Data

A lot has been said about big data recently, that is, we as marketers can make real world decisions based on large data sets. Google is a big data company, so it is only logical that the search marketer needs to undertake the same methodology. Now working within a freelance role, you may only have the budget available to cover a couple data services. The services are obviously each to their own to a search marketer and everyone will have preferences, the benefit of working agency side is that the amount of different resources available were astonishing, and something you only start to appreciate when whatever service you are using doesn't give you the data needed.

Agency 1 Freelance 0

Freedom

IF you are working for a personable company, they will give you the freedom necessary both for experimentation and research but the freedom and flexibility experienced in a freelance role is unparalleled. This has been essential for me as not only do I have a lot of family issues to attend to but it also gives me the freedom to spend half a day here or there to really further my knowledge almost at the drop of a hat rather than adding it to an ever growing list of 'things to do' when working at an agency.

It is often not the case that companies don't want you to actively further your knowledge, and in fact in my experience they have actively encouraged it, but in actuality sometimes there just isn't enough time to fulfil personal development within the scheduled hours.

Agency 1 Freelance 1

Remuneration

As a slightly controversial heading, it is obvious to many who have had a brief foray into freelance SEO that the monetary reward is much higher, whilst at the same time the company choosing the freelancer has the opportunity to save a hefty percentage on the day rate quoted by many companies.

Agency 1 Freelance 2

Knowledge Share

Never have I been around so many great people than when I worked for Fresh Egg, they have a great team with specialists in all areas of SEO, not only that, the cross team knowledge sharing was top notch, presentations from insight, development, social and account managers all added something to the SEO's arsenal. 

The freelancer has to wait for events such as BrightonSEO for the same cross departmental learning Or to follow a plethora of blogs that sometimes just isn't practical.

Agency 2 Freelance 2

Clients

This is a big one and very dependant on how lucky you are, I know many agency workers who are lucky to work with clients that appreciate the importance of what we do, and alternatively some that are still stuck in the old thinking of SEO. I have been lucky enough to get a couple great freelance clients, top quality sites combined with a passion for digital makes my job much easier. 

At an agency level you are likely to work with large clients that have many hoops to jump through before any onsite work gets done, then there are limitations and high expectations. New sites generally don't have the budget to join an agency so they hire freelancers. Taking a site from rags to riches is extremely fulfilling and is not something I have managed to experience working at an agency level.

Agency 2 Freelance 3

So far its a close race, and by my calculations, freelance is the clear winner, I'd say the primary reason for working at an agency is the awesomeness of the people, they are irreplaceable within the confines of my own dinky office.

Hopefully sometime in the future I will be able to add "versus client side". Thank you for reading, perhaps you have more topics that need covering, feel free to comment.

The post Agency Versus Freelance SEO appeared first on Andy Marchant.

Just because I'm helpful like that!

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I was introduced to Rainmeter and then spent many frustrating evenings fiddling about with it, working out the code and the terminology. There is quite a bit to get your head around, but it all makes sense in the end and what you’re left with is an awesomely, customised background.

I used the guides on the forum and Lifehacker’s pretty comprehensive guide, but I found that you had to get balls deep in there and play about to really understand it all the while referring to the awfully hard to navigate manual. This guide only really has what I found were the stumbling blocks

There are just a couple fundamentals you need stick to;

Fundemental 1 - Keep your files tidy

Good folder management is important, you will be downloading skins, making skin packages, downloading and unzipping quite a bit, having a place to stick it all is the first step and clear your desktop of everything (I use Windows Tweaker and Rocket Dock) so that you are essentially working with a blank canvas.

Fundamental 2 – Backup before you make any changes

Rainmeter works on .dll files, you can edit these with any notepad without any repercussions, Rainmeter (and the skins you will be getting used to) is pretty rugged, just backup by save as in the backup folder you’re going to create in the install folder. Close it, edit with notepad, refresh skin hope for the best.

Copy and paste is also your friend.

Disclaimer – Sorry to any coders out there

Fundemental 3 – It’s a funny old language

Inside the code and out, get used to it, skins are essentially widgets. The talk about skins threw me a bit, each “skin” is a widget. A Skin Suite is a collection of widgets of the same design. You are not limited to how many skin suites you can have, so you can mix and match “skins” from many different “skin suites” depending on your tastes and widgets you will find that look cool.

Install Rainmeter

Download the files from here (I downloaded the 2.4 beta) worked fine for everything I could figure out. Install the package in a folder of your choosing. It will already come with a skin suite attached. But there are so many different skin suites out there (try Deviant Art for example), if you like just one skin in a skin suite, that’s fine, you can only load that one. You’ll be greeted with the following;

Create skin packages

Once you have a collection of skins downloaded, you need to unzip the files to a folder, you don’t have to unzip them to the Rainmeter folder for them to work, but it’s best to, just to keep track of the package. Once unzipped, you will have a folder of the desired skin, in the example, I will install Rising Reflection.

Find the Create .rmskin package... button on the Rainmeter manager and create the skin package out of the files you have just downloaded;

Put the information in the required boxes, name and author;

Select add skin, hit the radio button to Add custom folder and navigate to the unzipped folder and the skin packager will do exactly that, and create a file like the one below;

Tweaking your skin

You will want to tweak your skin, in size, position, colour and what it executes. Skins might have default actions, but you might want to do something a little different, or look a little different. Some of the skin suites have their own UI where you can change settings from there (the Enigma or Illustro skins have a UI like this). But I didn’t like the options it gave me, and found it easier to grasp the simple coding behind each of the skins and by using the Rainmeter manager.

Here’s where you need to back up all the files as you edit them.

There’s a basic structure to each file, open one up by clicking the “Edit” button with the skin selected, or by right clicking on the skin itself.

You should first see a [Variables] section that will relate to the rest of the code in the file. Where you might have the settings for font, fontcolor (measured in RGB), text size etc. These are to affect the rest of the code where these variables are in place, any variable throughout the code surrounded by hashtags are using the attribute defined in the variable section at the top of the code.

I’m only getting to grips with the coding, but there are many advanced functions that I may write about at a later date when I have a greater understanding.

Practical

There are still individual attributes you can edit without causing much damage, such as changing the metrics something measures in. For example, if you were to open up the skin;

Rising Reflection\Skins\Custom\Clock – Copy

You will notice (depending on the time of day) the clock displaying a 12 hour time. In the evening it can look rubbish, so we want to change it to a 24hr clock.

To do so, right click on the clock and “edit skin”, as you want to change a measure, simply look down the code to the measure you are looking for, and edit the format how you want it. To find the code for the measure you are after, they are most often located in the Rainmeter manual on the site, here is the page for the time measures;

Save the file, refresh the skin and to your delight, the time will presented properly.

There is so much to do

So many skins to explore and customise, you can flick between themes that you create so easily, you can export them from one computer to another with ease. It is just an awesome, lite, programme that just makes your PC that much nicer.

Following is a list of the skins I am running in the picture above.

HaxCleanUI - fairly simple to pull apart and learn how executables work in Rainmeter, I use it for my clickable text folders in the bottom left.

Enigma – Only whilst I am looking for a sweet network monitor and shold be included in your basic package.

Illustro – This is fairly standard too, I use it for my recycle bin, disk space and RSS feeds, but I used these to play about with different font sections.

Weather – I had great fun working out which part of the URL needed to be included.

Rising Reflection – I have this for all my time measuring.

Have you got any good recommendations, or think I have missed something or want any clarification, leave a comment or get in touch.

The post My introduction to Rainmeter appeared first on Andy Marchant.

I'm missing out all the standard Google Webmaster, Insight and Analytics, Moz's, Search lands that you read and get tweeted at all day and just listing some of my favourite, more personable blogs.

SEO

James Welch SEO - Over the last few months, James' blog has become one of my essential reads. His flow charts are phenomenally logical and his data visualisation posts are some of the most interesting thought provoking on the internet. I challenge you to not take something away from his posts.

James Carson Social Search - He is constantly challenging preconceptions of the SEO industry and his no holds barred approach to the fluff found on other SEO sites is particularly refreshing. I feel I can relate to James as he has worked his way up from a similar position I find myself in today. I love the way he backs up his posts and has a certain way of presenting toilet talk.

SEO Gadget - I have learnt a lot of what I know about collecting and presenting data through the excel guides and extensions found on SEO gadget, they also introduced me to SEO tools plugin for Excel by Niels Bosma.

SEO Nonsense - Apart from an annoying domain, the style and subject of his writing isn't hard to enjoy. It would be satirical if it weren't so on the button. Sometimes exaggerating, always controversial but you can tell the guy has got the knowledge to back it up.

EnjoyAlex - Colleague and friend of mine, I look forward to him expressing his dry outlook on the industry on his blog in the same way he does in person.

Other

I follow plenty of other sites about business, gaming and Tottenham, it wouldn't be right not to mention some of them.

David Hornik Venture Blog - It may look dry, but I find it worth the investment on the infrequent occasions he does post.

PsyBlog - I have a growing interest in psychology and any post I have an inkling that can be related to our industry gets bookmarked for a later date for when I am smart enough to make the connection.

Tony Robbins Business Blog - If you haven't heard of Tony Robbins, he's a celebrity life coach and has worked with a lot of high profile people. He is essentially a self help extraordinaire and a lot of what he says may be cringe worthy, corny and crammed full of vague metaphor, but I wouldn't be the man I am today without embracing the self belief he attempts to inspire.

Such Small Portions - An ever suffering Spurs supporter, just like the rest of us.

Some more others...

Kotaku - For the gaming.

MCV - For the business side of gaming.

Crazy Leaf Design - Design and that.

9gag - Yup... I'm a 9gagger.

The post Sites I Frequent appeared first on Andy Marchant.

A man with international club experience, he’s led 3 international teams out onto the pitch for a total of 80 games. The win percentage is something of a worry, 31 out of 80, but considering the teams he managed, it’s probably not the worst record to have.

He’s made moderately successful teams out of little resources, there are no jobs with less resources than the England role, but his keen eye for long term squad building is a notion that whilst being a fine attribute, won’t win any plaudits come the Summer.

The FA have a long-term plan, but to not bow in to public pressure, Roy will need to make a decent go at the Euros.

As an England fan, I wouldn’t mind us getting knocked out of the Euros, as it’s frankly inevitable, but to do so excitingly. I would rather watch 3 exciting England games, where we are adventurous going forward, than 4 mediocre battles where the ball is passed around the back and we win by a single goal.

For this long term plan to work, Roy needs to win the backing of the public, he’s already at a disadvantage by not being our nations number one choice, and his previous failings with Liverpool has tarred his previously respected record.

A poor show by the squad will see this long term plan squandered as pressure mounts for him out of the seat

He’s got a lot to prove just in the run in to the Euros, the heavily scrutinized captaincy role, the issue with Terry and Ferdinand (do we really need both?), and the whole squad selection.

We all have an opinion, the only reason I am holding a grudge is how the FA dragging their feet has caused Spurs' season to go down the shitter.

The FA have potentially cost us Champions League football next season, we might finish 4th, but considering before Capello left we were settled in third spot and launching; in the words of Alan Hansen "a genuine title challenge", the papers continually linked Redknapp to the role and after that our form was horrendous.

It shouldn't have had any bearing on our league, but it did, and if the reason Redknapp didn't get the job is because of the drop in Spurs form, then the causality of that is something they have overlooked completely.

They chose not to disrupt West Broms season, but instead let the media question our players and staff over and over again, whilst they held extremely covert talks with Hodgson.

As an England fan, I hope Hodgson does great, but as a Spurs fan, this grudge may be quite hard to overcome if after a disappointing summer of watching England, I have to revert to watching Spurs on Thursday nights.

The post England crash out the Euros appeared first on Andy Marchant.

Site Visibility

To understand the current overall health of the site in the search engines I will carry out the following processes;

Crawl analysis;

Using Xenu or Screaming Frog I will assess how many pages exist on the domain.

Google saturation;

Using a site: search I will look at how many of these pages have been indexed, ensuring the home page is at the top of the search.

Bing saturation;

I will do the same on Bing to cross reference and make sure Bing picks up the site.

Current visibility for brand and current key terms;

Checking where they currently stand for highly relevant key terms from glamour down to copy pasting a couple title tags into Google will give you an idea of visibility and could alert to any problems;

Ensure external properties are up to date;

Check the places pages and social media properties have correct information on them;

Site Construction

A lot of this will take place in the initial stages of a project, you got to get client buy in from the word go to get any problems identified ironed out before any offsite promotion can be considered. Onsite issues make a huge percentage of ranking factors as Mr Cutts constantly goes on about. Algorithm updates that affect on site such as the recent "above the fold" algo update need to be considered too.

Assess broken links and internal redirects;

See if there are any internal issues on the site with Xenu or Screaming Frog;

Look at fundamental site issues;

Any analytics and Google and Bing Webmaster Tools are set up correctly;

Look at crawlability;

Looking at what content the Google spider sees and to make sure it can actually crawl the site by checking the robots.txt and via using services such as SEO browser;

Analyse site speed

Site speed IS a ranking factor, I haven't got a clue how to fix any of the issues, but I sure as hell know how to identify them. I use Chrome Page Speed addon, YSlow addon for Firefox, Pindom and by using Google Webmaster Tools.

URL structure

The most benefit comes from having a clean, keyword rich URL structure with minimal foreign characters and a logical folder structure.

Find duplicate content in structure issues, implement fixes;

The site might be making its own duplicate content, but this can most of the time be fixed quite easily by editing the htaccess file, by implementing various on page elements or with the various plugins available (depending on the platform).

If the site already has multiple instances of duplication, you need to 301 redirect to the existing pages; and implement canonical tags to combat any pagination issues;

Link Popularity

Look at how many links the site has accrued and what sort of power is being transmitted to the site. To do this I will use what tools are available, I can carry out an in depth analysis using Majestic SEO, Open Site Explorer and more recently I have enjoyed Ahrefs free analysis tools.

Understand where the links are coming from and where the links are pointing to, fresh and un-SEO'd (hmm..) sites should have naturally accrued links after some time, found out what pages are attracting these links, see if this matches up with Analytics top pages;

One of the first steps is to identify what current gaps are there that can be exploited, (lack of directory sites, old properties without 301’s, check citations are all examples of some quick wins)

Market Research

Understanding the market, the vertical, competitors and all other stakeholders in a business is key to understanding a campaign and gives you the vision moving forward for creating content, keyword targeting, demographics and more

1. Look at market data from Hitwise, and studies from Mintel and Econsultancy;
2. Analytics can help build your own research;
3. Research will also help create content, knowing what sites people go from and to goes some way to understanding how to carve the content, what content has proved most popular either by onsite navigation, search or other sources.

Keyword research

I gather keywords from a bunch of different tools, paid and free, study analytics to see what terms are bringing traffic to the site. Evaluate the terms for volume, traffic and position and use excel to display in a way that’s easy to understand for people other than me.

Content

The site needs all variations of content.

1. Introductory or explanatory content on key anchor pages;
2. Fresh content across deeper pages, for pulling in onto anchor pages;
3. Ensure content is optimised for key terms and pre-empts trends in search;
4. Media such as pictures and videos;
   1.  Following best practice, use own video hosting for self made videos, apply with rich mark up for best chance of inclusion in SERP’s;
   2. Assess suitable file names and tagging;

So there you have it, a rough and ready guide to how I do the initial SEO’s from the very beginning of a campaign. Once all the basework has been completed, then you go about the actual marketing of the site, gaining links and making the most of social media, but they are two posts for another day.

Any glaring mistakes? Wrong order? Shout them out in the comments or give me an email.

The post My SEO Process appeared first on Andy Marchant.

In short, I didn’t want to work.

But I did have an interest in the internet and expressed my somewhat muted opinions on to it in the form of a personal Blogspot, what I didn’t know was how to make money from it, sure I knew about adsense, even got my running total up to £18, but making any form of income I thought was impossible.

I could have quite easily supplemented my fairly healthy student loan wage with a bit of additional beer money by taking what I know now and making the use of all the time I had between lectures.

I might not have have made millions, but in three years, who knows how much I could have earned.

Beyond setting the site up, adding content could mean very little additional work. It just so happens that the exam board and the Google bots have a common interest, original, un-plagiarised content.

At Uni you will create shit loads of it, granted some will be delicately lifted from sources, but the majority will be in your own words and Google loves it.

After three years of uploading the content, you will be pulling in plenty of long-tail traffic for a lot of terms surrounding the subject of your studies. Make a bit of effort with headers, titles and descriptions and you could end up being in a very handsome position three years down the line.

Tagging your work

By tagging all the posts with relevant key terms to the subject, you will also have one of the best file management and recovery systems going. When the exams come around, searching through the tags of the different modules or subjects

You would have stacks of paper come the end of the year, but by uploading it onto the website, you cut down on all the searching and can just use a search bar or tag could to find all relevant information on your site.

Money and other perks

If you want to make money you can be as clever as you like, become an Amazon affiliate and add relevant texts to the articles, find any other number of affiliate services or just let adsense do its thing. The money will start coming in.

Tampering about with it would be all part of the fun and finding ways to push traffic, monitor positions and continually improving it could end you up with a job in the long run.

I would do anything to have another three years experience at the SEO game, not matter how part time and hobbyist it may have been.

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