Search London – Last one for 2011

Thank you to all of you for coming to Search London last week – The Value of SEO and Social. Thanks to Searchmetrics who sponsored the event, providing us with drinks and nibbles at the meetup.

The presentations have been uploaded to slideshare:

Steve Overton’s presentation on the value of SEO:
http://www.slideshare.net/seojoblogs/the-value-of-seo

Richard Kirk’s presentation on the value of Social:
http://www.slideshare.net/seojoblogs/social-signals-seo

I have been running this meetup for more than a year and with your help and support Search London has grown from 200 members last October to now over 520 members. I am really pleased with the expansion of Search London and I hope you will join me for many more events next year.

I will be spending winter Down Under and therefore will arrange the next Search London event in spring 2012.

Hope you all have a fantastic Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Search London – The Value of SEO and Social

Searchmetrics will be sponsoring our last Search London event for 2011 which will take place on Wednesday, December 7th.

The meetup “The Value of SEO and Social” will have two speakers:

Steve Overton from Searchmetrics and Richard Kirk from Performics. I am sure some of your clients may be asking what the return on investment is from seo and social and sometimes it is a bit hard to quantify. Steve will be talking about the value of SEO and Richard will be speaking about the value of social, he has recently been studying the impactof social inputs on organic search.

searchmetrics logo

Searchmetrics is the global expert in search analytics software, empowering marketers to increase visibility and market share on the world’s leading search engines.

I would like to thank everyone who has come to Search London during the year. We have had 7 meetups and the group has gone from 200 members to over 460. Please RSVP to the last Search London of 2011

Search London – Search In House or Agency

Thank you all for coming to the last meetup “Search London – SEO & PPC In House or Agency” that took place on Wednesday, October 26th.

Thanks to IG Index who sponsored the event, giving us a few drinks at the bar. Martin MacDonlad’s presentation of search agency side has been uploaded to slideshare.

http://www.slideshare.net/seojoblogs/search-london-seo-ppc-in-house

Check out the photos from the latest event.

http://www.meetup.com/search-london/photos/4208332/

I have also uploaded them to this site.

Happy Halloween from London

The Google Doodle changes everyday and today is no exception.

Click on the video below to see how the Google employees build their Google Doodle out of pumpkins.

Halloween Google Doodle

Google Halloween Doodle

Here is a post a wrote a while ago regarding the history of Halloween.

Where does it come from?
Halloween comes from the pagan festival Samhain, which the Celts celebrated on what was their New Year Eve, October 31st. Samhain marked the end of summer and the beginning of winter which brought the evil spirits. The Celts believed that on this night, the barrier between our world and the spirit world was at its weakest and the spirits would return to the earth. They built bonfires and in England carved out faces in the turnips to warn off the evil spirits. The festival was celebrated by lighting bonfires and sacrificing crops and animals. The bonfire was also believed to protect them during the winter months.

Read more »

Search London – SEO & PPC In House Or Agency

Search London – SEO & PPC In House Or Agency – Sharon Harris

Sharon Harris, Head of Search at IG Group will be discussing the benefits of taking SEO & PPC In House. IG Group is a FTSE 250 leader servicing over 130,000 clients across 130 countries. The sheer size and scale of IG Group proved a challenging yet rewarding online platform for search integration.

IG Group encompasses IG Markets, IG Index and Nadex. IG Markets CFDs offer traders the ability to take a directional position on market movement. IG Index acts as a gateway into spread betting across a range of markets including the fast paced world of forex spreads. Nadex is a fully regulated US Exchange.

These markets offer complex derivative products yet understanding remains at the heart of IG Group. Integrating search enabled IG Group to tap into the users desire to learn at the point of inception, targeting both the newbie and professional trader. Increased online exposure across multiple keywords significantly enhanced visibility and conversion rates on a global scale.

Financial markets are fast and dynamic – Sharon Harris has fine tuned global SEO & PPC to react accordingly.

The event “SEO & PPC In House Or Agency” will take place:

When: Wednesday, October 26th, 7:00pm

Where: Theodore Bullfrog, 26 John Adam Street, London WC2N 6HL

RSVP to Search London to guarantee your place

Search London – SEO Making it work – Judith Lewis

After a summer off networking, Search London has its first networking event of the autumn.

Judith Lewis, a well known search professional in the industry and blogger at mostlyaboutchocolate.com and SEOChicks will be speaking at the event. She will be sharing her experience and learnings from seo along with the best ways to get clients to implement seo.

The event “SEO – Making it work” will take place:

When: Tuesday, September 6th, 7:00pm

Where: The Doggett’s Coat and Badge, 1 Blackfriars Bridge.

Over 60 people have RSVPed so far, so hurry and reserve your place today.

Please RSVP on meetup.com/search-london to guarantee your place

London Blog Club with Judith Lewis

Last week I went to London Blog club which took place at the Green Man, by Great Portland Street.

I wanted to go because my former colleague, Judith Lewis was speaking at the event. It turns out it was a mini i-level reunion as Mike Doyle, James and Eric who all worked at the same place also came.

Judith is a great blogger and twitterer and shared some tips on how to increase your subscribers, followers and reach with your blog.

1) Headline
Have something controversial to attract the attention of your readers.

2) Comments
Make sure you comment on other people’s blogs and they will begin to comment on yours.

3) Social
We all know this is the year for social search. Make sure you have a twitter profile and update it regularly. You can always schedule tweets, you do not have to be tweeting live all the time.

4) Engage
Respond to people, if they have left a comment for you, say thank you, talk to them.

5) Follow
If you want people to follow you, start following those in your field, but do not spam them.

6) Ask
Get people to subscribe to your blog. Also have a link to say “follow me on twitter”. Once a week, go and find one peerson who you don’t comment on their blog or follow and start following them.

7) PR
If you know some people who work in the same field that you blog about, then email them. Tell them you blog about a topic – as in Judith’s case it is chocolate and that you noticed they are in PR in the same field.

It all sounds so simple. The thing that I need though to implement it all is time…. something that seems to be very scare these days.

As always, I took some photos to remember the occasion.

American Independence Day

Today is the 4th of July, American Independence Day.

What will you be doing to celebrate?

There are a number of activities organised throughout London:

Be Bop and American Hops
Until Mon Jul 4, Positively 4th Street

A real-ale festival, celebrating American Independence Day with US-inspired beers from British breweries. There’s also music, DJs and burlesque performances

Uncle Sam

Blues Kitchen hot-dog-eating competition
Blues Kitchen

Take part in a traditional eating competiton – this time with hot dogs. The prize is ‘Hot Dog King’ for the year as well as a Blues Kitchen voucher worth £100. You can still go along even if you are not taking part in the competiton as there is live country music and acoustic blues performances late into the evening.

http://now-here-this.timeout.com/2011/07/03/american-independence-day-london/

Roadhouse
373 Lonsdale Rd, SW13 9PY
Celebrate Independence Day with live music from an array of special guests.

Bodean’s
I am going to head to Bodean’s, a must for those that love BBQs, not really friendly for vegetarians.
There are three in London:
169 Clapham High Street SW4 7SS, in Soho 10 Poland Street, W1F 8PZ and South London – 4 Broadway Chambers, Fulham Broadway SW6 1EP

SEO Down Under

Hi everyone,

I know it has been some time since I last updated my blog. I have not shown it much love. I have been really busy at work and also at home. My sister and her fiance moved to Australia for good which meant we all moved out of our flat that we shared.

We went to the airport on June 21st and said goodbye.
It was supposed to be quick, but then we realised they were 42kgs overweight.

Ruth and Matt 42kgs overweight - costing 1,000 pounds

As Ruth and Matt did not have a spare 1,000 pounds which could have easily been the cost of a plane ticket, they decided to repack.

Matt and Ruth repacking

Once they had repacked and shipped the additional case as cargo, it was time to say goodbye. We are seeing them in 6 months time. Wish them well Down Under…..

Ruth and Jo saying goodbye - see you in six months

Ruth will not be coming to anymore Search London events, but she may be getting into Search Down Under.

Good Luck Ruth !
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SEO Tools – which ones to use

Thanks to all those who came to Search London – SEO Tools.

It took place at the Doggett’s Coat and Badge on June 14th. I hope you found the presentation from our sponsor Linkdex interesting. Please find a link to the presentation below:

http://www.slideshare.net/johnstraw/linkdex-screen-shots

It is always hard to find one tool that does everything. I often find you have to combine a number of seo tools, seomoz, Google Keyword tool, Backlink checker, but Linkdex seemed to have everything under one package. I will be testing it out and let you know how I get on. John Straw was offering some free trials to those that attended, so get in touch if you would like one.

If you would like to find out more about search london, please visit our website www.meetup.com/search-london

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