Last year I attended and spoke at the legendary Pubcon conference for the first time. I wrote about my experiences that year and how much I enjoyed the whole event. This year I wasn’t sure if the event could hold up to the high standard that was set in 2015. But I shouldn’t have worried; it was once again a superb conference, and we had a truly great time in Las Vegas. I was asked to give two talks this year: one as part of the Tech Issues session and another in the Site Security session. All my sessions were in the same room, which looks like this when empty: When it’s full of people, however, it’s suddenly a lot more intimidating – especially when you see some of the SEO industry’s biggest names sitting right at the front. My first talk was about Google AMP, which I see as one of the major technical SEO challenges of the moment and something every SEO needs to keep a sharp eye on. I’m conflicted about AMP; on the one hand I see its enormous potential, but on the other hand I don’t feel the web needs yet another new standard – especially one controlled in large part by Google. In my talk I discussed the basic principles of AMP and dissected an AMP page to show how it works. I also discussed the way Google is putting a lot of effort behind AMP to encourage widespread adoption. In that same Tech Issues panel, Dawn Anderson gave a stellar talk about crawl budget and URL importance. Dawn likes to read research papers and patents in her spare time, and as a result she’s learned a lot about how Google’s crawlers work. Her talk was nothing short of amazing, and has lead to a very deep rabbit hole for SEOs like myself to follow and learn more about Google’s crawling processes. Make sure you have a look at her slides here. After that first session I moderated a session on site speed, which featured three amazing talks from Ian Lurie, Jenny Halasz, and Fili Wiese. Then after a lunch break I was back on the podium for my second talk of the day about site security. In this talk I showed how you can use Google to find vulnerabilities in websites, and how website owners should protect their websites from such basic reconnaissance methods. The slides from my talk feature several Google queries that you can use to find potential security flaws in your site – it’s worthwhile doing these on your own sites to see just what kind of information you might have out there without realising. Pubcon’s official photographer managed to catch me in the act during this talk: In that same session, Kristine Schachinger gave a very solid talk about WordPress site security, which you definitely need to check out if you run a WordPress site. After that session my Pubcon duties were fulfilled and I could enjoy the rest of the conference at my leisure. And I did – I watched many great talks and enjoyed wonderful conversations with all kinds of awesome people like JP Sherman, Tobias Fellner, and Dennis Goedebuure. After the social event on Tuesday night a group of us went out for dinner together – Aleyda Solis, Eric Wu, Purna Virji, Wissam Dandan, Marty Martin, Dawn Anderson and her hubby John, Rob Woods and myself: We had a wonderful dinner and afterwards I probably had a few too many drinks at the Breeze Bar in Treasure Island. But hey, that too is part of the Vegas experience, right? On Wednesday evening after the conference, the 4th annual US Search Awards were held in conjunction with Pubcon. As I was a judge for these awards, my wife and I were invited to the awards event. We got all dressed up and made our way to Caesar’s Palace where the awards were being held. It was a wonderful evening in a great venue, and we had a lot of fun. We met plenty of new people and hung out with long time industry friends. Seeing my name on the list of judges is a personal highlight of my SEO career: The following day, suffering from a rather epic hangover, my wife and I decided to participate in the Kerboo Tournament of Champions – a fun set of activities organised by Dom Hodgson and Paul Madden. Our good friends Sam Noble and Ben Norman from Koozai also participated, as did Jon Henshaw from Raven SEO. The goal was to accumulate points through various games and activities across several, ehm… interesting locations in Las Vegas. We started with three rounds of bowling at The Orleans, which was the highlight of the day as far as I was concerned as the points I scored there would be pretty much the only points I’d win that day. Then we moved on to Circus Circus for a dozen different games in their Carnival Midway, before heading to Fremont Street for some food. Needless to say, at the end of the day when we tallied up all our points, I was dead last. Thus I won the not-so-coveted Loser trophy, which now graces a shelf in my office. Despite my embarrassing loss, it was a great day spent with wonderful people and a fitting end to our amazing time in Las Vegas. Once again Las Vegas in general and Pubcon specifically were amazing. It’s such a great gathering of the search marketing industry and definitely one of the highlights of my year. I’ve not much time to suffer from the inevitable post-Pubcon blues, as I’m off to Dublin to speak at the Learn Inbound event. I hope by then the last remnants of my jet lag will have faded.

I arrived in Las Vegas on Sunday evening, exhausted from 14 hours of travel but excited to be there. It’s a city that certainly overwhelms visitors with its hustle & bustle, and a constant assault on the senses with light and noise everywhere, so I couldn’t just go straight to bed. Fortunately there was a wee unofficial gathering of Pubcon people at the New York New York hotel, where I got to hang out with Dawn, Kristine, Simon, Rey, Becky, and several other folks that my sleep-deprived brain struggled to remember (sorry!). We played several rounds of a digital-themed Cards Against Humanity variant designed by Simon, which had all of us thoroughly entertained. Due to the inevitabilities of transatlantic travel, I woke up way too early on Monday so decided to get some work done before heading to the Las Vegas Convention Centre for the Pubcon speaker’s enclave. When I arrived I couldn’t help but take a photo of the venue: it’s enormous! The enclave was all kinds of awesome. It’s an opportunity for the conference speakers to network and mingle, and to ask each other questions about issues they’re struggling with and the state of the industry. Many of Pubcon’s speakers were there, and I felt truly privileged to be in their company. My tweet pretty much sums it up: At the #Pubcon speakers enclave. Many of the smartest minds in search in one room. And me. #whoop — Barry Adams (@badams) October 5, 2015 That evening I explored Vegas a wee bit with the help of Dom, Gareth, Paul, and Eddy. We ate obscenely large portions of chicken wings and wandered around the southern end of The Strip before calling it a night. The next day I once again awoke way too early (damn you jetlag), and decided to make the most of the day by using the hotel’s gym to burn off some of the calories from that ginormous portion of food the previous night. Then I headed to the venue to make sure I got there early to explore the place a bit. I took a peek at Salon A where I was due to speak that day, and was a bit in awe at the sheer size of the room: Not much time for worrying though as I didn’t want to miss Guy Kawasaki‘s opening keynote. His talk was amusing and full of interesting anecdotes, but I’m not sure I learned anything new. Basically he said that you needed to get the small details right in your marketing, something that many have been saying for years (myself included). After the opening keynote, there were no less than nine concurrent tracks of talks. I went to see Eric Wu‘s talk about SEO and JavaScript, which was all kinds of awesome – it taught me a lot about how to best approach JS-heavy websites for SEO. His slides are online here. I had to leave a bit early to head to Salon A where my own talk was due to take place. I presented as part of the SEO Tech Masters session alongside Dave Rohrer and Michael Gray. My talk was about crawl optimisation, and it seemed to be received pretty well – I got lots of positive feedback on Twitter, After my talk we had a lunchbreak, and then I headed to Salon I where I was part of a live site review session with Russ Jones, Kevin Lee, and Derrick Wheeler. We reviewed a handful of websites for SEO performance, and I have to say there were a few sites that I couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow at. After that session my speaker duties at Pubcon were fulfilled and I could relax and enjoy the remainder of the conference, which lasted until Thursday. On Tuesday evening we had a big social event in the Señor Frogs bar at the Treasure Island hotel, where I hung out with lots of awesome folks such as Dawn, Patrick, Mark, Eddy, and many others, so come Wednesday I was a bit worse for wear – not least because despite abundant consumption of alcohol I again woke up at 4.30 AM, my body still refusing to accept I was in a different time zone. With the help of prodigious amounts of coffee and Mountain Dew I made it through Wednesday, catching a fair few sessions as well. My favourite was Rand Fishkin‘s afternoon keynote, in which he gave a great outline of where search in general and SEO in particular are headed. I got to see my friend Martin Macdonald speak about narratives in content marketing, and while he’d admitted to me he’d only barely finished his slides before his talk, you wouldn’t have known that from his great delivery full of humour and witty anecdotes. That evening I had intended to go to another social event and perhaps even drop by the US Search Awards, but my combined hangover and jetlag made me crash without a hope of getting up – despite Nicky Wake‘s best attempts to get me to the awards! The next morning I was actually quite pleased I’d gone to bed as early as I did, because for the first time that week I felt fresh and full of energy. The last day of Pubcon featured a few sessions I desperately wanted to see. Duane Forrester‘s keynote was very good, with loads of interesting trends and factoids, and he mirrored many of the points Rand had raised in his talk. Search is changing and we as SEOs need to adapt, modifying our tactics and priorities as the market transforms. SEO is not going away, but it has gotten a bit more complicated. Later that day I got to see one of my heroes in the SEO world speak: Alan Bleiweiss, whose example I’ve been trying to follow for years. The man is an SEO audit genius and his approach to site audits has inspired my own. It was great to see him speak and talk to him later that day. I also caught Kristine‘s talk about technical SEO, which was very good, and got to meet Corey McNeil, who I’ve been friendly with online for years but had never met face to face. It was awesome to finally meet him and I felt like I’d spoken with an old friend rather than a total stranger. After the conference there was one final social event where I got to hang out with lots of great folks again such as Aleyda, Sylvia, Dawn, and Eric, and also got to meet Wissam, another long-time online friend. I had high expectations of Pubcon beforehand, as the conference has such a great reputation. Having been to the 2015 edition, I can honestly say Pubcon lived up to that reputation all the way. It’s been without a doubt one of the greatest industry events I’ve ever attended, and I will definitely be back.

Last year I attended and spoke at the renowned Pubcon conference for the first time. It was an awesome experience, and you can read about it here. I’ll be going to Pubcon again this year from October 10 to 13, to deliver two talks – one on technical SEO issues and one on site security. I’m very excited to share sessions with great SEOs and long-time industry friends like Dawn Anderson and Kristine Schachinger. Additionally I’m moderating a session on site speed, which features SEO legends like Ian Lurie, Fili Wiese, and Michael King. Having gotten an early glimpse of what these talks will be covering, I can’t wait to see the whole thing! In fact, the entire Pubcon 2016 schedule is packed full of great sessions and keynotes from amazing speakers. It’s going to be very hard to pick which ones to see. To make this Las Vegas trip even more special, I’m on the judging panel for the US Search Awards which will be held in association with Pubcon at Caesar’s Palace on October 12th. I’m honoured to be part of this year’s US Search Awards. I take the responsibility of judging awards very seriously, as an award win can make a huge difference to a business. All in all, Pubcon 2016 is already shaping up to be a truly amazing event once again, and personally I can’t wait to get there. As a speaker, I can offer a special discount on Pubcon tickets – You can get a 15% discount on Gold and Platinum passes, just use the following code in the checkout process: rc-8768015. This code is valid until August 31. If you need more good reasons to help convince your boss to send you to Pubcon, they’ve got you covered. I hope to see you in Vegas!

Last week a fresh Belfast Bloggers Meetup was held at Farset Labs. I’d been to the very first meetup, where I spoke (i.e. ranted) about SEO for bloggers, but I hadn’t managed to attend one since. This time I was asked to speak on a topic of my choosing, and I decided to make it a bit of a mix. Before my talk, two other speakers held the stage, starting with Brian O’Neill from the famous Northern Irish political blog Slugger O’Toole. As the technical guy behind the scenes, Brian shared fascinating insights about how such a popular blog is run and managed, how they moderate their comments, and the hosting requirements for their website (turns out it still runs on a shared server). Next up was Brian John Spencer, a man I’ve admired for a long time and finally got a chance to meet. A political cartoonist, blogger, and writer, Brian spoke about his awakening to blogging as a platform to make his voice heard and write about his political views and ideals, not content to let others speak on his behalf with their warped visions of what his culture should look like. Brian is an exceptionally well-read man, which was evident from the litany of quotes he peppered his talk with, from John Hewitt to George Orwell, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett. His talk was hugely inspiring and motivating for me to put even more passion and drive in to my writing. He also drew one of his signature caricatures of me while I was speaking – it’s awesome! Lastly I was up, and my talk went from the negatives of Google’s mission statement to monetising blogs by selling links, and I fielded a number of questions from the attendees as well who were keen to learn more about SEO and blogging. Before the event some of the speakers and attendees were interviewed by Northern Visions TV, a local TV station, and the resulting video has been made available online. It includes some snippets from my interview as well: The quality and participation of the bloggers meetup seems to grow with every event, so I’ll make it a point to attend every one from now on. You can keep up to date with the meetup by following @BelfastBloggers on twitter.

When I started Polemic Digital in 2014, my goal was to deliver world-class SEO services to business across the UK and Ireland from my base in Belfast. Previously I’d achieved considerable success with my team at The Tomorrow Lab, winning numerous DANI Awards and getting on to the shortlist of the UK and European Search Awards on several occasions. In due time I hoped to achieve similar recognition with Polemic Digital. Being shortlisted for a UK-wide search marketing award would be one of my entrepreneurial milestones, a measure of how far my business had come. Though I accepted that this would take a while, due to the slow-moving nature of SEO projects; good SEO takes time, so any potential accolade would have to wait for my projects with Polemic Digital to achieve success. I’m very happy to say that we’ve now reached that first award milestone: Polemic Digital is shortlisted for three UK Search Awards! We’re shortlisted for the following three awards: Best Local Campaign Best Low Budget Campaign Best Small SEO Agency I’m very happy to see our hard work for Super Saver Oil has been shortlisted in two categories, and I’m especially proud that Polemic Digital has been shortlisted for the Best Small SEO Agency award. When you consider the businesses we’re going up against in these awards, it’s incredibly uplifting to see our small Northern Irish outfit ranked among some of the best agencies in the UK. It’s one thing to believe you should be counted among the country’s best – it’s another to know that others agree with you. Many thanks to all the people who’ve supported Polemic Digital in various ways. Achieving success is never a one-person effort, you need the support of so many people around you to make it happen. To all of those people who have lent a hand in one way or another: thank you so much. It’s also great to see fellow Belfast-based agency Loud Mouth Media shortlisted for Best Small PPC Agency; Mark Haslam is a great friend of Polemic Digital and his agency deserves to be recognised as one of the UK’s finest digital advertising companies. The awards event on 30 November in London promises to be a wonderful celebration of the UK’s vibrant search marketing industry. I’m proud that Polemic Digital is part of this industry, and we’ll make sure to enjoy the celebrations regardless.

Doing search engine optimisation is much harder without good SEO tools. While there are many tools available, not all of them will be suitable for everyone. Back in 2014 I reviewed a new tool called Monitor Backlinks. It’s been a while since then and the tool has expanded significantly, so it’s time to revisit the tool and see what’s been added and changed. Rather than point out the differences, I’ll go through every aspect of Monitor Backlinks to give you a full overview of the tool’s current features and possibilities. As the name suggests, Monitor Backlinks helps you monitor your site’s backlinks, but that’s not all it can do. You can also use Monitor Backlinks to keep track of your keyword rankings in Google, spy competitors and create a disavow report with your bad links. How to start using it Monitor Backlinks comes with a 30 day free trial. After registering your account, you’ll be asked to add your domain. You have the option to connect it to Google Analytics, which will give you more insights about your website, so it’s worth doing. The core feature of Monitor Backlinks is that it automatically identifies your site’s new backlinks and sends email alerts when you earn them. In this day and age of virality as well as the threat of negative SEO, knowing when your site earns new links is crucial to stay on top of your SEO efforts. Aside from identifying new backlinks, the tool also verifies the status of your existing links. For example, if one of your links goes from dofollow to nofollow – a constant possibility when you do blogger outreach – you’ll be notified. The Dashboard On the main dashboard, you’ll see a range of metrics for your site, such as: Social signals, number of pages indexed in Google, total number of links, unique referring domains, Google Page Speed, MozRank, Spam Score, Trust Flow, and other metrics of varying usefulness. There’s also a module showing if it detects your website has been hacked. These metrics are automatically updated on a monthly basis. Also on the dashboard, if you’ve connected your domain with Google Analytics, you’ll see a graphic with your organic traffic, the average keyword position, the dates when you got new links, overlaid with dates of know major Google algorithm updates. You can see at a glance when you got new backlinks and how it helped you increase your average keyword position in Google. Backlinks Overview The backlinks table is where the fun happens. All your discovered backlinks are shown here, but you also have the option to add your own links, if need be. Each backlink comes with a range of metrics, so you can easily analyse and compare their value. For some of your links, you’ll see a warning sign on the left side of the row. That indicates the backlink has some questionable metrics, and it’s recommended to manually review it. If, after a manual review, you decide to keep the link, you can ignore the warning. Alternately, you can click on button “disavow domain” and you’ll add the link to your disavow list. Hold your mouse over the warning sign to see why the backlink has been flagged as potentially harmful. The huge variety of metrics provided for each link is what makes Monitor Backlink very useful for those that want to quickly analyze the quality of their inbound links. A backlink can have various status codes, which is why the tool has a dedicated column showing the link’s status. Aside from regular dofollow and nofollow, links can also suffer from redirects or errors like 302, 301, 404, 500, 403, 522, 503, etc. Below the backlink status, you’ll find a Google icon that indicates if the page or domain the link resides on is indexed by Google. When the icon is green, it means both the domain and page are indexed. When it’s yellow, the domain is indexed, but the page isn’t – which can happen with fresh blog posts for example. If the icon is red, it means that both the domain and page are not indexed, meaning it’s likely the site was penalised by Google. Monitor Backlinks makes use of APIs from other SEO tools to expand their platform’s usefulness. Therefore, for each of your links you’ll see Trust & Citation Flow, MozRank, Spam Score, and Domain & Page Authority. Other metrics include: TLD/IP location, social signals, number of external links, and referring traffic for each link (if you’ve connected it to Google Analytics). You also have the option to sort your backlinks using the filters located on the right side of the table. Multiple filters can be applied at once. If you want to learn more about filtering links to find good and bad ones, you can check this video tutorial from the team at Monitor Backlinks: You can also tag your links or add notes to easily identify them in the future. For example, if you’ve done some guest blogging campaigns, you might want to tag your links as “guest posts”. This will help you easily group your links. To add a note or tag a link, click on the settings icon located on the left side of each row and then on “Edit”. Reporting on links Monitor Backlinks can also generate reports about your site’s inbound links. Using the same filters available for the backlinks page, you can generate custom reports with their TLD, IP location, top Anchor text, backlinks status, most linked pages, Majestic metrics, Moz metrics, and most shared backlinks distribution. Spying on competitors with Monitor Backlinks The tool’s competitors feature is very straightforward, and quite useful. You simply add your main competitors and Monitor Backlinks will automatically verify all the links they are getting, every 10 days. If new links are detected, you’ll get an email showing you these links. It’s an easy way to keep up with your competitors’ link building campaigns. Using the metrics provided, you can decide which backlinks are worthy of being replicated. The domains from where your site already has links will be highlighted in green. Keyword rank tracker To add to the tool’s already all-round usefulness, it also includes a keyword rank tracker. You can keep track of rankings in Google and get a side by side comparison with your competitors. Monitor Backlinks checks the rankings on top 150 results for each keyword and shows average search volume, AdWords competition and CPC. All keywords are checked weekly and included in the weekly SEO progress reports you receive via email every Wednesday. The tool supports rank checking on various international Google versions, making it useful for international SEOs. And you also get nice graphs to visualise your progress and include in management reports. The Disavow Tool The disavow feature is quite handy. It works directly in conjunction with the backlinks page. Once you identify a bad link, you can add it to the disavow list. To export the disavow report, you have to go to the disavow page, and then click on “Export”. The report generated by Monitor Backlinks matches the format Google requires for disavow files. All that’s left for the you is to upload the report to Google’s Disavow Tool. Conclusion Monitor Backlinks is a good all-round SEO tool with a specific focus on link analysis and monitoring, making it a key weapon in every SEO’s arsenal. Unlike other tools which only give you data on demand, with Monitor Backlinks most of the reporting is automated. I especially like the numerous metrics you are given for each link, negating the need to go to multiple tools to gather all this data. I also found the ease with which you can identify and disavow bad links to be very useful. With the 30-day trial Monitor Backlinks provides you can’t really go wrong, so give it a try and let me know your thoughts.

I first learned about Toxoplasma a few years ago on the blog of Peter Watts, author of my favourite SF novel of all time (‘Blindsight’, which also features what is arguably the scariest and most plausible concept of vampirism). Reading about this parasite made me feel distinctly uncomfortable, as chances are I am one of the multitude of infected people, and my own behaviour may be subtly altered by this lifeform’s effects on my brain. So when I sat down to write my presentation for SAScon 2014 about how Google’s webmaster recommendations are subtly altering our online behaviour to conform to Google’s desires, the analogies with Toxoplasma quickly came to mind. Here’s how it goes: The Toxoplasma gondii parasite is a lifeform that reproduces primarily in cats. When it has infected a rodent, it will settle in the infected host’s brain, and subtly alter the rodent’s behaviour. Rats and mice that are infected by Toxoplasma Gondii will become more active, less social, and more likely to take risks and explore open areas. Rodents will also often be attracted to the scent of feline urine. This of course leads to a higher risk of being eaten by cats – which is exactly what the parasite wants, because it can only reproduce in the body of a cat. Toxoplasma gondii This is akin to how Google works on the world wide web. Google is the first truly dominant search engine in the western world. Because everyone wants to rank high in Google and get all that juicy traffic, we will do whatever we can to please Google and follow their guidelines and recommendations. Google has realised that having this army of webmasters following its every whim can be quite useful. So, what is Google doing with this incredible amount of influence over the world wide web? Google makes a lot of recommendations about how websites should be built and structured, and the technology that should underpin every website. Google also makes very clear with it doesn’t like, things it doesn’t want you to implement. Most of Google’s recommendations and guidelines are in fact good for user experience. There’s no denying that, overall, many of Google’s recommendations make for a better web. But there are also a number of recommendations that help no one but Google itself. Things that make it easier for Google to crawl and index the web. And these recommendations are the ones we see more and more of. Google recommendations for better websites Take the recommendations highlighted above. They have nothing to do with improved UX, and everything to do with making Google’s crawlers and indexers run a bit more efficiently and give Google greater access to the information you publish online. But these recommendations, intended to help Google, have an unfortunate side effect. It means that instead of Google adapting to the way the web is evolving, Google is in fact restricting the evolution of the web. Google’s enormous influence on the web means that websites will try to conform to Google’s framework, and that results in a web that is shaped how Google wants it. Google is the cat here, and the recommendations it makes in its webmaster guidelines and Matt Cutts videos are the memetic parasites that it uses to infect us. When we are infected by Google’s parasitical recommendations, we will alter our behaviour – i.e. our websites – to conform to Google’s wishes and make our information more accessible, easier to crawl and index and for Google to make sense of. This in turn fuels Google’s ecosystem, enabling Google to take over interesting and profitable niches (travel, finance, knowledge, local, etc.) and grow its profits. Toxoplasma Google The end result is a World Wide Web that, instead of an open platform for innovation, mirrors Google’s desires: the Google-Shaped Web. This Google-shaped web allows the search engine to exert an enormous amount of control over the direction the web is heading in, ensuring it’ll maintain its dominant position indefinitely. We will never see a new rival service rise and supplant Google – in a Google-shaped web, competitors will be choked to death or bought. We are stuck in Google’s ecosystem, and nothing short of drastic intervention is going to change that. P.S. There’s a good chance you too are infected by Toxoplasma gondii, and your thoughts and behaviour might be slightly different as a result…

Recently I was asked by Danny Denhard to contribute to a collective post on the direction organic search will be heading in 2015. My thoughts were published alongside those of leading SEO industry experts like Stacey MacNaught, Kevin Gibbons, Dan Sharp, Paddy Moogan, Matt Beswick, Paul Rogers, Patrick Hathaway, Stephen Kenwright, Carl Hendy, Simon Penson, Justin Butcher, and Michael Briggs. It’s a great collection of different perspectives on the future of search, and you can see some areas of overlap where many of us believe search and SEO are heading. Every individual contribution is worthwhile to read. Below are my own thoughts, though I recommend you read the whole piece (it’s also available as a downloadable PDF). If there’s one complaint I can make, it’s that the contributions to Danny’s article are very heavy on XY chromosomes. As Stacey’s contribution is so excellent, I can’t help but feel that a greater dose of female perspective would have made it an even more awesome article. I’d love to have read the predictions of Aleyda Solis, Nichola Stott, Samantha Noble, Hannah Smith, or any of the other exceptionally talented women in our industry. Anyway, here is my contribution: With the number of high profile changes and algorithm updates in 2014, what do you think the most important thing will be to achieve success in 2015? First of all you need to have a product or service that Google can’t (easily) steal or copy. Increasingly we see Google wanting to be the end-destination, rather than the gateway, which is why they’re using websites’ content to provide answers directly in their search results (knowledge graph), or building rival services of their own (Google Maps, Flights, Hotel Finder, Credit Card comparison, etc). So make sure you have something that Google can’t (yet) take over, otherwise you’ll find yourself out of business very quickly. Secondly, you need to diversify your acquisition channels. Even if you have a unique product, there’s no guarantee Google will show you in its search results. Organic search is likely to be your biggest traffic driver for the foreseeable future, but if Google can’t take over what you do they’ll damn sure try to force you to buy AdWords ads. So don’t rely too much on a single traffic source. Diversify your digital marketing channels, and do them all as well as you can. Where or what do you think the biggest challenge will be in 2015? Aside from preventing yourself from becoming obsolete when Google tries to move in to your niche, your biggest challenge is to do effective SEO whilst steering clear of Google penalties and algorithmic filters. There has always been a conflict between what works to drive organic visiblity, and what Google recommends you do. In recent years this conflict ignited into full-on war when Google started putting the onus of cleaning up its search results firmly on webmasters rather than on its own webspam team, and they’ve been liberally handing out penalties ever since. The problem is of course that effective SEO often breaks Google’s guidelines. So, to avoid getting penalised, you have to be smart about what you do, how you do it, and the tracks that you leave for Google to discover. That’ll be your biggest challenge. I also expect Google will keep shifting the goalposts, and tactics that work fine now will be re-designated as spam at some point down the line. Preparing for that can also be quite challenging, and you’ll need contingency plans for when that happens. Thinking about how you think your industry or clients industries are going, what’s the best piece of advice that you give all clients or prospective clients in coming weeks/months? As per the first point, diversification is key. I’m a SEO guy through and through, and I’m advising my clients to not rely purely on SEO. Yes, organic search is and will remain the strongest driver of growth for nearly all websites out there, but due to the increasingly adversarial attitude Google is adopting towards the web, you can’t rely on organic search indefinitely. Google wants you to buy ads, so you better suck it up and start an AdWords campaign. When those paid visits arrive on your website, work hard to convert them into customers; use CRO and UX to make your website deliver tangible results for your business. And when you’ve won a customer, do whatever you can to keep them: use email marketing and social media effectively to retain business so you don’t have to keep paying Google for the privilege of sending you new customers. What do you predict will be the biggest change / or hardest hitting change in 2015? I’m not sure if 2015 is the year, but I’m convinced that in the near future Google will start using brand sentiment as an alternative to link-based metrics for its ranking algorithms. A positive brand sentiment, as evidenced through positive customer reviews and mentions online, will become a crucial factor for businesses that want to gain visibility in search. If and when this is rolled out, expect to see a massive shift in search visibility for some major brands, as well as for many smaller players. Sentiment analysis is however a notoriously difficult nut to crack, but I’m seeing all kinds of interesting technologies appear in this space, so it’s definitely something to keep an eye on and prepare for. Lastly, if you were Google what would you do to improve quality and search results? If I were Google I’d make damn sure I recognised my place in the online ecosystem. Google has broken the unofficial agreement they had with the web: that they could take websites’ content to show in their search results, and in return they would send relevant traffic back to those websites. Now Google believes that they shouldn’t be the middleman, but instead act as final destination, using whatever means at their disposal to keep people on their own sites so they can harvest more personal data and show more ads. Google still takes all your content, but increasingly it doesn’t send traffic to your site but wants you to pay for it through AdWords advertising. It’s a destructive development for the rest of the web, causing great harm to the online businesses whose websites Google used for building its empire the first place. Google needs to realise its position in the ecosystem and stop chasing after profit maximisation to the detriment of everything and everyone else. Read all contributions in the full article here.

When I moved to Northern Ireland in 2009, I felt a bit like a fish out of water. Culturally it was a huge change from my native Netherlands, and the digital community in NI was a very different environment from what I was used to. But I shouldn’t have worried – the people in Northern Ireland embraced me with open arms and quickly made me feel welcome and part of their community. The digital industry was especially welcoming, and I quickly made good friends with many people working locally in the digital realm. Having worked in Northern Ireland for over seven years now, I feel that many of our best and brightest digital experts are not always getting the recognition they deserve beyond NI’s borders. While I’m lucky enough to speak at international conferences regularly, few of my peers in the digital industry in Northern Ireland have managed to create a name for themselves outside of NI. I want to do what I can to change that. To that end, I am performing a series of interviews with local Northern Irish digital experts that I feel are at the top of their game, and deserve wider recognition in the UK & Ireland and beyond. Through these interviews I’m hoping to help promote these NI digital experts to the rest of the world, and perhaps contribute – however modestly – to a wider appreciation of their skills and abilities. The first person to feature in this series of interviews is Emma Gribben. I first met Emma when I did a guest lecture for the Ulster University, and later I collaborated with her when she was the Digital Marketing Executive at Linwoods Healthfoods. For me, as an agency-side supplier of digital marketing services, Emma was a breath of fresh air; she came fully armed with a comprehensive digital strategy for Linwoods, which made working with her very easy and rewarding. Emma has since started her own business as a freelance digital marketer, and she’s also working as a TV presenter for Irish TV. Below you can read all about Emma’s journey in to digital marketing. Tell us a bit about yourself and your journey in to the digital industry: how did you discover the internet, and how did you become so involved with it? I grew up in the era where social media was just starting to become a thing – in my school days we had Bebo but we weren’t quite sure how to use it and we had absolutely no concept of the possibilities that social media and the internet could offer us. I did the CAM degree at the University of Ulster and digital marketing at that time was starting to become quite big, there was a lot of talk about it. Because it was new, the course didn’t have a dedicated module focusing on digital, so once I graduated I decided that I needed to skill myself in that area, as I saw it as the future from all the reading and research that I was doing at the time. I completed the Digital Media Communications course at Ulster University – I’m very proud to say we were the first year of the course and recently got invited back to share our experience with some potential applicants. From there my passion was ignited, I loved that the digital industry could provide so many solutions and new opportunities. From there I decided that I wanted to focus on digital full time and I jumped at a role with Linwoods Healthfoods as a Digital Marketing Executive with both hands! You have a formal education in communication, advertising, and marketing. Do you feel that there was sufficient focus on digital technologies in your studies? How did the DMC post-graduate course you undertook later help you focus more on the digital side of marketing & communication? At the time when I was doing CAM there was not a strong enough focus on digital marketing – I graduated in 2010 so you can see how much it has evolved since then. I think because digital was still a new things it was hard to work out what the course should teach people. The DMC course was fantastic, a really solid starting point for any digital strategy or project. Now I still utilise the models and frameworks that I learned in DMC and I find myself teaching these to a few of my digital training clients, which is nice to be able to pass on the information which helped me so much! You’ve had a few in-house roles before you decided to work for yourself. What made you decide to start your own business? Tell us a bit about your journey in to self-employment. I’ve always been quite independent and ambitious since a young age and starting my own business was something I’d always wanted to do. My father was and still is a role model in that sense; he saw an opportunity in the market 20 odd years ago and built a successful business out of nothing so I always felt that it was something in my blood. I worked client side with Linwoods Healthfoods and I absolutely loved that role, I’ve never been happier in my life. The experience was great and the Board of Directors there were very ambitious with their plans so there was a lot of activity and growth. I soon realised that I wanted international experience and it would be now or never before I settled down so I took the leap and moved to Dubai. That was a whole other world and I learned more about life than anything else I suppose! I had a fantastic role there and really got to experience international culture. I was amazed by the fast pace of life there and if somebody wanted to make something happen they just did. Projects that would take years here in the UK happened in weeks and months, there was a real sense of ‘go for it, make it happen’ and that influenced me to a great degree. Whilst I was there I started to think about my life path and my passions and I wanted to do something meaningful that would make a difference – something that I could create. I thought long and hard about starting up on my own and I think everything guided me to that point and I just went for it. I’ll admit, I had no idea what it would take and I think if I did it might have put me off, but the excitement, the passion, the ability to control my own future pushed me forward! You’ve established yourself fairly quickly as a top all-round digital marketer in Northern Ireland. Is there a specific area in digital marketing that you feel you’re strongest in? And which of your digital skills would you like to develop further? I don’t know if I would say that now, as I always feel that there is so much room to learn – especially in digital marketing as it moves so quickly day to day. When speaking to clients I love the buzz when we can identify an area that we can work on and build something from and that’s what keeps me going – seeing the results at the end of a project. I work a lot with social media at the moment as many brands have witnessed the shift in social from organic reach to paid advertising. Some companies were achieving fantastic reach results and those have now gone through the floor as Facebook and others change algorithms and make those companies now pay for the reach that they were previously able to achieve day in, day out. The most exciting area that I’m working in is digital training. I saw an opportunity in the market where many businesses no longer want to pay somebody to ‘do digital’ for them, but they want to learn and have that ability in house as they see it as a longer term project. I have worked with some amazing clients across retail, hospitality, media and investment to deliver digital marketing training and for me, this is going to be an area of focus for the rest of the year. I’d like to develop my SEO skills as at the end of the day, every client with a website wants more traffic. I’ll be honest, I leave PPC to the professionals as it’s a bit of a science. I work with my clients to create a PPC strategy and I have a great agency locally that I work with on their PPC and they do the intricate stuff that would take me weeks. I like to work with clients to steer the ship in the right direction and get the best possible skills on board to make it a success. You’re now also a TV presenter for Irish TV. Do you see that side of your career taking off and becoming your sole focus, or will you always stay a digital marketer first and foremost? My experience so far with Irish TV has been unbelievable! It’s something that I never thought I’d achieve in my wildest dreams but every day we are out filming I feel so blessed and lucky to be able to do that. The thing that I really like is that there are so many people, groups, clubs, bands and organisations doing amazing work throughout County Armagh and I may be able, through Irish TV to help others learn about them and what they do, and even support them or get on board. This role is very important as a digital marketer as I am literally challenging myself day and daily to create engaging content – something that I am always discussing with clients. It has helped me become a better digital marketer and get a clearer perspective on story telling. I absolutely love digital marketing and it will be my key focus – right now I am doing the work with Irish TV one day per week so I have plenty of time to build my business and deliver great results for my clients. You were the Armagh Rose of Tralee in 2013/14. For those of us who have no idea what that means, tell us a bit about it. The Rose of Tralee is an international festival that celebrates Irish roots and we all know that Irish people are renowned throughout the world! Even though we are one of the smallest land areas our people go far and wide. The Rose of Tralee has an ambassador from every county in Ireland and many countries across the world, with a big festival every August in Tralee, County Kerry with one lady being chosen as that year’s Rose of Tralee and they have a fantastic year of travelling and profiling worthwhile causes and trying to bring a positive change into the world. It was Linwoods Healthfoods that encouraged me to apply in 2013 and I saw it as a challenge and definitely out of my comfort zone so I went for it and gave it a go! I was shocked when my name was called out as the Armagh Rose as I was just doing it for the craic – I didn’t think I’d win! For me, the best part was meeting 60 odd roses from right across the world and 32 guys who were called escorts (not in that sense!) and we all got to know each other and learn a lot from hearing about our different backgrounds and way of life. The one thing that connected us was a sense of pride in where we came from and the ambition to better ourselves to do something positive in this world. Three years later I am still very much connected with the 2013 gang as we call it, you could easily travel round the world and have a bed for the night by calling to say hi with all our connections. Lastly, give us one website or app that you feel is vastly underrated and deserves a wider audience. I have to admit that I am absolutely addicted to Canva – I use it on a daily basis and I often ask how something so useful and easy to use can be free! It is an image creation tool where you can use pre-loaded templates, shapes, lines, frames, borders as well as uploading your own assets. I tell all my clients about it and once they start using it they love it. If you have not yet tried it out you need to! About Emma Gribben, Digital Marketing Consultant

Last week my NI Digital Experts interview series got off to a great start with Emma Gribben. Be sure to read her interview if you haven’t already done so. For the second instalment I asked Niamh Taylor to participate. I’ve know Niamh for several years now – we first met through the (now dormant) Digital Exchange networking group, and got to collaborate when she was at Sliderobes. Since she started her own business I’ve been working with her on several client projects, and we’ve also shared judging duties on the DANI Awards. Niamh is one of the smartest and most educated digital marketers I know. She did amazing work while at Sliderobes, and her new agency Digital Twenty Four has been going from strength to strength since its inception. I was really chuffed that she agreed to be interviewed for this series. So let’s get stuck in and read all about Niamh’s journey in to digital marketing: Tell us a bit about yourself and your journey in to the digital industry: how did you discover the internet, and how did you become so involved with it? Back when I was 14, I started working in a travel agency on a Saturday in Omagh – earning £10 a day! It was a fairly stressful job for someone so young but it completely shaped me into the person I am today. I know that sounds a bit clichéd but I learnt so much over the 7 years I worked there – from dealing with customers, working on a computer and being responsible for booking flights and holidays. I was exposed to marketing too and that’s pretty much when I decided I wanted a career in advertising and marketing. I was fortunate because so many leave school not knowing what they want to do. I went to Queens and studied Economics and Information Management which included coding and marketing. Once I completed my degree I got on to the Premiere Programme. It places you in work experience within a company on your job choice – mine was marketing. I got placed in Bedeck and I got kept on once it finished. I stayed there four years before deciding I wanted to spread my wings and go to Australia. During my time in Bedeck I was involved in a basic website project which was the only online activity there was back then. I went to a similar company to Bedeck in Sydney – Sheridan Australia – where I worked on their Actil brand for a few years. I worked on their website and was more involved in online then. When I came back to NI, I worked in Translink, then Hollywood and Donnelly C&C, before I finally settled into a job looking after Sliderobes marketing. During my 7 years there we moved from traditional marketing with a £3m budget to a solely digital strategy and a £1.8m budget. Changing strategy meant we could reduce spend. It was in the latter 5 years that I started to work closely with Google in Dublin to develop a strategy that reduced the cost to acquire targeted leads. I was so fascinated by the possibilities that online opened up and the targeted reach you could get from advertising. I gradually built up an in-house digital team before leaving last May and starting my own digital company. Since your original studies in information management, you’ve never stopped learning and have collected an impressive range of professional certificates and diplomas. Do you feel that such a wholehearted embrace of lifelong learning is crucial to success in the digital industry? If you could go back, would you study a different subject at university? I’ve always enjoyed studying and learning new things, and I guess getting a qualification or certification at the end of it is always nice. I do think it is important to never stop learning – whether that is through completing a course or just constantly reading. But I don’t think having professional qualifications or diplomas are critical, especially in today’s digital age. As long as you have common sense and a desire to learn – like a real yearning to constantly learn new things – then you can be very successful in digital. Digital is constantly changing. If you aren’t in the ‘here and now’ reading every day you will miss something. That is crucial to success in the digital industry. My biggest advice to people is to be on Twitter daily; look at what’s happening in the digital sphere and sign up to lots of industry related newsletters. If I had to go back to university now I would love to do some sort of psychology – something related to the brain and behaviour research in marketing. I’m fascinated by neuromarketing. You’ve had a rich career over the years before you started Digital Twenty Four, including working two years in Australia. How do you feel your varied experiences have shaped your focus on digital marketing? When did you decide that starting your own business was the right decision? Tell us about your journey as an entrepreneur. Australia – and, more importantly, the Central Business District of Sydney, which is where I worked – is an incredibly dynamic and exciting place to be. There is such a strong work ethic there, much more than I had ever experienced. People in NI tend to work 9 to 5 but Sydney was very like London. All work and little play. The opportunities to do varied work is vast. My job came with great prospects for an interesting and rewarding career but I missed my family too much and came home to NI. Travelling and working abroad just opens your eyes to a whole new world out there. When I came back I didn’t want to get stuck in a rut but as with many things I did. Time ticked on and suddenly ten years had passed by. I was feeling frustrated at myself and didn’t know what I wanted. Loads of incredible people whose opinions I value had said to me that I should go out on my own and with that in mind I decided to go for it. The biggest driver for me was the same as when I went to Australia – I didn’t want to look back and regret not trying. And so in May last year I did just that. There was no magic formula – it just happened and I haven’t looked back. I was accepted on to Women in Business ‘Power of Four’ programme which really helped with my network. To be surrounded with like-minded people was important to me. Then I got accepted onto Entrepreneurial Spark which meant I had the opportunity to grow my network even more with like-minded entrepreneurs, not to mention it came with free city centre office space. I have just completed that and have found new offices with some amazing entrepreneurs I met through Power of Four and we move in at the start of September. Why the name ‘Digital Twenty Four’? I don’t want this to sound like a “train wreck” approach to creating a business name but I was lying in bed thinking about what I wanted the business to be called, and I thought Digital was important to have in the name. And then I decided my slogan would be “always on” because the online world never shuts. I thought about Digital 24/7 but the domain was gone and so I went with Digital Twenty Four. I wish it was more exciting than that but it just happened. There was no musing for days. It took about 15 minutes. But I liked it straight away and my gut said to go with it. I always trust my gut instinct. You’re well-known in Northern Ireland as a strong all-round digital marketer. What skillset within digital marketing do you consider to be your main strength? Are there areas of digital marketing you feel you could develop yourself further in? I lectured for the Digital Marketing Institute, have spoken at conferences, taken masterclasses for Women in Business, judged CIM awards and DANI awards, so that helped me become well-known in my field. I won awards in marketing like CIM Senior Professional as well as multiple digital accolades and head hunters told me I was seen as a “person to watch” in the digital arena in NI. I would say my main strengths are looking at a business and developing a holistic digital strategy as well as implementing it to deliver a return on investment. The main areas I look at are Affiliate Marketing, Email Marketing, Paid Advertising (Search and Display), Social Media, and Content Marketing. I learnt so much during my time working alongside Google which definitely helped and now I am a Google Partner. I have been able to deliver brilliant results for my clients with some seeing 100%+ increase in sales revenue year on year. That makes me happy and also drives word of mouth recommendations. My link building and technical SEO skills aren’t up to scratch so if you ever wanted to run a masterclass course for us digital marketers in NI on Technical SEO then I would be the first to sign up. Tell us a bit about your hobbies outside of work; what do you enjoy in your life outside of the office? I could live my entire life travelling – I just love going abroad – seeing new places and experiencing different cultures. I have been fortunate enough to have travelled throughout the world; I took 3 months off when moving back from Australia and travelled extensively. My husband and I try to get away at least 4 times a year and never to the same place. I have a house in Rossnowlagh, Donegal, so I love to go there for long walks on the beach or the odd cycle which always inevitably ends up in the pub. I love eating out too as well as entertaining friends and family. I pay for Virgin gym membership but it stops there. Does that count as a hobby? Lastly, give us one website or app that you feel is vastly underrated and deserves a wider audience. Buzzsumo is a website I am on practically every day. It helps me when I am looking at trending content or coming up with great ideas for blog topics. It lets you enter any keyword or topic you are interested in and it’ll show you the most shared articles for that keyword across all the major social networks for any time period. It is my go-to for all content marketing ideas. About Niamh Taylor

Last week we had Niamh Taylor in our NI Digital Experts interview series, following our inaugural interview with Emma Gribben. Today’s interview is with someone who’s been a champion of the digital industry in NI for many years: Gareth Dunlop. When I first started to familiarise myself with the digital scene in Northern Ireland, Gareth’s name kept popping up. Seen as one of the digital industry’s leading lights in NI, Gareth was – and is – well-known and widely respected as a digital entrepreneur and leader. I consider myself lucky that I’ve gotten to know Gareth a bit over the years, having collaborated on a few projects as well as seeing him in action delivering his expert insights and consultancy. Moreover, I see Gareth as a bit of a mentor, someone who’s advice I value and respect, and who has a keen insight in to the realities of building an agency-model business in the digital realm. His UX agency Fathom is going from strength to strength, something which surprised me at first because too many people in Northern Ireland working in digital barely know what ‘UX’ means, let alone see the need for a specialised service. But I really shouldn’t have been surprised, knowing Gareth’s experience and business acumen. I’ll let him talk about how he got in to digital, and the reasons behind founding Fathom. Tell us a bit about yourself and your journey in to the digital industry: how did you discover the internet, and how did you become so involved with it? My year out from university (1992 / 1993 – mercy!) was in AIB in Dublin. I was fortunate to work to a boss who I got on with really well and in a very talented team. When they offered me that same position when I graduated I was only too glad to accept. That crew went on to form the web team who developed Ireland’s first online personal banking platform – 24online.ie – launched in January 1997. (To show how different times were back then, a Senior IT Manager in the bank at the time threatened to move his banking to a competitor if his account was connected to the internet in some way because of the security risk!) That was me hooked. At the time I remember thinking that something big was happening, that the Internet could accelerate a fundamental change in how society communicates. And even though I didn’t quite know where the journey might take me, I knew if those wagons were heading West I wanted to be on them! Contrary to many people that strive to build a business in the digital industry who come from a background in sales or marketing, you as a Computer Science graduate have a formal education that’s incredibly relevant. How do you feel your degree has given you an advantage in this business (if any)? If you could go back, would you choose to study the same subject, another subject, or skip university altogether? Perhaps I can answer that question by letting you know my final year modules? Parallel programming, COBOL, business analysis, assembly language! Like much education it wasn’t the specifics of what I learned, but the logical way it taught me to think, that has stood by me. I wouldn’t change a thing, and perhaps like many it was my year in industry that really lit a spark about how relevant technology can be. As an aside it also means I can speak confidently about the technical componentry of the Internet and I think that has been an advantage. You’ve had a rich career over the years before you started Fathom, and can easily be considered one of the early flag-bearers of the digital industry in Northern Ireland. When did you decide that starting your own business was the right decision? Tell us about your journey as an entrepreneur. The Tibus experience was a remarkable one and when I came out of it at the age of 37 even then I knew that if I ever experienced a decade in my career as stimulating and fulfilling as “the Tibus years” I would count myself very fortunate. Tibus was a great cocktail of an old-school Chairman who always demanded more, a super-capable team of Directors who led the various divisions of the business and lots of great people selling, project-managing, designing, developing, hosting and connecting. I used to say Tibus was like when you used to pick football teams at school, except that one of the captains was allowed to pick 20 players before the other captain could start. Luck is such a big part of life and therefore business, so I wanted to know if I could do it again. I came to the simple realisation that I would rather try and fail than not try and wonder. Of course, preferable to both of these was trying and succeeding! And so Fathom was born. Why the name ‘Fathom’? Back in my Tibus days, Kenney and Mark and their team at HamillBosket were very generous in constantly referring their clients to Tibus for their web design and development needs, so Kenney was the first person I turned to when I set up the business to help with my name and brand. Of all the options they provided, I really liked how Fathom had implications of depth and measurement and how that resonated with the type of agency I had hoped I would be able to build. Notwithstanding the challenges of getting an apposite domain name, it’s a brand name I’ve always liked and felt able to rally around it. Clients have often commented unsolicited that they like it too. In Northern Ireland, User Experience design is not on many people’s radar. Many of your clients come from further afield – do you feel that basing your business in Northern Ireland gives you a competitive advantage, or does it hinder your agency’s growth? In between Tibus and Fathom I spent just over a year and a half working for my good buddy Niall McKeown at his business Ionology. Niall spent (and continues to spend) all his waking hours thinking about strategy and I had the benefit of being the sounding board for the creative storm inside his brain. He was clear that businesses needed to be ruthless in their focus for differentiation and that unless they were hugely capitalised that they could only go mainstream via a niche “get big, get niche or get out”. So that gave me the confidence that UX should be the focus for the agency. Our revenue is split roughly 60% Republic of Ireland, 30% Northern Ireland, 10% London, which I think is a fair reflection of our reach and the relative maturity of those marketplaces. Of course the business would find it easier to grow in London because over half of the entire UK digital marketing marketplace is there. However because we are in a niche, many of our clients understand that we need to travel to service their needs. So I would be neutral about being in Northern Ireland. On one side, the marketplace is tiny here and we need to travel for work, on the other we are one of only two dedicated UX agencies on the island and therefore we do get the opportunity to work with large and significant organisations such as Three, Tesco Mobile, PSNI, Ordnance Survey Ireland, Ogvily, Permanent TSB, Tourism NI, Enterprise Ireland, and Independent News & Media. I think one of the reasons we get these opportunities is because we have the confidence to focus our offering in our niche. Tell us a bit about your hobbies outside of work; what do you enjoy in your life outside of the office? My lovely and super-supportive family take much of my time outside of work, with my wife Lorna (whose backing has been absolute from the very start) playing the role of listener-in-chief with aplomb. When I’m not doing family things I’m feverishly staving off mid-life crises (plural not a mistake) through a series of sporting outlets including rugby refereeing, keeping fit, mountain biking and of late donning the lycra and getting on the road-bike. I am also on the Board of Christian Aid Ireland, a charity whose values and activities I believe in passionately. Lastly, give us one website or app that you feel is vastly underrated and deserves a wider audience. Apart from fathom.pro? There is a cracking lo-fi and paper prototyping app called Marvel, which is brilliant for getting sketched interface ideas off paper and onto a digital device for testing and validation effectively and inexpensively. Clients and those who attend our UX training courses are constantly amazed at how easy it is to use and how quickly it facilitates design validation and direction. About Gareth Dunlop

We’re now five weeks in to my NI Digital Experts interview series. So far we’ve heard from great all-round digital marketers Emma Gribben and Niamh Taylor, UX agency founder Gareth Dunlop, and front-end developer Derek Johnson. Today we’ll hear from Wayne Denner, who is a well-known figure in the local digital scene as an expert in online reputation management. He was recently featured on UTV to give his thoughts about a PSNI social media gaffe, and has written a great book aimed at students and parents about the pitfalls of sharing your personal information online. Wayne regularly speaks to students and businesses about cyber safety, reputation management, and online well-being. I’ve known Wayne for several years now, and we share a passion for the internet and a keen awareness of both the joys and dangers it can bring. Although our face-to-face catch-ups are rare (both Wayne and I are hard to pin down, which makes syncing up calendars rather challenging), I consider him a friend in the industry and it’s always a pleasure to hang out with him. Let’s hear from Wayne and his adventures in the digital industry. Tell us a bit about yourself and your journey in to the digital industry: how did you discover the internet, and how did you become so involved with it? I’ve always been fascinated with tech and love having the latest gadgets. I remember back in the mid 90s, perhaps ‘93 or ‘94, getting my hands on an AOL CD and about 1000 FREE hours of daily internet use. I was instantly hooked. I started to build very very basic webpages putting up early forms of my own content. I loved how even the very early Internet gave you a chance to learn, access new information and build new connections with people you might never have met. Back then social media was just chat rooms. For me, my (some might say) obsession with the Internet evolved from those early days on the family computer connected via dial up to AOL. Or, as I used to call it, ‘AO Hell’ due to being kicked off it constantly when the phone rang or when my 15 minutes was up on one of the 3 computers owned by my college!. Aaarrgh, remember that lovely dial up sound? :) [Ed: I still have nightmares about dial-up modems…] Your original university degree was in travel & tourism. You’ve since successfully managed to transition to marketing, with a special focus on digital marketing. If you could go back, would you study a different subject at university, or perhaps skip it altogether? Yeah my journey to university wasn’t typical. When I left school the Internet was still in its infancy. Opportunities were really limited – compared to what is available today. Strangely enough I originally trained to become a mechanic. This lasted about 6 months. I then switched to a painting and decorating apprenticeship but the early mornings (5.30 AM) – off to Belfast in a white van, again was not for me. I’m a night worker and I finally realised manual labour wasn’t for me. :) Finally, after some misspent youth and bouncing around, I was given the opportunity to study a BTec National Diploma in Media Studies at Newry College of Further & Higher Education. Then an HND in Travel and Tourism Management and then a Degree in the subject at the University of Northumbria in Newcastle. I was lucky enough to study for my MSc in Communication at Queens University which focused very much on the principles of traditional communication. My knowledge on digital communications is self-taught and comes from over 18 years of challenging myself every day to learn new things online. I think looking back, this was actually a good route, as pretty quickly I knew what was and wasn’t for me. Also the media and travel/tourism industries have changed massively as a result of the internet and technology and these sectors were early adopters. You were an early internet entrepreneur with outlastnight.com, and have gone from strength to strength since then. What were the biggest lessons you learned in those early years? I’ve always had a flair for entrepreneurship. Though some might say I’m just unemployable. :) Growing up there wasn’t much money around and I always liked the challenge of trying to generate my own income and building something from nothing. At 14 with another friend I ‘launched’ Wayne’s Mobile Disco Roadshow, DJ-ing at 16th and 18th birthday parties as well as bingo calling at local elderly peoples homes. I also DJ-ed and presented for clubs and a few (unofficial) radio stations. Fun days. Around 1998 myself and a friend had been toying around with an early website which was basically a scrapbook or our nights out. This then became Outlastnight – an early social network platform pre-Facebook and even Bebo which didn’t come along until 2004. The nights out platform grew from strength to strength; at one point we had around 40 photographers in 8 locations that included Derry, Liverpool, London, and New York! It was really in those early years that I learned a lot about building a business online, especially the aspect of educating businesses as to why they need to be utilising online advertising opportunities for their businesses. You’re now established as an expert in online reputation management and cyber safety. What made you specialise in this niche? Was there a specific trigger that made you choose this speciality? Yes there was a trigger for both. Regarding reputation management for business I’ve never been a fan of the ‘jack of all trades’ and I work deliberately to get exposure in certain areas. This shapes the niches I like to work in the most. We live in a world now where social media is everywhere. Business, brands, personalities and individuals are all using social media on a daily if not hourly basis to create content. For many the content does not cause too much of a stir but from time to time – and increasingly now as it’s so integral to our lives – things go wrong. What’s posted and shared online can impact a businesses, brand or individuals reputation. Also for many, so much more can be done to improve a reputation if you know how. So as I saw the development of more and more social media platforms and apps, giving people the ability to create content, and businesses to use these as a way to market their products and services, I knew that businesses and organisations would need help to protect and manage their online reputations. Re: our cyber safety work, the school talks and events started as a bit of CSR over 4 years ago. This is now a huge part of what we do. The trigger for this was actually back in the Bebo days when profile based systems first became popular. Seeing first-hand the imagery and content young kids around 12, 13 put online – how vulnerable they made themselves in the online world – was why we started the ONLINE REPUTATION MATTERS program (Reputation, Protection, Wellbeing & Employability) in schools. Our team also provide up to date and jargon-free resources for children and adults as well as daily content on main social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat. To date I’ve now spoken with over 250,000 students, teachers and parents in Ireland, UK, and the UAE, on e-safety, digital resilience, and online education topics, and reached many more via our online channels. I deliver the talks personally and they’re designed to inspire and motivate young people to protect themselves online and use social media, mobile and internet technology responsibly – as tools to help them get opportunities in life. We also deliver to adults to empower and inform parents, teachers, and school community stakeholders with relevant guidance. This is the first generation of adults who’ve had to worry about these things. The rapid rate of new message sharing and video sharing apps being released, as well as risks involved in gaming online, has been tough on parents and teachers. We give them the heads-up. The programme is constantly evolving and takes up about 60% of my time now. Schools are a great environment to work in. For young people going online, the internet can be a hazardous place. What would your number one advice be for kids when it comes to the internet? And what would you tell parents about how to manage their children’s online presence? For young people, I know it’s a cliché, but think before you post. Just take a minute. It’s normally what you have posted in the past that comes back to haunt you in the future. That stuff could be up there forever. Then I would recommend using technology to get opportunities as I’ve been lucky enough to have. Find ways to create positive content about who you are and what you’re all about so that when it’s time to apply for university or the job you want, your future employer/college recruiter will find great things about you online and you’ll be ahead of the pack. You already love your apps. Use them to get a job, travel, connect with people you admire. Investing in your digital self is where it is at today. Be positive and responsible online. The possibilities are endless. For parents, educators and anyone who works with children and young people, I would say, please never forget that no matter how good they are with technology, they need your adult input and guidance. Keep the conversations going and keep up with what you need to know to help children and young people protect themselves. You have a duty of care. Be aware of the risks and set a good example. How your child uses technology is key to their future education, career and life opportunities. Oh and (shameless plug) buy them a copy of my book ‘The Students Guide to an Epic Online Reputation..and parents too’. Tell us a bit about your hobbies outside of work; what do you enjoy in your life outside of the office? Spending time with the better half and our two boys is very important especially given how crazy the life of an entrepreneur can be. Being a dad to two little boys keeps me busy. In between rugby, footie, and bug hunting, I try to squeeze in the odd cycle on my road bike which I got into a few years ago. I’d love to do more but when I do get out it’s a lot of fun. As a family we enjoy getting outdoors, visiting new places and a bit of fishing. Lastly, give us one website or app that you feel is vastly underrated and deserves a wider audience. Never one to miss an opportunity Barry I have to say my new app RepSelfie which helps you take control of your online reputation – and improve it. We’ve been working on this for some time and have just launched in the UAE. It will be available in the UK and Ireland over the next 2-3 weeks. To put it in context, 93% of recruiters admit to using social media to screen applicants and 67% of college and job recruiters will remove you from the application process if you have a negative online reputation. RepSelfie is the new and exciting tool which allows you to view, monitor, and improve your online reputation. About Wayne Denner