The Credit Crisis Visualised

Not much to say - just watch. I loved it.

SEO - Theme Density

I was talking to an American chap recently about SEO practices and he kept making reference to Theme Density. I tried to explain that I was completely unfamiliar with the term but he wasn’t very good at explaining what he meant. I did a bit of research and found several articles that made reference to Theme Density but I haven’t been able to figure out a) whether the practice actually works, b) whether it is a bon fide ‘legal’ strategy, and c) what the limitations are for content duplication in smaller sites.

Basic overview time for those not familiar with the term, I guess. Theme Density refers to building internal linking structures throughout a network of pages and posts that develop strong semantic links (related data content), occurrences of matching keyphrases and synonyms, and thematic modifiers. Now in laymen’s terms; you write several posts all of which are interlinked to each other through multiple keyphrases, while also all being around the same general topic. Basically.

The result of all this is that within those keyphrases you will start to gain multiple search results on both broad match and exact match keywords. By making the practice habitual throughout everything you post, you start to show more page results over certain keywords. Hence Theme Density.

Seems clear and easy (to be honest I’m not sure why that guy couldn’t explain it?).

The best example I have come across is Wikipedia. Consider all the words within a wikipage that are linked to other wikipages describing that term. Now think about how many times you performed a search and Wikipedia is the top result! In the case of Wikipedia this is further reinforced as each word that links to it’s own article, features itself as the H1 on the other end, possible as the H2 and H3 too.

This however is where the average person starts to think about the number of posts necessary to do this effectively, or rather the number of existing posts to do this effectively. It’s a lot. Plus there’s no point in retrospectively linking an old post to a newer one. So the process is slow, and requires that you post a lot, linking between related posts several times for each post you make.

Unfortunately while I now (think I) understand what the process is, why it’s beneficial and how to do it, I haven’t answered any of my original three questions.

Back to the research!

Compare the Meerkat Out-takes

Without doubt Aleksandr and his Compare the Meerkat campaign have been one of the best campaigns in the last 6 months. Brilliantly simple, extremely funny and integrated into a multitude of digital and non-digital channels. Both tv ads have gained huge viewing rates online, the use of Twitter is superb (with hilarious updates and personalised reply messages) and the microsite itself is straight to the point.

So, in what I hope is not the last time I can post about Compare the Meerkat, here is another hilarious video of 'out-takes' from the ad shoots.

Google Suggest - Local Flavours

Last August Google launched its Suggest function. Since then, as you type a search query into the Google search box, you are offered suggestions as to what it is you may be looking for. On Tuesday the service received it's first major update, with a full country-by-country localisation.

For example, if in the UK as soon as 'liver' is typed you are shown possible searches around Liverpool football club, however if you were in the US you would be offered possible searches on Liver Disease.

In India, as the mobile phone market is exploding, as soon as you type 'no' you are shown a multitude of possible Nokia searches.

The Google Blog gives a full account of the feature and loads of examples.

Be warned, if you don't like stereotypes it'd be best to overlook the Irish example they give!

Esquire do it again!

Yet again Esquire wow me with there innovative front cover work. This is just great - it's simple, it's fun, it's engaging and it's something no one else has done. I think that ticks the four most important (non-result) boxes in any marketing campaign.

100 Words About Digital Branding

I found this great presentation by Mike Arauz over on (the always brilliant) Only Dead Fish. Well worth a slide through.

Big Brother Google is Watching!

As some of you may be aware, for quite some time Google has been tracking all Google Searches of users who are logged into Google. It may or may not be a big deal to you, and many don't really care. I mean, if you don't want your searches to be tracked, then just log out of Google.

However, something that a lot of people may be totally oblivious to is Google's new doubleclick.net tracking cookie. Essentially Google can now record the surfing behaviour of any user that visits a site using AdSense. Note, not the behaviour of users you click around on a site - users who visit a site. No clicking required.

As soon as the page loads, the doubleclick.net cookie uses a unique ID to tag and track your surfing behaviour. The system is essentailly very similar to the system that has been developed over the last decade for the google.com cookie.

And with a huge amount of sites now featuring AdSense, this is a very big catchnet that Google has created. For instance, AdSense can be found on newyorktimes.com, irishtimes.com, and a large number of blogs and user generated sites. And even if there isn't any sign of AdSense on the site, remember that DoubleClick is one of the largest Ad Serving companies around and chances are it's them delivering the ads that you see on a daily basis. In short, this is everywhere.

Although Google are on record as saying that they only sort users by broad interest groups, the movement of the industry towards behaviourally targeted ads means that it would be stupid for Google not to retain the full breath of data capture that these cookies are known to be capable of. Time stamp, IP address, URL and unique identifier are all collected and relayed back to Google as soon as you hit that page.

It's certainly food for thought, and makes me consider one of the first blog posts I ever wrote about How much you can trust your ISP - Google may not be an ISP but it seems it won't be long before they have the same tracking cpabilities.