Posts on State of Search about ‘Industry’

Linking can mean a breach of copyright and privacy says judge

links-london

A remarkable ruling in The Netherlands today where a judge decided that one of the most popular websites in the country which linked to content which was ‘leaked’ is guilty of breach of copyright as well as breach of privacy. The ruling could potentially have a big impact on online journalism.

The website GeenStijl.nl, which is a controversial, but very popular site in the Netherlands, last year placed a link to photo’s of a Dutch celebrity of a photoshoot for the Dutch version of Playboy. The photos were according to GeenStijl leaked by someone inside the offices of the publisher, which makes the ruling even more remarkable. (more…)

SEO Growing Pains – What the Search Industry Should be Searching for

walkway-featured

Things continue to grow and evolve at such rapid pace, in our previously tiny industry. And to be quite honest, one of the major struggles we’re all facing is trying to keep up! I’m not talking about keeping up with life-changing technological advancements, Google’s mind-boggling algorithm updates, or even with the challenges of working in such a competitive industry. Instead, I’m talking about business 101 – recruitment challenges.

SEO blogs across the web have been voicing their ideas on what makes the perfect SEO team. Articles such as The Ideal Digital Marketing Team, written my friend and fellow blogger, Barry Adams, echo the industry’s thoughts.

Recruiting the right people, whilst growing an agency and keeping clients happy, is never an easy task. But what’s amazed us most about our recent burst of recruitment has been how we have changed.  We’re simply not looking for the same people we were looking for this time last year. We’re not even looking for the same people we were looking for this time 6 months ago. (more…)

Getting Your First SEO Job – How to Stand Out

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As an industry we’re extremely lucky to be enjoying a time that is full of opportunity. Whilst many businesses are suffering from economic problems, it seems that the SEO industry is struggling to hire quick enough. With no formal qualifications or courses, a career in SEO isn’t most graduate’s first choice for their entry into the jobs market. If you speak to most successful people in the industry you’ll hear a very familiar story of ‘falling into’ SEO without really realising what they were getting into. Many people have come from a range of different jobs including traditional marketing, web development and pretty much every career you can imagine and found that SEO started to become a part of their current role. Others (like myself) simply got intrigued with how it works!

Despite all of this opportunity, speaking with many people who are looking to recruit staff you’ll hear that finding the right people is tough, even when you’re looking to fill junior positions that don’t necessarily require any pre existing experience. From a job hunters point of view it might be easy to find job opportunities and get an interview, but how do you stand out from the crowd and get the job you want? There’s some great material available with some fantastic advice on how to land a job in SEO, but I thought I’d chip in with some thoughts based on my own experience. (more…)

What Google Wants vs What SEOs Want

Google vs SEO

A recent image shared by Carla Marshall from Sorbet Digital demonstrated to me how adversarial the relationship between Google and the SEO industry has become (see image below).

Google is basically waging a propaganda campaign of fear, attempting to weed out SEO agencies that use tactics Google doesn’t agree with by fueling paranoia and suspicion in our clients. (more…)

Microsoft Advertising Making Job Cuts

mel-carson-job

When you follow Mel Carson around on Facebook and Twitter you will see a lot of happy updates, about his daughter, his life in general. If you have met him in person you’ll know this is what he’s like. Mel has been a well known face in the industry over the past years advocating Microsoft to the community with a big smile on his face, speaking, interviewing and writing.

So when I saw Mel’s post entitled “Sad Face: My Role at Microsoft Advertising Has Been “Eliminated”” on his personal blog show up on Social Media my first thought was it was some sort of joke he was making. But when reading the post it became clear: his job really got ‘eliminated’: Microsoft seems to be pulling the plug on Microsoft Advertising. (more…)

The Ideal Digital Marketing Team

The Ideal Digital Marketing Team

In this rapidly evolving industry of ours, we strive hard to deliver top quality services to our clients. And the key to quality services is having the right team.

Lately I’ve been giving a lot of thought to what an ideal digital marketing team would look like. I’ve dropped the question in a couple of communities I’m a member of, and received a wide variety of responses. (more…)

A letter from a Concerned PR Professional

panda-n-penguin-stateofsearch

Dear SEO Company,

Having asked what SEO looks like in post penguin and panda world, I am afraid. Very afraid. Because it looks like PR (public relations).

As a freelance PR person, of course, new entrants to the market bring prices down, and for the inexperienced PR purchaser, having an SEO person do your PR at the same time as your SEO seems like a great idea. So there’s the selfish bit out on the table.

But years of experience have gone into making me a good PR, and my bigger fears are for PR in the hands of the inexperienced. (more…)

The Ultimate Cookie Legislation Guide

cookie-monster

I don’t think any one of us would have predicted that when we saw cookie monster in Sesame Street cookies would have such a big impact on our lives. We might have thought we needed to protect our cookies, but we probably all thought cookie monster was after the ones in our mothers cookie basket. Never ones which made sure we did our jobs right.

Now the cookie monster has changed into a governmental creature. And instead of eating all our cookies, he is simply telling us we have to ask permission. Hmm it does sound a lot like my mother back then if you think about it…

Ever since the EU decided on the new cookie regulations the online industry has been in distress: what is really happening? what are we supposed to do? What are the implications? Nobody really seems to know, not even those who made the regulations in the first place. (more…)

Is Google Declaring War by Banning an Agency for Mistakes on Clients Sites?

red-card

Again the search industry is once again in uproar. Why? Because somewhere somebody took a wrong turn, someone else saw it and told Google. And now Google is upset.

To be honest, it’s like looking at my kids sometimes, but that’s a different story. What is more interesting at this specific point is Google’s reaction yesterday to the alleged buying of links by search agency iAqcuire: they didn’t kick out the clients for who they may have bought links, they kicked out the agency.

It was smart find by Barry Schwartz at Searchengineland last night when he did a site command search for [site:www.iacquire.com] and didn’t get any results back. There was no site there, which usually means either the company has withdrawn itself from Google or has made a mistake (I’ve seen enough ‘no index’ which shouldn’t have been there in robots.txts around the globe over the past few years) or the company has been penalized by Google. (more…)

Shortlist European SearchAwards Announced: State of Search Up For Best Blog

European-Search-Awards-2012

This morning the nominees for the European Searchawards have been announced. The nominees are divided in 13 different categories, two more categories have no nominees, but these winners will be announced on the awards night which will be held in Amsterdam on July 5th.

State of Search has been nominated in the category “best blog”, which off course we are very proud of. Other known nominees are Linkdex and Majestic SEO for best tool, Branded3, Verve Search, Carat, Latitude, Performics, Koozai and LBi/bigmouthmedia in different categories. You can find the entire list below. (more…)

Its Search Captain – But Not as we Know it!

sinking-gondola

The last couple of weeks have certainly been interesting . If your like me, you will have spent many of the last couple of days evaluating the new search landscape that we now find outselves operating within. Since the turn of the year, we have seen a renewed focus from Google, with a number of far reaches improvements made to the search results, and with it a significant number of web operators impacted – some for the best – but for others it has significantly operated much of the search landscape.

In particular I would suggest there are three significant updates I think need significant focus, two of which were announced during the recent raft of Google announcements. When Google announced a number of improvements to their results back in late March, many of us had to dig dip to see which ones may affect us. However two stood out, namely that of ‘iotfreshweb’ or Freshness and about 20 or so points down the mention of an update called Google Venice (more…)

All Talk – Desensitisation in Online Communication

GetAlongGang

This is a guest post by Stuart P Turner. Stuart is a trained philosopher, casual procrastinator and experienced search marketer. He has worked in digital agencies and as a freelance consultant over the past five years, across a range of UK and international clients. Stuart currently resides in Sydney and works for specialist search marketing agency Outrider. When he is not busy sharpening his SEO skills on the APAC market, he is typically lost in a book or staring whimsically out into the antipodean skies.

Two recent posts on inclusion and sexism in the digital industry inspired this post; it is a subject I touched on briefly in a previous post I wrote on the subject of Twitter.

The manner in which we communicate online desensitises us. We say things we would never dream of saying in ‘real life’, which in turn leads to almost immediate polarisation of opinion and rife tribalism.

But isn’t the internet as much real life as an argument down the pub? Or a conversation over the dinner table? (more…)

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