The 5th Eu Search Awards took place in Salle Wagram in Paris on Wednesday, May 4th. Here are the photos of the winners.
The winner of the Best Use of Search in Finance went to Merkle| Periscopix & Endsleigh – Audience on their Search Strategy.
I am excited to announce the next Search London event is sponsored by Ungagged.
I interviewed Craig in September on State of Digital and asked him about the Las Vegas event that was taking place in November. This June, there is the London Ungagged taking place during Tech Week.
I met Paul Rouke at a Conversion Conference a couple years ago and I wanted to find out more information about conversion optimisation and how he is preparing for Conversion World, the virtual conference taking place next month.
How did you get into Conversion Optimisation?
Leaving school with a passion for design and computers, clearly the natural path to take was to join an engineering apprenticeship with British Aerospace! As it turned out, two years in to my four-year apprenticeship I made one of my early life lessons – if you don’t feel like you are in a role that is allowing you to do what you are really passionate about, make a change.
So I went from wiring missile control panels to a design role (desktop publishing in fact), which soon after led me to join Shop Direct Group (who at the time were Great Universal Stores). As I was working within their catalogue design department, an opportunity came up to become their first web designer and I jumped at the opportunity. This was back in 1999, and it was then that I took part in my first ever user research session. This role and introduction to interacting with users to understand their behaviour set me up for life (well, the rest of my career to date)!
In 2004, I began moonlighting under my company name PRWD, providing UX design and development for a range of businesses looking to invest in a customer focused online experience. User research was a core passion and a core focus for the business then, and it has remained the same throughout our first 11 years. On saying this, up until 2009 we were missing one thing – the quantifiable evidence that the improvements we were recommending were actually changing user behaviour and delivering a higher percentage of outcomes for our clients.
With this in mind, in 2009 we started our first conversion optimisation programme. Since then, we have focused the business on delivering transformative conversion optimisation programmes for a wide range of mid to enterprise size brands such as The North Face, The Student Room, Skyscanner, Bensons, Sliderobes, Lovehoney, King & McGaw and Harveys.
Do you want to attend more conferences but do not have the time or budget to travel?
I would recommend attending at least one and this is Conversion World. It is taking place 18-20 April 2016 this year. Conversion World is an online/virtual conference dedicated to Conversion Rate Optimisation and growth. This will be the second edition of the event after a successful run in 2015. Last year there were delegates and speakers from Europe, US and Australia.
As an organizer or Search London, I wanted to find out what it was like organising an online conference such as this one. I interview the founder, Manuel da Costa.
How long have you been in Conversion Optimisation for?
Coming up to 4 years now since I started focussing solely on Conversion Optimisation and growth.
When did you first have the idea of running this conference?
I had the idea about a year and half before I actually started planning it. I sat on it for a while, never too sure if this would be something people wanted to be a part of. Founder’s doubt, you can call it.
How do you attract the speakers?
I have a big network which consists of top CRO experts. For year one, it was reaching out to them and inviting them to be part of it. There isn’t a big barrier for speakers to take part in Conversion World compared to regular conferences ie No travel, no jetlag and minimal time commitment so that makes it easier.
What are the requirements to be a speaker and how do they present?
The conference speakers are selected on an invite only basis. Meaning they are hand picked or they come recommended. The general rule is that they have a talk that is actionable and practical for the attendees. No sales pitches.
For speakers, the attraction was being part of this global event without the usual travel and time commitments. They could be anywhere in the world, hook up their webcam and mic and present to our audience.
Do the speakers need a webcam? do they talk through a presentation or is it more of q&A style format?
Yes. They need a webcam and their slide deck to present. The format varies. Usually it will be a presentation. This year, we are adding panels with multiple speakers and AMAs (Ask me anythings) to make it more varied.
What are you doing in March?
Don’t miss out on seeing Charlie Williams and Lukasz Zelezny speak at the next Search London event March 7th.
I am really pleased Majestic is the Gold Sponsor of Search London’s 5th Birthday Party. Majestic has been involved with Search London from the start. They sponsored the bar at our SEO at The Heart of Google event back in March 2013. Below is a photo from the event of Dixon Jones and I nearly 3 years ago now.
Dixon and Jo at Search London 2013
I really enjoy attending conferences and in the search industry, there are plenty ! Here are just a few of the ones to attend this year.
January
Search London 5th Birthday Party – January 19 – London
February
SES Miami – February 4 – 5 – Miami
Mobile World Congress – February 22 – 25 – Barcelona
March
SMX West – March 1 – 3 – San Jose, California
As we come to the end of 2015, I have seen Search London grow from strength to strength. I took over the meetup group from my colleague, Judith Lewis in October 2010, renamed it to Search London and rebranded it and now 5 years on, I have nearly 1600 members.
To celebrate turning 5 years old, I am hosting a Birthday Party. Search London is privately funded and therefore we rely on ticket sales as well as sponsorship.
I am pleased to announce we have four sponsors at the event.
Majestic is our Gold Sponsor. They have been involved with Search London back in March 2013 when we had our first afternoon Search event at Google Campus. Dixon Jones will be speaking at the meetup. Dixon Jones has worked at the forefront of search marketing since 1999, since he set up the UK based search marketing consultancy, Receptional. During that time, Dixon has been a consistent presenter on the search conference circuit all over the world and has helped clients in all sectors – including national papers and international search engines themselves to understand their own search strategy. His consulting clients come from a wide variety of difficult sectors, from travel to gambling.
Whitenet is one of our silver sponsors. Hannah Thorpe has previously spoken at Search London. To celebrate their new London office, White.net are delighted to be sponsoring Search London’s 5th birthday. With a head office in picturesque Oxford, White.net have started 2016 with an expansion into London, making them even more excited for meeting more of London’s search community. Always keen to learn something new and happy to share their knowledge, make sure you get a chance to meet some of the guys at the event.
As a collection of straight talking, approachable digital marketing experts, White.net are passionate about helping websites earn more traffic through insight & creativity.
DeepCrawl
DeepCrawl is one of world’s most comprehensive website crawler, providing actionable data for flawless website architecture. By identifying, and monitoring, key issues that could negatively effect your websites performance, they empower you to optimise your site for search engines and users alike.
As every website has its own unique set of challenges DeepCrawl has also been designed to be fully customisable so you are in control of how and when you crawl your site. It was winner of Best SEO Software at the European Search Awards. They are trusted by over 1000 clients in 50 countries.
Searchmetrics
Searchmetrics provide customers with competitive advantage and help them identify new business opportunities by exposing the content consumers are engaging with on industry and competitors’ sites. Searchmetrics guides SEOs and content marketers with suggestions for creating content that improves relevance and boosts conversions. It shows the connection between social media links and overall engagement. And its analytics make clear which content performs the best and how an organization’s content performs against its competitors.
Don’t miss out on Search London’s biggest event, RSVP on Search London meetup page.
Searchmetrics is a SEO and content marketing platform that also provides competitive insight and market analysis. The first time I met Searchmetrics was in summer 2012 when I was taking part in the State of Search Roadshow and met Marcus Tober, the founder and CTO.
I have always wanted to write a review of the platform especially as I have been reviewing quite a few over the past year.
In this review I look at 4 key areas of the Searchmetrics platform and what differentiates itself against some of the others in the market place.
- SEO Visibility
- Content Performance
- Competition Insight
- Visibility Guard
We have had a great Search London year so far, organising 5 meetups this year. The next and last event for 2015 will be about how big brands work on content marketing for campaigns. These brands will show how they work with bloggers, the press team and their own SEO team, integrating their work to achieve great results.
As we are approaching the Christmas season, I am inviting invite brands to get involved with Search London and share with us how they worked on their previous Christmas campaigns.
