General
1) Think human and be human when you're designing your campaigns. It's the brands that engage on a human level that do well.Dave Coplin @dcoplin The Envisioners
2) Re-imagine the way you work. We're too stuck in a plateau of mediocrity and too fond of the old ways.
Dave Coplin
3) The QWERTY keyboard was designed to slow typists down and we're still using it!
Dave Coplin
4) Be aware of lean forward/lean back behavior when you're designing.
Dave Coplin
Link building
5) Here's a shocking fact ... links existed before Google. Why? because people wanted to generate traffic, get leads or promote the website via the link.Kevin Gibbons @kevgibbo BlueGlass
6) Some people say social is more important than links. However I don't see that. Links are still important
Paul Madden @pauldavidmadden Paul Madden
7) Read all the link building theories that you can, but test for your particular market. Don't rush into building lots of links for the sake of it.
Kevin Gibbons
8) Who links to you could become more important than where the link's from ...
Kevin Gibbons
9) Try to replicate the link models of the top sites in your sector. [Wordtracker's Link Builder can help with this.]
Kevin Gibbons
10) For best outreach results, you need an audience, which means social media ie likes, shares, tweets but rarely links.
Kevin Gibbons
11) Your existing assets can help generate links. What unusual characteristics do your staff have that make a good angle for a story? Are you younger, older? What are your passions? What makes you stand out?
Nichola Stott @NicholaStott themediaflow
12 ) If you're working in B2B link building, can you use the company's ethical policy to create a story? Other ideas: ride-to-work schemes, charitable donations.
Nichola Stott
13) Events can generate links: whether that's speaking at events, organizing a bloggers' evening, or a get-together for journalists.
Nichola Stott
14) What do you have in your business that's quantifiable, which would make a good story? Tallest, shortest, biggest, fattest, largest, longest.
Nichola Stott
15) Once you've got a story, use advanced query operators to look for story opportunities.
Nichola Stott
SEO
16) In 2013 Google's ranking factor is audience and human activity.Kevin Gibbons
17) What is Penguin? It's a penalty filter - designed to dull the effect of people chasing the Google Algorithm.
Paul Madden
18) Location, intent and device. Google with its Enhanced Campaigns expects you to be aware of all three.
Bill Hunt @billhunt backazimuth
19) Make sure you include the product number in your product description. People are going to search for it.
Bill Hunt
20) What are people searching for currently on your site? (Check your site search results.)
Bill Hunt
21) What terms are currently driving visits to your site? Knowing this will help you choose more.
Bill Hunt
22) Think about your main keywords. What do you think your visitor is expecting to find when they use it - information, or a product to buy?
Bill Hunt
23) Understand your buy cycle - learn, shop, buy, get, use. Where are your customers in it when they use a particular keyword?
Bill Hunt
24) There are 26 different words for "buy" in the English language. Make sure you're using them.
Bill Hunt
25) Where you rank high for a keyword but you're not getting clicks, it could be that your meta description isn't compelling enough.
Bill Hunt
26) Monitor social media chatter around your products - you may find words you hadn't thought of using.
Bill Hunt
27) Beat the data to death and find your keyword nuggets.
Bill Hunt
28) Make your H1 title stand out and go for a local angle. Something like "Richmond Man Escapes from Sinking Steamer Titanic" in a newspaper at the time of the sinking of the ship.
Max Brockbank @BiginSEO Verve search
29) Your search snippet is the first point of conversion - the title tag should be linked properly with the meta description. Together they should form part of a story that gets your message across and gets your link clicked.
Max Brockbank
30) First - define your business goals. What's the purpose of your website?
Jon Quinton @jonquinton1 SEO Gadget
31) Think about needs and how your goal fits in with those needs.
Jon Quinton
32) Identify who your searchers are. For example, for beach holidays you have the elderly couple, the party animal, the romantic couple or the young family. What search terms are each of those groups likely to use?
Jon Quinton
33) Look at TripAdvisor (if you're a travel-related site), Quora and Yahoo Answers to find out what your searchers are looking for.
Jon Quinton
34) Find out what people are asking and cater for it on your site. Be proactive. For example, there are lots of questions around families and kids from people looking for beach holidays. Therefore have lots of information and holidays aimed at families on your beach holiday site.
Jon Quinton
35) Monitoring your internal search will tell you how good your site navigation is.
Jon Quinton
36) It's hard work to keep doing well all the time. You have to prove your metrics on a daily basis.
Marcus Tober @marcustober Search Metrics
37) There are 30 trillion pages in Google's current index.
Marcus Tober
38) There will be continual updates from Google this year - on an ongoing basis. They won't all necessarily have a name.
Marcus Tober
39) Ranking on single keywords is worth less these days with personalization, localization, search history etc.
Marcus Tober
40) 55% better rankings with authorship integration, 36.6% without, 8.1% equal.
Marcus Tober
41) If you spend a long time on an article by an author, when you go back to SERPs you'll be shown three more articles by that author. Therefore the quality and readibility of your writing is important.
Marcus Tober
42) Analytics packages don't track people. They track cookies. Google Analytics will possibly start to move towards tracking people.
Will Critchlow @willcritchlow Distilled
Penguin and Panda
43) Google are now reading human engagement. If there is none, then the page is there to manipulate the algorithm.Kevin Gibbons
44) Reconsider your metrics:
1) Traffic
2) RSS subscribers
3) Bounce rate
4) Average no of links per post
5) Average no of social shares/comments
6)What would Matt Cutts do?
Kevin Gibbons
45) Analyze your anchor text distribution percentage [you can do this using Link Builder]
Kevin Gibbons
46) Consider removing links that don't match your target profile. And remove the link altogether - don't just get it changed. Google records what it was originally.
Kevin Gibbons
47) Getting a link should be a by-product of producing good content. It shouldn't be the primary purpose.
Kevin Gibbons
48) Focus on audience and topical relevancy to build a natural and defensible profile.
Kevin Gibbons
49) Consider removing links that have no value to users.
Kevin Gibbons
50) What makes a link problematic? Purpose of site, no interaction, links to bad places, banned words, poor link metrics, commercial anchors again and again, no social activity.
Paul Madden
51) Only buy link building services if the company can demonstrate that they know what risk is and how they handle it.
Paul Madden
52) Don't follow what everyone else is doing or you'll be caught in the next algorithm update.
Paul Madden
53) Make sure whoever does your link audit knows what they're doing.
Paul Madden
54) Watch your link profile all the time - know all about each link that's coming into your site.
Paul Madden
55) 301 redirects don't work any more. If you have penalties they're going to follow you after that redirect.
Paul Madden
56) You don't need to spell out all your keywords in anchor text. Google can work out what the link is about anyway.
Kevin Gibbons
Conversation rate optimization
57) Test your business using your website, don't just test stuff on your website (like buttons).Doug Hall @fastbloke Conversion Works
58) Before you start testing your landing pages, make a hypothesis of what, why, or how something is happening (or not happening - like visitors not clicking).
Doug Hall
59) Use baseline metrics so that you have a starting point to work from.
Doug Hall
60) Consider what type of test it's best to do: A/B, MVT, Serial or a Smoke Test (from Lean Startup).
Doug Hall
61) Repeat tests, iterate, refine and follow up.
Doug Hall
62) Above all, learn from your tests.
Doug Hall
63) PayPoint for their mobile site tested a long page with lots of info; a short, punchy page with a signup form; and a responsive page. The short punchy page won.
Doug Hall
64) Book recommendation: Lean Startup
Doug Hall
65) Consider your market. For example, senior surfers may appreciate larger text.
Doug Hall
66) Start with a good hypothesis, pick the right test, fail and learn, retest and win.
Doug Hall
67) Test your PPC ad. When you click through to its landing page, does it agree with what you've said in the ad?
Dave Gowans @conversionfac Conversion Factory
68) Do a five second test on your landing page. Do you know that the page is for and do you know what the benefits are?
Dave Gowans
69) FiveSecondTest will help you test your landing pages.
Dave Gowans
70) Do a blur test of your page using Powerpoint to blur out the page. Can you tell where the CTA button is? You should be able to.
Dave Gowans
71) The color of your CTA button doesn't matter. As long as it can be seen.
Dave Gowans
72) Eliminate any unnecessary fields on your landing page.
Dave Gowans
73) Automatically progress your visitor through your site. For example, default your cursor into the first field like Google and Air BnB do.
Dave Gowans
74) If using a scarcity tactic, don't use it on every page. Be careful with it.
Dave Gowans
75) Movable Ink allows you to send real-time emails that don't go out of date.
Doug Hall
76) In an ideal CMS you should have the ability to test copy blocks, headlines, subheadings, video/image areas etc.
Crispin Sheridan @CrispinSheridan SAP
77) Have short registration forms if your visitors are coming in via mobile. No-one wants to fill in 12 fields on a mobile phone.
Crispin Sheridan
Content
78) The amount of time that visitors spend watching your videos is now an important metric. How long people watch your video is now part of the google Algorithm.Greg Jarboe @gregjarboe SEO-PR
79) Build a community around your YouTube channel.
Greg Jarboe
80) Online bloggers are now the New Trade press.
Greg Jarboe
81) I can't pitch a story these days to bloggers unless I have a video to go with it.
Greg Jarboe
82) Your web content should be meaningful, it's got to create value, it's got to guide the reader, solve problems and it needs to create retention.
@leeodden TopRank
83) Kinetic typography, quizzes, microsites, communities, events, HTML5 content, interactive infographics, infograms, blog posts, in-depth articles, videos: all these and more are types of content.
Kevin Gibbons
84) If you're trying to sell to everyone on every interaction you are failing.
Lee Odden
85) Great content isn't great until is discovered, consumed and shared.
Lee Odden
86) Winning creative is about results not awards. Creative with meaning ... this is where the awesome is
Lee Odden
87) Create a scalable content marketing strategy to focus on audience and human engagement.
Kevin Gibbons
88) Concentrate on one good piece of content rather than lots of mediocre blog posts.
Paul Madden
89) Be whacky, offbeat or informative to get links and have lots of user-generated content.
Max Brockbank
90) When approaching online videos always ask - What is the goal I want to achieve?
Phil Nottingham @philnottingham Distilled
91) Use WISTIA to create a video site map for your site.
Phil Nottingham
92) If you're looking to improve conversions make sure you include transcriptions on pages.
Phil Nottingham
93) Metrics you should care about: Links to pages with video, embeds, social shares ...
Phil Nottingham
94) Sonos encourage people to search for reviews of their products online. Therefore they're confident in their brand and Google see people are talking about them.
Kevin Gibbons
95) Facebook shares and comments aren't used by Google for ranking.
Kevin Gibbons
96) One high quality link is worth a multitude of low quality, eg directory links.
Kevin Gibbons
97) Quality, method and patience are what's needed in link building and SEO.
Kevin Gibbons
98) Identify where you want your content to be posted before you start creating it.
Kevin Gibbons
99) Be first with a story and you'll become the go-to person on that subject.
Kevin Gibbons
100) Be creative with your content: eg http://www.airbnb.com/annual/ using HTML5.
Kevin Gibbons
101) Be useful.
Kevin Gibbons
102) Be unique.
Kevin Gibbons
103) Be agile like the creators of these rival Audi/BMW campaigns Audi/BMW http://bit.ly/xaKFgW
Kevin Gibbons
104) If using testimonials they have to be believable and verifiable.
Doug Hall
105) Create "targeted audiences of value" with content.
Simon Penson @simonpenson Zazzle
106) Work through a magazine pulling out all the content types for inspiration.
Simon Penson
107) Google are heading towards a semantic web. This means using associations between words and phrases to discover the searcher's intent.
Simon Penson
108) Plan for every persona.
Simon Penson
110) Great content idea: Hobbycraft and their how-to guides. Get your ideas about the next set of guides from comments on the first.
Catherine Toole @stickycontent Sticky Content
111) Chop content up and use it in different ways. Mailchimp do this in their downloadable guides.
Catherine Toole
112) Stick to content that's within your area of expertise.
Catherine Toole
113) Who is your desired audience? A very important first question.
Catherine Toole
114) Cheap wins aren't necessarily in user generated content, but in curation.
115) Co-create with your customers with you as the finisher. Eg an online t-shirt retailer encouraging designs from their community.
Lee Odden
116) Magazine guys have been working on their products for decades ... so borrow content strategy ideas from magazines.
Simon Penson
117) Think semantic relevance and use LSIkeywords.com This tool makes it easy to find semantically relevant phrases from your keywords.
Simon Penson
118) Make sure your content pages are crawlable, usability is addressed and pages are optimized for the platforms users will use.
Simon Penson
119) To find influencers in your niche use KeyHole It's like FollowerWonk on steroids.
Simon Penson
120) How do you measure the value of your content? Know what you want to measure and define those KPIs. Set up events tracking as a custom report in analytics.
Simon Penson
121) If you stop making content based on your internal priorities and naming conventions; and change your content to what customers want to do, you will gain increased effectiveness.
Catherine Toole
122) Push a message to your customers that addresses what's in it for them and speak in their language.
Catherine Toole
123) Where can you find ideas for content? In the stories people tell, water cooler feedback, in emails sales people send, chat rooms and forums. You can also find ideas in social media and customer reviews.
Catherine Toole
124) Wherever you have an area of expertise, personalize that expertise to a specific audience and look at the different formats you are putting it into.
Catherine Toole
Social media
125) Twitter stats:1) 80% of UK Twitter users access the platform from their mobile devices (55% in the US).
2) 60% UK users are on Twitter while watching tv.
3) 40% of all Twitter traffic occurs around tv peak-time.
Oliver Snoddy
126) 50% of Super Bowl ads had a hashtag in them in 2013. Using hashtags cleverly will bring great benefits.
Oliver Snoddy
127) O2 managed to benefit from a network outage with fantastic customer service on Twitter. They did this by being inciteful, useful and at times using humor in their tweets during the blackout.
Oliver Snoddy
128) One of the most retweeted formats is the photo.
Oliver Snoddy
129) 80% of visible keywords on Wikipedia are on Page 1.
Marcus Tober
130) Google+ shares get cached within a couple of seconds.
Marcus Tober
131) Facebook articles can take 10 days or more to get indexed.
Marcus Tober
132) Articles that have a Google PlusOne or two rank better than those with plenty of Facebook shares. Google is putting lots of effort into Google+ so you should definitely be using it.
Marcus Tober
133) Author rank means:
* Verification of content
* Protection and personalization of content
* Personal branding of journalistic content
* Improved online reputation
* Rich snippet optimization in SERPs
Marcus Tober
134) Google+ isn't a social network, it's an identity network [via Google's Eric Schmidt].
Marcus Tober
135) A SEMPO survey found that 44% of companies found it difficult to measure social media ROI.
Krista LaRiviere @KristaLaRiviere gShift Labs
136) ROI has been around for 100 years, so can it really still be relevant when measuring social media ROI?
Krista LaRiviere
137) Measure return on impact instead - short term and long term (a tweet can be picked up months down the line).
Krista LaRiviere
138) Relevance is at the core of organic search.
Krista LaRiviere
139) Facebook tends to get better conversions than Twitter. Google+ has a long life so post your content there too.
Krista LaRiviere
140) There's no better way to get people to engage with your product than video.
Aaron Kahlow
141) Skittles, Starbucks and Amazon use amplification (ads) on Facebook to great effect. It can be worth your while paying to get your content viewed.
Aaron Kahlow @omconnect OMI
142) Video in email will drive clicks - up to 50% uplift in clickthrough rates.
Aaron Kahlow
143) YouTube is the second largest search engine on the web but you should have a call to action overlay or an ad on your video to make it worth your while.
Aaron Kahlow
144) We now create 1 billion tweets every 2.5 days.
Oliver Snoddy @olisnoddy Twitter
145) Twitter is the shortest distance between you and what interests you most, according to Twitter.
Oli Snoddy
146) Twitter has 10 million active users in the UK and 200 million users globally.
Oliver Snoddy
147) How mobile users in the UK interact with Twitter: Click here to see a report
Oliver Snoddy
148) 80% of Facebook ads are viewed on mobile devices.
Michael Wheeler @ShopDirectGroup Shop Direct Group
149) Use Twitter advanced search to find current themed conversations where you can exclude words as well as include. [Eg include Paris, exclude Hilton.]
Marty Weintraub aimClear
150) Hootsuite is another tool for searching through social media.
Marty Weintraub
151) Social isn't free any more: use paid organic amplification (ads) if you really want to get your posts seen on Facebook.
Marty Weintraub
152) You can target particular workplaces (eg media companies) with ads on Facebook.
Marty Weintraub
153) aimClear has sold minivans to women who said they "love pregnancy" on Facebook and disposable nappies to women who "hate pregnancy" - use targeting.
Marty Weintraub
154) Amplify your content using psychographics: you can target occupations, age groups, interests, location and much more on Facebook.
Marty Weintraub
155) Google translate is your friend.
Marty Weintraub
156) Remember, journalists use social too.
Marty Weintraub
157) Measure who's in your community - don't just look at numbers, look at the people.
Marty Weintraub
158) Use the Google site: search operator to gather social data.
Marty Weintraub
Remarketing
159) Offer deals as part of your remarketing - eg, you could create daily deals that are only available through remarketing.Guy Levine @guylevine Return on Digital
160) Remarketing is an interruption medium. You'll want to attract attention.
Guy Levine
161) Use retargeting for recruitment.
Guy Levine
162) Use remarketing to recruit reviews from existing customers.
Guy Levine
163) Use remarketing to increase your social following.
Guy Levine
164) Banner fatigue is a big problem. You can get away with less professional looking banners in remarketing.
Guy Levine
165) When you start, advertise at a high cost per click, so you collect data. Then reduce costs.
Guy Levine
166) Add your remarketing code when you set up a new site.
Guy Levine
167) It's now possible to use Google Analytics to build your remarketing lists (create a visitor segment).
Guy Levine
168) This means you can advertise to people who've already bought lots of products from you. Upsell them.
Guy Levine
169) Email marketing is a lost opportunity in remarketing.
Dax Hamman @daxhamman DaxThink
170) In a perfect world you wouldn't need site retargeting. Your website would convince visitors to purchase at the first attempt.
Dax Hamman
171) Stalking is when two people go for a long, romantic walk together. But only one of them knows about it. Don't stalk your customers. When starting out, try showing your ads 7 times per day for 7 days. And modify from there.
Dax Hamman
Local and mobile
172) We're selling smartphones at a faster rate than there are babies being born.Mark Brill @marktxt4ever http://www.txt4ever.wordpress.com
173) Campaigns involving Instagram work well: invite people to share their photos.
Mark Brill
174) As a marketer, don't be creepy. Just provide a good service.
Mark Brill
175) Tablets are used mostly in the home (over 90% of the time) and as a result, Google are starting to treat desktop and tablet in a similar way.
Sri Sharma @srisharma Net Media Planet
176) Mobile users needs are immediacy and personal advice. They expect to communicate with someone straight away or they lose interest.
Sri Sharma
177) 85% of non-desktop/laptop users are on smartphones as opposed to tablets
Sri Sharma
178) Mobile users mostly use their phones on the move and 40% of mobile searches are for local shops/amenities.
Sri Sharma
179) A free click-to-call campaign addresses immediacy - by doing this in one campaign leads increased x26 and the conversion rate went up by x2.2
Sri Sharma
180) Food companies, connect with customers when they're hungry, create appetite appeal with text or pictures and carefully select products that will drive revenue.
Sri Sharma
181) An ad campaign for pizzas with the description "Try our oozy cheesy melt in the mouth garlic cheesesticks today!" sent at targeted times of the day resulted in an increase on profit per pound spent, by 75% on desktop and 139% on mobile. The key to this campaign was taking time to understand the customer.
Sri Sharma
182) Enhanced campaigns in Google mean a greater cost per click as mobile and desktop are being lumped together.
Sri Sharma
183) Google Enhanced Campaigns: use a custom bid adjustment to show your PPC ad just on mobile or just on desktop. Decrease by 100% to exclude mobile; and have a very low bid for desktop, increasing the bid by 300% for mobile (this hasn't been tested yet but it may be a workaround.)
Sri Sharma
184) Responsive design is preferred by Google but they haven't said why. It's probably easier for them as they don't have to crawl multiple URLs.
Cindy Krum @Suzzicks Mobile Moxie
Web design for mobile:
185) Responsive design: means that your page may load more slowly if there's a lot on it. It's harder to target mobile-specific keywords with this one set of content. But it's less complicated because you only have to worry about one set of content.
Cindy Krum
186) RESS: a mixed solution where different formats are sent depending on the device it's being viewed on. It can result in a better bounce rate and level of engagement than responsive but it's the most complicated and still very new. It's slightly harder for Google to crawl but not too much.
Cindy Krum
187) Separate ".m" mobile pages: the most common solution so far. You can target specific mobile keywords, but it's using the most of Google's resources as there are then two copies of your content for its spiders to search. However, you don't need to make mobile versions of every page.
Cindy Krum
188) If using a mobilization engine, make sure it's bringing across all your SEO tags. If you're not careful it will show content only, with no alt tag, description tag etc.
Cindy Krum
189) Use Gomez or Whyslow to check how fast your page loads - it should be under three seconds for mobile.
Cindy Krum
190) Facebook Graph Search doesn't show any burger restaurants in Edinburgh. Therefore it isn't great for local yet. That's an opportunity.
Andrew Girdwood @andrewgirdwood Andrew Girdwood
191) The number of reviews you've attracted seems to be the number one ranking factor in Google+ Local. You have to get people to review you.
Andrew Girdwood
192) Building a community is a must. Give people reasons to care about your brand. They'll becoming recruiters for you and it will be easier to get these people to buy from you again than to find new buyers.
Andrew Girdwood
193) Even if you don't have a website yet, get going with Facebook and Twitter.
Andrew Girdwood
194) Great restaurant idea - The Galley, Leith takes a picture of their hand-written menu every morning and posts it on their Facebook page around 11:15.
Andrew Girdwood
195) If you're a franchise, empower your franchisees to make a name for themselves in their community, for example by setting up their own Facebook page.
Andrew Girdwood
196) Google Map Maker is one step up from Google+ Local - handy if your business is in shared premises or shopping center.
Richard Kirk @rich_kirk Performics
197) Google's Data Highlighter for events is great for local. Say you'll be at an event and other people looking at that event will see you.
Richard Kirk
198) Get a high quality photography of your location. You'll receive a better clickthrough rate.
Richard Kirk
199) Think about page speed - defer social share buttons and other scripts to load after the main content has loaded.
Richard Kirk
200) Travel site: add local tips written by your staff, videos of your hotel rooms taken by your staff. Get feedback from your staff and customers for these tips. Travel directions are an example, local restaurants. Staff feel empowered, and visitors will feel that they're getting authentic information.
Richard Kirk
201) Get cheap, timely, local content into Facebook.
Andrew Girdwood
202) Engage with local online celebrities and get them to sample your brand. They'll be a great advocate for you.
Richard Kirk
203) Use Foursquare check-ins. Offer free stuff for new customers or discounts on slow days to get yourself seen.
Richard Kirk
204) Respond to good and bad reviews and get notified of them with Google alerts using these phrases http://i5.minus.com/jH2k12U2DxjOZ.JPG
Richard Kirk
205) Have QR codes on tills, receipts and loyalty cards linking to places where users can review you.
Richard Kirk
Duplicate content issues
206) Make sure you are familiar with how content is displayed on your website - Google Guidelines.Kristjan Mar Hauksson @optimizeyourweb Optimize Your Web
207) Consider everything that's likely to cause you website duplication problems and create a checklist. Create a best practice process and go through your items one by one.
Kristjan Mar Hauksson
208) Useful tools to troubleshoot duplicate content issues include: [Wordtracker], Screaming Frog, Google Webmaster Tools and you can also do manual testing.
Kristjan Mar Hauksson
209) Sometimes CMS systems leak content into web pages that shouldn't be there - this can confuse Google and when Google is confused it can cause problems.
Kristjan Mar Hauksson
210) When your website is in the development stage, make sure your development server is under lock and key until its ready - this will help prevent people from potentially stealing content.
Kristjan Mar Hauksson
211) Report any online plagiarism of your content to Google immediately. Submit an ownership claim to Google, as they are acting on these more and more.
Kristjan Mar Hauksson
212) If you discover two duplicate pages that are under your control, the first solution is to 301 redirect the duplicate to the canonical one (the one you want published).
Eric Enge @stonetemple Stone Temple Read more about canonical tags
213) If you're using manufacturer's descriptions you are duplicating content.
Eric Enge
214) With e-commerce websites if you build a lot of authority at the top end of your website, then it can sometimes help you with issues deep down in product pages.
Eric Enge
originallly posted in wordtracker.com
214 Top tips and takeaways [SES London 2013]
