Monthly Archives: May 2012

Search Industry Job of the Week – SEO Technical Consultant

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Job Title: SEO Technical Consultant
Job Reference #: Unknown
Position Type: full time
Name of employer: Found Agency
Location: Sydney Australia
Date Posted: 24 May 2012
Position description:

Hands-on agency role with strong strategic input
Specialist search agency (20 staff). Flat management structure. “Can-do” work ethic.
Dynamic role with strong career opportunities.

Found Agency is looking for an experienced SEO professional to join their highly-regarded SEO team. This is the environment and role that will see you quickly become recognised for SEO and help build your profile in the digital media space. They offer a competitive salary, freedom for individuals to grow and learn, and a results-orientated yet informal culture. If you’re a self-starter who doesn’t like micro-management then this is the environment for you.

The successful applicant for this role will have:

High-level understanding of SEO techniques and best practice
Fantastic client liaison skills – you must deal with a wide variety of individuals, from corporate CMOs, to 3rd-party agencies and SMEs
Brilliant communication – solid writing & presentation skills are mandatory
Two to five years working as web developer, SEO consultant or search producer
A track record in handling all aspects of large scale web projects
Be able to manage production staff including designers, copy writers and developers
Rigorous workflow, time management and budgeting skills
A passion for the internet
High Attention to detail
High level of competence in internet authoring tools
Agency or corporate experience would be ideal
A strong motivation to be one of the best SEO consultants in Australia

As a SEO Tech consultant you will…

Be able to analyse website architecture, content and produce optimisation recommendations
Develop functional specifications, IA, and content recommendation to improve a site’s SEO characteristics
Develop short-term and long-range strategies for achieving client’s SEO objectives
Optimise various site components including keywords & copy, page title/descriptions, meta tags, internal linking, site maps etc.
Follow SEO guidelines with respect to coding and adherence to established copy/keyword standards.
Deliver training & recommendations to developers, designers & marketing teams.
Monitor and report on overall SEO program success with regard to key metrics including: traffic, keyword ranking, indexed pages, backlinks etc.
Develop and drive diversified link acquisition strategies.
Regularly & clearly communicate SEO progress to clients via reporting & analysis and provide answers to any questions related to their SEO program.
Perform competitive analysis to help develop and drive future SEO roll outs.
Actively improve knowledge of SEO best practice to develop and recommend new SEO strategies.
Maintain awareness of various SEO resources and tools.

Role Requirements:

Thorough understanding of website develop processes
Ability to code in one of the following languages: PHP (ideal), Java, ASP, .NET, Ruby On Rails etc
Broad knowledge of dynamic web programming, databases, HTML, XHTML, CSS and JavaScript
Ability to write functional specifications and wireframing
Skills in MS Office and Google Analytics
Commercial SEO experience including hands-on optimisation and link building.
A strong understanding of search engine trends, algorithms and ranking factors; and a desire to continually enhance skills.
Excellent written & verbal communication skills. Strong team player.
Ability to manage multiple assignments and work to deadlines.
Experience with leading search engine ranking, traffic and analysis software
An understanding of Paid Search and Social Media is a bonus.

Please include any URLs of your recent work.

Salary range: Unknown
Closing date: Unknown
More info about company from: http://www.foundagency.com/jobs/seo-search-engine-optimisation-sydney.htm
Contact: Send resumes via online form: http://www.foundagency.com/jobs

For more search industry jobs, or to post a vacancy, visit Search Engine College Jobs Board.

Search Industry Job of the Week – SEO Consultant

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Job Title: SEO Consultant
Job Reference #: Unknown
Position Type: full time
Name of employer: Outrider
Location: Sydney, Australia
Date Posted: 4 May 2012
Position description:

Primary Responsibilities:

  • Consulting on numerous clients from well known Australian brands
  • Preparing search engine audit documentation on clients websites
  • Make recommendations to clients on how they can improve their organic listings and traffic
  • Preparation of reports on client’s KPI’s
  • Keeping abreast of current search engine optimisation strategies and methods
  • Liaising with clients, internal account management and technical staff to ensure campaigns are managed effectively

Skills and Experience Required:

  • Over 2 years of solid SEO experience
  • Ability to work face-to-face with customers essential
  • Web development experience
  • Web Programming Skills an advantage – ASP, Cold Fusion, HTML and JavaScript
  • Understanding of Common Server Technologies – IIS, Apache
  • Can prioritise and manage multiple tasks to deadline

Please e-mail your CV to sean.rooney[at]outrider.com

Salary: Unknown
Closing date: Unknown
More info from: www.outrider.com.au
Contact: Send resumes to: sean.rooney[at]outrider.com

For more search industry jobs, or to post a vacancy, visit Search Engine College Jobs Board.

Can competitors harm your Google ranking?

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My little tribute to the Beastie Boys

A client and I were Skyping this week and the topic inevitably turned to Google Penguin and the impending doom of link building *tactics*.

This particular client has been having issues with rogue affiliates setting up fake link networks in order to boost their sales for my client’s products. Despite repeated warnings and/or promises to clean up their act, some of these affiliates have continued using dodgy practices for years, managing somehow to avoid Panda, Panda II and even Panda III. But their house of cards came tumbling down with the implementation of Penguin and with it went over 30 percent of my client’s traffic.

The problem is that, ultimately, my client has NO CONTROL over the tactics used by persons linking to their site. If they spot dodgy tactics being used, my client can alert or even ban the offending affiliate, but what of all the affiliates spamming under the radar? And these are sites supposedly in favor of my client staying in business. Imagine if they were direct competitors? All the education in the world isn’t going to stop spammers using whatever tactics they can if they are rewarded for those tactics in cold hard cash. And who can blame them?

This is inherently the problem I have with Google at the moment. They still claim it isn’t possible for spammers to hurt innocent sites using SEO spam but guess what? There are many, many examples of exactly that happening. Heck, this guy is offering a $10,000 reward to find the persons responsible for link bombing his site. Do you think he’d offer cash if the issue wasn’t crippling his business? There are even public projects set up encouraging people to use SEO spam in order to influence the Google SERPs in a positive or negative way for political purposes. And what about super competitive industries like the PPCs – porn, pills and casinos? I can assure you that competitor sabotage is alive and well and flying business class.

Now I applaud that Google are concerned enough about the issue to roll out updates like Penguin to try and punish persons using obvious SEO spam. Comment spam is evil! they warn. Artificial backlinks are evil! they say. Use of these tactics is a violation of our guidelines! But then they say don’t fret if others build backlinks to your site. Don’t worry too much. Just concentrate on making your site the best that it can be.

Why oh why do they keep insisting that competitors can’t harm your site using those same methods? Asked the question, Can competitors harm your ranking?, this was Google’s reply:

Google works hard to prevent other webmasters from being able to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index. If you’re concerned about another site linking to yours, we suggest contacting the webmaster of the site in question. Google aggregates and organizes information published on the web; we don’t control the content of these pages.

I look at these posts and this is what I’m hearing:

“Don’t be evil. Don’t do this, this or this. Doesn’t matter if your competitor tries that, they can’t hurt you. Oh look at these naughty spammers ruining your SERPs. We’ve got an update to fix that. What? Your legitimate site was smacked down? Not our problem. Don’t be evil.”

Well Google may not want to admit it but here it is: Can competitors harm your Google ranking? You bet they can.

 

 

 

SMX Sydney 2012 – Robert Moorman – Developing a video content marketing campaign

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This is a summary of Robert Moorman’s presentation at Search Marketing Expo / Online Marketer Conference held in Sydney 1-2 May 2012.Robert Moorman at SMX Sydney 2012

Robert Moorman is a Video Strategist at Hunting With Pixels, a company that specializes in strategic social video campaigns. Robert has over 20 years of experience working as a video producer for media organisations like Fremantle Media and MTV in the UK, Australia and Europe.

Content is king but distribution is queen, says Robert. Content is now about ideas, not tech. For example, 8 year olds who use iPads don’t need to know interface design in order to use it. Video content must be engaging, authentic, simple and memorable.

Robert kicked off showing a corporate video that emphasizes the relationships formed by a business rather than the product they sell.

 

Video Content Optimization

There are a couple of major things to remember when optimizing your video content, says Robert:

  • Highlight your branding early so people associate it with the visual message.
  • Include your call to action early, in case people don’t view the entire video.
  • Don’t forget audio quality. Poor audio will automatically reflect poorly on your brand. TEST it!
  • Short videos generally perform better. If possible, keep your videos to 2-3 minutes.
  • Use graphics and captions in your videos to highlight key points.
  • Be engaging and relevant.

Robert then showed a Nintendo 3DS promotional video that acknowledges the audience is smart. Clever approach, it worked well with the target market and had a viral impact because it was funny.

Video Distribution Channels

There are quite a few video distribution channels available – YouTube is not everything. So here are the options:

  • YouTube – the obvious choice.
  • Vimeo Pro – is an excellent HD quality hosting option.
  • Vid.ly – is great for video transcoding and checking if your video is viewable on multiple platforms.

Video Content Syndication Tips

  • Get your videos embedded by others. If you haven’t already read it, read The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. It will give you some ideas for how to make your videos memorable and sharable.
  • Make sure your videos are fully searchable. Fill out all the fields when uploading them to YouTube and other content placeholders. Put the http URL in the video title and/or video description so it becomes a clickable link.
  • Use playlists to your advantage.
  • When viewing YouTube, choose the right thumbnail, do keyword research to find popular related keywords.
  • Turn on transcription / subtitles when uploading your videos to create an automatic text version of your content.
  • Context matters – be wary of where your vid appears.
  • Use seeding and video advertising platforms – eg. TubeMogul or YouTube advertising to auto distribute your video content via similar content.

Video Marketing Tips

  • Be sharable – use video plugins that make it easy.
  • Be easy to use.
  • Make your video content easily navigable.
  • Don’t use shortcuts – quality is key with video content.
  • Use YouTube analytics to keep up with viewer statistics and tweak your videos based on viewer activity.
  • If you need to create a video-based site, try Vidcaster – instant micro websites made for videos.
  • For tips on how to SEO your videos, read Reelseo.com regularly.

Robert then talked about a new marketing trend – interactive video content. He showed the Choose a Different Ending video that paused and gave viewers two storyline options to choose from eg. “take the knife”, or “don’t take the knife”, like the alternative ending books you used to read as a kid. Ultimately, you choose whether to live or die. The video was created by DropTheWeapons.org as an awareness tool to break the circle of youth violence and weapons crime.

Robert then showed a video that was a Flash video that entirely mimicked a YouTube page – A Hunter Shoots a Bear – with the word *shoots* able to be replaced by user chosen via keyboard [fun tip – type in *dances with*]. It was a clever ad for Tipp-Ex correction fluid. Apparently they shot over 100 different keyword scenarios. Robert showed another where the company had created an entire website just using video.

In summary, video marketing doesn’t have to be difficult or expensive. Just give it a go. Look into buying a mid range video camera, a cheapish background screen and a spotlight in order to DIY videos for your site. You can get an entire package for under $1,200.

 

Search Industry Job of the Week – SEO Consultant

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Job Title: SEO Consultant
Job Reference #: Unknown
Position Type: full time or part time
Name of employer: Brivin Corp
Location: Miami Florida or telecommute
Date Posted: 10 May 2012
Position description:

Brivin Corp is currently seeking an SEO Consultant to join their SEO Team in Miami, FL: If you have a thorough knowledge of SEO, are a self-starter and goal oriented — then you are their ideal candidate.

The SEO Consultant’s responsibility will be to assist in the structure of the SEO architecture of their new websites alongside their SEO team.

Required Qualifications:

  • Must have a genuine passion for SEO and stay up-to-date with the latest SEO trends by studying, understanding, and implementing ethical tactics and techniques;
  • Excellent writing and grammatical skills;
  • Strong analytical and problem-solving skills required;
  • Knowledge of Site Taxonomy;
  • Web Analytic Tools (GWT and GA – segmentation, filtering, reports );

Primary responsibilities are not limited to:

  • Review of their site content and structure.
  • Technical advice on website development: for example, hosting, redirects, error pages, use of JavaScript.
  • Content development.
  • Management of online business development campaigns.
  • Keyword research.
  • SEO training.
  • Expertise in specific markets and geographies.

Welcomed Qualifications (not a requirement):

  • An overall knowledge in programming technologies such as PHP, HTML / CSS, Javascript also MySQL database is a huge plus but not a requirement;
  • Knowledge on the most popular CMS’ like: WordPress, Magento, Drupal or Joomla;

Besides these features, their new SEO Consultant should be able to hire and manage other service providers in order to get support in his/her daily tasks of SEO.

This full/part time job is open for anyone in the United States or abroad. If you live in the South Florida area near Miami, consider a live interview and an onsite position. If you are not in the area then you will be interviewed through a video conference on Skype during their office hours which are 08:00 a.m. to 06:00 p.m. EST. If offered the position, you will telecommute with them by working virtually.

All interested candidates looking to fill the SEO Consultant Job vacancy should send their most recent resume along with a cover letter, relevant portfolio, and referrals.

Salary: Unknown
Closing date: Unknown
More info from: Brivin Corp Careers
Contact: Send resumes via online form: Brivin Corp – SEO Consultant – Apply Now

For more search industry jobs, or to post a vacancy, visit Search Engine College Jobs Board.