So we’ve been waiting for it ever since Matt Cutts first announced that a new Penguin update was just around the corner, but this morning we awoke to the news that Penguin 2.0 has landed and has affected an estimated 2.3% of English based terms.

It’s been a whirlwind 13 months since the first Penguin update was rolled out, and although there have been two data refreshes; this is the first update to the algorithm since it was first launched in April 2012.

So what’s changed?

SEO’s across the world are still dissecting the resulting changes of the new and improved Penguin, but the general consensus is that this update has cast a wider net than the original algorithm and as such more webmasters are likely to be affected. Ultimately, it seems as though this update has sought to devalue poor quality links, as opposed to the crippling penalties that were handed out en masse when Penguin first took the SEO world by storm last year.

In short, if you’ve been focusing on quality content, user experience and have avoided adopting any black hat methods then this update is nothing for you to worry about – just keep doing what you’re doing.

The calm before the storm?

Personally, I think this is the first in a series of updates that Google has in the pipeline to roll out over the next few months. Only two weeks ago, Matt Cutts told us that Google will soon be trying to tackle advertorials and paid links that violate their quality guidelines so it’s logical to assume that more updates are on their way.

Additionally, the extremely low quality of the first page of the ‘pay day loans’ search results has not been changed by Penguin 2.0, despite being mentioned as a specific example by Mr Cutts as an industry that has caught Google’s attention. It could be that it has merely slipped through the net, but it seems more likely that Penguin 2.0 is a flightless warning shot to any webmasters who are still yet to adhere to Google’s quality guidelines.

Every time a Google update is rolled out it leaves both winners and losers in its wake - so how has your site fared? Each niche gets affected in a slightly differently way by each algorithm change, and we always love to hear from you about your observations, ranking changes or anything else Penguin related. Except for Danny DeVito, we can’t help if you’ve had a problem with him … unless he’s spammed your site or something …

Since launching in 2009, Pinterest has evolved into one of the internet’s fastest growing social platforms. As such, more and more businesses are choosing to get creative and jump on the Pinwagon. Whilst many companies can utilise this image-based channel with the help of a little brainstorming and some creativity, it is worth understanding which markets work best on Pinterest and what they are doing to gain popularity.

Who is the Pinterest User?

When planning a Pinterest strategy, it’s important to understand who you will be reaching with your content, and considering whether your own target audience fits in with the active users on the social platform.
According to TechCrunch, the average Pinterest user is an 18-34 year old American female in the upper income bracket.  In the US, the audience consists predominantly of women with 70-80% of the demographic being female; whereas in the UK there is a more even split of 56% male and 44% female.  
These users dictate exactly which brands are popular on Pinterest and which images are re-pinned most frequently.


Who are the Best Brands on Pinterest?

Pinterest is predominantly user-generated, but that doesn’t mean that a company can’t establish a strong presence; a good brand can make their mark on pinners and increase their reach. As expected, the brands that are currently most popular on the photo-sharing platform are those that have the capability of being more visual. However, your business shouldn’t avoid Pinterest, even if you are less visual; a lot can be learnt from the brands that work best on Pinterest – just apply their ideas to your own social strategy, whatever your market.

Repinly, which provides insights into what’s most popular on Pinterest, reveals that food and drink, home décor, DIY and crafts, art, design, and hair and beauty are currently among some of the most popular categories on the social channel. All of these categories are aesthetically pleasing and many businesses will have the potential to tap into these already successful areas to expand their reach. The most popular categories feed into the brands that are currently doing best on the platform; Mashable revealed the most successful branded boards based on the most followers, the most repins, the most likes and the most comments:

L.L. Bean, which sells outdoor apparel and equipment, has topped Mashable’s list of ‘Most Popular Boards by Followers’ for its Woodland Creatures board which has attracted an impressive 4,689,706 followers. It also currently holds 5^th position for ‘Boards With the Most Likes.’ This just goes to show that no matter what your business is, you can still have Pinterest success with a little creativity (and perhaps a dose of cuteness!)

Better Homes and Gardens has also fared really well with some of its boards appearing in the top 5 for ‘Most Repins’, ‘Most Likes’, and ‘Most Comments’ with their ‘Blogger Recipes We Love’ and ‘Blogger Faves From BHG.com’. This reinforces the fact that popular pins revolve around food and home décor. And while you may not be able to take advantage of the home décor trend for your business, you can certainly produce some tasty images to appeal to new audiences; take snaps of office cakes, interesting lunches, or just re-pin food that you love and you’re sure to get some followers!

Our top tips for popular pins

So we now know how popular Pinterest is, but how can you adapt your business to suit it? Here are our top tips:

·         Be Creative: Whatever industry you’re in, you can still find a way to make your mark on Pinterest.  You can add personality to your brand by creating boards based around food, things you like, TV/music you’re hooked on in the office or popular spots in your city – just let your imagination run wild and the followers will soon be re-pinning at will!

·         Get Everyone Involved: Use Pinterest to get all of your team involved; ask them what they would like to see on there, post snaps of the team to show the faces behind the brand, and pop photos of any company outings on there.

·         Pin Infographics: If your industry is a little on the dull side, then you may be wondering how you’re going to generate images. The answer lies with infographics – you can take dry, hard-to-digest information and liven it up in an infographic. These are becoming incredibly popular on Pinterest, so if you can create a strong, eye-catching infographic, you have a good chance of it going viral!

·         Get Repinning: If you’re struggling for image-based content, then scour the popular boards for cool images to repin – this can win you likes and new followers.

·         Use Your Services: Whether you are an e-commerce website or a business that provides a service, you can take some interesting snaps that represent what you do best and pin them.

So now you know how valuable this social outlet can be, we want to see you pinning! Follow us on Pinterest to see what we are up to.

We are proud to announce that we are now working with the international children’s charity EveryChild on their PPC and social campaigns.

As their official marketing partner, we will be providing advice on the implementation of their social strategy whilst also managing their Google Pay per Click advertising campaign – all with the aim of increasing their brand reach, raising awareness of the cause and to increase the number of online donations.

Jonah Klein, who is the Digital Editor for EveryChild, said: “From improving our PPC advertising to offering expert, strategic advice on how to build our social media presence, Liberty Marketing have been a great help to our organisation. Liberty’s support will help us reach and improve the lives of more vulnerable children across the world.”

PPC Account Manager, Amy Lyddon, who is taking care of the EveryChild PPC campaign said: "It’s a pleasure having EveryChild on board. PPC is a very effective way to help raise awareness of their services, such as protecting vulnerable children and getting children back into families. PPC has helped drive relevant traffic to their website, building charity awareness and encouraging online donations. Knowing that we are helping to influence change through PPC is great."

More than 24 million children grow up without parental care; EveryChild aim to put an end to this so that these youngsters don’t grow up vulnerable and alone.  They set out to protect these children from the threat of malnutrition, violence and exploitation, and to keep families together wherever possible.

We’re thrilled to be working with such a fantastic charity to help them make a difference to the lives of vulnerable children, and we are eager to work with additional charities in the future … so watch this space …

What were you doing in May of 2008? Madonna and Justin Timberlake had hit Number 1 with 4 Minutes, the top film at the box office was Iron Man, Boris Johnson was the new Mayor of London and Britain looked forward to another wet, miserable summer. There was also something brewing in the marketing scene here in Cardiff...Liberty Marketing was born and today is our 5th birthday.

The company was started in a home office but after just a few months and a handful of happy clients, word of mouth ensured that we quickly grew and needed to move into something a bit more professional. Our first office was in Cardiff Gate Business Park, which we moved into in December 2008. That office was just big enough for two desks but by the time Kris Davies and Chris Gurner, future heads of Operations and PPC respectively, joined the team in 2010, we were a team of 7 and had taken over the room next door.

As more companies came to us for their SEO, Pay Per Click and social media campaigns, we outgrew our Cardiff Gate office and bought our current home in Llanishen Business Park in February 2011. Here, we developed ways in which we could offer more transparent and more effective services to our customers, including the Apollo project management system, which gives clients up-to-date information about what we’re doing on their projects.

A couple of years on and our 28 members of staff are spread over three different teams and span a wide range of personalities and specialities – from SEO experts and inventive copywriters to trained PPC professionals, social whizzes and much more. On a daily basis, we’re working with some interesting brands, such as Millennium Stadium, ConstructaQuote, Fiorelli, University of Hertfordshire, London Women’s Clinic, Wales Millennium Centre, Folly Farm and Visit Cymru. And we’re very proud that 12 clients from our first year of business are still using us.

We’d like to thank you for your support and custom so far – here’s to the next 5!

Our amazing cake, thanks to Lianne.

We have just discovered a lot of very dodgy links pointing at our site. It looks like, within the last few months, thousands of links have started pointing in to us from adult sites, irrelevant blog comments and low quality directory listings.

One of our local competitors has obviously had enough of us ranking well for their target keywords, so is running a negative SEO campaign to try and wipe us off Google. Classy.

Negative SEO is where someone tries to push your site down (or even out of) the Google rankings by building lots of bad links to your site. Since the Google Penguin update launched and showed us that low quality sites and over-optimised anchor-text can cause serious SEO problems, the negative SEO industry has thrived and now even has a nickname - Google Bowling. By employing these tactics, you can outrank your competitors not because you are any better than them or Google prefers the content on your site, but because you have no morals and can only do well when others fall.

We are being targeted heavily for the keyword SEO Cardiff, meaning one of our local competitors has had enough of us winning a lot of the local projects and wants to hit us here. The ironic thing is, the decent SEO projects very rarely come in off local Google searches! Almost all of our work comes as word of mouth recommendations or from events we attend, so even if this campaign works and you no longer see us in Google for local keywords, it isn't going to harm us as a business. We will continue to grow and win SEO projects because of the quality of our work and the hundreds of happy clients who regularly tell their friends.

If you are looking to engage an SEO agency within the Cardiff and South Wales area then make sure you do your homework. There are obviously some very dodgy people locally who cannot be bothered to market themselves properly, rather resorting to tactics like this.

We will be keeping an eye on the links and will speak to our contacts within Google to highlight this issue. One upside of being big enough to get targeted by competitors with this type of SEO campaign is that we are also big enough to have numerous contacts within the search engines who will help us when needed.

I’ll be seeing what tools they have to help us identify who did this and when I know, I will be publishing their details on this blog for everyone to see. What we will also do is record our activity and then blog about it. We have seen this type of work happen to a few of our clients who are in very competitive markets and it could easily happen to you too, so watch this space to see the impact of negative SEO and what we will do to take care of it.

Panda and Penguin. If you’re in any way connected to the world of SEO, these are two animals you need to know about. You’ll probably have heard about these cute, fuzzily-monikered Google algorithm updates (which change the way the search engine ranks websites) at some point. Especially since every time another algorithm update hits, online marketers everywhere descend into a frenzy. 

How new algorithms unfold can impact enormously on any online marketing you have in place. That’s why it’s important to have at least some understanding of what it all means for the SEO work connected to your business - so here’s a brief summary of what Panda and Penguin were all about, and what you need to be aware of...

About Google Panda

Panda first hit in February 2011 (US) with Panda 1.0 (also known as the ‘Farmer’s Update’) targeting websites with low quality content, in particular content farms and second rate article directories. Google had enough of these clogging up the search results so took action. It’s estimated that Panda 1.0 affected almost 12% of US search terms when it first emerged.

Following this initial rollout, Panda continued with updates every few months (we are currently on Panda version 25) , taking the update global and targeting spammy, low quality, thin content, as well as duplicate and keyword heavy content, in order to improve the experience for web users and to improve the search engine results.

Websites that were hit particularly hard were content aggregators. The way Google sees it, sites that gather and store articles from other sites don't add much value to the web, so were penalised for the heavy amount of duplicate content on them. When they launched Panda, Google said that they were: "evaluating multiple changes that should help drive spam levels even lower, including one change that primarily affects sites that copy others' content and sites with low levels of original content … attention has shifted to ‘content farms’ which are sites with shallow or low-quality content".

Unfortunately for webmasters and online businesses the world over, there was a tonne of collateral damage. Ecommerce sites in particular, were hit too. The reason being that they often have the exact same product descriptions as other sites, often passed straight from the manufacturer and uploaded to the site. Google saw a lot of these Ecommerce sites as copying other content so they failed the Panda test and rankings plummeted.

About Google Penguin

Penguin waddled onto the scene and first caused waves in the SEO world in April 2012; Penguin made its entrance by penalising questionable SEO tactics and hitting sites that were violating Google’s Webmaster guidelines by using manipulative or ‘black hat’ SEO techniques to improve their rankings. Whereas Panda was about content and on-site SEO, Penguin zoned in on off-site SEO, in particular low quality links and over-optimised anchor text. It delivered a slap to any sites that appeared guilty, which at the time saw a large number of sites fall. 

Lots of businesses that had been outsourcing their SEO on the cheap (i.e. either by responding to one of those "We guarantee rankings. We build thousands of links for $99 a month" type emails or by using an agency that outsources to these people) got hit, even when they had been ranking well off these dodgy tactics for months or even years. The reality of Penguin is that it put many people out of business, as the rankings penalties were often so huge that sites would go from thousands of visitors a day to none.

How to stay out of trouble

If you want to stay on the right side of the Google Panda and Penguin updates and keep your site safely at the top of the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), you need to understand what makes them tick and what they love. Adhere to their preferences and you shouldn’t have any problems.

Panda hates content thin pages, content farms, duplicate content and has set out to penalise these in order to increase the relevancy of pages and show users pages that have high quality, unique content. Therefore, you need to focus on producing strong, engaging content that is relevant and that your users will find useful. If you can ensure that your site copy is unique, of a high quality and provides useful information to your audience, then you will have one happy Panda!

Penguin is effectively a link filter and doesn’t like sites that try too hard to cheat the SERPs; it hates low quality links and too many keywords being used in the anchor text, so what makes Penguin happy? Well Penguin loves websites that appear to be naturally good without having to overdo it; it likes to see natural links based on quality, Panda-friendly content. If you are building links then you need to ensure you have a varied link profile, with hyperlinks pointing in from authoritative, relevant websites and when you have the option to choose anchor-text, make sure you vary it and don't always make it keyword focused.

Panda and Penguin check-list

Follow this quick check-list to ensure you’re not in the Panda or Penguin firing line:

• Keep content relevant and engaging - write for users, not for search engines
• Make sure your backlink profile is natural and doesn’t contain many spammy links, paid links or links from sites that Google would consider low quality
• Ensure that content is unique and not taken from other websites
• Don’t over-optimise your anchor text
• Avoid link building from rubbish websites that only exist for the purpose of manipulating search engines i.e. general directories with no quality control, article submission sites that publish any old thing, link farms, etc.

What’s coming next?

But don’t rest on your laurels: there are new updates every few months. Google changed over 500 times last year and there were many other changes on top of Panda and Penguin. The word on the web is that another major Penguin update is on the horizon; Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, revealed last month that they are working on Penguin 4, cryptically stating that the way Penguin works will be changed. So, while we all sit and wait for this next big Penguin update in anticipation, it’s worth clearing up that backlink profile, refining your content, and checking that you’re not currently stepping over the line!

We will be visiting and speaking at a number of events over the next few weeks...

BrightonSEO

Kris, Rhodri, Ben, Monique, Dean and Rachel will be attending this great event on Friday. They will be there all day sitting in on the seminars and will also be staying over, to take advantage of the after party. If you are also going to be there, make sure you join them for a beer.

Carmarthenshire Tourism Summit

On Wednesday 17th April, I will be at the event in the Parc Y Scarlets Stadium. I'll be giving a workshop on SEO and improving website performance. The synopsis is:

"Get the most out of your website: 5 search engine marketing tips

Learn the five main things you need to be doing to take advantage of search engine traffic. We will look at how to choose the right keywords to focus on, and then how to use those on your site. We will then examine the benefits of blogging and how to get other websites linking to yours. We will also look at how you can attract local visitors with Google+ Local. All of which will increase the amount of business you get from Google, Yahoo! and Bing."

Torfaen Digital Enterprise Festival

On Tuesday 23rd April, I will also be presenting two slots on SEO to the tourism and hospitality sector. The synopsis is the same as the above event. 

If you are based in South West Wales or South East Wales and fall within the tourism industry then these two events look like they will be time well spent, so it's worth you checking them out. 

Sorry that we’ve been quiet on the blog of late; 2013 so far has been a very busy one, with plenty of exciting new clients and projects to get our teeth into. 

We’re also delighted to welcome six more fresh and friendly faces to Liberty Marketing. This year, James Cavanagh, Rosella Pollard, Cher Cheung, Laura Mackenzie, Pooja Parab and Monique Allin joined us – while we’ve even more joining over the forthcoming weeks.

James and Monique are both joining us as SEO Account Co-ordinators, and will be helping a number of different clients with their day-to-day online strategies. James is a recent digital graduate, with experience in web development and digital animation, while Monique’s social media background has seen her work with The AA, the National Trust and the fashion brand Internacionale.   

Having graduated from Newport University with a degree in Business & Marketing, Cher has worked for charities and public sector clients across England and Wales, and joins our PPC team as a PPC Account Executive. And Pembrokeshire-born Laura, who’ll be joining us as an SEO Specialist, has worked in web development, online marketing and database analysis for a number of clients since graduating with a Business & IT degree in 2006. 

Rosella, our new SEO Copywriter, is an English and Creative Writing graduate who has written for More Magazine, NME and a digital agency in Prague, and keeps herself busy by reviewing gigs and festivals in her spare time. Last but not least is Pooja, who comes to us as our new Social Media & PR specialist with content marketing experience in the entertainment industry in her native India. 

Are you interested in working for one of Britain’s fast-growing agencies? We’re always looking for talented marketers with a passion for digital. For more information about working at Liberty Marketing, visit our careers page today.

The Pay Per Clickers amongst you will be delighted to hear that there are a whole host of PPC updates coming to a computer near you, as well as some which were rolled out towards the back end of 2012. With the PPC sphere constantly changing, here’s a helpful guide to the 5 main areas we think that Pay Per Click advertisers should be on top of this year.

Mobile

As the years go by the reach of mobile technology grows and grows. This year the stranglehold will grow stronger than ever, with 2013 set to become the year more people access the internet on a mobile device than through their computer. For many of us the smartphone is the first thing we pick up in the morning and the last thing we put down at night. If you are still not harnessing the power of PPC for mobiles then the potential market you are missing out on is enormous. The time for being able to justify ignoring the mobile market has been and gone, so we recommend that you test out specific mobile campaigns and make sure that your site and landing pages work on mobile devices.

If your site is ecommerce then you may find that people research more with their mobile but are more likely to make the actual purchase later on a desktop or laptop. Bear this in mind when choosing the keywords to put into your mobile campaigns, as the ones used at the start of the user journey may work better for you. Check the Assisted Conversions data within Analytics to see if it is the case that these PPC campaigns are influencing more online purchases.

Product Listing Ads

Product Listing ads allow retailers to promote their products on Google Shopping, with each ad displaying the product price, image, business name and more to users. Setting up a campaign is easy and can be done either directly from the Merchant Centre or by using your existing AdWords account. Once the account has been created Google will automatically display your products which are most relevant to a particular search query.

We did a lot of testing of Product Targets within AdWords in 2012 and found that in the majority of cases, the click-through-rates and conversion-rates grew significantly for ecommerce websites that take advantage of this feature.

Remarketing

There has been plenty of debate over the effectiveness of Google Remarketing with many users finding the adverts a bit annoying and invasive. Remarketing ads are those from a particular site which follow you about wherever your online activity takes you (so long as the websites you visit allow Google AdSense placements). The beauty of this strategy is the customers being targeted are those who have already visited your site and performed a certain action, ensuring an underlying interest in the products or services you offer. By spending money on prequalified traffic it is possible for a Google Remarketing campaign to play an important part in improving overall ROI, as you get a second chance with visitors.

Remarketing isn’t just for attracting new business. We have run campaigns for clients in the financial services and training markets, where the adverts are used to remind people to complete the sign-up process or up-sell them to a different package. In each case, we saw success and will be further testing out Remarketing campaigns this year.

Attribution Modelling

An attribution model allows marketers to take a broader view of the journey a customer goes on before a sale or conversion is made. Traditionally conversions were credited to the last ad clicked or viewed, whilst an attribution model gives credit to each ‘touch point’ the user interacts with along the way. 

The benefit of attribution modelling is it allows marketers to obtain an understanding of the bigger picture, in terms of the part each marketing channel is playing in a customer’s journey. By analysing multiple touch points users can gain new insights into their campaigns giving them a more accurate representation of the worth each marketing channel presents. 2012 saw attribution modelling become mainstream, with most of the industry events holding topics based on the subject, and we think 2013 will be the year that all advertisers start taking it seriously, especially as the attribution modelling toolkit for Google Analytics Premium users will be filtered down to all basic level accounts at some point this year.

Tag Manager Tracking

With marketing budgets increasingly under the spotlight, tracking, which helps you understand how your customers convert is becoming an increasingly important tool. There are plenty of tracking options available to you, but if you’re worried about how to implement the correct code or how long it will take to get through your IT development backlog, Google’s Tag Manager could be the solution for you.

Google Tag Manager allows optimisation tags to be changed quickly and easily without the need for your development team to go behind the scenes and start playing around with the site code. The system uses a simple and intuitive interface which allows users to edit their website’s tags. This can help to increase the speed campaigns go live, reduce developer costs and allow you to identify errors before they occur.

With so much new to the world of PPC advertising, the year ahead looks to be a busy and exciting one for search engine marketers. If you want to discuss these points further then please give us a ring.

2012 has been a very interesting year. Lots of great new projects came on board, many new talented marketers joined the team and we saw a lot of changes in the SEO, Pay Per Click and social media markets.

We want to thank everyone who made it such a special year and wish you a merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous new year.

Our offices are shut from 6 pm this Friday (the 21st) and will re-open at 8 am on Wednesday 2nd. We look forward to seeing you in 2013.

So you don't forget who we are in the meantime, here's a snap from our office Christmas party:

And for good measure, here's an instagrammed picture of our Christmas trees, courtesy of Rachel: