Getting Your Face In Google: My Cardiff Internet Talk

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A week ago (on 16th April) I gave a talk at Cardiff Internet, a local monthly internet marketing event aimed at small business owners. My talk was all about rel="author" implementation and its benefits, containing a live implementation demo on a WordPress blog using the Yoast SEO plugin.

The venue – Porter’s Cardiff – was awesome: the ‘Other Room’ which can be hired “houses a cinema style projector screen and theatre seats:”

Greg (@gregbednarski, CI’s organiser) also took some photos, which can be found on Facebook (you’ll have to login to see them though).

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Introducing… Whose Line 365

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* Update: Unfotunately WL365 is no more… *

I’ve been busy! I’ve just launched a pet project called Whose Line 365: a blog 365 project where I’ll be sharing a clip of Whose Line Is It Anyway? (both the UK and US versions) each and every day. It started on 6th April and will continue until 5th April 2014.

If you’re a fan of WLIIA, why not check it out? If you want to be updated as-and-when posts are published, then follow it on Twitter: @WhoseLine365

Whose Line 365 screenshot

Rorschach’s SEO Journal

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Given that I work in SEO and that Watchmen is one of my favourite films of all time, I’ve had this idea on the back burner for a while.

I have just one request of you though, dear reader/fellow SEO/fellow Watchmen fan. Please don’t take any of it seriously. Read, laugh and enjoy! 🙂

Full credit for the original text goes to its writer, Alan Moore, who’d probably weep if he knew I’d desecrated his excellent work. Or bludgeon me. Or both. Simultaneously.

OCTOBER 12, 2015:

Rorschach image 1Panda dancing in the algo this morning, version 155. This search engine is afraid of me. I have seen its true SERPs. The results are extended sewers and the sewers are full of spam and when the drains finally scab over, all the black hats will lose rankings. The accumulated filth of all their link wheels and keyword stuffing will foam up about their backlink profiles and all the directory submitters and article spinners will login and type “Save us!”…

…and I’ll look at Google’s search bar on my screen, and type in “no results found.”

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SEOno News & GB Posts: Part 5

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News

A fair bit’s happened recently:

  • I’ve joined Cardiff Blogs‘ admin team. Even though I’ve had little involvement with the organsation of the March event (due to illness), I will be involved with future events. If you blog and you’re based in South Wales yet you’ve never been before then what’s stopping you?! 🙂 Sign up here.
  • I was also supposed to give a talk at Ignite Cardiff‘s February event (IC10), but unfortunately had to pull out at the last minute (also due to illness). I’m hoping to have my talk pushed to their next event – IC11 – in May.
  • Even though I’d previously reported that I’m on my way to obtaining ‘chartered’ marketer status, it turns out… I’m not. My tutor found out from the CIM that the CAM Diploma doesn’t count towards it. However this is bearing in mind that I’ve received multiple letters and certificates of progress from the CIM saying that I’m on my way to becoming chartered. Pretty bad really… it’s certainly soured my opinion of the CIM. Update: The CIM have cleared this up via Twitter here and here.
  • It’s not yet been fully announced, but I’m going to be doing a talk at Cardiff Internet in April. My first ever professional talk! I’ll be talking about rel="author". Update: Unfortunately the event has been postponed, so… just ignore this bullet-point, heh!
  • I’ve been featured on Lancaster University’s Alumni section. Read my profile writeup here.

Posts on other sites

And here’s a couple of posts I’ve written for my work blog and as guest blogs since last time:

#SMsceptic: Etiquette Tips For Gentler (Yet More Effective) Twitter Outreach

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Megaphone graffiti imageIt’s been a little while since I wrote an #SMsceptic post (i.e. moans about social media), but following a recent first-hand experience and various conversations with colleagues/industry peers/fellow tech enthusiasts, I wanted to discuss Twitter @mentions some more, especially in the context of conducting outreach.

For the record, in my opinion, outreach via Twitter is awesome. I prefer it to email (which is I guess the more standard approach in an online capacity) for a fair few reasons:

  • It’s quicker and easier. “Hey, I wrote about you – check it out: [shortened URL].” Boom! Done.
  • It’s less pestering to an extent (…at least I think so, as I see email as a somewhat more formal means of communication and therefore Twitter as less formal – with that in mind, an ill-timed or unwanted @mention may be viewed with less dislike than an email of the same intent).
  • It holds more weight from an authoritative point of view – if someone’s thinking “who is this guy/girl?!” then they can check out your profile. If you have stuff in common or they realise that you have mutual acquaintances then it might help with the process. They might not be able to assess all of that by email alone, e.g. if you don’t have any info in your email signature.
  • It’s visible to those who have an interest in both of you – i.e. if someone is following both the sender and receiver of the tweet, they’d be able to see it in their feed and – as they know both of you – they might be inclined to check it out as well.

Also, @mentions are generally more effective than DMs (Direct Messages) as the latter requires that both people follow each other, which may not be the case all the time, especially if you’re conducting outreach with people who may not know you (yet).

Anyway, I digress. Apologies… I tend to do that.

The main point of this post is help you to avoid a few common pitfalls, take a softer approach and generally piss as few people off as possible (which can sometimes be the nature of the beast with this type of thing).

Click to read more!