IP were keen to use WordPress, thanks to its ease of use for content publishers. The finished site bears testament to the flexibility of the WordPress as a CMS and provides an excellent showcase for how far it can be pushed beyond a simple blogging platform. The original site content was re-architected around good, clean, search-accessible  HTML markup. Elements of the original flash design were retained (to be used as animated backgrounds), with other transitions and animation added through Javascript. Of course, the site was designed to degrade gracefully for non Flash-supporting browsers to ensure a rich user experience across all devices.

The result is a site which accords with accessibility and SEO best practice and is fully manageable by the brand, without sacrificing any of the visual slickness of its predecessor.

With a strong regional presence the company were looking to use the web as a means to reach a wider market. Intelligent positioning were engaged on a design and build basis to fulfil these goals and develop an online presence for Sartoria Umbra which showcases the company’s product collections while conveying the quality and heritage of the brand.

The resulting build was based on the Joomla platform, giving Sartoria Umbra a simple interface from which to manage their site content, including posting news updates and new product collections. Key to the success of the project were Joomla’s strong support for multilingual content (the ability to add translations in future was seen as essential) and the K2 component, used to provide catalogue functionality.

I was certainly expecting this anticipated update to fly in like an eagle owl, late at night, with a highly tuned sense of its prey and clean up, leaving a trail of screaming keyword-rich domains and web 2.0 dressed linking farms counting the cost of depleting referring traffic revenues. As should have been expected, Google turns cool on it head and delivers us the Penguin.

The implications will be felt across all sectors but those high-value, resellable terms like “Loans” are as to be expected the first to be hit.

Here are two examples of this, as seen late in April, for Unsecured Loans and Bridging Finance – alerted to us by our Intelligence Platform

If we take a closer look at the Unsecured Loans chart we can see two clear examples of winners and losers, using our content diagnostics and performance tool we can look closer at the affected pages.

Penguin Losers

www.fastunsecuredloans.org.uk and www.circleloans.co.uk

Penguin Winners

www.totallymoney.com and www.uswitch.com

If we take a look at the return page SEO diagnostics it is clear to see that the sites with low authority and poor on-page optimisation scores have fallen. Those sites with higher PageRank (a good sign of stronger link quality) and with stronger page theming benefit from improved conversion positions.

So what is the lesson?

It’s too early to tell the long term implications (the positions may revert) but so far this could be the long awaited triumph for substance over spam. But like most things on the internet I hope this does not come at the cost of the emerging pretender looking to build authority and in turn position.

London 2012 will be the social media Olympics. Obviously we are 4 years on from Beijing with 4 years of advancement, but this time there will is official integration of social media assets with the Olympics. Plus athletes and competitors will be online, tweeting their experiences (where they are allowed to of course) and part of an Olympics online hub which showcases all the athletes and promotes their Twitter and Facebook pages. 

This will enable audiences to have real-time text chats with competitors. Get insight into the preparations before the games as well as any Olympic village party after the London Olympics.

Twitter will be the perfect supplementary media to watching the games on TV. For Europeans who will be at work during many of the events Twitter will be deluged on a daily basis with Olympic related trending topics, especially as some of the big stars enjoy over 10million followers.

TV audiences too are obviously expected to increase above and beyond Beijing which enjoyed 4.3 Billion viewers in 2008, with 2 billion watching the opening ceremony alone. (source Nielsen)

Evolution of Olympic coverage:

Print and Radio to Facebook and Twitter via The Wall

As individuals and organisations we are using more and more data. There is so much data being generated the rewards are huge for the companies that can analyse it all and better predict our buying habits and behaviour. Previously utilising this data would only be available to the biggest companies.

Intelligent Positioning is one of these such companies. We use vast amounts of data everyday to better understand website performance and what it takes to perform well in the search engines for 100,000s of keywords across scores of countries. We are part of this new big data revolution.

What is Big Data?

At the simplest level it is vast amounts of information. Big Data has been around for years, but the revolution that is coming from it is based on cheaper computers and server costs and the ability to better mine the data in a valuable format.

On the Radio 4 Today programme, the BBC Technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones reports on how the data consumers create when they buy something, get cash out, visit a website, or communicate via mobile or email, is being used by companies to better predict people’s shopping habits and purchasing behaviour.

Well one of these things looks like its close to being built by Google’s secretive X Lab – and it’s not the hovercraft.

The invention in question is called Project Glass, where Google released photos and posted a video to YouTube to preview the company’s long-rumoured activity in the spectacle business.

What is Google Project Glass?

Well Project Glass looks like Google is attempting to give everyone total, uninhibited access to all its clever applications (such as Maps and Google+ etc) in a pair of glasses – while you walk down the street. Have a look at this typical Google-style promotion video, where the guy in question uses all the services to the betterment of his existence.

Who knows Tomorrow’s World would probably still be with us if the inventors in the show said said “Hey Dude?” and had a chintzy guitar tune in the background.

But surely, as a poster on the Guardian blog said: “You already have a machine that does all this. it is called a brain.”

Google Glass Parody

We think this is what Google Glass would more likely be like. But surely Google won’t be placing adverts on the glasses, they wouldn’t do something like that.

Marketers can choose from a variety of ways to spend their marketing budgets – from SEO, to PPC (pay-per-click), Facebook and old school display adverts, to social media management and tracking and email marketing. Just as the routes for online users to interact online have grown, both in the paid and organic arenas, so too have the methods of marketing to online users have grown with it. As that activity grows then the tracking and reporting grows too.

So along with this activity comes masses of digital data from disparate sources and ushered in an era of ‘Big Data’. Now large sets of data that, when mined, could reveal insight about online marketing efforts and effect for all stakeholders. For traffic there’s Omniture or the free (but relatively flawed) Google Analytics. For social media brand tracking there’s Brandwatch (based on the same street as us) and Radian 6. For PPC there is DC Storm (also based on the same street as us). And for organic search there is Intelligent Positioning which includes data such as search rankings, site visits, SERPs and click-data.

So what are the implications of this big data and digital analytics trend?

In its Web Analytics Buyer’s Guide, Econsultancy reported that the analytics market was up despite the economic downturn and growing well beyond many other sectors at around 9%.

The study also found that companies use analytics predominantly for both customer acquisition and retention, and 59% of those involved n the study regarded information relating to the cost of gaining a customer or lead as ‘high priority’.

For marketeers and brand managers the approach was to ask “What is and what is not working in each channel?” This includes the use of tactics like conversion optimisation, content optimisation, web analytics and PPC bid management and tracking. It encompasses metrics such as bounce rates, click-through curves and conversion rates in order to diagnose the levers that require adjustment.

Until recently, this was the only way marketers talked of online marketing. But now in addition to enhancing the multi-channel view, big-data also enables the marketer to go deeper in the channel view. Whereas SEO used to be solely about search PageRank and positions for example, now it is about long tail rankings, conversions, traffic, bounce rate, social interaction and so on.

Now a new approach, call it the ‘multi-channel’ approach covers the all the online marketer’s channels and everything therein. It began with attribution, but thanks to ‘Big Data’ can leverage all those data points and measurements for actionable intelligence. This is what Intelligent Positioning does already with its own SEO software and Platform, offering clients that granularity in their own businesses across the world.

This approach is reflected in a separate finding from the Econsultancy study that spending on in-house web analytics staff grew by 6%. This means that UK companies are increasingly investing in internal analysts to interpret this Big Data technology.

The Need for Big Data is industry agnostic

Given the growth in big data from all forms of online marketing channels we need to take a much more holistic approach to what and how the data is telling us. If you were an Oxford street store you’d need to know how many people visit London. How many visit your competitors. How many walk down Oxford Street. How many walk into your store. What attracted them to your store over a competitor. How many leave without buying. What the average spend is. For online there is an authority for every element of this regardless of the industry.

The growth in the volume and breadth of data across online marketing channels combined with the maturation of marketing technology to leverage that data cross-functionally means the era of big data is upon us. Well for those you have the right tools and intelligence systems.

And this then is where Intelligent Positioning had the foresight to develop a comprehensive technology platform nearly 6 years ago that was truly universal, could handle any search worldwide in almost any language or dialect. Searching in Google “translated into English” is no comparison to searching in the local idiom. And all of this in real time. So for the first time marketers can really start to leverage all the available data into their marketing strategies. For some, this begins with starting to think about their marketing channels in a more holistic fashion.

For others, it means taking action on a multi-channel operations utilising all the features and technology that will enable them to make the transition into marketers leveraging this holistic multi-channel approach. This as they say, changes everything from a brand or marketing perspective.

We’ve seen huge opportunities and technology advances in natural search that are compelling search marketers to turn to SEO platforms to gain the upper hand. Because of that we are therefore strongly accelerating IP’s software development program in 2012.

Our agile technology infrastructure gives brand managers peace of mind knowing millions of dollars won’t be lost when search engines like Google make changes to satisfy consumer interests. This is supported by strong endorsement and results from top global clients such as BSkyB, Alitalia, AXA, Pearson (FT) and now publishing group, IPC.
We’re building a big business focused on SEO through Big Data and SEO Technology as the emerging future course of the Search industry.

Forrester’s analysis and forecasts has become a reality in the UK, Scandinavia and Southern Europe already. Intelligent Positioning is planning a near 200% increase in overall sales in 2012 with all of that coming from our combined Intelligent Platform and soon-to-be released new IP Application Suite software product range.

We have almost 60 sales prospects already booked in our UK and Italian pipeline alone, and we plan to expand into other European countries imminently. Right now we are looking for more distribution partners across Europe and Asia and are already in talks with software and agency partners to give us reach in Benelux, Scandinavia, Hong Kong and China.

While Natural Search (Google’s free search results) accounts for 92 percent of clicks, but only 11 percent of search spending. Intelligent Positioning through our sustained emphasis on a ground-up architected technology platform since late 2009 is committed to changing that trend.

Intelligent Positioning’s cloud platform collects data millions of sources daily over the past 5 years to help companies understand where they sit in search results, where their competitors sit, and how they can move up. Not surprisingly some companies that depend on SEO for all their traffic might spend hours using IP’s products (such as news, media, travel or retail brands), while others see it more of an alert system, so they know when their rank is falling.

Intelligent Positioning has consistently been chosen to work with cutting edge brands who need real time intelligence fast and it shows in our results. That is why the future of search is Big Data backed by SEO technology – which is exactly where IP is – 2012 is going to be a very good year.

In order to make our searches ‘safer’ Google announced in October 2011 that it would start to encrypt searches for users who were logged in to their Google account through Google.com. This would include their subdomains such as Google Plus. This has since rolled out in the UK as of March 5th and I wanted to document the initial impact of the change for webmasters and brand managers.

Within Google Analytics you can see which keywords people have searched for, then clicked on to reach your site. But with this new encryption the “Keyword not provided” field has cropped up. As more and more people stay logged into Google while making searches, this field has grown in popularity.

I have my own website that notches up around 30k visitors per month. I sometimes use the site to perform certain tests based on traffic, analytics and usability, and I’m more than happy to share the ‘Keyword Not Provided’ stats from Google Analytics within this blog:

1st Sep – 30th Nov

1st Jan – 27th Mar

As you can see from the two charts above, there has been a huge jump since this change was implemented by Google and migrated across to the UK.

Google is therefore losing grip of what traffic it is sending to sites. 70% of search traffic comes through SEO. Webmasters are losing the visibility of their performing keywords and Google’s visibility is therefore waning. These are very disturbing times for companies that use Google analytics – especially considering that ‘keyword not provided’ will increase even more so over the next couple of months with FireFox’s latest announcement.

Beyond Google Analytics

This issue has transcended Google analytics. For other clients of ours who use Omniture we have seen “Keyword unavailable” go up over the last 6 months. For two of our clients that gain 500,000 visitors a month, “keyword unavailable” in Omniture accounts for between 5-7% of traffic.

Is this something that we just simply have to get used to?

In terms of search, “Mother’s day” in 2012 is a major gift day, obviously not as big as Christmas but bigger in terms of search than Father’s Day, Graduation and perhaps more surprisingly even Valentines Day. But then again, pretty much everyone has a mother, but not everyone has a lover.

Mothers Day V Other Minor Gift Days

So to be on page one and above the fold for Mother’s day in natural search could be very lucrative to a select few. Our URL line tracker below shows how the main brands have been fairing over the last few months for the search term “Mother’s Day Gifts”. (BTW this term is almost 7 times bigger than

The SEO Winners on Mother’s Day 2012

The chart below shows the final drive for page one for the keyword “Mother’s Day Gifts”. A whole chasing pack of site seem to rise from the last week in February to take top spot this week.

Languishing on page 3 for most of the year, www.buyagift.co.uk makes a late bolt for page one. So too did www.gonedigging.co.uk and several others.

The SEO Losers on Mother’s Day 2012

Unfortunately for gettingpersonal.co.uk they had fantastic positions all year, but then drop a week before the big day. So too is last minute flower favourites www.interflora – this time last year they were position 4 in Google.co.uk – no position 15. Let’s hope a lot of people buy their Mother’s Day Gifts early.

For much more detailed analysis on why these sites went up and down, we’d happily do bespoke reports and give the reasons behind the positions.