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International SEO: How to be Effective in Languages You’re not Fluent in

There’s no denying it, the world is getting smaller. Not in the sense of population, or even the amount of Internet users (in fact, in that case it’s quite the opposite!). However, geographical borders or familiarities online are arising at an increasing rate.

To many respects, the Internet is the one global business place, a shop front that can be accessed by anyone (with an Internet connection) 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. This presents a fantastic level of opportunity for digital marketers. A rate of Internet penetration now reaching 34.3% (38.1% in the top 20 world countries) shows this level of opportunity is only going to grow… (more…)

Google Analytics for Mobile: Where Art Thou?

Digital marketing is a very new industry. It is recognised for being dynamic, incredibly face-paced and, some could argue, stays at the forefront of technology and its application to our everyday lives. This causes problems for many of those that consider themselves online (or digital) marketing professionals though.

Put us in a room without a laptop or takeaway our Internet connection and many in-depth conversations that we can have are limited. To a certain degree we’ve become dependent on technology, for our profession, for our livelihoods. (more…)

Technical SEO as Part of a Multi-Signal Search Strategy – #brightonseo

There’s a common misconception that SEO should sit alongside social media and PPC as part of a blended search strategy. However, SEO is an essential part of site build, content creation and on-going strategy development. Whether it’s on desktop, mobile or Internet TV, technical SEO shouldn’t be pigeon-holed.

To approach this in a better, more future-proof method, thorough understanding of technical SEO and its place in the approach to developing a strategy is absolutely vital. At BrightonSEO, Richard Falconer, Head of Technical Search at LBi, provided some interesting insights and useful tips on how to gain a better understanding of your – and your competitor’s – technical SEO set up. (more…)

Go Big or Go Home – #brightonseo

One of the opening talks for BrightonSEO promised to be a really interesting one. Hannah Smith, Principal Consultant at Distilled (and one of our own State of Search bloggers) challenged the common perspective of link building, and told the conference attendees to ‘Go big or go home’.

Hannah’s talk identified a number of misguided ways of thinking, ultimately tackling why mediocre content is unlikely to cut it. But she also took the time to recognise that there are risks associated with big budget content. Find out more about her talk and see her slides below. (more…)

New Google Places Dashboard Launched

There’s no denying it, local is a major focus for the future of search. Local SEO has been high on the agenda over the last couple of years & has featured in many keynote presentations by top SEOs or on ‘things to look out for SEO in…’. There are a number of factors that have contributed to this rise, many of which are fairly obvious, some less so. What is true is that it certainly can’t be ignored, and if you’re ignoring it you’re probably missing out…

Last week Google announced the launch of a new Google Places Dashboard. But what does this mean? Can this be interpreted at a move towards a greater focus on local from the search giant? Or is this just a greater integration of its products into the Google+ aesthetic? Below, I will explore some of the new features and amendments, its expected rollout, and just why local is so important for search engines. (more…)

Entrepreneurship & Content Marketing Half Day #SearchLondon

Wednesday the 20th March saw the first of Search London’s half day events taking place in Google Campus in London, an area widely referred to as the Silicon Roundabout. The event was set to focus on Entrepreneurship and Content Marketing, and, having been to a number of Search London events before, I knew that it wasn’t due to disappoint. If you don’t know, Search London is a long running and much revered London SEO meetup, ran by passionately by State of Search’s very own Jo Turnbull, amongst others. The half-day promised a line up of great speakers, including: (more…)

Baidu Comes to Britain: New Opportunities for Online Marketing in China

Today welcomed some interested news in the search world and particularly those with an Easterly looking view. The announcement that Johnny Zhu’s CharmClick and Sri Sharma’s Net Media Planet will form an exclusive deal to partner with Baidu, China’s biggest search engine. I took the time to speak to them both to help State of Search readers understand what this new deal meant for European brands and how this exclusive partnership could help efforts targeting Chinese searchers. (more…)

Where Does SEO Belong in the Overall Marketing Mix?

I believe that there is a problem that SEO is facing in 2013, and will continue to face moving forward. I believe there is the risk that, as SEOs, we will spend too much time focusing on what we’re going to call ourselves and forget exactly what it is that we should be doing. Both to raise the profile of SEO as an industry, and continue to push the boundaries. While we’ve heard the pleas that ‘SEO is dead’ for a long time now, and SEO has had it’s fair share of criticism. I believe this is unfounded, spend in SEO is burgeoning and grown hugely, and it is not going to go anywhere soon.

However, a spate of new monikers or ‘rebranding’ in the industry has only served to confuse things in a way that we are siloing ourselves and causing alienation amongst the broader online marketing community. (more…)

Content Marketing for Conferences: How to Stand Out from the Crowd

Content Marketing for Conferences: How to Stand Out from the Crowd & Deliver Value to Those that Weren’t There…

Live blogging and/or writing summary blogs for conferences is a way in which it is common in our industry to exchange value and share our experiences. Online marketing, and more specifically social media and SEO, are ever-changing fields that arguably warrant the huge amount of conferences that happen across the world every year. Many individuals and companies liveblog at these events, or summary posts to attempt to summarise and share the key takeaways from the speakers. However, I believe that many don’t stop and question why you are covering these events? Is it just because everyone else is doing it? In this post I will explore some of the reasons why I believe we should cover events and also provide my top 4 tips on how I approach covering events. (more…)

SEO: The Secrets of Closing the Sale

As part of my new years resolution, I have promised myself that I will read more. This does include a number of highly recomm ended digital marketing and SEO reads, but I have also promised that I will branch out a little reading things that aren’t necessarily focused on SEO. I believe that many SEO’s, like me, can spend too much time reading everything and anything to do with SEO using services like Buffer, Instapaper and Reeder. However, doing this gets us trapped in our own filter bubble the information being shared restricts you from seeing the bigger picture. My reasons for focusing on some non-SEO reads is a selfish one, I’m aiming to broaden my knowledge and learn things from others that I may be able to apply to my profession. (more…)

The New Face of YouTube: The Redesign, Annotations and InVideo Programming

Quick editorial note: Today (the publishing date of this post) happens to be Ned’s birthday as well, so be sure to congratulate him in your comment .

The different types of media that is being consumed on the Internet has changed largely over the last few years. Increases in broadband penetration and improvements in mobile, 3G (or 4G for many of us now) speeds have lead to a rapidly increasing change in how we consume media online. It is now not irregular to see widespread use of higher quality image formats, more advanced usage of HTML5 and other interactive technologies, not to mention an exponential increase in the usage of video online. These are used to make engaging and interactive experiences to create websites that stand out and offer very different functionalities that we have become used to over the years (the BBC is a great example of this).

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Top CRO Tools for Improving Site Performance

The final session of the Conversion Conference didn’t show any signs of wanting to slow down the awesome amount of insights that were delivered by such a great line up of speakers at Conversion Conference 2012. The final session, entitled ‘Top 5 CRO Tools for Improving Site Performance’ brought a very simple task to Craig Sullivan and Rob Jackson; two of the biggest usability and CRO heavyweights in the industry, they simply had to name their favourite tools for improving site performance.

The talk title was somewhat misleading, because far more than 5 tools were mentioned, in fact an enormous 47 of the best CRO and usability testing tools were recommended by both Rob and Craig! Read on below to see how these tools can help you and check out the links to all of these recommended top tools…