← The Digital Marketing Podcast
The Digital Marketing Podcast
A local SEO question and a global SEO conference
00:26:03
Daniel and Ciaran pose a great local SEO question from one of our listeners to Kelvin Newman, founder and host of one of "Brighton SEO" Join Kelvin and the cream of the UK SEO community at Brighton SEO next week for their training sessions on the 1st...
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- [00:01]
A
Welcome to the Digital Marketing Podcast brought to you by targetinternet.com hello and welcome back to the Digital Marketing Podcast. My name is Kieran Rogers.
- [00:19]
B
And I'm Daniel Rolls.
- [00:20]
A
And today we're very excited. We're joined by a very special guest. Introduce yourself, Special guest.
- [00:26]
C
My name is Special Guest and I'm very special. Hi, my name is Kelvin Newman. I'm the author, organizer of the Brighton SEO Conference and training event.
- [00:37]
A
Brilliant. So we've had a question specifically on SEO and I'm very excited to have Kelvin here because he's very knowledgeable and experienced in these matters. I've certainly followed Kelvin for a number of years.
- [00:51]
C
Don't build me up too much. They'll be disappointed when it's already.
- [00:54]
A
If you haven't ever been to the Brighton SEO Conference, you should, especially if you have any interest in SEO is brilliant. You pull together some of the world's best experts. There's so much inspiration and ideas that you literally just leave buzzing. But we've had a question from a listener who actually wants to remain anonymous. Offered to do a shout out, but no, no, don't mention my name. But what she really wanted to know.
- [01:17]
C
Under witness protection.
- [01:18]
A
Exactly. Yeah. So we've changed the name.
- [01:20]
C
Yeah, changed the.
- [01:21]
A
What she wanted to know was, if you're a large brand, how do you cut through and get exposure from a local SEO strategy? Because actually a large online brand, you might not have lots of localized outlets, but you still want to be visible. And everybody's saying local SEO, it's so important from a mobile first perspective. Any ideas, gentlemen?
- [01:46]
B
Well, I'll start with an example from us because we had an issue. When you search the brand name Target Internet, our website was coming up, all our social profiles, all our feeds, and that was lovely. And on the right hand side there was a different company because they were a company that had a physical office that sold stuff in that physical office. So that was a real problem for us because you'd get people. I mean, I was particularly upset because we were getting sent Christmas gifts and they were being sent to this other company. So they were mailing them through and they didn't send them back. I was quite upset. So the key thing is we need to dominate that space a bit more. So we wanted to go through and make sure that we were showing up. And I went through to Moz Local because I do trust Moz great SEO website. Moz Local went through. Put your website address in, put your postcode in, we'll look up your listings and then as long as we're happy with it, we'll submit you to all these directories and places and you'll just be listed in more local places. So we went through and did it and they went, oh, you don't exist, you're not there. So we were, oh, that's a bit odd. So we went through and looked at Google my business and looked at our Google my business listing and we have a great Google page, lots of content on it, and we have a physical listing but it wasn't verified. So we went through. You hit the verify button, they will send you something in the mail. So you get this physical thing from mail with a PIN code and you put it in and suddenly become verified. Then you go back to Mozlok and go, oh, you do exist after all. And then they submit you to all these places and very, very quickly, I think it's $79 or thereabouts for a single location listing and we suddenly start showing up on the right hand side of Google. Now from an SEO benefit point of view, we don't know if there's any actual, it's not like getting an additional link or anything like that directly. But what it does add is a level of trust. And what it means is when somebody search our brand name, they see our website, they see our offices and it kind of adds that level of trust as well. And Kelvin and I were just talking about this.
- [03:30]
C
Yeah, I mean I think it's just, yeah, you're right. That like in the biggest changes that there's been in Google over the last couple of years, it's easy to overestimate and overemphasize the changes in the algorithm. But actually what I think is under appreciated is the changes in the user interface. So particularly when the paid search adverts moved from the right hand side and went down to the bottom of the page, that freed up Google to essentially go in like a two column view and in that right hand column they're sharing all kinds of information. So there's a product search, that's where the product adverts are. But if they sense that it's a business, that there's some kind of local intent there, that's where the map starts appearing. So what you want is that if someone already knows who you are, so they're searching for your company name and as a buyer they're either an existing customer or they've been influenced by some other form of marketing or advertising that you've done what you want is when they make that search query, you want to ensure that they're able to fulfill their need. And if they're searching for you as a company, there's a good chance, even if you're an online business, that they want to kind of understand that you're legitimate, that you exist, that you're not some kind of ebay scammer. If you're an online business, you know that they want to know that you're legit. So if there's a picture there of your office and there's a location on a map, even if that's the other end of the country, you know that you can trust that business a bit more. So it's very valuable from that perspective. But what I think is also important to understand is that if you're an online business with no fiscal locations, you've got quite a big advantage over, you know, businesses that have fiscal locations. Like your overheads are infinitely smaller. But one of the downsides you have is that you're not going to get these kind of listings or even natural search results where Google determine there's a local intent and that's your downside. And unfortunately that's the advantage that people have physical businesses have. But they pay quite a lot for that advantage.
- [05:20]
B
Yeah, I think it's a really good point because it used to be what people do is if you're an SEO company in Brighton, you would go through and you would say let's add a page for Coventry in, for New York and for Milan and everything else. And you'd end up with all these pages listing what you do, but in these different locations. But if you don't exist in those locations, it's a scam. And just like anything else, Google is potentially going to punish you for doing that. So I wouldn't try adding local listings when you don't exist in those local places.
- [05:46]
C
Yeah, if you're trying to create like post find PO boxes to get listings in those cities, that's not gonna work. From a local perspective, it's a lot of effort to create a page for every city that your business could target, which again is like a bit of a misnomer. But what's interesting I think as well is that often when people don't realize they're getting a localized search result without ever really realizing. So if, you know, I do training quite a lot for the IDM and they're based in Teddington, so if I go and I'm doing a bit of training for them and I type in hairdresser, no geographic modifier in there, just the word hairdresser into Google the results. The map is of course centered to Teddington because it knows that I'm located. I've never not said on there, it's just a realized I'm geolocated there. But the actual natural search results are showing the Teddington branch of Tony and Guy or whoever it is, you know, a chain that there. If I make that same search query in Brighton or in Worthing or in Swindon or in, you know, Boston, Massachusetts or wherever it is, you're getting those results personalized and they're not the local map ones. It's just Google are kind of going that the context of someone making a search. You, you know, there isn't a definitive search ranking list. It's not like These are websites 1 to 10 for that search query. The person who makes the searches are there on a mobile, are they on a desktop, are they geolocated, have they made previous searches in the last 90 days? All of that information is personalizing those search results. So saying I rank number five for hairdressers is a lie. You don't rank number five for hairdressters, you rank number five for hairdressersen when there's no personalization and no, you know, kind of geographic targeting going on there.
- [07:27]
B
The question you get asked a lot with this as well is if I go incognito and if I switch my cookies off, is that then going to change that? And actually no, if you do it now, if you go and search the word jobs, you'll find jobs to your local location. Go incognito and you're still going to find jobs to your local location because your IP address is being used. So it is about your search history. But even if you switch that off, so that's not being used by going into a private mode of browsing, you're still going to find the fact that actually Google and the other search engines are looking at your location. And Kelvin's absolutely right. There is no such thing really as a number one ranking because it depends on the context as well. So particularly of these local listings. So yes, you can register your office. That is going to help from a trust point of view.
- [08:06]
C
Mad not to, right?
- [08:07]
B
Absolutely. Because there's no reason not to do that. And we've just found that suddenly we're being listed in maybe 10 or 12 different kind of local listed websites and that's probably a trust indicator to Google. They go, well, we know this person physically exists. So there are certain factors and I think Kieran, early on you were talking about this kind of trust factor thing.
- [08:25]
A
Yeah, no, it is important that I think the whole infrastructure around local search isn't about having the links per se. An individual link in yel.com or on fourSquare isn't going to make a huge amount of difference. But actually I think what the search engine is doing is quite smart. They're looking out and aggregating information. So actually if they can see that you're in all of these key places then actually no, this is a genuine quality signal. This business has been around for a while. They're registered with all these respected directories that do their homework and follow up and check on these things and actually it's the sum total of all of those links feeds through and adds the benefit, not any one in individual things. So it's sort of link building but on a very different scale and for very different reasons.
- [09:11]
C
Yeah, I mean I think if you imagine, if you imagine the web divided into two buckets and one bucket is, you know, has a physical listing in you know, well known directory websites and another bucket that doesn't. Now on average if you look at, you know, the web as a whole, those are in the no listing ones are generally probably a little bit less trustworthy, get a little bit less traffic, a little bit less well written, have less links, less social shares than those that are in the other ones in, in general across the whole. And you know, for search results there's hundreds of factors but for things like that where it's like hygiene, I think Daniel was saying it's just one of these checklist items.
- [09:50]
B
So you raised a really important issue as well actually Kelvin, about this HTTPs thing. So do you just want to explain to people what it is? Because I think a lot of people might not even be aware of it and then I think it's one of those hygiene factors as well.
- [10:00]
C
Yeah, so Google have gone on the record and stated that one of their number of ranking factors is if you use HTTPs, which is a secure version of your server essentially now on its own it's not a huge ranking factor. This isn't going to get you from position 10 to position 1. This probably isn't going to get you from position 11 to position 10, but it's just another one of these factors that Google have said that again if you look at the websites as a whole and this is kind of the way in which, you know, a search engine would work is you go there's two types of websites, those that do have HTTPs and those that don't have HTTPs, Facebook's HTTPs, Twitter's, you know, all of them. You know any of the websites, I bet if you look at the last 10 big websites you visited, they used HTTPs. So that's kind of just a bit of a sign. And I suppose it's a bit like, you know, if you imagine if you're on an E commerce website and they show the Visa logo, they show the, you know, the PayPal logo. Even if you don't use those, it's kind of a shortcut to you understanding that they're more trusted websites. That's kind of how those certificates are working as well. If you're eCommerce, you need HTTPs, but it's kind of like even a normal website. If I was specking a brand new website from launch tomorrow, I'd include that on the spec.
- [11:13]
A
So it's an extra letter within the URL. But I think for those new to it, just explain what's the benefit of it? What does it actually mean?
- [11:21]
C
Well, essentially it's just a certificate that kind of says that there's a private version of your website. Right. And that's kind of fundamentally what it is. And there's a cost, not a huge cost, but there is a cost that you have to get in order to do this. You have to kind of like have that set up. So there's an admin cost of buying it and there's a kind of development cost of doing that there as well. If you're a big website, don't underestimate the impact of changing all of your URLs though. And that's where in the SEO community there's been a bit of a kind of, not necessarily backlash, but kind of a challenge, which is saying that actually if you've got a well established website, the change can have an implication. So, you know, don't underestimate any of these changes. But it's a lot like a lot of SEO changes. It's like you're making the decision of, you know, here's a wish list of everything I'd like to do. And if you're starting from scratch, you should do as many of them as you possibly can. If you're working from somewhere in the middle, the question is, is the cost benefit? And often something that has an SEO benefit isn't enough to outweigh the cost, the web development cost of making those changes. And I think that's really, really underappreciated that it's kind of, you know, here there's a hundred, I can look at every website. There's not a website in the world that couldn't be improved from an SEO perspective. The question is, is the improvements worth the cost of making them? And that often is a lot more of a complex question.
- [12:41]
B
Absolutely. And the challenge we're seeing a lot of times as well with these well established websites that are out there as well. How Google deals with the website transitioning, do they see the website addressed the same? Are people putting redirects in place? And there is a big debate about it at the moment.
- [12:57]
C
Yeah, I mean I think that's it. It's kind of, you know, there is a danger in making any change to your website from a Google perspective, you know, from an infrastructure technical perspective. And there's also this kind of interesting emerging area of SEO that I think we're going to hear a lot more about over the next couple of years, which is so distilled are doing quite a bit of this at the moment. They bought out a tool that will do this and I'm sure that lots of people are working on their own internal versions and I'd imagine the big SEO platforms are going to go do something along these lines which essentially what they've got is like a, you know, cdn so content distribution network that allows you to install like you would Cloudflare or any of those types of ones, but it allows you to a B test technical SEO changes. So it'll allow you to kind of go this bucket of 25% of our pages we want to change like so it's dynamically generated based on, you know, it's a product page. And like currently you've got product name, category, description and maybe you want to test what would happen if you change the order. Right. Small change. But if you're a big E commerce company, you know there's a risk in that. Right. If all your product pages dropped a position that would be quite dangerous. So what they've got is kind of like a system that kind of says we will choose at random 25% of your pages, make those changes and then see what the response is to them. And kind of doing that without necessarily IT involvement.
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A
That's brilliant because you can begin to test out what the change would cost and what benefit would have.
- [14:24]
C
Yeah. And that's it. And potentially it's a bit like tag management for analytics. Yeah. And it's kind of a bit like CRO is for testing as well. You put in your optimize the code and then the marketers can make the changes. There's a good reason for why it and Development skills are required for live test environments. But I think if you're a marketer, the danger is if you've got a lead time in your development queue of 12 months, 6 months, 3 months, not unusual at all. Big costs associated with those. What you really don't want to do is go through that process, then have to roll it back because that's. You've put a lot of political and personal capital into making those changes. And if you kind of go, oh, this, I thought it was a good idea, but it's not. You would then, because you've kind of invested this upfront effort, you're sometimes tempted to kind of go, yeah, don't worry, I know it's probably a 1% drop, but hey, maybe we'll find that somewhere else with our other stuff. And that's not how you should be working.
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B
Right?
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A
It's brilliant, isn't it? You mean to tell me I spent nine months of my life focusing on this, burning bridges with the IT department and we've actually dropped three ranks?
- [15:31]
C
So, I mean, I think that kind of, you know, that as a whole, I think we'll see more of that across all kinds of aspects of websites where it's this kind of like, how do I test things out on a small scale to be confident about them? And the reality is that, you know, what will work for one business might not work for another. Because actually, you know, maybe, you know, one E commerce business doesn't have those physical stores that we're talking about, so actually maybe they really don't want to mention geographic locations in it. Or maybe, you know, you know, you make a change that allows you to rank for a keyword that has an average, you know, lower average basket value. And, you know, you kind of go, okay, we've made these dramatic changes. We've improved our rankings, but, you know, increased our returns. You know, I think there's a sophistication there in marketing that I think is often kind of underappreciated. It's all just more traffic. How do I get more traffic? Maybe a bit more sophisticated, how do I get more conversions? But like, actually not every conversion is equal. You know, not every order is equal. It might well be that, like, a particular type of customer just isn't profitable for you or another really is, and you just missed it. And it's, how do you respond to those insights as you gain them in a kind of scalable, agile way, which is not like the reality of how a lot of websites are managed.
- [16:43]
A
And I guess it all boils down to the same thing, really. There's no one size fits all magic bullet. Some SEO developments are going to benefit some businesses and not be relevant to others. It's about picking the areas that you're going to be able to develop and move forward with.
- [16:57]
C
Yeah, I mean, an analogy I use a lot and I apologize if people have ever heard me use this before, but you know, it's often to kind of think of that Google isn't a judge, they're a referee. Right. So they're not judging how good your website is. They're kind of saying, well, this website is better than, you know, they're kind of everything that takes place is not. You don't beat Google, you know, that's not what you're doing. What you're doing is, am I doing a better job than my competitors? So what that means is I think that what is required for an ecommerce website is different from what's required from a professional services website, which is different from a travel website, which is different, you know, and all of these parameters, whether it's link building, technical CRO, web design, you know, you don't need to be the best designed website in the world, you just need to be the best designed website relative to your competitors. And I think that kind of how do I do compared to other people is a really good mindset to have.
- [17:53]
B
I think that's hugely, hugely important. And I like the analogy an awful lot actually. I think it's great because a lot of people are talking about how do we beat Google, how do we defeat the Google algorithm? And it's completely the wrong mindset. And it goes back to the basic value of if you want to be number one in Google something, you need to be best at doing it and therefore you are competing with other people that do the same things. So I think it's a great analogy. Now I'm quite excited. Brighton SEO. So if you're not familiar, Brighton in the uk, down on the south coast where I live and where Target Internet is based and where Site Visibility, which is the agency, many, many years ago I used to work for, when Kelvin used to work for as well. And I went off and did my own thing, I think six, seven years ago. Kelvin then went off and did a spin off from that and started an events company that does Brighton SEO. And Brighton SEO has gone from strength to strength and it's a really well respected global SEO conference now and it's scaling up at quite a significant pace. So just tell us about what's going On.
- [18:46]
C
Yeah. I mean, I think that the story. I like to pretend. Pretend it's an interesting one. So, yeah, originally, as often is the case, the idea was fought up in a pub. And the reality is that for a long time on Twitter, there were people who worked in SEO in Brighton. So in this city, not the biggest city in the uk, but one that does have a disproportionately large number of digital businesses in it. And the people who worked in SEO in Brighton used to just use the hashtag Brighton SEO to kind of talk to each other, like, if there was a job going or something like that. Now, a few people arranged to meet up in a pub for a drink, and that was good and we all enjoyed it. And I thought, well, wouldn't it be great if next time we could go down the pub at lunchtime rather than five o'? Clock?
- [19:31]
B
Always good thinking.
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C
Oh, yeah. That's my logic. So the very first event was kind of, okay, let's do it. And it was a Friday. We had a projector that I borrowed and a whiteboard that was propped on a suitcase. It wasn't very level or straight. And we had five people presenting, I think. And my hope was, well, we've got five people presenting. If each of them brings two people with them, we'll do all right. But more people turned up, so that was about 20 people. 30 people showed up. We got coverage in the Guardian because someone said something a bit controversial about newspapers. And then we moved to a bigger venue. And then we moved to a bigger venue. Moved to a bigger venue. Now, for a number of years, we've been at the Brighton Dome and various venues related to that. And last April, the most recent event, when we released tickets in January, there were 1700 tickets, and they went in 60 seconds.
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B
I was just gonna interject and say the Brighton Dome was a pretty big venue.
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C
Yeah, yeah, 1700 people we had there. Which is, you know, pretty substantial in.
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A
Terms of conference scale, isn't it, where abba.
- [20:28]
C
Yeah, it's where ABBA won Eurovision as well, and where Pink Floyd first performed Dark side of the Moon. And, you know, there's lots of really great things about that. That venue.
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A
Hallowed ground.
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C
Yeah. Yeah. It's quite fun, actually. I mean, the bizarre thing is it's just like, it's such an amazing venue, but we just had this issue for a long time that we love it. There's like, we love it too much, but we were just getting too big. And, like, you know, we. The tickets sold out really, really quickly this time. We, like, at one stage had to close the doors and not let anyone moor in the building because we've got too many. So the good news is that we're moving to a new, bigger venue. It's the Brighton Centre, you know, home of Dancing on Ice when it goes on tour, and the party political conferences when they go on tour of the UK and you know, where a place where, if you're, I don't know, an X Factor winner, you'll go and play there. So, yeah, it's a kind of a big space and it's really good. We're doubling the size of the venue, so it's gonna be three and a half thousand people, which we reckon it certainly makes us one of the biggest SEO events in Europe, possibly even the world, depending how you define SEO. So, yeah, it's really exciting. And it's predominantly free to attend. Most of the tickets that are free have now sold. Well, all of the tickets that free are now sold out. There's a few sort of VIP ones and there's a few circulating if people are friends of sponsors and that type of thing. But, yeah, it's kind of. I don't know, we started out as a pub. We're not, you know, the way we handle and the way we approach events, I think it's quite similar to the approach that you guys have taken to this podcast, which is the first thing you need to do is help people, right? You need to share stuff you need to be all about, kind of, you know, how do you help people do their job better? Right? That's kind of our ambition is, you know, how do we arrange a physical event where people go away and they don't feel like they've been ripped off, they don't feel like they've spent 1500 quid on a soggy buffet lunch and all of that type of thing. So, yeah, that's the kind of main intention and, you know, spun out that with your training the day beforehand on the kind of sort of topics that, you know, just start economical and don't make sense for other training companies to provide because they're just too specific. But if you're really interested in SEO, you know, a big training company, they want to run the same course, I don't know, 10 times a year to make it make money. But we can run like a, you know, a course just about App Store optimization. And there's probably only a couple of thousand people who are interested out in the country, but we know a chunk of them are coming on the Friday, so The training on the first day makes a lot of sense.
- [22:42]
A
So I just want to interject on this because I've been along to some of the training sessions and they are really, really good. There's so much focus to spend a whole day on a specific area that, that you're really interested in the conference. I mean, it's brilliant that you can attend lots of short sessions and get lots of short, sharp insights into key areas. But there's nothing that really beats really taking a day out and focusing on a specific area that's actually gonna, at the end of it, make you much more of an expert within your company or your organization or your agency. And yes, there's a higher ticket price for it, but you get back, you know, tenfold what, what you actually invest in and you'll get out of it what you put into it. You know, there's lots of additional resources you can dig into once you've done the training. You make connections with all sorts of interesting people. And the networking, I think that goes on within the training because they're all really super focused on the key area that you're. You're focused on as well. The only downside is you can't do them all. That's criticism.
- [23:47]
C
Yeah, no, I mean, it's always a challenge of any physical location, isn't it?
- [23:50]
B
But yeah, I would also say you get to come to Brighton as well, which I think is the greatest city in the world. That may be challenged by a few people live in London or New York perhaps, but it is a great city. It's where we, where I live and where we're based. And it's a great city to visit, particularly at this time of year when it's sunny and beautiful.
- [24:05]
C
Yeah, it's a funny one. It's like I like to pretend like the reason that it's so successful is that I program an exceptionally, you know, well put together event. The reality is it's in a Friday, it's on a Friday in Brighton and that's a great place to be. Right. So the drinks are as much part of it as the cold freezer.
- [24:21]
B
If you're not familiar, Brighton has got a bit of a reputation as a bit of a party town. It is by the sea and it's an hour from London. So people like to come from London and just kind of probably hang out for the weekend as well. But it is definitely worth coming to. So. And although we said all the free tickets or most of them have gone, there are paid tickets that aren't expensive.
- [24:36]
C
They're 75 quid. You get, you know, like a Q Jump wristband and a T shirt and all that type of things. But if people are interested, I could probably, you know, if any, any of your listeners fancy kind of coming along, I can probably rustle up a few tickets for you guys to give out as a competition.
- [24:49]
B
Get onto the website targetinternet.com get onto the normal show notes and if you get in contact, we'll give away some of those free tickets. That's fantastic.
- [24:56]
A
We'll do on a first come, first serve basis to make it or I'll.
- [24:59]
B
Just selectively choose them.
- [25:00]
A
Yeah.
- [25:00]
C
Who Dan likes the name of.
- [25:02]
B
I'm joking. Fantastic. Well, thank you so much, Kelvin, for joining us today. It's really, really useful to kind of get your insights and things and we'll hopefully get you along soon again and maybe we'll get along to the conference and cover a few of the things that are going on as well.
- [25:13]
C
That'll be great.
- [25:13]
B
Fantastic. Well, thank you very much.
- [25:15]
A
Thank you, Kelvin. Thanks for listening to another episode of the Digital Marketing podcast brought to you by Target Internet.
- [25:29]
C
If you'd like to get more information.
- [25:30]
A
On the show, get hold of back issues of this podcast or get details on any of the links we mentioned, please visit our website at www.targetinternet.com. if you've enjoyed the show, we would love to read your feedback. Please rate us in itunes or even better, write us a review. Or if you have any questions, please get in touch.
- [25:51]
C
We'd love to.