Posts on State of Search about ‘How to’

10 Key Tips to Include in a Technical SEO Audit – For Non-Techies

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In order to do a fully comprehensive SEO technical audit, it helps to have a developer background.  Many SEOs in the industry have such a background, which helps in being able to spot some of the more complex technical errors for a site.

However, for those that have come from a marketing background, it may be difficult to decide what the most important elements are to include in an initial technical SEO audit.  When working with clients it may not be possible to fix all of the errors on a client’s site, therefore for the non technical SEO, these are the key areas that should be included in the audit:

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SEO Brand Marketing – Looking Beyond Keywords

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Over the years, I have worked for start-ups, on my own sites, on huge multi-national brands, across a variety of countries and a variety of digital channels. A

mentality that seems to continuously pop up no matter what country I’m on what type of site I’m working on is that SEO should be used to focus on non-brand generic keywords because a site should ‘be default’ always rank for its own brand. This is especially true when considering large multi-national brands. Or is it? A big mistake I see sites make all the time (and I’ve been guilty of myself) is getting so bogged down in the details and the focus on ranking for those all important non-brand keywords that the quick, obvious wins, and investment in SEO as a branding tool are overlooked. SEO brand marketing is ‘a thing’! Here’s

a few quick win areas that are often being forgotten. In the interest of being local, I’m using all Australian search results for this particular exercise but the quick wins remain true no matter the territory! Brand searches are not a guaranteed conversion, it is too easy to assume so. Don’t give the searcher the opportunity get distracted by what else is on the page, ensure a brand search is always part of a wider branding exercise. Just because they’re already looking for your brand doesn’t mean they are 100% loyal! (more…)

How to build that Killer Presentation Slide Deck

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As you may have noticed it is event week here on State of Search. We have already looked at different aspects of the event business and especially also the speaking part. In the last two days we’ve learned how to recognise a quality speaker and how to become one.

A big aspect of a successful speaker seems to be the presentation format: the slides. Some have even made an entire profession out of it: creating the perfect slides. Now I am not a design king so I decided to again ask some experts for their opinions to showcase next to the pointers I myself want to give. So with the help of Eric Enge, Illiya Vjestica, Simon Penson and Anders Hjorth: let’s get started :) . (more…)

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

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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…)

7 Pieces of Public Speaking Advice I Learnt From Speaking at TEDx

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If you’ve watched a TED talk before, you’ll have probably noticed that they have a very distinct style to them – the talks are sharp, emotional, thought provoking, and ultra-shareable.

This isn’t by accident. The organisers of TED events invest a lot of effort into training their speakers to ensure the talks end up like that.

As many SoS readers are public speakers themselves, and with quite a few digital marketing conferences on the horizon, I wanted to share a few of the most valuable lessons and experiences I had in preparation for a talk I did at TEDxMelbourne last year. (more…)

Lessons Learned from Doing Live Google+ Hangouts

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When we talk about events you immediately start thinking about a conference room full of people listening to different speakers, tweeting, blogging and networking. But events can also take place on a different level. Yes, bigger and smaller events with one or multiple tracks, but think about an event anyone can attend, from any place in the world, at anytime they want:through the web.

Webinars have been around for many years already and there are many different suppliers who have learned to perfectionise these types of event where you can register for a webinar and follow what speakers have to say. Take a look for example at how Distilled organises their webinars, very professional and I presume very profitable as well.

But also very time consuming and in some cases costly. After all, you need webinar software, video software and you need to host your video somewhere afterwards as well. Since Google launched Google+ however a whole new way of doing events online: cheap and quick, and sometimes dirty. But very useful as well. A combination between a home video, a radio or tv show and a webinar. Here at State of Search we have done a few live Hangouts already. With success. Today it is time to share some of our lessons learned about Live Google Hangouts with you. (more…)

6 Top WordPress Backup Plugin Recommendations

Holy Data Loss Batman

Keeping your own website or blog takes time and effort but what happens if you lose even part of your information? Having to re-do content or scrape the Wayback Machine for indexed page records is time consuming and sketchy. Even after that there is no guarantee that you can retrieve all files.

Having recently experienced perils of cheap hosting on WordPress affiliate sites (cobbler’s children worst shod and all that),  I found out the hard way that not practicing what you preach to clients with regards to backing up database files can result in a lot of extra work and effort and of course lost income!

Even hardcore professionals suffer from procrastination when it comes to boring tasks like backups so I thought that I would share my plugin findings in the hope that it saves you data, time and prevents you from ever having to re-make anything ever again - [*disclaimer* - in theory]

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Measuring Success in 2013: Assigning Real Value & Tracking Every Click with Google Analytics

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In every company I’ve worked for or with, I’ll confess that I’ve often been a little confused about the tracking setup. I’ve seen plenty of reports that simply don’t make sense, but once these got sorted out, I usually found that we were putting developments live with only having a top level understanding of their effect – basically ‘improving’ a product based on conjecture. But speaking to quite a few experienced analysts led me to believe that this problem wasn’t just following me around – it was everywhere! So I learnt what I needed to do about it, and I thought I’d share that knowledge here. (more…)

In-house and Bored? 3 Causes and Cures of In-house SEO Syndrome

Bored teenage computer nerd

A few weeks ago I met up with some old colleagues of mine. Three years before, we had all worked for the same search agency, but had since moved on to in-house roles. Typically we talked about what we’re doing now and how it used to be, but this little meeting took an interesting turn. One of my friends was now working at a well-known High Street retailer, another for one of ‘the big’ portals. They had both been in SEO roles for the past five years, but both appeared incontrovertibly fed up. I wouldn’t say I’ve really felt like this recently, but all jobs have ups and downs and I could relate to it. I thought of it as some sort of career condition – a general malaise that probably affects a good proportion of in-house SEO workers. (more…)

Rel=’Publisher’ for Brand-Savvy Marketers

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I’ve been banging on about Rel=Author and Rich Snippets for a while now. Partly because I like the idea of associating content with people, and partly because I think it’s a good insight into Google’s future plans.

It totally makes sense, to me at least, that the worlds of SEO and Social Media should be run in unison – complementing each other. Rel=Publisher, however, often gets left by the wayside; I view it as Rel=Author’s ugly twin, the one that no-one really talks about, or wants to get to know. But I’m going to tell you why you should! (more…)

3 Ways To Confirm YouTube Is Actually Working For You

YouTube Playback

After you put the effort in to upload your corporate or client videos to YouTube and optimised/promoted then accordingly, it’s vital that you are able to track and measure how each individual video (plus the channel as a whole) is working for you. Luckily, YouTube provides users with statistical and analytical tools help you measure the reach and engagement of your videos very easily.  Utilising these free tools will provide you with the information you need to understand how your video strategy is working and how it can be further leveraged.

Many people rely on view count stats alone, and while it’s hugely important to know how many people have watched a video, it’s equally important to know how just long viewers watched for and what action they took after. (more…)

Getting the attention to get your article into the wrap up posts

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Linkbuilding is still regarded as one of the most important factors when it comes to getting your site ranking well in search engines, especially Google. How to get those links always is one of the big issues. There is always the option of e-mailing websites trying to get a link on them, but that in most cases is a lot of work, plus you really need to do that right, doing it wrong is a waste of your valuable time. Other options are off course doing “linkbait” or there is the option of using services like Eightfold Logic Linker, which helps you find ‘suitable’ linkpartners. But still the best way to get the most valuable links is to write great content which others will pick up.

The question however is: how do you know what others will pick up? There are many “wrap up posts” out there, posts which give you a quick overview of what has been written around the web. The big sites are doing it on a daily basis, others weekly. These kind of wrap ups are very useful, for the readers to filter out what was important to read in the enormous amount of blog posts out there, as well as for the blog owners who through these posts have a way of spreading their content. And getting links…

But getting your article mentioned in these posts isn’t that easy. There are a lot of factors which decide if your article is worth it to be mentioned. Which factors? Well, why not ask the sources directly? I asked Barry Schwartz, who is responsible for the “Searchcap” wrap up on Searchengineland and who makes wrap ups for SERoundtable, Danny Goodwin, who collects stories for the “Search Week in Review” on Searchenginewatch and Susanne Koch, who does the weekly “Pandia Search Engine News Wrap-up” together with her husband Per Koch, on Pandia.com. Combined with my own experience on this (I’ve made these kind of posts several times, the State of Search news roundup which will return in 2011 is an example of that) you can get a pretty decent overview of what you should be doing to get ‘in sight” of these influentials. (more…)

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