Welcome to Adam Aspland and Carla Holcombe: Newest Members of the Think Tank
We’re really pleased to welcome two new team members so far in 2012, and they wanted to introduce themselves!
Archive for the ‘Working In Search’ Category
What Are We Doing at SiteVisibility to try to Give Something Back? Our CSR Activities.
It’s good news that an increasing number of companies are doing more to take responsibility for themselves and give something back to society. We’ve been trying to do a bit more of that over the last 12 months and I thought some of you might be interested to learn a little more about some of the groups we support and the activities we’ve been up to.
SiteVisibility has a proud history of leadership in corporate responsibility having won the “BITC Small Company of the Year” award in 2007 for our CSR Strategy, and since then our CEO Jason Woodford has served on the prestigious BITC South East Leadership Board.
We are currently revising our CSR strategy to bring our objectives up to date with our current business strategy, the needs of our local community and desires of our staff. Everyone in the company is given one day per annum to participate in either company or personal volunteering or charity activities. We’ve also recently appointed an internal Sustainability Officer who’s in charge of making sure we all do our parts to reduce our usage, as well as keep us up to date on any environmental developments that might make us consider redesigning our strategy.
Happy Click-mas! SiteVisibility’s Christmas Party 2011
The SiteVisibility Christmas party was a great success last night. It involved ice skating at the Pavilion, a tapas meal fit for a king, drinks at the Mesmerist and a trip to the casino for those with the stamina. Believe it or not even Santa himself showed up! We have our own Ministry of Fun to thank for the activites, and we’d like to share some of the photos of the night with our readers.
A Quality (Search Marketing) Service Never Goes Out of Fashion.
The UK Search Marketing sector has a great reputation around the world for leadership and innovation as well as quality. Yet in the midst of a financial meltdown, I believe that a good old fashioned quality service will not go out of fashion.
But what underpins a reputation for quality, especially in the world of Search Marketing? When you “lift the hood” off your Search Agency, what is it that drives the consistency of service and reliability of results? Why is it so hard to find a quality assured Search Marketing service in the UK? What justifies a reputation for being a “leading search marketing agency”? The most employees? The highest revenue? The most profitable? The loudest marketing? Or the most satisfied customers?
A SiteVisibility Internship – From Intern to Coordinator
As you might have read here, SiteVisibility has retained its Investors In People accreditation for the third time. It seems like a fitting time to reflect on my time here, having started as an intern and becoming Marketing Coordinator.
I started here earlier in the year primarily helping Kelvin with the Internet Marketing Podcast, although I was taken through lots of different SEO tactics. It was during that time that the first major BrightonSEO was happening and Kelvin asked me to do more and more things to help him organise the conference. I love organising events so I was quite happy to help. My month-long internship was extended, and just before BrightonSEO I was asked to stay on and join the team full time as the Marketing Coordinator.
Movember UK: Penhaligon’s Pop-Up Barbershop
As you might have realised from our blog and twitter activity recently, we’re proud to be partipating in Movember again in 2011. The aim of the campaign is to increase awareness of men’s health issues and raise funds for related charities. We’re really pleased to announce that Penhaligon’s are also participating in Mo-mania this month.
Ever since they treated us to a fragrance profiling session, we’ve known that Penhaligon’s are a unique brand with a rich history and an expert knowledge of their field. It seems that they’re also charitable sports, as not only are the team cultivating crumb catchers this month to help raise sponsorship money and awareness, but they are also opening up a pop-up barbershop at their flagship store in Covent Garden, offering free moustache trims for Movember participants, or “mo bros”.
Who is SiteVisibility’s Mystic Meg?
Three months I had a hair-brained idea it would be interesting to see who in the office who was the best at predicting the future. Obviously we’re a search agency, and you’d expect us to be able to reasonably accurately estimate the success of an SEO campaign, whether that’s due to intuition, analysis or forecasting. I set up a Google doc with ten clients and one of their keywords with its current ranking. The task of the experimenters was simple. They just had to predict the ranking in three months time. The more accurate they were the more they scored.
Generally people didn’t do too bad, but far away the most successful of our predictors was Lyndsey. A Global Hypercolour t-shirt is winging her way to her as a prize. What the experiment did show some interesting patterns. What I found is that we’re better at improving results than we give ourselves credit for, and that Graeme, who gets involved in our forecasting, is the most conservatitive of our team when it comes to these estimates!
What’s the Most Important Quality to Look for in a Search Marketer?
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what makes the ideal search marketer. We’ve been doing quite a lot of recruiting, which is never easy, and I’ve been discussing whether we ought to re-jig our company mission statement. Both these processes have converged and led me to believe that the most important quality in any search marketer is being inquisitive. Let me explain why.
SiteVisibility Have A New Team Member! He’d like to introduce himself…..
Howdy! My name’s Dominick and today is my first day as a Digital Marketing Manager at SiteVisibility. It feels a bit surreal to be writing this from SiteVisiblity’s lovely office in Brighton, when I’ve spent some time following the blog posts and listening to the podcasts during my own leisure time, but to be now part of the talented team at SiteVisibility and get the chance to work with some fantastic clients is a great opportunity and one that I shall relish.
Now for some quick background information, in case you’re wondering who is this guy that’s hijacked SiteVisibility’s blog this week. For the last 3 years I’ve actually been doing my best to avoid England’s cold climate and work in some slightly more tropical countries in Asia. Most recently I returned from Taiwan about 4 months ago, where I was working for a multinational software company handling their English Paid Search and affiliate programs as well as consulting on their international SEO strategies.
Exclusive Central London Bungee Jump – Extreme Element
“Alles vol! Alles is vol!”
It can happen to anyone on their birthday right? Terrified of taking the leap from a 160ft-high crane which was set up in Potters field Park, a beautiful little area in the East of London, I started browsing the You Tube channel using keywords such as “bungee funny” or “bungee comedy”. Too frightened to take a look at any of the extreme bungee footage, all I needed was a little bit of comedy. One of the top search results was a short sketch which appeared on the Flemish Comedy Television Show “In De Gloria” many years ago. The sketch shows a father amazed – or rather distressed – by his family’s originality when they organize a bungee jump for his birthday. Although being terrified of heights, the man eventually takes the jump. However, his fears take control of him, making the bungee an embarrassing event for himself as well as his family. “Alles vol. Alles is vol” [It’s completely filled up]; those are the only words the poor man is able to shout out while jumping.
This was literally all that went through my head on that Sunday morning train to London. Read on