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Anyone know of some good resources on the way to control the meta descriptions in the Google six pack  for a branded search. Google appears to often bypass the meta description and pull random text from the page. We have tested this by adding the brand name to the meta description and this appears to help but doesn't always sort the issue. You often get the same results with the site comand. It not really an SEO issue more a branding one. Anyone get any ideas or resources they can point me at?

Hello Mozzers. A client has seen big drop in their organic rankings in google.co.uk. Desktop results have dropped from page one to page three and mobile results have completely gone. They have recently added Location-Aware Browsing to the site so that it attempts to find you location and add this to the search box. However this appears to be in a loop and doesn't then turn off once you have allowed it. It keeps appearing in both Firefox and Chrome and asking for permission to use you location. Could this have resulted in the ranking drop? There have also rolled out a new mobile version and this has the same issue. Any ideas? Thanks in advance TH

Hello Mozzers The issue I have is a client with a number of office locations (six) across the south of England and they want each to rank well for each location + the qualifier solicitors. IE Brighton Solicitors. Work has been undertaken on the office location pages to include the services offered from each location, full postcodes and phone numbers. These location pages are linked to from the footer of the website so have good internal links. The site has a DA of 49 and the office location pages have a PA of 33. Google in its wisdom keeps ranking the home pages for the searches. The result is that the site ranks well in one location (London) but poorly in all the majority of others (2nd,3rd and 4th page). Were it does pick up/choose the location page the rankings are better than the homepage. The other locations are less competitive than London according to the Keyword difficulty tool. Any tips on to suggest to Google that it should rank the office location pages and not the homepage for each location?  Thanks in advance 🙂

We have seen a pattern in the Google UK SERPS where only three local listings are triggered for a query although they have a more local results to show but chose to only show three: Anyone else seen this? Anyone know why? Is there a magic number for them to trigger a six pack, does the data set they pull from need to be larger for them to trigger more local listings. "Solicitors Cambridge" = 3 listings https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=solicitors+cambridge&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&gws_rd=cr&ei=_vCwVc2mHMiAUZ-luZAE "solicitors kent" = 3 listings https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=solicitors+cambridge&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&gws_rd=cr&ei=_vCwVc2mHMiAUZ-luZAE#q=solicitors+kent "Solicitors Oxford"  = 6 listings https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=solicitors+cambridge&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&gws_rd=cr&ei=_vCwVc2mHMiAUZ-luZAE Any thoughts?

Hello All Mozzers (that makes us sound like fans of The Smiths), Is there a tool that shows if a keyword triggers a knowledge graph panel/box/result. I have a quite a few (100's) of informational searches I need to check and don't really want to do in manually. It would be good if the tool returned the knowledge graph answer and the URL. Thanks in advance and have a good weekend 🙂

Does anyone have a compete list of the business categories for the UK Google Business listings? I have done a few searches on line and not uncovered anything up to date. Thanks in advance.

I wondered if any UK based SEO's and link builders would be interested in creating a group to share best practice, trade link building tips and stuff that works well in the UK SERPS as opposed to the .com SERPS. PM me if interested Thanks

I wondered if people had a list of the top five or ten links you should build for a new website in order to add some sense of authority. For example should a new website start with key social media websites such as Twitter, Google+ and Linkedin ? Or top level directories such as BOTW and DMOZ? Should they local for niche website directories in their location or vertical? If you had to choose five links - free or paid which would they be?

Hi All, Anyone else seeing major changes in the google.co.uk SERPS results.Across about 12 different clients we have seen gains and loses. Sub pages seems to be suffering more than homepages. Any idea what has been targeted? With think it might be anchor text but were not sure. Noticed first dips on Monday and it has been rolling out across different niches all week. Thanks

Anyone else had any sudden drops in rankings this week? Is there an update going on? One of my primary keywords has dropped from 6th to 49th in the google.co.uk search results. Not in webmaster tools to flag an issue. I have downloaded the links from webmaster and it does look if some content has been scraped and then linked back to us from a large number of sites that we have never sort links from. I have upload the google disavow link tool. Only one keyword appears to be effected not all of them? Any ideas? Thanks

Hello On a lighter note just wondered what Christmas song's are the favorites of the SEO industry? One from each of us in our team: Fairytale of New York - The Pogues Santa Claus is Coming to Town - Jackson Five White Wine in the Sun - Tim Minchin Last Christmas - Wham! Christmas Wrapping - The Waitresses 🙂

Hi Look for a list for niche video directories for a non profit I am working for who have a good number of videos highlighting the good work that they do. No porn listing sites thanks... Cheers Tony

Anyone recommend a good mid level social media training company in the UK. Ideally would want on site training for about six people. We are based in Salisbury in Wiltshire. Thanks in advance.

I keep getting a little picture of Matt Cutts pop up in the right hand side bar every time I am on Facebook. The advert goes through to this company seocosmo I wonder if Matt Cutts knows they are using his image to sell SEO services 🙂

I want to build a niche directory based on a one service area and wondered if anyone has any experience of the best out of the box directory software to use? I would want to have free listings and paid for listing. The CMS would need to be SEO friendly Thanks in advance

I have used a number of different tools for getting ranking information and have been using Cuterank but it now seems to be report the wrong results. Any suggestions for the best third party ranking software. It would allow me to check google, yahoo and bing ranks, compare month on month and produce branded PDFs. Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

Just a bit of light relief in the world of SEO. Hey SEO people are funny and can laugh as well 🙂 Our SEO team has had a go at drawing some penguins and the results are funny to us as they are so childlike. Anyone else fancy adding their drawing to the flicker group. This is just a bit of fun for us all! http://www.flickr.com/groups/googlepenguincartoons/

Have had a clients site that has been staple in the SERPS for the last four years that we have worked on it. However they had hosting issues a couple of months back which they didn't sort for two to three weeks. Since there the main keyword has bounced around between 24th and 44th in the google results. The drop ties in with the hosting issue but the client does seem to believe that this is the source of the issue. Can someone point me towards some online articles that would explain this for them. Some of the keywords have not suffered as badly but the one key term is still in the mid 20's. I am sure it is suffering a minus 20 for the keyword as it was normally 4th or 5th in the results. We don't host the site and the client had know idea were it was hosted. What is so annoying is that it is us who pointed out the site was down. Thanks in advance everyone 🙂