James Finlayson

Head of Organic Search @mpbcom, ex Head of Strategy @vervesearch . A self-taught geeky creative, exploring how things work, railing against 'impossible'

[James Finlayson @JamesFinlayson]

@le_kman I've been using it for maybe 5 years now. Unlimited budget, speak to SEOClarity. All in one, speak to SEMRush. Taking a best-of-breed approach? Then SEOmonitor's what you need. Unlimited API, intuitive interface that you can dig DEEPLY into the data and GREAT customer service.

[James Finlayson @JamesFinlayson]

Guess who I just bumped into at the #UKSearchAwards . Only search’s biggest blagger @JC_SEO1 !

[Jeremy Rivera @JeremyRiveraSEO]

/6 as @JamesFinlayson says "This update sounds a lot like it’s the outcome of that work-a Panda update for the age of AI content." The AI age of easy to generate, regurgitate and republish has had it's run of SERPs to the point where "Season X of X show" queries are meta jokes.

[James Finlayson @JamesFinlayson]

Google expands product review schema by adding pros and cons list: https://t.co/qXONW1adEd

[James Finlayson @JamesFinlayson]

@MartynJohnPR @CarrieRosePR I'd be very happy to pick this up again. I put together a cross-agency working group and wrote a code of practice, but I suspect the code of practice was soo long/detailed that it put people off. I chatted to @epicgraphic about a manifesto instead and I think that has legs.

[James Finlayson @JamesFinlayson]

That feeling when you come up with a whole new way to come up with ideas and the inspiration gates burst open 🚀

[James Finlayson @JamesFinlayson]

@JC_SEO1 This wasn't even true. Good engagement though...

[James Finlayson @JamesFinlayson]

Doing some keyword research on factories and it’s getting increasingly existential. Is an abbatoir just a meat factory? Is a power station a power factory? Is a comedy club a laughter factory? What even is a factory anymore??

[James Finlayson @JamesFinlayson]

@Andrew_Isidoro

[James Finlayson @JamesFinlayson]

@mattround ignore - I didn’t realise that the title was a drop-down!

[James Finlayson @JamesFinlayson]

@mattround Is there a way to see the ones that are left without just repeatedly hitting ‘show another’?

[James Finlayson @JamesFinlayson]

@thetafferboy @VerveSearch ABSOLUTELY. I know one agency, for years, was just taking TrustFlow and applying it to an exponential scale.

[James Finlayson @JamesFinlayson]

@thetafferboy @VerveSearch I agree, though, that there being 100 different metrics floating around, though, is bad for the industry as services become less comparable and complexity increases.

[James Finlayson @JamesFinlayson]

@thetafferboy @VerveSearch It depends what you mean. LinkScore, at Verve, helped concentrate outreach effort on the links that we thought would help shift rankings. It also acted as a differentiator and proof of commitment to building *valuable* links.

[James Finlayson @JamesFinlayson]

@thetafferboy Seemingly every agency’s building their own metric (like @VerveSearch did a decade ago). It’s a bit of a problem to be able to services compare like-for-like, but consensus on a common metric is… hard.

[James Finlayson @JamesFinlayson]

…and this is why engagement should always be a clue rather than a metric.

[Kevin Hillstrom @minethatdata]

Reason Number Four: The fourteenth episode outlined the fact that direct mail has a 100% engagement rate ... "even if you throw it out, you have to engage with the piece to do so. At worst case, it's good exercise!"

[James Finlayson @JamesFinlayson]

I assume that about half the Digital PRs in the UK are currently either outreaching their old ‘celebs with most fake Twitter followers’ campaign or buying Friday beers for the data person who they had calculate it this morning?

[James Finlayson @JamesFinlayson]

@meross my smart plugs are each pinging the amazon time server 5 times a second. Something broken with the latest firmware?

[TEDxKingston @TEDxKingston]

Breaking news: fake facts in the age of churnalism @JamesFinlayson https://t.co/lJbd0RG4x5

[James Finlayson @JamesFinlayson]

@duanerajkumar @epicgraphic The biggest issue is link-rot - these campaigns keep getting taken down by people not understanding their value. To be fair, that’s usually due to their lack of clear relevance to product/core customers, which is something we all need to work on getting better at.

[James Finlayson @JamesFinlayson]

@duanerajkumar @epicgraphic 4) Esther Honig's Before and After project ( https://t.co/nbR51hNFI3 ) came out in 2014 and, apart from spawning multiple copycat campaigns, was still getting top-tier coverage earlier this year - https://t.co/VEYwLlKjAD