Blogging

Google EU Settlement / Facebook IPO / Long-Form Content

by Barry May 19, 2013

When it was revealed that Google would settle its EU antitrust case by making a range of concessions, I thought it would be worthwhile to look at what these concessions would actually do to promote competition and innovation in the European digital economy: State of Search: What Google’s EU Settlement Means For Search Speculating about [...]

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Outsmarting Google / Fighting Sexism / SEO Distributed

by Barry May 15, 2013

I was sent a review copy of Evan Bailyn’s book Outsmarting Google. While the book’s subtitle was a bit too optimistic and the content a bit light on technical details for my taste, I did find it a solid introduction to effective SEO tactics. State of Search: Book Review – Outsmarting Google Some aspects of [...]

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Google’s 2012 / FTC exoneration / Perceived Value

by Barry January 4, 2013

In my last post of the year for State of Search I looked back at what 2012 brought for Google in terms of bad PR. I feel it’s been a hallmark year for Google where the public woke up to the fact the search giant isn’t the altruistic cuddly bear we want it to be, [...]

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Long-Form SEO Writing / Meet Your Marketer Interview

by Barry November 30, 2012

Triggered by a series of blog posts deriding the pervasive ‘What X Taught Me About Y’ blog fluff, culminating in Joanthan Colman’s excellent ‘We Can Do Better Than This‘ article, I wrote a post for State of Search listing the obstacles to a widespread adoption of investigate SEO writing, and providing a few possible avenues [...]

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Structured Data / Dublin SEO Summit / Part-time Jobs

by Barry November 28, 2012

In my last regular blog post for Search News Central I wrote about how over time my perspective on structured data has changed, from skeptic to fan: Search News Central: My Changed Perspective on Structured Data I’ve now come to believe that structured data is, in fact, the future of the internet. At some stage [...]

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The Basics of Blogger Outreach

by Guest Author October 23, 2012

I usually don’t publish guest posts here, but this one is the result of a very well-crafted blogger outreach email that I felt warranted a reward. I take no responsibility for the quality or accuracy of the article – though obviously I think it has some merit otherwise I wouldn’t publish it. Enjoy: Link building [...]

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Index Status / What Google Wants

by Barry August 8, 2012

A new function Google has added to its Webmaster Tools shows how many pages on your website the search engine has crawled and indexed. In my latest post for Search News Central I give a real world case study demonstrating the usefulness of these new reports: Search News Central: Index Status – Google’s Gift to [...]

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Problematic Personas / Ideal Digital Team

by Barry July 11, 2012

In my latest post for Search News Central I explain my discomfort with using personas in online marketing. It boils down to the fact that online marketing is a data-driven industry, and personas are mostly guesswork supplemented by wishful thinking: Search News Central: The Problem with Personas in Digital Marketing At best, personas are extrapolations [...]

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Tom Gregan writes bullshit, Net magazine publishes it, hilarity ensues

by Barry June 19, 2012

Recently .net magazine – a reputable publication aimed at web designers – publishes an article entitled “10 things you need to know about Google Panda and Penguin“. In it the author, Tom Gregan – a one-year veteran of the SEO industry and already in the lofty position of ‘Head of Search‘ at Brandfluent Digital – [...]

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Ecommerce Category Pages / Don’t Rely on Google / Free Speech

by Barry May 11, 2012

In a new post for Search News Central I list a few of the aspects that go in to making a successful category page for an ecommerce website: Search News Central: Best Practices for Ecommerce Category Pages Essentially a category page is a transit point, a fleeting stop between arrival and destination. Its purpose is [...]

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Reclaiming (not provided) / Author Rank Hype

by Barry April 24, 2012

For State of Search I explored a way to reclaim some of the keyword data that was lost when Google implemented SSL search. With some clever Google Analytics filters and custom reports it’s fairly easy to correlate (not provided) keywords with known keywords, and thus reclaim some of your lost metrics: State of Search: Yet [...]

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SEO Debates / Click2Rank Interview

by Barry March 28, 2012

In my latest article for State of Search I argue against arguing about SEO – or at least a specific type of ‘meta’ argument about SEO: State of Search: The Source of All SEO Debates These meta arguments are about whether SEO equates to spam or not, whether a tactic is white hat or black [...]

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