The judges said:

“Successful search marketing today is all about collaboration: with clients to make sure that their websites are written and organized in a way that search engines understand; with clients’ customers to make sure engagement is happening at all levels; and with other marketing channels to get the best out of every penny spent. The winning campaign here used solid SEO techniques, social media and tactical PPC to achieve that collaboration with great success.”

Read more on the PushON blog.

1. Citations – Google uses citations for Local Business Listings in the same way it uses Inbound Links for its local ranking algorithms. The more citations you have the higher probability you have to rank well in Google Local Business. Foursquare allows you to add your address and phone number to your listing which is enough to qualify as a citation for this purpose. Tom Critchlow has some awesome information about Google Local here.
2. Link Building – You can leave tips on venue pages. Not many people have noticed that when you leave a tip you have the option to specify a link. These links are followed. For an example of these links take a look at my comment on the PushON Foursquare listing.
3. Bing Maps – Bing recently announced that they’re going to be including Foursquare data in their maps. There is no reason why Google and other mapping website won’t start doing it.

Got another reason? Let me know!

The main reason I find Foursquare so interesting is that you can view all of your check in history on Google Earth. This feature is not promoted as well as it should be by Foursquare, so this is how you do it.

1. Log into your Foursquare account
2. Select the “History” tab from the horizontal navigation menu
3. Select the RSS icon on the right-hand side of the page
4. Select the KML feed link from the list of feed formats

The KML file should download and allow you to view your history in Google Earth.

You can download Google Earth from here.

Sam Rutley on Foursquare

So what are the options?

Google Chrome

Google Chrome was released by Google in September, 2008. Chrome was built from the ground-up making it one of the fastest and most reliable web browsers out there. Recently Google added extensions which makes Google Chrome a viable alternative to Firefox.
Download Google Chrome

Mozilla Firefox

Firefox was released by the Mozilla Foundation in November, 2004. Firefox has evolved tremendously since its launch in 2004 and has by far the largest number of extensions of any modern web browser.
Download Mozilla Firefox

How to find an SEO company

• Search for “SEO + Your Town/City” (for example “SEO Manchester“) and look at the highest ranking SEO companies. Ignore the paid advertising along the top and right-hand side of the page and also ignore any Google Local Listing/Google News items that appear.
• Get a recommendation from other business owners. If you know someone who has worked with a search marketing company ask them about their experience using that particular agency.

Questions to ask a potential SEO company

• “Can I be number one on the Google for some competitive term? By some unrealistic period of time” – if the answer is yes steer clear of them. Many cowboy agencies claim they can get you to number one for X terms but they will actually mean through pay-per-click advertising.
• “How much will you charge?” – if the answer is less than a few hundred pounds per month avoid them.
• “How do you go about building links to my website?” – if the answer mentions any of the following avoid them; buying links, link farms, content networks, bulk directory submissions, link exchanges.

Choosing an SEO company is hard and you may not get it right the first time so make sure you ask the above questions, keep asking what you’re getting for your money each month and monitor the results closely.

Objective: Force users to define specific custom fields on pages using custom templates and display them as separate required fields in the page editor.

How it would work: As the developer you simply put add the required variables to the custom template file when you declare the template’s name. Something like:-

<?php
/*
Template Name: Snarfer
Requires: page-subheading | Page Subheading
Requires: some-image-for-popup | Popup Image
*/
?>

These fields would then be displayed in the page editor and the user would be unable to publish the page unless the custom field has been entered.

Anyone know if this has already been done? If not, what do you think?

However now they include the users real name as well as their username.

This is another opportunity great for both brands and people to own more of the SERPs for their names.

• Events
• Housing
• Jobs
• News
• Products
• Services
• Travel Packages
• Vehicles

Google then pumps this information into a variety of services including Google Product Search, Google Base Search and most importantly Universal Search (this is the name for when Google search includes news, images, products and other items in the results page).

Here is an example of a Universal Search result for the query garden shed:

As you can see from the example above the Google Product Search results have been inserted into the SERP (search engine results page) above all organic listings and directly below any PPC adverts- this is valuable space. It is also worth noting that Shedstore appears twice in the Google Product Search listings and is ranked #3 in the organic listings and that Screwfix.com appears in the Google Product Search listings but does not appear in the top 100 search results.

This example illustrates the value of adding items to Google Base. Over the next few weeks I am planning to post about each of the different Google Base formats and how to optimise Google Base.

• iFooty – great app that helps you stay up-to-date with the latest football news and pulls in live match text from the BBC. Saves me loads of time checking the scores for the best team in the world!
• Remote – allows you to control your iTunes from your iPhone.
• Twitterific – Lets you post tweets/replies to Twitter and view your Twitter feed.
• Facebook for iPhone – allows you to use Facebook functionality on your iPhone. My favourite (and probably most over-used) feature is the photo uploader, which lets you take a photo and upload it “live” to Facebook.
• WordPress for iPhone – allows you to post to your WordPress blog using your iPhone.

iPhone Review

Over the past six months the iPhone has both delighted and frustrated me. The iPhone is not a great phone. It does not let you send MMS (although some say that being able to send an email is just as good), you cannot forward text messages or contact information, the camera quality isn’t great and it does not do video recording. However the ability to install great apps which increase your productivity and keep you ahead of the game make it a great accessory to have.

Think I’ve been fair? What are your favourite apps? Let me know in the comments!