Alan McMahon, EMEA SEO Manager at Dell Global Online

Simplify your site, focus on what is important and don’t get distracted having millions of pages to manage. De-segment large sites to make it easier for the customer and to improve experience.

Check your backlink history, high quality backlinks may be coming to old pages or to less relevant pages. Sculpt link equity to the key pages of strategic importance (but don’t over do it and get hit with an over optimization filter)

Mobile is fast becoming the key medium. Recent report shows mobile traffic to exceed desktop traffic this year. Utilize HTML5 and responsive design principles to create flexible and fluid layouts that adapt to almost any screen including smart-phones, tablets, PCs and HDTVs. Much better solution than using screen scraping technology to create a new mobile page

Finally, work hard to communicate internally SEO needs constant steady progress, there are no quick wins and above all don’t buy links!

Rob Garner, iCrossing

  1. Be present in your marketing efforts. Your audience and customers
expect you to be there, so in effect, all marketers are real time
marketers. It is not enough to just have a website or a social
presence – there must be a person behind the presence. It is just like
 answering the phone – people want someone to be there.


  2. Remember that without content, search engines and social networks 
do not exist. Content is the glue that binds communities, and connects 
searchers with the answers they are looking for. If your strategy
leads with meaningful content, then you are on the right track.
  3. As more marketers realize that content is an important and 
fundamental part of their marketing strategy, marketers must increase 
both the quality and quantity of content production.

    In other words,
you have to go beyond calling yourself a “content marketer“, you have 
to go out and be a *great* content marketer.

   

Image Credit – Wiley 

Duane Forrester of Bing on Links and social signals

They are both important for their own reasons, and people shouldn’t try to seek shortcuts by focusing on one over the other.

That said, if you build excellent, compelling content, build a solid social presences and provide an outstanding user experience, ultimately the links will find you. No need to go looking for them. 

  • Content is the reason.
  • Keyword research is a beacon.
  • Quality is your watch word.
  • Authority is your goal.
  • Niche is your starting point.
  • User experience is your religion.

Haukur Jarl Kristjansson, Nordic eMarketing

There is an intrinsic relationship between PPC and social media. The first thing I would say is ‘Context is King’. The number 1 problem that account managers face, that I have seen, is getting things out of context and not delivering upon the copy in the ad.  

If you don’t do this the you’ll most likely end up giving the user a bad user experience, meaning that they’ll be more likely to bounce and therefore paid for traffic that won’t convert. Keeping the promise you make in your ad copy is key for successful PPC campaigns. 

Chris Mortimer, Search Integration 

Receiving messages has a universal structure: Cue> Routine > Response. Knowing this structure helps us to craft our messaging. The content needs to be adapted, or set free, though for local audiences. 

Even ads are a form of story  i.e. we all know the structure and routine when presented with an ad. We have a choice to surprise or tell the same old “traditional” story when doing our selling communications. 

Agencies are becoming more strategic, and consultancies more tactical – this means as an agency you need to learn how to structure tactics in an overall context and story to gain more ROI.  

Bas Van den Beld, State of Search 

The key to being successful when it comes to social is to get a good understanding of humans. This means you need to get basic information about people, but even more important: understand what triggers them. 

You are dealing with humans, not machines. They are not necessarily waiting for your message to show up on their feed, they are waiting for answers to questions they haven’t even asked yet, call it serendipity.  

Getting attention on the right time and the right place means the user will embrace it naturally and thus will carry the message, because it fits their needs, not yours.  

Cindy Krum, Mobile Mixie

Social and mobile are becoming the same thing, but mobile increasingly includes tablets. Engage people on social without assuming they are sitting at a computer. Be creative.

Google is really trying on mobile, but official and unofficial statements and stuff like that are not…..consistent. Watch for more changes and updates to Google’s current mobile SEO rankings and guidelines

Expect to hear more about Responsive Design and RESS. It’s what all the cool kids are doing, and it is much better when linking or promoting content in social media. ‘mDOT’ sites are still cool, but harder to integrate so they really need to be justified.

Bruce Daisley, Twitter’s UK Director

Tone of voice is crucial. Brands need to think about what they want to achieve. This doesn’t mean that every brand has to be funny. In fact there is a choice to be made, and  we suggest brands think about fun, info and help. They should pick two.

Thinking about social, it is becoming synomous with mobile. Think about how your connect is consumed on the move. Brevity is a powerful filter here.

Further reading

For those who like to read and learn more from the experts at RIMC I would recommend the following books