Christmas is just a matter of week’s away and I’m sure it’s been a busy year… So why not end the year on a high and get yourself down to the SEO Christmas Hootenanny in Brighton!
If you’re an SEO and you’re based in Brighton, make sure you put the following date in your diary -
Friday 21st December from 7pm
I will be announing the venue within the next couple of weeks and will post all the details shortly.
So… who’s up for a night of search, santa and sambucas?
With so much talk about the SMX conference in London last week and with many great conferences in the States coming up soon, how do you justify with your boss the costs involved and more importantly get the time off work?
If you work for an agency or consultancy then you probably don’t have this problem. However, if you’re an in-house SEO you will need to sell the idea to your boss so he gets his cheque book out and signs you off work for a few days.
Here are a few tips that should help you sell the idea.
1. You’ve got to stay ahead of the game!
The search industry in the UK is competitive, if you’re going to stay ahead of the game and learn what those around you are getting up to, you really should attend a conference. Many conference sessions offer valuable information that is not always available online. The chance to then go and grill the speaker and ask questions after his/her presentation is invaluable. Research your competition online and show your boss how they are doing certain things that you may need to learn about, tell him that if you are going to compete and reap the rewards financially…you need to go to this conference.
2. Don’t mention the partying!
Search conferences provide great opportunities to party, there will be evening pub meet ups, invites to go and eat at restaurants and all night drinking sessions in the hotel bar… but your boss won’t like the idea of his few grand being spent on a drunk employee with a killer hangover. Instead talk about the type of experts that are going to be attending and how the conference will provide a great opportunity to network with them. Tell your boss that you have a strategy to meet certain experts and ask them lots of questions. That way if a picture of you getting drunk with a bunch of SEO’s appears on the web, you know what to say.
3. Save money on consultancy!
Could you imagine the cost of getting Matt Cutts in for an hour to look at one of your sites? What about asking Danny Sullivan to come and carry out a site audit for your lead client. It just won’t happen. However, if you manage to grab one of the hotshots while at a search conference, as long as you’re polite and don’t go too overboard with the questions, they will always be accommodating and will answer your question. Approach experts and say “Hi, I read your blog all the time, can I buy you a beer?” That always works! Go to the conference with a list of things you would like to find out, tell your boss that you have a strategy in place for what you are going to learn and come back with.
4. Spread the wealth!
If your company decided to take the whole team out to PubCon in Vegas, it’s going to get pricey. If your boss pays a few thousand quid for you to go, he may have concerns that you are going to be offered a job and may not come back. Instead tell your boss that you are going to gain as much valuable information as possible, take loads of notes and then brief the whole team when you get back. Spread the knowledge around your organisation and provide write ups for employees to read, blogging the information is also a great way to spread the word around your team.
5. If you’re part of an agency, pitch it to your clients
If you work for a few clients or provide consultancy, why not speak to them and inform them about the conference. Pick out a few key areas that they are interested in and discuss the benefits of you attending the conference and coming back to implement everything you have learned on their website. If you are lucky they may even offer to contribute to the cost of you attending. This can happen, trust me.
6. Choose the right conference
If you are like me you probably want to go to all of them, but some are better than others. Research the conference schedule, see who is talking and what they are speaking about. Make a list of things you really want to learn and make sure the conference has the relevant content. Ask questions at forums and blogs with industry experts and ask them for their view on a particular conference. Tell your boss that you have researched all of the conferences and have picked the best one to go to.
Hopefully these tips should help you sell the idea of going to the next search conference with your boss, maybe you have some other tips or ideas that you would like to share.
See you at SES in Feb!
I have just returned back to Brighton after a busy couple of days at SMX in London.
SMX is a search marketing conference organised by renowned search experts and ex Search Engine Strategies organisers Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman.
Smaller in comparison to Search Engine Strategies, SMX took place at the London Hilton Metropole and included advanced and fundamental sessions and some industry specific discussions on the final day.
It proved another great oppurtunity to meet up with new and old friends and it was nice to see the Brighton SEO’s were out in force.
I will be posting up details about the best of the sessions over the next few days and will include some take-aways from each.
In the meantime check out the SEOMoz style London SMX comic strip over at Apple Pie and Custard for some “Pow” “Wow” and “Kazam”.
A great night was had by all, the weather tuned out to be perfect as most of the evening was spent sitting out on the promenade right by the beach, drinking beer and talking supplemental results and duplicate content…it doesn’t get any better!
Great to hook up with everyone last week, a special thanks to Propellernet, Juretic Media and Click with Technology for providing the beer and tequila tokens, everyone went home suitably merry.
The next event will be arranged to include a club solution for after the event. Pride weekend, one of the busiest of the year, proved difficult to try and get a large group of guys and a few SEO chicks into a club… although DJ Randal is supposedly an excellent Drum’n'Bass DJ, I’m not sure it was to everyone’s taste!
This didn’t prevent us all from having a great evening which went into the wee small hours…
Here are a few photos from the event…
The Propellernet Team:
Jack Hubbard, Paul, Jim Jenson & James O’Connor
Lisa Ditlefsen & Ammon Johns
Frank, Mike Nott & Kelvin Newman
Neven from Juretic Media & Jack Hubbard, Propellernet
Ecky propping up the bar…
Alicia Gough in deep discussion.
How many tequilas!
The LondonSEO crew. Rob Kerry and Ekrum Ashgar with Shimrit Elisar and Mike Jacobson
Look out for news about upcoming events in London and Manchester and stay tuned for details about the next SEO event beside the sea.
A date, venue and sponsor has now been arranged. We’ll be drinking beer and talking search, right on the beach next to the burnt out West Pier!
A big thanks to Propellernet for sponsoring the event and enabling us to have a free bar for the first part of the evening. When the drinks kitty runs dry we will have to start paying for drinks, if there are any other potential sponsors out there who wouldn’t mind chucking a few more quid behind the bar, please get in touch.
For those who are traveling down to the seaside for the weekend, there are plenty of hotels along the seafront all within close proximity to Alfresco.
Put the following date in your diary and please let your availability be known, it would be great if we had some idea of numbers, I’ve had some great feedback from everyone and it should prove to be a popular event.
Sun, sea, search and beer!
When: Friday 3rd August 2007
Where: Alfresco Bar
Time: 8pm til late
See you all there!
I regularly attend the London SEO pissup. I recently expressed an interest in moving a future event down south and a bit more closer to home. Rob Kerry who organises the London Pissup has asked me if I would like to organise something in
I know there are a lot of SEO agencies and consultants also based by the seaside so I wanted to start the ball rolling and see who might be interested in attending…
If you’re based in
Rebecca from SEOmoz has posted her SES London Comic Strip over on the blog. Go check it out!
It includes a cameo role from Lisa at SEO blog UK and it had me laughing out loud throughout.
Pure Genius!
The second day of the conference started brightly, with a decent hotel breakfast and a cab ride with Dennis Mortensen from Index Tools, nice to meet you Dennis! Followed by a mad rush to the conference hall to make sure I got a seat for Matt Cutts’ keynote conversation, something I had been really looking forward to…
For those of you who are not aware; Matt Cutts is a leading software engineer at Google, he is Head of the Webspam team and writes a well known blog about Google and SEO. It was good to see him make the trip over from the States to meet the UK crowd and being such an open and interesting guy, I was looking forward to hearing what he had to say. The interview/conversation was conducted by Chris Sherman.
Here are some of the highlights…
The conversation started with Matt explaining how he ended up working for Google. He explained that he and his wife eloped to try and work for Google, he took classes in library and information science and after writing a letter, they employed him in 2000.
As he’s Head of the Spam team, Matt was asked where to draw the line with spam. He explained that “measuring how happy users are is important.” He went on to say that off topic spam, he used an example of typing in your name and getting porn, “isn’t in anybody’s interest.”
Matt was asked to clarify current algorithm updates at Google. He explained that in the old days there would be a monthly update, which was referred to as the Google Dance. In 2003 they started to make incremental changes, but now Google has “Everflux” where an index update happens everyday. The algorithm takes a lot longer to update, but there are updates taking place on a daily basis to either the index or algorithms.
When asked whether he could say anything about undetectable spam, Matt explained that there was once a guy who claimed that his “super duper” cloaking technique would never be detected. He found that his “super duper” cloaking had page names like “doorway-page-alta-vista” - Matt explained: “even my Mum could have detected that!”
Matt also said that he receives emails form people saying; “try our link buying program”. He said he replies by asking “can you show me some examples of your work?” They write back and supply him with a whole list of the websites which you can buy links from… Absolute classic!
Matt even said that Google receives email spam claiming “We can increase the visibility of Google.com within Google!”
Chris asked Matt if he could give one piece of advice to those who are new to SEO, something they can go home to try out… it probably won’t come as much of a surprise that he told them to all go and try out Google Webmaster Central - plug, plug!
Matt made the announcement that Google Webmaster Tools was coming out of Beta, a Valentines gift, he explained! He picked out Vanessa Fox in the audience and thanked her for all her great work. He asked those who have tried the service to raise their hands. He told those who hadn’t to go and try it out! - Quel surprise!
Chris asked Matt where he saw Google in the next 3-5 years? He answered: “personalisation and localisation”. He also plugged a few more Google services by telling the audience that they can store their data at Google. He claimed that a business could start up and run perfectly well by using all of Google’s free services within 5-10 days.
Chris thanked Matt for his time, Matt thanked Chris for the having him and the audience started to applause…
So, a fairly interesting keynote, glad I made it along. I found the information about index and algorithm changes fairly useful but I can’t say anything came as a big surprise. All the of Google plugging got a bit much towards the end - but I won’t be too hypocritical, as I use all of the tools which were mentioned and happen to be a fan of them all.
It was great to see a few top Google employees over in the UK for the three days. It proves how Google is now really embracing our industry, working with us not against us (black hats not included of course) and providing us all with great tools in order for us to do our ethical SEO more effectively.
Matt came across as a really nice guy, I have been reading his blog for many years and it was good to see him speaking in person ..I didn’t get a chance to meet him after the session as he was absolutely mobbed. Maybe next time…
Next up: Successful Site Architecture
Last week I attended Search Engine Strategies for the second year running. Taking place at the ExCel in the Docklands area of London. Apart from being in the middle of nowhere (try popping out for a late bite to eat while in Docklands, not recommended) it was a fairly impressive venue. The exhibition seemed a lot smaller this year, but I was told that there was a 100% increase in seminar delegates. I think we’re back at the BDC in Islington next year, which is a much better venue in my opinion.
There was some great content again this year, a lot of the same renowned speakers and presenters and always something new to discuss. Here is a brief overview of some of the useful seminars which I attended…
This session was presented by Shari Thurow, Webmaster at GrantasticDesigns.com. Shari really knows her stuff, and coming from a programming and design background, she packed her presentation with a lot of great information. Shari is the author of the major selling SEO book Search Engine Visibility. This session was Part 1 of a two part session which corresponds with the Successful Site Architecture seminar on Day 2.
The session was mainly suited for beginners, but it was useful for more advanced SEO’s to refresh their knowledge of some of the basics of page structure and internal link structure.
Shari explained that there are 5 basic rules to follow when designing your website, every successful site should be:
Shari discussed the importance of designing for the users as well as the search engines, by making sure that your site visitors know exactly what page they have landed on when they arrive at your site. It is important to use descriptive, keyworded headers and call to actions as well as including compelling content around the subject matter. Image maps should always be backed up with the inclusion of plain text links on the page. You should be able to navigate around your site by clicking links and not using JavaScript or flash menus. If you have to use java menus, make sure there are plain text links to support users who do not have .js enabled.
All sites should have cross links including hierarchical vertical links and related horizontal links…
Breadcrumb trails are great tool for navigation and search engine spiders. Usability studies show that many people like the simplicity of breadcrumbs. You can also keyword your trails to help the search engine spiders find your content.
When using a tabbed navigation menu always highlight the menu item on the page you have landed on. This also helps the user to understand which section of your site they are viewing.
In conclusion, your website should be designed for both the human users and the crawlers; therefore your pages should be easy to read, navigate and find and be consistent in layout and design. By including keyword rich text, sound site and page architecture and continually building inbound links to internal pages your site should not only successfully rank in the search engines but be usable and profitable.
A highly enjoyable session this one… always good for a few laughs, especially with Dave and Mikel on the panel. Rather than fit the usual seminar format of presentations and questions, this session was a forum based discussion. The panel was made up of three of my favourite SEO celebrities; David Naylor, Mikel DeMib Svendson and Rand Fishkin. Rand being the only white hat on the panel, which caused some amusing discussion.
Does SEO matter?
In response to the recent Jason Calacanis comment about how SEO is bullshit and content will always win in the end. The panel was asked if good content will always get you good rankings …obviously there was a resounding NO! Queue Dave Naylor; using a few chosen words about Calacanis, which I won’t repeat just incase there are any child SEO’s reading this. The general consensus was that all good website’s should concentrate on design and optimisation, which is obviously basic stuff. The panel agreed that SEO is your PR (Public Relations) tool and PPC is similar to the traditional marketing campaign. Both are still extremely important for any site that wishes to generate good traffic and excellent conversions.
Who benefits from the turf wars between SEO’s and the Search Engines?
It was discussed that the algorithms are changed to improve the results that the user receives. At times the changes are made because of the quality in results from spammers and black hat SEO’s. If you are using white hat techniques when optimising your website it can only benefit you; every change to the algorithms means someone’s position is lost and is there to be gained by ethical SEO.
Does the Google Dance still exist?
The original monthly changes to the Google index which would cause the results to fluctuate and de fluctuate is referred to as the Google Dance. Google now updates their index on a daily basis, making subtle changes to the index. Therefore the big shifts are no longer seen. Its now much more of a daily shuffle.
The future of Search
There were plenty of great things discussed, notably where search is headed and whether the inclusion of personalised search is going to have a major effect on the industry. The general consensus was no, it can only aid SEO as users are continually shown varying results when using Google. The major prediction for the future was that Yahoo and MSN will be forced to join forces in a major deal…very interesting!
More to come…