chris dalrymple - blog
Monday, 9 March 2009
Think Visibility - a quick review
As with most of the blogosphere, I thought I'd offer a quick review of Think Visibility, (probably) Leeds' only online marketing conference.
Thinking back, I think this is honestly the first internet conference I've been to outside of London, and I was very happy to make the short 4 mile trip down the road to Leeds Uni for the 9am Saturday start.
First impressions were a well organised and relaxed day, and there were some great presentations:
Rob Lee on the 'web of data'.
This was a great reminder of the principals of digital networks - focus on resources, essential services and key areas of your site and use these 'social objects' as the targets of your promotion. It's the way LinkedIn, Flickr and Twitter have become succesful - using points of aggregation to allow others to syndicate content.
Really good example of MusicBrainz and the BBC aggregating this content.
Katie Lips on mobile. [slides]
Great talk on options for mobile apps - something I'm not too familiar with truth be told. Really good overview of resources available and I found Blyk particularly interesting.
Finally, Dave N on SEO.
Entertaining as always, and the underlying frustration Dave seems to have with the majority of SEO-ers is always worth seeing! However a few good tid-bits around 'Silver Bullet' sites and the opportunities marketers should be taking within Google's SERPs, particularly as personalised search takes hold - onebox (maps, product search, image results etc) and site links all help to claim much needed real estate on results pages and in many cases are faily easy to obtain.
Overall, I was very impressed with the day - for thirty quid there was enough to rival conferences costing ten times as much. Well done The Hodge!
Labels: conference, sem, seo
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Wednesday, 21 January 2009
My 2009 digital marketing predictions
Now in video-y goodness.Labels: 2009, affiliates, marketing, sem, seo
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Tuesday, 30 December 2008
Think Visibility conference - cheap and northern*
DaveN recently blogged about Think Visiblity, a new mini SEO/SEM/digital conference being held in Leeds on the 7th March which looks pretty good.
Dave himself will be speaking, as well as a few other notables, including some who spoke at the far more pricey A4U Expo this year.
My ticket's bought already and I'd recommend if fancy attending you do the same sharpish - they're only allowing 100 attendees and rumours are there are less then 30 tickets left. See you there.
*Well, £30 and in Leeds - see what I did there?
Labels: conference, marketing, sem, seo
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Wednesday, 26 March 2008
These noobs sure do browse funny.
Great blog post from Cabel.name about adverts in Japan using search suggestions instead of URLs to guide people to websites.
The main reason is seems is the difficulties of using the internet with both Japanese and Latin alphabets - searching in Google means not having to switch keyboards. It also makes life easier when so many Japanese use the web via mobile.
However there's still lessons for UK marketers - a surprisingly high number of people never input URLs into the address bar: they either search for the keyword in Google, or better still search for the full URL in Google.In fact, more people search for 'hotmail' in Google than search for 'DVD'.
The only problem is, once you've decided to publish a 'search for...' how do you make sure you always stay top?..
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Tuesday, 26 June 2007
Say it aint so - Threadwatch to close?
Say it aint so Aaron - Threadwatch is to close this Friday, for good.
Apparently, the site's been slowly dying and the time and effort no longer seems worth it.
Somebody buy it off him, quick! A great little community there - it would be a shame to see it go.
Update: watch this space for what happens next...
Labels: seo
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Monday, 21 May 2007
Google *really* doesn't like gambling
For the last couple of years, it's not been possible to use AdWords for sites which allow gambling online (unless you manage to avoid the attentions of Google's editorial team...).
However, it had been possible to advertise free play sites then soliciting email addresses to target later (i.e. littlewoodsbingoquiz.com).
According to a recent conversation with an AdWords rep, that's all about to change however:
I'd like to confirm that we are changing our policies regarding the advertising of gambling from 1st June 2007.
In the past we made exceptions for gambling when no real currency was involved. However these exceptions will no longer apply from June onwards.
Which pretty much means there's no way in to AdWords for gambling advertisers, unless you're prepared to play bait and switch every Friday night when the reps go home.
Gambling SEO just got a little tougher still.
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Chris Dalrymple is an online marketing manager in Leeds, Yorkshire, UK. This blog talks about lots of aspects of digital marketing, as well as general web-related geekery. 
