At our ‘SEO for Brands’ in 2014 Think Tank we con­duct­ed a short inter­view with Andrew Gird­wood. He is cur­rent­ly Media Inno­va­tions Direc­tor at Dig­i­tasLBi where he is on the bleed­ing edge of tech­nol­o­gy for mar­ket­ing, always on the out­look for the next inno­va­tion.

How would you define SEO in 2014?

‘Mod­ern SEO means the con­ver­gence of con­tent mar­ket­ing, social media, ana­lyt­ics, tech, PR, and events with pub­lish­ers, as well as the actu­al page rank­ings and results. One day I might be help­ing blog­gers under­stand the dif­fer­ence between online edi­to­r­i­al and adver­to­r­i­al, and anoth­er I might be work­ing with a large brand on the devel­op­ment of their web­site. There are loads of dif­fer­ent plates in the SEO world. The most accu­rate def­i­n­i­tion is pub­lish­er since it’s our job to use con­tent to engage your audi­ence and make mon­ey. In terms of SEO this means gen­er­at­ing links, social sig­nals, aware­ness, traf­fic, which essen­tial­ly is a pub­lish­ing strat­e­gy.’

What were the big changes in your SEO plans from 2013 to 2014?

‘The changes were minor because the rules have been set for qui­et some time now. I think the main thing is that we need to teach our­selves more as well as hav­ing to be stricter with clients. Brands seem to be aware of this since they are talk­ing ‘con­tent mar­ket­ing’ but it must not be a con­sid­er­a­tion because we have to do it now.’

In a per­fect world how should SEO be bud­get­ed for? 

‘Ide­al­ly the mon­ey would come from brands which embrace it and have infi­nite mon­ey. In a slight­ly less per­fect world it should be seen as a neces­si­ty because if you don’t do SEO you can be so eas­i­ly hit by neg­a­tive SEO by get­ting back­links which will have a neg­a­tive impact on your site. You need to wor­ry about ‘can SEO dri­ve incre­men­tal traf­fic’. You now need to do SEO in some shape or form. SEO should have a flex­i­ble bud­get: with a pot of cash right at the start – let­ting the agency or in-house team spend that as they want through­out the year in spits and spurts. If you are con­fi­dent that your SEO strat­e­gy is struc­tured in the way that you can see the results you can eas­i­ly work out if it’s prof­itable or not. And if it’s prof­itable – pay.’

What’s the dif­fer­ence between brands that dom­i­nate their sec­tor for organ­ic search and those that don’t dom­i­nate and are catch­ing up? And what brands are cur­rent­ly doing the best work?

‘It’s the ‘pure play’ dig­i­tal brands’ that are dom­i­nat­ing, they are noth­ing if they don’t get dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing right. Until they became famous they had no brand strength. Where­as the hybrids and big brands are not doing SEO as well. It’s not impor­tant to them. Brands from affil­i­ate ori­gin are only being paid based on suc­cess. So if you want to pick a brand that is doing real­ly well in SEO you’d pick those brands that demon­strate that they are a hero.’

You can watch the high­lights of Andrew’s  Think Tank pre­sen­ta­tion below:

SEO has changed more in 2013 than in any oth­er year. Are you a CMO, Mar­ket­ing Direc­tor, Mar­ket­ing Strate­gist or SEO work­ing with brands and want to learn:

• What are the brands that are set-up to increase vis­i­bil­i­ty and ROI doing?
• What can brands that are off the pace learn from those that are win­ning?

Our speak­ers are from some of the most promi­nent brands and agen­cies in the world. Our videos share great insights from Mark Williams (iCross­ing), Joe Lewis (iProspect), Edward Cow­ell (Medi­a­Com), David Har­vey (Razor­fish) and Matt Roberts (Linkdex).

The exclu­sive Think Tank videos offer expert insights from agen­cies and in-house teams ser­vic­ing the world’s largest brands, as well as from brands them­selves, about what SEO means to them in 2014.