Posts About ‘interview’

A look at #BrightonSEO Workshops with Aleyda Solis and Kevin Mullaney

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In the third and final interview in our BrightonSEO workshop series, we speak to Aleyda Solis, International SEO at SEER Interactive and Kevin Mullaney, Head of Search Marketing at Render Positive.

Aleyda known specialism is mobile SEO and this is the subject she will be covering in-depth throughout the one day course. By the end of the day, attendees will be equipped with everything they need in order to deliver an effective mobile SEO campaign that drives visits and conversions from mobile visitors. To book your place on the course, click here.

Kevin is going to run the local SEO workshop giving attendees and end-to-end overview of local search for all levels of expertise. If you are attending the course, you can expect to leave with the skills required to implement a local strategy for your business or your clients including best practice technical implementation of Google+. To book your place on the course, click here.

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A look at #BrightonSEO Workshops with James Agate and Carla Marshall

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In the second interview in our BrightonSEO workshop series, we speak to James Agate, Founder of SkyRocket SEO and Carla Marshall, SEO Director at ReelSEO.

James is running a workshop on advanced link building techniques and he will be walking attendees through techniques that will work in highly competitive industries to give you a wider range of ways to build links that get those rankings moving. To book your place on the course, click here.

Carla has a real interest in Video SEO and will be sharing her knowledge to cover the latest techniques that are not only proven to work but are suitable for beginner and advanced level SEO’s. To secure your place, click here.

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A look at #BrightonSEO Workshops with Tim Grice and Dara Fitzgerald

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Over the next three days we will be running  a series of interviews with the trainers at the BrightonSEO workshops. If you haven’t booked a place yet, do so soon as tickets are selling out fast.

In the first interview of the week, we spoke to Tim Grice, Head of Search at Branded3 and Dara Fitzgerald, Head of Insight at FreshEgg.

Tim will be running a workshop on one of the hottest topics over the last six months, Penalty Recovery and Future Proofing SEO Strategies. If you are attending this workshop, you can expect to walk away packed full of knowledge about what links are ‘unnatural’, what an effective recovery would look like and how to develop a strategy for your link building that will stand with you through the test of time.

Dara is focusing on advanced techniques you can use with Google Analytics which will help attendees get more insight out of campaigns and ensure they can measure campaigns more transparently. Some of the core features that Dara will be looking at include Advanced Segments, Event Tracking, Cross Domain Tracking, Custom Reports and more. To book your place, click here.

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Webs of Influence: How Marketers Influence Online, Interview With Nathalie Nahai

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As you know I have a huge interest in psychology and how that is translated online. At the upcoming Conversion Conference the keynote speaker will be Nathalie Nahai. She wrote a book called “Webs of Influence” which looks into how online persuasion on website could work.

I recently had the chance to talk to her. You can find the interview with Nathalie below. It was truly inspiring so I urge you to read on! (more…)

Interview in Paris via Skype with David Degrelle

David Degrelle

I interviewed, David Degrelle, founder and owner of  1ère Position, an SEO/SMO company in France.  We conducted the interview via modern technology, ie. skype as David was not in Paris when I visited last month.  I wanted to find out about the search market in France and the challenges of running your own search agency in France.

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A4U London Expo 2012 – Interview With Chris Johnson

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October 2012 is just round the corner and on the 17th of the month, the next A4U Expo in London begins. State of Search are Media Partners at the event and will be bringing you updates on both days so keep a close eye on the blog between 16th and 17th October.

A4U have offered State of Search readers a 10% discount when you register to attend the event. All you need to do is use the following code upon registering – SOS10%

In the lead up to the event, State of Search put together some questions for Chris Johnson, Content Director at A4u – Affiliates4u.com to get their views on the show.

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Euro 2012 – Interview with Alessio Madeyski, SEO Manager of Zalando

Alessio and Jo

When I was in Berlin, I met Alessio Madeyski, SEO Manager of Zalando.  He is an Italian with a Polish ancestory living in Berlin  (since Jan 2011)– a true International SEO professional. Alessio has also spent some time in Paris, Barcelona and Denmark.

How long have you been in SEO for?

I have been in an SEO role for more than one year.  But previously to this, I had been creating websites, mobile versions of sites and some social media stuff.  I actually started work as a molecular biologist but I did not like it as much as SEO and therefore I changed career.

What does Zalando do?

It is an ecommerce site which is now becoming the first portal for fashion and lifestyle in Europe.  We have launched it in Germany in 2008, currently making it in 10 countries in EU.

How do you find working in Germany compared to Italy?

The two countries are very different.  I was also in different roles in both countries.  I was working as a biologist in Italy when I decided to come to Berlin for an experience. I worked for few months as freelancer for an UK startup, and then I saw that Zalando was looking for an SEO manager for taking care of the Italian market. I applied and all went well. Now I am in charge even of the Scandinavian market, and this  is a real challenge for me. You know, different mentality, different language. This is the real difference between Italy and Germany: here every day is a challenge, in Italy all the things are more calm and quiet, and I don’t like that lifestyle.

Moreover, in Italy there are less opportunities for young people. If you are young, you cannot get senior positions or have the ability to climb the corporate ladder as quickly as you can do so here.  I have not been in SEO for a long time but I have a passion for it, and Zalando is very good to recognise it in people and builds on it. That’s the beauty of working here: they invest in you because they believe in you.

Have you been affected by these Google updates – Penguin and Panda?

Neither the German nor Italian market (which I work on) has been affected by the Panda and Penguin update. We have not seen a drop in traffic or rankings and we are still beating our competitors.

The reason we have not been affected may be due to the fact that we practice all white hat SEO work. To me, it’s not matter of what color is the hat you wear, but to do something for the user. I strongly believe that the brand belongs to the user, not to the company. So we, as Zalando, are trying to do all we can to listen to what the user wants.

What is your main form of link building?

I do not like the term “link building”.  I prefer to build relationships with blogs and portals, true relations that can lead to a link because of them. I also believe that great content depending on the type of the site you are working on can bring link in a natural way. Spam tactis, or black hat SEO has worked for some sites, but I don’t like it for the simple reason that there is nothing authentic in it. That’s why I prefer talking about “idea building” , because when you have a really good idea and you use your creativity, good links will follow.

Do you attend search marketing events in Germany?

Alessio by the bikes

I attend search events, but many of the ones in Germany are in German obviously and I do not speak fluent German yet.  I’ve been to “Be Wizard” in Rimini and I will attend “WebReevolution” in Rome in june, for being more involved in the Italian SEO scene. I hope to go to SearchLove in London in October. I like conferences to so that I can build relationships and meet my SEO heroes.

How important is search in your company?

It is really important, and you feel this because we are evolving every day and this is amazing. We evolve with the user, in order to be able to answer their queries in the best way possible.

What is search like in Sweden?

Sweden is more advanced compared to Italy.  In Italy, people search for “Nike”, but in Sweden they search for “Nike clothes”, “Nike shoes”, they know more specifically what they want.  Moreover, Sweden, like all Scandinavian countries I suppose, is more accustomed to buying goods used online.

What SEO tools do you use?

We use two main tools – Searchmetrics and Sistrix.  Then of course we use all “classic” tools for keyword research, trends, insights, what’s hot and so on.

What reports do you do?

We adjust a report for each country. We tend to talk about difficulties in our reports to our head of SEO Norman Nielsen, because of our goal is not to be static, but to evolve and solve any problems we may have.

Outside Zalando

What do you see as the future of SEO?

It will keep on developing.  The key is to evolve. In my opinion, SEOs have to be more open-minded, like collaborating with social media guys, PRs, developers, graphic designers… SEO to me is how to answer to what people wants. And you cannot do it as only SEO.

I have actually started interviewing SEOs in my post “Meet your SEO” , so I was really pleased to be interviewed for “State of Search”.  Thank you for interviewing me and hope to see you when I come to London for Search Love.

 

Exclusive Interview Amit Singhal: “People often confuse context with personalization”

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For some Larry Page or Sergey Brin might be the big mind when it comes to Google. Others believe its Matt Cutts who holds all the knowledge. But ask any Googler who has the most influence on what actually happens with the search engine Google and most probably 99% of them will answer: Amit Singhal.

Amit Singhal is the Senior VP at Google, a “Google Fellow”, and the head of Google’s core ranking team. There are not many issues with Google Search which do not go past him. Amit Singhal and his team are responsible for the Google search algorithms. The video from the Search Quality Meeting which we showed before and is also placed at the end of this post shows just that: it is Singhal who makes the decisions and it is Singhal who knows the most. Anyone who looks at leaderships will also notice that the way Singhal leads the meeting is like a natural leader.

In a few weeks time Singhal will make a rare appearance on the stage of a major search conference. And even rarer: that appearance will not be in the US, but in Europe: at SMX London 2012. We talked to Danny Sullivan about that show earlier and now we have the exclusive chance to talk to Amit Singhal who was kind enough to answer some of our burning questions. We tried to ask him questions on different topics: Search Plus Your World, the Panda Update, Google and Europe and some of the privacy issues Google is running into. Enjoy! (more…)

Exclusive: Danny Sullivan About Personalization, Privacy, Not Being Impartial and SMX

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Note: this interview was done before SMX London 2012. At this moment SMX East (New York) is about to start. Read more about that conference here.

I had the chance to sit down and talk to Danny Sullivan. It was a really nice talk in which Danny really took his time to discuss many different topics. We talked about how he does his job, how he doesn’t want to be impartial and believes nobody is, we talked about Google off course, but also about Bing, Baidu and Yahoo. And we discussed topics like personalization and privacy, Facebook and off course SMX London.

You can listen to the entire talk (40 minutes) right here. Find below an extract of the topics discussed. (more…)