UPDATE: The reason for the current UK notices and Interflora’s rankings have been discovered. More information Here: http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/interflora-what-really-happened.html

I am somewhat a tin foil conspiracy theorist when it comes to google. And often my theories do prove to be right, and most times I am not far from the mark. This week, two seemingly unrelated events have triggered one of those theories.

By now, the UK SEO community would be aware that google has penalised a fairly large brand. I call this EVENT 1.

In addition, I have spoken to a fair number (10+) UK SEOs that have had this gem in their inbox:

Unnatural inbound links

We’ve detected that some of the links pointing to your site are using techniques outside Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

We don’t want to put any trust in links that are unnatural or artificial, and we recommend removing any unnatural links to your site. However, we do realize that some links may be outside of your control. As a result, for this specific incident we are taking very targeted action to reduce trust in the unnatural links. If you are able to remove any of the links, you can submit a reconsideration request, including the actions that you took.

If you have any questions, please visit our Webmaster Help Forum.

This is Event 2.

Notice the wording (emphasis mine):

We don’t want to put any trust in links that are unnatural or artificial, and we recommend removing any unnatural links to your site. However, we do realize that some links may be outside of your control. As a result, for this specific incident we are taking very targeted action to reduce trust in the unnatural links.

If you are able to remove any of the links, you can submit a reconsideration request, including the actions that you took.

So how are these two events tied together?

By now, if you work in SEO, you should be aware that google cannot catch all the spam that goes on, algorithmically anyway. They are getting better at it, as Panda and Penguin clearly indicate, but its not perfect yet. Add to that the “new” public belief that you can hurt a site by Negative SEO (a whole bunch of us old timers have insisted that this has ALWAYS been possible, but it’s a bit easier now).

SO what is googles best defence?

An Offence…

One of the serious problems in planning the fight against American doctrine, is that the Americans do not read their manuals, nor do they feel any obligation to follow their doctrine…- From a Soviet Junior Lt’s Notebook

“The reason the American Army does so well in wartime, is that war is chaos, and the American Army practices it on a daily basis.” – from a post-war debriefing of a German General

And this is true of google’s latest strategy. Scare SEOs and webmasters to the point that they don’t know what can and cannot hurt them. Get them to clean up search results FOR google. And this latest bout of warnings, IMHO is exactly that.

1. Penalise a LARGE UK brand  – send fear of god into SEOs. Check.
2. Send a bunch of vague link notices in GWMT to the general population. Check.
3. Sit back and profit.

My advice

1. Don’t panic.
2. Create a list of all your shitty links (you should be doing this anyway!)
3. Wait to see if there are any drops.
4. If there are, you should be able to isolate where the drops are and for what terms. Start clean up.
5. If there are drops and you cant isolate the drops, then reach out and contact via resubmission, with specific question about the links.
6. If there are no drops, build newer, better quality links .

This post has been inspired and adapted from one of my favourite non-SEO bloggers, James Altucher. He recently wrote: 9 Ways to break all the rules.

As an SEO, regardless to the fact we proscribe or prescribe the definition, our jobs are to get our content high up enough in SERPs to attract searchers into our sites. Simply put, it’s the art of making something findable. However, in order to do that, we need to try and follow a set of rules; rules that have been set for us by search engines to get that content up there.  Of course, these rules are different for different people, but don’t let that stop you.

Sometimes rules are meant to be broken. Some need to be tested and bent to withhold the test of time and their stability. I mean, if everyone followed the rules to letter “T”, would probably mean that not everyone will rank, after all, there is only one No. 1 spot and only 10 spots on the first page of the SERPs (I am ignoring all the other stuff like images, maps, etc excuse the exclusion).

Part of being a good SEO is to understand what these rules are, but part of being a GREAT SEO is to know how far you can stretch these rules, how to cleverly interpret them, and when you can break them.

A few of these are going to be shocking, a few outrageous. And maybe a few not even worth doing, but worth knowing about. Most of this happens, but the “clean” world of competitive SEO doesn’t talk about it.  Others are simple, well thought out risks that you should probably try.

I don’t endorse, nor condemn any.

rules in SEO

===> Do the opposite.

On any given day, there are hundreds of theories on what the right strategy is. Some from leading SEO sites, others from Google themselves.

Don’t follow blindly – sometimes try the opposite of what is being suggested, just to see what happens.  Google Suggest can’t be manipulated by anything else than search volume, right?

Try something that is totally out of sync with what the leading theories are saying. You may just find something new.

===> Surprise

Surprise yourself, surprise your colleagues, surprise your clients. Are your normal reports about keywords that the site ranks for? Why not suddenly submit a set of keywords that you DON’T rank for? (but could).

Is the strategy to look at volume of links? Instead, why don’t you suggest something totally different?

Like mining the top 5000 long tail keywords in the niche, and then proposing to dedicate budget to developing content around each? That’s how Demand became one of the most powerful companies in the content space right?

===> Change one thing

So you have gone hard and fast acquiring exact anchors. Ever thought of shifting tract for a little while to target long tails instead? What are the effects?  

Reputation Issue? Instead of trying to outrank a site with your own content, find other content that matches the query. Buy and build links to it.

You can’t get your site penalised for buying links to someone else’s site right?

===> Steal

Take the top 50 results for your target keyword. Grab all their content.  Give it to an editor / copy writer to rewrite it to work seamlessly.  What do you have there? Probably the longest, best researched, well written  piece of content on that subject. Thats Content Spinning on a majestic level.

Don’t start from scratch.

What are your competitors highest value backlinks? Buy that site. Remove those links and replace over time with yours. Learn destructive SEO.

===> Combine

SEO does not work in silo. It a marketing discipline that should be treated like one. Combine your strategy with another.

For example, does your business end out marketing emails? Why not try link opportunity mining there? Send out one email to the whole database to ask customers to submit their own sites for an “award”.  Mine these to select which are ideal for grabbing links. Build a True Value Link Network.

Or combine two clients’ link building strategies.  Is one a Car insurance client, while the other Lawyer? What about a series of articles that have a bent on legal issues around Car Insurance? Get that out to the press. Two clients, one subject, good links.

===> Question Everything

The worst SEO in my opinion is one that follows Google guidelines blindly.

They are nothing but a financial organisation, despite whatever they say. They often dont follow their own rules. Nor do they have the best track record of honesty.  Question everything.

Why is Google Plus so important? Why do they want to give you free analytics? Why did they buy a bunch of verticals? Why are they suggesting you put more ads on your site? Why are paid links bad?

As James says in his article:

There’s always a “good reason” and the “real reason”

===> Ignore  CAN’T, DON’T, SHOULDN’T, MUSTN’T

Self explanatory.  If I need to explain this any further, then you haven’t read the post right so far.

===> Honesty

Contradiction or what? On one hand I am asking you to steal, the other asking you to be honest?

Honesty is the only one thing that sets you apart from any other SEO company.

Be Honest to your clients. If you are going to try something risky, tell them what and why.  Don’t screw them over – your own business will end quick enough if you do.

Don’t make up answers, if you DON’T know why the site tanked, then say so. Be 100% honest to your clients.  And dont suggest anything that could be potentially illegal.

They will respect you for it. If they don’t, maybe they aren’t the right client for you. You would be surprised what clients let you risk if only you explain it to them.

===> Persistence

Keep testing. Keep bending the rules. Keep trying. Keep developing new theories. Don’t give up. Keep going.

This is not going to be a long post, nor is it going to teach much. I am putting it out as a way of an early warning system for thin affiliate sites that survived the panda effect.

Basics  Of Thin Affiliates

I run a few data collecting (and money making) thin affiliate sites. I dont hide the fact and I dont overly try and push them either. I build them and let them run. Most of these survived the Panda 1.0 update. Panda 2.0 was a different matter.

For those who dont know what a thin affiliate site is, Its pretty much a thematic site put together with a series of affiliate feeds on related products that automatically create product pages. The game here is to try and rank for the long tail – often Google would give priority to thematic sites built on Exact Match Domains, over the original retailer. The other advantage to date has been that some ecommerce sites are so huge that they only concentrate on the larger volume, money making SERPs, and tend to ignore smaller volume products.

This is where a number of thin affiliates who make money play at. The SERP competition is low, and it is often easy enough to outstrip the original retailer in the SERPs for their own products. Its nothing new and many have made a living out of it comfortably. (Sadly not I – I get bored too easily).

In essence, though not exactly “scraping”, these sites often tend to be repetition of content that exists on other sites, passed on through the blessings of the original content producer.

So what happened?

Initially Panda 2.0 halved the traffic to the sites. Literally. and I thought to myself, well 50% aint so bad. And I thought that Panda updates are going to be periodic, bulk algo changes. However, if what I am seeing is the norm, then the roll out is far from finished. Here is the aftermath as of yesterday:

Light Affiliate Site Destroyed by Panda Sloww Roll out (click to get full image)

Learnings

Panda 2.0 isnt a one of release, and can potentially affect sites weeks after its roll out – just because you survived, or partially survived the aftermath, doesnt mean your sites are safe if the content isnt great.

I lost the HOMPAGE. Thats right – the home page does not rank. In this example and 5 other hit sites. In fact, an inner page ranks for some of the KWs that the home page used to rank for. Is this a signal? I dont know. but I know that the home page of a blog based site tends to be the strongest part of a site – and often short term content that appears on it helps sites rank for KWs even before the inner post pages are indexed.  Whats the easiest way to stop sites ranking quickly for constant low quality content? Kill the home page.

Blood Thirsty Panda

Damage Control?

I dont think that the site is worth recovering, despite the volume of traffic it used to drive. Why? Because I know that it was a crappy affiliate site, I knew that there wasn’t much content on it that was original, and I know it deserved to die. So I will let it R.I.P .

So what will I do? If you are new to my writings, you should head over and read about SERP Sniffing. But in essence, this is a strategy that allows you to capture long tail keywords that drive volume, AND are easy to rank for. Thus armed with this data I intend to build this site on a new domain, without all the crappy element, write custom content for it, make it useful, and hopefully make it pay off.

What should you do? Be wary and keep an eye out – it isnt over yet.

Image Source http://forums.voogru.com/off-topic/13741-red-white-pandas-4.html

Beat the Quote - Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sidelong/1908434227/

Is Google screwing about with UK Car Insurance Autocomplete (or Suggest as we know it) results?

Maybe. And I have data to suggest it.

In my last post, I demonstrated how it is in fact possible to Manipulate Google suggest. I also pointed out that it is possible to do this for a number of reasons, one of them being increasing conversions by driving people to the right landing page by forcing autocomplete to suggest a Brand+Long Tail Result.

This may not sound so amazing to a number of people, but those working on big brands, this may make massive changes in increase revenue from the SERPs. I know cause I consult for big brands all the time. In fact, after brand suggest results change, often the second or third keyphrase highlighted ends up becoming the biggest referrer to a site. So there is a slight importance when it comes to Google suggest results.


Let me take it to a tangent, We know that google just bought an aggregator, Beat the Quote. Then promptly banned them in the SERPs for shady SEO practices. In fact I love the fact that when beating the quote, my two fav SEOs are ranking 1^st and 2^nd for the brand search

Can you smell conspiracy theory cooking? Yes? Still interested? Read on.

UK Ranks for Car Insurance

Car Insurance - Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wysz/65251172/

Lets take the top 15 UK Results for Car Insurance. At the time of checking they were, in order:

1. www.elephant.co.uk
2. www.moneysupermarket.com
3. www.co-operativeinsurance.co.uk
4. www.morethan.com
5. www.confused.com
6. www.admiral.com
7. www.kwik-fitinsurance.com
8. www.swiftcover.com
9. www.directline.com
10. www.churchill.com
11. www.sheilaswheels.com
12. www.esure.com
13. www.gocompare.com
14. www.uswitch.com
15. www.privilege.com

Got that? OK. They ALL Rank for car insurance. And apart from Kwik Fit, ALL have run some seriously large TV campaigns. So all BIG brands when it comes to car insurance. I guarantee they ALL receive huge volumes of brand search AS WELL AS traffic for “Car Insurance”.

Why is that important to emphasise? Well, I am trying to build a plausible relationship between these brands and the phrase, “car insurance”.

Google Autocomplete For UK Car Insurance Brands

Swift Cover - Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/glenscott/3206069688/

By now you may know what I am hinting at, but bear with me, let me explain.

Like any SEO that plays with the SERPs, I and a bunch of others keep an eye on shifting SERPs and even the smallest interesting tit bits. A couple of people in my circle pointed out that they have been looking at Google Suggest a bit more after reading my post. And that they noticed something very strange. A number of the Brands in the Car Insurance niche they were monitoring, have lost (yes LOST!) the autocomplete “car insurance” addition to their brand search.

Unfortunately none had screenshots, but all swear that it did exist. So I decided to go on an investigative journey. First I checked the brands in suggest and whether the appended phrase existed:

• www.elephant.co.uk NO
• www.moneysupermarket.com/ NO (*)
• www.co-operativeinsurance.co.uk NO
• www.morethan.com NO
• www.confused.com NO (*)
• www.admiral.com/ NO
• www.kwik-fitinsurance.com NO
• www.swiftcover.com NO (*)
• www.directline.com YES
• www.churchill.com YES
• www.sheilaswheels.com NO (*)
• www.esure.com YES
• www.gocompare.com NO
• www.uswitch.com NO (*)
• www.privilege.com NO

Before you go off and verify, wait for me to finish. Only 3 of the 15 have the words “Car insurance” appended to the brand – instead ALL have the words “insurance” appended.

The (*) notes are certain special cases which I will come back to.

So Where’s the Proof of Removal of “Car Insurance”?

Well I ignored “Elephant” as I saw it as too generic, and could have a genuine reason for non appendage. Similarly More Than and Compare the market run TV campaigns that translate their brands into different names, “More Than Freeman” and Compare the Meerkat”. Confused is also a generic that may have variations. However, I did use publicly available data to look at search volumes for two variants of each:

Brand + Insurance

Brand +Car Insurance


A few are showing the same trend:

Go Compare Car Insurance Variance

See how both phrases follow the same trend up to the poinnt I have indicated with the arrow – which now shows variance in behaviour – that one is moving up, while the other isnt.

The variance indicated may be the date from when the “Car insurance” appendages were taken out. These variances in volume suggest to me that the search volume for the brand that see it, have dropped volume for “Brand + Car Insurance”. Why would this sudden dip be?

I propose that my mad hat theory of dropping the appendage from Google Autocomplete play a big role.

Another Verification

So I pinged some people. Asked them to look into Hitwise data for the sites I noticed the dips for. As far as we can see, the change happened between 15^th Feb to 18^th Feb. About TWO WEEKS before the official announcement of the purchase of Beat the Quote. This is the timeframe potentially when the decision to buy them happened.

Proof – The Data Charts below are ALL from Hitwise for the volume of traffic to these brands for the term “Brand + Car Insurance”:

Compare the Market Hitwise

Go Compare Hitwise

Money Supermarket Hitwise

How cool is that? Still think that Google Suggest / Autocomplete isnt a big deal?

Lets look at Go Compare, whose data variance I showed to you via Google trends.

Go Compare Hitwise Variance

See the fall in volume of traffic for “go compare car insurance” and the sudden increase of traffic for “go compare insurance”? This my friends is the power of Google Suggest.

The Special Cases Marked (*)

I haven’t forgotten those. They may or may not add to my theory that these appendages have been somehow manually been taken off.

Let’s look at Money Supermarket:

Money Super Market Car Insurance

So type in two words Money Supermarket, and NO Car Insurance. Type in three words, Money Super Market, and you get Car Insurance. Looks like someone forgot to take THAT out of the mix .

Now Swift Cover:

Swift Cover Car Insurance

If you add a space to Swift Cover (indictating that the results shown arent enough) THEN you get the car insurance appended.

Sheilas Wheels:

sheilas wheels car insurance

Interesting right? In this case two words AND a space triggers the car insurance phrase.

Now let’s look at Confused:

Confused Van Insurance

Van Insurance? How popular is that for confused? It’s so low that Google trends does NOT show it.

What does this all mean?

Well I dont know. Make your own conclusions. Does it prove some sort of intervention? Yes. Oh and check this out:

Beat the Quote Car Insurance

Beat the Quote Car Insurance trends

Finally…

Dave Naylor said my last RSS button was difficult to find, so here is an easier one – feel free to subscribe to my lunacy:

Click to Subscribe!

We are all fallible. And I think I am more so, as I often go off on different moods as they strike me. Over the years I have allowed myself to fall victim to many of my weaknesses, and I thought maybe, just maybe, there is something others may learn by exposing them.  These are seven weaknesses that I fell victim to in my career this far:

Wrath

Wrath (Latin, ira), also known as anger or “rage”, may be described as inordinate and uncontrolled feelings of hatred and anger.

Photo Credit http://www.flickr.com/photos/daredarlington

It’s easy to get angry. Angry with people that don’t seem to have a clue, and your performance depends on them. From stupid IT teams to daft clients, to ignorant bosses to annoying colleagues. Slowly you build up this feeling of resentment and annoyance, which can quickly escalade into a full blown hatred. I have been in these situations, more often than I would like to admit.

You start slacking. Stop actually listening to what the people around you are saying. All you can think of is how annoying they are. How much you would like to **LL them.

Anger can really kill your efforts, it blinds you. It blinds your logic, and it tempers your conversations with others, which may slowly or in certain situations, rapidly turn in a direction you should never venture. How the hell are you going to work,  if you are angry at all the people that need to be involved?

It took a while for me to get a handle on my anger. I just vent sometimes and let it blow over.

Greed

Greed (Latin, avaritia), also known as avarice or covetousness, is, like lust and gluttony, a sin of excess. However, greed (as seen by the church) is applied to a very excessive or rapacious desire and pursuit of wealth, status, and power.

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lanuiop/224624067/

For me greed was when I originally started out, I kept taking on client after client. The recommendations were rolling in. And I thought I could work on them all,. The money was OK, and I thought that I will be able to provide the same level of service to 50 clients as I would to 10.

I was wrong. Standards slipped, I kept forgetting to do stuff, and basically started annoying my clients. I could have taken on two routes  either reduce the number of people I am working with, or take on someone to help. The latter  wasn’t financially viable at the time, and the former was my only choice.

I learnt a valuable lesson – greed can really hurt your reputation.

Sloth

The modern view goes further, regarding laziness and indifference as the sin at the heart of the matter.

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/darkumber/2645078671

This is probably a more recent sin for me – I used to be quite hardworking, burning candles at both ends. But as I grew in skill, I started developing a laissez faire attitude, to the point where it again started spiraling my work life out of control.

So much more work needs to happen to make sure that a campaign is running smoothly – if you start getting lazy, you will drop your eyes off the ball, and one day have to wonder why your site suddenly dropped off the SERPs…

In fact I think to this day, this is one I am constantly battling with. Laziness is a bloody disease…

Pride

In almost every list Pride (Latin, superbia), or hubris, is considered the original and most serious of the seven deadly sins, and the source of the others. It is identified as a desire to be more important or attractive than others, failing to acknowledge the good work of others, and excessive love of self.

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nolarisingproject/4896813004/

Somewhere along the line I started thinking too much of myself, and looked down on people. This does not help. Seriously. It’s one thing to take pride in your work, and another being a proud person – its only a step away from arrogance, which can actually lead to ignorance. Feeling too self important will give you myopia, as I have learnt to my detriment – in SEO you have to keep reading, keep on top of things – and just because someone is new, doesn’t mean that they are less intelligent than you.

Keep the pride in your work, lose the arrogance in your attitude. I have kind of tackled this one, however, from time to time it does slip out.

Lust

Lust or lechery (carnal “luxuria”) is usually thought of as excessive thoughts or desires of a sexual nature

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/loop_oh/4433308044

Sexy is fun. Sexy looks good. Sexy takes a fuck load of time to deliver. I use to love make my ideas, strategies result etc look absolutely great. Loads of charts, figures, results, quotes – seriously some of that work deserved medals .

But once again, I was losing time to perfection. To make things look good. What’s the point of a report that will take 10 minutes to read, but 10 days to create? I am not saying don’t make your work attractive, but don’t waste too much time sexing it up. You may end up having pretty charts and figures, but results that are ugly… if you know what I mean.

Learn to present the meat in the quickest, yet most accessible manner, and try and get that done in the fastest time possible.

Envy

Like greed, Envy (Latin, invidia) may be characterized by an insatiable desire; they differ, however, for two main reasons. First, greed is largely associated with material goods, where as envy may apply more generally. Second, those who commit the sin of envy resent that another person has something they perceive themselves as lacking, and wish the other person to be deprived of it.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/allcityvision/5232297969

This was a short lived sin for me. There was a time in my life that I was constantly jealous of others who were doing well compared to I was. But instead of trying to learn from their success, I was too busy spiraling myself into a latent hatred for these people.

“Why were their sites ranking? They are buying links! I wish I could. But what if… maybe I should report them… maybe I should call them out… ” etc etc. These are common thoughts that I still come across by people n SEO forums and on twitter. Let it go. Just work harder.

Envy can really eat at you – and actually distract you from work – take on competition with a healthy frame of mind, admit when you are beaten, and only address jealousy by working harder – not hating harder.

Gluttony

Derived from the Latin gluttire, meaning to gulp down or swallow, gluttony (Latin, gula) is the over-indulgence and over-consumption of anything to the point of waste.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/st3f4n/4448140377/

I read. I read a lot. I hoard articles, ideas and concepts. But overdoing it may have a negative effect as well. There was a time I was voraciously consuming every blog post, every article on SEO with a grim determination. But this came at a cost as well. Overindulging in consuming this content can often leave you with two symptoms – lack of time to actually implement anything and confusing yourself to kingdom come.

Read, and read the right content. Learn to skim, mark and notarize. Don’t try and overdo it either.  I tend to rely on the SEO community now to throw decent content across to me. If it good, chances are it will be widely circulated. I don’t over indulge anymore, I only binge occasionally.

Summary:

Its that time of the year that you have to make resolutions, mine is simple, I stay away from past mistakes – and maybe some of them ring true for you?  I will make mistakes, probably till the day I die. But, I hope I continue to keep learning from them.

If you enjoyed this post, you may want to scoot over to the SEOchicks version of the 7 Deadly Sins written by Judith…

I often get offered jobs in the UK to Head up SEO for businesses, both agency and in house. Some of these offers have been in excess of £100,000 per year  – and I would guess thats a pretty good salary for a UK SEO. Now I am not averse to money, but neither am I motivated by it. I do what I do because I really, really enjoy it. I don’t have that many expenses, and am comfortable with what I earn.  However, I appreciate not everyone has this outlook, nor can they ignore the call to earning more.

At the moment there are loads of SEO Jobs being offered (check out SEOGadget, Holistic Search and Blogstorm for some really cool SEO / SEM jobs), and many of us would be tempted to dive in and start applying. In my opinion the SEO industry is booming, and almost all the SEO agencies I know are looking for skilled staff, while many more businesses are looking to build in house teams. Which means that potentially a decent SEO could choose and pick from these vacancies, such that they get the best deal. However the best deal should not just be on the ££££ signs.

There are many other aspects to picking the right SEO job, for example growth – working with the right team will propel you further towards success I the long term. I wish I had that opportunity when I started out in SEO – there are many SEO teams I would gladly work for , and actually regret not having taking up couple of the offers I had (I normally turn down London based opportunities cause I don’t like working in London).

In the past year, I have spoken to many SEOs in private about their worries – and although I dont claim to be the best person to speak to, I am always happy to advise based on my experiences, and having another independent person to speak to sometimes helps making a decision, even if the other person is there just to bounce off ideas.

What kind of Questions Should You Ask In An SEO Interview?

I am not advising the run off the mill questions about benefits etc. I am more concerned about the job itself.

1.       What is the current internal SEO organizational structure.

A big salary isn’t an indication of a big team. You need to find out what sort of people will work with you on the account, who supports you, and who you support. It is important to make sure you find out who makes the decisions.

2.       What is the full Online Marketing Structure?

Seriously, SEO cannot function in silo, it is important to know what other online channels your potential employers are involved in, and what the teams are like. (I would normally get names etc and go and research these people!)

3.       What budgets do you have?

I am always surprised when SEOs apply to jobs (I have interviewed a fair few) they don’t enquire about the current budgets for SEO. What could be worse than taking on a job and then realizing that they don’t actually have the financial resources to actually carry out any real work?

4.       What volume of the revenue comes from SEO?

Why would you NOT ask this question? SEO interviews in my experience have been very vague – and if you don’t know what volume of revenue is generated by SEO, how do you judge your potential importance to the business?

5.       What tools and resources do you have?

I have often walked into organizations that don’t have real SEO tools or resources. This is normally OK for those who are technically skilled and can build their own, but for those who aren’t, may be an issue. (one of the worst ones I have been to didn’t even have analytics on their site that recorded SEO data…)

6.       What other teams work regularly with the online team?

It may seem trivial, but judging inter-departmental relationships is important. For example a great relationship with the PR departments may make your link building efforts that much smoother.  Or if the business has its own creative department, you could probably work on creating great content, especially stuff like infographics.

7.       What training, conference budgets are available?

For SEO, where there isn’t any real formal training, and guided by the fact that the industry is so dynamic, it is important to be constantly on the self education move. Part of that of course can be guided by reading decent blogs and conversing with other SEOs on Twitter. But the other art of the equation is meeting SEOs in the flesh, attending events. (By the way, of late I am getting extremely impressed with the digital and SEO events in the UK – the quality has gone up notches.  Distilled Pro Seminar was incredible, as were Think Visibility and the A4U Conferences.)

These are some of the more important questions that come to mind. I am sure that others can think of more, and feel free to drop me a comment if you can think of others.

Judging the Book By Its Intro

There are also other subtle indications that your potential employers are a decent bunch to work with. Take for example Tom Critchlow’s Interview questions for Distilled:

Distilled Sample Interview Questions

That to me indicates a fun company to work for – they are actually bothering to find out my skills and ideas.

Similarly, iCrossing has started being a lot more transparent with what it expects from its applicants:

iCrossing Natural Search Analyst Profile

What Should You Evaluate?

• What was your interview like?
• Did it feel you could build a relationship with the person managing you?
• How clever were their questions?
• A mediocre interviewer may mean you could ace the interview, but remember that may actually be their level of expertise in the day to day job – would you be able to work for someone mediocre?

Personally, I love the idea that the Distilled team have created with HireMarshall, it shows how much time and effort they have spent in trying to hire the right people:

Hire Marshal gives you an easy way of creating application forms for recruitment. Multiple reviewers can then score applicants and decide collaboratively who to interview.

TL;DR

So the next time you attend an interview, make sure it isn’t a one way process – interview them as well. It may just save you the headache of regret if you take a job that will depress you daily.

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I speak to many SEOs off the record, be they inhouse or agency side SEOs. Each have a number of priorities, with the most common one overlapping is really good results. However, in m experience, the journey for these two very individual roles are quite different in my opinion. Of course, the very basic SEO skills are a must have, but the routes to success are dependent on the nature of organizations.

Example 1 – Second Opinions

Second Opiions Matter! (Photo Credit http://www.flickr.com/photos/colinsd40/)

Take for example the inhouse team – this is usually quite small, and often a one or two man operation, with if they are lucky, access to an agency for some outsourced work such as content or link building, however these situations are rare. On the other hand, the agency side teams have a large resource base and are usually made up of at least 2-3 experts who serve as a port of call, with other individuals with micro specialisms for further reference.

Spot the issue? The inhouse specialist doesn’t have a secondary call of comfort, or the second opinion. Often they have to make the crux decision based on instinct. If they are unsure of the decision they need to make, they will often rely on their research skills and send ages looking for a semblance of an answer online, in their favourite points of reference such as webmaster world and other SEO blogs.

Once again, the inhouse peeps lose out that shared discussion.

Example 2 – Education

Too Many SEO Blogs!

It is up to the inhouse specialist to keep him/herself current by trawling through literally hundreds of SEO blogs. There aren’t any ready-made digestible education resources – the information is spread in the search blogosphere. Although the Agency SEO has to perform a similar self education task, I think that the job is easier – there are resources that are shared within the team – one person picking up a really good idea or post, will most probably share with the team.

The team will commonly discuss the merits of the concept (or should!!!), thus improving the output of any strategy that grew from that idea. This makes the agenc team a much stronger proposition.

Example 3 – Cross Industry Experience

A Spiders Web of Connections

An inhouse team would have a very narrow focus, typically on their specific subject matter. Although this may make them experts in their specific industry, they may lose out developments in other parts of the websphere.

Conversely, agency teams work across a number of accounts, cross industries, which means that they may be able to share their learnings and try and implement these across clients. This gives them a competitive advantage over their inhouse compatriots.

Get It?

The three examples above highlight some of the differences between the two similar yet different SEO roles that on could take up. I have played on both sides of the pond, with much more on the inhouse angle than the agency.

So what advice would I give the inhouse SEO?

Build your network.  Get your own “associates”.  Create a horde of resources in terms of contacts with two simple tricks I use:

Attend Any SEO / related network events.

I love chatting to people at various informal SEO events, for example I recently attended the Search Pro event kindly organized by Dave Reynolds.There I met Up with Jane Copland, Jaamit , Annabel , Richard Shove , Samuel Crocker, Rob Nicholson, Tatiana amongst others. As usual the drinks flowed, and so did the conversation. Although it seems like that these ar massive piss ups (they are!) many ideas are discussed, and a number of inhouse and agency SEOs share tips and ideas that you may not find being blogged.

You also get a chance to bond with other SEOs, which may enable you to get second opinions when you are stuck – I often get asked by people what I think of an idea, or when I find an idea worth their time I shoot it across to them. Similarly, I often email others I have hung out with for tips and advice, and always get a response back. This is because I have built a “real” relationship with these people. And it helps.

Speak to People on Twitter

See the number of DMs?

Twitter to me is a great way to connect with people. So many contacts I have had have come through this route, including job offers, ideas, tips and tricks. Learn to connect with people. Find people whose streams match yours – just because a person doesn’t have 100’s of followers doesn’t mean that they aren’t worth following. And dont forget, a lot of ocnversation on Twitter isnt on the public domain – the DM is a great way to have bite sized conversations.

Speak out – talk to people – don’t feel that because they don’t know you, they won’t respond. I do it all the time. (Stephen Fry never replies to me ).

The more you connect with someone, the more chance you have of being able to connect better with the in real life.

Build Lists. OK, so you don’t want to follow a million people. That’s fine. Neither do I. Build a bloody list. Lists are great way to segment conversations and types of people. I don’t want to follow 100+ UK SEOs, but my UK SEO list is one of the highest followed SEO lists. I listen to these people.

Finally – don’t leave an online interaction online – make a point to meet up, either at one of the events I suggested, or over a coffee!

Some of the UK events worth attending:

• Think Visibility
• London SEO
• Manchester SEO
• Brighton SEO
• Conversion Thursday
• Webanalytics Wednesdays

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Just for fun, I decided to create this infographic – will it get links? Am I right? Will SEO info graphics get links?

Are they good for link baiting? Or for getting noticed by google?

infographics and SEO

Me getting Grilled at ThinkVis No. 4 Site Clinics

I love site clinics. There isnt a better way to get your site infront of professionals and get advice, which would often uncover angles you may have previously missed or never thought of. Which is why it surprised me that only a handful of sites were submitted to the site clinic at Think Visibility. I would have really expected at least 100 out of the 200 attendees to have given out sites they want analysed.

A Panel of Experts

Think about it, 4 industry experts:

• Dave Naylor
• Michelle Pilcher
• Kieron Donoghue
• Karl Blanks

Each has proven themselves in their own respective arenas – for example Dr Blanks is renowned for Conversion Optimisation, Kieron has successfully created a raft of profitable affiliate businesses, such as Share My Playlists , Dave needs no introduction in the field of SEO, and Michelle, although new to the blogging / speaking scene, delivered amazing website redesign pitches that would have taken the best part of a week to work on.

Value For Money

I submitted my science fiction blog for which Michelle created a brilliant, gritty, new design. That design alone would have cost me upwards of £500 minimum if I had a bunch of amateurs to create it. The fact that Michelle actually took time to understand the site, and then created a design that is geared not only towards the nature of the topic, but to better pull out the different core elements of the site, made the work worth much, much more. the fact that she spent hours on the phone with Karl regarding the conversion elements pushed that rate up even higher.

After which it was analysed by Dave for SEO (well he thought I could push it better, but seemed to be happy with it’s SEO prowess ). That badge of verification is worth something I tell you!

Kieron gave me a few tips on monetising the site, during and after the clinic, most of which I will most definately consider.

What would you have paid to have your site analysed by these experts? To me the total package in monetary terms was over £3,000 for the advice I got, if I was to pay affordable rates… What did I pay for this advice? The price of my ticket to Think Visibility and the guts to submit the site.

So why didnt more people try to get their sites in the site clinic?

Unofficial Tip 3: GET YOUR SITE IN SITE CLINICS FOR FREE PROFESSIONAL ADVICE!!!!

This post is part of a series of  on my Unofficial Tips for Think Vis #4

Post 1. Approaching Speakers and Attendess

post2. Dealing with Big Brand Politics and Fallouts

This is post two in my series of Unofficial Think Vis Tips

SEO Mess - Photo credit http://www.flickr.com/photos/atibens/4578260998/

This came about with my chat with Dave Naylor, SEO Specialist and industry legend. I am one of the few fortunate people that feel that they can go up to Dave and have a sneaky chat on any subject – and the man is highly approachable, and extremely intelligent. Dave, having had many years head start and much better skills than I, has worked with a number of big brands. As most people know, I love working for large Brands, working on their strategies and giving advice as part of what I do. Dave came up with an analogy that will probably stick with me for a very long time:

“It’s like your doctor being blamed for you getting Lung cancer by the friends and family.

As much as he shouts and screams that he told you not to smoke, you wouldn’t listen. Then when if you were to get the dreaded disease,  would it be your fault for not heeding the advice of your Medical Specialist, or would it be the Doctors fault? Obviously yours.

But in SEO, when you client refuses to listen to your careful advice, and doesn’t do things right, and when things get messed up, it’s instantly your fault. No one apart from you and the client know this, and everyone outside that deal starts pointing fingers. ”

I hope you followed the gist of the conversation. Why do we as SEO’s get blamed when our clients don’t follow our advice? We can’t actually come out in the open and say “We told them not to do it, but they did it anyway.”  In fact I have partially tweeted  / ranted about this fact, that sometimes you misjudge an SEO’s work based on what you see on the surface, not under the corporate hood, and Jaamit kindly gave life to those tweets.  

The take away?

Don’t let people outside the deal between you and your clients annoy you. Don’t respond, keep your professional cool. Secondly, make sure that your client is aware at every given point of the possible issues in any decisions that they make against your advice. Document them.

Keep a log – and maybe even put together a disaster recovery plan. Even if they don’t pay you to think about that – 9/10 times you may not need it, but the 10% time that you do, you will win the favour of your clients even more.

 Fact is this is and will remain the bane of any SEOs life as long as non SEO people are making decisions for the business. Keep trying to maintain them on the right track, but dont make it personal if they dont always follow your advice. They have other priorities. I have covered most of this in a presentation for Brighton SEO before (see below).

Actually Making SEO Happen

This is the Slideshare version of my presentation: