• Hresume in microformats http://t.co/SnqqVgph or schema job posting http://t.co/2yaFTRTf for positions, interesting!
• Visit http://t.co/dxbvN0kT to find out when the next Google webmaster tools hangout is
• Think of rich snippets as rich summaries, it must visible on the landing page.
• Rich snippets are supposed to be short descriptions of the content on to the page, not a spam tactic
• Google plus pages for publishers with rel=publishers to the publishers google plus page – ideal for Brands!
• Authorship – use accurately for authors NOT publishers
• Recommended tools: AWR, http://t.co/858pgSL8,
• Recommended tool: seo tools for excel – quickly pull data without being a developer
• 21% CTR without rich snippet versus 26% CTR with rich snippet in one test
• SERP Turkey is a b testing tool with SERPs
• Copy the schema and chuck it into the rich snippet tool by google
• Schema and micro formats enrich our SERPs (or pollute?)

Hardcore Local SEO Tactics

• RIP geo sitemap support
• Be alert to google map maker when it launches in UK (soon… We hope)
• Mobilize local heros &passionate supporters of your industry/product to translate ur brand/product into real world says @aleyda
• Schema must be utilized for local content, use scheme creator or schema dentist
• Flow of fresh and relevant localized content must push into real world with local badges for brick and mortar says @aleyda

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After a relatively long wait, Google announced today that they have launched an update to their Google Plus iPhone app. As I type this post, my phone seems to be taking its own time in downloading the update which gives me the impression that this particular update is a fairly significant one. In fact, Google seem to almost want the Google plus app to be part of your normal day to day experience by stressing that “we’re not interested in a mobile or social experience that’s just smaller. We’re embracing the sensor-rich smartphone (with its touchable screen and high-density display), and transforming Google+ into something more intimate, and more expressive”.

The most significant line in their announcement to me, was their justification for the iPhone app upgrade, “today’s new iPhone app is an important step in this direction—toward a simpler, more beautiful Google”. I’m not sure about you, but I feel this is probably the biggest hint Google has publicly dropped of their efforts in moving toward a more  ’social’ and a more ‘mobile-centric’ strategy for their future.

So what areas have they improved on?
The stream – the upgrade has just completed on my mobile phone and I must say, it certainly is “a feast for the eyes”.  I certainly will give them a relatively high score for ‘first impressions’. Content that’s displayed on your stream not only include people’s posts in text but also incorporate elegance with regards to design. Google plus certainly looks a lot more stylish than it did before, and they do mean it when they say, “whether you post photos or articles or text, we’re making ‘em look gooood. We’re adding crisper fonts, larger profile pics and a friendlier homescreen. We’re making the stream easier to scan, and easier on the eyes with overlays, gradients and other visual elements”.

Hangouts on your iPhone – in addition to the above improvements, a great step forward is the ability to utilise hangouts directly via your iPhone. For someone whose closest friends are spread across five different time zones – be it Orlando, Oxford, Colombo, Singapore or Melbourne – the flexibility to perform hangouts virtually anywhere in the world is a significant improvement in terms of convenience and connectivity.

If there is any criticism of the app, at least for now, is the fact that the +1′s and the number of comments tend to go unnoticed on some posts due to the colour of the buttons.

Also, I wish Google plus would let me upload more than one image at a time. It is quite annoying that images need to be uploaded one by one.

Overall though, I think this is quite a momentous and significant step toward a more social Google. A Google, who is trying to shun away from the perception of an ‘algorithm driven’ company to a more ‘humanistic company’ and is taking bold steps in connecting with their users at the most basic of “sensory” levels.

The iPhone update is rolling out now to the App Store (version 2.0.0.5888), and according to Google, the Android update is coming out in a few weeks which includes some “extra surprises”. Google claim that the new mobile app is “an app with sense and soul”, but what are your thoughts on the new mobile app? Have you tried it out yet and what are it’s features you like or dislike most? Feel free to share your thoughts with us below.

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On the 18th of April, Bing UK, launched the “Bing is for doing” campaign to reach out to their users in order to discover what people really want to be doing. From those lifelong unfulfilled ambitions to those times when they’ve discovered something through a search engine that they’d love to do but think they’d never get the chance to.

The idea behind the campaign is pretty simple; since most people turn to search engines in order to arm themselves with the necessary insights and commentary to make informed choices, Bing decided they’d actually go a step further in offering you the opportunity to experience what you’ve found or discovered on a search engine.

In an email response, a spokesperson for Bing said: “We wanted to ask people of all ages what it is that they really want to be doing – whether that be travelling the world, learning a new skill or fulfilling a lifelong ambition.”

Bing has already received a significant number of submissions: “We’re really enjoying reading through people’s wants and as part of the campaign, the team will be looking to pick out a few select submissions with the view to making them actually happen.”

So what type of submissions are they looking for? According to Bing, “the submissions won’t necessarily be the most unique or the most outrageous – it’ll be a mix of things that make people laugh, cry and most of all make us want to get out there and do – life is there to be enjoyed and Bing wants to help people make the most of it.”

For more information, including examples of some of the submissions that have already got the folks at Bing thinking and video straw polls from all over the UK, visit the Bing UK Facebook page.

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This was quite easily the best search event I have ever attended (and there’s been quite a few now!), the sessions were packed full of great content – once you’ve been to a lot of conferences you find yourself skipping quite a few sessions, but this conference was the exception – and every session was full to the back of the room! But as is normally the way, the highlight was the networking – you really could just sell tickets for “an audience with Greg Boser” show! Getting the chance to meet everyone before the event at Mike’s SEO BBQ was a great way to kick-off the conference – and the intimate feel of the event by having a limited number of 125 attendees and all staying at the amazing Standard Hotel in Downtown LA with a free bar and rooftop party is always an appreciated nice touch!

Anyway getting into the content, I’ve organised my tweets and notes so that hopefully you can pickup a couple of useful tips even if you weren’t able to attend the event:

Google

• A writer who has the biggest reach is who @GregBoser recommends hiring. This person can influence people in search result …
• Start removing title tags and see how Google rewrites them. Let Google give you hints on what they think is best. @Gregboser
• Great tip from @GregBoser 450 character descriptions give #SEO experts more control over SERP descriptions

Conversion Rate Optimisation

• Use descriptive words on buttons – ‘create a gift’, not ‘buy now’ @hnshah
• Design for conversions tips; CROToolkit, lightbox promotions, cross-promo ad banners, promote top posts @hnshah
• Stick to basics on Twitter, share great, relevant & interesting content. @KISSmetrics grown to 88,000 followers @hnshah
• Use aweber & WordPress for drip email marketing on blogs @hnshah
• CRO tools; whichtestwon.com, usertesting.com, 99designs.com for landing pages, visualwebsiteoptimizer.com @hnshah
• Great CRO landing page examples; RipFire, DollarShaveClub @jasonnazar
• Can also have social proof on purchase page…’verified by’, better business bureau, etc.@jasonnazar
• Use social proof CRO – client logos (e.g. visualwebsiteoptimizer.com), as seen on, customer testimonials @jasonnazar
• Call-to-action; size, colour & text biggest CRO quick win. Dark forest green button converts well – agree, green means go!  @jasonnazar
• Single biggest CRO tip; headline most important text on page – not call-to-action or on-page text. Great example; Square @jasonnazar

On-Site SEO

• Evaluate those low performing pages. Good reminder to either optimize them, or 301 to higher value sections. @alanbleiweiss
• Are your highest visited/stickiest pages converting? A/B test your call-to-action & content wording. @alanbleiweiss
• In Page Analytics in GA recommended by @alanbleiweiss to determine phrases people find relevant, based on internal CTRs
• 400% increase in organic visits shown by @alanbleiweiss as example of why you don’t need to look at granular kw level
• Smart bet is keyword data could go completely & not provided to =100% – interesting prediction by @alanbleiweiss
• ‘SEO is organic ad writing’ great quote by @aimclear
• @aimclear As far as KWs go, (not set) means the URL, GATC , or AdWords wasn’t set up correctly.
• ‘Within analytics work on the short-tail first because it helps you understand the long-tail.’ @aimclear
• GA not provided tip; segment landing page data by keyword & map to GWT to compare no of kw visits @aimclear
• @alanbleiweiss: So many finally validating what i was advocating last spring abt schema as the 2012 big opportunity in SEO

Link Building

• Buy traditional advertising then use that relationship to get free editorial links that last forever. @RavenJon
• Build private lists & set auto reminders to interact w/ people you want to connect w/ on Twitter @RavenJon
• Position yourself or your client as an expert source. Recommends @helpareporter to help them find you @RavenJon
• FullContact, BuzzStream & Tout recommended by @RavenJon to find contact details & manage relationships
• Great answer from @jamies to my question; how do you value how much a link is worth? Measure attention & traffic it generates
• @jamies Is tearing up , fantastic realtime ideas, highlighting TheVerge CMS, also likes AtlanticWire
• Great tip by @jamies: Google Analytics Query Explorer can be used to map traffic alongside links in @seomoz

Content Marketing / Infographics

• Infographic tips; work with a great publishing partner, capitalise on previous success & tap proven ideas @danieltynski
• Serve needs of business & potential customers, once you’ve targeted audience, by creating remarkable content @danieltynski
• Build a content team: Community Mgr, Content Strategist, Moderators, Guest Authors, Video Producers, Graphic Designers
• 43% of online news is shared via social networks, 27% of ppl who share are frequent sharers & responsible for 87% of shares

Blogging / Cultivating Visibility

• Email marketing tips from @chrisbrogan Brevity – 250 words max, don’t start with view in browser, don’t use dontreply@ address
• Nice tip from @copyblogger @chrisbrogan unsubscribe your annoying email subscribers, e.g. grammar nazi’s who always reply!
• Plain text emais have better delivery rates, take people to landing pages, healthy ratio of value vs promotion @copyblogger
• ‘We don’t buy lists, we build audiences.’ ~Brian Clark @copyblogger
• ‘never invest in the carpet, invest in the people who are walking on it!’ @chrisbrogan
•  ’Don’t be an artist. Be a business person who makes art.’ – @chrisbrogan
• There’s so many bloggers out there, but lack of real quality in most niches – still lots of big opportunities @copyblogger
• Thanks for the @copyblogger 10 landing page commandments @JasonNazar

WordPress

• Understand WP version numbers: .1 is a major release, .2 is a security update @yoast

Trusted Recommendations & New PR

• ‘always take your work seriously, don’t take yourself seriously’ great advice from @soniasimone
• Best pitches in the world are 7 words that describe exactly what you’re pitching @petershankman
• We tend to think more ass in chair time produces more. Take breaks. @soniasimone
• I never write unless I’ve just gotten a workout in. Working out spawns creativity. @petershankman
• Don’t just sent out press releases, have conversations @soniasimone
• ‘if you’re not making money from it, you’re doing it wrong’ on PR @petershankman
• ‘Personal recommendation is the new PR’ – absolutely true! @misswetapatel

There’s also been some great write-ups on the sessions, checkout the BlueGlass blog where Kelsey Libert did a great job on covering the key points from each. And if anyone else has tips to add or questions – please feel free to do so in the comments and I’ll keep an eye on these.

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Martin McNulty, from Forward3D

• Don’t try to attribute your way out of a rubbish marketing campaign. If your marketing is rubbish no attribution model will fix that.
• Modelling is not measuring – it’s about statistics and odds.
• Concentrate on what you can control – it’s all very well finding out the volume of search depends on cloud cover, but you can’t control the weather so you can’t do anything about it.
• Some companies will get most conversions from just one click – there’s not much point doing attribution modelling if it’s only for a couple of conversions.

Helen Southgate, from BSkyB

• Attribution has flaws:
  • People buy and research on many devices, and you can’t track them between these – this is only going to get worse in the future
  • Tracking is based on cookies, and assumes one person only has one cookie.
• There are several objectives:
  • Want to understand advertising and justify spend.
  • Want to prove worth of the brand.
  • Want to understand customer journey and message differently depending on what stage the customer is in.
• At Sky they’re using a staged approach:
  • Getting all the data sorted (so everything can be meaningfully compared)
  • Working out the objectives of the stakeholders
  • Get top line information – what the channels are doing
  • Look at different media partners, keywords – deeper level stuff
  • Test different combinations of different channels, and different ads at different stages

David Richards, from ZenithOptimedia

• Attribution does provide a wealth of insight.
  • Generics can influence people and push them to the brand
  • Look at different behaviour of people from different sources.
• But it isn’t a silver bullet.
  • You should only do it if it makes sense for your business.
  • There are lots of things you can fix before it’s worthwhile doing attribution modelling (such as getting the best website possible)
• We’re missing so many things, such as TV and radio advertising, or the effect of competitors’ advertising pushing generic searches.

Tom Cull, from Carat Manchester

• There are two levels to attribution modelling
  • The macro scale (with econometrics) – for looking at the channel mix
  • The micro scale (with clicks and conversions) – for optimising at a finer level
• There’s no single standard model. Tom starts with a standard model and customises for each client as they get more data.
• Beware the “so what?” trap: some clients ask for attribution data but then don’t do anything with them. Take action based on your data.
  • Eliminate non-converters
  • Change the channel mix
• Build an engagement model, based on on-site activity, and feed that into the attribution model
• Process has to be collaborative – you have to involve all the right client-side data holders.
• Don’t rely solely on attribution modelling – the tools are getting better but the data are getting worse. You could optimise yourself out of important keywords your model can’t assign the correct value to. Accept the limitations of the data.

From the Q&A

How do you choose the right model? Martin starts with big chunks of data and working out the relationships between them, and doesn’t get more complicated. He suggests looking at Google Analytics with different attribution models and seeing if there’s a difference between them.

How do you line up everyone in a large organisation? Helen said that it was a challenge, but she got buy-in by having an unbiased and holistic view of attribution, and sold it as it could drive a lot more high quality sales.

Doesn’t last click work best for many real world situations? “Yes”, said Martin. Helen said that it was still worth looking at last click attribution, but using the more complicated models could help understand and optimise.

To round things up, the panel were asked for a single recommendation:

• Martin – Keep it simple.
• Helen – Know your objectives.
• David – Work with the things you can change today.
• Tom – Don’t fall into the “so what?” trap. Don’t do attribution unless you’re prepared to do things on the back of it.

© SEOptimise - Download our free business guide to blogging whitepaper and sign-up for the SEOptimise monthly newsletter. Top Takeaways from the Search Firestarters Event on Attribution

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So, should you opt in or out? Here are my thoughts:

What will the effects be?

Even if you turn the setting off, you can still be affected.

As campaigns are opted in by default, it seems likely that the majority of advertisers will be using this new match behaviour. So there may well be a sudden increase in competition on misspellings and close variants – clearly this will affect you if you already bid on them.

Could it homogenise performance? There’ll suddenly be a whole group of search terms under one bid, where previously there was only one term. If many competitors have [widget] on near exact match, they’ll be using the same bid for ‘widget’ and ‘widgets’ – if ‘widgets’ is more competitive and needs a higher bid, the competitors might increase the bid on [widget] and so make ‘widget’ more expensive too. Different variants will still perform differently – there isn’t a change in the searchers, so you wouldn’t expect a change in conversion rate – but CPCs of variants may converge.

But shouldn’t I be bidding on all these variants anyway?

Proper keyword research should uncover many variants. But it’s likely that some will be rare enough to have the dreaded ‘low search volume’ status: that means Google won’t let you directly advertise for them, but you could bid on them indirectly with near exact match. Also, it’s nigh impossible to find all possible variants – searchers are very inventive when it comes to misspellings.

Doing the keyword research to find variants takes time, and (as the cliché says) time is money. Ad impressions on irrelevant search terms are also money. The question is: which is less money? Google may let in some dud search terms, but it may cover relevant variants you wouldn’t have found otherwise.

You could use near exact as part of your keyword research: have an exploratory campaign with the new setting on and fill it with exact match keywords to find the behaviour of their variants. Then take the best performing ones into your regular campaigns (where exact is exact).

Other matters to think about

Will exact or phrase negative keywords’ behaviour change? Google’s announcement does not mention negative keywords, suggesting only positive ones are affected. There could be benefits to having a near exact match, such as when using ‘embedded match’, but keeping exact negative actually exact would seem to be better for most advertisers. Even if the new setting is on, you can still exclude individual variants when they don’t work.

What happens if you use Conversion Optimiser? Suddenly your exact match keywords will pick up brand new searches you don’t have any history for.

What about keyword metrics? The Quality Score and Estimated First Page Bid columns shown in your account are based on searches exactly matching the keyword (whatever the keyword’s match type is). In high competition areas merely changing a singular to a plural can impact performance and price, so if you have [widget] on near exact match but most of the searches are for ‘widgets’ the QS and EFPB may not reflect the keyword’s actual performance. QS and EFPB are both averages and thus should be treated with care: this is another thing to bear in mind when looking at them.

So, will you switch it on or opt out?

Ultimately whether you opt in or out depends on your account. It seems unlikely that near exact will help a campaign where variants are already covered and match-types are segregated; having multiple exact match keywords cover the same search terms will get in the way of precision management in the same way that having broad, phrase and exact match keywords in the same ad group will.

On the other hand, if you have campaigns which don’t need or can’t have that level of management the new setting may well be helpful. Consider testing the new setting – no one knows exactly how it will work out, so no one can say if it will help or hinder your account.

What do you think? Are you trying the new setting, opting out everywhere, or testing with some campaigns? Share your thoughts in the comments.

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Many speculated for weeks over the launch of Google’s next algorithm update targeting websites that Matt Cutts described as “over optimised”. The new algorithm update is meant to launch in the next few days and according to the Official Google Search Blog, this particular update will affect sites that employ the following “black-hat” tactics:

• Keyword stuffing
• Link schemes (paid links, excessive reciprocal linking, links from (and to) spammy or unrelated sites etc.)
• Article spinning

According to Matt Cutts, the change will go live for all languages at the same time. The update is meant to affect 3.1% of queries in English where “regular users” will notice. This number is relatively small when compared to the effect the original Panda update had on search queries (12% of search queries for regular users).

So how does one make sure not to fall pray to Google’s next update? Cutts emphasises that in addition to improving site usability, creating “great” content, and improving site speed; site-owners must also need to think of creative marketing campaigns that make sites more compelling “that help search engines as well as social media”.

The SEO community have long known the indirect benefits of launching “high level” online marketing campaigns that gain publicity and higher visibility on social networks and the blogosphere. However, this is probably the most compelling hint that the search giant has dropped on SEOs which stress the need for SEOs to graduate from it’s infant state and take it’s rightful place at a strategic marketing level.

Google’s ultimate objective is to provide the most relevant results for their users and this algorithm update seems to be an aggressive step toward that goal. We will be updating this space as and when we hear more from the search giant so be sure to watch this space. Also feel free to voice your opinions and share your thoughts with the community.

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Search engines are interested in getting structured data from websites for better user experience in searching. Google uses them for rich snippets in the search results, to show things like ratings and author pictures.

There are three different ways to markup structured data.

• Microformats
• Microdata
• RDFa

Microformats let you markup data with pre-existing attributes. Both Microdata and RDFa are more flexible, as they let you use prebuilt schemas or create your own

Which should you use? Glenn uses microformats most of the time as they’re simpler, but they only cover some things. Microdata can be used to describe more unusual objects.

Glenn talked through how to mark-up a Yorkshire pudding recipe using microformats:

• You can have a property inside another, such as yield inside the summary.
• You can have marked up data within paragraphs of freeform text.
• Some properties have parent-child structure. For example, ‘ingredient’ has the child properties ‘amount’ and ‘name’.
• Properties can take data that aren’t text, eg has to be an image
• Some data are more complex. For example there are many ways to write same date, so you have to use a specific data structure that says what the text means, eg title=”2011-10-27″ when text says ‘27 Oct 2011’.

Google’s Webmaster area has a rich snippet page that tells you how they want you to mark up data, and what’s most likely to be pulled into the search results. Not all data are pulled into the SERPs at the moment, but as more may be used in the future it makes sense to mark up as much as possible.

Best thing to do to help is to use Google’s rich snippets testing tool – this gives an example of how how it looks your page could look in the SERPs and shows the data it’s parsed.

There are compound microformats (microformats with microformats nested inside them). For instance hRecipe can hold an aggregated review and author.

To mark up an author, link all recipes (or articles) to a profile page using rel=author, then link form the profile page to a Google profile with rel=me. See the Google Webmaster Tools help page on authorship.

Does this affect SEO? Google are not telling us – Glenn suspects it does affect ranking but doesn’t know.

How does it affect CTR? Paul Bruemmer saw a 30% uplift for rich snippets, while Richard Baxter only saw a 5% uplift. You have to test it yourself: there isn’t one figure for everyone.

Audience Question: there’s spam going on with microformats, how do you avoid it?

Glenn says it does happen: people will game any technique that affects search listings. It will be the usual cat-and-mouse game between Google and spammers. Microformats are about adding extra semantic data to website, improving way machines can parse information: quality content will win out in the end.

Pierre Far from Google said that if someone’s rich snippet spam really affects the SERPs, Google will take their rich snippets out. There’s a form to report rich snippet spam. Don’t abuse it.

Audience Question: Unlike other attributes, rel=author is tied into Google+, so does it belong to google? Will it be able to tie into other social profile sites to be used by Bing and others?

Glenn hopes Google will become more open, as people are interested in connecting up social media identities.

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More People, More Things, More Data

The world’s population is rapidly growing and is set to reach 8 billion people in the next decade. We produce and consume large quantities of resources. The amount of data we produce is extensive; from content and documents on the internet, to output signals from electronic devices to environmental sensory trackers that measure things like temperature, electricity consumption, traffic and flow of water. We can quite easily collect this data however applying intelligence to turn it into useful information by identifying patterns is becoming more and more difficult.

Big Data, Big Info & Maybe Big Knowledge?

Big data is the term coined to describe data sets that are so large it becomes difficult and awkward to extract valuable information from them within a reasonable time frame. We can quite easily collect this data however the larger the sample set the more difficult turning it into useful information becomes.. To take it one step further is to turn this information into knowledge and make the data work for us in ways that have been previously unattainable.

A New Era For The Web

The third decade of the web and we are beginning to witness a change in how the data contained within the internet is being rationalised and organised. Sheldrake used three different names for to describe this new era.
“Web 3.0”
“The Web of Data”
“The Semantic Web”
I wish to use the term The Semantic Web as semantics is the study of meaning and this era represents how we will make sense of the data contained within the internet. We are growing and evolving the web to convert the current web of unstructured documents into meaningful data that can be manipulated and filtered by machines. These machines will be able to join sets of complicated data, helping us become aware of what is going on and solve problems that previously were not able to achieve.

How will this work?

Resource Description Framework (RDF) provides a standardised language for defining web based ontologies which enable richer integration and interoperability of data. It’s a way of structuring web information using a variety syntax formats called triples.

{subject}                {predicate}                 {object}
Gillian Cook            works in                         SEO.

RDF extends the linking structure of the Web to use URIs to name the relationship between things as well as the two ends of the link. Using this simple model, it allows structured and semi-structured data to be mixed, exposed, and shared across different applications.
Using RDF we are able to categorise data correctly and by doing this we are able to link data in new ways. Linked Data is a term coined for the best practice of exposing, sharing and connecting pieces of data, information, and knowledge on the Semantic Web using URIs and RDF.
This isn’t something that is forecast for the future it’s something that is already happening now. Google are already encouraging the use of Microformats – simple conventions or entities with their own properties that can be used on web pages to describe a specific type of information – e.g. a review, a recipe, a business.

What Does This Mean For SEO

When we consider how SEO is perceived, at times it seems like SEO’s are doing everything in their power to elevate their websites to the golden prize of 1st position in the SERPs, even if it means breaking the rules of the Google game. Yet when conceived in this way, SEO is a limited practice as the internet will become more regulated and transparent hence diminishing this type of online behaviour.
However if we consider our role in SEO as working with search engines to deliver users the right content at the right time in the right format then our position is no longer in jeopardy. Content for content’s sake will need to change as organisations become defined by their flows of data and information. The role of SEO will be defined as “improving the presentation, discoverability, machinability and usefulness of data, information and knowledge for all stakeholders”. As Pierre Farr mentioned at the start of the conference, SEO is not dying it is simply evolving over time as we have seen it do in the past. What’s good to know is that that according to Sheldrake, SEOs have the relevant skills to take on the challenges of the future.

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• The secretary/receptionist is your best friend.  These are the gate keepers to your budget, and they’re invaluable.  Chat them up, find out what they like to do at the weekends, and ask about their families; when you have this type of rapport going it’s much easier to ask “has Mike had a chance to review my budget proposal with the MD?” or “Does Mike have any more meetings with other agencies this week?”
• Say My Name.  The sweetest word to anyone, in any language, is their own name.  Use it often to maintain interest as you explain your justifications for increase in budget or while selling your SEO service.
  
• Sharing is Caring.  The best way to get in contact with a new business lead or gain the favour of your in-house marketing director is to offer them something.  For instance, if I have an extra ticket to a marketing event or have acquired a niche report on a competitor of interest, I’ll be sure to share it with my new relevant new business leads.
• Smile.  I know, an American telling Brits to smile isn’t convincing – but it works :) Especially when you pick up the phone, people can tell whether your smiling in your voice.  If Marketing Director Mike has a choice of having a 15 minute meeting with Depressed Deborah or Smiling Sam – Mike will pick Smiling Sam.
  
• Investigate.  You want budget, but what does your Marketing Director of choice hope for?  Is he stressed over the lack of traffic to a new site just launched?  Is he pondering how to spend the remaining budget from a TV campaign which was cancelled at short notice?  Ask questions.
• ABC’s.  Repeat after me “Have I explained that clearly?”.  Marketing Directors are looking at the bigger picture, and as a general rule don’t understand terms like “build directory links” and “institute canonical tags”, nor will most admit they don’t understand.  So keep your explanations in terms a 10 year old would understand.
• Open Questions.  An open question is any questions which initiates discussion and cannot be answered with a Yes or No.  Good open questions usually start with the words how, what, and why.  For instance, “How did you think last year’s SEO budget performed?” will reveal more detailed insight than “Were you happy with last year’s SEO spend?”
• Positive words.  Setting a negative tone, with negative words and thoughts will automatically put dark evil clouds in your marketing directors mind.  Keep things positive, if you’re pitching for new business don’t speak negatively of other agencies, if you’re in house, don’t diss the way Bob the PPC Manager mismanaged his money and it would have been better spent on link building.
• Shush!  As the investigator, it’s up to you to nod your head, take notes, and listen.  This is not a 50/50 conversation, it’s 90/10.  The more you listen, the more your are graduating into the role of trusted advisor instead of annoying employee harassing for budget or money hungry agency.
• Alternative avenues for raising funds.  We can all talk about social search and personalised search till the cows come home, so why not look to dip your foot into the resources available in social media?  Is there an in-house team which could help build links through blogger relationships?  For agencies, can you exemplify why your approach works so well with social, and additional budget should be pulled in to work on a united approach?
• What’s the impact?  Marketing Directors must legitimise everything they’ve spent, and so it’s these terms that you must present your solution to them in.  There are three main ways to do this – 1) Revenue 2) Rankings and 3) Traffic.
  
• Revenue.  Evaluate the organic exposure you’re predicting you’ll receive in terms of revenue.  If you get position three for the term “dog insurance”, what does that look like for your marketing director?
• Measure it as PPC.  If you’ve got a plan to boost rankings for a hundred of keywords, value that traffic as it would be worth in PPC exposure.   What sort of media budget would be required to the projected levels you expect?
• Rank.  Appease their vanity!  How often do MDs and Marketing Directors search for themselves online?  A lot.  Plain how your plan will launch them to the top of the rankings for the terms that they hold dear to themselves.  Even if this isn’t your personal priority, if it’s their priority, work it into the plan as a key point.
• Traffic.  Has a lot of money just been invested in a new website that’s invisible in SERPs?  Have conversions rates on site been poor due to the wrong sort of traffic arriving?  Explain how your strategy will deliver the right sort of traffic, and at what sort of increased levels?
• Raise your hand with the answer to solve your Directors problems.  You’ve listened, you’ve asked open questions, you’ve learned what your Directors priorities are, you’ve understood what has gone wrong in the past and have put measures into place to ensure those bad things will never happen again.  So provide your solution!  This should be in the last 10% of your investigation, where you as the trusted advisor know what to do.
• Take a Risk Yourself.  Guarantees are great, but holding them in place with tangible results puts a lot more girth in what you’re predicting will happen.  For agencies, this may mean discounts or refunds if certain projections aren’t met.  In house, this may mean striking deals around future performance – if certain results are met, more budget from lower performing avenues will be set aside for you in Q3.

Do you fly the SEO flag in house or as part of the new business function at an agency?  What tips and tricks have you come across to gain additional budget or sign a contract?

© SEOptimise - Download our free business guide to blogging whitepaper and sign-up for the SEOptimise monthly newsletter. How to Pitch SEO: Sales Tips for Appeasing Marketing Directors #BrightsonSEO

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Question 1 – Is SEO doomed, damned and/or in it’s infancy?

Google (Pierre) – SEO has never been dying. It’s evolving, and we’ve seen it change over time.

Martin McDonald – it’s in its infancy – but SEO will evolve, SEO will evolve into any organic medium. (e.g. mobile apps)

Rishi – The industry unfortunately has no standard practice, ethics board or a governing body – until this is implemented it will be difficult for the industry to be a formally recognised industry.

Bing (Dave Coplin) – SEOs were like magicians, alchemists.  No one understand what SEOs do. However, SEO will evolve well beyond what we can imagine -
There is no career path laid out, but SEOs have the ability to shape whatever career they want.
SEOs are passionate; this alone is commendable – you’d never see 1000 attendees for an email marketing conference!

Q2 – Question aimed for Pierre – “Been getting inquiries from people who have got themselves de-indexed. However, it’s been very difficult to define what a bad link is? Could you broadly classify what a ‘bad link’ is? secondly, what is the re-inclusion, process?”

Answer, when you say de-indexed, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s out of the index, only that it doesn’t rank in the SERPs. There’s 2 ways of getting penalised: manual penalty (the more serious penalty) and algorithmic penalty (e.g. can get away by changing on-page layout etc.)

So how do you classify if a link is bad? Ask yourself the following questions:

1) does the webmaster of the linking website genuinely want to link to you?
2) does linking to you add value to the user?

In terms of reinclusion – show that you have made an effort – Let Google know that you have identified bad links, you have emailed all the webmasters, these guys say they can’t remove them, these guys never got back to me, etc. and we will make an effort to help you.

Also make sure to tell us what you did, and to be honest.

Rishi – Check GWT, and see if there’s any dodgy links pointing to you

Martin – “How about competitive industries where people buy massive amounts of links?”
Pierre – buying links is a definite NO! Definitely report it!

We use over 200 signals, and there are some websites that rank without any links.

Q3 – What about Content? What should shape a good content strategy?
Bing (Dave Coplin) – Definitely social; it’s the new kid on the block, if you are bloody good, then your content will get shared.

So What is social? (Dave) For Bing it’s Twitter and Facebook

Google (Pierre)- who are my users? what do they want? and do they get it? Every page on your site must supply a knowledge demand. Use rich snippets, when dealing with duplicate content think about what you choose to serve as canonical. Also content doesn’t only mean text, use video, images, apps, reviews etc.

Rishi – Think about whether you are making it easy for people to share?
Does your content have tips?
Update old content. Ask yourself if these need updating, are they still relevant?
Add genuine resources in your posts.

Q4 – Do you test before rolling out Google Analytics redesigns?
Pierre: yes, we do test. We serve webmasters, serve in-house webmasters, agencies, so eventually something will have to give, but we try to cover as much as we can. Also provide us with specific feedback – tell us why the design is bad? Don’t say “your redesign is crap!” tell us what is the deficiency and how we should improve it.

Q5 – What is good social signals?

Bing (Dave)- good social signal is the quantity of the shares, the speed of which it is getting shared.
Google (Pierre)- if you are raising awareness about something, and it is genuinely shareable content, then these will get the coverage naturally.

Q6 – Aimed at Pierre – “you mentioned that you should know who your customers are, and what they’re looking for? Can you tell us about not giving us the search query data”?

Pierre: We do provide this data in in GWT – for most webmasters this data is more than sufficient.

Martin – The data sample size is so small that it’s rubbish, I rank for Expedia!
Rishi – I rank for insurance according to GWT. The data isn’t accurate.

Pierre – GWTs process data differently, our main focus is about protecting users and we don’t want user’s personal data being compromised by providing search query data especially with the roll out of Google plus your world.

Bing – easy to be angry about this – I’m not defending Google, or “dissing” them, but you must genuinely appreciate that there’s a larger issue here. People are getting more concerned about privacy issues.
But it certainly does show that there is an underlying need for more discussion and engagement among all parties; users, webmasters, legislators and search engines.

-Ends-

© SEOptimise - Download our free business guide to blogging whitepaper and sign-up for the SEOptimise monthly newsletter. Google & Bing Panel Discussion – BrightonSEO 2012

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Unfortunately I can’t be there. Sadly my dad, Jim Gibbons, passed away on Wednesday morning having battled cancer so bravely for the last year, but unfortunately his health deteriorated very quickly earlier this week. Obviously it puts things in perspective, as these things always do, but I know my dad would have loved me to do this. He was so proud of my career and paid such a great interest in everything I do, especially speaking at events like this – mainly because this isn’t something I’m naturally comfortable at doing and I’d rather not be center of attention (I’m just like him in so many ways), but I am ambitious and want to push myself and company forward by forcing myself into creating and taking these opportunities.

So while I can’t be there today, I still wanted to share the slides with everyone who’s going along to the event.

I love you dad, this one’s for you!

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Image credit: Dana Lookadoo

Thanks to Chris for taking the time to answer these questions – here goes:

1) I haven’t attended a BlueGlass event before, but I have heard great things about them (which is why I’m attending this year) – can you give us a bit of background about the event and let us know why first-time attendees should sign up? 

Over the years, several of us at the company have attended and spoken at just about every Internet marketing conference. I did make great connections going to shows, but it was because I was going to 10+ conferences a year with a lot of the same people. We wanted to find a way to whittle this type of networking down into just one conference where you’d also learn from the best minds in the industry without sacrificing an entire week of your time.

We set out to create an experience where attendees can see real benefits in their business because of what they’ve learned and who they’ve connected with. Because we cap our conference size and everyone attends the same sessions (one track), there’s ample opportunity to form relationships with the other participants AND speakers. The speakers don’t just show up for their panels: they attend the sessions and hang out with everyone. It’s nearly impossible to get that kind of access at a big conference.

What a lot of people don’t realize is we’re not in the conference business. We don’t profit off of our conferences (we’d be happy to just break-even on one of these). That in itself differentiates us from other conferences since we don’t have to be focused on the bottom line.

2) BlueGlass has made a fantastic name for itself in a very short space of time – obviously you must be delighted with the growth experienced, but with that do you think there comes an expectation with this to take things further? The BlueGlass events seem to be very highly thought of because of the high-quality of sessions, hand-selected speakers and the limited number of attendees which creates a more intimate community feel. Do you think you can keep that balance if Blueglass was to grow into a larger scale event?

Honestly, it’s hard to believe this is only our fourth conference. We’ve learned so much about how to put on a show in just under two years. I can only imagine what our conferences will look like in another two years.

I’m really proud of the niche we’ve carved out for ourselves, and I don’t see a reason to veer much from this formula in the future. Instead, we’ll continue coming up with ways to get a great mix of speakers, include even more in the cost of a ticket, and facilitate networking among participants.

I don’t think taking things further necessarily means growing our attendance roster. We’ve managed to improve on each conference without compromising the intimate feel we set out to achieve with our very first conference.

3) As I mentioned I’ve heard lots of great things about BlueGlass (both as a company and the events), the team is full of world-class speakers/bloggers, you all actively use Twitter etc. I’m a big fan of the inbound marketing approach and I’m sure BlueGlass is an excellent example of this paying off very effectively, but I just wondered how you value putting the effort in to building a strong brand and reputation. I remember seeing an interesting case study on how Pubcon saved $xxx,000 on advertising by replacing this with Twitter and word-of-mouth promotion – do you measure and compare this activity against alternative advertising methods/costs in a similar way?

We planned to start seriously start promoting BlueGlass LA in April, but we’ve already sold out! We’ve been fortunate enough that we’ve never spent money advertising our conferences. It’s been done using word-of-mouth and our own resources: social media, our site and newsletters.

We’ve actually watched conversations on Twitter where someone is talking about our conference, and next thing we know we have a ticket purchased from one of their followers. That’s pretty damn cool.

4) What are the main sessions you’re looking forward to seeing yourself at Blueglass LA?

As you mentioned before, we hand-picked all of the speakers. In other words, this is the BlueGlass team’s dream speaker list. We also come up with most of the session topics, so it’s also what we want to hear our dream team speak about! This is by far our best lineup yet, so it’s not easy to pick just one or two sessions. But if I have to…

Having Chris Brogan and Brian Clark speak together will be off the charts. Plus, I get to moderate their panel, called Cultivating Visibility: How to Amplify the Human Digital Channel. 

I’m also really excited for the PR panel, called Why Trusted Recommendation is the New Public Relations. There are few people I want to hear talk about the shifting PR landscape more than Peter Shankman, Sonia Simone and Adam Singer. 

5) 2011 and early 2012 seem to have been crazier than ever in the world of search. What do you think have been the biggest game changers in search during the last 6 months and should be the key takeaways from the event?

We made sure our sessions touch on most, if not all, of the recent game changers.

Greg Boser has a killer presentation planned for his first session where he’ll walk through what he considers the most pivotal algorithm tweaks Google’s made since November. We have an entire panel focusing on alternative data-collection methods in wake of Google’s “not provided” keywords. If Panda taught us anything, it’s that everything needs to be built around quality content. As such, our agenda for this conferences focuses on a lot of content marketing.

Honestly, I haven’t thought of anything as being a game changer in a really long time. And that’s not because there haven’t been huge, momentous events or actual changes but rather because the only constant in this game is change.

6) The agenda looks amazing, packed full of great speakers and very interesting/topical sessions – what type of audience is this aimed towards and as our readers are largely from the UK, do you think this has an international appeal?

This is a more advanced conference, so many of those attending have at least several years experience in the industry. Our audience includes business owners, SEOs and marketing teams representing companies ranging from small to global, in a wide range of verticals. We also have a lot of return attendees. Some people have been to all 4 of our conferences (and no, they don’t work for us!).

Most online marketing principles are universal, so the overall agenda will appeal to just about anyone in the industry. We don’t have any sessions specifically focused on international topics, but we do have quite a few Europeans speaking (Joost de Valk, Marcus Tandler and Dennis Goedeubuure – even though Dennis is now a California resident :) so I expect their presentations to be infused with what they’ve learned in international markets. And I should mention our Chairman of the Board Richard Zwicky is Canadian and moderating one of the SEO panels (yes, Canadian counts as international!).

We have quite a few attendees traveling from all over the world (yourself included), so we expect this to be quite an international crowd.

If you want to signup for BlueGlass LA unfortunately you’re now too late! The event fully sold out (always a good sign though!), but of course there will be further events announced later in the year. And if you’ve missed our previous interviews – we’ve also spoken about SAScon, SMX London, BrightonSEO, ionSearch (I’m also speaking at all four) and International Search Summit.

© SEOptimise - Download our free business guide to blogging whitepaper and sign-up for the SEOptimise monthly newsletter. BlueGlass LA Interview with Chris Winfield

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Whether you’re agency or client-side, here is a useful little guide to link building tools and resources which Distilled gave out to help you improve on your link building activities:

Tools & Resources

Distilled Speaker Posts / Link Building Resources

Link Building Resource Guides

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1. SAScon has quickly grown into a key UK industry event – when starting out did you ever see this as the plan? And are there any further plans to expand this moving forward? The original concept round Sascon was to deliver a complete search engine marketing and social marketing conference which could compete against established conferences such as Search Engine Strategies and SMX – but do this in the regions rather than in London which is where a number of the more established conferences tend to be. At the end of the day there are some fantastic search and social marketeers in the regions and some great work being done here, and thus it seemed a shame not to take advantage of it. Moving forward there are plans to take Sascon to a far wider audience, outside of just the UK. At the end of the day, search and social marketing are still growing perhaps even faster outside of the UK and it would be great to take the Sascon brand to more people. Further to that being involved in the Search Awards (of which there are the European Search Awards in Amsterdam on the 5th July – http://www.europeansearchawards.com) is allowing us to show case much of the good work many search businesses are doing and taking both the awards and the Sascon brands to a far bigger audience.
2. What are the main sessions you’re looking forward to seeing yourself? Given that I helped put alot of the panels together thats a difficult one to answer as I think all of them have their own strengths but on a personal note I always enjoy watching Martin McDonald speaking and his panel with Jon Quinton should be particularly interesting – not to mention I am moderting :). Also looking forward to seeing how some of the new panel frameworks come together as we have tweaked some of the panels a bit to encourage more debate not just from the panelists themselves but from the wider audience as well.
3. With SAScon standing for “Search, Analytics and Social Media conference” how do you think the integration between these disciplines has changed during the last 6-12 months? I think one only has to look at the Google search results to see just how much the landscape has changed recently. Search and social are now so integrated as Google looks to evolve beyond a pure search player. This in itself is bringing its own challenges. Changes to the way they parse data for example has implications not just for SEO’s but for paid search marketeers as well – and the integrated picture becomes a far more complicated beast than it was 12 months ago. That is something I am looking forward to seeing come out of Sascon – how people are embracing these challenges and making them work in this new environment.
4. What do you think have been the biggest game changers in search during the last 6 months and should be the key takeaways from the event? Personally, I would have to say the integration of social and the personalisation aspects this has allowed Google in particular to integrate into our results have been a particular challenge. The one size fits all approach is no longer applicable and we are now having to think multi channel , multi touch points to ensure we make our sites and content as visible as possible. Further to that the complexities caused by the data or lack of it that Google allow us is another issue that has caused a number of late nights as we look to highlight to advertisers the impact and effect of our work on what we know is a viable marketing channel.
5. And lastly, why should people attend the event? I noticed a mix of sessions which focus on in-house strategies, plus verticals such as retail and gaming – what type of audience do you expect to be attending? We are trying to create an event that caters for all. The modern day search conference landscape is increasingly competitive with some great conferences such as Think Visibility already well established over in Leeds. For that reason we have to cater for a slightly different audience, and in particular we have looked to engage with client side marketeers – who sometimes I think dont get the value out of due to the high agency side involvement in many events. Further to this, we want to create a legacy. Sascon is a not for profit event. When myself, Nicky Wake (from Dont Panic), Richard Gregory (from Latitude), Simon Wharton (from Pushon), Peter Cobley (Home James), Richard Hudson (Vanilla Storm)  and Ben McKay started on this road we did it because we wanted to give something back to the community and create something that really did provide value to the industry. None of that has changed…..

If you haven’t signed up yet, you really should – SAScon is a great event packed full of great sessions/presentations for a mix of skills and I’m excited to be speaking there again this year – see the full agenda here.

© SEOptimise - Download our free business guide to blogging whitepaper and sign-up for the SEOptimise monthly newsletter. SAScon 2012 Interview with Pete Young

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1. It’s the inaugural ionSearch event; obviously there are a range of search and digital events across the UK, so how do you see ionSearch differentiating itself?
That’s a good question. Rather than trying to explain why ionSearch is different to other conferences I will explain what ionSearch is and what it hopes to achieve.

ionSearch is an advanced search marketing conference where the speakers involved intend to push the boundaries and will explore all things SEM, with the agenda consisting of talks on SEO, Link Building, Content, Social and PPC. The day will consist of three main components; the Main Auditorium, the Experts Panels and the Search Tools suite.

The main auditorium will play host to the nine keynote speakers. Each speaker will have 40 minutes to present their thoughts and insights to the delegates. We feel that 40 minutes will allow the speakers enough time for them to delve deeper into their subject areas, allowing delegates to take away actionable skills from leading experts.

The expert panels will have set agendas, however the panel members will encourage audience participation. This will ensure there is a two way conversation between the audience and the panel. Key sessions include: SEO for Ecommerce, MY SEO Tool Kit, Killer Keyword Research, SEO Content Strategies, Creative Link Building Tactics, SEO for Ecommerce, Maximising ROI for high-turnover PPC Campaigns, How to Use Twitter, Facebook and G+ for SEO, Mobile SEO and SoLoMo and Black/Grey/White Hat – where do you Draw the Line? Plenty of room for debate, insight and discussion!

The Search tools suite will feature some of the latest SEO/PPC tool technologies. This type of a session can typically be a bit of a conference turn-off at risk of being directly pitched to.  I can safely say however that the speakers in the tools suite will not be delivering a sales pitch, instead they will show how various tools can help maximise search campaigns. SEOs at the coal face know the need for good tools and without them their work would be a lot more laborious, less productive and less insightful; that’s why we feel it is important to include a room dedicated to search technology. Kenshoo, Wordtracker, Linkdex, CognitiveSEO, AnalyticsSEO and SearchMetrics will be in the tools suite so it’s a heavy weight line-up.

There will be also a Speakers’ Corner at ionSearch so there will be a chance for delegates to get onto their Search soap box.

Last but not least of course is the location. Currently there isn’t a midweek business-centred search conference in Leeds (our office in based in Leeds) and the North is a hotbed for Search Marketing so it makes sense to bring some of the top names in search and local talent together. We have set tickets prices as low as possible; we want delegates to feel they are getting excellent value for money. The conference won’t just be all work and no play, however! There will be an after party and plenty of networking opportunities.

We want delegates to go back to their various workplaces and feel they have been treated to a top end conference. Most importantly the delegates will use the knowledge obtained at ionSearch and hopefully implement much of it within their search campaigns (and come back in 2013 for more!).

The ionSearch Conference is building momentum and we’ve received lots of positive feedback from the wider search community. The team who run the SASCON conference, based in Manchester, are particularly helpful and we thank them for their support.

Use this discount code to get 10% off the standard ticket price: IONSEARCH10 – www.ionsearch.co.uk

2. What are the main sessions you’re looking forward to seeing yourself?
For the main keynote speakers it’s hard for me to favour a particular session as I know each speaker will bring something special to the table on the day. For example Nick Garner (Head of Search at Unibet) will run the G+ session with Matt Bush (Head of Agency at Google). Nick and Matt will go head to head and will explore G+ from a user and business point of view.

Lee Odden (CEO TopRankBlog) and Dave Snyder (CEO Steelcast) are both flying in from the US exclusively for ionSearch. I am really looking forward to what they both have to say. I’ve seen Martin MacDonald (SEO Director at Expedia) speak before and he didn’t disappoint so I’m sure his talk will be full of the latest insights and actionable advice. Of course I can’t forget Kevin Gibbons (SEOptimise), I haven’t seen Kevin talk yet but I’m sure he’ll deliver the goods. :)

The panels and tools sessions will be full of tips and tricks. The last panel of the day Black Hat/Grey Hat/ White Hat where do you draw the line featuring Martin Macdonald, Ralf Tegtmeier, Dave Snyder and David Towers will attract a big audience and any session with the words ‘black hat’ in it usually causes a stir.

3. What do you think have been the biggest game changers in search during the last 6 months and should be the key takeaways from the event?
I’ll tackle this from an SEO perspective. In my opinion the biggest game changers during the last six months are the following:

• Quality Content – As most SEOs already know, the Google Panda update dial is still turning towards good quality content, especially during the last six-twelve months. Content backed by social shares (Likes, Tweets, +s etc) is now the order of the day. In today’s climate an SEO has to be whiter than white if they wish to join the Google content party. A recent blog post by Lyndon Antcliff, who is speaking at ionSearch, highlights the need to create magnetic content. I’d go one step further and say magnetic content backed by author rank is where SEO will be heading in the next 12 months. Semantic Search friendly content will also be vital, see point 5 below.
• Negative SEO is on the Rise – The trend for White Hat content driven SEO has left the door open to spam attacks.  It’s far easier and cheaper (than White Hat SEO) to build a set of low quality links towards a site and trick Google into thinking a site is over-optimised. White Hat SEOs need to be alert; negative link building attacks (or link bombing) could be blatantly obvious or more subtle than a creeping vine and negative SEO could grow and become a major problem. Spammy social mentions and citations on low quality domains will become increasingly damaging to sites. It will be interesting to see how Google can monitor this and not penalise a site when it has been attacked. Google will need to become more customer focused and easier to contact when an attack occurs. The potential loss of income due Negative SEO could be huge; Google must appreciate this and will have to offer a service to deal with such issues far more rapidly than it does currently (the painfully slow Webmaster Tools requests).
• Author Rank and Influence – A G+ profile allows Google to know who the actual author of a piece of content is (see Yoast’s post on rel=author). In short G+ legitimises content. I firmly believe rel=author content and the G+ profile links associated with this content will be the most powerful links moving forward. Influencers and entities who have strong G+ accounts, a social presence, produce awesome semantic content, have quality links and citations will own the SERPS. Justin Briggs recently wrote a fascinating post on his blog about search entities. It’s well worth a read. To my mind it’s the best SEO blog post I have read in the last 12 months.
• Paid Links – If you wish to rank for the long term then there is no point buying a number of footer, thin content (with stuffed keyword anchor text) or sidebar links. Google will eventually see this and will penalise the target site accordingly. Google has been cracking down on sites that overtly partake in paid link activity, especially during the last few months.  The paid link model will move towards social shares (by key influencers), citations, author sponsorship, advertorials and subtle anchor text placements. I recently listened to a talk by a well-respected agency and they declared they no longer pay for links. I challenged this. My argument is every SEO ‘buys’ links whether it’s content creation, online PR or social shares, SEO cannot ever be 100% organic. The difference is some paid links are more blatant than others. Let’s be honest and sensible about paid links, most SEOs would not turn down a link on a key blog if the author of that blog asked for £50 for their time and effort.
• Semantic Search – Google purchased Metaweb in 2010 and Google have been a busy ever since creating their semantic indexation processes. Semantic Search is another move by Google to improve its search results for certain queries (and keep users on its pages). Individuals looking for answers for particular complex questions will, according to Google, receive more accurate data. The move towards semantic search will force SEO practitioners to think again how best to develop content. I guess in most cases content will need to rewritten so it fits with Google’s semantic template. This depends on the nature of the content and what it is trying to achieve. For example FAQ sections could prove to be vital for longer tail searches (how to, why, where, when etc).  David Towers (SEO Manager at MEC), who is also speaking at ionSearch, has just released a post on econsultancy which discusses the Google semantic search update. He argues Google’s Semantic Search update will revolutionise SEO. I agree with David. It’s back to content, social, authors and links again!
• Over-Optimised Link Footprints – Google is cracking down on over-optimised link footprints. If a webmaster continues to build spammy links then they will face the consequences in the medium/long term.  This is not to say spam type SEO doesn’t work, keyword stuffed anchor txt link building can still achieve top rankings, for less competitive keywords, Google’s algorithm isn’t perfect.  Short term slash and burn SEO can harvest high returns. I see numerous sites everyday where spam SEO still dominates the SERPS. I do not condone this type of SEO. My advice is to build links carefully, keyword mix your anchors, with brand terms being the most dominant, most importantly build links within content that will be noticed and shared.
• Local Search – The Venice update added local listings into Google’s organic results, even when location was not specified in the query. This inevitably has a big impact on SEO, particularly for nationwide businesses targeting short tail terms. The immediate impact of this on search will be that we will see a revival of thin, low quality location based microsites and a push onto paid search for nationwide online businesses.
• Mobile SEO – Search queries on mobile devices continue to grow year on year. SEOs will need to learn more about how SEO works for mobiles and how they can maximise mobile search opportunities.
• Measurable SEO – From my own experience and also speaking with other SEOs clients increasingly want higher level reporting regarding how SEO is calculated in terms of ROI and LTV. I believe technology will play a vital role here. Proactive agencies will build their own tools sets so they can report data more efficiently. This will enable SEOs to demonstrate that their work is making a real impact (or not, hopefully this isn’t the case). Kevin Gibbons will present his ideas on how SEOs should think like a business at ionSearch so I’m looking forward to hearing what Kevin has to say.
• Code – I haven’t mentioned the importance of code yet. Clean and tight code will help boost the overall SEO effort. Google does consider on-site variables such as site speed and bounce rates and has made this more of a ranking factor since the Panda and Venice updates.

In terms of what people can expect to take away from the conference, all of the above points will be discussed in depth by leading experts. The day will focus around these changes and how the SEO industry and related techniques will respond to them, including content marketing, link building techniques, social media, mobile and tools. If you are looking to optimise a site for search this year, ionSearch will provide valuable, insightful and actionable takeaways whatever your level of expertise or niche.

4. The agenda looks great, with a nice mix between presentations, panels and tools – what type of audience is this aimed towards and why do you think people should attend?

The conference is ideal for anyone who has an interest and passion in search and wants to learn the latest tips, tricks and trends. The conference isn’t trying to be elitist and welcomes all corners of the digital community from one-man bands, agencies, in-house teams to directors and CEOs. The conference is aimed at the advanced level, however whether you’re a seasoned pro or an early adopter I expect everyone who attends ionSearch will take much valuable insight back to their office and will use this in their various search campaigns.

Why should people come to ionSearch? Well the line-up is fantastic, it’s fairly priced, it will offer the latest advanced tips in search marketing, it’s in the centre of Leeds, hosted in a great venue, Google will be there, there’s networking, tasty food, it’s a no brainer! Hope to see you there…

ionSearch Conference, 18^th April, Leeds at the Carriageworks Theatre – www.ionsearch.co.uk

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What is the EU cookie directive?
For those not already aware, the supposed aim of this legislation is to increase online security and data privacy, giving users more control over what data can be held about them. It addresses concerns with how personal information is held and used. Some users – albeit a small minority – are concerned with what they see as the development of a ‘Big Brother’ society in which their every move is being recorded.

The legislation forces websites to be transparent about how they are using cookies, detailing exactly what information each cookie holds and how long it will be held, and requires them actively to request permission from their users before cookies can be used.

Previously, the law dictated that websites had to explain how they were using cookies and how users can ‘opt out’. Most sites did so in their Privacy Policies, but this isn’t enough under the new law:  users now have to ‘opt in’, having been made fully aware of the implications of doing so.

Who needs to comply with it?
The law applies to all Member States of the European Union. However, even websites outside the EU are required to comply with the law if they are targeting Member States. For example, a site based in the USA that sells products to consumers in the UK, or that has a French-language version of its site aimed at users in France, will still have to comply.

Why do I need to comply with it?
Put simply, because it’s the law! Many have speculated that the law will be hard to enforce, but the penalties for non-compliance could be severe. The maximum monetary penalty for non-compliance is £500,000, which could apply in situations where deliberate contravention of the legislation leads to substantial damage or distress. There are of course less severe penalties for more minor contraventions, including an information notice, undertaking (which commits the organisation to specific actions to ensure compliance) and an enforcement notice.

What does this mean for my website and analytics?
Quite apart from the initial hassle of making practical website changes to comply with the law, websites will face a whole host of possible problems as a result of complying with this legislation. Cookies are used extensively to improve user experience – things like remembering preferences such as font size and language, or what’s in the user’s shopping basket on e-commerce sites. Although webmasters will be allowed to use cookies without permission in instances where it is strictly necessary to do so for the functionality of the website and where that action is explicitly requested by the user (i.e. where a feature requested by the user wouldn’t work without the use of a cookie, such as the shopping basket on an e-commerce site), it’s likely that user experience will suffer for those who say no to cookies.

The good news is that the UK Government has come out and said that the use of analytics is “essential” – see this useful post on Econsultancy for more information. Let’s hope the EU agrees, otherwise analytics is doomed.

When do I need to comply with it?
The law actually came into force last year, on 25 May 2011. However, it was recognised that webmasters need time to bring their websites in line with the law, and a grace period of one year was granted. This means that by 26 May 2012, all websites will have no choice but to comply with the law.

How do I comply with it?
To comply with the new cookie legislation, it will be necessary to make changes to your website to make information about your use of cookies transparent and prominent, and to allow users to give consent to the use of cookies. Note that:

• If you have more than one website, you can gain permission for cookies in one place, providing you make it clear what websites the permission applies to.
• If you change your use of cookies significantly following initial permission, you’ll need to ask for permission again.

It’s a good idea to start by auditing your use of cookies. Look out for the following:

• Ascertain which cookies are being used, their purpose and what data they hold.
• Find out whether they can be linked with personal data such as username, email address etc.
• Establish whether they apply to the session (just that visit) or if they’re persistent (applying to future visits as well).
• Establish how long they last.
• Establish whether they’re 1^st or 3^rd party, and if the latter, who is setting the 3^rd party ones.
• Check that your Privacy Policy includes accurate and clear information on each cookie being used, and in a way that a layman can understand.

Gaining consent can be done in a variety of ways. As the ICO points out, the method you use to gain users’ consent depends on what your cookies are doing and also on your relationship with your users.
Settings-led consent

This involves gaining consent when a user makes a change that affects how the site works for them. For example, this could mean asking the user if they want the website to remember a particular language setting and gaining consent for cookies to be used for this purpose.

Feature-led consent
This applies in instances where cookies are used to remember what content a user viewed the last time they visited the site, to enable content to be tailored to them – for example, remembering what videos they viewed last time they visited. In such cases, your site should make clear to the user that taking a particular action will result in a cookie being used. This could mean, for instance, highlighting cookie use when a user turns on a particular feature and requiring consent before the change is applied.

Consent for functional/analytical cookie use
Cookies used to collect anonymous information about how visitors use your site still need user consent. This is relatively straightforward if a user has to log into your site, but more complicated where they do not. You’ll need to make absolutely clear to users what cookies are being used, what they’re being used for, and asking for consent. Below are some suggestions on how you can go about this.

The practicalities
A number of software solutions are already on the market to allow webmasters to comply with the law without affecting the look and feel of their site. One example is http://civicuk.com/cookie-law/configuration.

Other options suggested by the Information Commissioner’s Office include:

• JavaScript pop-up box – explaining cookie use and offering ‘yes’ and ‘no’ options for consent. This isn’t a very nice solution though, as we all know how much everybody hates pop-ups and most browsers automatically block them anyway.
• Splash page – a big SEO no-no.
• Banner – shown along the top of the page to first time visitors with a tick box to allow users to consent, with cookies disabled until the visitor ticks to indicate consent.
• Footer bar – similar to the banner concept, this would be displayed along the bottom.  If they do not click yes or no, but continue to use the site, consent can be inferred because they have seen a clear message but are still continuing to use the site. A smaller message could be maintained throughout the site in such instances, to remind users of the fact that the site is using cookies.
• Remember preferences – enhance the wording of your ‘remember preferences’ such as language or font size to ensure that it’s clear that a cookie will be required to do so.
• Flag changes to terms and conditions – an option where users have to log into their account. They would need to give ‘specific and informed’ consent to these pages, so consent cannot be assumed just by changing the terms and conditions they agreed to when they signed up. You’ll need to get a positive indication that consent has been granted, as they log in and before they are able to proceed to their account.

In addition to this, the law also requires you to make your privacy policy more prominent, rather than hiding it away. This could be a question of making the font bigger, moving it from the footer to the header, or changing the wording to indicate that it includes information about cookie use.

BT.com has implemented quite a comprehensive response to the cookie law today, if you’re in need of some more inspiration…

My opinion
Researching this law in detail, I found myself becoming rather angry at what I see as a pointless bit of European bureaucracy that has little real value and, on the contrary, is disruptive to both users and webmasters. From a user perspective, one might pose the question:  how many people are so concerned about data protection that they take the time to read a website’s privacy policy? From being able to use a website without interruption, the user will now find themselves faced with information about cookies that the vast majority are likely to have no wish to read, and will be forced to state their agreement to the use cookies that enable features that most would rather happened as a matter of course.

There will of course also be users who react the opposite way; if the information about cookie usage is not worded carefully, it risks sparking paranoia in some, who will then not agree to cookie usage and their user experience of a website will be lessened. This introduces frustration into what might otherwise have been a seamless user journey, and that in turn means that they may be less likely to come back.

What does the future hold?
The hope is that in time, the Government will work closely with browsers such as Firefox to find a way around the issue of having to ask for consent. Ed Vaizey, Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries, has confirmed that the Government is already liaising with browser manufacturers over how to enhance browsers to provide information on cookies as well as user-friendly settings. But at the moment, he says, browsers simply aren’t sophisticated enough to assume consent. Furthermore, an increasing number of users are browsing the web through mobile devices, without using a browser, so it’s likely that we’re heading towards an international standard of online privacy that applies to mobiles as well.

Further reading and useful resources

• Guidelines from the Information Commissioner’s Office provide in-depth information about the law and what it means for webmasters.
• The full legislation can be viewed here.
• Information on the monetary penalties for non-compliance can be found at www.ico.gov.uk.
• Google Analytics and the EU Cookie Law – http://www.cookielaw.org/google-analytics-eu-cookie-law.aspx

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1. The International Search Summit is obviously coming up soon in London – can you just give us a bit of background about the event for those who haven’t attended before? The first public International Search Summit was organised in London in May 2008 – originally it was created because the major search conferences didn’t have enough space on the agenda to accommodate a deep content on international search subjects. Personally, they were mostly kind enough to invite me along and I’d have 10 minutes to cover what is a huge subject. Compare that with the typical presentation which today, I open the ISS with which runs to some 30 minutes followed by speakers throughout the rest of the day. Since then we have been running the ISS twice a year in London, with a selection of other cities which, for one reason or another, have invited us. The last year we teamed up with the great team at SMX to run the event alongside SMX in most locations globally.
2. What are the main sessions you’re looking forward to seeing yourself and the key takeaways attendees should be looking to learn? Difficult to choose – we have some great speakers this year including Pierre Far from Google, Bas van den Beld from State of Search, Nick Garner from Unibet and Lisa Myers from Verve search. However, I’m particularly interested in learning more from Lee Macini of Sekari who will be talking about the Arabic web. I believe the Arabic speaking world is still wide open for search marketers and whilst we’ve been working in that region for some years, I think we all have a lot to learn. However, I have to add that the most valuable things I’ve learned from ISS in the past were things I hadn’t even thought about. ISS is very good at opening your eyes to new opportunities.
3. The last 12-months have been crazy in terms of the number of changes we’ve seen in search. How has this impacted global SEO strategies? Over the last 12 months the impact of search engine changes on global SEO strategies has been huge. Currently, the most hotly contested issue is the use of canonicals combined with Hreflang tags which is pretty recent by anyone’s measure. Pierre Far will be the third speaker this year addressing this issue and we’re certainly aiming to try and clear some of the fog surrounding it. Mind you the Hreflang tag, in my opinion, is a response by Google to try and help global search marketers to cope with the vast waves of movement we have seen on global websites in the last twelve months. Panda, in particular, was targeted at improving the quality of content and removing abusers – but it has had a very negative impact on big global websites too, especially those using machine translation. It seems that Panda thinks a website automatically translated into multiple languages by machine falls into the same category as content spinners! Trouble is, to fix the problem in 40 languages and 160 countries costs huge sums of money that no one can really justify. And this only scratches the surface. As more and more companies try to gain a foothold internationally, the competition is growing and the need to market effectively has put huge pressure on the SEO teams. Whilst some of the technical aspects are the same, the impacts and the means of addressing them are not!
4. In terms of SEO strategies – how different do you see tactics being across different countries? For example, have the rollouts of Google panda, Google Venice, Google+/personalisation etc affected the global search market in the same way as the US and UK? Or do some of the old tactics still work in certain countries better than you’d expect? SEO strategies do need to vary by market because the markets are different – even though Google’s overriding algorithm works principally in the same way. The biggest issue is dealing with language, relevant local keywords and understanding really what the customers want to know and how it’s different. About Us pages, for instance, are really important for some countries, less so for others. Of course, we also have to keep an eye on Yandex, Baidu, Seznam and Naver which are all very different to Google. They’re also now spreading into other international markets than their home bases – such as Turkey or Egypt – so delegates to ISS are often interested to learn more of these search engines as they can be somewhat obscure. And as we cover social media and its connections with search, Google+ is a BIG topic for international folks right now. The agenda looks great – obviously it’s very internationally focussed with a nice mix of speakers from different regions.
5. Is the ISS audience aimed at global marketers look to take SEO to the next level internationally? And how do you see this fitting in alongside SMX London this year? ISS delegates include agencies who are looking after clients with international needs as well as clients with years of global search marketing experience and “newcomers” to the field – noting that these “newcomers” are often highly experienced SEOs or search marketers who’ve acquired new responsibilities. We also have teams from organisations which have just decided they should “go global” and now they need to figure out how. The discussions to locate ISS alongside SMX in London happened because for a couple of years ISS took place the week before SMX and we were getting delegates flying in from all over the world to attend ISS, stay the weekend and then go to SMX. So it made sense to bring the events much closer together. But it also meant that SMX didn’t have to worry so much about spending more of its valuable agenda grid time on international content even in a global city like London. So the combination worked really well and has continued to develop. I first met Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman in 2004 and it is a privilege to work with them – as the ISS team we do feel a great sense of responsibility to deliver top notch content on international topics to complement the great work they’re doing!

This event is running alongside SMX London this year – so maybe sign up for both with our 15% off discount code (SEOPTIMISE012) and see you there!

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1.  The growth of BrightonSEO has been phenomenal over the last couple of years and April’s event promises to the biggest yet. So is it going to be the best? :) It’s been crazy the growth, the first event we had thirty forty people along and now we’ve got a thousand, which I hope is a testament to the quality of the content at the event. Will the next one be the best? I certainly hope so, though as the event gets bigger it does become harder to please everyone but I think more than any other event in the industry it brings the biggest and best selection of SEOs in one room at one time. Being free means more people from smaller agencies or in-house teams can make it along than other more expensive events. The speakers we’ve got this time are simply outstanding and in most cases are delivring the type of session I can’t imagine being scheduled at any other events. We’re avoiding covering the conference cliches like ‘content is king’ and really delving deep into to what I think are the most interesting areas of search.
2. What are the main sessions you’re looking forward to? The Q&A session with Pierre Farr from Google and Dave Coplin from Bing has huge potential, I know there’s loads of probing questions and unusual anomalies people want to ask them about, I’ve got high hopes for that session. I’m also looking forward to hearing from Glenn Jones and Phillip Sheldrake who aren’t part of the SEO world but are experts in areas which have the potential to make a huge difference to the SEO game, the internet of things and semantic mark-up.
3. BrightonSEO has always been a great event for encouraging new speakers in the UK – how do you find the balance between giving opportunities to first-time speakers and growing the event in size? It’s great to have developed a reputation for finding new speakers and introducing them to the circuit, I take huge pride in seeing people who did their first major speaking gig at BrightonSEO now delivering talks all over the country and world. The reason I invite new speakers is twofold, everyone needs a first opportunity to speak at an event, so I think any conference organiser has an obligation to try and find new talent, but the real reason is too many conference organisers are scared to take risks so rely on the ‘old guard’ of speakers who they’ve worked with in the past. That’s not a bad thing, especially as I’m probably part of that old guard. But I want BrightonSEO to have the most interesting talks of any marketing event and to do that I need to find people who have new perspectives or won’t just roll out their ‘greatest hits’ set. As the audience becomes larger it does become tricky. Other than maybe the keynote slots at the big conferences, the audience at BrightonSEO is probably the biggest of any event now. that’s daunting for a first time speaker; but what I’m interested in is do they have something new and compelling to say. If they do – they’ve got nothing to worry about.
4. What do you think have been the biggest game changers in search during the last 6 months and should be the key takeaways from the event? It certainly feels a bit more dramatic than usual, but I don’t think many of the changes are things most of us couldn’t have anticipated. But I think the changes rewarded people taking action; for example we all knew it made sense for Google to better personalise results pages based on the recommendations of someone’s friends. So rather than just anticipating that but doing nothing the early winners in Search Plus Your World will be those who were taking action! I hope what the next event will do is give people a few more things to add to their to do list, the challenge is executing on those items.
5. Can you tell us more about what else you’re doing around the conference this year? One of the downsides to squeezing lots of talks into the conference is you can’t always go into quite as much details as you’d like, so this time we’ve added three workshops the day before covering Advanced Analytics, What SEO can learn from PR and Building your own SEO tools and we’ve also got a bowling competition the day after as well, which I imagine will be closely fought!

The event is on 13th April and already sold out – but if you’re heading down, we’re bringing the team and myself and Chelsea Blacker from SEOptimise are both speaking – so make sure you say hi!

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1. Firstly, great news that you’re coming over to SMX London in May. I noticed that SMX London has dropped the Advanced tag this year, how do you see the event changing from previous years in terms of content and audience? We haven’t dropped SMX Advanced but rather incorporated it into the broader show of SMX London. SMX Advanced runs in one track each day, while the other track will cover aspects of search marketing accessible to people of all skill levels. So all the great advanced content is still there. But we know there’s a broader base out there that’s been wanting to come to our London show, and so the expansion helps serve them, too. We also added a new SMX Boot Camp as one of the pre-conference workshops to help those new to search marketing get a start.
2. There’s been a huge amount of changes in the world of search during the last 12-months, what do you consider to have had the biggest impact so far and is likely to be the key talking points at SMX London 2012? Mobile and social are both key developments. We’re searching all the time now, away from our desktops, on our phones and tablets. It’s crucial that marketers understand that conversions and radically drop when people encounter a mobile-unfriendly site. Our Mobile Trends session will be looking at this. As for social, Google have moved its ads further down the page to make room for the Google+ “People and Pages” box. That should tell search marketers all they need to know about how serious Google is about making Google+ be a success. It’s factored into the new Search Plus Your World ranking, so it’s a major new signal that marketers need to consider. Meanwhile, Bing taps into Facebook and Twitter. The world of social meets search keeps getting reshaped literally each month, but the main point is clear: if you want to succeed in search, you need to be considering social. We’ll have plenty of sessions about this.
3. Looking ahead – do you think Google+ is likely to be the biggest game-changer in search this year? And what do you think should be the key takeaways attendees should look to learn about this? I think Google+ already is one of the biggest game changers. The takeaway is that you should be doing it. But the conference takeaways will be specific tips on how to best build your followers and tap into Google+ enhancements for your listings.
4. With Google’s updates and rollouts of Google+/authorship/personalisation/Google Venice/local etc – do you think this is their reaction to the social media threat of personal recommendations? For example, a query for “can you recommend a good yoga class in London for under £20?” is likely to get a better (or at least more personal) response on Twitter than a Google query could provide. Or, as many believe, do they just want your data?! There are a combination of things. People do “search” by asking their friends questions through social networks. Google needs to find a way to integrate that type of activity. Google+ is one way of doing this, such as through the “Need some input from friends? Ask on Google+” links that appear on Google.com now. It would be better if Google could also help us sort through our Facebook and Twitter data, but until there’s some détente on deals, that’s in the distance. Of course, Google does also want more data about us, both because it allows them to create better products for us and also to target us better with ads. But Google+ is about far more than that.
5. I’ve also noticed you’ve been writing about Google’s anti-competitive behaviour recently (e.g. “Google plus your world” favouring Google’s own social network over others and their hypocrisy over “privacy” issues) – do you think Google are potentially running the risk of becoming too monopolistic? I think Google’s given more solid ammunition than ever before to those who make an anti-trust argument. However, that ammunition doesn’t help those who’ve been leading this fight directly, the vertical search engines that claim they’re hard-done-by. It’s difficult to argue that you’re being harmed by Google when at the same time, you argue that 75% of your traffic comes from Google, as some do. The bottom line is that the vast majority of web sites continue to get huge amounts of traffic for free from Google.
6. And finally, you lived in England for several years so I wondered how you find the UK industry and development of search strategies when compared with the US and other key international territories? The UK has always been fairly advanced in search marketing, even compared to the US. In some cases, it can even be ahead. The main challenge is that the UK is in an interesting middle ground of often having products and sites aimed toward the UK, Europe and the US. That means grappling with two different English languages (UK English vs US English), as well as the multitude of European languages, along with issues of running country-specific sites in the mix. That’s one reason why it’s great to have the International Search Summit running as one of the pre-conference events.

If you haven’t signed up for the event yet, make sure you use the SMX London discount code: SEOPTIMISE012 for 15% off the ticket price – see you there!

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