Events

25 Posts in One Month: Co-ordinating a ‘Content Blitz’ Campaign on the Cheap – My BrightonSEO Talk

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Speaking at BrightonSEOHaving previously been to BrightonSEO 4, 5, maybe 6 times (I’ve genuinely lost count), it was an absolute pleasure and honour to be given the opportunity to speak about my recent CR 25 campaign, as part of the Content Strategy segment.

From the BrightonSEO website (which I’m copying-and-pasting as well, just in case it gets removed from the site at some point):

In January 2015, I helped my parents’ IT recruitment agency to launch a ‘content blitz’ campaign, posting 25 posts in one month to mark the company’s 25th anniversary.

6 months in the making, we created and co-ordinated a plethora of content types beyond the usual bog-standard blog post, including guest posts, crowdsourced posts, a timeline, a list of local events, a list of local co-working spaces… and even a quiz.

Utilising free/cheap resources and WordPress plugins as much as possible to keep the budget nice and low, the campaign was intended to boost their site’s SEO as well as the company’s branding awareness, PR, social media followings and ultimately help them to earn new clients and candidates.

Here are the slides:

Someone let me know that the talk was Periscoped (is that a verb yet?) as well – here’s a screenshot. Really exciting!

As I said towards the end of the talk / on the penultimate slide, I’m hoping to do a full write-up of the campaign – its good, bad and ugly moments – which would cover everything from the talk and more stuff that I would have liked to have covered if I had more time. I’ll most likely submit it as a YouMoz post – keep an eye out for it over the coming weeks/months.

I’d also like to say a big thank you not only to @kelvinnewman (BrightonSEO’s organiser) for allowing me to speak, but also to @MUmar_Khan, @krystianszastok, @ichbinGisele and @Tony_DWM for taking the time to give me feedback on an early draft of my slide deck. Tony especially was incredible, giving thoughts and feedback on every single individual slide. Top bloke.

[Main speaking image credit – @octink (from Twitter)]

The Rise & (Supposed) Fall Of Google Authorship – My Port80 Localhost Talk

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Burning books imageOn Wednesday evening I spoke at Port80 Summer Localhost 2014 in Newport, alongside three other excellent talks on the subjects of product launches, intellectual property and the power of using emotion in UX.

When @Joel_Hughes (@Port80Events‘ organiser) and I first discussed my talk topic earlier in the year, which was going to be about Google Authorship (a.k.a. rel="author"), it was before Google’s John Mueller announced the changes to Authorship in late June. Rather than to ditch the talk topic entirely and talk about something else SEO-related instead, I decided to stick with it, talking about its past, present and potential future.

Here’s the slide deck on Speaker Deck (an alternative to SlideShare, which seems to upload decks at a much higher quality):

UPDATE: As you can’t click on the links in the above slide deck, here’s a link to the deck as a PDF, where the hyperlinks – such as the list of ‘References & Further Reading’ near the end – will work.

UPDATE #2: Just over a week after my talk, Google kills Authorship altogether. Oh well, so that’s that then…! (Although some speculate that it may live in the form of AuthorRank…)

[Burning books image credit – LearningLark]

Offline (Face-To-Face) Networking For SEOs: My #maximpact Guest Slot

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#maximpact Hangout screenshot
#maximpact Offline Networking logoI’ve been a huge fan of Max Minzer’s #maximpact series of Google+ Hangouts On Air ever since I first discovered and joined in on one back in August last year. Since then, I have become a regular attendee, alongside the likes of the mighty Steve Webb (a.k.a. US Steve), Barrie Moran and Tony Dimmock.

43 episodes and nearly a year later, I was delighted to be asked to be the main speaker on a topic close to my heart: offline, face-to-face networking for SEOs. The Hangout took place this past Thursday (24th July).

During the Hangout we talked about:

  • My networking approach, which is not to sell – just getting to know people, listening to them and answering any questions that they have. “Anti-sales is the best kind of sales.”
  • Going to events on your own. What’s best to do? Try and go where you know someone is going, or bring a friend with you.
  • How networking doesn’t have to be seen as your traditional business networking events. Networking is what you make of it. You can network at social meetups (just so long as you don’t just sell, sell, sell – that’s sleazy). Just give people help and advice.
  • Researching events before you go – e.g. finding out who else is attending.
  • Networking at events where you’re also speaking, especially in terms of keeping calm or not acting too aloof or egotistical!
  • Networking at conferences, of both the SEO and non-SEO variety.
  • Not being one of those networkers who tries to leave a conversation the moment they realise that the person they’re talking to isn’t a potential customer/client – it’s not about selling to the person in front of you, it’s about getting to know them and vice versa. “You have no idea who knows who.”
  • Using social media (especially LinkedIn) for following up and keeping in touch with people after you’ve met them in person.
  • How to handle ‘hecklers’, i.e. people who have a negative impression of SEO when you meet them.

Here’s a link to the event page on Google+, which contains a few comments as well as a video embed, which I’ve also included below:

I also have an interview with Max in the works (similar to some of the interviews I’ve done before), which I hope to publish very soon.

The Business Of Web Design Conference 2014 – An SEO’s Perspective

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Yesterday I attended The Business Of Web Design 2014 (#tboWD), which was held on my doorstep in Cardiff. Although I am not a web designer, I could see from the conference’s talk topics that a lot of it would relate heavily to SEO freelancing – and I was right.

The question “how much does a website cost?” is so similar to the question “how much does SEO cost?”, when you’ve not even been told the prospect’s industry, their goals (e.g. whether they want to rank for a really tough keyword or a few less competitive keywords) or even the URL of the site. Determining how to price yourself as a consultant – whether it be on a basis of time or the potential value/ROI offered to the client – is applicable across both industries. And getting a client to say “yes” to things can be just as tricky in SEO as it is in web design.

In addition to eight fantastic talks, there was a panel Q&A at the end, and to my terror (but also delight), the wonderful world of SEO was debated. I spent the first few minutes of my recent unified.diff talk tackling the subject of SEO’s terrible reputation – especially in the eyes of the web design/development community – and have previously blogged about how one of the best compliments I’d ever received was from a highly-respected local developer. Fortunately, while there were some stirrings of the typical “SEO is evil” type talk that we’re so used to seeing, I was really surprised and pleased to discover that the debate was handled really well. I’ll go into more detail below.

(Note: for those where it says “[Slides TBA]” for now, I’ll update the post with the slide deck embeds as-and-when they all become available.)

1) How much does a website cost? – Sean Johnson

[Slides TBA]

Sean Johnson photoSean (@seanuk) kicked things off with the question from prospects that often causes the most chagrin: “how much does a website cost?” Why? Because the answer is always: “it depends!”

What’s your industry? What are your goals with the website? Do you need eCommerce functionality? Does it need a blog? This applies to SEO so, so much: What’s your industry? What are your goals? Is the site brand new? Is the site even live yet? Has SEO work been carried out before, and if so, were spammy tactics involved? How can a web designer or SEO quote effectively without knowing that type of info first? The answer is: not very effectively. Not very.

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Choose Your Own Adventure – SEO For Web Developers: My unified.diff Talk

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unified.diff 1st slide screenshot
Last week I spoke at unified.diff, a monthly software/web development meet-up that’s made its home at the wonderful FoundersHub. It was a good and busy crowd.

I was sandwiched between interesting and entertaining talks about the Robotic Operating System and JSON Schema. Additional photos can be found here.

And here are the slides…

For my talk, I decided to challenge myself. I took on the Choose Your Own Adventure format – they were a bunch of books where you decided the journey of the character. Do you climb the mountain (go to pg. 33) or dive into the cave (pg. 38)? You chose the cave? Oh no! You were eaten by a bear! Go back to before that happened (pg. 29), and so on. I remember having a Sonic The Hedgehog CYOA book (in fact, I think it was this one).

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