One of my favourite sessions of the day was ‘Keywords and Mini Sites’ presented by Gary Taylor. I’m not sure whether advanced domainers would have found this event a little basic, but I thought Gary did a great job summarising the most important aspects of buying and utilising domain names.  He also suggested some useful resources and links to follow up and there was a nice buzz amongst the audience afterwards. I will definitely check out Gary’s starter guide for new domainers.

In other sessions, Lisa Myers and Jaamit Durrani looked at how social media and linkbuilding could really increase one’s chance of dominating the SERPs.

Lisa provided some top ideas on how to look beyond Facebook and Twitter to build relationships with your audience and drive relevant, highly targeted traffic and backlinks to your website including ‘article marketing’ – writing key content for other sector related websites, guest blogging and providing best practice and white papers.

Jaamit’s session discussed how researching competitor SEO activity and backlink profiles as well as article spinning and negotiating links from trusted ac.uk domains can make a noticeable difference to your place within the SERPS.

Both sessions by Lisa and Jaamit complemented each other and did well to educate and reinforce the key metrics of SEO as well as throw new ideas into the pot.

Paul Madden’s discussion about Black Hat SEO provided a rare and unique insight into the mindset of a spammer which I found scary but somewhat intriguing at the same time.  It was amazing to hear how easily and quickly some individuals are able to make significant sums of money with just a domain name, a piece of script and an eye for an opportunity.

There were many more highlights throughout the day and not all sessions were SEO-themed, other topics included Affiliate Marketing Technologies, Accessibility, Conversion and Online PR.

With so many events being held in London, Dom and his team have done the northern digital community proud. If you have never attended Think Visibility and you are serious about online marketing you are missing a treat!

The only thing I regret about Think Visibility 4 is that I did not enter the Pre conference Pool Tournament because I reckon I would have kicked some serious butt! Roll on ThinkVis 5…

If you have any favourite moments from ThinkVis4 or would like to share feedback on the above, please leave your comments here or email sinead [at] azam.net. You may also like to read my review of Think Visibility 3.

Think Visibility Photos courtesy of Martin Cunningham.

Recommended Link: Professional Search Marketing Services.

I attended my first Think Visibility conference on Saturday and found it to be a really useful and informative event which was also fun at the same time. It was held at the Alea Casino’s conference area, a splendid venue in Leeds, West Yorkshire.

Tom Critchlow’s overview of Local SEO Strategies provided an interesting insight into how to make Google Local work for any business and I took away some handy tips that I will definitely use to help my own clients maximise their exposure across that specific channel.

I also sat in on Paddy Moogan’s session about Link Building. As a first time presenter, Paddy did a great job and put forward a constructive plan of action to help any SEO Manager target and achieve the links that will be of most benefit to them and their advertisers.

Judith Lewis gave a terrific presentation about her SEO experiences and offered some brilliant advice about which activities will actually help you get to the top of the SERPS and those that won’t. (Judith also handed out lots of chocolate which may be another reason why I enjoyed her presentation in particular!)

Unfortunately I didn’t get to stay for the after party but if the tales of the pre-party and the antics at the lunch time quiz are anything go by, I’m sure it was a lively night. Well done to Dom Hodgson and his team for executing a great event.

If you are interested in Search Engine Optimization, I also recommend reading Why you should combine SEO and PPC efforts to dominate search rankings.

• 80% of the time searchers go to the organic results first
• 65% of search traffic goes to the top ten search results
• 60% of searchers click on paid ads sometimes while 12% say they click on them always or most of the time.

Use them together for the most effective marketing strategy:

• Organic SEO is a great long term investment which everyone who is serious about their website should invest in, but PPC can start driving traffic right away. Smart customers will use this to their benefit. Begin SEO and PPC at the same time so you are getting traffic to your site right away, while you wait for your organic rankings start to rise. Once you’ve obtained strong organic rankings, you can reduce your PPC spending, but you shouldn’t stop it altogether.

You should never put all your marketing budget in one basket – it’s too risky. A solid marketing plan should minimize risks and maximize impressions:

• If you have high organic rankings but no paid ads, then you are letting your PPC-savvy competitors steal away some traffic from you because a large percentage of potential customers will click on paid ads too.
• If your organic rankings suddenly take a dive due to search engine algorithm changes and you don’t have a PPC campaign then you are suddenly invisible in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). Granted you can start PPC at any time, but if you aren’t familiar with it, it can take some time (even for a professional) to figure out the most-effective PPC strategy for your site.
• If you only focus on paid listings, you are missing out on the 80% of traffic that goes to organic rankings. Also, research indicates that many customers put a higher “trust” level on organic rankings since many customers are aware that those ads are paid for. You may find that your conversion rate for organic rankings is higher than that of your PPC campaign.
• If you only focus on paid listings and suddenly a competitor enters the PPC market with a big budget that you can’t compete with, then you are going to lose your placement and now you are looking at 3-5 months before you can counter that with organic rankings.

Budgeting

PPC and SEO can be combined to offer an excellent search marketing campaign. Together they can help to maximize web traffic, capture highly targeted visitors, enhance sales, and generate brand awareness. By budgeting wisely, you will be able to use PPC and SEO to their full advantage.

• For new online storefronts or websites, PPC will drive traffic to your site immediately. Based on your budget, a good strategy will be to start using PPC advertising, invest in SEO as soon as you have the funds to invest in it, and begin to taper off your PPC advertising as your organic listings begin to increase.
• From a recent study at the Penn State School of Information Sciences and Technology (IST), researchers found that on more than 80% of searches, study participants went first to the results identified as “organic.” Sponsored links were viewed first less than 10% of the time. A safe bet is to break down your SEO and PPC budget into roughly 70-80% organic SEO and 20-30% PPC. This will help you drive long-term, consistent traffic to your site.
• Set a goal for the amount of traffic you expect to see in a given day. Then, monitor your traffic sources using a quality web analytics program. Turn on conversion tracking code provided by PPC engines like Google and Yahoo!. Information is power. You will begin to see which form of advertising is working best for your industry and your unique situation. When you know where your traffic is coming from and which visitors are converting, you’ll be able to make better marketing decisions.
• Diversify your efforts. Remember that the search engine marketing industry is not limited to these two forms of advertising. Additional options such as blogs, press releases and RSS feeds will help you take advantage of the fact that consumers are first visiting search engines when they are looking to make a purchase.

USA businesses: drive local customers through your doors! Sign up now to get your website listed in local directories & we’ll waive the $19.95 setup fee.

SEO and PPC jobs at Azam Marketing

Our relentless pace of growth shows no sign of abating and we’re hiring again. Below are a list of six exciting new vacancies we have.

These are all senior roles; you must have at least two years full-time or three years part-time experience in the discipline you are applying for the position in.

Click on the job title for detailed information about each role.

Paid Search Marketing Specialist – full-time

Search Engine Optimisation Specialist – part-time

Affiliate Marketing Manager – full-time or maximum part-time

Website and Graphic Designer – full-time

Business Development Manager – full-time or part-time.

Chief Executive Officer - full-time.

You may find out more about Azam Marketing on our website and see all the fun we have in our Facebook Fan Group.

Please send applications to Melissa White at hr [at] azam.net

Applications without the information requested in the job ads will not be considered.

If you recommend a candidate to us who we hire, we will pay a generous referral fee.

We all know the importance of appreciating readers of our blogs from time to time. As we continue in our efforts to keep this the blog alive and kicking we have thought of utilising the goodness of the ‘Top Commentator Widget’ to thank our loyal and faithful readers.

A few months back we gave away ‘Microsoft Office Ultimate Edition’ worth £610 to our 21st Century Quotation Competition winner. However this time we thought of rewarding our blog readers on a continual basis and the ’Top Commentators Widget’ seems to be a perfect answer to do this.

Being in the ‘Top Commentators’ list rewards you with a clean ‘DoFollow’ link and traffic to your website from the right-hand sidebar on every page of Azam.info. So I would urge you to include a link when you leave a comment.

To make it even better and following in the footsteps of other good blogs, we will be publishing a list of top commentators in a post every several weeks to keep the link juice flowing; this means you get to keep our link love for good.

So get you name up on the list guys!