Our SEO guru Barry (who hates being called a guru, which is why we keep calling him that) has been interviewed by Sean from the geekily titled 01100111011001010110010101101011.co.uk blog, together with eight other top class SEOs such as Julie Joyce, Ted Ives, Branko Rihtman, and AJ Kohn.

The questions ranged from how they got in to SEO to what they consider to be the best linkbuilding method in terms of ROI. You can read all their collected answers on the 01100111011001010110010101101011.co.uk blog here.

Barry has also been invited to present at the upcoming Think Visibility conference in Leeds on March 3^rd, where he will be speaking on advanced SEO for ecommerce websites. Other speakers include Google’s Pierre Far, Dan Harrison from WordPress Doctors, Anna Lewis from Koozai, and many more. Tickets are still available to book online here.

Google seems to have started 2012 in the worst possible way. First there was a scandal about how Google, through a video advertising promotions agency, was apparently buying links to promote its Chrome browser.

Personally I felt this was much ado about nothing, and that Google penalised itself only so it would be seen to be doing something. In essence Google never paid for any links, but merely paid for video ads to be distributed among bloggers – the link was an editorial decision by one of the bloggers who posted the video.

This sort of thing is not against Google’s own guidelines, but Google still penalised itself under the guise of being “held to a higher standard“. If such a thing were genuinely worthy of a penalty in Google’s search results they might as well shut down the entire internet, as you could probably find a similar link in almost every established website’s backlink profile.

But that was just the start of it,

Search Engine Optimisation is a discipline within internet marketing that is, unfortunately, widely misunderstood. Often seen as a dark art bordering on the illegal, SEO as an industry has managed to gather a rather poor reputation.

This is entirely unwarranted, as SEO is a very powerful instrument in a website’s online marketing arsenal – if done properly. However, some of the negative connotations of SEO are due to inexperienced practicioners working off of incomplete or outdated knowledge, and thus not managing to gather any resulst for their clients.

Because search engines continually improve and update their algorithms, SEO is never static and always evolves towards new ranking signals. Thus SEOs need to change their tactics continuously.

However, not all SEOs do. Some still continue to work on old principles that no longer apply. Below are a few of such outdated practices that, if a ‘SEO expert’ recommends them to you, you should turn around and run:

Our very own Barry Adams has been voted as one of the Top 50 SEO Bloggers in the world in 2011. The countdown of SEO bloggers of the year, ranked by their Klout score, is brought to you by UK Internet Marketing Consultancy Receptional. Ranking at number 29 in the list, it recognises the time and personal effort Barry puts in to developing his reputation in the industry.

Instead of writing a nondescript and easily forgotten bit of news about Google’s latest release – Think Insights – I decided to write two versions to announce the new tool, and let you, the audience, choose which one you prefer.

So go on ahead, read both versions of the news below, and then vote for your favourite in the poll:

Yesterday Google announced on its Analytics blog that it would make a change to its search and analytics. To be exact, all users who are signed-in to their Google account will automatically make use of the SSL encrypted version of the google.com search engine.

This also means that any search query performed by these signed-in users will not be passing any keyword information to web analytics. This effectively means that the keyword information you get out of your Google Analytics reports (or any other web analytics system) will no longer be accurate.

We were delighted this month when Tesco (Ireland) asked us to do further work on enhancing their social media presence.  We first started working as Tesco (Ireland)’s social media partner back in June 2011 when we were tasked with designing and launching their Facebook presence, including welcome page and sub-pages covering; Tesco Clubcard, Your Local Store, Community, Baby and Toddler, Ladies GAA, and Schools and Clubs.

Early finish Friday. Studio out for a bite to eat and an impromptu pool tournament. It’s been the first opportunity for us all to get out since Rory and Will joined at the beginning of the year. Been so busy, lots of great work coming through. Web update is imminent…