About martin

Works at Copify

Fancy some free PageRank 6 links?

Posted on February 9, 2012 by martin

We’re adding the final touches to our new website and we need some case studies. So we’re calling on all of our lovely customers to be nice and give us permission to use their logos and maybe a few kind words about us on the site…

What’s in it for you?

Well apart from the warm, fuzzy feeling you’ll get from helping out your favourite copywriting agency, you’ll receive the following:

Links from a PageRank 6 website (that’s the same as Rightmove, Autotrader and John Lewis.
Your logo on our homepage (6000 visitors a month) either linked to your site with an alt tag of your choice, or linked to a static case study page.

Your Logo Here

2 followed, in-context anchor links of your choice from a static page, linked from our homepage.

Case studies page with link

Written case study by us (or write your own if you’d prefer).
A link from the ‘Friends’ section of our Blog (PageRank 4), again, anchor text of your choice (This is not a sitewide link).
A free guest post on this very blog with copy provided by us (or provide your own if you prefer).

Interested?

Drop me an email: martin@copify.com and we’ll get cracking.

SEO 2022 – What does the future hold?

Posted on February 1, 2012 by martin

If you haven’t already heard, the SEO Chicks are running a competition. The challenge, a blog post with predictions on what SEO might look like in 2022. The prize, tickets to the SES Conference and 3 months mentoring from the ladies themselves.

We’ve taken up the gauntlet and here is our entry, inspired by one of the greatest films of all time.

SEO could be heavy in the future

Voice activated search

We already have Siri and surely it’s only a matter of time before more and more people start using voice activated services, whether they are turning on the lights, hydrating a pizza or searching on Google. As a result, 2022 SEOs may have to adapt target keywords to what people say rather than type.

Augmented reality

We are already beginning to see augmented reality; by 2022 this will surely be the norm. You can already see what a new sofa will look like in your home and by 2022 you might just have finished paying for it.

By then, search terms beginning with the query ‘show me…’ could be commonplace.

The shark might still look fake...

Aggressive tactics won’t work

We’re already seeing Google become increasingly clever at detecting paid links. In the future, it is unlikely that aggressive SEO tactics will be effective.

Google will become evil

As Google bows to growing shareholder pressure and becomes increasingly commercial in the way that it does things, it will completely lose sight of its ‘Don’t be evil’ policy. This may force people to use other search engines.

Google will become evil

Will SEO still exist?

Maybe search engines will become so advanced that it is literally impossible to try and influence their results…

SEO contracts may be terminated

Why big brands are failing at web content

Posted on January 17, 2012 by martin

On paper, they have the budget and resource to offer killer content on every page, so why are so many big brands failing miserably when it comes to web content?

Restrictive sign off

Big businesses often have slow and painful sign-off processes for even the smallest of content changes. With Google’s algorithm increasingly rewarding freshness, this means they are their own worst enemies when it comes to SEO.

Duplicate content

For many brands, populating pages involves lifting and shifting directly from manufacturer-supplied copy and images. If they are late to the party in being indexed by Google, this content will be seen as duplicate, which will prevent them from ranking. For businesses operating multiple brands under one umbrella, this is a massive headache.

‘SEO’ copy

All too often, big brands make the mistake of distinguishing between regular copy and SEO copy.

Argos Dishwashers page 5/12/2011

Many websites allocate a portion of the page (usually just above the footer) to poorly written, keyword stuffed copy, in the misguided belief that this will improve Google rankings.

Argos are one of the worst offenders of this, with a formula-based approach that generates some interesting results…

Multiple agendas

Most big brands have several stakeholders producing content, each with very different agendas. In many cases, they do so without communicating with each other. This leads to a lack of consistency, not to mention duplication.

The solution

In his presentation at the SearchLove 2011 event, Distilled’s Tom Critchlow discussed what he refers to as ‘The Content Gap’, a lack of consistent strategy between teams in the production of content.

To combat this, Tom proposed the introduction of a ‘Chief Content Officer’ position within a business. The idea is that by having someone with top level visibility and responsibility for all content production, you can prevent the above from happening.

Copify’s content marketing predictions for 2012

Posted on January 4, 2012 by martin

The start of a new year is a great time to consider your content marketing strategy. If you’re looking for some inspiration, here’s Copify’s content marketing predictions for 2012.

The death of ezine article marketing

Thanks to Google’s Panda update, links from Ezine Articles et al are now virtually worthless. So hopefully 2012 will see an end to those dreadful, mundane, “10 things you didn’t know about cat food” type of articles that have been cluttering up the internet for far too long.

Blogger outreach

For the uninitiated, blogger outreach is the process of reaching out to bloggers and offering them content and in some cases payment or goods/services in exchange for coverage and those all important backlinks.

If these blogs have a decent authority and the links are in context, the value of this in SEO terms can be very valuable indeed.

Advertorials

Most local and even national newspapers are now pimping out space on their websites to advertorial content. If you can find a contact who will publish content for you, these below the radar links will be hugely beneficial for SEO. Get in there before everyone else does.

Hopefully 2012 will see an end to those dreadful, mundane, “10 things you didn’t know about cat food” type of articles that have been cluttering up the internet for far too long.

If you’ve been doing generic press release syndication via services like PR Web then it’s likely that you will have reached a saturation point in terms of links. 2012 should see a growth in smarter PR syndication and the increasing importance of promoting this socially and putting in the leg work of talking to journalists and publishers.

The return of infographics

More and more people are consuming digital content via devices such as tablets and smartphones, which means that displaying it in an appealing way has never been more important. As a result, we predict that infographics will become increasingly popular in 2012.

Summary

Investing the time and money in high quality content that people actually want to read and share will pay dividends in 2012 and beyond.

What’s on the agenda for your 2012 content marketing strategy?

Copify Blog

The latest ramblings from the Copify team

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