brave new personal world of search. The range of case studies on the day from all winners was impressive and there were some great ideas to incorporate into our own activity – with a particular thanks to Tom Smith of Fast Web Mediawhose definition of ‘vanity’ keywords vs ‘sanity’ keywords (those which actually convert) will certainly be entering the Found vocab in future! Other highlights included some interesting insights from Matt Bush of Google into the current state of play in search, with a standout statistic being the fact that if page load speed is even one second longer than expected by the potential customer, conversion drops by 7%; a very convincing argument for any ecommerce site to get its servers in order if ever I heard one. SEOOptimise’s tips for best blog showed a real commitment to generating engaging content, including using the UK time difference to get a head start on US blogs for big tech announcements, gamification of blogging (such as incentivising staff for the most popular post of the month) and ensuring effective cross linking between posts to increase time on site. The aforementioned Tom Smith introduced the clever concept of ‘weather parting’ in PPC, incorporating a live feed from the Met office into ad planning and bidding strategies, which was harnessed very effectively for client Bravissimo to maximise sales of relevant products e.g. sunny conditions = bikinis flying off the shelves! Oliver Ewbank from Koozai showcased an admirably ‘white hat’ approach to moving a client to position 4 on the keyword ‘payday loans’ while up against a veritable sea of black hatters, undercover SEO ninjas and extremely dubious tactics in a notoriously hard fought industry. By concentrating on the fundamentals including good technical and content optimisation along with ethical link building, the client has stayed in a stable position while many flash in the pan competitors have come and gone. Polly Pospelova from Fuse8 profiled an intelligent approach to PPC landing page optimisation involving landing pages customised according to geo location data to improve quality score and adrank, highlighting that improving relevance and enabling simpler conversion will always be a winning approach. The final case study presented by the bubbly Lisa Myers of Verve Search showcased a refreshingly ‘girly’ approach to selling the fairly dry product of doors – by approaching the target keyword set according to style and colour rather than material or product classification, this more granular and targeted approach enabled quicker ranking and better conversion for the client. The day wrapped up with the awards judges giving their insight into what makes a successful entry, with the key elements including demonstrable ROI and delivery on the clients’ KPIs. Value for the client was an important theme, with the judges highlighting that while some entries had involved much bigger budgets than others, the overall results leveraged from the available budget were more important than volume alone. Another important announcement during the day was the extension of the awards beyond the UK, with the European Search Awards taking place on 5^th July in Amsterdam along with the UK Search Awards 2012 taking place on 8^th November. A big thank you to Andrew Wake of Don’t Panic Projects for organising a fantastic event – time to start thinking about our next innovative submission and hopefully Found will be speaking at the winners’ conference again next year!

The History Of Social Media (1978-2012)

Gareth Olyott — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 10:00:28 +0000

(Source: http://visual.ly/history-social-media-1978-2012)

Infographic - The Power of Pinterest

Gareth Olyott — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 10:55:24 +0000

Did you know about Pinterest’s testing of Skimlinks? Skimlinks are an innovative piece of kit which can append affiliate tracking to hyperlinks, to monetise its offering. All this is covered by our Director of Account Management, Angela Greenwood in the post 'Pinterest and the prickly issue of affiliate disclosure'.

Is CPA the right model for you?

Angela Greenwood — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 12:22:57 +0000

As a performance-based search agency we frequently work with clients on a purely CPA (Cost per Action or Cost per Acquisition) model, primarily via paid search but also utilising channels including mobile and social media advertising. These campaigns are often win-win for both parties, but it’s important for each client to understand the benefits and implications of the model to ensure it’s the perfect model for their business. Here’s our stress-free guide: The benefits of CPA The primary benefit that certainly appeals to a lot of our clients is that CPA is a risk-free payment model. It means they don’t have to worry about marketing costs with no return, because they’re only paying for the sales or the leads generated. CPA enables you to manage your budget to a controlled ROI, from a fixed percentage of basket value to a fixed cost per lead. By providing our clients with a guaranteed CPA (whether this be a percentage of the basket value or a fixed value per lead), it’s then our responsibility to construct an effective marketing campaign that delivers conversions. Another key benefit is that as Found’s revenue is directly related to the client’s success, the CPA model ensures we are always striving to deliver more. We’re not limited by time - with a fixed management fee model, where a client pays a set amount to manage the campaign each month, Found’s time allocation on a campaign can be restricted. However CPA allows us to manage time against the opportunity; if we can provide greater return for even more time and cost investment, it’s in our best interest to do so. The search landscape is extremely dynamic with new opportunities opening up every month, week and day. CPA promotes constant proactivity in accounts, to find the new opportunities that are opening up every day, taking the risk upon ourselves to test each opportunity. Why CPA might not be right for you While Found is a proud champion of performance marketing, we appreciate that the model is not always right for every client. Before embarking on a CPA-based campaign we challenge our clients to ask the question – will this deliver what I need? There are three main areas that will restrict successful implementation of a CPA campaign:

1. Product offering

If your website doesn’t have distinctive product offerings or brands to differentiate clearly, they may not be right for the CPA model. There can be instances where generic keywords simply do not provide sufficient return on investment to make the CPA model viable. Found will always seek to invest revenue from brand conversions into generic terms but, when generic terms are not converting nor contributing to a conversion, then the only winner is the search engine.

2. Non-ROI goals

If you have specific branding goals for your search campaign that are not mapped directly to performance, or a fixed budget that is not purely driven by the return on investment, CPA may not be the best model to pursue. For example, if a gift site wishes to bid on a very generic and expensive term such as ‘Christmas gifts’, the CPA model is not going to work in this instance unless appearing on this term results in or contributes to conversions.

3. Campaign access

One of the reasons we are able to run CPA campaigns is that we are able to retain the IP around the structure of the campaign-builds. If you need complete access to your Google, Yahoo or MSN campaign, CPA is not the model for you. If, however, it’s simply insight and understanding you require, we are always able to share a host of metrics that provide a detailed view of the performance of your account. However if the CPA model isn’t quite right for you, there are always other ways to build performance-led metrics into the management of your campaign. Whether it’s incentivising better performance via a fixed retainer + target-led bonuses or mapping campaign costs to net profit goals, you needn’t be stuck with a campaign that isn’t pushing your agency to achieve more. The key is to examine your individual success metrics up front and work with your search provider to come up with an agreement that will work best to drive these. If you’re interested in discussing this with our Partnerships team, you can contact us here.

Picasso at the Found Quarterly Review

Deepa Arthur — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 11:28:14 +0000

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you’re invited to a ‘Quarterly Meeting’? Loads of paperwork, number crunching, a round table conference in a room full of suits od’ing on coffee and trying really hard to stay awake? At Found, we know this is far from the truth. Last Thursday, we Founders got together to celebrate the first quarter of 2012. We started the year with a bang - along with a bunch of happy clients, we bagged some new ones, a few new faces joined us and together we continued to create some good old magic. The team put together a fantastic presentation outlining their challenges and achievements, key among which are the facts that we beat targets set up based on the previous quarter, personal and professional, gathered some glowing praise from our clients and are continuously pushing and expanding the boundaries of performance marketing. Our new lead designer Andrea Downey was awarded Outstanding Contribution for the Quarter for all her hard work on re-branding Found. Super amazing Director of Account Management, Angela Greenwood took home the Best Performance award, being voted in by a crew of ever grateful Founders for her boundless energy and ‘can do’ attitude. Her insurmountable knowledge and nifty client servicing skills have made Found an agency to reckon with. Special mentions were also given to Pete Newman and Heeral Shah, both of who have been bringing in the BOOMTING and smiles amongst other things. And that’s not it. The fabulous Flo organised a fantastic team building event which took most of us by surprise (about how much we liked it, well, me at least)! We all headed down to Innovation Warehouse where Red Letter Days had set the stage. There we were divided into teams and made to draw and paint parts of a Picasso painting.

Banter and creative chaos ensued. While some teams had long discussions on the accurateness of dimensions and picture quality, some teams like ours decided to go free hand, impressionist and abstract all at the same time. However when it was time for the big reveal, a collective ‘OH WOW’ was heard as we managed to even surpass our own expectations! The Found Picasso was truly breath taking. It is absolutely amazing what teamwork can accomplish and we at Found are testament to it.

For more pictures from this activity, check out our Facebook page and pictures.

We all then proceeded to Giant Robot – a smart, trendy bar in Clerkenwell which served up some delicious cocktails and scrumptious snacks. It was the perfect close to a terrific day and as many of us slowly turned the bar in to a graveyard of empty prosecco bottles and cocktail glasses we also toasted to good health, happiness and another fabulous quarter at Found.

Responsive Design to deliver resounding ROI

Andrea Downey — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 09:11:28 +0000

WARNING: This article contains traces of Amazium! Responsive design is a relatively new concept in website creation and it was an approach I thought would be perfect for our new microsite for Warner Leisure Hotels (www.warnerukhotels.co.uk). Rather than create multiple sites for multiple devices, I wanted to build a site that could easily adapt to the devices upon which it was being viewed. Responsive Design was the perfect solution.

So where to Start?

Researching the best ways to make a Responsive website was the first place I started. There were 2 options: either create your own media queries from scratch or use a framework. When looking into Responsive frameworks it became apparent that this was the easiest and quickest way to do this. I came across quite a few good frameworks such as; Less Framework, 320 and up, Mobile Boilerplate, Frameless Grid and Amazium. I decided that the best Framework for me to use was the Amazium framework, as it used the 960 grid system which I had designed the site in and it looked the easiest to integrate into a ModX website, and amazing it was! Many say that websites should be designed with Mobile in mind (some say 'Mobile First') so it was important that I had already designed the site for both mobiles and tablets, so I knew what the site would look like on these screen sizes.

Amazium Framework

The Amazium framework is based on the 960grid system with 12 columns. Each column has a unique class to give sections of a site the right width, depending on which device you are looking at it on. It's so easy to use - so, say you wanted your site to have a left nav of 3 columns and the content area of 9 columns, the class for these would be: 'grid_3' & 'grid_9' and Amazium does the rest for you, as the media queries are already set up. You can change styles in the Amazium framework so it looks exactly how you want it to, but it is as easy as that! Every element in this framework is adjustable from divs to forms to videos & images. The media queries included are set up for; all browsers (over 960px), tabletportrait (728px), mobile landscape (420px) & mobile portrait (300px). This is an amazing framework and I will be using this on every project going forward - what a great new addition to any web designer’s toolbox!

The Results

'The new Warner Leisure Hotels microsite works perfectly on all devices. There were a few little issues along the way such as images being quite large in size (so they could be scaled nicely, especially for mobile) so they had to be compressed as much as possible, without looking pixelated. The Amazium styles weren't exactly as needed but a bit of tweaking got the site to look exactly as it should. All in all, Amazium didn’t take too long to implement, was relatively easy to use and we now have a completely mobile friendly website. Since the launch of the new site with the Responsive layout we have seen a 21.86% uplift in CTR, which is a great so we can show potential clients that making a site Responsive really is worth it!

Digital Marketing Opportunities in Australia

Angela Greenwood — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 08:43:18 +0000

For this dual Aussie/Brit, it’s very satisfying to see the Australian market becoming increasingly fertile for a number of our UK clients. Econsultancy’s recent release of the State of Digital Marketing in Australia report highlighted Oz as a market that is making the UK sit up and take notice, and not without good reason. In the travel arena, Australian visitors have long been a high value market due to the sheer amount of time and monetary investment required for a European holiday. No point boarding that hellish flight for a short trip! And with a much stronger currency at their disposal these days, the Australian visitor is only increasing in importance. An interesting trend we have noted for one of our travel clients is the growing amount of bookings being driven from searches made by Australians via tablet devices. It certainly makes sense that a customer who can afford to consider a European jaunt for their holiday plans could be targeted on gadgets that are likely to be used by the more affluent. With heavy optimisation of this client’s activity towards tablet searches, these higher value customers are much easier to target, and booking revenue from Aussie customers is continuing to play an important and growing part of their overall revenue mix. A key trend we have noted in the retail market is the growing appetite of the Australian consumer for high end brands, particularly those which are difficult to source within Australia or which are more price competitive here in the UK. Again, the buying power of the Australian dollar (which has traded above parity with the US dollar in 2012) clearly has a crucial role to play in this trend, offering real opportunities for retailers who are able to offer luxury goods which may otherwise be in short supply in Australia. Delivery options in particular are crucial to enticing Australian customers to buy from UK retailers. In our experience, search campaigns featuring creative which highlights quick and reasonably priced or even free shipping to Australia are achieving considerably higher clickthrough rates and conversion; again something we could reasonably expect from a market located on the other side of the planet, but surprisingly something that few retailers seem to be taking into consideration when devising their promotional calendars. With one of our clients experiencing up to 30% higher average order values from Australia than the UK, it can be worth considering taking the hit on delivery charges in order to drive these larger basket sizes. As we continue to test and learn, there will no doubt be more stories to tell from our targeting of the land down under, but how about you? What has your experience been with the Oz market? We’d love to hear your feedback.

Discover Problems with your Site with our FREE Online SEO Audit Tool

Keith Horwood — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 10:00:23 +0000

I am very pleased to announce the beta release of Found's SEO Tool. This free tool will provide you with an initial snapshot of what is, and what isn't, working on your website. This will ensure you are in prime position to make the right decisions to feature ahead of the competition in search listings. The goal of this project was to produce a useful tool that allows you to enter a URL and receive an instant automated SEO audit of your site, with an overall score and advice on how to improve it, without incurring any cost.

The data returned can act as a starting point and quickly alert you to some key issues that may need to be looked at. Whilst this beta version the tool does not complete a full audit, nor can it be expected to replace human checks by a seasoned SEO’er, we believe it is currently at a stage where it provides extremely useful pointers. The Tool has 3 Main Parts: • Technical issues, such as domain canonicalisation & XML sitemaps • Content issues, such as keywords found on the page and in meta data • External link analysis The tool will indicate whether the task is successful, if there is an error or just provides a warning. This ‘traffic light’ warning system is then displayed in the top left of the page. How to use the SEO Tool

Step 1. Enter a domain into the box provided

Step 2. Click go and wait for the checks to complete!* As the tool completes each task you will be displayed the results, and then it will scroll onto the next task. Full list of Tool Features • HTTP header check • Domain canonicalisation – checks for duplicates of the homepage. This checks www and non-www versions and for multiple index files. This is probably one of my favourite features • Robots.txt check - checks existence and sitemap location • Sitemap check – checks for existence • On-page links analysis - summary, internal links and external links within HTML • Header check - checks H1 tags • Image analysis - checks for missing alt tags • Keywords analysis - checks density of keywords found • Metadata analysis - looks at title tags, description tags and keywords tag • SEOmoz URL metrics analysis - domain authority and total links • SEOmoz Links Analysis - checks for strongest links by page authority Foundlabs This tool is a direct result of Foundlabs, which is an internal system where staff can submit innovative ideas. All of these ideas are then considered by our Technical Director and his team to see how feasible they are. The idea for this tool was submitted by our Head of SEO & Social, Guy Donnelly, and I then worked with our amazing web development studio to see the tool through to completion. The team has done a fantastic job on this, with David taking on the coding lead and Dean presenting the information in a rather slick manner. A great team effort for our first publicly available SEO tool. Also, big thanks to SEOMoz for allowing the use of an excellent links API. We hope they like the use of their API, and I am sure we will do a lot more interesting things with this data in the future. Access the Tool on the following URL: http://www.found.co.uk/seo-tool/ Although we have tested on a variety of domains, we still may have some issues under load. We appreciate feedback, so if you come across any problems, let us know on the tool's [feedback form] or in the comments below. If you have found this audit tool useful then please share to those who might like to check it out. Why not subscribe to our blog to hear about any new SEO tools, and updates on this one? Update 05/12/2012 The tool has now been updated, and is out of beta. (I think we had a beta of a beta version at one point!)

Results can now be saved and exported to PDF!
We now have an iOS mobile app version which is free to download from the AppStore.

5 Great Time-Saving Excel Tips (you may not know about)

Jamie Brady — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 14:41:58 +0000

Microsoft Excel. Love it or hate it, but chances are if you’re in this digital marketing industry of ours, it plays an integral part in your daily working routine. Indeed, if you’re anything like me (and I sit firmly in the love category by the way) you spend an enormous % of your day working with it in some capacity or another. With this in mind, I’ve decided to present some small tips and tricks that I’ve picked up over the years that may just save your life! (Well, at least save you a lot of time and effort in the long-run..) 1. Multiple Insert / Multiple Delete This first point is a classic example of a tiny tip saving a huge amount of time. I won’t name names, but a few months back I stumbled across a colleague who asked me if there was a quick way to insert many rows in his worksheet. He had already populated his worksheet with a lot of data, but found that he wanted to clear a big space in the middle of it (about 100 rows). So his approach was to add in single rows... 100 times over! So the way in which he was doing this was to right click on the numbers down the left-hand side, and then clicking on ‘insert’. One row will appear in-between. Useful, yes, but not for mass amounts of rows. In order to insert multiple rows, you have several options: a) Highlight (drag your mouse) over many of these numbers, then right click, then ‘insert’. b) Highlight a range of rows in your table, right click, ‘insert’, then ‘shift cells down’. The first option will add the rows across the whole worksheet, whereas the second option will just do it for that table. Why not try it at home now? Best used: When you want to add or delete lots of data from the middle of a worksheet. 2. Open Excel on two screens at once If you’re a smug media-type like me, you may make use of multiple screens at once – casually checking twitter trends on one screen whilst triumphantly SUMIF’ing on the other. But what if you want to compare two Excel sheets at once, and constantly switching sheets on one monitor is really starting to do your head in? Well fear not, for there is a way! Essentially all you need to do is open Excel again (I know, easy right?). Chances are if you have multiple Excel sheets open at the same time, they’re all bound to the same instance of the program, so when you switch between them they appear on the same screen as all the others. To open a new instance simply re-open Excel anew, from scratch (either by double clicking on your desktop icon or by loading it from your start bar). Drag this second instance across to your other screen and voila! Best Used: When you want to compare things quickly side by side. 3. The Format Painter is your friend Have you ever found yourself trying to replicate a certain style or format several times over, and spent ages messing around with all the colours and fonts? Have you ever tried to replicate a custom colour and spent ages searching through the colour palette to try and get it ‘just right’? The format painter is a great little tool that allows you to select any cell or set of cells, and copy all formatting from them into new ones. You can locate it at the top left of your tool bar. Simply highlight the cells with the formatting that you want to copy and click on ‘format painter’. A little paintbrush icon will appear – then dragging this over other cells will copy the formatting into them. But wait, think you know the format painter already? Here’s another tip for free: When you want to copy a set of formatted cells multiple times, you can! Rather than clicking on ‘format painter’ once, double click it instead. You can run it over a set of cells multiple times without it resetting – a handy little timesaver that one! Best Used: Particularly useful when you’re trying to replicate a custom colour, and would otherwise have to trawl through and replicate by trial and error. 4. Who needs a mouse? Remember these keys, and remember them well. Ctrl. Shift. Up. Down. Left. Right. Fast navigation in Excel is perhaps the best thing ever invented, and is the one thing that has single-handedly saved me the most time over the course of my Excel ‘career’. I first discovered it way back in Year 7 IT class, when we would gleefully sabotage mate’s spreadsheets when they weren’t looking - quickly navigating to the far bottom right of their worksheet and writing the word 'bum', before quickly shooting back up to the top again. What crazy times! Nowadays I use it to navigate around Excel sheets at lightning fast speed. Using the arrow keys will move your selector across the cells, but if you use Ctrl at the same time, it can do two things: 1) If you’re in the middle of a selection of data, it will shoot you to the end of that data, in any direction. If you’re on record 10 of 5000 for instance, using Ctrl and the down arrow at the same time will shoot you all the way down to record 5000 instantly. 2) If you’re on a blank cell, using this technique will move your cursor to the next non-empty cell in any direction. Shift is also a very useful tool when used in conjunction with the arrow keys. Holding it down will allow you to highlight cells that you navigate across, allowing for rapid-fast cell selection. Using Ctrl, Shift and the arrow keys together allows you to select huge swathes of data in one fell swoop. When you start to combine these tips with the other Ctrl shortcuts (such as copy and paste) it starts to become a lot more powerful, and believe me, will save you a hell of a lot of time! Best used: When you’re trying to find the end of a particularly long list of data. When used in conjunction with other common shortcuts such as copy/cut and paste. 5. Using Find/Replace for fun & profit Chances are you’re aware of the find function (or CTRL+F to the savvy user). Most programs have one, from spreadsheets, to word processers and internet browsers. It enables you to quickly skip to the data you want to find, best used when there’s a lot of data to hand. For instance I use it to quickly skip to my favourite Ricky Martin lyrics from his fanpage important business data in Excel. You may even be aware of the find and replace function (or CTRL+H to the savvy user). This can be used in lots of different ways, all of which can save you time. Some examples include:

You’ve created a huge spreadsheet with lots of employee data but have accidentally misspelled the MD’s name 5000 times over (uh-oh!) Find/Replace: “Tnia” with “Tina”. 5000 records modified.
You’ve been generating thousands of keywords for blue dresses on a fashion website. You want to move on to the next section, green, but don’t want to type out all of those keywords again. Copy the list, paste into a new column, find and replace “blue” with “green”.
You’re trying to access commission references from a report, but it’s full of additional code:

<>UsefulInformationInHere<>

First: Find/Replace <> with [nothing] Second: Find/Replace with [space] Note: You’ll want to replace with a space otherwise you’ll return “UsefulInformationInHere” You can also use Find/Replace in some more clever ways, if you make use of some common Excel wildcards. You can experiment with these as you see fit, but I’ll use the most common one, being the * symbol. This can be used most effectively to signify all data before or after a given point. Some examples:

You’re looking at a product feed and you want to strip the product ID of all characters after the dash, just keeping the ones before it.

Find all characters including “ – “ and everything after it, and replace with nothing. Note: In the example above I’ve had to highlight the column. If this wasn’t done first then it would find and replace this in the entire worksheet, including the data in column D.

Now you want to grab the code before and the code after the dash, and store separately in two columns..

- Replicate the column entirely with copy and paste. - On the first column, find “ - *” and replace with nothing. - On the second column, find “* - “ and replace with nothing. These tips should get you well on your way to using this great feature more productively. However, as a word of warning, make sure you are 100% confident in the data you are replacing. If I had a penny for every time I’ve seen people get into trouble with this feature.. well, I’d have quite a few pennies basically. Highlight data wherever possible to make sure you don’t apply it to the whole worksheet, and be very wary if you’re matching on just a few characters. For instance changing the misspell “ign” to “ing” on a huge list of keywords would also change “sign” and “resign” to “sing” and “resing”. Best used: When you have massive spreadsheets and want to edit thousands of entries in a single command. Stay tuned for more in my Excel series, including Excel formatting and advanced formulas. Make those presentations, forecasts and internal spreadsheets really shine and work for you and your business. We have an RSS so don’t delay in subscribing today!

Olympic preparation for your PPC campaign

Rob Barnes — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 14:28:56 +0000

An extra special summer of sport is just around the corner with the European football championships followed by the much anticipated London Olympics and Paralympics. Organisers, coaches and athletes alike are clamouring to be fully prepared to perform at the highest level in what could be their career defining moment.

Meticulous planning, state of the art technology and years of knowledge are combined to produce a winning performance and the same kind of preparation is needed to create a PPC campaign. At Found we have years of experience in launching new campaigns, which has given us the opportunity to test and refine new tools, enhance our knowledge in many fields and give our clients that crucial head start for their business. Here are our top three tips for preparing the winning formula for a paid search campaign. 1. Research – Every campaign requires keyword research, but it doesn’t end there. Competitor research is vital to not only see who you’re up against in the space, but what they have to offer. If a rival company is advertising a product or service at a more expensive rate, there’s your opportunity to prepare ads with the better price in. Or, vice versa, if they have a more competitive price, tailor your ads to focus on the key selling point of your product, for example: free delivery or three nights for the price of two. 2. Structure – The foundation of your campaign comes from its structure and if you get the initial set up right everything else will fall in to place – get it wrong and you could create more work in the long run. Tightly themed campaigns broken down with brand, brand plus generic and generics all separated. Make them as granular as possible with ad groups broken down by match type where possible, and never throw thousands of keywords in to one ad group. Negative matching terms from your exact match ad group in your broad match ad group will enable you to easily mine new keywords from search term reports and also help you secure maximum CTRs. Always use site links and organize your negative keywords in to negative Keyword lists which can be quickly added to new campaigns. Break out devices into separate campaigns; mobile and tablet perform differently to desktop, and even go one further by breaking mobile down by carrier or operating system. 3. Tools – There are many free tools out there to help you create those all-important keyword lists. If you’re not utilizing any of the following the chances are you’re losing valuable time in your pursuit for PPC perfection:

So that’s it, you’ve done all the hard work, the blood, sweat and tears have fallen and now you’re at the start line ready to enter the race for gold.

New Google+ interface apes Facebook and Twitter (Again)

Keith Horwood — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 15:37:33 +0000

This week, Google released a new interface for Google+. It seems to make sense for Google to make such drastic changes early in the products life. Usually, early adopters can adapt better and test features more than the casual users who have been famously absent from the social network. Well, if you can't beat them, copy them! What the hell - I had just got used to the current interface! The main changes are the new side navigation, which is totally customisable. A neat feature, even if it did take several minutes of expletives before I discovered that my pages were hidden under the 'more' part at the bottom of this side menu. I apologise to new desk-pod recruit Kristina for the amount of profanity caused by Google+ this week.

Other Changes highlight visual content such as video and images on the timeline, and there is also a dedicated page for hangouts. Other features have been created by coining the terms 'activity drawer' and conversation 'cards', which I doubt will enter the lexicon of any digital marketers anytime soon. An uncanny resemblance to well known Social Networks Now we all know that Google+ has taken inspiration from both Twitter and Facebook (well, apart from the regular users), but several of the latest changes look very familiar. The first and most obvious of these is very similar to the recent Facebook banner headline image. Google+ now allows you to choose between a wide screen image from your uploaded photos or 5 different images to display at the top of your profile. The difference is shown below; and you can clearly see that the profile image is larger than in Facebook, and on the opposite side. To me it looks like Google has copied Facebook, edited a few items, and have ended up with a bizarro world Facebook. OK - So what about Twitter? To put it simply - Google+ now shows trending topics and hashtags very prominently. An obvious benefit of this is that it is already familiar with twitter users. One thing that is interesting here, is that the way Twitter tries to keep things simple is at odds with the ever evolving G+ method. Pretty much everyone understands how twitter works, even if I do hear some very strange stories about lack of understanding. Whenever Facebook make the slightest change people seem to go crazy, like they expect it to stay the same forever. For me, it is one of the best and also the most frustrating things about twitter - you usually need to use apps, tools and other things to bolt onto it. As you can see Bieber fever is skewing the results, so there are plenty of wrinkles to iron out, such as banning pop stars from my trending topics. It seems that many people will then comment on the lameness of trending topics, thus making it worse. It is a viscous circle that Google need to make their highest priority. If Content is King, What does that say about Google+? It is in vogue to poke fun at Google+, but you cannot argue about some of great the content that is shared on there. One of the coolest things I found recently was Project Glass. Project Glass was launched with a very cool video that shows what a possible sci-fi Google world may be like in the future with new 'social spectacles'. Even better was the Microsoft BSOD spoof of this that followed which was a shared by a friend on Google+. If you do not know what a BSOD is then you must be very young. Using Youtube I then found out how to play the song used in the Project Glass video on the ukulele. The song used is 'Lovers Carvings' by Bibio, which was also used on the Kindle adverts about a year before. So is Google copying Amazon now? Anyway, the main point I am making that once you are using Google+, for me it is a worthwhile experience. I even found out the meaning of life. How far will this integration go? Integration is happening all over Google's services, as they streamline into 'a simpler and more beautiful Google'. Little things keep popping up everywhere. One of the 'PG Tips' this week was that in Gmail you can choose to search normal Google search too, via a drop down menu. [caption id="attachment_3518" align="aligncenter" width="515" caption="Search in Gmail"][/caption] This place is coming like a Ghost Town It remains to be seen whether Google+ will remain an almost virtual ghost town, but as a Google fan who wants to interact with Googlers for me it is great. I am not using it to share my latest trip photos with my best friends, I use it for cutting edge industry news. If you are afraid to network online past your friends and family then Twitter and Google+ will not really be for you. InstaFace What does this mean for Facebook? Well after the bold move of buying Instagram for $1 billion, I am not sure these changes will overly concern them. What I would do if I was Google, is improve the standard Android camera app, so it works more like Instagram. Currently it seems limited in comparison and now that Android users can install the Instagram app itself, Google have missed a trick. Key Thoughts and Questions: • New Google+ Interface: Worthwhile changes or just copying established social networks? • Google+ UK TV Ad: Effective or too much like the classic Werthers Original ad? • Instagram: Expensive or wise move into more mobile sharers? Should Google improve it's photo / camera application to adjust photos for Google+? • Project Glass: Cool project to spend some of that money? So, Google are relentlessly pressing ahead, pushing Google+ for greater exposure. I can't wait to see what happens next.

Should Your Business be on Pinterest?

Gareth Olyott — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 10:24:26 +0000

Whether they know what it is or not, almost everybody has heard about Pinterest — The social network with real visual appeal! It's a pinboard-style social image sharing website that allows users to create and manage theme-based image boards that take the typical form of "interests", "things I love" and more often than I care to think about, boards filled with pictures of cute and fluffy animals. Pinterest is based on users using pinboards for inspiration, be that for wedding planning, re-decorating a room in your house or the next pair of sneakers you're looking to buy. Pinterest literally has it all. Brilliant integration with the two social media powerhouses Facebook and Twitter, ensures that people will be 're-pinning' images for a long time based on the rapid and strong growth of a real community. What makes it so Pinteresting for marketers? • More than one-fifth of Facebook-connected users are on Pinterest daily (via Mashable) • In the U.K., the majority of Pinterest users are male (via Ragan.com) • Pinterest accounts for 3.6 percent of referral traffic (via PR Daily) • Pinterest has 10.4 million registered users (via AppData) • Estimated unique visitors to Pinterest.com increased by 429 percent from September to December 2011 (via Monetate) • The average Pinterest user spends 98 minutes per month on the site, compared to 2.5 hours on Tumblr, and seven hours on Facebook. (comScore, via TechCrunch) This new social media hot spot is an attractive proposition for businesses who want to get the word out about their products, but how do you know if Pinterest is right for your business? A fantastic infographic from the guys at Intuit gives a simple decision tree to help you make that decision.

Found Welcomes - Anna Brunt

Angela Greenwood — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 08:55:05 +0000

This week Found welcomes Anna Brunt to the team, who joins us as our brilliant new Account Director. With an impressive background in some of the UK’s largest digital agencies working across search, display and social media, Anna’s looking forward to utilising her wealth of experience and know-how to turbo charge our clients’ campaigns.

The Found Grill

What’s your background? I’ve worked within Marketing since 1998, with the majority of this spent in Digital Marketing. This has been predominantly agency side, but I also have experience client side where I led the Digital Marketing function for a global holding company working across a variety of brands. For the majority of my career I’ve worked in a client servicing capacity, managing expectations, client relationships and ensuring results are achieved. What will you bring to the team? A smile and good broad digital marketing knowledge. What are you looking forward to the most? Working with the team and getting to know everyone. What’s your super power? Wonder Woman! Favourite Food? Gu key lime pies Favourite Tipple? Mojito Describe your ideal Sunday. A long lie-in, yoga class, walk on Hampstead Heath (weather permitting) and a roast at my Mum’s. Where would you go if you had a time machine? Woodstock What’s your karaoke song? We Will Rock You What was the best thing before sliced bread? Chickens … No eggs

Why We Need an Over-Monopolisation Penalty for Google

Tad Chef — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 13:56:38 +0000

Lately Google spokesperson Matt Cutts has been scaring website owners and business people all over the world with an so called "over-optimisation" update for too much SEO. I have written about this upcoming update already elsewhere. Here I want to point out that the so called over-optimisation is not the main problem we face as Google users today. It's just a smokescreen to hide the real issue: The Google monopoly.

In most countries worldwide Google dominates the search market by an overwhelming margin.

As most people use Google to inform themselves about anything and everything Google effectively controls the access the the global information. Only a few countries like China or Russia have been able to sustain a Google competitor.

In the UK, France or Germany Google has more than 90 or even 95% of the search market under their control.

To be on Google or not to be You don't exist on Google you don't exist on the Web. It's that simple by now for most of us. Not even thousands of Facebook friends can bring you the targeted traffic that search engines offer or used to as now there is basically only one of them. There are other ones but people apparently choose to use Google instead. No problem. Everybody is happy aren't they? No.

Google is under heightened anti-trust scrutiny both in the US and the EU for more than a year by now.

One of the most often raised concerns by their competitors is that Google favors their own properties in search results. You can test yourself. Indeed I did on Google.com - Many advanced users throughout the world use Google.com in order to get untainted English language results and not just the local sites. Google localises search results so that UK search users get results from Great Britain, Canadians from Canada, Australians from Australia etc. Searching Google to find Google So when testing these search queries you might find different sites than I do especially in case you use a local Google version like Google.co.uk. Nonetheless I'd like to show you what I find when I search Google.com for

images - Google Images
maps - Google Maps
videos - Google Videos
news - Google News
shopping - Google Product Search
blogs - Google Blog Search
books - Google Blogs

So you see what I find on top of each of those search results: Google's own properties. I also want to stress what I do not find on #1 or sometimes not even in the top 10. When I search for images I'd expect Flickr, the Yahoo owned image community somewhere on top. Flickr is not even in the top 10. Does Google favors search in search results then? Let's see, when I search for blogs I'd expect the Technorati blog search engine somewhere on top then. They are at #5 here. Remember that the number one in Google's search results get approx. 40% of all clicks while number 7 may get around 2- 3%. When I search for books I'd expect Amazon to be #1 but of course Google Books is more relevant, isn't it? Amazon is at #2 and #3 allright. On four I get the Google supported Wikipedia that explains what a book is in case I didn't know or forgot. Are you really sure you don't want to use our own service? You may have noticed by now that I have chosen the menu items Google shows in their sidebar once you search for something to prove my point.

Why do I get served another Google search service when I search "everything" instead of choosing one of the options in the menu?

When I search for blogs on "everything" Google is still not convinced that I want everything and wants me to search on Google Blog search instead? Btw. what's number three after Wikipedia when I search for [blogs]? Blogger. Another Google owned service! Where is Wordpress? Wordpress.com? At #5 Wordpress.org? Not in the top 10. Where is Tumblr? Not on the first page. I could go on like that for a while. In short: I am not convinced that Google' own services are the most relevant results for each and every of these queries. Have you noticed the Google domination as well? Personally I think that we need an over-monopolisation penalty for Google. Scape-goating the SEO industry is a cheap trick to divert attention. * Creative Common image by Scott Reader.

How the Linklove conference may have inspired Mashlove

Keith Horwood — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 14:00:46 +0000

I was lucky enough to go to the #linklove link building conference last month with Guy Donnelly. It was great to take a break from the office and listen to inspirational speakers for a full day of SEO linkbuilding strategies. I will not cover all of the slides presented as there have been some fantastic round ups by a ton of SEO's already. Also I think I spent most of my time listening and not taking notes. Added to this, is the fact that the scribbles I do have look like some ancient hieroglyphics, that are indecipherable to all. Luckily, perhaps as I did not go to the drinks afterwards, I remember a fair amount of what I heard. One of the themes of the day was about connecting with influential people online who will then amplify your content, thus achieving more chance of obtaining links naturally. For linkbuilders this can be essential, not only to work together but also share ideas. There is an age old saying, that if you surround yourself with successful people then this has a beneficial impact upon your own success. If that fails, you can always STALK them online, which was the purpose of Will Reynolds entertaining presentation. He recommended online stalking using iGoogle, to connect with them online by helping them, and perhaps inviting them out for a free coffee if they are in your area. Is Google+ Author Strength Part of the Link Graph? Another key topic discussed which looks set to rise in importance this year is how authorship and Google+ and hows this may affect linkbuilding. Tom Anthony presented his AuthoredPageRank algorithm theory, which he explains fully in a recent SEOMoz blog post. It will be interesting to see how authorship can be used and developed in some niches. Of course SEO's are testing out authorship in their droves, but it may take a while before we see more widespread use. Will it be possible to stalk a prominent and prolific writer who has a large influence on Google+? Like the old fashioned reciprocal link buying we may see 'reciprocal authorship' schemes springing up all over the place. There is already similar sites with guest blogging exchanges, but it this form of linkbuilding may become more powerful when linked up with Google+ authorship. Would you prefer to write a guest blog post if you knew the authorship was correctly setup on the target website? For most, the answer would be a resounding yes. Although I did not take impressive photos of the speakers like Mat Bennett, I did happen to take some photos of the food, so I will give that a little review. Usually you are lucky to get food at most conferences, so this was a welcome surprise. The first bowl of food I managed to grab was pretty much a giant leaf. Not really my thing, but I gave it a go. I was not a fan of the healthy starter, maybe because what I really craved was a classic bacon butty or a sausage sandwich. Luckily, my prayers were answered by the next dish, a delightful, albeit tiny bowl of sausage and mash. The gravy was the highlight for me, which must have been an onion-packed red wine reduction. I was on the hunt to find another bowl but alas, the waiter proved elusive.

I am not sure what on earth to call this desert, but it was pretty amazing by anyone's standards. If anybody knows what it is, please let me know so I can try to recreate it. It had a pastry base and lashings of caramel, topped up with a creamy thing of some sort on top. Yum.

I started to think about what I would do to find some influential folks, whilst still involving my love of food. My thoughts turned to creating a close-knit SEO meetup in the locality, where the group would invite prominent online authors or influencers. This humble conference, or 'Mashlove' as I call it could easily be hosted it in a local pie and mash shop for a bargain price. Once momentum is gained, perhaps get the fledgling event could be sponsored by 'S&M' or 'Mother Mash' or another brand of mash producers (anything but 'smash'). If anything, I am sure they will appreciate the powerful links from all of the SEO bloggers out there after the event!

Social Media, Blackjack and Coffee

Luke Townsend — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 10:57:58 +0000

A week or so ago, I was lucky enough to attend the Figaro Digital Social Media Marketing Conference held at the International Coffee Organisation HQ in Berners St London. In a room equipped with comfortable chairs, desk microphones with buttons and flags from around the world it felt a bit like I was attending a world trade summit rather than a Social Media conference. It quickly became apparent however that this was an ideal venue to relax, take notes and soak up the valuable insights and observations that were being presented by the excellent speakers, their slide decks clearly visible on a multitude of screens. There was a broad range of speakers on the bill including Found’s own Pete Newman who had the difficult challenge of kicking off the ‘Figaro 21s’ section. Here each of the four speakers had to power through 21 slides with just 21 seconds per slide, as Figaro themselves put it “No sales pitches, no small talk, no second chances”. Pete decided to take this ‘21’ theme one step further and built his talk around a game of ‘Social Media Blackjack’. In a warmly received and truly entertaining manner Pete broke his slides down into micro Social Media campaign case studies that either went bust, or hit 21 with Social Media blackjacks. Referencing campaigns involving Katie Price, the Old Spice guy, roller skating babies and condoms with QR codes on them, Pete went down a storm. Delivery was clearly key here but I should mention the behind the scenes work done by our Social Media guru Gareth Olyott and our Lead Designer Andrea Downey who provided the great inspiration, research and design work to make it possible. You can watch Pete and his presentation >here< Other highlights from the day included: Allister Frost – Microsoft’s Head of Digital Marketing Strategy, gave a concise and poignant overview of how Social Media has changed the shape of marketing in a digital world. Managing to simplify an often over-complicated subject matter Allister got the attention of the audience by stating things like “social media is just people having conversations online” and encouraging us all to “create social objects”. Truly inspiring stuff indeed. You can watch Allister’s talk >here< Selina Sykes- Senior Brand Manager at Unilever, gave us some real insight and a behind the scenes look into Lynx ‘Fallen Angel’ an enormously successful and award winning multi-channel Social Media campaign. Facebook followers of Lynx got the chance to try and entice an angel down to earth and, if they were lucky, see her land in their street courtesy of a video and Google street view mash-up. See Selina’s talk >here< Roger Warner - Chairman at the DMA UK Social Media Council, gave an amusing and thought provoking talk entitled ‘What Facebook can learn from Mad Men’. Roger emphasizes that Social Media is more than just a platform and that ideas, creativity and storytelling are at the heart of any good Social Media campaign. Referencing some of the true advertising greats Roger brings it back to the simple truths that ideas and people matter more than anything else when it comes to creating great campaigns. See Roger’s talk >here< I have just cherry picked a few of my highlights from what was an excellent and really well organised day with some fantastic speakers. I should also mention the great food (salmon or gnocchi) that was on offer at lunch, but the real 'take-away' was the 'food for thought' the speakers and panelists provided. There were many more I haven't mentioned. You can see the full line up from the days events >here< Many thanks to Figaro Digital and Jeremy Waite for setting it up we’ll definitely be coming back for more soon.

Google - Helping teachers to flip their classrooms

Carrie Anne Philbin — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 16:18:31 +0000

On Wednesday April 4th and Thursday 5th April 2012, Google held their second UK Google Teacher Academy in London, and I was lucky enough to have been selected as one of 50 educators from across the globe to attend. What is the Google Teacher Academy? The Google Teacher Academy is a free professional development experience designed to help primary and secondary educators from around the globe get the most from innovative technologies. Each Academy is an intensive event where participants get hands-on experience with Google's free products and other technologies, learn about innovative instructional strategies, receive resources to share with colleagues, and immerse themselves in an innovative corporate environment. How did you apply? As a secondary ICT Teacher in Dagenham, I constantly strive to improve the teaching and learning opportunities for my students. I consider myself to be a reflective practitioner, always looking at the way in which young people learn, questioning the current classroom techniques and practices and developing innovative ways that perhaps have not been employed before. This personal journey usually leans towards innovation in the classroom and effective use of technology. All our students are digital natives, who have lived in a world where the Internet has always existed. Access to information is instantaneous, and we are beginning to question what is it we are teaching and how we are teaching it. I use twitter to collaborate and share ideas with like minded teachers across the UK and the world, and it was in this forum that I first learnt that Google were accepting applications for this years Academy. There was a lengthy online application form to fill out and every applicant had to make a one minute video about 'Classroom Innovation' or 'Motivation and Learning'. Then it was a case of waiting for a verdict from Google, whilst trying not to watch other applicants entries on youtube. At the end of February I received an email from Google congratulating me on being selected, but I had no idea what I had signed up for. What happens at the Academy? Like Alice in Wonderland I had no idea what I had stumbled across before I attended the academy. Friends and colleagues keep asking me "What does it mean?" "What does it involve?" and I could only shrug my shoulders. On the first day I was introduced to 49 other educators from across the globe. Approximately 25 of us were from the UK, not all teachers, some worked in the education sector as advisors or developers. The other 25 were made up mostly of Americans, who explained to me that being a Google Certified Teacher in the US is an important and recognised professional development for any teacher. We were put into groups and attended sessions on Google Search, Google Docs, Google Sites, Google Calendars, Youtube for schools, Google Scripts, Google Maps, Google+ and Google Apps for Education. These sessions were fast paced all with an educational slant provided by a previous cohort of Google Certified Teachers. I got hands on with a Chromebook for the first time, which was such a good experience that I may invest in one. We were also privileged enough to be invited to have Google hangouts with developers in the US who demonstrated what was coming next for Google docs and Google+ which was one of the highlights of the day. The second day was called the “unconference” giving us the time and opportunity to look into some of technolgies more closely, ask questions of those in the know, and to make connections with other educators. It was the best professional development I’ve ever experienced as a teacher, and it has led me to rethink my use of technology in my teaching. My classrooms will no longer have walls. With Google’s tools I have been able to create a Google site which students will be able to access from home and at school to watch Youtube videos that I have created or sourced through youtube for schools, to learn the concepts needed for the lesson. I will write my lesson plans through a blog, that students can access on any device, leaving more lesson time to engage the students through activity. I will have flipped my classroom to make full use of technology that is in each school child’s pocket or home. At the end of the day we were all given our Google Certified Teacher Status. I now have access to a community of GCT’s from across the globe through Google Groups, and have networked with educators who are already making a huge difference in the US. What happens next? Each GCT is required to write an Action Plan for change. This year’s GTA has asked its members to think about how they can change the world. Quite a daunting task for a little teacher from East London, but Google have inspired me to try. We have deadlines to guide us through the action plan, and the project we design should take on average a year to complete. I have a few ideas which I want to put to my students before I write up my plan, and we are encouraged to share our plans with another GCT who acts as a peer mentor. Side effects My twitter account and my Google+ accounts have gone crazy ever since. I am part of a community that shares and collaborates like never before which is incredibly exciting. It’s also made me feel that I am not alone in wanting change, and I hope I get the opportunity to visit my teacher contacts in the US to see what they are doing with Google, even perhaps get to see Mount View. Some people have questioned the appropriateness of a company like Google being involved so much in education. I am not a spokesperson for their company, only a humble teacher who uses their tools. I can guarantee that a lot of the children in this country already use them, and if they are not then they may be left behind. Of course they are not the only tools we use, and Google were very open to teachers discussions on the day of the use of other web tools in conjunction. What I experienced will make my teaching better, and I hope to share that with my students as soon as we return to school next week, and all teachers I come into contact with.

Found welcomes - Jadon Stewart to the SEO team

Keith Horwood — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 14:39:01 +0000

This week Found welcomes Jadon Stewart to the team, who joins us as an SEO Intern. Jadon has a wealth of experience in digital having worked with the likes of Volkswagen, H&M and Boden.

The Found grill

Favourite quote “Be yourself, everyone else is already taken” Oscar Wilde What interests you most about SEO? The combination of both using creativity as well as an understanding of best practice guidelines. Really enjoy using Google Adwords, researching the latest trends and consumer behaviours on search engines. Hopefully seeing some clients jump into 1st place on Google will be pretty rewarding also. What will you bring to the team? Enthusiasm, good sense of humour and a cool head. Have been looking forward to my new role at Found for some time and everyone in the office seems cool so long may it continue. Sausage sandwich, sausage baguette or neither? Sausage sandwich. Must be cumberland sausages with a tinkle of rocket. Posh sandwich! What football team do you support? Liverpool. Andy Carroll is the best footballer in the world. Second is Jordan Henderson. £50 million couldn’t get you two better players. Friday burger or Friday gym? Friday gym. Arnie is my hero! Claim to fame? Lost £1 million on the second question of the Million Pound Drop. Gutted!! P.S We don’t talk about this…. honestly, we don’t talk about it!! I may tread on your toe if you attempt. Where would you go if you had a time machine? Anytime in the 70’s. I have yet to witness Liverpool win a league title and doubt I ever will, the way we are playing so send me back. I could also witness Michael Jackson live whilst I’m there. Describe your ideal Sunday. Lie in, watch a film, watch a footie match at the pub and then come home to watch Homeland, Entourage or some kind of American hit drama. Favourite tipple? Tough one. Either a Mojito or a cold bottle of Desperado!! Favourite karaoke song? Estelle and Kanye West. American boy, I sing the Kanye part and my girlfriend does Estelle. We smash it every time. haha What is your hidden talent? Can pull the most awful and strange faces!! What was the best thing before sliced bread? Bread.

Savvy search marketers win (and lose) from more Google match type changes

Greg Burgess — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 16:35:27 +0000

Whenever Google make a change to their PPC algorithms there is always talk within the industry that their intention is to ultimately increase the number of ad clicks as we see them climb the ladder to their 2016 $100 Billion revenue target. There will be gains for advertisers, but not all of them and not on every search space.

Google announced this week that: “Phrase and exact match keywords will match close variants, including misspellings, singular/plural forms, stemmings, accents and abbreviations.” In short, these match types will now match to more terms with very similar intent. “Based on our research and testing, we believe these changes will be broadly beneficial for users and advertisers.” They will be extremely beneficial to some advertisers but not as beneficial to others, hence the use of the word, ‘broadly’. Google are making it easier to match to the terms it knows you are likely to want to show your ads on. Surely this is great news as less effort and expertise is needed for more coverage. Yet advanced Search Marketers will have known about these gaps in coverage for years as they worked around the previous limitations of these match types. Prior to becoming a digital marketing agency, Found operated successfully within the affiliate market. We fronted our own spend on the PPC space and had to work at to extremely tight margins. This led to us accumulating a huge amount of knowledge that is not widely known within the industry, knowledge that still gives us and our clients a great competitive advantage. One of the main strategies it led to was gap-spotting, along with a very granular approach to optimisation. If there were variations of keywords with commercial intent, and no other advertisers were on them, we would find them (and pay very little for it). With these new changes to Google’s matching algorithms, more competing advertisers are now going to appear in these gaps. However, they will still not win across the board. With the new settings allowing your exact and phrase matches to appear on close variants; your paid search campaign will not reflect a true picture of the exact keywords that are working for you, their exact ROI and the exact bid to be allocated. It’s true they are likely to have similar ROIs, but from our experience similar is not good enough, you have to be exact and precise to squeeze every last drop out of your PPC. You have to understand the exact search terms your keywords you are matching on, in order to align the most relevant ad-text. By losing visibility of these terms you lose the capability to be rewarded by Google’s relevancy system and thus lower your CPCs. Here is an easy PPC example, looking at just one part of the match type change to illustrate my point; plural versus singular keywords. Consider the two search terms “stomach ache” and “stomach aches”. If an advertiser only has one of these within their campaign it would match to the other. Yet, just by adding the “s” changes the searcher’s intent: “stomach ache” will often mean that the searcher is currently experiencing a stomach ache and is likely to be looking for an immediate solution, whereas “stomach aches” would be searched by someone who currently isn’t experiencing a stomach ache but has been experiencing them recently, or on behalf of someone else, and is looking for a long term solution. Close variants can still have different intents where ad-text, landing pages and bids have to be tailored to approach this effectively. These new exact and phrase match changes will have come on the back of Google’s success over the last year from making the broad match algorithm even “broader” and reaching out to extremely tenuous related terms. Broad match used to match to misspellings, singulars and plurals, but with them now matching to a wider range of synonyms they have to be optimised very differently, so it does make sense to move these closer related variations & abbreviations onto a more tightly controlled match type. Either way, out of every Google change, new opportunities arise and, just a few days since this latest news, we are already exploring the advantages and possibilities for our clients.

Jay-Z's Got (Social) Game!

Gareth Olyott — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 14:16:32 +0000

As if being one of the richest rappers in the world boasting a $460 million fortune and coming home to Beyonce every night isn’t enough; the rapper, businessman and entrepreneur, Jay-Z, has set conquering Social Games as his next business goal. This week the beta for his game ‘Empire’ launched. Inspired by the story of his own life and career, Facebook users get the opportunity to take the leap from “hustler, to entrepreneur, to business mogul”, all without leaving Facebook. According to Mashable, “Empire gives you points allowing you to move up life's ladder by visiting your mum, taking part in a rap battle, making a mixtape, or getting a job to pay for new bling. Once you've earned enough points, you can move out of housing projects and into the "hotspots of the rich and famous" in Manhattan. "Make the right choices and the World belongs to you. ‘LIVE THE DREAM’, reads a prompt early in the game.” So, why Social Gaming for Jay-Z? Social Gaming is without doubt the biggest buzz online and the newest addition in the world of gaming. The top Social Games on the market boast millions of users but, more notably, millions in monthly revenue. The attraction to Jay-Z will no doubt be the potential of using his status and influence by mass appeal to tap into the millions of dollars of revenue experienced by the other Social Gaming newcomers. The most important point to note, is the most successful players in the Social Games space are either totally new companies like Zynga or casual gaming companies like Popcap games or King.com which stands Jay-Z in good stead. Defining the Social Gaming market Social Games sometimes mean different things to different people. In the era of Social Networking, the term is most commonly associated with games that are played primarily on Social Networking sites or games that can be played with a person’s real world social graph. The primary platform on which these games are played is Facebook, due to its huge user numbers and the smart programming elements that enable programmes to be hosted within the Facebook environment. With over 845 million monthly active users, it is unrivalled in terms of popularity for website usage on the internet. According to ALLFacebook.com, 53% of these users play Facebook games. Because of this highly active userbase and a high percentage of users in “developed” countries, it represents a great opportunity to capture high numbers of monetised users. However, in the last year, the cost of acquiring users on Facebook has risen sharply. Adparlor estimates that purchasing installs can cost anywhere from $.50 – $3 per install. Thus, launching a game on Facebook often requires heavy marketing investment to gain a large number of users. It can be valuable to take a look at the early life cycle of a Social Game to determine whether or not putting your game on Facebook is likely to be a success on its own merit or a flash-in-the-pan whose growth is driven through less sustainable forms of user acquisition. Thanks to Facebook’s large user base, it’s very easy for a new Social Game to gain millions or even tens of millions of players within the first few weeks of its launch. When a game recruits huge numbers of followers some creators hail this as a success without realising the dip on the horizon. Recently, creators have seen Facebook games that harvest millions of players in the first month will lose most of them in the following few months. Gaming success is determined by users regularly returning to the game, showing high retention - which is what generates the revenue. Success is determined by recruiting not only an army of fans, but an army of fanatics. The appearance of high user numbers can be deceiving.

Mark Zuckerberg believes the success of Social Games on his Facebook platform is determined by two metrics: viral distribution and re-engagement. Facebook believes that the scales were tilted on the former and have now changed the rules of the game so that it is tilted to the latter, which they believe will lead to better games over the long-term.The challenge for social game creators is to create a concept that is appealing, mildly addictive and encourages cross-network buzz whilst not being too focussed on the type of sharing that bombards the newsfeeds and timelines of the other Facebook users. The question is; can Jay-Z succeed where others have publicly failed? It is no secret that gamers are the one of the most fickle and difficult audiences to please. Jay-Z isn’t the first Hip-Hop/Rap artist to try and enter the gaming space. Artists such as “Wu-Tang Clan” and 50-Cent have attempted to enter the gaming space and both found it testing to say the least. Most recently 50 Cent’s “Blood on the Sand” landed on both Playstation and X-box and received terrible reviews, most memorably the brilliant video review from the Guardian’s Charlie Brooker. Wu-Tang’s “Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style” also met mixed reviews when they entered the gaming arena on the Playstation in 1999. They, as many others have, fell victim to the difficulty of finding the balance of attracting both the casual gamer that spends the most money, and the hardcore gamer that may only purchase 3 or 4 titles per year but invest the most hours of gameplay. By falling right in the middle; they fail to engage the ‘casual’ gamers by being too complex, making it hard to interface, yet they fail to engage the ‘hard core’ gamers due to the fact that by this demographic, it would be considered feature-light. Jay-Z no doubt has some of the best Social Gaming experts around involved in the making of his Empire game. He’s going to need them - this venture could damage his reputation as easily as it could take him to the next level. Only time will tell, with his status, the whole world is watching.

Found Welcomes - Charlotte Bella to the Partnerships Team

Pete Newman — Fri, 04 May 2012 15:16:04 +0000

This week Found welcomes Charlotte Bella to the team, who joins under the role, Partnerships Process Manager. Charlotte has a wealth of experience in supporting and managing teams and has run her own events business.

The Found grill

Favourite quote: YOLO – only kidding. Erm, I have 2, can I have 2? I’m having 2.

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did.” Mark Twain

"How do you talk if you don't have a brain?" "I don't know, but don't you think a lot of people talk a lot without a brain?" Scarecrow - Wizard of Oz

What makes you laugh? Depends, if you see my laughing at my desk like a weirdo then it’s usually because I’ve been reading Suri’s Burn Book or seen a Tweet from Rich Fulcher. I have a silly and random sense of humour but I really dislike unintelligent humour, like when certain papers take the mickey out of peoples speech impediments, or if someone takes the mickey out of someone with a disability, it then becomes rude and offensive to me. What will you bring to the team? I’m hoping to bring structure and fun to the team, I’m very enthusiastic and social and I’m full of ideas, they might not all be great ideas but at least I have some. High Five or Handshake? I would high-five a friend if we had just done something really cool e.g. never, but as a formal greeting it would be a handshake or a one cheek kiss, I don’t get 2 cheek kisses, they make me feel awkward and there’s always potential for misreading the situation… Subway or Salad? Salad, Subway should only be consumed when you are drunk/hungover and there isn’t a McDonalds nearby. Pint or Prosecco? Prosecco, it’s my favourite drink! Cadburys or Galaxy? Cadburys, without a doubt, Galaxy doesn’t taste real. Where would you go right now if you could go anywhere? To Westeros. Describe your ideal Sunday. Yoga, baking cakes, reading in the sun after a long walk to a park and a Sunday Roast. Found is really happy to have Charlotte on board, she's a great addition to an already fantastic team!

The Relentless March of Google's Penguin

Keith Horwood — Tue, 15 May 2012 15:21:06 +0000

April was a busy month for SEO’s as Google continued with its relentless pace of change in 2012 with the release of the 'Penguin’ who has terrorised many sites over the last month. This has been on the cards for a while, especially after well-publicised de-indexing of blog Link networks, such as buildmyrank. It has been expected for a long time that sites will be penalised by Google more harshly if they do not comply with their famous webmaster guidelines, especially after many seemed to be getting away with it. Affiliate Niche Sites with Exact Match Domains at Risk? I have spoken to some digital marketers over the last few weeks that have niche affiliate sites that have had issues. They had problems where their site had an exact match domain matched to the target keyword. When I analysed the link profile, they had a high amount of exact match anchor text links pointing to domain. You cannot honestly call 'brown wedge shoes' a brand term, for example. They did have some authentic user interaction and social shares, but not enough to outweigh the spam signals caused by these links. It is now more difficult to get any success with affiliate mini-sites aimed at one product and keyword from now on. Many of these sites have a short lifespan anyway, as often demand tails off as the product reaches the end of its lifecycle. Even some sites that were helped by Panda were hurt by Penguin. The graph below shows a case where traffic for the exact match term for the domain has actually increased over the last few months. This could be a combination of a cleaner link profile or better content system than competitors in this area.

The Rise of Negative SEO There has been an increased buzz around negative SEO this year, but even more so in the last month. Rand Fishkin offered a negative SEO challenge on his own personal site and also Dan Thies was targeted, after Matt Cutts responded to his twitter message about link networks. The algorithm is not perfect and I am sure Google will continue to tweak Penguin over the coming year (much as they have done with Panda), but as mentioned in SEObook's excellent post, it’s probably wise not to annoy too many people! Future-Proofing - Can You Become Immune? Even for small businesses it is possible to make your brand stand out and make it stronger. It can be frustrating, especially in the early stages of building a brand. It can take some time to fight against overly spammy competitors, who do not provide any benefit to users – their only reason for existing to make a quick buck by selling links on their site to related businesses. These Google changes are a step in the right direction and will benefit those are prepared to go the distance and believe in their brand and business. Many of the larger, well-known brands I work with have seen a benefit from the latest changes, possibly as they are not so overly-optimised, and are established high street brands. If all of your link anchor text is ‘cheap fishing wire’ and your brand is ‘wirefish’, but that has no links, then that is an indicator that you will need to clean up your link profile. I still think it is possible with a great strategy for a small business to punch above their weight online. Algorithmic Tracking It is essential that major algorithmic changes are tracked, so that you can identify what affects this has had on your and your competitor’s site performance. SEOMoz has a fantastic list of algorithm changes which stretches all the way back to 2000 (When the toolbar was launched). I have recently used this to monitor changes using a piece of SEO kit called ISOgen. With this you see any major movement in indexation, links and keyword visibility after an update.

Below is a comparison of three brands, where two seem to have benefited from the latest algorithm changes and one which has been penalised. The yellow bar shows keyword visibility, which has grown over 80% on 30 relevant keywords for two brands. Both of these companies will have benefitted from exposure from TV advertising campaigns and strong links as they are larger and more established. Would negative SEO hurt them? I very much doubt it, but it's certainly possible. The third brand had a poor link profile and will need to clean this up as much as possible to recover. [caption id="attachment_4105" align="aligncenter" width="630" caption="Yellow = Keyword Visibility, Red = Links, blue = indexed pages"][/caption] The old methods that worked for many are no longer a sustainable business model. It is time to re-evaluate your online business, fix your technical issues, and develop a long term online strategy that will grow with your business.

Google is now great at releasing more information about changes, as I have mentioned in a previous post. For April, as well as Penguin, it seems there were many updates focusing on freshness quality, and making sure that low-quality fresh updates did not get through the net. It is now more important than ever to build your sites reputation, authority and trust in your niche with regular, high-quality content, utilising your brand’s core strengths.

Found at the Performance Marketing Awards 2012

Flo Bundy — Tue, 15 May 2012 17:11:16 +0000

There’s a definite buzz in the office this evening as those Founders lucky enough to be representing us at the Performance Marketing Awards this evening head out for their taxis to the fabulous Grovesnor House Hotel. For some of them it’s their first awards ceremony during their time here at Found and they are in for an absolute treat. Dashing tuxes for the men and beautiful dresses for the ladies, they really do brush up rather nicely! It’s always a fantastic evening and the Founders are sure to show our clients a great night. But I have to say the most exciting thing about this evening is that we are up for 5 awards! Not only is our very own Pete Newman up for the Hotshot Rising Star Award but we have been shortlisted for another 4 awards: Best Search Campaign for Flybe, Best in Finance Publisher for Post Office, Best in Retail Publisher for Maplin and Best in Travel & Leisure Publisher for Handpicked Hotels. These are all fantastic categories to be shortlisted in and I have my fingers crossed that all the hard work has paid off. Good luck to everyone who has been shortlisted tonight and I hope the heads aren’t too sore in the morning!

Found wins three at this years Performance Marketing Awards

Tina Judic — Wed, 16 May 2012 09:22:52 +0000

Found had another amazing night at the Performance Marketing Awards, scooping 3 awards for our work with Flybe and the Post Office, along with our very own Pete Newman taking home the Hotshot Rising Star award. We love attending these awards – they are so much fun, so well organised and so entertaining. The host, Miles Jupp, held the crowd with his deadpan mocking and the food was some of the best we’ve ever eaten at awards ceremonies! We beat a clutch of other high profile contenders to win Best Search Campaign for our ‘Magic Broad Match’ work for Flybe, Best in Finance Publisher for our Post Office partnership and received a high commendation for our work with Handpicked Hotels in the Travel & Leisure Publisher category. We were delighted to see Pete, who at just 25 was appointed Found’s Partnerships Director late last year, walk away with the highly-prestigious Hotshot Rising Star Award, beating an impressive collection of some of the other brightest and most innovative minds in the industry. As a team that lives and breathes Performance Marketing, the success of last night is a brilliant thumbs-up from the industry to all of the hard work and dedication from the Found team. We certainly made the most of the evening and had a cracking time, especially when the after show party truly kicked into action with Rockaoke – giving everyone a chance to be a pop star for 5 minutes. Brilliant, brilliant fun. Bring on next year!

Wordpress and Magento contact forms just got clever thanks to FoundLabs

dora moldovan — Thu, 24 May 2012 13:20:20 +0000

Ok so you’ve launched your website, the next step is to make your presence known on the web. Sometimes this means paying to be seen, so it's only natural you would like to find out what works and how people land on your site. At Found, as part of our FoundLabs project, we have created a Contact Form Analytics plugin so you will never have to wonder how people have found you again!

What is it?

Contact Form Analytics is a simple but clever piece of software that collects information from your Google Analytics’ cookies and adds it to the emails sent after forms are filled on your site. This provides insight into what brought visitors to your website, such as a PPC or mobile marketing campaign. As a pre-requisite, you need to have Google Analytics code installed on your website in order for the plugin to run.

Why use it?

If you’re using Google Analytics goal tracking to record contact form submissions, you can simply see how many leads each source generates. However, since Google doesn't collect identifiable information about users, you can't tell which leads came from which source. With this plugin, you can get a much better picture of where your most valuable leads are coming from, and therefore optimise your online marketing channels more effectively.

WP version - Contact Form 7 Analytics Plugin for WordPress

As the title suggests, this plugin is an addition to the popular Wordpress plugin Contact Form 7 .

How the plugin works

I love the flexibility of the CF7 plugin and the fact that it comes with an API. This made it possible to implement an elegant solution for our Analytics addition in the form of a [found] shortcode to your contact form builder (by using the hooks made available by CF7). By using the shortcode, key information from Google Analytics will be included in the email that the form submission generates. The implementation is seamless - users used to using CF7 shortcodes to generate their form fields will find the [found] shortcode familiar and easy to use.

How to install it

Download and extract Contact Form 7 Analytics from Found zip file to the plugins folder.
Verify that you see the contact-form-7-found folder inside the plugins folder.
Activate it through the plugin management screen.
A new shortcode([found]) will be available in the Contact Form 7 builder interface.
Add the shortcode to your form and to the emails you set up for your site.

The Magento Extension - Contact Form Analytics for Magneto

Recognising that traffic source and PPC insight are very valuable to merchants, a version of the plugin for the most popular ecommerce platform seemed like the next logical step. The Magento extension simply extends the contact form functionality and appends the analytics code to the email message. The analytics code is generated by the module's model, which makes it flexible in the sense that it can be called anywhere in the application. Installation is easy via Magento Connect and it only requires the plugin to be activated - no other configuration required.

Source field values explained:

Empty (and all other fields empty) - the visitor has disabled cookies or GA code is not installed
Direct - the visitor has come directly to your site by either using a bookmark or they remembered your URL. They did use a search engine or used a link via another referrer.
Google - the user has used Google's search engine to land on your site. If the medium value is PPC then the user clicked on a premium ad. If the medium value is organic then they clicked on a link of one of the organic listings.
Another website's name (Ex: 'facebook') - the visitor has landed on your site by clicking a link on another website.

Below are a few examples:

Roadmap - what is next step for the plugins?

As the EU cookie law implementation deadline is approaching we are looking into alternatives to using cookies, so we keep providing the same useful information to the site owners, even if their visitors decide not to accept cookies. For the Magento version, we're looking into incorporating Analytics into the main conversion point of the site - order confirmations. We hope you find the plugins useful and enjoy the insight it provides. We would love to hear your feedback so please let us know about your experience or if you come across any issues. As a FoundLabs project, the plugin follows the ethos of our labs department - create software that is helpful and relevant for our business, test it, use it and then open source it.

Found Welcomes: Giovanni Di Cosmo

Nasreen Cullen — Fri, 18 May 2012 16:37:16 +0000

This week Found are pleased to introduce Giovanni Di Cosmo who joins the Account Management team as Account Executive. Gio has a wealth of PPC knowledge under his belt and has moved all the way from Manchester to join the team!

The Found Grill

What’s your background? English and French lit graduate (though I always struggled to finish reading the books), with experience in Affiliate marketing and running PPC campaigns. First exposed to the world of Online with MyVoucherCodes.co.uk, as their French go-to for CodesPromotion.fr. I don’t have any French in my blood, however, as far as I know. What will you bring to the team? A bad laugh, stories of my mishaps and misadventures from the preceding weekend, and maybe the odd bit of “special dietary needs” baking. What are you looking forward to the most? Working with a load of switched-on and motivated marketers. I’m the first to admit that I do my best work when inspired by those around me. What’s your super power? Staying out from Friday night until Monday morning with only a few strategic Americanos to power me through. Favourite Food? Haribo Maoam Favourite Tipple? I don’t drink, so something along the lines of a Virgin Mojito! Describe your ideal Sunday… Long lie-in followed by a gym sesh and a nice lunch, before joining an afternoon after party. Where would you go if you had a time machine? Wherever I’ll be in 50 years’ time. I want to see how worse for the wear I’ll look! What’s your karaoke song? Flashdance, “What a Feeling”. What is the best thing since sliced bread? Gluten-free sliced bread!

CSS3 3D Transforms – The future of User experience?

Dean McDonagh — Wed, 30 May 2012 09:36:09 +0000

Back in 2009 an extension to CSS was pushed forward from the WebKit development team. Using CSS it became possible to display and transform web elements three-dimensionally. This extension was appropriately called 3D Transforms. At the time of its release, browser compatibility for this technology was very limited, but great advancements have been made since. Starting with compatibility in only Safari for Mac and iOS, support followed for Chrome in August 2010 and from early this year compatibility in Firefox 10, which was released in January 2012. Like with a number of their other technologies Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is slightly behind, being the last of the most popular browsers to incorporate CSS3 3D Transforms. Don’t be fooled by how shiny and contemporary IE9 is portrayed in its recent TV ads, it still isn’t CSS3 3D Transforms compatible. This being said IE10 aims to be compatible and can be tested by downloading preview releases here. Note: To view the examples below you will need to have a web browser which supports CSS 3D Transforms. That is currently Safari, Chrome, Firefox 10 and IE10 Platform Preview.

User Experience

If you look about the web you can find many examples of 3D transforms. Many of these trigger into action as a result of user input, usually a click or mouse over. For example, below is a familiar Call-to-action button similar to those found on millions of websites. However, in this example I've made the button has the ability to transform three-dimensionally, but will only initiate this function once a user’s mouse hovers over it. This introduction of an animation can be used as an added way of drawing attention to a button and its function as the user passes over it whilst scanning the page. In my opinion for the best results this feature could work alongside the common use of bright colourful buttons with large text to draw the user’s eye and should not be seen as a replacement for these standard buttons.

In the case that the trigger for these to function is hovering over the CTA, what does this mean for smart phone and tablet users? As we know, touch screen users do not have the ability to hover like a mouse user can. First thoughts are that this experience would be missed. However, due to the way this example has been written, users on a tablet such as an iPad can touch the button, see the animation and then touch again to be taken through to the URL destination. This is one way of handling the missing hover function on a tablet; you can find other examples on the web.

3D Transform – Future implementation

Aside from using CSS 3D Transform to improve your click through rate, it can be used to aid animated design. In recent years we have seen a great rise in the number of info-graphics due to their ability to offload and breakdown data in a neat and visually pleasing way. As an extension to info-graphics we are now starting to see animated info-graphics especially since the recent release of HTML5 i.e Plat4M. The use of beautiful design with dynamically updated data/content is what I think contemporary web design is all about. I definitely foresee the use of CSS3 Transform somewhere in that mix. Below is an example of using 3D Transform to create a 3D Cube. It has been created with smart phones and tablets in mind. Use your mouse, finger or directional keys to control its movement. Note: This works best in Safari and Chrome. It works in Firefox 10 but has problems with displaying the correct perspective. (You may need to click this image to start the animation)

Conclusion

CSS3 3D Transforms is exciting and future implementations of it have great potential. Could we see a more animated web in the years to come? I certainly think so, however, it is still at a stage where many people may not be able to enjoy the experience unless running the latest version of their web browser. This definitely should be kept in mind when designing an element utilizing this functionality so as not to exclude lots of people from viewing your 3d creations. As a web designer of course I love beautiful designs, but when designs animate in order to help their users make a decision and improve and add enjoyment to their experience at the same time, then of that I am a real fan. Perhaps an even bigger advocate when this type of animation is three dimensional.

Found Welcomes: Nikhil Sharma to the SEO Team

Keith Horwood — Thu, 31 May 2012 16:55:53 +0000

We are pleased to announce that Nikhil Sharma has joined the team this week as an SEO & Social Intern. He will be with us for 3 months and will learn the ins and outs of SEO & Social media by doing some hands-on work. Nikhil has Just finished studying a Computing and Information systems degree, and is a keen blogger and writer. We have asked Nikhil some questions below to get to know him better: What Interests You Most About SEO? How it can be done and how to keep up with Google updating algorithms. What will you bring to the team? Hopefully a hard-working team member and some knowledge about Underground Hip-Hop, as well as any random facts I come up with. Red Sauce, Brown Sauce or no Sauce at all? Red Sauce What is your favourite sport to watch or play? Basketball Friday Burger or Friday Gym? Friday Gym. Claim to Fame? I was featured on a BBC World Service podcast – for Chinese students learning English. Also been able to Interview some Hip-Hop heavyweights for my blog. Where would you go if you had a time machine? Back to my first year of Uni. Describe Your Ideal Sunday. Going to a venue and hearing some undiscovered music. Do you have a trademark party trick? Unfortunately no Favourite Tipple? Kopparberg Pear Cider Favourite Karaoke Song? “She’s Fresh” – Kool and the Gang. What is Your Hidden Talent? I'm a good writer. Nikhil also had this to say, "What excites about working with Found is to work with a motivated and enthusiastic team with the chance to enhance and expand my SEO skills."

Are you a data-hater or an infographic freak?

Kristina Grineva — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 12:30:35 +0000

I don't know about you, but I've had a recent budding obsession with all things 'Infographic'. It floats my boat that even some of the more mundane facts and topics can become Infographic-tastic. If this phenomenon has passed you by and you are wondering, “What is this Infographic thing she is talking about?”- Here is a definition you will find on Wikipedia:

Information graphics or infographics are graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge. These graphics present complex information quickly and clearly, such as in signs, maps, journalism, technical writing, and education. With an information graphic, computer scientists, mathematicians, and statisticians develop and communicate concepts using a single symbol to process information.

You see…you did probably already know as they've been around for a while. They are the things that the news, newspapers and magazines do so well, with teams of data scientists working through reams of data. You could say that an Infographic in a primitive form is what you would draw on a back of a napkin to explain to someone numbers, technical titbits and to make comparisons. Here is an ‘Infographic of Infographics’ (try saying this fast - 5 times in a row…!) which looks at some visual devices, elements and trends in today’s infographics: The Guardian has been leading the way with their ‘DATABLOG’, which takes things further by making Inforgraphics interactive. One example that updated in real-time was the Greek election results map, which was being updated as more results were coming in by the minute. You can also download the data used in their Infographic – nifty! With recent developments in User Experience like CSS 3D, which transforms web elements into cool, 3D graphics, the possibilities for the future are exciting. It’s a win-win for businesses and customers and makes the web much more interesting and interactive than a text-only experience can provide. Being straight to the point, detailed, and insightful means that it is easier to grasp what the statistics really mean. You can’t deny that web users with their diminishing attention spans will be drawn to these visually pleasing, cleanly presented, factually interesting, relevant and well displayed information nuggets. All of this also has the added benefit that people love to share these data visualisations using social media. Businesses can keep things topical on their websites, in social media or on their blog, by producing well-timed infographics that are far more likely to be shared and means more people visiting the site, sharing important information, as well as more new visitors! I hope this has whet your appetite and, of course, in celebration of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee last weekend let me leave you with a lovely Infographic created for Dartington Crystal.

Infographic Resources: If you want to have a go yourself here are a couple of sites that will keep you entertained for hours and some other useful resources: http://www.infogr.am/ http://www.tiki-toki.com/ Google public data – lets you easily take public data and transform it into an Infographic The New York Times Visualization Lab – allows readers to create compelling interactive charts, graphs, maps etc…from data made available by Times editors. Uses technology from I.B.M research called Many Eyes, which has been specifically design for The New York Times. Can't get enough? Feast your eyes on these: http://mashable.com/follow/topics/infographics/ http://pinterest.com/search/?q=infographics https://pinterest.com/1stwebdesigner/top-social-media-infographics-in-2012/ http://dailyinfographic.com/ - for your daily fix

The Way the Cookie Crumbled – No Need for Site Owners to Grumble?

Luke Townsend — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 13:59:27 +0000

The Way the Cookie Crumbles On a weekend when most of the UK was scorching hot without a cloud in the sky, the EU cookie law deadline came and passed. The BBC reported it on the radio in the morning and for many the park picnic had to wait. I found myself surfing around different publisher websites reading pretty much the same sentence over and over again in many different shape and size boxes. On the eve of the regulation coming in to force a dramatic late twist left most web site owners able to sleep easy. With not quite as much drama as a Champions League final penalty shoot-out, but as far as EU cookie law goes pretty exciting stuff, the ICO made a late amendment to its guidelines. Implied consent was now in the ICO's own words ‘certainly a valid form of consent’ which definitely came as a relief to many. Some of the big website owners had shown their hand already, BT.com being a good example, and many people had hoped that this style of implied consent solution would be enough. Our own testing of an implied consent solution found it to be far less damaging to analytics and tracking than the prior consent solutions we also tested. The problems with 'prior consent' cookie solutions The above graphs show three different prior consent solutions being tested. The green showing the number of consents, the red the number of those not wanting cookies, and the orange is those that did not get drawn into a decision at all. We trialled three styles, each with the same messaging, a pop up style, a header drop down style and a footer drop up style, the bottom graph showing the total actions across all three styles. As you can see orange (no decision) dominates the above pie charts. The left hand pie refers to the pop-up style notification, which greyed the site behind whilst it was shown and had no obvious way to dismiss it. Almost forcing a yes or no on allowing cookies. With this style we obtained a better rate of engagement but even here users found a way to by-pass making a decision (in this case clicking outside the window). Different messaging didn't make a very noticeable difference, certainly not a big enough one to give us a prior consent solution we could realistically run with. Don't make me make a decision The bottom line seemed to be that website users, regardless of how you presented the information to them, overwhelmingly chose to avoid making any choice on cookies. They instead preferred to carry on regardless, closing the box or where that wasn't possible continuing, despite their experience being impaired by a cookie information panel. This lack of interaction from the user really surprised me. We could see from analytics that these same group of users were clearly capable of operating sophisticated filter panels when shopping, or able to navigate to the least accessible parts of a website if it contained the content they were after. My own theory is that this is a hang up from the days of dodgy pop up windows that opened a dozen more if you tried click to close them. It would certainly be interesting to compare the data we have gathered against data from a huge, well known and publicly trusted site to see if this decision making apathy is connected to brand trust. ICO Changes it's stance on 'Implied Consent' This reluctance from users to make a decision either way on cookies and lack of interest to 'find out more' meant that the 'prior consent' solutions, that until the eve of the deadline seemed the only truly compliant ones, were about to become a necessity. This really scared the pants off anyone interested in analytics data or tracking their user behaviour. Digital marketers, sites using behavioural re-targeting and everyone with a Facebook or Twitter counter on their page was clearly in breach of the regulations without obtaining 'prior consent' to drop the relevant cookies. With 'prior consent' we were looking at losing 9 out of 10 cookies, and frustratingly not because people were clicking NO but because they weren't making any choice at all! The complications didn't stop there. To implement any solution that offered the user a 'I want these cookies but not those cookies' choice was a technically difficult one, especially with some website frameworks and CMS solutions. Even once past that, what results is information and decision overload. The audience is not engaged, they are frustrated, and just want to get on with their shopping. Thus creating another reason for them to leave the site without a making a purchase. It seemed that at the final hour the ICO saw some sense and realised what the potential damage was to a group fruitful and growing industries. 'Implied consent' is now an option and although it still comes with it's technical challenges, is a solution that hopefully strikes the right balance between educating web site users about cookies and allowing marketers to continue to do the good work they do. A good way to teach people about cookies? In conclusion it's been a bit of a roller coaster. Most of us thought the regulations were OTT and ignored them for a while, waiting for clarification or someone else to lead the way with a clever solution. Then most of us scrambled around at the last minute making sure that we were as compliant as we could be. Testing various solutions out certainly gave me a real insight into how difficult prior consent would've been to achieve without losing almost all visibility on tools like Google Analytics. It has however left me wondering if the cookie education piece that is clearly needed here should be the responsibility of the smaller individual website owners, especially as the same message will be repeated time and time again over hundreds and hundreds of sites. Should there not be some responsibility on the the big guys who have the biggest audiences, not to mention some of the much more intrusive cookies, to do their bit to educate about cookies? A well positioned message from Facebook, Apple, Google, Microsoft or even Mozilla would have the reach and perhaps more importantly the authority that the smaller publisher can only dream of. Cookie Monster image courtesy of the excellent ssoosay http://www.flickr.com/photos/ssoosay/

Found Welcomes: Raluca Costin to the SEO Team

Keith Horwood — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 09:13:23 +0000

This week we welcome another addition to the Found ranks, Raluca Costin. Raluca has just moved from Nottingham to join Found in the role of Senior SEO Executive. As a passionate SEO'er she tells us she naturally aspires to become Matt Cutt's best friend. Raluca has a natural flair for foreign languages and proven SEO skills. Raluca has most recently worked for an international Internet marketing company where she was head of the search engine optimization department, implementing strategies in a multitude of foreign languages.

The Found Grill

What’s your background? I was initially a foreign languages graduate and worked as a certified translator and interpreter until I discovered the world of SEO and completely fell in love with it! I then returned to university to study for a Master's Degree in IT and international management, during that time I also taught myself SEO. Who was to know that a couple of years later I would be heading the SEO department of an international online marketing agency! What would you name the next Google update? Koala - not a scary update, but will turn things 'upside-down'. What will you bring to the team? I'm a good team player with huge ambition and passion for SEO and PPC. Favourite Quote? "Wasting all my time with stupid things that only get me down" - Pulp What makes you laugh? Normally a good joke :) High Five or Handshake? Handshake. Subway or Salad? Salad. Pint or Prosecco? Definitely Prosecco. What’s your karaoke song? I can't sing a note so karaoke is something I have to avoid. Music classes in school brings back horrible memories! Cadburys or Galaxy? Lindt! Where would you go if you had a time machine? Garden of Eden. Describe your ideal Sunday. Coffee and lunch on a sunny terrace... in France! What are you looking forward to the most at Found? Working on some fabulous client accounts, learning from experts and a massage session! :)

Found shortlisted for Best Use of Affiliate Marketing at the 2012 NMA Awards.

Nasreen Cullen — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 09:41:01 +0000

We’re proud of the work we do here at Found and even prouder when it’s recognised outside of the company by leading people in the industry. We’re therefore thrilled to announce our being shortlisted for Best Use of Affiliate Marketing for our work with Warner Leisure Hotels at the NMA Awards this year. Found have been working with Warner Leisure Hotels since 2009 when we joined their affiliate programme in order to provide brand protection in the search space. Working closely with the team at Warner, we developed a site that enabled users to reach Warner Leisure Hotels official site via a landing page that offered additional information around locations and offers. It became apparent in late summer 2011 that there was now a steady increase in traffic visiting our site from mobile devices. Already looking at ways to expand activity and build out the site, it was obvious that the next step should be to approach how we presented the site to users viewing on mobiles or tablets. The decision to do this fell nicely in line with a site refresh from Warner allowing us to revamp our site and launch a new responsive design site providing users across a broad range of devices and browsers, a single source of content. Since launch, overall click-through rate has risen by 5% with a rise in mobile and tablet CTR of over 20%!! Not only are we looking forward to seeing how these numbers will grow over the coming months, we are also looking forward to the results! Keep your fingers and toes crossed for us to win this award!

Beat the Keyword Blues with Found’s Ultimate Keyword Concatenation Tool

Ciaran Brady — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 12:26:26 +0000

The Ultimate PPC Keyword Concatenation Tool is the latest time-saving tool to find its way out of Found Labs, helping you to construct large lists of keywords with ease. While there is a tendency for larger agencies to make use of fully-automated solutions when generating keywords, we here at Found find that keyword quality suffers when people are left out of the loop, and as such we generate a large proportion of our keywords manually based on experience and intuition. Having said all that, keywording still happens to be a time-consuming and often tedious business, so we’re not above using the odd tool to help us knock out those lists. Over the years we have worked with various free tools found lurking in dark corners of the internet, and although many of them were useful none of them were perfect. With that in mind we decided to develop a tool of our own, and after much labouring and head-scratching by our boffin's we can now present to you the Ultimate Keyword Concatenation Tool. How does the PPC Keyword Tool work? Let’s assume that you are looking to construct a list of brand-specific generic keywords for cameras. You have a list of camera brands, a list of camera types, and a list of adjectives. By entering each list into a column of the tool you are able to create keywords based on all the various ways these keywords can be linked together, and output them in every match-type you may be interested in. In addition to this, the tool offers the following functionality:

Create Exact, Phrase, Broad, Modified Broad, and Negative match-types from a single list of keywords
Capitalise all first letters in a list of keywords for use in Keyword Insertion ad types
Work with up to four lists of keywords, adjectives, or other descriptive phrases, allowing you to create large lists of relevant long-tail keywords from a base set of generic keywords
Fully control the order and extent of the output permutations
Quickly obtain every possible permutation and match-type with a “Super Concatenate” button
Clean up messy keyword lists by automatically removing duplicates, blank line or special characters
Bulk-edit your keyword lists with either a prefix or suffix
Output your final list of keywords in two different formats, allowing you to instantly paste them into a number of other tools such as Adwords Editor
Remove any keywords over 25 characters in length, allowing you to create lists where every keyword will be eligible to show in a Keyword Insertion ad type

What benefit will this tool have on my campaigns? This tool will allow you to construct large numbers of keywords to cover a wide range of products or services on your client’s site in a very short amount of time, freeing you up to spend more time with the more important aspects of PPC management. Furthermore it offers a versatility of control that enables it to work in different ways for different circumstances, which should give you full confidence in the quality and relevance of the keywords being produced. The cornerstone of any good PPC campaign is its keywords, and time spent on their creation is time well spent. Found’s Keyword Concatenation Tool should help you to make the most of that time.

Whose Search Data is it Anyway? – Firefox to encrypt referring search strings

Philip Gamble — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 15:40:40 +0000

One of the key reporting metrics returned by website analytics programs such as Google Analytics and Comscore is referral data.

What is Referral Data?

Referral data enables website owners and marketers to determine how traffic found their site. Combined with goal or ecommerce tracking this data can be used to report upon the success of particular marketing campaigns. Most websites will have 3 main visitor sources – search, referral and direct traffic. Search traffic encompasses all clicks from the results pages of a search engine, be the click on an organic or paid search listing. Referral traffic is a click from another website, for example a blog or social media platform, whilst direct traffic accounts for visitors who have typed your URL directly into their address bar. The exact proportions of traffic from each source will differ on a site-by-site basis but a healthy strategy should see visitors, and conversions, coming from across these different segments. [caption id="attachment_4679" align="aligncenter" width="403" caption="Most websites will see a mix of traffic sources. The site above gets most of its traffic from searches."][/caption] Analytics packages can drill down into this data to provide more details about how people found particular pages on your site. For search traffic the most important piece of data is the search query or “keyword” which was entered into a search engine before your listing was clicked. This data is presented in an aggregated format and on its own is not personally identifiable in most cases. Webmasters can use this data to help establish the kind of content people are looking for and the questions visitors have relating to their site or products which can be used to help improve site content.

Who else has referral data?

It isn’t just the websites you click through to that get to discover how you, and the rest of the Internet, came to access them. Numerous other organisations can see the websites you visit and how you found them. Search Engines The large search engines monitor every search you make and result you click in order to use this data to help improve their rankings and customise the results and advertisements you see. Who could forget the embarrassing release of AOL search data! [caption id="attachment_4678" align="aligncenter" width="568" caption="If you quickly return to a Google results page after clicking a listing Google will ask you if you want to block that site from showing in your search results."][/caption] Browsers The web browser you are using to read this very blog post may very well be passing information on to its creator about how you found this article. For many this was brought to attention when Google accused Microsoft’s Bing of copying its search results following a honeypot operation. Users had granted permission for Microsoft to use their clickstream data by ticking a box which they were told would “help Microsoft improve your online experience”. Indeed it isn’t just search activity that browsers are able to access. 2% of all text entered into Chrome’s Omnibox is logged by Google if you have set the engine as the default search results provide, regardless of whether or not you actually press enter to trigger the search results page. Browser Plugins Browser plugins and addons know which pages you visit – how else would plugins such as Google Toolbar be able to show you page specific information as you browse the web! Services such as Alexa make use of such toolbars to generate their traffic rank statistics. It’s easy to extract search queries from URLs visited. http://www.google.co.uk/search?sugexp=chrome,mod=16&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=found http://www.bing.com/search?q=found&go=&qs=n&form=QBLH&filt=all&pq=found&sc=8-5&sp=-1&sk= Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) ISP’s take a record of every webpage you visit and have, in the past, sold this data to advertising providers such as Phorm. Web statistics companies such as Hitwise use such data to build up their click-stream and competitive research platform. The Government now wants to be able to get its hands on more of this data from ISPs too!

Google Switch to HTTPs

In October last year Google implemented a change to “make search more secure”. From this date users who performed a search whilst logged into a Google account would have their search query encrypted over the HTTPS protocol. Whilst the user experience has remained pretty much the same when searching, except that queries are directed through https://www.google.com instead of http://www.google.com, the owners of visited search results are no longer able to obtain information on the keyword which was searched. Very quickly a new keyword entered the Analytics reports of webmasters – ‘not provided’. As the number of registered Google accounts has increased, helped no doubt by the Google+ social network, the proportion of searches returning ‘not provided’ as the referring keyword have increased. At the start of March 2012 Google defaulted to encrypted search for logged in users searching on localised versions of their site as well, which for UK-based sites had a far more significant effect on reporting than the initial .com introduction. Though Google is still returning this keyword data if you pay them for the privilege of the click through Adwords!

Proportion of Searches Effected

Prior to roll-out Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan reported Google’s Matt Cutts as saying that only “single-digit percentages” of searches would be affected by (not provided). We have seen the proportions of organic Google traffic affected by the change vary significantly across sites and industries with many in the SEO community believing that single-digit percentages have been exceeded. Data from surveys by SEOmoz, Hubspot and Search Engine Land in November of last year after the initial Google.com roll out of HTTPs all reported that around 12% of organic search referrals were then showing alongside (not provided). Three months after the expanded March roll-out we’re generally seeing (not provided) account for around 7-8% of Google organic referrals across our client sites, increasing to 11-12% for sites which have a more “techy” theme. SEO and online marketing industry sites have been far more noticeably affected given that their readership are more likely than the average web user to be using their own personal Google accounts when searching. Towards the end of April SEOmoz’s Casey Henry tweeted that the SEO software company was seeing over 50% (not provided) traffic! For sites which receive traffic from a wide spread of keywords the total of all these (not provided) visits can easily push the term to the top referring keyword for a website. [caption id="attachment_5021" align="aligncenter" width="586" caption="The rise of (not provided)"][/caption]

Firefox to Block Search Referral Data – Other Browsers to Follow?

Whatever the percentage of ‘not provided’ traffic you are seeing in your analytics package – the number is set to increase significantly soon. The leaking of search keyword data from SERPs to visited sites was reported to Firefox as a “bug” back in February 2011 by privacy researcher Christopher Soghoian. The browser creator, Mozilla, has implemented a fix which will make up one of the main additions to Firefox 14. This version of Firefox, dubbed Aurora, will by default perform Google searches over the HTTPs protocol – so search query strings will show as ‘not provided’. Aurora moved in to beta on June 5^thand according to the Firefox release calendar will be pushed out on full release on 17^th July. With Firefox browser share currently at about 25% worldwide (closer to 20% in the UK) the impact of this switch will likely be greater than the initial switch for logged in users. The other major browsers may soon be following Firefox’s lead in preventing keyword data reaching your analytics account. The BBC reported that Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 10 “will be the first version of the browser with ‘do not track’” turned on by default”. The remaining popular browser, Google’s Chrome, is of course owned by the very people who last year started to flicked the switch for their logged in users to HTTPs. As is the case with the recent EU Cookie directive the debate of usability versus end-use privacy has once again started!

You can Now ‘Disavow' Links in Bing – But is it worth it?

Keith Horwood — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 16:28:31 +0000

Since the Google Penguin update a lot has been written about negative SEO, with some high profile cases of sites being penalised due to an influx of links from questionable sources with overly-optimised anchor text. Google alerted any webmasters affected by the Penguin update via a webmaster tools notification. There has been a clamour for a way to be able to devalue potentially harmful links, due to the fact that you cannot really control who links to you. What can be done to combat Negative SEO? Google has mentioned that the link profile could be cleaned up, with poor quality links being removed. There is an issue here that a company could produce poor quality links to harm a competitor. This has meant that many webmasters wanted to be able to ‘Disavow Links’ that could have been built by a negative SEO team. Of course the best method to combat negative SEO is to build a trustworthy online brand that can ride the storm of any such links having as major effect. Not always easy for many small businesses in competitive niches that rely on Google rankings, and an SEO may need to act fast for a client. Using Bing’s Disavow Tool This week, Bing released a ‘Disavow Links’ tool within Bing webmaster tools. With this tool you can submit URL's that look like they are from spam or low quality sites. By disavowing the links, Bing should then ignore any penalties but be aware, improper use could also disable links that pass link equity. This list of removed links can also be exported and is unlimited in size. Here is a screenshot of where this new tool is featured. Unfortunately, I cannot see this feature in my account yet.

Can negative SEO affect rankings in Bing? Bing do not outline penalisation for harmful links in the same way as Google, but reserve the right to penalise in certain cases. Bing's terms and conditions are investigated fully on ‘searchengineland’. One thing they will get is some useful data. If a domain keeps getting disavowed then it could certainly make them aware of the fact that the site is not a trusted source. I am not sure if it is worth spending too much time disavowing links on Bing, not unless your high volume number 1 positions have been hit hard! There may be a case where you can use Bing as a Disavow test before trying to do so in Google, when they release a similar tool. Matt Cutt's has stated before that they will be working on a tool that provides the same functionality. What is a Poor Quality Link? Poor quality links are those that violate Google’s webmaster terms and conditions. If Google have an issue with a site's links they can take action against it, such as decreasing rankings or removing the site from its index altogether. These are paid links, link schemes and links from poor quality auto-generated content. There might be a case of people who are not experts in link analysis will use this tool too harshly. It is certainly possible to get carried away and actually remove links that are passing value. Bing itself has declared that there will not be a significant change in rankings from using the disavow tool, but I am sure it would be interesting to experiment by removing some powerful, legitimate links (I wouild suggest doing this on an unused site!). Any search engine will not show what links are adding value or damaging your profile, so you would really need to monitor this scientifically to really know the full extent of the issues your site has, and what links could be a problem. Will Google Follow Suit and Introduce a Similar Feature? The fact remains that Penguin was a Google algorithm update, not a Bing update. Judging by the incorporation of this feature it makes sense to assume there can also be a penalty on Bing to have large numbers of unnatural links. I am sure a lot of sites would not be relying on Bing traffic like they would be with Google – so many will be waiting for a similar tool in Google Webmaster Tools. Since the Penguin update many webmasters will have been cleaning their link profile, but there will be quite a few links they were unable to remove. Sometimes Bing is forgotten, which is down to the colossal size of Google's search share and clever marketing. The recent updates and changes to Bing’s Webmaster Center have certainly been grabbing many SEO’s attention and assisting webmasters with useful tools. It seems likely that Google may follow suit and release a disavow tool fairly soon, and I am sure there will be many more changes to webmaster tools to come this year. At the moment I am sure Google are more concerned with testing video on Google Glass by Skydiving Live to their I/O developer conference. Check out the video of this mind blowing PR Stunt - it is certainly worth your time more than using the disavow tool on Bing.

A4U Expo Europe: Performance Marketing, Sun and Cocktails in Barcelona

Strahil Anguelov — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 15:18:57 +0000

The sun was shining and the cocktails were flowing at this year’s A4U expo in Barcelona. With a fantastic mix of publishers, merchants and networks present, it was a great opportunity to take the industries pulse and catch-up with all the new and exciting developments. Whilst we are drenched in the spiralling economic situation in Europe, everyone at the event was surprisingly very interested in expanding their activities throughout the continent. The event was packed with insightful presentations and in-depth discussions on a variety of topics, ranging from how to incentivise social-commerce to the differences in mobile purchase behaviours across Europe –insightful proprietary research presented by Urban Gillstrom on behalf of TradeDoubler. One of my favourite talks was “Tapping into Advertiser Budgets”, where Emilie Mouquot (cheapflights.com) made some interesting points about how affiliates can approach advertisers in order to secure additional budgets. It seems that while affiliate activity is, by nature, cost of sale activity, most merchants still view it as a fixed cost, which needs to be planned out in advance. It’s up to the affiliates to put across a business case for securing a chunk of that. Found were delighted to also be invited to present, with Pete Newman taking to the stage on the topic of Facebook-commerce affiliations, together with Andrew Sittermann (choosewithme.com). Pete was also part of a panel discussion on the marriage between merchants, networks and affiliates. Although I felt some of the talks did not go into enough depth, or tap into the vast pool of knowledge available, one thing is for sure, there was a high calibre of individuals and companies in attendance. I would however like to see a reduction in the number of talks and possibly more focus on highly relevant topics, with much deeper analysis. It is clear that affiliates are looking for growth further afield with Brazil, Argentina and the Far East being the hot topics of the week. This clearly illustrates the quality and the variety of publishers and networks at the event and how the focus remains firmly on driving growth wherever the opportunities may be. Perhaps next year’s A4Uexpo will be in Shanghai? Two tickets please!

5 Great Uses of the IF Formula in Excel (you may not know about)

Jamie Brady — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 13:00:58 +0000

Hello, and welcome to my second post in this series, where I dare to stand up against some of the most common Excel challenges we face within this industry, and defeat them head-on with cold, hard, uncompromising logic. You may be well versed in Excel and know much of the below already, but have a look through as I’ll be touching on a number of additional hints and tips along the way as well..

I’ve also attached a worksheet to this post for you to see and work with the examples themselves.

In my previous post I looked at some top tips to save you time in Excel, ranging from data manipulation, to cell formatting and general navigation. In this post I look to tackle the most common uses of the IF statement.

What IF...?

Getting acquainted with the many IF statements will start to open up a whole range of new opportunities for you when you’re looking to analyse and manipulate data. It can be used to quickly fetch results based around given criteria, to sort and catalogue data, or be used in conjunction with other formulas for some very inventive and powerful operations.

The main essence of the statement is to return a result when meeting certain criteria. So for example..

- Return the sum of all clicks IF the month is March

- Return the phrase “Out of Stock” IF the stock level field = 0

- Lookup an associated cost IF a cell contains the word “forecast”

Excel will tell you that the basic IF statement follows this format:

Below I’ve applied this to some very simple statements:

=IF(A1=”March”,1,0)

If the value in cell A1 is equal to “March”, then return a 1, and if it isn’t then return a 0.

=IF(A1>10000,”high spend”,”low spend”)

If the number in cell A1 is greater than £10,000, return “high spend”, and if it isn’t then return “low spend”

Of course you can return more sophisticated results than a simple number or text string if the criteria is met, but we’ll get into those later. Different numerical operators can also be used well in these types of statement. Equal to, Greater than, less than, greater than or equal to etc. can all be used to good effect.

So now the formula is laid down, let’s get into some of these great uses...!

1. Using SumIF, CountIF, and AverageIF

Some of the most common Excel IF formulas allow you to sum, count and average data based on set criteria. To demonstrate these I’ve put together a simple affiliate commission report below:

With these particular formulas you first supply the range that you wish to lookup, the criteria that you wish to match in this range, and then finally supply the associated result.

=SUMIF(B2:14,”Merchant 1”,D2:D14)

If column B contains the value “Merchant 1”, return a sum of column D (commission) for that merchant.

=AVERAGEIF(B2:14,”Merchant 1”,D2:D14)

If column B contains the value “Merchant 1”, return an average of column D (commission) for that merchant.

=COUNTIF(B2:14,”Merchant 1”)

If column B contains the value “Merchant 1”, return a count of the number of times it appears.

You won’t always want to apply a text string as the lookup value. In the example below, I wanted to summarise total commission by day and display it in a nice (new) table. You can see I’m looking up the previous data as before, but in this instance I’m summing where the date is equal to the cell next to the formula (F2).

Best Used: When you want to summarise data from a large table, and display it separately.

2. Using SumIFs, CountIFs, and AverageIFs

What’s that? You want to do the same thing but with multiple criteria? Well worry not, for the ‘Ifs’ formulas allow you to do just that. Keeping with the previous example, I've decided to break my daily commission out even further, and display it by merchant as well. This will give me a more granular overview of performance over time. I've adjusted my table so that merchants stretch across the top, with dates going down the side. I've also kept both the date format and merchant names exactly the same as in the commission report, so that I can refer to them by cell reference.

These are slightly different to the previous formulas, as you define the result first, and then supply multiple conditions afterwards..

=SUMIFS(D2:D14,A2:A14,F4,B2:B14,G3)

Sum the commission column (D2:D14) where the date column (A2:A14) is equal to the date in my summary table (F4) and the merchant column (B2:B14) is equal to the merchant in my summary table (G3).

It’s worth noting at this stage that my formula makes use of $ symbols as well. These lock cells in place, and stop them updating when you move your formula across. For instance, without $ symbols, my D:D reference would suddenly change to E:E if I moved the formula across one.

You can place $ symbols before both the letter and the number in a cell reference to lock each part individually. Doing it on both will lock the cell, column or row absolutely. If you look at the formula in the table below, you can see I’ve locked the commission table lookups absolutely, but allowed a bit of flexibility with my own table lookups so that the date and merchant update as well. Especially handy if you keep updating the table with new merchants or new dates!

Best Used: When you want to summarise and display data separately, but in a more granular format.

3. IF AND and IF OR

Sometimes there are scenarios where you have very specific criteria that you need to build into your Excel formulas. IF AND can help you define multiple conditions that all need to be met before returning the desired result, and IF OR can return a result when only one of multiple conditions is met.

To put it in the context of another typical, industry scenario..

I’m running a PPC campaign with a bonus scheme set around achieving a set number of sales in a month, and I want to analyse what bonus I’m likely to hit. I’ve started by building out a simple calculator that looks at current sales, and scales it by days in month to bring me an expected sales figure.

I want the bonus to update automatically throughout the month dependent on expected sales, and add it to the expected commission. There are many ways you can go about doing this, but one particularly tidy example uses IF AND formulas..

To tell if tier 1 has been hit: =IF(AND(C11>99,C11<200),50,"")

If expected sales are greater than 99 and less than 200, return £50 (tier 1) else return nothing.

To tell if tier 2 has been hit: =IF(AND(C11>199,C11<300),100,"")

If expected sales are greater than 199 and less than 300, return £100 (tier 2) else return nothing.

To tell if tier 3 has been hit: =IF(C11>299,200,"")

If expected sales are greater than 299, return £200 (tier 3) else return nothing.

You can build these into a table next to the bonus tiers and include them in a further calculation to show commission with bonus.

The IF OR formula works in much the same way, only with this formula only one of the conditions needs to be true to trigger the output. In the following example I have a breakdown of sales revenue by type of merchant. I want to only calculate revenue for PPC and SEO and display it in a separate column. The IF OR formula can help here..

=IF(OR(B2=”PPC”,B2=”SEO”),C2,””)

If cell B2 is equal to PPC or SEO, return the revenue amount, else return nothing.

Best Used: When you want to be a bit more selective with the data you select.

4. Nested Ifs

With Excel, you can actually use the ‘value if false’ option to include further IF statements. If the condition in the first IF formula isn’t met, it will move onto the next IF formula, and so on..

Let’s return to the bonus tier example I gave in point 3. I previously calculated bonus tiers with IF AND statements individually, and returned a number next to them. It looks nice. However if you preferred you could actually scrap this and calculate the whole thing with nested Ifs instead, returning the result in a single cell..

=IF(C11>299,200,(IF(C11>199,100,(IF(C11>99,50,0)))))

If expected sales is greater than 299, return £200 (tier 3) else if expected sales is greater than 199, return £100 (tier 2), else if expected sales is greater than 99, return £50 (tier 1), else return £0.

Note: In this example I had to calculate the tiers in reverse order. If you were to calculate IF sales > 99 in the first IF formula, the condition would be met and it wouldn’t trigger the other IF statements.

Best used: When you want to provide multiple conditions, and return a distinct result for each.

5. Blank out those horrible looking errors with IFERROR

And so on to our final tip for this session, and a really nice formula which can help turn an awful looking table into a much cleaner and more presentable one. I use this formula all the time.

Here is a very simple table that might look quite familiar to you. A simple conversion rate calculation has thrown up two errors. An incorrect entry of “no sales” has forced an incorrect value error, and a ‘divide by 0’ error has been thrown by the last row where there have been 0 clicks.

I don’t know about you, but whenever I see these I like to eradicate them upon sight. A simple IFERROR formula appended to your existing formula gives you a lot of control in doing this, and allows you to supply an alternate value.

So where my conversion rate formula previously looked like this:

=(C3/A3)

It now looks a little like this:

=IFERROR((C3/A3), “N/A”)

..where the “N/A” is the value I’ve chosen to replace the error messages.

There. Doesn’t that look better? I’ll be sure to win that client pitch now!

It’s really very simple to apply, and can be used on even the most complicated and long-winded formulas. You can choose anything to replace it with, be it a numerical value, a text value, or even another formula – not bad!

Best used: If you’re sending out data to clients or bosses, and don’t want them sighing in despair.

Stay tuned for yet more Excel blog posts from me in the near future, where I’ll be looking to put even more formulas and shortcuts to good use. Remember to check out the attached worksheet for further info, and my previous post - 5 Great Uses of the 5 Great Time-Saving Excel Tips (you may not know about)

Got a great idea for further blog posts that you’d like me to cover? Why not email me?

Time to Get Creative as One Word Search Queries Increase by 19%

Keith Horwood — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 10:00:06 +0000

Hitwise have released the latest stats on search share in the UK and US - and the results throw up a few surprises. In the UK, Google continued to hold over 90% of the market with a small but steady increase since March 2012. In the US, a different story, as Bing continue to make inroads into the share of the all-powerful Google, increasing by 7% since the same time in 2011. Bing-powered search as a whole was up 5%. Is this simply a reflection of the American market succumbing to Bing’s flashy advertising? After so many years in the consumer wilderness, is Microsoft cool again? Or are there other forces at play? Further US figures outlined by Hitwise could provide the answer. An analysis of clicks by keyword shows shorter search queries (1 to 4 words) comprise over 80% of all searches, and that 1 word search queries alone account for nearly 30%, a 19% year-on-year increase. This may reflect developments from the search engines in launching automated search features, such as Google Instant and Bing Autosuggest. I think it means that the search engines have made progress towards their goal: to assist searchers with finding what they need, faster.

What does this mean for search marketing?

The focus must shift to how consumers start their searches – that first keyword is more important than ever. This will naturally support bigger brands over those trying to break into the space, and new entries will have to work harder to find their niche. It means that those high volume golden keywords are more competitive than ever, and the latest Google Penguin update means that you cannot simply build links with exact match anchor text repeatedly.
The long-tail may be down but it isn’t out and it is an area that new brands can exploit. Smart content-led strategies are essential to tap into keywords within shorter searches and search marketers will need to draw upon experience and creativity to make the most of the changing landscape.
If you are working in digital marketing in the US, and have ignored Bing and its smaller cousins in recent years, you may wish to rethink your plans. As for the UK market, will recent Bing updates provide the catalyst that will kickstart their quest to be king?

I quite like Don Drapers' recently aired attitude to dominance in the market, which he almost shouted to a potential client. Certainly words that will strike a chord with many business owners:

“I won’t settle for 50 percent of anything, You don’t want most of it, you want all of it, and I won’t stop until you get all of it.”

Will adopting Don Drapers' Mantra help Bing to succeed? Only time will tell.

Tracking Social Media Conversions Using Google Analytics

Keith Horwood — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 10:37:28 +0000

Monitoring your social traffic conversions is essential if you maintain any sort of content and social media strategy. It can take time to build your online presence to a level that brings in revenue, but there are certainly cases where great returns are made. Social Media data is now fully integrated into Google Analytics so you can track the ROI of each action and social media traffic source on your content and the traffic from your social properties themselves.

Tracking Social Actions

Analytics can track items like file downloads, movie plays, and anything else you can think of. To do this you would set up a custom event. Social Media tracking works in a similar manner, but in this case an event is considered a 'social action'. What do you class as a social action? A social action can be shares, votes, posts, reshares, comments and bookmarks, for example. So, a Social action is a special kind of event. To find these statistics in Google Analytics, navigate to Traffic Sources > Social > Social Plugins. Normal events are located in Content > Events.

Data Hub Providers

Google allows social network developers to integrate their activity streams into Social Analytics reports via their social data hub. Current data hub partners are reddit, Google+, Delicious, Digg and are indicated in Analytics by a symbol (shown below). This means that Google +1's and their ilk can be tracked easily out of the box, but other social network such as Facebook and Twitter require some additional code to be implemented.

Code Examples

The code is pretty similar for tracking both normal events and social events. For social: _gaq.push(['_trackSocial', network, socialAction, opt_target, opt_pagePath]); For events: _gaq.push(['_trackEvent', category, action, opt_label, opt_value, opt_noninteraction]); Basically the difference is _trackSocial and _trackEvent. You will may need to implement this code for every social network you want to track that is not a data hub provider. All social buttons use a callback method which is triggered when the social action is effective. We do this to be more accurate. A visitor can click on Twitter’s button from your website, but you should not track this social action based on the “on click” event because the visitor can close the popup without tweeting. This would result in incorrect statistics. You have to use the callback function provider by Twitter which is triggered when the tweet is posted. Let's see an example integrating Facebook's like button. A very basic implementation for Facebook for instance would take the following steps: Insert the Facebook JavaScript SDK asynchronously:

Insert Facebook like button:

Add the tracking code:

For more info on how to do this - check out the Facebook documentation, and also Google's Twitter integration example. You should aim to keep your code as compact as possible, and ideally load social buttons asynchronously to reduce any performance impact. But having implemented this code, you should be able to see assisted social conversions, so you can see the return that is coming from your social channels.

How to Determine Social ROI - Infographic

Below is a great infographic sourced from InventHelp. This shows how social media can be tracked to show how it can drive significant ROI for some major brands. Take special note of the 'social value' section, which shows a visual representation of how the social event data correlates with sales. This is essential for retail sites who have an extensive social media strategy in place to monitor how their campaigns are performing. Understanding how each of your online channels interact will give important information on adjusting your future strategy.

Special thanks to David, who is like a one-man Spanish football team of web development.

Official Google Analytics App for Android Reviewed

Keith Horwood — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 08:15:56 +0000

I have been a bit of an Android fan since the early days, having owned the second Android phone on the market, so was pleased to find out that Google had released of an official App for Google Analytics. I downloaded the app recently and put it through it's paces. Would I use the app on a regular basis? The App consists of four main screens: Real-Time statistics, dashboards, automatic alerts and custom alerts. It is easy to scroll between your accounts before you get to these screens, but if you have a full account like me, you will appreciate the 'recently used' section at the top.

Real-time analytics

Real-time Analytics is great to get a snapshot of how busy your site is at any one time. This feature has been in beta a while in the web version. It's interesting to see how well a great piece of content is doing, or where traffic is coming from when it is busy. It kind of makes you think of a site in a more fluid and interactive manner. I am sure the mesmerising information has taken up a few flatscreens around offices of large websites. I had some issues with this with 'unauthorized access' messages on some sites, even when logged in with Admin users. It seemed to work fine for other sites, so perhaps this is just a glitch.

Dashboards

The dashboards give you a graphical representation of data for the site, and are completely customizable. Simply tap on the graph you wish to edit, and the graph can then be deleted or the settings adjusted.

What would you see if you selected 'non-paid traffic' and kept the metric on 'clicks'? Answers on a postcard or in the comments below!

Automatic Alerts

Google will cleverly detect any unusual patterns in your data and present them to you here. Some of these traffic spikes can be quite interesting. Tap on anything of interest and you wil get a larger representation like the following graph:

Setup Custom Alerts of what you want to see

The standard reporting could certainly be of use for digital marketers, but even more insight can be gained by using Custom Alerts of the key metrics you are monitoring. Setting up custom alerts can easily fill an entire post, but if you would like to know more then read this great guide on setting up custom alerts for your site. If you don't do this, you will get an empty screen here.

You might want to setup alerts for traffic increases on certain traffic sources, such as reddit.com for example.

So, what's missing?

Although the app can give some useful data, I am one of those who always wants more. I think the app could benefit from some more features based on standard Analytics reports, such as:

Some juicy keyword reports will be nice. Keywords driving traffic, via both PPC and SEO.
Brand /Generic splits, PPC/SEO splits.
A simple top referrers report.
A focus on the social side, without setting up custom Google Alerts.
Easy navigation to the same reports as in the web interface.

The Google Analytics app can be downloaded from Google Play (Formerly Android Market!).

Google is focussing on mobile devices, in a big way

Google have certainly been busy focussing on mobile specific applications recently, as on the same day that the Analytics App was released, they also announced Mobile App Analytics. This will enable developers to track all sorts of useful data from within their Android Apps such as the following: crashes, traffic sources, app versions, overview of devices, user behaviour, goals and in-app purchases. It should also show how many Android users are still using Gingerbread. This section of Google Analytics is currently in Beta, and you can apply via a lengthy signup form. With the increasing popularity of Android Tablets amongst professionals and the launch of the Google Nexus 7 tablet, we can expect Google to produce many more apps and improve mobile device tracking while they are at it.

Ad Text Olympics - How to Win Gold with AdWords

Lauren Dodds — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 10:00:00 +0000

It’s finally here! This week sees the start of the London 2012 Olympics. Following Rob’s post “Olympic Preparation for your PPC campaign”, I thought I’d take a closer look at what the Olympics can teach us about ad text writing. Competition – Above all the Olympics is a competition. Every athlete wants to win the gold medal and competition is also important with your ad text. Learn from sports such as tennis and fencing and set up a knockout tournament between your ads. Write two identical ads but change just one thing, perhaps the headline or call to action. Pit them against each other and once you’ve gathered enough data, decide a winner. The winner then moves onto the next round to face a new opponent – perhaps the same ad but with keyword insertion or a price. Soon enough you’ll find your gold medal-winning ad. Teamwork – Here at Found we are a close team and like to help each other out and that applies when it comes to writing ad text. You can often get stuck in a rut using the same phrases and calls to action but sometimes it is good to see things with a fresh pair of eyes and share what’s been working best. We often pair up to look at each other’s campaigns and see if we can come up with ideas to beat the current top performing ad text. Multiculturalism – Athletes, officials and guests from all over the world will be coming together in London for the Olympics and there are events across London celebrating the many cultures that are taking part. Here at Found we find ourselves writing ads targeted to many different countries and in an increasing number of languages. It is important to not just rely on a direct translation of your English ads when preparing a campaign in another language (or even in English, targeted to another country), but to get a native speaker or translator to read your ad text and write their own version, as there will be certain spellings, calls to action and other idiosyncrasies unique to that language that can make all the difference to CTR. Team selection – In the Olympics you want your best athletes participating in events but so often people fail to give their best ads the chance to perform. I have seen many campaigns that are missing out on clicks and conversions because a poorly performing ad is being shown as frequently as the best ad. The rotate setting can be great for testing ads but make sure you use the ‘optimize for clicks and conversions’ settings to allow your top performers to shine. So now you should have all the preparation you need to go out and write a winning ad and take home that PPC gold-medal!

How the temperamental British weather affects Online Sales

Keith Horwood — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 09:25:00 +0000

The weather is central to British life. We curse it, we praise it, and we do both in equal measure when the snow hits us. Rain and Sunshine affect the mood of the nation and grabs headlines of the red tops. It causes traffic chaos, droughts, floods, and poor clothing choices on a weekly basis. Being a heavy focus of endless debates in offices and other such places of small talk up and down the country, it is inevitable it will have some impact on the shopping habits of us Brits.

Bloody weather

The recent record breaking run of wet weather had people in a mad depressive haze and was 'almost apocalyptic' for wildlife. Not absorbing much Vitamin D for 2 months, there was even a submission to FoundLabs to move the office to Ibiza. I'm still waiting to hear back on that one. The wet weather has now been followed by this mini heatwave, which has preceded the start of the Olympics here in London this week. The city is back to its jubilant best, and soggy feet seems a distant memory for Londoners. But what does this waxing and waning of the British psyche mean for digital marketers?

Forget the Google dance, it's all about the rain dance

It has been known for some PPC analysts to to pray for rain, almost doing an Indian rain dance around the end of November to bring on the downpours. This kind of undesirable weather usually lowers footfall to high street stores and increases online sales. This holds true in many cases, and is seen on many retail campaigns. Huge shopping centres somewhat dispel some of that myth, but anyone who has been to Oxford Street or other old style high streets on a regular basis would rather avoid getting wet. One such case of exploiting variable weather was capitalising on the huge surge of breakdown cover applications during the early December snowstorms in 2010. The heavy snowfall brought many motorists to a halt, whilst breakdown campaigns soared. However, the snow actually hit pre-Christmas online sales hard, as many were worried about snow delays affecting their online deliveries. A more recent example is how the recent unprecedented rainstorms affected the amount of holidays booked in sunnier climes to a degree of 20%. Online stores are now the main shopping resource for many and trusted for use by a greater number of customers each year. So the affect the weather has will have a lesser impact overall. For the current wet weather, this ended up being poor overall for online marketers, as the public's mood turned to an almost zombie-like depression. (Any PPC Analysts doing a rain-dance now will perhaps incur the wrath of their peers!). Dramatic weather conditions can be a boon for paid search analysts. Here are some ways a PPC campaign could be changed:

Focus on fast-moving trending products: A paid search analyst can take advantage of fast moving trends by simply trying new keywords. Reports from on-site searches, and data from tools can be used to find these keywords.
Ad Text Variations – Adjusting ad messaging to appeal to certain moods and grab attention.
Bid Optimisations - Keyword or Ad Group bids can be changed after analysing data from sales, profits, stock and ROI on a daily or even hourly basis.

Plan part of your SEO content strategy around the weather

In-depth content could be produced in advance of any season, but it is best to know what products you will be aiming to sell. It may be possible to produce some generic content based on expected weather conditions, then complete this at a later date. You could also have contingency content plans in place alongside your standard strategy, and store those for a 'rainy day'. Maybe your goal at the start of the 2012 campaign was to push flip-flops in June. This standard strategy would need to be adjusted, otherwise if you are pushing flips flops through an automated email during wet weather, you may annoy your customers. It's important for any SEO content strategy to remain flexible. Perhaps you had a plan of attack that involved extolling the benefits of your new summer range during May and June. As the UK had the wettest 2 months on record you would really need to adjust the message to focus on sun-seeking travellers. Email and other content could run alongside this targeting stylish lightweight raincoats and more sensible waterproof shoes. For me, it's time to grab an ice cream, crank up the air-con and pray that the current sunshine levels hold out long enough not to spoil beach volleyball on Saturday night. Let's hope that the welcome return of the sun, and British Olympics success can return the bounce to UK consumers.

The Found Newsletter is GO!

Gareth Olyott — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 15:37:20 +0000

As part of the new branding process and profile building strategy here at Found HQ, we have just launched our first newsletter! After careful thought, considerable planning and clocking up some serious design hours, by the time we got to yesterday, we finally had something we were happy to “press the big red button on” (well, we clicked send…) The format isn’t something to which we gave little thought; it was designed to have a specific demographic appeal and this is evident in our final design where we find the content interesting, informative and easy on the eye.

Good planning and design ensured cross-demographic appeal was achieved and gave us the platform to display content that applies to a whole host of active users – all those that work across the digital industry, web and interface design enthusiasts looking to stay on the edge and also to all those marketers out there looking to stay informed and keep up to date with the most current tips, tricks and advice about SEO, PPC and Social Media.

Our format not only gives the reader an overview of the digital world from the previous 4-6 weeks, but also gives the reader an insight into Found as an outfit, not only as experts in paid search and digital marketing, but also as a fantastic place to work.

Guess where you can subscribe below?

Why the UK SEO Industry Wins Gold for Team GB

Dale Lovell — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 09:15:00 +0000

The Olympics started in London last week; the best sports people from around the world are now in the Capital, all competing to win gold medals at their respective sports. This is an exciting time for the country and as the opening ceremony on Friday night proved - as a nation we know how to put on a show and get results. Danny Boyle (or should that be Sir Danny Boyle?), put on a great event that was truly spectacular to watch. Central to the latter stages of the event was the emphasis on the digital age and how the UK and the rest of the world is now switched on and interconnected like never before – the number of smartphones recording the ceremony shows just how quickly footage of the event will flood the internet; Facebook and Twitter feeds only covered one event on Friday night. Perhaps it is not surprising to learn then that the UK has one of the most switched on digital populations in the world: according to Ofcom, the average household now has three internet-enabled gadgets; 15% of homes have more than six. This digital emphasis of the opening ceremony and the fact that the world’s best are in London has many parallels, in my opinion, with ‘team GB’s’ burgeoning search industry. The UK continually delivers exceptional results for businesses and brands in a highly competitive market. Thanks to the well publicised Google Panda and Penguin updates over the last 12 months SEO has become far less technically focused and more reliant on traditional marketing discipline techniques, with great online content at its core. This switch from a technical focus towards a stronger more content led approach is great news for the UK SEO industry as a whole. Here’s why:

Off-shore companies find it difficult to compete

Anyone with a website and an email address will know about SEO companies based off-shore, many in India, where English is commonly spoken. In the past these companies could get results; they were cheap and worked primarily by adding a sheer weight of numbers approach when it came to generating back-links, comments and directory submissions. In short, they technically knew how to play the search engines to get the desired results. But with a greater emphasis on content and quality content at that, with Google coming down hard on anything that looks too unnatural, the successes these companies can generate, for British and Western websites in particular will be limited. Yes they write in English, but do they write like native Brits and about timely topics that will generate the desired links and likes? Probably not.

Britain does creativity best

In the future SEO as a medium will have to become more creative, and creative, as the opening ceremony shows, is what we do best in Britain. According to the latest stats from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (December 2011), 1.5 million people are employed in the creative industries or in creative roles in other industries. This equates to 5.1% of the UK’s total employment population. There are 106,700 businesses in the creative industries and when it comes to exporting our creativity around the world, the creative industries accounted for 10.6% of all services exported. So when it comes to coming up with creative ideas that can optimise your website – be it in paid search, natural search or social – British agencies are always likely to be innovative and full of ideas.

We are competitive

The UK Search industry, in both PPC and SEO, is one of the most competitive in the world. There are several reasons why, to date, this has been the case. Firstly, we read and write in English. This is great in terms of business and communication, but it also means that there is more competition. Not only is there off-shore capabilities from countries such as India as mentioned above, but there is considerable competition from the US too. As a result, as an industry we are used to performing well.

We are used to doing more with less

The US, as we all know, has a burgeoning search industry. It is home to giants such as Twitter, Facebook and the all-powerful Google. Many leading search specialists are American. It is a mature search industry. But with a bigger audience to appeal to and target, US search specialists benefit from being able to cast their net far and wide to attract users - and they also typically have bigger budgets to work with too. In comparison the UK, where the target demographic is considerably smaller and the budgets often smaller too; we are used to doing more with less. The challenge is sometimes harder, the resources we have to call upon for success fewer. Perhaps this is where the UK’s creative edge really comes from? If you take sectors such as travel or personal finance, for example, there is considerable competition in the UK; there are numerous big players all competing for similar targeted keywords and the best overall SERPs. Everyone wants to be number one for their desired keyword. Any good search agency operating in the UK, Found being one of them, will have experience of and strategies in place that can move clients up the rankings and increase website traffic, conversions and ROI. The UK Search market is competitive and brutal to any underperforming agency. For success, like the Olympians going for gold in London over the next few weeks, you have to put in continual effort, look to innovate and look to capitalise on your competition’s weaknesses. We do all of these things in the UK, which, when combined with our creative heritage is why I think we are best place to grab gold for the SEO industry in the years to come.

Is Facebook Advertising Right For Your Business?

Rob Barnes — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 09:17:51 +0000

A debate over the effectiveness of Facebook advertising raged recently after an investigation by the BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones, which suggested that many companies were wasting their marketing budgets on adverts to gain ‘likes’ from members of the social media giant. Miranda Miller, of Search Engine Watch, was quick to fire back - pointing out a number of flaws in the investigation – and, after running a number of Facebook campaigns here at Found, we decided to share some of our insights and give any businesses that are unsure about the channel some food for thought.

Cold Hard Facts

Facebook’s IPO reported that 2011 advertising revenues increased by 69 percent on the previous year, while Google was only valued at a quarter of Facebook’s valuation when it first went public. With a reported 955 million active users as of June 2012, averaging 10.5 billion total minutes per day spent on the site from desktop use alone, the possibilities of exposing any business to the right type of customer must surely be there – the main question is how to engage these prospective customers?

Which Type of Ad?

With the recent release of promoted posts, Facebook has given brand page owners the opportunity to pay for their content to be shown to a wider audience. Not every fan of a page will regularly engage with the brand and receive updates in their news feed. Promoted posts give the page owner the chance to show a recent offer in the news feed of these less engaged fans and also to their friends when they interact with the post. A sponsored story allows the page owner to promote an ad about social interactions people have had with their brand or organisation. When someone likes your page their friends may see this in their news feed as a story which you can pay to sponsor, making the post more visible and appealing to users to interact with your business. Web ads are a way of promoting a business outside of Facebook - for example, a restaurant owner may wish to target an ad for their website to everyone that lives in the town they operate in. A social ad encourages people to engage with any Facebook objects you may have such as a Page, App, Event or Place.

Short or long-term strategy?

Many digital marketers agree that to get any success you have to test, test and test some more and this applies to Facebook perhaps more than any other online channel. Ads will fatigue and Facebook recommends changing them every 12 days, testing multiple ads each time. We recently had a travel client approach us to try and help them with bookings for an upcoming Mushroom Foraging Weekend they were running at one of their Hotels. With the advanced targeting options available we were able to run a short campaign targeted to people who sighted mushroom foraging as an interest and included other associated topics. The ads generated a high click-through rate and the campaign was a resounding success, driving a number of bookings. We also run longer-term strategies for clients built around their Facebook objects which include promoting games and competitions to help engage new and existing customers to their brand and drive leads and sales. Social media data is now fully integrated into Google Analytics and tools like Qwaya allow you to sync this data and easily track clicks and conversions whilst automatically generating and editing different combinations of ad titles, text, images and targeting.

Like or Dislike?

If you’re looking for a direct response to your business to generate sales or leads then a short term strategy consisting of bursts of fresh ads over a period of time, promoting new offers and testing landing pages would align with your company goals. Brand engagement requires the use of all ad formats to gradually build your likes, visibility and penetration within Facebook over a longer period of time. Leveraging Facebook in this way will allow your business to engage and share unique products and experiences to a whole community of customers. So, whether it’s a marathon or a sprint, now could be the perfect time for you to try advertising on the world’s largest social network. The Olympics are upon us – why not use the opportunity to promote your great British business to the rest of the world!

Blackjack, Beer and Blueberry Pancakes

Flo Bundy — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 17:23:35 +0000

What a week at Found HQ! I’m not sure if it’s because summer is coming to an end, or the fact that we are approaching the Bank Holiday weekend but whatever it is means that Found has been bustling with activity all week in and out of the office. If I’m honest, I love it when it’s busy - everyone’s enthusiastic, the music goes on and everyone pulls together to achieve amazing things. And this week has been no exception - full of interviews, announcements, events and of course digital marketing.

On Tuesday I was lucky enough to take the old boys out to lunch. By old boys I refer to those Founders that have been here since the beginning, back when Artemis8 launched. It was great to touch base and reflect on the last 7 years and all that has happened and also to look to the future what with so many exciting opportunities in the pipeline including the growth and development of Found and the evolution of the digital industry.

Wednesday night saw the Found team head out to our local and enjoy a few cocktails… It’s always great to get the whole team together, something which is increasingly more difficult as the team grows, but hey, I love a challenge and I will always encourage after-work fun (especially when there’s a Tokyo Iced Tea involved). It gave me great pleasure to announce that we have 4 newbies joining the team over the next two weeks and I can’t wait to welcome them on-board.

Luckily there weren’t too many sore heads on Thursday as the day had arrived for the BIG Casino Night. Once again the brilliant BIG Ideas Group had generously treated us to our very own end-of-summer Casino Night at the Music Room. BIG’s very talented Social Committee had put a lot of time and effort into recreating Vegas in an empty space and it looked fantastic!

We were all given $200 dollars to change into chips and even though the money was fake, there were some incredible prizes up for grabs. The 3 people with the most chips at the end of the night won dinner for 2 at Gordan Ramsay’s Maze. Fun was had by all and by the looks of some of the faces in the office today, the party continued long after I hung up my gambling shoes and retired. I didn’t think this week could get much better when I remember we’d organised to go for breakfast this morning at Smiths of Smithfield – a prize a group of us had won in our Olympic desk-decorating competition. We transformed our desk into a paper lantern covered, Samsung sponsored tribute to South Korea which seemed to really impress the judges. The blueberry pancakes went down a treat after such a hectic week and I must say I’m very much looking forward to that extra lie-in on Monday morning….Happy Bank Holiday weekend everyone!

Effective Digital Content Marketing – And the wonders it can do to your ROI

Deepa Arthur — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 11:26:22 +0000

We’ve all heard about it, most businesses have engaged in some form of it whilst others are deliberating on whether or not to get on the content marketing bandwagon. Content marketing, as we at Found know it, is the life and soul of any SEO and Social Media marketing campaign. As an Account Manager, I am constantly asked by clients about what they could do to get that higher rank, that extra click, that extra sale without being too pushy and in-your-face asking customers to buy, buy, buy! After all, today’s consumer is knowledgeable, well-informed and has a wide range of tools that they can use to make the best purchasing decisions and this is where content marketing comes in. Through articles, blog posts, videos, tweets, Facebook updates, infographics, press releases and various other mediums, content marketing is becoming a crucial player in influencing the customer purchase cycle. But with the wealth of data out there, how does a business ensure that only the relevant information is shared with the customer? 1. Develop a Content Plan/ Strategy Planning content in advance is a key element of any digital marketing strategy. Both internal brand messaging and external customer insights play an important role in putting this plan together. a) Content should be helpful and relevant to customers and must add value. Customers don’t want to read about how amazing a brand is, but they do want to know how that brand could potentially solve their problem. b) Whilst planning a strategy, it is also essential that the plan remains reactionary to particular news or events in the business’ field. This would further help boost rankings and reach by capitalising on trending content that attracts a higher search volume. c) Use Databases and Analytics effectively. Often business forget to use their own databases other than for newsletters and updates. A ‘spring clean’ of the database could easily determine what information is no longer required and what could be used more effectively. For example, looking at what content is clicked the most when a newsletter is sent out will give you a good idea of what content your subscribers are interested in. 2. Create an Operational Process Once you’ve planned your content strategy, now it’s time for execution. A clear process should be created to avoid any delays, cross hurdles and ensure on-time delivery. For example: Content Brief Discussed-> Idea Brainstorm -> Write Content -> Send Content for Approval a) If approved -> Content distributed -> Effectiveness measured b) If not approved -> Content Re-written -> Content distributed -> Effectiveness measured 3. Constantly Innovate Someone once said “Innovation is anything but business as usual” And this rings true for any content marketer or business. As part of the overall strategy, marketers can optimise their digital campaign by keeping up to speed with the latest tools and technologies, including mobile applications and software. These days there are so many social media platforms to launch marketing campaigns across and it’s important to note which ones would be best suited for your campaign. By measuring where your social conversions are coming from, you can refine your focus.

The Found Five - August

Flo Bundy — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 14:41:21 +0000

Welcome to the first post in our new monthly ‘Found Five’ where we will be bringing you our monthly round-up of 5 things from around the wonderful world wide web that have really got us talking. So to kick things off – here’s our August round-up: 1. Because we love our technology, the acquiring of Followerwonk by SEOMoz caused some real excitement amongst the SEO and Social teams as it should result in some exciting new social tools to access through SEOMoz. 2. “Google Ads and the War on Free Clicks" – this awesome infographic sparked another round in the on-going PPC vs. SEO debate 3. Old spice works with Vimeo on a campaign for the first time - “Watch me jam solo, then use the special interactive player to record your own remix. Go ahead, show me what you got!” 4. I don’t know what it’s like in your office but our team couldn’t get through the day without the regular ‘tea’o’clock’ 5. There’s been lots of buzz surrounding this newly opened place in Charlotte Street and we can’t wait to try it! Champagne and Hot Dogs…..oh go on then! Watch this space for the next Found Five at the end of September. Enjoy!

The Anatomy of Landing Page Testing Using AdWords

Matthew Freedman — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 15:16:49 +0000

Landing Page Testing from a PPC Perspective (We previously covered A/B or multi-variant testing using website optimiser here) Imagine you want to find the landing page with the highest conversion rates or EPCs (earnings per click) from a website that you don’t have access to edit yourself. One option is to use AdWords Campaign Experiments (ACE). AdWords Experiments seems to have been in “Beta” ever since it was launched over 2 years ago, however that doesn’t mean it isn’t useful. Firstly the Don’ts: The Don’ts:

Don’t pick two different keywords and give each one a different landing page URLs, then compare conversion or revenue data sometime later. You should not do this because different keywords have different conversion rates. How do you know whether the difference in conversion rate is because of the different landing page, or because of the different keyword?

Don’t split test landing pages over different periods of time. You should not do this because conversion rates and EPCs also vary over time depending on a multitude of known and unknown factors.

My Solution is as follows:

Pick an Adgroup you want to use for the experiment.

You’ll then need to make a complete copy of the Adgroup that you want to use, with the same ads and bids except with different destination URLs changed prospectively to the two landing pages you want to test.

(You now have a Control Landing Page on the original Adgroup, and the Experiment one on the copy).

Give the experiment Adgroup some traffic for one or two days so that all ads are approved and the quality scores are the same as the original ones, then set up the Adwords Campaign Experiment.

To set up the Experiment you’ll have to go into the Setting tab and expand the Experiment section under ‘Advanced Settings’ right at the bottom. Click on ‘Specific Experiment Settings’, and give the Experiment any name you want.

On the Control/Experiment Split ideally you would use 50%/50%, however if the test landing page is very experimental and you don’t want a risk a drop off in conversion you could make the experiment percentage smaller.

As for the period of time, it doesn’t matter as long as you have statistical significant data, set it to 30 days and extend or end depending on whether you have enough information.

Once the Experiment is activated you’ll have to set the Control Adgroup to “Control” and the test Adgroup to ’Experiment’. You can do this by going to the Adgroup tab and selecting “Control” or “Experiment” under the menu that you usually use to Enabled, Pause or Delete Adgroups.

Now all searches should be split between the Adgroups depending on your Control / Experiment split choice during set up. Note that all other Adgroups in the campaign should be set to “Control and Experiment”. From there it’s up to you how and when you decide you have enough data to say one is better than the other. You can do it with a little help from some statistical hypothesis testing. For example, a Chi-squared test can be used to compare conversion rates as found here.

Find out the truth behind the best ‘Who Done It’ novels

Gareth Olyott — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 12:49:20 +0000

As specialists in helping our clients get ‘found’ online, we’re delighted to step out of our normal digital marketing arena and support an extra special evening where crime fiction lovers will get a unique opportunity to ‘find’ out the truth behind some of the world’s most popular 'who done it' crime novels. A Conversation with Ruth Rendell and PD James takes place in London on October 5 and will see the two world-famous and award-winning writers give a personal insight into their writing, how they research their stories and how they view the portrayal of their characters on film and TV. With plenty of time for questions, book signings and a chance to meet the two famous ladies over drinks afterwards, this is a one-off event in aid of children’s heart charity Little Hearts Matter, which itself is close to our hearts as one of our team’s daughters suffers from the highly complex heart condition the charity strives to support and raise awareness of. Ruth Rendell, who is Vice-President of Little Hearts Matters, says: “When I think about Little Hearts Matter and what they do I try putting myself into the shoes of these children's parents. I have, as you might guess, a pretty active imagination and though I don't come near entering into their fear or feeling with their love, I do manage a degree of empathy. That empathy doesn't make me feel humble or ashamed. It makes me feel lucky. It brings me to an enormous admiration for these brave children and their even braver parents. ” The evening takes place at Central School of Speech and Drama in London and tickets cost £35 with all proceeds going to Little Hearts Matter to support children born with only half a heart. Please visit www.lhm.org.uk to book tickets and hopefully we’ll see you there.

7 Top Tools and Takeaways from BrightonSEO

Philip Gamble — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 07:55:40 +0000

Three Founders had an early start last Friday as we headed to the south coast for BrightonSEO, the largest free search marketing event in Europe. Following on from Raluca’s post about BrightonSEO, I’ve decided to pull together some of the tools and services mentioned by the speakers.

New version of SocialCrawlytics (by @ysekand)

SocialCrawlytics enables you to quickly and easily identify the URLs on a domain which have been shared the most socially. This is a great way to identify your competitor’s most popular content which you can take inspiration from when devising a content marketing plan. Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Digg, Delicious and StumbleUpon are the 6 social networking or sharing sites queried as SocialCrawlytics navigates your content. After a quick Twitter oAuth registration, enter a starting URL and maximum crawl depth before either scheduling a regular scan or skipping ahead in order to run a one-off live scan. Free accounts currently come with 500 credits which are replenished at the start of each week. The produced reports contain both tabular and visual representations of the socially hot content on a website - here’s a look at a crawl of eConsultancy.

Google Analytics Dashboards and Custom Report Templates (by @Koozai_Anna)

Custom dashboards in Google Analytics have been around for more than a year now, enabling a relevant overview of recent traffic performance to be visible with a glance at a single page. Anna Lewis from Koozai shared 11 custom reports and dashboards which are useful for keeping an eye on online marketing activity, be it SEO, PPC, Email, Affiliate or Social. The great thing about this free takeaway is that the dashboards can be applied to your chosen Google Analytics profile. This can be achieved in just a few clicks, so you can be up and running in less than a minute. There are some customisations which will first need to be made to the provided templates in-order to get the most out of them. For example, branded terms must be defined by modifying the provided filters but thankfully instances where changes are necessary are clearly highlighted on the dashboard itself. If you’re still using the default “My Dashboard” in Google Analytics the provided SEO Dashboard offers a quick and pain-free improvement.

Google Smartphone Website Recommendations (via @aleyda)

This post from Google’s Webmaster Central blog introduces the search giant’s recommendations for webmasters who want their content to be suitable for use by both desktop and mobile users. In her slides Aleyda included an accompanying flow chart which can help establish what the best approach to creating a mobile website is for your particular situation - a separate mobile website, dynamic detection of mobile visitors or responsive design.

Change Detection (via @berianreed) and Robotto (by Tony King/Semetrical)

Change Detection is a free website monitoring tool I’ve been using for a while now. The premise is as effective as it is simple. You sign up, input a list of URLs you want the tool to watch over and then you get sent an email every time your listed webpages are modified. The emails contain details of content which is added, updated or removed enabling you to keep tabs on the changes your clients and their competitors make to their websites. Robotto will regularly monitor the robots.txt file for any website of your choice and alert you of any changes.

Pinalytics (via @D_Fudge)

Pinalytics is a new tool that enables you to quickly find the source website of images on the social image sharing website Pinterest. By importing social share counts a number of opportunities are opened up - you can locate influential websites in a particular niche as well as identify the types of images which are popular in your target area. Handily all of the data is easily exportable for you to play around with in Excel. Account invitation codes were handed out at BrightonSEO but you can still use a limited service without creating an account.

Link Detective (via @berianreed)

Only getting a brief name-check at BrightonSEO, Link Detective is a simple but powerful tool for drilling down into a competitors backlink profile. Link Detective takes in a .csv from OpenSiteExplorer and processes it additionally generating a more detailed backlink report. Reports aren’t returned instantly but when available they validate the existence of uploaded links (useful since the SEOmoz database takes so long to process information before pushing it live). Links are divided into categories such as blog comments and sidebar links, enabling you to get a quick snapshot of where a websites backlinks are coming from. You can also see the different anchor texts obtained from each type of link.

Pandas and Penguins Spotted in Brighton

Raluca Costin — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 10:45:39 +0000

Found were some of the lucky ones to secure some places at the BrightonSEO conference that reunited SEO and Media experts all traveling from all over the UK and even overseas (the furthest being someone who came all the way from Texas!). The conference kicked off with an amusing dance of a smirking Panda bear and a slim Penguin. All that was missing was for Harry Hill to show up, and shout 'FIIIIGHT!'

But what were the main things to take away? Below is a list of the talks and hopefully some useful tips: First to talk was Dave Trott who gave us an insight into “Predatory Thinking”. How is this applicable to SEO? Well, in SEO just as in many other industries, you need to constantly win new business. And in order to win new business, as Dave taught us, you need to speak your client’s language. Make them understand you are a true expert in your niche but explain your processes in terms that your clients can understand and win their trust. Dave gave an excellent example of this: together with his colleague they were going to Morrison’s to pitch for an advertising project. During the pitch, his colleague made the following statement: “in order to increase your profit, you need to optimise your own stock margins” and the client said that was the exact problem. They then walked out with the account. Dave initially did not know what that meant and his colleague explained to him in the car on the way back to the office that it basically meant that Morrisons should make products cheaper so that people buy more and that he obviously did not want to put it that way as the client would not have been impressed. The lesson learnt from this is that we need to show the clients we understand what the problem is and why they need us but persuade them in their language. Following on from Dave’s insights, Stephanie Troeth next explained to us that “speaking your user’s language” is also essential because a website needs to reflect the company’s ethics, business values and needs to easily deliver within few clicks the desired goals and actions. This is highly applicable for website design but, of course, we all know that. Never more so than now, there is an extremely strong connection between SEO, website architecture and website design. Next on the list we had Rebecca Weeks who presented us with a case study of quick versus quality SEO. The conclusions were that in a post Panda and Penguin search world, SEO strategies need to be changed. So, if you have been focusing on your quantity of links (forum commenting, publishing of identical content on multiple target sites, guest posts, over-optimisation of anchor texts and/or page titles) rather than quality ones, then you need to quickly change your strategies and focus on less, more natural looking, links. Quality is more important than ever! Oh, and, of course, verification that local SEO works! So don't be afraid to work towards a local SEO campaign for your local business. Ensure you have a legitimate address for your business and a few citations and you're starting on the right track. Next, we met James Little from Top Cashback who spoke to us about affiliate marketing. He gave us a good insight into the difficulty of affiliate marketing in the current and highly competitive search environment. With a decade of affiliate marketing experience, James has seen a lot of changes and he stated that generating revenue from various niche affiliate sites is no longer a sustainable solution. Rather, people should be looking to create brands in their own right. Switching back to SEO, Martin Belam was up next, and he shared a few thoughts to bear in mind when doing SEO:

Headlines – you always need to think about your headlines and make them snappy, in order to catch people’s attention and make people want to share them. Also, think about what your titles will read like when Tweeted. Titles often get shortened when shared on Twitter and if they don’t read well, you are not going to encourage people to click on them.
Navigation – for a good user experience and a successful SEO campaign, make sure you understand your visitors’ flow on your website. Make it easier for them to find what you have to offer and encourage them to engage with your website. Sometimes, including links on the homepage to all internal pages isn’t necessary and it might just dilute your page rank to the important pages so bear that in mind too.
Site Speed: As a very short piece of advice, if your website isn’t performing at its best and you’ve been doing everything you can, maybe it’s time to invest in better hardware?
Conversion optimisation – always do some AB testing to ensure you achieve the highest conversion rates for your website. For example, optimised positions and the colour of a ‘Buy Now’ button can make a huge difference.

Next on the list there was a talk on Mobile SEO by Aleyda Solis who gave us a few tips on how to deliver a successful Mobile SEO campaign. A very good starting point for keyword research is your Analytics data. You can see which keywords people are using to get to your mobile website and for further research, one thing to bear in mind is that when searching on smartphones people tend to use longer tail keywords to increase their chances of getting relevant results because searching on the phone has some disadvantages compared to searching on your big screen laptops or desktop computers. If you want to see what your mobile website looks like to Google, log into your Webmaster Tools, tick the mobile filter and Fetch as Google and there it is! Also, just as on a standard website, the visitors’ flow and behaviour on your mobile site is essential. Maybe you need to move things around, shift them higher up or to the left of the screen to improve navigation and conversions. Sometimes there may also be a need to localise the way you market your product and target local keywords as when on mobile, people may be looking for results close to their location. Another talk on quality links was delivered by Berian Reed from Auto Trader who introduced us to “Future proofing SEO on large websites”. Here are a few quick wins for quality links:

Are people using your content without linking back? There is a free tool to help you get those links. Go to Tynt, create an account, place a snippet of code on your site and you’re all set! Once tested, you should be able to get an automatic link back to your site whenever a competitor copies and pastes your content.
Use your Analytics data. Create a custom filter and find out who is linking to you and to which page. Is there anything more you could create to target more sites like the ones already linking? Can you create more and better content than the one that is currently on your website and receiving the most links?
Monitor your competitors’ moves. You don’t want to just make mistakes and learn from them (although we all do it), you want to learn from your competitors’ mistakes too! Go to Change Detection and use the service to monitor what your competitors are doing. What are they changing? Why are they making those changes? What were the results of that move? If positive, can you do something similar?
Finally, use Link Detective to spy on your competitors’ backlinks profiles. Can you use that data to create some quick links for yourself? Is anybody linking to a 404 page on your competitor’s site? If yes, can you create something that the linking webmaster was looking for when linking to that page?

Next on the list was Danielle Fudge, from Forward 3D who introduced us to Pinalytics (a tool made by Forward themselves). Pinalytics is a free service that allows you to gather all sorts of data from Pinterest that you could use for link building. If you are not an advanced scraper, you can use this tool to find out who is posting images on Pinterest on specific themes or subjects and we all know how useful this is for link building. Time to get creative! Finally, we learnt that ‘ize’ instead of ‘ise’ isn’t an American English spelling. It was actually first used in British English. :) It was a great conference, full of fun activities (again, you had to be there) and useful advice and I am sure we all learnt a lot from it! Happy SEO-ing everyone! Photo courtesy of Shaad's Liveblog!

Found launches Ultimate PPC Keyword Concatenation Tool

Emily White — Sat, 30 Jun 2012 10:46:43 +0000

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Found launches free, user-friendly keyword tool to drive greater ppc results

Leading digital marketing agency Found has unveiled a free Keyword Tool, which will assist advertisers in creating stronger keyword lists for their PPC campaigns in a quicker and more intuitive manner. Efficiencies which should see in turn, significantly improved results from their PPC campaigns. The Ultimate PPC Keyword Concatenation Tool, which can be found on the Search, Social and Mobile specialist’s site www.found.co.uk, is available for everyone and aimed at those who are responsible for building keyword lists for Google Adwords or other bid management systems. It will enable them to build out their existing campaigns by using every permutation of their chosen keywords whilst allowing them to automatically add the different match types available in Google Adwords. It also makes it easy to remove special characters from pasted keyword lists or add a prefix or a suffix to lists of keywords. Tina Judic, Managing Director of Found, says: “The Ultimate Keyword Tool has been built by experts, for experts. It has been developed out of pure frustration by our own highly-experienced analyst team who were fed up with using a variety of different industry tools which were either badly-designed or partially working. Their key aim is to build robust and expansive keyword lists which deliver results quickly for our clients, and this tool gives them both the speed and reach they need to achieve this.” Found’s Keyword Tool is the latest invention borne out of its internal Found Labs initiative. Found Labs gives all ‘Founders’ the platform to share their hottest, craziest ideas for new sites, campaigns or technologies for possible development and integration into Found’s infrastructure and services. All ideas are discussed and already Found Labs has sprung a number of other new website initiatives including a free SEO Audit Tool which provides a link and canonicalisation checker, plus a variety of internal tools such as a PPC Accreditation scheme, a Mobile App and a PPC out of position ad spotter, AdVista. Tina adds: “We’re already seeing results from the integration of the Keyword Tool in our analysts’ delivery, and therefore decided to share our innovation and make it available to the wider market too as I’m sure there are many others sharing the same pain out there. This is an invaluable companion tool for anyone who’s looking to really drive significant revenue through PPC activity, so enjoy!” -ENDS- This press release was originally published on Econsultancy on 27th June 2012. To find out more about Found tools and technology, check out The Foundry.

Enhanced AdWords Sitelinks Appearing for UK Searches

Lauren Dodds — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 15:08:34 +0000

There has been a lot of excitement at Found this week. On Valentine’s day this year Google gave us the lovely gift of an announcement about enhanced sitelinks for AdWords. After seven long months they have now been rolled out globally and we can’t wait to see their effects. Enhanced sitelinks take the sitelinks you have created for a campaign and pair them with relevant ad text taken from your account that has the same landing page URL as the sitelink. In order to qualify to show in this format your ads also need to appear at the top of the page. You can see what they look like below. It was a very exciting moment when we first spotted them showing on our own campaigns (sorry, to our lovely Kristina who got caught in a cross-fire of very happy analysts). However, there are still many questions to be answered: 1. What effect will enhanced sitelinks have on click-through rate? Google announced that these ads lead to significantly higher CTR. This definitely seems likely as they take up much more space on the page and give users more information. But how big will this increase be? And what will the effect be on other ads that aren’t eligible for enhanced sitelinks where competitors are? 2. In addition to increasing CTR on the ad as a whole, will CTR on the sitelinks themselves increase as they take up more space and stand out more? Perhaps increasing conversion rates as users finds themselves closer to the exact page they are looking for. 3. So far we have only seen enhanced sitelinks showing for brand keywords in P1. Will other ads at the top of the page be eligible? What about generic keywords? 4. What does this mean for SEO as organic results are being pushed further down the page and paid ads are looking more like organic results? We will be closely monitoring the eligibility for enhanced sitelinks and their effect on CTR and hope to answer some of these questions soon. Feel free to get in touch too with any interesting observations or results of your own.

Found Donate to Help Lions

Gareth Olyott — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 08:55:19 +0000

Here at Found we always get excited when we can get involved with the community and this summer we discovered a young football team who needed a little help with funding, to get their 2012/2013 campaign underway. And so began Found’s sponsorship of Linford Wanderers. Our love of football and the chance to help out a great young team was too much to let pass and we decided we desperately wanted to get involved. I’m therefore delighted to introduce you to The Linford Wanderers Lions, sporting their brand new 2012 kit – and don’t they look great? We are thrilled to be able to help and will be keeping up with the lads’ progress throughout the year.

First game of the season…

Lions v Tigers

This weekend, the Tigers found themselves in the Lion’s den in what was an eagerly anticipated game for all local football fans. In a game filled with goals, the Lions went in at half time with 2 goals and a penalty save over their opponents. The penalty was saved by Joshua, and the lead secured by two great goals from open play by Samuel and Riley. Sadly, the second half saw a number of decisions go against the Lions, letting the Tigers claw their way back into the game, despite their 2-goal lead. 2 early goals for the Tigers gave the boys the momentum to push on and the floodgates opened. The Tigers added another 2 goals that would seem to have put the fixture out of the reach of the Lions. However, the Lions gave it one last roar and were able to score what would only turn out to be a conciliation goal at the end of the game. Sadly, the Lions didn’t win this weekend but they put up a good fight to end the game 4-3 to the Tigers. When quizzed after the game, a close source said, “Had it not been for two poor refereeing decisions, this would have been a winning start to the season for the team. But the lads did great, we were happy with the performance and, most of all, the character and determination showed by the players, even in the face of adversity towards the end, to claim what could be an important goal at the end of the season.” The Man of the Match award this week went to the goal-keeping skills of Joshua; for his fantastic acrobatic save to deny the Tigers a first half penalty. You can keep up with them too! Just click here for all the stats from the FA.

Google Web Lab

Andrea Downey — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 08:41:01 +0000

Over the weekend I went and checked out Google's Web Lab experiments at the Science Museum. Google's Web Lab is made of 5 Chrome experiment installations that bring the extraordinary workings of the internet to life and aims to inspire the world to the possibilities of the web. In this interactive exhibition worldwide visitors both at the museum and online are able to collaborate to make music with people across the world; launch digital images into cyberspace and see where they are on the web; travel instantly to far away places all over the world and watch their portrait being processed, translated, and then drawn in sand by a robot, all in real time.

Lab Tag Explorer

Each visitor is given a clever 'Lab Tag' to represent them in the virtual space online and the physical space at the Science Museum. This 'Lab Tag' is your ID for everything you create in the Google Web Lab and with some clever QR code technology you can then use it to retrieve your creations. This is all done via the 'Lab Tag Explorer', a website where you can explore the global community and browse visitors' creations.

Sketchbot

The Sketchbot takes a photo of your face using a webcam via HTML5's canvas and processes this into a line drawing. This data is then sent to the robot arm and it starts to sketch your face into the sand. Check out the video below of the Sketchbot drawing my face in the sand. This by far was my favourite expriment at the Web Lab.

Teleporter

Next up were the Teleporter experiments, where you get transported to another part of the planet, you can explore a panoramic 360° scene in real-time and take photos. The 3 locations you can be transported to are the Two Oceans Aquarium in Cape Town, the Miniature Wunderland in Hamburg and Amelie's Bakery in North Carolina. Sadly apart from seeing a few fish swimming about in the aquarium this was a bit of a disappointing experience.

Universal Orchestra

In the Universal Orchestra experiment, you can play some funky musical instruments set up in the Science Museum, over the internet, with people from all over the world whenever you want and in real-time. You control each instrument via a touch screen, where you can control the notes being played and the timing. People accessing the instruments from the internet have same screen but use their mouse to control them. Check out my musical talent with people from Russia and Spain in the video below.

Data Tracer

With the Data Tracer you track routes across the internet's vast networks and discover where images are stored. The Data Tracer combines the information from Traceroute with a 3D virtual world map to show you where the information comes from and how fast it is pinged across the planet. The experiments at Google's Web Lab push the limits of what it's possible to do in a web browser. The main technologies used to make these experiments work, include WebGL for amazing real-time 3D graphics; web sockets for realtime two way communication and advanced video streaming that allows you to see live locations from across the web. Web Workers is used to process lots of data fast; canvas controls individual pixels in the browser and Javascript + V8 powers each of the experiments. If you love the web and a little bit of a geeky, go check out the Web Lab at the Science Museum. Experiment with your browser, the possibilities are endless!

An SEO event that even Googlebot would enjoy

Keith Horwood — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 13:34:23 +0000

It is important as a digital marketer to attend events, not only to network with others but to discuss techniques, tools and, more importantly, ideas. This year I have made it a goal of mine to attend more SEO-specific events and, most recently, I attended Search London, which proved to be another great event. Search London is arranged by @SEOJoBlogs, and is an SEO event that even Googlebot would love, especially as it wants to be 'a real boy'. This leads on nicely to the stand-out talk of the evening, which was from Kelvin Newman. Kelvin is the chap who founded BrightonSEO, and his presentation was entitled 'How to Build Links That Google Will Enjoy'. I thought his presentation about the content strategy process was impressive, much like his full beard. The points put across aligned with many of my thoughts about the process of developing a content strategy that is effective in gaining links. I have been banging the content drum for years now at Found, both internally for our own properties as well as for client campaigns. Kelvin certainly illustrated the way companies should be looking to build a sustainable and long-lasting SEO strategy. I thought Kelvin did a great job in terms of presentation of the slides and adding extra explanations, using simple concepts to describe the process in an entertaining manner. There is certainly an ideation process that needs to be undertaken before the content is created. No longer can the SEO agency sit too far apart from clients and just get on with it. We need to consult, plan and work with existing marketing teams to help the brand become a publisher in their own right. This might be a long hard slog for some, but is worth it. Every SEO knows it is easier to get exposure for an item online that is exceptional and help it on its way to success. It will be part of the SEO’s role to understand, identify opportunities and work towards developing these ‘remarkable’ items of content. It has made many re-think their site design this year, with much more focus on authors, and improving the ease of posting new pieces that can engage with potential customers. This year we have expanded our SEO team so that we have skills in complementary areas, with an additional focus on having an eye for design and writing skills. I would hope that most forward-thinking agencies understand this and do not just continue with a cookie-cutter approach to SEO. Luckily, as an extension of our SEO team we already have an established and exceptional studio team who can assist us with designing and developing stunning pieces of work. Get involved I'm looking forward to attending Search London again this month, as well as OMN which is a digital marketing event with a fantastic venue – the HMS president. If you want to find out more about the BrightonSEO event then read Raluca’s BrightonSEO review and also Philip’s overview of the SEO tools discussed by the speakers at the event. If you would like to start your own event, then the organisers of these digital marketing events gave excellent advice & tips about organising your own SEO conference over on the SEOChicks SEO blog. Great stuff. This week many of the Found team are attending some of the many social media week events, which takes place at many venues and offices around the world. I look forward to hearing their thoughts, and might try to get to several myself!

Week 2: Young Hungry Lions

Gareth Olyott — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 11:10:51 +0000

The Lions took to the field again on what was a cold morning. It was the first real winter morning, and the question was, would the boys be able to warm the people on the sidelines with another hard fought display to build on last weeks good performance? Saturday’s opponents were the Basildon Trojans, who were stepping out to play their first league game of the 2012/13 campaign. Although it was the Trojans first outing, they put in a convincing performance and pushed the Lions all the way in a game that boasted 12 goals! Both sides played well with the Lions managing to edge the win in the end thanks to 5 goals from Sam, 1 from Teddy, and a late own goal to crown the Lions victorious on the day. The final score, 7-5 to the Lions. Who are the Linford Lions?

The Found Five –September

Flo Bundy — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 15:39:15 +0000

September ended up being surprisingly sunny but it seems as October steams ahead, the cold has set in and is here to stay. So to cheer you up as you settle into winter mode – here’s our September round-up reminding you of all the fab things around the web last month:

Google latest marvel, an interactive infographic entitled ‘The Story of Send’ presents with precision the journey of an email, displayed with simple but eye-catching visuals accompanied by concise explanations at each stage of the journey. Google uses the infographic to explain step by step the rigorous process of an action we as consumers see as a simple click of a button!
With Social Media Week landing in the last week of September, there were some incredible talks and events going on around London which really got me thinking about ‘The Social Network Mind-set’
Our team love to travel and September saw quite a few trips! Two of our boys visited the Big Apple and one of our lovely AMs soaked up the magic of Paris. This video compliments perfectly, the tale of two cities and those things we love about each. Which team are you on? Paris Je t’aime or New York, I love you?
Longing for the Olympics again? Wishing for another Jubilee weekend? It was a fantastic feeling uniting with the rest of Great Britain this summer. Are you still feeling the London love?
We love the fact that the newest branch of Polpo opened up right here in Smithfield. Great food, cool venue and a delicious wine list to boot! Lunch? Yes please!

Oversharing or misunderstood: Automatic sharing in social.

Chantelle Dadd — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 16:48:06 +0000

Thursday 27^th September 2012, 9-11am. Official Facebook Hub. We’ve all done it. Sitting at the top of your news feed, you notice a post that says your friend has recently read an article. It looks interesting, so you click on it and begin to read. Once finished, the app presents another article to read, and before you know it you’ve entered the wardrobe out of Facebook and teleported to their website. Upon your return, you notice that the app has completely taken over your newsfeed with their articles – Aren’t you lucky?

Welcome to the world of automatic sharing.

Last week, Found entered the brightly lit white loft apartment of London’s ‘Official Facebook Hub’ to take part in a Social Media Week automatic sharing conference. Betapond’s Marketing Director Richard Delevan, kicked off the conference as host by stating that 84% of people found something of interest within shared posts. Aaron Rajan – Director of Digital Marketing of Unilever Unilever’s Director of Digital Marketing, Aaron Rajan, gave an interesting introduction on their new development, Waterworks. Being the first Facebook app to allow donations in the form of Facebook payments, it heavily relies on automatic sharing to gain new customers. The app will post frequently to update your friends on your donation progress and how much clean water has been raised. Rob Proctor – CEO of Audio Boo Next up was Rob Proctor on behalf of Audio Boo, (who kept apologising for forgetting his slides!) who introduced the audience to the positives of automatic sharing: “Facebook produces no content of its own, as the content is all from its customers. Automatic sharing allows users to experience new causes, events and music that they might not have found before. Sharing self-curates what is going out and others base views on what you have shared.” Unilever’s Waterworks campaign is a prime example of this. Chris Lawson – Content Sales & Marketing of The Guardian As Chris Lawson explained how The Guardian website successfully receives more traffic using Facebook’s automated sharing than from Google, I was feeling that the conference was a bit one sided – what about the negative aspect of sharing? Spam invites? Game requests? Daily horoscopes? The list is endless… By now, I (and the rest of the audience!) was itching, yet patiently waiting until it was time to ask questions. Suddenly, Rob Practor piped up: “You wouldn’t spam your friends with 40 emails a day, so why is it acceptable on Facebook?” This was an interesting ‘spanner in the works’ for Chris Lawson, but his answer was that automatic sharing and spam is acceptable; if you don’t like it you have the option to simply turn it off. Which is all very well if it’s your own account, but there’s nothing you can do if you are receiving the automated sharing from your friends (unless deleting them and that wouldn’t be very nice, would it?).

If all automatic sharing was switched off, would we lose something? The answer is both yes and no. Although sharing allows users to follow good causes and find new content, why do we need to know that our friends have just reached a new level, need virtual items sent to them, or that their pixelated crops on Farmville are dying? Have we forgotten the ‘social’ side of Facebook? I want to know the milestones of my friend’s lives, not the milestones of their automated sharing. With the recent Apple IOS6 upgrade, it’s even easier for automatic sharing. With one click of the Facebook log in button, that’s it. Every check in, like, comment, article read, donation, and photo is posted to Facebook without your individual consent. Your entire life is online and as this video proves, it’s scarily easy to access. The above video reflects in websites such as www.zeebly.com/social_me who state that they will analyse your Facebook data. After a quick log in to Facebook, I was presented with the total amount of statuses I have written, where I post from, what I talk about, how many words I’ve typed…. Ironically, this website automatically shared itself on my Facebook without even giving me a choice! The Social Media Week conference poised some interesting thoughts on the automatic sharing debate and I look forward to attending next year. Here are a few points that were raised on what motivates people to organically share content rather than automatic sharing:

Brand image – Does your brand produce an honest and positive image? Visible negative customer reviews can seriously damage a brand’s reputation – address these quickly and honestly.
Understand and engage with your audience – Explore your audience’s demographics and find out their interests. Produce good quality content (for example, articles, blog posts or recipes) that is relevant to both your brand and customer’s needs.
Customer loyalty – Let the audience decide what they want to share. Organic content sharing gives a stronger insight as to what your customer likes, what works and what doesn’t. Find out who engages most with your brand and who the most influential sharers are.

If you have the first two points already nailed, your customers will automatically be willing to share your content.

Found Turns Two!

Flo Bundy — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 17:25:22 +0000

The buzzing atmosphere, the bubbling enthusiasm and the delicious smell of cake can only mean one thing - it’s our birthday! Today marks the second birthday of Found re-launching into the agency space and in those two years we have grown exceptionally. We have welcomed some more incredibly talented people into our team, along with landing some exciting new clients and continuing to love those that have been with us since the start. As we become another year older we end the previous one with some significant changes. With some swanky updates to our branding and our ever evolving website, we’ve firmly put our roots down in the digital marketing sphere. By focusing on pushing out great blog content and emphasising the social side of our website we have been able to show off our expertise, engagement and our personalities. With more of a focus on Social Media and its important impact on search results, the introduction of an excellent social media team has seen us get involved with some really exciting projects (and participating in some not-so-average office activities like making chocolate cakes in mugs and pirate boat building!). We’ve inspired through innovation with the creation of our FoundLab where our extremely gifted team members can submit their ideas and see them through every stage of development. This fantastic initiative has already resulted in a few Found tools and apps and there is lots more to come. We’ve also introduced the Found Newsletter which is broadcasting key insights from the blog along with the snippets from the latest trends in Search and Social. Our second year saw some fabulous recognition for our hard work and innovative campaigns by landing three Performance Marketing awards for the Best in Finance Publisher, Best Search Campaign and Hotshot Rising Star at the Performance Marketing Awards for our very brilliant Pete Newman. Along with our award wins we also got awarded number 33 in the Sunday Times ‘Top 100 Best Small Companies’ which is a wonderful achievement. We can proudly say that we are rounding off our second year being shortlisted for Best Use of Search - Finance with the Post Office and Best Use of Search - Leisure with Warner Leisure hotels at the UK Search Awards, so fingers crossed for the Awards Night in November. We have lots to be proud of in our evolution over the last two years and long may it continue! Here's to lots more success (and lots more cake) in the years to come. Happy Birthday Found!

Google Algo Changes - The Autumn Fantastic Four

Raluca Costin — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 16:13:14 +0000

Stormy weather Any SEO will remember the period of April – May 2012. For most search engine marketers it was a period of intense activity, mainly due to three important Google updates being released which caused a high ‘turbulence’ in search engine rankings. Turbulence is such a great analogy, that SEOmoz produced MozCast, a simple weather report which shows how much rankings have changed on that day. A few months later, we thought we could see another hurricane on the horizon as four Google updates are rolled out. Google’s Panda is certainly not shy So, starting with the oldest one that was announced on 27 September 2012, a new update to the post Panda algorithm was released and was said to impact 2.4 of English queries and 0.5% of non-English ones. This would make the 20th update we’ve seen so far for the Panda change since February 2011. It looks like Pandas take a lot of looking after.

Google launches WMD’s on EMD’s About the same time of releasing the new Panda update, another change was announced. This time it was to do with something new that Google has apparently been looking at for the past couple of years: exact match domains ranking well. This update is likely to hit 0.6 of English-US queries.

When I first heard and read about this update I decided I did not like it. Could it mean that affiliates selling products on keyphrase exact matched domains were now doomed? After a bit more research I realised that once again Google wasn’t being that mean. This update is likely to impact exact match domain websites with poor content and of a general low quality so if your website is ranking well exclusively on the exact match domain premise and it doesn’t offer any quality unique information, you may now have to change your strategy. Penguins migrating to warmer climes? Following the chain of updates, a few days ago, there was a third update to the fierce Penguin spam-fighting algorithm which is said to impact a further 0.3% of English language queries. This update is now likely to affect queries in other languages too such as Spanish – 0.4%, Italian – 0.3% and French – 0.4%.

I think it was high time searches in other languages were filtered a bit too. Having worked in the international arena of online marketing for a while, I have seen a large number of poor quality foreign language websites ranking above websites which I, as a user, would have deemed more relevant and useful websites. Sites top heavy with ads revisited And finally, on October 9th, Google announced the “Page Layout” update which, according to Matt Cutts, will impact only 0.7 of English language queries. This is the second update in this series, with the first one having been released in January 2012 which impacted around 1% of queries. Similar to the first one, this second update relates to the layout of a webpage and focuses on the amount of ads that are placed above the fold of a webpage. Matt Cutts’ concern was that landing on a page with numerous ads positioned above the fold make it difficult for people to find the content they are looking for and thus doesn’t provide a good user experience. So instead, people should focus on placing the content high up on the page to make it easily accessible without having to scroll down and move the majority of ads below the fold. I suspect this is going to hit websites with poor content which are exclusively built for the purpose of generating revenue from AdSense ads and other banner advertising forms. We’ve all seen them: websites which offer little or no content despite the promising Meta descriptions and which seem to be a collection of ads followed by some generic blurb. Whilst I think this is a good update which will filter the well-optimised but poorly built and written ‘advertising websites’ it remains to be seen whether placing a couple of ads on your high page rank, ’Google-friendly’ website is going to see you penalised. In Conclusion – What’s next? Although the latest updates do not offer too much that is new, it is clear that Google is keeping up its quest to improve search quality. Anyway, we look forward to the next update (are we ready?) which I dare to think that will be about targeted keywords. I think the day when you have to use your brand’s name next to your main keywords in order to please Google will come. They already seem to be favouring big brands and highly natural link profiles, so it definitely looks as if this is where we’re heading. The time to make sure your branding and publishing standards are up to scratch has arrived.

Find us at the a4u expo 2012

Flo Bundy — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 16:39:13 +0000

It’s that time of year again, time for A4U London! The office has been abuzz with preparation for this year’s expo for the last few weeks and tomorrow it finally arrives. As you will remember from past years, Found always does something a little bit different (from Routemaster bus conductors to purple waistcoat wearing cocktail waiters) and this year is no exception! This year’s concept is all about innovation so do look out for our search scientists on day one in the expo hall and find out how our innovative approach can help your business and whilst you are there you’ll be in for a ‘cool’ treat and could also be in with a chance of winning a tasting sensation for 2!

Social’s Big Performance Battle 13:30–14:15, on Wednesday 17th October Look out for Tina and Pete who will both be leading panels on day two. Tina will be moderating ‘Social’s Big Performance Battle’ (#A4UB11 ) where you can witness a head to head debate on whether Performance Marketing can develop across Social Media or whether it can only ever remain as a Branding and Customer Service channel. Who’s in Premier Position in the Digital Marketing League and who’s Fighting Relegation? 16:00–17:00, in Balmoral, on Wednesday 17th October Pete will be leading ‘Who’s in Premier Position in the Digital Marketing League and who’s Fighting Relegation?’ (#A4UB12) a session which will see advocates from the different channels discussing their performance focus and tactics in the ever-evolving digital space. See the day two agenda for more details. We look forward to seeing you there! #searchscience

12 Fundamental Landing Page Optimisation Tips

Bronson.Harrington — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 16:34:53 +0000

When it comes to your marketing strategy priorities, the design of quality landing pages for your marketing campaigns should be at the top of your list of things to do. Your awesome new branding and website design may grab the visitors attention initially, but a strong landing page will engage them long enough to deliver your marketing message along with a call to action and sufficient information for the user to decide whether or not to take action. To bring some of you up to speed, a landing page is the internet marketing equivalent of a landing strip for potential customers. Wikipedia defines a landing page as:

a landing page, sometimes known as a "lead capture page" or a "lander", is a single web page that appears in response to clicking on an advertisement. The landing page will usually display directed sales copy that is a logical extension of the advertisement or link.

Although Wikipedia's definition does a great job of summing it up, there's definitely a lot more to a quality landing page which converts well than relevant and keyword rich content. What the definition neglects to mention is that the single underlying purpose of a landing page is to get users to take specific actions, whether it be buying a product, subscribing to a mailing list, sharing information or requesting further information about your product or service. To learn more about what I consider to be the most critical factors that you should be considering when planning how to optimize your landing pages for higher conversion rates, read on after the jump:

Landing Page Optimisation: Top Tips for Conversion-tastic Landing Pages

1. Make Your Landing Page Content Relevant The content of a landing page should be directly related and relevant to your organic search results, PPC campaigns, anchor texts used in inbound links and any other targeted traffic advertising which is responsible for delivering users to that page. If you don't deliver the right content and provide visitors with what they expect, there's no compelling reason for them to stay on the page. 2. Give Users a Reason to Stay on Your Landing Page Avoid sending your website visitors to other pages on your site unless you absolutely have to. Eliminate, or at the very least minimize on the clutter and distractions such as unnecessary internal navigation, advertising and banners which direct users away from the page they are currently viewing. The more distractions and non-essential navigation options you can eliminate and the better your chance of retaining your visitors. I often refer to this as the "No-Bleed" rule. 3. Strive for Simplicity When Creating Landing Pages Make it easy for your visitors to take the actions which you want them to. Reduce confusion and decision making for your visitor and watch how conversions improve for your landing page. Avoid offering multiple choices and throwing-in too many optional extras. Focus on making the offer the page was created for as compelling as possible. As a rule, the lower the perceived value of the offer, the simpler it should be for users to take action. No user is going to complete a 20 page form to download a sample of your new 5-page ebook about the Mating Habits of the North-Sea Clam. 4. Focus on Landing Page Functionality The saying you cannot judge a book by it's cover unfortunately does not apply on the world wide web. According to many internet research polls a growing number of visitors seem to judge the professionalism and credibility of a website by its design alone. Unfortunately, this means that many website owners place too much emphasis on the design aspect and neglect to pay attention to the functionality and the overall user-experience. Any landing page, no matter how good-looking, is essentially rendered worthless if the user cannot complete the desired action. While I wouldn't never suggest sacrificing design, it shouldn't be your only priority. Focus on the exact steps you want your visitor to take and design a page which facilitates that specific user experience. 5. Provide Clear & Consistent Messaging Keep your landing page squeaky clean and free of clutter to ensure that your message stays front and centre and allows your website visitors to remain focused on your message. Emphasize the biggest selling points, benefits, advantages of your product or service as well as any calls to action with larger text, font variations, colour, contrast engaging graphics. Make it easy for users to scan the content and find the information they need by headings, bulleted lists and clear, concise, response orientated copy which gets straight to the point. Ensure that any offers leading to the page are identical to avoid confusion - if a user clicks through from a banner offering a 25% discount, make sure that your landing page offers the same. 6. Provide a Clear Call To Action Once you get your visitors to the desired landing page, ask them to take action. Make it clear and highly noticeable without being condescending. Whether it's a lead capture form asking a user to submit theor details or a "Buy Now" button, make it the focus of your landing page. Customize your submit button text or include copy to provide a clear indication of what happens after a user has taken action. If a secondary call to action is also required, downplay it's importance by making it less obvious than the primary. 7. Use Design Cues Having a great call to action or selling point is useless if users don't see it. Make use of design cues to lead your visitors through a landing page and direct their attention towards important calls-to-action, features, benefits or selling points. Employing use of arrows, viewing angles or contrasting colours are all great ways to lead the user's eye towards important page elements when used appropriately, if your landing page blinks, flashes and buzzes and looks like it should contain an epilepsy disclaimer - try again. 8. Give Something Away for Free Everyone likes freebies and samples. They are irresistible and can be used as a powerful conversion tool. Whether a call to action is free or something free is offered as a result of taking action, it certainly doesn't hurt. Use freebies and give-away's to build trust with your audience. If your competitor is charging for something and you're giving it away for free, guess who will win the customer. Remember, just because it's free, doesn't mean it shouldn't be quality. Always under-promise and over-deliver. 9. Offer Incentives Straight-up bribing visitors with a freebies and complimentary samples is a tried and trusted method of motivating your visitors to take action, offline businesses have been employing this strategy successfully for ages. Offer more than your competition but don't sell yourself so short that you're not making bank either. Provide a list of reasons why your offer is better than those of your competitors and what exactly the visitor can expect when dealing with you. 10. Build Trust & Credibility Trust and credibility are most likely the two biggest factors underlying any successful, mutually-beneficial relationship. Where possible, provide references and testimonials as social proof to build trust and facilitate better conversions. 11. Use Multiple Landing Pages All web site home pages are landing pages, but not all landing pages should be home pages. A landing page shouldn't necessarily be your homepage. In many instances a homepage is a good landing page as it forms the first introduction to your business, product or service for first-time visitors. However, if you're seeking better results from more targeted traffic and returning visitor your landing page should be focused on a single offer and feature a specific call to action. In the same way that each page on your website should be targeted to a specific keyword phrase, each of your landing pages should be targeted to a single, clearly defined purpose. To accomplish this, employ a multiple landing page strategy. Create and promote some landing pages that will focus on specific products, services or offers and your conversions will improve. 12. Test, Track Results & Refine Your Landing Pages In a recent post titled "7 Zen Ways to Make More Sales" I concluded the post with a mention of how important testing and tracking are for finding out what your visitors like and don't like. Testing various combinations of copy, calls to action, form layouts and media types will give you an accurate indication of what produces the best conversions rates. Never stop tracking, never stop testing. Using a tool like Google's Website Optimizer which is now built right into Google Analytics under Content Experiments you can easily monitor the conversion rate, bounce rate and a plethora of other useful visitor metrics related to your landing pages and website as a whole. Using these metrics you can easily experiment, test and review your results to figure out which version will be your optimal page, the one which maximizes the conversion rate. A good rule of thumb here is to test the effect of changes one element at a time. Conclusion …and that's a wrap. Although creating a successful, well-optimized and effective landing page which converts well requires much effort, it should be one of the primary areas of focus for anyone involved with the marketing of a website and it's associated products or services. Whether you are a website owner, webmaster, designer, developer or marketing specialist you should be aware of the various elements that go into building quality landing pages which effectively acquire customers and ultimately make a positive contribution to the bottom-line. After all, this can mean the difference between success or failure of a website in the long-run. I hope you enjoyed these tips for optimizing your landing pages for improved conversion rates. I have a few quality sources of information which I make use of when researching landing page ideas, templates and designs and will share these resources in a future post. If you need some assistance with your next landing page design, optimisation or marketing campaign get in touch and discover how our award-winning and passionate team's forward-thinking performance marketing services can help your company succeed online. .

What We Found at Google Engage

Anna Brunt — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 08:49:05 +0000

Yesterday some of the Found Account Management team were fortunate enough to attend the Google Engage event for agencies at their swanky Central St Giles offices in London. Google are focusing heavily on their mobile and display products, with Brian Brady from their Dublin office giving an excellent (but rather quick), in-depth overview of the market, product features and strategies that could be applied to our clients digital marketing. Improving their display remarketing offering has clearly been a key focus. Linking up to Google Merchant Centre and using dynamic ads built from Google’s Ad Builder tool are great features to improve the click through and conversion rates generated from display advertising. These are also great tools to improve management, optimisation and set-up times.

Although late to the market (some of the more savvy Digital Marketers were doing this via ad servers in 2005) this is a great development from Google and a sure way of improving effectiveness. Back in 2005, setting up the ad server with all the possible product images based on an action was definitely a big headache and one that the link to Merchant Centre resolves. Viewpoints on price transparency, highlighting the massive increase in price comparison searches in-store via mobile devices, provided food for thought for anyone in retail. It’s more important than ever to offer competitive pricing, but also to build brand affinity via qualities such as customer service and convenience. Another interesting point was measuring mobile conversions. Looking beyond a direct sale from a mobile ad made on a mobile site and extending the attribution model to include in-store visits and sales, desktop and application purchases and calls. It’s amazing how attractive ROI can be if you are willing consider all of these touch points, which a sound mobile strategy inevitably impacts. Loads of food for thought. Thank you Google.

Found at the A4U Expo

Jamie Brady — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 16:47:07 +0000

This week The Found team descended upon the Hilton Metropole in London for the 2012 A4U expo. Talks were had! Contacts were made! Ice-creams were devoured! And most stayed around long past the expo itself to observe many rounds of heavy ‘networking’ at the official after party. As always with the A4U, Found were out in force hosting several search panels. Tina Judic MD hosted an engaging discussion on ‘Social’s Big Performance Battle’, whilst ‘hotshot’ P ete Newman hosted a lively debate that saw various channels slogging it out in a football-themed showdown. Within the main arena itself, we showed off our innovative ‘Found Lab’ ice-cream stand, offering expo-ers the chance to mix ‘n’ match various ice-cream flavours together and win a tasting experience for two. You probably saw one of our search scientists wandering the arena with a cheeky gleam in their eye (or was that just the monocle?)

We would just like to take this opportunity to thank everyone involved at A4U for hosting yet another memorable and informative event. We look forward to next year, where we will no doubt represent yet again in our own individual way. I’m counting down the days already..

Did you enter our competition at the A4U?

Keep your eyes peeled on our twitter and facebook as the winner of our competition will be announced next week….Good luck!

8 Mobile SEO Tools Provided for Free by Google

Keith Horwood — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 08:57:53 +0000

2012 was predicted to be a year of continued mobile search growth, and it certainly did not disappoint. With tablet devices hitting the mainstream and smartphones now the norm, catering for these devices has now become standard practise for success online. Understanding how visitors are using these devices on your site is important, and also how your site is performing in relation to desktop search. You can then look into putting in place a mobile marketing strategy to improve performance. Luckily, Google provide a whole host of tools that can help you analyse and understand mobile device usage on your website, and ultimately improve performance through this channel.

1 - Our Mobile Planet

This tool allows you to view data about mobile users that Google has gathered. Select your key demographic and other potential customers, and view key differences between 2011 and 2012. This data can form part of your research for your clients. Especially if management buy-in is needed to confirm budgets on a mobile site implementation. This data could also be used in blog posts or infographics. Need more data? Then download the full dataset.

2. Mobile Meter

There are many tools out there for testing your site, and Google's mobile meter gives an overview of how your site looks and performs on a mobile. The mobile meter is part of Google's excellent 'Mobilize Your Site' resource, which has lots of other information on developing mobile sites. The mobile site case studies are certainly worth a read.

3. PageSpeed Insights

The PageSpeed insight tool can test speed from both a desktop and mobile perspective. Very useful to see where the easiest performance improvements can be gained in terms of download speed. As site speed is considered part of Google's algorithm, fixing issues could result in a real impact on mobile search positions.

4. Google AdWords Keyword Tool

The Google keyword tool gives a guideline on the monthly volume in searches. As well as looking at desktop searches, the tool can also show data for searches on mobile devices. Simply select 'advanced options' > 'show ideas and statistics for' > and select 'mobile'. Local search trends can be added to see seasonal fluctuations or if keyword searches are increasing in volume. Select columns and 'local search trends'. This will show a simple bar graph, but if you download the data it will give some figures over time. It is worth checking your target keywords and investigating potential local search term variations. Monitor accuracy of this data by comparing it against your visits from search terms in high positions.

5. Google Webmaster Tools

Webmaster tools has several useful features if you are investigating your mobile site. If you have mobile specific content, then test to see if different mobile GoogleBots can fetch your pages ok. This is useful for checking your mobile site setup and investigating any performance issues or poor search results. Additionally, if you redirect mobile users to specific mobile versions of your URLs, then Mobile Sitemaps can be added in Google Webmaster Tools. Check the Mobile Sitemap Specification for more information.

6. Google Sites

Not got the time or budget to build your own mobile solution? You can quite quickly build a mobile landing page using Google Sites. This could be useful to build a test or mock up and see how it performs. They have different templates for several types of landing pages.

7. Google Mobile Ads

Although not strictly part of organic search, it is worthwhile knowing about some paid search tricks which can also help clients give their mobile campaigns a push. With a multitude of segmentation options between tablet and mobile phones, you will be missing out on extracting the maximum amount of ROI for your marketing spend if you do not use AdWords. Getting the most from Ads is a whole series of blog posts in themselves but there is a whole host of options Google have developed for mobile devices. Here are some of the potential methods to look at that can drive traffic to your mobile landing pages using mobile ads:

Phone numbers in ads using 'click-to-call',
click-to-download
Mobile Ad Sitelinks
Seller Ratings
Location Extensions (Multiple Addresses too!)
Location Targeting

View the superb Mobile Ads Blog for the latest updates, case studies and examples.

8. Google Analytics

I am sure everyone knows about using Google Analytics and is the most obvious free tool for mobile SEO analysis. At a basic level, understanding Google Analytics will help you to find out how mobile traffic is performing relative to desktop. You can easily find out which mobile devices are working well, and which may be candidates for optimisation. Is some content getting a lot of mobile traffic but performing relatively badly? Can a page be optimised to generate more phone call leads? Which content drives more local mobile users? It is even possible to hook Analytics up to track downloads of mobile apps. Although Google also has a set of standard reports just for mobile, it is worth spending some time setting up advanced segments and custom reports so you can see the exact data you need. I hope that gives you a good overview of Google's extensive list of free tools that can help with improving your mobile site performance. If you know of more, then please leave a comment and I will try to include it here!

6 things I hate to see in my Twitter feed... and how you can avoid them

Philip Gamble — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 14:51:21 +0000

Twitter can be a powerful medium for businesses to communicate with existing and potential customers. Despite many brands and potential consumers having used the social networking website for a number of years, tweets are still made which frustrate followers by cluttering feeds, interrupting the flow of information and offering a poor user experience. Here are six types of tweet which get on my nerves – and what you can do to help prevent these issues annoying your followers. 1. A personal tweet Software such as TweetDeck and Hootsuite make it easy to manage multiple Twitter accounts from a dashboard on a single screen wherever you are. Unfortunately the ease of this cross-account communication also increases the likelihood of an employee accidentally sending a rogue tweet out to the wrong account. Whilst the majority of personal tweets are totally harmless and would perhaps only briefly warrant some confusion among brand followers, the risk of something political, rude or offensive making it out is very real. An increasing number of brands are finding themselves in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons after an employee's personal tweet has inadvertently been broadcast on the brand account. We recommend using different social media management tools for your personal and business accounts to help avoid making this potentially embarrassing mistake in future. 2. Spam If a company’s security is so lapse that they allow their Twitter account to become compromised and start broadcasting spam tweets, @mentions and direct messages under the name of their brand what does it suggest about the quality of controls they place upon the data they hold about you? Your brand is exceptionally valuable - protect it by using a secure and unique password. Courtesy of XKCD here’s some food for thought when next trying to choose a memorable but secure passphrase. Be aware of phishing attempts, a large proportion of spam originates from people unwittingly entering their login details at a rogue site after following a link to a login page - if in doubt don’t click the link. Be aware of your Twitter data sharing permissions - check to see what tools and websites have you given permission to broadcast to your followers under your brand name. Revoke access from any services you no longer use and be careful when granting any services write privileges - with these you are effectively handing over control of your brands online profile.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="386" caption="Which Applications are you trusting with your brand?"][/caption]

3. Non-mobile friendly content (unless you warn me) 60% of active Twitter users access the social networking platform through their phones. With the growing affordability and proliferation of smartphones and the availability and speed of mobile Internet worldwide increasing this number is almost certain to grow. So when someone on the move wants to check out a link you’ve tweeted try to have the content available in a mobile friendly format. For instance some content from SlideShare isn’t accessible on mobile. This one’s really the responsibility of the sites you tweet links to, but do check to see how all sections of your company website operate on the top mobile devices. Mobilizer is a great free desktop based tool which can help you preview and test your site on the most common mobile phone setups. 4. Paywalled content (unless you warn me) You’ve found some content you feel is share-worthy and decide to tweet a link to it. All well and good, but then your followers click the URL and find themselves faced with a paywall or a site demanding registration to read past the first paragraph of the article. Many of these ‘closed’ sites operate on first click free functionality whereby visitors referred from search engines are able to read the full text of the page they land on following a click from a search results page. For instance navigating to this story on the FT will through a subscription message whereas Googling the URL then clicking the top result will take you straight to the content. It’s normally a good idea to highlight pay-walled content with a (£) or ($) after the URL to pre-warn your followers. 5. Websites that redirect all mobile traffic to their mobile homepage Perhaps one of the most infuriating barriers put in your way by a shocking number of websites is the catch-all redirection of visitors from mobile devices. When I click a link to internal content I want to see just that - not the mobile friendly version of your website’s homepage. This offers a terrible user experience, there’s no reason why simple text based content can’t be served up to mobile users. If you don’t have a mobile version of a particular page serve up the full version of that page instead of redirecting away from the content, better still use a responsive design to serve up your content across screens of various sizes. Thankfully the number of websites I encounter employing this practice seems to be in rapid decline as site redesigns bring websites up to date. 6. Links to Paginated Articles If I’m using my phone to check up on Twitter chances are I’m out and about somewhere, liable to lose 3G connection or fall out of WiFi range at any moment. I think I’ve opened the link you tweeted in my browser, only to find out once my Internet signal has gone that the article is split between 5 ridiculously short pages and I’ve only loaded the first. This mostly affects blogs and newspaper websites which should provide an option to view the entire article on a single page and use a cookie to save the user preference so that the next time they return to the site articles load fully straight off. With increasing mobile Internet speeds, data allowances and WiFi becoming more prevalent I see no need to split simple text based articles between multiple pages.

Adwords, Coffee And Cigarettes

Greg Burgess — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 15:42:10 +0000

When cigarette advertising was legal, cigarette manufacturers would plan well in advance how much they would spend on marketing their products. Company A’s advertising effectiveness completely depended on the advertising of Company B’s; if they both had a 50:50 share of the market and didn’t do any advertising the market share split would remain consistent; however if they both launched advertising campaigns, they would essentially cancel each other out and the market share would remain at 50:50, the advertising becomes little more than an additional expense to both companies. It was ultimately a game, with a number of outcomes, one of which leads to a win-win scenario for both firms. This basic concept of Game Theory still exists in advertising today, but within a far more volatile and fast moving environment.

Keyword bidding

With PPC, each advertiser through various methods calculates the maximum worth of a keyword. Without bringing quality score into the equation, each advertiser will pay not what they have valued their keyword at, but what their competitors have valued the keyword at, since the auction system works by making you pay £0.01 more than the next highest bidding competitor. As such, if every player in the auction agreed to cap their bids at a lower rate, all the players would be better off. If advertisers did form an alliance to fix positions at lower bids, the possibility still exists that an advertiser could defy the rules of the agreement at any hour of any day and immediately win the game. Historically in any advertising space short term gain will often override; it’s just a matter of time. Coordinating and monitoring these kind of “agreed” relationships is a cost itself. But it is possible. You need technology and trust to save time monitoring, along with a small number of competitors in a niche which is not expecting any newcomers. Agree to set bids low and increase your profit margins. Yet Google is continually developing its algorithm, which is making collusion harder to maintain. Google have data on how much previous advertisers have been willing to pay for a premium spot, and have techniques to encourage this. I’d be shocked if they didn’t already have a full-time team set aside working on exactly how to prevent capped bid agreements.

Dropping your costs

Yet there are other routes to artificially dropping your costs from what the other players in your industry are paying. In the same way cigarette companies welcomed and endorsed laws that banned adverting of cigarettes, certain Adwords advertisers’ endorsed trademarks, terms that couldn’t be used in adtext unless you were licensed to have them. Back in the days where anyone could bid on ‘iPhone’ and have the same word in their ad, the space was awash with ads for the product. But when it got trademarked, not having the word ‘iPhone’ in your adtext meant no clicks, poor quality scores, and such a huge drop in opportunity that many advertisers chose to drop out. Google have since relaxed their trademark policies, and now we see competition back up on these previously heavily trademarked terms. So if collusion is set up to fail and you don’t want to pay market rates for your ad spend, what do you need to do? On RTB (real-time bidding) platforms you will only pay what your competitors are willing to pay but in new spaces, where your competitors aren’t yet appearing, you can undercut marketing spend. So look to mobile. Look to the new search engine products. Look at new ways of targeting. Look at new platforms, new markets, and new products. Drink your coffee, wake up earlier and don’t be a slow mover. Take all the tricks you have learnt, adapt them to new areas and new spaces, and don’t be afraid to evolve your business model around these new developments. Ridiculously low marketing costs are out there; you just have to find them.

The Found Five - October

Flo Bundy — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 18:10:47 +0000

So the cold is finally here and it’s almost time for mulled wine and mince pies, but don't panic you've still got plenty of time for Christmas shopping….But first, here's what cool stuff has been going on in October:

The election is finally over and it’s “four more years” of Mr Obama. Along with the build-up to Election Day, there have been a large number of infographics out there for all to see. Here’s my favourite with a Halloween twist ‘Election Search & Media: The Spooky Truth’
October saw the return of the fantastic a4uexpo London in which we were there with our usual unique Found twist on search marketing. This event just keeps getting better and better and there was lots of say before, during and after the conference!
Do you sometimes feel like your life is lacking a little drama? The launch of a new TV channel in Belgium back in March saw a big red ‘Push to add drama’ button on a small Flemish town square. We rediscovered it last month and it's still brilliant!
Following the madness of London Cocktail Week in October, this awesome classic cocktails recipes tea towel is a great addition to those of you trying to perfect the Long Island Iced Tea in the comfort of your own home.
Burger AND Lobster?? The newest restaurant to be added to the already large selection of great Farringdon eateries is Burger and Lobster…..a winning combination if you ask me!

Is the Marketing Department fit for purpose in the brave new world of SEO?

Angela Greenwood — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 15:52:26 +0000

In the post-Panda, post-Penguin world (as an Aussie, I’m hoping the next Google update will be Platypus), anyone remotely interested in search engine optimisation will have twigged that SEO success is all about quality content, building a focused brand and maintaining a consistent voice across all marketing channels, including online. To my mind, this is easier said than done given that the majority of companies are still lumbering along with a division of marketing responsibilities that makes this consistency extremely difficult, if not nigh on impossible. With the PR department often still releasing unoptimised press releases down traditional channels, the ATL marketing department managing media purchasing, the eCommerce or online marketing team managing search and email, and potentially a branding team looking at customer engagement via social channels, it’s no wonder that disparate messaging and a confused content strategy can often result. The key to really gaining the most traction from any content marketing is amplification – taking a piece of content, adapting it for each audience and channel, and then ensuring it obtains the widest reach possible via an integrated approach to distribution. But with disparate marketing and PR divisions all fighting for budget and the right to claim success via allocation of a sale or action to their activities (rather than a multichannel view which truly understands the multiple touchpoints that led to the sale), marketing divisions are under the gun to defend their turf rather than taking a cohesive approach. It’s time for a rethink of organisational structures that enables a tightly integrated content strategy to develop. In my mind, there’s no such thing as ‘nonline’ marketing any more where the call to action across all channels is invariably a website address or social media presence. In the brave new world of SEO every facet of the marketing team needs to be contributing towards online brand building in some way. How ready is your team?

An Early Present from Found: SEO iPhone App

Keith Horwood — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 17:59:19 +0000

Our development studio elves have been hard at work in their workshop and have produced an SEO iPhone app - just in time for Christmas! I am proud to announce that the result of recent long winter evenings is the SEO Audit Tool App for iOS. The tool is available free, in the spirit of spreading goodwill & festive cheer to digital marketers who use iOS devices. The app is another development from our Foundlabs initiative, and joins many other excellent additions to our internal processes recently by the team. The studio team certainly deserve to enjoy the Christmas party!

The data returned through the tool can act as a great starting point and will quickly alert you to some key issues that may need to be addressed. The Tool has 3 Main Parts: • Technical issues, such as domain canonicalisation & XML sitemaps • Content issues, such as keywords found on the page and within meta data The tool is very easy to use - simply enter a URL (domain or a page) and tap the start button. The tool will then run and start to display the headline issues which have been found. Through the use of a ‘traffic light’ system the tool will indicate whether the task is successful, whether there is an error or whether there are any warning signs that could be addressed.

Full list of SEO App Features

• HTTP header check • Domain canonicalisation – checks for duplicates of the homepage. This checks www and non-www versions and for multiple index files. This is probably one of my favourite features • Robots.txt check – checks existence and sitemap location • Sitemap check – checks for existence • On-page links analysis – summary, internal links and external links within HTML • Header check – checks H1 tags • Image analysis – checks for missing alt tags • Keywords analysis – checks density of keywords found • Metadata analysis – looks at title tags, description tags and keywords tag Please download and test it out, it would be great to receive feedback.

Web Version Update

As well as producing the mobile app, our online audit tool, which was released back in March 2012 has been given an update. On top of lots of tweaks and design improvements after user feedback, some additional functionality has also been added. Here are some of the new features:

Export audit data to a PDF.
Ability to save a report with a URL.

Browser plugins for both Firefox and Chrome are currently being tested so watch this space for those!

Found to optimise HCL's online profile

Emily White — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 11:09:07 +0000

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

HCL appoints digital marketers Found to support SEO campaign

HCL, the largest provider of temporary healthcare professionals to the NHS has appointed Found, the award winning digital marketing agency specialising in search engine optimisation (SEO), pay per click (PPC), social and mobile marketing to optimise its online profile. HCL was formed in 2003 as a staffing agency, and today supplies over 2,000 temporary and permanent doctors, nurses, allied health professionals, qualified social workers and administration and clerical staff to public and private sectors every week. To align with the changing needs of the NHS, HCL has recently restructured, creating an opportunity to increase its presence online. Found is one of the UK’s most innovative digital marketing agencies. Headquartered in London, its results-obsessed team have championed the wider use of the performance model across key digital channels including Search, Social and Mobile. Passionate about delivery, Found is well known for its innovative thinking and focus on achieving results for all its clients. Claire Billenness, Director of Sales and Marketing at HCL, comments: “As the leading provider of healthcare workforce solutions, it is vital that HCL works with a digital marketing agency to optimise its online presence. Found’s track record in delivering SEO campaigns put it head and shoulders above the competition.” Tina Judic, Managing Director of Found, says: “As a respected partner in the healthcare recruitment field, HCL is well known in its market and we’re delighted they have chosen to work with us in helping them increase this awareness still further. Found is a passionate team, passionate about performance, and our role will focus on driving greater leads and enquiries to the HCL sites to help their business continue to grow and develop.” Please see www.hclplc.com for further information about HCL plc. To find out more information about Found please visit www.found.co.uk Notes to Editor For further press information about HCL plc please contact: Thomas Carlin - The Scott Partnership, 1 Whiteside, Station Road, Holmes Chapel, Cheshire, CW4 8AA, United Kingdom. Tel: + 44 1477 539 539 Fax: +44 1477 539 540. E-mail HCLPLC@Scottpr.com For further information about Found, please contact: Julie York, FYA Ltd, Tel: +44 1208 851982/+44 7774 207870, E-mail: julie@fyassoc.co.uk About HCL plc HCL plc, headquartered in London, was formed in 2003 and is a leading provider of staffing solutions in the health and social care sectors. HCL supplies over 2,000 temporary and permanent doctors, nurses, allied health professionals, qualified social workers and administration & clerical staff to public and private sectors every week. We are an international company with offices in the UK and Australia and recruitment drives in Europe. For more information please visit our website at www.hclplc.com, view our Facebook page or follow us on Twitter. About Found Found has led a new chapter for the Online Marketing industry, championing the wider integration of Performance Marketing to drive significant results across all growing digital channels. Focused on masterminding highly effective performance-based marketing campaigns which push the boundaries across Search, Social, Mobile and Affiliate, Found’s multi award-winning, results-obsessed team are experts in driving quality online traffic for such brands as Wilkinson, RAC, Premier Inn, Jane Shilton and the Post Office. The digital marketing agency has fast gained a reputation for finding new ways to build its clients’ businesses online, and its often ground-breaking campaigns are testament to Found's belief that great performance comes from great people. For more information, please visit our website at www.found.co.uk. This press release was originally published on The Marketing Blog. Interested in learning more about our work and our clients? Visit our clients and case studies page for more information.

The Found Five - November

Flo Bundy — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 13:06:10 +0000

So winter is officially here and the build up to Christmas has begun but before you rush ahead to the manic Christmas shopping and the rather indulgent eating and drinking, let’s recap November:

The last 18 months have seen a huge change in all aspects of SEO and what was originally a technical discipline is now calling for a much more creative and content focused approach. This awesome infographic outlines the new face of SEO and how it has changed.
November saw our very own Tina Judic feature in The Drum’s ‘Women in Digital’ where they have pulled together a series of profiles on influential women in digital. We are all really proud to have such an inspirational leader at our helm and love to see her out there sharing her wisdom with the digital world!
John Lewis does it again with their 2012 Christmas ad. Last year it was the box and this year the wonderful snowmen but as always they are celebrating that extra mile we all go to at Christmas to find the perfect gift.
Stuck for Christmas gift ideas? Don’t panic! November saw the launch of Fab’s online Christmas shop, a melting pot of all things creative and cool. Here you can pick up everything from prints to tables to shoes and it doesn't have to break the bank. Click here to get all your Xmas shopping done without leaving the sofa…
Some of us were lucky enough to spend a whole afternoon in ‘The Anthologist’ which is an absolutely fantastic venue with a really cool website. Book the private room for a meeting and follow it up with dinner and drinks at the chef’s table – you will not be disappointed! Wonderful staff and fantastic food… you could even treat yourself to the Chateaubriand for 2, go on you know you want to!

Top 5 Web Design Predictions for 2013

Andrea Downey — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 11:34:34 +0000

What happened in 2012?

2012 brought us an array of cool and wonderful new ideas and developments across the web. With mobile browsing contributing to over 10% of online traffic (source: NetMarketShare), there was an explosion of Responsive Design – an approach to web design that tailors the experience for the device the site is being viewed upon. Everything on the web has got bigger with the use of large headers and photography backgrounds that expand with your browser window. Typography made a big impression, with the use of more standard fonts such as Arial, Times New Roman, Georgia and Verdana reducing and new fonts emerging. Infographics have been huge this year, seeing insightful data being turned into easy-to-digest, interesting graphics. HTML5 and CSS3 have been making a lot of noise, with interactive web pages. Here at Found we have been pretty busy as we like to keep up with all new developments, techniques and technologies. With the use of HTML5 and CSS3, we transformed many of our sites for mobile and tablet use through Responsive Frameworks, whilst reducing the use of CSS thanks to new platforms such as Amazium and Bootstrap. 2 online apps have made it onto the web from Found HQ and with Found, most recently, launching our first mobile app Found SEO Audit Tool. Wow what a year! Okay, so that was a snapshot of 2012, what is in store for in 2013?

2013 Web Design Predictions

1. Responsive Design Yes, this was a 2012 actuality, but it was an added extra to a website build. In 2013, I predict that this will be standard on many websites! Yes, standard. Mobile is getting bigger and better every day therefore every website should be mobile and tablet friendly. 2. Interactive Infographics Infographics were huge at the beginning of 2012, with them becoming the bread and butter for website visual.ly and of course, the continued meteoric rise of Pinterest. With the number of Infographics being produced, this space and content creation method has become saturated making what was once a cool, easy way to get noticed into an abundant wave of endless (and not always great) infographics . The questions for 2013 are:

What else can we do with infographics to stand out from the crowd?
Why should we use an Infographic that’s just a static jpg when there is much more that could be done to make the concept more interesting?

2013 will see a rise in interactivity where infographics are concerned. Take the Facebook election page for example. This is an infographic that us updated in real time and is an example of the types of content we will be seeing much more over the next 12 months. 3. Typography The second half of 2012 year saw designed Typography start cropping up a lot more on the web, with the use of fancy typefaces and ligatures used on websites without the use of images, all thanks to the new font foundries. I can only see this increasing further this year, with more typefaces making their way online. Yes, my prediction is that 2013 is going to be the year of Typography! 4. Minimalism Apple has been the leader with its detailed use of Skeuomorphism for the past couple of years; with the recent launch of Windows 8 and Pinterest using the minimalist block look, I think 2013 will be the beginning in a shift to using this style of design. You will see sites and interfaces introduce block sections, limited colour palettes, less gradients and less textures. 5. HTML5 & CSS3 The use of HTML5 & CSS3 has been growing over the last couple of years but 2013 is going to see these languages take over. As most modern browsers are now pretty much HTML5 & CSS3 ready we can start creating more amazing things such as Google Web Labs experiments; where Google brought the Internet to life. Summing up, 2013 is going to bring us amazing mobile-friendly, interactive, type-focused, minimalist websites using HTML5 & CSS3. Here’s to a great 2013!

Happy Christmas from Found!

Luke Townsend — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 15:42:48 +0000

On the eve of much festive merriment, some of us are still here in the office. Wrapping up loose ends, awaiting delivery drivers that probably won't come, checking google for Santa and generally being in pretty good spirits. Whilst it's been a bit quieter we've had a little festive fun here in the office and created this little infographic we thought we'd share, it's from some data we collected a few weeks back about how the Found team feel about Christmas. So here it is: Some facts that didn't make the graphic were:

Apparently 'Home Alone' is the Found favourite 'Christmas' movie.
Only 56% of Found'ers will be having turkey for Christmas dinner.
And 36% of Found hate mince pies

Here's wishing all our friends and the readers of our blog a very merry festive season, from myself and all the team at Found. More from the blog in the New Year!

4G Destined To Hit Full Speed In 2013

Jadon Stewart — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 14:44:00 +0000

Much hype has been centred on the arrival of the 4G network into the UK in recent years. Yet, since its arrival the potential of this super-fast network has not yet been fulfilled in the eyes of many. The real big hitters in the market (Vodafone and O2), have been restricted to sit back and watch their competitors soak up the limelight. EE are currently the only operator in the UK that provides the service. This has been well documented in the media (with those silly Kevin Bacon adverts). To their credit, they have merged operational giants Orange and T-Mobile under this umbrella. It was a clever move to tie in the re-brand with technological advancements. In one fell swoop they have made established brands seem like old men trying to be trendy. However, poor signal coverage, over-priced tariffs, limited data coverage and inadequate customer service have seen them receive a bombardment of negative press. There may not be a wealth of 4G customers in the UK at the moment but the numbers look likely to soar. Vodafone, o2, Three and BT are all set to join the party this year, so EE will have some serious competition of their hands.

4G - So, why all the fuss anyway?

The connection is known be faster than many home Wi-Fi connections.
Applications that take up to 58 seconds on a standard 3G device can be obtained within just 4 seconds on a 4G (LTE) smartphone.
There has been a huge rise in the use of smartphones, which demand high data speeds
An increasing amount of people work on the move - many with tablets & notebooks which can use SIM cards.

Where is mobile right now?

It has been the buzzword for a few years but will this finally be the year it takes off properly? Well, all the evidence seems to point in that direction with mobile traffic reaching an all-time high in Christmas 2012. It is rumoured that mobile search traffic will surge ahead of traditional desktop computers and laptops by 2014. Smartphone sales continue to boom with models such as the Galaxy S3, iPhone 5, HTC One X, and Nokia Lumia all boasting larger screens with better resolutions. These devices now contain the power to offer a far greater user-experience, not to mention new form-factor tablet devices which are on many people's shopping lists. Data from Strategy Analytics suggests that 4G accounted for over 90 million mobile connections globally in 2012, led by the US, Japan and South Korea. However, that figure will rise to an approximate 275 million by the end of this year and possibly up to a billion by the year 2017. Furthermore, 60% of operators globally will be supporting 4G services come the end of the year.

What does all this data mean for companies with a mobile presence?

Mobile Search - Increasingly, consumers will be turning to their smartphones on the move. With this thought in mind it has never been more imperative to be on the first page of the search engines for priority search terms. Online shoppers will not be so willing to flick through pages and pages on their smaller 4-inch screens in the same way they would on their traditional desktop computers and laptops.
Time - Fourth Generation users are likely to spend twice as much time on the mobile web in comparison to their non-4G counterparts.
Display advertising – This area should benefit vastly from the increase in connection speeds with the capability of incorporating innovative rich media and new formats. Additionally, because these consumers won’t be twiddling thumbs waiting for pages to load, click though rates should increase as a result.
Coupons - More and more shops and businesses are introducing online coupons that can be downloaded to use in store. Quicker download speeds for 4G consumers will only prompt companies such as Voucher Cloud to craft more expansive designs and features when creating their coupons for their mobile audience.
Web Design - Data will load quicker therefore sites should be looking to make their sites more visually appealing. This could consist of more meticulous layouts, images and video content onsite.
Applications - Quirky and innovative tools such as Blippar (an app whereby video is streamed through image-recognition and provides exciting augmented reality experiences), would be much more proficient on 4G platforms. Companies looking to build apps this year should consider the influx of 4g users to the market as the capabilities of their performance will increase even further.

PC sales have dropped for the first time in 5 years as pointed out last week by my colleague Simon. Have mobile devices had an influence on this? Certainly. If this isn’t a glaring sign for companies to start thinking about responsive design, mobile SEO, app design, mobile advertising and analysing mobile analytics in a more methodical way then I don’t know what is. Mobile’s rise was huge last year, and 4G will play a significant role in continuing the upward trend for the foreseeable future.

10 Digital Trends for 2013

Luke Townsend — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 11:53:24 +0000

Welcome to 2013 - the world didn't end.. It's that reflective time of year again, we've all made resolutions or at least thought about making some, and it's in January that we tend to think about what has been and what will come to pass. There's always a tidal wave of articles around this time of year reviewing the previous years' highlights and summing up what to expect for the upcoming year. It's a rejuvenating process, we take stock and we make plans for the year ahead. So what did happen in 2012? Well one thing it was a BIG year for was Social Media. Facebook introduced timelines and Twitter introduced brand pages, the ASA got involved in regulating promotional tweets and Facebook floated on the stock exchange. And all that was just the first half of the year! Later on we saw Google+ pass 400 million users, LinkedIn revamp its profile pages, Facebook purge fake accounts and Pinterest opening its doors to all comers. It wasn't a dull year on other fronts either. April saw Google make a significant change to its search algorithm, 'Penguin'. This went a long way towards clearing the search space of 'spammy' sites and those violating Google's own webmaster guidelines, making for a cleaner and better search experience... well that was the aim anyway. The dreaded 'EU Cookie Law' came to pass, moments after the ICO made a last minute U-turn on the type of consent required from users around cookies, the collective sigh of relief from website owners everywhere was almost audible as they realised that they weren't going to lose visibility on what 9 out of 10 visitors to their sites were doing. But what about 2013? We've put our predictive hats on here at Found and come up with a list of 10 Digital Trends that we think will be creating waves in 2013. Check out our Slideshare below and let us know if you agree.

10 Digital Trends for 2013 from Found

Online PDF Version - Click Here

Have we now evolved beyond the Digital Age?

Tina Judic — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 09:26:19 +0000

The start of a new year always brings a flurry of opinion regarding the likely development and direction for the future of our industry. This year has been no exception; however alongside the usual projections on possible growth opportunities and technological advancements, the year has kicked off with a rather more interesting debate into the very moniker to which we give our existence and service. The culprit is a new report from Forrester which riskily suggests that 2013 may be the year that Digital Marketing loses its prefix of ‘Digital’ due to marketers’ inherent reliance on digital channels as part of their marketing mix. It specifically predicts that digital will continue to influence all verticals and channels in 2013; from Retail feeling the pressures of Social Media recommendations through to broadcasters feeling threatened by online channels such as YouTube and the growing mass of home-based ‘experts’. In response, it proposes that over the coming months, marketers must expand the utility and value of the experience their brands deliver and embrace digital to an extent that it is their ‘Marketing’. The reaction has, of course, been mixed with traditionalists rising to the “absurdity that we dare blend traditional with Digital”, whilst the more online savvy can’t see what all the fuss is about as they feel this natural evolution began way back in 2003 anyway when Google and Yahoo started to get a foothold. Blog space and comment columns have therefore been busily growing day-by-day with many of the industry’s leaders muscling in to give their two pennies’ worth on the grounds behind the global intelligence specialists belief that ‘Marketing’ will indeed suffice as Digital continues to represent more of the marketing investment and planning pie. Both sides of the argument actually have a point though. However, what is missing here is the fact that although our industry continues to grow, to expand and to develop, surely we are simply just responding to consumer need? Here at Found, we’ve been in the thick of the evolution of Digital Marketing, driving greater acceptance and usage of one of its most robust facets – Performance Marketing. We’ve championed the discipline of payment on results across PPC, SEO, Social and Mobile becoming a solid and useful business model across all areas of online marketing behaviour and, more recently, seeping into offline activity too. The concept of greater digital acceptance is therefore an opportunity and not a threat for us. With so many facets of Marketing becoming Digital it really is no surprise that we are not just gearing ourselves up to deliver this year’s Digital Marketing strategy but to deliver a 2013 Marketing strategy for a Digital world.

Facebook Graph Search – The Death Knell of Google?

Tina Judic — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 12:38:54 +0000

So, Facebook is ready to take on Google (Trip Advisor, Amazon, and Ebay…), or is it? Launched with much hype as the ‘third pillar of Facebook’ (the other two being News Feed and Timeline) Graph Search is, in some corners, being cited as Facebook’s answer to Google Search whereas others are wondering what all the fuss is about. So what does it do? In the simplest form, Graph Search allows users to ask for recommendations, for example, a pizza outlet in Manchester or best shows in Covent Garden. After scouring public data within Facebook, the product then serves the most relevant results. This new product relies on publicly available data – photos, posts, likes, shares - information posted on Timelines and News Feeds that users have not set as private. In turn, it relies very much on people’s understanding (or non-understanding) of their access levels within Facebook. Facebook says that users can opt out of the search results, but to what extent and how is not yet understood. The poor tech-savvy Facebook user is far more likely to unwittingly have publicly-available information whereas the more tech-savvy user will have considered the availability of their data on the web. Facebook will need to continually educate and innovate if they are to extend their visibility and use of data within their network.

What does Graph Search mean for the potential of advertising?

The results presented aren’t ads and, currently, there isn’t the ability to sponsor the results like Google AdWords, but surely it’s only a matter of time? Many users are already expressing an annoyance with ads within their New Feed, although at Found we’ve experienced great success for our clients with Facebook advertising, so Facebook is likely to initially watch, learn and discover before releasing this service as a paid platform for advertisers. And until a separate Facebook paid platform arrives for SEM marketers to capitalise on - Facebook is currently serving Bing results with its internal results - Search Graph is not a lightning bolt to capitalise on with PPC budgets. At this stage Facebook cannot be targeted separately in Bing’s adCentre and differences in data between the engines will be merged and unobservable to marketers. Facebook’s current display advertising platform has caused many marketers serious frustration over the last three years, leaving 3^rd parties open to capitalise on the API with separate platforms. I imagine these developers will have their eyes all over the paid platform demand Facebook could bring with this launch.

What does Graph Search mean for SEO?

Search Graph could become very powerful for local businesses, especially those where recommendations and word of mouth counts for a lot. Restaurants, hotels, shops, music tickets - all will benefit. The data that Facebook has on check-ins and ‘likes’ means that Graph Search becomes more powerful as a recommendation engine than Google+. It’s too early to say how this will impact SEO but it goes without saying that by structuring website data so that Facebook can read it (Open Graph Protocol) merchants will be in a prime position to benefit from Search Graph and the next stage in Facebook’s evolution. All said and done, this is great advancement for localised, relevant, recommended content – the next step to truly consumer-driven results. It was only last year that we predicted Facebook would soon be the access point to the Internet and it looks like it’s set out its stall to achieve this goal. Graph Search is unlikely to see Facebook’s value soar (stock has actually reduced by 3% upon this announcement), nor eat into Google’s market share, but it will get people talking and, love it or hate it, Facebook’s here to stay. To see Search Graph in action, check out Danny Sullivan’s excellent ‘hands-on’ post on searchengineland.

Travel - Facts about Mobile Search [Infographic]

Jamie Brady — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 11:57:16 +0000

As we all know, mobile is here. Mobile is the here and now, and it’s getting bigger and bigger all the time. Having worked at the forefront of mobile advertising for many years here at Found, we’ve been able to gather and analyse real data, and we can leverage it in new and exciting ways as a result. For clients of ours, that means greater reach and more granular targeting, all tied into a performance metric. One of our most successful undertakings in mobile is within the travel sector. We work across many big brands internationally, utilising mobile optimised sites to generate leads, bookings and travel insurance policies. As experts in both travel and mobile, we’ve been able to compile the following infographic highlighting some of the more important (and fun) findings to date. Enjoy!

Embed this mobile search infographic on Your Site: Copy and Paste the Code Below

We provide a range of Mobile Marketing services, to help you get the most out of this channel. Do you have an opportunity in the mobile arena, or are you looking to expand into it? Contact us today!

Vine, the next branch in the evolution of social

Charlotte Bella — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 13:15:25 +0000

Every once in a while there comes along an app, it doesn’t get introduced with fanfare and pushy content marketing, in fact in the case of this one you only got to hear about it through a blog post link you saw on Twitter via the “Director of Twitter in the UK” (@brucedaisley). For someone so closely tied to Twitter he doesn’t really have an awful lot of followers – no slight on him, I follow him & find him incredibly engaging - so the reach of this blog post dwindles somewhat. I don’t know how people heard about it elsewhere on this social media hungry planet, but his post last Thursday was the first I had heard of Vine and, upon doing a date range search on Google, it seems that the 24th January 2013 was the first most people had heard of it. I’m a sucker for an app where you can show off your artistic ‘skills’, the kind of person a professional photographer dislikes, because I go around thinking that by taking a picture of a railing and sticking a filter on it counts as ‘art’. I started out with Hipstamatic, then Snapseed and 12 months ago; Instagram (I won’t mention the Laser Cats or Mr Chiizu aps I have). Vine goes one step further, create a 6 second (or less) video of the world around you, it can be continuous or you can film something different in every frame – brilliant for stop motion style filming.

Found vine.co/v/b1WbPjT5XF5 — BellaBalls (@CharlotteBella) January 31, 2013

Co-founder & GM of Vine, Dom Hofmann (@dhof), recently coined the phrase ‘micro-vlogging’ with feigned embarrassment, but that’s exactly what it is. You can pause and record as many times as is physically possible in a 6 second loop, meaning you can document a whole day, or more, in less time than it takes to write a Tweet. It is little wonder that Vine has taken off, simple to use and full integration with Twitter (they bought out Vine for an undisclosed sum) means it’s easy to set up. There’s no news on initial sign up figures but with Twitter’s 200m+ active users it won’t be long before they dominate the social sphere, although I’m puzzled as to why the main demographic of users that have started following me seem to be Russian males in the 20-29 age bracket… It seems that businesses have taken to Vine a lot quicker than other social platforms such as Pinterest, with the app being launched perfectly in time for the upcoming A/W 13 Fashion Weeks. Brands such as Malibu, Gap and ASOS adopted it from the outset and have taken full advantage of the free video advertising opportunity that the software provides. If brands get their videos right, these ‘mini films’ have the potential to go viral in minutes. However, the possibility of getting it wrong and failing to post engaging content is high, and may need more than just the usual social media manager to monitor and update the profile. Vine’s short history hasn’t been free of hiccups either, with Apple stopping promotion of the app earlier this week due to a (large) number of porn videos being uploaded, along with profiles to match. Not great if your app is only available on the iPhone and iPod Touch. Apparently an Android version will be made available but there’s no date for that as yet. Twitter’s on-going feud with Facebook has further caused problems with users not being able to add friends via the ‘find people’ section. From a technical standpoint, the app could really do with an option to record without sound, to further mimic the share-ability of a GIF (and also not to have horrible background noise when recording a stop motion). Finally, if you choose not to post your Vine to Twitter or Facebook from the outset, it is rendered socially unshareable once you click the ‘done’ button. I’m perplexed by this, given that Instagram allows you to share other people’s pictures as well as your own after the time it was posted. Vine could do with following suit. Teething problems aside, Vine has stood out to me as a strong new social app and although in its infancy, it has the potential to outcompete older competitors such as Viddy and Tout in what I predict to be the fastest growing social platform this year. Not bad for an app developed by a 3 man start-up that formed in June 2012.

Enhanced Campaigns or Enhanced Google Grief?

Greg Burgess — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 13:28:14 +0000

Are enhanced campaigns actually enhancing Adwords?

Well, we knew something was coming; it was simply a case of what. This week Google announced a major change to Google Adwords, the launch of Enhanced Campaigns. In a world where everyone is forever on the move, this shift is a significant statement from Google that the multi-screen world demands multi-screen, highly targeted, localised search. Shocked, annoyed and somewhat frustrated was how I first felt when Google dropped this announcement on us, with no previous hints or suggestions that such a change was coming. My initial reaction was that it was another, yet more radical, change that will simplify the targeting for agencies and advertisers alike. But, the truth of the matter is, it isn’t. Whilst this is absolutely a move in the right direction, the fundamental changes to campaigns could result in campaign management becoming more complex and time-consuming.

So what are Enhanced Campaigns?

Enhanced Campaigns has brought about some significant changes to how advertisers will analyse, build and target their paid search campaigns. There are a number of changes but, to sum it up, you no longer have to build individual Adwords campaigns to target different locations and devices – such as desktop, mobile, tablet - signifying less time, effort & know-how to achieve almost identical optimisation results. However, you need to be savvy with budgeting as these changes will also bring about the potential to over or underspend your previous budget, with the former being the most likely.

Bing got there first

Google is not the first to change its campaign targeting in this kind of manner; Bing already has a similar ‘enhanced campaigns’ functionality within its interface, an option that’s been around for quite some time, although it is largely underutilised. This is predominantly because it’s not been widely promoted and it’s not a compulsory enhancement. I remember loving this concept when it first came out and wishing that Google would adopt a similar approach.

Will this make mobile advertising easier?

No clarity has been given yet as to whether mobile targeting will become an ‘opt-out’; whether, if you leave your desktop targeted campaign, it will automatically be turned into a universal device campaign, including mobile. This may lead to less targeted ads on mobile as well as the addition of more advertisers on the platform space, abolishing the cheap CPCs that used to exist there. In short, rather than users enabling a campaign across devices, this will happen automatically. The upside is coverage, clicks and conversions in areas a campaign has not necessarily targeted before, but advertisers must watch their clicks and CPCs as increased coverage can quickly turn into increased expenditure.

Third party optimisation platforms

Third party optimisation platforms will have to rebuild themselves to bring in this new data from the API changes in time for June (Enhanced Campaigns will be an option for advertisers until June, when all non-Enhanced Campaigns will be migrated) so it doesn’t give the platforms much time to adapt. Although Google’s Doubleclick is raring to go; it is “fully ready for this change”, according to the official Adwords blog.

Is this just a way for Google to make more money?

Of course this change will assist Google’s revenue but, when thinking long-term, the Google revenue model is aligned with users and advertisers. And the more I look into this change, the happier I am with it. Why? Well, in one breath it simplifies optimisation processes but, simultaneously, it adds another layer of complexity due to the key point that it is emphasising. And that’s what makes me tick.

True location-based search

People search similar keywords with different intent due to situational factors. Situational factors are location, hour of day & device, but not just at that one point in time, historically too. These factors have grown in importance dramatically over the last few years, as a result of the introduction and advancement of multiple devices; and the advertising world needs to take a hold of these now-fundamentals. We’re already able to acutely target Facebook campaigns based upon location, age, interests, sex and much more however the growing levels of complexity in targeting means we will soon be able to create search campaigns that target by sex, salary, applications and more – something that would be near-impossible to optimise in pre-Enhanced Campaigns Adwords.

Advertisers need to be smart

Enhanced Campaigns will see a number of advertisers fall short. Whilst advertisers have the ability to more easily adjust campaigns to situational factors, without years of experience to understand how to react to this data, mistakes will be made and opportunities will be missed. The more I have learnt it seems that you will still be able to target campaigns in the old-fashioned way by adjusting the new settings and, in a number of cases, this will still be the best way to do it over and above the enhanced simplifications. Google will slowly release more information about the switch however attention to detail and preparation will be the key to success.

What are we doing at Found?

We love a challenge. And we love nothing more than challenges like this, where we can quickly get under the skin of the changes and devise the right strategies for each of our clients. As an agency that likes to challenge the status quo, we equally love to see others challenge it to, and Google has done exactly that. A huge part of Found’s competitive advantage is our ability and speed to adapt to changes in order to ensure we are always delivering exceptional campaigns for our clients. As a specialist search agency, we will be working with each of our clients to rollout the most appropriate strategy to ensure continued competitive advantage and, ultimately, the growth of clicks to conversions. If you want to find out more or want to discuss your campaigns with us then please do contact us at discover@found.co.uk or call us on 0208 653 6709.

Use the latest web techniques to produce exceptional content

Keith Horwood — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 14:53:50 +0000

With more content than ever being produced, it can be difficult to stand out. Users may just see it as ‘noise’ and not pay the slightest bit of attention to it. If that happens, they are unlikely to share it, read it, link to it or return for more in the future. So how can you make your content burst forth from the screen and wow visitors? The kind of content that creates an instant buzz? You know the type. It is the kind of the content that is emailed round the office, even by those who would not usually be interested in the subject matter. It is shared on various platforms because it’s informative, on-topic, on-trend or just plain funny.

Interactivity & creative video

Often this content can take the form of video or other interactive items. One impressive example is the Old Spice Muscle Music interactive video, in which you could control Terry’s (The Old Spice Man) muscles to create music. It's very creative and any content featuring a flame sax is a winner in my book. Have a go for yourself.

Of course this example had an immense budget and it took a highly skilled team some time to create. But once you've got a process in place for producing regular content, it's good to have at least a couple of major content projects in the pipeline at any one time. Maybe employ freelancers for one-off projects, to help you. You might not get there straight away, but projects that take longer, require more effort and are visually impressive, can have a much greater impact online.

Where should content be placed, and by whom?

One factor that does affect the content reach and impact is site authority. A great piece of writing by a good author on a poorly visited website is a bit like Lionel Messi playing for Accrington Stanley. If he did play for Accrington Stanley, then it would generate exposure in the real world for the club. You could see Google Authorship in the same way. Content authored by a notable industry leader, on a smaller blog, will generate much more interest than usual. Don’t scrimp on design - Another ingredient that has a huge influence on whether a piece of content is going to be a hit or a miss is design. Having content which is clear and easy to read is what both people and search engines value. Content with cluttered designs and too much advertising can be penalised by Google. But how can you take content design to the next level? Two of the tools available that are being increasingly employed are HTML5 and CSS3D. Content marketing with HTML5 and CSS3D opens up a range of possibilities for businesses. It will enable you to create more interactive and shareable content that users will not only remember, but will keep them coming back.

Using HTML5 to make interactive & slick infographics

The internet and the way web pages are built and used is being transformed at the moment and HTML5 is at the heart of this. HMTL5 enables the creation of sleeker, better websites that can do much more. Over the past year, many of these projects have cropped up on sites such as html5infographics.com, a resource that shares some of the best examples found.

These infographics are sometimes placed on a dedicated content section on the site. If exceptional, they can act as an immense driver of links and shares. The Bond cars Infographic cleverly coincided with the release of Skyfall, and has now generated links from 250+ different domains; including design sites, newspapers, blogs and many more. Not only has this improved site traffic and authority, it has increased brand awareness of the car dealership it was designed for. It is kind of a shame that the rest of the site looks nowhere near as good as this content, but it’s still one of the success stories of 2012.

CSS3D – Gesture-based animated content set to soar

CSS3D, as you might have guessed, gives websites a whole new dimension to play with. With a third dimension the possibilities for the look and format of a website are almost endless. The technology has been around since 2009, and some stunning examples of CSS3D have been created since then. Several of the most impressive examples include the functions of a webpage created in a 3D cube or a rotating 3D tetrahedron; a page created within an interactive picture and even a collection of moving, responsive 3D molecules. This also has implications when designing ‘call-to-action’ buttons to increase conversion rates by improving the customer experience. Note: This works best in Safari and Chrome. It works in Firefox 10 but has problems with displaying the correct perspective.

So what will be hot in 2013?

On mobile devices the ability to engage with content with a swipe of a finger and other gestures will be seen more and more in 2013. I imagine that exploring some data represented in 3D is not too far off from being the norm. Traditionally, to achieve the best possible SEO performance of a page, the best practice would be to veer away from these types of techniques, as content was indexed based on textual content, but things have changed and so has SEO. With the context of links becoming increasingly important, as search engines become more sophisticated, creating shareable, engaging and memorable content will be the key to SEO success. A shortened version of this article was also posted to: http://www.techbubbles.co.uk/blog/using-the-latest-web-techniques-to-produce-memorable-content/

UK Digital Women - 100 Years of International Women's Day

Emily White — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 17:51:12 +0000

Today is the 100^th anniversary of International Women's Day (IWD). Along with the rest of the world, Found is celebrating the achievements of women, especially as we have a strong female leader of our own in Tina Judic. The International Women’s Day website stresses how important it is for women to advance in the economy, business and society. This year we decided to look at eight women in London making an impact in technology and digital because gender equality is essential in every field. According to the UK Skills Council for Business and Information Technology women make up just 19% of ITC managers and only 14% of IT strategy and planning professionals. This figure is one I hope will grow in the coming years and one I expect will as we see women begin to make their impact in IT known. Based on their exceptional contributions to digital and tech, we are highlighting these women in no particular order:

Joanna Shields

Current positions:

CEO and Chair of Tech City Investment Organization (TCIO)
British Ambassador for the Digital Industries.

“Working in the UK for the past decade has proven to me that this country has the potential to become a major force in digital innovation,” said Shields in the TCIO press release that announced her new role. "With the right boost now, there is no reason why we can’t make London the number one location for tech in the world.” Previous positions:

Facebook’s vice-president and managing director of Europe, Middle East and Africa.
Senior executive positions at Google, AOL and Bebo.

Milestones: The American native has many accolades to her name. Just this past September, MediaGuardian ranked her as the 6th most influential person in global media. In 2011, WIRED magazine named her the Most Influential Person in European Technology. Shields also appears on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour February’s 100 most powerful women in the United Kingdom. While at Facebook, she oversaw the Explore London 2012 page. Launched for the Olympics, users were able to interact with athletes and teams. Shields is also a member of the Government's Women's Business Council and a Trustee of Save the Children UK.

Jude Ower

Follow @playinthecloud Current:

Founder and CEO of PlayMob, a platform connecting games to social good.
Games judge at The British Academy of Film and Television Arts.

PlayMob was created with the intention of creating “world changing, meaningful games across sectors, to show the potential and power of games for change.” Previous:

Developed educational based games for corporate, education and government bodies
Managing Director of Digital 2.0, a consultancy specialising in Serious Games and Serious Virtual Worlds.

Milestones: Her dedication to showing how games and platforms can be used to make the world a better place has come with much deserved recognition. She was voted top 100 women in Tech in Europe in 2012 and in the same year was listed on the 2012 Growing Business Young Guns awards which recognises Britain's brightest entrepreneurs aged 35 and under. Playmob won Best Start Up 2012 at the Launch Conference and was finalist in Europas 2011 and at BBAA awards.

Elizabeth Varley

Follow @evarley Current:

Co-founder and CEO at TechHub, a community and workspace for tech entrepreneurs in Old Street, east London.

In an interview by LondonLovesBusiness.com, she commented on women in technology, “It’s about getting away from the stereotype that the technology sector is just about guys building grey boxes. It is actually hugely varied and creative. I think there is a lot more interest from women now but there is still a way to go.” Previous:

Head of marketing for business advice site Smarta.com.
Head the Twestival London team, a social-media-facilitated charity event.
Back in 2001, she set up Online Content UK which continues to be a leading supplier of UK Standards.

Milestones: Just last year she ranked on Computer Weekly‘s 25 most influential women in UK IT.

Mel Exon

Follow @melex Current:

Managing Partner and Co-founder of BBH Labs, a global creative ad agency.

Exon is also a BBH board director and part of the BBH London commercial management team. She joined BBH back in 1997 and has since worked with clients such as Levi’s and British Airways. Exon helps brands succeed using new technologies and new forms of storytelling. Milestones: Last year, she was voted as one of Europe’s Top 100 Women in Tech by GirlsinTech and in 2011, Exon was included in WIRED UK magazine’s Top 100 digital influencers. In an online article on campaignlive.co.uk in January 2013, Exon wrote about the technology in the year ahead. “If there has been a meta-creative goal of technology over the past decade or so, I would wager it is to create online experiences that inch closer to feeling viscerally real; to strive for a "real-world standard", if you will.”

Kathryn Parsons

Follow @KathrynParsons Current:

Decoded co-founder, a school which teaches computer programming or more specifically a service which teaches people how to code in a day.
Co-founder of the agency The Scarlett Mark but as Decoded goes international, this project is on hold.

Previous:

Channel planner, Ogilvy

Milestones: Parsons was recently named as one of the Top 100Women in Tech by GirlsinTech and winner of the 2012 RED Hot Magazine's Women's Awards and Digital Business of the Year. She was also featured as one of the TechCity 100. In column for the stylist.co.uk she wrote “The number of women in technology is worryingly low, however in my experience the appetite among professional women to become digitally literate is reassuringly high.”

Natalie Massenet

Current:

Executive chairman and founder, Net-A-Porter, an online luxury fashion retailer.
Chairman of the British Fashion Council.

Net-A-Porter online fashion boutique was started in 2000 and within ten years, Massenet’s site was being visited by two million people a week. She sold the company in 2010 for £350 million with her personal shares worth £50m Previous:

Fashion editor at Women's Wear Daily

Milestones: Just this past February, she was assessed as one of the 100 most powerful women in the United Kingdom by Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4.

Sophie Cornish

Follow @SophieVCornish Current:

Co-founder and managing of notonthehighstreet.com
Author of Build A Business From Your Kitchen Table
Business Ambassador for Stylist Magazine.

Previous:

Freelance journalist, account director Publicis, account manager at GGK London and Health and Beauty editor at the National Magazine Company.

Milestones: Cornish’s success has earned her the official honouree status at the 2011 Webby Awards and multiple titles for notonthehighstreet.com including the Telegraph’s Start-Up 100, Online Business of the Year at the Nectar Business Small Business Awards 2010 and Women in Business at Barclays Startups Awards 2008.

Justine Roberts & Carrie Longton

Follow @Justine_Roberts Follow @CarrieLongton Current: co-founders of Mumsnet, the parenting discussion website. Founded in 1999, the site now receives over 8 million visits a month. It is used not only by many new mothers and fathers, but it has also run campaigns on issues including support for families with special educational needs and the sexualisation of childhood. Milestones: The duo was ranked number seven on the 100 most powerful women in the United Kingdom by Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4, the Queen was number one. In 2010 Roberts was listed on the MediaGuardian 100 after the site was a forum for political discussion leading up to the general election and attracted the attention of politicians from all three parties. You go girls!

Image sources:

http://mashable.com/2012/10/24/facebook-joanna-shields-tech-city/
 http://rewiredpr.com/news/west_midlands_companies_say_hello_to_digital_dragons/
 http://www.zimbio.com/pictures/AvlEMLkB-_v/DLDwomen+Conference+2011+Day+2/Fg6wHF_zPPm/Elizabeth+Varley
 http://blog.notonthehighstreet.com/2011/09/01/sophie-s-first-stylist-event/
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=n7IB6BB2DpY#!
 http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/multimedia/dynamic/00296/FR_new_296675k.jpg
 http://www.flickr.com/photos/leweb3/with/6470899153/

10 Great Excel Shortcuts (You might not know about)

Jamie Brady — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 14:16:52 +0000

Hello and welcome to another Excel blog post - third in this series, where I attempt to explain and demonstrate some great Excel shortcuts for you to use in your everyday working lives (or just for fun). If you’re not already familiar with them, you may want to check out my previous posts: 5 Great Time-Saving Excel Tips and 5 Great Uses of the IF Formula. My previous post turned out to be a bit of a beast, so I thought I’d strip this one way back for some quick, punchy tips that you can pick up and put to work right away. So without further ado, here are the shortcuts.. 1. ALT + = (autosum a column) I first read this tip elsewhere about 3 months ago and scoffed at it openly. “How much time can this possibly save me?” scoffed I. Well, apparently quite a lot, as I’ve used this shortcut all the time since, every day. Simply use this shortcut at the bottom of a big list of numbers and it’ll do an immediate sum of them for you. If you find yourself doing this kind of thing regularly then it’s definitely worth remembering. 2. Ctrl + Tilde Key (shows formulas in cells) If you’re not sure what the tilde key is, it’s the one at the top left of your keyboard next to the number 1. That is, the tilde key was traditionally always there (~) but now probably has something like the following (¬) instead. Regardless, that is the key. The one next to the number 1 look (If you’re a mac owner then you’re probably beyond all help, sorry). Anyway this shortcut can be used to toggle showing the formulas on the page. It can be especially good if you’re analysing and comparing formulas next to each other. 3. F2, or double click (show formulas and references) This tip was added after watching several colleagues struggle to keep tabs on what cells were being referenced in some of their formulas. Stupidly easy – rather than running your eyes/finger up and down the page to find the cell reference, just double click on the cell (or press F2 on it) and it will go back into edit mode and show all the referenced cells in nice colourful boxes. 4. F3 (brings up list of named ranges used in sheet) If you don’t make use of named ranges in your worksheets, then this tip might not make sense – but that should really give you more impetus to start using them, so you can come right back here and learn how to find them again! As it turns out, it’s incredibly easy – simply press F3! 5. F4, whilst writing formula (locks cells with $ symbols) In my previous post I talk about the importance of using $ symbols to lock formulas in place. This can be a pain if you’re working on particularly lengthy formulas. However if you press F4 after the cell reference it’ll add these in for you. Have a go at playing with this now! 6. Alt + E (start a new line in the same cell/wrap Text) More of a presentation one, this. You may be aware that the ‘Wrap Text’ button allows text within a single cell to be displayed on separate lines (as opposed to having a long line of text spill into other adjacent cells). Well with this shortcut you can move the cursor manually down a line while typing, which gives you that extra little bit of control. 7. Ctrl + shift + L (turn on/off filters) If you’re a regular user of Excel, then chances are you use filters on quite a regular basis to quickly drill down to relevant info. I can’t really dress this one up too much – simply put, if you want to toggle filters on and off much more quickly then use this shortcut on any set of data! 8. Ctrl + H (find and replace) You can refer to the 5th tip on my first Excel post, which demonstrates some powerful uses of find and replace. This is a very commonly used process for a lot of the analysts here at Found, as they use it to quickly chop and change data, as well as using it for quick edits on keywords and search terms. Note: This includes the standard ‘find’ function in the same popup box, which you can easily flick to if needed. Alternatively you can just use Ctrl + F (Hey, two shortcuts in one tip!) Here I’ve demonstrated the shortcut with one of my grammatical pet hates. “Your” is the possessive word, and “you’re” is an abbreviation of “you are”. Honestly people, let’s get this back on track! (/end rant) 9. Ctrl + Home (go to cell A1) And now onto the final two shortcuts, which are both based around simple keyboard navigation. I find myself using a mouse less and less with Excel these days, as it’s a lot quicker to zoom around with the keys. These final two tips are really extensions of the 4th point from my previous post on time saving tips. Ctrl + Home – shoot the cursor back up to cell A1, aaaand… 10. Ctrl + Page Up/Page Down (flick between tabs) This is used to flick between tabs on an Excel worksheet. When used in conjunction with other keyboard quick navigation keys, these will enable you to fly around the page(s) with ease. There’s no stopping you now, so get stuck in and start using these shortcuts now! Thanks for reading, and if you have any suggestions or requests for further Excel topics, why not message me?

BrightonSEO - Roundup 2013

Gareth Olyott — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 11:51:01 +0000

Last week on a mildly sunny day, the Found SEO team visited The Brighton Dome for #BrightonSEO. The day was jam-packed with thought-provoking talks and lessons from our fellow SEO’ers. Here’s a reflection on our day at the conference:

Top 5 takeaways

1. Write about what people care about

With the shift in SEO strategies, the importance of content was always going to be a major focus at this seasons conference. Almost every person that took to the stage talked content, and the significance of producing solid pieces of content which engages audiences. Lexi Mill’s talk “7 Secret weapons of successful content & outreach” gave a few pointers on how to successfully create content and do outreach for it. Mill suggested visiting a client’s Facebook page when looking for ideas for topics that will bring traffic. The reason being that here you can see what the client’s fans are already talking about and which topics they engaged with most. Expand on topics already generating discussion. According to Mill, the kind of content people tend to engage best with are interviews, quotes and graphics.

2. Old-school SEO is dying

With the changes that Google is enforcing, the skill sets new SEO’ers need are different to those of the past. A major point of this conference was that we must build the skills to fully leverage the guys in social media and PR. It is using these two other groups that content and events can be created and hosted. Kevin Gibbons said “Tear down the silos.”

3. Forget about exact anchors

The “Ask the Ex-Googlers Anything Panel” was the talking point of the day. Three former employees spoke out about their experiences at Google. They answered questions from the specialist crowd, who took their opportunity to grill the experts. This seminar answered one of the questions that is burning on the minds of all SEOs: What links can we build? The answer wasn’t as straightforward as the question but my initial thoughts were confirmed; if you want to be seen authoritative in a specific niche, you need to prove you are an expert and aim to solve real problems! Additionally, the ex-Googlers said that links should be built more and more with branded or generic/natural anchor terms. This immediately raised another question. Raluca - “How can I then rank for a specific keyword with an internal page if the majority of the links I build have to be branded or generic, how can we relate to a keyword forecast?” My thoughts are that Google is pretty good at determining what a page is about, so pointing backlinks with exact anchors is just a signal of unnatural linking. Aim for a mixture of branded, generic and synonym anchors and you should be on the right path. Ask yourself “What would I link with if this were my own blog?” Try to forget you are an SEO for a minute."

4. Watch out for Google+

It's becoming common place to hear how links on social media have very little effect on search rankings. In fact, we're told that social media signals only count for roughly 1% of a sites ranking. This is partly down to the fact that Google simply can't access the data it needs from behind the walled garden of Facebook.

However, the Ex-Googlers seemed to think that Google+ may very well change that. At the moment, there is no direct ranking impact from the social media site but they advised the audience that if they use Google+ actively, they may very well be at an advantage later.

5. Techniques can vary to suit project type

The talk from Danielle Fudge, SEO Director at Forward 3d explained how certain sectors require a completely different approach and change in techniques in order to rank in the search engines.

Her brilliant example was that of pay day loans and how they have suddenly taken over the nation both online and away from the keyboard. "In the pay day sector you have to spam and play dirty," said Fudge who also referred to the financial gains that were on offer, being just in the top spots for a matter of hours.

"The only well-established company that were ranking for the term “pay day loans” was moneysupermarket.com who have superior domain authority in comparison but these can’t even compete anymore because they do purely white hat SEO and are not willing to get involved in dirty tricks." - Jadon

The point of the matter is that the top 10 sites in Google for the term “pay day loans” have probably all received a manual penalty but they all still rank. Why? Because they are all competing against each other and there is no-one else in the space making it a level playing field regardless of bad activity.

This contrasts with industries such as fashion where you need a much more of clean approach. - (Let's not even mention Interflora...)

New tools

Tools are one of our favourite parts about swapping thoughts and opinions with other people in the industry. It’s exciting finding out what other people use to get their results. We have summarised a few of the best tools talked about at BrightonSEO:

1. Linkrisk- It audits your links and gives your site a score depending on the number of good/bad links it finds. It can help flag up low quality links in a site backlink profile which you may want to remove/disavow to reduce the risk of a penalty.

2. Trendsmap and Google Trends - Google Trends should be leveraged to provide additional information when planning and performing analytics.

“Use Google Trends or, even better, the Trends Map to see what people are talking about”. - Lexi Mills, Dynamo PR

3. Get feedback on your web design from Concept Feedback.

4. Screaming Frog for crawling websites for data.

5. Power Mapper - Power Mapper usefully visualizes your website structure in an easy to digest format. - Rich Falconer

Honourable mentions

We all absolutely loved the SEO rap. Neil Walkers mashup of SEO and search related poetry, along to the track Niggas in Paris by Jay-Z and Kanye West finished off the day with a nice fun vibe that left people leaving the conference with something to think about. Check it out below.

And we can't forget the rodeo bull riding, which had Jadon our SEO executive clocking in a top 3 time of 57 seconds.

What Twitter looked like...

Focus on a niche and don't be afraid to turn away clients!#brightonseo — Click Consult (@ClickConsultLtd) April 12, 2013

How Phone Data Might Change Your Search Strategy – #brightonseo bit.ly/1535EFI by Sarah Bradley — State of Search (@stateofsearch) April 12, 2013

Removing links is a balancing act. Don't end up penalising yourself #BrightonSEO #Forward3D — Cherrie West (@Cherries_Scoop) April 12, 2013

Technical SEO as Part of a Multi-Signal Search Strategy – #brightonseo by @nedpoulter buff.ly/17wiPhS via... fb.me/2E5lzECRd — Anise Smith (@AniseSmith) April 16, 2013

RT @paddymoogan: Slides from #BrightonSEO April 2013 - Social Structured flip.it/JpZhA by @alexmoss — Jeff Davis (@Davisj80) April 16, 2013

Matt Roberts: content marketing is all about teamwork between departments - use the skills from social, search, pr, ppc, etc #brightonseo — Pablo Smithson (@PablitoSmithson) April 12, 2013

Issues-based content can get high value links and media coverage Sharon Flaherty at #brightonseo — Wordtracker (@wordtracker) April 12, 2013

Blogger outreach: "be polite, be honest and be useful to the blogger" #Brightonseo — Hannah Stephen (@hanskapade) April 12, 2013

Get FOUND.

Emily White — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 09:55:53 +0000

I started my internship at Found nine weeks ago and have had the chance to work alongside some really great and hard-working people. I realised early on that the team members who make up this dynamic digital marketing agency would be hard to leave behind. Instead, I set out to discover what it would take to get hired. Here is some insider info I compiled about the agency that first adopted me after I moved to London from Canada, and where I am still lucky enough to have a desk.

Learn about us

Found is part of a larger group of companies, The Big Ideas Group. We are a digital marketing agency in the heart of London that is officially one of the best small companies to work for as awarded by The Times. It is as good as it sounds. We promote a fun and friendly working environment. The office boasts nice extras such as a Playstation3 and Xbox! For those non-gamers, we have a pool table and a massage chair. We supply cereals, bagels, toast and fresh fruit every day! This is accompanied by our much loved coffee machine - for those harder mornings. We are also known for our performance and our tendency to go the extra mile. This unrivaled attention to detail helps us build our services around the needs of our clients. These are only a few of the qualities that make us who we are. That is why we highly recommend you take some time to get to know us. Research our site, tweet us, check out our Facebook and learn what you can. In an interview with our Managing Director Tina Judic, one of our newest recruits made sure to drop that he too was an Everton fan. While we can’t guarantee for sure that this is what got him the job, he now has his own avatar on our Found Hall of Fame...

Get to know the teams

The Found family is comprised of several smaller teams who work together to achieve results. We specialise in PPC, SEO, social media and mobile marketing. Technical skill in these teams is important, but so is the ability to combine analytical ability with creativity. The more you know about a specific team, the easier it will be to pick which position to pursue.

Choose the one that suits you

It doesn’t help either party if candidates apply without focus. That is why we strongly urge potential Founders to learn. Tailoring your CV and cover letter to a specific job helps us know where you want to be and where you will excel. So what do the team managers look for? Our Marketing team stresses the importance of having a fun, positive energy and how important it is to be able to communicate. The PPC team is looking for people who get excited about data, since findings, insights and patterns is a daily task. (He’s a bit of a geeky data head!) To be part of the Client Services team, applicants are expected to be outgoing, talkative and personable.

Be creative and informative

Yes, creativity is important to us and so are your skills. Make sure your application properly details your professional experience. Show us how you stand out from others with similar backgrounds. There is no better way to convince us that you have what it takes than by showing us. If you worked on something, show us, tell us and give us links! Did you run a successful campaign? Tells us about it and describe the role you played and always be specific. Also, don’t be shy to tell us how you can benefit our team. Are you interesting on social media? We want to see what you’re up to! We’re looking for your human side, your blog, the fun stuff you tweet about. We want to see that you’re engaged across a ton of platforms. We are a digital agency after all.

Consider starting as an intern

Do not worry if you feel that your CV isn’t up to the level of the positions listed. Many current Founders were interns at some stage too! An internship provides the training needed to make the jump to full-time employee, plus you get to see if it’s the right fit for you.

Get in touch!

Don't wait, check out our positions and apply online today. If you don’t see the role for you but are still interested in joining our team, let us know. If you haven’t heard back but want us to know you mean business - follow-up!

I listened in to Twitter #music

Gareth Olyott — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 16:41:44 +0000

After the rumours, Twitter #music was finally launched yesterday. I got my hands on the iOS app version this morning, flicking, swiping and of course, listening in to what the app had to give me. The slick, visually impressive app was first to hit iPhone users, which was then followed several hours later by the equally impressive web version. Its function is simple. Twitter activity like engagement and tweets is used “to detect and surface the most popular tracks and emerging artists,” as was explained on the official Twitter blog. There are 5 navigable categories:

Popular - new music trending on Twitter
Emerging - hidden talent found in Tweets
Suggested - artists you might like
#nowplaying - tweeted by people you follow
Me - artists you follow

Clicking play on any of these pages lets users listen to track previews and follow artists on Twitter.

Where the value is

It’s being able to follow artists on the fly and then discover other profiles connected to these that is the genius on the UI. The fact that you can flick between tracks and artists so sporadically means there is likely to be a great increase in users following newly discovered artists. The web player features two buttons: iTunes and compose. They make it completely effortless to both purchase the song and broadcast your thoughts, another couple of features incorporated to keep the music people happy. Where I found the most value was when linking my Spotify Pro account, which enabled me to play full length songs, a feature which is also possible using Rdio. The downfall is if you don't link it with Spotify, you're left with short previews of tracks from iTunes.

Questions to ask

Twitter tell us 50% of users follow at least one artist. Musicians, artists and DJ’s alike represent a huge portion of the most followed Twitter accounts. This will no doubt be a contributing factor to the thinking of the Twitter #music creators.

Will Twitter #music bridge the gap between popular culture and the brands looking to get their teeth into this space?
Will we see more brands collab with musicians?
Can brands use their partnerships with musicians to exploit this new platform?
Will this result in the socially engaged musicians, bands and DJ’s becoming more famous, and ultimately selling more records than those that chose to ignore the power of social media?

Only time will tell. However, take one of my personal favourites Flying Lotus for example. Almost a quarter of a million followers are always waiting to hear what Steven Ellison has to say. Now when he releases a new track, his followers can directly click play without having to move from their twitter feed, or just as easily buy them off iTunes.

The good, the bad and the time will tell

Out of the app’s five sections ‘Emerging’ is the one I think can be best leveraged by new bands, musicians and DJs. Here, the algorithm gives the user music just as it’s about to hit the tipping point of trending.... I just found London Grammar using this very function. (Check them out if you’re into The XX kind of vibes.) The #nowplaying feature is something that I can see as the Achilles heel with the service. Do I really have anyone on my Twitter feed that I care about their music choice that much that I would use an app to investigate further? Personally, no. I use the perfectly engineered Spotify Facebook app for that, and it’s going to take something pretty damn special to make me switch. With so many new social networks appearing every day, there are an increasing number of skeptics. They want to know why Twitter would release a music app, where the money is and question if anyone actually cares what the people they are following listen too. Sure, these are good questions but in all honesty, Wired.com’s “Why Twitter Music Is Totally Going to Work” seems to get the point. “ It’s simple: Twitter Music is all about getting you to spend more quality time with Twitter. It’s about everybody’s favorite buzzword: engagement... it’s a place for you to go and find new artists and then (and here’s the part that matter[s] for Twitter) follow and promote them.”

5 awesome browser extensions

Emily White — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 12:20:13 +0000

Found is immersed in the fast-paced, hectic world of digital. Deep down we are geeks who use little hacks and cheats to help us get through our day. I thought I would check out what the Founders touted as their favourite browser add-ons.

Pocket

Chrome, Firefox, Safari I installed this lovely little extension earlier this month. Pocket(formerly Read It Later) lets you save articles, videos, web pages and even tweets to your Pocket dashboard so you can read or view the content later. The biggest draw for me is that I have the extension at work and at home. This way I can save content and access it from both locations. I no longer have to email relevant content I find during my evenings to work, or vice versa for that NSFW stuff. Quick tip: Each piece of content has four useful buttons: share, mark as read, delete and star. There is also a bulk edit feature where you can make mass actions or add/remove tags.

Tab Packager

Chrome Tab Packager functions similarly to Pocket, but rather than having to save each tab one by one, it files all your currently opened tabs into one package. This is particularly useful when you are a taboholic like Social Media Manager Gareth Olyott. Each glance at his screen leaves me slightly stressed at his amount of opened tabs but a quick Tab Packager click and the extension creates a link to a holding page for all the tabs you have open. It also provides users the option to pick and choose which tabs to save and which to share. Quick tip: Another brilliant plus is that Tab Packager gives you the ability to send a bank of websites with one simple shortlink - perfect for shared research projects.

Clear Cache

Chrome This extension makes it quick and easy to clear cache and browsing data (hard refresh). Users are able to customise how much and which of their data they want to clear on the options page. This includes app cache, cookies, downloads, passwords, etc.. For Web Designer Dean McDonagh this extension is particularly useful. When you update images on a website but don’t change the name, the images have been cached in the browser. This means you will see the old images rather than the new ones. For developers this is very ineffective especially since Chrome does not make it easy to clear cache, so when creating websites Clear Cache is Dean’s go-to tool. Quick tips: Be mindful when choosing which features to clear as saved passwords will be deleted and automatic logins may no longer function. Set up a keyboard shortcut through chrome extensions and make the process even quicker!

Web Developer

Chrome, Firefox This tool is a favourite of Andrea Downey, our Lead Designer. This nifty extension adds web developer tools right onto your browser. From being able to view image information and a clear cache option to displaying ruler and disabling CSS styles, Web Developer is a one-stop shop. There is even a re-size window for responsive testing. For Product Director Luke Townsend the tool is more about using it to learn. Web Developer gives you the ability to see how something was achieved on another website or what broke on something our team is are working on. It can also be used to look at what cookies a site dropped or what tags the designers and developers have set.

SEOmoz Mozbar

Chrome Mozbar is a must for our PPC and SEO teams. While it may seem strange that an SEO software makes itself at home on the browser of the PPC team, there are few good reasons. Search Analyst Guy Thornton uses the tool daily because it gives instant results. Users can type in a search query and Mozbar tells you the power of the websites at the top of the list. This gives a PPCer an indication of what the market competition is, which in turn gives you an idea of CPCs (cost per clicks). For SEO Executive Philip Gamble the tool offers many useful functions, such as it giving a measure of authority of a page and showing how many links Moz found to it so you can get a metric of quality. Unfortunately the full software will cost you, but the good news is that the Mozbar extension is free of charge!

Do you have some extensions that we missed? Share them in the comments or tweet them to us on the hashtag #FoundExtentions.

Social search hits Google

Daniel Locke — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 11:47:06 +0000

Social search: Founders weigh in

Daniel Locke - Search Account Manager

Today, Thursday 25^th April 2013 seems to have seen new functionality in Google search results pages with the addition of drop-down options next to results. I’m not sure if he saw it first, but I’m crediting @paddymoogan for the spot - tweeting this screenshot first thing this morning: The new options allow users to view cached pages, similar results to a particular URL as well as a share button (if you are logged in to a Google account). What does this mean? Not much at this stage, and there has been no word from Google as to confirm or announce this change. It's also not clear if this is just Google experimenting and tinkering with SERPs, or a permanent change. The new share option does makes it easier for users to share a website on Google but it’s a pretty safe guess your average searcher, at least at the time of writing, will a) not pay much attention to the arrow and b) not be bothered about sharing a URL on Google+. Something to keep an eye on. Still, it's yet more data for Google to play with and if nothing else, it’s another reason for any latecomers to get on board with their social platform. Insight to similar search: The inclusion of an option to view similar results is puzzling. Only on Tuesday Google removed the related option from its search tools menu, citing lack of use. Perhaps moving it front and center is a last throw of the dice? Changes like these are why it’s so important, (and challenging!) for agencies and search marketers to keep up-to-date and on the ball.

Jaume Polo Torné - SEO Intern:

Will these new options change search results? Share button: This button is another attempt from Google to beat out Facebook and to bring users to G+. Social signals are becoming increasingly important as a ranking metric. If a page is shared straight from search results via this new share option, it can only be positive for the particular site because the page will increase positions, only if you are logged into your account. Similar button: This button may or may not have negative effects for the page, I am not yet 100% sure. On the one hand, it could be hypothezised that if you choose to look a similar pages, it’s because the result returned did not satisfy your search. However, it could also be true that a user thought a result was good, and as such wanted want to view more similar pages. It would be interesting to know what analysis Google engineers will take, if any, from use of this button. To sum up, we can say that the social search is here. These new options are aimed at bringing better results with social data from searchers. So, tasks have increased for SEO professionals. SEO is becoming less SEO and is now more like traditional marketing

Found featured in The Drum's search supplement

Emily White — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 10:35:05 +0000

In The Drum’s first search supplement, Through the Looking Glass - Search Under Scrutiny, MD Tina Judic answers questions about "how developments at Google, social search and the growth of mobile are all impacting on search marketing."

How do you see the role of the search marketer (PPC and SEO) changing in 2013?

2013 is going to be an interesting year for search marketers, from both an external and internal perspective, as the sector broadens in terms of opportunity, deliverability and skill. Specifically, demographic-based data sets will transform search marketing ROI this year. These will become integral to paid search campaign planning and even with privacy red tape, companies which target specific demographic groups will become the best converters pushing up costs per click. Likewise, the continuing growing focus on Social will see SEO teams deepening their relationship with social platforms to tap into the valuable content aggregators they represent. Underlying it all though will be a greater focus on the long term, with companies specifically learning to adjust KPIs to Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) – not just working to an acquisition-focussed CPA but a cost per CLV. However, mirroring all of these developments will be an internal shift for SEOs themselves, with their roles continuing to evolve to mirror the expanded, content-focussed role that search now plays.

Could this be the year of decreased reliance on Google?

Google always has and always will be a dominating force for the environment in which we operate. Although recent developments including the launch of Facebook’s Search Graph have led many to begin to question its role going forwards, I really don’t think there will be a fundamental decrease in wholesale reliance on this hugely influential industry partner.

What's the biggest challenge of search marketing in a multi-platform, multi-device environment?

That’s simple: cross device tracking and insight. Ultimately, the ability to join up data from different user sessions, sites and devices and crunch it with the vast amount of data generated by social platforms is a solution everyone is vying for. The companies who are investing in buying or building software to provide them with an integrated view of all marketing channels will be handing their analysts with the most useful and actionable insight to gain a competitive advantage.

How can marketers ensure optimum results from their paid and organic search?

Product marketing is going to be big this year and therefore commitment and focus must be channelled into this area. For retailers, Product Listing Ads is going to be key, now that Google has opened up Google Shopping as a paid channel. Product feeds and integration of feeds into the engines will be key to future PPC success. Google’s launch of Enhanced Campaigns has brought about some significant changes as to how advertisers will analyse, build and target their paid search campaigns. It will no longer be necessary to build individual Adwords campaigns to target different locations and devices – such as desktop, mobile, tablet – however advertisers will need to readdress their approach to campaign management to avoid significantly under (or over) spending budget. And finally, the possibilities that Near Field Communications technology will be bringing to the market are huge, providing tech-savvy companies with brand new ways to develop relationships with consumers through highly-targeted, totally unique content.

Found Launches SEO Audit Tool

Emily White — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 10:57:07 +0000

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Found Shares Search Expertise, Launching Seo Audit Tool On App Store

Leading digital marketing agency Found is publically sharing a part of its Search expertise for the first time through an app, launching its innovative SEO Audit Tool in the App Store. Free to download, the tool provides website owners with a simple-to-understand, yet detailed snapshot of how well their sites are set up for SEO. The nifty and very quick audit, obtained by simply uploading a URL address, will specifically provide users with a much clearer understanding of how well their sites are performing, from section scoring to advice on improvements they could still make. Tina Judic, Managing Director of Found, says: “The Found SEO Tool is a useful app for anyone querying their site performance and wanting to understand what enhancements they could make to their SEO campaigns overall. Not only does it provide clear indications of performance, it also offers valuable, free advice and insight for improvements.” Once a site audit has been completed, the data returned via the tool can act as a great starting point for SEO development and will quickly alert users to key issues that may need to be addressed including technical issues such as domain canonicalisation & XML sitemaps, and content issues such as keywords found on the page and within meta data. Through the use of a simple ‘traffic light’ system, the tool will then indicate whether the task is successful, whether there is an error in its implementation or whether there are any warning signs that could be addressed. Tina adds: “As champions of customer-centric SEO, I’m delighted that demand for this tool has prompted us to make it more publically available now. Originally borne out of our Foundlabs internal innovation initiative which gives all Founders the chance to pitch their own ideas for development, this has been a great team effort in delivering our first publicly available SEO mobile app to market.” To access the mobile app, visit iTunes Preview - Found SEO Tool or visit the online version Found SEO Audit Tool. This press release was originally published on Econsultancy.com.

Location, location, location!

Jaume P. Torne — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 12:04:56 +0000

One of the most important issues in business is location. Many experts have developed theories about how to determine the most optimal location for its companies, plants and products. Now, within the new era of digital marketing, location definition and strategies have changed. Here are some recommendations for getting Found online.

Location in business

Location has always been a key factor for different departments within a company. First of all, location was thought in terms of operations and logistics. The first important theory about location was developed by Johann Heinrich von Thünen. Considering variations of rent, transportation costs, land uses and intensities from one territory to another, he developed a model to calculate the best place to set company's plants. One of the key persons in highlighting location for retailing was J. Freeman Pyle, who in 1926 wrote about it in the Harvard Business Review. In 1940, Kenneth D. Hutchinson developed a technique to determine the location considering traffic. Many others have formulated theories and carried out studies about consumer behaviour within stores, raising the importance of product location. In the realm of property, Harold Samuel coined the phrase "location, location, location" as the three things that matter in property. Years later, new theories about determining property value appeared. Now, in the era of digital marketing, store and product location is a bit different.

Why is location important for businesses?

Location - both branch and product location - is the best way to increase visibility. By setting your store in a highly busy street, or your product at the level of the customer's eyes, you gain exposure and awareness. Therefore, you have a great chance of people entering into your store or buying your product. The alternative of a good location is earning awareness with advertising or word of mouth. The first one will cost you a lot of money, and the second one, a lot of time. Both require you to offer consumers something they really value because it will cost them time and money to go to your store. A store based at a busy location is more convenient to customers than one that is not on their route when shopping, going to work or heading back home.

What are consumers doing online?

To understand what location is in digital terms, we first have to know what consumers do online. Most of the non-work-related online activities can be grouped into one of these 3 areas:

Entertainment and relationships: activities with the purpose of recreation. Examples: watching videos and movies, visiting social networks, searching products that they never will buy like fashion designers clothes, etc.
Purchasing: all the activities related to purchasing. From getting information about products or services to post-purchase services such as how to use or repair a product.
Knowledge acquisition: any activity that increases knowledge. This can be reading newspapers or watching an interview related to a specific topic. It includes "how to" articles and videos within categories like cooking, DIY and repairing.

What is location in digital marketing?

Considering these three areas, location in digital marketing is about placing your business or product in the customer's "online path" to increase visibility and awareness. At the same time, it is also about being convenient for the customer when they are taking part in some of these activities. When customers are performing an activity that involves a high level of concentration or involvement, they might be reluctant to be interrupted, and may simply choose to ignore you. It's worth noting this, as it can negatively affect your brand's likability and can be a waste of money. Brand recall vs. brand recognition Brand recall is the process of thinking of a brand when being asked about a category. The digital world gives more importance than ever to brand recall since there are no physical streets for consumers to be walking upon. Rather, if consumers are looking for a product, they will first check the suppliers at the top-of-mind. If they don't have one in that particular category, or if they want to compare brands, they will ask their friends, seek out opinions by influencers or will look at search engines. As well, brand recognition is important both within an online store and at all the digital channels available. If a brand is recognised when browsing social networks or when performing a search, there is more of a chance of the site being clicked and visited.

How to improve location in a digital world?

Since the internet has made it very easy to go from one store to another, it is key to develop a complete strategy throughout the different digital channels in order to increase brand awareness, brand recognition and brand recall. Not only do you have to be a master in positioning your company/products on search engines through SEO and search advertising, but you also have to increase and maintain brand awareness through other tools like content marketing, referrals, email and social media. One such way of doing this is through affiliate marketing, a tool which can increase the digital footprint of your store and products and therefore, your sales. To increase your sales, two things must be carried out: a consumer analysis and a brand experience model. First of all, a complete analysis of the consumer must be done, including their values and preferences, their buying decision process and their influencers. Afterwards, a brand experience model must be developed. This model is a representation of the different experiences a customer has with a brand. These experiences are called points of contact. A point of contact might be, among others, an advertisement, a call from the sales department, the use of the product, etc. With this model, a brand is able to determine which of these points of contact are the most relevant in the buying decision process, and, therefore, assign more resources to the most profitable ones.

References

Location in logistics: Crosier, Scott. Johann-Heinrich von Thünen: Balancing Land-Use Allocation with Transport Cost. CSISS. Krumme, Gunter. Johann-Heinrich von Thünen (Resources). University of Washington. Location in property management: Pearson, Thomas D. Location! Location! Location! What is location? Appraisal Journal, 1991. Location in retailing: Pyle, J. Freeman. The determination of location standards for retail concerns. Harvard Business Review, 1926. Hutchinson, Kenneth D. Traffic and trade correlations: A technique in store location. Journal of Marketing, 1940. Kirby, Audrey. The architectural design of UK supermarkets 1950-2006. PhD Thesis, University of the Arts London, 2008. Location in digital marketing: Agarwal et al. Location, location, location: An analysis of profitability of position in online advertising markets. Journal of Marketing Research, 2011. Brand management: Iglesias, O.; Singh, J. J. & Batista-Foguet, J. M. (2011). The role of brand experience and affective commitment in determining brand loyalty. Journal of Brand Management, 18(8), 570-582.

Have you met Dan and George?

Flo Bundy — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 11:53:01 +0000

Found has recently welcomed two new faces to the team and they are quite awesome chaps! So, here is a "formal" introduction.

Daniel Locke

Search Account Manager

Dan is a former SEO'er who has worked both in an agency and as a consultant. His previous experience working search campaigns gave him the know-how to develop new and effective strategies for our clients. Here is some more to know about this Everton fan: Hometown A village in the centre of the world famous Milton Keynes-Bedford-Luton triangle. Any hidden talents? Karate belts? World records? Medals? Collections? Puffin 5m Swimming. Puffin 10m Swimming. Didn’t even bother with the 15 –straight into my Puffin 20m. You were trained as a journalist, any grammatical pet peeves to share? Their’s definately several spelling and grammer peevs I’ve got. Sweet or savoury? Savoury. Ideal savoury snack? Pizza, no question. Next. You claim to have an unrivaled knowledge of song lyrics, what is the most embarrassing song you can verse by heart? Any early Sugababes. Not embarrassed though – Overload is a masterpiece Why do you hate lolly sticks? I’d rather not talk about it. As a previous safari park employee (who worked in the kitchen) what is the scariest animal you ever faced? Dead or alive? They shut all the guests in the restaurant once when an Impala got out. Not that scary, but real life man.

George Bett

Senior Partnerships Manager

A veteran in the affiliate industry, George has the experience and understanding that will take the Found affiliate partners to a new level. Performance marketing is this Liverpool fan’s specialty but there is a load more to this St Peter Port, Guernsey native: Have you ever used the fact you played international cricket for Guernsey to gain/take advantage? Not yet, I suspect I would be unsuccessful given the lack of kudos Guernsey has in the wider cricketing world! Any hidden talents? Karate belts? World records? Medals? Collections? I have a u11 county Tennis trophy I’m still rather proud of. Sweet or savoury? Savoury. Ideal savoury snack? Crisps, love crisps. What do you have against dogs dressed as people? Ah I can’t stand it, dogs have fur………… they don’t need ski jackets or waterproof hats. Best golf score? 81, 9 over par. Best course you ever played on? Valderrama - unsuccessfully. As a former ice cream van man what is something customers do not want to know? Basically everything… As a 14 year old I was less concerned with food hygiene then I was giving free ice creams to my mates. I’m a changed man now though!

Stats & Facts: Content Marketing

Emily White — Thu, 09 May 2013 11:47:40 +0000

Let the insights below help you decide on the format of your next content marketing move:

Whether you are a big company or a small one, planning your next piece of branded content is an important affair. We compiled some facts to help guide you on what to post and where to post it.

Inbound vs outbound marketing

Generating a lead through inbound marketing costs an average of £92, less than half of the average £240 that outbound marketing costs. (Source)

Original content

One area where there is no debate - all content must be original.

According to Google's Webmaster tools one crucial step in improving your site's ranking is "to ensure that it contains plenty of rich information that includes relevant keywords, used appropriately, that indicate the subject matter of your content." (Source)

Blog posts

Blogs give websites 434% more indexed pages and 97% more indexed links. (Source)
Blogs on company sites result in 55% more visitors. (Source)
The frequency of blog posts has a large impact on customer acquisition. Of the companies who blogged multiple times a day, 92% acquired a customer via their blog. (Source)

Images & infographics

Articles accompanied by compelling visuals receive nearly 95% more total views than articles without relevant images. (Source)
Publishers who use infographics grow in traffic 12% more than those who don’t. (Source)

Videos posts

The value of one minute of video is 1.8 million words. That’s the equivalent of 3,600 typical web pages. (Source)
80% of users remember a video ad they watched on a website in the past 30 days with 46% of them taking some action after viewing the ad. (Source)

Email marketing

64% of people say they open an email because of the subject line. (Source)
The most clicked lead nurturing subject line word is secrets (Source)
Including a video in an introductory email increased the click-through rate by 96%. (Source)

Tweets

The price for promoted trends on Twitter have reached the $200,000 a day mark in the United States. (Source)
Companies that use Twitter generate 2x more leads than companies who don’t. (Source)
More than 1/3 of all links shared on Twitter point to an image. (Source)
Nearly 93% of all retweets happen within the first hour of the original tweet being published. (Source)
A tweet's retweet rate increases 12X when brands use a RT or retweet call to action. (Source)

Facebook

People ages 25-34 use Facebook the most. (Source)
Facebook posts that include ‘should,’ ‘would’ and ‘who’ get more comments. (Source)

Google+

Today Google+ is the fastest-growing network ever with 500 million members, 235 million which are active across Google. (Source)
Google’s +1 button is used 5 million times a day. (Source)
Plus, according to three ex-Googlers at Brighton SEO, Google+ is a social media platform whose content may soon affect rankings.

Digital Shoreditch 2013 - Future Brands

Gareth Olyott — Tue, 28 May 2013 14:14:05 +0000

Shoreditch Town Hall was a hive of agencies, advertisers, media and brands. Last Wednesday’s speakers used the stage to share their views on the fun and not so fun parts of our digital world. The list of speakers for the Digital Shoreditch, Future Brands event included ambassadors from Nokia, Metro, LBi, XS2, HERD and the Internet Advertising Bureau. The format of the conference was mostly overlapping 20 minute slots, in a similar fashion to TED, with the exception of a few hour long talks. Speakers were notified by a [damning] bell ring as to when they were nearing their time limit. It looked like this warning caught some speakers by surprise, as I felt some of them were only just getting going when they got interrupted.

The memorable talks

The vast majority of talks didn’t challenge the status quo or teach enough. However, four did stand out:

Social media laughs and fails with Jon Morter

[caption id="attachment_8866" align="aligncenter" width="554"] John Morten talks social media fails, with a funny twist[/caption] The conference began with a talk by the charismatic and interesting Jon Morter. The man behind the “Condescending Corporate Brand Facebook page” has an abrupt style and his free flowing taboo got a great response from the fresh faces and wide eyes on an early Wednesday morning. Jon spoke candidly and openly about the cringe-worthy moments of brands who have failed terribly at engaging their ‘Fans.’ His slides featured many misguided engagements and were as attention grabbing as his witty demeanour that has earned him the description “the Facebook equivalent of ‘This Is Spinal Tap’.” Jon’s interview afterwards is on Vimeo for your viewing pleasure.

The video girl - Cat Jones

[caption id="attachment_8867" align="aligncenter" width="438"] Cat Jones talks about the motivating factors of sharing[/caption] Cat Jones from Unruley gave an interesting talk on how she and the Unruly Media team have managed to crack the code for social video marketing. She gave examples of their software and its deep analysis. More importantly, she spoke about the prediction of virality for video marketing. Just as Cat began to get into the real details, the bell rang… She persisted but the bell didn’t stop and I was personally disappointed she couldn’t carry on!

Nokia’s marketing man – Chris Schumann

I was interested to hear the talk by Chris Schaumann, Global VP, Digital & Social Marketing and CRM at Nokia. If you have had your eyes on digital at all recently, you will know all about what they are calling the Elop Effect and more notoriously, the “burning platform memo.” This was the the decline in Nokia’s market-share since the first quarter of 2011 when Elop, the CEO of Nokia changed the phone OS from Symbian to Windows. The talk themed on transforming Nokia’s marketing organisation successfully and gave a nice rounded insight into marketing trends and the innovative approach Nokia has taken to adopt to this fluid digital world. His viewpoint was interesting, and the targets pretty huge. Their desire to become the most talked about tech brand on the internet in 2013 seems far-fetched for a brand that is losing market share by the minute. Despite this, they definitely have the right attitude, seriously recognising the role social can play in their fight to once again become a serious mobile contender. The slides are on Chris’ blog

Newsjack the lad - Jani Cortesini

Jani Cortesini of Inferno pragmatically talked about the anatomy of a newsjack or trendjack, when brands or persons capitalise on the popularity of a news story to amplify their sales and/or marketing. He shared an experienced account of how we should and shouldn't newsjack and how to avoid social media disasters as has been experienced by so many of the big boys. He talked tactics of perfecting a newsjack, listing the do’s and don’ts, tools and resources needed. One notorious example occurred as the revolution in Egypt was unfolding. Kenneth Cole tweeted: “Millions are in an uproar in #Cairo. Rumour is they heard our new spring collection is now available online…” The retailer was met with harsh widespread criticism due to the nature of the Cairo hashtag being used as one of the only channels for legitimate breaking news on the revolution. Jani’s talk was insightful and gave the audience some strong points to think about, which is what I really wanted from my day at Shoreditch Digital. The slides are here.

So what did I think?

Overall, I didn't benefit much from the sessions on Wednesday. Perhaps, I was expecting more than I should have. I was looking to hear about high-quality case studies and new methods of practice. After all, what is the point of a conference if it isn't intended to get attendees thinking or reshape their thinking entirely. Did I get that at this particular conference where the majority of talks were severely time restricted? No. Definitely not. Plus, the speakers seemed to feel this way too. Search the twitter hashtag #DS13 and check it all out for yourself.

Penguin 2.0 cheat sheet

Emily White — Thu, 30 May 2013 13:04:21 +0000

After a lot of hype, Google rolled out Penguin 2.0 last week. Since then, the web has been inundated with expert opinions on the topic. Some of the commentary has been helpful, some has been dramatic and some has spread misinformation on the subject. Found has created a Penguin 2.0 cheat sheet to help you understand the basics:

What is Penguin 2.0?

Penguin 2.0 is the latest Google algorithm change.

Wait, what do you mean by algorithm?

In its most basic form, an algorithm is a procedure for solving a mathematical problem. Google takes the words and phrases you type into its search bar as a problem that needs solving. Their algorithms are in the form of computer programs, which use processes and formulas to provide you, the user, with the answer to your search question. By relying on more than 200 unique clues and signals, such as the terms on websites, the freshness of content and backlinks, as well as personalised factors such as your search history, location and device, Google provides its “best guess” set of websites for your search query.

What is the update designed to do?

The main purpose of Penguin 2.0 is to target spam on the web and decrease the rankings of websites that the algorithms suspect violate Google’s existing quality guidelines. The update moves past targeting only the top level pages and begins to target lower level pages of a site.

For the normal guy, the removal of webspam enables Google to more effectively help searchers find the sites, and answers they are looking for and results in a strong user experience.

What about webmasters?

The intention is to have high-quality sites rewarded. When Google announced the update, they said that their advice for webmasters is “to focus on creating high-quality sites that create a good user experience and employ white hat SEO methods instead of engaging in aggressive webspam tactics.” Of course, this is intended to lower the rankings of sites Google believes are engaging in improper optimisation methods.

White hat vs. black hat

White hat refers to SEO techniques that effectively and properly improve a site’s usability. This can be through strong content, faster load times and natural linking to your site. These factors provide users with an enjoyable and effective experience. Black hat is the opposite of this. It refers to the improper techniques that are used to increase rankings or traffic in a way Google dislikes. This can be things like keyword stuffing, hacking websites, using hidden content and link schemes which increase traffic and rankings, but do not benefit the user.

Is Penguin a penalty?

A penalty assumes you did something wrong and now are being punished. Penguin 2.0 is an algorithm update, which means that if your rankings have slipped it is likely that links which may have been helping you previously, are no longer effective.

So if my rankings are falling, it means I have been Penguined?

Maybe, maybe not.

Not all fallen rankings can be attributed to Penguin 2.0. Most companies and brands are employing a form of SEO. Competition is strong and your rankings can be diminishing simply because others are working just as hard to get their sites in top placement.

However, as mentioned above, some of the links that used to increase your rankings, are no longer doing so. This is because a couple of weeks ago, Google took action against a large network of link sellers. All their outgoing links were devalued accordingly.

The result is that some brands and websites will need to write off the investment made in low quality links and start from scratch - building a SEO strategy fit for 2013 and beyond. This will involve using a more natural SEO strategy and focusing on attracting higher quality links. This is similar to the fate faced by some websites and brands with the release of the original Penguin.

What is the original Penguin?

An original Penguin was released in April 2012. It was followed by several smaller updates under the same title. The goal of the algorithm was the same - penalise the sites that employ black hat techniques and reward the high-quality sites. According to Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam team, there are some 500 algorithm updates a year. Moving forward, Penguin will likely have a lower threshold level in future. Most changes are minor but others, like Penguin, are highly discussed due to the impact or intended impact it will have on rankings.

Why are some people freaking out?

This was due in part to the fact that the update received a lot of hype and people were expecting a lot of backlash. Cutts' video below most likely had a large role to play in why people were worried. As of the publication date of this article, the update has been mostly underwhelming. Spam sites are still ranking and some legitimate websites have been penalised. To tackle the spam still ranking, Google has made it possible for webmasters to submit linkspam reports themselves. Regardless of low impact Penguin 2.0 has had so far, it is still important to make sure your SEO team is employing the proper techniques to improve your ranking.

5 questions to ask yourself and your SEO team:

1. Are the sites linking back to my site reputable? Proper backlink profile analysis should be conducted by any SEO agency worth their salt. There are several software platforms where you can grab your links, including Majestic SEO, Ahrefs and Moz. It is also possible to do this through Google Webmaster Tools. The next stage is to verify which of these links are relevant, natural and are from sites of a sufficient quality to be associated with your brand/website. If they don't meet these standards, get rid of them. 2. Is the content we are posting amazing and compelling? Your content should be authoritative within your niche. You should always aim to inform the reader, solve their problems and provide a great and effective user experience. 3. Are we doing link building properly? Link building has a bad rep, and rightly so. Shoddy and lazy SEOs spend too long chasing the algorithm; obtaining backlinks through ‘grey hat’ techniques. When done properly, link building is still a vital component of a digital marketing strategy. This can be done by building relevant links for traffic value rather than direct ranking benefit. Another way is through outreach to relevant hubs of authority or online PR. SEO teams just need to be better than ever before. 4. Are all my eggs in one basket? Employing a reputable agency is important for two main reasons. The first is that they will create a strong SEO strategy, second, a good team will be able to advise you on other forms of digital marketing needed to make your website thrive. If you put all your resources in organic traffic, you will end up with a very poor business model because when it comes to Google, you don’t have any divine rights to appearing in a search engine results page (SERP). Make sure you are diversifying your traffic sources on and offline. 5. Do we have a long-term plan? While it is tempting to focus on the right now, make sure your team isn’t employing quick fixes. They should be using a strategy that will continue to pay off even after Google’s next algorithm update.

As Cutts stresses, the goal is to create a site users love, that they will want to tell their friends about, that they will bookmark, come back to, visit over and over again - all the things that make a site compelling. These kinds of sites are likely to build links organically due to the fact people want to share them. With notes from Daniel Locke.

5 secrets to an Appy life

Charlotte Bella — Fri, 31 May 2013 12:58:02 +0000

Today’s fast moving world can often provide you with an information overload when, if you’re like me, you just want to keep it simple.

Here are the top 5 iOS apps that simplify my life:

5. Cleanup

Have you ever wanted to remove a load of contacts from your iPhone only to find you have to do this one at a time by painstakingly clicking to edit each individual? Maybe you have changed jobs and want to take out some client numbers or accidentally restored numbers from an old backup (yes this did happen to me).
Install Cleanup and all you have to do is select each contact to remove, click the dustbin icon and they are gone. Just like that.

4. BBC iPlayer Radio

This one has been a long time coming, for ages there were all sorts of apps out there claiming to provide you with digital radio stations on your 3G network. I tried a couple that claimed to have all the stations but often these were recordings from the previous day and not live.
6Music is my preferred station of choice, I listen to the ramblings of Shaun Keaveny from 7am and I am gutted when, at 8.15am, I have to turn them off. Now I don’t have to. Granted that as a BBC app it only has BBC stations, but seriously, if you’re listening to anything other than 6Music I will have to question your music tastes.

3. Google Search

The app is new to iOS but has been available on Android for a while for the obvious reason that it is owned by Google. It provides you with a wealth of information at your fingertips, in one place you can find; Google Maps, YouTube, Gmail, Google Drive, Chrome, Google + and your Google calendar to name a few. Great if you love Google.
Another excellent feature is the Goggles button. Click this and aim it at (almost) anything and it will instantly serve you with information on the object you are aiming the camera at. This app may be a bit of a cheat as it is many apps in one, but it is efficient nonetheless.

2. JumiDesktop+ Remote

I have a confession, I am super lazy. However, I can contest that this was initially downloaded when I was recovering from an operation, which meant I had to be bed bound for a few days. The app is downloaded to your iPhone and also to your computer/laptop, the rest is magic. OK maybe it’s a bit more complex than that, but who cares when you can control your laptop from your iPhone whilst only moving your fingertips?

1. Citymapper

As Rihanna once sang, “where have you been all my life?” Seriously, this is the app I have been waiting for. *London-centric reference klaxon* I’ve been living in London for 8 years now, I have had an iPhone for 3 of those years, but not once has any travel app come close to this offering. Granted there is a cool Barclays Bike app that works well, the Busmapper is almost perfect and Bus Checker is a godsend in the winter (more time in the pub instead of waiting for the bus), and well TFL; we can’t all be perfect can we?
Citymapper amalgamates all of these apps, their mission being to apparently “save Londoners from London!” and it has definitely saved me. To highlight all of the brilliant features would take some time so I will just summarise the important bits:

Walking – the route you can take, the calories this will burn, what the weather is like for walking and the time it will take at an average pace.
Taxi – the estimated cost and journey duration.
Bus, tube, train – which one is quickest and cheapest.
Cycle – closest bike station, route and estimated time to desired bike station. This is also simplified to show just the route if you have your own bike.
Jetpack – yes jetpack, say no more.

There you have it, these are the apps I use to make my life easy and efficient. Why not share your favourite apps for a simple life in the comments box below!

Sweet words from the Content Marketing Show

Emily White — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 12:38:04 +0000

The last day in May was an exciting one for London content makers. We had the opportunity to move away from our desks and attend a free conference on digital marketing’s favourite buzzword: content marketing. The Content Marketing Show, hosted by the same guys who do BrightonSEO, set out to explore “the junction between social media, online PR, SEO & content strategy.” Many of the speakers at the show shared similar opinions and experiences - one even shared the above fun slide with Canadian heartthrob Ryan Gosling (swoon). Here are my main takeaways from the conference:

7 major lessons from the Content Marketing Show

1. Content is a team sport

The conference opened with a talk by Danny Denhard, Senior SEO Manager Europe at VoucherCodes.co.uk. He compared the building of a content team to the building of a football team. Every player on the pitch has a job and each has specific strengths which make them a valuable asset on the team. From the goalkeeper who is there to protect your project, to the selfish striker who will work independently but get your team the results needed. To succeed and keep creativity coming, you must have a mix player types, know when to make substitutions and learn how to nurture your team. [caption id="attachment_9259" align="aligncenter" width="399"] The Sir Alex Ferguson's Guide To Building The Best (Content) Team - by Danny Denhard[/caption] Dan Fielder the Managing Editor at Sticky Content addressed this too. He explained that pulling ideas and content from all departments of your team is crucial in acquiring the knowledge and passion to communicate with your customers. One of the tips provided by Sarah Howard, Head of Content at Red Rocket Media, was to make content a company-wide exercise. By using your entire team, you can create the best content possible. Plus, having multiple personas on your site builds up its authority. [caption id="attachment_9256" align="aligncenter" width="399"] What is the right mix of content for your brand? Find out in 5 simple steps by Red Rocket Media[/caption]

...and sometimes people need incentives to get involved

While some of us content marketers would like to dream and hope that our teammates are motivated to contribute to the company blog, often this is not the reality. This can be because they lack the writing capabilities or just simply the time. Sarah offered the suggestion of making content a competition between teams. With posts receiving the highest reach earning bragging rights or a free lunch!

2. Planning and preparation is key

A strong content strategy requires proper planning and preparation. You need to have a content calendar. This was touched-upon by nearly every speaker at the Content Marketing Show. Planning also involves creating a budget that is relevant to the content you are trying to deliver, a point iterated by Laura Edwards founder of social media agency Nitter Natter. For Dan Fielder the planning stage involves being very realistic. He spoke about underestimating what you can achieve and beginning by tackling the things which require the least amount of sign-offs or ones that can be quick wins and ROIs. Once you do this, you use your successes to argue your case when more time or more money is needed. Jo Kerr, Digital Manager at vInspired took a different perspective on the topic of planning. She looked back at her experiences as a student newspaper editor and the planning she lacked during these years. One of the most important lessons she shared was that even though you need to plan ahead, you also have to be spontaneous. Expect breaking news and be able to adapt to it.

...and data is crucial

Making data your friend was the theme of Simon Penson’s talk. The Founder and MD at Zazzle Media described the role data plays in shaping content strategies. Using “Google’s Hidden Gems”(Google Ad Planner, Google Consumer Surveys, Google Public Data Explorer and Real-Time Insights Finder) and social data, like what is available on Facebook’s Power Editor, will not only tell you the type of content that will get you the engagement, data can and should be used to validate a campaign’s effectiveness. [caption id="attachment_9268" align="aligncenter" width="399"] Content strategy make data your friend by Simon Penson[/caption]

3. Make content people want to share

This is obvious, but this point was still one of my favourites spoken about throughout the day. The reason was that each speaker had a different perspective on how to do this. For Laura Edwards, one of the best ways to do this is by making the content easy to share. The social share buttons should be visible, enticing and placed at the top. Make sure the share message is already written because people are lazy. Any interference they face can stop them from sharing. Similarly, when asking for permissions on Facebook, never ask more than you need because this will throw users off.

…do so by telling good stories

Caliber COO Tony Samios opened with a verse from a storybook. His talk carried this story theme, focusing on the relationship storytelling has with strong content. He explained that people enjoy stories because they like to experience the similarities between themselves and others. While technology has changed and influenced the way we tell stories, storytelling is as old as time itself. Social media has given us the ability to personalise stories in a much more intimate setting. Tony explains that this is important for marketers because consumers are not concerned what the brand has to say about themselves, but what others have to say about the brand. It is all about providing an emotional connection. Tony stressed that content needs to be emotionally, intellectually and aesthetically appealing. It needs to be creative and authentic. Good stories can compel people to change, and as such, content should inspire action. Luke Lewis, UK Editor at BuzzFeed, closed the Content Marketing Show with a look at BuzzFeed’s move into the UK. One of the things that makes their content so successful, is that it taps into peoples’ passions. Luke explained that good articles harness that feel good factor in readers. He asked the question most of us content marketers ask ourselves on a daily basis: “How is your post going to be what people share when everyone’s writing about the same thing?” Content needs a hook. While there are many possible angles, the one that has been most effective at BuzzFeed is nostalgia. Anything that incites an emotional response is content that will be cut through.

4. Recycle the old (but good) pieces

Dan Fielder touched upon this and said part of your content plan has to be thinking of the different ways you can slice and dice your content. Basically, ask yourself how a single asset can be used in different formats and seeded to different platforms. Also think about creating templates that can be reused, such as a troubleshooter video series.

5. Be nice, be personable and be multicultural

Ben Redford designer at Mint Digital perhaps gave one of the most entertaining talks of the day. This was definitely due in part to the fact he is responsible for fun inventions like Olly, Polly and Projecteo. According to Ben, his success stemmed from blog posts his team posted of their invention production process. All he did was show people what he was doing and people responded. The blog posts were not done for the intention of increasing their SEO. His most poignant point for me was the importance of showing interest in what your consumers are doing with your product after the buying process. Many of the speakers touched about the necessity of knowing your audience. Eric Ingrand, Vice President Content Marketing EMEA at EnVeritasGroup, went one step further and pointed out that in order to reach audiences you must create multicultural content. This does not mean translating content from English to another language, it requires creating fresh content in that specific language. It is customers first and SEO second for Ed Bussey CEO and Founder at Quill. Hos talk was about offering content your customers want before worrying what Google wants. This is content that is relevant, helpful, timely and interesting. He also mentioned the importance of localising instead of translating.

6. Look beyond shares and start judging campaigns by conversion

Justin Taylor, Founder & MD at Graphitas, said what content marketers, SEOers and social media gurus needed to hear: social shares aren't good enough. He described these as vanity metrics and deeply stressed the importance of looking beyond shares and start judging campaigns by conversion. [caption id="attachment_9277" align="aligncenter" width="400"] Putting the conversion into content by Justin Taylor[/caption] Matt Roberts, Co-Founder & VP of Product at Linkdex echoed this point, calling for content that has measurable value.

7. The old outreach process is broken and has to change

This is probably one of the toughest challenges facing content marketers today. Paul May, CEO/Co-Founder at BuzzStream called us out. He told us that the old outreach game is up and we have to start doing better. We have to develop a new and improved outreach process. A big part of this is building relationships. This can be done by retweeting posts by bloggers you plan to target, by sending friendly emails and by making sure you target people who can benefit from what you are offering. [caption id="attachment_9279" align="aligncenter" width="399"] Advanced Content Promotion and Outreach Tactics by BuzzStream[/caption] Outreach needs to be personalised, positioned, persuasive and needs to have a call to action. Being personalised and positioned means you are clear and upfront on why what you have is valuable to them. Paul is careful to explain that it does not mean feeding them false flattery. Instead of gushing over their blog, he suggested introducing an email saying you read their article on a specific topic and its subject made you think their readers would be interested in the article you are offering. You also need to have a call to action in your outreach. Start small by requesting a Twitter follow and progress to asking for a link. Paul warned the audience that wording here was key. Instead of asking for a link directly, phrase it instead like this: "Do you think this is something you can share with your readers." The day was very informative and full of valuable lessons. There were also a handful of memorable quotes:

Wise words

"If your content is good you won't have fight to get peoples attention they will give it to you." - Laura Edwards founder of social media agency Nitter Natters

"Practice random acts of content kindness." - Dan Fielder the Managing Editor at Sticky Content

"Make me care please." - Tony Samios COO Caliber

“Become your audience, capitalise on what works, scrap what doesn't, get everyone involved and adopt a data-led content marketing strategy.” - Sarah Howard, Head of Content at Red Rocket Media’s

“To be comfortable outside your comfort zone you must be multicultural and multiplatform.” - Eric Ingrand, Vice President Content Marketing EMEA at EnVeritasGroup

Header photograph courtesy of SlideDeck by Paul May of BuzzStream.

Meet John, Rupy & Emily

Flo Bundy — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 15:30:48 +0000

The Found team is growing and expanding. We have been very lucky to welcome three new faces to the team over the last few weeks.

John Stuchfield

Search Analyst

The newest addition to the PPC team has been hooked on digital marketing since being introduced to it at University. The precise nature of paid search and the impressive results that can be achieved keep this new Founder motivated. Here is a bit more about this Tottenham Hotspur fan: Hometown Stratford St Mary - a small village in Suffolk. Any hidden talents? Calligraphy – I started doing it at prep school and have continued it ever since. Unfortunately I don’t get time to do it as much as I would like now though. Favourite font? Gothic. If you could only eat one thing every day for the rest of your life, what would it be? Parma ham – I just can’t enough of it. As a major Coldplay fan, what is your favourite Coldplay Moment? I saw them play at the Emirates last year, and everyone had a flashing these wristbands on, and when Every Teardrop is a Waterfall came on the whole crowd went crazy and started bouncing around. There were about 60,000 people in there and it was amazing to see such vibrant lights everywhere you looked. You claim to hate bad table manners, number one table pet peeve? People who talk while they have a mouthful of food. Can’t stand it! Do anything crazy on your trip to New Zealand? On my last day in New Zealand I randomly decided I wanted to do a sky dive. I did it at about 10am and then got driven straight to the airport to catch a flight to Fiji – crazy last day!! If you were to be an animal, which would you be and why? Probably an owl. I’ve got the big eyes already and I would love to be able to fly.

Rupy Kaur

Account Director

With ten years’ experience in digital, our newest Account Director is always ready to deliver strategy, solutions and exceptional service to our clients. Find out what else interests this art house cinema fan: First tell us what is art house cinema? Art house cinema for me is just that – art and beauty, a refreshing break from Hollywood and Bollywood! I find these films a real reflection on human nature and life experiences. What film would you recommend to someone new to the genre? I loved “Les petits mouchoirs” / Little White Lies. As the Oxfam fashion blogger, do you have any fashion advice? I would tell people to just wear what makes them happy. If you had to be a colour, which would you be? I would choose to be green – I find it a very uplifting and energising colour. Any crazy travel stories? Hardly crazy but it was great fun, if a little scary. I was travelling by myself in a tuk tuk at 5am in the morning, pitch black, towards Angor Wat just to see the sun rise, it was amazing when we got there! As a poet, what is one tip you can share with someone who has never written before? Don’t think, just feel and the writing should just flow. Favourite ice cream flavour and why? Neapolitan by Swedish Glace. Why? For dairy free ice cream eaters like me, this is just toooooo good! As a lover of the outdoors, is there was anything you would about it? Less concrete, more open green spaces please.

Emily White

Content Marketing Executive

After completing a Found internship, Emily joined the team permanently as a Content Marketer. Aside from assisting the Founders with all things content, there is a lot more to know about this Canadian native: Hometown Montreal, Canada. You claim to be of a journalistic background…. What's the weirdest article or piece you have ever written? I think it would have to be a tie between a story I did on a haunted mansion in the city’s wealthiest neighbourhood and the varying opinions of students on the sexualisation of Halloween costumes. If you could only eat one candy for the rest of your life what would it be? In a horrible world where such a decision had to be made, it would have to be Cherry Blasters. Actually Sour Patch Kids. No, make that Cherry Blasters. Can I choose two? We know you're from Canada, so tell us something we might not know about the motherland? Besides for the fact that we don’t live in igloos? I think it is good to know that the capital of Canada is Ottawa, not Toronto! Are you scared of spiders? Or any insects or animals for that matter? Cats. I hate how you can’t hear them creeping up on you as they appear to steal your soul away. Any crazy travel stories from your time in Peru? One moment that definitely stands out is when we took a buggy into the Nazca dessert and went sand boarding on the sand dunes. It was a pretty crazy experience. Paper or iPad? Kindle.

If you are interested in working at Found, check out our careers page for current vacancies or visit us on LinkedIn.

Found shortlisted for innovation at 2013 European Search Awards

Luke Townsend — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 13:45:51 +0000

It brings us great pleasure to announce that The Foundry: The “Giving Something Back” Project - Free Community Tools for Performance Search Success” has been shortlisted for Innovation at the 2013 European Search Awards. When we created The Foundry, a suite of tools to provide SEO insight, build PPC campaigns and delve deeper into analytics performance, we did so to help marketers like ourselves address key obstacles and produce simple solutions. Receiving recognition for our contribution to the performance marketing sector is an outcome of this project that we are honoured to receive. As an agency, Found makes it a priority to contribute to the growth and development of the industry as a whole. Currently The Foundry consists of three separate tools available to all publishers and advertisers looking to enhance their Search and Performance activity. There is the SEO Audit Tool, the PPC Keyword Tool and the Wordpress – Contact Form 7 Analytics plug-in which were all born out of Found’s internal initiative, FoundLabs, a platform which encourages Founders to put forward ideas and suggestions for new sites, campaigns and technologies. The Foundry is set to face-off with other industry innovators on Thursday 20 June 2013 in Barcelona. We have our fingers crossed and are wishing all the best to all others shortlisted.

The force behind SEO: a content marketing presentation

Daniel Locke — Tue, 02 Jul 2013 13:32:22 +0000

Last week, we were given the opportunity to deliver a presentation on content marketing for one of our clients.

Content marketing has enjoyed a dramatic resurgence over the last couple of years, as SEO's across the land hold up it's noble virtues against Penguin and Panda, Google's very own Bebop and Rocksteady on a crusade of devastation at the will of master Shredder. However, much like every year since 2008 being the 'year of mobile', content marketing is nothing new. Indeed, many search marketers have considered great content a prerequisite for SEO for many years.

The following slides from our presentation give some recent examples of brands producing compelling, shareable content in various forms. Brief notes can also be seen below.

Awesome Stormtrooper image courtesy of bfishadow on Flickr!

Presentation notes:

All aboard the content marketing bandwagon! 2013 has been dubbed the year of content marketing, but this not a new concept
Content marketing strategies that businesses used long before the Web existed include:
- Conferences
- Lectures, seminars and workshops
- Articles in industry magazines or papers
- Industry reports
- Customer newspapers
- Special magazines, guides and publications for clients
No content, no SEO!
Quantity ≠ Quality
- More content
- From more sources
- From inexperienced creators and low end SEO agencies = a lot of crap
This is bad for brands because people become blind to it. The problem is worsened when on the face of it content looks good - helpful subject matter, snappy titles etc, but no value. This makes consumers less trusting and less willing to invest time in your content
The bandwagon is already passing. There is only one way to get past this – creating something useful
Forget about:
- Converting customers from your content
- Acquiring leads and making sales directly
Instead:
- Build familiarity
- Likeability
- Trust
Review which type of content your audience have interacted best with in the past. Look at analytics, look at competitors via MajecticSEO and other link analysis tools, use social tools to determine the best content for your audience.
Plan and Brainstorm – lots of ideas.
- Bring people in from other teams. Get niche
Ubersuggest - semantics
Marketing plan – key dates, seasons, launches – link to PR.
Use your unique expertise – white papers, inforgraphics
Learn from your mistakes - continual refinement is key

References: Econsultancy content marketing survey American Express Open Forum Pepsi Max #LiveForNow KISSmetrics ASOS Best Night Ever Hubspot Huggies: Dad's pregnant too Around the World in 80 Jobs

A sneak peek into the future of the music industry

Kristina Grineva — Wed, 03 Jul 2013 11:44:35 +0000

It is always fun to get out of the office and meet with one of our clients. This time the opportunity was even more enticing. We were connected with a man who has a bold but clear intention: to fix the current state of the music industry.

A trip inside Speakers Corner

Philip and I were invited by Speakers Corner to hear from Alex Hunter, CEO of Rushmore.fm, a new start-up venture being described as a revolutionary new “music ecosystem.” Alex is also the former Head of Online for Virgin Group Global, so when he speaks music it's definitely worth putting that phone on silent and listening up!

Connecting artists and fans

Rushmore.fm is a London-based website that intends to connect fans with their favourite artists. Alex spoke about the site’s broader aim, which is to make it easier for emerging artists to make a living from their music. It’s comparable to Wikipedia, in the sense that members are encouraged to contribute and follow content. Launched in May of this year, membership is currently by invitation only.

The current state of the music industry

With the advent of new platforms over the last decade, many artists are seeing even less money for their 'popular' hits than in years past. Companies like Rushmore.fm are hoping to reverse that trend. On their purpose section, Rushmore.fm writes, "In many cases, they [artists] simply aren’t making good money and this means there’s a risk they’ll stop making music. Not good.” According to thecynicalmusician.com, “It takes at least 4,000,000 Spotify plays per month just to provide a band with a minimum wage.” That makes for pretty dire reading. With so few rewards for emerging artists, the depth and breadth of new music talent may well find themselves crunching numbers at the local bank, rather than getting out on stage where they belong. In response, Rushmore.fm are championing us to get behind their long term goal where “it’s possible to make a good living as an artist.”

What does the future hold?

As Alex put it, “We don’t think the music industry is dying, it’s just getting started! We think the answer to these problems will come if we can connect music fans directly and effortlessly with the artists and labels they love.” Rushmore has already had 200,000 contributions from music fans around the world. So, they seem to be more than up for taking on the challenge. Of course, Alex readily acknowledged on hypebot.com that the music industry is one "tough nut to crack." That won’t stop them getting out 'Thor's Hammer’, if you like!

Alex Hunter

Building a brand

Alex then went on to tell inside stories from his time at Virgin and gave further insights into what he believes are the key things in building a successful brand. ‘Who do you love?’ he asked, as he prompted us to think of our favourite brands. Apple and Diet Coke seemed a popular choice from the audience. Alex believes the emotional connection we have with these brands comes down to them utilising ‘relationship marketing’ well. He presented some interesting thoughts on what it means as a brand to create an "enduring loyalty in a connected world." If you want to find out more on this topic, you can check his slideshare:

Final thoughts

I also admit to reaching for my pen and pad, and making a note on Alex's laid back presentation style. He made us think and he made us laugh. His passion and energy was infectious - exactly what you would want when hiring a speaker.

Speakers Corner is a tight knit group of people who are passionate about what they do and the speakers they represent. For them it’s important to not just hear a new speaker talk, but get to know them as well. This complements their goal of matching speakers with their individual clients' needs. Alex’s talk is a good indicator that their dedication ensures their speakers are not just experts in their field, but can entertain an audience too. Plus, from what we heard and saw, why can't the music industry be set for an oncoming mini-revolution? If Alex Hunters' new project gets the traction it deserves, Philip and I might have witnessed the start of it. This is one web start-up that is worth keeping an eye out for, especially for a self-confessed muso like me. I recommend checking it out.

Can you handle our Performance Search Boot Camp?

Emily White — Fri, 05 Jul 2013 13:49:12 +0000

The boot camp

Early this week two Founders headed to Amsterdam to give the attendees of the a4uexpo Europe a work out – a Performance Search Boot Camp to be exact. Dressed in the latest army fatigue, Sergeant Major (Pete) Newman and Tank Commander (Jamie) Brady presented the rules of an engagement to an international crowd of industry experts. A4uexpo described our conference perfectly, “This session isn't for the faint hearted. It's Performance Search shock treatment; a jam-packed session that will exhilarate and ensure your notebook feels the burn.” Even with such an intense description, the room filled up. Some brave souls were even standing at the back of the room. The main goal of the Boot Camp was to highlight areas where advertisers needed to do better and to draw people’s attention to the fact that Performance PPC is reliant upon absolutely nailing the essentials first and foremost.

The Found Performance Search Boot Camp from Found.

To be effective, Performance Search needs to be done well. As a company that started life as Paid Search Performance Specialists, no one understands that better than us. Pete and Jamie gave multiple examples of brands who fail to tailor ads to search queries and others who have poor ad text. There are also the companies who don’t target keywords correctly, and perhaps the worst offense of all, the brands who don’t appear for their own brand terms.

Are you appearing on your brand terms?

Did you know that 75% of merchants have PPC brand competitors? Getting your brand coverage in shape can:

Give you greater dominance of inventory space
Help to facilitate quality score across your account
Enable (instant) controlled messaging & offers
Help to push the competition out of easy-win territory

Don't forget to ask...

Are you negative matching effectively? Are you appearing on Bing? Are you using Sitelinks? Is your site optimised for Mobile? It is easy to assume that at an industry conference the majority of merchants would be able to compete with Usain Bolt. Pulling from a cross-section of 25 merchants from the attendee list, Pete and Jamie discovered that the level of fitness was permissible, but not worthy of any Olympic medals.

So how can you improve your fitness?

High impact training will give you the strength and stamina needed. One of the most effective ways of getting in shape is having the right coach. That is because 95% of Performance Marketing is in nailing the essentials. It was important to convey that taking risks and trying new things is great, even encouraged. However, you must do this correctly and not to the detriment of your core activity. You also need to stay on top of new developments like Paid Product Listing Ads and Enhanced Campaigns. Due to the nature of the industry, building up a brand’s Search strength and stamina, requires experience and expertise. View the slides to find out more or get in touch at bootcamp@found.co.uk.

Daily Mail joins the Affiliate Marketing game

Jamie Brady — Fri, 05 Jul 2013 16:42:27 +0000

The Mail Online has decided to get into the affiliate marketing game, linking editorial content to online vendors. Those reading celebrity articles will be able to click through to vendors selling the fashion items appearing on the site.

What this might mean for consumers and the industry as a whole?

The whole concept of shopping for associated celebrity products isn’t new at all of course. Magazines, TV shows and radio programmes have been doing it for years, advising consumers on how to ‘get the look.’ Traditional affiliate publishers also target these products in similar ways. However, the latest move by the Mail is fairly significant in that they have a huge audience of nearly 6 million daily average browsers. I’m sure merchants will be looking at this with very keen eyes, hoping to catch a percentage of this traffic and direct them through to their site to shift huge amounts of stock. With such a big audience share comes the power and influence to demand higher commission rates from these merchants, so it’s not surprising to see the Mail demanding rates of between 10-14%. Ultimately merchants will need to decide if this rate works with their business model, whilst the Mail themselves will need to question how they can maintain journalistic integrity and not alienate their readership whilst pushing out products. If more merchants find that this affiliate marketing model works for them, and we see it build out successfully, then it could have several knock-on effects to the industry as a whole.

Potential knock-on effects

Pure speculation of course, but if advertising budgets are being placed into these kind of channels, then will this take budget away from other traditional channels? What if newspapers like the Mail decide to strike up deals whereby they offer discounts or offers for their readership? Would traditional voucher code affiliates see any impact on the back of this? Let’s say we do see an increase in this type of shopping behaviour online, how can traditional affiliates capitalise on this? Well, as industry technology, tracking and user behaviour becomes more and more sophisticated, I think we could see some interesting developments specifically around real-time bidding and responsive video ads, but also with the growing popularity of second screen advertising.

Is there money to be made?

At the end of the day we need to work everything back to a positive ROI in performance marketing, so this kind of advertising (while very interesting) might not make us any money right now. But in the next six months, year, two years and beyond..? This associated products advertising could come to the fore across all types of verticals. So, savvy advertisers will be there ready to pounce when the gross margin opportunities start to arise. You can bet that we’ll be there right with them.

Search Engine Marketing Terms, Part 1: PPC

Lauren Dodds — Thu, 18 Jul 2013 15:44:00 +0000

Working in the world of Pay per Click (PPC) it can be easy to forget that some of the PPC terms we use every day may not be clear to everyone around us. For starters, PPC is a form of search engine marketing where advertisers pay a publisher for each click on their ads. These ads can appear both on websites or on search engine results pages. Whether you are just starting out in paid search yourself, working alongside PPC experts or just interested in what it’s all about, here is a list of paid search terms in the first part of our terminology guide:

The top need-to-know PPC terms:

Search term / Search Query

The word or phrase searched for in a search engine.

Keyword

The word or phrase chosen by an advertiser that is used to determine whether an ad will show for a particular search term.

Match Type

A property of the keyword that determines which search terms a keyword is eligible to show for. There are several match types:

Exact - search term must match the keyword exactly
Phrase - search term contains keyword in that precise order
Broad - search terms contains keyword, misspells, similar terms and synonyms in any order
Modified broad - search terms contains keyword, misspells, similar terms but not synonyms in any order

You can also specify negative keywords which prevent an ad from showing if the search term contains that word or phrase.

Impressions

The number of times an ad is shown.

Click Through Rate (CTR)

The number of clicks your ad receives divided by the number of impressions. A high CTR is a good sign that your ad is relevant and stands out from competitors and it can lead to increases in quality score, lower CPCs and higher average positions. However, a lower CTR is not always necessarily a bad thing, for example, including a price in your ad might reduce the number of people clicking on it but those that do might be more likely to convert. Additionally, ads in higher positions often see the highest CTR and search partners and the display network usually see lower CTRs than search.

Cost-per-click (CPC)

Actual CPC is the amount you pay for each click on your ad. Your actual CPC will not be higher than the Max CPC you assign a particular keyword but it is often lower depending on your quality score and the ad rank of competitors.

Quality Score

Google assigns keywords a Quality Score which is represented through the interface by a number from 1 to 10 (10 being highest) based on their relevance. This takes into account factors such as CTR, landing page quality and relevance, and relevance of the keyword to the search term and ad. A high quality score can lead to higher positions and lower CPCs.

Ad Rank

A measure that takes into account your Quality Score and bid to determine the position on the page your ad will show.

Conversion Rate (CR)

The number of conversions (sales, leads etc) divided by number of clicks.

Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) / Cost Per Lead (CPL) / Cost Per Sale (CPS)

The amount spent for each conversion.

Return on Investment (ROI)

A measure of how much money is made compared to how much is spent. One of the benefits of paid search is that you can track each sale or lead right down to individual keyword level so you can measure ROI at a very granular level and optimise accordingly to improve ROI.

Impression Share

The number of times your ad is actually shown divided by the number of times it entered the auction to be shown. If this is less than 100% your ads will be missing out on potential traffic. An ad might lose out on impression share because there is not enough budget or because ad rank is too low.

Ad Extensions

Additional information you can add to you ad. The most popular type of ad extension is sitelinks which allow you to add links to additional pages on your site underneath your main ad. There are many other ad extensions though such as call extensions, location extensions and social extensions.

Product Listing Ads (PLAs)

Ads that show on Google Search and Google Shopping that contain an image of a product, its price and the store name. These are set up within AdWords using a product feed in the Google Merchant Centre.

Remarketing

Remarketing lets you display ads to users who you know have previously visited your site.

Ad Scheduling / Day Parting

Allows you to adjust bids by a percentage at campaign level depending on time of day or day of week.

Search Engine Marketing Terms, Part 2: SEO

Elle Stewart — Thu, 25 Jul 2013 15:02:27 +0000

The land of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) can look and sound like a scary place from the outside. In the second part of our series, we explore SEO terms. SEO is defined as the strategies and actions used to influence the rankings and visibility of a website within search engines resulting in increased traffic to the site. Here is a list of terms to help you navigate backlinks, Panda and Penguins and canonical tags.

The SEO pocket directory

Alt Attributes

Search engines can't read images because they are not text based. As a result, Alt Attributes /Alt Tags have been created to describe images within HTML or XHTML documents allowing search engines to add relevance to an image.

Anchor text

Anchor text describes the clickable characters of a hyperlink. They often look like this and when clicked, take you through to the linked webpage. The benefit of hyperlinking words is that it helps search engines to pass relevance to the site linked, helping to improve the ranking of the linked webpage.

Backlinks

A link from one website to another. Each backlink is seen by search engines as a vote of confidence and legitimacy for the linked site but each link can transfer a different amount of value. As well as authority, backlinks can also pass information about the theme or relevance of a webpage.

Canonical Tags

A canonical tag tells search engines which URL is the ‘original page' or preferred page when there are multiple pages with similar content. Canonical tags allow the SEO value to be passed on to the original or preferred page, helping it to rank. An example of this would be when a store website has identical content accessible on multiple pages so that users can search by price or alphabetically.

Page and Domain Authority

Each page that is indexed by search engines retains a page value and authority ranking.

Page Authority is influenced by the number and quality of links back to the individual page.
Domain Authority is the overall strength of a domain.

HTTP Response Status Code

You probably already know what a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) responsive status code is. Remember the last time you clicked on a link and suddenly your online world temporarily crashed with an ‘ERROR 404’ message? This my friend, is what we are talking about. So what do these status codes actually mean?

404 – page does not exist.
200 - page is functioning as it should.
301 redirects – the page has been permanently moved. Users will be redirected to the current location of this original page, the advantage in that 301s pass on majority of the SEO value from the old location to the landing page of the redirect.
302 redirects – a temporary redirect that works similarly to the 301 redirect. However, SEO value is not passed on via the redirect (or is it?).

Keyword Cannibalisation

Keyword Cannibalisation is when certain keywords and phrases are optimised on multiple pages across a website. This can create confusion within the search engine as to which page to distribute value to. As a result, the pages end up competing against each and the search engine will be unaware which one is most appropriate to rank.

Do Follow / No Follow

Links are extremely valuable within the world of SEO. However, not all links pass value for search engines. Normal links are do follow and can pass SEO value. Whereas if the no follow attribute is implemented, authority does not flow. No follow links are usually used on sites that allow user generated content such as blogs or Wikipedia to avoid people leaving spammy SEO links.

PageRank

An indicator from Google of the authority of a webpage. A scale of 1-10 is used to assign value.

Panda & Penguin

Two of the least favourite animals in the (SEO) world. Panda was launched with the aim to penalise poor or duplicated content. If enough pages are flagged, a site-wide penalty can be issued for having ‘thin content.’ Penguin was designed to target spam SEO or Black hat’ SEO methods (techniques used to increase rankings or traffic in a way Google dislikes.) E.g. over-optimised link building in relation to keywords and links from non-relevant sites. The update was designed to rate the quality of article marketing and blog spam. Then there was Penguin 2.0...

Referring Domains

The domain from which a backlink is pointing to a specific page or link.

Robots.txt

Robots.txt or the robots exclusion standard is a small text file that is uploaded into a website's root directory and linked into the sites HTML code. The robots.txt file is there to provide instructions about the site to search engine crawlers about which parts can be indexed for the public.

Root Domain / Sub Domain / Sub folder

Root Domain is the origin and top level of domain hierarchy on the internet. It is the entry point / root to example.com, example.co.uk, example.ac.uk, example.org domains. The Sub Domain or third-level domain is a second website that can be used to organise website content and has a special URL to gain access to it. For example if job listings on www.example.com were to be accessed via a separate website at jobs.example.com, this would be a subdomain. A Sub Folder describes the separate folders that are used to organise a website. They can be easily spotted as they’re displayed within a URL after the root domain and between slashes “/”. Let me illustrate – example.com/contact-us/address. The sub folder is /contact-us/.

Search Engine Results Page (SERP)

The Search Engine Results Page is a page that is returned when a search query is performed. SERP will display a list of web pages, including the page title of each result and a brief summary of its contents. Video, images, news and shopping results may also be featured.

SEO spam

Spam is the use of optimisation methods which search engines consider to be low quality or against their guidelines. Examples of such techniques include keyword stuffing, low quality link buying and hacking websites for example. The Google web spam team led by Matt Cutts deploy algorithm updates such as Penguin and sometimes apply manual penalties to lessen the effect of what they deem to be excessive manipulative activity.

Search Engine Marketing Terms, Part 3: Website Design and Build

Dean McDonagh — Thu, 01 Aug 2013 15:59:43 +0000

Years ago, the epically progressive world of design began taking steps in a new direction and began gracing the World Wide Web with its talents. Gradually it brought us visually styled webpages far superior to the default Times New Roman black on white look, leaving the feeling of oil on canvas a distant memory. Even though that was years ago, some avid surfers still struggle with web standard acronyms and need help understanding of the mechanics beyond the pixels. So in the third part of our series, we explore and define the terminology surrounding website design and build:

Website Terms:

Landing page

A landing page is, yes you got it, a page designed to land traffic on. Usually crafted for a specific channel like PPC or email, they are often created to encourage a specific reaction from the user after they have landed on the page, like calling a number or filling out a form.

CTA

Call to action. This is commonly a button i.e 'Click Here'. Generally, it is the first action you want a user to make when viewing your website. Often, the design will be orientated around this main focus point in order to funnel the users focus, thus bringing about an action - the much wanted click.

A/B Testing

Comparing two or more versions of the same webpage (with slight differences). It is done in a competitive manner in order to see which design converts the most traffic. E.g. Changing the headline of the page, altering the colour of a CTA from red to green, or even changing the CTA copy from 'Buy Now' to 'Add to Basket'.

Colour types:

These colour models can be used on your computer screen and for print work.

RGB

Red Green Blue is for colours displayed on a computer device using an additive colour model.

CMYK

Cyan Magenta Yellow Black are the four colour inks that make up the printing process for common and industrial printers. When producing a design for print, you would set up your document for CMYK. Print can't always reproduce colours in the RGB spectrum.

HEX

Hexadecimal colour codes are basically HTML colours. They are the notations for the combination of Red, Green and Blue (RGB) values.

Image file types:

Find out the difference between a JPG, PNG, GIF and SVG image format and when to use them.

JPEG/JPG

Joint Photographic Experts Group image format is the most commonly used method of lossy compression. Often used for photographs, made up of hundreds of colours.

PNG

Portable Network Graphics is a raster graphics file format that supports lossless data compression. This is a great file type for graphics that need transparent backgrounds. Helpful Tip: When posting graphic images to Facebook use PNG as it appears much clearer than JPG.

GIF

Graphics Interchange Format is a bitmap image format that uses a lossless data compression technique. If you want a small image for your website with only a few colours in it, then the GIF format is perfect.

SVG

Scalable Vector Graphics are a vector image format best for images that you want to make scalable on your website. This is great for responsive websites, so you can scale an image to the size of the browser, on your mobile, tablet or desktop computer.

Coding:

Building a website? Here is some need-to-know coding languages and techniques to do just that:

CSS

Cascading Style Sheets are used to style HTML elements. Font-size, width, height, background-colour are just some of the fabulous attributes you can assign. CSS can lay in the HTML or be called from an ‘External Style Sheet’.

HTML

Hypertext Markup Language is not a coding language, it is purely mark-up for your webpage.

JS

Javascript is a coding language born sometime in the 90's. It is used to do a lot of cool stuff on the web and is still sometimes preferred for animating HTML rather than CSS3 because it has a larger browser support. JavaScript can be is used to read user input i.e mouse clicks or a finger swipe on a tablet.

JQuery

This is a JavaScript library where all the cool stuff you have ever wanted to easily do with JavaScript has become available in just a few lines. Some popular functions we enjoy using here at Found are: .fadeIn, .fadeOut, .toggle, .show, .hide.

CMS

A Content Management System allows you to publish, edit and modify content on your website. Examples of content management systems used Found are Wordpress and Modx.

Browser Testing

A website renders differently in every browser and operating systems. It is good to test your website in different browsers and OS to check all HTML, CSS and Javascript renders as intended.

Responsive Design

The ability of a website to respond to the resolution of the device it is displayed on, most commonly desktop, tablet or mobile.

Web Safe Fonts

Fonts that are already installed on most computers i.e Arial, Times New Roman, Georgia. These are web safe in the sense that they are very likely to be displayed by the target user rather than defaulting to another font. New options to embed fonts have become popular but are not always supported in all browsers.

Search Engine Marketing Terms, Part 4: Web Development

David Arenas — Thu, 15 Aug 2013 15:43:25 +0000

In the final instalment of our terminology guide, we delve into the world of web development. With many of us used to being on the end-user side of web development, some of these words can seem like they are a different language all together. To prevent information overload, we compiled a list that just scratches the surface of what is involved in developing a website.

The web development dictionary:

Programming Language

As with spoken languages, a programming language is designed to help humans and machines communicate. Each language has its strengths and is used for a particular type of software development – some are better for desktop applications while others are more suitable for web sites.

API

The acronym of Application Programming Interface. APIs allow programs to talk to each other, regardless of the programming language they were created in. For example, a mobile's camera application might use the phone’s hardware API to request the current location and then use Facebook’s API to upload the photo and tag it with the location.

AJAX

Asynchronous JavaScript and XML is a technique that allows browsers to communicate with web servers in the background, without the need to reload the web page. It has led to the development of more sophisticated websites and web applications. For example Google’s suggestions feature auto-completes your search as you type.

Application Architecture

This describes the structure of the code within an application. Good applications have a well-defined structure divided into different layers. For example, web applications typically have presentation, logic and data storage layers.

Application Stack

This refers to the combination of operating system, programming language, server software and database used to create a web application. While there are hundreds of possible combinations, there are several common stacks that work well. Examples of web server setup includes a Microsoft stack of Windows, IIS, .Net and MSSQL and an open source stack consisting of Linux, Apache, PHP and MySQL (referred to as LAMP).

Framework

A reusable platform or skeleton used to develop applications. Frameworks provide programmers with tools to accomplish common tasks like accessing databases or displaying graphics, so they don’t have to write everything from scratch.

IDE

The abbreviation of Integrated Development Environment – it’s the software used by programmers to create applications. The right choice can save a lot of time.

Database

A structured collection of data stored on disks. Typically, a database consists of a collection of linked tables, similar to sheets in a spreadsheet. It also includes an interface to query the data, which retrieves a particular set of data from the database.

Web Server

This is where websites live. A web server is simply software that is used to host web applications and deliver content to web browsers. Around two-thirds of all websites run on an open source web server called Apache.

Virtual Server

Way back in the old days (10 years ago), a server would typically be a powerful computer running a server operating system. These days, virtualisation means that the physical hardware is separated from the operating system and many different server instances can run simultaneously on the same hardware. This makes it easier to scale applications by adding more server resources and offers higher-availability by removing a single point of failure.

Cloud Server

This term is used widely in the tech world and can be applied to many different things. Generally though, it refers to a service hosted on the Internet that provides some functionality for applications. This often includes things like file storage, email or data synchronisation. An example of a popular cloud service is Dropbox.

Testing

In order to detect and fix software faults and bugs, we need to invest time in writing and testing our code and applications. Tests not only assess whether an application behaves as expected in various situations, but they also analyse the performance when hundreds of concurrent users access it.

Agile Software Development

Rather than spend months or years developing a system, the agile method breaks the development process down into a series of what are commonly referred to as short sprints. This approach lets developers continuously deliver updates or new functions to end users, enabling them to receive feedback throughout the process and helps prevent large-scale failures in systems development programs that span a long time.

Continuous Integration

When a team of developers work on the same project, continuous integration refers to the practice of frequently combining the changes they make in order to prevent conflicts in the code they are working on. For this purpose, tools like version control are crucial. The aim is to automate the process of testing and committing the code, building the application and if everything passes the tests, deploying the application.

Google wants your feedback

Philip Gamble — Thu, 29 Aug 2013 11:58:44 +0000

Google has launched a suggestion form and is asking for feedback on how the search engine can provide a better experience for users. The form is different from the existing “send feedback” feature found in the footer of results pages and solicits broader suggestions by asking for ideas on how Google can improve “search policies and processes”.

The post on the Inside Search blog by Search Policy Specialist Patrick Thomas states that all submissions will be reviewed and that Google will contact some of the best contributors to discuss their ideas.

Thoughts on Patrick's suggested feedback areas

Should we alert users if we suspect that there's not much information on the web about their query?

Does this really happen that often in 2013? When you look at the figures for the amount of content added to the Internet it is hard to believe that there are many queries which don’t return valid information to match the user request, even if Google doesn't manage to surface the best bits to the top. Besides, surely it is up for the user to judge the sufficiency of the results returned and not Google.

Currently if nothing can be found that matches your query exactly, Google may slightly adjust or expand the search in order to pull in results and informs the searcher that this has been done.

Perhaps by doing so Google are attempting to reduce the spread of misinformation or encourage content creation in under-represented areas, but this seems outside the remit of a search provider.

How should Google surface information that might affect a website's ranking?

I am sure Google’s Webspam team would argue that any additional transparency in this area would aide spammers by providing them with additional data on the spam detection capabilities they are up against when trying to rank their sites.

Google have only recently added a feature in Webmaster Tools which informs site owners if their sites are subject to manual action, such as a penalty for low quality content or link building. Given this, I don’t think we will be seeing much more from Google in the future. Especially since in many cases the current information given by Google doesn't exactly provide any insights.

[caption id="attachment_9982" align="aligncenter" width="626"] Thanks for that Google, very useful![/caption]

Realistically I don’t know how much more information webmasters should reasonably expect but if manual action is taken the site should be made aware - preferably by email!

How should we deal with businesses that we believe may be hacked?

Rather apt given that Google recently decided that one of my websites “may” have been infected with Malware and decided to inform searchers of this and prevent click-throughs with a scary looking warning page.

The effect on organic search traffic traffic was, as you would expect, dramatic. But Google didn’t think to send me an email to inform me of this instead a vague malware warning appeared in Webmaster Tools with no details as to what was found or on which page.

If Google has enough information to reasonably believe a site has been hacked, they should take action to demote the site from search results - but only if they have made a proper attempt to inform the site owner.

Should we do something completely different to support our users? Anything related to how we serve content in search results or interact with users is fair game.

Google has come a long way since results pages were just 10 blue links.

The slides below by Pete Meyers show 85 features now appearing on selected search results pages including answers boxes.

Beyond 10 Blue Links: The Future of Ranking from Peter Meyers

Google are clearly moving to provide a greater variety of information directly on search results pages. Good for the user yes - but the ability to answer user queries directly can also take away search traffic from websites overnight.

Whilst undoubtedly many of these additions are enhancing user experience, there comes a limit if this capability is to be used to enter new industries overnight.

Take for example [car insurance] where Google has positioned its comparison service in front of searchers in premium space not available to other advertisers.

Given the number of Google changes both casual searchers and SEOs have experienced in the last couple of years, it will be interesting to see what the coming years hold for Google.

The Google search policies feedback form can be completed here.

Found Lures Industry Heavy-Hitters to Join Senior Management Team

Emily White — Fri, 16 Aug 2013 10:25:44 +0000

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - Performance Marketing pioneer Found (www.found.co.uk) has lured two of the industry’s veteran digital marketers to join its senior management team as it positions the eight year old Search, Social and Mobile business for its next stage of strategic growth. Read the full article here. If you are interested in working at Found, check out our careers page for current vacancies or visit us on LinkedIn.

Found partners with parental schooling resource EdPlace to drive greater parental sign-up

Emily White — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 10:32:36 +0000

Found is working closely with EdPlace, a parent-focused education platform (www.edplace.com), as it cements its role as the most useful resource for parents wishing to support their children’s’ education at home. The highly interactive site provides all families with access to innovative, educational resources, developed by teachers, currently covering English, Maths and Science across the National Curriculum in Key Stages 1 to 4. Since launch, it has seen consistent growth in users as more families choose to supplement their children’s learning at home, and the EdPlace team is keen to ensure the site continues to develop both in subject content as well as delivery Patrick Cooke, one of EdPlace’s Partners, says: “Our research has shown that 28% of parents currently use private tuition to supplement their children’s schooling. Those that don’t use tuition, but want to help their child’s learning, reference cost as the primary reason. Our focus is to support those parents who want easy and affordable support in the core subjects, but see private tuition as their only option. Working with Found we are able to broaden awareness of the EdPlace offering and provide educational help, whether that be in place of, or in addition to, traditional schooling.” Found was specifically tasked with making significant cuts to the CPA and immediately switched the current Adwords legacy campaigns to the latest enhanced campaigns to enable the team to harness the benefits offered. Using advanced day-parting, multi-device bid adjustments and proximity bidding it was able to better optimise the campaigns and ultimately drive down the CPA, whilst also working towards the client’s awareness goal. Tina Judic, Managing Director of Found says: “Whilst obtaining the best education for children continues to be a key issue for most parents, the spotlight on schooling in general has created a much greater need for innovative, trackable and current learning resources for parents. We’re delighted to be helping EdPlace reach more families.”

-ENDS-

About EdPlace EdPlace is an educational start-up company dedicated to empowering parents in their child's education; Covering English, Maths and Science across the National Curriculum in Key Stages 1 to 4. EdPlace was founded in 2005. The company changed hands in 2011 and is now being run by a team of education and online professionals, who see big opportunities to help parents by blending the best online tools with leading resources created by qualified teachers. At the heart of EdPlace is great customer care and brilliant educational content, coupled with constant innovation and improvement About Found Found has led a new chapter for the Digital Marketing industry, championing the innovative integration of Performance Marketing to drive significant results across all growing channels. Focused on masterminding highly effective performance-based marketing campaigns which push the boundaries across Search, Social, Mobile and Affiliate, Found’s multi award-winning, results-obsessed team are experts in driving quality online traffic for such brands as Wilkinson, RAC, Premier Inn, Jane Shilton and the Post Office. The digital marketing agency has fast gained a reputation for finding new ways to build its clients’ businesses online, and its often ground-breaking campaigns are testament to Found's belief that great performance comes from great people.

What's all the buzz? - BuzzFeed

Charlotte Bella — Fri, 20 Sep 2013 14:24:38 +0000

The article usually starts with a number, then some pop culture reference you thought was long forgotten and inevitably makes you feel old but at the same time nostalgic. It is seemingly a simple formula, but what is it about BuzzFeed that has catapulted it beyond cat memes? Earlier this month, CEO and Founder Jonah Peretti published an internal memo he sent out to his employees. He spoke about how BuzzFeed has reached new milestones, a major one was reaching record traffic of 85 million unique visitors in August. Peretti also mentioned a record profit for August, explaining that the site has "gone from zero revenue four years ago to a profitable company with over 300 employees." In the memo, Peretti attributes their major success to nine key points: news, formats, video, mobile, international, business, advertising, team and focus. Below I have made my own listicle of things you may not know about BuzzFeed and the factors I think are behind their major success.

Why BuzzFeed rocks

1. They break news...before CNN

BuzzFeed exclusive: McCain to endorse Romney tomorrow http://t.co/kGR369qy — Ben Smith (@BuzzFeedBen) January 4, 2012

In 2012, BuzzFeed delved in to the realms of business and politics. BuzzFeed's editor-in-chief; political reporter Ben Smith – previously of Politico – helped put them on the map. More famously he tweeted that 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain had endorsed Mitt Romney in the recent elections. Smith's tweet was shared over 200 times. Originally CNN reported it as an original story. However, the news outlet eventually properly attributed BuzzFeed in the closing line of the article: "News of the endorsement was first reported by BuzzFeed Politics." Perhaps this scoop is what led the way for the two to team up, because in May this year, BuzzFeed joined with CNN and now produce CNNBuzzFeed, a news channel on YouTube aimed at bringing breaking news to younger viewers in bite-sized chunks.

2. They don’t constrain themselves to the rules of digital advertising

They’re bringing advertorial content to the web and are doing it in a way that engages people. Not wanting to bombard their readers with banners and pop-ups, BuzzFeed engages readers with unique content promoting the likes of Coca-Cola, MTV and Nike. Their post for the Toyota Prius The 20 Coolest Hybrid Animals was shared much in the same way as their non-sponsored lists but it was promoting a car – who else does that?! According to Digiday, advertising on BuzzFeed costs brands some $100,000. This gets them four to five posts and that’s not including any potential earnings they may pull from the sales attributed to these clicks.

3. They can read my thoughts

Recently I discussed with a colleague what happened to Jonathan Taylor Thomas (JTT)? If you’re not a woman aged between 22-32 you may not realise who this is. He was the teenage heartthrob in Home Improvements, a TV sitcom aired in the 90’s. The day after BuzzFeed posted this exact article, answering all my questions. Thanks BuzzFeed. No really, thanks.

4. They are sharing their innovation

As if that isn't enough innovation, BuzzFeed are starting an effort to train agencies in their storytelling style. In their words: “building the agency of the future for a social world.” The Social Storytelling Creator Program will "teach the best practices in social storytelling for both editorial and branded content."

5. They want to take on the mighty Mail Online

BuzzFeed want to compete with the likes of the Mail Online but they're still a long way off. On 19 September 2013 at 1pm BST (British Summer Time) Mail Online's live stats page reported over 33 million visits globally, and that's even before our American neighbours had their morning pancakes and coffee. BuzzFeed have a similar stats feature which is currently reporting around the same amount of visits over a 48 hour period. With that said, I think competing with the Mail Online is achievable. I put them in the same league as the likes of Huffington Post owned by Ariana Huffington – who coincidentally BuzzFeed founder, Jonah Peretti helped set up the site in 2005 – and other social news sites such as Gawker and Mashable, the latter seeming to take note of BuzzFeed’s listicle style recently and posting similar articles such as “13 Questions You'll Have After Watching Avril Lavigne's 'Rock N Roll.'”

6. They encourage users to contribute

[caption id="attachment_10329" align="aligncenter" width="615"] Eli500 - glee.wikia.com[/caption] You too can post your own “17 things you never knew you could do with a nail file” style story in the BuzzFeed Community simply by signing up for an account and creating a post. The post does have to pass through the Community Editors but who wouldn't want to know about the multiple nail file uses?

7. They have their own lab

OK, so it’s not a real lab but they have a content ideas ‘meet-up’ called BuzzFeed Labs. Everything they write has to be shareable, it’s the ethos of their entire brand. They appeal to the memes and social web culture generation and if a story isn't getting shared it fades from the promotional spots on the site.

8. Cats

Readers really, really like cats. I know this because of their own onsite dashboard platform built in to each story.

9. They know what it is to be human

I’ll leave you with this quote straight from the horse's mouth, that horse being the founder himself Jonah in an interview with Fast Company:

“Have you heard me talk about the Paris café? You go to a café and you bring a copy of Sartre and Le Monde. There's a cute dog under the table next to you. So after you read the news and the philosophy, you may pet the dog, flirt with someone at another table, and talk about some trivial gossip.All these things are part of being human. You don't become stupid when you turn away from the philosophy and pet the dog. People are complex and multifaceted. When you talk to people who say it dumbs down the audience to have cute animals, the truth is nobody has a choice: because Facebook and Twitter are perfect Paris cafés.”

Found's round-up of BrightonSEO Sept 2013

Emily White — Tue, 17 Sep 2013 16:14:16 +0000

Despite the fog and rain, members from the Found team headed to BrightonSEO last week for the September 2013 conference. With three different rooms and dozens of speakers, we were able to learn quite a bit from those who went on stage to share their knowledge. Of course, not every speaker was as well received, but it wouldn't be a real SEO conference without a few critiques.

Here are our thoughts on #BrightonSEO:

Philip Gamble - SEO Executive

Mobile: It’s important to remember that an increasing proportion of site visitors will be accessing your site from these devices. Last month I reviewed the share of mobile and tablet traffic across our client sites and was surprised just how fast it had grown over the last year. Tony Samios of Caliber recommended a useful tool called Placeit,which enables the easy generation of realistic real-world website or product screenshots. The proportion of mobile visits varies considerably depending on site type and sector. We are starting to see e-commerce sites with desktop visitors accounting for the minority of traffic in some instances - highlighting the importance of responsive design and mobile user experience. In his Lightning Session talk, "How We Plan Editorial at BBC Sport," Paul Blunkett, the assistant editor at BBC Sport interactive, said that the BBC Sport website passed this tipping point too earlier this month - with 52% of traffic in the first week of the month being from a mobile or tablet device. Surprisingly little talk about link building...I didn't attend the Links session in the Corn Exchange, but even so given this was an SEO conference there was very little mention of link-building - far more about so-called “great content” #yawn. Paul Madden described himself as a “carbon neutral link builder,” these days removing as many links as he builds in link-building that seemed like a good idea at the time. Most SEOs are finding themselves spending increasing amounts of time removing lower quality links built pre-2012 which used to pass value but now, instead of being ignored by Google, result in penalties. The key point - don’t be stupid. As Tim Grice said “stop building links you don’t deserve”. Build and promote link-worthy content and stop worrying about anchor text or target pages. [caption id="attachment_10179" align="alignleft" width="518"] SEO for Ecommerce - Selling Doesn't Make You Link Worthy by Tim Grice[/caption] But I absolutely do not agree with Lisa Myers’ sentiment of not asking for links. She said you probably don't deserve a link if you have to ask for it. However, in her slides she said it a bit differently, encouraging us to attract rather than sell. "Create content that deserves links and market that content."

Elle Stewart - Client Services Executive

Overall, Brighton SEO left me with new views to consider, ideas to debate and software to test. The stand out presentation came from Keith White, Head of Marketing – Eventa Group with ‘Make your PR idea a National SEO success’. By utilising the strong foundations of a PR campaign and creating naturally shareable content you are able to draw attention from media channels beyond your industry scope and reap returns in SEO link juice and increased brand awareness. By viewing your campaign as more than ‘link building’ you are able to increase the integration of the message with your brand, work with campaign partners and further engage with your audience through differing communication channels (e.g. onsite, email, social and blogs). You can see his presentation here:

William Nye - SEO Executive

The presentation by Adriano Accardo, "Google+ for Brands," was rather disappointing and seemed like more of a Google+ sales pitch than anything else. It would have been good if he had used smaller companies where ROI is a primary concern in his examples of great content rather than Redbull and Toyota. Phil Nottingham’s presentation on video SEO on the other hand contained a wealth of actionable information that will likely inspire many to branch out into this underutilised entity.

Emily White - Content & Marketing Executive

After attending the Content Marketing Show earlier this year, I wasn’t surprised that many of the SEO talks mentioned it. What was probably most interesting was the reaction around the term. Quite a few attendees took to Twitter to share their opinions on the subject:

'Content Marketing' is an awful term - content production & strategy is part of digital marketing. The term is misleading. #BrightonSEO — Digby (@Dogby52) September 13, 2013

Content marketing isn't a thing anymore. You need to seperate content production and distribution strategies. #BrightonSEO — Mr Bynes (@thelittlemonsta) September 13, 2013

While most of us know that creating great content is key in the SEO game, not all of us have the budget to pull off some of the examples used throughout the day like the Red Bull Stratos jump from space or the MINI backflip. That is why it was so refreshing to hear from both Stacey Cavanagh and Danny Ashton. Stacey's talk was entitled Low Cost Link Building with Data. Her talk focused on other more affordable ways to create strong content: investing time and using data. She listed several really great ways of acquiring interesting data: [caption id="attachment_10264" align="alignleft" width="565"] Low cost link building with data - Brighton SEO 2013 - by @staceycav[/caption] Her own successful content creation was a blog she wrote about a poll she had conducted. She asked 1000 Americans to name a British city other than London. Both Wales and Paris made the list, which probably added to the success of the piece. With mentions on Reddit and BuzzFeed, it only cost Stacey $25 on survey responses and two hours time writing the post and some initial social sharing. Pretty successful in anyone's books. Danny's talk was all about seduction, more specifically how seduction techniques can help in your content outreach. He listed six fundamentals: vulnerability, honest communication, affinity, overcoming fear, rejection and confidence. The way in which it applies to outreach is that vulnerability and honest communication opens you up to having more meaningful connections and relationships. He also spoke about how rejection is part of the process of content outreach but to not let this lower your confidence. For one, there are many variables that could have caused the rejection, some as simple as the receiver having too much emails or their quota has been filled. What this doesn't mean is you should give up, rather he concluded on the importance going outside your comfort zone because when you do there is the chance of great success.

Joel Mellor - SEO Intern

BrightonSEO is a free conference that should be a gold mine for learning new skills and tricks that you've not heard about before. Instead the September session seemed to push products (of its sponsors, which is fair enough I guess) and only reinforce the things we should know about the Google algorithm updates, which is to make “great content” and to stop building rubbish links. As SEOs we know that these are pre-requisites for doing our job. The best talk of the day was Jennifer Sable Lopez the Director of Community at Moz. She gave an insight into social sharing to earn links. Her talk illustrated the importance of SEOs using their own data from their sites and seeing when was the best time to tweet or post it online for maximum effect. [caption id="attachment_10253" align="alignleft" width="510"] The Ins & Outs of Testing Social + Lots of Tools by Jennifer Lopez[/caption] Whilst she did push a couple of Moz tools, Jennifer also shared a list of both free and paid tools from different companies and how well they could be utilised. There was one thing the whole team agreed on: Burgers on The Troll's Pantry grill at Hobgoblin were spot on.

Found featured in Web Designer Magazine

Emily White — Fri, 20 Sep 2013 16:27:38 +0000

This month's Web Designer Magazine (Issue 214) asked the question:

SEO vs content: who is number 1?

Found's Product Director Luke Townsend had this to say:

“Getting your website to rank organically can be difficult, especially if you are in a competitive area or industry. My advice would be to focus on the slightly more niche keywords and provide searchers with useful information around those, rather than targeting the popular and broad search terms where the competition is rife. Once you have identified the search terms you will target, landing pages should be created and tailored specifically towards these keywords. Trying to target lots of different keywords with one page will be much less effective than a page focused around a small group of similar keywords. Ensure that you are including the subject keyword in the title tag, url, image alt text and in the text content of the page and take steps to make sure your page loads quickly. If you create a page with compelling and unique content then people should link to it, but you will need to kick start this by reaching out to your network and asking them for a link from any relevant pages they have."

PPC Advertisers Must Capitalise from the Great Google v Amazon Product Listing Battle

Emily White — Tue, 01 Oct 2013 08:18:31 +0000

Greg Burgess, the Director of Digital Advertising at Found tackled the topic of Product Listing Advertising for Digital Marketing Magazine. He writes: "Pay per click continues to be an advantageous part of any brand’s marketing armoury, but the increasing focus on Product Listing Advertising within the Search space is now creating a further and larger lucrative avenue for savvy advertisers." Click here to read the rest of the article.

Hummingbird - Google announces new algorithm

Philip Gamble — Wed, 02 Oct 2013 12:13:38 +0000

Last week Google announced a major algorithm re-write to coincide with the 15th anniversary of the search engine's inception. The search engine celebrated the milestone in style with a super addictive piñata doodle, an Easter egg sending us back to Google circa 1998 and a birthday party and press conference hosted in the garage of the house where Google got its start - 232 Santa Margarita, Menlo Park. At the well-publicised press conference, Google’s Senior Vice President for Search Amit Singhal announced that there had been a major change and that Google now ran on a new algorithm. The change was called Hummingbird and according to Singhal, it had already been in place for a month!

What is Hummingbird and why didn't anyone notice?

Hummingbird is not an update - it is a complete redo of the algorithm. The intention is to offer searchers quicker and more accurate query results, but it appears to go a fair bit deeper than that. It seems that the Google algorithm is now better tuned to understand the more conversational style queries and the context of these queries. This is surely a significant step in Google's evolution, moving away from results that hinge purely on one or two keywords in the search query, and getting closer to understanding the exact intention of the searcher. [caption id="attachment_10498" align="aligncenter" width="592"] Google - How Search Works[/caption] With this news, search practitioners around the world dived into their analyses trying to understand what had changed but the general consensus was simple: Google’s core natural research-based algorithm had not changed (beyond normal fluctuations) in a way that was visible in the metrics. The overall page layout and design has evolved to incorporate Google’s Knowledge Graph based results, providing more information for the searcher. Google Search is constantly evolving. It has already been quite some time since we began to see smarter results. When you type in London weather, you get the weather in London. A mathematics equation typed into the search bar prompts a calculator with the response. The goal of Hummingbird is to take Search one step further and make it so that Google understands the intent of the queries by identifying relationships between items, people and places. Charlotte Bella, an Account Manager at Found, described Hummingbird well - “It is a more intelligent search algorithm that is trying to be more human and efficient in the way it interprets queries.”

How are the answers smarter?

If you are curious about the nutrient difference between chocolate cake and brownies, Google can help with that:

Hummingbird is also set to be a positive step for anyone using Voice Search as verbalised queries tend to be different than typed searches. As Denis Pinsky wrote in an article on Forbes “Many people learned that the best way to formulate search phrases to get what we want involves finding the minimum number of words in the search query.” Where users would have once would search "David Beckham age" to find out how old the footballer is, now you can simply ask "How old is David Beckham" and Google understands.

Another update to the algorithm (though I can’t seem to get this to work myself) allows for Google to understand the word “it” on a second reference of a name or an object – “using previous search. So you can ask “How old is the Queen” and then ask “Is she married” and Google should pull up results about Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. By moving past queries relying on simple use of keywords, Hummingbird sets out to be able to answer queries that are more complex, a goal very similar to that of Google’s Knowledge Graph. Which Google describes as such: “When you search, you’re not just looking for a webpage. You’re looking to get answers, understand or explore. So we’re building a massive graph of real-world things and their connections, to bring you more meaningful results.” Back before Google was where it is today, when a user's query was along the lines of "Tips on replacing a bike tyre," it was likely that the key words picked up would be "bike" and "tyre" and the search results would display bike tyre ads and merchants. Now, Google better understands the context of the query - the results are videos and guides which more accurately answer the question being asked.

In Beyond 10 Blue Links: The Future of Ranking, Peter Meyers shows some examples of the wide range of knowledge graph displays on SERPs

What does this mean for SEO?

There is no need to panic because as Danny Sullivan’s Hummingbird FAQ at Search Engine Land writes “Google’s saying there’s nothing new or different SEOs or publishers need to worry about. Guidance remains the same, it says: have original, high-quality content. Signals that have been important in the past remain important; Hummingbird just allows Google to process them in new and hopefully better ways.” Basically the focus on content remains as important as ever. Strong reader-oriented content is going to be able to provide those smart answers Google is working on giving its users.

Found recognised in The Drum Digital Census 2013

Tina Judic — Thu, 03 Oct 2013 10:05:00 +0000

Our team here at Found is driven by performance and so to be recognised for our performance by both The Drum and our peers is very exciting. In this year’s The Drum Digital Census 2013, Found was awarded one of the top 20 agencies positions with less than 50 staff. We also scored a very prestigious top 10 position in the peer poll which highlights the most respected businesses of this size within the industry. The best part of this top 10 placement was that we were ranked in joint seventh, making us the most respected London-based and UK-focused digital performance agency. To have our fellow digital experts recognise our innovation and delivery is certainly very cool and spurs us on to continue to deliver work that stands out from the crowd. We do this by working closely with our clients to achieve ultimate stand-out across the digital spectrum, and we've delivered some pretty clever and effective campaigns over the past year. Found is also constantly developing tools in house that allow us to stand out in the digital market. The latest version of our SEO-Tool is soon being released as is the brand new FeedLab, a tool that helps enhance and optimise your product listing ads.

Found is 3!

Emily White — Fri, 04 Oct 2013 17:24:24 +0000

Today is a very special day, it's our 3rd birthday!

It has been three whole years since we said goodbye to Artemis8 and hello to Found, positioning ourselves as a performance-based Search, Social and Mobile agency. To celebrate we put together the fun and challenging Facebook game Now & Then! How many Founders you can identify at the tender age of 3?

We also indulged in some lovely and delicious cupcakes from Primrose Bakery.

It was a great day in the office and we were lucky enough to end the day with a final word from Tina:

“Happy birthday to us! Boy, have we had some fun along the way since becoming Found. We've learned, we've delivered, we've expanded, we've grown, we've said goodbye and we've said hello. And through it all there has been some immense contributions from each of the team. From amazing ROI delivery, inspirational strategic planning and delivery, being the inspiration behind many of our tools and ideas born out of FoundLabs to multiple award wins and happy clients, we have a fantastically inspired, motived, committed and innovative team at Found. Not to mention some of our other skills: baking, singing, roller-skating, hula-hooping and more. Transforming into an agency and expanding our services is no mean feat however with hard work, inspiration and dedication we’ve made it to our 3rd birthday and can proudly celebrate in style. At 3 years’ old our health check-up will say that we’re in the top quartile of infant development: are a great place to work (Top 50 Sunday Times), respected by our peers (7th in the Drum of most respected businesses, as voted for in a peer poll) and loved by many a client! You can’t get much better than that. We’re loving the pace and energy of digital marketing more than ever; excited about the here and now and we’re continually planning for the future we have ahead of us. Thanks to all who have contributed to this fantastic journey. Happy birthday Found and ‘happy cupcake celebration day’ too all our deserving Founders. Tina

Found tackles PPC advertising in 50 Shades of Digital Marketing - ebook

Emily White — Thu, 17 Oct 2013 10:59:54 +0000

Take a read through 50 Shades of Digital Marketing to hear from our Managing Director Tina Judic on PPC advertising. Tina's article is featured on page 58 of the ebook which has been put together by the producers of the Digital Marketing Show. Download the ebook here.

Found Welcomes Dan S & Elle

Chelsea Hall — Tue, 22 Oct 2013 11:14:22 +0000

There is a chill in the London air but here at Found we are offering two Founders the warmest of welcomes. We have also had three interns recently join the team and are currently recruiting! So without further a do meet our new starters:

Daniel Stephenson

Junior Search Analyst

Dan is the newest Search Analyst to join Found. He brings along Account Management experience and a love for amateur dramatics. Take a read to learn more: Hometown Northampton – home of the gentleman’s shoe. If you were only able to eat one thing for the rest of your life, what would it be? Steak, medium rare. Is asking for a glass of red too much? Favourite movie ? Loch Ness. This is not a typo. Rumour has it you are a world record holder? It’s getting around already, huh. You may have seen me signing autographs in shopping centres and getting mobbed in a Tesco near you. I actually share my record with a mere 416 other people of this 7 billion person planet having been part of a group of 417 achieving ‘The most bow ties tied simultaneously’. As a fan of mountains and skiing, where is the best place you have ever skied? Europe is my favourite place for mountains. One of my best memories is skiing very early in the morning in Cortina, Italy taking advantage of the crisp snow and zooming down the slopes while everyone else was still in bed. Paper, kindle or ipad? Paper. I am resisting getting a Kindle as long as I can. I guess I like to physically leaf my way through a book and feel a sense of satisfaction that I’ve finished. Plus I think they look cool on the shelf as long as you hide the embarrassing ones away. Money and time is no factor, where in the world would you travel next? Japan. It seems so unique and I want to ride the bullet train, eat food I didn’t know existed and find out what geishas are all about.

Elle Stewart

Client Services Executive

Armed with a background in market research, public relations and event marketing, Elle jumped aboard the Client Services team after first coming to Found as an SEO intern. Take a read to find out more about Elle: Hometown Sydney, Australia If you were only able to eat one thing for the rest of your life, what would it be? My Mum’s Mexican; nachos, burritos or tacos. Rumour has it you are a Buzzfeed addict, any favourite posts to share? The one top of mind at the moment is 22 Amazing Kids’ Halloween Costumes That They’re Too Young To Understand - with one baby dressed as Wilson from cast away, pure gold. As an Aussie who loves beaches, what is your favourite beach / best beach in the world? I have two favourites: Santa Maria Beach, Sal - Cape Verde and Gunnamatta bay, Cronulla, Sydney. Paper, kindle or ipad? Kobo Favourite book? The bronze Horseman series Best part of living in London? Markets and winter fashion Top places to shop in London? Miss Selfridge, Ted Baker, Oasis and Dune

If you are interested in working at Found, check out our careers page for current vacancies.

FeedLab Shortlisted for Innovation Award

Emily White — Mon, 21 Oct 2013 17:22:11 +0000

We are very excited to announce that FeedLab was shortlisted for the 2013 UK Search Awards. “Found - Transforming Data Feeds for Search Success” earned a spot in the category of Innovation. Being recognised for this tool just a few weeks after its release, is a major achievement for the entire team. FeedLab was a group effort - suggested by a team member, developed in Found Labs and transformed into the great tool it is today. The UK Search Awards are a national awards competition that celebrate the top agencies and campaigns in SEO, PPC and digital marketing. This is our third nomination for the awards, having won Best Mobile Campaign in 2011 and coming in as a finalist in the same year for Best use of Search, Retail. The awards take place on the 14th November 2013 at the Emirates Stadium, London.

Friday Roundup: 25 October 2013

Emily White — Fri, 25 Oct 2013 14:48:48 +0000

On Fridays before we head to the Fun Zone for snacks and beer, all the teams get together for a weekly round-up. It is a time for the teams to hear what everyone else has been up to and what to expect in the coming week. We decided to start sharing our updates via the blog:

Found the week of October 21-25:

Team achievement

Earlier this week we had the opportunity to host a group of Birmingham City University students from the Future Media course. We ran a Search Marketing Workshop and introduced them to Found and our services. The session was a great success and the students came away with a strong understanding of both SEM and Found as a brand.

Something we are looking forward to

Next week, Found will be at Performance Marketing Insights London. As a sponsor, exhibitor and speaker there has been a lot to coordinate but everything is falling into place and the excitement within the team is growing because during the event we will be hosting a Ping Pong Challenge! You can practice your skills here over the weekend, but what really counts is visiting our booth over the two days of the expo to challenge a Ping Pong Bot and compete for a chance to win an iPad Mini 2!

Jason Duke our Associate Director, Search will be giving a talk on day one entitled "How Email & Retargeting can turn SEO Traffic into Long-term Customer Journey Rewards." He will explore how brands can continue conversations with customers to build a longer-term and more rewarding relationship.

Something we learnt

As always in digital the week was jam packed full of fresh learnings for our team, but perhaps the one that stands out most comes from our Client Services Team and isn’t really new at all. It began with the question “Should you be using Google+?” and quickly moved into common ground for SEO’s, the correlation vs. causation debate. The consensus on the value of Google+ still seems to be split, yet one thing we know for sure is that if Google are not looking to social media for additional ranking signals already, they certainly will be in the future. Bedtime perusing through the +1 button and search results section of Google+ Webmaster FAQ uncovers “+1′s from friends and contacts can be a useful signal to Google when determining the relevance of your page to a user’s query. This is just one of many signals Google may use to determine a page’s relevance and ranking, and we’re constantly tweaking and improving our algorithm to improve overall search quality.” Industry surveys and studies also support this conclusion. One of the latest that support social signs as ranking indicators came from Searchmetrics earlier this year. The Ranking Factors – Rank Correlation 2013 Study has been cited by peers and clients several times when discussing what exactly makes a site rank in search engines, and it once again found this year that ”well positioned URLs have a high number of likes, shares, tweets and plus ones and specific URLs stand out in the top search results with a very high mass of social signals.” Anyone worth listening to in the search marketing industry will treat these correlation studies with a pinch of salt, and as Searchmetrics will point out themselves - correlation does not equal causation. Simply put, just because a website has a high number of likes, shares, tweets, and plus ones, it does not mean that these signals are the cause for the high ranking. Of course it stands to reason that websites and pages which enjoy high ranking for certain keywords do so because of the quality of the content they offer. It also stands to reason that high quality content is likely to also have a high level of social signals.

Stat of the week

On Free Pizza day the BIG office went through 37 XXL pizzas. Perhaps that is not as impressive as it is worrisome... More interesting however, is that more than half of the time spent on photos, maps, games, weather and social networks is done so on mobile. The graph below breaks the usage into more detail: You will find more statistics at Statista

Say Hello to Matteo, Chris & Tim

Chelsea Hall — Thu, 21 Nov 2013 09:48:53 +0000

The Found team is continuing to grow and expand! We are really excited to have welcomed three lovely new Founders into the team over the past few weeks. Read below to find out more about our newest recruits.

Matteo Bassan

Client Services Executive

Hometown? Padova, in the heart of North East of Italy, between Verona (Romeo and Juliet) and Venice (The Merchant of Venice). My land, Veneto, was loved by Shakespeare, which isn’t surprising…it’s a very beautiful place. We hear you are a lover of sport, if you had to choose would it be rugby or football? Yes, I am! What a tricky question to answer…Probably rugby…but also football, especially at Upton Park, home of West Ham United. What an atmosphere during the match day, incredible! Rumour has it, you once played rugby with the Vice-Captain of Italy. How was that? We were part of Petrarca Padova under 18 squad and Leonardo Ghiraldini was already the best player in the team! I remember that he was always training so hard…not like me!!! Then we studied together at the University of Padova and we’re still in contact! He’s a lovely guy and great player. If you could eat one food for the rest of your life, what would it be? I love my mum’s dishes…all of them are from Veneto, my home region. I would probably say “Baccalá alla Vicentina”. But have you have try donkey casserole?! It’s delicious…I love it! Favourite thing about London? I love London, simple as that. I love walking in Battersea Park just in front of my home or walking around Brick Lane or Columbia Road, spending my weekend shopping in Brixton or enjoying the sunshine at Hampstead Heath. Best pub in London? For a lazy Sunday roast nothing is better than my local pub, The Prince Albert in Battersea Park. If I have guests, I prefer to go to the Cutty Sark Tavern, a Georgian tavern by the River Thames in Greenwich. For a pint with my mates? Of course every pub is perfect for me if the company is good! As a social media addict – Twitter or Facebook? Twitter for sure! I use Facebook to stay in touch with my mates but Twitter is really helpful for my job and understanding the digital trends. Paper, Kindle or iPad? I’ve got both but I prefer my iPad 80% of the time except when I'm travelling, I prefer my Kindle.

Chris Haines

SEO Executive

Chris is our newest SEO executive to join the team. A self-described SEO fanatic, Chris is motivated to achieve great results for our clients. Find out what else interests this cookie lover: Hometown? I am originally from Herefordshire - a small place in the English countryside near the Welsh Border, famous for Hereford Beef, Bulmer’s Cider and Ellie Goulding. We need to know, what is your favourite type of cookie? Like Cookie Monster, I love all cookies. But my favourites are: Milk Chocolate Chunk and White Chocolate Chunk. If I’m feeling wild: Milk Chocolate Orange. I should mention that I go to a special cookie shop to get my cookie fix. Normal supermarket cookies just don’t do it for me. Rumour has it that a famous singer once bought you a drink. Tell us more... Yes, the rumours are true. The singer was Daniel Bedingfield, and he bought me a drink in Piccadilly Circus near the Rainforest Café. At the time I was assisting him with his digital marketing and helping film his latest video. Most of the crew had problems getting into London on that day, but I managed to get in on time through some careful planning. Looking back, I maybe should have quipped on that day: “Come on Daniel, we gotta get thru this!” (Yeah… probably better I didn't say that actually). Do you have any hidden talents that we don’t know about? Yes I do. But If I told you, they wouldn't be hidden anymore! What about if you were a superhero, what would your special power be? I think my superpower would have to be teleportation. That would be very useful getting around London, going to “the shire”, or going on a spontaneous holiday. We hear that you are learning Korean, tell us something about yourself in Korean? 안녕하세요 저는 크리스 입니다. 저는 쿠키와 한국음악(K-pop)을 좋아합니다. 저는 Found에서 일을 합니다. 한국어 배우는 것에 시간을 조금 더 투자해야 합니다. 감사합니다. “Hi my name is Chris. I like cookies and Korean music. I work at Found. I need to spend more time learning Korean. Thank you. Goodbye.” Paper, Kindle or iPad? After moving house recently and carrying boxes of heavy books I have finally realised the benefit of the Kindle. I haven’t actually bought a Kindle yet, but I think it’s only a matter of time. At the moment though, I do most of my reading through a Kindle app on an iPhone.

Tim Lai

Junior Web Designer

Coming all the way from Hong Kong, meet our newest Junior Web Designer Tim. Having started designing at 12 years old, Tim brings a keen eye for detail and a cool sense of style to the office. Find out more about our photography fan below: Hometown? Fanling, Hong Kong. Best place you have visited in London? Brick Lane Market. I enjoy seeing the paintings, illustrations and many strange products there. These refresh my mind and inspire me. If you could eat one thing for the rest of your life, what would it be? Japanese Ramen. What is your favourite animated film? Wall-E. If you could have one superpower, what would it be? Transportation. I would visit NASA and check if Aliens visited the Earth. As a designer, what is your biggest design pet peeve? Using Comic Sans MS. It just doesn't fit modern beauty standards. We hear you love photography, what do you love about photography? Taking photographs is the best and easiest way to record my life, and it is always fun to look at old photos. Paper, iPad or Kindle? Ipad.

If you are interested in working at Found, check out our careers page for current vacancies or visit us on LinkedIn.

Found profiled in lead up to Affiliate Window Supergames

Emily White — Tue, 12 Nov 2013 12:40:17 +0000

In two short days several members from the Found team will compete in the Affiliate Window SuperGames. The team at Found have been practicing to be in with a fighting chance! Read our team profile to find out more.

Earlier this month all the Founders got together for our company quarterly review. Each quarter, representatives from each team give a mini presentation on everything that has happened throughout the previous quarter and what is to come in the future months. After the meeting, the team always heads out to do a group activity...this quarter we made delicious pizza at the Caldesi Cucina Italiana: Overall it was a really great experience. All the staff were not only very welcoming, they were also patient and helpful. The pizza kept flowing all night long, topped with everything from mushrooms and pancetta to capers and anchovies. Lucky for us, chef Giancarlo Caldesi sent us home with the recipe for his beer pizza dough:

10g fresh yeast or 5g dried yeast
220ml Birra Moretti at room temperature
125ml tepid water
500g strong bread flour
2 teaspoons salt
Semolina for sliding the pizza

Mix the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. If using fresh yeast stir this into the water until completely dissolved. Add the liquid to the dry ingredients in the bowl and using a dough scraper or your hand blend the ingredients together well. For more detailed instructions, check out the full recipe and directions.

5 lessons I’ve learned during 5 years at Found

Tina Judic — Thu, 28 Nov 2013 09:15:57 +0000

As I celebrate my 5th anniversary here at Found, I thought I would share 5 lessons I've learned along the way:

1. People are the heartbeat of a successful business. Let them be brilliant.

If there’s one thing I can look back on over the past 5 years, it is the brilliant people I've worked with. I'm utterly inspired - and couldn’t be happier - when I see my team develop and truly flourish. From new starters in their first jobs, to those with experience galore – both are able to bring ideas, insights and delivery to the team. If you give people the right role, the right support, fill them with confidence – and then truly nurture the talent - then something very brilliant will most certainly happen.

2. Don’t just follow the rules of expectancy. Praise & promote when it feels right to do so.

Empowerment can be a great thing. Age and experience shouldn't take precedent over ability, passion and drive if it feels right. Some of the best people in my team at Found are young, hugely talented and have a real fire in their belly – they are in senior roles and performing brilliantly. In other businesses, they may not have had this chance to take ownership or responsibility so quickly but I firmly believe that promotion should never be solely linked to age and experience, but in response to drive, determination and sheer ability to deliver great things.

3. We live in a digital bubble. Give a little and you’ll get a lot back.

Despite the vast growth of digital media, we still very much operate in our own digital hub where contacts play a fundamental part in business success; from colleague and client to associate and community recommendations. Over the years we've been fortunate that much of our new business has come on the back of recommendations and, as big community players, through the launch of a variety of tools housed in our Foundry sharing centre, we have offered many new technology developments to the broader community for free. It’s been amazing to see how much you can get back from simply being willing to share.

4. Define your business goals. And stick to them.

In digital, it is so easy to want to jump on the back of each and every opportunity that presents itself and, in some circumstances, part of your business plan may be to ensure flexibility and agility to adapt to new opportunities. And this is not a bad business plan, as long as you’re not shooting for a multitude of new stars each and every month. It’s highly likely that your time is best spent on your core offering, so make sure you get the balance right between building on your existing product or service offering and focusing on non-core innovation.

5. Happiness isn't a destination, it’s a way of life.

I have a picture on my wall at home with these words on it and I couldn't agree more. Business is a journey, one that has its ups and downs and can truly tear at the heartstrings. No matter what may have happened the day before, tomorrow is a new day and if you can approach that day with a positive outlook, it will resonate with the team and, together, with hard work and focus, success can be achieved with a smile on everyone’s faces. Interested in reading more blog posts like this one? Sign up to our newsletter for the latest news and opinion from Found.

22 takeaways from the Digital Marketing Show

Emily White — Thu, 05 Dec 2013 09:25:17 +0000

We are always encouraging learning at Found, which is why we find it very important to allow all members of our team time out of the office to attend conferences or workshops. Last week our three awesome interns Tom, Victoria and Helen attended Day 1 of the Digital Marketing Show at ExCel London. Here are their takeaways from the four different tracks of the conference:

Mobile Theatre

Creating a Future-proof Mobile SEO Strategy – Patrick Altoft, Branded3 1. Optimise your mobile site Many corporations are only now just catching on to the power mobile optimisation can bring. Mobile browsing is increasing rapidly, and as customers who have had their fingers burnt once are unlikely to return, you can’t afford to let this slide. 2. However tempting, don’t pester users to download your mobile app Interrupting mobile browsing to force your app on to users is almost certainly a bad tactic, and may even end up on I Don't Want Your F****** App.

Content Theatre

Maximise Digital ROI: Clicks, Content & Conversions – Liza Jackson & Julia Payne 3. Sales and Marketing teams must work closer together to have shared, mutual goals Thanks to search engines, people are entering the sales funnel later. The top sections of the funnel (e.g. awareness, interest and evaluation) are being fulfilled thanks to the marketing team. Julia suggests integrating sales and marketing teams to achieve better results and waste less time and resources. Buyers are entering the purchasing process later than ever before, it is vital that sales and marketing work together to realise the point at which sales staff can take over from marketing. 4. Personalisation is at the core of modern digital marketing Make each consumer feel unique and they’ll appreciate it. Instead of attempting to group users, understand their behaviour, how they have come to visit your site, and what they are doing when they are there. Engaging Your Audience: Learn From the News Industry – Paul Shanley, Associated Press 5. “The line between brands and publishers blurs.” Nowadays quality content is as important for companies as it is for news providers. It is vital to use content partnerships to create high-end content. Digital marketers can learn from publishers how to be agile. In years of crisis they had to create better content with less money! Being flexible and adopting to changes is a key to success. 6. Don’t try to do everything yourself Use external help to achieve better results. 7. Video is a major influence 72% of 16-24 year olds say video is an important factor when choosing their news site. SEO is Changing: Keep Up – Hugh Jackson, MediaCo 8. Over optimisation is as bad as lack of optimisation. Know when to stop optimising. 9. The Google Venice update can get you Although the Venice update from Google in February 2012 did not make as many waves as Panda, or Penguin, it’s still very relevant to many online businesses, and tips were offered on how to make the update work to your advantage. The Future of Content Marketing: Where Next? – Michael Tinmouth, The SocialPro 10. Social media is not only about broadcasting, but also about listening to consumers. Sometimes marketers care so much about the content creation that they forget to research and find out more about what their consumers want and need. Implication – spend as much time in social media listening to consumers as creating content. 11. Company CEOs need to get on Twitter 77% people are more likely to trust a company who has a CEO on Twitter. 12. Facebook drives more traffic to YouTube than all of the Google channels combined. Managing High Volume Marketing Content Across Multiple Channels – Lee Jorgenson, Compendium 13. Stop trying to be amazing. Just be useful to your market - Jay Baer Sometimes being useful and helpful to your target audience is more efficient than trying to impress everyone with your creativity. Functionality is a core of new content. Be specific, create real value and consumers will appreciate it. Just concentrate on creating content users will find relevant and hopefully along the way something amazing will occur naturally from this. 14. Create lower effort content that is more time and cost effective Creating Q&As which Lee classified as medium effort content is more efficient than high effort content like videos, apps, etc. It is impossible to scale the production of very high quality content and for this reason it is advisable for some businesses to concentrate on creation of less costly and time consuming content. Q & A content is the best content from a search perspective – and takes only medium effort. Anticipate every question that will be asked about your product, and answer it as fully as you can. Creating “real, low effort content” can be a great way to engage your users. Lee shared the example of when the marketing team of a fishing and hunting outlet in North America decided to empower their employees by getting them to write about personal hunting and fishing stories. With these personal anecdotes, they stumbled upon a great way of producing content their users would love.

Social Theatre

Social Media’s Impact on Native advertising – Guy Cookson, Respond 15. Use rich snippets They can be greatly beneficial to click through rates, specifically reviews beneath results, which according to Guy increase CTRs by 20-30%. The Evolution of Search, Social and Content – Kevin Gibbons, BlueGrass Interactive 16. Don’t oversaturate tactics While Infographics are a great, shareable way of conveying information or creating a talking point, jumping on the latest content trend bandwagon should not take first place to the creation of content that has something new and useful to say.

17. It’s hard to fake authority, you have to build a brand Start with developing the company and making sure you provide value to consumers with your products and services. Then, go online and show everyone how great you are. Not vice versa.

bizcrowd Theatre

Make your SEO Campaign Start With a Bang – Dixon Jones, Majestic SEO 18. No-one wants to hear you blow you own horn Contact industry authorities, influential bloggers, news sites and let them break your amazing news for you. 19. Make sure content is useful to a particular sector of society. Creating new content can be a daunting prospect. Dixon suggests instead creating content with new functionality and that is useful for people. 10. Generate ambassadors for your brand Ambassadors will aid you in promotion of your product/service. Majestic SEO achieved this by giving a select group of trusted users early beta access, pictures of the product and an account once the product was developed. 20. After your product is released follow up With webinars, YouTube videos and a conference circuit to keep users engaged. 21. “Google is not so much a search engine, rather than a popularity contest” That is why strategic SEO becomes especially important nowadays. Effective Mobile Marketing for Small Business – Ewan Macleod, bizcrowd 22. Mobile should be thought of as primary screen One in 10 Brits do all of their online shopping via mobile, whilst 1 in 3 do at least some of their Christmas shopping on mobile. Ewan urges marketers to consider the possibility a mobile screen might be the primary screen on which people are viewing your site, and therefore to ensure your site has a responsive design. Keep on top of the latest digital marketing trends and strategies via the Found blog or through using our SEO, PPC and mobile marketing services.

Digital marketing 2014: an end to the law of averages

Emily White — Fri, 13 Dec 2013 09:36:19 +0000

In the latest email by Newsdesk @ Netimperative, an online digital marketing magazine, Found MD Tina Judic shares her insight on what digital marketing trends we are likely to see in the new year: "2014 could see the end to the law of averages for marketing as we move way beyond probability to more honed, strategic delivery..." Read the article here.

Found Expands Senior Team with Key Hire

Emily White — Wed, 11 Dec 2013 09:43:55 +0000

Found Expands Senior Team with Key Hire Performance Marketing pioneer Found (www.found.co.uk) has appointed Stephen Dart as Sales Director. Stephen was previously CEO of search agency High Position where he project led search campaigns for such brands as Hoseasons, Sony Consumer Electronics and Motorola. As a highly experienced sales professional, he will now lead Found’s sales strategy; managing the Found sales team and the rolling out of the agency’s existing and new-to-market service offerings and toolsets. Tina Judic, Managing Director of Found, says: “Bringing such a senior appointment into the team has to meet a number of criteria and the role of Sales Director was no different. I was seeking historic new business success, astute business acumen to really understand what the market is looking for, a business leader and, importantly, an individual who could fit into the personality, spirit and work ethic that is Found. Stephen has proven success running through his veins, having worked with a number of big online brands and created campaigns which have not only achieved brand standout, but also brought fresh thinking to the market. Found is all about new, disruptive thinking and I’m therefore delighted that he has joined the team to help us achieve greater things for our clients and for our business.” Stephen adds: “I love the way Found works and have admired its client activity for some time. As a fellow Search fanatic, it’s going to be a dynamic blend with my own focus, knowledge and enthusiasm.”

-ENDS-

About Found Found has led a new chapter for the Digital Marketing industry, championing the innovative integration of Performance Marketing to drive significant results across all growing channels. Focused on masterminding highly effective performance-based marketing campaigns which push the boundaries across Search, Social, Mobile and Affiliate, Found’s multi award-winning, results-obsessed team are experts in driving quality online traffic for such brands as Red Letter Days, RAC, Premier Inn, Canterbury and the Post Office. The Digital Marketing agency has fast gained a reputation for finding new ways to build its clients’ businesses online, and its often ground-breaking campaigns are testament to Found's belief that great performance comes from great people. This press release was originally published on prfire.co.uk. If you are interested in working at Found, check out our careers page for current vacancies or visit us on LinkedIn.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

Emily White — Mon, 23 Dec 2013 16:17:05 +0000

The Found cinemagraph Christmas card

December has been full of special festivities in and around the office. When we weren't stuffing our faces full of chocolates, cookies and sweets, we were participating in #XmasJumperDay and packaging some delicious custom gingerbread men for our clients.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of our clients, fans, friends and family! We hope you will join us in 2014 for some new blog posts, white papers and more. Don't miss out on our updates, follow along at Found_Online.

Found's 2014 Digital Predictions

Stephen Dart — Thu, 02 Jan 2014 15:42:29 +0000

Check out our FREE ebook for insight into some of the biggest trends set to hit digital marketing in 2014. Digital marketing is always evolving and, as 2013 showed, marketers must adapt to these changes in order to continue delivering results for their clients. Last year buzzwords such as big data, content marketing, newsjacking and native advertising were at the forefront of marketers’ minds. Mobile was a major player, as was responsive design. Google threw us curveballs which included the algorithm updates Penguin 2.0 and Hummingbird. They pushed enhanced campaigns on paid search advertisers and moved even more keywords to now appear as not provided in Google Analytics.

What to expect in 2014

Our team has compiled a list of the digital marketing trends to look our for in the coming year.

Marketing automation is here. Content at the ready! – Tina Judic, Managing Director
Mobile advertising comes of age – Luke Townsend, Creative Director
The end of the law of averages – Simon Raybould
Brand power: tackling the aggregator sites – Jamie Brady, Head of Performance Marketing and Lead Generation
Digital marketers to be held accountable – George Bett, Senior Partnerships Manager
Sales will be further scrutinised by businesses – George Bett, Senior Partnerships Manager
Successful SEO requires wisdom – Jason Duke, Senior SEO Consultant
Brand building will grow as a ranking signal – Greg Burgess, Director of Digital Advertising
You will estimate your multi-channel conversions – Greg Burgess, Director of Digital Advertising
Marketing spend is static, but expectations are up! – Sam Morris, Client Services Director
Brick-to-click, the circle finally closes – Sam Morris, Client Services Director

Found's Digital Predictions 2014 ebook is free to read, share and download. Stay up-to-date by signing up for our newsletter.

PI - Movers and Shakers: December 2013

Emily White — Fri, 10 Jan 2014 09:23:32 +0000

In the December edition of Movers and Shakers by Performance Marketing Insight, Stephen Dart, our new Sales Director receives a mention:

"Found announced the hiring of a new sales director in December. Previously a CEO of search agency High Position, Stephen Dart will now lead Found’s sales strategy, manage its sales team and roll out new services and tools."

Read the full article here.

Why you should be using Google Authorship

Sam Morris — Mon, 03 Feb 2014 15:21:39 +0000

Content is central to online marketing activity. This is not news. All modern online marketers know that content is the way ahead for effective consumer engagement and for your site's visibility in search results. Plus, it is shareable across multiple channels from social to email. Think about it - consumers want the most relevant answer to their search query. They want it quickly and they want the answer to be one they can trust. This is even important to Google in their espoused drive to deliver the most effective and relevant results to users of their search engine (and so, take over the universe).

For brands producing content that provides these trustworthy answers is a necessity. Writing a strong post is only half of it though, reinforcing your authority is as important. So how do you do this? Google Authorship.

What is Google Authorship?

Simply put, it is when an article or blog in a search result features a photo and byline - rich snippets of information that lists the author's full name, Google+ head shot and their number of Google+ circles.

More than that though, Authorship is Google's way of verifying the authority of those creating content by connecting it with the author's Google+ profile. A verified profile not only looks nice but it tells Google you are human and therefore, that your content is credible.

Why Google Authorship is valuable for all

[caption id="attachment_12511" align="alignright" width="301"] Click to download our guide.[/caption]

Authorship can't be connected to a brand specifically, but companies of all size should make sure the authors of their blogs have verified Google Authorship accounts.

Doing so has many positive effects such as helping the article stand out among the results, asserting your brand's authority, and providing your article with higher click-through-rates.

A win-win

Everyone benefits from authorised profiles and the rich-snippets that accompany them. Writers get credit for their work, Google gets to provide searchers with high quality results from real people and brands are able to assert their authority as experts in the field, which in turn, hopefully benefits them in conversion and ROI.

Results in organic search

As an agency that specialises in organic search, one of our goals as a team is to increase our client's ranking in the search results. The thought process being that the higher the ranking the more likely our clients are to get clicks, and clicks equal conversion. What is very interesting about Google Authorship, is that it changes things a bit. According to an eye tracking study from LookTracker, more time and attention is given to results that have Authorship snippets. Search Engine Journal covered this study in an in-depth article by LookTracker analyst Matthew Campion, which drew attention to the fact that ""authorship snippets still performed better than many of their organic counterparts." One of the study's scenarios looked at the query "tablet reviews", which offered searchers a variety of visual results. Take a look at these two identical screenshots. The first is the results without tracking and the one on the right has the eye tracking heat map applied (red indicates an intense gaze position):

What is so interesting in this side-by-side comparison is that even though one of the results with Authorship was buried deep on page, it got attention usually reserved for the top spots - performing better than many of the organic results higher up on the page. The article noted, and it is important to mention, that searchers may have not been paying much attention to the product ads as much because of the nature of the search. They were looking for information and research and weren't in that purchase mindset. Still, the conclusions from this study went as follows:

Top organic results continued to get significant viewership, even without authorship – but importantly, lower-ranked results that implemented authorship were able to draw a disproportionate amount of attention in comparison to surrounding results without it. Matthew Campion, Lead Analyst LookTracker

So yes, top spots are still important but what we can learn from the above study is that Authorship gives visibility to those with lower rankings. But that's not all...

Higher CTRs

A study on rich snippets by a search marketing firm in the USA found that clicks could improve up to 150% with Google authorship. Similarly, Cyrus Shepard of Moz, conducted an experiment that resulted in increased CTRs for posts where he had optimised his Google+ picture with a more professional head shot. Having clients rank in the top spots of SERPs is only one priority for agencies. The other is getting these rankings to convert into traffic and clicks, which from a Client Services perspective, is a favourite client KPI to measure. Lucky for us, Google Authorship helps with this too, drawing attention to the picture and byline which re-enforces the authority

More to come

These are just the ways Google Authorship currently affects results in the SERPs but the importance of having a verified profile is very likely in grow in importance. Early last year Google Executive Chairman, Eric Schmidt, released a book titled The New Digital Age. He wrote:

Within search results, information tied to verified online profiles will be ranked higher than content without such verification, which will result in most users naturally clicking on the top (verified) results.

Get set up with Google Authorship

The strong benefits of getting Authorship has already been explained but don't worry, you don't need a double first in applied physics to get set up. Our quick and easy-peasy guide will help you get your content within the Google Authorship space.

Click to download our EASY Google Authorship Guide.

What the London tube strike taught me about omni-channel marketing

Lauren Dodds — Thu, 06 Feb 2014 17:38:20 +0000

The tube strike has only been going on a couple of days but so far it has taught me two very important lessons. The first is that I should own a bicycle and the second is that omni-channel retailing will dominate in the coming year. Let me explain. As I stood crammed onto a bus with what felt like all 4 million people said to be affected by the strike, I was envious of all the bicycles zooming past. Knowing there were more strike days planned, I pulled out my mobile and searched for bicycle shops in London. I clicked around a few sites until it was (finally!) time to get off the bus.

Omni-channel's role in digital marketing

Shoppers are now highly knowledgeable, better informed and well-connected at all times through multiple devices. This is where omni-channel retailing comes in.

My mobile search didn't convert into a sale in that moment, but I did continue researching bicycles later in the day, drawing my attention to the fact that consumers and the consumer purchasing cycle has drastically changed.

What is omni-channel retailing?

Omni-channel retailing is about providing shoppers with a strong consumer experience throughout multiple channels. There must be consistent and effortless message across all sales platforms: mobile, desktop, tablet, in-store, mobile in-store and call centre. Born from multi-channel retailing, omni-channel is more about looking at the bigger picture when fulfilling a satisfying consumer experience. Retailers need to be aware of an alternative conversion pattern, where you will not necessarily witness traffic from one platform converting on the same medium.

The brave new world of consumer engagement

Let’s revisit my search for a bicycle. I first searched on my mobile but later on in the day I used my desktop to check the site and seek out the specifications of the bicycle that caught my eye. I also noticed that the prices online were very competitive. While I was tempted to buy the bike at that exact moment, I couldn’t commit without a test ride. Is a lack of conversion at this desktop stage a sign of failure? Not at all. Being able to find that exact model easily from my desktop was important for my journey as a consumer, as was seeing competitive prices. I may not have purchased a bicycle as of yet, but I remember the name of the shop that was offering the model I liked, at the price I loved. The brick-and-mortar store should not be overlooked. According to the A.T. Kearney study Recasting the Retail Store in Today's Omnichannel World, digital channels are most important for the research stage of the buying process but "phsyical stores dominate later stages, including product trial and testing and after-sales service and support. While stores can and should play some role in all shopping stages, they needn't play a central role in each to generate sales across channels." This is because when retailers are visible across a variety of mediums, consumers can utilise all technologies available to make an informed decision about a particular brand, thus enabling an effortless action to purchase. A Google case study for Carphone Warehouse reaffirms this. In the test areas where the company increased mobile search investment, there was “significant incremental sales,” with mobile search driving a 5:1 ROI, and 90% incremental clicks. More than that though the study found “a directional increase in store visits in the tens of thousands over the measurement period.”

The expectations of the evolved shopper

According to a recent study by GE Capital Retail Banks, seven of the top ten activities carried out by mobile users are shopping related, and the number of omni-shoppers using multiple devices in and out of the store is also increasing.

This means that if I were to go into the cycle shop’s brick-and-mortar store for a test ride I would expect to see the same model I liked on my mobile at the price that was advertised to me on my desktop.

I am not alone, a massive 80% of store shoppers check to see prices online. According to a report by MIT, and a third access information via their mobile phones while situated in store.As consumers demand access to information across multiple channels, retailers need to allow that same information to follow the consumer on their journey, while instigating certain incentives that influence customer buying decisions.

How to measure omni-channel marketing

This has all suggested the beginnings of a connected shopper with more complex decision making processes and greater expectations for their shopping experience. Consumers can access information at any moment in time due to the smartphone revolution, limiting restrictions and facilitating access to any information required. Due to this new wave of cross-channel shoppers, it is equally difficult to measure incremental sales and revenue across multiple devices. One way to address this issue could be to look at the combined number of sales across all channels. Macy’s, a chain of upscale department stores, has taken this approach. They have even created the position of chief omnichannel officer “to oversee the integration of store, online and mobile operations.” Alternatively, Sephora, a care and beauty retailer, uses a loyalty program to try and track customer journeys. Some channels of course, are harder to measure than others. Organic search, for instance, is harder to track than paid, particularly since AdWords started estimating multichannel conversions, originating from mobile ads. The functionality is not perfected yet, but attempting to track this process is in itself an important step.

Embracing the changing landscape

The main point here is to realise and understand the changes taking place and the ways in which retailers and brands can exploit the opportunities before them. Had I not seen the cycle shop on my mobile, would I have gone to their website or considered visiting their store? Visibility is a key component to omni-channel success and retailers are advised to embrace the shift to integrated shopping experience through a range unified platforms. As omni-channel retailing acts to facilitate a more knowledgeable consumer, it only makes sense to make sure you are searchable and to employ well informed store employees whose knowledge about products and processes are second to none. Interested in more content like this? Subscribe to the Found newsletter for the latest digital marketing news.

An infographic to celebrate RBS 6 Nations Championship

Emily White — Thu, 13 Feb 2014 16:31:02 +0000

To showcase the 2014 Six Nations Championship Found, in collaboration with the world’s original rugby brand Canterbury, has produced an infographic stacked with stats and facts about the six European teams facing-off in the competition. The annual rugby tournament is played by England, France, Ireland, Italy, Scotland and Wales. Succeeding the Five Nations Championship, RBS 6 Nations was born in 2000 with the addition of Italy. Using historical data, the Canterbury infographic compares Championship wins, Grand Slam titles, match and Championship points and squad stats. Want to know how much the average forward weighs or who posed nude for the 2014 Dieux Du Stade calendar? Check out the infographic below to find out.

Six Nations Championship 2014 infographic

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Found on the 2014 European Search Awards shortlist

William Nye — Tue, 18 Feb 2014 17:33:56 +0000

Now in its third year, the European Search Awards sets out to recognise the best in Europe for Search, Digital and Content Marketing. Found is thrilled to be on the 2014 shortlist with a chance to take home an award at the ceremony in Reykjavik, Iceland at the end of March.

Making the shortlist

"Found & HCL - ROI Health Kick for UK Nursing Recruiter" was shortlisted in the category Best Low Budget Campaign. HCL Nursing had a limited monthly budget but Found was able to achieve measurable and outstanding SEO results. This includes successfully driving brand awareness, increasing organic traffic, improving registrations and applications, as well as providing a strong and cost effective ROI. Over the period of the campaign, Found constantly monitored and refined the work we were doing. The results of the campaign showcase our cost-effective tactics and our efficient approach to using a limited budget in a competitive marketplace. The team’s work paid off not only by achieving massive increases in traffic and applications, but also in its ability to deliver a strong return on investment from such a low budget. Another achievement was the positive relationship Found developed with HCL Workforce Solutions.

"Our partnership with Found has, from the beginning, been invaluable. Medical recruitment is an extremely specialised sector and Found has made it their business to fundamentally understand our organisation and its objectives, bending over backwards to deliver, add value and advise. Work is turned around quickly and innovatively, and in regards to our web traffic – well, the numbers speak for themselves." Laura Ackland, HCL Workforce Solutions

A big thanks to the esteemed panel of judges and Don't Panic Events for recognising Found in this manner. The 2014 European Search Awards will take place at the Grand Hotel Reykjavik on Friday 28 March 2014

Found collaborates with Life Works for Eating Disorders Awareness Week

Kristina Grineva — Tue, 25 Feb 2014 12:00:16 +0000

Over the last few weeks, members from our team here at Found have been working closely with consultants at Life Works, a leading specialist in the treatment of addictions and behavioural health disorders, to create an infographic about eating disorders (ED). The project was to coincide with Eating Disorders Awareness Week 2014 (24 February - 2 March), a week-long campaign whose aim is to raise awareness about eating disorders and to teach the wider community that EDs are treatable and that a full recovery is possible.

Given the sensitive nature of the topic, it quickly became clear that this would be a difficult project for the team to tackle. Despite the tough subject matter, we were able to create something educational, engaging and shareable by collaborating with the Life Works team at every step. The research phase of this project was another important element, as we ended up educating ourselves along the way, which led us to be acutely aware of the importance of displaying both sides of the online ED environment.

The ED landscape

Even though eating disorders affect 1.6 million people in the UK, awareness about these illnesses and their causes remains relatively low. On top of this lack of awareness, EDs are prone to unfair stereotypes and stigmas. It is all too often that they can be written off as a phase young girls go through. In reality, EDs are serious mental illnesses that claim more lives than any other mental illness. An important part of this education process is learning about how in the last decade, social media has grown into a dangerous place for people suffering from EDs. Websites, forums and social media sites act as a place where those suffering meet and encourage each other’s ED tendencies by competing to lose weight, eat the fewest calories and to consume the smallest portions of food.

Creating ED sensitive content

We knew going into this project that it was a very sensitive subject to handle and as such getting this message across appropriately, but accessibly was a key driver for all. As we begun the research phase, we were introduced into an online world plagued with pro-eating disorder content that most of us never knew existed. Upon initial research, it seemed a common question from the team was why were sites with this type of content allowed? The unfortunate truth is that each time a site, chat forum or social media group is closed down, it will just eventually reappear with a new name on a new site. Social media sites like Pinterest, Tumblr and Instagram made moves to ban damaging hashtags such #thinspiration and #thinspo but the effectiveness of these bans can’t really be monitored as variations like #thynspiration continued in use. Not too long after #thinspiration appeared on Instagram’s ban list, the hashtag was re-allowed, with search results being accompanied by a content advisory warning and selecting Learn More links users to the National Eating Disorders Association website. #Anorexia gets the same treatment but #Anorexiatips gets off warning-free, evidence that these types of restrictions can be hard to enforce.

As our team worked through the creation of the infographic, we kept asking the same question “Can Social Media Feed Eating Disorders?” This eventually became the title of our piece due to the amount of research pointing to a correlation between the two.

Portraying both sides

It was a difficult subject to tackle. As we worked through the design, statistics and research, it became apparent that in order to remain respectful, sensitive, helpful and informative to those suffering and the work Life Work conducts, it only made sense to include the ways in which social media is a positive influence. From online support forums to those fighting back with positive images on social media sites, the potential is there to create safer spaces online.

Of course, eating disorders are caused by a complex combination of factors and there is still a lot of work to be done in order to raise awareness about these disorders, including spreading the message that they are treatable. Life Works saw how we were trying to use the infographic to educate, and supplied us with 10 tips for overcoming an eating disorder which gave us a strong conclusion for our piece. Overall, working through such a difficult subject matter was an important learning experience for every member of the team who touched this piece of work. Most interesting for me was a bit of research we came across from the West Indian Medical Journal. It found that people with no history of eating disorders subconsciously ate less for three weeks after being exposed to pro-anorexia sites. Immediately I asked myself, did I do the same? Would you?

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Top 7 SEO errors you should fix today

Jadon Stewart — Fri, 28 Feb 2014 15:36:46 +0000

For any SEO strategy to flourish, it’s essential to have a website that is technically equipped to meet the expectations of search engines’ complex algorithms and the spiders that will frequently crawl your site, assuming they have sufficient access. Technical weaknesses on a website can hinder its chances of ranking highly in the SERPs. Everything from missing title tags to slow load time can have an impact on the overall success of your SEO campaign. The Found SEO-Tool was created to identify these types of issues and to provide a high-level audit of any webpage instantly. Not only is the tool free, but users are able to run unlimited home or/and internal page URL checks. A recent study by Randstad Technologies illustrates the shortage of IT and digital professionals that currently exist in the UK, so this tool should come in handy to website owners who don't want to incur fees from skilled freelance professionals or agencies. Below we cover 7 common SEO errors websites tend to make and how to resolve them.

SEO errors and how to fix them

1. Sitemap - not found

A Sitemap is a way for a webmaster to feed data to search engines and pass on details about your most important pages, in order of priority. According to sitemaps.org, whose Protocol 0.9 is adopted by Google, Bing and Yahoo, "a Sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata about each URL - when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is, relative to other URLs in the site. This allows search engines to more intelligently crawl the site. Using a Sitemap can't guarantee your webpages will appear in the SERPs, but it is best practice to have one. For more detail on what should be included or how to set one up, Google's Webmaster Tools offers detailed explanations on creating Sitemaps. A missing Sitemap can be easily overlooked, but is relatively easy to fix and once you do be sure to submit or resubmit your site to search engines. Both Google and Bing make it relatively straightforward to submit a new sitemap, allowing them to do a fresh crawl of your site.

2. Canonical domain check failed

If you fail a canonical domain check, it means that your homepage is accessible via more than one URL, without having the correct technical instructions in place. Examples of homepage variations: www.found.co.uk, found.co.uk, www.found.co.uk/index.html or Found.co.uk/home.asp The SEO-Tool carries out canonical checks on individual pages and will help you identify some of the common duplications which can occur. With multiple functioning URLs that display identical content, the effectiveness of inbound link equity can be split, reducing your site’s SEO potential. If your website has multiple home pages with different URLs, you need to make sure that the correct canonical tags have been implemented or that you have 301 (Moved Permanently) redirects in place to combine the value in one location. For more information on how to fix canonicalisation issues you can reach out to your Search agency or consult Matt Cutt's SEO advice on url canonicalization.

3. Page loading time

Even though connection speeds are generally improving, slow loading websites are still an issue for many users. Google stated for the first time, in April 2010, that loading time is factored into their ranking algorithm. As mobile becomes more and more predominant, it is no surprise that the load time of mobile sites is crucial too. Midway through last year, Google introduced changes in rankings of smartphone search results, which was followed up with an August 2013 post about making smartphone sites load faster than the typical 7 second load time for a mobile page. In order to help identify some of the issues your site currently has, you can use Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool, which will analyse the reasons your page is running slow and suggest solutions to fix them. Some typical changes include enabling compression, optimising images, minimising JavaScript and avoiding landing page redirects. Having HTML that is not compressed, simply means that there are unnecessary white spaces and line breaks in your code. Taking out any blank lines so that your HTML is only the actual code helps minimise the size, and is an incredibly easy fix to implement using any online HTML compressor.

4. Header tag analysis

Header tags (< h1 > < h2 > < h3 >) are important for content hierarchy and for communication with the search engines on which headings you want them to prioritise.

Improper use of tags can lead to a very confused content structure. To avoid this, make sure that each page has properly nested and unique < h1 > tag, and that any subheadings use < h2 >and < h3 > tags where appropriate.

It helps to incorporate keywords and phrases into your header tags, because not only do search engines deem them as important when describing a webpage, readers are attracted to the biggest headline on a site just as they would first read the major headline of a newspaper.

5. Alt attribute is missing in x% images

Search engines don’t read images, so it’s essential that you tag them with text, otherwise you may lose out on the opportunity to add relevancy to your page through a keyword rich description. Just how you would ensure your webpages and blogs are optimised for search, your images alt tag should be relevant and descriptive. Vague descriptions are to be avoided as it can lead to you losing relevant Google Images traffic. If your image source is men’s jumper, consider making your alt tag as specific as navy blue cashmere men’s jumper at London Fashion Week. Note that descriptive does not mean keyword stuffing and this is important to avoid in your content and alt tags.

6. Metadata analysis

The most important errors to solve in the metadata analysis section are the title tags. They are still widely recognised as one of the most important on page factors for SEO. Each individual webpage on a site should have its own unique title tag which is concise, optimised appropriately and relative to the content on the page. Title tags should be limited in length to roughly 70 characters (depending on character width), to avoid them becoming truncated. This can be achieved by removing unnecessary stop words such as: a, the, we, with, etc. Be sure to include your primary keywords for that page at the start of the tag whenever possible, as this is known to carry more weight. Description tags or meta descriptions, are also important, enabling users to view a snippet or overview of what each page is about directly in the search results. Webmasters should focus on producing a well-written 156 character piece, which will tempt people to click through to a site. Meta descriptions are no longer a ranking factor considered by the search engines but high quality, enticing descriptions can significantly increase the click-through rate to a website. Relevant words to a users search within the description will appear bolded, further reassuring users the page is relevant. The SEO- tool will only flag an error or warning within the title tag and description tag sections when either the tag is missing completely or exceeds the character limit.

The inclusion of keywords tag will not have a negative impact on your website, but won’t have a positive impact either. The keywords tag is no longer used by search engines to rank your site and should be removed where possible.

7. Keyword analysis

Keyword analysis refers to the body content on your webpage being analysed. Similar to the metadata analysis, it’s essential that the quality of the writing is strong and that the content is unique. It’s important to have well-written and engaging content for your visitors, but bear in mind that search engines will use the most frequent keywords and phrases within the copy to categorise your page (and site) so it’s important to include relevant keywords where necessary. This does not mean keyword stuffing or over optimising as doing so will run you the risk of making your page appear spammy. However, too little and search engines might have a hard time understanding which keywords the landing page is trying to rank for.

Why you should download our Free SEO-Tool

Unlike a lot of free tools, Found's SEO-Tool provides both a mixture of technical, link analysis and content recommendations. The audit also offers valuable information when your hover over the question marks that appear to the right of each heading. Once the data has been gathered, it can be viewed at any time by either bookmarking a uniquely generated URL from the 'Save result' button or by exporting to PDF. We recently updated the SEO-Tool App, adding some features such as a result filtering for more in-depth reporting and interface updates for both the iPhone and iPad.

Visit our SEO-Tool for a free instant audit

Friday Roundup: 7 March 2014

Emily White — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 17:57:00 +0000

It's been a little while since our last Friday Roundup but with lots going on in and around the office, we thought it was a good week to get back at it. Just a quick disclosure that some of this news is in fact from from a bit earlier than Monday...

Found so far this month

Team achievement

We are very excited to announce, that for the fifth year in a row, Big Ideas Group has made The Sunday Times 100 Best Small Companies To Work For. The official feature doesn't come out online until Sunday, but Best Companies who produces the list, released the standings last week.

The survey looks at many aspects of a company such as leadership in the team, personal growth, manager and team dynamics, employee well-being, involvement in the local community, company culture and pay and benefits.

A friendly working environment, cross-company learning and perks such as food and games are at the heart of Found and Big Ideas Group, making our offices in London and South Africa fun and innovative places to work. We are always on the lookout for talent, so check out our current vacancies to join our dynamic team.

Something we are looking forward to

At the end of the month, members from the Found Team will be exhibiting and running a Search Clinic at the Internet Retailing Expo. The Expo is part of Internet Retailing, a magazine, portal and events group whose focus is European ecommerce and who provide platforms for conversations about multichannel retailing. On the 26th and 27th of March, you can find Found at Stand K10 at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham. Come visit us there to talk through your objectives and, as an agency that builds our services around a client's targets, demands and budgets, we can give you some hints and tips to help you shape your digital performance. We are also running one the Expo's Ask the Experts Web Clinics (book in advance) where you can get a deeper understanding of how to use Search Marketing effectively. During the 30 minute clinic, our Search experts will show you how to improve your SEO and PPC activity. We’ll talk you through the ways you can maximise your existing campaigns and, most importantly, advise you on improvements you can easily make to not only increase overall digital performance, but your return on investment too.

Stat of the week

Some very interesting statistics in the omni-channel arena. Check out this slide from the eBay Guide on the omni-channel consumer. It paints a very interesting picture of the consumers in today's world. According to the report 56% of consumers use at least two devices in their shopping, with 18% using a computer, mobile and tablet.

Finance Monthly - The Importance of Mobile Marketing

Emily White — Mon, 17 Mar 2014 10:31:09 +0000

As part the March 2014 edition of Finance Monthly, Found Sales Director, Stephen Dart, commented on the scope, importance and efficacy of mobile marketing for businesses, especially those within the finance sector.

“The importance of Mobile as a vehicle for sales and brand awareness is now beyond compare and it’s imperative that all advertisers take notice of the opportunity that’s before them. The fact that Google Mobile searches have increased tenfold in two years is proof enough, whilst a recent study by Google itself found that 67% of consumers were more likely to buy from a Mobile-friendly website. Worryingly though, it also found that even if a customer liked a company, half would use it less often if their website wasn't Mobile-friendly.”

The whole article is available to read and download here.

If you are interested in learning more about mobile marketing and how it can help your business, get in touch or have a look at our mobile services.

Found shortlisted at the Performance Marketing Awards

Nasreen Cullen — Tue, 18 Mar 2014 14:58:48 +0000

We are very pleased to announce that Found has made the shortlist for Publisher Innovation at the 2014 Performance Marketing Awards. Our campaign Transforming Red5's Feeds for Search Success was recognised for our effective implementation of new technology to increase revenue and provide outstanding ROI for our client. Utilising two of our proprietary tools, namely the new FeedLab feed optimiser, and its bespoke live inventory checker Goggles, we greatly boosted Red5's product listing search performance. FeedLab is a web-based tool that cleverly sits between a merchant’s product feed and Google’s Merchant Center, where, without needing to alter the original feed, it crunches the raw data so our analysts can then optimise the feed, correct problems, improve copy and remove unwanted items so the Product Listing Ads (PLAs) are tailored and uploaded for optimum Search potential. Additionally, complex changes are then automated so that each time a merchant makes a change to their feed, all previous optimisations can be applied in an instant, meaning that any new products added to the feed can be updated in seconds by Found analysts. Our Goggles live inventory checker compliments FeedLab by allowing us to quickly turn on or off the individual product ads depending on stock availability. This leaves our analysts with more time to maximise spend and helps avoid irritating shoppers who click on an ad to find the product is out of stock. This is the second year that Found has been shortlisted for Publisher Innovation and we are very thankful to the judges for recognising the hard work put in by our team and to our clients who allow us to employ innovative measures to get them ahead in the search space. To everyone else on shortlist, good luck and we look forward to seeing you on 29th April 2014 at Grosvenor House Hotel for the award ceremony.

Introducing new Founders Caroline, Victoria & Tom

Chelsea Hall — Thu, 22 May 2014 08:23:11 +0000

The Found office has been buzzing with energy the past few weeks. There has been lots going on, including welcoming some very lovely new recruits. Read on to find out more about the newest Founders to join our team:

Caroline Jagger-Higginson

Senior Account Manager

Caroline is the newest style queen to join the Found team. She brings along a wealth of Account Management experience,as well as a warm smile and great sense of humour. Find out more about this tennis fan: Hometown Marlow - where they do all the rowing! We heard you once worked on ChuckleVision, was that a lot of fun? The secret is out, I worked on ChuckleVision! What most people don’t know, is I actually starred in one of the episodes as a giant raven that had to steal the crown jewels in the Tower of London! You are always looking very stylish in the office – where is your favourite place to shop? I do love shopping and have an unhealthy retail relationship with Zara. If you could travel anywhere, where would you go? If I could go anywhere in the world, I would love to go across California on a Harley Davis. As a lover of sport, what is your favourite sport? My favourite sports have to be tennis, golf and rowing – I’m very competitive! Twitter or Facebook? I’m a FB girl to the core. Paper, Kindle or iPad? I use an iPad mini – Zara has a great app ; )

Victoria Chernobrivets

Junior Search Analyst

After completing a masters in London, Russian born Victoria took the Found PPC internship by storm and joined Found as a Junior Search Analyst. Read below to find out more about our Moscow-born analyst: Tell us about Moscow. I absolutely love the city for its amazing restaurants, cheap gypsy cabs and crazy night life, where leaving the party before 6 am is almost rude. You once did a 60 meter bungee jump. Weren't you scared? It was one of the most exciting and scariest experiences of my life, especially since I’m afraid of heights. But I like to challenge myself in different ways and I get great satisfaction from overcoming my fears. As a self-proclaimed ultimate tourist of London, what is your favourite place in London? I have too many favourite places to pick only one, but one of my recent discoveries is Richmond park. I was amazed at how different it is from everything I have seen in London before. It's a perfect place to escape from the noise of a big city, enjoy a nice picnic and watch the world (and the deer) go by. If you could travel anywhere, where would you go? My dream is to visit Antarctica. From what I've heard, it is supposed to be the most beautiful place on earth, with its unique scenery and wildlife. The cruise from Argentina to Antarctica through the Atlantic Ocean must be an amazing adventure in itself. Twitter or Facebook? Definitely Facebook. For me, social media is a way of communicating with friends. If I want to read news I’d rather go on a news website and read comprehensive articles. Paper, kindle or iPad? Paper. I’m quite old-fashioned in terms of using new gadgets and technologies, which is probably a bit strange for a digital marketer. I always strive to be up-to-date and progressive at work, but in my personal time, I enjoy the good old ways of doing things. Favourite TV show? Friends. I love it so much that my real friends get a bit jealous sometimes.

Tom Brand

Junior SEO Executive

Originally joining Found for a two week work experience placement, Tom stayed on to complete an internship with us. After his internship, we just couldn't let him go and he joined Found as our newest Junior SEO Executive. Read below to find out more about this Essex boy: Hometown? Brentwood, home of the Sugar Hut, Nick’s newsagents and H&H kebabs. A rumour has been going round that you once baked with Kevin Spacey. Tell us more! I was working at a film advertising agency in London and had just got some brownies out of the oven when someone asked what I was baking. I turned round to see a runner behind the door frantically pointing through it at Kevin Spacey donning an orange neon hoodie. Having been too star struck to offer him one, I'll never know what he thinks of my baking skills. Favourite TV programme? Probably QI. There's nothing like a bit of useless knowledge and no one is like Stephen Fry. As a lover of skiing, where is the best place you’ve been skiing? If I disregard the 18 hour coach journey there, then Val Thorens, thanks to La Folie Douce. Twitter or Facebook? Facebook - although I don't actually have Facebook. Paper, Kindle or iPad? I own a Kindle so it's got to be paper for reading, kindle for weighing down paper and iPad for everything else. Favourite food? Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.

If you are interested in working at Found, check out our careers page for current vacancies or visit us on LinkedIn.

2 clever guys at Google share the future of Adwords

Daniel Stephenson — Wed, 30 Apr 2014 15:16:18 +0000

Google has just revealed their future plans for AdWords in a video livestream. Some of these changes are big, meaning they are also (probably) important. To save you some time and help you understand what Jerry Dischler, Vice President of Product Management, AdWords, was going on about, I watched the Step inside the future of AdWords livestream for you and distilled the pertinent facts. Before we go on though, I must ask you a crucial question: what does Google think is the key to getting your advert out to your consumers in 2014? I know...you are thinking Mobile? Well, if you said mobile, you have four options:

Hang your head in shame
Get a donkey
Ride to Ipswich or someplace
Work in SEO

If you said, ‘It’s about connecting people to content with whatever device they’re using right now to the content they want now,’ take the rest of the day off. You’re allowed, I have already cleared it with your boss. The new buzzword on the market is connecting. Say that at parties and everyone will think you know more than you do. People will probably even buy you free drinks. Please remember to drink responsibly - You. Are. Gonna. Get. Hammered.

Oh ya, here are the 3 main things that Google will be rolling out in AdWords over the next few months:

1. App Specific ads

Google calls this ‘Innovative Ads’ but really they just want to help app promoters advertise their apps because that’s where loads of dosh is at the moment. The sequence for app advertisers is:

Awareness > Install > Engagement > Conversions ie. monetisation

60% of apps are never installed and 80% of apps are only fiddled about with once. Look at your phone. Are you one of the 80%? If you are, buy some pink and green socks tomorrow so you can be unique again. Google wants to help app advertisers increase installations and engagement. They’re going to do this by having: a) App keyword suggestions – there will now be ‘app ads’ which recommend a relevant app based on what you’re searching for. Google thinks hotel apps are a particularly relevant example.

b) Ads inside apps - based on what apps you have already downloaded /what you have been searching for/what you had for supper last Tuesday. c) Ads that deep link inside an app. Eg. ‘Doner kebab sellers near me’ in a HungryHouse app.

2. Insightful Reporting

Google has very helpfully carried out some case studies which tell us that ‘yes, online desktop purchases have originated from mobile’ and ‘yes, people who originate from a mobile advert spend more in an online store or even a physical store’. Thanks guys! That means we can see the effect that our mobile ads are having on end conversions and bid MORE so our ‘effective’ ads are showing more often. In summary, Google is trying to close the loop from online to offline and make another $23,834,091 billion in the process.

3. Intelligent Tools

There are 4 main functions that Google are bringing to us: 1) For people who can’t change their own bidding, the tongue-in-cheekily named ‘intelligent tool’ offers new goals for automated bidding. They’ll introduce ‘max conversions’ and ‘max revenue’. Sure, Google will help you sell more pink and green socks at your online shop but at a £54 cost. b) Do you get annoyed having to export AdWords data and manipulate the numbers in Excel? No? It doesn’t matter. Google still wants to trample all over Excel and offer exciting reporting possibilities within Adwords. What is kind of cool, is that all the data can be manipulated live. So, you will never have an excuse that your info is old and your account ‘should be doing much better now’. Also, Google lets us have some pretty colours and graphs to spend our time on. c) Bulk Changes No need to mess around with Editor if you want to make some large-scale campaign changes. You will soon be able to do it within AdWords. Maybe Excel and Editor can have a farewell party together? d) ‘Drafts and Experiments’ If you want to change your bids from £0.35 to £45 and are scared at what will happen, don’t worry as the new tool makes it easier to find out. A kind of ‘shopping cart’ for Adwords changes, you can carry out some experiments and test with a certain % of your total traffic to see what will happen. Personally, I’d opt for £55, call me reckless. All of these changes are coming to a screen near you soon, but in the meantime let me share with you something new you can see today.

1. Go to the Keyword Planner 2. Get some ideas for keywords of your choosing. I like ‘secret rum punch recipes you can sip at work and no-one will know you’re drinking rum’.

What do you notice? Exactly! New reporting graphs which show us trends on seasonality, devices and location. A welcome visual encapsulation for when my eyes go all blurry from too many stats. So now you’re fully up-to-date with the latest Google goings on. Use the information for good not evil. And enjoy the ever evolving Google landscape!

Google Panda 4.0 update – How to avoid Panda-geddon

Ally Biring — Fri, 23 May 2014 16:47:08 +0000

After a lot of speculation in the SEO world, it seems that Panda 4.0 has finally hit the SERPs causing waves of discontent in some quarters, and signs of recovery for others. Google’s head of web spam, Matt Cutts, announced the update on Twitter on the 20th May 2014 stating that: “Google is rolling out our Panda 4.0 update starting today.” The update follows Cutts' previous announcement that he and his team were working on ‘softening’ the Google algorithm to help smaller businesses with quality content compete against larger sites.

Google is rolling out our Panda 4.0 update starting today.

— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) May 20, 2014

What is Google Panda?

Panda is a search engine filter that is designed to stop low quality ‘spammy’ websites from ranking as well in the SERPs. The Panda algorithm, named after Google Software engineer Navneet Panda, first came on the scene in February 2011. It caused Panda-monium in the SEO world. (There we go, I said it). The latest update is a major release for Google, meaning that it is likely to be a data refresh as well as an algorithmic update.

Panda Patent

Google released a Google Panda patent (patent 8,682,892) on 28th September 2012. It was granted this year on the 25th March, 2014. The patent is a fairly wordy explanation of the algorithm that states that if a website fails to meet a certain quality threshold, then a modification factor will be applied and the site and it will subsequently be ranked lower in the SERPs.

Ranking search results

Invented by Navneet Panda and Vladimir Ofitserov Abstract

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for ranking search results. One of the methods includes:
Determining, for each of a plurality of groups of resources, a respective count of independent incoming links to resources in the group;
Determining, for each of the plurality of groups of resources, a respective count of reference queries;
Determining, for each of the plurality of groups of resources, a respective group-specific modification factor, wherein the group-specific modification factor for each group is based on the count of independent links and the count of reference queries for the group; and
Associating, with each of the plurality of groups of resources, the respective group-specific modification factor for the group, wherein the respective group-specific modification for the group modifies initial scores generated for resources in the group in response to received search queries.

How languages differ

Google Panda 4.0 affects different languages by different percentage. Google told Search Engine Land that the new Panda affects different languages to different degrees, impacting roughly 7.5% of queries in English.

Panda 4.0: not black and white

With the Panda 4.0 update announced at roughly at the same time as the Payday Loans 2.0 update, it is difficult to ascertain its effects yet. Google have almost certainly done this on purpose, making it harder for SEOs to reverse engineer the specifics of the Panda 4.0 update. As with any update though, there are certain key things that you can do to ensure that you are in the best position to be least affected by Google’s animal updates. These tips are listed below:

Top ways to avoid a Panda Penalty

...or any other Google penalty

Create quality content that is original, interesting and engaging for your audience. Make sure you keep your site regularly updated with fresh content that people will want to link to.
Make sure you have high quality backlinks from authority sources.
Don’t guest post on low quality sites using exact match anchor text for your ‘money’ terms.
Ensure that your site structure is technically sound. You can use our Found SEO Audit Tool to get a quick indication of some of the technical problems on your site’s homepage.

Panda 4.0 update affecting big brands?

Ebay’s sudden drop after Panda 4.0: Following the Panda 4.0 update, news broke quickly that eBay.co.uk’s search visibility had fallen dramatically, as shown below: Moz Marketing Scientist, Dr. Peter J. Meyers, showed that eBay had lost rankings on a number of keywords. Meyers said that eBay had lost rankings for a number of specific phrases, losing two top ten rankings for three separate phrases: “fiber optic christmas tree,” “tongue rings,” and “vermont castings”. Meyers stated that each of these was a category page on eBay. The site has also reported to have fallen out of the top ten for other phrases, such as: “beats by dr dre,” “honeywell thermostat,” “hooked on phonics,” “batman costume,” “lenovo tablet,” “george foreman grill,” and others.

The Panda effect: It’s not all bad news

Although the potential effects of Panda updates can seem brutal, it can also have the opposite effect. Alan Bleiweiss, an SEO consultant, illustrated this on Twitter by showing that the latest Panda 4.0 update had actually increased his visibility on his website. The image below shows the type of effect that a Google update of this nature can have.

Dr. Marie Haynes, self-described as "completely obsessed about Google Penalties and algorithm changes", also posted a photo on Twitter of one of her sites that had improved after the Panda 4.0 update. Showing that Google updates are not always bad news and can actually benefit some sites dramatically.

Prediction:

Big brands will continue to be affected throughout the year by Google’s Panda update Being a big brand in 2014 no longer means you are immune from Google’s updates. This year has seen an unprecedented number of big brands receiving Google penalties. Ebay could just be the latest. Big brands should be checking that their websites are updated and relevant for 2014 and beyond. They need to do a thorough analysis of their backlink profile and make sure their website is technically sound to ensure they are in the best possible position as soon as the next update comes around.

I've got a Google penalty, can I recover?

As always with a big Google update such as Panda 4.0, there will be winners and losers. Ebay will almost certainly recover as they are a big brand. It is somewhat tougher for smaller companies though, and it certainly is possible to recover from a Google Penalty as illustrated by Rapgenius.com, who got hit at Christmas, 2013 and have managed to recover this year.

Found’s client results after Panda 4.0

Following the Panda 4.0 update, Found have already seen some impressive increases in rankings for our clients. The graph below shows the increase in SEO visibility after the Panda 4.0 update for one of our clients. This is a client we took on with a history of on and off-site issues which had led to both algorithmic and manually penalties being applied. The site had been penalised by Panda 3.4 back in March 2012 and was then hit by penguin a month later which combined wiped out around 90% of organic visibility. Over the last year, links have been cleaned up, a manual penalty lifted and content has been rewritten to remove duplicated elements. Although visibility had been gradually increasing, Panda 4.0 has enabled the site to return to page 1 for many high-volume industry competitive terms, with rankings for some keywords jumping several pages overnight from pages 3 and 4.

What does Panda 4.0 mean for me?

Based on previous Panda updates, the key emphasis has been to provide a mechanism for Google to remove what it perceives as low quality ‘spam’ websites from the search rankings. With Panda 4.0, we expect to see a continuation of this trend but also a potential ‘softening’ of its heavy handed approach of the past. Unfortunately, it is still too early to assess the full impact of Panda 4.0, but it is likely to be good news for smaller websites that have been unduly affected by previous Google updates in the past.

The Google Algorithm Timeline for the SEO professional

Sean Flint — Fri, 20 Jun 2014 15:48:47 +0000

Have you ever needed a quick reference for major historical changes to Google algorithm updates? Maybe you’re investigating a massive drop off in SEO visibility way back in 2011? Or you've got a sneaky suspicion that the website was hit by a Panda or Penguin update? Yes there are other timelines out there, some of them very detailed. But what if you wanted something simple. Maybe something that you could print out (yes physical things exist in the digital world) and stick above your desk so that whenever you needed to check for a potential algorithmic penalty, there it was. Well if this sounds like something that you may need…read on. This Google algorithm timeline will make your life easier (unless it tells you that Penguin got you bad)…

DOWNLOAD

Voting opens for The Drum Search Top 50

Emily White — Tue, 10 Jun 2014 16:25:30 +0000

In celebration of the most influential people in SEO and search marketing, The Drum's editorial team has compiled a shortlist of 100 individuals making waves in the search space.

Our very own Managing Director, Tina Judic, has been shortlisted, a true testament to her hard work and leadership. Through her vision, Found has quadrupled in size, won countless awards and now manages strategically connected digital marketing campaigns – from search to social - that engage with target audiences, drive quality traffic and increase sales conversions.

Now the list is to be narrowed to a Top 50, with the readers of the Drum being asked to nominate up to three of these individuals before 20th June 2014. Check out the full list and vote for The Drum Search Top 50 here. Follow along with the conversation at #TheDrumSearch50.

Should companies be bidding on their brand terms?

John Stuchfield — Thu, 12 Jun 2014 17:15:08 +0000

PPC is a precise science. Getting the best from your campaigns comes down to fine margins – and sometimes it’s the tiny tweaks that help you steal an advantage in the SERPs turf war. But PPC needn’t always be so fiddly. Bidding on your own brand name is a savvy strategy regardless of your position in the organic results. It is also quite easy to implement and promises compelling benefits. Rewards include more click-throughs, higher-quality leads and increased sales conversion. Brand name ads can even lift the performance of unrelated campaigns across your account. Give us five minutes to explain.

What do we mean by bidding on your brand name?

Simple. Running a PPC campaign with your brand name as the keyword. At first the strategy may seem odd, particularly if you’re ranking well in the organic listings. Detractors often say that it’s a waste of money. Or that it will damage your organic traffic. Or that it’s an exercise in narcissism. Yet the benefits of bidding on your own brand name have been proven many times over.

6 reasons for bidding on brand terms

Your brand is the real deal. Prove it to your searchers.

If you already rank number one in the organic listings for your brand name, it may seem counterintuitive to run a paid campaign for the same term. But paid ads are a great way to enhance brand exposure, reassure searchers of your brand identity and encourage click-throughs to your website. Two listings at the top of the SERPs are better than one. Most people interact with search results above the fold – rarely scrolling down the page. As such the top of the SERPs is prime real estate and you should own as much of it as possible. Paid ads will also push any negative information about your brand – such as poor customer reviews – down the page, making it less likely to be discovered by your target audience.

Stop competitors muscling in

It’s becoming common for wily brands to bid on their competitors’ brand terms to hijack their traffic. Failure to secure a paid ad on your brand name could lead to a situation where your plain old organic listing is preceded by a competitor’s eye-catching ad. It’s like inviting your rivals to pitch their products and services outside your flagship store or head office. So do you sit back as your competitors try to divert people away from engaging with your brand? Or do you fetch a hulking great pitchfork and force them off your turf? Exactly. Bidding on your brand name reinstates you at the top of the pile, where you belong. Your quality score will see that you soon outrank your competitors on your brand name. Organic listings limit your flexibility to express yourself in the SERPs. There is – after all – only so much you can do with meta tags. Paid ads give you a lot more control, allowing you to create specific messaging to grab user attention and encourage click-throughs. Running a last-minute online sale? Push traffic to the relevant landing page. Opening a new store in Bristol? Make sure searchers in the Westcountry know about it. It sure beats trying to manipulate your meta tags and then waiting for weeks while Google indexes the changes.

Branded campaigns can boost the performance of your other ads

Given the high relevancy of branded terms, your branded campaigns will likely have the highest quality scores in your account (9 or 10). These will offset keywords with lower quality scores and ultimately bring up the average quality score of your entire account. And because quality score is impression weighted, the more search volume your brand has, the greater effect this will have across your campaigns.

Conversion is high and easy on the wallet

Brand terms are usually cheap to bid on due to the lack of competition and high quality scores (from website relevancy etc). Conversion rates are generally high too. The searcher is aware of your brand - and actively seeking you out. That promises quality traffic and pre-qualified leads that are further into your sales funnel than people who have found you after searching for something more generic. It adds up to an extremely cost-effective PPC strategy, which is why lots of brands do it.

The proof in the pudding

Here are some figures that provide a more tangible idea of how branded campaigns could impact your search performance. These numbers show the share of traffic from a selection of branded search queries. EasyJet: 73.30% share - Organic, no PPC Ryanair: – 76.08% share - Organic, no PPC Just Eat: – 78.93% share - Organic, no PPC Red Letter Days: 91.11% share – Organic & PPC In the examples above, failure to bid on brand name in competitive search spaces cost an average of 16% of clicks. That could have a dramatic impact on search performance across an average month. With paid search on:

120,000 total clicks
60,000 paid clicks
60,000 organic clicks

With paid search off:

100,800 total clicks
0 paid clicks
100,800 organic clicks

No paid search, no paid clicks. All but 16% (19,200 clicks) will come from organic instead. This 16% loss may not sound catastrophic, but consider the financial implications. With paid search on:

60,000 x £0.11 (Avg. CPC) = £6,600 spent

With paid search off:

0 x £0.11 (Avg. CPC) = £0 spent

How to turn £6,600 into £71,040

Brand and brand generic clicks convert at 5%. So it’s reasonable to suggest that a loss of 19,200 clicks would cause a loss of 960 sales per month. An average order value of £74 would mean a financial loss of £71,040 per month. Or to put it another way, spending £6,600 on a branded PPC campaign could bring in an extra £71,040 per month. And that’s before you consider the impact of customer loyalty, the lifetime value of your customers and the long-term implications of losing customers to your competitors.

Let’s wrap up with a quick conclusion

Branded PPC campaigns make sense logically and financially. It shows you to be a reputable brand, encourages click-throughs, allows you to entice your audience with flexible messaging, brings you qualified leads and can stop your competitors stepping on your turf. Best of all it needn’t blow your budget.

PerformanceIN - INside the Boardroom: MD at Found, Tina Judic

Emily White — Mon, 23 Jun 2014 09:09:13 +0000

In the latest of PerformanceIN's INside the Boardroom, Found MD Tina Judic looks at the digital industry's shift towards greater marketing integration, evaluating marketing automation and questions whether it's really what it is cracked out to be:

Our industry’s shift towards greater marketing integration sees many of us reflecting on, and refining, the systems, structure and service we are providing our merchant clients. As our world becomes even more connected and the multi-screen revolution brings even greater cross-device, cross-channel, any time, any place buying journeys, we’re equally compelled to ensure our marketing approach is not only hard working but entirely relevant and inspiring to generate valuable sales and leads.

Google authorship photos removed from SERPs

Tom Brand — Fri, 27 Jun 2014 14:36:58 +0000

As Google cleans up their search result design to better suit mobile devices, Google Authorship gets a face lift - literally. For the most part, search results on Google will no longer include an author's profile image and circle count. This change will affect Google News slightly differently, with small author head shots appearing beside a larger news photo snippet. This change was just announced on Wednesday. However, as Moz Senior Content Astronaut Cyrus Shepard discovered, as of yesterday, traditional authorship snippets had already declined by 10%. [caption id="attachment_12511" align="alignright" width="301"] Click to download our FREE guide.[/caption]

This new layout does not mean Authorship is no longer an important move for bloggers and publishers. In fact, the value of linking your content to your verified profile is apparently still there. As Google's John Mueller explains, "Our experiments indicate that click-through behavior on this new less-cluttered design is similar to the previous one."

As Shepard points out, even though visually results lack the head shot, there are still many valid reasons for verifying:

Authorship still exists
The names of authors still appear in the SERPs
Rankings aren't influenced by these changes
Enhanced snippets still require Google+ verification

For more information, read Shepard's full article "Google Announces the End of Author Photos in Search: What You Should Know".

10 Point Inbound Marketing Campaign Checklist

Jadon Stewart — Mon, 14 Jul 2014 08:06:31 +0000

A well-executed inbound marketing campaign has the ability to bring in new customers who were originally hard to reach and unaware of your company and products. Inbound marketing is also a cost effective way of reaching a large number of people without having to spend a fortune on advertising or sales forces. Below are ten check points to guide you along the process of setting up an inbound marketing campaign to boost your customer base and most hopefully drive revenue.

1. Identify your campaign audience

The first place to start is to get a clear idea of who your campaigns audience is. Having a clear view of your audience will allow you to tailor your message directly to them and increase your chances of them converting into a customer. Your audience will have an impact on what your offer is, your branding, copywriting and design. It is important to note that your audience isn’t always your end user. If you are promoting children’s clothes for example, then your audience is parents and not the child, if you are promoting an elderly home, your audience might be the children of the person requiring a home. Additionally, this is crucial to take into consideration for websites that offer products or services that might be purchased as gifts. Recent research on one of our ecommerce clients highlighted that much of their traffic came from females for a male focused site. Not only were these figures surprising but the conversion rate for females in contrast to males was much higher as well.

2. Create your offer and landing pages

Creating your offer is all about providing something of value to your target audience. The value has to be greater than the cost to your potential customer if you want a fair chance of converting them. If your aim is to generate leads then you will need to come up with an incentive for someone to opt-in, this might be a free whitepaper, e-book or template. If you are selling a product then you need to consider benefits, features and pricing. A large factor of whether your offer will be accepted by the customer is due to your landing page. It should instantly capture your viewers’ attention and use compelling copy and images to engage and sell the viewer on your offer. The most effective way of creating high converting landing pages is to A/B test them against each other and consistently try to come up with a higher converting page.

3. Set your goals and benchmarks

Every successful campaign needs to have goals or benchmarks that you aim to achieve. Not knowing what you want to achieve makes it impossible to know if the campaign was a success or not and therefore if it was a worthwhile use of time and money. A popular format for goal setting is to use the SMART formula in which your goals should be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely. SMART goals may include getting 1000 email opt-ins over one month or 20 customers purchasing your offer each day.

4. Build your automation and nurturing flows

Once someone has taken you up on your offer, then it is important to maintain contact with them and nurture them into a long term and valued customer. Using methods such as email marketing can make the entire process automated allows you to send regular emails to upsell them or make a purchase. Your follow up marketing shouldn’t necessarily always be about selling. Rather, it can be a channel to offer them more value and information and therefore keeping your company in the forefront of your customers mind.

5. Marketing the offer

You might have the greatest offer in the world and a stunning landing page however if nobody knows about it then it’s of no use. There are various effective ways to drive traffic to your landing page but a couple of quick win options that come to mind would be;

Write a blog post - Make your readers aware of the latest offer with strong call to actions within the post that really sell the latest promotion.
Review existing content - Reviewing popular and older onsite content for opportunities is a great way to make your audience mindful of your latest promotions. There could be blog posts, tools, or other forms of content that attract a lot of long tail traffic and directly correlate to your latest promotion in regards to subject matter. This would be a great time to add a call to actions to these pages to further support in your marketing efforts whilst simultaneously updating existing content which search engines love.

Other options for marketing the latest offers include small homepage banners and pop-up call to actions such as modals.

[caption id="attachment_14042" align="alignnone" width="280"] Click to download our FREE guide.[/caption]

6. Share it on social media

Your social media audience have already demonstrated interest in your company and many of them are probably already customers which makes it an ideal place to promote your offer and blog post. If someone already has a relationship with you through social media, then there is probably a higher chance that they will make a purchase from you. It’s important to integrate strong call to actions, hashtags, shortened URL’s (using Bit.ly) and relevant target influencers within the social updates to further amplify the reach.

7. Optimise with relevant keywords

Making sure your campaign is search engine friendly will allow people to find your offer well after you have finished promoting it. Including long tail keywords to your blog posts and landing page will give your pages a better chance of appearing in search engines for relevant phrases.

8. Consider paid search and other channels

Sending viewers through organic search results and tapping into your social media followers has its limitations. Pages take time to rank and certain keywords are fiercely competitive while nobody has an endless supply of social media followers. Two ways to instantly get more targeted eyeballs on your content is through paid and native advertising. While you have to pay every time someone clicks on your ad or content, those people will have a degree of interest in your offer as they click on your advertisement. The native advertisement campaign you are running could quite simply be promoting the blog post you have just written which would in turn link through to the landing page. The most popular networks currently in the UK are Taboola and Outbrain who offer their own unique forms of targeting. Other channels may include advertising on social media sites or running display campaigns. One great advantage of paying for customers is that you can determine what channels are cost effective and which ones aren’t. Stick with the channels that provide a positive return and cut costs on channels that aren’t effectively meeting their outlined performance metrics.

9. Track Your URLs

URL tracking will give you a good idea where the highest converting traffic is coming from. By setting up and tracking campaigns separately you can determine what the most effective ways of promoting your offer are. It is imperative that you focus on performance, which means attention to conversions per campaign and not heavily focusing on traffic numbers as different traffic sources will have different conversion performance metrics.

10. Reporting

Through the use of analytics tools and compiling data, you can now determine if the campaign was a success or not. Hopefully your campaign was a real success and provided a good return on investment, then you might decide to scale up the campaign. For unsuccessful campaigns you may want to continue tweaking all of the above until you start to see positive statistics and engagement or simply choose to discontinue the campaign and take those learnings to influence your decisions more directly on your next inbound marketing campaign.

Found Shortlisted for Dadi Awards 2014

Nasreen Cullen — Fri, 18 Jul 2014 15:57:18 +0000

We are excited to announce that Found have been shortlisted not once, not twice, but four times at this year's Dadi Awards. The Dadis bring together the best of the digital industry to recognise and celebrate their achievements and will be hosted later this year at the Park Plaza in Westminster. Our work with Canterbury of New Zealand and Randstad is shortlisted for Best Digital Media Strategy, Anglian Home Improvements for Best Use of Affiliate Marketing and Randstad for Best Recruitment Website, App or Campaign. We are proud to be recognised for this work alongside some of the leading agencies in the industry and look forward to the event later this year, which is guaranteed to be a fun evening for all involved.

SEO Experts React To Google Pigeon Algorithm Update

Jadon Stewart — Thu, 07 Aug 2014 12:33:59 +0000

I have to give it to them, Google are pretty dedicated when it comes to naming their major algorithmic updates after animals starting with the letter P. First we had the introduction of Panda back in February 2011, followed by the Penguin in April 2012 and now we have Pigeon. However, has this latest name been created by Google themselves or by online publisher Search Engine Land? It is in fact the latter. The following quote from veteran Barry Schwartz on the 25th July verifies this "Last night, Google released a pretty significant local search algorithm update. Google told us there was no internal name for the update, but now that we see that it was fairly significant, we decided to give it a name: Pigeon."

What is Pigeon?

All Google have shared to date is that the new local search algorithm ties deeper into the online search capabilities, which covers numerous ranking signals not to mention features such as synonyms, spelling correction, Knowledge Graph, and more. Furthermore, Google have said that algorithm enhancements have been made in relation to their location and distance ranking parameters. One of the things that has been noted so far is that the rankings of local directories have improved as they are more likely to appear on the first page. This may in part have been a response to businesses like Yelp complaining that they were being unfairly pushed out of the results. [caption id="attachment_14162" align="alignnone" width="630"] Click to view Google's street map view of humans with pigeon masks on.[/caption] If anything, this update just reiterates the importance of submitting a website that utilises local search to local/business directories for the NAP (name, address phone) citations they give you. These citations have an impact on local search rankings in a similar fashion to links on the regular listings. With the local map packs being reduced, things are going to get more competitive, meaning that this is more of an advantage than before. Google haven't yet shared any details about if and when the update would roll out more widely in other countries and languages. What we do know is that Pigeon, as we're calling it for now is only impacting US English results at present.

Industry view on Pigeon

MiShop.local are specialists in local listing optimisation, so we recently asked them for their feedback on this update. Here is what Dave Whatley, their Managing Director had to say about it at all. "The results seem to vary depending on search terms and between sectors. Local search results would typically have been displayed with two or three organic results appearing above the ‘7 pack’ and with a mixture of local listing sites and local business websites underneath. Since Pigeon, early indications are that good local listing sites and local social sites are appearing above local businesses results and the ‘7 pack’ has less prominence or is diminished in size. [caption id="attachment_13890" align="alignnone" width="324"] Click here to Download our free Google Algorithm Timeline PDF[/caption] Local listing and local social sites with strong local SEO signals and authority may appear at the top of SERPs for local search and in doing so, generate more direct traffic. The implications are that it is now even more important that a business listing on these sites is correct, consistent and contains rich information. Pigeon actually strengthens the case for building your local listings. A business should be listed on the bigger sites that are appearing above the traditional local results. It is too soon to say what the long term impact of Pigeon will be on local search, however, in our opinion, the fundamentals of Google local search will remain the same; they are about the distance, relevance and prominence of a business and how it is listed in local directories."

What are experts tweeting about Pigeon?

Dave Naylor Mr Naylor doesn't go into too much depth with his own personal view but has begun to realise how much the name "Pigeon" is really sticking with his fellow search professionals and clients.

Google Update Nicknamed ‘Pigeon Update’ Makes Major Local Search Changes http://t.co/yW31ifw19C via @davenaylor — Dave Naylor (@DaveNaylor) July 30, 2014

Barry Schwartz On 1st August Barry and the Roundtable team reported on a refresh of the update (Pigeon 1.1) only a week after the initial update. However, Google's feedback was that they had nothing to say it's likely they won't provide future details on changes on the local search algorithm.

Earlier today, Google Gives No Comment On Pigeon Updates http://t.co/kdj6jlItwP — Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) August 5, 2014

Danny Sullivan Danny tweeted one of Barry Schwartz posts explaining how Expedia managed to wriggle their way into Google's local carousel results for the phrase "New York Hotels" even though they are not a hotel. Google have recently changed the companies local listing category from travel to the "corporate headquarters" category. Over time this should fix the current issue.

Expedia Becomes A New York City Hotel After Google’s Pigeon Local Update by @rustybrick http://t.co/yH547CZJ8a — Search Engine Land (@sengineland) July 30, 2014

Summary

The key takeaways from this update are as follows;

The new local search algorithm ties deeper into the online search capabilities
Location and distance ranking parameters will benefit from algorithm enhancements that have been made
Google have not officially confirmed a name for the update themselves
The rankings of local directory sites such as Yelp have improved as a result
The update currently only affects US English search phrases
Just as much significance should be placed on aligned citations and NAP details as they have done prior to the update
Google have not confirmed that there has already been a refresh of algorithm update a week after its launch

Google Announces HTTPS as a Ranking Factor

William Nye — Tue, 19 Aug 2014 16:54:27 +0000

On the 6^th of August Google publicly announced the introduction of HTTPS as a ranking signal, providing webmasters with a real incentive to ensure greater security for their users. Despite Google’s Matt Cutts identifying website encryption as an important trend for 2014, this update still came as a surprise to many within the SEM industry. Not in the least part because Google explicitly referenced something as a ranking signal – a relatively rare occurrence. Although the announcement of HTTPS as a ranking signal was relatively out of the blue, Google has long expressed a commitment to making the web a safer place for its users. In recent years it has made great strides in encrypting the majority of its own services, including gmail, Google drive and even the search results themselves – leading to the emergence and rise of the dreaded keyword data “not provided”.

What is HTTPS?

In simple terms HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) provides a layer of encryption between a user’s device and a website, preventing private data from being accessible to third parties. This distinguishes it from a regular HTTP connection, where data can be read by every server that it flows through. The benefits of this are twofold: Authority – The presence of HTTPS can help reassure users that they are accessing the correct website. Security – Greater user security through the encryption of private data.

What is SSL?

SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) refers to the type of security technology that creates an encrypted link between two machines – typically the web server and a browser. This link safeguards the information and data passed between the web server and browsers ensuring that it remains private.

How does the algorithm work?

In the week following the announcement of HTTPS, a number of questions have already been posed to Google by individuals keen to better understand how this algorithm works. Google’s John Mueller provided some more information in a recent webmaster hangout, revealing several important details: The algorithm works at a URL level – Rather than viewing a site in its entirety, this update works at a URL level, meaning that websites using SSL checkouts will not see ranking benefits without changing to site wide implementation. The update runs independently & in real time – Unlike updates like Panda which refreshes on a monthly basis and Penguin which is manually processed, this algorithm runs in real time and completely independently. This will be well received by many businesses who have been waiting almost 10 months for a Penguin refresh and may have feared that they would have to endure lengthy waiting periods to see any benefit from investing in HTTPS.

Should All Websites Go HTTPS?

In its official announcement, Google made the point of describing HTTPS as a “lightweight signal”, emphasising the greater importance of other factors like high quality content. As such webmasters shouldn’t feel that they have to make this change immediately and should weigh up the potential benefits on a site by site basis. For businesses that deal with financial or other types of confidential data, implementing HTTPS may be more of a priority because of the more direct relationship between user security, trust and website transactions. Others may not prescribe the same worth to its introduction, in which case, considering it in feature website builds may be a more appropriate reaction. Within the past week the rush to install HTTPS has already caused issues for a number of websites, including theguardian.com which incorrectly configured its security certificate. This resulted in the website displaying a warning message to users which most likely had a negative impact that far outweighed any potential ranking benefits. (image credit: sempost) This example serves as a perfect precautionary tale in its own right and re-emphasises the importance of considering all of the possible issues that can arise from large-scale technical changes.

To help websites avoid common mistakes Google has actually provided a list of basic tips, these are:

Decide the kind of certificate you need: single, multi-domain or wildcard certificate
Use 2048-bit key certificates
Use relative URLs for resources that reside on the same secure domain
Use protocol relative URLs for all other domains
Check out our site move article for more guidelines on how to change your website’s address
Don’t block your HTTPS site from crawling using robots.txt
Allow indexing of your pages by search engines where possible. Avoid the noindex robots meta tag.

(Source: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/https-as-ranking-signal.html)

Websites already using HTTPS can also test their implementation with the Qualys Lab tool.

What are the experts tweeting about HTTPS?

Google Announce HTTPS Is A Ranking Factor http://t.co/2zx9029RbO via @davenaylor — Dave Naylor (@DaveNaylor) August 7, 2014

have already started getting the "update my link to https" email spams. people in a rush to shift & breaking old links #yuck — aaron wall (@aaronwall) August 12, 2014

Twitter Outranks Me After HTTPS Migration http://t.co/N2lX4jDS7r — Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) August 19, 2014

Takeaways

HTTPS is now a publicly announced ranking factor, although its importance is relatively minor.
The decision to implement HTTPS should be made on a site by site basis.
Care should be taken in implementation to prevent any technical issues that might impact on a websites organic visibility and traffic.

Google Shopping; Top Tips & Performance Pitfalls

Emily Cole — Fri, 05 Sep 2014 10:44:05 +0000

PPC would long be a thing of the past if it wasn’t for Google’s ever-changing Adwords’ features. Fast forward from a special announcement in May 2013 to today, and yes, you’ve guessed it, the Google Shopping transition is well-and-truly underway. This hot-topic switchover between Product Listing Ads to Google Shopping has resulted in PPC experts and marketers alike revelling in the bundles of benefits that the new campaign default offers. Google wants to display your products and services as if they were a storefront, and the focus?...Products, Performers, and Competition. But albeit the host of advantages that this new shopping model brings, it is very easy to slip up. Let’s discuss…

PLAs vs. Google Shopping Campaigns

First let us understand the key differences between PLAs and Google Shopping Campaigns before we dive into the real nitty gritty about how to use these enhanced features in all their glories.

Old PLA Campaigns	New Google Shopping Campaigns
Merchant Feed Centre	Advanced Product Inventory
Access the feed where you can only search by product name.	Browse through your merchant feed based on brand name, item ID, product type, and many more to create product groups at a highly granular level.
Competitive Metrics	Competitive Metrics
View Impression share data only.	View benchmark CTR and CPC data to provide insight for making own account bid changes.
Ad Groups	Product Groups
A more basic targeting which matches a user’s search term with the product in the merchant feed.	More sophisticated product targeting allowing you to assign specific attributes to a product group. They also allow you to exclude products that you don’t want to show in Google search.

Tips For a Happy Shopper

Now we have established our basic differences (is it safe to say we could write a list as long as our arm), now let’s focus on some Found top tips for a successful Google Shopping campaign.

Tip 1: Up-to-date, high quality product data

Nobody likes things which are “so last year!” You should apply the same cliché to your product data. Your ad performance parallels the data which is in your merchant centre feed. So to create a seamless shopping experience, ensure that the user sees the same information in your ads to what is available on your website. There is no good in advertising products which were last season’s stock, that are now out of stock. This will result in wasted clicks, and wasted spend. Be accurate with your feed, and ensure you are making updates every time product lines are being updated, added to or removed. And ‘quality over quantity’ is arguable. The volume of products in your merchant feed is unlimited, so ensure that the products’ information are of as high quality as possible.

Tip 2: Promote your very best products

It has all become very sophisticated. More product targets do mean more decisions to make, so break out these targets to focus on your top performers. I am not suggesting throwing all your eggs into one basket. It can be very easy to soley focus on optimising one product group, but this will mean you are wasting spend on low performers when you could be utilising your budgets on product categories that drive more traffic and more conversions. Be smart. Judge this on a case-by-case basis. Every account will perform very differently, so use your historical PLA data to help you make these decisions.

Tip 3: Boost bids on top performers

That’s right, boost your bids on top performing items, brands & categories. With Google Shopping giving you the option to create product groups with up to 7 attributes, you can afford to be picky so make sure you align these with the top performers. And vice-versa, you may need to pull back on poor performers so just apply your existing knowledge of PPC bid adjustments and you’re sure to succeed.

Tip 4: Stay competitive

With Google Shopping’s new benchmarking data feature, advertisers now have the opportunity to compare performance of their campaigns to those of their competitors. But how you may ask? Well, competitive metrics for Google Shopping are now readily available through the Adwords interface.

Benchmark Click-Through Rate (CTR)

Paid advertisers always strive to be the front-runners, but it can be very easy to become lost in the pack. This is where benchmarking CTR can ensure you don’t lose out to your competitors. And it is simple enough to add this in to your performance figures, click ‘Customise’ below the ‘Product Group’ tab > and then ‘Competitive Metrics’ > and then get choosing. Much the same as generic campaigns, you can tailor your performance reports to suit your accounts’ needs. So if you see that your benchmark CTR is higher than your CTR for a particular product group, then you know competitors may be advertising a better offer (for example ‘Free Delivery’), or they could be bidding more aggressively to achieve premium position and have more competitive pricing. As a result, look for ways of increasing your CTR for that product group that will result in a higher CTR. (You will need to apply these changes yourself though, as I can’t do all the work…)

Benchmark Max Cost Per Click (CPC)

And from one bench to another, the benchmark cost per click can tell you how much competitors with similar products are bidding. Are you bidding significantly less than the benchmark? If you are, then consider raising your bids and testing whether this has a positive effect on your click-through rate. Much the same, if you are bidding largely above the benchmark, then maybe you are spending more than you need to still achieve premium position. CAUTION: Take these benchmark figures with a pinch of salt! After all, you know how your account performs, so increasing/decreasing bids drastically to meet the benchmark figures may not necessarily be the best approach to optimum performance. Again, look to historical performance data of your old PLAs to decide the extent to which you should change your bids.

Performance Pitfalls

PPC is like a double-edged sword. And although most reap the benefits of the new default campaign, others may fall short during the transition between PLAs to Google Shopping, so let’s take a look at why!

Pitfall 1: Do you have crossover inventory?

Some marketers may want to break their shopping out into multiple campaigns. This is absolutely fine to do, but be careful! If you divide one campaign by product and another by brand for example, you may risk crossover, meaning the same products falls into two campaigns. If you are bidding differently in these campaigns, Google will choose the highest bid, resulting in wasted targeting in your other campaign. Ensure that if you do set up multiple campaigns, you are not cross-matching through the product targets that were chosen when the campaigns were set up.

Pitfall 2: Have you taken an all-in-one approach?

Yes it may seem like less work to put all of your products into one product group, and for some accounts this may work if all your conversions come from one product. But what if you are bidding the same amount for both a top convertor and a non-convertor? You are essentially just wasting money on poor performing products, which could be better spent on those that convert. It may be worth testing breaking your campaign out based upon those that convert and those that don’t’. This way you will get a firm hold over what is working well and what is not. What’s more, the merchant inventory is available to sub-divide by levels such as brand and product type - so utilise this feature in a way that works for your account.

Pitfall 3: Are your advanced settings still supported?

With the new default campaign, there are also a few adaptations to advanced settings which could send you into a quandary.

One country campaign targeting. If you have previously targeted multiple locations through your PLAs and have tried to replicate this through your new Google Shopping campaign, you will fall short. Google Shopping only permits you to target one country per campaign. Try setting up multiple shopping campaigns which target different countries as a solution.

No automatic bidding. This feature is no longer supported through Google Shopping campaigns. Upon set-up you will only be able to select manual bidding. Don’t get caught out, the bidding is in your hands now!

The key takeaways:

Keep your product lists relevant, up-to-date and of high quality
Promote your very best products
Ensure you stay competitive using Google’s new benchmarking data

What’s more, ensure your campaigns do not fall short on basic best practises. Check your advanced settings are supported by the new campaign default, ensure you do not have product crossover across campaigns, and be thorough with your campaign’s structure - make it work for you, so that the end-user is able to experience the fruits of your labour.

So, whether your Google Shopping campaign has rocketed or plummeted since the switchover from PLAs to Google Shopping campaigns, it is not too late to make these quick fixes. Better get cracking!

Found's new Digital Strategy team

Tina Judic — Wed, 03 Sep 2014 16:33:09 +0000

Today I am pleased to announce that here at Found we have created a new Strategy team, tasked with maximising the cross channel insights across our clients' campaigns. In order to facilitate our growing list of clients and their more integrated and interdependent marketing requirements, we have created a new centralised Strategy team led by Ross Boyd and Greg Burgess. Found’s agility in constantly responding to market need means we are always best-placed for the ongoing delivery of enviable results for our clients’ marketing activity. This evolution towards more integrated thinking now sees us bringing together two of the sharpest digital marketing brains to provide a clever and synchronised strategic focus for Found. Greg Burgess, our Director of Digital Advertising, is a digital performance specialist who has been part of the digital marketing space for over seven years. Ross Boyd, who joined Found earlier this year, equally has an amazing wealth of project management, strategy and delivery experience. The synergy of their knowledge and experience means they have a very clear vision for how Found can assist advertisers in their quest for optimum campaign performance and, together, provide us with a formidable Strategy team. This new Found Digital Strategy team will facilitate the sharing and absorbing of insights from each marketing channel, ensuring that what is learnt in one area is strategically deployed in others. “Greater marketing integration is now a key industry focus and as the conductors for our clients’ key digital relationships with their customers, alongside the introduction of a whole host of new technologies and platforms from programmatic bidding to personalisation, we are perfectly poised to support clients looking to build even harder-working, interlocking campaigns. The new Found Strategy team uniquely ensures collaborative partnerships and innovative strategies are in place to deliver winning user experience across all of our clients’ online channels. With this focus, Found orchestrates clever omni-channel campaigns, extracting the insight from each channel’s data and uses it to further leverage each interaction of a customer’s buying journey.” Ross Boyd, Found’s Strategy Director. Shedstore, the UK’s leading online retailer of garden and outdoor buildings, alongside leading sportswear retailer Canterbury of New Zealand, are two such clients that have grasped the potential of interdependent thinking. Both have recently charged Found with driving full digital campaigns across their brands to not only engage with target audiences but also drive quality traffic and increase sales conversions. Fiona Ferguson, Digital Manager at Canterbury of New Zealand says: “By cleverly combining insight from across our spectrum of digital marketing channels, we have been able to build intuitive, inter-locked campaigns which target customers even more effectively. Found’s shrewd understanding of the different channels’ capabilities, plus its clever analysis and application of both data and performance from each, has taken our planning to another level and is most definitely reaping rewards.”

Found shortlisted for the 2014 UK Search Awards

Flo Bundy — Thu, 02 Oct 2014 16:25:21 +0000

We are thrilled to announce that Found have been shortlisted for three awards at this years' UK Search Awards, to be held at The Troxy on 6^th November. The awards are now in their fourth year and are open to companies based worldwide delivering work within the UK and celebrate the best in SEO, PPC, Digital and Content Marketing. This year we have been shortlisted for our work with both Dr. Martens and Shedstore for Best PPC Campaign. Having also made the shortlist for Best Agency, we feel honoured to be recognised amongst some of the leading agencies in the industry. Congratulations to everyone who made the shortlist and best of luck to you all!

Tina Judic recognised by both The Drum and The Digitals

Nasreen Cullen — Thu, 16 Oct 2014 08:53:18 +0000

We love being able to showcase our hard work and have it recognised within the industry via various award shortlists/wins. It is even more enjoyable to shout when one of our own is individually recognised for their contribution not only to Found but the industry itself. With that said, it is great news to announce that our very own MD Tina Judic has this week, been named twice as one of the UK digital industry’s leading professionals. Firstly, Tina is included in The Drum’s annual list of influential individuals, Drum Digerati. The Digerati, now in its second year, recognises the contribution made by 100 key players in the digital space. Along with this, Tina has also been shortlisted for the Senior Digital Leader category at this years Digital Awards organised by Econsultancy, celebrating the entire digital landscape. Tina says: “I live and breathe digital and being recognised by these two heavyweight institutions is very special. Together with my brilliant team at Found, our aim is to shine and be known for our focus on creativity, performance and delivery. It’s great to receive an industry thumbs-up to this focus.” The Digitals will be hosted on 12^th November at Tobacco Dock.

Moz webinar ‘Earning Links Through Audience Segmentation’

Chelsea Hall — Thu, 30 Oct 2014 11:36:37 +0000

Join Kirsty for her latest Mozinar!

On November the 4^th, Found’s Head of SEO, Kirsty Hulse, is going to be teaming up with industry heavyweights Moz to deliver the webinar ‘Earning Links Through Audience Segmentation’.

Here’s a brief description of what to expect.

SEO is evolving and the past few years have seen significant change in how we have to become an authority in Google’s eyes. In order to succeed with our SEO efforts, long term, we need to start creating engaging, user centric content to naturally earn our links and rankings. Essentially, we just need to be better brands and do better things. However this is no easy feat; content driven SEO can be difficult to quantify, is resource heavy and may not always yield the results we were hoping to achieve. Understanding who your audiences are, recognising how they behave online and tapping in to the core of your user behaviour enables us to create content that your users are likely to like. Kirsty Hulse will discuss a way in which to understand this in a Mozinar on Tues 4^th November.

So if you want to brush up on your content driven SEO skills, join Kirsty via this link here

Found Collaborates with Randstad to Create the Ultimate Sales Tool Kit

William Nye — Mon, 24 Nov 2014 14:23:36 +0000

Found recently had the opportunity to collaborate with Randstad, one of the world’s largest specialist recruiters, to create the ultimate sales tool kit. The piece is jam-packed with inspiring content to help sales people – and those aspiring to work in sales roles – get motivated, learn new techniques and become more efficient. To explore the tool kit simply hover over a box of your choice within the grid and click to expand the content. There are 10 different sections, including:

Randstad’s UK Sales Salary Survey 2014
Inspiring Sales Articles & Blog Posts
The Most Influential Salespeople
Influential Sales Speakers and Video Clips
Top 10 Free Sales Apps
Top 10 Sales Tools
The Most Influential Sales Movies
The Best Books for Sales Professionals
Motivational Sales Quotes
Sales Candidate Guide

Want to revolutionise the way you communicate your ideas and deliver game-changing consultancy? Check out the interactive content below:

Say Hello to Charles, Imogen & Laura

Chelsea Hall — Thu, 11 Dec 2014 15:39:13 +0000

Found is always on the look out for digital enthusiasts to join our growing team. We're thrilled to introduce three SEO champs that have come onboard!

Charles Ferrer

Junior SEO Executive

He's got the rhythm of a dancer and the suave moves of a real SEO-er. Charles 'stumbled' upon the world of SEO after splitting his degree in Media & Web-Development. When he isn't in the office immersed in his work, he's probably at the gym or catching up with good friends. Where do you call home? I've lived in Battersea all my life; famous for Battersea Park, Battersea Bridge and Battersea Dogs Home. Do you have any talents that we don’t know about? So have I told you that I’m a blue belt in Taekwondo? I've also represented Belgrave Harriers and Hercules Wimbledon Athletics (long distance events!), as well as having trained with the Wimbledon Junior Tennis Initiative. Biggest pet peeve? During my university days I hated flat mates who'd leave unwashed dishes for countless days until someone else needed to use them and had to do it themselves.

If you could eat one type of food for the rest of your life, what would it be?

I often get told off by my mum for eating eggs every day. Eggs and pickled gherkins - the combination sounds weird but actually tastes great. You need to try it!! How many languages do you speak？ Well aside from English, I can speak Ilocano, one of the many dialects spoken in the Philippines. I can also speak Bubble language (search it on Google), does that count too? What do you do for fun? I’m probably considered a family man - I love hanging out with my little nephews as it brings out the kid in me; especially when we hit the Nerf guns. However, the little rascals have a tendency to aim at my face. If you were a superhero, what would your special power be? I think my superpower would have to be time control. I would fast forward to the era where there are flying cars. That would solve my problem with the London underground at Clapham Common station (if you’ve seen the video of the people who have to cram themselves onto the trains in Japan then you will know what I mean). Favourite thing about London? I think it would have to be the diversity in food culture; I’m definitely a food addict to the core, and being in London opens the opportunity to try food from other cultures without actually leaving London, or better yet the UK. iOS or Android If you ask all my friends, then you would know how much of a gadget freak I am. I like both systems as they both have their pros and cons; however, coming from a development background, Android should probably be my answer.

Imogen Davies

Junior SEO Executive

It's true that Found love their interns and this was the case with Imogen. After impressing the team with her SEO skills & dedication during her internship, we just didn't want her to leave! Where do you call home? Although I was born in Hackney, I have always thought of Tonbridge as my hometown. When we moved down to Kent I was only 4 years old so I was always outside and eager to explore. I've made some great friends in Tonbridge and I’m still friends with some people I went to playschool with! Biggest pet peeve? I cannot stand slow walkers (unless they have a genuine excuse!). People that just dawdle along, take up the whole pavement, and have no concept of their surroundings really get on my nerves – I think it's my London roots showing through. Favourite thing about London. I love the city at night, I always have. All of the lights, reflections and somehow enchanting scenery makes for some of the best walks along the river. Plus I always think people are friendlier at night than they are in the hustle and bustle of the day, providing that you don’t go to the wrong areas! Do you have any talents we don’t know about? I have been told I make an excellent ‘Hold the Hangover’ meal (their words, not mine) consisting of tea, apple juice, a crispy bacon sarnie with cheese and hash browns inside, some baked beans on the side and occasionally an egg for good measure. If that doesn’t quite cut it then I can also get some pretty good speed on a pair of crutches, even going uphill. But I will need some practice if you are going to test me on it because I’ve not used them in about 6 years! How would you describe your music style? If you've seen my Spotify and iTunes playlists you would wonder if it was just one person’s account. I have a wide range of music that I listen to but anything with a good beat and some rhythm is likely to get me on the dance floor, or at least have me bobbing my head (subtly) on the train. Favourite guilty-pleasure TV show? I do like Desperate Housewives, I’m not that ashamed to admit it, and would always watch it if it was on. I guess it is really a good thing that it isn’t on Netflix otherwise I wouldn’t leave my house for days at a time. Describe the best weekend you've ever had so far. I have had so many good weekends it’s hard to pinpoint one that was truly spectacular. I recently graduated from university which was a brilliant weekend seeing everyone again and reliving the university life for one night. I saw Jamie T at Alexandra Palace on his comeback tour this year; I’ve seen the Red Hot Chili Peppers at Knebworth Park; I’ve been to V Festival; I’ve spent weekends in Paris, Madrid and Venice (which come to think of it was definitely my favourite holiday, and possibly weekend) to mention a few. Rumour has it that you’re a sport lover… I played football from the age of 5 or 6 years old for 10 years and won a good few trophies at various clubs. Unfortunately I badly damaged my ankle and it has never quite fully recovered, which set me back a lot and put me off returning fully to it, although I will still enjoy the occasional kick about when the chance arises. As well as football, I held the school record for a number of years for the furthest javelin throw in athletics and was a good 100m and 1500m runner – odd mix I know! I was always sporty as a child, and I’m fairly sure that was what drove my competitive streak. Twitter or Facebook? I have both a Twitter and a Facebook account. If I just want mindless entertainment I will choose Facebook over Twitter 9/10 times but if I want a bit more substance, and occasionally some insight into all things newsworthy, then I will call upon Twitter to keep me up-to-date.

Laura Morris

SEO Executive

When Laura's not busy making delicious cupcakes in her kitchen, she’s worried about giant sloths taking over the world. Find out more about our Rugby fan below. Hometown? Doncaster girl, of course! Rumour has it that you’ve been interviewed by 4 different TV channels in different countries. Tell us more! Technically, 4 different TV channels broadcast in 4 different countries. First time my brother and I were young and a French political party tried to interview my parents about Labour, but left with a soundbite of us being cute instead. Second, I went to Diwali in Leicester Square one year and was interviewed for an Indian TV documentary. Third and fourth were at the student protests in 2010. We went for a peaceful protest, but got stuck in the Milbank riot. We asked a nice policeman if we could leave before we got kettled and Sky News stopped us for an interview. We had a little debate on live TV with some guys in balaclavas, and then went on an eastern European TV channel. We then went home and watched Mean Girls. What do you do during your weekends? I’m often in Barcelona visiting my boyfriend or visiting friends in various places. I have also attended about 10 weddings this year, which is a ridiculous number! When I’m in London, I’m mostly catching up with friends or bake excessive amounts of cupcakes. We know you’re a Rugby fan. Who is your favourite team? Doncaster, obviously! And rugby league - the proper stuff. Favourite guilty-pleasure TV show? I don’t really have one – I guess my extreme Netflix viewing is more of my guilty pleasure. Why don’t you like sloths? Because they are terrifying in every way. Also, Google the prehistoric sloth Megatherium. Giant sloths - one day they will take over the world. If you were a bag of crisps, what flavour would you be? Prawn cocktail. Because, like me, they are unexpectedly vegetarian. Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings? I’m a big fan of both. I suppose it would have to be HP for sentimental value. Twitter or Facebook? Facebook for friends, Twitter for news. Is that cheating?

If you are interested in working at Found, check out our careers page for current vacancies or visit us on LinkedIn.

Found’s 2015 Digital Predictions

Tina Judic — Wed, 07 Jan 2015 11:12:17 +0000

Check out our FREE ebook for insight into some of the biggest trends we believe are set to hit digital marketing in 2015. Another year and another huge step forward has been taken in the world of digital. A year where Google gave us Pigeon, Facebook made Messenger mandatory, Quantcast acquired Struq, Google acquired Skybox Imaging and Apple acquired Beats Electronics, it’s been a busy one. And it’s not set to slow down in 2015. Whereas 2014 was the year when big data truly began powering performance, when content curation became embedded into the heart of strategies and where mobile truly stood up as a channel in its own right, 2015 will introduce true predictive search to the world, mobile marketing will hit acceleration mode and personalisation is set to explode! At Found, we have compiled a list of digital marketing trends that we think will hit the ground running in 2015. Click here to download our FREE Digital Predictions 2015 ebook. Contents

Single channel strategists will fade out – Luke Townsend, Creative Director
Brand experience will lead the way - Luke Townsend, Creative Director
Mobile advertising will hit acceleration mode - Tina Judic, Managing Director
Predictive search will read your mind - Kirsty Hulse, Head of SEO
Advertisers will fight for control - Greg Burgess, Director of Digital Advertising
The rise of persona targeting - Guy Thornton, Head of Paid Search
True personalisation is set to explode - Ross Boyd, Product & Strategy Director
Smart data will be the new big data - Tina Judic, Managing Director
Closing the loop will become a reality - Guy Thornton, Head of Paid Search

Found’s Digital Predictions 2015 ebook is free to read, share and download. Stay up-to-date by signing up for our newsletter.

Could you be our newest Founder and work with Richard, Lucinda and Greg?

Chelsea Hall — Fri, 08 May 2015 14:34:33 +0000

Found employs only the most talented, hard working and engaging individuals and we're always on the look out for fresh new Founders to join our team! Our HR Exec, Chelsea, looks into what makes a good Founder tick....so if you have a love for all things digital and can see yourself singing Abba with Lucinda, eating Tuna-Sashimi with Richard or advising Greg on a decent Korean BBQ restaurant in London, we could be the place for you. Meet three of our newest recruits,

Richard Lewis

SEO Executive

Where do you call home?

West Bergholt, my home village. It's near Colchester in Essex. There are wide open muddy fields with horses and sheep, the A12 and dial-up internet. Earlier on I went for walk in the mud and watched a beautiful sunset. Now I'm sat down with a cup of tea, ready to share my deepest secrets on the internet.

What is your favourite guilty pleasure TV show?

Antiques Road Show. I hope this doesn’t affect my dream of joining a street gang.

We can always count on you to brighten up the room with your smile, tell us the secret to true happiness.

If you could go back in history, who would you like to meet and why?

Great question! As a historian I’ll triple your answer! First, Charles Darwin, to see what he thinks of David Attenborough’s nature documentaries. I studied his life at uni. The shark jumping out of the water in slow-mo on Planet Earth would have thoroughly shaken his gentlemanly constitution. Then, Socrates so he can remind me that I know nothing. Last but by no means least, Genghis Khan, to see what he thinks about glow sticks. We could listen to some music together and have a chat. All this would be happening at the same time. In the fun zone. With Bill and Ted.

If you could eat one type of food for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Tuna Sashimi - raw sliced tuna. It's a daily habit I intend to take up after I get my wordpress blog to #1 for car insurance. Just you wait, Go Compare.

Your ideal weekend would be..

A theme park with no queues and unlimited rides; it’s also summer.

You tower over most of the Founders, would you mind telling us your height.

6' 5". This gives me less than 1 inch clearance from the overhead beams in the office. Overcoming the instinct to duck my head will be a long process. At least those low hanging Christmas decorations in the fun zone have been taken down. Minefield.

iOS or Android?

Android. When things break, I like to take the back off and pretend I’m an electrician.

Lucinda Southall

Client Services Account Manager

Where do you call home?

I’m a London girl through and through - I grew up in East Sheen (close to Richmond Park).

A rumour has been going round that you've once eaten a hippo... what?

Not only Hippo! I’ve also tried Warthog, Impala and Wildebeest when I was travelling around Africa.

If you could pick up a new talent, what would it be?

Definitely singing. I like to sing a lot, sadly other’s don’t like it quite as much…

We know you love travelling, if you could travel anywhere, where would you go next?

I’d love to go to so many places - I can’t choose one! Top of my list at the moment are: Argentina, Bali, Cuba and Mexico (oh and Nekker Island ;) ) .

As a self-proclaimed foodie, please share with us your favourite place to eat out in London.

This is a tough one as there are so many amazing restaurants in London! If I had to pick a favourite, it would be The Shed in Notting Hill. The ‘Lamb Chips’ should be on everyone’s bucket list as a must-try!

Your favourite guilty pleasure karaoke song is..

Anything by Abba, but Voulez Vous would be my first choice!

Twitter or Facebook?

Facebook every time. 140 characters are not enough for a chatterbox like me!

Greg Nye

Junior Content Executive

Where do you call home?

Bexleyheath - a small town in South East London with very few noteworthy features. However, if you’re partial to a good Wetherspoons and a spot of ten pin bowling, I’d wholeheartedly recommend a visit.

Biggest pet peeve.

Corporate Jargon or ‘buzzwords’. Words like ‘scalable opportunity’, ‘synergy’, ‘ballpark figure’, ‘quick-wins’, ‘ideation’ etc. I’m not sure who coins these neologisms, but I always seem to associate them with a ‘David Brent’ kind of figure. What’s worrying is, since graduating, some of these words have started to slide into my vocabulary and I hate it!

Favourite TV show.

Probably The Wire. It’s just so consistently good. With most TV shows there are one or two series which have flaws or loose ends, but, in my opinion, The Wire is almost faultless and is very much a modern American epic.

A country you’ve visited and would love to return again.

I stayed with some friends in South Korea last year which was a real eye-opening experience. I spent most of my time in and around Seoul so it would be great to see more of the country. I’ve heard areas in the South such as Busan are pretty cool, so I’ll definitely have to return one day. Also, I still haven’t managed to find a decent Korean BBQ restaurant in London yet, so that’s another reason to go back.

Rumour has it, that you’re a very talented young man…

Really? Perhaps I’ve given a false impression of myself… I think my interests and hobbies are quite varied but I don’t think I’ve quite had the skill or tenacity to really earn a ‘talented young man’ accolade. I’ve always enjoyed playing rugby, I play a bit of piano and I’m quite passionate about literature, but I don’t take these hobbies too seriously.

Would you consider yourself a cat or a dog person?

I’m still convinced cats are arrogant and self-important creatures. I am definitely more of a dog person.

Twitter or Facebook?

Each has its own advantages but I suppose I probably tend to use Facebook more. I like the fact that it has helped document a large part of my adolescence and university life, so I can scroll back and revisit anything from questionable teenage haircuts to daring fresher’s week fancy dress outfits.

Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings?

I think The Lord of the Rings has had a much larger influence on fantasy fiction and Peter Jackson really nailed it with his adaptation. Also, Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) blanked me in the street once so that has influenced my decision greatly.

Can you see yourself working alongside Richard, Lucinda and Greg? If you’re interested in experiencing life as a Founder then take a look at some of our existing vacancies. If there’s nothing there that quite fits with your talents but you know you’d be a fantastic addition to our team, please get in touch – we’d love to hear from you.

Amazon Advertising & Pay Per Click – It’s A Recipe for Success

Kadriye Elekler — Tue, 24 Feb 2015 15:03:50 +0000

Founded in 1994, as an online bookstore, Amazon now covers everything from TVs to your kitchen sink (literally). Fast forward two decades and PPC enthusiasts are beginning to reap the benefits of a pay-for performance marketplace – a booming one at that! With advertising prospects on both mobile and desktop devices, Amazon is the perfect platform for paid advertisers keen to broaden their shopping horizons. So if you have exhausted your current Google Shopping efforts and fancy a hand at something new, then Amazon’s Advertising Platform is the place to go! And here’s how it all works… There are three core ways to promote your products on Amazon; these being:

Amazon Product ads
Amazon Sponsored ads
Amazon Display & E-commerce ads

1.) Amazon Product Ads Amazon Product Ads are aimed to provide customers with access to products available on external websites. This means Amazon allows sellers to promote their products on a cost per click basis. Advertising with Amazon using Product Ads is really simple; sellers list the products they wish to promote and set their daily budget and cost per click bids (just like a Google Shopping Campaign). Product categories can then either be built manually, in bulk or via a FTP server to upload to Amazon. Ad formats When building your product ads, you must ensure competitive product titles – mostly consisting of keywords that have high search volume, descriptive content and a 500x500 pixel image. Amazon will display these ads to customers when they search for these (or related) products and will send customers to a seller’s website once they have clicked on the ad. Customers who are interested in purchasing the seller’s products will then complete the transaction directly on the seller’s website. It is important to note that cost per click bids and conversion rates will differ depending on the product categories listed on Amazon. But in general, you can expect to see CPCs ranging anywhere from £0.10 up to £1.35 per click. Despite this Amazon revolution, Amazon Product Ads are currently only available on Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr and Amazon.com. How it works 1.) Sellers upload their Product Feed to Amazon (Amazon provides a template spreadsheet) 2.) Sellers set their daily budget and cost per click bids (the same as a standard search campaign) 3.) Consumers see the product ads on Amazon – these can appear on the detail pages, search results and even in the ‘buy box’ 4.) Customers click on the ad and they go through to the product page on the seller’s website 5.) The seller pays based on the cost-per-click model 6.) Customers purchase products from the seller’s website 2.) Amazon Sponsored Ads Amazon Sponsored Ads allow sellers to promote products they have listed on Amazon.co.uk – giving far more control and visibility than previously available through standard product listing. This works in much the same way as Google AdWords in that targeting is based on keywords and a CPC bidding model. So ads will only show when a keyword directly matches a customer’s search query. Sellers need to set a daily budget and competitive bids to run Sponsored Ads. As with all forms of paid advertising, the more competitive the bids are, the more likely the ads will be displayed when customers search for similar, or related, search terms on Amazon. How are Sponsored Ads different from Product Ads? With Product Ads, Amazon send customers through to the seller’s actual website where the product is then purchased (or not). With Sponsored Ads, the purchase is completed on the Amazon website. In addition to this, Amazon only display Sponsored Ads if the products are eligible in Amazon Buy Box. How it works 1.) Sellers upload their product inventory – Amazon provides a free desktop tool, as well as further web-based tools so this can be completed quickly 2.) Sellers then select the products they want to advertise, assign relevant keywords (maximum of 1,000 per product/ad) and set daily budgets and bids 3.) Ads are then shown alongside search results 4.) Shoppers who click on the ads are then taken through to the details page where the product is listed 5.) Shoppers can then purchase the product directly on Amazon A little bit more about set-up On Amazon, there are only two types of campaign settings to choose from - Manual & Automatic. Automatic: Sellers set up a daily budget, start date and targeting parameters to create a campaign. They then create new ad groups and set a default bid. Amazon automatically matches customers’ search terms with relevant products. Manual: Largely the same as automatic targeting, except sellers manually add their own keywords to determine which ads show. 3.) Amazon Display & E-commerce Ads Amazon Display Advertising allows sellers to target their products to customers over a wider reach, across all devices and through multiple ad formats. These ads run across multiple platforms such as Onsite, AAP, on Amazon Devices including Mobile and Kindle, and also Amazon`s operated sites amazon.com, DPReview, Quidsi and IMDB. To set up Amazon Display Ads sellers have to contact Amazon directly and confirm the products they would like to promote. Typical Amazon Display Ad formats include:

Customer review ads
Add to cart ads
Coupon ads
Showcase ads

Amazon Advertising Tips In order to advertise with Amazon, sellers must have at least 3–6 months of selling history and must offer excellent delivery options and customer service. It is also crucial that the advertiser can guarantee product availability to be able to handle high levels of customer demand. With increasing competition on the Amazon Marketplace, sellers must ensure they stand out from the crowd. Let’s take a look at some top tips for helping to increase your position on Amazon’s search results. Product Title: Product descriptions and feature bullet points are not indexed in Amazon search pages, therefore the product name and titles must include the brand name, search terms and event keywords. Product Images: Amazon only allows product images on a plain white background without any watermarks or text. Having at least five to six high quality pictures of a product from various angles will enhance the customer’s experience and ensure higher CTRs and conversion rates. Product Content: Keep it short but sweet. Make sure top product features are included and don’t forget to point out the key benefits of the product. Product content is a limited section on Amazon, so use this space to convince customers to buy, buy, buy! Customer Reviews: Customer reviews are hugely important for Amazon to rank a seller’s position on the search result pages. Shoppers now read more and more reviews before completing a purchase, so better reviews equals more trust in the brand and ultimately higher conversion rates. According to Amazon, only 10-20% of buyers leave comments. One of the best ways to convince customers to leave reviews is to contact them one to two weeks after the transaction date and kindly ask them to rate the service and product. But this is a different kettle of fish entirely, and one best left for another day. Summary Amazon is one of the world’s biggest marketplaces, allowing sellers to increase their sales volume as well as introducing their brands and products to potential new customers. Whether on mobile or desktop devices, Amazon continues to improve its advertising programmes in the industry. If you are willing to try out new avenues, drive more traffic and generate more sales, it is very likely that one of the Amazon PPC advertising programmes is the perfect fit for your business!

Found is one of the top companies to work for 2015!

Tina Judic — Thu, 26 Feb 2015 16:51:02 +0000

Here at Found we’ve, once again, demonstrated our reputation for being one of the top employers in the UK. At last night’s prestigious Sunday Times Best Companies to Work For 2015 awards ceremony, Found (as part of our parent company, BIG Ideas Group) was honoured with a top 100 place in the 100 Best Small Companies to Work For. As a top 100 performer for the past 5 years, Found is delighted that the investment we make into work enjoyment and team satisfaction continues to pay dividends – as the voting is all done by the team.

As a result of an anonymous survey circulated amongst all staff, asking detailed questions about their motivation, their workload, their managers, their environment and much more, it’s always great to know that the team within Found is happy. Of course, we continually strive to be an exceptional digital performance agency however it is very difficult to be brilliant without a happy, engaged and driven group of people who are all focusing on the same goals and are motivated day in, day out. From flexible working to training, from quarterly team outings to beers on a Friday, we strive to create the right level of work/life balance. Let’s see what we can achieve this year as a team and next year at the 2016 awards!

Found Shortlisted for the 2015 Performance Marketing Awards

Nasreen Cullen — Tue, 03 Mar 2015 16:30:19 +0000

Found has once again been recognised as one of the best digital agencies in the business after being shortlisted for our innovative delivery and approach in this year’s prestigious Performance Marketing Awards. Shortlisted for Best Use of Customer Insight for Dr Martens as well as Best Use of Performance Marketing as part of a Multi-channel Campaign for Hand Picked Hotels, this puts us amongst an elite group of agencies, networks and affiliate partners who continue to drive revenue and business opportunity through the performance channel. With the 2015 awards season just around the corner, the Performance Marketing Awards are the first to announce their shortlist line-up, and we’re expecting more good news from the Drum Marketing Awards, European Search Awards and new kid on the block Drum Search Awards over the coming weeks.

How Conversation Mapping Can Boost Your Outreach Success Rate!

Imogen Davies — Fri, 27 Mar 2015 15:08:59 +0000

Working in content marketing many of us know that one of the toughest and most time consuming areas of our job is outreach. This is, however, one of the most important. We all have our own methods to ensure that we get as many responses as possible. However, if you want to ensure you not only increase the likelihood of a response but make it a positive one, then you need to read on!

So, What is Conversation Mapping?

Conversation mapping is the simple process of planning out an email stream or a phone call before your initial connection, and can be done in four simple steps. It takes one standard diagram, and all of your emails and phone calls can follow the same method.

Why is This So Important For Outreach Strategy?

Planning the possibilities for your chosen method of communication will allow you to prepare for all possible outcomes. This preparation can help you plan responses to the outcomes that are negative. It will help you learn from mistakes and build out a framework for that particular vertical, which you can then use in future for other clients.

This saves time, effort, and in reality, will make for a more streamlined process of connecting with influencers and marketing your content.

This conversation mapping technique can be the difference between marketing content and praying you get a few positive responses to actually increasing the number of positive responses and not having to pray anymore!

Yes, it takes time to tailor your initial contact to perfectly suit the person you are trying to reach, but this needn’t put you off following this technique. Just think, if you don’t do this now, that carefully created and curated prospecting list will be in turn worthless and you will need to start prospecting from scratch.

Getting in the Right Frame of Mind

Think of marketing your content as a big sales pitch, and follow these four simple steps to ensure a successful deal clincher of a pitch:

Research and analysis of who you are pitching to (including their company)
You have to plan your pitch
Making them believe in what it is you are selling
Closing the deal

At the end of all that hard work, you will come out with the best result – you have sold your product and earned a commission. With content in mind, a successful end result will be that you have managed to secure a fantastic publisher whose authority in your vertical is powerful and has the reach to capture your target audience.

Now for the Important Part – The Method

Below is an example of a standard conversation mapping technique, which consists of four parts, each of these are explained underneath the diagram.

Introductive Email

This is where you first make contact. Having done some research around the person or company you are contacting, you should find yourself in a position where this part is quite natural. Praise a piece of their work which you found particularly interesting or well done, and let them know that you have taken the time to have a look around their website. Top Tip: You can even drop in a sentence or a phrase from their website if it fits into context. However you decide to approach it, this initial contact should be:

Easy to read
Informative yet concise

Initial Outcome 1 – Negative/Worst Response

Here we are planning for the eventuality that a publisher will reject your pitch, or will not reply to your original email, even after follow-up emails (of which two should be a maximum to avoid being classed as spam-email). In the event they reject your pitch, it is up to you to judge the tone of their rejection. This will be Response 1 – Should I ask them why they did not decide to go ahead? Whatever you decide will be the response outcome, plan for both - that you can or should not ask for further reason - so you are able to respond quickly and not let the opportunity slip. The thought process comes into play when you are unable to respond to their initial response, or there is no response from them. At this point you need to ask yourself what went wrong and below are some questions you should ask yourself:

Did you fully understand the influencer’s goals?
Did you make any grammatical errors in your email?
Did you call them by the wrong name?
Did you forget to reference a piece of their work in your initial email?

Top Tip: Try to figure out where you went wrong so that you don’t make the same mistake again and minimise chances of a negative or non-existent response in the future.

Initial Outcome 2 – Neutral/Some Interest

At this point you may be presented with the option of negotiation whereby you can ask questions about how they would prefer to proceed. Alternatively you can offer them more in depth information on the content piece in an attempt to turn the outcome into a positive response. This is response 2 – you have the opportunity to control the outcome to this response:

You need to ask exactly the right questions
Conduct a thorough analysis of their response

Top Tip: If you plan for both a negative and positive outcome to this response, you will be able to act quickly and do some damage control if necessary.

Initial Outcome 3 – Positive/Best Response

This will be the best possible outcome from your introductory email/call – they love the content and they want to help spread the word about it. How you then go about informing them of the next steps will be response 3. Below are some considerations you should take into account when responding:

What is it that they need to do?
Do they need more information before they share your content?
Is there a scheduled timeframe for publishing?
What else do you need to do to maintain this new relationship?

Top Tip: How you respond will, again, determine the ultimate outcome, which at this point should be a done deal!

The Summary

The beauty of the standard conversation map is that it can be applied to almost any outreach campaign, whether it is by email, over the phone or even face to face. By making this a part of your overall outreach strategy, a negative or non response will not phase you. You will be prepared for every outcome and you will learn to develop your response accordingly. If you have your own secrets for success please do share below!

European Search Awards: Found Amongst the European Search Elite

Flo Bundy — Wed, 01 Apr 2015 10:36:39 +0000

Hot on the heels of the news that we’ve been shortlisted for two Performance Marketing Awards this year already, Found is once more in the shortlist spotlight, but this time on the European search scene for our nifty multi-channel work for Hand Picked Hotels. The European Search Awards are held annually to showcase the very best search campaigns across all European markets and all key business sectors. Each year some 50 companies are shortlisted for their innovative delivery and impressive results and it’s a huge accolade for both the Found and Hand Picked Hotels teams to see their work showcased at such a prestigious event. The awards ceremony takes place in Berlin in April so we’ll find out then if we've also outshone the rest of our shortlist colleagues to take the crown in the Best Use of Social in a Search Campaign category.

It’s ‘T’ Time with RLSAs - Remarketing Lists for Search Ads

Emily Cole — Fri, 24 Apr 2015 15:00:58 +0000

Remarketing Lists for Search Ads are now more prevalent than ever. Just over a year on from their release, and paid search enthusiasts are fast understanding the complexity of this multidimensional strategy. Long gone are the days when targeting ‘All Site Visitors’ was our sole focus. With an increasing awareness of the why, what and how, marketers are getting closer and closer to closing that gap of opportunity lost through paid search. Returning visitors have already actively engaged with your site and products, so why are we still losing a large percentage of them to competitors? Nobody wants to pay for a click from a returning visitor to then lose the visitor to your arch rival. But how can we prevent returning visitors from leaving your site and searching elsewhere? How are we able to gain greater dominance on the space? And how is it possible to tap into broader, more generic search areas that we would never have dreamed of bidding on before? Before we get started, let’s not run before we can walk. It is imperative that you understand the core elements of Remarketing in all its glory before you can even begin brushing the surface of Remarketing Lists for Search Ads. Once you are confident with Remarketing, then you are more than ready to start getting your hands dirty! To ensure that we are not missing opportunity, we approach Remarketing Lists with a little combo which we like to call the 4 Ts. These are; Testing new keywords, Tailored Ad Copy, Targeted Audience and well, Time. Team this with a little tenacity –and you are on to a winner with your strategy. Let’s get started!

Testing New Keywords

Previous Poor Performers

Take the opportunity to bid on keywords that may have performed poorly through standard search. Maybe the conversion rate of those keywords was historically too low to sustain your ROI targets? Or was there too much competition on the space forcing you to pay too much to achieve premium positions? These poor performing keywords will be much more cost effective when you add an RLSA layer on top, as visitors have already actively engaged with these sorts of searches. If they click on your ad then they are ultra-engaged and much more likely to convert, if they don’t click on your ad, then it would suggest that the product / offering is not suited to the user's search query, but don’t worry, you will have saved the cost of a click!

Broader Match Types

So what is all this talk of bidding on broader, more generic keywords? Have no fear, with RLSAs layered on top it can be and is possible to tap into these new areas. With control over your audiences, you can bid on keywords that were much too risky to bid on before. But why? Well, you will only be showing these searches to people who have visited your site, and so your audience breadth is much smaller than the entire Google audience. With this in mind, the search volumes of these broader, more generic keywords is smaller.

Tailored Ad Copy

This is the pivotal point at which you can narrow the gap of upstream and downstream from your site. You are able to avert visitors from clicking a competitor’s ad, as well as reducing the chance of them navigating to another site having not purchased a product on yours. The type of audience you are targeting should largely influence how you appeal to returning customers through your creative. You should be speaking to new and returning visitors in very different ways. You know a returning visitor has previously liked the appeal of your standard search ads, so what can you do to add another sparkle to entice them back, and more importantly - buy? This creative approach almost sells itself, but if you or your client really can’t be flexible with discounting a product / service, then how about trying a more subtle offering which will still help to clinch them; the guarantee of 1^st Class delivery is one which we have seen work wonders. Consequently the user may / will be paying for the delivery – but knowing they will receive an efficient, quick and hassle free delivery is a great way to sell your product without affecting your selling price. Show your returning visitors that they are a valued customer; have you ever thought about an exclusive promo code? Or how about ‘Free Delivery’ to make your ad stand out from your competitors. From experience, many clients are afraid they are giving away too much for free and putting too much of a dent in their AOV. But with AOVs and conversion rates much higher for returning users compared to new visitors, it's likely that there is more than enough room in the ROI to offer a small incentive. Remember if you have split out your audiences into separate ad groups, then this will give you even greater control over your creativity. How about trying to upsell another product to a previously converted visitor? For example ‘2 For 1 on your next order’… The last thing to remember about creative is Enhanced Sitelinks. These can be another savvy way to draw your visitors back, especially if you have a whole host of UPS - you will have visitors eating out of your hands!

Tight Audiences

Your audience lists are like the hub of the home. And those one step ahead of RLSAs will know the granularity at which you can go to achieve optimum performance for returning visitors. But for those of you just starting out, then let’s take a look at some audience basics to get you started… They are:

Converted visitors
Non-Converted visitors
Basket abandoners
Delivery page abandoners
Payment abandoners
Category page visitors

If you have done this already and want to start taking your RLSA targeting to the next level, then you need start evaluating cookie periods. This is where your Google Analytics knowledge will be put to the test. Have a look at your Time Lag and Search Funnel reports to begin understanding the percentage of visitors that purchase the product on day 1, day 15, day 30, and so on. Once you have a firm grip over your site user behavior, it is worth testing different cookie periods for different audiences. For example, maybe you should be using a much shorter cookie period for delivery page abandoners then you would for converted visitors. Remember the length of an Analytics Remarketing Cookie differs to that of an Adwords Cookie. It is not the be-all and end-all, just make sure you take this into consideration when testing your cookie periods and analysing performance in GA.

Time

It is without doubt that an RLSA strategy will be time consuming. The time is takes will depend on the extent at which you build this out. You may be deciding to adopt a very basic RLSA layer on top of existing campaigns, or maybe you prefer to take a more advanced approach in duplicating campaigns – one for new and the other for returning visitors. Perfecting all of the above will not happen overnight, nor will it take years to get right. It all boils down to; strategic planning, a thorough understanding of remarketing principles and time. With the audience segmentation in place, the nature of the strategy will allow you to try, fail, and try again without putting a dent in your (or your client’s) wallet. So, it’s time to get RLSAing!

Download our latest whitepaper

SEARCH RETARGETING: THE POWER OF CAPTURING INTENT BEYOND SEARCH.

Google to release update for Mobile-Friendly Search

Tom Brand — Fri, 10 Apr 2015 10:35:00 +0000

As of April 21st Google will be rolling out their first announced update of 2015 for mobile-friendly search. The update only affects mobile results and is expected to affect more websites than Panda or Penguin have previously, which is understandable due to the massive growth mobile search has seen. Zineb Ait Banajji, of Google’s Webmaster Trends team, let attendees of SMX know the update will impact more sites than either Panda or Penguin did. She also assured attendees at the talk that any negative impacts from the mobile update would have no effect on desktop results/traffic.

Will you be affected by the update?

Some webmasters are concerned that they will be affected negatively if they’re receiving negative mobile usability reports in Webmaster Tools. However, Google has let site owners know that as long as the mobile testing tool gives you the all clear or if your site contains the mobile-friendly tag in the SERPS you’ll most likely benefit from the update. One thing to keep in mind is that sites are assessed on a page by page basis, so even though a homepage may be perfectly optimised, internal product pages or other content may not be and could see negative outcomes from the update.

How will mobile sub-domains be affected?

This applies to all sites serving m. sub-domains to mobile users. After the release of the mobile-friendly SERPs label in late 2014 a lot of m.site sub-domains were seen ranking quite highly, suggesting Google was taking this as an indicator that a site was mobile-friendly. There is currently however no evidence that Google will be treating mobile sub-domains any differently to other implementations of mobile sites. Although as a top tip, Google does suggest using responsive design over either a mobile sub-domain or dynamic serving.

Do you need an app to be mobile-friendly?

Whilst apps can be a great way to provide a service outside of that which you offer on your mobile site, in most cases they are not a ranking factor. There is however an exception to the rule, and this affects Android apps. At the moment you can get your companies app indexed in Google, but this is limited to Android apps. Google recently announced that they are going to begin using “information from indexed apps as a factor in ranking for signed-in users who have the app installed. As a result, we may now surface content from indexed apps more prominently in search.” So if you’re thinking of creating an app, it won’t have any effect on the upcoming update. But watch this space as apps may become more of a ranking factor in the future!

What can you do?

So you’ve checked your site in the SERPs and in the Google mobile-friendly test and the results aren't good. Here are 3 points we think you need to prioritise before the update:

There are a number of reasons why your site might not be mobile-friendly – running a mobile site audit will help you and your digital agency understand the issues and come up with an action plan to get your site ready.
Ensure robots.txt is correctly implemented on the site – for example, is the mobile version of a site being blocked in the robots.txt file? If this is the case for your site Google won’t know a mobile friendly version exists.
Page speed is a really important factor for mobile search – use Google’s PageSpeed insights to assess the speed of your site on mobile. The tool will then highlight areas which need attention and you can action them respectively.

You may be reading this and be incredibly comforted by the fact your site meets all the criteria outlined, in which case you can sit back and relax. However to those of you (and it will be the majority) who are concerned by this update, don't despair, you still have a few weeks to ensure your site is in tip top shape and ready for the update. Hopefully this announcement will have helped, so get those tools at the ready and start ensuring your site is mobile search-friendly!

If you think this update will affect you, please contact us and speak to the team to find out how we can help.

Found announced as finalists at The Drum Marketing Awards!

Flo Bundy — Thu, 30 Apr 2015 10:01:23 +0000

Found’s innovative delivery has once again gained us industry recognition with the news that our highly-intuitive work for iconic footwear brand Dr. Martens has won us yet another shortlist position, this time in The Drum Marketing Awards. Shortlisted in the Customer Insight Strategy of the Year category of the annual event, this represents our third appearance in this year’s industry awards line-up and according to the event website puts Found among ‘the superheroes of modern marketing’! The category specifically looks at how brands can achieve greater ROI by identifying and utilising customer and channel data. Our clever approach has not only delivered an entirely new digital pathway for Dr. Martens but has also enabled the brand to cleverly close the gap between its search and display activity. By overlaying our own highly valuable data insight with Dr. Martens’ own indepth persona profiling activity, the campaign has equally achieved record results for the brand including a whopping 615% increase in conversions as well as a massive £1.5m increase in revenue year-on-year. The Drum Marketing Awards ceremony takes place in London on May 7.

Download our latest whitepaper

SEARCH RETARGETING: THE POWER OF CAPTURING INTENT BEYOND SEARCH.

An insight into Rich Snippets and Google's structured data tool

Charles Ferrer — Tue, 19 May 2015 15:54:47 +0000

Rich Snippets, you will have all come across them many times when searching the web, but the question is, have you noticed them? Whether you’re searching for the nearest fast food restaurant or the best place to take your partner at the weekend, Rich Snippets essentially do one thing – provide your search with the best visual and most relevant results. Rich Snippets were first introduced by Google in May 2009 which then led to other search engines following soon after.

The how and why of Rich Snippets

Search engines, such as Google, pull data into the SERPs through the use of structured data markup. This is a process that would need to be implemented by you on your own site, but is well worth the trouble. Although not directly affecting rankings within the SERPs, this data can be used to enhance the way your site is displayed within the search results, thus making it stand out from competitors. Below is an example of a Rich Snippet for us here at Found: In recent years the variety of different types of Rich Snippets has hugely evolved. We have moved on from the days where Google were only supporting data for reviews. There are now many different types of Rich Snippets being displayed by Google which you almost certainly will have come across when entering a search query. Product availability, prices and reviews about a person or organisation are just some of the many Rich Snippets that are displayed by search engines today. We have shown an example of this below with the film search 'Avengers : Age of Ultron' - you will see here that the results have pulled together times and cinema website links, with reference to our personal location - and it's Rich Snippets that have enabled this personalised data to show in the results. Screenshot taken 06/05/2015 from www.google.co.uk

How to find out if Structured Data Markup is present on your website

If you’ve had the development of your website outsourced, then you’re most likely to be unaware if structured data markup has been implemented. In January this year, Google announced the update of their new Structured Data testing tool, making it easier to identify how Google interprets a web page’s structured data markup. By copying and pasting the URL in the “Fetch URL” text box, this will display any valid structured data code used on the page.

How to decide which Structured Data Markup to use on the site

For this process, the first thing to do is to identify which type of data would be valid. There are many ways to manage this; one option is to take a look at a collection of schemas provided at schema.org . Schemas are often used by webmasters to markup HTML pages and is a form of structured data. By manually looking at the available types of schema (e.g. Organisation, Person, Place and Review) you are able to identify which schema types could potentially be used. Google also offers a Structured Data Markup Helper tool, however, this tool does not list all data types in comparison to viewing Schema.org. Once you’ve decided on the data types that are valid for structured data markup, the next step is to choose the type of markup format to use. There are currently three different formats supported by Google. These are JSON-LD, RDFa and microdata. The latter is most preferable for Google.

Things to think about when marking up your content

When deciding the type of content to markup, it’s always good to have a visual understanding of where Google may choose to use the information to enhance the search results. Some of the most common data used by Google to enhance a webpage’s search listing are as follow:

Product Information

By implementing schema markup Product and Offer on valid data such as product name and price, Google could use this to feature a Rich Snippet providing an enhanced page listing such as the price of the product and its availability. This is most useful for ecommerce type sites, which could see the benefit in an increase of click-throughs from organic search. Screenshot taken 06/05/2015 from www.google.co.uk

Organisation and Local Business

In using the schema markup such as Telephone, Email and Location on valid data, this can be a strong signal to Google’s algorithms to show which information is preferred, such as contact details or address, and where possible, influence the information provided on Google’s Knowledge Graph. Screenshot taken 06/05/2015 from www.google.co.uk

Product Review

This type of page enhancement on Google is often associated with an organisation, product or service. Although this can positively affect a user from clicking through to a page from the organic search listing, this should be used with caution. In essence, if your site has a poor site review across most pages, this could negatively affect the chances of a user clicking through to your site. However, if there are a lot of positive reviews evident on the page, employing the schema markup aggregate rating could reap the benefit of the site receiving more click-throughs, and the possible chance of higher conversions as positive reviews are a trusted vouch. Screenshot taken 06/05/2015 from www.google.co.uk

Social Media Profile Markup

There are now a large number of social media platforms available on the web. Some of the benefits in having a social media profile for business is that it can help increase website traffic and build brand awareness. Websites that have a link to their social profiles can employ an organisation schema markup (Google offer advice here), which can be used and displayed within Google’s Knowledge Graph. Deciding on what data to markup can effectively improve your user’s experience and you may even see an increase in website traffic and the possibility of higher conversions. With any implemented strategy, it’s imperative to monitor the site’s performance before and after implementation. As with the "Site Review" example above, displaying positive reviews in the form of a Rich Snippet could have a positive effect, however, this could be a disadvantage later if many reviews turn negative. So it is always best to think about whether this is the right tactic for your business.

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GOOGLE ALGORITHM TIMELINE

A quick and easy reference to Google algorithm updates

It's top marks for Found at The Drum Search Awards!

Nasreen Cullen — Thu, 21 May 2015 15:10:34 +0000

It seems we're on a roll here at Found and extremely proud to announce that we've been shortlisted for five.......yes FIVE entries at The Drum Search Awards this year. The Drum Search Awards has its inaugural event in June with an aim to recognise and reward the most innovative, creative and effective search campaigns and strategies across both PPC and SEO. So as you can imagine, we are delighted to be involved and so highly recognised. We have two shortlisted entries within Best Retail/Ecommerce Campaign. The first recognises our work with Red Letter Days by the implementation of focused search retargeting to existing clients, and clever search expertise to target new customers. The second shout out goes to the interlocking campaign for Canterbury of New Zealand - combining clever paid search with paid social, display and remarketing activity, ensuring core KPIs are hit.

Our expertise and industry recognition also run into Best Travel/Leisure/Sports Campaign for our work with Hand Picked Hotels - we focused activity around paid search, bolting on additional display and social tactics to help the brand increase market share. This tactic really exploded as we were able to cleverly manipulate the channels to work harder together.

And last but by no means least, we have two recognitions for Best B2C Campaign, and we're very proud to say Red Letter Days gets another mention here! We performed a considerable amount of consumer behaviour analysis for this account, and thus were able to divide audiences based on extremely granular data. We were also praised on our strategy for Canterbury of New Zealand whereby we cleverly manipulated, and got the most from, three new and developing Google tools - RLSAs, Dynamic Search and Google Shopping.

It's been a really exciting first quarter for us and we're always delighted when our hard work achieves recognition. Every client of Found gets over and beyond, because after all, if we didn't perform well for our clients, theses awards would soon dry up.....and we're determined to never let that happen!

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SEARCH RETARGETING: THE POWER OF CAPTURING INTENT BEYOND SEARCH.

Google’s Ever-Expanding Knowledge Graph

Richard Lewis — Fri, 29 May 2015 09:18:56 +0000

To explain and discuss Google's Knowledge Graph, I start here with a fundamental mission statement, taken straight from Google's mouth, and that is: 'to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful' - Google. I think Google's Knowledge Graph may be the most visible expression of this aim - used as Google’s own attempt at answering a search query. From it's network of data-entity relationships (the technical definition of a graph), it attempts to identify and answer the question behind the key phrase you search, thus eliminating the need to leave Google and visit another website in the search results. For example, searching for “what is the knowledge graph” produces this helpful box: Image taken from Google on 26/05/15 In this case, the information is taken directly from Wikipedia and a link is provided. The Knowledge Graph has been around since May 2012 so it is certainly not a new thing, but 2015 has seen some key developments which I have listed a few below :

More Knowledge Graph Queries – A quarter of all search queries now display Knowledge Graph boxes.
Bigger Knowledge Graph Boxes – Some Knowledge Graph components are now so large that they push organic results below-fold.
More Knowledge Graph Types – Increasingly customised and content-rich.

The implications of these changes are:

Organic search results can be seen as less prominent and receive fewer clicks than they otherwise might.
Traffic and revenue may be affected on many types of key phrases as a result.

Some very advanced experimental Knowledge Graph features have emerged over the past several months. Medical queries have recently begun to show much more detailed information, as in the example below: Image taken from Google on 26/05/15 So, how does the Knowledge Graph source its answers I hear you ask? Well, potentially from another website – or, much more likely, from Wikipedia or a similar super-authoritive site. It needs to be noted here that the Knowledge Graph is more than just a scraper and congrgater of information, it works first by identifying entities and then analyses the relationships between those entities. The identification of entities is a semantic technique which has long rendered keyword density defunct as a method for determining relevance of information. Using entities and entity relationships allows pieces of data to be viewed in wider context. For example, a long document (I'll call it document A) about football might contain many references to European football but only mentions UEFA once. Through knowledge of the entity relationship between the references to European football on doc A and other documents that mention UEFA more frequently and prominently, Google can dipict that the term UEFA is important in document A – despite it only appearing once....phew, impressive stuff! Such an understanding of the semantic links between entities allows Google to provide suggested answers to many user queries with a very high success rate.

Knowledge Graph Boxes

The knowledge graph takes four main forms on the search results pages. Each affects the search results pages in different ways in terms of user behaviour. The Knowledge Graph sidebar is the most easily recognisable and contains the largest amount of information, example below: Image taken from Google on 25/05/15 While it can answer a user’s query without them necessarily having to visit a search result, it does not push any search results below the fold.

Quick Answer Box

These tend to appear when it’s clear from a search query what is being requested. In the example below, I randomly searched “Tom Cruise's father”: Image taken from Google on 26/05/15 The extent to which this pushes organic search results off the page depends on how many paid search ads are displayed.

Knowledge Graph Customised Answer

These appear on top of the organic listings and take potentially hundreds of different forms depending on the entity concerned. Google has been highly inventive with these – see the three examples below: Image taken from Google on 26/05/15 This list of formula 1 standings appear for the term “f1”. Image taken from Google on 26/05/15 This appears for “flights to New York” and pushes the organic results below the fold of the page. Image taken from Google on 26/05/15 If you want to check on the progress of a flight, simply entering the flight number provides a graphical representation of the flight’s progress.

Extended Instant Answer

This is a longer answer to a user’s query, comprised of an extended snippet of content from a website. These can be somewhat large and detailed, and depending on their size, they can push organic search results below the fold of the page. A key feature of these extended instant answer boxes is that they contain a linked reference to the source of the content. Users who wish to get further detail regarding their query are thus given an opportunity to click through, as seen here for the query “cook eggs in microwave”. Image taken from Google on 26/05/15 Another example which takes up a large amount of space in the SERPs for “how to tie a tie”: Image taken from Google on 26/05/15 In extended instant answer boxes, the content does not necessarily come from the page at position 1 in the organic search results. In the ties example, the content comes from the page in position 3.

Knowledge Graph & Semantic Markup

It can be challenging for Google to extract data from websites that are relevant for use in the Knowledge Graph – schema markup or JSON-LD is usually required to facilitate the process. Image taken from Google on 26/05/15 This markup is specifically designed to make it easier for search engines to identify semantic entities within the source code of a web-page – and as such, they will be preferentially selected when Google is choosing which websites to extract knowledge graph information from. Due to the potentially large cost of inserting semantic mark-up or JSON-LD into existing websites, its uptake has been very low. Some sources estimate just 1% of sites on the web use semantic markup. This is set to change as methods of easily inserting semantic mark-up into webpage source code are developed. One such method is the use of JSON-LD in concert with Google Tag Manager.

Understanding the Implications for SEO Campaigns

If you’re a tie retailer, there are some questions you might like to ask regarding the knowledge graph result I showed above for “how to tie a tie”. 1) Do I want content from my site to be featured in the knowledge graph box which appears for “how to tie a tie”? 2) Do I mind if one of my competitors appear and I don’t? Depending on your business and objectives, the answers will be different.

Brand Awareness

In this case, it’s unlikely that being referenced in the instant answer box for this query would yield much extra traffic for the website concerned. Most people searching for this term will be satisfied by the information provided in the box. However, being seen to be referenced by Google as an authoritative source of information is likely to boost the brand of the website concerned in an important way in the eyes of searchers. If your website is seen to be where Google is getting it's information from and it’s putting that information at the top of the search results page, it broadcasts a brand credibility signal. The expanding Knowledge Graph is ever-expanding and continuing to change the way searchers behave. It can be helpful to take the Knowledge Graph into consideration when planning various aspects of an SEO campaign. I have explored a few of these below :

Content Planning

Is there a chance that the new unique content piece / useful tool that you're planning will be done by the Knowledge Graph on your target keyword SERPs just after you’ve spent thousands of pounds making it? It’s worth asking yourself this question before investing resources. For example, if your content idea is to create an amazing interactive live flight progress checker, Google’s own Knowledge Graph version may have stolen your thunder. Similarly, any infographic which is intended for practical use could have its impact muted by the presence of knowledge graph alternatives in the SERPs.

Keyword Research

When choosing which keywords to target on a campaign, it may be useful to assess the extent to which some of the more important keywords are affected by knowledge graph results. No automatic metric currently provides this information – it needs to be collected manually. However, it can make a lot of difference. Investing heavily in targeting a key phrase for which the knowledge graph drastically reduces the prominence of organic search results is something which can be avoided by simple reconnaissance at the keyword research stage.

Analytics Adjustments

A newly appeared Extended Instant Answer box on the SERP for a key query can have an impact on the amount of traffic received. It’s advisable to account for this by adding annotations in Analytics and ensuring that everyone involved in a campaign understands the reasons why a web-page at position 1 is only receiving, say, 40% of its expected traffic as a result of being pushed below the fold by a high-quality instant answer box.

Unanswered Elements of Searcher Questions

While the Knowledge Graph may provide an answer to many simple queries, in many cases more information is required or desired by the searcher. Understanding which elements of the users’ questions are not being answered by the Knowledge Graph can be of great help in optimising landing page content to capture those searchers who are not served by the particular knowledge graph answer they are shown. The Knowledge Graph is really useful. In fact, it forms a larger part of my life than I would like to admit. After all, as a technical SEO, I’m supposed to love organic search results the most.

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GOOGLE ALGORITHM TIMELINE

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Five Things To Consider When Writing Your RFP

George Bett — Fri, 29 May 2015 16:36:11 +0000

Writing a comprehensive RFP document without spending a disproportionate amount of time on it can be a challenge, even for the most experienced marketers. As a business, Found is lucky enough to receive its fair share of RFP documents; some are good and some don’t quite hit the mark. From a procurement point of view the RFP document is one of the most important parts of the process. At its best it can give a bidding agency all the information required to build a strategy and commercial proposition; at its worst it can confuse and misguide agencies, leading to poor proposals that don’t meet the requirements of the seller. At Found we feel privileged to be considered as a potential partner for so many new businesses. Our desire is to deliver the best proposition to each and every one, with this in mind we have built 5 top tips that should be considered when building your RFP.

Tip 1 – Open communication

Always look to open up a conversation stream with your shortlisted agencies. The Q&A stage will enable the agencies to fill in any gaps that they might have internally. It also enables a dialogue to be set up allowing the client a snapshot view into what it would be like working with an agency (speed of reply, intelligence of questions etc). Setting up a halfway call/meeting allows the agency to divulge their initial thoughts and is critical to ensure that neither party will be wasting their time come the pitch. Ultimately you will be looking to work closely with your chosen agency; make sure that you get to know them during this time. From an agency point of view the more we know and understand, the better our solution will be.

Tip 2 – Current internal challenges/Issues

Be sure to document any particular issues that the business is facing (resource, internal communications, training etc.). It is important not to give the whole story away but guide the agencies in areas that you feel are most important; after all you’re not looking to send an agency out on a treasure hunt hoping that they stumble across the very thing you are looking for. Instead you are trying to find the most appropriate party that match your requirements the best. In terms of identifying external issues, again it is important to guide but it is also important to challenge the agencies to identify what they believe to be areas of concern or opportunity.

Tip 3 – Quantitative and Qualitative targets

Where possible it is important to detail how an agency will be judged; core KPIs if you will. Be open and honest when dealing with simple revenue/sales targets. As an agency we would much rather know from an early stage if expectations are going to be achievable or not, we can then manage accordingly. Identifying other areas that will be judged such as reporting, client services and design will allow any decent agency to ensure that they cover these points in their proposal. An RFP should not be a cryptic script but instead a document that details your requirements, allowing an agency to address these directly.

Tip 4 – Challenge the sellers

Having previously stated that the RFP should not be a cryptic script, it must also be noted here that it’s still important to challenge a seller on how they will address the given requirement with a specific strategy or solution. It is easy for an agency to say they can solve all your problems but the true test is how these will be implemented. We are firm believers that a pitch/proposal is our opportunity as an agency to showcase potential solutions for the client's problems, we can then detail strategies in line with these requirements. Setting specific challenges within the RFP not only allows the agency to build a strategy but can also showcase past case studies where they have had particular success.

Tip 5 – Deadlines

Agencies are no different to your business, they don’t employ excess people that sit around all day awaiting a call. Very often new business departments are juggling a number of potential enquiries at one time and if you want the best possible proposal/pitch, then ensure that you are giving the agencies adequate time in which to meet your expectations. Typically from initial discussions to a completed proposal, Found would require at least 14 days. This will change depending on the other pitch requirements but in order to ensure that the best resource is spent on any given RFP this is the minimal amount of time. During this time we would expect to be given a deadline for questions (a deadline for answers would also be in place), a deadline for initial thoughts and ideas to be discussed (typically a call is put into the calendar) and then finally a deadline for the proposal to be submitted. Getting the most out of the RFP stage is so important and is sadly often undervalued. Getting it wrong can lead to countless hours spent reading or listening to proposals that are way off the mark and add little/no value to your selection process. A well thought out RFP will ensure that the proposals are bespoke, detailed and innovative. Perhaps most importantly if you get this stage right you will achieve much more clarity into how an agency works.

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SEARCH RETARGETING: THE POWER OF CAPTURING INTENT BEYOND SEARCH.

A H'app'y Campaign with Mobile App Installs

Emily Cole — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 12:23:56 +0000

With hundreds of new apps making their way onto the App Store every day, it can be very difficult to get noticed in such a competitive space – especially if you're new to the market and seeking instant visibility. By understanding and using paid search wisely within the App Store, it can help give you instant results and that immediate presence you're striving for. Google Adwords offers an easy to set up and simple to manage solution that entices users to download your app straight away. Tailored ads – yes, relevant placements – yes. So for all those display lovers out there – is it the dream!?? But, let’s not run before we can walk here..... Google offers multiple campaign types and settings for apps, including Mobile App Installs, Mobile App Engagement, Ads in Mobile, Apps in Display, App Installs and App Extensions in Search….confused yet?! Don't worry, we seek to explain and simplify so read on!

Campaign Types

Mobile App Engagement

Focuses on getting users who have already installed your app to try it again. These work by showing ads within other apps. Currently app engagement campaigns on the Search Network are only available for Android app, not iOS.

Mobile App Installs

Focuses on getting users to download your app by showing ads within other apps/categories in the App Store. Currently app engagement campaigns on the Search Network are only available for Android app, not iOS.

Ads in Mobile Apps Campaigns

Focuses on reaching out to people who are currently using your app. Google give a great breakdown of the different campaign types to help you choose the right strategy for your business.

AdWords Help Atricle - Driving mobile app downloads >

App Extensions

This allows you to link your mobile or tablet apps from your texts. Here we discuss Mobile App Installs for the Display Network as this is the only compatible network type available for iOS apps. However, word on the street is that Google plan to release this campaign type on the Search Network too. So watch this space!

GETTING STARTED

Before you dive into setting up the campaign it's crucial to do your research first - You wouldn't book a holiday without doing your research so just apply the same principles to setting up a new App Install Campaign. The Display Planner will become your best friend throughout your research, launch and optimisation phases – so you are going to have to learn to love it! The DP (Display Planner) gives you a wealth of information about suitable placements for what apps you want your ad to show on, to whom and on what devices. In the campaign targeting at the top left hand corner of the DP – “Campaign Targeting” you can narrow down your targeting to iOS devices and apps. If your App has been built to be compatible with Android Devices, then you should choose this option too. Use a separate campaign for this as you will need to apply specific targeting, bidding and settings.

FIND YOUR APP

You can use the look up function in the Campaign Settings to find your app – nice and easy.

TARGETING AND BIDDING

So, once you have set your appropriate campaign settings you will need to apply your targeting methods. If you are unsure about the exact app placements, keep this on a broad category with a low bid. You will later be able to see where your app is performing best to refine it further. As we discussed earlier, you can target by the following: interests, placements and remarketing.

AD CREATION

So you have set your campaign up, applied the correct settings and made it as targeted as you require. Now it is time to create your ads. Ads take 3 different formats;

App Install Text Ads which shows your app icon next to text
App Install Image Ads which allow you to show a banner
App Install Videos which allow you to show a video

The sizes and specifications are exactly the same as a standard Display Campaign.

TRACKING (In GA and Adwords)

As well as being able to track conversions in the Adwords interface – as you would with a normal search or display campaign, you can also track your app activity in Google’s very own Mobile App Analytics. This gives you a wealth of information including behaviour flow around your app and traffic sources. You can also track goal conversions and get real-time reporting. All you have to do is download the Google Analytics SDK.

OPTIMISATION and STATISTICS

So what sort of results can you expect to see with a Mobile App Download Campaign? Your campaign results will vary from campaign to campaign. But if you are apprehensive about running a display campaign – then don’t be! Expect to see cheaper CPCs, better CTRs and better conversion rates than standard display on the GDN. App lovers are always looking for new apps to install on their phones and tablets – especially if they are free. So a Mobile App Campaign is the perfect solution to promote your app in this thriving mobile platform. So to summerise - To ensure you are achieving optimum performance, you must be concise with your set up, make sure you are targeting relevant people and on the relevant placements, and have ads that entice users to click through – and ultimately download! Happy Apping!

Another award win for Found at the Drum Search Awards

Guy Thornton — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 16:11:03 +0000

We’re delighted to have been officially recognised as one of the search industry’s top agencies after taking home two accolades at the inaugural Drum Search Awards last night. Jostling amongst the industry’s great and good at the glitzy black tie event in Grosvenor Square, we won Best B2C Campaign for our work with Red Letter Days as well as being commended for our strategic retail focus and delivery for the long term client in the Best Retail/Ecommerce Campaign category. Our very own brilliant PPC Analyst Emily Cole and Campaign Manager Lauren Dodds were there to receive the awards and then got their own moment in the spotlight with very Oscar-esque performances in their recorded acceptance speech! Having our work recognised twice at such a prestigious ceremony is fantastic and, more importantly, is a real testament to the Found team’s absolute focus on crafting hard-working campaigns which not only deliver but also outshine the rest of the market. We’re delighted as a team for all of their hard work with Red Letter Days and delighted for our client too, whom we thoroughly enjoy working hand in hand with! The campaign success hinged on our clever segmentation to target new customers and search retargeting to reach existing customers. We were able to not only secure a massive 51% increase in revenue over the previous year’s activity, but also maintain costs whilst driving a significant 67% increase in ROI year-on-year. In terms of brand awareness, our strategy equally generated over 20% more clicks. Topping this all off, Gerry O’Brien, Ecommerce Director at Red Letter Days, adds: “Found’s ability to immerse themselves into the Red Letter Days’ brand, interpreting data and insight, enabled them to mastermind a clever paid search campaign that has delivered fantastic returns. Not only have we reached greater revenue numbers than we expected, but we’ve achieved this through a considerable reduction in ROI and a huge increase in generic keyword performance. Working closely together in an agile manner, we’ve been able to share knowledge and skills which, together, has definitely helped us to achieve these great results.”

Workshops are beautiful: Roundup

Luke Townsend — Thu, 18 Jun 2015 12:02:54 +0000

Creating data visualisations can sometimes be tricky, it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that you have a good idea and all the elements you need to make it, only to be a bit underwhelmed by the end result. To find that something doesn’t quite sit right in the final version and that you have to start over or re-work the idea can be frustrating. To hone our skills and get a wider understanding of how some of our favourite data visualisations were made, we decided to head along to David McCandless' ‘Workshops are Beautiful’ event at the Soho Hotel in London. David’s book ‘Information is Beautiful‘ is a big favourite on the bookshelf here at Found, and with David being one of the leading figures in the field, who better is there for us to pick up some tips from?

What did we learn?

One of the key early takeaways for me was the emphasis David stressed on how important the data analysis and research part of every visualisation is; with 80% of his time and resource going into that for each graphic. It might sound quite obvious but when you’re actually making one it’s easy to over prioritise the design and creation elements. Another very important element is brilliantly outlined with the below Venn diagram: The four pillars of a visualisation: 1) data, information 2) story, concept 3) goal, function 4) design, visualisation must all come together if your data visualisation is to be successful. Leave one out and it will unlikely fulfil its potential, with the piece feeling and looking incomplete, substanceless, poorly executed or just plain boring. Finding the story within the data can be half the battle, but then presenting that in its most engaging light is equally important. One example that was used in the event was ‘What country spends the most on its military?’ an interesting topic in itself, but by applying a metric to change the expected outcome ‘What country spends the most on their military in relation to population size?’ it suddenly becomes much more engaging. The results are unexpected, even shocking! This lesson is a valuable one and one of the key reasons why David’s data visualisations are so powerful. He also got us thinking in photographic terms about how best to present the data. How zoomed in to the detail do we want to be? Is it a wide angle shot or a close up? Picking and choosing what to present from the data set to make for the best possible story is a key decision, with the whole data set often burying the most interesting bits within it. Choosing the right type of visualisation to best present the data was another focus and it was interesting to see just how many data visualisation types there were on the list, from bubble tables and polar charts to atmospheric timelines and wordclouds. The key takeaway here is that there is likely to be an existing format perfect for your data story rather than you having to invent a new type of graph or chart. Once this is defined, the visual vocabulary comes in to play allowing you to start really formulating what the data visualisation is going to look like. Are you using colour or symbols to distinguish between the elements in your data? What does the font say? Are textures or line weights important? Does the size, arrangement or proximity of elements correspond to the data you are illustrating ? Lots to think about here but there is something to be said for keeping it simple and only including vocabulary if it is playing a strong part in illustrating your data story. All in all it was a fascinating day, and it being a workshop there were interactive elements too. We all got to share our ideas for data visualisations with the group, and lots of us got some feedback and suggestions from David and the group as to how to potentially improve or solve problems with our ideas. A really worthwhile day that left us with lots to think about. In summary here a some key points we took away with us : - Don’t underinvest in the research and data analysis - Make sure you include all the four pillars of data visualisation - data, story, goal and design - Think about including a metric which enhances the story and makes the data more engaging - Think about how you will frame the data, exclude data that doesn’t support the goal or story - Find an existing format that suits your data set - Define your visual vocabulary carefully to help you tell the story Follow these top tips and you're well on the way to creating a great data visualisation!

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SEARCH RETARGETING: THE POWER OF CAPTURING INTENT BEYOND SEARCH.

Google Shopping Ad Extensions

Emily Cole — Tue, 23 Jun 2015 11:43:14 +0000

‘Buy One Get One Free’, ‘2 For 1’, ‘Half Price’, ‘Special Offer’, ‘25% Off’…...bargain hunting Brits are always searching for the very best deals; both on and offline. So, back in November 2014 Google released a new Google Shopping ad extension to satisfy its shopper’s demands and they have been revelling in the benefits ever since! But this was just the very beginning.... Since the switch over from Product Listing Ads (PLAs) to the new campaign update Google Shopping back in July 2014, Google has released four new and major shopping extensions that change the face of the Google Shopping real estate. These four changes are 1) Merchant Promotions 2) Google Price Drop 3) Local Inventory Ads 4) Product Ratings, and the most recent Google gossip is the ‘Buy Now’ button which is rumoured to be added to Google Shopping ads very soon. With the Google Shopping real-estate becoming more competitive than ever before, implementing shopping extensions should be an absolute must if you are striving to deliver the very best results for you and your clients. It used to be about ensuring maximum exposure of products to shoppers, but now there is a much greater focus on ensuring there is a competitive edge in the space. So how can you clinch that click over one of your rivals? Trust & incentives – that’s how!

Merchant Promotions

One of the most prevalent updates for Google Shopping was Merchant Promotions. Similar to standard text ads, merchant promotions give advertisers the opportunity to highlight a special offer alongside their ads in a mini pop up. The offer is revealed when a shopper clicks on the ‘Special Offer’ text below the ad. Enticing? Absolutely! Incentivising shoppers with a promo code or ‘free delivery’ results in a more qualified click as users can see the offer associated with the product before clicking on the ad. Image taken from Google 22 June With higher click through rates and increased conversion rates, it is no wonder this has been a fast adopted strategy by Google Shopping enthusiasts! So, how can you jump on the merchant promotion bandwagon? Well, there is no additional cost to implementing this extension, and set up is very simple too! All you need to do is fill out a Merchant Promotions Interest Form. Once your application has been successfully approved, you will see a ‘Promotions’ tab in the left hand side of your Google Merchant Centre (GMC). It is important to note that Merchant Promotions are only applicable in conjunction with a promo code – so unless you have a promo code, you cannot create a promotion in your GMC.

Percentage Price Drop

Promotions, promotions, promotions. We are beginning to see more and more ‘price drop’ annotations showing in Google Shopping ads - and shoppers are loving them. At present, Google show these annotations automatically based on any merchant feed price changes over the previous 90 days. As this is automated, advertisers are beginning to dig deeper into ways of applying these price drops manually through their feed. But until Google releases this update, you will just have to keep your feed up to date and of high quality, and then sit tight as you watch your price drops show (…or not). Image taken from Google 22 June

Local Inventory Ads

This does exactly what it says on the tin – shows Google Shopping ads to shoppers planning their shopping trip locally. Again, going back to the qualification of clicks, users can better understand the availability of the products they are searching for in a nearby store before making a purchase or going to visit the store. The objective of this extension is to drive traffic to the site by showing local product availability. The focus of the extension is to act as an assistor in the purchase funnel and to add incremental value to the business offline. With the research phase becoming an even more crucial aspect of shoppers buying behaviour for on and offline purchases, Local Inventory Ads help to give users a much better understanding of pricing, quality and most importantly, availability in a local store. You may be concerned that Local Inventory Ads deter shoppers from purchasing products online – and therefore you are wasting the cost of a click for a user that is not converting online. Therefore it is crucial to mention here that having your local product catalogue on as many channels as possible is the best way to ensure maximum visibility – the perfect omni-channel shopping experience. If you provide shoppers with high quality data that they can trust, then they are much more likely to return to your store both on and offline; allowing you to capitalise on your returning visitors later on.

Product Ratings

Product Ratings was released July 2014 in the U.S and it wasn't long after that it hit the U.K. Showing star ratings for individual products became an instant USP for retailers. But to ensure successful implementation of this most talked about extension involves encouraging customers to leave real and honest reviews about your products. Google will show your product reviews when you have signed up to a review aggregator or obtained reviews directly from Google. Image taken from Google 22 June Unlike seller ratings which show in standard text ads – where they only show if you have received 30 or more reviews with a star rating of 3.5 or above, Product Ratings for Google Shopping can show no matter how many stars you have accumulated. So, if you have a history of poor product reviews then it would be advised to hold fire on integrating this extension into your campaign, otherwise it may have a detrimental effect on campaign performance. Successful implementation of these ratings will see the achievement of higher click through rates and higher conversion rates, as shoppers have a huge amount more trust in the products you are promoting. Again, implementation is simple. You have to fill out this form, a Google representative will then put you in touch with the right person to action your request*. *It is important to note that if you already use a third party aggregator, you may have to pay an additional cost to opt in for product ratings if this is not already part of your current programme.

Buy Now!

The last (but by no means the least) is the Google gossip which is spanning the net. This is the release of the ‘Buy Now’ button being added to mobile searches for Google Shopping…watch this space. So, whether you are looking to entice new customers towards your site with an exclusive promotion or want to increase customer visits to the store, Google Shopping’s ad extensions allow you to do all this and more. Just make sure you stay ahead of the game because advertisers are adopting these strategies as quick as they are being released. And no-one wants to get stuck at the back of the shopping queue.

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SEARCH RETARGETING: THE POWER OF CAPTURING INTENT BEYOND SEARCH.

8 helpful tips to follow when building a Content Marketing team

Ally Biring — Thu, 25 Jun 2015 15:15:04 +0000

Content Marketing is the buzzword in digital marketing today. How many of you have heard the following phrases come up in conversation... : “Content is King”, “a good content strategy”, “we need a content department”, “we need to hire a Content Marketer”. With the addition of Hummingbird, a search algorithum used by Google, there is now a big focus on content in search. The introduction of Hummingbird added strength to long-tailed keywords — catering to the optimisation of content rather than just keywords. In reality though do people actually understand what content marketing is? And more importantly why and how they should be doing it? Since I started out in SEO, many moons ago now, content marketing went under a very different guise. At a very basic level it was known as 'link building'. Although speeding ahead to 2015, we now know that link building (in its old form) is very bad - gaining unrelated and authoritative links will only hinder the credits of a site - we have penguin to prove it! I have outlined below eight fun, quick and simple tips and traits that I consider, as an SEO content Manager, when building a solid and effective content marketing team.

A solid understanding of technical SEO

Before creating innovative content, it is imperative to have a solid grasp of the SEO basics. A team that understands how a website is crawled and viewed by search engines is crucial and is the only way to ensure that a site has a solid foundation to begin work. There is no point in creating content and attracting traffic to a site that can’t cope technically or has a very bad user experience!

A different outlook

Some of the most inspirational people I have worked with have come with all sorts of educational backgrounds, from Philosophy, Law, Music, Sports and more! But I think this is what makes them GREAT! They see things from a different angle and identify opportunities that could be overlooked. So, whilst a good solid foundation of SEO knowledge is essential, don't be put off if you find out your SEO consultant has a past degree in Dance! The good old saying of 'stepping outside the box' should be encouraged in content marketing!

Hustlers!

Once good content has been produced it isn’t just about “if you build it they will come” - time, effort and some element of 'hustling' needs be implemented to make it shine. I look for a team that shows savvy networking skills, colleagues who actually speak to the targeted outreach market and a team who don't rely solely on online interaction. They go that extra mile and 'hustle' to get results.

Encourage a bit of competition

Be that with a colleague, rival agency or yourself, a little competition has never hurt anyone. Make sure your team are inspired by those working around them but will show a bit of a gumption to inspire others back!

A team player

Following on from my above point about competitiveness, I don’t want a team of cut throat marketers and neither should you, this will only mean you will lose sight of your objective. A GREAT content marketer should be able to work and perform well in a team as well as shine as an individual.

Knowing what your clients' business objectives are

This is a very important point. When creating content both onsite and offsite, a great content marketer needs to be very much aware and understand what their clients' business objectives are. This could be growth in traffic, an increase in conversions or a level of social engagement. Whatever it is, they need to be able to produce content that will meet all KPIs and measurable factors.

Don’t be afraid to fail

We content marketers can get precious about our ideas and sometimes, you just have to let it go and start over. As long as they can speak up and say 'this won’t work' (or isn’t working) and learn from it, then I'm happy. It’s much better than just continuing blindly forward and wasting valuable resource and budget for very little ROI.

Most importantly….

Are they a cultural fit? Will they work well within the organisation? And with existing team members? Will they give you an edge or insight that no one else can already provide? This list can go on and on but hopefully it's a helpful snapshot into what I tend to look for in a GREAT content marketing team, and so far, it's definitely working for me! If you’re interested in experiencing life as a Founder then take a look at some of our existing vacancies. If there’s nothing there that quite fits with your talents but you know you’d be a fantastic addition to our team, please get in touch – we’d love to hear from you.

Found launches video strategy and production department

Sarah Haviland — Wed, 01 Jul 2015 15:24:38 +0000

There is never a dull week here at Found and we're very proud to announce that this week saw the launch of our video strategy and production suite - a valuable addition to our award-winning search, social, display and content capabilities. Video and film are fast becoming core elements to any modern and, ultimately, successful marketing campaign. Interaction is key to any engaging campaign and video offers a great platform used to not only promote services but personalise content and really 'bring a brand to life' in a fun and creative way! With video fast becoming a key part of digital campaign delivery and consumer demand fuelling its rapid growth as an ad format, we’re extremely excited to extend Found’s market-leading expertise and delivery into this area. Whether it’s to achieve a desired emotional, direct or brand response, the Found video team are now producing a range of projects for existing clients, including branded video content and content specifically conceived for other channels, as well as device-targeted content, coverage of events and presentations, case studies and end-to-end video strategy; providing services that encompass everything from concept through to delivery. The new team will be led by Head of Video, Josh Adams, who has worked with clients including Google, Channel 4, ITV studios, YouTube and Sony Pictures, both shooting and producing digital content for entertainment and advertising formats. You can check out our showreel here and if you want to learn a little more about Josh then check out our recent Q&A with him. If you want to find out more then get in touch!

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5 ways running blogger events will create stronger link building campaigns

Laura Morris — Fri, 26 Jun 2015 13:42:56 +0000

Here at Found we’re always looking for new and exciting ways to produce stronger link building campaigns and deliver the best results for our clients. The rise of the blogging community has paved the way for a fresh perspective on link building. Long gone are the days of directory link building! Bloggers are now becoming increasingly savvy and learning to monetise their blogs, and the SEO community needs to develop alongside them. Blogger events are a relatively new phenomenon in the SEO world, previously thought to be a PR method. As the two practises are becoming more entwined, we’ve discovered ways that running blogger events can strengthen your link building efforts.

1. Experiential marketing is cool

Not many bloggers will want to talk to you about boosting your brand’s SEO. At best, they want advice on their own site. At worst, they’re scared it will impact their site negatively. If you email them with an exclusive invite to an industry event, you’ll probably find them more responsive. Experiential marketing isn’t just for the likes of Red Bull. Find your brand’s angle and utilise it. People like to be treated to a nice day out, especially if there are freebies involved. The only difference between a standard experiential event and one geared to link building is your audience. They can still be public, if that works for you, but to ensure you gain good links always prioritise the sites which would prove most beneficial to your link building campaign.

2. Humanising your brand

Even in the digital world, word of mouth marketing is still important. Most bloggers with a decent online following have a good social reach, so utilise this. Create a hashtag, provide them with the details of your brand’s social pages before the event begins, and engage with them socially in the lead up to, and following, their review. Your brand isn’t just ‘your company’. Prove to the bloggers that you’re living the brand - it’s your job to make them as passionate about it as you are. Give the attending bloggers the feeling of authority and insights they can share with their own audience. You aren’t just building links here, you’re building a company persona.

3. Content is (still) King

SEO is an ever changing medium in the shifting world of the internet. However content continues to be a hugely important factor. Instead of creating advertorial style guest posts, blogger events are a fantastic way to provide your targeted outreach market with great content, with genuine interest. We ran a recent in-store event with a client of ours, introducing new stock alongside outlining the history of the family-run company. We also offered money off in-store purchases (while entertaining their energetic kids). We tapped into the mummy blogger community and received some really great links for client reviewing and not just the intended products, but the company as a whole too. One of the bloggers’ sons filmed the event and posted a video alongside their review. Where else would you get such unique content without even asking for it?

4. Achieve both quality and a quantity of links

As we’ve discussed, blogger events can lead to great content. They can be insightful and honest. But no matter how great your content is, the linking site still needs to be good quality. Google’s algorithm takes into account a variety of factors, so a well-balanced link building campaign should be made up of a good quantity of quality links. Now thats a tongue twister! Not every campaign is going to win a link from the BBC (although it’s always worth a shot)! So how do we balance these two, sometimes opposing, factors? Savvy bloggers know how to monetise their site. Appeal to their interests, select bloggers who fit your brand. We recently organised an experience day for a blogger on behalf of a Found client. The expense to us was minimal, but the experience was fantastic, and wholly relevant to the topic of his blog. He was so pleased he was already planning his review when he drove away. We’re planning on repeating the day with a number of other bloggers within the same niche. Try it out. If it works, rinse and repeat. Good quality links, good quantity of links.

5. Combining PR with SEO

As a final note, remember to get your PR team involved. Public Relations and Search Engine Optimisation are no longer separate worlds. Every year these two fields become increasingly linked. PR teams are a valuable resource, and ‘Brand Reputation Management’ comes under both team’s remit. In the past we’ve found pooling our resources to be very effective. Make sure both teams are involved in running the event, the two strengths will have all bases covered to ensure the event is a great success. So, with these 5 points in mind, meet up with your PR team and organise an experience or event which appeals to your target market and makes you look great, then start outreaching. It doesn’t hurt to get your design team to create a formal looking invite too – we’ve found this improves our response rate hugely. Remember, all events are not made equal. A weekend event with forty bloggers attending sounds great, but will it practically work for your brand? Sometimes eight bloggers, twelve energetic kids and a stock room with a kettle is all you need. Let the links flow.

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Q&A with Josh Adams, Head of Video at Found

Sarah Haviland — Tue, 30 Jun 2015 12:24:00 +0000

Here at Found HQ, we know the value of a great working environment and spend a lot of time getting to know our workmates, whether that's over a game of pool at lunchtime or over some Friday beers at the end of a busy week. So, in light of the launch to Found's video strategy and production suite (watch this space for more information), I sat down with Found's Head of Video, Josh Adams, and asked a few probing questions to try and understand just what makes this guy tick...

If you could be any film character for a day who would it be and why?

Captain Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean – I've always wanted to sail around the world and couple that with a few bottles of rum and unlimited amounts of gold, I think I'd have a pretty unforgettable day!

What talent do you wish for?

I would love to be a much better surfer than I am. I’ve been really lucky and had the opportunity to surf in some incredible places - Bali , Malaysia, Devon and Cornwall to name a few, but that surfer within me is definitely still a bit rusty.

What is your greatest fear?

Falling from a great height without any safety measures, the parachute malfunction nightmare.

Josh or Joshua?

Definitely Josh! Joshua only gets used when I'm in trouble...mainly by my mum.

Is it more important to be liked or respected?

I’m sitting on the fence with that one; I think it’s crucial to have both. I really don’t think one can work without the other.

Who or what inspires you and gets those creative juices flowing?

I love sitting in the middle of the Mark Rothko room in Tate Modern. It's got a very strange but incredibly powerful and inspiring energy to it.

Any weird requests or demands from clients in the past?

Well, my first ever job in the world of production was making tea for Playboy! It was for a TV series about the Playboy Mansion, so whilst there wasn't any weird requests as such, I think serving tea around a lot of nakedness was quite a bizarre welcome to the world of video and production.

If you could be remembered for one thing, what would it be?

For making the meanest smoked BBQ banquet! I've always loved cooking and actually own my own smoker! There is nothing quite like some great home-smoked meat on a BBQ.

Any advice for all those young and budding film producers out there?

Absolutely! Stick with it...absorb and learn as much as possible on each job. Always seek to expand your network and get to know those around you, as you never know where that could lead. Persevere and don't grumble at those 4am wake up calls!

It would be rude not to ask... so finally, what is your ultimate 'must see' film?

That's such a tough question but I think I will have to go with Empire of the Sun – it's such a beautiful, classic Spielberg production. I also think Shawshank Redemption has an incredible script and story telling, so is certainly a must see too. Josh has worked with a roster of clients including Google, Channel 4, ITV Studios, YouTube and Sony Pictures, both shooting and producing digital content for entertainment and advertising formats, and we're really excited to have him on board with us! We'll be following this post with more details on our expansion into video strategy and production, but in the meantime why not check out our showreel here.

What impact has Google’s mobile algorithm update had on paid search?

Justin Maxwell — Thu, 02 Jul 2015 15:42:31 +0000

It’s certainly clear that Google has strong intentions to move users towards a mobile friendly web, seeking to make the best possible experience for their users. After all, search queries on mobile have now surpassed desktop searches, so these updates come as no surprise. On April 21^st Google rolled out the mobile friendly update. Prior to this, mobile rankings for a website were usually tied to the ranking strength of the desktop site. Ranking well on desktop SERPs usually meant that you would also rank well on mobile SERPs. Since the update in April agencies have seen a boost in rankings, especially where competition has not adapted to a mobile-friendly site. Certain companies have seen as much as an 88% drop in mobile traffic due to their sites not being mobile friendly, which clearly shows you how severe the impact can be. We take a look at some of the main impacts Google's mobile algorithm update has had to paid search campaigns and provide some helpful tips to ensure you don't get left behind and lose valuable customers.

How has the update impacted paid search CPCs?

When Panda and Penguin first launched, many companies' organic rankings were negatively affected which obviously made a big impact on revenue figures. To make up for this loss, companies had to invest more of their marketing budgets into PPC to fill the void. The mobile friendly update has been no different, with mobile CPCs increasing in certain accounts where their competition has had no mobile-friendly site. This trend is probably set to continue until companies have adapted their sites, recovering both rankings and traffic.

What does this mean for your mobile paid search strategy?

As the paid mobile space becomes more competitive, it’s imperative that a mobile specific strategy is in place for all paid search advertisers. Increased CPCs now mean that ad text, quality scores and conversion rates are more important than ever. Here are five strategies you need to be thinking about for your Adwords campaigns:

1) Mobile preferred ads

A good place to start is making sure you’re speaking to your mobile audience and desktop audience differently. This can be done by implementing mobile-preferred ads, which can only be seen by users searching from their mobile phone. It's best practice to keep your communications short and sweet and make sure that the desired action is possible on mobile ie: don’t ask them to download whitepapers... instead, direct them to call, email or visit a nearby store. Image taken from Google 2 July

2) Mobile bid adjustments

As with all digital marketing techniques, mobile bid adjustments aren’t something you should ‘set and forget’. Mobile CPCs have increased 150% since 2012 and as we know, show absolutely no signs of slowing down. Make sure you constantly monitor the number of impressions, clicks, conversions and CPA on mobile as opposed to desktop, and make appropriate bid adjustments based on performance. If you notice that click volume is high, but your conversions are lacking, then it might very well be down to your poorly optimised mobile landing page experience. Image taken from Google 2 July

3) Use all ad extensions

Ad extensions are a terrific way to increase your ad's CTR. They also play an important role in your quality scores. Location extensions are particularly important if your business is based both online and offline. People are constantly on their mobile phones looking for directions, so make it as easy as possible for them to find you and avoid losing out on any offline sales!

4) Call only-ads

If you currently don’t have a mobile site and you're struggling with getting mobile traffic to convert, then you might want to think about utilising call only ads. These only give users the option to call and not get directed to your website. Image taken from Google 2 July

5) Google shopping

If you’re an eCommerce business, Google Shopping is an absolute must! These high intent searches normally see higher CTRs and conversion rates due to their visual impact. Since mobile real estate is also a lot smaller, Google Shopping provides opportunity to take up more of the space and override your competitors. Image taken from Google 2 July

Will paid search be seeing a similar mobile update?

I don’t think a similar update for paid search would come as a surprise to anyone. As we know, Google want to provide the best user experience possible. A mobile friendly PPC update would force many companies to adopt mobile friendly sites if it meant their quality scores and overall performance would be affected. Those advertisers who rely on paid search, and not organic search, are not as concerned about the mobile responsiveness of their website due to the mobile-friendly feature being part of Adwords quality score since September 2011. Over the past two months, Google has started testing a “mobile-friendly tag” onto the front of Adwords ad description lines. This could indicate that Google are looking to place more emphasis on the mobile friendliness for PPC landing pages. Looking back a few years, ad extensions were never part of the Ad Rank formula, this changed when, in 2013, Google announced these would contribute to quality score. So, don’t be surprised if more mobile factors start making up a bigger portion of quality scores in the months to come....watch this space! Image taken from Google 1 July So, it appears that a PPC mobile update could be arriving sooner than we think. The combination of algorithm updates and mobile searches surpassing desktop means that you need to become mobile friendly immediately. It’s not only important to think about your site but to also think about the mobile strategies involved with driving traffic to it. If you’d like to get a quick overview to how mobile friendly your landing pages are, check out this handy Google tool mobile friendly tester.

6 quick wins for link earning

Robert Mitkow — Wed, 29 Jul 2015 09:19:19 +0000

It's a well known fact that the days of quick link acquisition tactics, such as making directory submissions and posting comments are gone. These methods are now not only ineffective but they can also harm your site's potential to rank. SEO has been disrupted by the advent of content marketing; creating high quality and engaging content is considered the main legitimate way of earning links to a site. I think I can speak on behalf of all SEO and content marketers when I say that producing linkable content is often quite resource intensive and requires significant time, and sometimes financial commitments. So, what is left for SMEs that have very limited content budgets and need to gain search visibility as quickly as possible to drive conversions?

What is a good link?

Let's first demystify our understanding of quality links, as this is something we get asked to clarify on a regular basis. As Casey Meraz says on the Moz blog, a good link should meet the following criteria: - It should drive direct referral traffic. - It should build visibility with the target audience for your brand. - It should build your reputation. The six link acquisition methods outlined in this post will put you in good stead to acquire links that are in line with these requirements. Now that we have established what kind of links we should be trying to earn, let's take a look at six quick and effective ways of getting them. 1. Leveraging your business network Most organisations have a number of external stakeholders (suppliers, customers, clients or other types of business partners) that have websites and could potentially link to your site - so contact them! The exact placement of the link will depend on the nature of yours and your partner's businesses, but it could be added to a testimonial or an 'about us' page, for example. 2. Competitor link building If there are websites that link to two or more of your direct competitors, there is a good chance that they'll be willing to link to you as well. Tools such as Majestic's Clique Hunter and Open Site Explorer's Link Intersect come in particularly handy for this quick win link earning tactic. 3. Unlinked brand mentions This link acquisition method is usually extremely powerful when it comes to strong brands, but it can also work well for less known names. Search for your brand name using the advanced search operator [BRAND -site:DOMAIN] and you might find many instances of websites that mention your brand but don't link to your site. A quick email to the website owner asking for a link within an existing post often yields fantastic results. Once you've checked and chased most mentions that you can find in the search results, you can automate this link acquisition process by setting up alerts for your brand name using tools like Google Alerts or Talkwalker. 4. Utilising your digital assets Do you have a lot of imagery on your site? Does your company logo get used on various websites across the web? Visual, but also audio and video materials created by you or your business are owned digital assets that can be protected by intellectual property rights. You can require those willing to use your logo, images or videos to give credit by linking to your site. It's also possible to chase those who have already re-purposed your assets by doing a search using relevant keywords and/or Google image reverse search feature. 5. Link reclamation You should regularly conduct technical SEO healthchecks and crawl your site for server errors. You may have pages that no longer exist (and return a 404 error) that might have some external inbound links. Your website has already earned them, so make sure you make the most of this and redirect the URLs of the non-existent pages to relevant pages on your site using a 301 redirect. This will ensure that any link value flowing from the external sites is captured, which should subsequently lead to a boost in page and domain authority. 6. News jacking This tactic is very similar to chasing unlinked brand mentions but instead of monitoring the web for mentions of your brand, you keep your eyes open for any mentions of a topic that is relevant to your business. Should you come across a relevant mention, take a look at your portfolio of existing content and digital assets to see if there is anything that could complement the given piece of coverage. If you have a relevant blog post, imagery or infographic for example, get in touch with the author who has written about that topic and ask if they'd be willing to include your work. Having worked in SEO for many years now, these tips have proven very effective when clients require fast, inexpensive links. Follow these steps and you are well on your way to strong and succesful outreach and link building strategy. Good luck!

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Facebook and the evolving 'cost per click'

Emily Cole — Wed, 15 Jul 2015 16:28:56 +0000

Facebook, loved and used by over 1.44 billion users (2015) and with 936 million people actively logging on every day, it was inevitable that the brains behind the brawn would find a way to better capitalise on paid search advertising. And just like that – the update was announced! Today, Facebook released the brand new Ads Application Programming Interface. AAPI, can we call it that? Let’s! So what does this mean for us savvy social media advertising gurus? Well, a cost per click through Facebook currently covers liking an ad, commenting on it, sharing it and clicking on it, but do these actions all add the same value to the business? Advertisers can now breathe a sigh of relief, because the new update will mean that CPCs are only counted on a ‘Link Click’ basis. So, a click cost will be clicks to visit the site, clicks to install an app and call to action clicks. But why are Facebook changing their current cost per click pricing model, and is this update going to help or hinder social network advertisers? One thing is clear, the benefits of the update come in abundance!

Return on Investment

We can all appreciate how hard it can be to demonstrate the return on our paid advertising efforts through Facebook. After all, is someone ‘liking’ an advert really as valuable as a user who clicks on the advert and then goes on to purchase a product through their website? By Facebook splitting out these engagement metrics, it will mean that advertisers are only paying when a user takes a valued action – being a click through to the site. This is not to say that likes, shares and comments are not valuable. An engagement is an engagement after all, and these will always be a crucial component to any brand awareness campaign. Moving forward we will only be paying when a click is adding considerable value to the business; traffic to the site, and the end goal – a purchase.

Rising CPCs

Now, there must be some kind of adverse affect of the Facebook update, right? Undoubtedly CPCs will rise because advertisers are no longer paying for likes and comments. But this rise in CPCs is only proportional to the added return that the investment will bring. Advertisers are paying for quality clicks and in turn should reap the revenue rewards.

Lower Click Through Rates

In line with the rise in CPCs, CTR will also decrease, as likes, comments and other engagement metrics will no longer form part of the CTR calculation and bolster click stats. But don’t be put off by this as CTR will now become a more useful measure of performance. The clicks you will be receiving will be much more valuable and will allow bid optimisation to become more accurate to reflect this. Just be wary of comparing performance against previous Facebook campaigns as you will no longer be comparing apples to apples, and on the face of it, performance will appear to have dropped.

Enhanced Optimisation Capabilities

Separating likes and comments, from more informed, lower funnel actions such as clicks or app downloads will mean advertisers can begin treating a campaign much more like an Adwords or Bing account– optimising to true key performance metrics. In turn, bids and budget management will become much more controlled, and so spend can be much better used to achieve businesses goals. So, in summary, the Facebook paid ads update means that comments, like and shares on an ad are no longer attributing to CPC. Eliminating these from the Cost Per Click pricing model means that advertisers can better understand the true return on ad spend. This will allow them much greater optimising capabilities, and in turn, brands can expect to see bundles more value from advertising through Facebook. With the update upon us, there is no better time than now to invest in Facebook paid advertising. Greater control over budgets and more granular reporting capabilities will mean that brands can begin using Facebook as a much more cost effective advertising platform, rather than just the brand awareness tool it has been predominately used as in the past.

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How can brands beat Facebook's news feed update?

Imogen Davies — Thu, 23 Jul 2015 12:09:42 +0000

With social media constantly evolving, we have grown to accept that changes can and do happen overnight. However, not many changes have been as significant as Facebook’s most recent update, and it's important people know how to use it to its full potential. We are now a few weeks into the the latest Facebook update and if you didn't already know, it is affecting the all important 'news feed' application. An update triggered by users' feedback requesting to see more posts from the people they are closest to. To give the users what they asked for, Facebook implemented an algorithm change which would allow users to select people and brands which they wanted to see updates from so they would appear first in their news feeds. Great news for everyone who wants to filter out the noise, having the power to now see exactly what they want to see from the people they want to keep in touch with. However this update can't be viewed in such a positive light for brand pages. Not only does this update let people select who they want to see news from, it also allows them to unfollow people and brands quickly and easily so that their posts won’t appear in the newsfeed at all! If that wasn’t enough, the update also shows users new pages that they may like to follow! So for a quick roundup, this is what the news feed update is all about :

See posts from those closest to you first in your news feed
Unfollow and re-follow people and brands quickly
Discover new pages that might be of interest to you

The issue is, that whilst all of these slick new features will greatly enhance the user experience, it could be detrimental to brands and business pages; so I've put together a few top tips to help brands beat the update. A short while ago brands started to see a decline in the reach of their organic posts with the likes of Beyoncé and Coca-Cola averaging an organic reach of 1% of their followers. This could be the reason why we're seeing more sponsored and paid media posts on our Facebook news feeds than we did last year. Whilst it is true that Facebook have recently been trying to remove advert-like organic posts from the news feed, that does not mean that you should go straight to paid options. The posts need to remain of genuine interest to the viewer to encourage engagement and minimize the action of being unfollowed, not selected for a top-of-the-news-feed spot or worst of all losing out to competition through recommendations. That’s hit all three outcomes of the latest update, so as a brand you need to take a look at exactly what your audiences want. Whilst it's crucial to use Facebook to every advantage you can, you also need to remember that your audience is made up of people just like you! So ask yourself, what annoys you on Facebook? Do you see too many adverts? Or do you want to see more specific posts relating to what you actually like? This update lets you manage and control this, so take a bit of time out to put yourself in your targeted audience's position and ask yourself the below :

How much interest does this brand add to my day?
Would I prefer to see more of their posts in my news feed, instead of having to go to their page to see them?
Do they just use the same content in their ads as they do in their updates?
Are they still relevant to me?

Top Tip

The key thing to remember to keep your audience engaged is a varied posting style (links, videos/images, text) applied to content that is relevant to your audience. And whatever you do, do not post the same content on all of your social platforms or keep the same content in ads and organic posts.

Audience Engagement

As I've already suggested this news feed update is set to wreak havoc on brands pages, so it is crucial you stay engaged and offer valuable content to your audiences. This cannot be stressed enough; I myself this morning got rid of four pages I followed on Facebook because I didn’t like the content they were posting any more – and that was without using the quick, easy ‘unfollow’ option the update has introduced! If your audience don’t like your content, find your page too static or similar to other pages then you end up in competition with every other brand on Facebook that offers what you do. This is when you need to find your USP, ask yourself :

What makes you different?
Why should people follow your brand instead of another one?
Why should people see your post at the start of their news feed instead of a cat video posted by someone they went to school with 10 years ago?

If you can’t answer those questions then you need to think about the quality of your content and what it's actually offering to your audience. This is particularly true if they follow you as well as one of your competitors. Social media is a brutal space for brands and is becoming ever more competitive. As the old saying goes, if you snooze you lose. Big time!

Top Tip

Keeping your audience engaged on Facebook can help your brand's performance a lot more than you think. The more time people spend on your site, the chance of them purchasing something increases. It's a simple formula but it works!

How to Retain Your Audience

Audience retention is a huge task on social media platforms, you need to trust that most will follow you for a reason, and it's your duty to provide them with relevant content and added value for doing so. Here are five steps to help keep a firm grip of your audience and beat the update: 1) Look at your Facebook insights and answer these questions:

When is the majority of my audience online? – Time and Days of the Week
What kind of posts do they interact with most? – Text/Image or Video/Link
What has been the best performing post over the last 3 months?

2) Use your insights to tailor your content approach to suit your audience

Post when they are online
Post what they want to see
Post more of what has already worked

3) Engage with your audience!

Answer their questions
Reply to their comments
Share their content if they have written for you or sent you a picture of your product

4) Do not spam your audience

Just because you know when they are online doesn’t mean you can schedule 50 updates to blast their news feed between the hours of 6.00 and 9.00 p.m.
They will appreciate spam as much as you do – which is not very much at all!
Be considerate of them, vary the content and make sure your ads are not the same as your organic posts

5) Listen to your audience!

They know what they want from you, if you don’t deliver it, they will go elsewhere
Often people see brands as ‘friends’ on Facebook – treat your audience as you would your friends – listen, offer advice and be comfortable talking to them
The more you listen to their needs and act on them, the more they will trust you and that leads to even more people following and engaging with you.

So, where does that leave my brand?

Even though this new update has the potential to be damaging to a brand’s audience numbers on Facebook, it really hasn’t told us anything we didn’t already know – people want to see what interests them. Simple. If your page is publishing posts that are exclusively relevant to your Facebook audience, they will stay interested. If your page is publishing posts that are interesting and beneficial to your Facebook audience, they will stay interested. It will be rare that people choose to put a brand's page above their best friend on a news feed, but this shouldn't mean that people are tempted to unfollow you. Facebook can be a cruel, cut-throat platform, and to stay on top you need to completely understand your audience. If you follow the tips above, you should be able to beat the update and shouldn’t lose any of your followers, you might even make it into their priority post lists! Good luck to all fellow brands, #beattheupdate

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Top 'n' Tail - An afternoon for discussion, debate and cocktails

Tina Judic — Mon, 13 Jul 2015 15:37:20 +0000

Found kicked off its inaugural Top 'n' Tail event last week at The Anthologist in central London. An event focusing on hot topics followed by cocktails, we were delighted to welcome two guest speakers, Alex Henry of personalisation platform, Monetate, and Peter Janes of social recommendation site, Shopa. After a few welcome drinks, Alex kicked off the event with a rip-roaring tour of how personalisation is a must-have for any company wanting to secure the future of their ecommerce business. Whilst digital ad spend is growing year on year, the rate of growth is falling. With advertising costs increasing, coupled with customers demanding a more personalised experience with brands, Alex talked about the time being “to act now” – to engage the audience already on your website, by treating them as unique individuals and, in turn, increasing conversion and loyalty. Alex Henry, Monetate Peter talked to us about the world of discovery, how the way we interact online is no longer just about searching but about personal recommendations. Shopa is a personal recommendation and discovery site that identified this shift in activity back in 2012. IBM’s ‘European start-up of the year in 2013’, Shopa is going from strength to strength as it unlocks the future of social recommendation globally. The audience were delighted to gain insight into how they could benefit from this evolution. Peter Janes, Shopa As the two sessions came to a close, the cocktail masterclass began, with those keen to create their own cocktails being let loose with the mixers and shakers! It was at this point that two Founders stepped forward in a head-to-head speed debate. Guy Thornton and George Bett had two minutes each to argue their view on a particular subject (in this instance, “Is digital marketing killing the high street?”) followed by a two minute retort. With one standing for a firm “yes” and the other a resolute “no”, both parties gave great arguments which encouraged lots of discussion from the audience. Florence Bundy, Found Considering TFL decided to strike on the day of our Top ‘n’ Tail, we were delighted with the turnout – so a huge thank you to everyone who battled their way across London to be there. Look out for details of our next Top ‘n’ Tail event, coming soon!

10 questions your keyword research should be able to answer

Richard Lewis — Fri, 31 Jul 2015 15:17:22 +0000

It’s Friday – late afternoon. You’ve finished your keyword research document for your shiny new client. You click save for the last time and close the barely responsive spreadsheet. Relief washes over your weary soul. The weekend’s siren song is almost audible. It sounds like Chris de Burgh. There’s just enough time left in the working day to check the Found blog – what better time to catch up on the latest insights in the field? And here you are. Of all the posts on all the web, you chose to click onto this one. Believe us when we say your client will be dazzled by all the new insights you’ll be weaving into your improved keyword research document after learning these ten handy tips, so sit back and and enjoy ‘til closing time. Cheers!

1. Which products and services does the client actually offer?

Most SEO keyword researchers rely on AdWords Keyword Planner for their data. This is understandable as it is the most reliable source around – most of the other keyword search volume tools get their data primarily from here. When you placed your client’s primary keyword into Keyword Planner, it came back with a series of suggested Ad Groups – sub groupings of keywords which it thinks are related to your primary keyword. But are they all related to your client’s business?

Portfolio groups

These are based on Ad Groups but they’re better. They give structure to your keyword research and allow it to be digested at the topic level rather than at the keyword level - useful for a broader view. First, read your data and get rid of those Ad groups which are just plain silly. Sometimes Keyword Planner gets it wrong and it’s often easy to miss rogue groups which look related to your client’s business but are in fact about something else entirely. For example, the group “boots uk” is actually about Boots the Chemist and not wearable boots – but you’d have to actually read the keywords in the goup in order to determine that. Which brings us on to the naming of the Ad Groups. The Ad Groups are rarely named well. Sometimes it gets it right but most often, a group containing keywords about theatre tickets in Manchester will be called something like “Tickets Manchester”. So dive into the CSV, say goodbye to bogus Ad Groups and give them nice new names as Portfolio Groups. Your client will thank you. Depending on the number of groups, rainbow colours are an option here to help us identify the portfolio groups more easily and enjoyably.

2. How many people are interested in these products / services throughout the year?

Ok it’s pretty unlikely that you have missed search volume, seeing as it’s the most basic component of Keyword Analysis. But how about seasonality?

Search volume and seasonality

Google’s “Average Monthly Searches” data is averaged over 12 months. It’s worth bearing in mind that this averaging can be misleading if your client’s product is seasonal. Wooly hats may have a search volume of 5000 but you can bet that for July the real figure will be significantly lower than Google’s provided average. Keyword planner is luckily kind enough to provide seasonal search volume data. When you’re exporting your CSV, tick the option to include seasonal data. Even if you’re just a wizard level 2 on Excel you should be able to knock up a little trends comparison graph with drop down menus like this one : Now your client can look at seasonal trends for different keywords at once and choose which ones they want to go for at different times of the year.

3. How much are people paying to appear for this keyword?

If people are paying loads of money to appear for a keyword, it is either well known to make money, or people with a lot of money think it will make them money. These are good reasons for giving a keyword extra attention in your organic campaign. [caption id="attachment_15499" align="alignnone" width="642"] Can you rank for this keyword? Someone does. And they’re knee deep in doubloons.[/caption]

4. Where does the client's website currently stand in organic search?

Most clients already know whether they’re getting a lot of organic traffic or not, but they usually don’t have a summary view of their rankings for keywords relevant to them across the board. So why not give them one – a simple chart showing the position spread can be really insightful. Each segment of the chart corresponds to a different mutually exclusive group of positions in Google’s search results e.g. #1, 2-5, 6-10 etc. A pie chart should do the trick nicely – some people go for bars, it’s a matter of personal taste. A pivot table and a couple of countifs later and you’ve got a bird’s eye view. Now the client can say to their CEO “this is where we are in organic” and look righteous in the process.

5. Which pages rank for which terms?

Most rank tracking tools are kind enough to tell you the page on the client’s website which is ranking for a keyword, not just the position. This data is simple to add into your main keyword table and adds a whole new dimension of insight. Add some columns, fire up the lockups and you’re ready to hit the town. If your client’s “contact us” page is outranking their homepage for their primary terms, you’ll find out about it by doing this. Then you can ask them to change the title on the homepage from “Home” to “Trouser Presses | Corby”.

6. How much traffic is the client getting from organic search on each term?

Landing page reports in Google Analytics can give a hint as to which pages are doing well but since ‘not provided’ there is little indication as to whether the organic traffic to a successful page is coming from one big keyword or a host of smaller keywords. Including ranking data in your keyword analysis document gives you a clue to this mystery. Combining ranking data with search volume and average click through rates by organic position, you can make a damn good guess at the amount of organic traffic which is being received per keyword. It’s not as good as the old stuff but it still packs a punch.

7. How much is a single organic visit worth to the client?

When you know the value of an organic visit, your search volume and ranking data take on a whole new meaning. Suddenly, you can put a tangible currency value on your SEO data. Now your research speaks the language most comprehensible to your client: £££

Per session value

The “Per Session Value”, also referred to as EPV (earnings per visit), is available in Google Analytics provided your client has eCommerce tracking set up. After segmenting for organic traffic and setting the date range to the last 12 months. 1: Behaviour -> Landing Pages 2: Select “eCommerce” from the explorer tab 3: The average Per Session Value is shown in the right-most column. Now, if you know how many organic visits the client’s website may receive for a certain keyword at a certain position, you can use the per session value to place a monetary value on that keyword depending on position. The per-session value can vary between groups of products and services, so for maximum accuracy, it’s best to look at each keyword portfolio group in turn.

8. How much traffic and revenue could be gained from a top 5 position?

As a hot shot SEO, you’re confident you can get your client’s website performing better than it currently does in organic search. The exact form this will take, however, is less certain. Google haven’t yet shared the full details of their algorithm and your spies on the inside have yet to deliver the crucial intelligence needed to finally crack the code. The exact SERP positions cannot be predicted. This can make assigning organic keyword value difficult because organic traffic (and revenue) varies significantly between positions in the top 5. Is there another way? Sort of...

Potential traffic & revenue by portfolio: Top 5

Averaging the traffic to be obtained for a keyword across the top 5 may be the answer you’re looking for - it's a way of getting a broad impression of the rewards of ranking in the top 5 without knowing which particular rank the client's website will achieve. When all the keywords for which the client site ranks below position 5 are given this treatment, combined with the Per Session Value data explained in the point above, you’ll have a series of monetary values for the keywords which can be prioritised in order of potential top 5 revenue. Viewing this data at the portfolio level (i.e. sum of top 5 potential revenue for all keywords in a portfolio) is even more powerful because it shows clearly which business areas your campaign will profit most from focusing on.

9. Which keywords can deliver the quickest wins?

You’ve made your top 5 revenue pie charts and now your keyword analysis document looks like it’s from the 26^th century. When your client says “which areas should we target?”, you can say “our data suggests that targeting the ‘trouser presses’ portfolio group will yield the greatest potential top 5 revenue”. “Ok” says the client, visibly impressed but wanting more. “Which particular keywords should we target first?”

Opportunity keywords

Opportunity keywords deliver the quickest wins for the client. There are many possibilities for identifying these. Two of my favourites are:

Cusp of Page 1 (positions 11-13)
Cusp of Top 5 (positions 6-8)

Keywords in these position brackets stand to receive an increase in organic traffic and / or organic impressions from relatively small increases in rank. If you can list all the keywords meeting this criteria for the client’s website and order them by search volume, you’re one step away from creating opportunity keyword scatter graphs like the one pictured below. All you need to do first is check that the keywords which you’re looking at actually have commercial value. Client: “Which particular keywords should we target first?” You: *Points at graph showing a wealth of information*

10. Why have I paid money for you to make this?

This is what will run through some clients’ minds when they finish reading your magnum opus. To you, it’s clear that the keyword at the top-right of the cusp of top 5 opportunity scatter graph is the one which should be optimised for first. You even wrote “top right = higher SEO potential” next to it so even a 5 year old could understand it. Problem is, your client makes trouser presses and hadn’t heard of SEO until last Wednesday. In SEO, I find it’s easy to forget that things which seem obvious to me are only obvious because I’ve been doing this for years. Some clients, being human, won’t want to admit to not understanding (who likes doing that?) so instead of asking for clarification, they might close off and keep asking “so what do we do?” when, to your SEO brain, that is clear from the document.

Write a tailored summary

Have an idea of the client’s level of understanding and technical interest before sending the document over to them. Write a summary tailored to fit them – the better they understand your findings, the easier it will be for both clients and SEOs to make progress together. When the real work of SEO optimisation begins, the tables, graphs and statistics in your Keyword Analysis Document will be there to back up every action. Until next weekend.

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Ad copy testing: start it, test it, measure it!

Kadriye Elekler — Thu, 13 Aug 2015 10:52:51 +0000

Ad copy testing is a vital aspect of any PPC strategy. Whether you're new to PPC or have been doing it for decades, ads should be tried and tested on a regular basis for optimum performance and maximum click-through rates (CTRs)! Every PPC guru wants to encourage more traffic to either their own or their client’s site, but may not always have the financial backing for inflated cost per clicks (CPCs) to get there. This is where testing, testing and more testing comes into play. In a nutshell, the higher your CTRs, the more relevant Google deems your ads to be. In turn that will give your site higher quality scores, more clicks on your ads and lower CPCs - a PPC dream come true! CTR is the key metric which determines Quality Score (QS), and Quality Score is a direct multiplier which determines cost per click. So carrying out even a small amount of ad testing will positively influence all of these key metrics – making your paid activity much more cost effective.

A couple of musts...

Before we jump into the best way of testing new ads, let’s first take a look at a couple of pointers behind the ‘what’ and the ‘why’… 1. What do you want to achieve? “More clicks to your site?” or “More conversions with a lower cost per action?” Decide what you want and start tailoring your ads with your target goals in mind. 2. What is your target language? As well as making your ads look eye catching in terms of grammar and punctuation, it is really important that you understand your target market. If you are selling travel insurance to the "over 70s” you will need to use language that is appropriate and well suited to that market, probably very different to language targeting teenagers for example. Google Analytics is a great way of understanding your target market; age demographic etc. Ensure your creative sits well in the market you are competing in. 3. What campaign settings to use? When you are testing three entirely new ads, change your ad delivery setting to “rotate evenly”. This will allow your ads to be served evenly rather than showing one ad the majority of the time and enabling you to identify your best performing ads. Not sure where to find this? Go to: Campaign Settings>Advanced Settings>Ad Delivery (see screenshot below) Image from Google Adwords, July 2015 4. The big spenders... Using high volume ad groups for your ad testing will allow you to analyse performance more effectively. There’s no benefit in starting your ad testing in an ad group which gets only five impressions a month. Believe me, you'll be waiting a long time to see any results!

Let's delve a little deeper

Ad testing is all about minimal effort for maximum reward. You can change just the smallest snippet of text in your ads, and this can make the world of difference to your campaign performance. And this is where we recommend you begin. Ad testing in paid search does not mean testing an entirely new ad each time – in fact, we would recommend starting with 2-3 ads with a slight ‘spot the difference’ in each one. So maybe you keep the entire ad the same but just change the 2^nd description line in each ad. Or maybe you keep the entire ad the same, but test changing the headline. This way you can analyse performance very effectively to find your top performing ads. You can then create a new version of that ad keeping the winning aspect the same across all ads. Think of it like a football tournament – test variations of your ads until you find the one achieving the highest CTRs at the cheapest CPCs. A little confusing, let’s take a look at some live examples… Ad - version 1 Ad - version 2 If we look at the examples above, the only aspect I changed is the Description Line 1 (DL1). So if version 2 has the highest click through rate, I would then test that DL1 in both ads, instead changing the DL2. It's a simple process of elimination. To ensure you are effectively analysing the performance of your ads, make sure you run them for a long enough period of time. You may have an ad which has acquired one impression and had one click – 100% CTR. “I am a PPC King!?” But one impression and one click is not enough to fully understand how well it has performed. Allow enough traffic to go through each ad before deciding on the next ad copy test. On the other hand, don’t allow 1000s of clicks through to your ads before you make changes – you never know, you could have acquired double the amount of clicks through a new ad variation.

The key elements to a perfect ad

It is very tempting to test a new ad from scratch most of the time. However, best practice of ad testing requires extra patience with a strategy to follow. While you are working on A/B testing, you shouldn't leave any room for doubt which may lead your testing to a failure. That is why it is very important to test one variable at a time and measure the outcomes of each changes. Subsequently, carry on to the next ad copy testing using your winner ad. The beauty of Adwords if that you can change a whole host of aspects of your ads. You are not just limited to the main description lines, so use this opportunity to make your ads as compelling as possible, and win clicks over your competitors:

Headlines: Start your testing with headlines. No doubt, headlines are the first text your potential customer will see when they are looking for your product or service. Make sure you add what exactly people are looking for in your headline that will stand out, along with your best offer if you have one. Do not include any attractive sale related term if you are not currently running any offer!
Description Lines (1 and 2) : Use this space to make your messaging as attractive as possible without misleading visitors. As well as this, make full use of the space. So often we see advertisers only using half the description line space, making the ads much less attractive.
Call to Action (CTA): Your CTA is your deal breaker. This is what you are asking from your customers to do, be specific here. Make sure to use strong phrases to lead your visitors. Don`t waste your precious description line with poor or complicated CTAs.
Display URL: This is one of the most underrated and underused (for that matter) part of the ad. There are several ways you can test your URLs such as adding a keyword at the end of your URL or testing it as a sub-folder e.g. www.Sample.com/Summer-Sale www.Sample.com/Designer-Handbag
Sitelink Extensions: Another great way for up-selling your products and services – Sitelink extensions allow you additional links to your site at the bottom of your ads’ descriptions lines. A lot of advertisers forget that Sitelink extensions contribute to your CTRs and Quality Scores. If Google recognises your sitelinks as assisting in a click on your ads – then you will pay less in CPCs.

Measure it!

Undoubtedly, click-through rate is the main metric which indicates the success of your ad testing. Make sure you understand your goals, your audiences and your competition for a solid ad-copy strategy. Although ad-testing is can be seen as never-ending process, if it means your paid search activity is more cost effective, then it is well worth the time investment!

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It’s more than just ABC as Google restructures

Tina Judic — Wed, 12 Aug 2015 09:14:49 +0000

So Google is restructuring which will see the business operate under a parent company, Alphabet. Confusing? Unnecessary? Or a great move? Personally, I believe this is a great move for Google – so often known as the search company or, even worse, the search company that dabbles in other stuff as well – as it truly separates their core business from their further goals; to discover, experiment and explore. It’s a bold move but it’s the right move for Google – a company I look up to in so many ways. Google, the search company, along with YouTube and their Android operating system will remain under the Google brand, with the main change being the person in charge. Step up Sundar Pichai who, after serving as Google’s Senior Vice President of Products, is the new CEO. So, why do this now? Google has effectively grown up. It’s a phenomenally successful global business that has delivered on a vast scale, however it’s a business that doesn’t want to, “get comfortable doing the same thing”, accordingly to Alphabet CEO, Larry Page. Technology is moving at a fast pace and this streamlined approach not only gives the founders the ability to spread their wings, it’s also a ringing endorsement to the existing Google business that its future is in safe hands. So, what does this mean for the founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin? “Sergey and I are seriously in the business of starting new things," explained Page. This is Page and Brin’s opportunity to focus on the future - the group’s (even) bigger picture - whether that future is self-driving cars or extending human life span. These are two individuals that have got more to give to the world than search. Personally, I’m excited by this move. Alphabet is meant to be a cleaner, more accountable holding company - for those interested, Alphabet was chosen as the company name because it represents the core of how they index with Google search. However, it’s not simply the streamlining of the various Alphabet businesses but the potential of what Brin and Page are going to introduce to the world in the coming years that truly excites me. From Nest and Fiber to the ever-mysterious Google X, this is Brin and Page’s opportunity to take on / create world changing technologies and businesses. And I, for one, want to see more of what these two have to offer.

Digital marketing lessons from Vogue's offline strategy

Beth Cornell — Wed, 19 Aug 2015 08:55:42 +0000

Digital marketing is an industry that is becoming more and more demanding and competitive across the web. Today we have access to almost everything online, and at just a click of a button. In just over 20 years we have seen mobile phone devices change from needing an aerial the size of the handset to a slimline touch screen smart phone, with Siri navigating and answering our every need. It’s certainly evident that brands and services are becoming more reliant and involved online. Potential customers can now access, search and purchase on a whole range of devices, either on the go or in the comfort of their living room. It's this recognition of the online buyer that has shifted digital marketing to the forefront of any successful marketing and outreach strategy. After all, what use is your product or service if no one can easily find it?! For the companies who market their products and services online where you rank on a Google SERP is crucial. In theory, the higher you rank, the higher the percentage of traffic that is likely to visit your site. Marketing strategies vary from brand to brand, company to company, all depending on what you want to achieve. Unconsciously, we tend to trust the first result we see (the highest ranked) as Google's aim is to provide and show us the best result for that particular search. It's a basic formula but one that is extremely difficult to achieve without professional advice and support. So what if you’re a brand and you don’t rank highly for key terms? Is this a problem? Should you be worried? Well, going against the grain for one such brand, this isn't a worry at all... It seems to date, the most iconic and globally accepted fashion magazine Vogue hasn't needed to follow the same rule. When searching Google for the generic term ‘fashion magazine’ (a term we would all expect to see Vogue ranking number one for), the result actually shows a number of much smaller and less authoritative competitors in higher positions, including Stylist and Elle magazine.

Image taken from Google - 20 July

When searching the term ‘fashion bible’, as Vogue is often referred to, you’ll see that Vogue doesn’t even appear within the SERP, and as the most powerful fashion influencing publication you’d think it would be high up there no matter what! Despite how the rest of the world have become reliant on developments online, it seems Vogue have maintained a large reliance on their presence offline and within print. Looking at stats from May15, Vogue boast an impressive 12.7 million print audience and a whopping 5 billion press impressions each month! So how have Vogue performed so well in print when technology advancement is taking over? Well, over the past 123 years, they have worked hard to become a brand as opposed to just a magazine. The Vogue brand mission has remained true and unaltered since the first issue back in December of 1892, where following their success on newsstands in New York USA, they brought it to London in 1916.

Early Vogue cover image taken from Google image - 20 July

If you also look back at past issues of Vogue, you’ll see there have been very few changes in the publications format and layout. For every decade that Vogue has marked so far, you can see the slight evolving changes to the front cover as reactions to the trends of the time. Vogue have managed to stay current and attract readers that fall within their target market; 25-40 years old, luxury consumers who are influential in opinion and who wish to establish themselves as leaders within career field. Considered the ‘fashion bible’, Vogue aim to target an audience who have the purchasing means to buy the products mentioned, thus making it a gold mine for brands wishing to advertise within. Vogue have always stayed true to their audience and focused on what they want to achieve as a thought-provoking, reliable and influential publication. Vogue has more international sales than any other fashion magazine. They know who their audience is, they understand what makes them tick and what affects them. They haven’t steered away from this, they haven’t engaged in faddy ad campaigns or online viral content strategies. Vogue have been marketing to the same field of women since their first issue landed in the hands of female fashionistas. The continuity shows that they haven’t tried to up their game - they haven’t needed to! Vogue: the brand Vogue immerses itself in fashion, always leading readers to what will happen next, whilst playing smart in the industry to be current and hold ownership. A brand has been created and a ‘go-to’ bible established. Wouldn’t it be great if we could all have this power and control over an industry? The logos of the below brands show examples of the importance of evolution and staying true and current to their targeted consumer.

Image taken from Google - 20 July

Vogue have also kept up to date with media and design demands, understanding what sells and how best to sell it! The below highlights the evolution of imagery used on cover shots, beginning with detailed art imagery to the advancement of skilled photography and editing:

Image taken from Vogue.co.uk on 20 July

In order to make your business a success, there are several key takeaways from Vogue listed below:

Stay on top and involved in the current ever-changing market along with your competitors without becoming unfocused.
Understand what it is your audience want and give it to them, don’t deviate.
Make sure people in organisations understand what your goal is! Vogue knew that being the most fashionable resource to get your hands on was key, and has constantly accomplished trends, icons and media growth to keep up with this.

“Don’t turn your back on print. Embrace social but don’t build your house on it. Invest in quality content that excites your readers. Focus on the reader and not the sales pitch and remember, you can build a brand on content – just be definitively good at one thing.” - Stephen Quinn; British VOGUE’s publishing director. Following the Vogue marketing module, less is indeed more - specific, targeted and relevant content triumphs. Trust and reliance on your brand aim is key and get to know your audience, understand what they want and deliver just that.

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A short video of our inaugural Top ‘n’ Tail event

Sarah Haviland — Thu, 13 Aug 2015 15:21:45 +0000

It’s just over a month since we hosted our first Top ‘n’ Tail event, and what a month it’s been! If I can take you back to that somewhat crazy day (thanks to the tube strike!) of discussion, debate and cocktails, you’ll remember that this month saw the launch of our personalisation offering. We welcomed Alex Henry, Director of Client solutions at partner company Monetate, to explain why personalisation is a crucial factor for any company wanting to secure the future of their ecommerce business. Peter Janes, Founder of Shopa, then talked us through how consumers’ purchase decisions are now more reliant on personal recommendations and discovery more than ever before. We finished the event off with a crash course lesson in how to make seasonal (and strong!) cocktails…..the perfect way to spend a Thursday afternoon. But why take my word for it? This month also saw the launch of our video department so, leading by example, we’ve created a short promotional video that we think sums up the afternoon rather perfectly! We have maintained throughout our Top ‘n’ Tail journey that our goal is to create a relaxed environment, where debate and discussion is encouraged. With demand for our next event already in full swing, make sure you get in quick to secure a place! INVITE ME Thanks again to all those who braved the tube strike and attended - we look forward to seeing your friendly faces again next time.

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Learning to love dynamic search ads

Lauren Dodds — Mon, 24 Aug 2015 13:40:51 +0000

Here on the PPC team we are the first to admit that we can sometimes come across as control freaks. We love nothing more than getting stuck into an account - building out granular keyword lists, refining our ad copy and optimising our bids (well, maybe apart from tea). So, whilst we are always open to testing new features and improving our campaigns, at first we viewed dynamic search ads (DSAs) with a hint of skepticism. Hand over control to Google to pick our keywords and ads for us - surely not! However, determined to remain open-minded, we gave them a go and we learnt that far from being a simple solution with no personal input they can, in fact, be part of a sophisticated strategy that leads to great results. With Google announcing even more changes to this feature we thought we'd review some of our thoughts, experiences and recommendations for DSAs. First of all though it's important to understand what exactly are DSAs? and why would you use them?

What are dynamic search ads?

Unlike the standard search campaigns most advertisers use, DSAs don’t use keywords to target queries. Instead, Google determines which queries to show ads for based on the content of your website. It then generates a headline for the ad using the search query and selects the most relevant URL from your website. This is combined with your own description lines and display URLs to create the final ad.

Why use dynamic search ads?

You might wonder why though, after you’ve spent years refining your keyword research techniques and ad copy writing skills, you’d need Google to start doing it for you... Well, of the billion searches made on Google every day, 15% of them have never been seen before (Internal Google Data). It’s unlikely that these are just keywords in your account waiting to be used. You might argue that this is what broad match and phrase match is for, but there are still relevant terms that even these won’t cover. So, why not give Google the chance to show a highly targeted ad for these terms. This shift away from focusing on keywords echo what we are seeing with Google Shopping, whereby what is shown on an ad is determined by a feed rather than keywords. DSAs are particularly useful when you have a large number of products and services on offer eg. an e-commerce or travel site. It would take a long time to cover these products individually through traditional keyword campaigns. DSAs mean you can quickly cover a large number of product and not waste vital time you could be using elsewhere. They might be less effective, however, if you have rapidly changing content on your site (eg. daily deals) or a poorly optimised website where it may be difficult for Google to determine the right page for each query.

How to set it up dynamic search ads

Google have built a very useful step-by step guide to make implementing DSAs as easy as possible, so I won’t go through all the details here but there are certainly some important points to consider:

Domain and language - For each campaign you need to select a website domain and language. If you want to target multiple domains or languages these will need to be separated into separate campaigns.
Segmentation – Rather than simply targeting your whole domain or just choosing certain webpages, Google now organises your website into categories and lets you bid individually on these. Google also show example search queries and recommended bids for each category alongside the text ads and landing pages. Segmentation is absolutely crucial to campaign performance. By pulling different categories into separate ad groups you can target them with the most relevant ad text, just as you would with your keywords.
Dynamic target exclusions – Don’t forget to add dynamic target exclusions, particularly if you’re targeting your whole website. These prevent the ad showing on pages containing certain words (eg. “Out of Stock”) or certain URLs.
Ad copy testing – Make sure to create multiple versions of your ads, just as you would with your standard search campaigns; this will ensure you are seeing the highest possible CTR. Another added bonus of DSAs is that the dynamically inserted headline can be longer than your standard headline.
Tracking – Make sure any relevant tracking is applied to your campaign through tracking templates so you know how your ads are performing.

What does this mean for the role of a PPC analyst?

So, if Google can choose the search terms and write the ads does this mean us PPC analysts are out of jobs? Well, luckily, no. It’s not a case of just setting it up and leaving it with DSAs. There is a lot you can do to both improve your DSA campaign and use them to help out your main campaigns. I have written a few helpful points below :

Negative keywords – This is a key part of DSA management. Make sure you have your existing keywords applied to your DSAs to start with. Once the campaign is live, regular mining of search query reports (SQRs) for irrelevant keywords is essential to ensure you’re getting the best quality traffic to your website.
Search query reports – In addition to highlighting negative keywords, SQRs can be used to gather ideas for keywords to add to your standard search campaigns. Make sure to pull any top performing keywords out into your standard campaigns to manage individually.
Bid adjustments and bid modifiers - In addition to optimising your ad group bids you can apply your usual bid modifiers to your DSA campaigns eg. day parting, device targeting.
Ad copy testing – This is an on-going part of any good campaign optimisation and DSAs are no different. You might not be able to change the headline, but there’s plenty of room to experiment with the description line and display URL or test mobile preferred ads.
Continued segmentation – Expand your targeting to other areas of the site, try more granular bidding by category; there are lots of ways to continuously experiment with the segmentation of your DSAs.
Ad extensions – Make sure to include all the ad extensions you would usually have on your search campaigns to your DSA campaigns; this will ensure the highest possible CTR.
RLSAs - One strategy we have found particularly rewarding is combining dynamic search ads with Re-marketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSAs). RLSAs on standard search allow you to target returning visitors with tailored bids, keywords and ad copy, and we’ve seen great results for them on their own but when combined with DSAs we’ve seen performance really take off.

Because RLSAs target users that have already visited your site, you know they are a relevant and qualified audience who are more likely to convert and see a higher average order value. For one retail client we found that conversion rates on DSA combined with RLSA campaigns were five times that of the standard DSA campaigns, receiving an ROI that was 50% higher. For advertisers who are still a little nervous about DSAs and might worry that Google could show ads to users that aren’t relevant, RLSAs add a little safety net to test the waters - you know the users have already been to your site and so are already potential customers. So, while we were initially a little worried about handing over control to Google with DSAs we actually found there was a lot of scope for input and testing, and we have seen some great results. With Google always making updates and improvements, DSAs should only become a more important part of a well-rounded search strategy going forward.

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The formula for a winning digital team

Chelsea Hall — Fri, 21 Aug 2015 11:53:17 +0000

Here at Found, the happiness and welfare of the team is my number one priority. After all, having a happy, engaged, passionate team translates into the work that we do for our clients and the relationships we have with them. Alongside our fantastic managers, I am always making sure that we are an agency that provides an environment for the team to flourish whilst delivering amazing work, and all the while having fun! So what is it that makes up the formula for our award winning digital team?

A culture to be proud of

Is it the endless supply of waist-expanding treats, usually in the form of Krispy Kremes, the ice cold beers on a Friday or the power boating trips down the Thames that make Found the agency we are? Well of course these things help and definitely bring a smile to the team, but ask the team what they love most about Found and 99% of them will say the people. With a careful recruitment process to guarantee we have ticked the talent box and that we have also found the right fit for the team, we are able to continue to foster a real family-feel within the agency, helping to nurture our high performing team. Working in a collaborative, supportive and fun environment means that the team are able to work as a tight unit, not just in their immediate teams but across the business as a whole. Working with a like-minded, dynamic group of individuals means that there is the opportunity to share new ideas for innovative client campaigns. From day one whether someone is an intern or a director, we offer our team the freedom and responsibility to run with their accounts and try new things to get the best results. Every agency will say that they want to stay 'ahead of the curve' and of course we do too, but it’s the continuous drive to improve and evolve that sets us apart. From lunch and learns, SEO assemblies and PPC academies to external training and personalised development plans, we ensure our team are at the top of their game and can continue to learn and grow - because at the end of the day, being left behind in such a fast-paced industry is not an option. One of the things that I love the most about working at Found is the sounds around the office. There’s not a day that goes by where you won’t hear lots of laughter, random chat or some cracking tunes (usually in the form of 90’s classics!) These things to me indicate a happy and vibrant team, which is exactly what we aim for! And it’s not just inside the office - down the pub, at a Founder’s wedding and even over the weekend you can find us hanging out. It’s incredible to be part of a team that genuinely enjoy spending time with each other inside and outside of working hours, and it makes those challenging days we all face that much easier to deal with. So what are the different teams that make up our award-winning agency?

The relationship builders

From the moment a prospect first gets in touch to when they become a client, the partnerships and client services teams are there to build a warm and successful relationship. Always determined to help them achieve their business goals and push them ahead of their competitors; the relationship builders at Found will always give their all to supporting their clients’ success. These guys take the time to understand our client’s business inside and out, putting together a winning campaign strategy and ultimately ensuring that we are delivering results.

The search masters

Shaking up the search space, these guys are the masters behind your search campaigns. From ever-evolving paid media campaigns to the complex world of SEO, they are at the heart of delivery. The Paid Media analysts’ super slick skills have performance at their core, and with precision and efficiency they drive traffic, sales and revenue whilst always striving to deliver the best possible ROI. The SEO team is made up of a combination of tech wizzes that make sure our clients’ sites are optimised to maximise search visibility and content marketers with a passion for creating meaningful content that speaks to our clients’ target audience and drives results. Not afraid to delve into new areas, the search teams are always willing to test new ideas to stay ahead and make sure that we are at the cutting edge of delivery for our clients in all things search.

The creative and technical crew

Working closely together, the studio team are the heroes of Found, covering both creative and technical bases. They are a key support in the agency whilst also driving our business into new areas and exploring new platforms. From creating beautiful designs for engaging infographics to digging deep into the data, resolving tracking problems with creative solutions and even creating bespoke platforms for our clients, this team continue to bring our agency to the forefront of technical and creative delivery.

The operations team

We are the glue that holds the team together. From HR to delivery, the Ops team are here to make sure that no matter what happens, the Found wheels keep turning. Our priorities are people and process, striving to provide the best framework for the team to be efficient, brilliant and happy. So, what is the formula for a winning digital team? You bring together a group of brilliant, passionate and curious people, you offer them a supportive and dynamic environment where they have the freedom and autonomy to lead their campaigns, you make sure they are continually learning and developing, and then throw in a mix of interesting and unique clients and lots of fun! Oh and few Krispy Kremes too... If you’re interested in experiencing life as a Founder then take a look at some of our existing vacancies – we’d love to hear from you.

10 of my top paid SEO tools - part 1

Philip Gamble — Fri, 28 Aug 2015 13:29:41 +0000

There are so many tools available for SEO that it can be seen as bit of a minefield. It can be difficult to understand which tool, or more correctly, which tools (there is always more than one needed!) needed to help improve a website’s ranking in Google. The first thing to understand is that there is no one tool that will provide all the information needed. Part of any SEO’s job is to use a variety of these tools to interpret what is best for the website in question. Investing in the right tool/s is a big financial and time commitment for a small company or entrepreneur. It should go without saying that the tools an SEO uses are critical to the success of any campaign. Having access to the right SEO tools is very important and can make or break an SEO campaign. Of course, having access to the tools is only the first step – understanding how to effectively and efficiently to use them and shape your campaign is another thing entirely. The following information is the first part of a guide aimed to help you choose the best paid SEO tools for your situation. Whether you are an agency or a small business, there should be a tool to fit your SEO requirements below. 1) MAJESTIC Screenshot via majestic.com Key uses:

Site analysis: identifying site strengths and weaknesses
Backlink analysis: what content attracts the most links, how has the backlink profile grown, are backlinks spammy or natural?
Tracking new and lost links
Anchor text analysis

Summary Majestic is one of the most essential tools for many SEOs out there. Majestic is able to provide insight on Linkbuilding, competitor analysis, anchor text and much more. Majestic also excels at helping you to understand the link profiles of your websites and your competitors’ websites. Majestic say they crawl the web and view around a billion URLs per day. They then use their “Flow Metrics” algorithm to analyse the value of these websites. One of the key metrics Majestic provides is Trust Flow. In a Post-Penguin world, this is more important than ever to detect unnatural links. 2) AHREFS Screenshot via Ahrefs.com Key Uses :

Site explorer: Identifying site strengths and weaknesses
Positions Explorer: Allows you to explore profitable keywords for organic search
Keywords Explorer: Provides you with keyword ideas and search traffic estimation
Backlink analysis
Tracking new and lost links
Anchor text analysis
Content Explorer: Helps you to see what is trending and being shared in any niche.

Summary Ahrefs continues to be most of the most innovative SEO tools on the market. Describing itself as a “turnkey marketing laboratory”, the super clean and organised interface does actually give it that laboratory scientific feel. Ahrefs is also an excellent backlink analysis tool. One of the advantages of Ahrefs is that you can find links before they are on Majestic, as it has its own index which reloads every 30 minutes. This is very useful for identifying natural links for macro content pieces. 3) SCREAMING FROG SEO SPIDER Screenshot via screamingfrog.co.uk Key uses :

SEO Auditing tool for crawling small to medium sized websites
Identifying page titles, H1s, Meta Robots, Canonicals and image analysis are just a few of the things that Screaming Frog excels at
Full features list here

Summary Often described in the Found office as the ‘Swiss army knife’ of SEO. Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider excels at carrying out so many different day to day SEO tasks. Whilst mainly used by the Found technical team for discovering technical issues, this tool is also very good at analysing, in mass, content issues such as poor title tag optimisation or other basic level content issues. The free version allows you to crawl up to 500 URLs, which is great if you are just looking to trial the software first. For larger sites cloud-based systems such as Deep Crawl and Botify are more likely to suit your needs. 4) URL PROFILER Screenshots via urlprofiler.com Key uses:

Full Content Audits. Integration with a large range of other SEO tools makes this one of the closest things to an “all in one” solution for auditing.
Link Audits
Domain Research
Link Prospecting

Summary URL Profiler is one of a new batch of relatively new SEO tools that is causing a bit of stir in the SEO world! URL Profiler’s strength is that it integrates with lots of other APIs including SEO tools such as Majestic, Moz, Ahrefs, SEMRush as well as Copyscape, Whois scraping tools and more. You can also configure URL Profiler to scrape data from webpages and to verify the existence of backlinks on certain webpages. URL Profiler will then provide you with one of the most detailed SEO reports you will ever download. The side scrolling Excel report sometimes feels like it will never end. 5) LINKDEX Screenshot via linkdex.com Key uses:

Rank tracking
Link Audits
Domain Research
Link Prospecting

Summary Linkdex is one of the most advanced rank trackers available at the moment. Offering a wide range of features and very detailed reports, it is the “Rolls Royce” of rank tracking. Used by some of the biggest brands including Burberry, it is really one of the higher end tools in the rank tracking market. Many cheaper alternatives exist, but there is something about Linkdex that just feels like you are using a quality product. The rank tracking graphics also look great to put into client reports. 6) BUZZSTREAM Screenshot via Buzzstream Key uses:

Managing your outreach projects
Managing you outreach team and assigning tasks
Automating personalisation of emails

Summary Buzzstream is an essential organisational hub for your outreach team. This program allows you to record all the actions your team makes. It is a vast database that makes organising an outreach team a breeze. The interface makes sending 100 targeted emails a lot less painful than sending via Outlook. Buzzstream can take a while to learn, and it is not without its quirks, but it is one of the best solutions for outreach at the moment. The merge fields in the email template designer allow you to customize almost every element of your email and send personalised emails in bulk making the outreach team’s job very much easier! 7) SCRAPE BOX Screenshot via scrapebox.com Key uses:

Link prospecting
Competitor backlink analysis
Checking if links are dead or alive
Removing Duplicates / Trimming domains to root level

Summary Certainly one of the most infamous SEO tools around. Scrapebox has a place in the hall of blackhat fame, but it is now also being used creatively by White Hat SEOs for link prospecting and other more white hat uses. One of the advantages of Scrapebox is that it can help dramatically speed up many of your daily SEO tasks if it is used properly. 8) BUZZSUMO Screenshot via buzzumo.com Key uses:

Identifying content that is performing well
Providing deeper level content insight
Content alerts
Competitor content analysis

Summary If you are in the content team at an agency, then you really need to be all over Buzzsumo. Buzzsumo is key to understanding what is working in the content world. Providing insight across all of the major social networks, it is one of the best ways to see what is being shared. Buzzsumo is one of the most essential tools for helping you create larger pieces of content. 9) SEARCHMETRICS Screenshot via searchmetrics.com Key uses:

Identifying overall visibility
Identifying Google Updates or any penalties
Keyword rank tracking
Identifying social reach

Summary Searchmetrics is a great tool that allows you to see the overall SEO visibility of any given website. This is great for identifying Google penalties, or considering the reasons for any increases in SEO visibility. Although a lot of SEOs are very proud of huge visibility increases, it is often a good idea to use Searchmetrics in conjunction with other backlink analysis tools to understand the reason for the increase in visibility, as the reason might not always be positive. (I have seen sites in the past that have been hacked and have had links pointed to them, resulting in a large visibility increase). Searchmetrics also produce a ranking factors study. They use their data to assess what the most important ranking factors are. Like any study of this nature, it has to be taken with a pinch of salt, but it is interesting to read nonetheless. The 2014 Ranking factors study can be found here. 10) SEMRUSH Screenshot via semrush.com Key uses:

Competitor research
Keyword research – (Good for beginners)
Site audit

Summary SEM Rush is one the most well-known tools for competitor analysis. With lots of juicy data to get your teeth into, and an easy to implement API, this is one of the favourite tools of many SEOs. SEM Rush also has a fairly decent section for keyword research, with keywords, bulk search volume, CPC and also “SERP Source” which gives a snapshot of Google’s results page for a search using any given keyword. SUMMARY This is a snapshot of 10 of my most used paid tools I work with in my day to day work. There are many, many more SEO tools available which also can provide similar levels of insight into your website. There are also many different free tools available which will provide similar results. The key is to find one that suits your budget and your requirements.

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4 go-to brainstorming hacks for content marketers in need of inspiration

Greg Nye — Thu, 03 Sep 2015 10:42:17 +0000

Let’s face it, there will always come a time in every content marketer’s week when the proverbial ‘brick wall’ is hit and creativity begins to wear thin. To make matters worse, search algorithm changes have emphasised the need for quality content that values detail, high levels of user engagement and originality. So, with standards for both onsite and offsite content continuing to rise, brainstorming or ‘ideation’ (to use the correct marketing buzzword) can often seem like a rather daunting prospect. However, for those who are dissatisfied with lackluster content ideas or are simply staring vacantly at the cursor on an empty word document, there are a number of methods and processes worth experimenting with before you give up or ask for help. Here are a few of my go-to brainstorming hacks for the uninspired, the exhausted and the sometimes desperate. Image credit : Jacob Bøtter, Brainsotmr 1) Utilise your keyword research Content ideation should always begin by assessing the keyword landscape for your company or client. Providing your keyword research is complete and up to date, it’s worth singling out five or six high volume search terms which the company have a realistic chance of improving their rankings for in the SERPs. Once you have selected your keywords, it’s important to identify the different variations of these terms and the popular questions or queries associated with them, as these can often lead to new content ideas or help you narrow down the focus on suitable new topics. Google’s ‘Keyword Planner’ is easily the best tool for generating new keyword ideas and opportunities and can lead you to interesting new directions when it comes to planning new content. For example, quite recently I performed a basic search in Keyword Planner using terms associated with family/group holidays in the UK. After a bit of rummaging through the planner’s suggested ad groups, I eventually came across a number of noteworthy new high volume keyword opportunities such as ‘rural retreats’, ‘dog friendly holidays’ and ‘beach cottages in Cornwall’. These new keyword ideas not only helped narrow down my subject matter but also introduced me to several new potential content concepts for my client. You can also use platforms such as Keyword Tool and SerpStat to generate quick keyword suggestions for your chosen industry or sector. Both tools also allow you to filter the results by ‘question’ which can sometimes give you quick insights into the kind of queries being asked for your chosen subject or topic. 2) Learn from your competitors When devising a content strategy it is vital to analyse the competitive landscape and conduct some thorough research into the performance of content produced by competitors. Firstly, it's useful to identify companies who are also ranking for your key terms within the SERPs as they are likely to provide you with some valuable inspiration (even if you simply take a quick gloss over the topics they’ve written about on their blogs). Once you have put together a shortlist of suitable competitors, try running some of their URLs (either the homepage or the company blog) through BuzzSumo’s Content Research Tool in order to discover what has been performing well socially on the site and driving shares from influential companies. The software conveniently crawls all the pages on the site, ranks each page in order of ‘total shares’ (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter etc.) and even provides you with a detailed list of social media profiles who have been sharing the article/page. You can also complete searches using keywords, this is incredibly useful to discover content which is trending within your chosen industry. Image credit: Jason Howie, Social Media apps If you're still struggling to find inspiration you can also delve into the backlink profiles of your competitors. Software such as Majestic will allow you to enter competitor’s URLs and sift through the site’s backlinks in order to find out where the company is acquiring their most valuable links from. Although this can be quite time-consuming, you can usually find evidence of successful content campaigns within the lists and discover articles, micro-sites or infographics which have previously performed well within the industry. 3) Create an archive for ‘great content’ Ever seen a piece of content which has really wowed you and made you look back at your own work with an unbridled sense of shame and disappointment? You might share it with a few mates, give it a retweet or send it around the office but it’s vitally important that you store the URL somewhere – regardless of whether it’s related to your industry, client(s) or own interests. Having an extensive archive of ‘great content’ will always prove valuable for future brainstorming and you’ll probably end up kicking yourself when you’re scrolling through your Twitter feed or browser history trying to find ‘that awesome infographic you saw on Buzzfeed last week’. Whether it’s a big budget interactive infographic, an impressive video demonstration or simply a cool way of visualising data, save the URL, categorise it and store it in a document which is easy to access. At Found, we store our ‘inspiring content pieces’ on a platform called Murally -essentially an interactive digital whiteboard which allows you to display and organise information, links and images from a variety of sources all in one place in and share it with other team members. Our content inspiration lists are divided up by scale/budget and always provide life-saving resources to refer to if we’re struggling for new ideas or looking for new ways to visualise data sets. 4) Get your calendars in check An editorial calendar is essential to the success of any content strategy as valuable links and social shares are often generated from content released with key dates or occasions in mind. Regardless of whether you’re putting together a long term or short term strategy, a well-produced calendar highlighting key industry dates, events and occasions will improve your brainstorming session. They should provide you with a fairly comprehensive understanding of your client’s or company’s industry and key areas of focus. So, whether it’s a charity awareness day, an awards ceremony or a major sporting event, you’ll always manage to find a way to utilise key dates or events and plan large or small pieces of content around them. Image credit: Dafne Cholet, Calendar* Creating unique, timely and richly detailed content strategies for your site isn’t something which happens overnight and can often take weeks or sometimes months to really pull together. However, the techniques outlined above should provide you with a few new starting points for content ideation and strategy development, and will hopefully allow you to break through any barriers currently hampering your creativity.

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PPC considerations for a site migration

Lauren Dodds — Fri, 04 Sep 2015 09:57:46 +0000

When it comes to a site migration, companies are often very careful to consider SEO factors to ensure their organic traffic is not negatively impacted by any changes (and rightly so). However, few consider the affects on PPC or how PPC can help them through any changes. Whether you are migrating to a new domain or redesigning and restructuring a site, there are a number of important questions to ask both before and after you make any changes: Before the switch: 1) Do you know all the URLs that are being used for PPC?

Preparation is key here. Make sure you are aware of all the URLs that you are using in your PPC campaigns. Ensure redirects are set up or links changed within your campaigns to avoid sending users to broken links or having your keywords disapproved.
Remember, in Adwords you can’t redirect to a different domain in the final URL. The final URLs must match your display URLs, so make sure to update any ads if necessary. If you are switching to a new domain, and so creating new ads, it is a good idea to pause all but the top performing ad in each ad group so any effects on quality score are minimised.

2 ) Has all tracking code been transferred over?

It's crucial to make sure all tracking codes are transferred over to your new site, this will ensure a smooth transition in reporting. It is advisable to carry out test transactions to ensure everything has been implemented correctly before sending traffic to the site.
Additionally, if you're doing any sort of remarketing activity make sure the code for this is also in place on the new site.

3) Have you got a benchmark of organic rankings?

Creating a benchmark for your results is something you will probably already be doing as you monitor your organic traffic. It is also useful as it allows you to identify any areas where you see keyword rankings drop off after the switch that you might need to fill in with PPC.

After the switch: 4) Has conversion rate changed?

Has there been a major drop off in conversion rate (or even no sales at all) or a surprisingly large uplift since switching sites? Are you seeing different figures when you compare different reports, for example, Google Analytics and your third party tracking? Make sure you rule out any tracking issues before thinking about optimising to a new conversion rate.
It is likely that you will see some change in conversion rate with the switch and you will need to re-optimise your campaign to the new levels. Hopefully with the changes made to the site your conversion rate will increase and there will be the opportunity to push on or expand to new areas.

5) What is mobile performance like?

Again this is a good time to reassess and re-optimise activity. If your site wasn’t responsive before and is now performing well you would expect to see an increase in mobile conversion rate. This could be your chance to push bids or bid on areas that weren’t previously profitable.

6) Has quality score been affected?

Hopefully your new site will only be an improvement to the last with lots of relevant content and targeted landing pages ready for you to PPC. Due to this, your quality score should improve, however, it is a good idea to keep a close eye on it to start with monitoring any effect on CPCs, particularly if you are switching to a new domain. If there is a drop most accounts should see quality score bounce back to previous levels within one to two weeks, a month at the most. Anything beyond this should ring alarm bells.

7) Are there any gaps where organic traffic has dropped off?

Having benchmarked your rankings before the switch you will be able to assess if any important terms have dropped position and see if there is the opportunity to use PPC to make up for any shortfall in traffic by pushing on bids or bidding on keywords you weren’t previously on.

So, if you consider the insights above, you are well prepared and you closely monitor activity (good and bad), it is possible to have a smooth PPC transition when migrating to a new site...we promise!

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AdWords Vs Analytics Remarketing

Justin Maxwell — Fri, 11 Sep 2015 10:34:31 +0000

In the world of PPC, remarketing is undeniably one of the most crucial tactics that form part of your overall performance marketing strategy. Remarketing is a type of behavioral targeting that allows advertisers to target display adverts to audiences who have previously visited a website, regardless of their original traffic source. It works by placing cookies on a user's browser. This allows the advertiser to trace that audience member across the other websites they visit and serve them display ads across those websites. It’s one of the best ways in marketing to match the right people with the right message. Knowing that a user has interacted in some way or another with your site, means that they are far more likely to convert, which puts the performance of remarketing on a similar level when compared to paid search. So, with all that said, where should one start when it comes to remarketing? The answer is remarketing lists. These are lists of cookies that represent a set of users who are chosen based on your targeting criteria. There are two common options for approaching remarketing – AdWords and/or Google Analytics.

Google AdWords

AdWords remarketing templates

One of the first steps in creating remarketing lists is to determine which users to target and which to exclude, using the AdWords outline of “Visitors of a page”. Your choices are: These are the most basic forms of remarketing lists but a great place to start when setting up remarketing campaigns for the first time. These choices will allow you to include those who’ve visited your site, exclude those who have already completed a specific goal and build lists around users showing specific behaviour. This could be someone who has added an item to their shopping basket yet failed to complete the order. You could remarket to these users with an ad that offers them a discount code or maybe free delivery to entice them back.

Visitors of a page

This is the most common template and is set as the default option when you create remarketing lists. You can use it to create lists of people who have visited a certain page or group of pages.

Visitors to a page who did not visit another page

Use this if you’d like to reach people who have visited a certain page of your site but have not visited another. This could be used for creating a list for shopping basket abandons; people who have added items to their basket but for some reason did not check out. Here you would be able to serve them ads with a discount code or free delivery, increasing the chances of them completing their purchase.

Visitor to a page during specific dates

This is used for creating lists of visitors who came to your site before, after or in-between specific dates. This can be great during the Christmas period when e-commerce sites normally see a big increase in traffic. The users that visit the site over this period can be remarketed to during the New Year.

Membership duration

Membership duration is how long a visitor's cookie stays on your list. We recommend choosing a duration related to the length of time that you expect your ad to be relevant for the visitor. In general, the membership duration should be similar to the length of your sales cycle. To gain a greater understanding of your sales cycle, go to the 'time lag' report under the 'multi-channel funnels' section of your analytics account.

Google Analytics

GA remarketing is undoubtedly more advanced than AdWords remarketing and should only be used once you have a firm grasp of standard remarketing tactics. What I love about GA remarketing is the near-infinite amount of audience lists that can be created. Unlike AdWords you’re not just limited to URLs, you can expand into some pretty amazing audiences, allowing you to get very creative. Here’s a list of the different targeting options that are at your disposal using GA:

Demographics

This section is pretty self-explanatory. Here you have all the demographic options that you need: age, gender, language and location. This is obviously essential for making sure you are only serving ads to your target demographic and not wasting spend.

Behaviour

Under the behavioural targeting section, you can choose to target users based on the number of times they have been on your site, how recent their visit was, the number of transactions they made or finally the length of their visit. If you look at the image above you can see that I have created an audience based on the following combinations: 1) Users who have visited my site at least twice, meaning they are clearly interested in what we are selling. Below is the conversion rate of multi-session users vs all users. As you can see there is a strong correlation between conversion rate and the number of times someone has visited your site. 2) Their last visit has been more than 5 days, meaning they could still be shopping around but have potentially forgotten about me or could have been distracted by a competitor. 3) Excluding people that have already purchased. 4) My 4th and final setting is looking at users that have spent 4 minutes on site which is based on looking at data from my converting users segment. I suggest segmenting by converted users and analysing their behaviour in the 'Audience Overview' tab in GA. This will give a good start to how you should be segmenting audience lists.

Technology

There are a number of different technology targeting options to choose. You might see in Analytics that your remarketing campaigns are converting above average on iPads or maybe certain desktop browsers. Here you could create a separate campaign solely focusing either one of these and increase your bids accordingly. E-Commerce Here we can segment users by their transactions and the revenue that these transactions bring in. You might want to create a segment of users who have brought products that are way over the average order value as they could be interested in certain offers that would only apply to these higher revenue threshold audiences.

Summary

There are clearly many different remarketing strategies that can be used to complement your work being done in digital marketing. If you are currently not utilising remarketing, then start thinking about a strategy and begin building your audience lists right away. For more information about how remarketing can be used to complement your current digital strategy visit https://www.found.co.uk/retargeting/ to find out more.

Google Shopping – The Tools of the Trade

Emily Cole — Wed, 09 Sep 2015 11:45:42 +0000

As often as we have hot dinners, Google changes their shopping offerings. Well, maybe not quite that often… but it was only a month or so ago we were discussing Google’s host of new Ad Extensions, and just like that, they delight us Google Shopping enthusiasts with some new and exciting features! So what are these new revelations, and how can they help make our Google Shopping advertising easier? The new updates have been brought about to make feed management much easier. After all, who wants to spend long and arduous hours behind text or tab delimited files or XMLs managing their shopping feeds. Not me! The first, and certainly not the last update is Google Sheets add-ons. The add-on works by highlighting any issues in the feed before you upload it to the Google Merchant Centre. So if you have inputted an item which is restricted, or perhaps you have submitted a destination url which doesn’t match up with the url from your site, the add-on will alert you. The alert will pop up as an ‘item error’, with a red warning sign. So stop! Review the cell which is causing the issue and make the necessary changes. The add-on details exactly what is wrong, so you don’t need to trawl the internet reading blogs and guides about how to fix it. I would say that managing a product feed is no walk in the park especially if you are starting it from scratch. There is A LOT to learn; from GTINs to MPNs, and from UPCs to EANs – the numbers and abbreviations can send you into a mind-boggling quarry. So, use Google’s Product Feed Specification Guide to help you, as it has everything you need in there to help you along your way. Or if you are even keener to learn the ropes, then take the Google Shopping Exam. This will put your knowledge to the test! Getting back to the add-ons in question, the main benefit to your feed management is time. No developer wants to upload the feed, see errors and then have to go back through the feed all over again, make the changes and then re-upload the feed again. It’s a never-ending cycle. Follow this link to add, validate and submit your sheet before you post it live. Feed, validated. So what is the next exciting update? Submitting your feed – that’s what! Until just a few weeks or so ago, the only way you could submit your feed was through a full product feed, but now the world is your oyster! Because you can now use an ‘online product inventory feed’ to update the following attributes: • ID • Price • Availability • Sale Price • Sale Price effective date So if you are updating just a small selection of products which have gone on sale or maybe a new product has gone from being in stock to out of stock in a matter of minutes, then you can use Google’s online feature to make these updates. This is a particularly valuable tool for large businesses managing huge feeds, but it can also work really well for SMEs. It is important to bear in mind that you can only update the above attributes with the online tool, so if you want to change the ‘Product Description’ or another attribute for that matter, then you will need to update this through the full product feed. And the pros of this feature? How does time saving and error reducing sound? The brilliant thing about this feature is that you do not have to submit the whole feed every time you want to make a small change. As well as this, if an error arises when you upload this online feed- it won’t affect the entire feed. It’s a win, win. And last, but by no means the least important update is automated extensions for shopping ads. Again fulfilling your Google Shopping feed management dreams, now Google automatically shows ‘Price Drops’ and ‘Free Shipping’. So if your website is consistent with its messaging, then you can sit back and relax, because Google will do all the hard work for you! What’s more, at the end of September promotional text will be replaced completely by automated extensions. These extensions will work by pulling data from your feed automatically, and from information you have provided in your Merchant Centre Settings already. But does your website offer a promotion outside of free shipping? Have no fear, you will still have the option to add promotional discounts, Product Ratings and Trusted Stores certification to your merchant feed. After all, if you’ve got it, flaunt it! So whether you are a developer or a Google Shopping enthusiast, you are guaranteed to want to find ways around managing your feed which will save you time and reduce the risk of serious feed errors. Think about Google Sheet add-ons, online product inventory feeds and automated extensions – all will save you a lot of hassle in the long run!

How to target foreign markets with AdWords

Kadriye Elekler — Fri, 18 Sep 2015 15:53:38 +0000

Before diving into new territories and launching paid activity, it’s vital you allocate time to rigorously investigate your market. What works in one country may not work in another, and as cultural and language differences can be huge, there are many factors that affect the success of a paid campaign. It is critical to know the level of competition in your target country, behaviour of your target audience, the way they search for products/services, their online purchasing habits and shipping costs etc. It is also important to understand traffic volumes, CPCs and search term variations – especially given translation and language differences. The key is to put yourself in your consumers' shoes and think about how they would search and what creative messaging would most appeal to them. Spot the differences in different countries, such as seasonality, search behaviour, national holidays, sale periods and so on. Preparation truly is vital and below I have outlined some key areas to consider.

Search engine market share

Before starting any form of research, you need to be aware what the prevalent search engine is in that country. AdWords is the number one paid ad platform for most countries, and on the whole this is pretty simple. However, there are some notable exceptions – see below.

Russia (Yandex)
China (Baidu)
Japan (Yahoo)
Korea (Naver)
Taiwan (Bing Ads/Yahoo)

In most of these countries, AdWords does have a presence, but in countries such as Russia and China, local search engines really are a must if you want to make any kind of impact. In China, Baidu boasts 80% market share, while in Russia, Yandex sees about 60%. These ad platforms have different targeting options, sophistication and reach, so it’s important to fully understand them before beginning.

Advertising tools

Assuming that AdWords is your most suitable platform, the next thing to consider is what paid tools will be available in all countries. For example, Google Shopping and Gmail ads still have restrictions on which countries these can target. Simply replicating accounts and setting them live will not always be an option. Ensure you research this before going down the route of international expansion.

Comprehensive keyword research

Apart from target country market research, identify whether there is a demand for the products/services you offer in that country. Start with searching for variations of keywords in the SERPs, use keyword research tools, note your competitors, their pricing, discounts and the way they market their products or services etc. If you already run campaigns in English and plan to expand into international waters, start small, testing what you know works well. This will usually be brand, brand-generics and a selection of high converting generic terms. Remember, competition differs hugely from country to country, so while CPCs may be cheap in your original market, this may not be the case across the world. Be careful about launching activity and then leaving it – this is particularly important when dealing with pure generics.

Language

Both ad copy and keyword translations will form the backbone of your new activity. It’s easy for messages to get confused during the translation stage so it goes without saying you can’t do this through an online translator. Ensure you use an expert. Also ensure that the language on your ads match what is on your landing page. For example, you don’t want to be serving English ads that go through to a French website or vice-versa. Equally, it may be appropriate to run English ads where it is not the primary language; just be sure the landing page is in English as well.

Tax and delivery options

Shipping costs – these can vary wildly and can sometimes be hugely prohibitive. Research impact on conversion rates here and see whether better rates can be negotiated. Import/export regulations – this can be a tricky, complex beast depending on the target country and product in question. Customs/tax – this varies from country to country but import taxes can be sizable (circa 20-30%). Factor this into any forecasting.

Credentials

Credentials and trust signals are going to be crucial in breaking a new market, especially one oversees. Implementing on-site credentials, such as Google Trusted Stores, reviews and security protocols is a good place to start. Without an established brand name, building this trust will be vital in delivering any kind of conversion rate. No consumer is going to trust a brand they’ve never heard of, pay increased shipping costs and wait for a delivery from a company on the other side of the world.

Set up AdWords accounts for each target country

From a set-up and management point-of view, it makes sense to set up different AdWords accounts for each country you plan to expand to. This will help with both budget management, optimisation and reporting/analysis. It also makes currency management that much easier. Dedicate your campaigns to your target local language. In other words, create every bit of your campaigns using local language only. If possible, get the translations done by a native speaker who also has knowledge of your products or services, and have your ad text changes or updates approved in terms of grammar, use of language and relevancy before going live.

Time Zone/Currency/Holidays

Be aware of time zone differences and currencies. These are options you can only set at the account level – and once selected cannot be changed at a later date. Bear in mind that your AdWords account will operate based on the time zone selected, so be careful when using ad scheduling. Also be aware of national holidays, off peak/peak periods as this will have a big impact on performance and differ hugely from country to country. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it does give you a good overview if you’re thinking about testing your paid activity in international markets. While expansion offers huge opportunity, there are also big risks. There is a lot to think about so research, preparation and planning are absolutely crucial.

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Found jumps four places to take second spot in The Drum Elite

Tina Judic — Thu, 17 Sep 2015 11:43:15 +0000

We’re delighted to announce that, once again, Found has made it into The Drum’s Digital Elite, following their latest Digital Census. Found secured second place, a leap of four, in the 26-50 staff category. Agencies are judged on two core aspects: financial performance (made up of revenue, revenue growth and revenue per head) and client satisfaction (client ratings attained through the Recommended Agency Register – RAR - covering a number of areas, including service, effectiveness, strategic thinking, value and creativity). We are also delighted to be the only agency within our category to achieve top 10 scores in both the financial and client polls. This is a hugely proud and exciting achievement for Found. As a digital performance agency, performance excellence is at the heart of everything we do so to be recognised by our clients is a wonderful honour. A very big thank you to all of our clients – we couldn’t do this without you!

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What is it like being a PPC intern at Found?

James Wolman — Fri, 25 Sep 2015 11:32:36 +0000

I'm five weeks into my internship here at Found. It’s not my first internship but it’s definitely my favourite. A little about me - I graduated from UCL a couple of years ago with a master’s degree in human genetics before spending a year-and-a-half on a grad scheme at a London investment bank. After realising that the suited and ruthless world of banking wasn’t exactly for me, I spent some time writing in the science section of an online news magazine which gave me time to ask myself 'what might be a better fit for my personality and ambitions?' I guess you could say that career-wise I was lost but now I am………....somewhere much better. (Puns come later).

Image credit : 23/09/15 at www.findmemes.com This “scientist-turned-banker-turned-journalist-turned-future-PPC-guru” progression might seem a bit random on the surface but there’s a solid theme running through the heart of it all – data and analysis. When I eventually set my sights on digital marketing, I knew I wanted to pursue an area that challenged me intellectually, and where I could use my analytical and numerical strengths to make a tangible difference. From what I have discovered so far, if you like numbers and you like seeing direct results quickly, PPC is the place to be and the internship opportunity looked to me a solid footing to start a trendy new career. The working culture is relaxed but driven. 90’s classics cheering us on from the office Spotify playlist as Founders cleverly tinker with online advertising strategies on AdWords, Facebook, Bing, you name it. The environment has been an entirely new yet welcomed experience for me compared to where I’ve worked previously. Everyone is very generous with his or her time, even if snowed under, and the more senior Founders are only an arm’s length away and always up for a chat. From day one, I have received expert and dedicated mentoring from the team. Each day I work with my mentor learning new tasks and I’ll often help the other account managers in the team for some extra practice. The amount I have learned in just five weeks has been incredible. For those reading this blog who have just stumbled onto PPC or are more like “pee-pee-what?”, there is a whole lot that goes on behind those ads you might have noticed at the top of Google search results. As Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson put it in The Internship to the humble pizzeria owner: “Everybody’s searching for something. They are searching for you. Just let us help them find you”

Image credit : 23/09/15 at www.theatlantic.com Essentially, PPC is a form of online advertising that helps people find the products and services they are looking for. Companies pay money for users to click on their adverts and Found is an agency that specialises in digital advertising for their clients. The internet knows all. I have created ads that are aimed precisely at the type of person I want to see it and built to exactly the way I think they want to see it. Since I joined, the team have provided a friendly learning environment for me to grow and actually contribute with every task I’m set. For instance, I have really enjoyed coming up with my own methodology for testing ads in new and enlightening ways (with some surprising results!) and experimenting with my own metrics to measure performance. I call it the Wolmetric™. Give it time, it will catch on. Then you will be swearing by it. It’s allowed me the freedom to study PPC through my scientific lens and introduce new perspectives to the team.

Image credit : 23/09/15 at www.findmemes.com Each morning I like to check the performance of ads I have produced and see how they are doing in terms of ROI, cost-per-conversion, CTRs and conversion rates. Three months ago, I had little idea what those terms even meant. Except ROI. I mean, I did work for a bank after all. Nevertheless, it’s not all numbers and spreadsheets. From time to time, I can unplug my left-brain from the Matrix, exercise my creative right noggin writing intriguing ad copy, and even dabble in some Facebook creative, which is now live in fact. If there’s one thing I’ve learned above all else, it’s that the digital marketing world is huge, always changing and always updating; there is always something new to learn. When science has taught you to constantly question everything, it’s a hugely satisfying feeling to have found (there’s your pun) a career I really enjoy and encourages me to approach my work in that same mindset. I look forward to continuing my career in PPC and can’t wait to see where the industry grows and how I grow with it. If you’re interested in experiencing life as a Founder then take a look at some of our exciting internship vacancies – we’d love to hear from you.

Gmail Ads: the what, the why, the how

Justin Maxwell — Fri, 09 Oct 2015 14:37:51 +0000

Gmail Ads (formally known as Gmail Sponsored Promotions) are a form of high impact display advertising that offers both awareness and direct response functionality via the email channel. As Google puts it, they are “part email marketing, part display campaign extension”. Although Gmail Ads have been around as a Google Beta for the last two years, the platform has seen many improvements during this period and is now open to all advertisers though Google AdWords. As with pure display, social and other upper funnel advertising, Gmail Ads are aimed at users who are not explicitly looking for what you offer. This is paradoxical to search whereby users outline their intent very clearly via search queries. As such, it is important to align targeting and creative carefully to ensure your ads are only shown to those users most likely to be interested in your product/service. Ad Formats Ad formats are unique and will only show in personal Gmail boxes via the promotions tab. Ads are comprised of two components: a collapsed, teaser ad and an expandable ad format. The collapsed ad has a 25 character limit for the headline and a 100 character limit for the main body of text. Images need to be 50x50. Ad copy needs to act as a hook to encourage users to click and learn more. It’s essential to be clear, highlighting USPs, pricing and any special offers. Gmail Ads work on a CPC pricing format but advertisers will only pay when a user clicks on the teaser ad. Even if the ad is opened into the expandable format and a user clicks again and navigates through to the site, there are no additional costs.

Expanded ads have a maximum 600x1000 ad format and can contain ad copy, images, form fields, videos and phone numbers. Top Tip – Avoid using the expandable format as simply a larger version of the teaser ad. Instead, consider this to be a mini landing page. Use the space to really highlight your offer/proposition so the user (who has already incurred a CPC for the advertiser) is encouraged to click through to the site. As with social advertising, Gmail Ads suffer from ad fatigue, so ensure the creative is refreshed at least once a month. Use the reporting suite to ascertain which elements of previous ads have worked well and build on that for the next creative idea. Why should you be using Gmail Ads? On average Gmail Ads have open rates of up to 2.5%, with the majority of advertisers reporting campaign performance greater than prospecting display through the Google Display Network. The great thing about Gmail Ads is that they can be utilised across all stages of the buying funnel and can achieve a variety of different marketing objectives such as: Build awareness - classic brand awareness, helping your customers recognise and remember your brand and product range. Influence consideration - customised audience messaging allows you to capture interest from users in the middle of the funnel moving towards the point of conversions. Drive sales - drive already interested users to your product pages, allowing them to complete a purchase. Gmail Ads give you the ability to show multiple products simultaneously using a product showcase template. Grow loyalty & retention - build on existing customer relationships by sending promotions, discount codes, free delivery or letting them know about a new product line. As with paid social, Gmail Ads are about more than just driving traffic and sales. There are vital engagement metrics that need to be taken into consideration when optimising and measuring success. These include: Gmail saves, forward and clicks. Targeting options The targeting options for Gmail Ads are similar to those available via the GDN (Google Display Network) Below is a brief overview: Age / Gender – usual demographic targeting. Ensure you review Analytics so Gmail Ads are targeting only the top performing age/gender groups. Geo / Language - target specific locations and languages. Once again, have a look in GA and see if you can see any particularly high converting locations. You can apply up-weighted bids for these areas to create a more optimised campaign. Device – mobile targeting and bid options for reaching customers on the go. Ensure you split out mobile and desktop and target them separately (for cost control, creative and mobile specific CTAs). Topics / Affinity - target users who are interested in specific topics and interests. It's best practice to split these different forms of targeting out into separate ad groups, making analysis and bid control easier. Contextual targeting - you will have the ability to target people based on the keywords contained in their emails. It’s important to be more strategic with your keyword selection compared to standard search and display keyword targeting as your users might be using a variety of different 'slang' terms to describe your products and services when writing to someone via email. Make sure these ‘slang’ terms are housed in different ad groups so that you can easily monitor their performance. Domains – target traffic from top performing placements from the GDN campaign as they indicate interest from a site’s user base. Strategy & Approach As with any new product adoption, you need to be thinking about what kind of users you are trying to reach and what your goals are before campaign set up. Some top level ideas and strategies are outlined below though: New users - when trying to find new customers, make sure you exclude you own domain to prevent re-marketing to you own customer base. When targeting these new users, try including a special offer or discount in your ads to create a sense of value and urgency for the user. Re-engaging existing customers - target your own domain when attempting to reach users that you already have some form of relationship with. You need offer this type of customer something that gives them the incentive to come back to the site and purchase. This can be a great opportunity for up-selling or cross-selling complementary products. Competitor domain targeting – target core competitors’ domains. Use ads with special offers/discounts/USPs to target users receiving emails from main competitors. This is a great opportunity to minimise comparison shopping and engage with qualified users. Ad scheduling – this should play a key part in your strategy as user behaviour will vary hugely when reading or opening emails depending on the time of day. For instance, email open rates on mobile peak during commuting periods (early morning and evening) and lunch times, therefore make sure you are up weighting your bids over these times to try muscle out competitors. Keywords – adopt both a broad and granular keyword strategy, and split these out into separate campaigns. For example, go broad with terms such as ‘housing’ and refine down to ‘house type’, ‘house location’ etc. Language – think outside the box for your keyword targeting. Use colloquial and more casual keywords to target your audience. People speak differently when they chat via email compared to when they’re using search engines. For example, instead of ‘clothing’, target ‘fashion’. Creative - make sure you consider your creative strategy carefully as this forms such a huge part of your Gmail success. You might have set-up a fantastic campaign, targeting the perfect audience but if you aren’t reaching them with the correct creative then your campaign results are going to be poor. Summary Gmail Ads can be used as part of a full funnel marketing strategy offering opportunities for brand awareness and even direct response if used in the right way. Adoption has been limited with advertisers so far, so Gmail represents another fantastic, cost effective addition to the PPC arsenal.

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Using log file analysis to make the most of your crawl budget

Tom Brand — Thu, 22 Oct 2015 16:26:44 +0000

Crawl budget & log file analysis

Google is constantly crawling the web to index new content and any changes made to existing content. The perfect scenario once Google has crawled your site, is that every crawl results in all SERP (search engine results page) worthy pages being crawled and indexed. Unfortunately for SEOs and webmasters worldwide, this is not the case. Google actually limits the number of pages it will visit, this is known as crawl budget. So, you might be wondering two things at this point. 1) How is crawl budget assigned? And 2) How do I increase my crawl budget?

Crawl budget

Crawl budget is assigned based on a site’s authority. The formula is simple; the higher your site authority, the more URLs Google will crawl. Due to their high authority these sites are referenced multiple times across the web, therefore it can be presumed they will contain relevant and engaging content valuable to it's users. For this reason, it's in Google's interest to ensure the results pages are constantly updated with any new pages added to a high authority site and any changes made to existing content. So, to increase a site’s crawl budget you’ll need to increase site authority. SEO link earning practices seek to do this by gaining relevant links from other authoritative sites. However this is a timely process so whilst site authority is being built there are quicker wins to be had. Outside of increasing your crawl budget you can optimise the way your site is crawled. The best way to do this is to analyse your log files and arrange actions off the back of this.

Log files

Log files are recorded on a site’s server and allow those with access to see how users and bots are interacting with the URLs on the site. In its raw form, the data can look a little daunting... However, an understanding of the data segments within the file and a quick filter on the columns feature in your spreadsheet turns the data into a valuable resource for analysing your site’s crawl ability. The information shown above has been split into the following sections:

Server IP – The IP address of the bot or user accessing a file on your site
The date the URL was accessed
The time the URL was accessed
The URL requested by the agent
Server response – The HTTP response status code of the requested document
User-agent – The declared name of the browser or spider accessing the URL e.g. Firefox, Googlebot etc.

Log file analysis

Implementations off the back of log file analysis have the opportunity for massive impact. Whilst crawl inefficiencies may not have a direct negative impact on rankings, improving the number of important URLs crawled means your content will be indexed and updated more frequently. Both of which are factors in earning and retaining strong rankings. Once the data has been segmented correctly you can begin to analyse where crawl budget is being wasted. Firstly, look to restrict data to only showing Googlebot data, then search for URLs within the data set that you do not want to rank. Common examples of these include the following:

404s

The server response column lets us know just how many 404 error pages are being found within a crawl. A small number of these will be found on every site and generally won’t be harmful to a site’s organic visibility, but once larger numbers of 404s begin appearing, further analysis is needed. Using a tool like Screaming Frog can help you to assess the number and cause of 404 errors on the site.

Parameter URLs

Ecommerce sites commonly use parameter URLs to serve visitors filtered or condensed content. Allowing these to be crawled can mean a large percentage of crawl budget is wasted on these URL types and allowing them to be indexed can cause even more serious duplicate content issues. Google Search Console provides a list of parameters currently recognised by Google for your site. Creating a pivot table within the log file analysis and filtering by these parameters/ using COUNTIF formulas highlights how many of these URLs are being crawled. If any parameter has a high number of crawls it’s down to the analyst to determine whether or not these URLs need to be crawled and take action to stop this. This may involve editing of the robots.txt file or blocking the parameters within Search Console. This is only a very brief look into what can be achieved with log file analysis and increasing crawl budget. As a task that has the potential to improve the way your site is crawled, it should be a top priority, especially for large sites which have a high propensity to be wasting crawl budget on unnecessary pages.

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Florence Bundy makes the Drum's Top 50 under 30

Tina Judic — Fri, 16 Oct 2015 11:59:21 +0000

Following the success of securing second place in the Drum’s Digital Elite rankings, I’m delighted to announce that our very own Operations Director, Florence Bundy, has been singled out as one of The Drum’s high-achieving women, making their annual 50 under 30 list. In an industry where women are still considerably outnumbered, The Drum felt it pertinent to champion the women who are blazing a trail in our space. With judges including Matt Bush (Director of Performance, Google,), Stephanie Marks (Deputy Managing Director, Maxus) and Hamish Nicklin (Managing Director, AOL UK), to be judged and listed as one to watch is a wonderful, and well-deserved, achievement for Florence. Chelsea Hall, Found’s Talent and Culture Manager, caught up with Florence to ask a few probing questions about inspiration, what her average day looks like and what she might be doing if she wasn’t in digital. What’s been your biggest career highlight so far? Since joining Found, it has been my mission to bring operational excellence to our business strategy. For any agency, this fundamental focus can be a major lever towards building brilliant teams, supporting client acquisition and driving revenue growth. My biggest career highlight has, undoubtedly, been the invitation to join the Found Board in 2014. This represented a significant milestone for me personally, as I became the youngest board member amongst a team of highly experienced digital and business pioneers. Tell us about your average day: No day is the same! I can be coaching my team, interviewing potential new Founders, marketing Found, leading process changes or rolling up my sleeves to help teams bring their planning alive. It’s my role to ensure that Found's wheels keep turning, regardless of what the day brings, so flexibility and the ability to multi-task are key. How would your colleagues describe you? It will definitely depend on who you ask! I do have a reputation for being solutions-orientated, determined and unwavering in focus – must-haves in operations roles. However, alongside this, I’m often told I have a nurturing streak and embrace and enable the people I work with, which is something I take great pride in and is key when building a team. Who inspires you? I've been exceptionally lucky working closely alongside Tina Judic, our MD, since I joined Found. As one of our industry's digital elite, I've been exposed to her unrivalled online experience, glistening strategy delivery and tireless business acumen. She continues to impress and inspire me every day with her dedication, passion and enthusiasm So, if you weren’t in digital, what would you be doing? Honestly with the speed at which digital evolves, it’s hard to consider doing anything else! But, if digital didn't exist, then my next best passion is culinary so I'd be very happy being a food critic (maybe helping the divine Jason Atherton and co with their kitchen processes too!).

The 10 commandments of keyword optimisation

Richard Lewis — Fri, 23 Oct 2015 08:36:52 +0000

Keyword optimisation is fast becoming a dirty word in the SEO community. Like the link wheel and adding meta keywords, it's viewed as something old fashioned which worked back in the times before Google got skynet-smart. [caption id="attachment_16175" align="alignnone" width="467"] Mountain view, California[/caption] Yet, clunky as keyword optimisation sounds today, we still need it. While topics and entities supposedly reign supreme, we haven't reached the promised land yet. Googlebot still can't pass the turing test. AI has not arrived. We still need to do keyword optimisation. We just need to do it differently. Enter keyword topic optimisation - an approach which blends classic keyword optimisation with Google's latest advancements.

Why do we do keyword topic optimisation?

It boosts a web-page's relevancy score for our target topics. A high relevancy score helps pages rank higher for searches around a topic. It's a crucial part of the holy SEO trinity alongside authority and technical compliance. We want our page to rank higher.

Where should we start?

With keyword research. If you've done it, you know the most popular phrases relating to the client’s business. If you've grouped your client's keywords into portfolio groups, you're even further ahead of the game - the logical organisation will make it a lot easier to identify the topics which your keywords naturally belong to. But this next step is where the real winners take over. Not only do they lay off the salty foods and do a little exercise now and then, they also consider topics before keywords.

The 10 commandments of keyword optimisation:

1) Each topic needs one page

What's the page about? Not so long ago (let's face it - it's happening right now), SEOs used to make pages targeting specific individual keywords. Page (A) would target "action movies" and page (B) would target "action films" even though they are the same thing. The hope would be to rank for both terms and double your money. These days however, you're more likely to double your topic cannibalisation - that is, Googlebot being confused about which page from your site is the most appropriate to rank for a topic - and choosing to rank either the wrong page or neither page.

Action films - all the greats

Action movies - The results are the same. The carousel results are in a different order though.

2. Each page needs one topic

How much is the page about what it's about? When writing about your topic, keep the main thing the main thing. Topic relevancy is a signal which Googlebot picks up on - the more concentrated this relevancy, the better. Wandering off topic and introducing tangentially related or unrelated content into a page leads into the pathless hills of topic dilution. Shiver.

Don't get lost with your topic

3. Use a rich vocabulary

Are you for real? When real people write great content, they use a lot of synonyms. Googlebot knows this. It has a rudimentary understanding of which terms are likely to be found near other terms and this helps it to determine the topic of a page to quite some extent. Sounds great in theory. But what happens in the real world? Businesses write about their products without giving thought to SEO. Sometimes they luck out and Googlebot can pick up on their great content, but it's more likely that this doesn't happen. Googlebot isn't perfect and while individual keywords are a lot less important than they used to be, they still need to exist on the page for there to be a good chance of it ranking for them. If a business leaves out lots of important keywords by chance, it can struggle to rank even if the content is great at answering searchers' questions and needs. This is when it's good to jump in and add the individual keywords which attract the most useful search volume for the business. [caption id="attachment_16187" align="alignnone" width="363"] Give the page copy most of your attention - it's the meat and potatoes[/caption]

4. Optimise your title tag

The most important single on-page html element which can benefit from keyword optimisation
Choose a flagship keyword to begin the title tag. The important variants should appear at the beginning
Use a few more variants if there is space. The brand name takes priority over additional variants

5. Optimise your heading tags

Describe what’s on the page / highlight areas of different importance
Helps the user understand the different parts of the content of the page
If keywords in the headings help with this, include them
The same keyword in every heading would be over-optimisation

6. Optimise your URL

Keyword inclusion in page URLs is a ranking factor.
Only include the flagship topic keyword, and only once
Keep the URL as short as possible.
Use hyphens and not underscores to separate words

7. Optimise your image alt tags

Alt tags describe images – which search engines still cannot understand accurately without assistance
The images on the page should be relevant to the keyword topic – label them as such using the alt text
Top performing eCommerce sites use it on their product images to great effect

8. Optimise your internal link anchor text

Run a crawl to list all internal pages which link to the page you’re keyword optimising
Ensure these internal links indicate the topic of the page
A mix of keyword variations is preferred

9. Optimise these other things

Text: Above the Fold = higher importance
Formatted text may be weighted more heavily than regular text
SPAG (spelling, punctuation and grammar) is a ranking factor in Bing - perhaps one day Google will follow suit

10. Use your loaf

Make sure your page reads well and makes delicious sense. Robotic checklists can only give so much - go with your instinct. [caption id="attachment_16207" align="alignnone" width="473"] Use this![/caption] Amen.

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Found shortlisted again at the UK Search Awards

John Stuchfield — Tue, 20 Oct 2015 15:54:26 +0000

Award season continues and we’re delighted to announce Found has once again been recognised as one of the leading digital agencies in the UK. Competing with some of the finest companies the industry has to offer, Found have been shortlisted no less than three times at the prestigious UK Search Awards. Categories include Best Use of Search (Travel & Leisure) for Handpicked Hotels, Best PPC Campaign for Red Letter Days and Best Low Budget Campaign for our work on Randstad Finance and Professionals. Being shortlisted three times is a fantastic achievement, especially across such a diverse range of verticals and budgets. The team and our clients are rightly thrilled and it’s a real testament to our paid strategy and innovation, as well as the hard work we put into our campaigns each and every day! Having already won with Red Letter Days at the inaugural Drum Search Awards earlier in the year this is certainly an exciting time for Found. The winners are set to be announced on Thursday 26th November amid glitz and glamour at The Ballroom on London’s South Bank, so fingers crossed we can go one step further and bring back a few more trophies to Found HQ!

9 top tips to successfully manage large PPC accounts

Lauren Dodds — Wed, 04 Nov 2015 12:32:34 +0000

The great thing about PPC is that it can be used by businesses of all shapes and sizes, from a local florist to a large international company, to drive relevant traffic to a site. Whilst there are fundamental skills and strategies that can be used across a range of campaigns, there are also a number of important points to remember when specifically managing large accounts with higher volumes of campaigns or keywords.

1) Structure and naming

A crucial factor when managing large accounts is getting the structure and naming of campaigns, as well as the ad groups, correct. This level of organisation not only makes it easier to navigate around the account yourself but also allows anyone else looking at the account, be it your client or an external user, to know exactly what is going on. It is especially important when you have similar campaigns targeting different locations and languages, or if you are using a variety of features such as Google shopping, display or RLSAs. Develop a naming convention across all accounts that is clear and logical. For example, a search campaign targeting generic dress keywords to returning visitors in the UK might be labelled: Generic_UK_Dresses_RLSA. Any user looking at that campaign will then know exactly what to expect. It is also important to separate brand and generic activity. They perform very differently and should be assigned budgets accordingly and managed separately. Negatives can help ensure brand terms are not picked up in generic campaigns. It is helpful to use the site structure as a basis for your campaigns. For example, a clothing site might have campaigns for dresses, coats etc. Keep ad groups tightly targeted with keywords around a certain theme. With very large accounts it helps if bids can be managed at ad group level rather than keyword level. Any high traffic keywords (e.g. brand terms) can then be pulled out into their own ad groups for more granular management. A good naming structure can also help with reporting, making it easy to quickly add keywords and ads to multiple campaigns.

2) Labelling

Labels are a great way to group similar campaigns, ad groups, keywords and ads in order to identify trends. For example, you can compare how one specific offer or call-to-action performs against another across multiple ads. It can also be helpful to label any new activity so you can monitor performance and roll out changes to other campaigns.

3) Prioritise

It is easy to get overwhelmed by a large campaign, especially if you’ve never handled an account of that size before. Focus on areas that will have the most impact. Start by looking at the campaigns with the highest traffic and spend. A CTR increase of 1% on a keyword that receives 1000 impressions a day is going to have more of an impact than on one that receives 10.

4) Make use of tools

Use AdWords Editor (or the appropriate tool for the search engine you are using) to quickly and easily make bulk changes. You can work offline and quickly copy and paste changes which helps when you are duplicating a campaign or changing targeting. Excel is great for creating large numbers of keywords and ads to upload. Found have also created a very handy keyword tool that makes it easy to concatenate a large number of keywords at a time - particularly useful when you are first setting up a campaign or are expanding existing activity to new areas.

5) Dynamic search ads

You can very quickly and easily make ads live for a large number of products or services by using Dynamic Search Ads (DSAs). Rather than using keywords, Google determines which queries to show for DSAs backed on the content on your site and generates an ad based on this query and your own description lines. You can then use the results from DSAs to build out and refine your standard search campaigns.

6) Dynamic keyword insertions

Even if you aren’t using DSAs you can use dynamic keyword insertion (DKI) to create relevant ads for a large range of keywords. Ideally you would build out the campaign to be as detailed and granular possible, although this might be tricky to manage if you have a large account or lots of different targeting options. DKI inserts your keyword directly into your ad text to create a highly relevant ad for minimum effort.

7) Ad customisers

Ad customisers are another way to make your ads more relevant and eye-catching across a variety of different ad groups. Parameters in ad copy can be dynamically changed to show the most up-to-date information. Messaging can be customised relating to price, availability, countdowns to a certain event or any other information that is liable to change. Data is managed through the business data section of the shared library and you can now directly create countdowns in ads.

8) Campaign negative keywords

Another handy feature in the shared library that can help with large accounts is campaign negative keyword lists. This can help you easily manage a number of negatives across multiple campaigns and any updates made will be automatically applied to campaigns using the list.

9) Scripts

Scripts are a great way to speed up repetitive tasks, giving you more time to delve into the nitty gritty of account analysis and optimisation. Scripts are managed through bulk operations in your AdWords account using basic code to perform tasks such as pausing ad copy with low CTR, identifying broken links or running reports. We’re a fan of the Free Word Scripts site for script ideas and we often create more bespoke scripts in-house to suit our clients’ needs. So, whilst it's important to remember the basic PPC skills and strategies when managing large campaigns, there are a number of tools and techniques that can help with this task. Most importantly, ensure a clear structure in your campaign planning and you should see great results whatever the size of account.

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Don't go cold turkey on your PPC campaigns

Emily Cole — Thu, 12 Nov 2015 12:45:24 +0000

The clocks going back can only mean one thing, Christmas is nearly upon us!...and it seems to be catching up with us marketers, and shoppers alike, faster than ever before. You’d better get your skates on if you manage a PPC campaign, as searches for Christmas gifts started as early as September this year. (Source: Google Internal Data). The focus should no longer just be optimising your PPC campaigns for desktop users. The way people shop online is ever-evolving, so it is vital to capture users across multiple devices and platforms at every minute of the day. After all, if your brand is not visible when a user is searching for Christmas gifts on the commute home from work, then it is very unlikely they will revisit your site when they are ready to buy their present. They will visit a competitor, which is not what you want! So, if you are one of those people who has bought all of their Christmas presents already, wrapped them in colour co-ordinated paper and ribbon and is ready to put them under the tree, then I expect your paid search campaigns are as equally organised. Or perhaps you prefer to leave your Christmas shopping until the last minute? Then listen up, because there is no time like the present to get your campaigns in shape for the festive period. We discuss top tips for getting your PPC campaigns in shape, as well as new(er) initiatives for capturing shoppers' attention on their Christmas shopping journeys. Let’s get crack(l) ing!

2014 performance

Before you rush into launching any new activity, take some time to look into your eCommerce data in Google Analytics. Ask yourself which products sold well in 2014 and what role mobile played in these campaigns. Did performance peak on Black Friday and Cyber Monday? –I expect so! Use this wealth of knowledge to guide your 2015 Christmas strategy. Key dates : Knowing key dates for purchases online will mean you can set your clients' expectations and plan for seasonal spikes effectively. Black Friday – Black Friday 2014 was the biggest eCommerce shopping day on record. UK Black Friday queries grew by 273% YoY and Sales were up 74% YoY. This really is a game-changer – so brace yourselves! Cyber Monday - Searches on Cyber Monday grew by 39% YoY too – so another one to be prepared for. Boxing Day - 20+% YoY growth to retail sites. Last Order Days – Equally pay attention to your retailer’s last order dates. Nobody wants to receive a Christmas present on Boxing Day – so make this clear in your messaging.

Christmas keywords

So you know your historic data like the back of your hand, it’s time to get festive with your keywords. You will notice in search terms reports that Christmas related keywords started coming through earlier this year than they did in 2014. Harness those new searches and build out your Christmas keyword lists accordingly. House these either in individual ad groups or campaigns so you can easily review and optimise activity. What’s more, when you are planning your strategy for 2016, you can go back into the account and see how they performed.

RLSAs

Be careful if you are bidding on pure generic ‘Christmas gift’ related terms as search volumes are enormous and completion is fierce. You may not be able to bid on them cost effectively through standard search. Perhaps look at overlaying RLSAs on top of this activity so your budgets don’t shoot through the roof! This way you are attracting visitors who have already engaged with your brand and so you have greater control over reach and spend. Equally use your 2014 data to help with your RLSA and re-targeting activity - capture users in another moment of their journey. If a user bought a gift voucher from you last year, it is very likely that they will return to your site and buy another one this year. Think about how you can increase the lifetime value of your customer. Perhaps offer them an incentive such as a promo code or maybe free delivery. Likewise if a user visited your site last year and did not convert, why not? Was a competitor offering a better deal? Use re-targeting ad copy that they cannot resist. And bidding techniques – you know the drill.

Ad copy

It's no good having a sparkling Christmas campaign if you are not going to get festive with your ad copy. Again, have a look at what promotions you ran last year and see what worked well. If you are not able to run a promotion in the lead up to Christmas then think about mentioning something in your ad copy such as ‘The Perfect Christmas Gift Ideas’. It is all about creating the Christmas demand. Countdown Ads are a great way to give shoppers a sense of urgency to buy your product. How about counting down to Black Friday or perhaps counting down to the last delivery dates? With Google making it much easier to bulk edit your ads through Adwords editor, you can create new countdown ads much quicker and on a much larger scale. Think about mobile specific ad copy too. The stress of last minute shopping will force more people to purchase through their mobiles – so capitalise on this. Searches on Black Friday and Cyber Monday vary by time of day, and many shoppers are on the web browsing for the best deals from 12:00am. This is where Google’s automated rules can give you a helping hand. There is no good setting your ads live at 9am when you get into the office, as you will have missed out on a huge amount of interest from keen shoppers who stay up through the night (there are a lot more people out there than you would expect). Automated rules mean you can schedule your Black Friday and Cyber Monday ads to go live first thing in the morning so you can appear competitive from the word go.

Mobile

Mobile queries are forecast to grow 42% YoY (Source: Google Internal Data) and it plays such a pivotal part of the buying cycle. Used for the research and capturing interest phase – it is important that your visibility is as strong on mobile as it is on desktop. Use local inventory ads to highlight in-store availability and increase footfall to a store and use call extensions (with Google forwarding) to assist people in their ‘searching’ phase. Likewise use cross-device conversion in Adwords to understand the true value of your mobile advertising. Did a mobile ad assist with a desktop conversion later on in a user’s journey? Give it credit if so.

Bids and budgets

With Christmas shoppers increasing their activity online every year, you must keep an eye on the key metrics as you can expect them to get a little hectic! Look out for increasing competition, rising CPCs, incremental traffic, CTR changes and possible drops in Impressions share. The key dates are ones to watch out for.

Google Shopping

As Christmas is a pivotal part to any online retailer’s yearly calendar, then getting Google shopping right is also key. Have you got a new product launch which needs to be factored into your feed? Or perhaps you are running a site-wide promotion? Yes, we want these promos to show in your standard text ads, but with shopping ads driving 1/3 of retail traffic – you mustn’t forget merchant promotions in your shopping ads. Stock levels will also change much quicker so ensure your feed is up to date and relevant. After all, you do not want to waste budget sending traffic to a red tinsel page when the tinsel is out of stock!

Video Advertising

With an increasing demand for videos over Christmas, it is important to ensure your brand has visibility for this ad type. If a customer has seen your brand on YouTube, they are much more likely to revisit your brand later on in their journey – another magic moment. And how about incorporating Google shopping in here too. So, if a user is watching a video on how to cook the perfect turkey, then target them with a shopping ad selling ‘gravy’ with a special promo code. Job’s a good’en. To sum up; review 2014 performance, get creative with your Christmas copy, pay attention to key dates and most of all, ensure you are targeting users at every moment of their shopping journey. Now it’s time to eat, drink and be merry!

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Found shortlisted for six awards at the 2015 Drum Network Awards

Nasreen Cullen — Fri, 13 Nov 2015 13:26:37 +0000

With the end of the year looming, 2015 award season is nearing an end, but not without some more nominations for team Found. We’re delighted to announce that we have been shortlisted six times for this years Drum Network Awards recognising the innovation and hard work that we put into clients’ campaigns. This years’ shortlisted awards include Retail Campaign/Strategy of the Year for Red Letter Days, B2C Marketing Campaign/Strategy of the Year for Red Letter Days, Leisure & Tourism Campaign/Strategy of the Year for Hand Picked Hotels, Professional Services Campaign for our work with Randstad & Williams F1TM, Digital Marketing Agency of the Year and London Marketing Business of the Year. The Drum Network Awards will be held at the Emirates Stadium on Thursday 3rd December and we look forward to spending the evening amongst the industries finest and hopefully leaving with an award or two!

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Video advertising: watch & learn

Emily Cole — Tue, 24 Nov 2015 15:51:08 +0000

With over one billion active YouTube users, and more than five billion videos being watched every day on YouTube, we now eat, sleep and breathe video! Today, more than half of all YouTube views occur on mobile and we watch on average 39 minutes of video on our phones every day. So, how can advertisers use video to deliver the right message to the right people during their right micro-moment on the web? We no longer think of video advertising as a channel solely for increasing engagements (i.e. video views) - it is much more powerful than this. If you can a.) create demand for your brand b.) reach the right people and c.) combine this with purchase intent, then video becomes a channel which adds value to many other areas of your business. Let’s take a look at how to ensure your video campaigns are adding “True” value to your brand by first taking a look at the above elements in more detail.

a.) Creating demand

Engaging brand content is a fantastic way to create demand, but how can you differentiate yourself from other brands competing in the video space? Users will be actively in the market to watch videos, and often with the intention to buy too, but they may not be aware of your brand, or have ever thought about the types of products or services that you offer. Using video in this way will help add valuable traffic across multiple channels. Google highlighted that 35% of users are more likely to search for your brand after seeing a video ad, so if you're not already visible in the video space, then you're missing a trick!

b.) Reach the right people (with the right ad format)

So, you've thought about creating demand through video, but how can you ensure that you are reaching the right people? If your target audience does not watch videos, then a video campaign will not be suitable for your purposes. However, with video predicted to account for 69% of all online data traffic in 2017, it would be hard to believe that a video campaign wouldn't leverage your other online activity. TrueView offers two types of video ads; in-stream and in-display. The type of ad format you adopt will largely depend on your marketing objectives. Do you want to increase brand awareness or is your goal to deliver incremental sales? YouTube users will be oh too familiar with the ‘Skip Ad’ button – this is in-stream. It is obligatory for the user to watch the first five seconds, after which they have the option to skip the rest of the ad. Give them a reason to watch more! Grab their attention: hook, line and sinker. After all, your video campaign is only as good as the video itself. You can also add a companion banner alongside in-stream ads. This will appear on the right-hand side of your video. This will help to increase engagement rates of users, as they are more likely to click or view your video if you have dominated the results page. In-display is the format which shows up next to other YouTube videos. Viewers will need to actively click on your video to watch it, so content is crucial. As well as pinpointing your ad format, think about your audience. For existing visitors, reinforce your brand message and think about ways to increase their lifetime value, perhaps with an offer or promotion. Use remarketing to tailor your ads to millions of people based on their historic behaviour. If they have actively engaged with your brand and videos, they are much more likely to re-engage. Also think about remarketing to people based on their YouTube interactions; likes, dislikes and comments. Likewise you can also remarket to people dynamically – so the world is your oyster. And for new visitors, content is key.

c.) Purchase intent

The key is creating demand for your video and then converting the user via other channels. A recent statistic by Google stated that 42% of online shoppers use video during their pre-purchase research and 64% of people use YouTube to find products. So what better way than to tempt users to buy from your site than with your Google Shopping Feed? With the release of Shopping Ads on YouTube in October, advertisers can expand their shopping ads beyond the search space. They can now show in contextually relevant videos to give the user intent to buy. What’s more, you can continue to manage your feed using the Google Merchant Center, so there is no need to set up a separate feed.

Measure your success

55% of small and medium-sized businesses ceased advertising on YouTube because they expected clicks or conversions and didn’t get them. But it's important to highlight the value video advertising can bring outside of direct clicks and conversions: be it cross-channel uplift, assisted conversions or building your brand reputation. Multi-channel reports in Google Analytics are great for understanding where your video campaigns have assisted in a final sale. Google Analytics will also help you to understand if you saw an uplift in branded traffic as a result of your campaign for other channels. Did direct traffic increase over a like-for-like period, or did you see search traffic increase?

Engagement rates

We recently ran a TrueView campaign for a large professional photography retailer with the objective to boost awareness and drive sales. We saw average View-Through rates of 24.24%, which in comparison to the 4% previously achieved far exceeded our expectations. The campaign saw a considerable uplift in assisted conversions, where paid search later converted the user. Understand your metrics. Did you see an equally high click-through rate? If not, at what point were people closing the video? Were the call-to-actions strong? And were people using the video in the right way? These answers will help to guide the changes that you make to your campaign. If your campaign contributed to any of the above, then you are onto a winner. If it didn’t, then think about a few things: have you let the campaign run long enough to fully understand its value? Perhaps then consider ways you can alter your strategy for improved performance. And, of course: mobile, mobile, mobile. With such a high proportion of users viewing your videos and seeing your ads on mobile devices, understand the value of this device. Google Analytics will also allow you to dig deep into this attribution data. A recent prediction by Google states that by 2017 video will account for 69% of all online data traffic. So, as we move away from recognising TrueView solely as an engagement channel, we can begin to understand the full value that video advertising can bring. Be part of a micro-moment in your user’s journey and you can begin reaping the benefits from various other areas of your business. July this year saw the launch of our video and production suite and we've been going from strength to strength with the Found Video Team now producing a range of projects for existing and new clients. Get in touch and learn how Found can help, we'd love to hear from you.

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New Adwords update - DFSAs : making every click matter

Justin Maxwell — Tue, 01 Dec 2015 12:04:11 +0000

With over 200 Adwords updates in 2014, Google shows no sign of slowing down. The most recent and arguably the most exciting update comes in the form of another acronym: DFSAs (Demographics For Search Ads) - not to be confused with DSAs (Dynamic Search Ads). This new feature is compatible with both new and returning visitors and allows you to reach high value demographics based on the performance of certain ages and genders. What makes this feature so powerful is the ability to target top converting audience segments with a custom bidding and creative strategy. You can also exclude certain demographics which may be deemed irrelevant to those campaigns – this in turn will help eliminate unqualified traffic and reduce wasted spend, resulting in increased ROI and reduced CPA (your clients will love you!). Let’s take a look at how to set up and approach your DFSAs to ‘make every click matter’…

Which campaigns will benefit?

DFSAs work best with keywords that are outside of premium positions. Campaigns with an average position of 2.0 are going to be your ideal candidates as the opportunity is far greater to gain incremental clicks from an improved positional advantage. Campaigns with an average position in the 1.0 and 1.9 range could also benefit from DFSAs (so don’t disregard these!).

How to analyse historic performance

Reporting for all managed demographics will appear in the ‘audiences’ tab. This can be found at the AdGroup-Demographic level with a total row for all managed demographics. This is also the section where you will be able to apply bid adjustments to both gender and age.

Take a strategic approach to DFSAs

Existing keywords It’s important to up-weight your bids when your target audience searches for your existing keywords. There might be certain instances where some of your brand-generic keywords have too low of an ROI to be in premium positions. Go through to the audiences tab and up-weight bids for your highest converting demographics. Layer up Standard RLSAs have been a real game changer for bidding on generic keywords that have historically converted at very low rates. Now, with DFSAs layered on top of RLSAs, marketers are able to supercharge their keyword strategy by entering auctions and paying for clicks from users with the highest purchase intent. Look inside your existing RLSA campaigns and find out exactly which demographics have the highest conversion rates. Once you have this information, duplicate your campaign so that you are exclusively targeting these demographics and up-weighting bids based on performance. Go beyond direct response with tailored ads Paid search marketers can now go far beyond the classic ‘buy, buy, buy' approach. We can now really start to hone in on individual characteristics of the buyer to deliver personalised messaging. If you are a little apprehensive about the ‘right’ way to deliver your creative strategy, then a persona document is a great place to start. This will not only guide your creative testing with DFSAs but will also help drive other parts of your online and offline strategy, be it content creation for SEO, or online branding exercises such as video advertising. Here are a few points to think about when creating your demographic-based ad copy:

Overall perceptions of your brand
The relationship users have with your brand
Key interests of your target audience
Top reasons why they buy your brand
Top reason why they don’t buy your brand

Landing pages In line with your creative strategy, use your historic demographic performance to help guide changes to your landing pages. Take a life insurance company, for example. Each one will have pricing structures which differ according to age and gender. Splitting your campaigns out in this same way will allow you to better capitalize on these demographics and deliver highly-targeted messaging from the ad copy through to the landing page. The combination of these two components will drastically increase conversion rates and lower your CPA. Exclusions Make sure you stop bidding on poorly performing audiences outside of your target demographic. Your clicks will now be even more qualified and convert at a higher rate; so if you want to target men looking for a snazzy haircut this Christmas, then exclude women! NB: In all instances, it is crucial to ensure that you continue to show ads to the “unknown” segment, as this represents on average 55% of the available traffic. Image of account showing gender exclusion How much traffic can you expect from up-weighted bids? If you’re interested in seeing how much extra traffic you are expected to receive from increasing bids, then navigate over to the ‘opportunities’ tab and take advantage of AdWords' 'campaign simulator'. Take this tool with a pinch of salt as it is by no means perfect. It will, however, give you a good indication of the incremental clicks that you can expect if you change your bids. Summary DFSAs are yet another powerful weapon that can be placed in your paid search arsenal. Along with RLSAs, they will change the way we approach audience targeting, as well as our overall strategy to how we operate ‘search’. As the update is still in beta, we are still deepening our understanding of its true value and the full extent of its capabilities. Watch this space….

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Found win at the 2015 UK Search Awards!

Flo Bundy — Mon, 30 Nov 2015 14:59:57 +0000

On Thursday 10 of our lovely Founders got dressed up and headed down to the Southbank for the 2015 UK Search Awards. Shortlisted for 3 awards, the team were full of excitement and crossing their fingers for their categories. Always a fun night, this year hosted again by TV’s Andy Crane, the team enjoyed a slap-up dinner and a few drinks before the awards ceremony began. We’re always thrilled to be shortlisted for our work at these events, however, nothing quite compares when the team takes home an award. We are super proud to have won Best Low Budget Campaign for our paid search activity with Randstad Finance and Professional. Randstad approached us with a small budget to run a paid campaign that would increase job applications and cv submissions whilst reducing their CPA. Having worked with the team at Randstad since 2013, we were able to use our knowledge of their business and our paid search expertise to synchronise optimisation with real-time job availability driving conversion rate and returning visitors whilst reducing their CPA by over 48%. Congratulations to everyone who took an award home and to everyone shortlisted. We hope you had as much fun celebrating as we did!

Phantom 3 update targets poor user experience

Tom Brand — Wed, 09 Dec 2015 16:32:52 +0000

Recently, large fluctuations in organic visibility have been impacting sites' traffic across multiple industries. With no announced updates from Google, SEOs have been hard at work finding the cause of these movements. In May 2015, digital marketing veteran Glenn Gabe noticed that a large number of sites were seeing fluctuations, yet webmasters and digital marketers were given no official announcement from Google. Given that these changes were so mysterious, what with Google denying the assumptions that this was a Panda or Penguin update, Gabe gave the update the label of Phantom 2, after its namesake Phantom which was released in early 2013. Due to the similar nature of areas targeted by this update and the fact we are yet to receive an announcement around this update, it has been labelled Phantom 3 by the SEO community. The update rolled out around the 19^th of November and appears to have targeted sites with poor user experience.

Identifying the issue and what to expect

A look into Searchmetrics will reveal whether or not your site has been hit by the update. Firstly, look for significant changes in visibility around the 19^th of November. Sites which have been hit have seen around a 10% increases or decrease in visibility and some are seeing fluctuations of up to 20%. It’s important to follow this up in Google Analytics with further analysis into how this has affected your site’s traffic and revenue - have particular categories or landing pages seen greater impact? And how has this impacted on conversions and revenue? Like most updates, there will likely be tremors within visibility graphs and organic traffic as the update continues to roll out in the weeks following its release. Site owners and webmasters should expect recovery to take some time. This is because firstly we may need to see another update to fully recover, and secondly the nature of the areas targeted means that implementing changes as a result of this update will require ample analysis and development time.

What and where does the update target? And how to reverse the effects?

As previously mentioned, the update targets poor user experience. Below is a list of common elements which were found to be underperforming across negatively impacted sites.

Annoying/clunky site navigation: If Google is struggling to crawl your site efficiently, it’s likely that users are having a hard time navigating it too. Time should be spent identifying any issues users may have with the navigation and then optimising this both for bots and users. Key areas to focus on are ensuring that important category/landing pages are easily accessible, that the navigation isn’t cluttered with links, and that there is a clear category structure.
Thin/low-quality content: This one’s a no-brainer. Ensure all content on the site is relevant to the user and to the search term they used to get there. In addition, analysis of any supplementary content on the blog will reveal if articles aren’t getting the point across, or perhaps they’re just irrelevant to the rest of the content on your site. In any of the cases here, re-writes or removal of copy could benefit your site.
Poor pagination: A number of sites hit have implemented infinite scroll across their content without any other options available to navigate through content, such as a 'view all' button. This can affect sites with particularly long articles or those with poorly implemented pagination across category pages. Ensure pagination is user-friendly across your site by implementing 'view all', 'first page' and 'last page' buttons. In addition, generally focus on making navigating content more intuitive.
Banners and ads: Sites which have made excessive use of adverts and banners throughout content have been negatively impacted after the release of Phantom 3. If adverts and banners are pushing important content down the page or taking up a large percentage of the content on the page, user experience is hampered. In addition, the content on these pages becomes less prominent and less relevant overall with the presence of numerous ads.

If your site has been affected, conduct a full user experience audit across the site, paying particular attention to the points mentioned above and any other areas where a user’s journey is hampered by site structure, content or layout. Finally, expect more updates of this kind. We’ve seen at least four updates which target user experience and content throughout 2015, and there will be more to come. So take time to implement any recommendations off the back of these audits and safeguard your site against updates to come.

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Twitter’s War and Peace: could 9,860 characters end the micro-blog?

Luke Berry — Fri, 08 Jan 2016 18:23:04 +0000

#Twitter10k is the latest announcement keeping us on our toes, meaning my tweets could be much longer rather than being cut off right here. Just imagine the hashtag possibilities with 10,000 characters. If Tweet limits increase to 10,000 characters, I can already visualise the glory of paragraph-long hashtags. Each campaign hashtag would mention in minute detail each and every nuance as it is broadcast to Twitter. The KISS principle of Keep it Simple Stupid need not apply anymore!

I’m relieved, are you?

That is, if it doesn’t completely change the way we market and promote content on Twitter. In all seriousness, #Twitter10k is a matter that requires attention, as a dip in Twitter stock connected with the news is no small matter. What are people saying about how it will affect us content marketers? What are they trying to do? I wonder what Matthew Barby, Global Head of Growth & SEO at HubSpot, would have said if he had space for 9,960 characters more in his tweet above? Would he spend the characters expanding on his comment? Perhaps. In the 140 character past, the logical place for such an analysis would only have room on-site in a blog post, just like this one written here.

Is it the end of micro-blogging?

Twitter has been described as a micro-blogging platform since the early days of Web 2.0. With this new character limit, it has the potential to become another article blogging platform. Twitter’s unique value is in the brevity of its written content and, with the additional characters, that concise writing will never again hold the same importance on the platform. It’s another off-site location that wants our long-form content. If we are forced to compete with content in Twitter’s feed against sharing links to articles, it might harm our marketed website’s performance. It is a change that could make us re-consider the integration between our content and promotion strategy, or even force us to innovate more on-site. Reports are that we won’t see the full response past 140 characters unless we, as users, show we want to see it with a click. So, conversations for user-to-user interactions will likely still begin and end in the short-hand format that has characterised the platform. However, for user-to-brand considerations, the capability for a longer response to a question or talking point is there.

Why the conversation is still at the core

Twitter’s strength is in its ability to start and continue allow easy conversations, real-time responses written in a punchy fashion. Sometimes, complicated conversations need longer responses. The current character makes you keep it simple stupid but is an artificial restraint I’ve hit more than once. One part of the argument for change is that Twitter likely has user data to show that people like me are hitting that limit and it’s been detrimental enough to stop engagement. There have been notable responses cited by this WSJ article that have taken image format to circumvent the limit. It’s not an ideal restraint if users are taking extra time to hack their way out of it. The conversation will still be at the core, but it will give us room to keep the context in the conversation and not away in another location. In that case it's an opportunity.

Twitter wants the user journey and narrative to stay on the platform

Similar to the character limit changes by Facebook and in the rise of platforms such as Medium, the increase to 10,000 characters is the latest in a shift by social platforms to retain the user in their own environment. In the example of hacking the limit with images, a longer character restraint serves those users and their followers. They don’t have to move outside of Twitter, load another website page and find themselves sitting on another part of the web. If they are using the Twitter mobile app, they won’t be using additional mobile data and they don’t have to navigate back to their tailored feed. For example, the latest iPhone software update allows users to move right back to apps after they have opened a link. This is a common user behaviour that companies want to encourage on mobile, known to account for at least 80% of Twitter’s primary access channel.

1 + 1 = 3?

The character limit increase will add an entirely new format to the Twitter channel. It could subtract from the style and undermine its current foundation. Or it might just add something that future-proofs the channel from other disruptive social media companies. I’ve already borrowed the book title of ex-ad man Dave Trott in my sub-heading, so I’ll sign off with a borrowed parable he wrote about in the Message is the Medium: “It’s not just what you say that’s important. It’s also where, and when.” Twitter has signalled it wants us to say the important things, long form or snappy, right in your followers’ feed. What remains to be seen is what format(s) of content this will spawn, and whether they will provide value for us, our websites, our users, our brands. Will the change work for Twitter? I have no clue. It does keep us all on our toes.

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PERSONALISATION: FUTURE-PROOFING YOUR ECOMMERCE STRATEGY.

Found shortlisted for three awards at the Performance Marketing Awards 2016

John Stuchfield — Tue, 01 Mar 2016 17:15:35 +0000

Award season is just starting up again, and Found HQ is buzzing with the news that we have once again been shortlisted at the 2016 Performance Marketing Awards (PMAs). Competing with the very finest in the industry, Found have been shortlisted no less than three times at these prestigious awards. Categories include Best Lead Generation campaign for Handpicked Hotels, Best Paid Search campaign for Red Letter Days, and the Global Excellence award for the Vitec Group. Now in their 10th year, the PMAs are widely regarded as one of the leading events in performance marketing, so this is a fantastic achievement for Found. We’re particularly proud to be recognised across such a wide range of categories, as it’s allowed us to showcase our innovative approach to paid media for clients across verticals. This is probably most evident for our work with the Vitec Group as it’s the first year we’ve entered for the Global Excellence award. With a portfolio of 20 brands operating in 12 countries, Vitec gave us the opportunity to truly take our paid media strategy worldwide. We were able to implement a multi-language, multi-channel approach that increased their YoY revenue, whilst also improving their ROI. No easy feat but one both we, and our client, are rightly thrilled with. This news follows hot on the heels of our award win for Randstad at the UK Search Awards back in December, so this is a hugely exciting time for Found and a great way to start the year. The Grosvenor House Hotel will once again play host to the ceremony, so good luck to everyone else on the shortlist. We look forward to seeing you on the 26th April for an evening of glitz, glamour, and hopefully a couple more award wins!

Adblock wars - the publishers strike back

Philip Gamble — Tue, 29 Mar 2016 13:45:00 +0000

UK digital ad spend reached an estimated £7.2bn in 2014 according to the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) up from £6.3bn in the previous year. Yet despite years of inflation-beating growth the industry faces a threat - one that many may say is a result of the sector's own complacency and disregard for consumers. It’s been the topic of an increasing number of industry discussions and roundtable events held in recent months. The threat? Users blocking ads. The rise of the more savvy surfer has led to an increase in the number of web users opting to avoid advertisements online through the use browser plugins specifically designed to filter out advertisements from consumed content.

How widespread is the use of Adblockers?

Figures for the proportion of consumers utilising ad blocking solutions vary, but publishers, networks and industry bodies all appear to agree that usage is increasing - and rapidly. In the UK the IAB’s latest research from February 2016 shows that 22% of British adults currently use an ad-blocking solution, up from 18% just four months earlier. UK ad blocking grew 82% to reach 12 million active users in the year to June 2015 according to PageFair, one of a growing number of platforms that provide a way for publishers to fight back. The ad network, strapline "we help websites survive the rise of Adblock", offers to replace blocked ads on partners websites with “non-intrusive” ads and enables publishers to recapture revenue lost to blocking. The proliferation of ad blockers amongst internet users varies considerably by sector. With Quartz reporting that usage figures range from 30%-90% of visitors blocking ads to a selection of individual sites.

Mobile Hope?

Significant ad blocking has now made the jump over to mobile in a big way. With mobile now accounting for greater than 50% of sessions, any publisher hopes of this continuing shift offering a way to recoup revenue from users with desktop blockers are now evaporating. In September last year Apple released iOS 9 which for the first time enabled Safari content blocking apps to enter their App Store. In less than day ad blocking apps had shot up the app charts and penetration rates are approaching those on desktop. Things could be about to get worse. Citing concerns over consumer experience, privacy and increased data charges, the mobile network Three is planning to roll out a solution which can block 95% of banner and pop-up ads served to its 8.8 million subscribers.

Here to stay?

Perhaps even more alarming for those relying on an ad-funded model are that the figures suggest rates of adblocking are greatest amongst the young and those in emerging markets, growing a whole new generation of internet users who expect the web to be ad free. The number one browser in most Asian markets is UC Browser which is owned by the e-commerce giant Alibaba. With a 51% market share in India, ads are blocked as standard.

Remember Popup blockers?

Blocking ads is nothing new. Opting to improve your browsing experience by restricting the intrusion of online advertisements has happened for years. Pop-ups and pop-unders were the scourge of the internet in the late 1990s. The most popular browsers came with built-in pop-up blocking as standard in the early 2000s and the medium virtually died out. Advertisers and publishers responded with new formats. Our ads have evolved to become increasingly personalised and online video ad spend is growing at 40-50% a year.

So Why Are Users Blocking Ads?

Since switching to using Chrome as my primary browser shortly after its release, I had for several years browsed perfectly harmoniously consuming ads alongside my content. Yes - there were occasionally irritating ads - autoplay video ads on sports sites being the worst - but the majority weren’t too obnoxious and I didn’t have an issue with them at all. That changed in early-2015 when YouTube began to subject me to an increasing proportion of pre-roll video ads, not just the 5 second click-to-skip ads but also “non-skippable in-stream ads”, before I was able to access the content I requested. I’m not alone. The IAB report cites an interrupted experience as the top reason people chose to block ads. It’s much easier to install an ad-blocking plugin and leave the default settings rather than configure the options to block just the most irritating ads. So sadly the smaller publishers who rely on less-intrusive banners are hit too.

Ad-funded Adblockers

Some of the most popular ad-blocking solutions aren’t actually a catch-all. By default when Adblock Plus is installed “Acceptable Ads” are shown in the browser. Providing advertisements on a website meet certain criteria, effectively are less intrusive, the publisher applies to be whitelisted and passes a review process, ads can become enabled again by default to Adblock Plus users. This seems like a fair balance to me. A quick look at the list of Acceptable Ad exception rules immediately shows the presence of some of the largest brands. At the time of writing, “Google” shows up in the list 3,833 times. This is where the adblocking revenue model comes in. Whilst Acceptable Ad-compliant small publishers can appear on the whitelist for free, any publisher that will serve “10 million additional ad impressions per month due to participation in the Acceptable Ads initiative” is billed “30 percent of the additional revenue created by whitelisting its acceptable ads”.

How are publishers dealing with the threat?

In addition to the two most obvious approaches, “they aren’t” and making their ads “acceptable”, publishers are trying different methods to combat ad blocking users.

Adblock Blockers

Splash-page loving Forbes say 13% of their visitors have installed an ad blocking solution. Since mid-December 2015 the site has blocked “a small percentage of those with ad blockers” from accessing their content. A nag screen on their experience-interrupting splash screen demands that users switch off their ad blocker to access the site in exchange for 30 days of “less intrusive” advertising. 42% of users did disable Adblock when asked, enabling Forbes to serve an additional 15 million impressions which would otherwise have been blocked. Lewis DVorkin wrote an interesting article sharing some details of the test on the site (who knows if you’ll get to access his article if you have adblock enabled...). Channel 4’s live streaming and video on demand services make use of pre and in-video advertisements as well as surrounding banners and block users of Adblock software from playing videos. The number of sites employing such a solution has increased noticeably since late 2015 with news publishers sites such as CityAM also employing such measures. Whatever your thoughts on adblocking this surely counts as cloaking and should be penalised? “Cloaking refers to the practice of presenting different content or URLs to human users and search engines”

Circumnavigating the Filters

With consumer use of Adblock followed by publisher use of Adblock Blocker technology, it was surely only a matter of time before an anti-Adblock killer inevitably appeared on the scene. This game of cat and mouse is perhaps best seen with the EasyList community which provides a list of ad-blocking filters which users can subscribe to ensuring they block the most recent ads. Its forum for users to report unblocked ads has 15,000 topics. As publishers increasingly restrict access to those using Adblock, the ad blocking technology gets smarter at circumventing such behaviour.

See you in Court

German publisher Axel Springer took the makers of Adblock Plus, Eyeo, to court claiming that the software “breached laws on competition, copyright or market dominance”. They lost.

Nudging User Behavior

Others take a more softly-softly approach with messages informing users that their use of ad-blocking technology is preventing the site from monetizing its content. The Guardian suggests “perhaps you’ll support us another way?” to browsers who aren’t seeing ads, pushing their paid for Supporter membership.

New Products

Although the Android and iOS app stores allow apps which enable in-browser ad blocking, both are opposed to those which target in-app ads citing privacy concerns. So, for now at least, pushing users towards apps may offer at least a temporary reprieve. The Paywall model is notoriously hard to work for general publishers when equivalent content is available elsewhere for free. However, some publishers have begun to offer an ad-free subscription model. For example Google have launched YouTube Red. Currently only available in the US, this offers ad-free browsing of videos plus some additional features for $10 a month.

The Dilemma

Consumers are losing from the current proliferation of ads and increasingly intrusive formats. Publishers are losing from the growth of Adblock, journalism and content needs to be paid for. For now, the only winners are publishers of ad blocking software. What will be the next step in the ad-blocking war?

Making the leap: Should you Kermit to HTTPS?

Richard Lewis — Wed, 06 Apr 2016 10:59:25 +0000

HTTPS looks risky from some angles. Is the danger real or might it be more dangerous not to make the jump?

While searching for the location of the soul, 19th century German physiologist Friedrich Goltz observed that frogs did not attempt to escape hot water if it was heated slowly enough. The same results were produced by his contemporary WT Sedgwick, who noted that "the temperature was raised at a rate of 0.002°C per second, and the frog was found dead at the end of 2½ hours without having moved". They claimed that the poor frog had not responded to the changes in its environment because they were so gradual. To make matters worse, the location of the soul remained a mystery. Google's mobile update back in April 2015 flash-boiled the pot and caused a lot of webmasters to jump out of the water and sort out their websites pronto. "Mobilegeddon" is about as far as it's possible to get from the more subtle warming we're seeing with Google's approach to HTTPS.

"Why would I need to change my website? Everything's fine" (image)

What is HTTPS for?

HTTPS is about security. About safety. It's not exciting or explosive like, say, "mobilegeddon" - at least not at first glance. It's a communication protocol (a system of rules for communication between computers) which is encrypted using TLS (transport layer security) or its predecessor SSL. Ribbiting. Jargon aside, it's what stops the bad guys from seeing the information passing between your computer and a website you're visiting. The benefits:

Authentication - "Am I talking to who they claim to be?"
Data Integrity - "Has anyone tampered with the data?"
Encryption - "Can anyone see my conversation?"

With ye olde unencrypted HTTP, hard drinking desperados in balaclavas could do a man in the middle attack in which they eavesdrop on the details of your purchase of slippers for your gran. After this either (a) your bank phones up to check if you really did buy a plane ticket to Khabarovsk or (b) the rent doesn't get paid and you get evicted. This is not funny and the people with influence over how the internet works don't think so either.

"I'm an identity thief by trade. For me, HTTPS is a real headache" (image)

How many websites use HTTPS?

HTTPS looks like the obvious choice for a protocol - but how many websites have switched? 39.8% of the web's 141,383 most popular websites used HTTPS as of 5th March 2016 according to SSL Pulse, "a continuous and global dashboard for monitoring the quality of SSL support across the top one million web sites":

SSL Pulse HTTPS usage statistics

The number of secure sites in the sample increased by 2.5% in just one month as of March 2016. Google’s latest transparency report supports the SSL Pulse data. The stacked bar chart below shows the HTTPS status of the top 100 non-Google websites by traffic. By Google’s estimates, these websites account for “approximately 25% of all website traffic worldwide”:

Data on levels of HTTPS implementation from Google's HTTPS transparency report

While there are varying levels of implementation, “Works on HTTPS” is the most important measure to look at if we want to understand the extent of HTTPS uptake across this section of the web because we’re primarily interested in the adoption of the concept of HTTPS by webmasters. We're at about 40% here according to Google. While it used to be the case that SSL certificates cost money, certificate authorities are offering free HTTPS certificates in increasing numbers.

LetsEncrypt offered the first free digital certificate in September 2015
Symantec, previously charging $1,000 +, is now offering free certificates
Cloudflare has been providing free universal HTTPS security since September 2014 – the key difference from LetsEncrypt being that this was at the proxy level only and not on a website’s native server.

Google itself is leading the march to HTTPS by example. The graph below from the transparency report shows the percentage of requests to Google’s servers which used HTTPS:

The percentage of requests to Google's servers using HTTPS

To quell any remaining doubts on Google’s dedication to HTTPS adoption, Webmaster Trends Analyst Gary Illyes had this to say:

Words not minced

Why isn't everyone using HTTPS already?

Why don't all webmasters go secure today? There are some good reasons when it comes to SEO. Here's what happened to Wikipedia's organic visibility when it went secure in June 2015:

Visibility dipped at the time of the switch to HTTPS (SearchMetrics) - only the acute dip is correlated. Wikipedia's visibility was already on a downward trend.

Making a website secure using HTTPS is a form of migration - the content of the website is going to be moved from the insecure HTTP URLs to new secure HTTPS urls. The word "migration" often strikes fear into the hearts of anybody who has a stake in a website's organic traffic and revenue – and rightly so. Migrations are the riskiest things which can happen in a website's lifetime – resource and effort needs to be spent on ensuring they are done correctly. Googlebot is going to need to update the entirety of your website's presence in its index. Even if everything goes perfectly from a technical standpoint, there is still likely to be a dip in organic traffic and revenue for a brief period as Googlebot adjusts to the new setup. It's risky jumping out of the bowl – you could land upside down and are pretty much guaranteed to at least graze your knee. Frog in your throat? If that wasn’t enough:

HTTPS runs (a tiny bit) slower than HTTP
All resources need to be on HTTPS (CSS, JS)
Internal links, sitemaps, canonical tags, robots.txt and analytics tracking codes need to be updated
HSTS should be enabled in addition to HTTPS requiring further technical resource
HTTPS may interfere with the functioning of ad networks
Social shares for some platforms require migration & management to retain social proof.

"Maybe I'll just stay here on this leaf" (image)

If you were the in-house SEO for an ecommerce website, would you want to go hopping over to the C suite with a recommendation for going secure if you knew the risks and potential drawbacks? You'd need a powerful list of longer term benefits to the business as-well as the security reasons we've already covered. Slowly, gradually, imperceptibly, these benefits are getting easier to find.

Ranking signal

HTTPS is a ranking signal. Google stated this directly on the Webmaster Central Blog way back in August 2014: “we're starting to use HTTPS as a ranking signal. For now it's only a very lightweight signal — affecting fewer than 1% of global queries, and carrying less weight than other signals such as high-quality content— while we give webmasters time to switch to HTTPS. But over time, we may decide to strengthen it”. In an experiment performed by backlinko.com, HTTPS was found to be moderately correlated with higher rankings on page 1 as shown in the graph below:

Correlation between use of HTTPS and page 1 rankings - backlinko.com

Moz's mean Spearman’s correlation for use of HTTPS and rank showed an even lighter effect at 0.04, supporting Google’s assertion that HTTPS is indeed a real but lightweight signal. In Summer 2015, Gary Illyes stated that the signal serves as a dealbreaker only when all other ranking factors are essentially equal:

So most webmasters aren’t going to leapfrog over their competitors just by implementing HTTPS – at least not yet.

How long will the HTTPS ranking signal remain weak? While we can only speculate at the moment, Google has left its Webmaster Central Blog statement intentionally open and subject to change:

“for now” it’s only a very lightweight signal.
It’s a lightweight signal “while we give webmasters time to switch to HTTPS”
“over time, we may decide to strengthen it”

Google has been known to increase the strength of its existing ranking signals. The mobile friendly ranking boost is a clear example, with the original boost taking effect on April 21st 2015 and a further boost announced on March 16th 2016 which will reportedly be implemented in May 2016.

What does the perfect HTTPS setup for SEO look like?

How do the pros do it?

HTTPS is switched on and appears in URLs
All 4 possible HTTP/HTTPS and www/non-www combinations are consolidated into just one HTTPS URL
Redirect chains are avoided – every redirect leads directly to the canonical version of the content, ensuring maximum link equity is retained.
301 redirects are used as opposed to 302 redirects, signaling to Googlebot that the redirects are permanent.

Detailed guidelines are provided by Google here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6073543?hl=en

User trust implications

Warning! – a red X over a padlock will appear in front of all URLs not using HTTPS in Google Chrome in the near future. An example of what this might look like is shown below:

How the non-HTTPS warning icon is set to look on Google Chrome

Which basically to your mum means this: This alarming indication of the lack of HTTPS is in a highly prominent position and will be noticed by most users. How they will act in response to it remains to be seen but it is likely that trust in websites prominently marked as unsafe will be weakened in some sense. Visiting and browsing a website is one thing, but sending payment information to it is quite another and this may be evidenced in a decreased willingness of online shoppers to participate in ecommerce with websites not using HTTPS. This could have a noticeable effect on conversion rates. Rising awareness of cyber-crime and the risks involved in online activities involving personal information is only likely to strengthen this effect.

Turning up the heat

Ranking signals and browser security alerts may have raised the temperature enough for some webmasters to take action and leap from the pot, but it's unlikely that the majority will have been affected - probably because the user trust implications are not yet common knowledge or widely known. While things are getting decidedly warmer, something else may be needed to deliver that final hop-inducing stimulus. That something might just be the arrival of HTTP/2 - the first update to the language of the web in over a decade.

Getting warmer but still on the pot (image)

HTTP/2: Better safe than slow

It’s not just user trust and SERP rankings which could suffer if webmasters don’t act on HTTPS. For the first time in 17 years, a new version of the HTTP language itself has been created – HTTP/2. It’s faster: see for yourself. The main difference is that HTTP/2 can get all of the resources required to load a webpage in a single request, including resources which may or may not be required as the user browses and interacts with the page. The standard version of HTTP (HTTP/1.1) does not perform well when retrieving the large number of resources required to display a modern website because the web was a very different place when HTTP was devised:

"Baaaah" says Frank

To quote Google’s John Mueller, “One of the big advantages of HTTP/2 is that you can bundle requests, so if you are looking at a page, it has a bunch of embedded images, CSS, JavaScript files, those things, theoretically, you can do one request for all those files which should make things a lot faster".

How widely used is HTTP/2?

“HTTP/2 is now used by 6.5% of all websites, and by 13.5% of the top 1000 sites” as of 16th February 2016. The graph below shows that adoption has approximately tripled in 2016 alone.

HTTP2 adoption - W3techs

What does this have to do with HTTPS?

“no browser supports HTTP/2 unencrypted”
“Although the standard itself does not require usage of encryption, most client implementations (Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, IE, Edge) have stated that they will only support HTTP/2 over TLS, which makes encryption de facto mandatory”

If you want your website to be a part of the new faster web, you will have to migrate your website to HTTPS first – it’s de facto mandatory. It’s better to be safe than slow.

HTTP/2 and your SEO

HTTP/2 is fast, and fast is good for SEO. Web pages which load quickly frequently outperform slower pages in experiments measuring the effect of loading speed on organic conversion rate.
HTTP/2 is particularly beneficial to the speed of mobile websites – as latency increases (mobile browsing is often high latency), the beneficial effect of HTTP/2 is more pronounced, positively impacting UX.
Page speed is already a ranking factor so switching to HTTP/2 could provide a boost. It’s entirely possible that, given its significance in the history of the web, the usage of HTTP/2 itself on a webpage could one day become a ranking factor.

Unlocking these benefits requires the use of HTTPS on your website. While Google can’t yet crawl “HTTP/2 only” webpages, it is expected to be able to very shortly according to John Mueller who spoke about the subject in a webmaster hangout in November 2015.

It boils down to this:

HTTPS websites rank a tiny bit better now but this could get stronger.
The page-speed benefits of HTTP/2 are only available over HTTPS and faster pages rank and convert better in general.
Non HTTPS websites are soon to be shamed by Google Chrome with a big red X before the URL.

If your webbed feet aren’t twitching at that last one, you must be mad as a box of frogs. Will this raise the temperature just enough to see more webmasters jumping out of the water and getting HTTPS? Good god I hope so.

The analogy has come to the boil (image)

The experiments conducted on frogs in the 19th century by Goltz & Sedgwick inspired modern consultants to try to save companies from being boiled by the gradual changes in their environment by telling them a story which has now been recognized as a canard. When asked for his professional opinion on the boiling frog story, Dr. George R. Zug, curator of reptiles and amphibians at the National Museum of Natural History declared ”Well that's, may I say, bullshit”. Fast Company conducted a similar experiment with the help of J. Debra Hofman, research associate at MIT's Center for Information Systems Research. The frogs safely exited the warm water in good time and landed with style. "There are certain cases where gradual change is almost preferred," Hofman commented. "The change myth assumes a very narrow view of people. If frogs can do it, people definitely can."

"Go for it!" (image)

Facebook Advertising: Staying Connected to your Customers

John Stuchfield — Wed, 13 Apr 2016 11:03:04 +0000

With 936 million people logging in to Facebook every day, revealing more and more about themselves, it’s no wonder it has now become such a key component in advertiser toolkits. It’s one we’ve had great results with at Found, however, if you’re also thinking of testing this platform, then there are some key considerations and best practices you need to be aware of.

How is it different from paid search?

Often advertisers looking to begin their online marketing efforts start with paid search. This makes sense – it focuses on the bottom of the conversion funnel, so it inevitably sees strong conversion rates and results can be delivered quickly. It’s when additional reach is required that Facebook often starts to creep into the picture. It is important to remember the key difference between paid search and paid social. With paid search you are capitalising on strong user intent, targeting users towards the bottom of the conversion funnel. Your potential customers are in at least the research phase, if not ready to actually buy. But with Facebook you need to grab a user’s attention while they are busy looking at photos, liking friends' posts and finding out which Disney character they should be. As such, click through rates and conversion rates are a lot lower than search, but it does provide an opportunity to get more traffic and often at significantly lower CPCs. Compared to other social networks Facebook is also relatively cost effectively, particularly when compared to Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. Often the goal for Facebook activity will be to purely raise awareness of the brand in the aim of driving a conversion at a later date, perhaps from another channel. This difference must be considered right at the beginning of a campaign when setting expectations and targets, especially when communicating expected results with clients.

How do I assess performance?

Facebook is often used as a brand awareness tool, and as such, impressions and clicks are useful metrics. Engagements are also a good measure of success in this area – likes, shares, follows. Although these people might not necessarily click through to your site, they can be retargeted and even contacted organically at a later date. This is where it is important to consider the lifetime value of these users as users who simply engage with a brand initially can be developed into high spend acquisitions later down the line. However, it is also key to understand what is happening after these interactions to be able to invest in areas that are working and improve the performance of your campaigns. Ensure your Facebook activity is tracked either through Facebook’s own conversion tracking pixel or UTM tagged for tracking through Google Analytics - ideally both. The biggest mistake advertisers make when assessing Facebook performance is looking solely at last-click sales/conversions. It’s crucial to look beyond this and assess the assisted impact of your paid activity and how the activity is helping drive performance across other channels. While Facebook works particularly well for driving leads on both models, for example wedding enquiries or dating site subscriptions, it’s much tougher in a sales or retail market. We typically see that assisted conversions through Facebook are 85% higher than those on a last-click model, so it’s imperative you measure this accurately.

Where is my quality score?

Facebook doesn’t have Quality Score quite in the same way that AdWords does, however, it does have a similar metric called Relevance Score. This compares positive feedback (e.g. liking, sharing) with negative feedback (e.g. hiding, reporting) and assigns a score from one to ten. Like Quality Score in AdWords, relevance score helps determine where your ad shows and how much you pay for it. A high relevance score can help you get cheaper clicks so while you should always optimise to your actual goals it is important to consider which ads have the best relevance score and refine from there.

How should I tailor my strategies for Facebook?

The key thing to remember for your Facebook campaign is to test, test, test. There are a number of areas where you can make changes that will impact the performance of your campaigns. Targeting: An important part of Facebook advertising is segmentation and targeting your ads to the most relevant audience. This is where Facebook really comes into its own and differentiates itself from classic paid search. Targeting is a lot more segmented and gives a myriad of options, e.g. demographics, interests, behaviours, connections etc. By granularly targeting your audience you can focus on the most relevant ad text, but make sure not to make the reach so small you don’t have enough users to get results. You can look at Analytics data and your existing paid search campaigns to get ideas for how you might want to break out your targeting. For example, we currently run a lead gen campaign for hotel wedding venues. We knew that conversion rate varied by distance from the hotel, so we segmented our campaigns by this metric and were able to adjust bids, budget and creative accordingly to drive maximum performance. Remarketing: Another targeting strategy that can have a profound impact on results is remarketing. By installing the Facebook retargeting pixel, you can target users who have already visited your site. These customers have already engaged with your brand, have stronger intent and are therefore more likely to convert so you can adjust your bids and messaging accordingly. Once you’ve added to pixel to your site you can create audiences based on which pages your users have visited allowing highly tailored ad copy. An extension of this, Lookalike Audiences, allows you to target new users who are exhibit similar profiles/behaviours to your existing customers and therefore also likely to convert. Facebook retargeting is a must for all paid advertisers and here at Found we’ve had huge success with it. For our hotel wedding client, we’ve seen significantly higher conversion rates and a CPE 80% lower than our prospecting Facebook activity. Creative: We like to make sure we test our Facebook ads as thoroughly as we would our Paid Search ads and apply the same rigorous methodology. Test multiple variations of images and text for each ad to determine the best performer and then make slight adjustments and repeat. For example, for the hotel wedding campaign we tested time specific ads (e.g. late availability), specific offers (e.g. free champagne) and generic ads across a number of advert sets and found that CTR for the time specific ads was 26% higher than the others, so we focused on this for our future messaging. Refresh images and text regularly to prevent ad fatigue. Use eye-catching photos to grab the user’s attention - faces in particular work well. Make sure to test ad formats as well – both standard images and the carousel format. In terms of messaging make sure to include clear call-to-actions and highlight and USPs or offers. Punctuation also works well, especially exclamation and question marks. Video: A newer offering on Facebook but not one to be ignored. For advertisers with video content looking to truly engage with their consumer base, Facebook is the ideal platform. We’d suggest you run this in conjunction with YouTube TrueView formats, but Facebook offers huge reach, higher view rates and lower CPVs. The auto-play feature on Facebook obviously has a huge influence on performance stats here so they have to be taken with a pinch of salt, but if you have the assets the video should definitely form part of your testing portfolio. Bidding: You can allow Facebook to optimise your bids based on your goals (e.g. likes, clicks, app installs) or you can manually bid based on clicks or impressions. At Found we’re a fan of CPC bidding as it gives greater control over optimisation and performance, particularly now this only includes a click on a link which can be much more valuable than a page like or a share. Mobile: You can now target mobile and desktop news feeds separately, in addition to targeting the desktop right-hand column. As the different devices perform very differently in terms of traffic, CPCs, engagement rates, ad formats and levels of intent from users, we would recommend splitting out your campaign by device for optimal performance. Instagram: You can now target Instagram users from within the Facebook interface, which has been an exciting development in the social space. Our initial tests have shown higher CPCs and lower CTR, but higher conversion rates. This is something we’ve been looking to roll out across additional clients for further testing though. At Found, our paid media approach is all about matching the message to the moment. Facebook allows us to do just that – targeting users at a different level of the conversion funnel, creating hyper-targeted audiences and delivering the right message, at the right time, to exactly the right user. If you haven’t looked at it already then you’re definitely missing a trick, and almost certainly losing valuable awareness, conversions and engagements with your user base.

Found nominated for 6 more Drum awards

Luke Townsend — Thu, 31 Mar 2016 10:26:08 +0000

It's that time of year again when all the award nomination and shortlist announcements are made. This week, it's the turn of the Drum Digital Trading Awards. We're happy to announce that this year Found have been nominated for 6 awards in 4 different categories. These are: Best Video Campaign - 'Top Tips for Travellers' for YHA Best Paid Search Campaign - 'A Multichannel Marriage' for Hand Picked Hotels Best Paid Search Campaign - 'Focused on Exposure' for Vitec Best Paid Search Campaign - 'Matching the Message to the Moment' for Red Letter Days Best Mobile Campaign - 'Squaring up to mobile' for Square Meal Most Effective Media Agency - Found We're immensely proud to be recognised alongside some of our peers for the work we do every day here at Found. You can watch the video for the YHA nomination here You can view the Drum Digital Trading Awards 2016 full nomination list here We're really looking forward to attending the award ceremony and hopefully bringing home a few awards.

Found shortlisted for six awards the European Search Awards 2016

John Stuchfield — Thu, 31 Mar 2016 16:53:21 +0000

Award season is really starting to kick into gear, with nominations now being announced thick and fast. Following hot on the heels of nominations at both the Performance Marketing Awards and The Drum Digital Trading Awards, Found are delighted to announce we’ve been shortlisted for no less than six awards at the European Search Awards as well! These six nominations were across five different categories, with recognition coming for the following clients:

Best Use of Search in Retail for Red Letter Days
Best Use of Search in Travel & Leisure for Handpicked Hotels
Best Use of Search in Travel & Leisure for YHA
Best Mobile Campaign for Square Meal
Best PPC Campaign for Handpicked Hotels
Best Pan European Campaign for Vitec Group

The full shortlist can be viewed here. It’s always an honour and a privilege to be shortlisted at industry awards, but particularly at the prestigious European Search Awards where the very best agencies from across the continent come together to showcase their work. Competition has probably never been fiercer at these events so it’s a source of huge pride to be shortlisted, particularly across such a diverse range of categories as well! The award ceremony will be held in Paris on 4th May, but the Found team are already getting excited about a European road trip, an evening of celebration and hopefully lifting a trophy or two!

Intelligent search results: 5 things you should know about Google RankBrain in 2016

James Wolman — Wed, 20 Apr 2016 12:11:02 +0000

Back in March, Microsoft’s AI-based bot, Tay, had a bad day on Twitter when it was hidden from the public after breaking and becoming racist. That episode is in stark contrast to the success beyond expectations currently being experienced by Google’s new machine-learning tool, RankBrain. According to Google itself, the Machine Learning program is now being used in a significant fraction of the billions of search queries it receives every day. If RankBrain, or its importance to SEO, are new to you, here’s what you need to know...

What actually is RankBrain and how does it work?

The algorithm that Google uses for its search results has always been shrouded in secrecy, but we know that it is influenced by several hundred signals one of which is RankBrain. What makes RankBrain different is that whereas other signals used in the algorithm such as page-loading speed have been discovered and input by Google’s own designers and researchers, RankBrain has the ability to learn for itself. It recognises patterns that allow it to make vague search terms specific, establishing the intent behind verbose or indistinct queries that could trip up the search engine. RankBrain heralds the rise of machine learning in search - a program that can be used to process complex long tail keyword combinations, ambiguous terminology, colloquialisms or conversational speech. Over time, RankBrain will learn from user behaviours, making it even more accurate and effective. Key to understanding how RankBrain works is the concept of using word vectors to understand context or mapping the mathematical relationships between words. This Google article explains how a system (possibly RankBrain going by an earlier name) was able to learn the relationships between countries and their capital cities by being fed news articles.

Why is it necessary?

The ways in which we interact with search are changing - many of us now speak directly to our phone or tablet, and those queries could be made up of complex, difficult-to-understand phrases. RankBrain is vital in narrowing down what people are really looking for. By Google’s own estimates, some 15% of search queries it receives daily are completely new to it. RankBrain will make accurate guesses based on the knowledge that is continually improving upon. Google has said that much work is done offline, possibly by feeding text to the program so that it can analyse the semantic relationships between words and phrases. RankBrain is already being used worldwide. Alongside links and content, it is now one of the three most-important signals the search giant uses among several hundred to make up its algorithm, Hummingbird.

It’s not totally revolutionary

RankBrain may be the biggest step Google has taken to date into machine learning, but previous algorithms such as Panda have also employed it to some extent. Microsoft’s little-spoken-of RankNet, meanwhile, uses the concept of neural nets and is not totally dissimilar to RankBrain. The big leap some are predicting, however, is that RankBrain will at some point evolve into what’s termed Deep Learning, when it no longer needs a human to input ranking factors, but can determine them for itself.

What are the implications for current SEO practises?

Google only confirmed it was using RankBrain in October 2015, and has provided few details since, so it’s still quite early days to judge its effect. What we do know is that as the top three results on a page become more finely-tuned to the searcher’s actual wants, competition for positioning will become tighter than ever. 10x content, as defined by Rand Fishkin, could be a dealbreaker. RankBrain isn’t used for all searches, but specifically (at the moment) for those that have never been seen before or that contain unfamiliar phrasing. If, as some experts predict, RankBrain’s deployment expands in the future, then it could potentially devalue previous SEO structuring. Hummingbird focuses on what’s called Latent Semantic Indexing - you may have heard the term “Things Not Strings” being bandied around recently in SEO circles - RankBrain is looking behind the actual keywords and phrases on your pages for the underlying relationships between them - the content’s theme.

How do you optimise for RankBrain?

As ever, create content with the user in mind, rather than a bot. Data will help you to determine what your users are really looking for, and you can then produce unique content in line with those findings. Smart promotion is key as popular content being widely-linked remains a big influencer in rankings. Marking up that content with structured data will give and RankBrain a helping hand to understand what the purpose of each page is and engaging in semantic SEO practises will be productive in informing the program that your website is relevant. Remember “Things, Not Strings” - create landing pages with many different keywords and phrases all related to one topic. User reviews will likely gain in importance as RankBrain scours the web for what it deems “real language” that it associates with what the searcher has in mind - your site could be ranking for themes you may not have added to your own content, for instance if the hotel you’re advertising is considered by some guests to be family-friendly, or perfectly-located for a particular attraction. What RankBrain shows us, beyond the fact that Google is once again shaking the foundations of search, is that machine learning through pattern recognition is going to be a major factor in the future. We can expect search results to become more comprehensive and reliable than ever before, and as a consequence, the importance of useful content grouped around topics has never been higher.

Don’t let your website get lost in translation: Resolving issues with international targeting

Sally Poundall — Tue, 26 Apr 2016 10:57:45 +0000

As more and more businesses take advantage of the incredible opportunities offered by the World Wide Web to expand into global markets, it’s more critical than ever that sites are correctly optimised for international search. The detrimental effects of having the wrong content presented to users in organic listings cannot be underestimated. If your French content ranks in the Spanish SERPs, you will see decreased click-through rates, increased bounce rates and ultimately, your conversion rates will suffer along with the user experience of your visitors! Google uses several pieces of information to ascertain the best target audience for your content, such as

hreflang tags
geo-targeting settings in Google Search Console
ccTLDs (country-code top-level domain names), for example .es, .fr, .co.uk
IP address of the site’s web server
location and currency information on the page

Hreflang tags are little snippets of HTML code that allow webmasters to signal to search engines which language(s) and region(s) their site is targeting. They also indicate alternative versions of the content that may be more appropriate for the search engine to serve. Hreflang tags are also useful to eradicate issues of duplicate content which can potentially arise when you have very similar content in the same language which is targeted to different locations. For example, you could have separate, but very similar, content targeting English speakers in the UK and English speakers in the US. These tags have a strong influence on Google’s decision as to what content should be served up to international users. How do we know this? Well, there is abundant evidence that the incorrect, or complete absence of, implementation of these little snippets of code can result in the wrong content being displayed in the international SERPs. Given that incorrect implementation of hreflang tags can cause havoc for your international targeting, it’s crucial that you get it right.

How to identify if you have an international targeting problem

The first step, of course, is to ascertain whether or not there actually is a problem with your site. If your Google Analytics dashboard is showing poor traffic or user engagement metrics, then this could be a first indication that something’s up. For a more in-depth analysis, you could look at what countries your visitors are from when analysing the traffic to your geographically targeted content. In order to confirm whether or not your site’s hreflang implementation (or lack of) is the culprit, it’s definitely worth checking in Google Search Console to see if any issues have been flagged. If Google have detected a problem, you are likely to receive the following error message: While this is useful to make you aware of any issues, it is certainly not advisable to rely on this exclusively – the list of errors that Google provide here will by no means be exhaustive. It really is up to you to do the digging to identify the full extent of the problem (more on how to do this below). Finally, in order to gain a really clear perspective on exactly how your site is behaving in the international SERPs, you can use an international proxy in combination with changing the language settings in your browser. In this way, you can carry out a search for your brand terms and identify exactly what content from your site is being displayed for a range of locations and languages. For example, you could identify the content that’s served up to French speakers in France, as well as English speakers in France – be aware that this may not be the same content!

Gathering the data

Once you’ve identified that you’ve got a problem with your international targeting, getting to the root of the issue will require some nifty tools, mind-bending data manipulation and a bit of good old detective work. Essentially, however, the problem shouldn’t be too difficult to resolve – there are only a handful of ways that things could have gone wrong, and once you’ve spotted the issues they shouldn’t be too difficult to fix. Very fortunately for us SEOs, the Screaming Frog tool has a neat custom extraction feature that allows us to collect the hreflang data for all URLs on a site. All you need to do is go to Configuration > Custom > Extraction and then fill out the form using the following Xpaths:

(//*[@hreflang])[1]
(//*[@hreflang])[2]
… etc

You can extract up to 10 hreflang elements at a time using this format (see image below). Make sure that you select ‘Extract HTML Element’ – this will ensure that the entire HTML element is extracted, along with the link and the hreflang value. In addition, don’t forget to opt to crawl subdomains if some of your language- or location-specific content resides on subdomains instead of in subfolders. After you’ve run the crawl, simply download the custom report and you’re ready to start digging through the data.

Are your hreflang tags reciprocal?

A key problem to look out for with hreflang implementation is a lack of reciprocity between tags. Pages must link to each other. For example, if page A says that page B is its equivalent, page B must also refer back to page A in the same way. These mistakes are easy to overlook but crucial to fix. Once you’ve downloaded the report from Screaming Frog, this is where the real fun begins. You will find that the extracted hreflang elements are listed in columns in the spreadsheet according to whether they were the first, second, third (etc) hreflang element extracted from the page. In this way, you could have a mixture of different language and location tags located in each of the columns. What you actually want is for the tags to be arranged in columns according to the tag contents. For example, all fr-fr tags are to be located in one column, all en-gb tags to be located in another column etc. This will require some filtering, sorting, cutting and pasting. In addition, you only want the linked URL to be specified here, not the entire hreflang tag – you can use ‘find & replace’ to remove the rest of the html element. For example: In a new tab in the spreadsheet, you now want to utilise this data that you have so neatly arranged in order to clearly visualise which pages are missing the appropriate hreflang tags and - more crucially - instances where pages are not reciprocal. Using some VLOOKUP, IFERROR and EXACT functions you want to draw this data into a new sheet to create something that resembles the following: In this set-up, you have each URL on the site located in the far left column. Then, for each language or country variation, a column that specifies which URL is linked to from the necessary hreflang tag on that page. In addition, another column indicates the connection in reverse. A third column clearly states whether these URLs are reciprocal. Now you can clearly see which tags are reciprocating and which URLs are lacking hreflang tags altogether.

Are you incorrectly using the “x-default” tag?

Another mistake that can cause issues is the overuse of the ‘x-default’ tag. This tag is used to specify that a page is not targeted to any specific language or location. For example, you would implement the following piece of code on an international landing page that requests for users to choose their country or location from a drop-down menu. The ‘x-default’ tag is not to be used to refer to URLs which are also associated with specific language or country selectors. For example, the following code would be incorrect: These tags are contradictory and provide conflicting information to Google; the former tag is indicating that the content is targeted to English speakers in the UK, while the second tag is saying that the content is not targeted at all.

Have you updated Google Search Console?

In addition to hreflang tags, another way to indicate your target audience to Google is to update the international targeting settings in Search Console. In order to be able to do this correctly, you will need to ensure that you have a profile associated with each country-language subfolder (or subdomain). For example, you would want a profile for https://example.com/uk/ and a profile for https://example.com/france/ - in this way you can target each subfolder to a specific country. In order to do so, simply go to the ‘Search Traffic’ dropdown and select ‘International Targeting’ in the Google Search Console profile. From here you can then select the country that you wish to target for that section of the site.

Other common errors

Listed below are another couple of common errors that can trip up webmasters and SEOs in their quest to correctly target their content:

Are your language codes correct?

An easy mistake to make, but a mistake nonetheless – these finicky little codes could have you targeting your content to users in Georgia (GE) as opposed to Germany (DE). A useful way to make sure that your codes are correct is to use this hreflang tags generator tool.

Have you tried to target just a region, but not a language too?

While it’s possible to use hreflang tags simply to target speakers of a particular language (for example, signals that the content at this URL is targeted to all English speakers, independent of location), it is not possible to specify a country code by itself. So that’s it! Now you have the tools in your arsenal to diagnose any pesky hreflang problems. It’s definitely worth putting in the time and effort to diagnose and fix any international targeting issues on your site, because remember - incorrect targeting of content is not only bad for SEO but bad for business too!

Found scores a double at the European Search Awards

Luke Townsend — Fri, 06 May 2016 11:25:07 +0000

Forget Leicester, that's Nottingham Forest stuff!

In a week dominated by some memorable wins already, we've once again proved we're equally not of a mind to do things by half! Not content with a simple home win however, the brilliant Found team have romped home with not one, but two awards at this year's prestigious multi-territory European Search Awards. The annual awards ceremony showcases the best-of-the-best search campaigns across all European countries and our sterling work for both Squaremeal and Hand Picked Hotels caught the judges' eye resulting in us bringing home trophies for Best Mobile Campaign and Best Use of Search for the Travel & Leisure sectors respectively. This is absolutely marvellous stuff for the whole team and once again cements Found's ability to drive impressive client results that don't just rock in the UK search scene but also exemplify our spot-on strategic delivery, innovation and creativity in the wider European space.

John & Justin collecting one of our awards. (Image courtesy of Richard Hadley / Don't Panic)

Thank you to all those who participated in making it such a great night, and congratulations to all the other winners! You can explore the gallery of all the photos here courtesy of Richard Hadley / Don't Panic.

The importance of content as a ranking factor

Imogen Davies — Fri, 20 May 2016 11:40:22 +0000

SEO Ranking Factors Series #1: Content.

In a series of posts, we look at some of the key factors that Google and the other search engines take into consideration when deciding on where to place a site for a given search query. First up is a look at content and the part that it plays.

Content as a Ranking Factor

Content is the most important of all on-page SEO ranking factors. How you speak to the user determines how search engines will then view you. What is great content? From a search engine's perspective, it has to meet a need, answer the search query and it must be linkable. It also has to conform to the technical aspects that search engine ‘spiders’ such as Googlebot are looking for. As Google and other search engines evolve, the most successful websites take a holistic attitude to their content. They incorporate the correct elements such as keywords and internal links, but never at the expense of producing content that is of serious value to the reader, to answer the query, encourage a click-through and keep people on the page. The key elements of great on-site content are as follows...

'Proof terms' in the content

“You shall know a word by the company it keeps” J. R. Firth, 1957 Strongly linked to the primary keyword on the page, 'proof terms'are those thematic words that you would expect to find in most or all articles on a given topic. So if you’re writing about the environment and your keyword is “climate change”, then the 'proof terms' one would expect to find in the article might be “global warming” or “climate science”. A study by Searchmetrics in 2015 found over three-quarters of highly ranked websites used 'proof terms' in their content. The great thing about 'proof terms' is that they tend to appear completely naturally whenever you’re producing in-depth content on a topic, so it’s often not necessary to think too hard about them. N.B. it’s best to avoid discussing two or more topics on the same web page as this will confuse search engines, a situation known as topic dilution.

'Relevant terms' in the content

In the same Searchmetrics study as mentioned above, it was noticed that half of all highly ranked websites utilised 'relevant terms'. These are words not as closely correlated with the keyword as 'proof terms' but still contextually linked. So if your keyword is “exercise”, then “sweat” or “weight loss” might be 'relevant terms', whereas cupboard would not. By looking at a list of 'relevant terms' for a specific keyword, we should be able to make an accurate guess as to what the keyword itself is. Let’s say you’re creating a landing page for a hotel. Your primary keyword may be “Mayfair hotel”, but you might have a range of 'relevant terms' within the content such as “Mayfair rooms”, “inexpensive lodgings in London”, “breakfast included”. Again, these terms tend to appear naturally as you write about a topic and help convince search engines that your page contains relevant content for the query. The rise in importance of 'relevant terms' coincides with a decline in the importance of keywords. What Google is looking for is evidence of relevance, and by providing contextual depth you are doing just that.

Keywords in the internal links

An internal link is one that targets the same domain, or in other words, links to another page on the same website. The reason good internal link structuring is important is threefold. Firstly, it helps your site visitors to get around and find what they’re looking for - if they’re on a law firm’s website and reading an article about information on divorce law for instance, then an internal link to another article dealing with the amicable division of assets could well be of interest to them. Secondly, internal links help search engines to understand the architecture of a website and index it for future reference. Poor internal link structure, which can have many causes, frustrates the efforts of spiders to crawl a website and in doing so prevents it from ranking. Thirdly, it distributes page authority and ranking power around your website, telling the search engines that you think certain content is important. The best optimised internal links will have a descriptive keyword in the anchor text placed after the link referral location, such as: Division of assets This helps Google know that the linked-to page is important and improves the flow of relevance to that page for that specific keyword topic. Embedding the internal link within the body text, simply highlighting it, is more than enough, since it will be surrounded by relevant contextual content. The anchor text for links going to the same page should be varied, so long as they remain closely correlated to the keyword you want to rank for. It’s important to remember also that the page linked to must actually add value.

Keywords in your external links

The quantity and quality of external hyperlinks heading to your site and from your site to others are considered to be one of, if not the most important ranking factor in SEO. The “link-juice” they impart carries extra weight because they are third-party recommendations - think of it as a popularity contest. Key metrics in external links include the trustworthiness of the site they originate from, the relevancy between the source and the target page(s), and the relevancy of the anchor text in the link. So again using the example of the law firm with its page about the division of assets, one site might link to it using the anchor text of “splitting property between partners” while another might use the anchor text “avoiding conflict when dividing assets during a divorce”. By accurately reflecting the true nature of the content they’re linking to, both tell Google what the target page is about and help to improve its relevance scoring. However, when earning links for your content, caution is advised. Overuse of what is known as exact match keyword anchor text in links from external domains is one of the most common red flags for link profile manipulation, which Googlebot can detect through its Penguin algorithm. In practice, most external links to a domain either (a) have brand anchor text, or (b) simply use the URL. Keep a close eye on the anchor text of your incoming links to ensure you avoid algorithmic or manual actions.

Keywords in the body text

While still necessary in SEO, keywords are no longer as influential as they once were. Remember that what Google is looking for more than anything else now is relevancy, rather than keyword density, which doesn’t necessarily tell it anything. Focus most on the meaning behind your content, instead of just repeating the term that you want to rank for. Keywords can be placed in various segments of the page from the Title tag to image tags and the URL, but placing them in the body text is essential to establish a robust semantic core to the content. Of course, when writing about a topic, the keywords in the body will often just flow naturally but you should be aiming to include plenty of 'relevant' and 'proof terms' also. Two or three usages of your keyword in the body text of a page is enough to ensure the message of what the page is about gets through to search engines.

The word count of a page

While there’s no set word count for a web page, and the maxim that quality is always better than quantity generally holds true, long-form content does tend to be more valuable than short snippets. If you’re publishing articles, then a length of 1000+ words is thought to be best, providing that the topic you are writing about requires a large amount of background information. Google likes high-quality information and that usually can’t be conveyed in a 250-word article. Similarly, if you are creating list-based content, for example, then Google may see a 2,000+ word list-based article as poor quality, assuming you are trying to manipulate the ranking algorithm for one reason or another as it isn't giving the user the value they need straight away. Try to produce unique or original content that is useful to the reader and that utilises keywords, but remember that if yours is a topic that deserves talking about at length, then Google will probably agree. It will likely look at the genre of the website, so if you’re a journalist operating an online publication then it would expect to see considerable amounts of content but if you are a Chester pet-grooming parlour, it would not.

Keywords in page descriptions

When you write a meta description for a page, you’re effectively giving Google a snippet of information that it then uses on its SERPs as a summary of that same page. Optimising this short description, normally between 150 and 160 characters, with the right keywords, while it may not have any effect on your ranking, can greatly boost your click-through rates. It’s your best opportunity to concisely inform a reader that your page contains the information they need. Once you know the keyword you want to target in the description, you then combine that with information about your site and a call to action for the user to click the link. It’s a form of organic ad copy and requires accurate representation of what the on-page content is actually about, and being distinct from all of your other page descriptions, where reasonably possible, to work as it should.

Readability and the Flesch readability scale

Readability in your on-page content is vital, since if the text is too complex, with long, technical words that are difficult for the layperson to understand, most users won’t stay long. The Flesch Readability Test, developed by author Rudolf Flesch, produces scores based on the average sentence length and average number of syllables per word, with the highest scores being the most readable. If your page produces a score around 60-70 out of 100, this is considered about average, with sentences in the region of 15-20 words in length and words averaging around two syllables. Note that if your score is too high, this can have the reverse effect of convincing readers the page content is beneath them, and causing them to click away. So be smart, just not too smart. Much of search engine optimised content is in some ways open to interpretation. It’s not unknown for meta descriptions to be left blank for the search engines to pull out what they consider relevant text from the page to use as snippets, for instance. The value of high word counts is debatable and many now believe that keywords are nowhere near as important as they used to be. What is unarguable, however, is that it has never been more essential to have useful, original and relevant content on a page, content that is easy to understand and link to, and embedded within a semantically-rich contextual framework.

Technical elements that will help your site rank

Richard Lewis — Thu, 02 Jun 2016 09:14:01 +0000

SEO Ranking Factors Series #2: Technical Optimisation. In a series of posts, we look at some of the key factors that Google and the other search engines take into consideration when deciding on where to place a site in the organic results for a given search query. This time, it's technical factors and the difference they can make.

The importance of technical elements as ranking factors

A firm grasp of the technical elements of SEO, and the principles behind them, forms the basis of any successful organic campaign. If these elements are not implemented effectively, then other key factors in SEO such as content and outreach naturally cannot perform to their full potential. Googlebot will be unable to give full credit for the relevance and authority of your web-pages for given keyword searches if your domain is not technically compliant. Given the complexity of search engine algorithms, and that they are continually subject to change, it’s essential for webmasters to maintain a clear understanding of those features that are known to affect positioning on SERPS, and also those which while not thought to directly impact rankings can also help with SEO. Multiple studies of high-ranking sites indicate that the best performers will always have certain technical aspects in common. Below we discuss the crucial elements that should be borne in mind, and current best practices when implementing them…

Architecture and crawlability

If we think of the internet as a gigantic book, then for a website to feature in the web index, and thereby appear in the rankings, ‘spiders’ such as Googlebot and Bingbot need to be able to crawl it and determine its relevance for particular queries. If they can’t find their way around easily, the site won’t rank - it’s as simple as that, so ensuring that your website has a crawlable architecture is very important for boosting search rankings. Submitting a sitemap, the correct use of canonicalization, 301 redirects and building an effective internal link structure can all help boost crawlability. Note that if a site uses Flash or Javascript, these can impede spiders from making their way around by making any links or HTML embedded within them unparseable. While Googlebot’s ability to crawl Javascript content has improved in 2016, it’s still better to be safe than sorry.

The internal linking structure

As discussed above, a website’s visitors aren’t always human, and an effective internal link structure, as well as making it easy for someone to navigate a website and easily find the information they need, also helps search engine spiders to know what you consider to be of importance and where it is located. By making it easy for the spiders to index your pages and assess the content of each, you help your rankings, spreading domain authority and ranking power across your website. Aim to link deep into the website in natural directions, to valuable content that you want people to discover, rather than to your Home or Contact pages. Utilise follow links and anchor text, embedding them naturally in the body text, and use your internal links sparingly - while it’s not necessarily detrimental, adding dozens of links won’t have much more effect in terms of ranking than a handful. Make the internal links as natural as possible - exact match anchor text is preferable to a generic ‘Click here’ and is a major ranking signal yet it’s something that Google has been looking closely at recently.

The site is HTTPS

In long-form, Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure, or HTTPS, effectively means that any communications between a person’s web browser and a website bearing that prefix in its URL are encrypted and therefore secure. Google has been at the forefront of pushing for a HTTPS web and while it has itself said that HTTPS is only a low-strength ranking signal at present, it’s quite possible that it will grow in importance in the future. As such, currently HTTPS has only a low correlation with organic performance and since implementation can be both costly and complex, take-up is a long way from complete. But it does result in greater security and user confidence, and webmasters can restrict it to certain pages such as registration and checkout if they want, to make installation easier and reduce the strain on resources. There are also techniques available that can prevent HTTPS from slowing page loading speeds, which is vital especially for major ecommerce websites. For further detail on HTTPS, see our blog post Making the Leap: Should You Kermit to HTTPS?

Existence of a meta description

Writing meta descriptions won’t directly affect your search rankings but they are very useful for improving click-throughs from the SERPS. These snippets that describe the content of a page are what appear on the SERPS, like organic advertisements, and so they need to be correctly optimised. Aim for 150-160 characters - too long and your sentence will be cut off, too short and it doesn’t look right, denting user confidence. Add a persuasive description, smart deployment of keywords (which Google helpfully bolds to make them stand out), and of course pay attention to relevance to the page content. It’s preferred that every meta description should be unique from all the others you use, so if you have a lot of pages to describe, you might consider just leaving them blank and letting the search engines pull through content from each page to create their own.

The site speed

There are many things that are important to Google - web security, not being evil, and also, of course, the user experience, or UX for short. An interesting part of that is page-loading speeds which can be bogged down by a wide variety of factors - such as, potentially, HTTPS or video content that plays automatically. Slower website loading speeds - even fractions of a second, can cause users to click away in frustration, and so they are picked up on by search engines. Time To First Byte - the duration until the first response is received from the server, has the potential to impact rankings if competing websites are otherwise equal. A fast internet connection helps, but it’s far from the end of the matter. You can consider dedicated hosting for your site, and look at optimising your back-end infrastructure and software so that requests get through your network to your servers and data goes back as fast as possible. Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) are a common way of helping with latency and they are especially useful for companies that need a web presence in multiple countries and want to maximise site speed. Note that the actual page loading speed, according to one Moz study, does not seem to correlate directly with search rankings, but given Google’s interest in UX, it would be unwise to assume that won’t change at some point.

The keywords are in the domain

Keyword-rich domains, such as buildawebsite.com, can certainly help with rankings but they will understandably also face greater scrutiny from the search engines that are looking to confirm the quality and relevance of their content. Best practise calls for balancing the benefits of having a keyword in the domain name with ensuring that it remains catchy and easy to type for the user. Exact Match Domains, if you can afford to buy the one you want, can still have considerable value, but never rely on them as a way to increase traffic at the expense of other tactics. If getting a keyword-rich domain is going to involve using multiple hyphens or using a lesser-known Top Level Domain, then it’s probably not worth it.

The use of Flash

Again looking at the user experience, Flash is an effective device for grabbing the visitor’s attention quickly and conveying information in a snappy format, yet it can work against a site’s performance. Flash sites often have unconventional navigation that can impede users as well as being slower to load. If you want to incorporate Flash into your site but also help your rankings at the same time, then you shouldn’t use it for site navigation. Create XML Sitemaps for easy crawling and use HTML for the most important sections of your website.

The domain is a .com

While your site’s Top Level Domain, as Google allows, probably won’t affect your rankings, it’s thought that newer formats such as .travel or .gold, for instance, are inviting search engines and users, to consider them a little spammy. They can offer some advantages, such as in differentiating your site from the competition or allowing you to buy a memorable web address without spending a fortune on it, but you should always take into account the navigation preferences of web users - they are far more likely to click on a .com or .co.uk. Trickery such as having a domain name completely unrelated to a site’s content will get nowhere - there are now very few shortcuts with search and those that remain are being steadily picked off. By now if you’re a webmaster or work in SEO you’ll be long familiar with the term that Content is King and while it’s difficult to overstate the importance of high-quality content, overlooking the technical elements of a website, or worse, getting them wrong, can render all of your efforts for naught. In order to rank, the website needs to be readied for crawling, and the weight that Google and other search engines apply to different technical aspects is forever shifting, so the work is never done. But then, isn’t the quest for constant learning and improvement what makes SEO so much fun anyway?

Are you at the top of your game with Google Analytics?

James Wolman — Mon, 23 May 2016 11:02:28 +0000

Google Analytics can sometimes show results that leave you scratching your head. Use this guide to check you can trust the data it is displaying, so that you can be confident about the business decisions you are making with it. So you have a website, a GA code was dropped on it a while ago and now you’re finally thinking about getting serious with the data you collect. Perhaps you inherited some issues with the account from its previous caretaker. A poorly configured account could mean missing out on important data or working with misleading information. So if you don’t want your campaigns (SEO, email, link-building, PPC, display etc.) to be pointless and want your decisions to be truly data-driven, this guide will help you get started. Set your date range to the last six months and let’s go.

1. Check yourself before you refer yourself

The first place to dive into is the referrals report, under All Traffic in the Acquisition section. Filter the sources by searching for your website. If you’re seeing a large number of self-referrals, then you’re most likely missing tracking code somewhere or there’s a configuration problem. Leaving this unchecked will skew a lot of data in GA, from conversions to behaviour. It will compromise your data integrity and lead to bad business decisions. To fix this, you’ll need to identify which pages are missing tracking code and then add the code! If this doesn’t fix the issue, then cross domain tracking might be set up incorrectly. In either case it needs fixing. And do not just add your domain to the referral exclusions list.

2. Tracking code

Check whether the tracking code being used on the website matches the tracking code in your account’s property settings. If they’re different then you could be losing valuable data. You can check by viewing the source code of your website. But don’t draw any conclusions yet. Ctrl + F unfortunately won’t return much insight from the source code if the site’s tracking was implemented with Google Tag Manager. Luckily a Chrome extension called Tag Assistant (by Google) will be able to tell you. And most importantly tell you whether you’re using the Universal Analytics code or the older tracking code (Hint: you should be using the first one. Click here to see why).

3. AdWords linking

If you’re doing any paid activity through AdWords, it’s important to check whether your AdWords account has been linked to your Analytics account correctly. There may be some small data discrepancies for a number of reasons but you need to ensure this is not the result of incorrect linking between the two accounts.

4. Channels

There are lots of things you can analyse when sifting through the Channels report – too many for this blog post. So here are two important ones. In some cases, organic traffic might come through to your account as direct traffic. To check, head to Content under Real Time. Now, Google your site and find an organic link. Right, are you watching the Real Time report? Two screens would be very handy right about now. Click through to your site via your organic listing and then through to a relatively low-traffic page, e.g. “about-us”. When you see the page appear in GA, click it to filter all real time results by that page (but don’t close the web page!). Then click on Traffic Sources and check whether you’ve come through as direct or organic. Second, be on the lookout for huge, sudden spikes in direct or referral traffic in your data. If it’s not the result of a misattribution of your marketing mix, then you need to check for spam. Typically, this kind of obvious spam traffic will originate from a single location, have a bounce rate of close to 100% and spend close to 0 seconds on the site. Add city as a secondary dimension to your report and you’ll likely see all the traffic originates from the same place.

5. Spam traffic

Now that you’ve realised your data is infested, how do you stop it from happening again? This is really simple but often overlooked. Google Analytics provides a bot filtering option within the View Settings. Checking the box will exclude bots and spiders that could really mess up your data. Google’s list of spiders and bots is continuously updated. Some may slip through but not for long (not long enough to wildly affect your data).

6. URL page parameters

Often when looking at pages on your site, you will see long strings attached to the end of your page URLs. This can make your reports hard to read and make it difficult to analyse the performance of particular pages. Google’s search-and-replace filter will enable you to fine tune your data within your Google Analytics views and make it more human-readable. In the example above, we would use a regular expression to simplify our page paths by searching for ‘param’ and replacing it with an empty string. (Hint: regular expressions are a powerful way to filter your data in GA)

7. Goals

Goals enable you to measure how often users complete specific actions. It is important to check that these are set up correctly and that they meet your business KPIs. Additionally, previous users of the account may have set up all sorts of strange goal funnels to monitor drop off points in the customer journey. If they’re not pulling through any conversions from the last 7 days, something is wrong.

8. Exclude internal traffic

Presumably, you’ll want to track how external users are interacting with your website. If internal traffic from you or your office is piled into the mix, it can be difficult to understand true customer behaviours. To prevent this from happening, you’ll need to create an IP address filter for your view, excluding your IP address. Think something else belongs in this list? leave a comment below and let us know.

Summits gotta give - 3 AdWords updates you should know about

Guy Thornton — Wed, 25 May 2016 15:41:25 +0000

Time stopped still yesterday as the collective world of paid search held its breath for the long-awaited AdWords Summit. Under the theme of ‘mobile first’ Google had some pretty big announcements and analysts around the world were not disappointed with the revelation of a number of key changes. I’ve handpicked the big 3 and highlighted them below: 1. Google is finally breaking up tablet and desktop based bidding. Previously Google had said users interact the same on both devices so separate bidding was unnecessary. Clearly, this was ridiculous and two years later Google has cottoned on. With this, Google has brought advertisers more control and flexibility on their bidding within AdWords, finally allowing them to make individual bid adjustments by device type. 2. Text ads are being expanded on all devices. Remember when Google freed up the right hand side of the SERPs by removing our beloved ads? Well, unsurprisingly they’re now filling it with revenue generating paid ads. Longer headlines and whopping descriptions mean this will make CTRs for paid ads higher than ever. SEO, don’t be upset, we had a good run. In this move Google has reimagined the text ad for a 'mobile first' world and brought consistency across devices. In the biggest change to text ads since AdWords was launched, they have increased the length of the headline and the description. In early tests Google have said that some advertisers have seen increases in CTR of as much as 20%. 3. With the news that local searches are growing 50% faster than overall mobile searches Google has announced Promoted Pins. These bad boys offer paid placement of local listings on maps. They’re part of Google’s ongoing vision for closing the gap between offline and online so something we can all get on board with. You might think that would be enough to wet your whistle but there were more too - a new AdWords interface, a revolutionary approach to display and improvements to analytics to name just a few. It’s exciting times for paid search, perhaps too exciting to spend time watching the full summit. However, if you do have a spare hour, you can watch the full presentation here:

3 big things happening right now with Google Analytics

James Wolman — Thu, 26 May 2016 08:40:10 +0000

Back in March, Google announced their Google Analytics 360 Suite, featuring ten fully integrated products to understand your customer journey in a multi-screen world. If you made it to the final ten minutes of the Google Performance Summit, you will have previewed some pretty awesome products, promising integration, collaboration and intelligence. If you missed it, here’s a rundown of what we’re excited for in Google Analytics.

Integration

Site personalisation is really starting to take off. One-size-fits-all marketing is becoming less relevant. Now, your execution needs to be cleverly tailored to specific demographics. Google Optimize 360 aims to make it easy for you to test changes to your site and measure the impact on customer behaviour. It’s deep integration with Analytics means you can extract insights from your Audience and Goals to inform your experiments. Not to mention, with the scale that Google can provide, big data could open up a world of extremely personalised marketing opportunities. They claim to have amazing results from their Beta already, reducing their customer’s time to deploy site experiments from 3 days to 10 minutes.

Collaboration

How can you easily share your data and insights with people working across different functions in your organisation? Forget emailing attachments (and embarrassing attachment-less emails), now we have Google Data Studio 360. This is the one we’re most excited for! Data Studio supports multiple connectors to pull data from a number of sources, including third-party data sources. And Google promise to expand this list even further throughout the year. The ability to combine information from different sources into something meaningful could improve the value of your data business decisions smarter. The product will enable users to build beautiful, dynamic reports in minutes and instantly share with anybody in your organisation. The enterprise version is now in paid beta. However, Google have also launched a free version, which allows users to create up to five reports. Currently, it’s only available in the US but they are rolling it out to other countries throughout the year.

Built-in Intelligence

So you’re getting tons of data from a variety of sources quickly, which makes it harder to put it to good use. Google Assistant has enabled users to interact naturally with Google for help with their daily tasks. Now, Google want to use the same machine learning and artificial intelligence kit for Google Analytics to get answers to important business questions. They call it “Q&A Conversational Search” and is built into the Analytics 360 suite. Using natural language processing algorithms, it understands your intent and runs it over your analytics data. For example, you could ask it what your best selling products in a month were and it will return a list of relevant information. These products aren’t previews, they’re happening right now. Google are already starting to roll out the 360 Suite to all Google Analytics Premium customers.

12 Slack Hacks and tips you should know

Nasreen Cullen — Wed, 15 Jun 2016 14:54:37 +0000

There are any number of technologies that businesses use to communicate both internally, between employees and teams, and externally, with clients, suppliers and other stakeholders. Much of it, particularly email, can be a drain on productivity. Enter Slack. This rapidly growing communication platform (over 2 million current users) brings your business communications all into one place. With it's browser-based software and it's real-time messaging app developed for both iOS and Android, Slack is transforming the way that businesses... do business. Found have been using Slack a little while now and we'd thought we'd share a few tips to help you get the most out of the way you use it.

Here are 12 hacks to help you become a Slack Jedi...

Organise your channels

Just ask Hannibal Smith - one of the great joys in life is when a plan comes together. With Slack, it’s easy to join multiple channels but then you have the difficulty of staying on top of what’s new or important. Star the channels that you use most regularly to ensure they stick to your side menu, and for others, go to Preferences - Advanced Options - Channel List and hide those which have no unread messages. It keeps your panel looking tidy and aids productivity.

Use advanced channel searches

Channels can move quickly, especially if you have a large team or a fast-moving project. Using search functions such as: 'in:', 'from:' and 'to:' This will help you track down specific messages you’re looking for anywhere in Slack. Similarly, to find messages sent within certain time frames, use: 'before:', 'after:' and 'on:'

Update your status

If you’re going into a meeting or grabbing some lunch, use the /away command to let coworkers know.

Set up notifications for keywords

If you’re tracking a specific topic and want to be alerted whenever it’s mentioned, first select your name in the top-left corner of Slack and then click Preferences. In the menu that drops down, select Notification Settings, followed by Highlight Words. You’ll see a free-text box where you can add the keywords or phrases that you want to be notified of any time they appear in one of your channels. To add multiple keywords, separate them with commas.

Jumpstart your social abilities

By integrating the Notify app, every time your brand gets a mention on a social platform such as Twitter, Instagram or Tumblr, you get a notification. You can track not only mention of your brand names, but also keywords you’re interested in so that you can easily monitor what’s being said about you online.

Automate responses to common questions with Slackbot

If your organisation is anything like Found you probably find yourself answering the same question more than once on a Slack channel. This is where the very clever Slackbot can come in extremely useful. You can 'train' Slackbot to respond with an automated message every time a keyword or phrase is typed into a channel. No longer does anyone have to respond to 'Whats the office phone number?' or 'What are the Found brand colours? With a simple command, the Slackbot will do that for you.

Undo mistakes with fast edits

We all have occasions where we’ve said something that we instantly regret - how many times have you attempted to recall an email before the recipient reads it? Happily, if you do make a boo-boo, you can quickly edit your comments on Slack by hitting your↑key and clicking Edit, then Enter. It doesn’t guarantee your message won’t have already been seen by half a dozen people by then, but it’s better than nothing.

One keyboard shortcut to rule them all

Built-in to Slack are multiple keyboard shortcuts that can make life so much easier, and although each will only save you a couple of seconds, it all adds up! Hitting Command + / brings up the complete list, then it’s just a matter of memorising the ones you want.

Connect to Google Drive

Many businesses use Google Drive for easy online storage, and to integrate it with Slack, all you need to do is paste a link to a file in Drive into Slack, and the Slack Bot will give you the option of connecting either to just that file, or to any others you link to from that point onwards. Want to detach from Drive at any point? Reconfiguring the integration is the work of a few clicks.

Automate with IFTTT

IFTTT (If This, Then That) lets you create what it calls ‘recipes’ - conditional chains. Either use an existing account or sign up for one, then follow this link https://ifttt.com/slack to integrate it with Slack. So, say you’re in the business of Cloud storage solutions, you can automate it so that any time this subject is mentioned on a news website such as the BBC, a link will instantly appear in your chosen channel. That’s just one example - there is unlimited potential for conditional commands you can set up.

Fast jumps to conversations

When you have a big team with lots of different channels running, you want to be able to switch between conversations quickly and easily. Click ⌘ + K (for Mac) or Ctrl + K (for Windows and Linux) and a pop-up box appears. Begin typing the name of the channel you want, then select from the dropdown list. A convenient time-saver.

Automate your analytics

Integrate Slack with Stats Bot to get real-time metric reporting - your users, bounce rates, session length - for any time period or to get a quick site overview report at any point. Many marketers fall down the Google Analytics wormhole, but by integrating this app you can get a quick snapshot at any point and then get back to your main tasks.

Develop a usage policy

When launching it in your own business, it makes sense to develop an official usage policy early on so that everyone is on the same page, or rather in the same channel. That might include muting notifications to avoid distraction, insisting that any mentions of users in comments made after office hours are only vital ones, and letting admins adjust Off settings, as this app can be seriously addictive. Also, don’t forget that Slack are really nice. If you’re a nonprofit or educational institution then you can take advantage of special pricing, with discounted or even free-of-charge annual subscriptions. Pretty cool.

How important are Backlinks as a ranking factor?

Beth Cornell — Thu, 30 Jun 2016 09:57:50 +0000

SEO Ranking Factors Series #3: Backlinks. In a series of posts, we look at some of the key factors that Google and the other search engines take into consideration when deciding on where to place a site in the organic results for a given search query. This time, it’s backlinks and whether they are the be all and end all for success.

Without backlinks will your site rank at all?

The external links directed back to your own website, known as backlinks, are one of the principal aspects of SEO. The volume and quality of these backlinks help search engines to determine the authority of your site which is a major determinant of where it will be placed in the SERPS for keyword queries. Ranking without their presence is next to impossible. In the past backlinks have been the focus of “blackhat” techniques, such as link-buying or creating artificially constructed link networks called link farms - practices that Google has clamped down on and now classes as invalid. What you should be aiming for is a healthy link profile, where you have an adequate mix of as many natural dofollow and nofollow backlinks as possible from websites with a vast range of authority given from Google. Your profile should be built up over a period of time to help the natural flow and ideally contain no links from spammy websites in order to stay respectable in the eyes of Google. Fresh links should be developed as part of an ongoing process, as if the number of backlinks tails off, it signals to search engine spiders that a website is no longer of interest. This guide outlines the fundamental requirements and techniques of good backlink practice.

Number of backlinks

A high volume of backlinks may seem optimum, but quality will always take first place over quantity. Search engines use sophisticated analytical methods to establish which links should be taken seriously and which can be ignored due to their forced intentions to help rankings, or worse… penalised for! The speed at which a website attains its backlinks is also monitored by search engines. If they are observed to be building them aggressively, this can be perceived as suspicious and could see the target website penalised.

Referring domains

The content of the domains referring back to your site should be as relevant as possible to your own content, in order for search engines to give the links natural acceptance. These domains must also be reputable, with good levels of authority, because if they are blacklisted at some point then it could taint your own site with reduced visibility.

Links from news sites

Authoritative and globally popular news sites that are known for the high editorial quality of their content, such as the BBC, score highly for trustworthiness, and will provide increased link equity, because trusted, high authority sites tend to link to other trusted, high authority sites. Have doubts on which are suitable? Answer - look at those which have been approved to appear on Google News. The difficulty of course lies in getting those backlinks in the first place, but there are several tactics which can help. If you have something you consider newsworthy, such as the results of a survey, or a product hitting the market, send out a press release. This is just one way of establishing a mutually beneficial relationship with journalists, which can also involve making them aware of your site as a potential source if you know they tend to write about topics related to your content. If they contact you with a query, provide a helpful response and you may receive a backlink in return. Leaving a self-created backlink in below-the-line comments is less effective, but doesn’t hurt. Ensure your comment and the page linked to are relevant to the subject of the article, that the comment links constitute a very small proportion of the overall backlink profile, and that the source web-page has good trust metrics.

Nofollow ratio

Nofollow links should be utilised when you don’t want to vouch for the quality of the content on the websites from which they originate. Paid links should also be marked nofollow. You’re essentially telling search engine spiders not to use these links, or to pass value to them, whether positive or negative. On the other hand, too many dofollow links can indicate manual manipulation, damage the credibility of your site and downgrade your search rankings, at times resulting in penalties in some scenarios. The same is true of links from poor-quality websites, or excess numbers of links that use exact match anchor text. A happy balance needs to be found. While opinions vary on what the ratio of dofollow to nofollow should be, around 60/40 in favour of dofollow links is a good measure. A healthy link profile will always include a mix of both.

Backlink age

The age of backlinks is known to be of importance because of a Google patent that described how it can be used to determine the topicality of a piece of content. Crucially, backlink age cannot be faked, so Google can trust it! Backlinks with short lifespans, those that appear and then disappear again shortly afterwards, are an indication that they are being paid for, something that search engines are strongly against making this tactic fall under blackhat SEO.

Anchor text keywords

Websites earning a lot of backlinks with exact match keywords will score highly for those keywords, but rich anchor text should be rotated regularly, so it doesn’t look as though your link profile is being deliberately manipulated. Google’s Penguin update targeted overly optimised anchor text as a major sign of manipulation which resulted in penalties and loss of visibility for websites that partook. Analytics software can help you to learn what anchor text is being used in backlinks directing to your site, and if necessary you can contact the webmasters to change the text so that it’s optimised with your preferred keywords or, if they do not respond, use Google’s disavow tool. Effectively optimised backlink anchor text might incorporate your brand name, URL or a brand name combined with keywords, such as “SEO ranking advice from Found”.

Domain name keywords

Your link profile can get some extra muscle if you can encourage the use of your URL as your keyword anchor text to brand a portion of your backlinks. Domain name keywords are generally regarded as the safest form of anchor text you can use, as not only will they not arouse the suspicion of search engines, but they will also often contain your brand name within.

Links to homepage

Your homepage is your content hub. Once someone follows a link to an inner page on your site, such as a blog article, assuming they like it, then their natural next step is likely to be your home page. By strengthening your homepage with backlinks in this manner, you’re distributing its authority around your entire website, so having a large number of external links heading there makes sense. But that doesn’t mean you should neglect developing links to other content you want to be found or for which you wish to rank. It’s difficult to overstate the importance of a strong link profile, but without knowing what sites are linking to you and how, you’re flying blind. With the assistance of analytic software, you can perform a link audit to establish, among other information:

Which sites are backlinking to your own
Their domain and page authority
The age of the link
What anchor text is being used

You can build on that information using the various available techniques, while always keeping in mind that if you build a great website that provides a solid user experience, and has valuable, informative and relevant content, then it will grow in popularity and recognition. From there, good backlinks should naturally follow.

How to build a first-class company culture

Flo Bundy — Mon, 20 Jun 2016 14:19:06 +0000

In the world of digital, whether you’re Facebook or a cool East London start-up, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to set yourself apart. Everything you do - your services, your benefits, your company structure - will at some point be copied by another agency. In fact nowadays there is only one part of your company’s identity that can’t be copied, and that’s your culture. When meeting someone for the first time, we usually know within minutes if they are a ‘Founder’. Chances are, if we don’t get that feeling, then they probably won’t be feeling it either. I would never be so presumptive as to say we have the perfect company culture, but certainly there is something about Found that keeps people here. The reason your company culture is so important is that it’s key for both employee satisfaction and productivity. Unpleasant working environments drag down motivation, encourage your best people to leave and generally create a culture of negativity. A good culture, however, ensures that everyone can work to the best of their abilities, low on stress and will also attract talent. Many people, especially in the digital sector, have come to expect a distinctive company culture. So what are the key factors to consider when building one?

Individuality

Don’t try to imitate what you think is an ideal company culture, because there’s no guarantee it will transfer. Think instead about the individual values you want your company to focus on - such as ambition, supportiveness, incredible customer service - and the direction that you want it to take. Can you encapsulate that in a single motto, like Google’s “Don’t be evil”, or a short mission statement? If this is a process you’re just starting, then you can ask staff to contribute their own ideas. Once you know what kind of culture you want to achieve, you can look at the type of people and resources you need to get there.

Employee “Buy-In”

If your people are passionate about the company mission, then they will do what they can to accomplish it. To get that, there must be integrity and conviction behind the plan. Employees at all levels should see themselves as a team or even a family, rather than disparate units so that everyone is pulling in the same direction. Allowing for investment in the company’s success can help with this. John Lewis and Waitrose famously split their profits with staff, which is a huge motivational factor, while some public companies offer shares to their staff at discounted prices.

A Listening Approach

When people feel that they are being listened to, given a say in how their company operates, it’s a big motivator. Too often when companies hit a wall for inspiration, they look externally for solutions when in all likelihood the answer could come from within. Neither do the best ideas always come from the top down. By making it easy for people at every level to give suggestions on how they can improve a product or the way things are done, you indicate that you trust them. We introduced FoundLabs a few years ago to give the team a platform to share their ideas and get opinions from the wider team. The most popular ideas get built out and the contributors rewarded for their input, but more importantly, they are part of shaping the future of Found.

Promote Work/Life Balance

A place of work needs to be somewhere that people enjoy being rather than forced to endure. In our industry there are plenty of companies who offer unusual perks such as chocolate fountains or slides in the office. Yes, novelties like these can appear attractive at first glance, but the companies that people really want to work for are those that value their wellbeing, happiness and development and encourage a good work/life balance. Focus on the challenges your team face that you can help them with, such as childcare or flexible working arrangements. Google, which is, let’s face it, the benchmark when it comes to company culture, offers plenty of trendy benefits, but because it expects its team to give their all every day, it also throws in free meals, free healthcare and even free haircuts. These have a cost of course, but so does employee dissatisfaction and a high rate of staff turnover. If your people know that their company has their back when it counts, they’ll stick around.

Look Outwards

Happy people are more productive people, that’s well-established. But a good company culture cannot always be focused inwards. It needs to concentrate on the other vital stakeholder in business relationships - the customer. Every department of your company, not just those facing the customer directly, should be focused on providing the best possible customer service. So the accounts department, for instance, might look at how it can streamline its refund process, while IT should have the security of customer details front-of-mind at all times. Show the customer you care about them and you build loyalty and growth.

Communication

Find ways to break down barriers within your company and increase communications between organisational layers. It engenders a feeling of being part of a team which is crucial for a great company culture. Bonding between team members should be promoted, whether through informal catch-ups over coffee or regular shared lunches, because getting to know each other is key for a happy workplace. By bringing people together and sharing ideas, you’ll see an increase in employee satisfaction and creativity.

Hiring

Aim to hire people who you feel will be a good fit with your company culture. Going back to my own experience of knowing immediately who would be a potential ‘Founder’, it’s difficult to change people and a lot easier to identify if they will be a good fit in the first place. So, when interviewing for a position, look beyond skills and qualifications to personality. Invest in a mix of talents. Diverse experiences and personal backgrounds will strengthen your company. Once you find the right person, nurture them by helping them to develop new skills. Some companies prefer not to give their people too many opportunities to learn because they worry they will then start looking for new opportunities elsewhere, but as far as I’m concerned, this is often a great way to encourage people to stay.

Flexibility

People change, business environments change, so company cultures must have the ability to change also. Take inspiration from Google’s data-driven approach to see what’s working, and what isn’t, and turn that knowledge into transformation. This flexibility, the sweet spot between continuity and change, is particularly important when your company is growing, as the best aspects of the culture can often be forgotten as other priorities take over. No business can effectively operate without good people onside. Shared vision, shared attitudes, and shared behaviours - these are vital. You need to understand each within the context of your own company. If you have a great company culture and you acknowledge its importance, it’s a huge competitive advantage not just when it comes to doing business, but also attracting and retaining the best people.

Programmatic - Real-time vs Direct what's the difference?

Justin Maxwell — Thu, 21 Jul 2016 09:30:50 +0000

Paid Media Strategies series #2: Programmatic Display. In the second in this paid media series, we take a look at Programmatic Display, explain what it is and why you should be considering it for your next digital marketing campaign. Programmatic Display is best defined as the automated purchase of ad space, or impressions, on a web page, either through a bidding process, or buying direct. To some extent, it has revolutionised the relationships between advertisers and purchasers. From the outset, programmatic display has the potential to dramatically reduce the amount of time and resources needed in successfully marketing to web users. But beyond that, the process delivers a vast array of benefits to all parties:

Helping brands establish stronger, more relevant connections with their audiences, increasing the CTR
Capable of real-time responsiveness, ensuring every impression counts and improving campaign performance
Optimising the use of video advertising, the biggest trend in content
Allowing for greater audience insights and more targeted marketing
Helping brands take advantage of an extremely complex purchase funnel that can encompass multiple devices and stages

There are two types of programmatic display, Programmatic Real-Time Bidding (RTB) and Programmatic Direct, both of which we’ll run through below.

Programmatic RTB

How it works: Assuming that a web page has ad space available on it for purchase, advertisers can bid for it in the moments before it loads for the user. An ad exchange platform transmits information to the advertiser about the page content and the user, accessed from a supply-side platform (SSP), and the ad space, or ‘impression’, goes to the highest bidder. It’s important to remember that if the SSP takes what’s known as a ‘Round Robin’ approach to offering the website’s request for ads, then prospective advertisers need to be working with a well-ranked ad exchange to have the best chance of bidding, otherwise they may find themselves at the back of the queue and missing out on the best impressions. Alternatively, the SSP may send the request to every exchange simultaneously, making the process a lot more equitable. Demand-side platforms automate the bidding process to save advertisers time and human resource, and effectively make it easier to target relevant ads to people over a period of time. They use complex algorithms to determine if the ad they want to place will be relevant to this individual user. If they consider it will be, then they issue a bid, the price of which has been pre-agreed. Now, if the bid wins, the publisher retrieves the ad data, and up it goes onto the page. And remember that this entire process takes just fractions of a second. In fact, thousands of RTB auctions have been completed in the time it took you to read this very sentence.

Benefits of RTB

Removes the need for purchasing ad space on a web page for a set time period, which is akin to having a virtual billboard - costly and not necessarily guaranteed to boost traffic.
Far more efficient than the traditional process of media buying, as the advertiser has no need to negotiate with the publisher over every impression.
Enhanced targeting means the wastage of impressions on users to whom the content is irrelevant is dramatically reduced.
Greater reach and faster speeds have the capacity to highly optimise every campaign.
Benefits the publisher, who saves time, as they have a better chance of selling their full ad inventory, and earning the maximum money for the space by selling to the highest bidder.
Evens the playing field so small-medium size publishers have a chance against premium sites.

That’s not to say that RTB doesn’t have its downsides.

Negatives of RTB

You’re taking part in a public auction, so there’s no guarantee you will be able to get the ad space you want - you may be outbid.
While RTB adds transparency, there is no direct contact between advertiser and publisher - everything is done through an exchange. So the publisher doesn’t know who the advertiser is or why they’re interested in their ad inventory, and the advertiser will usually not know exactly what site its ads are appearing on, only the category, for instance, automotive sales.
The focus is now strongly on the user rather than the web page, so premium publishers are losing revenue and market share. Additionally, retargeting by embedding cookies through third-party platforms means that advertisers can track the users they want across the web, reducing their bid costs as the users migrate to long tail sites.
The publisher doesn’t know as much about the user as the advertiser does, so can’t always be certain how much its ad space is worth. It’s weighted in favour of the buyer, forcing many publishers to accept below market rates. Consequently some are reluctant to release their premium space to RTB.

Many advertisers still prefer to buy ad space with publishers directly, or combine it with RTB, so they have some control over where their ads are going. This can be an elongated, complex process though, which is where Programmatic Direct comes in.

Programmatic Direct

Automating the process of buying a bundled package of ad space is again an immense time and resource saver. With this method, the advertisers usually pay more, but they know they are guaranteed the impressions they want. The advertiser provides the publisher with data about the type of user it wants to target, young fathers for instance, and the publisher then displays those impressions only to visitors who fall into those categories. That data will usually come from the advertiser’s partner DMP (data management platform) which collects, sorts, analyses and stores a wealth of web activity and user data. Ad space on quality websites is premium. Larger brands want to be there, and so RTB is not always the process they prefer. Additionally, while big name global brands want to follow their users around the web with retargeting, there are naturally a few areas where they may prefer not to go. It’s all about being seen in the right places.

Benefits of Programmatic Direct

Advertisers know exactly where and when their ads will be displayed, and how much it will cost.
Enables the publisher to know exactly why the advertiser is targeting its ad space, so they can aim for relevant advertisers and create attractive packages.
Publishers can sell their ad inventory for more than they might get through RTB.

Programmatic Display Best Practise

The buy-in to programmatic display has been intense, and there has been an explosion in growth which shows no signs of slowing up. Brands not currently invested in either or both methods should be looking into it, if only for the potential cost-savings involved. Collaboration is key. Creative departments need to be involved at every stage of the process, and crucially be data-driven, so they can craft ads tailored to specific types of user. That data might include type of device; location; time; browsing history and many other useful factors. Aggregate data sources for a clear view across devices and channels, and consider an integrated tech partner for tighter execution of campaigns and to unify your brand message. Ensure content works across all screens and channels. With responsive technology such as this, there has never been better potential to forge meaningful connections with audiences, but simultaneously the competition has never been so intense either. Successful engagement with consumers requires consideration for the medium. Choose the platforms you work with carefully. Publishers should consider the nature of their inventory before selecting a partner, and advertisers whether their partners can help them place their ads where they will be most effective - are their algorithms sophisticated enough? Decide which process is best for your brand - lower costs but no guarantee of the impressions you want; paying more for guaranteed impressions on premium web pages, or a mix of the two. One of the first rules of marketing is that context is everything. The significance of advertisers being able to display the right content to the right person, at the right time, cannot be overstated. At its essence, programmatic needn’t be problematic - it is after all simply automating a process that already existed. True, it’s still a fairly young technology with many wrinkles to be ironed out, particularly around transparency and giving publishers the confidence to release their premium ad inventory to RTB. But the potential benefits it offers to both advertisers and publishers ensure that take-up is only going to move in one direction, and any brand not yet considering it as part of its marketing arsenal is likely wasting resources it needn’t, at the same time missing out on substantial benefits.

What you need to know about Native Advertising

John Stuchfield — Tue, 05 Jul 2016 09:30:32 +0000

Paid Media Strategies series #1: Native Advertising. In the first in this paid media series, we take a look at Native Advertising, explain what it is and why you should be considering it for your next digital marketing campaign. Age is no barrier to innovation. The Associated Press, founded in 1846 and the largest news-gathering organisation in the world, is to begin rolling out high-value native advertising on demand for clients such as Hearst Publishing. Web users are losing their appetite for traditional forms of display advertising. While many consider advertising as a ‘necessary evil’ in order to access free content such as journalism, still around 40% of UK users are now actively taking steps to avoid encountering what they view as obtrusive marketing online. The proliferation of ad-blocking software is causing consternation among publishers and marketers alike, and banner ads are seeing ever-lower rates of clickthrough. But it is pop-ups and autoplay video that draw the most ire, advertising that can easily distract from the content that the visitor is looking for, and can often delay loading speeds. Sites which make substantial use of this type of advertising tend to see high bounce rates. Consequently, many marketing teams are searching for alternative means of communicating and forging connections with consumers, and native advertising has evolved as one potential solution. Yet there remains considerable confusion among both sides about what actually constitutes native advertising, how to identify it, and how best to practise it.

Native Advertising, explained

While there are various definitions available, native advertising can be neatly summed-up as content that simultaneously meets the editorial standards of the publisher and user expectations, while also featuring an actionable goal for the advertiser. Essentially, it integrates so cohesively with the rest of the website’s content that it could potentially not be recognised as an advert at all. For the most part, this is content that has been paid for, though other forms of mutually-beneficial arrangements are not unknown. A subset of content marketing, native advertising can take many forms from sponsored posts on Facebook to paid ads that appear alongside organic listing on search engines, but it is most commonly associated with sponsored, or branded content such as editorials or video. A natural follow-on to product placement, the product is no longer embedded within the content, it is now actually merged with the content. Designed to closely emulate the other content on the website on which it is being published in both tone of voice and format, this native advertising typically sees high levels of engagement, is viewed for longer, and is more shareable. It will often aim for virality, but can also be controversial, as demonstrated by the Scientology debacle at The Atlantic

Benefits of Native Advertising

As mentioned above, native advertising fosters greater levels and depth of engagement and is particularly useful when reaching out to younger web users who are more familiar with encountering brand activity online. One publisher that attracts a young audience with its lighthearted approach to journalism, Buzzfeed, is especially adept at native advertising. Due to the potential for virality - good examples include sponsored online quizzes or video such as Under Armour’s ‘Funny or Die’ comedy skit which attracted over 2 million views - native advertising can be immensely scalable. Native advertising is an effective approach for marketers and brands wanting to leverage the credibility and authority of the publishing website, and is becoming increasingly popular everywhere from Spotify to Forbes and Twitter. It gives marketers the capacity for bold innovation, and for the user, it is normally far less intrusive and distracting than standard display ads.

Best Practise in Native Advertising

Rule number one is that sponsored content ought to be labelled as such

Not making this clear leads to cynicism from web users and detracts from their relationship with the brand. There have been numerous examples in recent years of sponsored posts by celebrities endorsing products on social media without payment being disclosed, drawing the attention of regulatory authorities. When producing a piece of native advertising, it pays to consider how the audience is likely to receive it if they aren’t aware that is has been sponsored.

Don’t treat native advertising as a press release

Brands should aim to become part of the conversation, rather than seeking to broadcast their message as loudly as possible. In order to evoke a positive and genuine response, the advertising should be engaging. It should try to understand the audience, and meet a need. Honest case studies are a popular approach in this regard. A balance must be struck in the effort to pose as genuine content, while not being deceptive.

Correct placement is crucial

Key to native advertising is fitting in naturally with a website’s existing content, but brands and marketers must also keep in mind that there are some locations where people would prefer not to encounter it. Lifestyle publications such as motoring or fashion websites offer a fertile environment for native ads - brands are already prevalent in these areas. Yet native advertising when extended to serious news content will, research indicates, be received unfavourably. There is the potential for a breakdown in trust between the reader and the publisher, as can be seen from this survey by Copyblogger.

Different types of native advertising provoke different responses

Note that the techniques in which native advertising can be employed typically engender varying responses from web users. Sponsored tweets, for instance, tend to be more favourably received than sponsored video content which is often seen as misleading. Native advertising is still a relatively new concept, and as such many marketers struggle to define it. There also remain questions over its true value, despite the greater levels of engagement it receives than other forms of display advertising. Some research indicates that native advertising may have little to no effect on brand perception, either positive or negative - perhaps because it’s so well-disguised as genuine content that the message doesn’t get through. The most successful ads are frequently useful and /or fun in tone. Serious publications have more to risk from native advertising, especially if the line between editorial and advertising is too blurry. When it doesn’t work, it tends to be the publisher that suffers rather than the brand. As a means of communication and relationship-building, then, there is great scope here, but maintaining trust is essential.

How is your Paid, Owned & Earned media mix?

Justin Maxwell — Wed, 29 Jun 2016 14:32:13 +0000

Before we go into the reasons why integrating paid and owned media is so important, let’s have a look at exactly what different types of media exist and why you need to be thinking about how these channels can work together to form part of your overall marketing mix.

Owned media

These consist of all your owned assets that you have 100% control over, such as:

Desktop site
Mobile site
Content
Social channels
Mobile app
Newsletter

Owned media is there for building long-term relationships with existing customers, generating earned media and magnifying your brand building efforts. Your blog and social media channels are extensions of your brand and need to have the same look and feel. Your marketing communications and brand image should therefore remain consistent when users are interacting with them across multiple owned touch-points.

Earned media

Earned media is essentially free publicity that you have managed to earn through doing something useful such as providing a fantastic customer experience or creating a compelling and insightful piece of content. Here are a few examples of what earned media can be:

Reviews
Backlinks
Likes
Comments
Word of mouth

Paid media

Paid media is quite simply any form of media that you pay for, such as:

Paid Search
TV
Print
Display
Paid social

When people think about paid media, the first thing that most probably pops into their head is a combination of paid search and display advertising. Paid media can be a great way to either promote content to drive earned media or direct highly targeted and ready to convert traffic to your owned assets. Seeding content on paid channels is an important way to increase reach and exposure, and will allow you to get the ball rolling when new content is released.

Converged media

Converged media is when two or more channels from owned and paid are working in conjunction with each other. A quality converged media strategy will result in the end user wanting to consume and partake in what a brand has to offer without the brand needing to advertise in an obtrusive way. One of the most successful converged media strategies I have seen is a hybrid media strategy of LinkedIn sponsored promotions (Paid), retargeting (Paid), whitepapers (Owned) and Hubspot landing pages (Owned). This is something we will look at in more detail shortly… Creating valuable, engaging and compelling content plays an important role in your branding efforts and overall SEO strategy. The type of content I’m talking about is not made in a day and it's most certainly not free. Big budget content pieces such as whitepapers, videos, infographics etc. can cost thousands of pounds and need to be seen by the right audience at scale in order to make the production worthwhile. You might have the perfect piece of content, but if you have no mechanism for driving targeted traffic to these assets, then there is no point in having them made in the first place. Unless you have an unbelievably huge and influential community, you are going to need to utilise paid promotion. What’s great about paid promotion is that you don’t need huge budgets to get started; a few hundred pounds can go a long way in reaching a large targeted audience. Paid media can be used to drive community growth through the use of platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Yahoo Gemini. All these platforms offer the insights and sophisticated targeting capabilities needed to deliver ads to the people that are most likely to join a brand’s community. Some brands only implement a converged strategy that consists solely of content creation and pure outreach. This is completely fine if you don’t have large budgets, however if you do have media budget available, then there is no excuse to not be implementing both tactics. Outreach is a very effective way of reaching authorities and generating earned media such as backlinks and word of mouth, but think about what could be achieved when various paid initiatives and outreach are working in tandem!

LinkedIn – Sponsored promotions

As mentioned earlier, one of the most successful integrations I have seen has been promoting whitepapers through the use of LinkedIn sponsored promotions. LinkedIn might not always be the right platform to reach your B2C audience, but for many B2B brands, it can be the perfect playground to interact with thousands of potential new leads. Here at Found, our approach to paid media is about matching the message to the moment, and LinkedIn allows you to do just that with its highly granular targeting capabilities, audience insights and large character limits in their ads. Modern day paid media is about adding value and helping consumers make decisions. LinkedIn sponsored promotions (when done correctly) will do exactly that, as they will match content to a specific audience. The proof is in the stats, and we have seen conversion rates of up 65% when running these campaigns.

Cross-channel retargeting

No matter what mechanism you have for driving traffic to your content, a large portion of this traffic will not convert. Retargeting helps you bring these non-converting users back for a second chance to become leads. Retargeting can be done across most social channels such as Facebook, Twitter and Yahoo Gemini, although the majority of success I have had with content based retargeting has been on the Google Display Network (GDN). What makes GDN remarketing so powerful, is the ability to segment audiences based on a number of segments in Google Analytics such as time on site, bounce rate, page views, cookie periods, custom combinations etc.

Hubspot

If content marketing is your core focus I would strongly recommend looking into Hubspot marketing suite to improve the optimisation of your owned assets. This platform has loads to offer and plays an important role in lead nurturing and gaining a better understanding paid & owned ROI. As a performance marketer constantly looking for ways to increase conversion rate and reduce CPA, I love the following about Hubspot: 1.) It’s easy to create and publish pages. You can add images and forms directly to a landing page, instantly preview and then publish. 2.) You can build relevant content and forms that are optimized for conversions and tailor the page to individuals based on location, device, buyer stage, referral source and any custom information in your HubSpot contact record. 3.) Test, test, test – You can also A/B test every aspect of your page, including headlines, images, calls-to-actions etc. All of the above points allow me to make quick optimisations to landing pages without having to know how to code or be particularly brilliant at design. I have only briefly touched on what Hubspot has to offer, so make sure to visit their site to find out more.

Conclusion

Content marketing is about attracting audiences, whereas advertising is about buying audiences. Native advertising/content promotion is a form of paid media which sits in-between content and advertising due to its hybrid nature. You are paying for an audience, but this is done by attracting that audience with useful content that the user is genuinely interested in. Any integrated marketing strategy requires a lot of planning, research, cross-team communication and collaboration. If you are currently looking for ways increase the reach of your content – or want more detail on how to get your media channels working together, then speak to someone at Found as we have a wide variety of experts solving these types of issues on a daily basis.

The rise of the Chatbots

dora moldovan — Wed, 20 Jul 2016 14:39:14 +0000

Chatbots, computer programs that are designed to engage in online conversations with people, use artificial intelligence to mimic human speech patterns. While the concept may still be unfamiliar to some, they have in fact been with us for some time already. The Stanford NLP (natural language parser) has been around since 1990, so actually some of the technology is practically ancient. But chatbots are becoming increasingly used by businesses. Now if you’ve shopped online or messaged a customer service representative about a minor issue, then the chances are you’ve been speaking with a chatbot. A number of major tech companies are now investing heavily in chatbots as they are offering substantial value due to their useful, interactive nature, giving what feels like a personal experience to the customer. Poor customer service, whether it be down to an inarticulate complaint or a grumpy representative on the other end of the phone, has long been a niggling issue between businesses and their customers. Here, chatbots represent a potential solution that can have a significant positive effect on marketing and brand-building. Or so they say. This is the dream we're being sold. Brands however need to be careful that the sub-standard experience that most of these chatbots currently offer will far more likely damage their reputation than enhance it.

no umbrella needed, really? - Poncho's weather chatbot

At the moment that is. As they improve and evolve, this will inevitably change for the better. Here, we explore some of the many ways that chatbots are already being put to work, what positives and negatives they bring with them and what the future may hold. Putting Chatbots to work There is immense scope for the potential uses of chatbots across a wide range of industries, but for the time being it is mainly in the area of customer services where their impact is most being felt.

Legal advice dispensed by the chatbot DoNotPay has helped drivers successfully overturn 160,000 unfair parking fines in London and New York in less than two years. The usually formulaic nature of the appeals process is well-suited to AI.

In e-commerce, chatbots can be used for automated support and guidance in everything from providing product-specific details, to returning an unwanted pair of shoes or changing a delivery time.

Facebook is broadening its offering to e-commerce providers, and now chatbots will allow businesses to interact with their customers efficiently and cost-effectively through the incredibly popular Messenger app. Naturally there is also an opportunity to build long-term relationships if customers make this their preferred communication channel.

Banks are beginning to use chatbots to deal with queries that can range from lost or stolen credit cards to forgotten passwords.

Then there is Assist, which aggregates a wide range of different apps so that if you want to send someone flowers, order a taxi, or book a hotel, you can do so depending on your preferences for timing or cost.

Many prominent tech companies are developing Virtual Assistants, which are more evolved, intelligent programs. These include Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana and OK Google. Siri made headlines recently when it was voice-activated to summon an ambulance by a woman who had dropped her handset.

Amazon’s Echo, a device which some experts believe will be revolutionary in the field of ‘smart homes,’ has a built-in virtual assistant called Alexa that lets you shop (with Amazon of course), set alarms, create To-Do lists and even order a pizza from Dominos.

Benefits of using Chatbots As far as businesses are concerned, the clearest benefit of employing chatbots, if employ is the right word, is the capacity for savings on staffing, and therefore expenditure. A touchy subject indeed. If a chatbot is at the frontline, able to competently deal with relatively simple customer services requests, then a company can either cut down the number of staff it needs or move existing staff into different areas, such as fielding more complex customer service tasks instead. That’s because while a furniture chain’s chatbot can explain to a customer how to return an unwanted wardrobe, it can’t provide real-time advice on how to assemble it (yet). Research to-date indicates that many consumers don’t really care if they speak to a person or a computer program, so long as their issue is resolved correctly and quickly. A chatbot can be programmed to speak in any language, can multitask, and once the initial development and implementation has been accounted for, its operating costs should be much lower than the salary of even a couple of employees. Moreover, a chatbot can field repetitive questions about the same topic endlessly, without ever getting tired, irritable, or needing a toilet break. They are just as efficient at 3am as they are at 3pm. Companies measuring timings for responses and query resolution will find they are getting predictable results which are far faster than a human can deliver. History is littered with scandals where a customer service representative has handled a situation badly, inadvertently triggered an argument with an aggrieved customer, who has then gone on to speak badly about the company across social media platforms. While there is still scope for reputation damage with a chatbot, the chances of situations such as this arising are greatly reduced. Companies are adapting the bots by "enhancing" them with sentiment analysis software and putting the bots to use as a first line support. As soon as the bot recognises any negative or strong sentiment, it can transfer the call to the human allowing for customer service to still employ empathy but only when needed. Chatbots enable simplified communications between brands and their customers, and if used in conjunction with an app such as Facebook’s Messenger service, can form one long conversation that can be retained indefinitely. Within that communication, over time, there is the opportunity to harvest substantial valuable data which can help the brand meet the customer’s needs more effectively. In future, we will see chatbots storing information about customers so that they can serve up products suited to their preferences, refer to them by nicknames or potentially, with diary permissions enabled, reminding them about family birthdays, anniversaries and other events. Potential clouds on the horizon Chatbots (at the time of writing this) are not as advanced as they could be and carry a significant risk of annoying anyone communicating with them. A few months ago, Microsoft launched an experimental chatbot it called ‘Tay’ on Twitter. While Tay coped with the volume of communications well-enough, sadly it struggled with the content. Artificial intelligence, learning as it goes from human responses, can be trolled and Tay was rapidly taken offline after it began to make offensive remarks. Chatbots need to be taught what is appropriate communication and what is not - the nuances of human interaction. Yet in theory this instruction would not need to be ongoing or could at least be scaled down after a while. Chatbots are not appropriate for every business, and as there can be significant costs involved in setting them up, a company must assess whether they are actually necessary first. Chatbots are best-suited to those businesses which engage in a lot of regular, repetitive communications with their customers, such as e-commerce stores or take-away services that have standardised menus. As chatbots begin to take over more and more functions, there is a possibility they will one day remove the need for humans altogether in customer service roles. Assuming that does eventually prove to be the case, in a country such as the UK, where a very high proportion of people work in the service industries - one estimate has it that almost 400,000 jobs might be affected - this will need to be well-managed to ensure that those employees can move into more skilled and rewarding positions.

Out of control - Microsoft's Tay shortly before it was taken down

Privacy concerns

"I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that"

Perhaps the most pressing issue of all around chatbots is that of privacy. The more information people share with them, the more helpful they can be. But at what point might that level of awareness become invasive? Data security concerns will naturally arise. This is a grey area, and one where technology companies will need to listen to their customers in order to find the right balance. The Chatbot Revolution Predicting the future of technology is always a dangerous game, but some reasonable guesses can be made about what the next few years might hold for chatbots. The immediate future will involve increasing numbers of businesses looking into human/AI hybrids (no Terminators hopefully), where a real person is at hand to deal with more complex customer service queries, or intervene should a conversation go off the rails. Individual businesses must decide for themselves the appropriate balance needed. Provided that growth in chatbot usage is handled well, then overall employment levels in the UK’s extensive services industries may not be too badly affected, as redundant staff can move into other roles such as supervising chatbot interactions. We can also expect to see chatbots being increasingly introduced to a raft of other industries, from manufacturing and education to medicine and finance, as brands begin to develop trust in the technology. Businesses that can successfully make chatbots work for them will potentially see rapid increases in their profitability, due to gains in time and productivity, while rates of customer satisfaction should also receive a boost. Assuming that progress in chatbot technology continues to improve and business uptake grows alongside it, then within the next few years we are likely to see chatbots in use all over the web - or rather, we may not see them. Ultimately, success will mean chatbots passing the Turing test - where it is impossible to differentiate in real-time, online conversations, between the computer program and an actual human. This will involve the chatbot having not just the ability to respond correctly but also to comprehend. It will also raise even more red flags about privacy, security and trust issues for web users. However if all that hasn't scared you off and you are looking to develop a chatbot or think that your business could benefit from automated customer service, then IBM Watson with its free API could be a very good place to start.

Gmail ads - should you be using them?

Akber Khan — Mon, 08 Aug 2016 14:26:02 +0000

Paid Media Strategies series #3: Gmail Advertising. For no.3 in the paid media series, we take a look at Gmail Advertising, we explain what it is and why you should be considering it for your next digital marketing campaign. Over one-third of the world’s population, or 2.9 billion people, will use email by the end of 2019. We don’t use it just to stay in touch with friends and family, but also to communicate with brands we like and to be alerted to offers, sales and new products that are of relevance to us. Naturally, Google wants to serve users with the ads that best represent their interests. One way it does this, besides methods such as harvesting search-and-click data, is by automatically scanning the content of emails sent through its Gmail platform for keywords and topics that can be of use to brands which can then advertise directly to individual users through the Gmail ads platform. That’s a vast opportunity by the way - as of 2014 there were some 500 million Gmail users around the world - one-sixth of the current market. Gmail Ads Explained Gmail ads are a form of native advertising and were formerly known as Gmail Sponsored Promotions until the service was rebranded in early 2015, then relaunched the following September as Gmail Ads. Previously a Beta product, it is now available to all AdWords clients on a Cost Per Click basis, which gives a sense of familiarity to Search Engine Marketers (SEMs) when targeting audiences, executing campaigns and reporting. Campaign functionality has been enhanced since the earlier version, such as allowing SEMs to schedule ads and optimise campaigns. The ads appear to Gmail users at the top of the Promotions tab in their Priority inbox, separate from marketing emails that have been sent from brands to which the user has subscribed and clearly marked as ads. Formatting and Targeting Google’s research into user preferences has resulted in there being several different customisable formats for Gmail ads that aim to integrate seamlessly with the ‘inbox experience.’ These range from single promotion ads that feature one image and some descriptive text to multi-product promotion templates, and custom HTML uploads that allow advertisers to embed videos, forms and multiple links, and introduce functionalities such as click-to-call. Display targeting, to narrow an audience down and assist with campaign scalability, is done through standard AdWords options such as type of device, demographics, keyword/contextual, topic and affinity. So a car brand using Gmail ads can easily target men in their 30s to 50s with an interest in sports cars with messages tailored to their smartphones. Benefits of Gmail Ads The ads themselves take the form of a Collapsed Ad, or teaser, which replicates the look of regular emails. Clicking into them takes users through to an Expanded Unit which visually resembles a landing page. Any further clicks, either from the ad through a CTA or to forward it on to a friend, for instance, cost the advertiser nothing. Gmail ads are a valuable tool for the content marketer. While comparatively not as effective in boosting sales as other forms of marketing, they are particularly useful in developing leads, raising awareness, ‘soft’ conversions such as free trial offers and building incremental value through existing customers. Best Practise for Brands in Using Gmail Ads Design - Brands using Gmail ads must keep in mind that as opposed to search, where a user is telling advertisers that they are interested in something at that precise moment, with this process the advertiser is essentially asking the user to take an action when they may not be actively considering it. This should drive creative efforts and targeting segmentation. Vary your ad design and subject line messages to prevent ad fatigue. As with any form of marketing, experimentation at the start can pay off in the long-run. As the types of template which can be used are currently limited to just four, the most successful brands are those using rich visuals and video content to drive up user engagement. Follow standard best-practise guidelines for the creation of your ad, being sure to include clear CTAs and if appropriate, phone numbers. Targeting - An important rule to remember is as follows: Greater Relevancy = Better CTR = Higher Quality Score = Lower CPC = Lower Cost Per Conversion. Ensuring that your ads are useful, and placed in front of the right people, is vital. Single Keyword Ad Groups help improve message-matching. Targeting with multiple keywords can bring your CTR down. Another factor to consider is ensuring you target by device, to avoid poor UX through content not loading properly. Targeting competitors’ domains, i.e. displaying your ads to users who receive promotional emails from your competitors, is viewed as a high-performing tactic and placement is generally worth aggressive bidding. Remember that due to Gmail users’ privacy, certain targeting options such as Remarketing (except through Customer Match) are not available. Unless you’re offering vastly reduced promotions that customers will find it difficult to resist buying immediately, Gmail ads should be used in conjunction with other methods, as this approach is unlikely to significantly drive up revenue on its own. Think of it as top-funnel marketing, where you’re meeting goals such as collecting email addresses or finding out who would have a potential interest in learning more about your products. Lastly, it’s vital to keep in mind that users can control the ads they see, either by blocking unwanted advertisers or by opting out of Gmail ads altogether, so it’s in everyone’s best interests to create ads that people want to see, that aren’t inappropriate, and that don’t irritate with their ubiquity. Gmail ads are a handy addition to the content marketer’s toolbox. The conversion rate may not be as high as with more targeted forms of advertising, but the CPC can be low, meaning it potentially offers good value. It’s a relatively new form of advertising, so the time to experiment with it and understand how it can work for your brand is now. Success will come to those that take a strategic approach and get most creative with the format.

Avoid these 5 common UX mistakes

Dean McDonagh — Tue, 02 Aug 2016 10:39:00 +0000

“Ugly but useful trumps pretty but pointless” - Kate Rutter Brands and their web designers often learn the hard way that the Wow-factor needs to be aligned with an effective User Experience (UX). Whether it be a slider that serves no real purpose, an elegant font that’s next-to unreadable on mobile devices, or an oh-so funky animation that amuses for a couple of seconds while causing slow loading times and adding precious little useful information, many websites and apps are so laughably overloaded with clutter someone could make a daytime TV show about them. Joking aside, poor UX design can cripple the success of a website or app, with the effect of high bounce rates and reduced conversion rates. A core principle of good web design is that an attractive website or an app that is stacked with value, is nothing if the UX isn’t right. Here are six common mistakes that should be avoided. 1. Poor Forms Poorly conceived online forms are one of the main frustrations for web users, often leading to abandonment before completion. Many parents agree that the greatest pain one can ever experience is stepping on a piece of lego barefoot, but in fact that ranks second to the suffering caused by spending ages filling out a long and complex form, only to accidentally miss a unobvious or unnecessary field and find that you have to fill the whole thing out again from scratch. Another common problem is forms that try to capture as much data as possible in one go - who wants to spend 20 minutes creating an account for a one-off transaction? Keep the data captured to an absolute minimum, and if you do need a lot, then consider breaking the form up over several steps or pages. Both Facebook and LinkedIn obviously like getting as much data about their users as possible, but they use what’s known as progressive profiling, which is not a liberal approach to airline security, but in fact taking just the bare minimum information to create an account and then regularly nudging users to add more over time. Expedia actually provided an interesting example of how modifying data capture can influence conversions when they used analytics to identify one field on a registration form, Company Name, that was disrupting the flow of its UX, as many users weren’t sure what to put in it. They removed the field and saw a massive jump in profits. Regular testing is the best way to achieve that balance between capturing as much data as possible, so in-demand from sales teams and achieving a good UX. Good practise for online forms includes ensuring the user is clear from the outset what the purpose of the form is, be it creating an account or signing up for newsletters, letting the user know their form has been submitted successfully and alerting them to errors in fields as soon as they click out of them, rather than right at the end. Example of a poorly-designed form: 2. Forcing users to login There are obviously advantages in forced log-ins for interactions that need to be kept confidential, such as with online banking or dating, but for other apps where security is not so important, there is an ‘interaction cost,’ with people abandoning the process in frustration. This is especially the case with mobile where it can take twice as long to key in usernames and passwords. People want to be able to immediately ascertain whether an app can be useful for them - they don’t necessarily want the hassle of having to create an account before they do so. Some companies have successfully used A/B testing to establish that eliminating logins enables greater numbers of transactions, while others that wish to keep it in place seek to make the process as smooth as possible by minimising the number of clicks needed and only capturing the essential data. Another aspect to consider is the ‘Reciprocity Principle’ - if you make the UX simple and enjoyable for the user, and then at the end of the process invite them to create an account, they are likely to feel more inclined to do so. This can be helped along by mentioning the added value of creating a profile, such as easier and faster purchases in the future. 3. Ignoring user data and feedback A common error is for web designers to simply copy their UX tactics wholesale from a similar site or app instead of basing their decisions on information collected from their own users. One size never fits all when it comes to UX. Collect, read and take onboard as much qualitative data as possible from your user base, whether that be obtained from surveys, comments, reviews or social media postings. A/B testing based on these responses will then produce valuable quantitative data that can illuminate which changes are likely to have the most effect on your KPIs. It will also convince your users that you’re listening to their feedback and encourage them to stick around. Don’t forget that even the slightest detail, from background colour to size of buttons, can have a big impact on the UX, and so any aspect of your design that can be tested, should be tested. This process is especially important when looking at a major redesign. In many cases, unless there is an urgent need, changes to design should be small and incremental so that any missteps can be easily corrected. Improve clicks by testing variations (CRO, Click Rate Optimisation): 4. Not prioritising responsiveness Building and maintaining separate desktop and mobile websites can be a costly and time-consuming process, which is why many companies opt for a responsive design that will adapt to whatever size of screen it is viewed on. Yet despite the rapidly growing numbers of people who use mobile devices to browse online - 80% of web users use smartphones while almost 50% also use tablets, and Google’s ‘Mobilegeddon’ algorithm update of 2015 which gave priority to sites that displayed well on mobile devices - many websites are still not properly responsive. Effects include slow loading times, confused navigation or pages being cut off, and naturally, general user frustration. How many times have you tried to load a website that you’re familiar with on a desktop onto your smartphone, only to find the display is completely fragmented and effectively unusable? The problem is that paring a website down so that it displays correctly no matter what the screen size can be tricky, especially if the website itself is complex. Yet if a business wishes to be visible on mobile devices, it has to either build a separate mobile website, or ensure that its main site is totally responsive. With growing numbers of smart devices hitting the market, this is going to be an enduring issue and one that should be tackled as a priority. BBC Sport (http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport), a nice mobile experience: 5. Complex conversion processes Users can arrive from many different places - banner ads, social media and search among them, and they will accordingly all have different wants and needs. They may be casually browsing, or looking to buy. Determining who is who can be difficult, but remember that not every visit needs to result in a conversion. Your focus should instead be on reducing friction in the conversion funnel, and removing any distractions that can hinder the conversion process. Include small nudges, through easy to understand proof points, optimised landing pages and clear CTAs, that will build incrementally without making the user feel pressured. Improving UX is a constant process that can only be achieved with regular research and testing. Mistakes are inevitable but are rarely disastrous, and they should be viewed as learning opportunities. Keep the needs and journey of your user front of mind at all times and the rest should follow naturally.

Seismic shifts in the paid search landscape

John Stuchfield — Fri, 29 Jul 2016 10:23:51 +0000

Google rolls out Expanded Texts Ads, device bidding and responsive display ads. On Tuesday Google announced the rollout of Expanded Text Ads, with immediate noticeable changes across all devices. The new-style longer ads with double headlines are already appearing alongside standard text ads. But this is just the first seismic shift of the week: as announced in May at the Google Performance Summit, the availability of device bidding and responsive display ads is also now rolling out, about to further transform the paid search landscape. Expanded Text Ads: why, when and what if? All of these latest changes reflect and are driven by the increasing importance of mobile. At the recent summit for AdWords and Google Analytics customers, Google gave us their first official update since 2012 on the total number of searches handled annually. The figure has risen from 1.2 trillion to over 2 trillion – and over half of these searches happen on mobile. With their new double headline, Expanded Text Ads (ETAs) offer advertisers up to 2 x 30 characters to best flag up their business, along with a description of up to 80 characters. According to Google, this improvement was introduced in order to give mobile users more hard information, and early test feedback suggests an average click-through boost of around 20 per cent – potentially good news for advertisers, who could see a consequential rise in ROI. At least for now, standard ads will continue to appear alongside ETAs, with October 26 set as the cut-off when single-header text ads will no longer be accepted from advertisers. At least for now, standard ads will continue to appear alongside ETAs, with October 26 set as the cut-off when single-header text ads will no longer be accepted from advertisers. Separate device bidding The second important change is designed to give advertisers greater control over AdWords campaigns by enabling different base bid adjustments to be set for targeting ads on mobile, desktop and tablet devices. Previously, under the Enhanced Campaigns regime introduced in 2013, desktop and tablet bids have been rather awkwardly tethered, and advertisers have lacked the freedom to focus campaigns on mobile. Also in response to advertiser demand, a wider bid range has now been introduced, up to +900%. Although the device bidding rollout has begun, Google are stressing that ‘not all accounts will have the option enabled right away. The full rollout will occur over the next few months'. Responsive native display ads Finally, Google have also begun to roll out responsive display ads which will serve across the Google Display Network (GDN) on all devices – though, once again, most importantly on mobile. The ads will auto-generate, resizing and adjusting in style as they access publishers’ native ad inventory. All advertisers need to supply is dual 25-character and 90-character headlines, a description up to 90 characters, an image and a landing page URL. Google will do the rest – and will doubtless turn the screw in display ad competition with Facebook as a result.

Why you should treasure good user experience as a ranking signal

Luke Berry — Fri, 12 Aug 2016 14:42:41 +0000

SEO Ranking Factors Series #4: User Experience. In a series of posts, we look at some of the key factors that Google and the other search engines take into consideration when deciding on where to place a site in the organic results for a given search query. If user engagement and ranking together in the title made you wince, you might not be the only reader with that response. You might say “Well, user experience is not confirmed as a direct ranking factor”. I’d say you’re technically right, for now. Hear me out. Engagement was voted last year as one of the top ten most influential ranking factors. Yet it isn’t a confirmed ranking factor, in fact Google’s own analyst John Mueller said in a sweeping statement that it isn’t a ranking signal in August 2015. From Google themselves come the contradictions, which leaves some of us in confusion and misery. But it shouldn’t! Just because it isn’t an official signal now doesn’t mean it won’t be confirmed as one in the future. We know that understanding user data is important to Google, even if they are vague on its impact to Search Engine Results Pages. I mean they even have a patent to use your phone’s camera to understand your feeling towards a particular search result (please smile if you are reading this on mobile). Note: Google does have a lot of patents and not all of them are for actual working mechanics. It’s simple common sense that your website's user engagement it’s important, but why so for SEO?

Why user engagement is important for SEO

Optimising a website for search engines necessitates optimising it for visitors. Without good user experience, SEO efforts will be frustrated, with disappointing levels of conversions, social shares and backlinks, whereas good UX benefits the entire website, as well as other aspects of your marketing. We know that Google is trying to understand how users interact not just with content, but also with website structure in general. Content and structure must find a balance between what works well for SEO purposes and what benefits UX to avoid conflict between the two. I think we can agree that the best user experiences are those that:

Engage and attract users
Offer consistent, positive brand-positioning
Boost sales and conversions
Reduce operational and resource costs

Those goals are aligned with the end goals of good SEO. So we’re working with the same metrics, why not combine the approach to achieving those goals.

Start planning for good UX in three steps:

Get over the curse of knowledge

You’re too close to your site. There is nothing more valuable than a fresh set of eyes and a great free tool for that is peek – try it out here.

Get to know your user engagement data

Read on below.

Avoid common UX mistakes

Read this great post about user experience mistakes by our Head of Design at Found.

Learn the data and metrics of UX

Click-through Rate It’s thought that organic click-through rate (CTR) - the number of visitors to a site who follow an organic search result hyperlink to get there - does still have some effect on search rankings, but Google remains frustratingly vague on the subject. Of course CTR has the potential to be manipulated, leaving SERPs vulnerable to abuse but, particularly when combined with other metrics such as bounce rate and time on-site, it can also be very informative on how a site is performing on user satisfaction. A high CTR is naturally beneficial to webmasters, providing they can then keep the visitors on-site. One example of how organic CTR can be increased is the inclusion of keyword-rich snippets with effective calls-to-action for the SERPS. If your snippet, domain, title or some other aspect on the SERPs can potentially boost the CTR beyond what would normally be expected, then Google may look at that and think your site should be ranking higher. Time on site Search engines can easily track dwell time or how quickly someone comes back to them after clicking through to your site. In some cases, they will be looking for the answer to a simple query, so this is not an issue, but if for instance the page they click on to contains a lengthy blog post and they’re clicking away within a matter of seconds, then the search engine is naturally going to assume the page is not meeting expectations for that particular search query. This therefore impacts upon the value of your CTR as well. Since time on-site is an increasingly important ranking factor, a positive UX is very helpful. Ensure your site is easy to navigate, with logical and relevant internal links. If there is something that visitors find interesting, useful or informative then they will stay longer. It emphasises the need for high-quality content. Internal links An effective internal link structure will help your visitors to find their way around your website, and it also distributes link equity to where it is most needed, helping to meaningfully improve your rankings. Additionally, if someone is interested in content on a certain topic, linking to related content on the same domain that will also likely be of use will improve the UX.

Introduce plenty of content, containing natural, un-optimised anchor text
Link deep and naturally
Use follow links for link equity distribution
Use breadcrumb navigation so that visitors know where they are
Ensure the pages you want to be picked out by search engine spiders can be found easily and are not blocked off, such as by being embedded in Flash or internal search boxes

Presence of unordered lists Unordered lists, for instance the one above arranged with bullet points, are a common feature of high-ranking pages. They make for a good way to condense a lot of information into an easily readable, user-friendly format. People appreciate being able to find what they want to know quickly. Note that when you’re optimizing a website for mobile that it’s best to keep your unordered lists fairly short, thereby avoiding the need for repetitive scrolling. Video integration It has been estimated that video in all its forms, such as streaming movies, could account for up to 80-90% of all web traffic by 2019. Take-up, even by small websites, is growing rapidly. Video indicates the presence of rich content to search engines and will therefore play an important role in their algorithms. Label your on-site video with keywords just as you would with images, to let the search engines know what the content is about, and consider including a transcript on the page to help further. Remember that when you embed a video on a page, such as with YouTube, it weighs the page down. A single video can download substantial amounts of data and make multiple HTTP requests even before the user hits the play button. Optimise the video, such as by loading the video player to begin on-demand, to help reduce page-loading times. Responsive design Google is on record as saying that it prefers responsive design for websites, as opposed to adaptive design or separate sites for different devices. While the search giant has also been clear that the type of design is not a ranking factor, and that all things are equal, webmasters should note that there can be indirect effects of not using a responsive design that correlate with impaired search rankings. Bad redirects, confused canonicalization, higher bounce rates due to poorly configured content and slower page-loading times can all have a detrimental effect on the user experience and will be affected by the type of design adopted. Bounce Rate Directly related to time spent on-site, a low bounce rate, at least for certain types of content such as video, will often signify a satisfactory user experience. It follows then that this can in turn help with external link-building, leading to better search rankings. How to put this into effect? People like well-designed websites that have clear navigational structures, high-quality, relevant and useful content that resolves problems or offers benefits, and they strongly dislike negative features such as incessant or annoying pop-ups that block them from the information they want and slow down page-loading and scrolling. Number of images A picture can speak a thousand words, and as a consequence search engines consider them as a factor in greater user engagement. A website that is too text-heavy without enough images to break it up, or that has images which aren’t related to the content on the page, can result in lower user satisfaction and higher bounce rates. When adding images to a site, ensure they are tagged correctly with appropriate file names and ensure that they are optimised so as to avoid slow-loading pages. File sizes can be adjusted in Photoshop or similar programs to assist with this. Adsense / Adwords Adsense, displaying related advertisements next to the content on your website in return for a commission from the advertiser every time one of your site visitors clicks through, does not in itself boost rankings. What you can be sure of though, is overloading your site with ads will distract people from the content and detract from the user experience. Adwords, where a company bids to be placed on the SERPs for a particular query, similarly has no known direct effect on rankings - one can hardly expect Google to rank a website higher solely because it is earning money from it. Note that the majority of users still trust organic placement over paid ads, so even though you can expect more click-throughs, neither Adsense or Adwords are a substitute for SEO - they can however be a very useful addition to your marketing toolbox. Font size Many websites still get the basics wrong, one of which is font size. Too small a font, anything less than a 10, is going to prove difficult for many users to read, while font that is too large can also affect user experience by making it necessary to scroll down continually. Ensure that text is clearly readable on all pages whatever the device being used, apply H1 tags for main headings so they stand out, and clearly highlight clickable links in the body text.

Final word

Optimising our pages for user experience is doing the SEO of the future for your site now.

7 Great Data Science Blogs to Follow

James Wolman — Fri, 19 Aug 2016 15:24:49 +0000

Whether data drives your marketing strategies or your climate simulation models, discovering and extracting actionable insights from the data is the name of the game. As the demand for data science expertise races ahead of supply, now is an important time stay relevant in this fast-growing discipline. So here are some essential places on the web to keep you at pique analytical fitness.

R-bloggers

https://www.r-bloggers.com/ R is possibly the most powerful and widely used statistical, machine learning and data visualization programming language. As the emerging data scientist’s tool of choice, R-bloggers brings together a vast community of R users in what they call the “R blogosphere”. If Internet marketing is your game and you’re knee-deep in clickstream data, then check out their blog on how to get R talking to the Google Analytics API: https://www.r-bloggers.com/using-google-analytics-with-r/.

KDnuggets

http://www.kdnuggets.com/ Walkthroughs of popular topics within data science like Bayesian analysis and deep learning, while still managing to keep it fairly accessible as well as intelligent related articles about the field. They even provide links to datasets so you can exercise your data mining and data science expertise.

Coursera

https://www.coursera.org/ There are plenty of free, online and excellent learning resources including FutureLearn, Standford Online, iversity and edX. One that I have found particularly useful at getting a handle on a number of statistical and analytical areas is Coursera. They have a wide variety of data science specialism courses, most of which you can take completely free, coursework and peer assessment included.

MIT OpenCourseWare on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEBb1b_L6zDS3xTUrIALZOw This YT channel is an excellent resource for learning the more tech-heavy computer science concepts for anybody from entry level analysts to seasoned miners looking to refresh their knowledge of search algorithms. A virtual seat in full-length lectures of one most prestigious technology educators. A number of other institutions also provide similar resources so explore!

The r/datascience, r/MachineLearning and r/bigdata Subreddits are also some useful corners of the web to keep an eye on for current developments, learning resources, recommendations and discussion threads. Sometimes responses may be relatively thin on the ground compared to, say, posts speculating the next death on The Walking Dead but gems aren’t so rare. There’s also a ML @ Reddit (@mxlearn) Twitter account, which posts research, news and discussions pretty regularly.

Data Tau

http://www.datatau.com/ Definitely bookmark this one. The most up-to-date data news and discussions, sort of similar to KDnuggets, covering many different topics and updated very frequently. An extremely valuable well of information and a handy supply chain for the data scientist’s online library.

Twitter

Lastly, Twitter is also another great place to keep up to date with developments in the field as well as thought pieces from data scientists working in all fields, like ex-professor of astrophysics Kirk Borne (@KirkDBorne), to help inspire your analysis with some newfound flair.