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The Marketer to Developer Translation – SMX West

posted on February 27, 2009

This session looked at ways to better liaise with web developers in the search marketing promotional cycle.

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Nathan Buggia – Microsoft

Nathan went through some examples of internal optimisation that the Live team were faced with. One example was that Microsoft had a product that they knew by its full technical name – however online most people were searching for the abbreviated initials ‘Moss’. So whilst originally Microsoft were optimising for the internal long name, the customer base was actually searching for Moss. As a result people searching for ‘MOSS’ were going to affiliate type websites for MOSS and not to the official company pages. Once Microsoft realised what was happening they began to optimise their pages for the keywords users were searching for. The importance of understanding what users are looking for are key whether you’re an in-house SEO or working as part of an agency.

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A Summary of Danny Sullivan’s SMX Keynote

posted on February 27, 2009

The conference kicked off bright and early at the Santa Clara Exhibition Center on Tuesday morning. Even for a Brit abroad the location was easy to find. Unlike some venues where parking is either impossible or hugely expensive at Santa Clara Exhibition Center it was a breeze and even free of charge! Next a great selection of food was served up for breakfast and by the time the first keynote of the conference was given by Danny Sullivan everyone was raring to go.

Search Landscape & market share

Danny showed the packed crowd the average share of searches based on a range of data he had gathered from Comscore, netcompete and others. The data that was primarily focused on the US market showed Google had moved from 60% to a 70% market share. Yahoo’ share had dropped a few points from the 20% range and Microsoft Live were around the 10% mark.

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SMX London – Buying Websites for SEO

posted on November 26, 2008

Buying Websites for SEO

Having only sold the odd website (and not bought any) this session was of some interest. The increased time and cost in manual link building for new websites has made buying existing websites an obvious choice for some and we were to find out the best ways to buy.

Richard Kershaw – Quality Nonsense – www.qualitynonsense.com

First up was Richard Kershaw, a UK super affiliate. He made it clear from the off that buying websites can help solve some of the problems SEOs face. With the current economic downturn now might be a particularly good time to buy too. Richard then proceeded to attendees through the website buying process step by step.

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SMX London – Blow Your Mind Link Building Techniques

posted on November 25, 2008

After a great London SEO event the night before at the Freemasons Arms, it was somewhat surprising to see such a packed room first thing in the morning. Rob Kerry from Ayima who organised the previous evening’s social event was up bright and breezy moderating this first session of the day. After a light-hearted introduction from Rob, the first person up to present was Lyndon Antcliff.

Lyndon Antcliff – www.cornwallseo.com

Lyndon talked the audience through a particularly well-known viral news story he worked on this year. The case study was a ‘13 year old credit card fraud story’. He dissected the story for the audience to help folks understand what makes a piece of content viral and then highlighted the importance of using ‘psychological hooks’.

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Ka-Pow! Google Packs a Punch with TV Ads

posted on November 25, 2008

Google TV Ads Header Graphic
Google seem to be on a roll with upbeat ideas recently. However one of the programs that may have slipped past some in the search space, is Google TV Ads.

At this year’s Pubcon conference I was fortunate enough to bump into Stephanie Duchaine of Google, and discovered why Google TV Ads are something every marketer should know about.

The link between TV and search

The latest data from Google shows that 37% of online users who perform a search, as a result of exposure to offline content, do so from seeing a Television Ad.

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SMX London – Empowering Search Marketers – Cool tools from Microsoft

posted on November 25, 2008

The first London SMX in 2007 was a great conference– so the 2008 event held in the New Connaught rooms in Russell Square had a fair bit to live up to. However in spite of a recession there was a good crowd in attendance and the conference attracted many attendees people from all over Europe.

To kick off the event Chris Sherman reminded us that we there were a lot of positive changes happening in the current search space. Search engines themselves were finally opening up – particularly so MSN & Yahoo.

So Chris suggested we were now witnessing an end of the ‘us v them’ mentality that had long seemed to exist between the search engines and online marketers.

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SMX London – SEO & Social Media Marketing

posted on November 24, 2008

The social media sessions at SMX last year were a packed affair and this year was no exception with the subject proving equally in demand.

Jane Copland – SEOMoz

Jane told attendees that relevant link bait is not just a good idea these days but a necessity. However with the link bait explosion there were some winners and losers and this year there was noticeably a more serious tone in the air…

She cited a case study where a web based widget was originally created and used on a dating website. The widget had a link contained inside back to the source website whenever it was placed on a website.