A very quick post just to let y’all know that we’re looking for some interns. If you’re a developer, marketer or SEO who wants to get some real proper hands-on experience with an exciting, friendly and cutting-edge company then please do get in touch! Similarly, if you know anyone who has the brains and the brawn* to complement our existing team then we’d be really grateful if you worked your magic.

(*Brawn isn’t actually needed.)

Enough from me. Here’s the jobs page with all the info, including links to the relevant application forms. We really look forward to hearing from you.

(We look deceptively foreboding in this shot. I think it might be the lighting. We’re actually very very nice.)

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Warning: This post is one of a small number on our blog that has nothing to do with SEO. Having said that is does have an embarrassing picture in it, so it is still well worth a read!

There are currently 3 out of our 15 employees at Distilled that sing with the Grosvenor light opera company (GLOC). Sarah, Jonathan and myself all met whilst singing at GLOC.

Last night was the opening night of this year’s production. The society mainly performs Gilbert and Sullivan operas, and this year is no different with our production of Iolanthe. The show is at the oratory theatre and runs until this Saturday.

Sarah is playing the Fairy Queen, and I’m playing a (very young looking) peer. Jonathan is bolstering the male chorus from the wings.

For any of you in London with a spare night we would love to see you at the show. You can buy tickets online, which you can then pick up on the door.

Stay tuned, and I promise the next few posts will have more of an SEO focus!

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My first conference experience since joining Distilled back in October couldn’t have been better; SMX London is a great event. I took a great deal away with me, learning some tips and tricks of the trade, as well as making some new friends in the SEO world. This is not your typical roundup. There were a few clear themes running through the many panels I attended across both days. I thought I might identify four of these and show some examples from the various speakers I listened to.

Theme One: Engagement

By this, I do not mean a proposal and a ring. Engaging with your audience was discussed across the board. It’s not just about posting a link here or submitting some content there; it’s also about the follow-through. Social media was made to be social, and conversations just come with the territory. Below are some of my favourite key points related to engagement from SMX:

• From the ‘Brand & Reputation Management Strategies’ panel, Mel Carson mentioned today’s consuming audience being engaged as well as “responsive, savvy, wireless, and mobile”. With this in mind, Mel showed the audience how Microsoft uses social media to their advantage through Twitter, their own blog and forums, and Facebook.
• Lyndon Antcliff talked about the importance of discussion on your blog during the ‘Blow Your Mind Link Building Techniques’ session. He recommended posting “discussion-sparking content” on your blog and inviting authority bloggers to participate in the debate, while maintaining what Lyndon refers to as a “mild temperature”.
• Getting a company’s policy to align with their social media strategy is key, according to Lucy Langdon. On ‘What’s New With Social Media Marketing’, Lucy noted that engagement from the company members is crucial in their social media efforts.
• From the same panel, Massimo Burgio invited the audience to listen first before participating in social media conversations. He mentioned that there is no rush, and that we should all be zen and do yoga! How true!

Theme Two: Return On Investment

Admittedly, ROI is a term I have only learned since working in SEO, but one that was heard a lot during this year’s SMX London. It only makes sense that, during a recession, companies are concerned with the return on their investment in search marketing. Luckily, there were many insights offered through some of the panels I attended.

• If there is overall better measurement of your SEO efforts, then a company’s SEO and PPC budget will be increased. Nigel Townend and Linus Gregoriadis highlighted this point right at the outset in ‘Searchscape: Latest Stats About The Search Engines’.
• Chris Cathcart pointed out that rankings are not an accurate measurement of SEO success. In ‘Analyzing & Converting Organic Search Traffic’ on day one, Chris showed the relationships between volume and intent versus effort and conversion.
• Massimo Burgio redefined ROI as “Relevant Optimized Interaction” when talking about social media marketing. ☺
• In a valiant effort to win the epic “presentation-off” during ‘Analytics Every SEO Needs To Know’, Rand Fishkin discussed using a mashup of metrics when explaining ROI to your client, rather than just one alone.
• However, Will Critchlow was proclaimed the victor in the end with his suggestions of filters and customisation techniques. If you’d like more detailed notes on these analytics tips, please email Will, though he asks to please be patient!

Theme Three: Privacy Concerns

As search has become increasingly personalised, naturally consumers are more aware of their own privacy. Google Profiles, for example, has made a user’s identity completely transparent and, while there is still a level of control in the hands of the user, this is worrying to some. It’s great that we are able to find out more about a searcher’s activity from an SEO perspective, but there are growing concerns for the future.

• In order to more closely target demographically as well as behaviourally, Andrew Girdwood explained that this requires private details. However, during the ‘Understanding Searcher Needs & Intent’ panel, he discussed the “site verifying” feature from Norton that enables safer searching.
• When asked about the future of search in the same session, Shari Thurow responded that the proverbial s**t will hit the fan with privacy issues. Everyone should prepare themselves for Operation: Searcher Backlash.
• At its core, Reputation Management is about privacy concerns. Our own Rob Ousbey gave a tip during the ‘Brand & Reputation Management Strategies’ session of hiding your referrer when probing sites for potential threats.
• Additionally, social media takes a level of privacy away from those who are engaged. Dean Chew explained the various advantages of using Facebook Connect with your website during the ‘What’s New With Social Media Marketing’ panel, allowing users to use existing credentials they trust on a different site.

Theme Four: Client Communication

One of the strongest themes running throughout the conference was the idea of an increase in communication with the client. It seemed like a simple idea to me; that the client knows their market the best and should therefore have an active involvement throughout the SEO process. However, this is easily overlooked when agents and SEMs have their own tools and expertise.

• The keynote address, given by Brian Fetherstonhaugh, included a strong message of getting search on the mind of the Chief Marketing Officer of a company. At the moment, Brian told us that search only accounts for about 1.5% of a CMO’s agenda.
• There is a wealth of data in the Research & Development and ‘Insights’ departments of a company. Chris Cathcart suggested spending more time using internal insights to understand target demographics for your campaign on the ‘Understanding Searcher Needs & Intent’ panel.
• Ralph du Plessis urged the idea of getting the consumer involved in keyword research and having them write a content brief. In ‘Analyzing & Converting Organic Search Traffic’, Ralph advised the audience against just giving the client a list of keywords.
• Following from a previous SEOmoz blog post, Rand Fishkin explained how to communicate analytics data to a client in the ‘Analytics Every SEO Needs To Know’ session. Providing a range of metrics from sites like Compete, Alexa, and Quantcast shows a more closely correlated estimation to the real picture.

Did you notice any more key themes from SMX London? Do you have more insights you’d like to share? Let me know in the comments.

Oh – and a shoutout to Spoonfed who provided some quality entertainment suggestions for us after the conference. They have awesome things to do in London, check em out!

And if you’d like some more details from the conference, here a few more roundups for your reading pleasure:

• http://www.seoptimise.com/blog/2009/05/41-ultimate-tips-from-smx-london-2009.html
• http://www.datadial.net/blog/index.php/2009/05/21/smx-london-roundup-more-news-tips-tricks-tools-and-links/
• http://www.webmarketingadvisor.com/SEO-blog/smx-london-recap
• http://www.searchcowboys.com/seo/596

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In amongst all the kerfuffle of the searchology news I’ve noticed something else new being tested on adwords. I’m not sure if this is a permanent change for a select number of sites or if it’s the start of a new change but when I search for ’small dog‘ in the US I see the following adwords result:

Expanding that plusbox shows me this:

Interesting huh! I wonder where Google is pulling those extra products from? They have long descriptions, price tags and nice images. Is this actually something that’s been out for a while and I’ve just not seen it before? I’d love to know your thoughts.

Update: Turns out this isn’t that new after all. It’s a test which has been ongoing for some time. The products are pulled from Google Base apparently. Check out the full Searchengineland story for more info.

Update 2: Thanks to tomsmith1984 who spotted this happening in the UK which I think might be a first: searching for littlewoods shows a plusbox for them in the UK.

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Conversion Rate Optimisation can sometimes seem daunting. It often has a stigma attached to it of constant testing, heavy development changes and large amounts of work. While it’s true that you certainly can do CRO testing till you’re blue in the face it doesn’t need to be that way. Here are five conversion rate improvements that you can do, right now, on your website in under 5 minutes. Ready? Go!

1. Move every step of the buying/checkout process above the fold.

This is one of the most common errors I see in the checkout/conversion process of clients where one or more steps of the checkout process involve scrolling down to the bottom of the page. How hard is it to move the buy-now button above the fold in every step of the process? If you need a long page for whatever reason, why not add a buy-now button above the fold (yes, two buy-now buttons on one page! crazy talk). Here’s an example product page from Boomkat (an awesome independent online music shop) where the ‘Buy!’ button is way down below the fold. Why not add a buy button up top too? Click to enlarge the image:

2. Make your call to action more visible.

The conversion is the thing you want to happen on the page, it’s the raison d’etre for the page – so make it as easy and intuitive as possible for the user to buy/contact/sign-up. Sometimes this can mean turning a text link into an image or making a button brighter or bigger, whatever it is you need to do – make the call to action as easy as possible to click.

Here’s an example from the BigChill Festival’s booking page where the buy-now button is conveniently a text link which says “next” (click the image to see full size):

3. Add some trust to your site.

Users are always scared. A recent study shows that almost a third of internet users don’t trust the internet enough to shop online. That’s a lot! Think about the number of users who will only shop from sites they DO trust. How can you make your site more trusted? There’s two easy and quick ways.

1 – Add some security buttons to your site, whether these be hackersafe, verisign, thawte or paypal these buttons have been proven to increase conversion rates. I found a really nice exmaple from PC World above the fold on their checkout process:

2 – Add a testimonial to your site. Testimonials are really important and help users feel comfortable that the product they’re buying and the site they’re buying it from are genuine. Here’s (one of) Will’s testimonial on the SEOmoz PRO landing page:

4. Get a friend to test the site.

Sometimes you can think that your site works perfectly, is easy to understand and works smoothly but there’s no accounting for the random s**t that users will click on or enter into text fields. Or, sometimes it’s the case that it makes sense to you since you look at the site every day but to your average user it doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense. The easiest way to do this is to find a friend who’s not familiar with your site and ask them to buy something. Watch over their shoulder and you’ll be amazed at the things they get confused at or the buttons they click incorrectly.

If you want something a bit more robust, but still really quick and easy, take a look at silverback – a neat piece of usability testing software (only for macs I’m afraid) which records video of people using your site alongside their progress through your site.

5. Remove (at least) one distraction from the checkout process.

When you’re looking to streamline your checkout process have you ever wondered why people sometimes leave half-way through buying a product to go and look at the FAQ page or the homepage? Have you ever wondered what would happen if they didn’t have the option of leaving the checkout process?! Removing distractions and links to pages outside the checkout process can really help your conversion rate so if you’re looking for a quick change, try removing a distraction – this could be a link to a page about shipping details (why not make this a pop-up instead?) or it could be a long form with lots of fields (why not remove some of the non-essential fields?).

Amazon.co.uk recently changed their checkout process so there’s hardly a distraction in sight – in the below image (click to enlarge) almost nothing is clickable except the ‘place your order’ button:

If anyone implements any of the changes in this post and gets results I’d love to hear from you!

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In my last blog post I outlined my experiences from the morning of FOWD 09, if you haven’t read it, I suggest reading it here first. If you have then great: read on.

After lunch I was looking forward the talk by Sabrina Dent “Throwing Client Collaboration Out of the Window: The Stalinist Web Design Model”. My main reason for wanting to see the talk was that the title suggested it would be controversial. As it happens, it wasn’t. Don’t get me wrong, Sabrina delivered her material very well, but I don’t think a lot of the concepts she was delivering were relevant to the majority of people. Her main idea was to eliminate choice from the client as they are not the expert. Also saying ‘no’ to clients so that if they really want what they are requesting they will push for it. But the reason I think it was out of most people’s scope was that you had to have a lot of experience and credibility for this methodology to work, which only comes from using the traditional methods. Also I believe that this approach could create a lot of conflict between you and the client and pen you as a trouble maker in the industry.

Then came Folkert Gorter’s talk “Participatory Evolution: Excerpts from a decade of Interaction Design on the Web”. From Folkert’s work I was expecting big ideas, but I feel it failed to deliver. The main narrative was Folkert showing the audience his personal portfolio. Lots of interesting examples, but it seemed like he was looking for a job and not teaching the audience anything new. One of the main points from the talk was the process of developing a concept, but it wasn’t a clear point at all.

With over 13 years of experience Simon Sankarayya was clearly going to be a good presentation. “13 years and 13 things I have learned about computers” outlined key events in the history of his career. Like Folkert, Simon chose to deliver a presentation around his personal portfolio, unlike Folkert key points were made about the evolution of the web we know today. Stand out moments involved the MTV2 website that his agency created. Later that same branding moved on to be used as the TV brand. Despite the fact this talk taught me nothing new, it was a very clear and an interesting presentation.

A very big hitter in the industry, Molly Holzschlag, rounded off the day. A key player in the WASP consortium, and an advocate for web standards everywhere. Her talk “The Future of Web Standards: Is There One?” tackled the big issues with web standards today. She championed the idea of supporting old browsers not by versioning, but by providing progressive enhancement. Not a new idea but an important one none the less. Although it was delivered with real passion and energy I couldn’t help but feeling one major issue was left out. How do we as an industry convince and educate clients about progressive enhancement in a way that will allow us to use it? (Any comments on the issue, please feel free to share).

Overall I found the day thoroughly enjoyable. As with every year, there are stand out talks , this year I’d personally say Robin Cristopherson wins on that front. His talk has convinced me that a lot more research needs to be put in with end users to see which techniques we are using hinder the experience for them.

Well done to the Carsonified team for putting on a great event, I look forward to seeing what next year brings. If you are interested in listening to any of these talks you can find them at http://events.carsonified.com/fowd/2009/london/content

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On the 18th and 19th May, employees from Distilled will be attending and speaking at SMX London 2009.

If there are any particular issues that you’d like to see covered, just leave a comment below and we’ll try to address them in the session.

Brand & Reputation Management Strategies

Rob Ousbey, Day 1, 16:30

When you’re managing the Online Reputation for a brand or individual, it can difficult to know which newly published pages could cause negative reputational issues, and which search results you should be concerned about. I’ll be talking about strategies you can use to resolve these issues, as well as providing some actionable tips that I use day-to-day in my work.

 

Paid Search & Tricky Issues

Richard Cotton, Day 1, 16:30

Richard will be speaking about how advanced broad match can get a bad press and how you can use it constructively – such as to get around competitor bidding quality score issues, plus other ways to get the most out of broad match.

He’ll also discuss how to use the community as an alternative to Google’s own support, conversion rate issues, how you can use intermediate metrics to judge traffic quality and why higher bounce might not be a bad thing.

 

What’s New With Social Media Marketing

Lucy Langdon, Day 2, 10:45

Lucy will be talking about the growing dominance of Twitter and other micro-blogging platforms in the world of ‘news’. She’ll examine case studies where old media are fighting their corner on and offline, and will examine how this fits in with the idea of linkbait – is news the new linkbait? She’ll give tips on how to be the one to break news, look at the implications of news & social media on business and use a case study or two to exemplify how companies have done well or not so well.

 

Analytics Every SEO Needs To Know

Will Critchlow, Day 2, 13:15

Will’s presentation will help you get the most from Google Analytics, by demonstrating advanced filters that you can use to discover important (and actionable) new features about your rankings and visitors.

 

Give It Up!

Will Critchlow, Day 2, 16:30

Give It Up! sessions are a chance for search marketing heavyweights to share advice behind closed doors (the techniques discussed here can’t be written about for at least a month.) The sessions can stumble well into ‘dark SEO’ territory, but Will has vowed to be the whiter-that-white expert amongst the group; he’ll be sharing advice that has been tried and tested over the last six months at Distilled.

 

You can grab the full agenda from the SMX website. Do give us a shout if you’re coming, and come and grab any of us to say ‘hello’ at the event.

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The Future of Web Design (FOWD) is a great way to keep in contact with the latest trends and issues in the web industry. Every year we gain access to leading thinkers in the field; this year was no exception.

The day started off with a surprise presentation from Danny Somekh on “Agile Branding & Creative Development”. Taking the concept of agile programming beyond programming and using it as part of your full creative process is something new. Danny presented a clear and confident argument on how we as ‘creatives’ can use the process to enhance the commitment and quality of the final products, achieved through the right levels of client engagement with a good team of collaborators behind it. The key point that I got from this talk was that creating a safe environment for creative ideas helps nurture creativity in a way that will show in the final outcome. This is something I believe to be very true and often over looked.

Next up was a powerful keynote address from Jim Coudal from Coudal Partners. Jim’s talk looked into creativity and how we use various techniques to gain creative ideas. He introduced the notion that when coming up with ideas or solving problems we always have one constant and one variable. Jim went on to talk about ways in which we can find the constants that we need by looking back into the past, or looking around into the wider world through discussion with others. Always hold onto that initial enthusiasm, because there might be a reason why you get bored of a project. These are key ideas that I think help in the creative process, but a lot of what he was saying seemed to me to be things we tend to do intuitively.

Then came Megan Fisher on “Designing Effective Mobile Interfaces”. Megan took us through more of a beginners’ guide to designing for the mobile web, citing Mobile Web Design by Cameron Moll as the chief inspiration for this talk. If you have read the book then you won’t have found much in the presentation new. A few key concepts were made clearer, such as identifying key areas on the site that mobile users will want to access being a great way to figure out the flow of the page. Keep mobile site design using single columns as you have to take into account small screen resolutions. I think a lot of these ideas are very key to desiging for the mobile web. Unfortunately, nothing new was brought to the table with this talk.

Goodbarry are well known for putting personality behind everything they do, so I was looking forward to the next presentation by Brett Welch. “Beyond Pixel Pushing: 3 Steps to Building Better Websites and Happier Clients” was a very funny and useful talk. Brett outlined a clear methodology for adding value to your projects by using a process he liked to refer to as BUSTA. Helped along the way by Busta Rhymes this point was put forward very effectively. The main idea behind this methodology seemed to be in getting the business more involved with their online strategy; an idea that has been presented before but one that I fully agree with. If a business has a clear online strategy there is always a higher chance that their website will succeed.

Up next Mark Boulton, founder of one of the UK’s most high profile agencies. Mark’s presentation on “Typography’s not on the Web, it IS the Web” was a very informed talk on the state of typography today. Beginning his presentation with a personal background on how he was taught by professionals in the print industry, Mark went on to explain why typography is where it is today. He ended his talk by addressing the issue with font embedding. A key point he made is that everyone has the ability to be a designer. Clients will want to add style to their pages, but as professional designers you should help people make good design decisions. An issue that I can totally agree with after observing how clients like to use our content management system; there is definitely room for research into this approach.

With my interest in the area of accessibility, I was really looking forward to the next talk by Robin Christopherson.“Designing for All in a Web 2.0 World” was one of the most insightful talks I’ve ever been too. Robin is blind and went through his presentation showing us examples of the stumbling blocks that he has to face on a day to day basis on the internet. When using Google Mail on a screen reader, it was shown that there were several empty elements on the page that were read out, something a company that large should know about. What transpired is that a lot of disabled users share the same needs as users of mobile devices. If we were to sign post the more accessible versions of the site for disabled users, those users would have a greater enhanced experience. This is something I really feel needs to be researched further.

Last up before lunch was Mike Kus, Carsonified’s very own graphic designer. As expected his slides were very well designed. “Graphic Design: The Forgotten Web Standard” looked at the issue that all the talk about standards and code across the web tends to neglect discussion on the design stage of the process. He moved through the talk discussing various key ideas on the medium failing to hold onto one main thread. He ended the session with a sped up version of his design process, proving that design isn’t instantaneous. I didn’t really come away from this presentation with any really insightful points, but found that the idea of creating more discussion around graphic design reiterated key ideas Jim Coudal and Danny Somekh were saying earlier.

In part two I will be discussing the second half of the day with talks from, among others, Molly Holzschlag and Simon Sankarayya. Click here to read it

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