Search Marketing Archives

At upcoming 3XE, I’m speaking about how SEO is changing – in particular, if we can no longer view SEO as a performance channel.

What is a performance channel?

A performance channel relies heavily on a simple equation: direct investment = direct results. Over time, you might see results begin to show diminishing returns on investment, but there is still a direct correlation between what you put in and what you get out.

By definition, that means performance channels lean much more towards being advertising channels rather than marketing. The difficulty we face when thinking about SEO as a performance channel is that it isn’t “advertising”; it’s marketing.

SEO is so much more heavily reliant on external factors than it used to be. It’s no longer about getting a page to rank in position 1 and reaping all the benefits. Now, it is much more geared towards ranking in position 0 and “maybe” getting traffic, but equally, maybe not. It isn’t just advertising channels you’re competing with, you’re also competing with the makeup of the first page. Things like:

Rich results
No-click searches
Query-less searches
Widgets

With all of that to compete with, ranking first doesn’t always mean that you’re guaranteed to get the most traffic, the most engagement, or the most revenue. Because there is no direct correlation between the investment you put into SEO and the results you get from that, SEO has never been further from “advertising”, and thus a “performance channel” than it is right now.

So, is SEO even worth investing in? Of course it is, but we need to be smarter about how we can make it work for us, and what the future of SEO really is if it isn’t in performance.

Two types of search

The way I see it, there are two types of information retrievals that performance SEO doesn’t account for:

Deep relevance matching
Position-aware relevance matching

Both of these focus on different components and are applied for different search types:

Deep Relevance Matching	Position-Aware Relevance Matching
Query and text only	Relevance matching between query terms and document terms
Query terms are scored relatively to document terms	Takes into account context and how these terms match in the documents
Doesn’t account for context where the terms occur

If we look at how Google is changing the SERPs, the different tools and widgets it offers right in the results pages, this shift towards different models for different query types becomes more apparent.

Take a job search query, for example, and now you are faced with the Google for Jobs widget as well as the more traditional “10-blue-links” style results. This is a perfect example of different algorithms working in harmony – the deep relevance/position-aware relevance matching model, working with the “traditional” algorithm we’ve become accustomed to.

But with things like the Google for Jobs widget coming into play, or Google Events, or Google Flights, or any number of Google products that entices users to interact directly in the search results, SEO needs to shift focus to capturing attention instead of driving “performance” as we know it.

Tactics

Go higher up the funnel

We need to start looking at ways to appear higher up the funnel, capturing user demand at the initial stages instead of just focusing on the end product. To do that, we need to be looking at things like:

People also ask and related queries
Using social media listening tools
Becoming visible on long-tail, question-based terms

2. Talk about your competitors

Capturing people higher up the funnel is great, but how do you get them to choose you over your competitors? You offer comparisons to them. If your product or service is genuinely better than the competition, help users understand why easily.

Searches around price, capability, and service comparisons are common – make sure you’re giving people the information they are searching for without them having to rely on a review site/aggregator.

3. Build trust in your brand

One of the factors growing in importance with recent core updates, particularly in advice/guidance focused verticals, means that building trust in your brand is becoming imperative. Good trust signals lead to places in the knowledge graph. Use everything from Schema, to Wikipedia entries, to press releases to really build on your trust signals and show users (and crawlers) that you are a trustworthy source of information and service.

4. Integrate with other channels

Just because you’re using SEO for attention, doesn’t mean you should stop at organic search. Use other channels wisely to really push your content, products, and services to users when they need them:

Retarget content through the display network
Bid higher on terms where organic is lower down the page/you don’t own position 0
Use SEO as a means to collate data and reach a wider audience

Working with different channels helps make sure that what you do for SEO is seen by as many people as possible, strengthening your position in user minds as well as the relationship across the web.

Measurement

We’ve already concluded that SEO is no longer just a performance channel, but that raises questions as to how you can really measure the impact it has.

Start thinking beyond “last-click”

Over ⅓ of purchases take place more than 30 days after their first enquiry. If people aren’t converting the same way that they began their search, chances are you’re not getting the full picture if you just report on a last-click model.

These days there are so many touchpoints across the conversion journey, that last-click as a model is almost becoming obsolete. If we move away from just reporting on last-click, and towards models that account for other channels in the journey, we’ll get a much better understanding of how SEO plays a part in the conversion journey, and how SEO is really impacting your performance.

2. Measure “time well spent”

Start looking at how users are actually engaging with your content. Is it meeting their needs? What emotions do users feel before and after they visit your content? When do they just want to complete an action?

If users are spending in excess of 3 minutes on a checkout form, do they really need to? Are you making their journey much more difficult than it needs to be? In contrast, if users aren’t reading all of your content and you know that there is valuable information in there that they aren’t getting to, can you restructure the page to make it more digestible for them?

Time well spent isn’t always about whether they complete an action, e.g. a purchase, sign up, download, but instead it focuses on understanding user needs and how you can best serve them to ensure they have a good experience.

3. Track task completion and satisfaction rate

Understanding whether users are engaging with your content in the way you’d like them to is a crucial part of informing content journeys and conversion journeys. Ask your users for feedback on the information provided:

Did this answer your question?
How would you rate your experience?
Do you have any feedback?

You can also use heat-mapping tools to better understand how users are engaging with the pages and see where they might be “going wrong”, in your eyes.

4. Track % share of SERP

With the SERPs constantly changing to include widgets, local listings, ads, knowledge panels, and a host of other listings, understanding your % share of the SERP is becoming more and more important.

It isn’t about whether you rank in position 1 for a target keyword, it’s about whether:

Your ad shows
Your knowledge graph shows
You’re ranking organically
You’re the answer box result
You’re capturing the ‘people also ask’ listings

Looking at your % share vs. your organic rank means you have a much broader picture of how you as a business are performing, but also how your digital investment is really impacting your performance.

Hannah Thorpe – Business Director at Found.

See Hannah speak at the 3XE Search Marketing Conference on October 23rd.

Reposted from Friday Agency

Actively blogging at his home agency (Friday.ie), Gavin Duff is appearing at the 3XE Digital Search Marketing Conference on October 23rd, 2019. This article was written by Gavin and can be viewed on their website.

How Long Should My Blog Posts Be?

If this headline caught your attention and you’ve come here looking for the answer, you’ll be disappointed.

But don’t go anywhere, this is still relevant…

The question you should be asking instead is “How good should my blog posts be?”

It’s not about length

Too often in discussion around content, this question is asked. “How long does it need to be?”. If you’re asking this, your approach is all wrong.

There’s nothing new to say here that we haven’t already been trying to drill home. It’s not about length, it’s about the user.

It’s about relevance, originality, quality, and engagement. And if it can be entertaining, informative, controversial or opinionated, then even better – people might actually share it.

Share my content

You may have seen studies out there suggesting that the longer your piece of content is the higher it will rank on Google. And yes, this is true in many cases. But not in every case. Let me explain…

I just searched on Google for “how long should a meta description be?” and this page ranked first – https://blog.spotibo.com/meta-description-length/

You know why? It’s rich content, its original, it’s got the length checker tool, there’s a useful image and then appropriate text length. That’s the key here – “appropriate”. It’s not two thousand words long but it certainly goes a long way towards answering my query.

Now, if my question instead had been “why do I need meta descriptions?” Then there’s an argument for writing more in order to give background, context and actionable value. Now that’s one I could easily write 2,000 words on. Not that length matters…

One core question

There is 1 core question you need to ask yourself at 3 key points while creating a blog post. And that question is: “Why should someone read this content and not someone else’s?”

And you should ask it:

Before you create your piece of content
While you write it
When you review it for publishing

So, at every point.

If you cannot answer that question, then start again.

You should ask yourself the same about your brand, product, service, website… it should be a part of everything that you do. But that’s another day’s discussion, and that could easily be 10,000 words… or whatever is appropriate.

Read the full article here at Friday Agency by Gavin Duff, the Head of Digital Performance.

You are reading about one of Ireland’s longest established Digital Marketing Agencies – Brightspark Consulting. It offers all the services (search and social) required to get found online, to drive leads, and to build loyalty amongst customers.

Explaining the company approach, Founder Maryrose Lyons says, “At Brightspark, we operate at the intersection of how humans use social media and how the platforms change their algorithms to drive highly targeted leads for our client’s businesses.”

“Our toolbox changes to meet an ever-evolving industry, and that’s exactly how we help you stay ahead of the curve.”

Founder of Brightspark Consulting

Maryrose Lyons is the woman behind the hugely successful Brightspark Consulting, who founded it in 2003. Maryrose has great ability to spot the trends that will last, and has been successfully operating in the industry since the very beginning.

“Social media hadn’t been invented when I set up Brightspark,” she laughs.

One of the current opportunities lies in the area of Messenger Marketing and Maryrose will deliver a keynote at the conference on Irish businesses that are killing it with messenger marketing. Maryrose’s advice: “start building your Messenger list now… you can thank me later!”

Brightspark Consulting Maryrose Lyons presentation topic is Drive engagement through Facebook Messenger

Irish Businesses Killing It With Facebook Messenger

On 23rd October, Maryrose Lyons will be delivering a keynote presentation on the topic ‘Irish Businesses Killing It With Facebook Messenger’.

Maryrose will share examples of Irish businesses who are driving Facebook engagement through Messenger. The future of social is private. Messenger marketing is a great tool for one-to-one conversations with customers at scale.

Brightspark Consulting Maryrose Lyons presentation topic is Drive engagement through Facebook Messenger

Facebook Messenger Marketing Guide

Of the 70 million businesses on Facebook, less than 1% are using Facebook Messenger as a marketing tool.

To know what is Facebook Messenger Marketing and what are chatbots, there is an excellent article by Brightspark.

This is the link to the Facebook Messenger Marketing Guide shared by Brightspark Consulting.

You can be one of the first businesses to take advantage of Facebook Messenger Marketing! Join us at the 3XE Search Marketing Conference on 23rd October in Dublin, where Maryrose Lyons will be one of our esteemed speakers.

Check the Event Schedule for more details and you can register using the Early Bird Offer.

With Zalando’s Marketing Lead, let’s take a look at the Marketing story at Zalando.

Zalando is Europe’s leading online platform for fashion and lifestyle. Founded in Berlin in 2008, they bring head-to-toe fashion to more than 27 million active customers in 17 markets, offering clothing, footwear, accessories, and beauty. The assortment of international brands range from world-famous names to local labels.

Their platform is a one-stop fashion destination for inspiration, innovation, and interaction. As Europe’s most fashionable tech company, Zalando puts in a lot of hard work to find digital solutions for every aspect of the fashion journey – for our customers, partners and every valuable player in the Zalando story.

Zalando’s goal is to become the starting point for fashion.

Marketing at Zalando

Zalando found success in the fast developing digital world with the help of platform-based business model. You can study their successful business model and understand how they focus on three key areas – customers, partners and infrastructure.

Melissa Weston is the Marketing Lead UK & Ireland at Zalando. Melissa believes that for potential digital growth, Search Marketing is one of the most important marketing channels to generate web traffic. She tells us “It compliments SEO and content marketing and gets your brand at the top of Google or any other search engine. It’s accessible to companies of all sizes, it is conversion focussed and can even contribute to brand awareness when ads are above the fold.”

For Zalando, an extremely helpful method to optimise for search has been personalisation.

What is personalisation in marketing?

Personalisation in marketing means improving customer experience by creating personal interactions using relevant content. Personalisation is possible through data collection (of browsing behaviour, purchase history, preferences, demographics, etc.), analyzing the data and using this information to serve the needs of the online users.

Personalisation in Search

Melissa Weston tells us that personalisation in search has been hugely helpful to target and reach their customers at Zalando. The 5 important ways that Zalando is using personalisation in search are – Algorithmic Fashion Companion (AFC), Sizing, Homepage, Mobile and Big Data.

We are inviting Melissa Weston to 3XE Search Marketing Conference in Dublin on 23rd October, 2019. As a main stage speaker, Melissa will present the different factors that affect search personalisation.

Using the case studies from Zalando, Melissa will be sharing the key insights of working on personalisation. She will also elaborate on the 5 areas where Zalando is using search personalisation. Melissa will take us through the development of personalisation in online fashion retail.

Quick fixes in Search Engine Optimisation

Melissa explains the quick and easy SEO fixes that brand managers should attend to:

Link Building – Include working with your PR agency to create new backlinks to your website on relevant sites or alternatively find and redirect dead links.

Mobile First – With an increase in mobile traffic, making sure your website is optimised for mobile is one of the most important SEO fixes.

Internal Links – Getting initial traffic is great, but return visitors really push your search rankings up, so one way to increase this is to add related suggestions at the bottom of your content or similar items below fashion choices for example.

Search Marketing Influencers

Today Melissa is responsible for the full marketing budget, strategy planning and media buying for UK & Ireland at Zalando. When she started learning about SEO and SEM, Neil Patel’s videos were really valuable for her, as well as MOZ blog and various marketing events in London.

Future of Search as per the Marketing Lead at Zalando

Looking at the growth in digital industry, she believes that Artificial Intelligence, more specific targeting and more automation will play a much more strategic role in Search Marketing moving forward. “Programmatic advertising has already had a huge impact here using AI to automatically buy advertising space, using data, to determine which audience the ads should target. It will be interesting to see how influencer marketing is affected here and also how video marketing can adapt to become more personalised. In terms of SEO, I think voice optimisation will become more key, as adoption rates grow.”

Connect with Melissa Weston:

LinkedIn

At the 3XE Search Marketing Conference – 23rd Oct, 2019

Marketing Lead at Zalando to speak at 3XE Digital Conference

Benjamin Goerler, SEO Consultant at Ayima, spoke about the benefits of Python scripts for marketing and how marketers, even with a non-technical background, can use the programming language to improve results related to Search Engine Optimisation.

At Ayima he manages the SEO strategy and implementation for some of Europe’s leading e-commerce brands.

His role involves performing technical audits of their clients’ websites and turning the technical findings into digestible and actionable recommendations to optimise the clients’ search visibility.

Benjamin’s journey into the Digital World as SEO Consultant!

“My background actually isn’t (at least not on the surface) related to the digital world at all. I studied History and English to become a teacher for secondary schools in Germany.

However, thanks to my older brother who introduced me to the world of PCs and inspired me to better understand them from the inside out, I started working with computers from an early age. I appreciate that the first ones I used still had a simple, but mighty command line interface – and no buttons or windows to click on – hence my technical understanding of modern computers.

After finishing my degree, I moved to the UK, and through translating websites for various clients from English into German, I became more involved with SEO and intrigued by its challenges. And that’s what led me to where I am today!”

SEO Agency – Ayima

SEO with Python, Ayima | 3XE Search Marketing Event

Ayima is an award-winning Digital Marketing Agency specialising in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, Web Design and Development and Content Marketing.

Last month Ayima acquired LeapThree, a leading analytics consultancy, which helped to solidify the Company’s presence and expertise within Analytics channels; Web Analytics, Data Analysis, Conversion Optimisation and Strategic Planning.

With offices in London, New York, San Francisco, Raleigh, Vancouver and Stockholm, Ayima’s 100+ employees continue to achieve spectacular results for some of the world’s biggest brands.

In addition to digital marketing services, Ayima have created a suite of market-leading software tools that are used by clients and agencies around the world, including ‘Redirect Path’, ‘Updatable’, ‘Ayima Intelligence’, ‘Page Insights’, ‘Pulse’ and ‘Appotate’.

SEO with Python at 3XE Digital Search Conference

At the last 3XE Search Conference, Benjamin spoke about ‘Bringing the fun back to SEO with Python’.

“I’m not a developer myself and I am hoping to inform other SEOs that you really don’t need to have a technical background in order to benefit from this amazing and flexible programming language.” – said, Benjamin Goerler.

The presentation featured a couple of examples of how he uses Python to automate, speed up various SEO-related tasks and how others can easily achieve the same.

SEO with Python

SEO Tools that he recommends!

“I wouldn’t get very far on a daily basis without Ayima’s various SEO tools such as the Chrome extension Redirect Path – combined with another freely available plugin ‘Ayima Page Insights’.

Both offer me a quick overview of key issues on any page I visit in my browser.

But what helps me most to deal with the various large datasets is Linux with its command line plus the programming language Python. Both speed up my daily routine a lot and help me break down millions of rows of data into a few clear, actionable datasets.

Google Data Studio is another great tool to help me visualise, track and report on the analysed data.”

What websites and people influence you on a day to day basis?

“Most of the time I learn from my amazing colleagues who always have a friendly ear for my questions and time to discuss any SEO-related finding in great detail.

I also benefit massively from the incredibly resourceful open source community. This offers tons of useful Python scripts, free tools for data analysis, how-tos and advice in forums – it also helps having our own in-house data analysts and scientists who are on hand to provide detailed insights when needed.”

Your thoughts on the future of SEO – What’s next?

I predict a long-lasting future for SEO. Ultimately, it is not about search engines, but about making information quickly accessible and digestible. I predict that search will continue to become integrated within more devices, even with things like smart kitchenware such as fridges and health gadgets. My hope is that the SEO industry develops a better balance between protecting customers’ privacy and providing the best possible answers to searchers.

You can connect with the Ayima team here: Ayima London

Our next 3XE Search Marketing Conference will be in October. Check this page for more details – 3XE Digital Conferences

For updates on our latest Conference, subscribe to our newsletter or follow us on social media.

John Foley is someone who understands the online business extremely well. Having worked on both sides of the client-agency relationship over the past 8 years, John is an expert at removing complexities of paid search campaigns.

John Foley is the Country Manager (UK & Ireland) at Finch, who strongly believes in the benefits of automation. He assures, “Not only does automation free up resources to focus on strategic execution and other areas of the business, it actually increases revenue!”

Finch is a marketing technology platform that automates, simplifies, and optimises their client’s key business objectives—turning the complexities of paid media into their competitive advantage.

Finch is a Bing Elite Partner and a Google Premier Partner.

They have been recognized as best in class within the Google Premier Partner Awards for “Best Shopping Performance” in EMEA 2017 and “Best Search Innovation” in North America.

John tells, “We manage £300 million in Google Ads alone and our average client monthly ad spends ranges from £7.5k – £300k.”

3XE Search Marketing Event in Dublin

John Foley is participating at the 3XE Search Marketing Event on October 18th, 2018. As a keynote speaker, he is delivering a presentation on the ways to close the Technology Gap between online businesses and technology giants there!

He explains “The global players on the sell side of clicks like Google and Facebook have a huge advantage compared to the buyer’s side, when it comes to data and technology. This is why we are rapidly exploring AI and ML technologies in online advertising.

The amount of information around each click we buy is exploding and the technologies of the past are simply not enough to handle this. This is where we see a clear gap:

The sellers of the clicks have ALL the DATA and ALL the Automation/Technology
The buyers of the clicks have very limited data and very limited Automation/Technology”

How to close the technology gap between you and the tech giants

New technologies are surfacing and that are helping advertisers to compete far more effectively. It also enables massively complex models to optimize the outcome.

“In my presentation I want to talk about how Finch is closing that technology gap with our own marketing technology platform. I will show you how we structure, manage and optimize campaigns and how we won two Premier Partner Awards for our results in Paid Search & Shopping.”

When we asked John what is one common mistake they come across in paid search campaigns, he says, “any business is neutering a campaign’s performance by having too many keywords in one ad group.”

John finds https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/ as a space for day to day influence.

Talking about the future of Search Marketing, John Foley says “There will be monetization of voice search where Bing will be a big player.

Meet John Foley at the 3XE Search Conference on October 18th in Croke Park.

Check the entire event schedule and book your tickets today.

Connect with John Foley.

Cathal Melinn is a Search and Analytics Specialist.

Working in digital marketing for about 14-15 years, Cathal is also an international digital marketing trainer, teaching digital marketing in UK, Austria, Switzerland, Cyprus, Hong Kong and Ireland.

“As a commercial digital marketing director, my main purpose is to make more money for my clients. As a digital marketing trainer, I make it easy to understand complex digital marketing concepts and have a long track record of driving revenue for all kinds of firms online”, says Cathal Melinn, Director at Digital Basics.

Digital Basics is a marketing consultancy that provides strategic guidance to organisations, that helps them drive maximum efficiency from their existing digital marketing activities.

Cathal’s business focuses on commercial analytics and media strategy. He ensures the fundamentals of digital marketing are correctly applied and that increases revenue for his clients.

As a marketing consultant, his list of clients include: Alcon – Novartis, Aer Lingus, Digital Marketing Institute, Medtronic and Cyprus International Institute of Management (CIIM).

Cathal explains, “My learning has been that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. You can achieve 80%+ of your KPIs by doing the basics right; I’m very much focused on instilling the basics to my clients’ digital activities and to my students.”

Cathal Melinn is coming as a Keynote Speaker at 3XE Search Conference on 18th October, 2018.

His presentation topic is ‘ The World’s Best Reporting and Optimisation Framework: In 7 Words!’

The talk will show people how to use their Analytics data to find the good stuff, weed out the bad and optimize for more conversions. Recent applications of this technique led to 55% growth in PPC revenue in just 3 months and from a significant 7 figure dollar revenue base, so it’s proven to drive success, fast.

We asked Cathal what will be the 3 takeaways that attendees will get from his presentation and he says – “How to identify Opportunities from Analytics, How to Draw Insights from Your Findings and How to Optimize for More Sales.”

There are channels and people who influence him on a day to day basis. Like, he prefers to read Search Engine Land (https://searchengineland.com/) and PPC Hero (https://www.ppchero.com/) everyday. He also keeps an eye on whatever’s trending on his LinkedIn Network.

Cathal shares “I am a fan of Avinash Kaushik, Tara Hunt, Jill Rowley, Brad Geddes, Ekaterina Walter, Larry Kim and Rand Fishkin in the digital world – they’re really great thinkers & strategists.”

Cathal began working as a copywriter for radio & print, back in 2001, before moving into digital creative in 2002. He joined Yahoo! as a PPC strategist in 2005, worked in the UK & Ireland with financial services clients until 2010 when he started working in digital marketing agencies.

After spending a few years on the agency-side of digital marketing, he started lecturing at premier marketing institutes. Next up, he became digital media manager for the Digital Marketing Institute. And then he was Search (PPC & SEO) and affiliates manager for Aer Lingus, until recently when Cathal started his own company called Digital Basics.

Leaving us with a lingering thought, he says “I always think Digital Marketing channels are like sports teams, you might have your star player but if the team isn’t working together, it’s much harder to succeed. You’ll often hear people say: you can’t expect to win if you don’t do the basics right.”

3XE Search Conference is an opportunity to network with industry experts like Cathal Melinn. You may check the event schedule for more details and reserve your seat before it’s too late!

To connect with Cathal Melinn, find the details on his profile page.

Marcus Tober is the Founder of Searchmetrics, a company that’s a global leader in SEO marketing and analytics, SEO optimization, social and content marketing.

Marcus is responsible for product innovation and the development of products at Searchmetrics. Currently, Marcus has over 100 people in his teams, working on different aspects of Search Marketing.

Searchmetrics is a software company with an Enterprise platform for Search Engine Optimization and Content Marketing. “That means we enable companies to understand their visibility in Search, their competition and guide them in the process to create more relevant content for their audience” – says Marcus Tober, the godfather of SEO.

In our recent conversation with Marcus Tober, we discussed his presentation topic at 3XE Search Conference 2018 and the future of Search Marketing. Marcus is a keynote speaker at 3XE Search Conference on 18th October, 2018 at Croke Park.

He will deliver a keynote presentation on the topic ‘When they go big, we go better: A New Take on Understanding Google Rankings’ at 3XE Search Conference.

Read the event schedule for more details.

What will you be speaking about at 3XE?

Basically, my topic is that there are not many general SEO tactics anymore. Each business has to deal with numerous other factors to be successful. For some it is more content driven, for others more about speed or user experience. SEO is now very much based on your market.

What are the 3 takeaways that you think delegates will get from your presentation?

– Audience will understand the still common Search Engine Optimization factors

– Understand why SEO has changed that much and companies need to adopt. Also I will show many custom ranking factors and examples.

– See best practices and companies that do it right

What are the most common SEO mistakes that you come across?

People often see SEO as marketing, but it is rather product management. They need to understand the business, the audience, the developers and many other things that enables the SEO to be very close to where the work happens. And because of that, many companies fail in Search Optimisation as they are not really centred around search. But the most successful companies in SEO like Tripadvisor are built around SEO as a core competence.

Which SEO tools would you recommend?

Basically, everyone should use Google Search Console. As a second software, it’s really up to the purpose of what you need. When you need good and transparent reporting for your management you need a software like our Searchmetrics Suite. If you are an Excel junkie or do SEO alone, you can combine tools like Majestic, GSC and other to get your insights out of it. So, besides GSC, the ‘must-use-tool’ is completely up to your need.

Google Search Console, SEO Tool | 3XE Digital Conference

Searchmetrics Suite | 3XE Digital Conference

What websites and people influence you on a day to day basis?

I rather look at websites where SEOs or journalists publish content. I learn the most out of successes or mistakes from others. My curiosity to dig into their website and analyse what’s going on keeps me moving forward more than reading only blog posts. This is something I can recommend to any SEO professional – that, being curious and doing your research is more important than following the crowd.

Tell us about your journey in the digital world and one thing that inspired you here.

I truly take inspiration from people like Simon Sinek, Charles Duhigg, Steve Jobs or Ben Horowitz. But honestly, I follow a few podcasts about founders and startups and there are so many smart people in the world, it would be wrong to just admire some people with great books. When I walk to my office or being on travel I listen to podcasts and that inspires me so much, learning from successes and failures of others.

Your thoughts on the future of SEO – What’s next?

SEO is in a drastic change. It’s desperately needed by many companies, but not many build SEO teams or integrate it in their product teams or product decisions. And SEO is not that sexy anymore as it used to be, but more important than ever. That creates a future with high demand for SEO, but lower supply. That will change SEO a lot. Also, the general SEO person that could do everything is going away. SEO in its breadth is so diverse when you think about technical SEO, user experience and content (strategy) as three very different sectors. It is very likely that SEO as a job title will disappear and be replaced by SEO Product Manager, SEO Content Strategist, SEO Analyst etc. This transition has started already and will continue.

Reserve your seat at the conference – Book Now

To connect with Macrus Tober, follow this link – 3XE Search Speaker, Marcus Tober

Bastian Grimm is the CEO and Director Organic Search at Peak Ace, where he oversees SEO as well as Performance Content Marketing.

Bastian who enjoys travelling and meeting new people, had started his career with software deployment. Having more than 15 years of experience in online marketing, Bastian still enjoys all the aspects of technical digital marketing.

Today he is a renowned digital expert for large scale international SEO, handling sites with 1 million+ pages in highly competitive industries.

Peak Ace is an international Performance Marketing agency based in Berlin, Germany. An award winning company, Peak Ace gives a strong focus on “all things search”, serving customers in more than 20 different languages. Bastian shares ‘With more than 90 employees, we implement native speaker level campaigns in these different languages and we are among the fastest-growing technology companies in Germany.’

On 8th February, at the 3XE Digital Conversion Conference, Bastian Grimm will be telling us about the fast changing Google Search. Naming his discussion topic ‘OK Google, what’s next? Getting control over the unexpected!’, Bastian will cover the most important features of Google search. As Google is getting smarter, he’ll also talk about the impact of new technologies on user behaviour and best ways to marry your efforts with CRO and great User Experience.

On our recent conversation with Bastian Grimm, we learnt more about him, his interesting work and his participation with 3XE Digital:

3XE Digital: Tell us about your journey in the digital world and one thing that inspired you here.

Bastian: I started in software deployment back in the day and ended up online in 1999. I was building websites at the time and at some point, got pretty annoyed about not having any visitors on those. Which was kind of my first touch point with search and actually SEO as well. I worked as an affiliate, moved in-house (amongst other things I was working for a company called Jamba / Jamster which sold mobile phone ringtones at the time; good old times!), went freelance again and now I’m heading Peak Ace AG.

3XE Digital: What will you be speaking about at 3XE?

Bastian: I’ll be touching on how search and user experience are coming more and more together as Google is getting better and better in understanding what users expect and really want. I think to create successful businesses, therefore a long lasting online business is critical. Of course CRO plays a major part in building successful businesses and their monetization strategies, so this will be the core of my talk. I’ll speak on how to integrate these practices and make it most beneficial for all parties involved.

3XE Digital: What are the 3 takeaways that you think delegates will get from your presentation on Google Search?

Bastian: The three major areas I’ll be talking about are: Convenience, Instant and Familiarity. I’ll be showing why they are relevant, how to utilize them and what they mean to your day-to-day CRO work.

3XE Digital: Which websites and people influence you on a day to day basis?

Bastian: I think it’s really hard and actually would be unfair to just pick one; I think in jobs like ours (in general, with any marketing role) it’s essential to have a trusted network. You need like-minded peers to bounce ideas or to just quickly “sense check” some of the things and thoughts that come along. Conferences such as 3XE Digital are actually a great tool to build and extent exactly this – so for me networking at events is absolutely key.

3XE Digital: How was year 2017 for you? What are your plans for this year?

Bastian: Pretty crazy to be honest – but that’s probably true for previous years as well. We almost doubled in staff again, got various awards and will now be adding just another office location in Berlin. So, it’s really going very well and we’re super happy and thankful for our clients and their trust in our work, which allows us to grow and develop further.

Don’t miss the opportunity of enriching your organic search knowledge, shared by Bastian Grimm at 3XE Digital Conversion Conference on 8th Feb 2018 in Croke Park, Dublin.

Find the Conference details here – Conversion Conference Schedule

If you’re yet to buy the conference tickets, click here…

With our great line-up of speakers, the list of attendees is making the upcoming conference look all the more luring! Check out our delegates list for 3XE Digital Conversion Conference. Link in the bio 👍 https://t.co/FdZq0BAGpa pic.twitter.com/x4z3U1iysq

— 3XE Digital (@3XEDIGITAL) February 1, 2018

It’s been an amazing year of learning here at 3XE and we hope for you too. Before we say goodbye to 2017, we wanted to take a look back and make sure we’ve squeezed every drop of goodness available and share some essential 3XE nuggets with you to help kick start your 2018.

Back in October, we journeyed into the world of Search Optimisation. With a total of 22 speakers guiding us through all elements of Search, we put together our top tips:

NEXT EVENT:

3XE Conversion
8 February, 2018
Croke Park, Dublin

To view agenda visit: https://3xedigital.com/dublin-feb-2018

Special thanks to We Are Promotional, a promotional branded merchandise distributor who’s marketing team took an impromptu trip to attend the 3XE search, all the way from Wales and for sharing the top conference tips with us in this awesome and easy to read infographic.

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