Posts by Hannah Smith

Hannah Smith is an SEO Consultant working for Distilled in their London office. She manages technical, link building and content campaigns for clients across a range verticals in addition to managing one of the internal SEO teams at Distilled.
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Breaking out of the SEO Echo Chamber

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Last week I was fascinated by Paul Miller’s story of his year without the internet. Whilst I wouldn’t go so far as to claim that I feel the internet is corrupting my soul, I have been feeling like I’m stuck in an SEO (or perhaps more accurately a search industry) echo chamber of late.

It’s not that I don’t love this industry, I do; however I’ve been making a concerted effort to change my usual reading habits in search of something new. To be clear, I’m not talking cute pictures of kittens (can you read pictures of kittens?!); I’m not convinced that those are likely to bring me much in the way of inspiration, new perspectives, or new ways of thinking.

Today I’m sharing some of the sites I’ve been reading of late, along with further recommendations from other State of Search writers and various other kind souls who responded via twitter. I’ve grouped them into categories to make the list a little easier to digest…

Ready? Let’s go.

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How to ‘Cheat’ at Link Building and Get Away with It

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Thanks to the pesky Penguin update link building has arguably become tougher. Many of the methods SEOs used to use to build links are ineffective at best, or potentially downright dangerous at worst.

Can you still ‘cheat’ at link building and get away with it?

Depends on what you mean by cheating :)

How about this: are there any easy ways to build links left?

Actually, I think there are. I’m not sure whether or not this really counts as ‘cheating’ at link building; but what follows are a bunch of methods to help you build links relatively easily. (more…)

Raising Shakespeare’s Sister (Or Why We Need to Talk about Female Speakers in Search)

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The lack of female speakers at search conferences (and indeed in other fields, not to mention wider calls for diversity generally) is something which I think about a lot.

I’m not convinced I have *the answer* or even an answer I’m completely happy with, but nevertheless I feel it’s time I woman-up and throw my hat into the ring. For the purposes of today I’ll be limiting the topic to female speakers at search conferences, not because I don’t think broader calls for diversity aren’t without merit (of course they are), but simply because I want to stick to a topic I feel I can legitimately write about.

We run conferences at Distilled and as one of the individuals who works on speaker selection, I feel that there’s a particular issue which isn’t being discussed publicly right now. Many have spoken about problems in finding women who are happy to speak, or problems with fewer women pitching. I will be talking a little about this here, however there’s another issue I’m more interested in:

  • Why are female speakers typically rated lower (in terms of audience feedback surveys) than their male counterparts?

I’m not sure why this isn’t talked about more. Possibly because not everyone is aware of it. Possibly because it makes us uncomfortable.

I’ll then look at the following questions:

  • Do these lower ratings ‘feed the beast’ – i.e. are there fewer females speakers because of these lower ratings?
  • What should we do about it?

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Does Content Marketing Kick TV Advertising’s Ass?

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The SEO industry have long bemoaned investment in traditional channels like TV advertising; claiming SEO yields higher ROI. However, if we’re honest I think our arguments have also been about us wanting to get our sticky mitts on a larger share of the marketing budget. (more…)

FAQ Pages – Are you Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory?

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Last month I spoke at the SearchLove London conference. One of the sessions I took part in was entitled ‘Let’s Get Real’ where each of the speakers were asked to share an actionable tip or tactic.

The tip I shared was around FAQ or Terms and Conditions pages, and went a little something like this:

When you get back to the office on Wednesday morning, go take a look at your FAQ and/or Terms and Conditions pages. Most are woeful. All too often the language used is unfriendly at best; or impenetrable legal jargon at worst. This is a crying shame on several counts – not only may it adversely affect a visitor’s perception of your company, but it may actually lose you business.

Why am I bothered about these pages?

Because the visitors who are reading your FAQ or Terms and Conditions pages are a hair’s breadth from converting on your site.

Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

No one wants to be *that* girl.

 

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SWOT Analysis for SEO

Sometimes I find my failure to remember things very upsetting.

Back when dinosaurs still walked the earth  I did a marketing qualification in Direct & Interactive Marketing. Whilst the course was definitely really useful most of the stuff I learned back then I don’t use very much and as a result it languishes half-forgotten somewhere in the recesses of my brain.

The SWOT Analysis was one such technique I’d forgotten I knew until Phil Nottingham (who works with me at Distilled) was asked to complete one for a client… and it all came flooding back. (more…)

How to Secure Budget for your Content Strategy

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“Any good marketer can come up with a great content idea for their niche, the difficult part is selling the idea to your company and getting the budget. “

This was the challenge laid down via the comments of a post I wrote back in June for SEOmoz highlighting companies in “boring” niches creating great content. It’s something I’ve been meaning to write for ages – as it’s something I know many face whether their in-house or agency-side.

The way in which you pitch likely depends on whoever you’re pitching to – if you can get a meeting with them, then great – however this might not always be possible. If you’re relying on your documentation to do the talking then keeping it short and sweet is best; backed up with a comprehensive appendix which can be cross-referenced.

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Geotargeting – TLDs, Sub-Folders & Sub-Domains

This is a guest post by Hannah Smith, SEO Consultant at Distilled Ltd. in London.

Geotargeting for International SEO isn’t a new topic by any means; however the question of how to get the right geotargeted content ranking for each particular country continues to rear its ugly head. Here I’ll be covering the options, the pros and cons and my views on how best to deal with it.

When it comes to geotargeting (i.e. if you want specific content to rank in different countries) essentially you have three options:

1) Create separate sites for each ccTLD e.g. domain.de (for a site targeting Germany); plus you should write the site in your target language, and host it in the country you are targeting too.

2) Create sub-folders (e.g. domain.com/uk) for each of the countries which you are targeting. Here, make sure all content in the sub-folder is written in your target language and then geotarget the sub-folders to your target countries within Google Webmaster Tools.

3) As per option two, however instead of creating sub-folders, create sub-domains (e.g. uk.domain.com) (more…)