Like the post says, businesses are now looking more into ways of saving money and online is the most cost effective way of achieving this.

I have met Jon a couple of times, and was very impressed by his presentation at the Paid Search optimisation (think that was it anyhow). Certainly one of the people I would expect a lot of UK based search marketing profs to be adding as well.

My experience with the other two is limited, particularly Ciaran, however Will Graham speaks of him very highly from his days at RBI. Rob as well seems to have been around for ages. Is he really 24. Better start packing my bags then…..

Here’s my suggestions:

UK:
Jon Myers - Head of Search at MediaVest, been in the industry for donkeys years and probably know more about paid search than is good for him He is respected by “old” and new generation of SEOs/SEMs, which is rare, and is a regular speaker at SES.
Ciaran Norris - Head of Search at Altogher. I recon Ciaran is UKs answer to Rand Fishkin, well he might as well be working for SEOmoz as he blogs and comments enough over there. He is also a really good speaker and has a really broad knowledge of both SEO and Social Media, in fact I think Ciaran is probably one of the best SMOs in the UK. Ok his head will explode now.
Rob Kerry (evilgreenmonkey) - Ok this guy is freakin 24, he’s been a editor at Search Engine Watch, currently editor at Sphinn, he has been speaking at conferences since he….ehm started talking at 2 He goes to about every conference there is and likes to mingle. This is a guy that doesn’t become too “big” to speak to people and although he can be a right opinionated donkey, he knows his stuff. Hopefully he won’t see this as he will never let me live it down, I usually just insult him.

anyway, that’s a few of my suggestions, I could go on and on, really should get back to work now =)

Too many businesses and online entrepreneurs completely miss this and jump head first into the abyss of social media - not really thinking through the implications of their actions and strategies.

Thank you!
Maria Reyes-McDavis

I read somewhere that one of the ways to generate traffic is to write something controversial. I don’ t think it’ s good to write something controversial just for the purpose of getting traffic necessarily (especially if it’ s only for that purpo…

http://www.comtechnews.net/search-marketing/amex-get-a-clue

I would suggest their exist three tiers of OM advertiser, namely

Tier 1 - OM Fans
Generally made up of larger organisations such as Tesco, Hilton, Monarch etc who want to consolidate their positions as ‘brand leaders’ online and small organisations who see Online as a cost effective medium that allows them to compete (on a more level playing field against the afore mentioned organisations

Tier 2 - Want to haves
These are the organisations that know that they need to have Online Marketing within their marketing mix - but dont want to commit too much to it quite yet - and therefore throw small (in context to competitors) amounts at Online Marketing in particular Search which doesn’t have the obvious ‘parallels’ with Offline Advertising.

Tier 3 - The UnConverted
These are the organisations that either won’t or can’t see how digital/online can help their marketing activity. I would add here, I still find it amazing how many web development organisations still sit in this tier, still aligning OM with very segmented verticals such as E-Commerce.

I would suggest their is still an education job to be done in many spheres, before digital is fully embraced - however one thing is for sure - digital marketing in its various guises is here to stay

I’m not advocating that people run out and buy or sell ilnks to game Google, but the real problem with SEO certification is that we have no industry standards and we cannot look to the search engines to provide those standards.

The search engines can certainly play a role in the process and I would not mind seeing them offer service-specific certification.

But in order for the SEO industry to adopt a credible, acceptable certification process (which would only assure that SEO technicians have been schooled in generally agreed upon fundamental principles) we need to adopt a set of standards.

Without the standards no certification has any credibility.

People need to ask SEO conference organizers (of all scales) to put SEO Industry Standards on their main programming calendars. Until the industry takes standards seriously, certification will be a joke.

Last year I worked with a £multi-million turnover company, with several e-commerce sites in their network, who were not tracking customer routes through to sale completion. Due to a technical usability fault with the site they had a 78% drop-off at the penultimate stage of the checkout process, which they were not aware of. After this was identified and fixed using the Goal feature in Google Analytics, conversion rates from the sites shot up and further targeted traffic could be driven.

If a client wants to double sales from its site, you can either double the amount of traffic or double the conversion rate. If the site has had no previous usability or conversion analysis, often the latter proves to be the quickest, easiest and cheapest, and will increase the ROI from all further SEO and PPC spend.

Thanks for the mention, drop me a line on Facebook some time

I’m from the Internet Advertising Bureau, and would really like to keep you up to date with new announcements that we have. Therefore could you supply me with a contact email address, so that we can send any new releases or statements to you directly.

Regards, IAB