SAScon 2010 now launched! Search, Analytics & Social Media 28th April

We’ve been working hard on a project that we’ve been keeping under-wraps for quite some time, so it’s a huge relief to finally get it out there! I am so pleased to announce the launch of a new Search, Analytics and Social Media conference to the UK online marketing scene: SAScon.

With the support of SEMPO and Manchester Digital, SAScon has been organised by a team of digital marketing specialists from around Manchester and the UK. It’s a conference for the online marketing industry by the industry – a tweaked cliché, but oh so true! It’s combined the energy, attention and talents of the following online marketers:

• Myself, Ben McKay, Mediaedge:cia
• Richard Gregory, Latitude
• Pete Young, MediaVest
• Simon Wharton, Pushon
• Richard Hudson, Vanilla Storm
• Peter Cobley, iSpy
• NickyWake, Don’t Panic
• Gary Bramwell, Brazen PR

It’s kind of funny really, individually I had previously spoken to many of these people about how great it would be to put Manchester on the international map for all the talent that currently exists and create an event that people want to travel to…And this one is certainly going to be one of those events!

Confirmed SAScon Speakers

Working as part of a project that has drawn such a high calibre is quite an honour, and I think it’s going to be an event to really draw the industry’s attention. Excitingly, I can announce that speakers attending include:

• Fantomaster / Ralph Tegtmeier – a prolific SEO tool developer, often associated with what some might describe as the darker arts of SEO. Will be an exciting session!
• Richard Gregory – Chief Operating Officer for Latitude Group, a leading European, digital agency.
• Joost de Valk / Yoast – a hugely well regarded developer of SEO tools and widgets, and recently established Orange Valley online marketing.
• Jon Myers – Head of Search at MVi, the online marketing arm of the Mediavest Group.
• Massimo Burgio – a founding member of SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organisation), and Chief Strategist for Global Search Interactive.

More speakers to be announced, but I can assure they are truly superb, super high-calibre speakers. Getting a ticket now wouldn’t be a bad idea at all whilst they’re on the early bird discount.

Who should attend SAScon?

So, so, so many people should attend…here are a few:

- Agency-side Search & Social Marketers

- Client-side Search and Social Marketers

- IT Professionals

- Web Designers and Developers

- Heads of Marketing

- Heads of SME

SAScon Event Details

Date: April 28^th 2010

Venue: The Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, UK

Early Bird Tickets: £225 + VAT
Early Bird SEMPO / Manchester Digital Member Tickets: £195 + VAT

SAScon is going to be one of the UK’s finest search and social events for those agency and client side looking to excel in their field. If you haven’t already, ensure you pop-by SAScon.co.uk to register for your ticket – at £250, they’re an absolute bargain!

What does an SEO Strategy look like?

Over at Mediaedge:cia we’ve been developing a SEO training programme entitled the MEC SEO Academy.  Something that I think is very cool and hopefully adds to what will be a framework where true excellence in SEO is encouraged.

We’ve got a load of print-outs from our favourite SEO websites and a number of SEO books laying around but there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of a summarised version of the items to consider when building-out a SEO strategy.  So, I’ve quickly whipped-up a number of items that I thought could help to provide a framework for approaching SEO strategically.  As such it’s a work-in-progress, but would be interested to hear your thoughts.

I’m hoping this sort of SEO strategy / thinking could prompt a fairly versatile and integrated approach to SEO, e.g. how does the company consider temporal factors – maybe through ongoing link-building, up weighting link-building in line with other channel’s activity or releasing content to the website.

The SEO Strategy

Click SEO strategy to enlarge.

Analytics & Reporting

Laying out the framework for what should be analysed and reported on as part of any SEO activity naturally helps factor in accountability and clarity regarding activity, outputs and opportunities in order to develop a more informed SEO strategy.

Ranking Factors

As SEO’s, we know better than most what factors could be feeding in to rankings and visibility of websites online.  This though, is a prompt to consider how these ranking factors are evolving, in the case of Google, at the rate of 300 changes per year.  In addition to the core algorithm changes we are also seeing huge shifts in how the search results are considering a broader array of display and ranking factors, such as Universal, personalisation and real time.

Geo-targeting

Local SEO and international SEO consider on-site factors and off-site factors…but so too should they consider things like mobile devices too.  For example, people that access your content in transit, looking up information on their iPhone, might have quite different intent to those using a desktop computer.

Geo-targeting (and temporal factors) could indeed be considered an relevancy factors but I just wanted to draw extra attention to them considering the different levels of intent and approach to marketing required.

Temporal Factors

Importantly, recently What is deemed successful in the Spring may be quite different to that seen in the Winter.  Conversely, patterns from trend data are not always so apparent if they are new to develop, however getting a foothold in a niche early on can have huge gains.  So too can regularity – by releasing content on a regular basis you can help establish yourself in a niche, gain regular links, benefit from return visitors, and from fresh visibility from a fresh range of terms.

Consumers / Personalisation

Understanding consumers, profiling their needs and responding accordingly is the centre-piece of so many marketers’ campaigns.

Naturally, all needs can’t be responded to in this way and some degree of anticipation / speculation is required to get ahead of the game.

But there are so many ways of profiling users considering items such as referrals, analytics, click path analysis, link-profiles, brand citations, SearchWiki, internal searches, demographic profile tools such as Quantcast, Hitwise data, user interviews / questionnaires, etc etc…

Online Visibility / Multiplier Effect / Assets

This is where pulling together the strategy begins to see outputs in taking advantage of

Here, one of the greatest areas of value will come from the USPs of the business, a consideration of where genuine value can be delivered to the user of the website, and the relationships harnessed both SEO relationships and business relationships.

Budgets, Business Goals & Brand Development

Direct visitors are the cheapest after all, so a thread of brand awareness can hugely beneficial as part of the SEO strategy.  Ultimately it comes back to the business goals.  1 million visitors might be a goal for the website but if these are blog visitors, then the over-arching business goal to increase turnover by 20% might be unachievable considering this traffic type.  As such, consideration of how one feeds in to the other, where the priorities lie, how the budgets are allocated and how long-term growth can be achieved is vital.

Competitors

AND, hugely important is what the competitors are doing across these strategic areas.  Is it likely they are not considering all areas, quite possibly, but what areas of their SEO strategy are these most keenly developing?

External, Environmental Factors

Using the PESTLE (Politics, Economic, Sociological, Technological, Legal and Environmental) points you can begin to speculate, plan or simply prepare yourself for unknown changes in the environment that you operate in.  So many items in search, marketing and business can’t be prepared for but a model that factors these considerations on a fluid basis is still important in my view.

The Wrap Up

So these are my thoughts, what would yours include?  This is a diagram that’s certainly open to being developed…are there any glaringly obvious factors that should be included?  What would your diagram include?

SEM Rush Review – Keyword Research & Competitive Analysis

Please note the following SEM Rush review to follow is geared-up for SEO’s using SEM Rush for understanding keyword volumes and competitiveness and value, but doesn’t really cover the PPC value in too much detail.  Paid Search guys can also take advantage of the PPC facets that look pretty handy.  Although I work with PPC guys a fair bit now, I can apply the SEO applications of this tool much more easily to how SEO’s like to work and so I’ve made that the focus of this review.

So what is SEM Rush?

SEM Rush has a database which tracks the visibility of websites via a huge set of keywords.  As a keyword suggestion tool, SEM Rush performs very well, but as a keyword value, volume and cost estimator it can work even better. SEM Rush has Firefox addon that can be pretty cool for at-you- finger-tips-access.

Regarding the depth of their keyword database, the following keywords should give you an idea of the number of keywords can be mined and tracked for that particular vertical:

• Credit Card, USA database: 17,000+ keywords
• Sunglasses, USA database: 3,000+ keywords
• Car, USA database: 24,000+ keywords

…these terms have been semantically generated and extracted from domains competing in that space, but number don’t mean anything if the quality of the suggested keywords are lousy.  The best way to see the quality of the keywords is to test for yourself, in your own niche, but from my queries I exported the SEM Rush keyword to excel and then sorted alphabetically to start the process of sorting the keywords by  and I saw a good level of quality and relevancy in their to be perfectly satisfied.

This is a good way of seeing which domains rank organically for the any given keyword query, but then you can see what terms they find most important by seeing what terms they are bidding on in AdWords.

USA, Holland, French and Russian Results Only

It would be truly great is SEM Rush extended its tools to consider the UK market.  Maybe after getting a few more public mentions in the UK they might see it as a feasible option.

I work with the Outrider guys in Holland and the States, so this might be more useful for them, but as many of my clients’ websites aren’t restrained by geographic borders then it could still potentially add value.

35 million keywords

SEM Rush goes to the effort of analysis what’s going on organically around 35 million keywords.  Now that’s some pretty impressive tracking data.

I’d certainly like to hear their perspective of key shifts or trends across competitive niches.  Would certainly add value to USA, Dutch, French and Russian clients – maybe there’s a high-level service they could provide!

For the 35 million keywords that they are tracking, these are taken from multiple volume driving verticals, but if you’re unsure whether they are able to serve all your needs, then give them a go.  Even with their free service you can see the potential keywords available.

SEM Rush Competitor Analysis

The best thing it offers from my perspective is that SEM Rush helps to highlight who is competing for the same keywords you are.  This is could be very helpful.  On a keyword-by-keyword basis, it’s naturally easy enough to see who is competing in your organic space for that keyword.  SEM Rush also allows you to then mine the keywords that they are targeting via Adwords or organically too.  It could provide a few more target sites for gaining links too of course.

It’s important to realise that data can be up to one month old.  It’s a huge data set of 35 million terms so it’s going to take some time to refresh.  This does mean that some of the rankings are misplaced.   Also because of the ad serving platforms redirecting through their own URLs, sometimes you might see results such as dartsearch.com or advertising.com, but it’s probably just best to disregard these as competitors as it’s just a bug in the way that the results are scraped.

SEMRush User Interface

SEM Rush enables access via the web interface and through excel docs, so data can be moulded and merged to suit your needs. Click on the image to see for yourself…

They also encourage you to get in touch if you want to plug and play with their data, maybe as part of another tool – so really helpful if you like to build your own SEO tools.

Reporting

The reporting interface is clear and easy to understand. I think they could provide better examples of ways that SEM Rush could be used in order to splice the data that it serves. After all, it’s not the data that’s important but the information that you pull from it.

Speed of Search

It can run a bit slow at times.  Most of the time when I was testing it was over the weekend so I would expect there to be much demand then on their servers but maybe they were doing some maintenance at low demand time, who knows.   Then again, I’ve been pretty busy lately so maybe I’m just getting less patient with old age!

35m keywords analysed – and digging through this kind of volume is a pretty big ask, but from my perspective it’s worth the wait for a healthy list of terms or competing domains.

Is SEM Rush for big websites?

Running SEM Rush on my website it showed me who I was competing again from keywords that are extracted from your website, although I’d personally disagree that I am competing with the likes of Wikipedia and Google.com for terms like SEO consultant. 

This makes me think that SEMRush is probably best suited for bigger websites where the data can be more accurate as a sample, but then again this could be the UK-skew again.

SEM Rush Price

SEMRush is priced very low compared to other keyword and vertical competition analysis tools, like Compete.com and Spyfu, but none of these can be compared like-for-like.  Each has their own specialities.

Conclusion

This tool is most likely to be most helpful for those working with big companies, with clearly defined websites and in big markets.

SEM Rush is good at what it does definitely, and I look forward seeing what else it has in store for us in the future!

Don’t take my word for it – if you like what you’re reading and want to know more, make sure you read Aaron Wall’s review too. If you want to trial SEM Rush give it a go by clicking here…

Another Manchester SEO Event! Wednesday 4th November

Following the success of last month’s Manchester SEO meet-up, the next event is all lined-up now for the infamous Manchester SEO group-ies!  Have you dropped a note on the Manchester SEO group’s thread to say you’re attending?  Do so here. If you’re not part of the group, drop a comment on this blog post and make sure you say hello on the night!  :)

Don’t forget this, like all ‘Manchester’ SEO events are not just for SEO folk from Manchester but from all over the North West, and I even hear we might be having some attendees from as far away as Leeds coming!  It could also be a good chance to learn more about freelance SEO services from any of the guys attending too.  So do make sure you pop by.

Regarding details…

Manchester SEO Meet-up Venue

Same venue as last month, House 9 Bar, but this time it’s upstairs in the loft of House 9 Bar – just follow the stairs up.  Feedback was good last month regarding the venue but people just wanted a little bit more elbow space so this time we’re heading upstairs to the same place where the Manchester Twestival held, here (just across the road from Deansgate Locks):
View Larger Map

If you do get lost, or have any queries, feel free to give me a ring (07828 760 343) or drop me an email: ben [at] justmeandmy.com

Time & Date

Wednesday 4th November, 6pm onwards

Drinks Promotions

If you like a mid-week drink then you’ll be pleased to hear about the following offers until 9pm:

• Bottle of house wine – £6
• Beer – £2 per bottle
• Many half price cocktails
• Shots – £1

In case anyone is especially keen to buy me a drink, I’ll have any of the above.  Ta!  ;)

Future Manchester SEO Events…

Oh, and make sure you feedback regarding the venue – fancy a change let us know, like the location for convenience, then let us know!  Feedback is always welcome!

Manchester SEO Meet-up > 8th October

Right, quick post….

So firstly, you’ve heard about the Manchester SEO group by now right?  Well if not, sign-up here. Technically speaking, it’s not just for Manchester SEO’s and we see people visiting from all over the North West, so do make sure you do too.

[Update: more info on the latest Manchester SEO event here]

SEO Manchester Meet-up

Secondly, you’ve heard about the Manchester SEO meet-ups that are being organised, haven’t you?  Well, if not, make sure you attend the next.

If you’re not part of LinkedIn the idea of signing up to the Manchester SEO group seems like a huge pain for the sake of meeting for a few beers, so here are the details anyway:

Date: Thursday 8th October

Time: 6pm

Venue: House Bar 9 (same place the Manchester Twestival was held at – the bar on the far left of Deansgate Locks)

Agenda: Anything you like.  It’s a casual affair and a very sociable bunch of people in a bar; so could be anything from discussing latest SERP aesthetics, to search engine patents, link-building approaches, blackhat techniques (to avoid?!), sharing contact details or something quite removed from SEO all together.  You decide!  It could also be a good chance to learn more about freelance SEO services from any of the guys attending too. 

Thirdly, did you know that Mediaedge:cia Manchester (part of WPP Group) are on the look-out for North West’s best SEO talent?  If you’re looking for a new SEO job, this would be a great opportunity to pop-by and say hello to myself or David Towers, as we’re always keen to meet ambitious SEO’s in the Manchester area.  Or of course connect with me on LinkedIn.

So, who’s in?

[Update: more info on the latest Manchester SEO event here]

The 2nd Tier Advantage of Modern Day SEO: Online PR example

As major news sites try to retain some of their link-equity, many have turned to not linking-out at all, rarely or building landing pages for those companies as opposed to linking to them directly. This has created a sort of SEO blackhole, but what are the implications for people who work in SEO?

What is the 2nd tier link advantage?

2nd tier links are links from authoritative sites or pages that filter through to your site via a middle-man/page.  However there is a second version, whereby companies develop internal landing pages that are linked to rather than linking directly to the website in question.

2nd Tier Links

Reporting in your link-profile might therefore only find one link from a site when in actual fact that link has (on a basic level) amalgamated the value of many links from internal link structures.

The original thread on WebMasterWorld talks about the value of 2nd tier links, but instead of just explaining the situation, I thought I would apply it to a popular link-building method – online PR.

2nd tier links in context

2nd tier links can be effective.  But many items feed in to their effectiveness.  Consider whether these links come from the sidebar/blogroll, contextual links, or quick-links/breadcrumb navigation, how frequently they link (both on grounds of volume and velocity), authority, the strength of those pages providing the link and the page’s strength itself.

Online PR benefits beyond direct links to your site.

Some sites, rather than linking directly to your website, will link to a landing page that has a description of your website / company.  This is not ideal, but it’s not so bad either, especially when that page links to your page of course.

As the strength of this page increases from the sites internal linking, so does the weight that is passed to your site.

Case in point: I was analysing a client’s link-profile as part of a ‘digital landscape review’ recently and enjoyed seeing the benefits of this to great affect.  In this instance, I could really see the affect of online PR as this caused so many citations of the company in question.

Measuring the 2nd Tier Advantage: SEO Tools

One of my favourite aspects of SEOBook’s toolbar is the SEO X-ray, it tells you how many pages link in to the page from the site. This means, on a basic level, that you can see how strong the page is as a 2nd tier provider of the link.

SEOMoz’s Linkscape will define this strength, trust, authority of those pages and links, but as it relies on major updates (reported to be every 3-6 weeks) it cannot consistently be relied upon to track changes as frequently as you might like.

Whilst in the process of link-building too, you can begin to learn which sites use this approach in your niche via brand mentions.  Do you know who’s talking about your brand?

Citations with or without a link may matter

Citations from 3rd party websites without a link have previously been thought to be fruitless when looking at a website’s link-profile. But the development of non-linking citation ranking factors could well be beginning to play a role, and as such factors in some of this buzz into their algorithms.

If this was the case it is likely that there would be considerations of certain TrustRank (or similar) algorithms to consider high-authority news sources’ citations, over a spam network.

The problem with SEO’s blackhole

Sites that build-out pages can end up out-ranking you for brand-orientated queries.  If this landing page ends-up outranking your site you could well be in trouble with regard to shifting it too -  many news sites are very authoritative in niche and mass markets…SME websites are likely to be the most vulnerable here.

Other examples of the 2nd Tier Advantage

There are also other examples too, maybe not the same quality but there’s quite a few out there.  For a long time now, people have applied this principle when looking for ‘good quality’ sources of links.  These might have included checking DMOZ, using forums and social media sites (comments link back to profile pages that link-out), or even looking at what certain top-level domains link out to,  such as .gov or .edu, etc, for those much loved high-trust links.

Economics of the 2nd Tier Advantage

How far back up the link-profile do you want to go?!  2nd, 3rd, 4th tier advantage – the link-graph is a complex, multi-dimensional system so maybe just look at the 2nd tier for now…I’m sure there’s plenty there to keep you busy in your analysis 

The economics of such a link-building method is even more difficult to measure the return, than a specific link to a specific page – measuring one relationship is easier than the merger of several of course.  Putting an exact value against hundreds of links if the PR has been especially successfully can be difficult too.  So if your activity is closely managed on ROI metrics then this might be a tough approach, but needless to say it’s something to keep an eye out for in your clients link-profile.

**Formula to remember:

PR = Interested Audience = Citations = Links = Organic SERPs Visbility + Media Visibility

80+ SEO Job Interview Questions

Bookmark this page on Delicious for later.

I’ve written a few questions that might help structure a SEO interview or even help someone get a SEO job.  I think though, there are a great deal of ways to answer many of these questions.  I’ve toyed with the idea of writing example answers but I think as long as you have a clear idea of the kind of answer you expect to hear back then this should do the trick.

A SEO interview needn’t be a long list of technical questions (as I expect many people might have differing perspectives anyway) but rather a chance for you, as the interviewer, to understand their technical SEO skills, depth of knowledge and interest the candidate has in SEO.

Some people might also disagree with the ethics of asking some of these questions, but feel free not ask them if, of course, you don’t want to. 

SEO Interview Questions

Death by interview has been known so I wouldn’t recommend asking all of these questions.  Pick and choose at will…

Open-ended SEO questions

1. What is your favourite aspect of SEO?
2. What is the most difficult aspect of SEO for you?
3. What has been your biggest mistake in optimising a website for search engines?
4. What has been you biggest success in SEO?
5. Do you have your own website(s)?  What are they?  What is their purpose? How effective have they been?
6. What business sectors have you previously worked in as a SEO?
7. What is the most competitive sector you have worked in as a SEO specialist?
8. Do you like Matt Cutt’s?! 

Knowledge of the SEO Industry / engagement in learning about SEO and engagement with the SEO Community

9. What is your favourite SEO website/blog, and why?
10. Who do you most respect in the SEO industry, and why?
11. Who do you least respect in the SEO industry, and why?
12. Which website do you go to learn something new every time?

Analytics

13. What Analytics packages have you used?
14. Talk me through the process of setting conversion goals?
15. Explain the process of advanced segmentation and an example of why you might use this?
16. If you could develop a new feature for an analytics package that is not currently/easily available what would it be?

Algorithms

17. Please explain the PageRank algorithm…
18. What is the most important aspect to you of the PageRank algorithm for link-building?
19. What is page segmentation?
20. What is LSI / LSA and its relevance to SEO?
21. Explain to me how phrase-base algorithms work?  Clustering?
22. Describe any perceived differences in the main search engines?
23. Have you noticed any algorithm changes lately that you believe to have affected your rankings?  How do you work to protect your online visibility?

Keywords

24. What process do you typically go through when researching keywords?
25. How could this process be improved?
26. How do you carry out competitive analysis of keywords/SERPs as part of the keyword research process?
27. When targeting keywords on-page, discuss some considerations you might make?

Accessibility

28. What factors hinder search engines access to a website’s content?
29. What is the most responsible way of using Flash?
30. Tell me how you might use the Robots.txt file?
31. What is the difference between an xml sitemap and an html sitemap?

On-page Ranking Factors

32. If you were reviewing a landing page, what on-page ranking factors would you consider?
33. How would you analyse the strength of that page as part of the site?
34. Are you competent with HTML and CSS?

Onsite Ranking Factors

35. Talk me through factors you would consider in building an optimised website. (Possible answers might include the discussion around information architecture, site structure, title tags, link structures, keyword relevance, etc).
36. What are onsite ranking factors for building a successful landing page strategy?
37. Please provide examples of blackhat SEO techniques?
38. What are your thoughts on blackhat SEO techniques?  What, if any, have you used, or tested?

Offsite Ranking Factors

39. What would the perfect inbound link look like?
40. What do you like and not like about link-building?
41. Explain to me your involvement in link-building in the past?
42. What approach to link-building have you had most success?

Linkbait Development and Marketing

43. Would you consider yourself as creative?
44. Have you ever successfully carried out a linkbait campaign for a client / in-house? What was the success?
45. Talk me through the process you might go through in developing a linkbait strategy?

Copywriting

46. Are you confident writing and publishing content online?
47. Please provide examples of the content that you have written. What was the purpose of this content and what keywords were you targeting?

SEO Tools

48. What keyword research tools do you use and why?
49. What is your favourite ‘SEO tool’? Why?
50. Do you think SEO tools are effective in competitive markets? Why?

Testing

51. Have you carried-out split-testing / multivariate testing of content?
52. What did you learn from this process?

Image Optimisation

53. What factors can you do to encourage the chance of ranking for images?
54. What is hotlinking? How can this be successfully optimised?

Video optimisation

55. Have you ever carried out video optimisation?
56. What are a few considerations of optimising video content?

Social Media Interview Questions

Open-ended Social Media Questions

57. Which social media sites do you most like?  Why?
58. Which social media sites do you most dislike?  Why?
59. What has been your biggest achievement in SMM?
60. Do you feel that you are well connected in Social media spheres?  Does your social media account carry influence?
61. Do you prefer to use the same pseudonym across your social media profiles? What are the pros and cons of doing this?
62. When did you get into social media (and marketing)?
63. What is your oldest social media profile?
64. Would you ever sell or buy social media profiles?
65. What has been the most effective social media marketing campaign you have been involved in?  How was it effective?  Metrics / exposure / links?
66. How do you effectively use social media to support SEO campaigns, or vice versa?

PPC Interview questions

67. Although not strictly SEO, the understanding of the cross-over of visibility in paid-listings can be very important for effective SEO campaigns.
68. Have you worked on/with PPC accounts?  How did it go?
69. How do you integrate PPC and SEO?
70. What considerations might you make when carrying out paid search competitive analysis?

Business Acumen and ROI

71. What are the key performance metrics you have previously reported to clients?
72. What are effective metrics for highlighting return on investment from SEO?
73. What would you like to change about the SEO reporting process?
74. What other areas of business present opportunities for organic search visibility?
75. If your SEO efforts aren’t getting the visibility you would hope, what would you do?

Pitching for Business

76. Have you prepared proposals for SEO clients?
77. Have you presented proposals to SEO clients? How did it go?
78. What was the biggest mistake you have made in a meeting with a client?
79. What is your greatest strength when presenting to prospective SEO clients?

Retaining Business

80. What do you think is the most important factor in retaining a client?
81. From the previous company that you worked for, what was one process that they could have improved in retaining and gaining clients?

Closing questions

82. Where do you see yourself in 5 years time?
83. What are you salary expectations?  Availability?  Etc, etc…
84. How did you feel the interview went?!

The Skills needed to get a SEO Consultant Job

One of the things that I did a couple of years ago, was look to see what other skills were being required from SEOs. I saw some jobs promoted as web development orientated jobs with SEO tagged on, and others that were promoted as specialist SEO consultants. The reference to SEO is crossing-up in more role descriptions (PR, marketing, copywriting and website management) so it’s all the more important to get a good understanding of how the SEO labour market is getting on and what is required of us (also see the 80+ SEO interview questions article).

The SEO Career Path?

There are no predetermined career paths in to SEO, like there are for a doctor for instance, but what is clear is that this variety of backgrounds makes it a vibrant and creative place to work in!

And wouldn’t you want to work with these guys?!

My SEO career to date, like most, hasn’t taken a traditional route but a stint in offline marketing and campaign management means I bring something else to the table, and I personally find it quite interesting to read about people’s backgrounds. Taking a slight tangent, I remember David Harry telling me that it’s always a good idea to look at the background of people who are involved in the search engine technology’s development (when reading patents) as this provides a sort of agenda / context for the what is being read. Maybe the same can be said about the developing skill-set of SEO’s?

SEO and a range of Web Development Skills and Understanding

Looking at IT Jobs Watch’s in-house SEO section, these are the other items that were quoted in their survey as required skills over the last 3 months:

1. (54.12 %) Marketing
2. (39.36 %) CSS
3. (37.72 %) HTML
4. (31.02 %) Pay per click
5. (30.22 %) JavaScript
6. (24.04 %) Internet Marketing
7. (21.65 %) PHP
8. (20.15 %) XHTML
9. (18.79 %) .NET
10. (17.76 %) E-Commerce
11. (16.17 %) Google
12. (14.95 %) AJAX
13. (14.85 %) Photoshop
14. (14.71 %) XML
15. (13.92 %) ASP.NET
16. (13.59 %) Flash
17. (12.61 %) MySQL
18. (12.56 %) CMS
19. (12.04 %) Web Development
20. (11.06 %) Internet
21. (10.40 %) Web Design
22. (10.22 %) SQL Server
23. (10.03 %) ASP
24. (9.606 %) Finance
25. (9.513 %) Content Management
26. (9.466 %) C#
27. (9.325 %) Advertising
28. (9.185 %) W3C
29. (8.388 %) Dreamweaver
30. (8.247 %) Web Analytics

For outsourced SEO consultants, interestingly it looks like a slightly different skill-set is required:

1. (39.78 %) HTML
2. (37.55 %) CSS
3. (30.48 %) Marketing
4. (27.51 %) JavaScript
5. (22.30 %) PHP
6. (20.07 %) CMS
7. (18.59 %) XHTML
8. (16.36 %) .NET
9. (15.99 %) MySQL
10. (15.99 %) Pay per click
11. (15.61 %) Content Management
12. (14.50 %) Photoshop
13. (14.50 %) XML
14. (14.50 %) AJAX
15. (13.75 %) Finance
16. (13.01 %) SQL
17. (13.01 %) Flash
18. (11.52 %) E-Commerce
19. (10.04 %) Dreamweaver
20. (8.550 %) ASP
21. (8.550 %) ASP.NET
22. (8.550 %) Web Design
23. (8.550 %) Google
24. (8.178 %) Web Development
25. (8.178 %) Internet
26. (7.807 %) W3C
27. (7.807 %) Oracle
28. (7.435 %) SQL Server
29. (7.435 %) Java
30. (7.435 %) Advertising

I wouldn’t use this list (from IT Jobs Watch) as a prioritised list of skills that you need to develop to become a SEO Consultant, as many jobs advertised here that reference ‘SEO’ are web design/development jobs.

The Range of SEO Jobs and Specialist Areas

Many SEO Consultants have specialisms, frequently because they have not had the experience of multiple areas of SEO – it is after all a very large field indeed. SEO roles have certainly been expanding in potential skill sets over the years as we see more opportunities to develop our website’s visibility in the search engines, a few examples include:

Don’t Forget Fluffy Skills!

You could add a whole host of adjectives and more ‘fluffy’ qualities to that list too; highlighting more links to marketing, creativity and management…but as this is an technical job description, let’s not be too pedantic! A SEO person specification as part of the job decrption will of course look quite different.

SEO Job Opportunities

I hope this helps people learn more about SEO and realise the opportunities that exist in the industry (if you didn’t know already of course!). Take a look at a couple of Google custom search engines that I built for SEO jobs, social media and PPC jobs, both in the USA and UK.

More SEO Heroes!

I just wanted to write a quick post giving credit to people who have been putting out some truly awesome SEO content lately…content that I believe has and will continue to add a great deal of value to the SEO industry’s professionalism.  This is following on from an early article written to thank my SEO heroes that had taught me so much already.

The Science and Professionalism of SEO

There is a second reason that I am writing this post beyond just thanking people.  Recently there has been an increased discussion regarding the science of SEO, and the professionalism of the SEO industry as a whole.  There has been good reason for this.  In many people’s mind there has been less focus by SEO consultants considering the technologies, research and developments in search engines, than what we might consider ideal.

Keep on your Toes

Because of the evolving nature of the web, I personally think it’s very important to understand the nature and technology of search engines and the technology behind them in order to see where they are going.  That way, you could argue that you bring in an increased likelihood of longevity into your organic search marketing results.  For that reason alone, I think it justifies considering such areas of the SEO field.

Read and Read and Read

For me at least, I find a huge amount of comfort and value in reading about internet marketing in all it’s forms, testing and trying considerations made, and it’s something that I think I can take into meetings with me, providing a great deal of confidence in the field.

One of my SEO Heroes, Gab Goldenberg has a pseudonym SEOBookworm, which I related to as soon as I saw it – reading and researching are the most important things you can do if you’re looking to learn more about SEO.  If you read something controversial, or something that doesn’t ring true, find multiple arguments and see where it rings true.  Alternatively, design your own SEO tests and discover for yourself the power of ranking factors for your sites.

More SEO Science Heroes

Here are a few extra helpful resources, research and analysis in the field of SEO.  These are specifically one’s that take a more scientific approach in the consideration of search engine optimisation:

• David Harry, Houmah SEO
  
• Michael Martinez, SEO Theory
• Bill Slawski, SEO by the Sea
• Marie-Claire Jenkins Science for SEO
• Mike Thelwall, Link Relationships
• Fantomaster News

Thanks to all!  The SEO industry wouldn’t be the same without you! 

Introduction to IR, LSA (and SEO) by Marie-Claire Jenkins

Following on from my last blog post entitled: “Is Semantic SEO the Marketers SEO“, Just Me and My received a fantastic response from Marie-Claire Jenkins, a part time PhD student from the University of East Anglia, UK, in the field of Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) and Information Retrieval (IR)…essentially what search engine algorithms use to both index and serve the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), an understanding of which is vital for SEOs.

One of the best things about SEO for me is that it’s where technology, analysis and creative marketing  converges in such an obvious way.  I had been tackling semantic SEO and how it related very closely to marketing concepts in my previous post and I could not believe my luck when a finalist of 2006’s Loebner Artificial Intelligence (AI) award agreed to help explain concepts around search engines in more depth.  Here’s the interview, but first a few definitions…

Mini IR Glossary

To help explain a few of the points below, here is an explanation of a few of the key terms used…

How search engines work

Latent Semantic Indexing and Analysis:

“Semantic” = meaning
“Latent” = present but hidden

LSI = The analysis of the hidden meaning of words and how often they occur in a document.

Probabilistic Latent Semantic Analysis

Probabilistic Latent Semantic Indexing is a novel approach to automated document indexing which is based on a statistical latent class model for factor analysis of count data.

OK, so here’s the interview…

What is your background and experience in information retrieval and SEO?

I’m called Marie-Claire Jenkins (nickname CJ). I have worked as an SEO for 6 years where I worked for a big fortune 500 company taking care of SEO and also research and development (reputation mining, sentiment analysis…), so it was a varied role.  I then worked for a hip digital agency as head of search and enjoyed it very much.

I did a Degree in translating interpreting, and then an MSc in computing, my thesis was in machine translation. I won a scholarship for a PhD, but I didn’t want to give up the SEO work I was doing. I ended up doing my PhD part-time. I’m in my final year now and my project is on natural language generation and understanding. It requires a good knowledge of information retrieval, information extraction, NLP [natural language processing], cognitive linguistics, linguistics, human computer interaction and AI.

I’m a yogi and practice Ashtanga every day, I love running and swimming. I’m an internet addict and a news junkie. I love record shopping.

How would you describe IR and it’s importance for search engine optimisation?

Information retrieval is the bread and butter of most systems. In order for example for my natural language system to have anything to actually provide to the user, it needs to find the relevant knowledge in the knowledge Base. Search engines obviously rely on it, but they also work with ranking algorithms, which are not strictly part of IR and HCI methods, AI, and a host of other things.

Information retrieval should definitely be understood at a basic level by SEO experts. The reason for this is that when you rely on search to make a living, you should have a thorough idea of how the system that you rely on works. If you don’t keep up with new developments and trends, you could be missing a trick. Most importantly, keeping up with different theories is very important because it helps you prepare for possible changes in the future. Social networks and Web 2.0 for example were being discussed in the computing community long before it became mainstream.

There are a good number of SEO people who do take the time to research and understand IR developments such as Bill Slawski, David Harry , Marios Alexandrou (a brilliant example of someone jumping in and not being afraid to) the guys at SeoMoz and others too. There are a lot though that don’t and rely on hearsay or basic blog information. This is good as a launchpad but the next step is to verify all of this for yourself and not be afraid to ask questions.

What are the most important aspects of algorithmic LSI and PLSI?

The initial theory of LSI and it’s methodology has been extended a great deal throughout the years, but if you are interested in the original post you can find the original LSA pdf here.  SEOs, either directly or indirectly, have taken some interest in these methodologies but a greater understanding is obviously quite necessary.

Here are also a few extracts from the Science for SEO blog [ed: which you really have to read - great writing on semantics and SE's] various blog posts on latent semantic, indexing and analysis that have been written on the subject to provide a little more detail:

Currently the focus on keywords, which is what LSI uses isn’t quite right anymore.  I’ve seen a lot of recent research (and so have many of you) talking about semantics.  There is lot of work on using semantic units which are not always keywords anyway.

The question should be “What multitudes of methods is Google using?” and “I wonder which LSI method is being used, although I know it is just one factor in a very very large system”.  Not “How should I optimise my site for LSI” – I’d ask you which type.  I believe that Matt Cutts said something very generic when he said Google used LSI

If you’re interested in going one step further and build, or use your own semantic search engine to run these queries, take a look at these latent semantic tools.

What is the importance of LSI / PLSI areas of study for people that take an interest in search engine optimisation?

I think people look for anything that might answer a question, and LSI gave everyone something to embrace. I think it was very valuable because it helped people understand how basic topic detection could work, and helped them gain insight into how to write and present their content. It was very useful for everyone. LSI has since evolved quite a lot and so the basic formula is still useful for Seo people, but you know, the actual LSI method looks very different.

PLSI is the upcoming form of semantics as developed by search engine engineers. How do you think SEOs should build this into their practices on a day-to-day basis?

I think that as far as any LSI technique is concerned, the SEO should simply worry about providing really useful content. I think that working beyond a keyword basis is very useful. There is a lot of talk about semantics, and I know that I use methods in my computing work that looks for structures rather than keywords, and also looks for the surrounding structures, how they correspond to each other and that kind of thing. If little me is doing that, i suspect that the big grown up scientists have built on these techniques and I know they have been expanded a great deal – I don’t need such accuracy in my work.

SEO experts should provide very relevant content to the page they are writing for. Using language that is proper to the topic, and that represents it well if the way to go IMHO. Keywords provide some benefit but there is more to look at.

And also, what about a strategic basis…thinking long-term is there something that you believe should SEOs should consider in their work?

I would simply say use common sense, and take the time to learn about IR. You don’t need to be an expert, and you don’t need to understand all the big complicated equations and the difficult mathematical concepts. At least read the abstract, introduction and conclusion. This should give you enough information.

It’s important to recognise the benefits of Latent Semantic Analysis too:

Its advantage over simple keyword analysis (Boolean search = True or False) is that it can infer meaning from words which is not evident, and match words which would not normally happen with other methods.  For example, “computer”, “PC”, “laptop” are all connected.  Documents are put together even if it is not obvious that they are connected, because a “latent semantic space” is created.

It uses vectors in a a high-dimensional vector space (lots of them).  It creates a term-document matrix from all the documents.  Then 3 matrices are created using SVD (singular value decomposition) (also the second matrix houses the singular values of the original matrix in a diagonal matrix).  This means that sets of terms or documents can be represented as d-dimensional vectors. Using the cosine of the angle between these vectors, there is  now an easy-to-calculate similarity measure between any two sets of terms and/or documents.  It can be used in any language because of the way that it’s constructed.

And the limitations of LSI:

1. The resulting dimensions can be very difficult to interpret so there are mistakes.  It’s unclear what the resulting similarities between terms really means.
2. The input is a bag-of-words so we don’t have any text structure information.
3. A compound term (bull-headed) is treated as 2 terms.
4. Ambiguous terms create noise in the vector space
5. There’s no way to define the optimal dimensionality of the vector space
6. There’s a time complexity for SVD in dynamic collections

So because of the limitations of LSI, there has been a move towards probabilistic latent semantic indexing / analysis:

1. It has a more robust statistical foundation and provides a proper generative data model
2. It uses the EM algorithm (Expectation maximization to avoid over-fitting (nodes too specific to noise) – this makes it far more flexible
3. It can deal with domain specific synonymy and polysemous words

…the implications for search engine marketing therefore become all the more apparent regarding site structure and meaning found in the flow of information.

Beyond how PLSI is used, how do you see IR moving forward? Is PLSI as far as we can go with regards to search engines?

I don’t think it really about PLSI or anything like that. An awful lot of very prominent scientists who pioneered these techniques are working on personalisation, not to mention Google obviously.

Social networks are very important and harnessing their strengths is super important right now. There are also issues within them such a deciding how important an individual vote is. If a layman votes on a technical post and an expert does, are the votes valued the same? Do topics with lots of expert votes rank higher rather than those with lots of votes? There is a lot of spam in these networks and these include people voting for their friends and so forth. I think taking on board what is happening right now in personalisation also is quite important.

There are also going to be a lot of developments in things like classification, topic detection and other research areas. I obviously am particularly looking forward to seeing more advances in question-answering systems.

If there was one final bit of advice that you could offer SEOs regarding semantics and IR, what would it be?

Write for your user, pay attention to larger structures rather than just keywords alone, inform yourself about IR and follow developments, read a lot

• Several downloadable research papers on IR, SVD, LSA, LSI, PLSI and more…
• Patterns in unstructured data presentation, including LSI and multi-dimensional scaling
• A piece with ideas on where search engines maybe heading…
• Search Engine Index Presentation by Marie-Claire Jenkins
• Search Engine Spiders by Marie-Claire Jenkins

Books include:

For the more hardcore SEO geeks – but can others can also get the gist of it too:

• Introduction to Information Retrieval
• Speech and Language Processing

Please note: PLSI / A is but one method of learning models for concepts and related words…there are a variety of methodologies that search engines might buy-in to.  Although, this is perceived to be amongst the most prominent direction that search engines have taken regarding their algorithms, it is always a good idea to keep on reading and researching to stay up to date with the SEO game!  Algorithmic models constantly evolve and new ones are born…here’s a few extra methodologies by Marie-Claire.