Possible name for Author Rank update in 2013: Shakespeare Panda
Two years ago, after attending a much smaller BrightonSEO, we wrote a post about the death of journalism. Now in 2012, at a much bigger BrightonSEO, James Carson believes it is rising from the grave to take back the internet from anonymous personas.
The importance of authorship on the internet was a hot topic on Friday. As well as James Carson’s excellent 20×20 presentation ‘I Believe that Authors are The Future’, it also came up in a number of the other talks and prompted some follow up discussion on Twitter and on blogs. Coincidently a blog post on authorship appeared on SEOmoz two days later.
The meat of James’ talk was that authorship will be important for SEO in the future as search engines look to find a suitable replacement for link ranking factors that have become skewed thanks to paid link building, link spam and the ongoing pursuit of SEOs to gain more and higher authority links to boost their rankings. Even social ranking factors aren’t that reliable due to paid followers and shares. Read the rest of "Author Rank: More Important than Panda?"
The popular 20×20 presentations from last year were back and went down a storm. These talks were short 6 minute talks where the presenter had 20 slides that each changed automatically after 20 seconds.
Nichola Stott and Dom Hodgson Prepare for their 20x20 Talk at BrightonSEO 2012
The 20×20 talks were definitely tough work for some but they all had some useful points. Here are our top 5 from each. These are very consolidated points so where possible we’ve included links to the speaker’s Twitter, slides and write up.
One of our favourite moments at BrightonSEO was speaking to somebody who came on an SEO training course in 2001. For many people our courses are their first step towards a new career path or a role change but we also provide training for businesses who want all their staff working with the same knowledge. Our Social Media, Content Marketing and Google Analytics training are all popular with SEO at the moment as the overall internet marketing strategy evolves into one.
We spent our lunchtime at Brighton SEO frantically typing up our morning notes and getting a blog post but we hear all the out of town SEOs thoroughly enjoyed Brighton’s cuisine and we had a chance to play a few people at Top SEO Trumps as well!
Unfortunately we can only find slides for one of the afternoon talks so far but if they turn up we will update the post.
New to SEO and want to learn more? We run regular 1-day SEO courses in Brighton which are perfect for beginners or as refresher courses. We also run Social Media, Content Marketing and Google Analytics training which fit together with SEO as part of an overall internet marketing strategy.
Charlie Peverett, iCrossing – It’s Only Words? Working with Content Strategy
In the past, a lot of SEOs came from a technical background – SEO meant links and website structure. Now that it is so focused on content, the recent trend has been to take content writers and train them up as SEOs, rather than the other way round. Charlie Peverett was a content writer who was unaware of SEO, this also meant that nobody was aware of his content. Now working for iCrossing, Charlie Peverett used this talk to explain how important content strategy is in SEO. So why is content strategy important?
The SEO industry knows that ‘great content’ is important but has never really spent time considering what ‘great content’ is – something that is usually glossed over.
Content is expensive – it takes time to decide what to write, who will write it, when it will be written and then time to write it, publish it and share it.
Users and brands are involved in all aspects of our content and so content creators should be aware of how content strategy involves them. Content writers must grow up.
Use the same language. “Linkbait” is sick-inducing, “over-optimisation” means making something too good to anybody outside the SEO world and don’t even think about “using bloggers”.
Know you value as an SEO – use search insight to inform your decisions on content strategy. Know what works and why and repeat.
On Friday 13th April, 1000 SEOs from around the world for BrightonSEO 2012. The event was a real success with a huge range of topics covered, some arguments started and a good time had by all. On Friday we wrote up the ‘Ask the Engines’ discussion panel but now that we’ve had the weekend to digest the day in full and watch back the videos of all the talks. As there is so much to cover we have split our round up into three parts – the morning session, afternoon session and 20×20 presentations. We have now also added a write up and discussion of James Carson’s Author Rank 20×20.
We have decided to do a BrightonSEO Round Up with a difference: for each and every talk we have picked out 5 Key Takeaways. These are a mix of the most actionable, quotable or jaw dropping points made by the speakers at BrightonSEO 2012.
It was certainly a great way to start the day with a chance for SEOs to ask their questions to the people that matter – Bing and Google. Answering questions and trying to stoke a heated debate were:
SEO will never die but is always evolving. (Pierre Far) SEOs are like magicians, they have skills that are alien to the rest of the world and must keep it that way, always staying one step ahead. (Dave Coplin)
Stop complaining about penalisation, if you stick to the Webmaster Guidelines, you won’t be punished. Try and be white hat, not matter how tempting paid links are. (Pierre Far)
Speed of sharing is a big social signal for Bing – perhaps even more important than number of fans. Buying likes and fans has little benefit as there is no guarantee they will share your content.
Rich media is probably a ranking factor (Martin MacDonald) but it ‘doesn’t matter if it’s a ranking factor’ – SEO is not a checklist, signals should come naturally. (Pierre Far)
Bing believes that Google really are just trying to protect user privacy with encrypted search. The 1000 SEOs in attendance believe otherwise.
As you can tell from those takeaways, the panel touched on some controversial points regarding paid links, social sharing and whether Google likes SEO or not.
Make sure you read our full write of the ‘Ask the Engines’ panel at Brighton SEO for a more in-depth insight into what Google and Bing are looking for from SEOs.
For each session we’ve highlighted our top 5 takeaways from every talk.
We caught the whole panel on video and have uploaded it for those of you who missed the day or want to watch it again. It’s long at 40 minutes but we thoroughly recommend it for any SEOs who want an insight into what the search engines are planning:
In honour of the event, Brighton pier has been used as the background for Bing today. This shows how far BrightonSEO has come from a room above a pub so kudos to Kelvin for that!
First up was the discussion panel, a chance to ‘ask the search engines’. This was a chance for SEOs to direct their questions directly at Google (Pierre Far) and Bing (Dave Coplin) and find out what they really think. Representing the search industry itself were freelancer Rishi Lakhani and Martin MacDonald.
If you want to learn more about SEO or train up your staff to understand it better then you should take a look at our SEO package deals. As shown in this post, SEO isn’t enough for rankings these days and your content and social strategies are just as important. Combine SEO training, Social Media training, Content Marketing training and Google Analytics training for 5 days of SEO insight and a great discount!
Here at Silicon Beach Training, we pride ourselves on providing training to meet demand – so we’re pleased to have just added a brand new HTML Emails Training course to our range of Internet Marketing Courses. We’ve designed it to complement our popular Email MarketingCourse which teaches you the principles of building an email marketing campaign. That campaign will rely on having engaging emails, so our HTML Emails course is here to fill this gap.
Our new HTML Emails Training course is £295 + vat and the first course will be running on 19th June 2012. Book the course as a package with our Email Marketing training for just £495 + vat (normally £590 + vat).
Why You Need HTML Emails
Businesses have been increasingly waking up to the need for effective, engaging web content. This extends to email-based content; a huge amount of emails are deleted every day after just a cursory scan through the content – you want your email to be the one to be read in full and the links followed.
Sending out plain text emails means missing out on a chance to emphasise your words with branding and a well-thought out layout.
In February this year, Mark Zuckerberg posted this photo to his Facebook profile. Have a look at the MacBook and the Facebook page it displays. Can you make out what appears to be the first sign of a revamped functionality – an elongated search box?
There have been many blog posts and articles written on the subject since. Most make the reasonable conclusion that Facebook’s developments in search, and SERPs, will be limited to the walls of its own site. This is fuelled by strong rumours that appear to stem from within the Facebook camp that say that Facebook is indeed working on a major improvement to its search, and that the project is lead by ex-Google engineer Lars Rasmussen. Rasmussen himself has expressed interest in the past about the link between social media and search.
Some, like the Daily Mail, have gone as far as to say that Facebook is trying to come up with a search engine to rival Google – which is almost certainly not true. What is certain is that Facebook’s priorities to date have not been in search. The existing search function is basic at best, frustrating at worst. A search for a company name gives you a mix of related pages and a jumbled mix of locations, current and ex-staff profiles, website ‘likes’ and mentions.
The importance of good project management skills is rarely more in the public eye than during the TV run of The Apprentice. Each week, the two teams each elect a project manager who is ultimately responsible for achieving the goals set that week – and performing better than the other team. The neck of the project manager on the losing team is automatically on the line as one of three poor performers who may get ‘fired’ – it’s a position of high responsibility, whether in a TV competition or in business.
Last week (series 8, episode 2), it was Jane McEvoy’s turn to be project manager of the women’s team. She nominated herself to be PM because she had experience of bringing products from conception to market. That’s fair enough – but not enough. The teams on The Apprentice should be questioning what makes a good project manager based on their PM skills as well as experience in that area of business. Any good project manager should have had training in a technique such as PRINCE2.
The boardroom showdown seemed like a close call this week; all three had made significant failings. Perhaps if Jane had had some project management training, her team would have won the task and let the boys fight it out instead. So where did she go wrong? What kind of project management advice could we have given her to achieve better results? Read the rest of "Project Management on The Apprentice – what Jane did Wrong"
In the past, a lot of SEOs came from a technical background – SEO meant links and website structure. Now that it is so focused on content, the recent trend has been to take content writers and train them up as SEOs, rather than the other way round. Charlie Peverett was a content writer who was unaware of SEO, this also meant that nobody was aware of his content. Now working for iCrossing, 
Here at Silicon Beach Training, we pride ourselves on providing training to meet demand – so we’re pleased to have just added a brand new 
In February this year, Mark Zuckerberg posted this photo to his Facebook profile. Have a look at the MacBook and the Facebook page it displays. Can you make out what appears to be the first sign of a revamped functionality – an elongated search box?
The importance of good project management skills is rarely more in the public eye than during the TV run of The Apprentice. Each week, the two teams each elect a project manager who is ultimately responsible for achieving the goals set that week – and performing better than the other team. The neck of the project manager on the losing team is automatically on the line as one of three poor performers who may get ‘fired’ – it’s a position of high responsibility, whether in a TV competition or in business.
