1. Mark Blackhurst LL.B Hons Joint Founder / Director.
Started the SEO and Digital Agency with my Brother Justin Blackhurst in the first week of 2010.
• Five Years later Turnover in UK £2.3 million
• Exponentially growing offices in a number of European and International Offices.
• 400 hundred UK SEO Clients
• Now have actual Offices - Manchester/Dublin/Melbourne/Stockholm/Milan/Miami

2. SEO and how did DigitalNext get here ?
BACKGROUND TO OUR START IN INTERNATIONAL SEO
HOBBY TO BUSINESS – LITERALLY FROM PARENTS HOUSE REALISED THE INTERNET LEVELLED THE
PLAYING FIELD OF BUSINESS.
USED TRANSFERABLE SKILLS PICKED UP FROM UNI AND BUSINESS WE LAUNCHED OUR SEO SKILLS
ONTO THE UK MARKET.
REALISED SMALL COMPANIES COULD DOMINATE LARGE ENTITIES ONLINE…………..
2009 /2010 MANY SEO COMPANIES OUT THERE BUT VERY UNETHICAL IN APPROACH.
• SAW THE GAP IN THE MARKET AFTER PROVING OUR SKILLS AND OTHER SEO AGENCIES
FAILURES.
• SKILLS DEVELOPED IN BUILDING CONFIGURING AND PERFORMING SEO ON SITES MADE THEM
GENERATE INBOUND ENQUIRIES AND TRAFFIC, SOMETHING I THOUGHT WAS INCREDIBLE.
• LITERALLY READ BOOK AFTER BOOK ABOUT
SEO. (Ask me after the talk )
• STUDIED EVERY COMPANY WORTH A
MENTION AND THEIR TECHNIQUES FOR A
YEAR BEFORE LAUNCHING.

3. Show of hands please …….
Before I go further can I ask the following questions ? Please show your hands
1. Who in here relies in some way on their website to bring them inbound
enquiries or for enquiries and sales ?
2. Who in here would like to gain more enquiries or rank for keywords
on Google above their competitor ?

4. SEO AND How did we get here ?
First International Client
www.888.com multi sites Keywords Online casino / Online casinos – met at Internet world in
London Earls Court we started to work with them on some of the worlds most difficult to rank
keywords - based in Isreal.
We then started to gain clients as far away as Brazil / USA / Sweden.
As time went on our contacts and skills developed further so carrying our skills on foreign
websites actually led to even stronger results as we were already very successful in the UK which
is for me the hardest market to crack in SEO as it is the most saturated.
International SEO was a Natural progression – and with help of a friend who is a well renowned interpreter with huge
contacts and high skill levels we then made him part of our company.
The abilities of our new linguistics department opened up our scope for growth to literally any language in the World.

5. 1. Do you have the domain – Make sure you have the GTLD e.g. .de, .fr, .com.au etc, these will always rank well in these
countries.
2. Are you native – Google and human users will avoid your service if you clearly not native. E.g. launching a website in
Germany, and having the content in English will not being you any business or rankings. (yes people do this J )
3. Are you local – if you are moving to another English speaking market, then make sure your content is still tailored for that
market, localised spellings, phrases and references work well.
4. Local Address – If you’re on the ground in that market, make sure you have your address on the website, if not, list were
the head office is but don’t make it a primary contact method
5. Local phone numbers – regular users don’t want to phone a different country to do business, make sure your phone
numbers are localised even if the people answering are not.
6. Use Localised Emails – Set up the relevant emails so when people send or receive emails, then they have the relevant
country extension.
7. Link between countries – have a country selector on the website to show people you are active in multiple countries.
Google like this and it adds credibility to the human user experience as well.
8. Make sure your prices are native – Another no brainer but this does happen. If you move markets, your website has to
have the native currency. IF a german website launces in the UK with prices in Euro, google wouldn’t rank it, and if I did
manage to land on the site, I wouldn’t buy in the wrong currency.
International SEO tips
2.5 years ago

6. MIX OF SALES | FEBRUARY 2014 – ALL FIGURES IN £,000’S
157
13
14
SEO Web dev PPC
AFTER ACQUISITION OF JUST SEARCH

7. MIX OF SALES | AS OFTODAY – ALL FIGURES IN £,000’S
92.5
30
22
17
24
8 5 4
SEO Web dev PPC
Content, social & PR Australia Ireland
Golden Pages Italy
A FULLY INTEGRATED SERVICE

8. GROWTH IN WEB DEV | ALL FIGURES IN £,000’S

9. 0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
180
200
2014 Sales in £,000's
GROWTH IN CONTENT, SOCIAL & PR | ALL FIGURES IN £,000’S

10. GROWTH IN AUSTRALIA | ALL FIGURES IN £,000’S
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
180
200
2014 Sales in £,000's

11. 0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
180
200
2014 Sales in £,000's
GROWTH IN GOLDEN PAGES | ALL FIGURES IN £,000’S

12. GROWTH IN PPC | ALL FIGURES IN £,000’S

13. GROWTH IN ITALY | ALL FIGURES IN £,000’S

14. GROWTH IN IRELAND | ALL FIGURES IN £,000’S
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
180
200
2014 Sales in £,000's

15. COSTS | ALL FIGURES IN £,000’S
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
180
200
2014 Costs

16. BUGDGET FOR NOV ‘15 | ALL FIGURES IN £,000’S
AUSTRALIA
£40K
+£16K GROWTH
IRELAND
£25K
+£17K GROWTH
GOLDEN PAGES
£15K
+£10K GROWTH
ITALY
£10K
+£6K GROWTH
SEO
£100K
+£7.5K GROWTH
WEB DEV
£50K
+£20K GROWTH
PPC
£40K
+£18K GROWTH
CONTENT, SOCIAL
& PR
£30K
+£13K GROWTH

17. A FULLY INTEGRATED SERVICE