Bright Things Share Discussion Threads

[airforce11] 03/3/2010 21:32

I'll wager a placing at 1.25p is going to be announced shortly along with a trading update.

[carl79] 03/3/2010 20:46

An interesting tangent guys...

Norbus What is your site?

TA, what are your sites? I'll fire you a link to my site - let me know your thoughts...I've not looked at SEO yet so I guess you'll see it as amateur :-) ...however, I am looking to start the optimisation phase immanently!

[the analyst] 03/3/2010 18:30

Thanks yump, that is interesting

My sites are mostly in the online gambling sector. I manage to rank at the top or near enough for the (mostly medium-tail) terms I go for, but In this industry I don't see too many non-sites getting top ranking, like the ones you mention. Unless, of course, they have the back-links to justify the ranking. Must vary between industries...

So, I'd love to know if whatever those spam sites are doing in terms of seo would work in the gambling field!

Can you give me a few of those search terms that bring up the spammy results, so I can check them out, try to see what they are doing?

Cheers

[yump] 03/3/2010 18:21

Hi analyst - think this is one of the most interesting net companies potentially, especially as it doesn't have the idiot following (erm, Blinkx crowd) !

Yes, agree url backs up content. I read a lot of what's said about SEO as make a living from various sites, but easy to end up looking at every aspect and not getting the priorities sorted.

I guess as a Google 'spokesman' he's always got to say something and of course people hang on every word trying to make something of it (including me !).

What does become apparent though, is that what anyone at Google says or writes, does not seem to tally very well with what actually happens in practice.

I offer as evidence the piles of c..p voucher code and price comparison site results at the top of the searches.

They can put up pages with no useful content whatsoever about any product eg. a fly fishing reel, and it appears as if by magic on the first page.

Very frustrating for users and imo if they don't do something about it, their market lead will suffer badly.

Bing working quite well for shopping imo.

I'm a bit biased as have a specialist sports price comparison site that has really good content and the spammy sites are still sitting above mine :-((

[the analyst] 03/3/2010 18:07

By the way, good to see you here yump

Perhaps you are planning to become a SocialGO shareholder at some stage?

[the analyst] 03/3/2010 18:05

You are right, yump, that content is the number one thing - good quality, natural content, written for the visiotrs and not the search engines.

The seo needs to back up that content

The stuff I just wrote about the url structure came from Matt Cutts - I discussed url structure with him in November at a site review consultation in Las Vegas. He said, getting your url structure right is just one of many things you should be doing, especially when you are going for competitive search terms

I do appreciate, though, that not everything he says is true! In fact, through talking to him I discovered that some things he 'states as fact' are misleading to say the least

I definitely don't agree with you that to optimise for the exact phrase "BT is Rubbish", the optimal url would be your choice of "BT-home-hub-connectivity-drop-problems-complaints" ! :)

Remember, that the url is an important factor in whether people click on the search result - when the google search results come up, they look at the url as well as the title when they decide whether to click. An exact match for the phrase they typed into google can work wonders in getting that hit rate up

[yump] 03/3/2010 17:43

If I may chip in, I wouldn't agonise too much over the exact url; concentrate 80% on the page content and on the different ways people might seach for 'BT' and 'rubbish' combined with other words, so that to a search engine your page seems to be an authority on the subject.

Google in particular ignores prepositions and incidental numbers in urls ('stop' words), so that url would look like: BT-worst-ISP-world.

Actually always worth checking whether Google recognises something like 'BT' as well.

If I was doing the BT one I'd use something like this without the non-keywords:
BT-home-hub-connectivity-drop-problems-complaints.

PS.
You only have to look around at sites with pages that appear very high in Google, to see that the url cannot be much of determining force in the ranking process. Its the page content thats critical. Otherwise I could have a url: anyoldthing.com/get-the-cheapest-credit-cards-here-now.html and it would rank well. However if I owned balancetransfers.co.uk, I might be laughing, because Google does (currently) like exact domain matches.

[the analyst] 03/3/2010 17:37

Sure Norbus, I just looked at you site and I can see that it's url structure needs A LOT of work. Wow, without trying to offend, it's really amature...

Easiest way right now is to fire me an email

[norbus] 03/3/2010 17:18

TA
can I pick your brains too? you explained that well, Bravo.

Reneuron : have a look at today's RNS.. also me favourite stock..

[the analyst] 03/3/2010 17:07

no problem with picking my brains Carl, just fire me an email when you have a question

On your question about BGT, you are right that the issue is not such a major problem if you are starting from scratch

But it is still a problem

An example:

You have a blog post (let's say it's your 38th blog post on your www.failingcompanies.com site) about the subject of BT and you want to optimise for the search phrase "BT is rubbish"

You write your blog post and give it the title "why BT is the worst ISP in the world", your url becomes:

www.failingcompanies.com/magazine/why-bt-is_the-worst-ISP-in-the-world_38.html

When really, to optimise it for the search phrase you were going for, a much better url would be:

www.failingcompanies.com/blog/bt-is-rubbish/

There are a few problems with the first url (the one SocialGO would force upon you)

1) it is very long and people may not want to click on a spammy looking link when they do their google search

2) it does not contain the exact search phrase you are going for, so you don't get maximum search phrase kudos with respect to the google algorhythm

3) it has the number in it, so partly it is optimised for the term "38" (not ideal)

You CAN still rank well even with those problems, but it's not as easy, especially if you are going for popular search terms. It COULD make the difference between being on page 1 or page 2 of google, which is essentially the difference between getting traffic or no traffic

[carl79] 03/3/2010 16:18

Thanks - I may at some point need to pick your brains on this subject matter - if you dont mind...it is for a personal project...

Back to BGT - My understanding is that a site starting from scratch does not have the issues that an existing and popular site looking to integrate would - eg, you can build a SEO optimised socialGO site, but you cant integrate one?? Or am i mistaken, can you simply not optimise any SG site?

[the analyst] 03/3/2010 16:17

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Adding relevant content in the form of blogs, news stories, photos and videos is critical to ensuring your members arrive in an environment that is interesting to them. This comes down to the efforts of the network owner - however our GO Pro Services directory does offer a GO Content service where for a small fee we can help you along the way.
When new members sign up, why not engage each of them with a personal welcome email? Or use our internal network messaging system and add a comment on their profile wall? You might even want to engage them on the chat system by "just wanting to say hi".
One great shortcut to getting your community populated is to import your database of existing members, so they all have a profile setup before they even arrive. You can do this using our GO Import service. See the Pro Services Directory for more information.
Of course, you can use the Invite Members functionality to invite everyone you can think of to your network. Plus, it won't hurt to encourage your members to invite their friends using the same tool. And don't forget to send out reminders to members to revisit your site using the 'Message all Members' feature in the Admin Centre. You've really got to actively market your network.
So if you invest some time and break through "The 150 Member Chasm", it is likely to pay dividends down stream with a successful and thriving community. Good luck!"

[the analyst] 03/3/2010 16:03

Hi Carl,

When I asked the first time (at the AGM), they admitted they had been slow to address the SEO needs of networks, but they knew that the issue needed addressing. At that time, they didn't have any SEO skills in house, so I felt they didn't quite grasp what a big issue it is in getting traffic to sites

Anyway, they told me that search-friendly blog urls were not possible to implement at the time because of the way V1 had been designed, but would be addressed in V2. When I asked later on (January, I think), they seemed to be a lot more aware about the issue and it's consequences - they answered me with a definitive "yes this is coming in V2", so as far as I'm concerned they have it under control

Of course, now they have Vikram is on board, his seo company my have loads of other suggestions for improving the way the seo works. Perhaps they will produce a world-class SEO widget, a bit like the Wordpress SEO plugins, but better. I'm 100% confident that Vikrant will have been on top of this issue

Many site owners either don't know about seo, ignore it, or only put a few hours into it. In reality, if you own a site and want traffic you need to put a huge amount of time and effort into the SEO site of things. Many site owners don't have the capability to develop the skills and so they outsource it - this can be very costly and if you don't hire the right people, potentially dangerous. Much better off doing it yourself

I suspect that most SocialGO site owners don't even know there is an seo issue, because they haven't educated themselves about seo to begin with. So, once all that is in place, they will then need to work REALLY hard to educate their users about SEO, imo

[carl79] 03/3/2010 15:08

Hi TA - point taken. Clearly a massive issue for them then...perhaps a reason that they were slower out of the blocks than we all hoped (I originally thought they had well over 1,000 premium sites - maybe some cancelled when they realised the SEO issue??

Norbus / TA, please do ask about this issue, i'd be interested to know how they plan on integrating existing large user and SEO sites onto their SG platform.

EDIT - When you asked TA, what was the reaction - concerned but fixable (timescale), not concerned and fixable, some other reaction....?

SEO is not a forte of mine - i'll need to get up to speed as i have need of it myself (or will do very shortly)

[the analyst] 03/3/2010 15:03

No need, Norbus, the issue was discussed at the AGM and also during one of the SocialGO seminars I attended

[norbus] 03/3/2010 14:40

I am not disagreeing with you C79 nor with TA, except to say my intuitive belief tells me that they are now working on different metrics to do with V2 and USA market.

The same way they dropped the adult side when a more sensible direction turned up. I think they know and have convinced Vikram this is it and maybe BIG. I can't even get to speak to Alex Halliday, as he's so busy.

I take what TA says on board and go further to say it could be an impediment if the SEO issue is not sorted for V2 if penetration is required into sites that are not cash strapped and therefore can pay.

TA:
could you write to Alex & Dominic or do you want me to? if latter give me draft e-mail and I'll send and follow up.

[the analyst] 03/3/2010 14:29

Hi Carl,

Yes, you can use an iframe to incorporate Wordpress (or any other content), but then you lose ALL seo benefits - google would not read the iframe as part of your socialgo site

It's not just an issue for converting Wordpress blogs, but for ANY site that you want to covert into a socialgo site. That is, any site where you have specifically optimised all of your url structures to match the content, the META descriptions, the title, the keywords etc. All really basic, but essential stuff if you want traffic

It's a massive issue, because without traffic, you can't make money and without optimising your site for the search engines, you lose out on a lot of traffic

As Vikrant is a Director of a major search optimisation company, I'm hoping that he has made it a primary issue to improve SocialGO's SEO capabilities going forward

[the analyst] 03/3/2010 12:45

By the way, this time last year we had a pre-close trading update (2nd March 2009)

A good trading update might allow them to raise funds at a higher price, otherwise, I still feel 1.25p would par for the course

[the analyst] 03/3/2010 12:43

"TA, They can!!"

Nope, unfortunately the SocialGO system doesn't allow for the Wordpress blog urls to be kept as they were. All the SocialGO blog urls have a number in them, whereas the Wordpress blogs are usually composed of keywords

It would be possible to do 301 re-directs, but nobody with a Wordpress site that gets good traffic through google would want to do this. Having the correct keywords (and nothing else) in the url is critical to getting to the top of the search engines. Changing all your posts to a search-unfriendly url structure, having previously made sure that each and every one was well-optimised would be crazy

At the AGM, I asked about search-friendly urls and was told it would only become possible when V2 comes out

So, once V2 is out, I'm really hoping we will start to see apps and widgets that can convert Wordpress sites into SocialGO sites, seamlessly including the url structure.

Once in place (if it ever becomes possible), then a marketing campaign of "Convert your blog into a social website" could do very well, imo

[the analyst] 03/3/2010 12:34

Hi Carl,

Obviously, I'm 100% in agreement with you on those points - it is all about the premium service take-up

We know there IS the demand for premium services, but as you mention, getting that 1% up to a much higher level is absolutely fundamental to the business model succeeding. It's worth mentioning that the attrition rate is also of major importance - it's no good people signing up, staying for a month or two, then leaving.

The way I see it, there will be another fund-raising and I would imagine that it will be at 1.25p again. I have no problem with that, as unless we get good news on premium rate uptake rising well above 1%, that is the value of the shares imo.

However, if the premium sign-up rate has increased, I would be hoping for them to raise funds at a higher level

I don't expect them to have any problems raising cash and I suspect we could see Dominic stumping up the cash again, as well as Vikrant

[norbus] 03/3/2010 12:29

Carl79
Having since my question spoken to Dominic recently, I think the ground is better than that. Perfecting V2 and working the USA market is what I guess to be the anticipated driver being worked on for a mature product in the best market place, which position we may get to in the summer. Provided they maintain credible progress to the goal, I see little issue in raising more $'s
at higher levels than current share price

[the analyst] 02/3/2010 11:09

Just checked my earlier post on the subject back in December (posted below)

Still mostly stands true, although I doubt v2 will be out by the end of March (my original hope) and also I doubt they will reach 4000 premium networks in the first quarter of 2011 (my aim for them, back in December). Still, there is time...

Overall, the emphasis for V2 is on speed, functionality (easier to use) and making it much easier for third party developers to integrate widgets and apps more easily.

For example, if a developer were to come up with a way to convert an established Wordpress blog into a SocialGO site at the click of a button, it could transform the company in a matter of months, imo


"the analyst - 29 Dec'09 - 12:35 - 4756 of 4991 edit

We discussed the product and it's future development in detail at the AGM. I mentioned that I still think there are some fundamental developments needed on the SocialGO platform for it to really succeed. There are basic technological and coding enhancements required before SocialGO becomes the finished article.

The good news is that these enhancements are being developed

The new version of SocialGO will be much more powerful and allow people that already run their own websites/blogs (using different platforms) to transform their sites to include powerful social networking capabilities much more easily than is currently possible.

The new product will also be much faster, scaleable and will be much easier for third party developers to make widgets and other additions. By the end of March, I think we will have a superb platform. I know that at some stage, the company intends to ramp up the marketing effort. We have already seen some extra marketing over the last couple of months, with appearances on NBC etc, but I am expecting a lot more in 2010. I don't know whether the big marketing push will be before or after the 'version 2' is fully up and running.

My aim for the company is to get up to 4000 premium networks by the beginning of 2011. Not an easy target, but possible. That number should bring in revenue at a rate of at least £1.5m pa, possibly more."

[norbus] 02/3/2010 10:20

Carl79

Norbus, I dont really understand your question "Do you know if they defined what their target to achieve within V2?"

Unique technical advances targeted to inmprove market reach.some may specify such for major projects they pursue. I thought the Analyst might have gleaned this from a chat or being at AGM.