In April, the Crafted team visited the superb Brighton SEO conference and were lucky enough to take home a number of key insights from a variety of industry expert speakers. Don’t worry if you missed the event because we have combined our findings into one easy-to-digest takeaway which we hope you will enjoy. Crafted would like to thank Jackie Hole for providing some outstanding photography and Kelvin Newman for organising the event - we can’t wait for the next conference!

1. KEY TAKEAWAY
Fili Wiese
Ex-Googler
@filiber
I heard a lot of talk about
links and link building. But
also about measuring success
and content.
Bread and butter content
feeds long term conversions
Outreach news
Ex-Googler’s Top Tips
Data News in brief
Dara Fitzgerarald of Fresh Egg highlighted that Google
Analytics creates incomplete data because it is currently
based on sessions and can be visited from multiple
browsers and devices. Dara uses the term “session silos”
and says that by using universal analytics, multi-channel
funnels and attribution modeling, users can make better
business decisions.
Ali White, T W White & Sons described how data from
phonecallscanchangeasearchmarketingstrategy,giving
the full picture of both on-site and off-site conversions,
which also highlights areas that are not currently targeted
or appear not be performing on-site. He also stressed the
importance of focusing on “conversion through to sales”.
Nikki Rae of Future Insight said it’s important to check
that Google Analytics cookies are working correctly and
that issues may arise such as pages not being tracked
or incorrect mediums being displayed in the traffic
sources. “To check the cookies use Google Analytics
debugger. To track subdomains or multiple domains use
_setdomainname as well as _setallowlinker,” she said.
Anna Lewis of Koozai said that Google Analytics
contains many tools that can analyse data and help you
make informed decisions. “Continually test your website
to improve conversions and usability. Consider metrics
such as what operating system, type of browser or screen
resolution is being used,” she said.
SEO in large
organisations
Nick Rinylo of Creare described
how combining an effective strategy,
a dedicated team, intelligent systems
and effective delivery can generate
retention and scalability: “Choosing
the right people is paramount.
Close ties with local universities and
education means they can recruit the
people they need and influence the
curriculum,” he said.
Dan Patmore of Argos described
that getting buy-in from stakeholders
for a piece of activity is easier if
your competitors are doing the
same thing. Dan also described that
“quick wins” are difficult to achieve at
Argos due to their long development
schedule; making friends with other
departments is critical and allows you
to influence people and get things
done by ‘piggy backing’ on other
developments.
BerianReedofAutotrader explained
how companies can automate SEO
on large websites in order to improve
efficiencyandreducecosts.Automatic
link building, via software such as
Tynt, can show where your content
has been copied and pasted from and
can provide links. “Automate what
keeps you up at night – you can use
Analyticsalertstoseekeytrendsdayon
day, week on week, month on month,”
he said.
StopchasingGoogle,
start chasing the customer, says SEO expert
SEOs need to stop “chasing Google”
and start “chasing the customer”
in order to sustain traffic and
conversions in the long term.
Making the internet more
navigational for the consumer, by
solving user queries effectively,
should be the main aim of search
marketing, according to Ade Lewis
of Teapot Creative.
Problem solving
Following the Google Penguin
update, optimising a site with the
sole aim of improving SERPs is no
longer a viable strategy; firms should
now focus on delivering high quality
content that helps consumers to
more effectively solve problems:
“Good Google rankings
shouldn’t be the overall aim of
SEO, but an outcome of good
business practises which maximises
the overall consumer experience,”
said Lewis.
“SEO is therefore no longer
about optimising a website for
SERP, and more about optimizing a
business so it deserves to sit at the
top of these rankings.
“SEO now needs to begin
making positive changes to people
rather than computers. The
starting point is the consumer,
not driving ranking positions,”
added Lewis.
Quality over quantity
To allow this to happen, firms
need to improve the quality and
relevance of their content while
aligning SEO strategy with other
marketing output.
Content, according to Pete
Wailes of SEOgadget, should be
carefully planned and executed to
best satisfy consumer demands:
“SEOs should not be saying,
let’s make an infographic or let’s
write a guest post, just because that
is fashionable right now. They should
be asking: what is the customer’s
search query? What type of content
will best solve this problem?”
An integrated approach
Tim Grice, of Branded 3,
spoke of the need to integrate search
with other marketing functions such
as advertising and PR:
KEY TAKEAWAY
Sharon Flaherty
Confused.com
@ConfusedSharon
I think it was clear that SEO
is really all about good quality
content. That was my take-out.
KEY TAKEAWAY
Dave Coplin
Bing
@dcoplin
For me is to stop seeing SEO in
isolation but as part of a joined
up approach.
KEY TAKEAWAY
Kevin Gibbons
BlueGlass
@kevgibbo
It’s not SEO, PR or content
marketing - it’s simply getting
your brands story in front of a
target audience.
KEY TAKEAWAY
Tim Grice
Branded3
@Tim_Grice
I think it was that SEO needs to
be genuine marketing activity,
and not just some stuff you do
to get rankings.
KEY TAKEAWAY
Ade Lewis
Teapot Creative
@Teapot_Ade
For me it was 50/50: the shift of
SEO towards proper marketing
and google reinclusion requests.
“Good Google rankings should
not be the overall aim of SEO”
“Focus your
content and user
experience on
conversion goals
– make it clear
to reach.”
~ Ralf Schwoebel, Tradebit
“We need to fully integrate
SEO strategy so that its central
focus is about marketing, not
manipulation. This doesn’t mean
SEO is dead, far from it,” he said.
It is therefore no longer
viable to view SEO strategy in
isolation – optimising content and
ranking positions must fully account
for overall brand values. Ralf
Schwoebel, of Tradebit, spoke
of the need to create an overall brand
“feeling” which is consistent across
all content and marketing mediums:
“All of Red Bull’s messages
are consistent with a feeling of
‘giving you wings’. You don’t need to
spend millions to achieve this, just
be consistent in your approach.”
Mark Henshall and Stefan
Hull, Propellernet also highlighted
the need to use consumer insights to
drive content strategy, incorporating
market research findings to produce
high quality content which
makes the internet, and world,
a better place.
Ex-Googlers on…
spam and
disavowed links
• Google responds to most
spam reports within a week:
keep them short and concise.
• All manual link penalties are
reviewed personally.
• If you’re disavowing links, it
may be worth disavowing the
entire domain; this tool has no
negative effect.
• Google uses Chrome user
data and can track every
click within it
Ex-Googlers on…
social signals
• Social media links are not
currently used for improving
search rankings.
• Facebook cannot create
signals because Google can’t
access the required data.
• Google+ will become
important in the future, start
using it now and you will
benefit later.
Following her talk, Lauren Pope of
Brilliant Noise was quick to correct
a member of the audience who
simply referred to her as a “Content
Marketer”.
“I’m a Content Strategist,” was
her firm, razor sharp rebuttal.
Many speakers emphasised
the need to think carefully, plan and
successfully combine different types
of content in order to satisfy long
term business requirements.
It is not enough to create
content on a whim or chase viral
traffic which creates quick ‘sugar
rush’ wins but ultimately fails
to generate a steady number of
conversions.
“Bread and butter content is
the stuff that answers questions like
who, what, where, when, why, how
much, and helps users to accomplish
the task they came to your website
with in mind.
“Viral content is like jelly
beans: it’s tasty and gives you a
sugar rush, but not healthy in the
long-term.”
An overall content strategy
should aim to balance bread and
butter content with an occasional
boost of viral content. This way
SEO activity can maximise traffic,
revenue and advocacy in the long
term.
“You’reprobablygoingtohave
to veer so far away from your core
product area to capture attention in
the kind of volume you need to go
viral that you probably won’t make
many or any sales or leads.
“Bread and butter content
should always be geared towards
generating sales, either by doing a
beautiful job of telling customers
about your product, or by
encouraging them to use more of it.
“They might not like or share
it, but if you help them solve a
problem,findananswertoaquestion
and give them a really effortless,
straightforward and enjoyable
experience, they’ll remember it.
They’ll come back again, and they’ll
probably recommend you in the
future too.”
InsightsfromPaulMadden,
Manual Link Building
Paul’s talk provided some really interesting insight around
link building. Following Penguin, he feels that all links
should be seen as posing some element of risk and should
be validated by SEOs at every opportunity: “analyse the
risk of every link that you place or have placed,” said Paul.
The key signals of risk include: a high percentage
of commercial anchors, banned words, poor link metrics,
wrong cctld, links to bad places and low social and site
interaction.
Paul explained that if you are hit by a penalty
you need to carry out a link audit, keeping a record of
links you remove and disavowing those you can’t. Firms
should also bear in mind that re-inclusion requests may
take several attempts.
Lexi Mills, Dynamo - 7 secret weapons
of successful content & outreach
Outreach news in brief
Geoff White at Channel 4 shared some insights into
successfully pitching ideas to journalists. Timing
is crucial, particularly in the case of press releases,
as one news story can easily replace another. Great
content tells a story and is written for people,
about people.
Hannah Smith, Distilled, described how “small
content” such as guest posts can generate consistent
but low-level results; acceptable until your niche
becomes more competitive. “Big content” can take
more than 40 hours to create and is often an expensive
gamble, but can result in much greater rewards. Pitch
“big content” to clients by demonstrating that the
idea supports brand positioning; implement them
over a longer time period to spread costs.
Link news in brief
Danielle Fudge from Forward3D
described that within specific niches
‘Black Hat techniques’ are still
widely used within the pay day loans
market. Interflora provided enough
evidence that we should stay away
from advertorials and avoid building
unnatural link portfolios. Danielle
also highlighted the importance
of knowing what your competitors
are doing.
Neil Walker from Quaevo Media
discussed scalable post-Penguin
link building. He recommended
that SEOs do not ignore WMT
unnatural link warnings and
ensure that all unnatural links are
disavowed. For reconsideration
requests, SEOs should “tell the truth”,
“provide examples” and remember
that “Google reviewers are human”.
Build links that aid local search,
sponsorship, content PR and social.
Matt Roberts, Linkdex, and Kevin
Gibbons, Blueglass, explained that
we need to refrain from using the
term SEO as search marketing has
now evolved hugely. Businesses
currently implement strategy across a
number of separate ‘marketing silos’,
but it is important to collaborate.
They also said you should “plan,
create, optimize, share, measure and
value” when creating a content plan.
News round-up
Dave Coplin, Microsoft Bing
highlighted the need to redefine
our use of technology in order to
maximise global opportunities.
“Doing something the way we
have always done it is no longer
acceptable, we need to work to
make the web, and world, a better
place,” he said.
Rich Falconer, Lbi, explained that
SEO friendly AJAX is good for
user experience but, if used badly,
poor for search; Power Mapper
also usefully visualizes your
website structure. SEOs should
study competitors’ pages to see
which keywords they’re using.
Sharon Flaherty, Confused.
com, discussed content strategy,
showing how her successful
creative campaign drove traffic,
conversions and rankings. “It’s not
all about SEO,” she said, “it’s also
a lot about brand engagement”.
Content is about “getting people
to be loyal to us,” she said.
Dixon Jones, Majestic SEO,
emphasised the need to use data
more accurately to predict future
trends. By using social signals
from Twitter, analysing data
from Wikipedia, or harnessing
information from any other
widely available source, we can
understand trends and more
accurately create future value.
Julia Logan, Content Mango,
talked about how “negative SEO”
can be self-inflicted as a result
of insecure plugins, incorrect
redirects or duplicate content.
Make negative SEO economically
unviable for competitors; develop
a highly reputable and trustworthy
site with large levels of traffic.
Alan Ferguson, Central
Bedfordshire Council, explained
that by streamlining his site he
was able to make his site work for
customers. “Cut out unnecessary
pages, optimise your content, put
it in the language of customers,”
he said.
Marcus Taylor, Venture Harbour
says that prior to implementing a
campaign you need to ask yourself
why it matters: “gather feedback
from users, remove any content
which might give the impression
of spam, provides incentives for
people to share your content,”
he said.
Alex Moss, 3 Door Digital,
explained that socially structured
data can improve click through
rates, generate exposure and allow
content to be tailored for each
social network. Using Google+,
Facebook Open Graph or Twitter
Cards can help to build clicks
when your content is shared.
Photo: Jackie Hole
Photo: Jackie Hole
Ex-Googler Jonas Weber raised a few eyebrows when he described how SEOs “think too dirty” in their
search activity, instead opting to hire journalists and writers who generally use less manipulative techniques.
Their advice focused on creating quality content and relevant links:
1 Overall, SEO should be a long-term strategy
- keep outreach and link building relevant.
2 For an in-house SEO, build up a relationship
with relevant sites and exchange links; make
them consistent.
3 If you are going to buy links then at least
make them relevant to your site.
4 Content for search engines should be about
solving a problem – description has to be
followed by an explanation.
5 Your content should be relevant and useful to
potential clients – cater for people rather than
search results.
1 Understand what people will be talking
about in the future.
2 Supply images with your content and
consider design elements.
3 Topical ideas often lack longevity - scale them
through niche markets.
4 Integrate social hooks - review social media
to see what people are talking about.
5 Generate additional links through the
creation of linkable on-site content.
6 Target your top 20 influencers - give them
beta versions of your product, ask their
opinion, make them feel part of the story.
7 Place no more than three relevant links in
your content - include any anchor text links
in the footer.
TakeawaysTakeaways
A guide to
International
SEO in 3 steps
Aleyda Solis, SEER Interactive
1. Assess your
international potential
Analyse international traffic
using Google Analytics.
How does your visibility
translate into clicks? Study
the volume of searches,
queries and CTR from
international locations and
analyse keyword trends.
2. Target your audience
Target by language or country
depending on relevance.
Study behaviour – what are
the keyword trends and
conversion rates?
3. Develop an
international site
Find the right structure for
your business’s characteristics.
Host locally with a local
IP to target relevant language
or country markets. Promote
within international
communities through Social
Crawlytics and Followerwonk.
Image credits
Thanks to Jackie Hole
www.jackiehole.com