ionSearch at the Electric Press, Leeds
As soon as I heard about ionSearch – the search marketing and social media conference in Leeds – I wanted to go. The line up of speakers was fantastic and, as a copywriter, I knew the conference would present a valuable opportunity to learn more about SEO.
I was lucky enough to win a pair of tickets through a social media competition so I headed off to the Electric Press with my PR associate Nikki.
The conference was every bit as informative as I hoped it would be. For those who couldn’t make it, here are the most useful SEO and SM tips and stats that I picked up from each speaker:
Lee Odden of TopRank Online Marketing
- Paths to purchase: One per cent through social media alone. 51 per cent through search alone. 48 per cent through a combination of search and social.
- 16 per cent of queries on Google have never been searched for before.
- Know your target audience: how they discover information, what they consume (eg video), how they consume it (eg tablet or mobile) and how they engage.
- Use a blog or website as a hub with your social media activity as spokes all relating to it.
- Develop an editorial plan for your blog content six months in advance and use a combination of fixed and dynamic content so you can react to current events.
Tim Grice of Branded3
- Understand the people who are already finding your website and how they get there.
- Think: why would people want to link back to this page?
- Good content gets more social shares than it does links.
- Different people like and share – try to get those who do both.
- Google wants fresh, relevant, unique and up-to-date content.
Andy Atkins-Krüger of Webcertain Group
- One third of activity on mobiles is search.
- The third biggest growth activity on mobile is retail – people are buying things.
- A tablet is best treated as if it was a desktop – don’t use Adobe Flash.
- $25M is spent per day on Newsstand on iPad alone.
- 25 per cent of all apps on Apple are free. 75 per cent of all apps on Android are free.
- The most popular apps are entertainment, games, business, news and weather.
- Two things drive traffic to apps – the amount of downloads and how much people use the app once they have downloaded it.
- Apple bought out Chomp in February for $50M – they’re going to use it as a search engine for apps.
Danny Gray of Google (speaking about Google+)
- 77 per cent of brand content is created by consumers.
- Brands who are having success on Google+ are creating different circles for different target audiences.
- Use Google+ ripples to see how your content has been shared.
- The best way to use Google+ is to share valuable content and hold hangouts (video-chats).
- Promote your page with badges and offline marketing.
Dave Snyder of Steelcast
- We’re about to hit a renaissance in SEO, mixing science (more traditional SEO) and art (quality content).
- The key is to create highly shareable content and media with depth, and finding it a home.
- Learn what each social media platform has to offer and what content will work.
- Facebook API tells you so much information about your target audience.
I really hope you find some of these useful – please get in touch at fiona@wordsbyfionakyle if you want to talk about any of them further.
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