Articles & resources
635 published articles.
How Our Website Translates Itself Into 5 SA Languages
How the Net Age language switcher translates a whole page into Afrikaans, isiZulu, isiXhosa or Sepedi live, with caching, no duplicate pages and English as a safe fallback.
Read moreHow to Use a Shared Meta Custom Audience Without Giving a Supplier Ad Account Access
Learn how to receive a third-party Meta Custom Audience from an external provider without giving away ad-account, campaign or billing access.
Read moreNet Age Launches the New and Improved RetailX
Net Age has launched a new and improved RetailX, the daily retail intelligence platform for South African retailers, with faster data, AI product matching and smarter alerts.
Read moreSearch by Photo or Voice: How the AI Search on Crazy Plastics Actually Works
Shoppers on Crazy Plastics can snap a photo of a product or simply say what they are looking for. Here is the technology behind picture search and voice search, step by step.
Read moreGoGee Launches blog.gogee.ai: The Complete Content Platform Behind Our Clients' Articles
blog.gogee.ai is our own content platform: an editor built for writing, AI that helps rather than replaces, real SEO tooling, internal link intelligence, scheduling, search and reader analytics. Here is a full walkthrough of every part of it, with screenshots.
Read moreGoGee Launches Website Replays and the AI Assessment: Optimise Your Website With Evidence
Two new pieces of technology on Net Age websites: session replays that show you exactly where visitors struggle, and an AI assessment that explains what to fix first and why it matters.
Read moreLargest Contentful Paint: Why Site Speed Costs You Sales
What Largest Contentful Paint measures, what a good score is, and how we track LCP, INP and CLS from real visits for every site we look after.
Read moreUnderstanding Google Analytics 4 Revenue Metrics: A Simple Guide
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is a powerful tool that helps businesses understand how their websites perform, and how users interact with them. For e-commerce businesses and online…
Read moreSEO in 2023: How AI and Voice Search Are Changing the Game
With every passing year, the digital landscape transforms, and SEO is no exception. As we immerse ourselves deeper into 2023, two prominent players are reshaping the SEO realm:…
Read moreBlack Friday Planning
Hiding your Black Friday specials up until the last minute might seem like a good idea to get all the full price sales you can, but you may actually be hurting your performance.…
Read morePOPI Act In Effect 1st July
Just a quick reminder that the provisions of the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) go into effect on the 1st July. Technically, it came into effect last year, but it…
Read moreApple Update Impact On Facebook
Apple's recently delayed, but nonetheless upcoming, update to iOS14 (i)S 14.5) will include the already much discussed "App Tracking Transparency" feature, which will require that…
Read moreA Decentralised Social Network
Twitter, one of the most active social media platforms, has been working on a new, decentralised social network, (called Bluesky) for a couple of years now, and earlier this…
Read moreGoogle, Facebook & The News
It has been a tumultuous month for Facebook and Google, as the world watched with interest while Australia threatened to make them pay for any local news content they displayed,…
Read moreFacebook Counters Apple Privacy Update
In the middle of an on-going privacy battle between Facebook and Apple, Facebook is launching a strategy designed to circumvent a planned Apple update that will severely impact…
Read moreHuge Privacy Fines For Google & Amazon
In the wake of the collapse of the EU-US Privacy Shield Agreement , France's privacy watchdog CNIL (Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertés) announced last month…
Read moreFacebook & Google Unbundling?
In the last month of last year, lawsuits were filed by the US Justice Department against Facebook, and Google's parent company Alphabet Inc. Accused of using their market power to…
Read moreWhatsApp - Facebook Data Sharing
A poorly explained and understood announcement by Facebook recently has led to unprecedented growth in the user bases of both Signal and Telegram, rivals to the Facebook-owned…
Read moreApple Changes Affect Facebook Marketing
Recently announced changes to the latest Apple iOS operating system, (iOS 14), have made it necessary for users to actively opt in to the kind of tracking that Facebook has…
Read moreSales Down On Black Friday 2020
Based on early figures, Business Insider has reported an even lower than expected volume of sales this year for Black Friday in the wake of the ongoing pandemic, and amidst the…
Read moreDisappearing Tweets & The Return Of Verification
Twitter made two recent announcements about changes to the platform, one of which was the launch of their new "Fleets" messaging, which allows users to send a series of short…
Read moreUnderstanding Google My Business Insights
Google My Business, (previously known as Google Business Listings) is a free directory-like service that allows business owners to list their business, and have it show up on…
Read moreFinancial Regulators Warn Against Instant EFT
In a surprising announcement, South African financial bodies the Reserve Bank, and the Financial Sector Conduct Authority, issued a warning this week that consumers should beware…
Read moreAdvertisers Working With Social Media To Curb Harmful Content
3 months after a major advertiser boycott which led to massive brands such as Coca-Cola, The Hershey Co., Unilever, Verizon, Honda, Birchbox, Ben & Jerry’s, The North Face, REI,…
Read moreAnti-Trust Report Hints At Tech Firm Break-Ups
After a 16 month long investigation, followed by a virtual hearing with the CEO's of Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google (Alphabet), the US House Judiciary committee released a 449…
Read moreFacebook Removes Ad Text Limit
In a move which will no doubt be welcomed by Facebook advertisers everywhere, Facebook has removed its restrictions on text in your Facebook image ads, which was previously…
Read moreFacebook EU Operations In Doubt
As we all know, online privacy, the security of user data, and the use which that data is put to have become significant issues at this stage of the evolution of our digital…
Read moreBlended Model Expected For Future SA Office Work
With the unprecedented shift to remote working at the start of the nationwide lock-down nearly 6 months ago, many companies, and especially large corporate ones, discovered a…
Read moreOnline Shopping Post Covid-19
Traditionally, South Africa has lagged behind in the ecommerce trend, with brick and mortar outlets, many of them in malls, tending to perform significantly better than ecommerce…
Read moreInternal Links and SEO
An internal link refers to a link on your site that points to another page on the same site. In practical terms, it's what your site visitors use in order to navigate around your…
Read moreWeb Design - Accordions
Everybody is familiar with accordions on websites, those little tables (popular for FAQ's for example) where clicking on the text of the question, or the icon next to it, opens up…
Read moreFacebook Grants For SA
If you own a small business in South Africa, and have been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, you may be eligible for a grant from Facebook of up to R24,482 in cash, and R14,689…
Read moreHacking On The Increase
According to numerous recent reports (and borne out by our own experience after the past few months), the incidences of hacking and phishing attacks on websites and workers has…
Read moreSupport Paid Search With YouTube Advertising
While it's tempting to focus your energy on generating high-converting leads from paid advertising targeted directly at people who are actively searching for your product, brand…
Read moreeCommerce Surges Under Lock-Down
While many, perhaps even most, businesses in South Africa have found themselves struggling under the national lock-down, (one of the harshest in the world), eCommerce in SA has…
Read moreGoogle Ad Revenue Drops For First Time
For the first time since eMarketer began estimating ad revenue for Google, the net US digital ad revenue of the search and advertising giant will decline. Combined with continued…
Read morePOPI Compliance Deadline Set
Although promulgated into law in 2013, the Protection of Personal Information Act, (or POPI Act) has been in only limited effect for the past 7 years, never really going past the…
Read moreSocial Media Tips For Lockdown
It can feel strange showing up on social media in a time where people are going through extreme anxiety, devastation, illness, and massive change. But amid the chaos, businesses…
Read moreVirtual Meeting Do's & Don'ts
With the country locked down for 21 days, as many of us as possible are now working remotely, taking advantage of the tools made possible by the digital age. And with such remote…
Read moreMarketing In The Time Of Lock-Down
The outbreak of COVID-19 in South Africa, and the resulting lock-down that the government has put in place to help slow the spread of transmission has resulted in many…
Read moreManaging Your Marketing In Times Of Crisis
With the ongoing global health crisis caused by the spread of the novel coronavirus pandemic of COVID-19 now starting to hit hard in South Africa, many businesses are faced with…
Read moreWhich Social Media Platform?
Although broadly similar on the surface, the various social media platforms can differ widely in the intent of their users, and as a result, choosing the right social media…
Read moreDesigning For Attention
One of the most critical things to bear in mind when it comes to website design is that the website, whatever it is for, is not being designed for you . (Whoever you are.) It's…
Read moreTwitter Tests Flags For False Tweets
With increasing concerns about the proliferation of false or misleading information on social media, Twitter appears to be planning a way for users to provide feedback by…
Read moreGoogle To Drop 3rd-Party Cookies
In a move that is causing consternation across the world, Google has announced plans to drop support for 3rd-party cookies from Chrome in 2022. Cookies have long been the backbone…
Read morePOPI Adoption Expected Soon
Although parts of the POPI (Protection Of Personal Information) Act have technically been in force for some time already, the remaining (and most important) provisions have not…
Read moreInternet 2020 - Changing Behaviours
In the last 20 odd years, the internet has changed almost unrecognisably for those of us who were using it back then. And the changes in the internet has, by necessity, changed…
Read moreLeaked Facebook Emails Reveal Poor Data Practices
According to internal messages leaked from Facebook earlier this month, top-level employees strategised about how they could leverage the vast quantity of user data Facebook…
Read moreInstagram Like Removal Expands To US
Following on from their initial trials in 7 other countries , Facebook-owned Instagram has now expanded the trial to the US, hiding "like" counts on posts for a selection of…
Read moreHow To Get The Best Search Results
As pervasive as Google has become for almost everybody, there are still a few tricks you can use, to make sure that Google can give you the result you're looking for. According to…
Read moreUser Experience: Contact Page
Site usability and the user experience are critical factors when it comes to converting website visitors into leads, and the "Contact" page on your website is one that is…
Read morePayfast Introduces Split Payments
In a first for South Africa, online payment gateway providers Payfast have introduced a new "Split Payments" option, that will allow merchants with platform-based businesses, such…
Read moreBiggest Google Algorithm Update Ever
Last week Google announced that they are in the process of deploying the biggest search update since the original launch of the search engine, in order to help them better…
Read moreFacebook Planning Major WhatsApp Changes
A recent announcement revealed some big plans on the cards for Facebook-owned messaging app WhatsApp, some which users will no doubt be pleased about, and others, not so much. New…
Read moreFacebook's PTAT Score
One of the many metrics that Facebook makes available to you is the "PTAT" score, or "People Are Talking About This," but it's a metric that is not always well understood. It can…
Read moreGoogle Ad Practices Under Investigation
Heading toward the end of a year which has no doubt proven trying for practically all of the online "giants," Google, perhaps the biggest of all, is facing yet another anti-trust…
Read moreLatest Google Update Boosts Reporting
In an announcement made earlier this month, Google reported that the latest update to its search engine algorithm is intended to increase the relevance of original reporting.…
Read moreBlack Friday Figures & Stats
Well, it's nearly time for Black Friday again, and no doubt everybody is making sure that any specials or promotions that they have planned for the 29th will be ready well head of…
Read moreFacebook Testing Hiding Likes
After reverse engineer Jane Wong recently discovered some test Facebook code, and Facebook confirmed that it was considering hiding "likes," the popularity metric that they…
Read moreYouTube To Stop Servings Ads To Kids
It's not just Facebook who has been facing the regulators for their business practices. Google property YouTube has been under investigation by the same Federal Trade Commission…
Read moreExpanded Placement Options For Google App Ads
At the same time as Google is planning on restricting or removing targeted ads from kids videos , they're also introducing more placement options for their app ads. At the moment,…
Read moreFacebook Rebrands Instagram & WhatsApp
In a move that appears to be quite widely derided, Facebook has decided that it is going to forcibly remind everybody who owns Instagram and WhatsApp, by officially rebranding…
Read moreDiscover Group Advertising Efforts Revealed
An interesting detail has come out of the ongoing court case between the Discover Group (including Discovery Life) and competitor Liberty. The calculations on which they're basing…
Read more525 Million Africans Online
According to data compiled by marketing firm Miniwatts, and sourced from Nielsen Online, the International Telecommunications Union, GfK and local regulators, an estimated 525…
Read moreGoogle Terminates Controversial Chinese Project
At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing earlier this month, Karan Bhatia, Google's VP of Public Policy, admitted that the company's controversial plan to re-launch its search…
Read moreFacebook Currency A Potential Economic Threat
Late last month, following an on-going series of leaks about the project, Facebook officially announced its plans to launch their own, in-platform cryptocurrency, to be known as…
Read moreYouTube Tips
With around 2 billion active users, YouTube is one of the most popular and widely used online platforms in existence, and it is just as popular in SA as anywhere else, with more…
Read moreFacebook Shareholders Vote Against Zuckerberg
At the beginning of this month, Facebook revealed that outside investors had voted overwhelmingly in favour of a series of proposals to fire Mark Zuckerberg, owner and CEO of the…
Read moreGoogle Core Update June 2019 - Search Relevance
The latest update to the core Google algorithm began rolling out this month, and has been classified as a "broad" update. In effect, broad updates mean that Google has no…
Read moreWhatsApp Acting Against Spam
In a recent update on their website, Facebook-owned WhatsApp, arguably now the most popular messaging platform in the world, announced that as of December 7th this year, they will…
Read moreFacebook To Get Biggest Ever Redesign
At the end of last month, Facebook announced that it would be getting what will probably be the biggest ever redesign of the platform in 15 years. The new look was officially…
Read moreUser Experience: Form Building
The forms on your website are a crucial part of the lead generation process, and as such, it's important to keep their overall usability in mind when planning your form. Remember,…
Read moreFacebook CEO Facing Unprecedented Threat
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, Facebook Chairman, and controlling shareholder, has always made a point of ensuring that his power over Facebook is effectively unassailable, an…
Read moreIntel Chip Security Flaws Patched
Earlier this month, researchers released information revealing a flaw in almost every Intel chip manufactured since 2011 that made it possible to harvest sensitive data, including…
Read moreBritain Seeks Leading Role In Regulating Social Media
The internet has traditionally been seen as largely "ungovernable" thanks to its decentralised nature and the potential (fast decreasing) for anonymity. A popular description for…
Read moreFacebook To Remove White Nationalist Content
As we've seen from far too many recent articles, Facebook is under global pressure from the governments of many different companies to both be more conscious of, and to take more…
Read moreMobile Page Speed - New Industry Benchmarks
Page speed has been one of Google's over 200 ranking signals for nearly 10 years now, but it only became an acknowledged factor for mobile ranking in 2018. With that update, (the…
Read moreFacebook Facing Possible 5 Billion Dollar Fine
After the relatively recent Cambridge Analytica scandal which saw Facebook user data being harvested and used for political campaign purposes, the Federal Trade Commission in the…
Read moreEcommerce - Communicate Your Specials
If you have an ecommerce site, chances are you regularly provide special offers, discounts or promotions for your clients. Just having the special is not enough though. It's…
Read moreFact Checking WhatsApp
With the continuing proliferation of so-called Fake News, it is becoming more and more important to ensure that we can differentiate between them. And while on social media…
Read moreFacebook Sues Chinese Companies For Selling Fake Accounts
According to a report earlier this month, Facebook, and more specifically its Instagram division, are suing 4 companies based in China for promoting the sale of fake accounts,…
Read moreGoogle Core Update
On March 12th 2019, Google released their latest update to the search engine algorithm. originally dubbed "Florida 2" by SEO's, Google took the unusual (but not unprecedented)…
Read moreThe Law And Digital Media
It has long been the case that the law lags behind our social and technological development, sometimes by a considerable margin. However, it looks like the law is finally getting…
Read moreSouth Africans Online
According to the Global State Of Digital In 2019 report by Hootsuite, South African's spend among the most time online of any country, with an average of nearly 8.5 hours a day…
Read moreEmoji's Making Court Appearances
In the unlikely event that you ever needed more evidence that we're in the digital information age, it turns out the emoji's the little pictures (or emoticons, the little symbols)…
Read moreThe Facebook Anti-Suicide Algorithm
Following on from recent scandals surrounding the live-streaming of suicides on Facebook, the company last year launched an ambitious project to use artificial intelligence to…
Read moreUnderstanding Business Intelligence
The concept of business intelligence has been becoming more and more popular these days, but it's important to understand the underlying principle in order to start making…
Read moreSA Cybercrime Bill
More than 3 years after first being tabled in Parliament, the South African Cybercrimes Bill is finally on the verge of being officially enacted, with the Deputy Minister of…
Read moreUnderstanding 301 Redirects
A 301 Redirect is an instruction to both Google, and to anybody who visits the site, that the content they are looking for has permanently moved to a new location, and it will…
Read moreInstagram To Remove Fake Likes & Followers
Last week Instagram (owned by Facebook), announced that in a continuing effort to reduce "inauthentic" (fake) activity on the platform, they would begin removing fake likes and…
Read moreTips For Mobile Ecommerce
With mobile searches now outstripping desktop searches thanks to the prevalence of smart phones and other mobile devices, the importance of considering mobile usability, for…
Read moreShopping Carts And Wishlists
In a recent study by user experience researchers and experts the Nielsen Norman Group, it was found that providing users with the ability to save shopping cart items for possible…
Read moreOver 1.2 Million ZA Domains
According to the ZACR (ZA Central Registry), more than 1.2 million domains have now been registered across all Second-Level Domains that the registry administers. This includes…
Read moreFacebook Introducing Advanced Analytics
At the beginning of this month, Facebook announced that they were rolling out advanced analytics that would make it possible to measure performance at a level higher than simply…
Read moreGoogle & Fake News
In the latest salvo in the fake news stakes, Google itself has been identified as a major enabler of the proliferation of websites which spread fake news, or "disinformation." It…
Read more50 Million Facebook Accounts Hacked
At the beginning of this month, Facebook announced that as many as 50 million user accounts had been compromised by hackers who took advantage of a vulnerability in the "View As"…
Read moreFacebook Moves Against Bullying With Keyword Blocking
Under pressure for some time already to combat the growing problems of bullying and harassment on Facebook, the platform has announced that they will begin to allow users to block…
Read moreSouth Africa Online - September 2018
According to Narratiive, a leading online audience measurement, modelling and verification company a total of 39.6 million unique browsers viewed over a billion pages online in…
Read moreGoogle My Business Update
Up until recently, the Google My Business (formerly known as Google Business Listings) dashboard only showed your address when you went to edit it, and not a map showing where…
Read moreUS Pressures Facebook & Twitter To Make Rules Clearer
The on-going investigations into election interference and misinformation by the United States congress saw appearances by both the Chief Operating Officer of Facebook, and the…
Read more20 Years Of Google
20 years ago this month, and two years after it was launched internally at Stanford University by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google was officially incorporated as a company. At…
Read moreGoogle & Mastercard In Deal To Track Retail Sales
Everybody knows that tracking conversions is one of the most important part of your online business. We go to a lot of trouble to accurately identify the source of leads and sales…
Read moreProtect Your Company Website Analytics
One of the most important tools you have when you're advertising online is website analytics. It gives you insight into where your website visitors are coming from, what their…
Read moreGmail Uses AI To Help You Save Time
If you're a regular Gmail user, you might have already seen how Google is using their AI to help save you time when it comes to answering your emails if you've been using their…
Read moreGoogle Recommends 301 Redirects For HTTPS Migration
As you'll know, Google has recently been putting more emphasis than before on securing your site via HTTPS, or Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology. This is a form of encryption…
Read moreTechnology For Fake Video Improving Rapidly
So-called fake news has been one of the hottest topics for the last year, and platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have working on addressing threats posed by…
Read moreYouTube Go Launched In South Africa
A new YouTube app, specially designed to be and offline-first option that reduces the (often heavy) data load of the traditional YouTube, has launched in South Africa. According…
Read moreTwitter User Numbers Down
Hot on the heels of Facebooks reported slow-down of growth for Q2, Twitter followed suit by reporting not just that growth had slowed, but that they actually lost 1 million active…
Read moreFacebook Shares Drop On Q2 Growth
Facebook has just released its earnings report for the 2nd quarter of 2018, and slowed growth for the social media platform is causing some concern regarding its future potential.…
Read moreGoogle Faces Biggest Anti-Trust Fine Ever
In Europe's biggest ever anti-trust claim, Google is facing a potential US$ 5 Billion fine for anti-competitive practices relating to their use of the mobile Android operating…
Read moreWrite Better Website Content
Writing content for your website can be one of the most challenging parts of getting a new site. Whether it's sales related content for the main areas of the site, or articles for…
Read moreFacebook Losing Importance As Source Of News
A recent report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism has revealed social media in general, and Facebook in particular, is losing ground as a source for news as…
Read moreFacebook Reveals What Data It Collects
Following on from Mark Zuckerberg's appearance before the US Congress in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and as part of his testimony, Facebook has revealed all (or…
Read moreGoogle Rebrands Advertising Products
Yesterday, almost 18 years after launching their Google Ads platform to allow businesses to advertise in their search engine results, Google announced that they will be…
Read moreFirst Human Vs AI Debates By IBM
In the first ever public demonstration of an AI technology that IBM has been working on for the last 5 years, last week saw the tech giant's "Project Debater" pit their artificial…
Read moreSouth Africa According To Google
With around 40,000 searches being processed every second by Google, the internet giant can provide some interesting insights into the everyday lives of the people who use it. They…
Read morePage Speed Affects Mobile Search Ranking
Earlier this year, Google announced that as part of their "Mobile First" drive, and their on-going commitment to providing answers to search queries as fast as possible, they…
Read moreNew Social Media Guidelines For Political Ads
In the wake of recent scandals about social media and its impact in political campaigns and elections, two of the worlds largest social media companies have, almost at the same…
Read moreAre You Ready For The POPI Act?
The Protection Of Personal Information Act (No 4 of 2013) has been hovering in the background for quite some time already. Its intention is to bring the practices governing data…
Read moreSet Your Own Data Retention Policy In Analytics
Earlier this month, Google Analytics users received an email telling them that, as a result of the new European General Data Protection Regulation, which comes into effect at the…
Read moreThe Beauty Of Analytics
Google Analytics was launched in 2005, and was called Urchin. Since then, it's seen numerous changes and massive growth. The standard Google Analytics is available fee of charge…
Read moreGuide To Google SERP Features
Search engines, and especially Google, are always working to improve the user experience. In essence the whole point of search engine is to provide relevant and accurate…
Read moreThe Challenge Of Brand Authenticity
In online marketing in recent years, authenticity has become one of the most popular buzzwords. Everybody is talking about people’s need to be authentic, but very few people are…
Read moreDownload Your Facebook Data
Unless you've been living under a social media rock for the past couple of months, you've probably noticed that Facebook has been in the news a lot, and has been embroiled in some…
Read moreGoogle Confirms Algorithm Update
Ah, for the good old days when Google announced updates and gave them cute names like "Penguin" and "Panda." But those days are gone, and it was only after webmaster noticed…
Read moreEdit Your Google Business Description
Google My Business has been a valuable resource for some time, allowing you to put information and images about your business into Google, which can display in Google maps, or in…
Read moreGoogle's Mobile First Index
Statistics show that in the recent past, mobile has overtaken desktop for the most number of search queries. These days, more than half of search queries are performed on mobile…
Read moreBrands & Storytelling: Tell Stories That Matter To You
Telling stories is part of our makeup as human beings. We have been gathered around a “fire” for thousands of years, and the sharing, and eventual documenting, of stories has been…
Read moreGoogle Sets HTTPS Deadline
Google has announced that the new, updated deadline for sites to convert to HTTPS is July of this year. After that, their browser, Chrome, will begine prominently warning users if…
Read moreGoogle Updates SEO Starter Guide
Google introduced the first ever Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) starter guide in November of 2008, to serve as a guideline for webmasters to better understand how to improve…
Read moreHow Social Media Changes Brand Interaction
According to The Content Factory , 81% of all small and medium businesses use some kind of social media platform to advertise & build their corporate branding. Some sources…
Read moreFacebook Engagement, Privacy And The Threat To Democracy
It's been a busy month for Facebook, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg staring off the year with a public announcement that his resolution for the year was to fix the social network. After…
Read moreFacebook AI Training To Prevent Suicides
Over the last year and more, there has been a disturbing trend of people live-streaming their suicides on Facebook, and considerable outcry against the social media platform for…
Read more10 Years Of Google In Africa
The beginning of this month marked the 10th anniversary of the opening of the first Google office in Africa, and Google held an event in Johannesburg to celebrate the milestone.…
Read moreTour South Africa's National Parks On Google
Earlier this month, Google announced that after a year of preparation, planning, and a lot of walking by a lot of volunteers, they had captured Street View footage of all 19 major…
Read moreFewer Featured Snippets
Ever since their appearance, featured snippets (or answer boxes) have been a prized search position, and much thought (and many strategies) have gone into getting them to appear…
Read moreTwitter Testing 280 Character Tweets
The Twitter character limit has always been a thing. Except in countries where the written word makes use of an alphabet where characters can convey more meaning than mere letters…
Read morePosting Smart On Facebook: Socially Responsible Advertising
Social media comes with many privileges, and just like any other medium, these privileges come with responsibilities. Finding the balance between freedom of expression and social…
Read moreCan You Rank In Google Without Inbound Links?
Inbound links have been a greater part of Google’s ranking factors since the beginning of time. According to Google algorithms, the more links you have pointing to your site…
Read moreExploring The New Google Ads Interface
There has been a lot of debate lately among the Google Ads community regarding the new Google Ads Interface, which has been released on Beta earlier in 2017. I, for one, have…
Read moreGoogle To Alphabet To XXVI
Although it feels like Google's corporate reorganisation and the formation of the Alphabet holding company that became the parent company of Google, (even though Google was first)…
Read moreStay Online - Stay In Business
In the latest case of retail brick and mortar stores struggling to compete in an increasingly e-commerce focused environment, US toy giant "Toys 'R' Us" has filed for bankruptcy…
Read moreSubmit URLs To Google In Search Results
Getting your site indexed by Google has always been critical when it comes to appearing in the search engine results, and traditional means of doing so have usually been either…
Read moreFacebook Addresses Hate Speech By Removing Targeting Options
In what is supposed to be a temporary measure, Facebook has announced that they will be removing some popular self-reported targeting options for advertisers, in order to prevent…
Read moreTo Animate Or Not To Animate
In a technological era characterised by sensory overload, your content is required to constantly compete for the attention of your audience. With increased internet access and…
Read moreTappable Mobile Sitelinks
According to Google, more than 50% of searches are done on mobile devices, and in certain countries, mobile searches have overtaken that of desktop searches. So, it is no surprise…
Read moreDesktop And Mobile Usage Compared
In the last few years, there's no doubt that a growing amount of website traffic comes from mobile devices. As more and more people get access to the internet via their phones,…
Read moreGoogle Increases YouTube Monitoring
After the recent YouTube controversy , Google has announced that as of September, they will be monitoring YouTube more than ever before in order to demonetise channels which are…
Read moreGoogle Introduces New Ad Filter
Google recently announced plans to add a default ad filter on the chrome web browser to filter out ads that create a frustrating web user experience. Though this may seem to be…
Read moreSearcher Task Accomplishment - 2017’s Ugly SEO Content
If you head over to the biggest SEO forums at the moment, you’ll find them abuzz with a new and mysterious ranking factor called “Searcher Task Accomplishment”. It’s being dubbed…
Read moreWill Social Advertising Destroy Social Media?
It is no secret that social media marketing is a huge business. I can't think of a single thriving company that you cannot find, engage with, or even purchase from, online.…
Read moreImproving The Online Ad User Experience
During the development of The Internet the way we know and love it today, we have all experienced frustration time-and-again when encountering online ads. Whether it’s a pop-up ad…
Read more2017 Internet Trends To Look Out For
Since 2001 Mary Meeker has been delivering annual web trend reports, shedding some light on what direction the internet trend scale will take throughout the year. This years…
Read moreThe Worst Online Advertising Techniques
Online shopping is one of the biggest phenomenons on the World Wide Web. Because so many people opt to browse online for products before purchasing, It‘s no wonder online ads are…
Read moreMachine Learning: The Future of Google Ads Bidding Strategies?
From June 2017, Google Ads has a new Smart (Automated) Bidding strategy called Maximize Conversions. Google Ads Smart Bidding is defined as “ A subset of automated bid strategies…
Read moreHow To Eliminate Duplicate My Business Listings
Google My Business listings offer a great way of getting users to your site, and even directly to your business. But as an almost entirely automated system, there is a lot that…
Read moreDo You Need An Agency To Run Your Social Media?
To be honest, you don't actually need an agency to run your social media efforts. That is, if you're willing to dedicate your own time to responding to countless comments, running…
Read moreGoogle Increases Ad Transparency For Publishers
Google has introduced two new updates in their AdSense feature that will increase transparency for publishers regarding AdSense policy violations, hopefully making it quicker and…
Read moreWhy Marketers Love Social Media
If you're reading this article, then you're probably one of the 3.6 billion people in the world who have access to the internet. That's only 46% of the people in the world, but 20…
Read moreImproving Your Ecommerce With Social Media
The relationship between social media and sales has always been a difficult one. Not only can socially driven ecommerce be tricky to measure, but social media users don't usually…
Read moreGoogle Clamping Down On Fake Businesses
According to a recent report, Google, in conjunction with computer scientists at UCLA San Diego are working on identifying and removing fake business listings on Google Maps.…
Read moreYouTube Controversy - Big Changes Coming
There has been a lot of controversy lately for YouTube and YouTube content creators alike, as several major US and UK brands have decided to stop advertising on the platform. This…
Read moreTwitter Users Offer To Buy Company
If you've been following along, Twitter has been experiencing the corporate version of existential angst for quite some time already. After the heady days of it's IPO of $26 a…
Read moreWhy SEO Is Unpredictable
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the process of making strategic efforts to improve search engine rankings by implementing more relevant content, creating a positive user…
Read moreThe Evolution Of SEO
Search engine optimisation has always been one of the most contentious, and contended, aspects of online marketing. There was a time, not all that many years ago, when ranking…
Read moreDMOZ Officially Closes Doors
In 1998, a new web directory launched in a challenge to the then pre-eminent Yahoo directory. Although it went through a few name changes and owners in the next few years, it was…
Read moreGoogle Automatically Adding Ads To Accounts
Google has started rolling out a new "service" to Google Ads users, by automatically opting them in to a new system called "Ads by Google Ads." According to them these will…
Read moreRunning A Social Media Contest
Social media has become one of the biggest sensations of modern technology. It's been used as a tool for everything from putting out political campaign content, to holding…
Read moreCould Your Facial Reaction Affect Rankings?
A recently published Google patent suggests that it may at some point begin using biometric indicators in order to modify ranking results based on the physical reaction of users…
Read moreFacebook To Block Discriminating Ads With AI
Earlier this month, Facebook announced that it would be using AI-based tools to identify ads for a selection of categories including credit, jobs and housing, and block them if…
Read more.Africa Domains Available Soon
After years of legal challenges, the ZA Central Registry will finally be able to make the .Africa generic top level domain (gTLD) available to the public. ICANN, (the Internet…
Read moreWhy People Unsubscribe
Email marketing remains one of the most effective forms of online marketing to date, but if you're going to be sending your client list emails, there are a few things you need to…
Read moreGoogle Discontinues Site Search
For years now, (since 2008) Google has made it possible for website owners to use their powerful search functionality on their own websites. Now, according to a recent…
Read moreDoes Your Company Need Facebook Marketing?
Well, according to experts, the answer is probably "Yes." And why is that you may ask? Because Facebook generates more advertising revenue than any of its social media peers.…
Read moreThe Personalisation Of Search
Search engine optimisation. One of the holy grails of online marketing is the first organic result for a search for your products or services. Everybody wants to be on the front…
Read moreHome Service Ads - Paid Local Listings
As far back as 2015, Google began experimenting with a beta, invite only program that enabled some businesses offering "home services" (just plumbers and locksmiths to begin with,…
Read morePop-Up Mobile Ad Penalty
Earlier this month, Google's latest algorithm update went into effect, penalising mobile sites with intrusive pop-up ads and interstitials (the full screen ads or notices that…
Read moreBrowsers Warn Users Of Insecure Log-In Pages
As of the next update to Google's Chrome browser, (version 56) which will release by the end of this month, and the newest version of Firefox, browsers will warn users when…
Read moreUnexpected Analytics Spam
We've talked about spam appearing in Analytics accounts before. We also talked about how Google appeared to have won that particular round, and removed the referral spam , only to…
Read moreGoogle Plans Mobile First Indexing
According to Google, the majority of people are more likely to search for information using a mobile device. It's certainly no secret that a sites mobile friendliness is important…
Read moreFacebook Admits To Data Errors
Earlier this month, Facebook revealed that the reporting data it shares with publishers and advertisers could have been subject to errors. This comes two months after they…
Read moreTwitter To Provide Tool To Curb Abuse
In the wake of ongoing scandals surrounding the use of the social media network Twitter in online abuse and bullying, Twitter this month announced that they would be rolling out a…
Read moreGoogle Links Online Activity To Personal Information
In a very quiet and decidedly non-public update to its privacy policy, Google has rescinded their promise to never link their ad tracking with personally identifiable information.…
Read moreLocal Search Update
Earlier this month Google implemented an update to their local search algorithm, which controls the "Local 3 Pack" of results that appear in the search results below a map when…
Read moreGoogle Adds Fact Check Tag
As an ever increasing amounts of information are added online, establishing the veracity of that information has become an important factor for both people and corporations. As…
Read moreNew Penguin Discounts Links
Last month we posted about the new Penguin update finally going live , and about how it was now a real-time, built in component of Google's search algorithm. Since then, some more…
Read moreReal-Time Penguin Update Launches
Finally, after what seems like years (in fact it has been years), Google has announced the release of the newest, and last, Penguin algorithm update. It's the last one, because as…
Read moreGoogle Ads Optimisation – 10 Basics You Need to Know
[fusion_text]So, you set up an Google Ads campaign, your ads are live, traffic is coming to your website and you have a whole lot of data to show for it. But now what? The data…
Read moreDigital Advertising Spend Growth Continues
According to a report published earlier this month by global media network company Carat, advertising spend on digital media could become as much as 27% of the total global media…
Read moreGoogle Unveils Smart Messaging App
Google has just unveiled its smart messaging app, Google Allo, featuring the first preview of their digital assistant in a late entry to attempts by various companies (see Apple's…
Read moreFacebook Advertising – Purchase Intent Or Branding
I’m a social media manager, and I think that Google Ads advertising is more effective than Facebook. There…I said it. While other social media managers plot my imminent demise,…
Read moreHow Brands Influence Consumers
As more and more options become available to the consumer, and as it becomes ever easier for the consumer to compare products, prices, and services, the importance of brand equity…
Read moreGoogle Testing New Search Results Look
When Google first broke onto the scene in 1998, one of the things that really set them apart was their clean, simple look. Compared to other search engines of the day, cluttered…
Read moreMarketing Automation
When the first advanced marketing automation systems were introduced in the mid 1990’s, the price of them, and the limited online presence of consumers, made it close to…
Read moreThe Importance Of Online Brand Building
The world is moving faster than ever with constantly evolving technologies, emerging social media platforms, viral videos, trending topics, streams of memes, algorithm updates,…
Read moreYouTube Advertising Vs TV Advertising
In today’s digitally dominated world, it’s becoming clearer than ever that consumers are moving away from their television sets, and spending more time than ever online. In fact,…
Read moreGoogle Frustrations – Taking Away Important Data
I regularly swing between loving Google and being seriously frustrated by them, and this is one of those really frustrating times. This is a long read, but I do think it’s worth…
Read moreDon't Be Fooled - Ecommerce Is Harder Than It Looks
Most companies who approach us for marketing for their ecommerce websites expect that they’ll set up their ecommerce site, allocate a small marketing budget, and sit back and…
Read moreIs Augmented Reality The Future Of Online Marketing?
Well the short answer is no. Or at best, certainly not yet. But Augmented Reality (AR) is starting to offer consumers exciting new ways to interact with brands. Most importantly…
Read moreCompetitor Google Ads Campaigns - Are They Worth It?
The ability to serve your advert when a user searches for a competitor brand term is a contentious subject. Some clients are enamoured with the concept and will spend thousands of…
Read moreInstagram & Modern Marketing
In our modern and fast paced digital world, that's all too often driven by an "I'll believe it when I see it" mindset, there are new forms of content, and new ways to market,…
Read moreSnapscan WooCommerce Integration
Did you know that you can accept Snapscan payments from your Ecommerce site? Snapscan is a popular payment app in widespread use in South Africa, that allows you to pay merchants…
Read moreMicrosoft Acquiring LinkedIn
Microsoft recently made a remarkably large bid to claim space in the social networking sphere with their proposal to purchase LinkedIn, (the worlds largest professional social…
Read moreDo Twitter URLs Get Clicked?
A recent study carried out jointly by Microsoft, the French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation, and Columbia University examined 2.8 million shares on…
Read moreCourt Upholds Google Ads Decision
In a landmark decision last week, the Supreme Court of Appeal upheld an earlier High Court decision overturning a bid by Cochrane Steel to prevent a competitor from bidding on…
Read moreSouth Africa On Social Media - 2016
World Wide Worx and Fuseware conduct a regular survey into South African use of social media platforms. Their latest South African Social Media Landscape report was released…
Read moreThe Lead Starts Here
For the most part, the purpose of your online marketing is to generate leads for your business. Brand building campaigns can be an exception to this, but in general, your…
Read moreSpam Referrals Return To Google Analytics
Last month we reported that Google appeared to have finally managed to filter out the referral spam that was flooding Analytics with fake traffic. And there was a general…
Read moreGoogle Product Review Penalty
Earlier this month saw scenes of confusion as Google dished out a manual penalty for "unnatural" links to an unknown (but apparently large) number of webmasters. A manual penalty…
Read morePageSpeed Insights & Analytics
The speed at which your site loads, (or page speed) has been considered one of the more important ranking factors in Google for some time already. With Google's focus on the user…
Read morePersonal Sharing Declines
According to a recent study by GlobalWebIndex , personal sharing on social media has undergone a significant decline, even while sharing for non-personal (commercial or…
Read moreUnpacking The Google Ads Layout Change
Recently Google made an unexpected change to how they’re laying out the Google Ads results in search. Instead of the old “3 ads at the top” and then a list of ads in the sidebar,…
Read moreToolbar PageRank Finally Dies
PageRank. The secret formula that Google used to decide how important any given web page was has finally been officially retired from public view. 16 years ago, Google made it…
Read moreAnalytics Removes Referral Spam
For a couple of years now, webmasters and online marketing agencies have been faced with a pernicious problem in Analytics. Referral spam. Referral spam was a technique of…
Read morePenguin Update Pushed Back Indefinitely
Despite having told you in January that the long awaited penguin update was due " soon ," it now appears that it may not be rolling out in this quarter after all. The Penguin, or…
Read moreGoogle Ads Results Layout Updated
In a surprising change, Google has rolled out a new ad display layout, that has significantly changed the ad real-estate landscape on search engine results pages. According to…
Read moreGoogle Contributor Expanding
In November of last year, Google began rolling out the Google Contributor program, designed to allow people to reduce the number of ads they see, on the sites they visit. Since…
Read moreDeep Learning Course Made Available
If you've been following the tech news recently, you'll have noticed that there has been a lot of attention paid to the concept of "Deep Learning" in the last few months. Deep…
Read moreGoogle Penguin Update Expected Soon
According to a Tweet from Google's Webmaster Trends Analyst, Gary Illyes, earlier this month, the long awaited and much expected update to the Google Penguin algorithm is expected…
Read moreNew Structured Data Markup Released
Earlier this month, Google released an update to their structured data which analysts suggest points to an ever increasing rise in the importance of user experience, and…
Read moreUnderstanding Online Reputation Management
In a digital world, word of mouth travels faster than ever before, and the credibility and reputation of your brand are tangible assets that can both accumulate value, or…
Read moreIt's Not Always About Google
A very interesting study recently by Impending Boom has suggested that, in some places at least, it's not all about Google. Intrigued by a trend he noticed in the number of Google…
Read moreA New Way To Calculate PageRank
A recent patent filed by Google suggests that the search giant may be considering a change to the way that pages are assigned rank by their algorithm. The original PageRank system…
Read moreGoogle Removing Inactive My Business Listings
In the wake of a recent announcement by Google that they would be removing Google My Business listings that were unverified, or which had no activity, we've seen a few of our…
Read moreMobile SEO - Ranking In Mobile Search
As everybody knows by now, Google encourages sites to be mobile friendly. In fact, since the "Mobilegeddon" algorithm update in April of this year, mobile-friendliness has been…
Read moreGoogle Reveals RankBrain AI
Ok, maybe not strictly AI in the truest sense, but a few days ago, in the wake of new Google "over-company" Alphabet earnings reports, Google revealed that for several months…
Read moreUnderstanding Email Personalisation
For all its simplicity, email marketing is still one of the most effective ways of communicating with, and selling to, your clients. Modern email software systems make the…
Read moreUnderstanding Conversion Rate Optimisation
We've always said that when it gets right down to it, the objective of your website is to convert visitors. A conversion could be a sale, it could be a lead. It could be somebody…
Read moreInstagram Advertising
After being acquired by social media giant Facebook nearly 6 months ago, Instagram recently announced that they had reached 400 million active monthly users, making them bigger…
Read moreMicrosoft To Drop IE8 Support
Internet Explorer 8, first released 5 years ago, is still one of the most frequently used web browsers, installed on more than 20% of PCs. It also still accounts for around 6% of…
Read moreHow Important Are The Latest Ranking Factors
A recent study published on Moz examined the relative impacts of the latest ranking factors released by Google on both informational and commercial queries. As you'll recall,…
Read more7 Pack Becomes 3 Pack For Local Results
As of the beginning of this month, Google began implementing a change to the way that the local results are displayed in search. Where we've been used to search engine results…
Read moreGoogle Reorganises Corporate Structure
Earlier this month, Google made new waves when they announced the implementation of a corporate restructure, in which they'll reorganise under the name "Alphabet," of which Google…
Read moreOptimise PDF Files For SEO
If you upload PDF's to your site for your visitors to read or download, it's a good idea to keep in mind that in many cases, Google can read that PDF and even display its contents…
Read moreSnapScan Implementing Ecommerce Payments
Already a common sight at retail outlets, South African based mobile payment application SnapScan has announced that they have launched the pilot phase of their ecommerce plugin.…
Read moreGoogle Panda Refresh In Progress
After months of relative quite, Google announced last week that they had begun rolling out the newest update to the infamous Panda algorithm, designed to reduce search engine…
Read moreTaking Advantage Of Micro-Moments
Think about how attached to your phone you are. Chances are that your phone has become an indispensable part of your day-to-day life. The cell phone is rapidly taking over digital…
Read moreTwitter And South Africans
There's no doubt that Twitter is one of the most popular social networking platforms available, and there's a lot of advice out there on how to use Twitter for your business. But…
Read moreAbove The Fold - Does It Matter
The origin of the term "above the fold" lies in the world of newspaper layout. Anything that was visible on the front page of the newspaper when it was folded in half on news…
Read moreEmail Marketing vs Social Media
“If your business isn’t on social media it may as well not exist,” is a phrase often spoken by people who don’t understand social media. What they fail to realise is that their…
Read moreTwitter Self-Serve Advertising In South Africa
Twitter’s advertising platform arrived on the scene in 2010, to the slight apprehension of many major brands. However, over the last four years, the platform has grown massively…
Read moreNew Google Ads Ads for Mobile Searches
With Google’s recent mobile update to their algorithm, we saw mobile-friendly, responsive sites starting to earn a ranking advantage over non-responsive ones. Now we’re seeing…
Read moreCould Facts Become Google Ranking Signal?
Google has recently published a paper that could look to drastically shake up the way they rank their index in the future. While the level of data handling in the paper is still…
Read moreGoogle Takeover Rumours Send Twitter’s Stock Up
Well, it isn’t the freshest rumour around, but more recent speculation on a potential takeover bid by Google caused Twitter’s stock to rise almost 4.8%, ending on a 52 week high.…
Read moreA New Way To Target Google Ads
Hot on the heels of Facebook’s introduction of ‘Custom Audiences’, Google is looking for a new way to target ads more directly. Custom Audiences is Facebook’s way of doing this,…
Read moreSouth Africa Online - By The Numbers
As technology advances in even bigger leaps from year to year, it becomes easier to get more of the world’s population online. Internet penetration – that is, the number of people…
Read moreThe Perils of Facebook Traffic
At the moment, Facebook provides more website traffic referrals than any other social media platform, by a significant margin. But amidst the sudden boom in Facebook video and the…
Read moreHealth Search On Google
Using the internet as a tool for finding out what’s ailing you is a tried, but not-very-well-tested, online tradition. We’ve all heard those jokes. Maybe we've even gone onto…
Read moreMobile Friendly Sites To Rank Better In Mobile Search
In a post on the official Google Webmaster blog yesterday, Google announced that as of the end of April, (the 21st in fact), the mobile friendliness of sites will be a ranking…
Read moreThe Value of FAQs
We’ve all seen our share of very useful and entirely confusing Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ or Q&A) sections. They can be a massive help when their questions seem to almost…
Read moreTwitter Lets Google Index Tweets Again
Twitter’s searchability has been a noticeable issue between it and search engine titan Google for quite some time now. The collapse of their original indexing agreement was a good…
Read moreDesigning Websites for the Colour Blind Visitor
Website accessibility is one of the popular new buzzwords in modern web design. Essentially it allows people: with physical disabilities, who speak other languages or who have…
Read moreGoogle Shuts Down Woza Online
In January of 2012, Google launched a free website service for South Africa, in partnership with the DTI, Vodacom and the HRDC. Since its inception, Google estimates that around…
Read moreAdSense Policies Unclear
AdSense is not usually something we pay much attention to, because in general, it's not really worth it unless your site is receiving huge amounts of traffic. For those that…
Read moreMultiple Location Extensions For Mobile Ads
Google recently announced an update to the Google Ads location extensions that will allow multiple locations to display for mobile search ads. This is great news for advertisers…
Read moreMobile User Experience May Affect Rankings
At a recent search marketing expo, Google engineer Gary Illyes spoke extensively about user experience, saying that webmasters should be focusing more attention in this area. But…
Read moreAre You Seeing Tweets From People You Don’t Follow?
Facebook recently came under fire for it’s now infamous ‘Emotional Study’ which involved the manipulation of a number of user’s timelines. The stalwarts of Twitter, one of…
Read morePenguin 3.0
Google has confirmed that their anti-spam algorithm, Penguin, was updated for the first time in over a year on Friday 17 October. Penguin is designed to target sites that it deems…
Read moreSocial Commerce: Buying Items on Facebook and Twitter
Mobile commerce or social commerce– the ability to purchase goods and services directly through social networks on your mobile phone - is something that companies have been…
Read moreThe Power of Subtlety in Web Copy – Speaking Your Clients Language
Let’s set the scene of a somewhat typical buying process. A prospective client discovers a need, carefully researches their options, enquires with a few suppliers, compares their…
Read moreGoogle Structured Snippets
It was announced yesterday in a post on the Google Research Blog that Google has rolled out a new feature that can show tabular data from your page under the description in the…
Read moreGoogle Penguin Update - Finally
In early 2012, Google released an algorithm update that was codenamed “Penguin.” This update was touted as an anti-spam measure, apparently mostly aimed at bad linking. Another…
Read moreGoogle Changes How Mobile Ads Might Display
Starting October 15, Google will be changing the way that users see ads on mobile devices. As it stands now, mobile ads are displayed in a similar way to the ads we’re all…
Read moreFacebook Reduces Click Bait
When it comes to Facebook, the term "organic reach" refers to the percentage of your followers who will see something you post in their feed. In what many commentators have…
Read moreGoogle Drops Authorship Markup
Just over 3 years since Google first announced in a 2011 blog post that it would be supporting authorship mark-up and including rich snippets showing it in search results,…
Read moreHTTPS Becomes Ranking Factor
On the 6th of August, Google announced on their Webmaster Central Blog that as of this month, having an SSL certificate (effectively encrypting your URLs and adding the HTTPS…
Read moreGoogle Pigeon Update: What We Know After Week 1
It’s been a week since Google’s Local Search algorithm update was rolled out in the U.S. Since our last article on the subject a few SEO experts have weighed in, reporting any…
Read moreGoogle Updates Local Search Algorithm
Last week Thursday (24 July 2014) Google released its new algorithm update which, though yet unnamed by Google, has been dubbed Pigeon by SEOs. The new algorithm will have a…
Read moreAre We Being Manipulated By Facebook?
Yes we are. On a daily basis in fact. In case you hadn’t heard, Facebook went and did something a little bit strange recently. Facebook claims that the study they conducted –…
Read moreGoogle Webmaster Tools Releases Robots Testing Update
The robots.txt exclusion standard is a bit of an ambiguous convention, acting as sort of the opposite of a sitemap. But while one might see the value in telling a web crawler what…
Read moreGoogle Ads Character Limits
I'm sure everybody who has ever had to write an Google Ads ad is familiar with the (often frustrating) Google Ads character limits. Just in case, let's quickly reprise them:…
Read moreIs Your Social Media Presence Really Selling Your Products?
These days, you’d be hard pressed to find a business that doesn’t have a Facebook page. And, on paper, it makes sense for these businesses to set up these pages and employ people…
Read moreOn-Site Content Writing Tips For Semantic Search
The introduction and increasing development of Google’s semantic search - otherwise known as the Hummingbird algorithm update - has not so much thrown the SEO rulebook out the…
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Read moreGoogle Panda 4.0 Rolls Out
If you've been following along with the on-going state of the SEO industry, you'll know that recent times have been fraught with changes. On that score at least, things have…
Read moreContext Is The Real King
The increasing industry focus on semantic search and context based content has created some of the biggest upsets in SEO in years, as well creating a significant surge in social…
Read moreGoogle Post Ads Now Available To All
At the end of last year, Google announced its +Post Ads, an Google Ads feature that allowed a limited number of select advertisers to turn a public post on Google+ into an…
Read moreSocial Media Shares
Some interesting, if slightly contradictory info out recently about the proportion of social media log-ins, and who is winning the war for social attention. 2 days ago, Gigya ,…
Read moreGoogle Ads Search Query Data Limited
It's already been a few years now since Google encrypted search queries, first for searches carried out by users who were logged in, and then increasingly for any organic search,…
Read moreHummingbird And The Future Of Search
Late last year, Google rolled out its new search algorithm, named Hummingbird, with the aim of giving users more precise results for their searches. In the past, the Google search…
Read moreReport Content Scraping
It's pretty frustrating to find out that somebody has copied your work. We've all had experience with that kid who sat next to you in class and copied your test answers. Imagine…
Read moreThe New Approach To Writing SEO Content
The ultimate goal with the new SEO is to win an audience. Sure, you have to do certain things with your webpage so that search engines will give it a better ranking, but that's…
Read moreThe Internet by Numbers – Global & Local Online Statistics
The number of internet users worldwide grows every day. The online world is already a big place, and it's only going to continue to grow. Right now, about a third (35%) of the…
Read moreInternet Marketing Beyond SEO
E-commerce website owners often focus so much of their time and effort on search engine optimisation that they often forget that websites are primarily built for people, not just…
Read moreGoogle Algorithm Update Feb 2012
In a post yesterday on Google's official search blog , the most recent changes to the Google algorithm were announced. Or if not announced, at least talked about and hinted at,…
Read moreNew Google Site Links Dominate Search Page
If you're a regular user of Google, (and these days, who isn't?), you might have noticed that what were once very small and unobtrusive extra links below some search engine…
Read moreGoogle Merchant Centre About To Be Rolled Out In South Africa
The Google Merchant Centre is a tool for managing your product inventory so that your products can appear as Product Listing Ads on Google, and on Google Shopping and Google…
Read moreGoogle Plus Advertising On The Way
It was only a matter of time before Google worked ads into (or out of) the growing Google+ network, and it looks like that time is arriving. Yesterday, Google announced testing of…
Read moreSurprise Page Rank Update
Although Google's Matt Cuts recently implied that there wouldn't be a PageRank update this year, it turns out that he wasn't quite accurate. After 10 months of inactivity, the…
Read moreDo Search Engine Rankings Even Matter Anymore?
Panda, Penguin, Hummingbird, the Google algorithm is certainly something that doesn't stay the same for long. And with Google no longer notifying people about changes, the Google…
Read moreGoogle Ads Display Changing For Search Results
I haven't seen anything about it online, so I don't know whether this is just a test, or if it's the official replacement for the way that Search Network ads are displayed in the…
Read moreGoogle Helpouts
Yesterday, search engine giant Google announced the official launch of Google Helpouts , a monetised live video platform designed to let businesses sell, and give away, live video…
Read moreGoogle Plus And Youtube Comments
Earlier this week, Google announced that they are finally implementing the changes to the Youtube comments that they started talking about in September. Officially, this revamp is…
Read moreGoogle's One True Log-In
Well, the next step in the Googlification of the internet is at hand. Google has rolled out its single, unified log-in that applies across all Google services. If you use any…
Read moreGoogle's Hummingbird Algorithm
At the end of September, Google retroactively announced that they had implemented a major rewrite of their infamous search engine algorithm, that they were naming “Hummingbird”…
Read moreGoogle Blocks Organic Keyword Data
Two years ago, Google began blocking keyword data from organic search queries if users were signed into their Google accounts while searching. They claimed that this was done to…
Read moreA Converting Landing Page Built on Solid Foundations
Conversion Rate Optimisation has become one of the more scientific online marketing practices. And for good reason. After all, paid search is too big an expense to just waste the…
Read moreSocial Signals Not a Direct Ranking Signal
Google has a tendency towards being cryptic or completely counter-intuitive about the details of their ranking algorithms. Following from this, Matt Cutts, head of search quality…
Read moreSEO Fundamentals That Will Always Work
Google SEO’s shrinking real estate has been a topic of great lament for internet marketers over the last couple of years. Algorithm heavyweights Panda and Penguin have not only…
Read moreIntegrate SEM and Social Media into Online Strategy
The shifting face of internet marketing has produced many challenging obstacles for the modern digital marketer. First came the democratic and conceptually laudable practice of…
Read moreLink Building is Not Illegal Says Google
Since the release of the Google Panda and Penguin algorithms, link building has gradually become more of a dirty word in the web community. This is evident from what was described…
Read moreHandy Google Search Tricks
For the majority of the people who submit the approximate 2 billion search queries each day on Google, only a fraction of them make use of Google’s extended search functionality.…
Read more4 Tips to an Effective Business Blog
Blogging. It’s not a new internet buzzword but it’s certainly been a persistent one since its inception. Many called it a bubble continually on the verge of bursting but, well…
Read moreChoosing the Right SEO Company
The practice of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has changed quite a deal. A lot of the developments in how websites are ranked can be directly attributed to spammers exploiting…
Read moreGoogle Updates Wreak Havoc
At a recent Search Engine conference, Google's Matt Cutts, head of search spam, announced that although Panda algorithm changes were no longer being announced, Panda is still…
Read moreGoing Viral on YouTube
Internet video sensations have been quite the trend over the last decade, with all manner of strange characters and outlandish acts surfacing on YouTube and spreading throughout…
Read more5 Tips to a Successful Digital Campaign
As one of the world’s fastest growing market channels, particularly in developing economies, online marketing is an attractive prospect for many businesses. It gives them a chance…
Read moreThe May 2013 Google Penguin Update
The Penguin algorithm, introduced to combat poor quality sites, has had many websites bracing themselves for ranking changes since its release in April of 2012. So it stood to…
Read moreEmail Campaigns Still a Valuable eMarketing Tool
Email marketing campaigns have a questionable reputation in the internet marketing industry. Despite being incredibly cost effective and highly targeted, the general view of the…
Read moreTips on Getting Your News Releases Published
Press releases are part and parcel of a marketing strategy, being the most directly controllable element of publicity. When you release a new product, make a significant change to…
Read moreNew Rich Pins from Pinterest
Branding and advertising online has taken various forms since its inception, with marketers always looking out for new profitable channels and mediums. Unfortunately, the format…
Read moreSearching Pages From South Africa
Some time ago already, Google made a few changes to its user interface. One of the things that changed was the way you tell the search engine that you only want to see pages from…
Read moreUpcoming Google Algorithm Updates According to Google
The updates which Google release for their algorithms, Panda and Penguin, are often considered a cause for some alarm for SEO agencies and businesses that source much of their…
Read moreGetting Users to Interact with You More on Social Media Sites
With the rising importance of social signals in Google’s ranking algorithm, an effective social media campaign has become more than just an internet novelty for companies on the…
Read moreThe Facebook Knowledge Graph
It’s probably one of the biggest upcoming developments for both Facebook users as well as search engine marketing firms. Facebook’s own knowledge graph , somewhat similar to…
Read moreGoogle Releases Google Ads Enhanced Campaigns
A new update is coming to Google Adwords in the middle of 2013. It’s hoping to address the massive increase in popularity of smartphones, and how people who surf the internet on…
Read moreSmall Things That Drastically Affect SEO
Most people who have done the smallest amount of research on organic SEO know all the basic mantras and their importance. You will likely know that content is king and that you…
Read moreSouth African Internet Behaviour by the Numbers
The Digital Media & Marketing Association (DMMA), an independent organisation for the digital industry in South Africa, recently released a study measuring the internet usage and…
Read moreGoogle Looking to Make More User Sign-In When Searching
The last few years have seen quite a distinct separation of interests of webmasters and popular search engines, mostly at the hands of Google. While many understood the value of…
Read moreFacebook Still Dominating Social Logins
Social logins, often referred to as OpenID, have been a big part of creating a unified authentication source and a general sense of identity for people on the internet in recent…
Read moreIs Google Search Engine Optimization Excluding SMEs
When Google originally envisioned SEO, it was seen as the great internet equaliser. It didn’t matter how much money you had or the size of your marketing department, you still had…
Read moreCreating Effective Content for Organic SEO
Anyone who’s done any mild investigation into SEO has no doubt run into the mantra of content being king. We know that if you want quality organic SEO results, you need to load…
Read moreSimple Tweaks to Your Search Engine Marketing Strategy for Laymen
Many of the tips that are given for an effective SEM strategy are often beyond the technical capabilities of a normal website owner, who perhaps just hired an SEO company to do…
Read moreNew Look For Display Network Text Ads
AdSense has long offered quite a large variety of mediums on which to display adverts on the Google Display Network. The choices range from a simple banner advert offering a…
Read moreFactors Affecting Google+ Local Search Engine Marketing
The release of Google Plus’s Local Search feature was to many websites a sign of a completely new era in local search engine marketing. One in which a commerce websites no longer…
Read more4 Reasons Most Guaranteed Search Engine Placement Ads Lie
If you’re a webmaster, you likely receive dozen of emails each month from SEO companies or individual consultants who promise to take your websites ranking to number one in the…
Read moreLink Disavow Finally Available With Google
Earlier this year we wrote about how search engine Bing has released a link disavow tool for those websites trying to optimise around their algorithm. It was a bold step in the…
Read moreTwitter Launches Directory to Address Searchability Issue
Searchability is an absolutely vital factor for any website trying to be found on the internet. After all, how can you hope to market yourself if your content doesn't show on the…
Read moreGoogle Releases Its Own Link Disavow Tool
It’s been an issue that’s plagued the Google webmaster forums for the better part of this year but finally, this month, Matt Cutts (head of webspam at Google) announced that a…
Read moreMaking Site Navigation Easier
When designing a website, it can be easy for someone to confuse the concept of exciting designs, with practical ones. People tend to think that if visitors find your website…
Read moreGoogle Updates Google Ads Functionality
Users of Google Ads know that the functionality of the tool is constantly changing. There are two primary reasons for this. Firstly, as Google's privacy policy changes they…
Read moreNew Meta-tag For News Articles
Getting articles on Google’s News search engine can be quite tricky for any website with a news section. If your site isn’t a well established publisher of news articles like the…
Read moreIncrease in Fake Reviews and Likes Predicted
It’s been quite the hot topic since the massive surge in popularity of social media sites over the last decade. But marketing in these media channels has proved to be a much more…
Read moreExact Match Domains Targeted by Google
Google is constantly working on its algorithms. They slightly tweak the weight of certain ranking factors, they add new ones and then carefully examine the results of the data…
Read moreFacebook Optimisation for Businesses
Businesses managing an online social media campaign know how hard it can be to properly engage with their market. This is especially true with the social network Facebook, which…
Read moreGoogle Synonym Matching And SEO
The various spellings of words and their numerous synonyms has always been an important factor in the SEO’s keyphrase strategy. And as anyone trying to optimise their content…
Read moreIncorporating Auto Complete Into SEO Strategy
As people use the internet more and more to conduct research for purchase decisions, the need to maintain a good brand image and decrease the visibility of negative statements on…
Read moreThe Shrinking SERP on Google
The first page of Google’s Search Engine Results Page (SERP) is the holy grail of a valuable web presence. Even more so if it’s for a popular industry keyword. Websites, in some…
Read moreThe Ongoing Battle Between Oracle and Google
It’s been going on since mid-2010 and if Oracle has anything to do with it, it won’t be ending anytime soon. Despite the fact that the judge had ruled in Oracles favour, they…
Read moreWriting Content for Conversion Optimisation
For companies operating in an e-commerce environment, or for those businesses that rely heavily on revenue generated by their website, it can be easy to make the mistake of…
Read moreKeyword Research For SEO And PPC
It's becoming harder and harder to find meaningful data on organic search from Google. But one of the few data resources they do still maintain is their keyword data. Whether this…
Read moreLink Building Factors an SEO Company Must Know
The practice of link building has undergone quite a lot of changes recently. Whereas before it used to be a giant free for all, where webmasters used any method at their disposal…
Read moreThe Google Panda and Penguin Updates
They’re the most heavily discussed of all of Google’s algorithms, which is why updates for the Penguin and Panda algorithm tend to make webmasters quite anxious. And when they…
Read moreUsing Google Ads Data For SEO
Anyone practising SEO these days will know that there is a growing shortage of valuable data. As Google applies more privacy measures on how it shares data it collects from its…
Read moreThe Google DoubleClick AdPlanner Downgrade
Those who practice search engine optimisation will know that it’s suffering from a dwindling number of sources for valuable browsing and search behaviour data. The main problem is…
Read moreCustom Google Plus URLs
Branding is an important activity, for any public entity, whether private or commercial. It allows people to identify and, in a sense, communicate with your brand on a personal…
Read moreEffective Landing Pages for B2B Advertising
The purpose of a landing page for a PPC campaign is often misinterpreted by companies. They think that it’s there to inform potential customers about their product offering and…
Read morePlanning B2B Search Marketing
Business to business markets are still quite reluctant to use pay-per-click campaigns as a way to boost business. The purchasing cycles in the markets are longer, buyers are more…
Read moreThe Google Emanuel Algorithm Update
When Google skipped their June search quality highlights, many SEOs didn’t know whether to consider it a good or a bad thing. Now that they’ve released a list of 86 changes, a lot…
Read moreAvoid Penalties For Split Testing
Website testing is often performed by domain owners to improve their conversion figures. It involves using different version of your webpages and seeing which variant returns the…
Read moreSearch Targeting And Multiple Languages
A lot of websites who optimise their pages for multinational search often struggle with translation problems. They’ll often find that the traffic figures from these foreign…
Read moreGoogle Updates for June and July
After a near two month break, Google finally decided to release its normally monthly Search Quality Highlights, the list of changes to its interface, algorithm and search…
Read moreIs PPC Becoming the New SEO
As the commercial markets on the internet grow, advertising methods that were once considered only marginally effective have now become lucrative revenue sources. Spearheading…
Read morePPC Better Than SEO For Small Budgets
Google's recent trend of emphasising paid search results, and giving them more and more room on the front page of search engine results, leaving less space for organic results,…
Read moreLink Locations and Their Effectiveness
Links have been the subject of great contention, amongst both search engines and search engine optimisers. The problem is search engines still have to be wary of link-building…
Read moreUproar Over Journalists Suspended Twitter Account
With the increasing problem of cyber-bullying, which is said to have reached an epidemic level on social networking websites and internet forums, one could be forgiven for…
Read moreMozCast From SEOMoz
Many people who practice SEO think that the most turbulent times in the rankings are when existing algorithms are updated monthly and more gravely, when completely new algorithms…
Read moreQuestionable Keyword Strategies That Still Work
As search engine algorithms become increasingly sophisticated, and as the search engines publicise these advancements, many SEO practitioners have been led to believe that many of…
Read moreGoogle Local Reviews Going Missing
Complaints on Google’s blog have spiked recently, concerning the unexplained disappearance of reviews on certain Business Pages in Google+ Local. The disappearances are apparently…
Read moreLink-Building Still to Be Around For a While
In search engine optimisation, we obviously have to base our practices on what we observe from ranking shifts and, equally importantly, from what search engines are willing to…
Read moreOptimising AdScheduling Based on Dayparting
AdScheduling from Google Ads allows you to choose which times of the day you want your advertisements and PPC links to be displayed. Obviously this presents some interesting…
Read moreWorry Less About Penguins and More About Your Customers
Since the release of Google’s two latest algorithms Panda and, more recently, Penguin, many have speculated that all forms of SEO are gradually coming into their cross-hairs. It…
Read moreGmail By SMS
Google began offering their browser based e-mail service, Gmail, in 2007 and although its market share is still relatively small compared to its competitors (7% by the last…
Read moreUsing SEO in the Foundations of Website Design
In an ideal world, search engine optimisation shouldn't be something that gets done as an afterthought. If you're really intending to succeed at online marketing, then search…
Read moreThe Google Share a Link Experiment
A new development in the way Google+ users can recommend results on Google’s website was announced yesterday on the G+ network by Google associate product manager Sean Liu. The…
Read moreWeb Design for Conversion Optimisation
Navigation structure is a well-known ranking factor. Web crawlers can penalise your pages for long loading times or unintuitive link structures. Human visitors can be even more…
Read moreThe War on Free Clicks by Google
A recent study by SEO Software company, WordStream has revealed some interesting results of Google’s recent intense focus on web spam and the effectiveness of pay-per-click…
Read moreRobot Exclusion Protocol
The robots.txt convention is a file on your site which allows you to specify pages and content on your website that you would prefer search engine web-crawlers not to index. This…
Read moreSEO Best Practices
Since the release of Google’s algorithms Panda and Penguin, a lot of SEO practitioners have been left wondering how effective the traditional optimisation practice are, which…
Read moreNew Firefox Version to Encrypt Search Terms
It’s been publicised by Mozilla (operator of Firefox) as a great leap forward in web privacy practices. The latest update to their browser included a feature that made all search…
Read moreTypical Services Offered by an SEO Company
South Africa certainly isn’t new to SEO. A company in Cape Town with a website though, for instance, will either be still completely oblivious to any search engine optimisation…
Read moreCost and Pricing
So you’ve decided to make use of a professional service for your search engine optimization. Pricing on these various services would depend on what type of strategy is being used.…
Read morePredicted Future Trends in Search Engine Marketing
We seem to have a modestly good grip on effective SEO practices these days, at least a professional does. Search Engine Marketing Strategy, however, should also be focused on…
Read morePractices to Watch Out For From Your SEO Company
South Africa isn’t new to search engine optimisation, with numerous professional consulting firms opening over the last decade. The problem is that many of these SEO companies…
Read moreInternet Marketing Company
The services relating to Search Engine Marketing (SEM) are well known as the most effective method to get meaningful traffic to your site and improving your conversion rate. So…
Read moreSEO in Cape Town Focuses on Mobile Access
As internet penetration in South Africa grows, the practice of SEO becomes more of standard requirement rather than just gaining a competitive edge. And with this, the market need…
Read moreBuilding a Quality Link Profile
It’s an SEO activity that’s fallen into some disrepute since Google’s algorithm updates began focusing on link spam. Before that it was seen by many as the only rank optimising…
Read moreThe Real Value of the Facebook Like
Since the birth of social media marketing, operators in those channels have looked for measures of success for their campaigns. It can be a difficult for a lot of companies so…
Read moreGoogle Search Engine Optimization
Tips for effective SEO are in no short supply. Everyone knows the essentials of search engine marketing (content, linking, structure, keywords etc.) but what a lot of people are…
Read moreWebsite Ranking
Google can be fairly tight-lipped on how exactly their web crawlers’ algorithm works. Most of what we know about their ranking practices is either very obvious or down to studied…
Read moreAffordable SEO Services
So you own a small company that has a few outlets that offer services to the local area. Nonetheless, you’ve heard that even local businesses need some sort of web presence. Not…
Read moreGoogle Gets Fined For Cookiegate
Google isn’t exactly new to being accused of privacy issues or being ruled against in such cases. It’s to be expected for a company whose activities include photographing the…
Read more20 Years Since the First Photo on the Internet
Content on the internet today has stretched to the limits of what can be stored digitally. We can share entire movies in minutes, video chat in almost perfect quality without any…
Read moreWriting Effective PPC Ad Copy
It’s that tiny description you see below a sponsored link. And although it effectively constitutes almost your entire unique value proposition, many advertisers tend to…
Read moreMatt Cutts Interview With Eric Enge
In a recent interview between Eric Enge and Matt Cutts, head of the Search Quality Team at Google, they explored some of the recent concerns SEO practitioners have had since…
Read moreReal Time Data VS Aggregated Data
‘Newer is better’ is a fairly common misconception about the world. This viewpoint is especially prevalent when it comes to the relevancy of financial and economic data. We may…
Read moreLocal SEO
Since the replacement of Google Places with Google+ Local for business pages on the search engine, ranking factors have been the big question. The most obvious ones relate to…
Read moreKeyword Classification is a Mixture of Numbers and People
A commercial companies’ choice of keywords to focus on in their site’s content, or the terms they purchase in a PPC campaign, are normally balanced between the relative popularity…
Read more10 Examples of KPIs for Your Search Engine Marketing Strategy
Whether your Search Engine Marketing is through professional services or in-house, the strategy needs to be accountable to determine its success. In the world of SEM though, the…
Read moreSearch Engine Marketing With Paid Inclusion
Google have long though of the term as a blasphemy. But now it seems that paid inclusion is now not only being tolerated by Google, but that is will be an important ranking factor…
Read moreElements of Search Engine Marketing
Any service or activity that concerns itself specifically with the manner in which websites try to gain a greater degree of visibility, falls under the umbrella of Search Engine…
Read moreUsing Search Engine Marketing to Have SEO Inform PPC
While never seen as fundamentally separate ideas, search engine optimisation and paid search aren't necessarily considered as being symbiotic concepts. Often resulting in a…
Read moreSEO South Africa
The practice of search engine optimisation is relatively well established. And while trying to achieve an international rankings boost can be difficult and frustrating, at least…
Read moreSearch Engine Blekko Release New Update
The search engine Blekko originally came out as a response to the power Google held over the market. Their complaint was that that Google wasn’t doing enough to provide fresh or…
Read moreWeb Design
Services in search engine optimisation today, focus primarily on taking an existing website and adding content and links that will make it more attractive to web crawlers and new…
Read moreGoogle Search By Image Gets Updated
The new image search interface was launched last year along with Google Voice Search for Android, and was very well received. It gave people the option to search for a topic based…
Read moreSuccessful Paid Search Campaigns Through Experimentation
When a website looks into the possibly of using paid search to increase their overall web traffic and conversion rate, their first question would likely be “What PPC strategy…
Read moreBing Launches Link Disavow Feature
We recently reported on the possibility of Google adding a feature to their Webmaster Tools that would allow websites to disavow certain backlinks. The links would still remain…
Read moreGoogle Can Be Fair With Your Link Profile
The release of Google's Penguin algorithm a few months ago represented a renewed and more sophisticated focus on linking. Not a beneficial focus though, mind you. Now, whereas a…
Read moreWeb Users Can Now Mute Google Ads Display Ads
If you're not familiar with Google's display ads, they come in many forms. They can be media-rich banners or just plain text on a web page. Google displays them on the actual…
Read moreInaccuracies in the Google Knowledge Graph
The Knowledge Graph was an exciting project: a search engine that no longer just exposed you to the information of internet but could actually summarise certain topics for you and…
Read moreFlexible Reach With Google Ads
Those with Google Ads accounts can look out for a brand new feature in their campaign settings. Flexible Reach, under the Network tabs, will enable users to employ multiple…
Read moreSEO For B2B Market Websites
Marketing to businesses on the internet has been somewhat of an uphill battle since its inception. The main issue is the level of complexity involved in these sales. A consumer is…
Read moreThe Focus of Your Search Engine Optimization Services
With so many SEO methods available today, many are wondering if there are any quick and cheap search engine optimization practices that can get them results. A good SEO agency…
Read moreBusiness Marketing on Twitter
Using Twitter as a marketing tool for your company is a strategy that's still getting mixed reviews. Many say that the Twitter user's natural aversion to commercialism on that…
Read moreStructuring Your Content Around Reading Behaviour
With the new emphasis search engines are placing on content, many are wondering what kind of content to have on their sites. Google’s algorithm wants them to have natural and…
Read moreLink Building for People Rather Than SEO
We've reported at length on the decreasing importance of link juice in Google's ranking algorithm. Many were relieved and many angered when the focus shifted to content. After…
Read moreGoogle+ Local Giving Businesses Valuable Exposure
We recently reported on the change from Google Places to Google+ Local . For a while after its introduction, it wasn't of that much consequence to the average user, from a…
Read moreThe New Google Localised Search
Google's Venice update in February of year this brought with it over forty changes to its search and indexing parameters. Of all the changes, one of the most exciting for…
Read moreGoogle Panda Update 3.8
We wrote about the introduction of Google's algorithm Panda in February of last year. The learning algorithm focuses on artificial intelligence by filtering out entire sites,…
Read moreBad SEO Practices
As websites fight to get noticed on the rankings, we can understand why many webmasters may make use of unethical search engine optimisation practices to get ahead. However, as…
Read moreMultinational SEO With Venice Update From Google
The new multinational search results update from Google's Venice update has many SEO practitioners excited. Essentially this will be a great balancer for business websites around…
Read moreGoogle Updates Their Algorithm Panda
With the very recent announcement of Google's new Penguin algorithm in late April of this year, many have have forgotten about their Panda algorithm. We reported on previous…
Read moreContent Freshness
'Content is king' has long been a web and SEO mantra, but recently the concept is getting a fresh boost, with the great emphasis Google is placing on it in their recent weighing…
Read moreA Social Search Engine
One of the biggest undertakings in recent search engine history is Google's current Social Search option on Google+ that allows people to query posts and content on G+ profiles.…
Read moreLink Exchanges
Link exchanges started in a time when search engine weighting algorithms could be described as little more than rudimentary. Spamming was hard to detect, let alone penalise. Link…
Read moreGoogle Businesses View
At the beginning of this year Google expanded on their Street View service that they introduced in 2007 to include interior views of businesses in those areas, giving people the…
Read moreGoogle Testing Potential New Interface
We've talked about Google's Knowledge Graph in the past. A resource that would allow Google users to search any given person or topic and which returns, along with the regular…
Read moreTwitter Suffers Sudden Outage
After a sudden, four hour, Twitter service outage yesterday, many deprived Twitterers were left in a froth with everyone asking, what exactly had happened? Twitter's official word…
Read moreNew Google Ads Interface
Google is rolling out a redesign on its Google Ads interface to all account holders. While many think added features when they're expecting an update, the main focus of this one…
Read moreWhy Bad Sites Rank
How sites rank in certain industries on Google often doesn't seem to make any sense. When a website, that looks like it was designed by a hyper-active teenager in the 90's can be…
Read more5 Years of Safe Browsing With Google
According to the official Google blog , Google is celebrating 5 years since the release of its Safe Browsing policy. Its original goal was to make sure the results it displayed…
Read moreGoogle Safe Browsing: 5 Years Old
5 years have passed since Google first announced it's plan to protect all users of their search engine from malware and phishing attacks, with its Safe Browsing policy. Today,…
Read moreLogical Link Building
Links have always been the yard-stick search engines use to measure and rank the relative importance of a specific website. Of course, some links weigh more than others but the…
Read moreSocial SEO for Businesses
With the amount of content exchange happening on social networks these days, it's only natural that many companies are looking to get their products and ideas marketed through…
Read moreTips For an Effective Landing Page
The landing page is what's responsible for the majority of a website's conversions. This is because it's the first consequential decision making point. As such, it could be called…
Read moreAvoid Penguin Penalties
A big fuss has been made after the launch of Google's new algorithm update, Penguin, in April of this year. The main issue, of course, being that it seemed many sites suddenly…
Read moreGoogle May Help Fight Negative SEO
For a long time, negative SEO was seen as sort of a myth, spread amongst webmasters. But it may finally be recognised, not only as very real but also quite a substantial threat.…
Read moreEffective Social Media Campaigns
Social media campaigning as a business concept is still very much in its infancy. And as an infant it characteristically: unpredictable, hard to control, has a limited temper and…
Read moreSucceed With Internet Marketing
With the constantly increasing number of businesses going online, effective internet marketing has become a crucial part of the continued success of any business. An internet…
Read moreLatest Twitter Updates
Social search has been a hot topic over the last few years. With the amount and speed of content being propagated on these types of sites, being able to navigate effectively…
Read moreGoogle Update May 2012
Well, it's that time of the month that Google tells us the most recent "improvements" to their algorithm. You can see the official announcement on the Google blog, Inside Search ,…
Read moreGoogle Places Replaced
No more Google Places. That's right, according to an official Google Blog post , Google Places, that handy product for businesses to list themselves on for a chance to appear in…
Read moreGoogle Penguin Update Updated
The recent Penguin update , first launched at the end of April, has been causing much consternation among website owners and SEO firms alike, with many reports of dropping…
Read moreICANN To Reveal New Top Level Domains
Since the beginning of the year, ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, has been taking applications for custom generic TLD's or top level domains, which…
Read moreGoogle Launches Knowledge Graph
Google has announced that today will mark the initial roll-out of the new Knowledge Graph search results interface, offering users enhanced search functionality and more relevant…
Read moreGoogle Knowledge Graph
The latest announcement out of Google is that, starting today, it will begin rolling out a new way of displaying and interacting with search results. They're calling it the…
Read moreWebspam Update Named Penguin
We've previously discussed the last Google update which has variously gone under the name of the "Over-Optimisation" update, the "Web Spam" update, and now finally, the "Penguin"…
Read moreGoogle Ads Helps With Quality Score
The new changes to the Google Ads interface that Google has just announced are designed to help users manage their accounts better. One of these changes allows account labels to…
Read moreGoogle Update Targets Web Spam Not SEO
The official Google search blog has announced a new update, apparently aimed specifically at what they call "webspam." The changes will decrease rankings for sites that are…
Read moreSA Google Ads
In a bid to increase customer online presence in SA, Google Ads has launched a local support system for Google Ads managers. The hope is that with increased support, SA Google Ads…
Read moreGoogle Warns About Artifical Link Structures
At the beginning of this month, Google announced their latest algorithm changes which included new ways of handling links, and more penalties for link exchanges and poor quality…
Read moreGoogle Algorithm Update March 2012
According to the offical Google search blog , Google made 50 changes to their algorithm in March. Obviously that's a lot more changes than we can go into here, but we'll touch on…
Read moreTrack Google Account Activity
Earlier this week, Google announced that users would be able to track and monitor their own internet usage patterns for search and the full range of Google platforms, including…
Read moreGoogle Checking Up On Places Pages
According to a recent post by Search Engine People , several business owners have reported being called by Google, who appear to be carrying out checks on businesses with Google…
Read moreHow Your Page Layout Affects Your Optimisation
As we mentioned before in one of our summaries on Google's regular changes to their algorithm, one of the factors that Google will be considering when deciding how pages should be…
Read moreTwitter Opens Automated Advertising
Twitter has had their "promoted Tweets" program running for some time now, as part of their effort to turn a profit from the widely used and ever-popular so-called micro-blogging…
Read moreGoogle Rolls Back Search Page Change
At the end of last year, I wrote a short piece about Google's latest change to the search page complete with screenshots and the (for me) rare admission that I actually quite…
Read moreGoogle Plus Growth
In the middle of last year, Google began the launch of their social media product, Google+, among some justifiable scepticism. Then late last year, Google made it possible for…
Read moreGoogle Repeats SEO Is Not Bad
The SEO community was up in arms recently, following some unwise comments by a new Google employee, who, in commenting on a discussion about the Google Search+ and privacy policy…
Read moreLink Building That Complements Professional Search Engine Marketing
It’s the SEO activity which is the probably the most outsourced as it typically doesn’t require much creativity, just time and an eye for opportunity. But link building can be a…
Read moreForm Spam And Captcha
Coined in 2000 by a teams from the Carnegie Mellon University, the CAPTCHA, or Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart was designed as a…
Read moreGoogle Algorithm Update January 2012
As we've described before, Google has taken the previously unprecedented step of releasing a monthly announcement, describing the changes that were made to its algorithm during…
Read moreGoogle Plus Hits Hundred Million Users
The question of whether Google+ will be an effective competitor to Facebook's already long established, 800 million strong social network is one that people have been considering…
Read moreTwitter Censorship Debate Continues
Late last week Twitter announced that they were about to launch functionality that would allow them to censor tweets by blocking them for users in individual countries, ostensibly…
Read moreHead Of Google Kenya Fired
We recently mentioned the Mocality scandal in which Google Kenya had been illegally accessing and using the database of a Kenyan firm in order to sell people into their GKBO offer…
Read moreGoogle Plus Lowers Age Limit
When Google+ first launched, there was an 18 age restriction on having a Google+ account. Now that Google+ continues to expand, Google has reached out to the younger users that…
Read morePage Layout To Affect Optimisation
Last week, Google announced the latest update to its algorithm on its Webmaster Central Blog , saying that this latest change looks at the layout of a web page, and takes note of…
Read moreGoogle Sells Google Ads With Free Websites
In a bid to bring more businesses online, Google, in association with the Department of Trade and Industry, Vodacom, and the HRDC, is offering free websites to small and medium…
Read moreGoogle Bringing More Plus To Results
We recently wrote about the furore that Google has been facing thanks to its increasing inclusion of Google+ results inside search results. You can find out more in our articles…
Read moreICANN Accepting Generic TLD Registrations
In some earlier articles, ( ICANN Approves Brand Name Suffixes and IAB Opposes Brand Domains ) we've discussed the then approaching launch of generic top level domains, and some…
Read moreWhy Unoptimised Sites Rank
Every now and then, you'll find a site that has no optimisation to speak off, but it's still performing well in the results, and maybe even outranking yours. There are a number of…
Read moreGoogle Search Plus Your World
If you're signed into Google.com when you search, you're going to start seeing a new message on your search results page. A message like this: If you see that above your results,…
Read moreTwitter Criticises Google For Google+ In Search
The recent announcement regarding Google's integration of Google+ content with search results, (as discussed here in our article on Google Search Plus ) has produced some…
Read moreGoogle Releasing Regular Update
Last month, Google first posted a list of the latest 10 updates to their search algorithm. Nothing too specific of course, but certainly a list of things that would be looked at…
Read moreGoogle Changes Search Page
Over the past few months, Google has been showing previews of their new look and feel over almost all of their products, from Gmail to Google Docs, and everything in between. It's…
Read moreGoogle Discontinues Products
Google is carrying out another round of spring cleaning, according to the official Google blog . Effectively, they're in the process of shutting down and discontinuing a few of…
Read moreGoogle Algorithm Changes
A recent post on the Official Google Blog showed a list of the 10 most recent improvements to the Google search algorithm, that complex piece of code that determines which…
Read moreVerbatim Results From Google
A long time ago, when search engines were new, there was a search operator known as "and" that made sure the words that it joined were both present on the pages you got as search…
Read moreGoogle+ In Search Engine Results
In what's only the latest indication that Google+ will be a factor in the search engine rankings, it seems that Google has started to deliver + results in its SERPs. According to…
Read moreUsers Resist Brands In Social Media
We've been suggesting it for quite a while already, but thanks to the latest report by TNS Digital Life , there's finally some compelling evidence that social media marketing…
Read moreGoogle Wants Content Above The Fold
According to Matt Cutts, speaking at PubCon 2011 , Google may soon be penalising pages on which relevant information is difficult to find. This change is intended to impact pages…
Read moreGoogle+ Launches Brand Pages
Google+, Google's fledgling social media platform, with around 40 million users, today announced the roll-out of Google+ Pages, a new feature that allows the creation of brand…
Read moreEncrypted Search Data Affects SEO
Recently, Google has instituted a policy of encrypting searches that people make when they're logged in to Google, and as a result, not providing the search terms they used to…
Read moreFresh Google Algorithm Update Planned
Google announced today that they've started testing their latest algorithm change, designed to provide the freshest results for searches. According to their official blog , the…
Read moreGoogle Adwords +1
By now, I'm pretty sure that almost everybody knows about Google's +1 button. The +1 button is part of Google's new social recommendation system, and there's been quite a lot of…
Read moreMultiple Keywords And Keyword Spam
We picked up on an interesting statement from Google's Matt Cutts recently, where he was answering a question about the possibility of Google seeing multiple keyword variations on…
Read moreMultiple Keywords And Keyword Spam
We picked up on an interesting statement from Google's Matt Cutts recently, where he was answering a question about the possibility of Google seeing multiple keyword variations on…
Read moreGoogle Ads To Review Paused Ads
According to a recent announcement by Google Ads, Google will now (as of last week actually), be reviewing paused ads in the same way that live ads are reviewed. This also means…
Read moreUnderstanding Your Google Ads Report
Introduction Google Ads is one of the most effective ways of bringing new visitors to your site. At Net Age, we make use of both the Google Ads Search Network, which displays…
Read moreBulk Email Marketing & Communications
The ease and convenience of communicating by email has turned the medium into a popular marketing channel. Most businesses want, (or need), the ability to send out bulk emails to…
Read moreGoogle Ads Automation
When you choose Net Age to manage your Google Ads campaigns, we offer you the choice between manual management, and advanced automation options for your account. Manual Management…
Read moreGoogle Ads - What We Do
If you're interested in advertising on Google Ads to bring more visitors to your site, here's a short explanation of what we can do for you. Google Ads Certified Partner Net Age…
Read moreGoogle Expands Site Links
Site links have been around for a long time now. Since 2006 in fact. You've probably noticed them, used them, and forgotten about them without ever knowing what they were called.…
Read moreSocial Media Marketing Drives Little Traffic
In today's online marketing environment, social media marketing is a big buzz word. everybody is a social media expert, and everybody has a strategy to leverage your social media…
Read moreIAB Opposes ICANN Brand Domains
According to a recent report in WebProNews, IAB, the Interactive Advertising Bureau, is opposing the recently publicised decision by ICAAN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names…
Read moreFinding Categories In Google Places
With the recent focus on Google Places and local search optimisation, one of the most important aspects of optimising for local search it to create a Google Places listing for…
Read moreFew Referrals From Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is still set as one of the important things to do when it comes to online marketing. However, thanks to a recent report released by Outbrain , it looks like…
Read moreGoogle Places Category Tool
With local search results continuing to be prominent (if not dominant) in search engine results, it's important to make sure that your business has a Google Places listing. This…
Read moreGoogle Places Pages Updated
The Google Places page has undergone a bit of a revamp, according to an announcement made last week by Google on their LatLong Blog , the official Google voice for all things map…
Read moreTwitter To Serve Promoted Tweets
According to recent news reports, Twitter announced yesterday that they will begin placing advertisements in users timelines, in a long anticipated attempt to effectively monetise…
Read moreTwitter Announces Advertising Via Tweet
In a post on the Twitter Blog yesterday, the popular micro-blogging service announced that they will be serving ads, or “promoted tweets” in the timelines of users who follow the…
Read moreGoogle Revamps Places Pages
Last week, Google publicised some new changes to Google Places, their local search / listing pages which allow businesses to be displayed on the Google maps, and in local search…
Read moreGoogle Discovers Malware
In an early morning (our time) post in Google+, Matt Cutts has announced that Google has discovered that some users computers appear to be infected by a type of malware (malicious…
Read moreThe Need For An SEO Expert
Having an online business is the new popular trend these days. Business owners have realised the need to have an online over other types of businesses. This is why there are now…
Read moreChoosing The Right SEO Company
As the importance of search engine optimisation becomes ever more apparent, there are more and more SEO companies to choose from, and all of them are claiming to be SEO experts.…
Read moreICANN Approves Brand Name Suffixes
In what has been hailed as the most significant decision since the creation of the ".com" suffix, more than 25 years ago, ICANN , (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and…
Read moreCompare Google SEO vs Google PPC
Honestly, most web marketing professionals agree that Google SEO offers substantially greater returns than Google PPC. However, the truth of this can be debated depending on the…
Read moreWhy Your Business Needs SEO
A massive majority of traffic on the Internet is driven by the leading search engines – like Google – if your website cannot be found quickly via search engines, you are missing…
Read moreSEO Keywords & SEO Content Tools
The average SEO results optimised site has shown that, if 5000 visitors arrive via the search engines, 4000 different keyphrases will have been used to find the site. A wide…
Read moreKeyword Research Has Never Been So Important
At the beginning of this month, Google implemented the latest changes to their algorithm. And as a result, many websites have experienced a sudden and dramatic downturn in the…
Read moreConversion Optimisation, Taking Over After Search Engine Optimisation Stops
Conversion optimisation is the art and science of optimising your website to increase the chances of visitors taking a desired action. This desired action could include any of the…
Read moreGoogle To Track Content Authors
Google announced yesterday that it has started to index content based not only on the website that published it, but also on the author who originated it. Using the rel="author"…
Read moreBounce Rate And Search Engine Ranking
Recently, WebProNews published a very interesting article that asked whether the bounce rate of your website is, (or should be), taken into account by Google as a factor in search…
Read moreGoogle Adwords Affiliate Auction Policy
Keeping Google's Affiliate Auction policy in mind is usually a good idea for anybody who manages more than one account on Google Ads. The Google Ads Affiliate Policy effectively…
Read moreGoogle +1
At the end of last month, Google very quietly launched what it calls a new layer of social networking tied to the world famous search engine. The Google +1 Button is modeled on…
Read moreGoogle Algorithm Never Complete
I'm sure that by now, everybody is aware of the latest big update to Google, that launched in February, and went global just a few days ago. And you're probably equally aware that…
Read moreGoogle Panda Update Goes Global
As you'll know if you follow the online news, (or keep up with our articles), Google launched a major update a couple of months ago, now known as the Panda Update. Initially, it…
Read moreTwitter Trends South Africa
Ever popular, socially revolutionary, mind-numbingly boring, information overload. No matter what you think about it, Twitter has become a pervasive feature of the information-age…
Read moreClickable Meta Tags As Important As SEO
The meta data is a part of the code of each page on your site. Although it isn't visible to visitors, (unless they go looking for it), it is visible to search engines that crawl…
Read moreOn Page Search Engine Optimisation Factors
In general, search engine optimisation can be divided into two primary spheres. These are known as on-site optimisation, and off-site optimisation. As the name implies, on-site…
Read moreWebsite Speed And Conversions
We've been saying that site speed is important for optimisation for some time already. In fact, about a year ago, we wrote an article on this very topic. But now it turns out that…
Read moreReadability And Website Content
One of the factors that influences your content as far as visitors to your site are concerned, is the readability of the text. Readability isn't just about your font, text size…
Read moreSurviving The Algorithm Change
Google changes its algorithm a lot. More than most people ever realise in fact. Last year for example, Google changed their algorithm 550 times. And in most cases, nobody really…
Read moreGoogle Panda Update
Although the latest update to the Google algorithm, now known as the "Panda" update, (but also called the "Farmer" update) has so far only come into effect in the US, its…
Read moreNew Google Update Details
We've already written a couple of articles on the latest update by Google. One on the announcement of the Google update , and another on what Google has said about the update .…
Read moreMajor Update To Google Algorithm
In it's latest move to keep delivering highly relevant content in its search results, Google announced the newest update to its search algorithm late last week. At the moment,…
Read moreLocal Search Optimisation
As we mentioned in some recent articles, Google is currently paying an awful lot of attention to its local search / Google Places listings when it comes to delivering search…
Read moreBlogging In South Africa
By now, we suspect that pretty much everybody on the internet knows what a blog is. If you don't have one yourself, the chances are that you're at least reading somebody else's.…
Read moreForm Usability And Online Conversions
No matter how many visitors come to your website thanks to search engine results, or your online marketing efforts, it won't help your business if your site doesn't deliver on the…
Read moreAdwords Tips - Using Broad Match
In Google Adwords, the match-type is something that people usually find fairly easy to use. In simple terms, it's a way of controlling what type of search you want your ad to be…
Read moreIs Google Becoming A Directory Site?
We mentioned in an earlier article that we've been doing some research into the way that Google Localisation is affecting search engine results, and we've started to wonder if…
Read moreEven Google Makes Mistakes
Technically, we all know that Google makes mistakes sometimes. It's pretty much an extremely complicated piece of software, that they make changes to every day . (In the last…
Read moreWeb Design For Instant Preview
As you may have noticed, Google launched their new feature, Instant Preview, two days ago, and already the web is abuzz with discussion of what it means for businesses in general,…
Read moreGoogle Instant Preview
In a move which some claim is an attempt to catch up with Microsoft's Bing search engine, Google has just rolled out testing on their new feature, Google Instant Preview . The…
Read moreSynonyms In Google Search
Since the beginning of this year, Google has been gradually including synonyms for the words that users are searching for in its results. It hasn't necessarily been a dramatic…
Read moreGuidelines For Writing Online Content
When it comes to writing for the web, and especially when it comes to writing SEO content, there are many different sets of guidelines and advice available online. These are a few…
Read moreContent Length and Word Count
Everybody knows that people online just don't read. Rather than sitting down and reading an article or a piece of information the same way that they'd read one in a magazine,…
Read moreAnalytics Overlay Replaced
If you're a regular Analytics user, you might have noticed that Analytics no longer offers the site overlay feature. Instead, it's been replaced by a brand new feature, called…
Read moreAdwords Tips - Manage Your Campaign
Over the course of the last few months, we've occasionally put up an article with some tips and advice for managing a successful Google Adwords campaign. In this, our latest in…
Read moreGoogle Place Search
Yesterday Google announced their latest feature, the Google Place Search. Place Search allows Google users to easily find information about local businesses, by clustering search…
Read moreUsing Keywords In Content
Once upon a time, when search engines were innocent, and search engine optimisers were blatant, you could stick keywords into your content, and search engines would rank you high…
Read moreBuilding Links The Right Way
As everybody in the search engine optimisation trade knows, and as we've mentioned countless times before, building good quality back links to your site is a vital and integral…
Read moreGoogle Instant And SEO
Earlier last month, we published an article about the launch of Google's new search service, Google Instant . This is the new "real time" search service that provides results as…
Read moreGoogle Instant Launches
In its never ending quest for the most intuitive search technology possible, Google has just released the latest tweak to its user interface: Google Instant. According to Google,…
Read moreThe Domain Sales Con
There's a domain sales con that's been going around for quite a few years now, and it looks like it's come back with a vengeance again. In the last few years, we've probably…
Read moreTips On Email Etiquette
Despite the fact that millions of people send emails every day, for both personal and business reasons, it's never ceased to amaze me how many people still don't know the basic…
Read moreAdwords Broad Match Modifier Live
A couple of months ago, we wrote an article about the initial limited roll-out of the testing phase of Google Adwords new broad match modifier. At the time, the new modifier was…
Read moreAdwords Tips - A Bad Site Affects Quality Score
We've mentioned in the past how important the design and construction of your website is, for a wide variety of different reasons, from usability to conversions. Another important…
Read moreTools for Online Success
Google, in conjunction with the US Small Business Administration, has launched a new site aimed at providing small business owners with the tools and advice they need to help them…
Read moreDesigning Adwords Banners
Pay per click advertising, (commonly referred to as PPC), has become one of the most common forms of advertising on the internet. In brief, PPC allows you to display ads, either…
Read moreWhy You Shouldn't Have A Flash Website
First introduced in 1996, Flash quickly became a popular tool online, allowing the combination of different types of graphics in animation that could be displayed in web browsers.…
Read moreMaking Sense Of Online Marketing
Online marketing is defined as marketing and promoting your product or service using the internet. Online marketing is definitely the way forward in the marketing world. This is…
Read moreUnderstanding Google SEO
Google SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is becoming a vital part of online marketing and success. It is aimed at making Google see your website as very relevant in response to…
Read moreLink Anchor Text & Google
As you're probably aware, off-site links which point back to your website are a critical part of the calculation that Google makes when determining where in the search engine…
Read moreMore Display Network Tips
The Google display network is a little different from traditional PPC (pay per click) advertising . Unlike the search network, which displays ads alongside search engine results…
Read moreGoogle Content Network Advertising
When it comes to pay per click advertising with Google, there are two available options. The search network, and the content network. They both work well, but they work in…
Read moreNew Adwords Modifier For Broad Search
In the first step of a move that some may feel has been a long time coming, Google Adwords recently announced that they've started making a modification to the way their broad…
Read moreWhen Will My Site Show On Google?
One of the most frequent questions we hear from new clients is "how long will it take before I can find my site on Google?" It's a simple question. Unfortunately, the answer is…
Read moreRunning Out Of IP Addresses
According to a recent report by ICANN, (the International Corporation for the Assignment of Names and Numbers), the global body that allocates IP (internet protocol) addresses,…
Read moreKeyword Order Matters
With the latest updates to Google's insanely complicated (and effective) algorithm, it's no longer enough to just make sure that you have all your keywords on the page. Now, it's…
Read moreGoogle Changes Mean Sleepless Nights
Do you ever feel that you've got a difficult job? You probably have. But let me tell you, you've got no idea what we have to go through working in the search engine optimisation…
Read moreAdwords Click To Call
Adwords Click To Call is a Google Adwords service that allows users with internet enabled mobile phones to call your business directly, simply by clicking on the link in your…
Read moreSearch Engine Optimisation And How People Search
We've been doing a lot of thinking recently about the way that people use the internet. And especially about the way that they use search engines. As a company interested in…
Read moreWebsite Speed Important For Optimisation
Search engine optimisation has always been an attempt to understand the factors that search engines like use to determine search engine ranking, and then making sure that you…
Read moreUsing Adwords For Organic SEO
Although not many people seem to realise it, Adwords can actually be a search engine optimisation tool as well as a paid traffic generator. In addition to bringing in traffic from…
Read moreTips For Successful Adwords Campaigns
In keeping with our recent focus on Google Adwords, here are a few of Google's own tips for running a successful Adwords campaign. Use Themes To Organise Your Campaigns When you…
Read morePPC Tips For The Google Display Network
Google Adwords is without doubt one of the most popular, and widely used, pay per click (or PPC) advertising providers on the internet. Adwords offers two types of advertising…
Read moreSeparating The Adwords PPC Search & Content Networks
One of the most important things that you have to remember when you're managing a Google Adwords Pay Per Click campaign is that the content network, and the search network, are…
Read moreGoogle PageRank Not So Important
A recent move by search engine giant Google has left search engine optimisers either shaking their heads, or feeling vindicated. An article appeared on WebProNews earlier this…
Read moreGoogle Local Business Directory
Now that Google Maps has officially launched in South Africa, with all the functionality that's associated with it, it's become possible to add your business to Google Maps with…
Read moreDesign for Ease Of Use
It's a well known fact that internet users, on average, spend less than a single minute on any given page unless there is a compelling reason for them to stay. This means that,…
Read moreEffective Website Design - Less Is More
When it comes to hiring somebody to design a website for your business, you're usually paying attention to the goals you'd like your website to achieve. In other words, bringing…
Read moreWorldwide Web Addresses
Ever since their creation in the 1980's, domain names and their resultant website addresses have been limited to the Latin alphabet, from A - Z, used by English speaking nations.…
Read moreKeyword Density Reconsidered
For a long time, keyword density has been taken very seriously in search engine optimisation. Keyword density, for those who aren't familiar with the term, refers to the number of…
Read morePageRank Sculpting
PageRank sculpting is the process of attempting to direct the way that PageRank flows within (and into and out of), your website. PageRank is a link analysis algorithm named after…
Read moreBuying Legitimate Links
Although buying links for the purposes of manipulating search engine rankings is rightly frowned upon by Google, the search engine company has explicitly recognised that the…
Read moreMeta Tags Still Matter
Despite the recent announcement on meta descriptions by Google, we feel it's important to mention that, regardless of what's been said on the topic, meta tags are still important.…
Read moreMicrosoft Bing Gets Twitter
According to a news report released today, Microsoft has gained the coveted right to index the hugely popular micro-blogging platform, Twitter. After lengthy discussions, the deal…
Read moreLong Tail Keywords Are Better
As we all know by now, keywords are the words and phrases that users enter into search engines when they're looking for something. When it comes to optimising your website,…
Read moreSouth Africa Tenth On Twitter
According to a recent report by Canadian research company Sysomos , South Africa has become the tenth largest twitter user in the world. According to the report, SA accounts for…
Read moreOutbound Links - An Overview
We get a lot of queries about the advisability of having outbound links to related resources in the content areas of a website, so we thought we'd put up an article on the various…
Read moreInternal Links - An Overview
Search algorithms rely heavily on internal link structures, using them to determine the importance of internal pages on your website. As a result, the pages that you link to the…
Read morePaid Links - Good or Bad?
As we all know, search engines like Google make use of the existence of links from external sources that point to your website to assist them in determining the reputation of your…
Read moreAdwords Landing Page Quality Score
It appears that a recent change (or increase in enforcement) of the Google guidelines for Pay Per Click landing page quality score has seen an unknown number of Adwords customers…
Read moreTwitter Tests List Feature
Twitter announced yesterday that they have started testing a new feature for the popular micro-blogging service. The new "List" feature will allow users to organise their tweets…
Read moreSocial Media Scams On The Rise
In a just released announcement by social media giant Facebook, the California-based company has warned its users to watch out for one of the old "419 scams" that has recently…
Read moreIs Social Media Marketing Worth The Effort?
Everybody knows about social media, (or social networking) these days. It's no longer the next big thing, it's a big thing right now. The real question though, is whether there's…
Read moreCommon Web Design Mistakes Impact SEO
As we've pointed out before, no matter what keywords you target , there are likely to be thousands, if not millions, of websites that are competing for the same keywords and that…
Read moreSocial Networking Growth Predicted
According to a report released by the BMI-Techknowledge Group, a business-to-business commercial and industrial research group focusing on the high-tech industry, social…
Read moreWebsite Usability Development
In his book Designing Web Usability , renowned expert Jakob Nielsen says, "There is no web page so important that I cannot go elsewhere." Web usability is one of the most…
Read moreGoogle Launches Display Ads
Google announced on it's official blog at the end of last week that it was rolling out the end product of it's incorporation with DoubleClick, an acquisition that Google made 18…
Read moreBecoming An SEO Expert
It's not easy to become an expert at SEO. Sure, there is plenty of information out there, and plenty of handy tips, tricks and guides. The problem though, is that the rules of…
Read morePlanning Your E-Mail Campaign
One of the greatest advantages of the internet when it comes to marketing can be the e-mail marketing campaign. It's low-cost, it's targeted, and it's easy to measure . But that…
Read moreRegister Your Trademark With Google
With recent questions regarding cyber-squatting and the protection of domain names, we've queried Google itself about the importance of trademarks when it comes to online…
Read moreNobody Can Guarantee First Place On Google
If anybody ever tells you that they can guarantee you a first place result on Google, then it's time to tread very warily. Net Age has been in the business of search engine…
Read moreWeb Tracking Applications
One of the greatest advantages of using the internet to market your products and services lies in the fact that online activity related to your web presence can be easily…
Read moreThe Online Decision Making Process
Making the choice to buy something online involves a variety of different factors. In this article, we'll consider a relatively simple model of the online decision making process…
Read moreAnalytics Data And PPC
If you use a pay per click campaign as part of your online marketing efforts, you should be tracking and analysing all your data, and you're all doing that, right? If you are,…
Read moreGoogle Trends & Search Research Tools
Google Trends is a public web tool released by Google, that provides a graphic representation of how frequently any given term is searched for, according to date, region and…
Read moreWebdesigns - Functional Appeal
Some of the most frequently discussed aspects of a website revolve around webdesigns. It's generally accepted that the design of your site plays a major role in attracting…
Read moreGoogle Analytics Guru - Avinash Kaushik
Few names stand out as much, in the field of website analytics, as that of Avinash Kaushik, co-founder of Market Motive, author of Web Analytics: An Hour A Day , and Google's…
Read moreIs Bing Better Than Google?
The relatively recent launch of Microsoft's new search engine Bing has also launched a new online debate. Which search engine is better? Since Microsoft and Yahoo have partnered…
Read moreSEM For Beginners
Search engine marketing, or SEM as it is abbreviated, generally refers to the practice of increasing exposure to your online business through search engine results. By combining a…
Read morePay Per Click Advertising
Pay per click advertising, or PPC, is a popular internet advertising model in which the companies that advertise pay the host only when a user clicks on their advert. Common…
Read moreA PPC Advertising Campaign
PPC, or pay per click, advertising has become a relatively simple and effective way of marketing your business on the web. Essentially, PPC marketing involves advertisers offering…
Read moreThe SEO Quick-Fix Illusion
One of the major misconceptions about search engine optimisation, (SEO), is that it's a quick fix that SEO professionals can simply add onto your finished website after the fact,…
Read moreGood Copy Sells
There's no question anymore that good copy sells. By sells though, we don't literally mean that it moves the products off the shelves. The purpose of selling copy all depends on…
Read moreContent Is Packaged Information
The internet is driven by information. And in this day and age, it could even been said that it's drowning in it. The ease with which the internet brings information on any…
Read moreGoogle Analytics - Web Tracking By Numbers
Google Analytics is a free service from Google that allows users to track data about visitors to their site. It achieves this by generating detailed statistics that may be…
Read moreGoogle Adwords - Targeted Internet Marketing
A Google Adwords campaign is widely considered one of the most effective targeted marketing opportunities that exists today on the internet. It takes advantage of Google's ability…
Read moreSearch Engine Marketing - Measurable Results
One of the greatest benefits of search engine marketing lies in the fact that it's one of the marketing strategies that's more measurable than most. Making use of search engine…
Read moreThe Importance of Content
It's easy to underestimate the importance of content when you're going through the process of putting an online platform in place. When you're planning a website, you're…
Read moreInternet Marketing - A World Of Opportunity
The rapid growth of internet marketing in South Africa, and indeed the world, has opened up new vistas of previously unimagined business opportunity. The advantages of internet…
Read moreThe Contents of Content
You'll find a lot of articles on the internet today telling you how important content is. " Content is King ," they say. And they're right. But what exactly is content? And why is…
Read moreContent and User Perception
The users perception of your brand, product or service plays a significant role in the effectiveness of your online presence. In many cases, whether implicitly or explicitly, it…
Read moreWeb Marketing - The Future Of Business
In a rapidly evolving online world, web marketing has become a sales strategy of choice for any company that seeks to keep their service current and up-to-date. The development of…
Read moreOnline Advertising: Target Your Market
Online advertising is a form of advertising that uses the technology of the internet, in order to spread your marketing message across a network of different channels. Online…
Read moreBranding - Building Credibility
An effective branding strategy is an essential component in building a credible and trustworthy online business presence. At their best, branding solutions increase the perceived…
Read moreWeb Design: Making Your Site Look Good
One of the most important factors in a successful online presence depends on your sites web design. As a result, the increase in online marketing has been followed by a…
Read moreMarketing Strategy And Online Business
At a time when so many businesses are moving into the online arena, it's essential that your business marketing strategy reflects the innovation that digital promotion makes…
Read moreAnalytics Terms
Standard Analytics Report Introduction Google Analytics is a Google service which generates detailed information about the activity on your website. It tells you how people found…
Read moreContent Writing As Writing
The net abounds with all manner of useful hints, tips and tricks aimed at producing content writing that will successfully market your website or blog. More than in any other form…
Read moreMarketing and Advertising: What's the Difference?
Defining The Difference The first step in determining the difference between advertising and marketing would be to define each practice independently of the other. Once we have…
Read moreWebsite Design - Attraction, Usability & Accessibility
Every aspect of the sites we create at Net Age has been carefully considered, and deeply thought-out. We do everything for a reason, with set goals in mind, and using the methods…
Read moreKeyword Research
In March 2008 the 28th most popular search term, according to the New York Times, was "drugs". Considering the way many people approach keyword research, one might think this made…
Read moreKeyword Density
One of the most controversial SEO topics, keyword density refers to the percentage of your written content that is made up of the keywords you're using to target your online…
Read moreIs Content King?
The importance of content , good, quality content, on your website is second-to-none in terms of link building and optimisation for organic searches. The Power of Inbound Links I…
Read moreWhy We Don't Do Flash - Search Engines 101
There was a time when Net Age did indeed use Flash. Chances are most people and businesses have gone through this stage in the development of their web design . We, like everyone…
Read moreImportance of Keyword Research in Optimising Your Website and Getting Business
What Is Keyword Research? Keyword research is the art of finding the keywords your potential customers are using on the search engines, then determining how to incorporate those…
Read moreImportance of Keyword Research
The first step in realising the importance of keyword research is that of acceptance. Accepting that you, in actual fact, do not speak the same language as your customers and…
Read moreWhy Outsource Your Pay Per Click (PPC Campaign)
Pay Per Click (PPC) And The Expanding World of Internet Advertising When deciding to engage in a Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign many companies are faced with the choice of whether…
Read moreOnline Advertising and SEO Versus Traditional Advertising
Traditional advertising and marketing is clumsy and unwieldy when compared to the more modern online marketing (such as SEO). Consider the following benefits inherent in choosing…
Read moreWhy Implement An Online Marketing Strategy?
As with more traditional marketing the point to online marketing is quite simply more business. An online marketing strategy aims at building your corporate image and driving…
Read moreBasic Google Search Tips
Its amazing. Google is a tool we all use constantly (I myself use it innumerable times a day), yet the true potential of its search capabilities remains untapped by most. This…
Read moreSearch Engine Optimisation Is Google Optimisation
Although the industry is called search engine optimisation (SEO), the truth of the matter is that most websites, especially in South Africa, want and need to optimise for Google.…
Read moreInternet Marketing Today
Electronic communication is the crux upon which so much of modern life is balanced in this, the age of information. The face of marketing and of advertising has been undeniably…
Read moreSEO is Not IT - Not Just For Techies
It seems that even in the technology-dominated society in which we live there are still many people struggling with a few tech-oriented concepts. For instance, not everything…
Read moreThe SEO Interview
The whole SEO field is somewhat obscured by a kind of industry mystery, where no one but those directly involved really know what it is all about, and sometimes even those…
Read moreSEO vs PPC
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) have become the two most prominent forms of web marketing today. Any company that has plans of using the incredible reach…
Read moreCharacteristics Of Good Web Design
A properly designed website is both user friendly and SEO friendly, while also being persuasive enough to optimise for visitor-to-customer conversion. SEO Web Design A correctly…
Read moreMeasuring Advertising
Have you heard those whispered words of dissension? The voices that claim the unimaginable? The words that indicate your money disappearing into the darkened woods of…
Read moreHow Much Does A Lead Cost You?
It's scary to me that so many companies spend huge amounts of money on their marketing campaigns without knowing how much of a return those campaigns are giving them. Do you know…
Read moreInvest Time in Marketing
When it comes to where and how we invest our money, I think most of us would agree that knowing if we're seeing a sizeable return on investment is an important matter to consider.…
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