For State of Search I wrote a rant against TopSEOs, a notorious scam intended to deceive potential clients with regards to a SEO company’s quality. I call on the SEO industry to stop lending implicit support to such deceptive practices and to take a stand:

State of Search: TopSEOs: Kill The Hypocrisy, It’s Time To Take a Stand

Advertising itself as an ‘an independent authority on search vendors’, the marketing material distributed by TopSEOs seems to suggest that a top ranking on a TopSEOs list is a mark of quality. This is, of course, a big fat lie, as rankings on TopSEOs can simply be bought. The more money you give TopSEOs, the higher they will rank you.

Prompted by a tweet from Geoff Jackson from search marketing firm Clubnet, I wrote a post for Search News Central about the similarities between SEO and quantum physics:

Search News Central: Where SEO meets Quantum Physics

All this SEO shtick does feel like a roll of the dice sometimes, doesn’t it? We do our best to send all the right signals in to this big black search engine box, and hope that what comes out more or less meets our expectations. More often than not, it doesn’t. We might as well be trying to catch Higgs-bosons with our bare hands.

The TopSEOs Scam / SEO and Quantum Theory is a blog post from Barry Adams.

A continuously updated list of Google’s public mishaps in 2012:

02 Feb: Google Maps fined in France
A French court convicts Google of abuse of its dominant market position with its Maps service and fines it €500,000. Google appeals the judgment.

29 Jan: Google’s New Privacy Policy
Google announces a new unified privacy policy which receives widespread condemnation. Microsoft seizes the opportunity to launch an anti-Google advertisement.

25 Jan: The Google Sting
A WSJ article reveals more damning details of Google’s business practices that lead to the 2011 $500m DOJ settlement.

16 Jan: Open Street Maps Vandalism
Google contractors are caught vandalising Open Street Map data.

13 Jan: Google Kenya caught in SME scam
Google’s ‘Getting Kenyan Businesses Online’ programme is caught red-handed scamming small businesses.

10 Jan: Search Plus Your World
Google launches ‘Search Plus Your World’ and is greeted by widespread criticism for favouring its own Google+ product and decreasing search result relevance.

10 Jan: Selling Illegal Ads
After expensive legal settlements for earlier offenses in 2007 and 2011, Google is yet again caught selling AdWords ads for illegal products, including cannabis, fake IDs, and fake Olympic tickets.

02 Jan: Chrome Link Buying
Google is caught buying links to promote its Chrome browser.

01 Jan: Manipulating +1 Upvotes
Google appears to be manipulating +1 upvotes in AdWords ads.

More will be added as they (inevitably) occur.

Google Noose image credit: freelance SEO Alex Moss

The 2012 Google Clusterfuck Countdown is a blog post from Barry Adams.

A little bit fed up with all the ‘best of 2011‘ and ‘trends for 2012‘ blog posts already emerging on the web, I figured I’d do my own list to make sure that at least one of these types of posts, inevitable in this time of year, had some measure of value:

State of Search: Top 10 Blogs That Are Not About SEO But You Should Be Reading Anyway

I figured if such lists get published anyway, I might as well make one of my own – but this time I’ll make one that could actually break the mold and, you know, be useful. So I thought I’d compose a slightly different list. Specifically, a list of blogs that are NOT about SEO – or only mention it in passing – but that you should be reading anyway. Because the stuff that gets published there is, simply put, epically awesome.

Also on State of Search I wrote a rant that was triggered by a blog post on SEOmoz, in which Rand Fishkin argues in favour of ‘outing’ bad SEO practices. I am against outing, and I explain why:

State of Search: The Division Within SEO: Google is our friend/enemy

Some pro-Google SEOs make comparisons between web spammers and criminals (like Rand does in the Twitter debates), justifying outing them as turning them in to the police. This is, of course, entirely farcical, as web spammers break no laws (generally speaking) except Google’s own arbitrary guidelines. And these guidelines do not exist for the greater good of the internet – they exist only because Google wants to make money.

Top non-SEO Blogs / Division within SEO is a blog post from Barry Adams.

I’ve started writing for the Holistic Search blog, run by my friend and SEO superman Peter Young. My first post for the site is about Google’s propaganda, and how it differs from what actually works in SEO:

Holistic Search: Debunking Google’s Propaganda

Experienced SEOs know that there’s a huge difference between what Google and its fans declare to be ‘SEO best practices’ and what actually works to get sites to rank. For those who are still struggling to make sense of this, below I’ve outlined a few SEO myths propagated by the likes of Matt Cutts and his adoring fanbase, and compared that to the real truth of the matter.

Recently I was a guest on a regular podcast hosted by David Harry and Terry Van Horne from the SEO Training Dojo. The podcast, entitled Search Geeks Speak, also featured my State of Search boss and all around great guy Bas van den Beld, and fellow SEO Dojo-er Kieran Flanaghan (aka Searchbrat).

The topic of the podcast was about European SEO, and you can listen to and download it from the SEO Dojo website here: Search Geeks Speak: EU SEO Panel with Bas van Den Beld, Barry Adams and Searchbrat

Google Propaganda / Search Geeks Speak is a blog post from Barry Adams.

On November 24th I gave a talk at the annual SAScon mini-conference about SEO for Ecommerce. As usual the conference was superbly organised with a good range of topics from a variety of speakers, and I was grateful for the opportunity to speak in front of a great crowd.

I wrote a detailed blog post for State of Search where I expand on many of the points I made in my talk, and you can see the slides from my presentation embedded below:

SEO for Ecommerce is a blog post from Barry Adams.

Earlier this month I wrote an article for State of Search in which I outline three essential skills every (beginning) SEO should possess:

State of Search: Three Essential Skills for Beginning SEOs

The ability to think critically – to question what you read and hear, to make up your own mind based on the best available evidence, and to put everything in the right context – is not just essential for every SEO, it’s an essential skill of life itself.

My latest for Search News Central explains the potential of branded search, and how to increase search volumes on such keywords:

Search News Central: Branded Search: A Digital Marketer’s Greatest Ally

Obviously SEO might not be the ideal tactic to increase branded searches. If the site already ranks first for its own brand name, there’s limited mileage for SEO to increase traffic on those branded searches. At most what you could do is experiment with different titles and meta descriptions to see if you can improve the click-through rate.

On the Pierce Communications blog we ran a little experiment in which I wrote two versions of a news article about Google’s Think Insights tool:

Pierce Communications: Google Think Insights – Choose Your Favourite

Instead of writing a nondescript and easily forgotten bit of news about Google’s latest release – Think Insights – I decided to write two versions to announce the new tool, and let you, the audience, choose which one you prefer. So go on ahead, read both versions of the news below, and then vote for your favourite in the poll.

Essential SEO Skills / Branded Search is a blog post from Barry Adams.

It’s going to be a very busy few weeks for me. Barely back from my honeymoon in New Zealand and re-acclimatised to the Irish time and weather, I’ve no time to take it easy.

First up I’ll be doing two half-day lectures for the Digital Marketing Institute on October 18th – one about Pay Per Click advertising (specifically Google AdWords) and one about Search Engine Optimisation. Both of these will be introductory lessons aimed at making the students familiar with the terminology, processes, and frames of mind of both of these forms of search engine marketing.

Then there’s a guest lecture at the University of Ulster on November 2nd for their postgraduate course in Digital Media Communication. In this lecture I’ll be discussing a case study of one of our clients, which will focus on the various improvements we’ve made to their website and how this impacted traffic and conversion rates.

The next day I’ll be flying to London to attend the UK Search Awards. The guys at Manual Link Building were kind enough to invite me to the event, and I’m looking forward to catching up with them and a host of other UK SEO people.

Then I’ll have a few weeks of relative rest before I head to Manchester on November 24th to speak at the SAScon Manchester SEO mini-conference. This year I’ll be speaking on the topic of SEO for e-commerce websites, and I hope my talk will have something of value for all levels of SEOs.

If you want to book me for a talk or lecture, you can email me or use the contact form.

Forthcoming Public Engagements is a blog post from Barry Adams.

For Search News Central I wrote an article outlining several often-overlooked data tracking opportunities that can help website owners make more informed decisions about how to improve their site:

Search News Central: Are You Tracking All That Happens on Your Website?

Many people seem to think that just installing Google Analytics tracking code on every page of their site is enough and that this’ll tell them all they need to know about their website. This is, of course, not true. There’s a lot more potential data out there that can be gathered and analysed to make better decisions about how to improve a website.

My latest for State of Search is a somewhat incoherent rant about a sense of impending change in how search engines rank websites:

State of Search: An Imminent Revolution in Search

I think everyone who works in search understands on some level that we’re living in truly interesting times. There’s a sense of anticipation, a mood of imminent revolutionary change. SEO has never been a static industry. As long as search engines have existed, and thus as long as SEO has been around, there’s been a ceaseless state of flux, a continuous exchange of fire between search engines and optimisers.

Website Tracking / Revolution in Search is a blog post from Barry Adams.

My friend and fellow SEO Dojo-member ‘Doc’ Sheldon Campbell has compiled a substantial ebook, containing insights from over 30 experienced search engine optimisers and digital marketers. The book, entitled “Critical Thinking for the Discerning SEO”, is now available via Doc Sheldon’s website:

“Critical Thinking for the Discerning SEO will give you insights from some of the top names in the business, on how to focus your efforts where they’ll give you real benefit, rather than chasing every shiny penny offered by self-proclaimed gurus and experts.”

In addition to contributions from SEO luminaries such as Danny Sullivan, Rand Fishkin, Bill Slawski, and Alan Bleiweiss, yours truly also contributed to the book. Go forth and grab it – all the proceeds will go to charity so it’ll benefit a good cause as well!

Critical Thinking for the Discerning SEO is a blog post from Barry Adams.

I wrote a host of short blog posts for State of Search over the past few weeks to cover for the site’s owner Bas van den Beld while he was on vacation.

The most substantial of these blog posts is a case study on why geotargeting users based on IP address is a silly affair, especially when trying to determine what region of a country a user is from. In the UK especially, IP targeting is utterly broken.

State of Search: Geotargeting Based on IP Address is Broken

It’s when you get to regional IP targeting that all semblance of accuracy goes straight out the window, and it becomes nothing less than a total crapshoot. In fact, firing buckshot at a big national map will probably yield more accurate results than the geographical data you’ll get from any web analytics package.

Some other blog posts I wrote for State of Search recently are primarily news stories about new developments in search and web:

• The Explosive Growth of Google+
• Google simplifies Adwords for small businesses with AW Express
• Branded AdWords advertising boosts total site traffic
• Growing pressure on Microsoft over Bing
• Adobe Edge: SEO-friendly web animations?
• Universal Search: how often are they shown on Google’s SERPs?

IP Address Geotargeting / State of Search is a blog post from Barry Adams.