Number1's blog

*Note: unfortunately, due to the nature of RDF and microformats, this post is slightly technical - for those who aren't of that persuasion it might be best to speed read the bulk of the content and skip to the conclusion :)*

RDF (Resource Description Framework) is a set of rules that enables a web page (actually, the various pieces of content on that page such as a person, an image, etc) to be described in a format that makes that content more accessible to search engines and other applications.

When talking to a fairly large public sector organisation (with my Adaptive hat on), I mentioned SEO to the customer and for the first time (in the public sector), they had the vision to understand the importance of attracting visitors to their website to fulfil their brief.

Many public sector organisations spend significant sums on marketing but rarely do you see a public sector website that has considered SEO.

I had an interesting meeting this morning with a great company - they're extremely clued up on their product and understand the value of SEO.

They're doing the right thing by talking to a few agencies and having PPC training - they beat themselves up terribly as they feel they don't know enough but in my view, they're way ahead of most similar sized companies in that they're open minded and eager to understand SEO to a level where they can make business decisions about the search strategy.

Dan says...

There's an awful lot of talk about Social Media Marketing at the moment and I have to be honest, I just don't think it's anywhere near as important or cost effective as search marketing for many businesses - especially B2B.

Dan says...

The short answer is : it's not.

There are a few agencies out there pitching SEO like it's a dark art or a science - to be frank, that approach annoys us intensely.

There is a technical element to SEO just like there's a technical element to printing a magazine or making a TV advert but customers aren't usually involved in every aspect of it so we just don't get why some agencies bring it to the table so much.

As part of every SEO package we submit websites to Google Webmaster tools. In their words "Google Webmaster Tools provides you with detailed reports about your pages' visibility on Google" - in reality it's a gateway between Google and the webmaster (you, us or the web design/development company).

It allows Google to report on any issues with the site and perhaps most importantly, communicate any major issues.

In July 09 it was announced that Microsoft's search engine, Bing.com, will be powering Yahoo searches. This means that there will be one pay per click interface (Microsoft AdCenter) and the organic/natural results will be entirely based on the Bing ranking factors.

In terms of market share it's said that Bing and Yahoo will have over 30% of the search market. From the stats we see, and we see a lot, we'd say that Google's market share in the UK is more like 85%.

It seems that Google have rolled out a change in their ranking factors in early November.

As ever, we are testing various techniques to see which factors are in the balance but our approach to SEO means that our customer sites are not suffering as many others are.

Google are constantly refining the ranking factors to ensure the search results, which is the bread and butter of their business, are as relevant as possible. It is rare that major updates happen but many industry experts are commenting on the changes in search results because of this update.