As the sun sets on 2012, I wish you all a very Happy New Year and look forward to the developments in search for 2013.  So what does 2013 have install for search?  I was inspired by Hannah Smith’s post on SEO in 2012 on State of Search and it made me reflect and think that so much has happened this past year, how can we begin predict what will happen in 2013?.  I held a Search London event on 27th of November about SEO in 2013 where Richard Baxter and Lee Smallwood give their predictions for the next year. Based on what has happened this year and also from key professionals in the industry, I have a few thoughts of what will take place in 2013:

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2012 has been an exciting year.  Bas van den Beld asked the State of Search bloggers what our highlights have been for 2012.  I started thinking what my greatest achievements have been this year and what my plans are for 2013.

1) Working for SEO Jo

I have been working freelance for just over two years and one year full time.  I spent the first 3 months of 2012 in Australia, staying with my sister Ruth and her husband Matt  (who both took part in the 20km Rottnest swim).  I worked for a search agency in Perth, WA, helping them with some of their key accounts. I also did some freelance SEO work for a couple of agencies in London.  I really enjoyed working across different accounts, in the different cities.

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The last Search London event for the year took place on November 27th in Shoreditch and we had two great speakers talk about SEO in 2013.

I would like to say a thank you to the speakers Lee Smallwood and Richard Baxter.  Richard came on the day that his company SEOGadget opened a new office in San Francisco, so he has been pretty busy.  Richard Baxter, has uploaded his presentation onto slideshare.  Lee Smallwood’s presentation is also on slideshare.

Search London continues to grow and this event was the largest to date with 291 RSVPs.  This was also the first time there was a Search London organising team who had helped put on the event.  I was pleased to have a Search London organising team on board as the number of members has grown considerably.  I was actually looking back at the number of members and in January 2012 and there were 592 people and now there are over 1,107. It has almost doubled in size in just 12 months.

Luella Ben Aziza, Tim Sheed and Mike Chidzey and of course myself make up the Search London Organising Team.  I am currently in Australia and therefore will miss out the next event in early 2013.  However, I will be back in March for another great Search London meetup.

Thank you to everyone for their support and continuing to come to Search London, which seen the meetup double in size in 2012.  Lets hope the growth and interest continues in 2013.

I hope you all have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.  As soon as the details of the next Search London event are confirmed, it will be announced.

At Digital Industry Females earlier this month, run by Sam Noble,  there was a great presentation by Lisa Share  about how to build a community around brands.

In today’s marketing and social media world, it is important to have a community for your brand or product.  A community means bringing together individuals around a common interest and it is how people relate to you and your brand. Lisa shared a few tips on how to build a community around brands:

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Next Monday and Tuesday (26th and 27th of November) is the Conversion Conference in London at the Business Design Centre. Conversion Conference London brings together a host of international experts, with a programme of engaging presentations and interactive sessions which explain how to improve sales and dramatically increase your site’s conversion rates.

Nathalie Nahai, Web Psychologist @TheWebPsych and author of the best selling book “Webs of Influence: The Psychology of Online Persuasion”will be a keynote speaker at this year’s London event.  Nathalie Nahai is a renowned persuasion expert, global speaker and founder of business consultancy The Web Psychologist. In her keynote presentation she will show delegates how their target markets think and how to pro-actively optimise their web and social media presence to influence brand perception and consumer behaviour.

Nathalie will be signing copies of her book “Webs of Influence: The Psychology of Online Persuasion” at this year’s conference.

The best selling book expertly draws from the worlds of cross-cultural psychology, neuroscience and behavioural economics to give business owners and entrepreneurs the essential how-to internet marketing guide.  Delegates will be able to purchase a copy at the event or order a signed copy when they register for the conference at www.conversionconference.co.uk. All delegates will receive a 30% discount.

Conversion Conference London is the only event dedicated to achieving maximum ROI from online marketing and sales through tracks which cover the key topics of persuasion, best practice, hands-on and testing tools. There will be live landing page tests and expert panel discussions, as well as networking opportunities where delegates can speak to the panel members and meet online sales and marketing experts from leading global companies.

The Conversion Conference Advisory Board

The Conversion Conference Advisory Board consists of the following members:

Richard Baxter, founder and director of SEOgadget. Dr. Karl Blanks, Chairman Conversion Rate Experts. Rob Jackson, founder Conversion Thursday UK. Stephen Pavlovich, director Conversion Factory.  Paul Rouke, head of usability, trainer and consultant, PRWD. 

Data Driven Business Week

 Conversion Conference London is one of the Data Driven Business Week group of conferences taking place in November. All conferences are designed to accelerate business competitiveness through the successful adoption of analytics, voice-of-customer and online marketing best practices. 

The Data Driven Business Week conferences include: Conversion Conference, Predictive Analytics World, eMetrics Summit and International Search Summit. See http://www.datadrivenbusinessweek.com/ for details. 

This past week was Search Love, one of the most well known conferences hosted by Distilled and partnered with SEOMoz. I had been to the Link Love session back in April which was also at the Conference Centre just off of Tottenham Court Road.  This Search Love 2 day event was jam packed full of great speakers, key search professionals form the industry.  It was really well organised by Lynsey and Lauren, good location, great venue for the networking drinks and delicous food.  I will be writing the highlights from the conference over the weekend, but in the meantime, here are a few photos from the event.

Thank you all for coming to the latest Search London event, Technical Tips for 2012.  We had the highest number of RSVPs to the event – 218.  We now also have a new record of the number of attendes. Please find below some of the photos from the event:

Craig gave a very interesting presentation about the technical tips you should use on your own website. He spoke about the importance of Google+, Authorship, Video and Rich Snippets. If you missed Search London, visit us in November, we will be hosting another meetup at the end of the month, announcing it this week.

After 2 years of running Search London on my own, I now have 3 organisers – Luella, Mike and Tim.  They are all in the “featured image” on the post and will be at the next meetup at the end of November.

I went to my first SMX East in New York City last week.  Combined with ISS on the Monday,it was a 4 day conference.  There were a lot of sessions to attend in 88 hours.  Here are some of the highlights from my time in the Big Apple.

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I was fortunate to attend ISS this past week in NYC,  It was my first ISS session and there were many interesting sessions.

Here are just a few highlights, the full write up from the morning session can be found on State of Search.

A Checklist for International Search Success  @andyatkinskruge @webcertain

Andy started the day with a checklist for those entering the international market. Here are some of the top tips for international search success:

1. Research and Planning

• This is one of the most important step of all the 10.
• Content, Connections and Compatibility and culture,
•  Keywords are very important
• Keywords cannot always be translated, there are some terms that are not present in every language.  Using Google image search helps those to see what the term means in that language.  For example “casseroles” means food but in French it is the pans you cook in.

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