Unlike just another smartphone announcement, or yawn inducing iteration on the smart TV, Google Glass is a potentially revolutionary product. The Glassware (Google’s term for apps, see http://glass-apps.org/ for some examples) that we will see over the next few years will likely contain real innovation and be used in ways we can’t foresee. From education to the erotic this may be the start of another land rush for developers and entrepreneurs.

As with most new technologies there are plenty of naysayers. If you’ve had the pleasure of watching Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror episode “The Entire History of You” (if you haven’t head over to http://www.channel4.com/programmes/black-mirror/4od) you will be very much aware of how deeply integrating such technology with day-to-day life can have unintended consequences. Mobile phones have their negatives, from parental worries about teen sexting to yet another thing which reduce our powers of attention, and Google Glass will be no different. Bans have already started appearing over concerns with privacy. These are likely to have easy fixes and some countries may enact legislation to deal with this – South Korea has a law forcing all cameras to have a shutter sound which cannot be disabled. There will also be a period of time where people wearing Google Glass in the street are viewed with some suspicion, just like the Bluetooth dongle sporting business men talking into thin air were a few years ago.

Despite the negatives I’m excited by Google Glass. My only worry is that it won’t be a widely available product before our robot overlords supersede us.

The post Man vs. Machine or Man becomes Machine? appeared first on One Result Ltd.

In partnership with mcommerce.io we have produced this visual representation of what to expect from Google Glass.

The post Infographic: Google Glass Specs appeared first on One Result Ltd.

Does this mean that you need to stop guest blogging as a link building strategy? A lot of SEOs are saying yes, just to avoid the risk of getting hit by Penguin. However, if you’re creating great content, which can be easily shared, why stop? Penguin will undoubtedly affect websites, which employ spammy guest blog posts, which don’t look natural.  The solution is simple; don’t write content for the links. Write content for the subject matter.

Anchor Text Links

Google is already penalising websites, which appear to have an unnatural link profile. If a domain has thousands of links, which have the same anchor text, expect it to drop from the rankings.

Google now looks more at the authority of the site your link came from rather than the anchor text. Would you expect to get an anchor text link from the BBC or Guardian? Most likely not, but the link juice still has a huge effect. Additionally, you don’t even need to include a link every time you submit content.

Links are Citations

An article shouldn’t link to another website just for the sake of it. If a link looks out of place due to the subject of the content or the relevancy of the website, then Google will notice and penalise.

This means authors are going to need to try harder to find relevant high authority third-party websites to post to.

Author Rank

Author rank is a way for Google to keep tabs on the quality of a writer’s content.  This is a way to improve a person’s authority on the internet much in the same way websites gain page rank.

If you continually write great content, which is actively shared, Google will weight more ‘authority’ on your posts.  In my last post about Google Communities, I looked at how you can share your content effectively. This is a great way to improve your author rank.

Still unsure?

The problem with guest blogging now has been the emphasis on SEO itself. Authors are forcing links, which just look unnatural. Look beyond the link juice and the anchor text and focus on the content that you love writing about.

The post How to adapt guest blogging for Penguin 2.0 appeared first on One Result Ltd.

One of the reasons blog posts might not get picked up could be because it hasn’t been targeted to the correct audience. Twitter can be a constant struggle to seek attention, Pinterest has its niches but not enough exposure and Facebook can be too broad for relevant audiences to notice. Although I would still encourage sharing content on these social networks, it can be difficult to get the results you expected.

Back in February we looked at how Google+ became the second most popular social network. This is one social network that I would recommend to all my clients, whereas Twitter and Facebook might not necessarily meet the tone of voice required for every brand. Why do I always recommend Google+? Other than the obvious reason of being owned by Google, it is a great platform to share content with relevant audiences in specific communities.

Google+ communities are places where users can get together, sharing a common interest and discuss or post relevant content around a certain topic. The number of communities is endless and there will be one for just about anything. Still not familiar with the concept?

Why is this good for your website? Google has taken an emphasis on trust. The more Google trusts a website, the better it will rank naturally.  Google+ provides one measurement of trust as users ‘plus’ a link to relevant articles or web pages.

Sharing with Google Communities

To share your content with relevant audiences, you will need to create a Google+ profile. In the search tab at the top, enter something, which is similar to the content you want to share. Then in the drop down menu below the search tab select ‘Communities’ and you will find all the relevant places where you can share your content. Remember that community members are keen to discuss topics, so don’t simply post content and run away. Engage with the users and open up conversation and debates.

It appears that Google+ is incorporating itself more and more into websites, showing the benefits of authorship and local listings, combining Google maps with profiles. Communities will be another aspect which will provide a benefit to online marketing and SEO.

The post Using Google Communities to Promote Content appeared first on One Result Ltd.

Why is Magento slow in the first place?

The simplest answer is because it does so much. The down-side of encompassing almost any feature you can imagine, customisable to a whole new level  in addition to the clever method Magento uses to store/retrieve data means there are more things to load, resulting in a drop in performance. Having experienced these problems personally, I decided enough was enough. What follows is my collection of steps you can employ to significantly boost the performance of your Magento store.

Part I:  General Tweaks

Combine CSS and JS Files

This feature reduces the number of HTTP requests. For versions earlier than 1.4.x, the Fooman_Speedster extension can be used instead.

1. In the Magento Admin, go to System > Configuration > Developer.
2. Under “Javascript Settings”, change “Merge Javascript Files” to YES.
3. Under “CSS Settings”, change “Merge CSS Files” to YES.
4. Clear the cache.

Enable Flat Catalog

Magento uses the EAV model to store customer and product data. This enables these objects to be incredibly extensible, but results in longer SQL queries and more reads. Enabling the Flat Catalog for Categories and Products merges product data into one table, thereby improving performance. Generally, all stores should enable Flat Catalog for Categories. Stores with over 1000 products should enable Flat Catalog for Products.

1. In the Magento Admin, go to System > Configuration > Catalog.
2. Under “Frontend”, change “Use Flat Catalog Category” to YES.
3. Under “Frontend”, change “Use Flat Catalog Product” to YES. (optional)
4. Clear the cache.

Enable the Magento Compiler

Magento’s application files are searched for in the following order:

• app/code/local
• app/code/community
• app/code/core
• lib

This search is performed for every page load, every time, resulting in a lot of filesystem reads. The Magento compiler reduces the number of reads by copying all of the application files to a single include directory. It also caches the most frequently used pages.

1. In the Magento Admin, go to System > Tools > Compilation.
2. Click “Run Compilation Process”

* It is worth noting that the latest version of Magento will have optimised catalog EAV which means the Magento Compilation is not really needed, however in previous versions of Magento this can be utilised for a 25-50% performance gain.

Remove unused extensions

System -> Configuration -> Advanced -> Advanced.

Enable All Magento Caches

System -> Cache Management.

Enable Output Compression (.htaccess)

Turn on the apache mod_deflate module, which compresses text, css, and javascript before it is sent to the browser. This results in a smaller download size. To enable, simply uncomment the appropriate lines so that it looks like the following:

<IfModule mod_deflate.c>
############################################
## enable apache served files compression
## http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html#gzip
# Insert filter on all content
SetOutputFilter DEFLATE
# Insert filter on selected content types only
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/xml text/css text/javascript application/javascript
# Netscape 4.x has some problems…
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html
# Netscape 4.06-4.08 have some more problems
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip
# MSIE masquerades as Netscape, but it is fine
BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html
# Don’t compress images
SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.(?:gif|jpe?g|png)$ no-gzip dont-vary
# Make sure proxies don’t deliver the wrong content
Header append Vary User-Agent env=!dont-vary
</IfModule>

You can further boost speed by enabling resulting html compression as shown below. Add this line under Header append Vary… in the code above (Some people reported the site throwing a 500 error after adding this line)

php_flag zlib.output_compression on

PHP/.htaccess

set ‘php_value memory_limit 128M’ in your php configuration or add it to your .htaccess file to ensure you don’t run out of memory.

Enable Expires Headers

NOTE: This does not work on Litespeed servers.

Browsers use Expires headers to determine how long a page component can be cached. Static components, like images, should have far-future expires headers, but truthfully, all page components should have expires headers. To turn this feature on, just uncomment the appropriate line and add “ExpiresActive On” right above it. See below:

<IfModule mod_expires.c>
############################################
## Add default Expires header
## http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html#expires
ExpiresActive On
ExpiresDefault “access plus 1 year”
</IfModule>

Part II: Database Optimisation

Clear the logs

2GB+ databases have dropped to a quarter of their size after cleaning the logs, so it is very important that this sort of maintenance is performed regularly. Particularly if your time-to-first-byte latency starts growing larger, and you’ve implemented the other performance tweaks.

1. In the Magento Admin, go to System > Configuration.
2. In the left menu under Advanced click on System.
3. Under “Log Cleaning”, change “Enable Log Cleaning” to YES and configure the Save Log for 15 days:
4. Click “Save Config”

Part III: W3C Compliant

1. Make your output W3C compliant. Errors slow down the browser.

Part IV: Speed Test Tips

• Test your Magento site with Magento Speed Test
• Run your site through http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/
• Use Google Page Speed Firefox extension or Yahoo Yslow for some tips from Google and Yahoo.
• Implement Google Speed measurements in Analytics: Measure Page Load Time with Site Speed Analytics Report
• Speed monitoring and downtime alerts.
  • Mon.itor.us
  • Pingdom

The post Making Magento Superfast appeared first on One Result Ltd.

So you have your blog set up, the page looks great and you’re ready to start posting, but where do you begin?

As an initial eye opener, blogs tend to have high bounce rates. This is mainly down to people searching for answers to questions, landing on a blog and it either not being on the right subject or it doesn’t contain any relevant information. Choose engaging stories to prevent these users from bouncing straight off your site… if a user lands on a blog page and finds the story interesting and engaging, chances are they will continue reading or save the page for later, even if it isn’t what they were originally looking for.

Blog posts don’t always have to be reams and reams of text, they can be short and snappy or even purely picture based. After all they say that a picture is worth a thousand words. If you choose picture posts though, don’t run them every week, limit yourself to once a month if possible as a rule of thumb so it doesn’t just become online storage for your photos. So all of your other posts will need some text-based material, this means you are going to need content. Finding subjects to talk about is often one of the biggest hurdles for most bloggers and it is the main reason why a lot of blogs drop off the face of the earth after the initial novelty period has worn off. If you run out of personal content then scouring the Internet for sources of information is not a crime. Looking for recent news and reviews is fine for blogging, just make sure to reference your sources and even drop them a link if you’re feeling generous. A good source for the latest articles is Google news, filled with only news that has met a certain criteria means that there’s generally a lot less to sift through before you get a good story on your hands. A good feature of Google News is the way it allows you to set up e-mail alerts for certain keyword terms so that as soon as a news story goes up related to your keyword you are instantly informed via e-mail.

Another good way of finding information is by using modifiers. These are specially modified strings of text that will bring up more specific results in search engines. One of our favourites is the ‘intitle: inurl:’ modifier. For example by searching ‘intitle:seo inurl:blog’ there should be a high percentage of result which are blogs related to SEO. You can obviously modify this to bring up the more specific searches on whichever subjects you require.

Now if you’re reading this post, chances are you already know the basic term ‘SEO’ and loosely what it involves. As I am sure you are aware linking is one of the key parts of SEO that will drive authority into your site, therefore you want as many high quality links pointing to your site as possible. As you can imagine you don’t get these high quality links for nothing, they take a lot of work to get hold of and high authority sites don’t just link here there and everywhere. Therefore you need to earn some base authority before you will get a chance at the bigger and better authority pages. This is where you need to try and gain a few non-spammy type links from pages that have a semi decent authority, which you can apply yourself. Enter social sharing… By socially sharing your blog on sites like stumbleupon, scoop.it and Kippt etc you get your blog exposure and provide a link back to your site. Don’t for a minute think that these will instantly get you lots of authority but if you make a habit of sharing each post as soon as it is published, you should see some positive results long term.

Trying to get two posts out per week is a good starting point. You don’t want to flood your site with so much information that every time someone visits they can’t keep up with what you have to offer. Similarly you don’t want people to enter your blog and see a complete lack of information, this would mean they probably wont visit again. Using free analytical software like Google Analytics will help you to see what sort of traffic your site is generating and what sort of interest your readers are into. As well as giving you an overview of traffic you will also see the most popular pages and in turn the topics that are working well for you, giving you more chance of fine tuning your subjects to make your blog as successful as possible.

The post Using Your Blog To Great Effect for SEO appeared first on One Result Ltd.

One of the hardest tasks when understanding what keywords to focus on, as part of an SEO strategy, is predicting search volume. Using the Google Keyword Tool is a great start for this, but you can never know the true volume of a keyword until you get to the top of the rankings.

It’s important to understand that what Google predicts as a search volume isn’t the exact figure, which you will receive. We have to take into account the CTR and click share which can vary, but one thing is always consistent; the jump in traffic when entering the top three positions in Google can be very high.

If we look at the data below, we can see the story of how one keyword progressed to the top of page one in Google.

We can see exactly when the keyword achieved a page 1 position  in the week commencing on the 15^th March. After a couple of weeks of not moving, traffic became fairly static, however, with one last push to the top of page 1 we can still see that there is some additional traffic left to mine.

This goes to show that being on page 2 or 3 of Google isn’t enough. Only until a keyword is within the top three of page 1 can you really see the difference.

The post The Journey of a Keyword appeared first on One Result Ltd.

Fisher German

Fisher German has a huge portfolio of properties, so One Result provided a solution, which allowed enquiries to be tracked from all sources. Not only were we able to see the end result, but also the user’s journey from which search engine they came from, what onsite search term they used and which property they enquired about.

One Result also identified the quick-wins within the first month, improving relevant keyword rankings for highly competitive terms.

“The first month’s results are encouraging; eg we now appear on page 1 for the phrases ‘farms for sale’ and ‘land for sale’ – a good result when you consider that there are 621 million search results for ‘land for sale’ and 65 million for ‘farms for sale’!” - Amanda Clark, Fisher German.

The Lansdowne Club

Only being a client with One Result for one month, The Lansdowne Club has already seen improvements in the natural rankings. As one of the most prestigious private members club in London, it’s important for this establishment to rank highly. Within the first month, One Result achieved 7 additional page 1 rankings, making the website visible to additional 1,721 searches a month.

Train 4 Academy

One Result provided a fast solution for Train 4 Academy by analysing it’s current PPC campaign and reducing it’s overall cost, whilst maintaining the ROI. The reallocation of budget means that the campaign can be rebuilt and evolved to meet the efficient frontier, defining the point of diminishing return.

As well as improving the PPC campaign, One Result is working well with the Train 4 Academy development team, providing consultation on analytics and tracking methods.

Green Room Retail

Clear analytical reporting and transparency has helped Green Room Retail understand where enquiries and leads are coming from. This has allowed us to identify which parts of their Search Engine Marketing campaign need improvement. One Result has not only provided the solutions to benefit Green Room Retail’s website, but also attends regular face to face meetings to guide them through the process.

Green Room Retail also found a huge benefit using the One Result Keyword Density Tool, analysing competitors’ onsite content and improving their own keyword density. The result was almost instantaneous following the commitment of the onsite optimisation.

If you would like to realise the potential of your business’ website with  attentive service and clear, regular communication, get in contact with One Result today. Our SEM team will guide you through every step of the way, with clear understanding on what needs to be achieved and how it will be put into action.

The post One Result SEM Helps More Online Businesses appeared first on One Result Ltd.

Try the Keyword Density Tool for yourself and see how it can help you and your website.

The post Keyword Density Tool Showcase appeared first on One Result Ltd.

You could use YouTube for self-education. Users would much rather be shown how to do something rather than reading about how to do it themselves. Or you might just want to see the latest music video from your favourite artist or a movie trailer for an upcoming blockbuster.

In this respect YouTube has become it’s own kind of search engine, offering up videos instead of web pages, and since it’s owned by Google we can be sure that the results we get are relevant to our queries.

We’ve been able to view top-level analytics on YouTube videos for some time now, but it’s always been difficult to know what’s trending. What are people searching for when they visit YouTube? How can I create content relevant to these users? These are questions many marketers have asked themselves in the past. Now, Google Trends offers some useful insight.

Google Trends has been a valuable tool in understanding trends of search terms with historical data. I recently showed how this proved useful when finding out how important SEO is, but we’ve been missing out on a huge vein of information supplied from YouTube.

A new function to Google Trends allows users to discover trending search terms in YouTube from across the world, including historical data. To filter this information, simply select ‘YouTube’ in the ‘Limit to’ drop down menu on the left.

The post Google Trends Tracks YouTube Searches appeared first on One Result Ltd.