I visited 6 countries and 13 cities in 31 days while I took part on the State of Search Euro 2012 Roadshow. This was the first ever roadshow for State of Search who have also won the Best European Search Blog earlier this month. I interviewed 11 SEOs while I was in Europe which have been featured on State of Search and on their Facebook page and now I am being interviewed by Bas van den Beld, the founder of the site.
The idea behind the roadshow
I have always been passionate about travel and even have my own travel blog which I set up last year. I had just spent a month in Spain, working and learning Spanish and I wanted to combine work with this trip. Anna Lewis had introduced me to Bas at SMX London and I wanted to blog for State of Search but they had enough UK bloggers. If I was travelling round Europe and meeting other SEOs, then I would be an international blogger and I know they did not have one of these.
Big differences
I was really surprised by how small the Austrian market was. This meant that any link building that was carried out was immediately effective. Bruce Jackson, who has his own business SEO Coach in Austria said you can see the value of SEO very quickly, as you see results straight away.
SEOs in Europe
I met 11 SEOs in Europe and they were all friendly and eager to meet with me and answer all my questions about SEO in their country. I would like to thank them all for meeting me.
In date order that I saw all SEOs:
Marcus Tober – CTO and founder of Searchmetrics
Andre Alpar – Partner of AKM3
Alessio Madeyski – SEO Manager at Zalando
Bruce Jackson – Founder of SEO Coach
Elena Farinelli – Freelance SEO consultant and blogger for Ioamofirenze.com
Stefano Romeo and Lourdes Flores – Founders of WebPromoter.com
Andrea Cardelli – Founder of Aperion.it
Niccolo Villiger and Katia Baroncelli
Giuseppe Pastore – SEO Specialist in Rome
The future of European Search
I do not think it is any different in the UK to what it is in the rest of Europe. Many people I interviewed said the future is great content and with that links will follow (and of course appearing higher in the SERPs. Thank you to State of Search for giving me this opportunity to meet so many SEOs and I have also received I lots of referrals from the State of Search blog and also AKM3. I think technical SEO will become less important as the others on my Euro Roadshow interviewees have mentioned.
More roadshows
Bas asked if I was going on anymore roadshows in the future. I am planning on a few more in Europe. I am going to Stockholm in August (Thursday the 16th to Sunday the 19th) and then Paris in September (6th – 9th). If you are in SEO and will be in Stockholm at this time, please let me know.
It would be great to do a US “roadtrip”. I would welcome the opportunity to go to SMX New York and meet SEOs in NYC as well as in D.C. I know D.C. really well as I used to live there.
It was a fantastic opportunity to be able to blog for State of Search, I met so many people. Thank you to Bas for introducing me to some of these people and also Gianluca for introducing me to Elena in Florence who then organised the lunch with 6 SEOs. Thank you to everyone who responded to my tweets and emails which made it possible for me to carry out the interviews.
The full interview can be found on the State of Search blog. If you like it, please share it.