I went to the LinkLove London session last week and it was fantastic, I have to write about it.

There were great speakers, Rand Fishkin, Mike King, Branko Rhitman, Jane Copland, Wil Reynolds, Tom Anthony, Martin MacDonald and Will Critchlow.

There was a lot to take away from the event. I think Rand summed it up in the first talk of the day that you cannot just build links for the sake of it. You need to build great content which will lead to more links. This may sound obvious but there are still companies out there that want to get x number of links per month and increase their rankings by doing so.

The LinkLove conference highlighted again the importance of content building as opposed to just link building through directories or article syndication. There are 5 reasons to invest in content creation – from Rand Fishkin
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Facebook have ben announcing their new timeline for the past few months. I personally have been ignoring it as I really like the current Facebook page. Every time Facebook changes the layout or brings in a new feature there is always a backlash. In 2006 Facebook introduced the news feed which was met with a lot of negativity due to the fact that every post, picture, comment mentioned on your own wall was then immediately in the news feed. Facebook took note and amended their privacy settings so that people could then control what goes in the feed.

The Timeline will let people easily access their friends’ status updates and photos. I am sure by now a lot of you have already seen the timeline which shows the stories and photos of friends in a far more visual way.

The timeline is coming tomorrow and there is nothing we can do about it. There was the option to use the new feature since it was made public on December 15th last year. Now we have to use it, no opt in options. Here are a few tips on how to get the most out of your timeline.

1) Cover Photo
Make sure you pick the right photo for the cover as this is the biggest picture people will see when they land on your page.

2) Timeline
On the right hand side of the page, there is a timeline which shows the years you have been a member on Facebook. It also shows the times you were at school or working in a particular company (if you have added this to the timeline). Friends can also see the timeline if you allow this in your privacy settings.

3) Activity
Now with the timeline there will be a log of all your activity on Facebook, showing photos you have tagged, updates you have made and so on. If you do not want to show all your activity you can hide it from your wall. If you want to get rid of an activity permanently, you will have to delete it.

4) Verify
Now that everything you do and post will be on the timeline, you will need to check it before it goes live if you want to avoid any embarrassing incidents being made public. There is the option to select the “timeline review” so make sure you use it.

5) Privacy
Now with the Facebook timeline, your friends post will appear on your timeline if they tag you. It is the same as if people tag you now, your friends’ post will be on your wall. If you do not want people to see that you have been tagged, you can amend your privacy settings so that “only me” sees the tags.

Hope you are all ready for the timeline that takes place tomorrow. I will be sad to see the old wall go, but I am sure in a few months time, it will all be forgotten.

Search Marketing Expo London takes place on Tuesday May 15th and Wednesday, May 16th in London. SMX is for all those that are working in online marketing or those passionate about getting into the field.Here you can meet like minded people who love online marketing, you can meet the speakers, attend the Q&A sessions, network during the break and learn a lot.

I am pleased to announce I am one of the SMX’s blog partner and therefore I will be giving 15% off the price of the tickets to some of my readers. The first three that tweet back to me about this event will receive a code to give them a 15% discount. Make sure you get your ticket before the 30th of March to ensure your early bird discount.

This year, the event takes place at the Great Hall, at Chelsea Football Club, nearest station is Fulham Broadway.

Make sure you check out the agenda before you go as there are two sessions running at the same time.

On both days there is the SMX Advanced Track where the sessions include The New Periodic Table of SEO, Surviving Personalisation and Google, Mobile Trends, Real Answers for Technical SEO Problems, Maximising Paid Search Campaigns with Google.

On the Tuesday, there are sessions for Paid Search and Analytics and the Wednesday there is the SEO & Social Media Track.

The keynote speaker for this year’s event is Google engineer Amit Singhal. He will open the conference on the Tuesday. For those that want to have a closer interaction with the speakers, there is a the SMX boot camp.

Look forward to seeing you there.

A colleague of my dad’s – Giovanni Strawbridge will be taking part in the Help for Heroes (H4H) Big Battelfield Bike Ride  (BBBR) this May.

Gio will be cycling alongside those people who have been been wounded in the current conflicts. All of them have suffered life-changing injuries but despite this, they will be cycling 350miles from Portsmouth through some of the WWI and WWII battle fields in Somme before they finish in Dunkirk.

In order to take part in the race, Gio is holding a charity golf event on the 14th of March to raise the minimum sponsorship of £2,300 for H4H.  Gio is embarking on this race despite being confound to a wheelchair due to MS and battling with cancer for the past two years.  Gio will cover an average of 70 miles per day over 5 days.  Gio realises it will be a big challenge but is determined to complete the journey in his  3 wheel handcycle.

There should be more people in the world like Gio.  He has already had to battle his own illness and despite that is going to cycle the 350 miles.  He continues to be positive and set himself big challenges. The golf day takes place on Wednesday the 14th, all details below in the pdf document.

Help 4 Heroes Golf Day Information Pack

However, you can still support the event if you are not going by donating to the Gio Challenge.

www.bmycharity.com/GiosChallenge2012

Information about Staverton Park Golf Club

Staverton Park Golf Club is a mature, championship standard 18 hole golf course set in 140 acres of beautiful Northamptonshire countryside. With 4 small lakes and 64 American-style sand traps, Staverton Park offers a challenge to players of all abilities. The facilities have a De Vere Hotel with preferential rates for event players and also a Spa on site.

Staverton Park

Daventry Road

Northhamptonshire

NN11 6JT

There are three elements of hosting that affect SEO:

1) Hosting location

2) Country specific domain like .com.au or .co.uk

3) Hosting reputation

1) Hosting Location

Matt Cutts in the video below says that the location of your server, the IP address affects seo.  But then he also says the the ccTLD plays a role.  He recommends that you “play around” with your hosting, if you are in the UK, try a UK hosting on the .co.uk domain and see if you rank higher.

<iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/keIzr3eWK8I” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>

2) Country specific domain

If you have the country specific domain, then the location of where it is hosted – either US or UK does not make that much difference. This video  from Matt Cutts was back in June 2009 and in December that year, a Google employee said it was the ccTLD that was an important factor.

hosting server IP address importance to SEO – Search Console Help

If you have a country specific domain, then you should not worry where you are hosted. A decent US hoster can serve web site much faster than UK one does. So this is not always the case of hosting web sites in the same country where business commences.

3) Hosting reputation

It is important to have a good hosting company.  If you are sharing a server with a mixture of different spam sites, and the server often crashes, you will see a negative impact on your rankings.  You need to have a dedicated server and a static IP address from a company that can give you reliable hosting where you website never falls down.

Hosting is not the only factor to affect seo, there are a number of others:

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I am pleased to announce we have a date for the next Search London event “SEO in 2012 – Link Building Post Panda”

When: Tuesday, April 3rd from 7:00pm

Where: The Green Man, 383 Euston Road, NW1 3AU

We are lucky to have Lisa Myers, CEO and Owner of Verve Search speaking at the meetup.  Lisa  is well known in the Search World, founder of SEO-Chicks.com and the International Search Blog: Stateofsearch.com.  She will be talking about the most effective ways of link building in 2012 post Panda. Lisa has 11 years’ experience in Marketing of which 7 years in Search.  Lisa is heavily involved in the global Search community and respected by peers and search engines alike.

Wow, what a lot of experience to bring to the table……

If you are wondering how you are going to increase rankings and traffic to your client’s site or even your own, RSVP to reserve your place on meetup.com/search-london and come to the Green Man.

Look forward to seeing you all on the 3rd of April.

I felt I had to write this post after experiencing the wrath of Google and them suspending my account.

What does suspending an account mean?

All current campaigns will be stopped and no future ppc can be run in future, so it is really like banning you from using Google Adwords ever again.

My story

I set up a Google Adwords account on a Thursday for a new website and I set the campaign to go live on the Monday.  I gave my billing details on the Thursday which was enough time for Google to verify the card and contact me if there were any problems before Monday.  I did not get any email and therefore started the campaign on the Monday morning.

Budget

The campaign was on a very small daily budget. It ran for just 3 hours and then I paused it as there was no impressions and the client also asked for the campaign to be postponed till the end of the week.  I therefore was going to review the campaign, amend the keywords and adgroups before Friday.  Two days after I had paused the campaign, I received an email from Google saying they had suspended my account.  The email is below.  It was a very generic email as you can see.

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Another year has past and SES London is back in town from February 20th to February 24rd. Like last year, it will be taking place at the following venue:

The Queen Elizabeth II
Conference Centre
Broad Sanctuary, London

Nearest tube is Westminster

There are lots of events taking place in the evening. The SEO Chicks are hosting the after party on Wednesday night, at The Old Monk Exchange, 61- 71 Victoria Street.  They have teamed up with Linkdex who will be sponsoring the event.

Tuesday is the first day of the event. The agenda for the 3 days  is as follows:

Day 1

9:00 – 10:00 Business Optimisation in a Digital Age

10:30 – 11:30 (3 topics to choose from)

SEO – 11 Ways to Be Invisible to Search Engines

PPC – Landing Page Optimisation

Introduction to SEO

11:45 – 12:45 (3 topics to choose from)

SEO – Key Link Building Strategies

PPC – Ads in a Quality Score World

Google Analytics Basics—Implementation and Analysis Strategies

2:00 – 3:00pm (3 topics to choose from)

SEO – The Business of SEO

I am very intersted in the topic “The Business of SEO” which is moderated by Matt McGown and will have two speakers  – Jake Langwith and Lisa Myers from Verve Search.
PPC – PPC Tools of the Trade

A 13-Step Checklist to #Jumpstart Your Social Program

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Check out the new Google Doodle, it is a one minute feature animation to celebrate Valentine’s Day.

Google Valentine’s Doodle

The animation sees a young boy, smitten with a girl, trying to show the girl how much he likes her.  The schoolgirl is playing with a skipping rope and doesn’t move from the spot despite the boy’s best efforts.  The boy searches on Google for presents to woo her, flowers, chocolates, balloons, rabbit in a top hat.

It is only after he has tried everything Google suggested, that he starts skipping with his own rope, the girl jumps in and hugs him.

The song in the background is the Grammy-winning Tony Bennett – singing the bluesy Hank Williams tune “Cold, Cold Heart.” As there is no dialogue, Michael Lipman, the Doodle’s animator said: “These characters are archetypes, with no dialogue, so it can play around the world.”