For agen­cies and brands devel­op­ing an SEO strat­e­gy that deliv­ers can involve a del­i­cate set of chal­lenges. Agen­cies often need to pitch above capa­bil­i­ties, and then strug­gle to keep momen­tum when day-to-day deliv­ery starts; and brands can strug­gle to mobilise their organ­i­sa­tions to meet defined strate­gies.

One of the most demand­ing chal­lenges of SEO is cre­at­ing a suc­cess­ful syn­er­gy between agency and brands, so both par­ties can actu­al­ly exe­cute and deliv­er on an SEO strat­e­gy.

On 1st Octo­ber, Linkdex will host a full-day event, bring­ing togeth­er brands, agen­cies, and a top line­up of expert speak­ers to dis­cuss how to jus­ti­fy invest­ment and cre­ate exe­cu­tion­al, prac­ti­cal strate­gies that deliv­er.

The day is a per­fect oppor­tu­ni­ty for heads of SEO, con­tent, or account man­age­ment teams to dis­cuss how to build, main­tain, and exe­cute excep­tion­al busi­ness that meets the poten­tial of a pro­posed strat­e­gy. The event will cov­er the wide range of skills nec­es­sary for teams to refine best prac­tice, and do bet­ter than the com­pe­ti­tion.

With a new year (and new bud­gets) just around the cor­ner, “SEO Strate­gies for 2016” is a must-attend Think Tank, unit­ing lead­ing experts with brands and agen­cies, to dis­cuss com­mon chal­lenges and mis­takes, and how we can solve them, for bet­ter SEO strat­e­gy, deliv­ery, and per­for­mance.

Presentation And Speaker Details

James Murray, UK Search Advertising Lead at Microsoft

James will dis­cuss why under­stand­ing human con­text is becom­ing increas­ing­ly impor­tant to deter­mine the rel­e­vance of the results being served. Decod­ing human con­text is the next step to evolv­ing search intel­li­gence and bring­ing con­sumers the answers they need regard­less of their mood, envi­ron­ment, or social set­ting.

In his role as Search Adver­tis­ing Lead for Microsoft UK, James is respon­si­ble for man­ag­ing rela­tion­ships between Microsoft and its strate­gic part­ners, as well as act­ing as an evan­ge­list for the Bing Search plat­form and search adver­tis­ing tools. James is fas­ci­nat­ed by data and the insight it gives into con­sumer behav­iour. He is a writer, speak­er, and thought leader in search and dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing being a reg­u­lar con­trib­u­tor at indus­try events and wide­ly quot­ed in the media.

David Harling, Digital Marketing Director at MoneySuperMarket.com

David’s talk is focused on cre­ativ­i­ty and how to scale data-dri­ven con­tent ideas that work.

David has expe­ri­ence on both the agency and client side, for­mer­ly work­ing as Head of SEO for Pub­li­cis Groupe’s dig­i­tal agency Razor­fish, and now Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing Direc­tor at Mon­ey­Su­per­mar­ket. David is account­able for all func­tions across the SEO, con­tent, and social media teams. Due to his wide-rang­ing pro­fes­sion­al career, David learnt first hand that work­ing with in-house teams dif­fers great­ly from work­ing agency-side.

Ian Daniels, Head of Digital at Yard Digital

Ian will be speak­ing about attri­bu­tion and con­tent mea­sure­ment, bring­ing agency expe­ri­ence and insights to shed light on the top­ic.
A respect­ed agency direc­tor, Ian has a wealth of expe­ri­ence in SEO and dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing lead­ing the strat­e­gy, plan­ning, and senior stake­hold­er man­age­ment for Yard’s clients. Cur­rent­ly spend­ing time work­ing with Yard’s spin-off Attri­bu­tion Tool VisS­core to prove the wider val­ue of SEO and pro­mot­ed con­tent in today’s mul­ti-touch, cross-device cus­tomer jour­neys.

Simon Jones, Campaign Director at MEC Organic Performance

Simon’s talk is focused around set­ting the right objec­tives and KPIs to dri­ve improve­ments in organ­ic vis­i­bil­i­ty.
Simon is the Cam­paign Direc­tor at MEC Organ­ic Per­for­mance. He runs the agency’s search and social con­tent team and works across a wide vari­ety of finan­cial and tele­coms con­sumer brands. His team spe­cialis­es in opti­mis­ing the con­tent devel­oped as part of ‘big brand’ cam­paigns to deliv­er SEO KPI.

Martin Jones, Managing Partner at AAR Group

Mar­tin will be dis­cussing how for both clients and agen­cies, the pitch should be the start of a mean­ing­ful rela­tion­ship, look­ing at what both sides need to con­sid­er through­out the pitch in order to ensure that they have a suc­cess­ful part­ner­ship rather than a mar­riage that fails after a few months of acri­mo­ny!

Mar­tin joined AAR as Man­ag­ing Direc­tor in 1997 and, over the last 18 years, has worked on more than 800 pitch­es and seen count­less chem­istry and cre­den­tials pre­sen­ta­tions. Dur­ing that time he has assist­ed clients as diverse as John Lewis, Smart Ener­gy GB, Alzheimer’s Soci­ety Train­line, First Util­i­ty and Addi­son Lee, advis­ing them on the most appro­pri­ate agen­cies for their needs and work­ing with them through­out the pitch process. Mar­tin also works with agen­cies advis­ing them on their new busi­ness efforts and leads AAR’s Busi­ness Devel­op­ment Appren­tice­ship, help­ing those who are new to new busi­ness to build their skills and expe­ri­ence.

Nick Wilsdon, SEO Lead Global Channel Optimisation at Vodafone

Nick’s talk is on how brands can con­sol­i­date glob­al owned and earned media assets to dri­ve SEO.
A dig­i­tal mar­keter and strate­gist, Nick was brought into the Glob­al Chan­nels Opti­mi­sa­tion Group at Voda­fone to lead SEO opti­mi­sa­tion pro­grams across 22+ inter­na­tion­al mar­kets. The pro­gram stan­dard­ised best-prac­tice across the group and with­in local mar­kets, deliv­er­ing growth in organ­ic search vis­i­bil­i­ty, traf­fic, and attrib­uted sales.

Richard Shove, Group Organic Performance Manager at Buyagift

Richard’s pre­sen­ta­tion will focus on his per­son­al expe­ri­ences of switch­ing to an in-house role vs work­ing for an agency and where he thinks both sides go wrong. There will be a par­tic­u­lar focus on report­ing, in fit­ting with the title of the day itself.

Richard Shove has an Inter­net mar­ket­ing back­ground with 10 years expe­ri­ence in man­ag­ing SEO, Ana­lyt­ics, PPC and oth­er gen­er­al inter­net mar­ket­ing areas. His cur­rent role as Group Organ­ic Per­for­mance Man­ag­er at BuyaGift means he focus­es on the earned and owned side of media.

Alex Spyrou, Head of Digital Marketing and Engagement at Bupa

Alex’s talk looks ahead at how client in-house teams and capa­bil­i­ties are devel­op­ing, how agency & client rela­tion­ships are evolv­ing as a result, and thoughts on what clients are like­ly to require from their agen­cies in 2016.

Alex start­ed his career plan­ning ban­ner cam­paigns, and soon decid­ed that there was more to dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing utopia than home­page takeovers with syn­chro­nised  MPUs and leader­boards.  He went on to devel­op dig­i­tal cam­paign strat­e­gy at MEC for clients includ­ing Nation­wide, Alfa Romeo and Orange, along with his fair share of pitch­es.  He then fol­lowed his pas­sion for grey sky and con­stant driz­zle all the way to Man­ches­ter, where he has worked client side for LateRooms.com and most recent­ly Bupa, where he is respon­si­ble for dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing and web­site per­for­mance.

Matt Roberts, Chief Strategy Officer at Linkdex

Matt will be dis­cussing the evo­lu­tion of SEO Now, and how we should be plan­ning for 2016. How can we bet­ter under­stand rep­u­ta­tion and con­sumer behav­iour, set com­mon goals, and use tech­nol­o­gy to tell pow­er­ful data sto­ries? And how should we invest bud­gets to ensure max­i­mum impact and results?

Kirsty Hulse, head of SEO Best Practice at Linkdex

Fore­cast­ing SEO can be time con­sum­ing, inac­cu­rate and resource inten­sive. Kirsty looks at how to scale an effec­tive SEO fore­cast­ing process for SEO cam­paigns and projects.

Jono Alderson, Head of Insight at Linkdex

Tech­ni­cal SEO is impor­tant. The way your web­site is built and oper­ates can direct­ly affect rank­ings, traf­fic, and rev­enue — so why do so many brands’ web­sites have crip­pling tech­ni­cal issues? Jono exam­ines the role of the Tech­ni­cal Site Audit, chal­lenges us to present our find­ings, and exam­ine require­ments with con­sid­er­a­tion for the com­mer­cial, oper­a­tional, and psy­cho­log­i­cal fac­tors at play — in order to get things fixed, and to win big.

In addition, the talks will cover:

• Deliv­er­ing on pitch promis­es or a pro­pos­al brief.
• Improv­ing rela­tion­ships and reduc­ing churn.
• Using attri­bu­tion and con­tent mea­sure­ment to demon­strate prov­able val­ue.
• Scal­ing data-dri­ven con­tent ideas that will win buy-in and suc­cess.
• Con­sol­i­dat­ing glob­al owned and earned media assets to dri­ve SEO.
• Improv­ing tech­ni­cal on-site SEO.

Event details

The Think Tank will take place at the Crypt on the Green in Clerken­well, Lon­don at from 8:30am to 5:00pm. Linkdex will pro­vide break­fast, lunch and refresh­ments for atten­dees. After the talks, we’d love for you to stay with us for net­work­ing drinks, which will take place at 1920 Bar — just a 5 minute walk from the Crypt on the Green.