Five Areas You Could Improve to Become the Ultimate Search Marketer

The last two weeks I’ve had the pleasure to interviewing 20 odd search marketers for a couple of roles I’ve been recruiting for. I’ve noticed a number of trends and patterns in the process but one thing really stood out – the improvement in the quality of candidates. Of all the rounds of recruitment I’ve been involved in, over the last six years, this has been the strongest cohort.Many people claim there’s still be a skills shortage but I’d argue otherwise, of this batch each candidate has had to do more to stand out.What skills really were on my shopping list which I think search marketers should be working on to ensure their career goes far?

The first skill was public relations. The task of link building is looking more like PR every-day, and the more traditional link building skills continue to become an easily purchased as a commodity. They even seem to exert less influence over the search results. Now the ability to put together a story pitch which you can approach a journo’s  that have a trusting relationship with, is what link building is about. … Continue Reading

Will Critchlow: “I Love The Increasing Socialisation of my Search Results”

In two weeks time the European Search World will gather in London to attend, network and share knowledge at SES London 2012. Like every year it promises to be a great event with a great line up of speakers. State of Search will off course be covering the event and in cooperation with our friends at SEO Chicks you could be visiting the conference!

Going up to the conference we will also be shedding our light on the event. We have asked several speakers at the event to answer some questions. Questions about SES off course, but also about the market in general: where do they feel the market is heading.

Today we kick things off with Will Critchlow, one of the founders of Distilled, one of the leading UK Search Agencies. … Continue Reading

Are You a Young SEO? Here’s Your Chance: SES London Tickets + SEO Chicks Mentoring

As you may have noticed conference season is about to begin again. The first major event in Europe will be SES London 2012. Many great speakers will be present there, some of which we will be highlighting starting next week.

There are many chances you will get to go to that conference, for free! And here is one of them. A special set up from our close friends over at SEO Chicks. A unique opportunity for those starting out in the industry. You can not only win a ticket, you also get free mentoring from some of the best in the industry.

SEO Chicks is running a competition on their blog, because nothing comes for free. You have to prove that you are worth the ticket and the advice! … Continue Reading

Elements That Decide Which Conference You Choose To Attend

The end of January means you have to get yourself ready for another conference season. In the next few months there will be a lot of events which you can attend to learn about search or social media. To hear the latest developments, listen to great speakers and network with industry colleagues.

State of Search will off course be covering a lot of events for you as you are used from us. Even yesterday we could see a post by Jackie about the London Affiliate Conference. And there will be many more in the months to come.

But if you are planning to attend one of the many conferences out there. How will you decide what conference is best for you? Which one to pick? Let’s take a look at some of the elements which will decide what conference you are going to attend and which one you will leave aside. … Continue Reading

London Affiliate Conference 2012

The LAC2012 took place this weekend at the rather spectacular space at the Old Billingsgate Market, London. LAC is a four day event kicking off with the LAC Affiliate Awards on Thursday followed by speaker sessions on Friday and Saturday, and rounding up with a social on Sunday.

Heavily iGaming Centric as you would expect, and many of the speaker sessions were hardcore regulation sessions, but there were many sessions to help affiliates cover domaining, search tactics and ideas for how to work that audience. … Continue Reading

SMX Israel 2012 – Google Panda, Freshness and More

I was lucky enough to get to speak at SMX Israel, which took place on Sunday. I’ve long been keen to get out here as for a couple of years now I’ve been following and speaking (via twitter and Facebook) to a number of SEO and online marketing professionalst here in Israel, so was thrilled to finally get the chance to come and meet some friends face to face; and get to know some new people. I’d always got a sense of a highly engaged, extremely adept SEO community in Israel however I was bowled over by everything. Hospitality, conference venue, levels of professionalism and enthusiasm from every single attendee; and I have to say that at every session I attended the level of content from my fellow speakers was of the highest quality and variety.
… Continue Reading

Speaker Submissions and Registration A4UEXpo Barcelona opens

A4 U Expo Europe has been located in Munich, for the past few years. The successful Affiliate show, which also has a close connection to the SEO-industry, was very successful in Germany but decided it needed to ‘broaden its horizon’ and is going south: to Barcelona.

Today A4U opens up the registration for this show, as well as the submission for speaker proposals. The A4U Expo show starts June 19th. … Continue Reading

ThinkVisibility 7 Announced: “Outsourcing for Cheap Bastards”

March 3rd will be the day a big part of the UK SEO crowd will meet up in Leeds again for the first of two Thinkvisibility events for 2012. The conference, organized by our good friend Dom Hodgson and his team, is already up to its 7th edition.

On the website, where starting this weekend the tickets can be bought, the show is announced to be an “event with some surprises”. It sure is and we can let you in on one of those surprises now: a very special session which has the working title of “outsourcing for cheap bastards”. … Continue Reading

Honest SEO Conference Advice

After another busy year packed with SEO conferences I thought it would be a good time to lay out some tips to organisers, speakers and attendees alike from my personal experiences with conferences over the last two years.

The aim here is to be as constructive as possible, but to do so it’s important also to provide as much honest advice as is possible as well.I hope that this will be constructive and useful in some fashion for anyone that has anything to do with conference organisation, speaking or attendance… and hopefully won’t preclude me from ever speaking at a conference again! … Continue Reading