Thank you everyone for attending the Search London meetup which took place on Tuesday, January 22nd.

Pierre Far gave a great presentation about Google’s Smartphone Recommendations site. Jon Quinton from SEO Gadget presented a site audit in 10 minutes, quick work !

We would really like to get your feedback from the event, a few people have responded but we would like to hear from as many as you as possible.  Please complete this quick survey »

Thank you again to SEOgadget for sponsoring the drinks, bar food and snooker table, it was a fantastic evening.  I hope to see many of you at the next event we are organising in March. We are just confirming the evening venue and then will announce it to you all

Below are a few photos from the January event:

This is the last in the series of “SEO Predictions” from those who I met when I was in Europe in June 2012.  Elena lives in Florence and writes about many places to visit in the city and surrounding area on her site Io amo Firenze. The site means “I love Florence” and visitors will too once they visit this city in the heart of the Tuscan countryside.  I asked the web marketing consultant  about what she thought would happen to SEO this year.

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Just over a week ago, I looked at my site through another laptop that had javascript turned off.  I found a lot of spam content in the header part of SEO Jo Blogs.  It was visible in the code as well and  did not look pretty.  As the site had been built via wordpress, I went into my header.php section and removed the spam content.  However, there was also a problem with the theme and now I can no longer use that – hence the fact I have changed the theme back to its original version when I launched in February 2009.

If your site has been hacked, here are a few tips on what to do:

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I have recently been asked about what it is like to run my own meetup group, Search London.  SEOGadget are sponsoring my next event on Tuesday and I wrote a post on their blog about “Never Underestimate the Value of Networking”   I have been the organiser of Search London for just over 2 years and in that time the number of attendees has grown from 200 to over 1100.  It has been a fantastic 2 years and 2013 will see Search London continue to grow. I have really enjoyed being the organiser of this meetup group and I encourage anyone with a passion in a particular field to set up and run one too.  Here are some of my tips on how to run your own meetup group:

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I met Andre Alpar from AKM3 while I was in Germany last year as part of the Euro 2012 State of Search Roadshow.  Andre is certainly a busy guy, he has a English podcast, is one Partner of AKM3 and also has an online cigar store.  I asked Andre (remotely) about what he thought 2013 means for search.

Looking back at 2012, what has been the major change in SEO that you have experienced?

Two things were very easy to observe. One is internationalization – many of our clients are active in many countries. That made us, as an agency, diversify, so we can deliver high-quality content and link marketing campaigns in 20 countries now.  Another major change was a very strong shift to quality which came through Panda and Penguin, both being massive updates.

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2013 was going to be a great year for the website SEO Jo Blogs.  It turns 4 years old next month. However, last Thursday I found out both this site and my travel site (using wordpress themes) had been hacked into due to the themes I was using.  I will write a blog post about how I found this out later, I just wanted to let everyone know that this current theme is only temporary. I really liked the old theme wpzoom- but unfortunately it was hacked into.  If anyone can recommend a great theme they have used before, let me know.

I met Giuseppe Pastore, an Italian SEO consultant while I was in Rome  last year as part of the Euro 2012 State of Search Roadshow.  Giuseppe has his own blog en.posizionamentozen writing in English and Italian (and putting all us English speaking people to shame).  I wanted to find out from Giuseppe about his search predictions 2013.

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At the next Search London meetup we are lucky to have Pierre Far from Google.  Pierre is a webmaster trends analyst,  speaking about Google’s Recommendations for Smartphone Websites.

The event will take place on:

• Date: Tuesday January 22nd
• Time: From 7:00pm
• Location: 19/20 Great Sutton Street, Clerkenwell, London, EC1V 0DR

Pierre attends many search conferences and I first met him at SMX London in May last year.  He follows industry trends in SEO and web development in order to help different Google teams build better tools for webmasters and improve search quality.  He will be providing valuable insight to the first Search London event of 2013.

Pierre also writes for the Webmaster Central Blog and participates in Google and external forums, helping site owners troubleshoot search-related problems and get the most out of Google Webmaster Tools.  Prior to joining Google, Pierre held several roles in the technology sector, including community and product management, innovation consulting, and online marketing. He has a Ph.D. in bacterial genetics from the University of Cambridge.

2013 will see a few positive changes to Search London.  Instead of going onto meetup.com as before, please register and “buy” your ticket through the Search London event brite page.  All future events will need to be registered via eventbrite and not through meetup.com.

2012 was an exciting year and I was fortunate to be able to attend many conferences, including SMX, Link Love and Search Love.  However, attending conferences can be very expensive.  There is the cost of the ticket, plus the hotel and sometimes even the flight.  There are however, many events and meetups that provide audiences with valuable insight and case studies and one of the best parts, is that they are free (or cost just £5.00). Here are just some of them taking place in Q1 this year.

January

I thought January was supposed to be a quiet time of year, but there are many meetup groups holding their events this month, I have only noted down 4 taking place in London:

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I wrote a post about Search Down Under  earlier this year about the opportunities available in Australia.

There are many place to work in Perth, Melbourne Sydney. Australia has not been hit by the GFC which is short for the Global Financial Crisis (and is how Australians refer to the recession in Europe).  Sydney and Melbourne have the highest number of digital agencies, although Perth was named Australia’s top E town in August, due to the number of online businesses set up in 2012.

For those searching for a job in digital in Sydney, there are many companies on the look out for fresh talent.

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