John OK SEO Consultant | SEO Training

I recently had the pleasure of going to a Search London event at Campus London. It was the first day event put on by the Search London team which kicked off in the afternoon.

The event started with a brief talk by the event sponsor Dixon Jones Managing Director of Majestic SEO. Dixon gave a quick walk through on the latest updates to their software which covered a talk about Flow metrics.

Lisa Myers – Founder and CEO of Verve Search

Lisa’s presentation was entitled Killer Content Strategies. Amongst other points I found her creativity rules very helpful. Lisa encourages the importance of resting your mind and doing something different that is not in front of your desk. Another useful tip from Lisa was ‘Have a notepad with you at all times’. Recently I have been carrying my moleskin with me and no longer rely on the Notes App on the iPhone. Other useful takeaways were writing about topics that you care about, this is true because it makes writing so much easier.

http://www.slideshare.net/lisadmyers/killer-content-strategies-searchlondon/

Kevin Gibbons – Managing Director UK Blue Glass

Kevin gave tips and advice which he himself would have benefited from when he started out ten years ago. As a freelance SEO I found Kevin’s insights really useful as he provided clear tips which I’m sure most entrepreneurs would agree with. Some of Kevin’s tips included ‘finishing one task is better than starting ten’ and figure out what you do best and stick with it. I will certainly be putting some of his tips into practice. You can checkout Kevin’s presentation on slide share to get more of his tips.

http://www.slideshare.net/kevgibbo/what-ive-learned-from-10-years-of-seo

Nichola Stott – Managing Director of Media Flow

Nichola delivered her presentation superbly. She sure is a good speaker who can command your attention. Nichola is not only a good presenter but her content about ‘Earning Links’ was solid. She first challenges the myths like ‘build it and they will come’ and making a video, does not mean that it will go viral. Nichola covered the three phrase process of getting links (Creation, Distribution, Ideation) and ‘What makes us news worthy’ which I found useful. You can view Nichola presentation by clicking on the link below:

http://www.slideshare.net/NicholaStott/earning-links-using-business-assets

James Carson – Founder of Carson Consultancy

If you had just walked into James’ presentation you may have mistaken him for a film critic, or a presenter on Film 2013. He spoke about story telling in content marketing and explained the correlation between the films The Matrix, Lion King, Gladiator, Star Wars and Avatar. He also provided an example of selling marketing software and used a bored SEO persona named Joe to explain the process of effective stakeholder engagement.

http://www.carsoncontent.com/blog/storytelling

Summary

Great talks!The event also included complementary drinks and snacks during the intervals which presented some good networking opportunities. The event was followed by ‘meet the speakers’ meetup in the evening. A big thank you goes out to the host Jo Turnbull and the rest of the Search London team for putting on a successful event, keep ‘em coming guys!

When I first started out in SEO I would focus all of my attention on optimising the web pages meta data and content with keywords. I thought by meticulously doing these tasks it would definitely get me to page one of Google. I was so wrong, I soon realised that on-page SEO was only a small part of the overall campaign. I learnt that getting links to my site was where I needed to focus my attention. Although I have now realised the importance of link building I am also aware that it’s important to get the on-page basics right.

SEO Copywriting now

Major update’s have already been made to Google’s algorithms and the need to write good content on a page is of even more importance now (early 2013) than before. The things that I used to focus on when I first started out remain the same, make sure web pages are properly optimised for search engines but more importantly, add value to the reader.

Does the Meta Data still make a difference in SEO?

Yes is the short answer, but to make this useful to the reader I will explain further. After you have performed a thorough keyword research using a tool like Google keyword tool, start adding your chosen keywords into the meta data of the site. This is necessary rather than revolutionary information that I’m sharing because search engines still look at meta data to determine what the web page is about. That being said you should give your page a title using the relevant keywords for that page. Here’s an example, let’s say the keyword that you want to rank for is Cupcake; the firm Sprinkles Cupcakes have put the title of their homepage as ‘Sprinkles Cupcakes – The Original Cupcake Bakery’. The search engine immediately knows that the web page relates to the keyword Cupcake and can display it on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP’s) based on its PageRank. Other important meta data is the description. Meta keywords do not carry much weight with the search engines so forget about stuffing keywords in that tag.

What about Header Tags do they still matter?

The header tags tell the search engines what the content on a page or post is about. For example I’ve used the heading ‘What About Header Tags Do They Still Matter?’ in this section of the post. The search engine can deliver this post on the SERP’s when someone does a search for header tags. Header tags have a hierarchy which begin with the H1 tag right down to H6. Just like when you pick up a newspaper and look at the headline title on a page and determine whether it’s worth reading or not is similar to how a search engine will decide whether to deliver the web page.

Writing Content for seo

Once you have optimised the meta data and header tags it’s now time to add the keywords into the content. Your primary focus should be to write useful information that is readable and engaging to the reader. This cannot be achieved if keywords are simply stuffed into sentences and paragraphs. Yes your keywords should be added to your content but it needs to flow and read well. This may mean changing your sentences and paragraphs around until it sounds right.

Currently search engines still use the above to crawl and index web pages which makes these points still relevant.

Feel free to share your thoughts and views.

In 2012 the landscape of SEO changed more than at any other time since its inception. All those poor link building tactics (links schemes, unrelated links, duplicate content etc) couldn’t handle the Google Panda and Penguin updates and were penalised and the sites performance on Google significantly dipped.
If you’re a link builder and followed the correct methods of obtaining links then you were not affected by Google’s algorithm updates. If you sought to obtain quality over the quantity of links then Google’s updates would not have phased you, in fact you welcomed their updates!

What to expect in 2013

By keeping my ear to the ground I have come up with what I feel will be important to a successful link building campaign.

Content
It’s always worth creating quality content for generating links but even more so now. When creating a blog post, infograhpic, video or press release make sure that the content adds value. Adding value could be educating or solving a problem. If something adds value to you, you’re going to want to keep hold of it and link to it!

Outreach
I’m going to put a few different techniques under the umbrella of ‘Outreach’. Now what I mean by outreach is reaching out to bloggers, leading authorities and experts in your niche.
Offline is also a very natural way to connect with like minded people that can be mutually beneficial to both parties. It’s through attending conferences and meetups where relationships are formed. This brings me to guest posting. You could form a good relationship with a very influential blogger who may be willing for you to guest post on their blog! A link acquired through guest posting is only of real value if it’s from a high authority site. The benefits of guest posting is not limited to just links but also brand awareness and extra traffic to your site which is always nice.

Summary
I would say that the future of link building is link earning. Creating quality content will naturally attract links as it adds value. Google want to give their users a better experience so if SEO’s develop campaigns with that in mind then you’re on the right track. No more cutting corners by publishing poor content, buying links or getting links from (cough) low value directory sites. Links of value now have to be earned.

What do you think the future of link building is?