On Sunday 23rd October myself, Sam and Ben will be attending the speakers’ dinner for Searchlove, with the conference to follow on Monday and Tuesday. For those curious about the event, or who want a Searchlove preview, we’ve put together our thoughts on the topics and idea’s we’d like to see covered on the day.
Of course what we’d really like to hear the speakers say is “We’d love to have you guys speak at next year’s event” but failing that the following would suffice:
Monday 24th October
The last time I saw Rand speak he was passionate about the mistakes Google were making and how wrong it was that bad SEO techniques could win the search war. The strong undercurrent of a lot of Rand’s recent work has been that having a great brand and rewarding your fans is more important than dodgy SEO tactics to rank well.
What we’d like to see here is a culmination of Rand’s previous talks in this area, and a great insight in to the lessons SEOmoz has learned from their own community. SEOmoz have great loyalty from their fans, alongside both their brand and the ‘Roger’ mascot, so a look at this process would be ideal.
A lot of SEO practices work great on a small scale, but are difficult to manage when applied to a large business or in an industry that has many big name competitors. We got a look at how Tom did SEO for SEOmoz at the linklove seminar, which was a case of competing in a very competitive market, so we’d like more of an analysis in that way. With many brands focusing million pound investments in SEO it will be great to get an insight in to the best way to slice this budget and avoid wastage.
Mat Clayton: “The next level of social integration”
Social and SEO have always made for an uneasy mix, but the benefit of hearing Mat speaking on this topic is that he’s co-founder of Mixcloud a social network for finding DJ’s. This gives him a good insight on using SEO and Social together, especially in the area of having customers post their interactions with your site on to other social networks. We’d like Mat to explain recent connection methods with social networks and methods of tracking ROI from the channel.
Will Critchlow: “The modern SEO’s toolkit”
No conference would be complete without a free tool, and Will’s presentation is all about mixing tools together to build new pieces of technology that can be used to make SEO easier. We’ve recently been experimenting with API’s at Koozai and would agree there’s a lot to be gained from building your own tools – many of which are quite simple once you learn the basics.
We’d like a beginners guide to API’s, and a look at how anyone in the SEO team can build their own tools, even with something basic like Excel or Google Docs.
Joanna Lord: “Social media: Are you keeping up with the Joneses?”
With social media it’s very typical for a boss to look at a competitor and ask for their strategy to be copied with no real understanding of why (or what you can gain from it). Joanna promises that by the end of this presentation we will be able to see what the competitor is investing in and what works for them. Our main hope from this presentation is that it will empower people to only say “Yes” to social media if they can identify a clear benefit.
Joost de Valk: “Wordpress SEO”
Joost is the creator of the excellent WordPress SEO tool, who will be talking here about WordPress SEO. How can we lose? For those already familiar with the tool it would be good to get an insight in to future changes planned by Joost, as well as how we can improve our own SEO on WordPress projects without using the tool.
Rob Ousbey: “Outreach: is it all about hustle?”
Rob has trained countless link builders since 2010, and in this presentation he will show us the methods used and how to track results. As I’m in charge of the link building training at Koozai this should be an excellent look at how other agencies work. We’re hoping Rob will share tactics that can apply to all agencies, and also offer a level of transparency that allows other people to run with the ideas shared.
Wil Reynolds: “Your content strategy is part of your link building strategy”
Wil was my favourite speaker at Linklove, (no pressure Wil!) because he spent a lot of the presentation being honest and stating SEO mistakes that he had made and the lessons that had been learnt from them. In this content-focused presentation I’d like to see Wil advance the topic away from spinning content, and low level article sites to more advanced efforts like guest blogging and networking to build PR contacts.
Tuesday 25th October
In a talk that looks like it will be in a similar vein to the Filter Bubble, Ciaran will be looking at personalised search results and the impact of social signals. Alongside that he’ll be looking at remarketing and cookie regulations. As everyone seems to be silent on the cookie regulations and with remarketing a hot topic at the moment, Ciaran has a great chance to tie this all together and leave people with new marketing areas for this year and next.
Wiep is a self-titled “hatless link builder” so we’d like to see a little from the dark side here, with white hat applications. Researching competitor links and using them for my own purposes is one of my favourite link building methods, so any extra ways to compete in that space will be noted down immediately. Any tips on scaling this, or quickly filtering out bad link sources would also be handy.
Richard has been covering Gamification on a recent SEOmoz webinar and on the SEOgadget website so this presentation should be the equivalent of a comedian doing their last gig in a tour after a run of practice gigs around the country. In other words it will be a very polished look at using game elements to build user engagement. The promise of real campaign experience only adds to the package and makes the video gamer in me very excited by this talk.
In a similar vein to Rob’s talk, Patrick will be explaining what works in link building from his own experience and those of his clients. We’d like to see actionable data alongside a list of some of the best methods Patrick has used. I’m a strong fan of top 10 lists, so anything that can say “you should be building these links, in this order” is a must for me. Alternatively, a look at why the methods worked and how they can be replicated will be incredibly useful.
Distilled already dropped the best guide to linkbait ever on our laps this year, so the pressure is on Hannah to digest that humongous document in to a 45 minute set that compiles the best aspects and also looks ahead at what we can expect next. Hannah gave an excellent webinar on “creating viral link bait” with Mark Johnstone in September, where they asked the attendees for sites in need of linkbait, and they provided suggestions. More of this type of discussion and analysis would be great.
Whilst driving extra people to your website can improve sales, implementing CRO techniques can help you make more money from the customers you already have. As this is a look at Stephen’s bookmarks I’m intrigued as to the format this will take, but I assume it will be a look at the best tools and resources that Stephen uses on a regular basis. Anything that helps brands make more money would be the desired goal here.
What do I want to see from Martin? Controversy.
His comments on black hat SEO made the Linklove event one of the most memorable events of the year (even Matt Cutts got involved) and it was the insights in this area that helped white hat SEO’s improve as well. With a brand presentation focusing on Waitrose and McDonalds we may have to rely on Wiep to fill the controversy criteria, but given the importance we’ve seen of branded SEO in the last year, I’m sure we’ll find plenty to like in this talk.
And more:
There’s also a “give it up session” on day one, where the speakers will share their best tips, and a head to head on day two, which will pitch Will Critchlow and Rand Fishkin against each other in a live site review.
If you’d like to meet-up with any of the Koozai team at the show our Twitter details are below:
You can also buy tickets for Searchlove here.
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