All posts by Kevin Gibbons

Kevin Gibbons is Founder/Director of Strategy at SEOptimise. Kevin is well known within the search industry as a blogger for sites such as Search Engine Land, Econsultancy and Search Engine Watch. Kevin is also a frequent SEO speaker at a number of conferences including Search Marketing Expo (SMX), Search Engine Strategies (SES), a4uexpo, SAScon and BrightonSEO.

Last week I got the chance to attend the latest BlueGlass conference in LA. I’ve got to admit, when heading out to the US I had high expectations for this event having heard a lot of buzz around previous conferences they’ve held and you might have seen my interview with Chris Winfield ahead of the event. But I’d have to say, they exceeded expectations way beyond what I ever expected!

This was quite easily the best search event I have ever attended (and there’s been quite a few now!), the sessions were packed full of great content – once you’ve been to a lot of conferences you find yourself skipping quite a few sessions, but this conference was the exception – and every session was full to the back of the room! But as is normally the way, the highlight was the networking – you really could just sell tickets for “an audience with Greg Boser” show! Getting the chance to meet everyone before the event at Mike’s SEO BBQ was a great way to kick-off the conference – and the intimate feel of the event by having a limited number of 125 attendees and all staying at the amazing Standard Hotel in Downtown LA with a free bar and rooftop party is always an appreciated nice touch!

I should be presenting at BrightonSEO today on a 20/20 slot (20 slides, 20 seconds each) talking about 20 SEO tools.

Unfortunately I can’t be there. Sadly my dad, Jim Gibbons, passed away on Wednesday morning having battled cancer so bravely for the last year, but unfortunately his health deteriorated very quickly earlier this week. Obviously it puts things in perspective, as these things always do, but I know my dad would have loved me to do this. He was so proud of my career and paid such a great interest in everything I do, especially speaking at events like this – mainly because this isn’t something I’m naturally comfortable at doing and I’d rather not be center of attention (I’m just like him in so many ways), but I am ambitious and want to push myself and company forward by forcing myself into creating and taking these opportunities.

So while I can’t be there today, I still wanted to share the slides with everyone who’s going along to the event.



I love you dad, this one’s for you!

In the last in our series of conference interviews (for now at least), I’m talking to Chris Winfield ahead of the BlueGlass LA conference later this month. Personally I find it incredibly useful attending US conferences in order to keep up with how the industry is developing in the States – this has included SMX Advanced in Seattle and Pubcon Las Vegas in the past – and this year I’m heading over to the BlueGlass LA event.

Image credit: Dana Lookadoo

Thanks to Chris for taking the time to answer these questions – here goes:

Last week we ran a series of blog interviews for the up-and-coming search conferences and events, including SMX London, International Search Summit, BrightonSEO and ionSearch – today we look at SAScon, with answers from co-organiser Pete Young.


Ahead of next month’s ionSearch, we spoke to organiser Fergus Clawson about his vision for the event, what we can look forward to and much more besides…

1. It’s the inaugural ionSearch event; obviously there are a range of search and digital events across the UK, so how do you see ionSearch differentiating itself?
That’s a good question. Rather than trying to explain why ionSearch is different to other conferences I will explain what ionSearch is and what it hopes to achieve.

ionSearch is an advanced search marketing conference where the speakers involved intend to push the boundaries and will explore all things SEM, with the agenda consisting of talks on SEO, Link Building, Content, Social and PPC. The day will consist of three main components; the Main Auditorium, the Experts Panels and the Search Tools suite.

The main auditorium will play host to the nine keynote speakers. Each speaker will have 40 minutes to present their thoughts and insights to the delegates. We feel that 40 minutes will allow the speakers enough time for them to delve deeper into their subject areas, allowing delegates to take away actionable skills from leading experts.

Following on the theme of conference interviews with Danny Sullivan from SMX London and Kelvin Newman for BrightonSEO, todays interview is with Andy Atkins-Krüger ahead of the International Search Summit (ISS) in London on 14th May 2012.


Following on from my interview with Danny Sullivan last week – I decided to give our readers some insight into some of the other up-and-coming events, so that they can get an idea about what each has to offer and why they are different etc. We’ll be running a series of similar interviews during the next week, starting today with the host of BrightonSEO Kelvin Newman.

With SMX London coming up in May, we were lucky enough to get a chance to ask Danny Sullivan some questions ahead of the conference.

Danny Sullivan SMX London

Today I spoke at the UK Search Awards Conference – presenting on how SEOptimise won a UK Search Award last year for best blog!

Here are my slides:

10 Steps to How We Built an Award-Winning Blog

View more presentations from Kevin Gibbons

If you have any questions on this, just let me know in the comments. We’re also attending (and presenting) at a lot of UK conferences coming up during the next months, including; BrightonSEO, IONSearch, SAScon and SMX London.

Doing a few queries this morning, I’ve noticed a range of local sites being listed in Google alongside the regular SERPs for generic queries. Digging a bit deeper, this looks like much more than a personalised search feature, in fact Google seem to be emphasising local websites very heavily for competitive queries when completely logged out too.

Google have announced this week that they have applied 40 algorithm updates in Feb, with the Google Venice update rollout affecting local. So I’ve tested this out by performing the following queries in Incognito mode in Chrome – so hopefully this will restrict the amount of personalisation that is going on here. But Google does know my location – which is automatically set as Oxford. So I’ve compared the set of results for a range of queries – and have changed my location settings, from the automatic selection of Oxford – comparing this with Manchester.

Google Venice – Local Algorithm Update

View more presentations from Kevin Gibbons

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