We have put together a truly galaxy class competition for all SEO cadets out there. Have you been in SEO LESS than 2 YEARS or WANT TO GET IN TO SEO? Then YOU are the next generation SEO, and WE would like to help you become the best SEO cadet that you can be.

The enterPRIZE:

1 FULL CONFERENCE pass to SES LONDON 2012 (21st-23rd February)
AND access to ClickZ Training Academy (Monday 20th February). Courtesy of the guys at SES Conference Series.

3 Months MENTORING with the SEO-Chicks!
YOU will have access to ALL of the SEO-Chicks to help you with any questions or guidance you need. You will also get to meet a bunch of us (Lisa, Nichola, Judith & Annabel) at one of the days of SES London to discuss your mentoring plan.

How to ENTER the competition:

Create a blogpost OR a video

Topic: A lot has happened in SEO in the past 10 years, what will happen in the next 10 years. Tell us what you think SEO will be like in 2022. The entry can be anything from a serious blogpost on SEO and its development to a fun futuristic view of SEO, or maybe an interview with yourself in the future. It’s up to you.

When you have made the entry all you do is tweet a link to your entry and include @SEOChicks + the hashtag #SEO2022 OR  you can simply leave a a comment on this blogpost with the URL to your entry!

What we are looking for: An entry that will make us think, laugh or make us say “yeah that’s it”.

Deadline: Monday 6th February. The SEO-Chicks will then review all the entries and announce the WINNER on Thursday 9th February.

Good Luck and “make it so No 1”!!!!

———————————————————————————————
Note: you don’t need to be in the UK to enter the competition but the prize does NOT include hotel or travel to London (you will have to make your own way to the conference).The competition is limited to anyone that has been in SEO 2 years or less and you MUST be available to attend both the training day and the conference days (we basically don’t want the prize to go to waste). The competition is open to women AND MEN (we’re not sexist)!!

Edit 1/2/12: We have extended the deadline to Monday 6th February + extended the experience level to anyone that has been in SEO 2 years or LESS!

I keep hearing horror stories about SEO companies ripping off the very people they are meant to help. While there are some excellent search companies out there dedicated to helping customers and going above and beyond, there are others who, like cowboy builders, want to take the cash and run. This can often leave the client out of pocket but also unsure of who to turn to for help when something of this nature happens.

When I attended SES London some six or so years ago, I remember hearing the story of a charity who had paid an SEO firm five-figures and gotten nothing for it. Whether this was their perception or reality is always difficult to know but it left them thinking the whole industry was crooked. I continued to hear of agencies charging for Google Analytics (free), purporting to run PPC with no proof of any spend and continued hearing of SEO companies taking money and doing nothing at all.

If this wasn’t bad enough, the shoddy work produced by some led to sites being dropped down the rankings or worse – banned. Link buying is one example of a practice that can harm the client as well as the agency and as recently as March 2011 I have heard of companies continuing to buy links in competitive, but not extremely so, verticals. JC Penny and Overstock are just two examples of companies harmed by blatant link manipulation.

How do you know if you choosing a good agency? With no industry body and anyone able to set themselves up as an SEO, how do you know that they are acting in your best interest and in a professional way? I gave a talk on just that (and how to survive the zombie apocalypse) at the London Affiliate Conference.

Moderator – Gillian Muessig

Speaker – Dixon Jones

Speaker – Judith Lewis

Speaker – Ken McGaffin

Looks like Gillian is MIA so Judith is warming up the crowd with some @greenandblacks good stuff.

Judith Lewis – Beyond fills in, to intro for Dixon. Hands over to Dixon.

Dixon Jones – MajeticSEO

We’re looking at what defines success; correlatrions between links and traffic.

1st Case Study: beautifulpeople.com

Dating site, pretty common, competetive, not particulalry newsworthy.

Aim was to create a storm by kicking out all the fat member (7000) of the site, which worked extremely well as linkbait and in terms of articles.

“Letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business model” (CEO quote). Perfect linkbait, got national coverage.

Story came out 4th January 2010, and looking at link graph using domain discovery report (Majestic) shows that the links go bang in Q1 2010.

Activity was stoked by follow-up press releases about brits being ugliest people in the world etc.

In this particular case the link graph and traffic correlated highly, which is the hallmark of a great link campaign.

Press releases were the main communication method for this – but the question is – is there something stickier?

Case study 2.

XE.com – became the authority on the web, which they did by creating  a link-magnet of a widget. They are number 1 for their headline phrase, however they are beginning to lose traffic. Possible loss of site-wide links? Usurped by better/slicker conversion widget?

Lesson – being number 1 is not always enough and do not assume that links are forever.

Case Study 3 – Paper.li

Collates a personalised “best of” tweets and RT’s from those in your feed. Dixon calls this “technobait”. Content is collated and geared to the individual, but the fact the Paper.li is “published” via twitter, showing which users are featured as content contributors, combined technobait, with egobait, meaning their non-cumulative link generation has seen phenomenal growth.

Campaign is therefore exponential. Doesn’t matter if Google sees this as good or bad, as “duplicate content” or less than original.

Lessons

Social link elements have added virality

Play to vanity (even wordpress plays to this with pingbacks)

Good links = good traffic

Press can be good but technology can be more powerful

Anne Kennedy steps in for Gillian and introduces Judith.

Judith Lewis – Beyond

What is the motivation for becomming a link magnet?

Sharing is one way, becomming a useful resource in your community.

Create a strategy – why dictates the strategy

• Personal fame
• understand voice
• choose name, register, publish
• Register domain, and all social spaces

be careful, if you want to be a personal link magnet as a representitive of company, then who owns that intellectual property.

Copy a winning strategy – e.g. drinkbait campaign

Project Your Voice

• Blog
• Guest blog
• Speaking

Obligatory top 10 link magnet ideas

• controversial
• be the font of all knowledge
• take a stand
• personality
• share
• funny
• prolific
• mysterious
• buy links

That’s why Judith does the chocolate thing! Now using this strategy Judith pwns all bar one on the top 10, as opposed to previously 2 out of top 7.

Anne Kennedy asks Judith for a comment on JCP – “don’t buy stupid links”.

This is a liveblog in progress and will update…

Final speaker is Ken McGaffin of Wordtracker, who is going to offer a slightly different stance.

Ken is going to look at creative ideas/products/tools as link magnets.

1. Free tools ( a good idea will continue to bring traffic and links months and months, if not years after launch)

Creativity is a skill that can be learned. Ken quotes Kipling “I keep six honest serving men they taught me all I knew; Their names are What and Why and When, And How and Where and Who.” (I have no idea where this point went – NS).

How many people watched the Golden Globes? Very few – however all the coverage and re-views came from the Ricky Jervais publicity. Who was Jervais’ audience? Not those at the awards, not really even those at home. His audience was the press, bloggers, online sharing (linkerati).

Whole event and the selection of Jervais as host is an absolute ratings coup.

Ken asks – how can we apply this kind of traditional PR mentality/creativity to a magnetic link campaign.

Key Lessons:

• Get creative
• Identify top targets (using link analysis for influential links not competitor links)
• Create something oustatnding
• Generate direct income
• Prime your top targets
• Write customised press releases
• Tweet about the launch extensively
• Monitor results and add new linking sites to target lists

Fret not, if you haven’t got a ticket for SES London 2011, as the SEO Chicks will be out in force (like Delta Force.)  Unfortunately Sarah Carling can’t be with us, as she is pretending to be Canadian. Lisa Myers and Judith Lewis will be speaking at various sessions, whilst I’ll be covering some of the main events, with some support from Julie Joyce.

Here’s the dates and times of the sessions I’ll be covering. The intention is to liveblog, so keep an eye on the hashtags #SESUK and #SESLondon.

Day 1: Tuesday 22nd February

2:45 – 3:45 Track 2. Meaningful SEO Metrics

Speakers: Brian Clifton, Matthew Bailey and Peter Young

4:00 – 5:00 Track 1. How to Become a Link Magnet

Speakers: Gillian Muessig (Mod), with Dixon Jones, Judith Lewis and Ken McGaffin (panel)

In the evening I’ll be heading along to the LondonSEO Big Party, which is open to anyone in the SEO (and related search fields) that happens to be in town and wants to go and have some fun, make some new friends and business contacts.

Day 2. Wednesday 23rd February

9:30 – 10:30 Track 2. Monetising Social Commerce

Solo presentation by John Butler, Global Head – Communications & Media, dunnhumby

11:00 – 12:00 Track 3. Content Marketing Optimisation

Solo presentation by Lee Odden, SES Advisory Board & CEO, TopRank Online Marketing

1:00 – 2:00 Track 1. Why Does Search Get All the Credit

Speakers: Bill Hunt (Moderating), with Nick beck and Paul Mead on the panel.

2:30 – 3:30 Track 1. Is Search Remarketing/Retargetting Right for You?

Speakers: Matt McGowan (moderator) with James Yancey, Guy Levine and Magnus Nilsson on the panel.

Wednesday nights’ entertainment; the SES London Networking Party starts at 7:00 pm, on board HMS President. Due to head-count restrictions this is for conference attendees only and you must show your pass.

Make sure you bring a business card for a chance to win one of five super-cool Raven Tools t-shirts!

Day 3. Thursday 24th February

9:30 – 10:30 Track 3. Video Search Optimisation

Speakers: Sean Hargrave (moderating) with Paul Carff, Will Critchlow and Jonathan Allen on the panel.

10:45 – 11:45 Track 3. Local 2.0 – The Evolution of Local Search

Speakers: Andy Atkins-Kruger (moderating) with Lisa Myers and Jens Munch on the panel.

Karma, undying affection and a possible Raven t-shirt will go to anyone who brings me coffee whilst I fly around the conference centre trying to be in the right place, early and with signal.

With only 6% of companies ready to engage with customers on a regular basis and 82% of consumers actively wanting to engage with brands, the recent Alterian survey revealed a huge disconnect between businesses and consumers.

Social media reports may seem to be a dime a dozen at times and while there are lies, damn lies and statistics, this report casts a frightening light on marketing departments all over the UK and US.  No matter how nicely you try and spin the numbers, the Alterian report “Brands At Risk” is a damning indictment of the inability of brands to keep up with the rapid pace of change in the current marketplace.

The internet is essential to business.  Whether looking at the over 10 billion searches performed in March 2010 in the US alone, or the fact that 81% of the people surveyed for this study saw the internet as the ‘first port of call’ to compare products or services, the internet is an essential part of marketing.  Social media, with its requirement for engagement and response in an often public forum to sometimes embarrassing mistakes, can seem like an unnecessary time overhead and yet the Alterian study reveals it is as important a marketing channel as any other.

Only a tiny 5% of people surveyed trusted the advertising from an organisation, and yet 75% said it would have a positive impact on their experience as a customer if companies took the time to find out more about their needs.  While the time overhead involved in social media is greater than the time involved in traditional media, for the cost of an average TV campaign a much more effective and longer lasting social media campaign with a higher impact could be launched if this report is to be believed.

Social media is a relative newcomer on to a marketer’s radar but email marketing, a much more mature marketing channel should have a higher utilisation rate for customer management.  While 75.3% of companies taking part in a different survey said they received customer feedback by e-mail, only 23.1% said they tracked and measured the volume and nature of these messages.  These companies don’t know if they have a problem, let alone how bad the problem is.

New Media Age published survey results in January 2010 indicating that just 14% of marketers believe social media has a significant impact on their brand and 60% do not currently have a social media strategy for their business.  That is a serious disconnect between what marketers believe and that customers believe.  If the customer is always right then in this spells a disaster for many brands with a marketing department completely out of touch with the modern marketing age.

The Alterian and related reports makes for pretty depressing reading both as a marketer and as a consumer.  There is a serious disconnect between what marketing departments believe to be important and what consumers want.  This disconnect is serious enough that it is putting a number of large, well established brands at risk as smaller, more agile brands respond to this type of sentiment and move rapidly into social media for sales, marketing and customer service support.

Marketing departments need to take a look at this report and decide if they can afford to continue to ignore social media and the internet as a significant marketing channel.  While reach may be measured differently, the internet is vital for all brands, regardless of size or marketing spend.

Scared? Need to find help?  I have ONE FREE TICKET to the Monitoring Social Media conference to give away to the tenth person to tweet “I’m scared and *need* that free ticket to Monitoring Social Media from @JudithLewis STAT!” on Tuesday November 9th after 11:30am GMT (judge’s decision final. No cash alternative. It’s a free ticket, nothing more).  Missed getting a freebie? Get a 10% discount with code JL10

Hello, my name is Judith Lewis and I am a searchoholic.  I live and breathe search and have done for pretty much over a decade.  It has become who and what I am more than any other aspect of myself.  It is easy to become a searchaholic in this industry with its own language, secret codes and instant gratification.  What we sometimes forget is that the world does not live and breathe search, a fact I was reminded of in the Pan European Search Strategies session at SAScon.

During a break between speakers, one of the attendees thanked the speakers for helping him to understand that he needed to target the Netherlands and Belgium differently.  While this seemed quite basic to me, it suddenly became clear to me that those who live in the Land of Search learn and understand localisation and targeting, do so slightly differently than those who do not.

As part of the naturalisation process when you immigrate to the Land of Search, you are taught about the global search landscape and how culture, language, platforms and other elements differ from country to country.  You are taught about Orkut and Brazil, Yandex and Russia, Baidu and China with its interesting politics and cultural norma.  You learn how a busy page works in Asia while a minimalist page works better in Europe.  You are taught that there are cultural, language and search engine preference differences globally and this becomes second nature.

Beyond this more obvious and easily measured uniqueness globally, is the understanding of how culture and regional politics factors in to everything.  Bas vandenBelt in his Pan-European search presentation mentioned how a predominantly orange coloured site in the Ukrane indicates a political affiliation while in Holland it represents a huge party celebrating the queen.  Andy Atkins Kruger pointed out how simply translating a site from English to other languages never works because of language usage and cultural differences.  These are all important points which are sometimes lost when creating a global web strategy.

Language is one of the things which makes each area of the world, each culture and each sub-group unique.  From the differences in Portuguese around the world, to Spanish, French and Chinese, each language will not only have its own nuances but culturally people will respond differently to the same sentiment expressed using slightly different words.  This is why translating a site is never enough – not only will translation leave a site unoptimised, it could also render it unreadable.

In Finland there are sometimes four or five ways to refer to the same thing.  Checking to make sure we captured the more popular forms of the words meant not only being aware of this, but understanding what the popular searches were.  What this shows is that a simple translation could end up using the wrong word, too formal a word, a word no one searches for or the right word purely by chance.  Localisation requires a local, expert hand.  Translation is not enough – understanding local language use is key.

In the Far East, not only is the use of language complex but the cultural and political issues must also be taken in to account when localising.  There are issues around what is said, how it is said and what the target audience is.  Even images which seem inoffensive or banal could be seen differently elsewhere in the world.  Understanding these cultural nuances when creating a site can mean the difference between success and expulsion of the company from the country.

Localisation and not translation is the key but also understanding the local market for each country you are going in to is important.  Barging in like a bull in a china shop will be more likely to alienate a potential market rather than win them over.

There are a number of things that have led me to this post. I first started thinking about it following Judith’s post on SEO Moonlighting, then I had an experience with my pilates instructor and her website, that has my blood boiling still a week later, and finally Judith turned the SEO accreditation strategy session into a blog post which cemented my ideas and suddenly this post came together. I had planned for this to be the third in the SEO chicks 101 series, but this had to be written (in the way that blog posts often do) so I’m afraid you will have to wait until Thursday if you want to learn more about Keyword strategies.

For now let me tell you about my pilates instructor.

For quite some time now I have been moonlighting. Interestingly when I first read Judith’s post on the subject I disagreed, on the basis that many of us have lives outside of SEO and that there are only a limited number of hours in the day. Then after a lot of thought I realised that I managed to combine my moonlighting with other interests by doing SEO for very small business, on a barter basis. In the last couple of years I have worked with Yarn vendors, rat hammock makers, my optician, and now, my pilates instructor. I get free or discounted products and services, they get very cheap, quality SEO. It’s a win win situation. Most of these people would never be able to afford a good SEO, but because I barter they spend £100-£200 and I get products worth £200-£300. Not only that but I get to work on sites where the owner never argues, or tells me that their branding team won’t let me do something essential.

So when Abbie told me that she was leaving the health centre that she had been doing classes at and branching out on her own, I let her know that if she wanted help marketing her site, to give me a call. I also gave her a few hints, like making sure that she was able to edit the site and that there was a CMS in place to let her make the changes she needed to.

Lo and behold last week she called to let me know her new pilates site was liv, I had a look and wrote out some recommendations for the site. We then arranged for me to go round to show her how she could implement them. This was when it all went horribly wrong. The list of things that her web developer had screwed her on was huge, but some of the biggies were;

Not to mention the sexual harassment from someone who just couldn’t accept that he wasn’t getting a date!

Now, in some ways these aren’t the worst things a developer can do, but for someone who has never worked on line before, they are deal breakers. Abbie had been planning to get business cards printed out the following day, and had she not spoken to me would have built her business around a brand she did not own.

I’m working with Abbie to resolve many of these issues, and look at what we can do with the site on an ongoing basis to help make it manageable for her. She doesn’t need monthly ongoing SEO, she needs educating on the little things that she can do to make her site visible, against relatively few competitors.

So what does this have to do with regulation? When Judith was first venting about this on twitter, I pointed out that it wasn’t the medium sized companies who should know better that I got pissed off about, it was the really small, one man bands, without the resources to find out this information. Abbie proved to be the perfect example of this. So I urge everyone, if in any area of your life outside of work, you deal with small businesses or niche vendors, go out of your way to spend an hour or two to educate them, barter for your time if you want, or jut do it for free. Work with your local small business groups to provide some training, even if they’re not your target businesses. Not because it will bring you business in the future (though it might) but because the only way to beat the charlatans in this industry is to educate the people who are most likely to fall victim to them.

P.S. I haven’t named the web developer in question in this post because that wasn’t the point of the post. Abbie and I are giving him time to correct some of his errors before we look at way to take further action.

Title: Director
Company: Seshet Consulting
Email: Judith.lewis [at] seshet.co.uk
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/judithlewis
Twitter: www.twitter.com/JudithLewis
Also writes for: Technology Weekly and the Mostly About Chocolate Blog

Bio:

Judith Lewis has been working in online marketing since 1996, before it was called “online marketing”. She has extensive experience in performing “hands-on” SEO, indulging in everything from keyword research through to content development and linking building. She is also a dab hand at strategizing social media campaigns as well as pay-per-click (PPC) campaign creation and management. Prior to joining her current position she has worked in-house across a variety of sectors including retail/e-commerce, high tech and publishing.

Judith Lewis is the top finalist for the “Female Social Media Guru Award”. Outside of her digital media work at a west-end agency, Judith is director of Seshet Consulting, which works with small businesses on their paid & natural search, social media marketing and usability.

Judith Lewis has authored a chapter on Web Analytics in the “B2B Marketing – Best Practice Search Marketing Report (2008)” and a chapter on social media analytics in the “B2B Marketing – Best Practice Social Media Guide”. She writes regularly for Technology Weekly, the weekly publication from Centaur Publication. She also continuously contributes to other on and offline publications. Judith currently fully embraces a white hat existence, though this was not always the case.

Judith is a regular speaker at industry events, having spoken at: Search Engine Strategies (SES), Search Marketing Expo (SMX), Internet World, ThinkVisibility, W-Tech, Unicom Social Media Conferences, Centaur Communications Conferences, Social Media in Business, A4UExpo London and Amsterdam, Amsterdam Affiliate Conference, Online Information and a B2B Marketing Search Conference.

Interviews:

Interview with Judith Lewis re Affiliate Marketing (Video interview)
Interview with Judith Lewis on Future of Publishing
Interview with Judith Lewis by Lee McCoy
Interview with Judith Lewis from Linkworth
Interview with Judith Lewis by Kelvin Newman

Lisa Myers

She runs her own SEO & Social Agency, she’s founder of SEO-Chicks and co-founder of Stateofsearch.com, she speaks, she writes and has  a funny laugh..More..

Julie Joyce

Julie, or “Me Julie” like Lisa calls her is co-founder of SEO-Chicks and a southern belle (also the only one that can get away with calling Lisa “cupcake”) She runs her own Link Building agency in North Caroline and sits in a rocking chair (they all do over there) More..

Judith Lewis

Judith Lewis is obsessed about chocolate and will never speak at a conference without either bringing or talking about chocolate. She’s been in online marketing before it was even called that…..More..

Sarah Carling

Sarah is another crazy red-head on the SEO Chicks team, she spends her time on the beach SEOing as she is know in sunny Costa Rica…More..

Nichola Stott

Nichola is northern so don’t mess with her. She also runs her own SEO & Social Agency and have more balls than most men….More..

Annabel Hodges

Annabel is panda and seo obsessed…actually there is a lot more to her than that More..

Wow! We really didn’t imagine getting such fantastic response to the SEO Chicks blogging competition. We even had to extend the deadline as people kept on writing in asking if it was too late to enter. Myself, Julie and Judith have been going back and forth trying to whittle it down to 5 blogposts, in fact we decided to publish 6 as we just couldn’t whittle it down any more. So a big THANK YOU to everyone that has entered, and to those that were not successful on this occassion. Don’t give up, it was NO bad blogposts entered, it was really difficult choosing.

So with further ado, please find below links to each blogpost that has been published, we encourage you also to make any comments to each blogpost. Here’s the top 6 entries:

Entry #1 – Being Anonymous
Entry #2 – Diplomacy – the hidden quality of a successful
Entry #3 – PPC decline, AdWords & SEO: Where is online marketing headed?
Entry #4 – 15 Must-Follow Tips for Live Tweeting Conferences
Entry #5 – What Small Businesses Need From Search Marketers
Entry #6 – The End Of The “So What Is It That You Actually Do?” Question

Now that you have read them all, please vote for YOUR favourite: EDIT: THE VOTING IS NOW CLOSED!! THE FOLLOWING IS A SCREENGRAB OF THE FINAL VOTES!

Two of these taltented bloggers WILL become the new SEO Chicks, the winners will be anounced on Friday 9th October, the official launch date for the NEW SEO-Chicks website.

As well as becoming the new SEO Chicks, the winners will receive a SEO-Chicks t-shirt each AND get interviewed on Searchcowboys to be published next week!

In advance thank you for voting and taking part in the judging!