There are many great search-experts out there. We decided we wanted to give some extra attention to some of them. Therefore we will be interviewing some of these experts. During the entire summer you will be served with short interviews with influential people in the industry. You will be seeing interviews with the likes of Joost de Valk, Marcus Tandler, Chris Sherman, Mike Grehan and Danny Sullivan, and off course our bloggers! Be aware that some interviews will be published in the newsletter!
Today: One of our own bloggers and well respected blogger in the industry: Kelvin Newman
1- Can you introduce yourself in one paragraph?
I’m Kelvin Newman, Creative Director at SiteVisibility, that means as well as working on a few select client projects; I also get to get involved with things like organising #brightonseo mini-conference, producing iTunes most popular marketing podcast and it’s new training membership site offshoot.
2- What are you doing this summer?
For me a big focus at the moment is about how get those companies to realise conventional SEO is dead and to really begin to understand and explore the five big new trends for the future which I see as Local, Microformats, Real Time Search, Personalised Search and Social Search.
3- What is the most hottest subject in search at the moment, what should every SEO be looking into
For a lot of the five subjects above they’re huge topics where it’s hard to predict what’s going to happen, but I think there are some great quick wins to be made with Microformats and the huge click through improvements rich snippets can deliver. So I’d be taking time to see whether any of the microformats are at all applicable to your business and get stuck in getting them implemented.
4- What do you think is the “state of search” at the moment, is the industry doing good?
I’ve written a post for State of Search which will be published next Monday warning of a real danger our profession, in that fly by night, call centre based SEO agencies could really be hurting our industry’s reputation. I have no fears about the top firms’ ability to deliver great work for clients but I am concerned that in 12 months time business owners will be so annoyed with the constant pestering of these agencies and their misleading sales approach that the whole sector could be tarred with the same brush
5- What is your favorite website, apart from your own?
It’s absolutely nothing to do with SEO; but Umair Haque’s blog for Harvard Business School really gets me thinking. He talks a lot about economics and business strategy and really makes you think about whether you and your customers are really taking the right approach. He’s pretty self righteous, and got a lot of stick for his Twitter interview at SxSWi but his Awesomeness Manifesto is a must read.
6- Can “social marketing / media” and search survive apart from each other?
I think they’re very different beasts, even if search marketers make very good social marketers they have different aims which may sometimes require a complimentary approach and other times something radically different. I think you’ll see search marketers carry out social campaigns and search campaigns independently but at the same time. They’ll have different objectives, different KPIs but will have a great understanding of how one can help the other.
7- What’s your search tip for the summer?
Get on with stuff, no search marketer is lacking in ideas of how they could improve their or their clients websites; all that’s holding them back is inertia. It may require getting stuck into a project which may make life more difficult in the short term or it may require understanding that a good search market is an advocate and an evangelist as much as a practionitioner. But either way actions better than inaction.
