Since their inception in 2010, the DANI Awards have celebrated the best and brightest of the Northern Irish digital scene. In a previous life, when I was with Pierce Communications, we won two DANI Awards in 2012 for our campaigns for Emo Oil and Total Produce. And in 2014, I achieved a great personal honour by winning Digital Industries Person of the Year at that year’s DANI Awards. Pursuing awards is not something we actively engage in at Polemic Digital. Awards are a dime a dozen, and we have little faith in the majority of them. So far we have chosen to only enter the renowned UK Search Awards, with some measure of success. This year we decided to also enter the DANI Awards, because we felt our client projects were achieving a level of success that warranted recognition. And that gamble has seemed to pay off, as all three of the client projects we’ve entered have been shortlisted! Our work is competing in the following categories: Best SEO Campaign for our work with TheSun.co.uk Best Campaign in Retail for our work with SkirtingsRUs.co.uk Best Campaign in Healthcare for our work with DocklandsDental.ie All three of these websites have achieved considerable SEO success since we started working with them, and to be shortlisted for the 2018 DANI Awards shows that we’re at the forefront of the Northern Irish digital scene. Hopefully on the night itself we’ll come away with some silverware. It’ll be a great event regardless, celebrating the awesome work that’s being done in our wee country. I’m also very pleased to see people and companies we consider friends of Polemic Digital also shortlisted at this year’s awards. Good luck to the folks at The Tomorrow Lab, Digital 24, Loud Mouth Media, and Fathom, and especially to Emma Gribben who’s shortlisted for Best Young Digital Person!

The UK Search Awards are a special event. In the digital and marketing industries, awards are a dime a dozen; almost every month some awards event is held somewhere. While some of these are legitimate awards that recognise real success, many others are shambolic affairs where judges and winners overlap and behind-the-scenes shenanigans determine who wins and who loses. Since its inception, the UK Search Awards have been different. There’s a very rigorous judging process and judges are not allowed to enter the awards themselves. The judges are, without exception, the best and brightest minds in search marketing, and for them the integrity of the process is paramount as they attach their reputations to the quality of these awards. Hence why the UK Search Awards is one of the very few award occasions Polemic Digital chooses to enter. When we learned in October that we’d been shortlisted for three UK Search Awards, we were absolutely ecstatic. To be listed among so many great agencies and successful projects was a true honour. Just to make it to the shortlist is an accomplishment in and of itself – especially in such competitive categories – and in all honesty, that’s where we expected it to end this year. We attended the awards event, held in the Bloomsbury Big Top in London, with perhaps a little hope but certainly no expectation beyond having a good time. This year the UK Search Awards were bigger than ever, hosted by comedian Jason Manford with over 650 people attending from all over the country. We were looking forward to catching up with many of our industry friends and to celebrate the search industry in the UK. So when Polemic Digital was called out as the winner for not one, but two of these highly coveted awards, we couldn’t really believe it. In fact, right now, looking at the awards on my desk, it’s still hard to believe that we won. Out of the three nominations, we won two: Best Low Budget Campaign for our work for Super Saver Oil, and Best Small SEO Agency. This latter award is an especially proud moment for us, as we’ve only been going since 2014. It’s amazing to see how far we’ve already come in such a short time. When anyone achieves success, it’s never just a single person’s efforts that make it possible. Polemic Digital is a two-person agency, with me as the SEO guy and my wife Alison as the business person. She shares as much in Polemic Digital’s success as I do. Many thanks to our families as well, and to all the people around us who have helped over the years with their advice, friendship, support and love. We couldn’t have done it without you. We love being part of the SEO industry, and we love being part of the Northern Irish digital scene – both communities are full of amazing people doing great things on a daily basis. And most of all thanks to our clients who put their trust in us to deliver results, and make all of this possible. It’s a privilege to work with so many inspiring businesses and to be able to contribute, however modestly, to their success. These national award wins so early in Polemic Digital’s journey certainly set the bar high for future achievements. We hope to live up to the expectation and continue to deliver award-winning SEO services. Onwards and upwards!

On Friday 13 April the 2018 DANI Awards were held in Whitla Hall at Queen’s University Belfast. Since 2018 the DANI Awards have celebrated the great work in digital done in Northern Ireland, and this year was the biggest event yet with more award submissions than ever before. We were up for three awards and, with a shortlist full of great companies and exciting projects, we knew there was going to be tough competition in every category. The one we most looked forward to was of course the Best SEO Campaign award. In an ever-changing industry where many agencies chase after the latest hype, we are unashamedly an SEO-only agency. It’s the one thing we do, and we try to do it as well as it can be done. So we were very happy and honoured to win Best SEO Campaign and take home the prize! It was an evening to celebrate – not only did we win, we also saw many of our friends in the Northern Irish digital industry pick up awards! Huge congratulations to the folks at The Tomorrow Lab, Digital 24, Loud Mouth Media, and Fathom, and especially to Emma Gribben for winning Young Digital Person of the Year! (I interviewed Emma as part of my NI Digital Experts series, read her story here.) We won the award for our work with TheSun.co.uk, and sometimes people ask what makes for an award-winning campaign. How do the judges decide what’s worthy of recognition, and are the winners really deserving of it? I don’t usually share specific client results, but since this was such a great project to work on and has been written about before, I feel it’s okay to share a bit about this project. Since the launch of the new TheSun.co.uk site in 2016, search visibility growth has been astonishing and the site has been going from strength to strength. This is what the Sistrix graph of an award-winning campaign looks like: While I collected the award, it’s really for the combined efforts of everyone involved in SEO at The Sun. They are some of the smartest and most driven people I’ve ever had the privilege of working with. Lately many news sites have had to deal with significant algorithm updates from Google that had a profound impact on the industry. These are the types of challenges that I thrive on. Hopefully we can continue the site’s stellar growth and demonstrate the power of an all-encompassing approach to SEO.

As more and more digital marketers are buying in to the social media hype, we’re starting to see a growing number of studies on the ROI of social media marketing as compared to more established forms of digital marketing such as SEO and email. And – if you’re a social media marketer that wants to drive online sales – the news isn’t good. In late 2012 Forrester released a study in which they analysed 77,000 online transactions in a two-week period. They found that only 1% of those transactions had any influence from a social media channel: “While 33% of transactions by new customers involve more than one trackable touchpoint, 48% of repeat customers visit multiple trackable touchpoints. The most popular platforms include organic search, paid search, and email.” The report also touches upon the disparity between what users say they use social media for, versus what the data actually shows: “Forty-eight percent of consumers reported that social media posts are a great way to discover new products, brands, trends, or retailers, but less than 1% of transactions could be traced back to social.” Optify’s 2012  B2B Marketing Benchmark report shows similar numbers; here too organic search reigns supreme, followed by direct traffic and referral clicks. B2B websites get just 1.9% of their traffic from social media sites, and social media plays a role in only 4.75% of all leads: Then in July 2013 a study by Custora also showed that the strongest drivers of online transactions were organic search, paid search, and email marketing. This study had a considerably larger data set, tracking 72 million customers across 86 online retailers. Custora also kept tabs on the long term customer value of those transactions, analysing repeat purchases. Here too, organic search rules the roost and social media channels dramatically underperformed. Traffic from Twitter was especially poor at customer retention. In light of such abundant evidence of the futility of social media marketing for driving sales, does it mean we should give up on social media entirely? Not quite. We do need to stop seeing social media as a source of customer acquisition. Facebook and Twitter contribute next to nothing to growing your customer base. Yet when it comes to customer service, social media plays a strong role, and you have a duty to engage with your customers on social media platforms. And advertising on social media platforms will likely contribute to brand awareness. But as far as driving online sales goes, social media is an astoundingly ineffective channel. If you want to grow your online sales, the evidence is clear: SEO and PPC are where you need to invest. Update 01 August 2013: Optify study added. Update: in 2014, search still rules: Update: in 2015, guess who’s still king? Exactly. P.S. Is social media really dead? Of course not. It just needs to know its place in the digital marketing pecking order.

Last week the inaugural Friends of Search conference took place in Amsterdam, and I was honoured to be asked to speak there. In front of a few hundred of the best and brightest search marketers in the Netherlands I gave a talk about personalised search – and specifically, about why personalised search results can be a bad thing. It was doubly exciting for me as this was the first time I got to use our new brand in a presentation – we soft-launched The Tomorrow Lab brand last week, and have kicked it off properly today. As usual I uploaded the slides from my talk to Slideshare, so you can view them online: For a first-time conference Friends of Search was very well organised, with a great schedule packed full of top notch speakers. I managed to catch quite a few talks myself, and I especially enjoyed Marcus Tandler’s light-speed keynote about the future of search, Fili Wiese and Kaspar Szymanski’s tag-team talks about Google penalties and reconsideration requests, Bastian Grimm’s sobering talk on WordPress security, and Kevin Gibbons’ overview of the state of content marketing. The #fos14 hashtag saw abundant use and there was plenty of live-tweeting, and the hashtag is still in active use as round-up posts from the event are being published on various blogs and news sites. Another nice wee thing the organisers did was record short video interviews with all the speakers, which allows people who couldn’t attend to get a sample of the various talks on offer. Below you can see my video interview, and all interviews are available on the Friends of Search website here. All in all I think Friends of Search was a top notch conference and a great addition to the Dutch digital events calendar, and I’m looking forward to next year’s edition! P.S. Friends of Search also gave me an answer to the question “how many Google fans does it take to balance Google-skeptic Barry Adams?” The answer, judging from the conference’s morning schedule, is four. ;)

But how do you know what changes to make to improve your website? The answer is simple: web analytics. With web analytics you can determine what works and doesn’t work on your website. Web analytics starts with statistics: numbers, percentages, and graphs. You need to understand the basic elements of web statistics before you can graduate to proper analysis of those figures and derive actionable insights from them. In this article I will try to explain the basic terminology of web statistics. Different web analysis programs sometimes use different wordings, but you will be able to recognize them and interpret them accordingly. Web statistics terminology Unique Visitors: this is the first statistic many rookie web analysts look at, but in my opinion it’s one of the least important numbers. It refers to the number of individuals that have visited your website in the given time frame. It is always a rough estimate as due to the limitations of web technology it’s nearly impossible to accurately determine how many people actually see your website. The raw figure is not that interesting, but as a trend over time it’s worth keeping an eye on, especially if you have initiatives running to draw more visitors to your site. Total Visits: this figure indicates how many times web users have visited your website. The same user can come back to look at your site again within the set time frame and will generate two or more visits to your site. This metric combined with unique visitors determines the stickiness of your website. It’s sometimes also referred to as sessions. Page Views: this metric indicates how many pages of your website have been shown to visitors. Don’t be surprised to learn that many visitors only look at one page of your site and then leave. Some visitors will click through to other pages and log multiple page views in your statistics. Combined with the total visits this gives you the average page views per visit, which is an indication of how engaging your site is. Hits: a remnant of the old days of web statistics, a hit is every single request a browser sends to the web server your site runs on. Every single separate element of a web page, including the HTML file, CSS stylesheet, and all the images, generate hits when someone views the page. These days it’s a fairly useless number, as any given web page can generate anything from one to fifty hits. Time on Site: this indicates how long an average a visitor has spent on your website before moving on. This can be a difficult statistic to use. If for example you have a blog, most of your website’s visitors won’t go beyond the homepage. This means your web analytics program probably won’t be able to see how long those visitors actually spend on your site, as they undertake no action that can be logged. It will count all those visits as zero seconds long, regardless of how long the user spent reading your content. Bounce Rate: this metric is usually attached to a single page on your website. It shows the number or percentage of visitors that saw only that page and then left shortly thereafter (usually within 5 to 10 seconds). For some reason those visitors clicked the back button, closed the browser window, or went to a different website immediately upon entering your site. This can have many different causes, but generally a high bounce rate on a page means that page isn’t very appealing and can use some improvement. Exit Rate: similar to bounce rate but also different in a very fundamental way, this metric indicates how many people came to a page on your website and then left. This goes beyond bounce rate as it counts those users that navigated through your site prior to exiting. Some pages should have a high exit rate, like for example the “Thank You” page after a submitted order. Good web analytics programs calculate the exit rate while omitting the bounces shown in the bounce rate, so you will get a good sense of where your site’s engagement with its users fails. Referrals: this is not a number but a list of sources of visits to your site. This contains everything from the search engines people used to find your site to links on other websites that users clicked on to get to your site. Ideally your analytics program should also tell you what keywords users typed into the search engines to find you, and on exactly what page of an external website the link to your site was found. There are other statistics worth looking at, such as the error codes (especially the 404 error) and visitor origins. But the metrics listed above are the core measurements that you need to have a good grasp on to gain valuable insights into user activity on your site.

Since I started delivering the classroom-based technical SEO training in Dublin, there’s been a lot of demand to deliver the training in other locations. One of the most-requested locations is London, and I’ve got good news! In collaboration with the inaugural State of Digital conference, my technical SEO training is coming to London. The date is 9th October 2018 (the day after the State of Digital conference) and tickets for the training are limited. The course content is along the same lines as my previous training days, which were highly rated by the attendees: For websites to perform well, their technical side now matters more than ever, but we know it’s often overwhelming and challenging due to its complexity. To grow your organic search presence, you need to master technical SEO foundations and truly understand search engine processes such as crawling, indexing, structured data, and canonicalisation. This technical SEO masterclass is for digital marketing professionals that have a basic understanding of SEO but want to take it to the next level. The masterclass is suitable for marketers who come from a non-technical background and want to be able to navigate the increasingly complex SEO landscape. If you don’t understand what web developers are saying, or you struggle to deal with concepts such as structured data and crawl budget, this training is for you. Ideally you will have a decent grasp of the basics of SEO, such as keyword research, on-page SEO, and linkbuilding. After completing this training, you will be equipped with the knowledge, insight, and vocabulary to deal with technical SEO challenges. The training consists of the following modules: 1. How Search Engines Work We will begin by explaining how search engines work, and what the three main processes of every search engine are. This module will show where technical SEO fits in to the overall SEO stack and how it relates to search engines. 2. Web Infrastructure Before we can start explaining technical SEO in detail, you first need to have a foundational understanding of the web’s technical underpinnings. Here we will explain internet connectivity, client-server architecture, and basic coding principles. 3. Crawl Optimisation Optimising how search engine spiders crawl your website is the cornerstone of technical SEO. We will explain what crawl optimisation is, why it’s important, and how you can identify and fix crawl issues on your site. We will also discuss JavaScript and how it impacts on search engine crawling and indexing. 4. Load Speed & Mobile SEO Fast-loading websites perform better for every conceivable metric. Optimising your site for speed is an important SEO aspect as well. You will learn how to identify load speed issues and what the best ways are to improve your site’s performance. With more searches performed on mobile devices than on desktop, and Google switching to a mobile-first index, optimising your site for mobile usability is not optional. We’ll show you the various ways you can improve your site’s mobile SEO and achieve success on mobile search. 5. Structured Data Implementing structured data on your site will make your content machine-readable and unlocks a range of benefits. We’ll explain what structured data is, which snippets are most valuable, and how to implement it on your site. 6. Basic Site Security Security issues on your site also impact on SEO and traffic. We’ll show some basic security checks you can perform and provide tools and tips to help make your website more secure. 7. International SEO Sending the right geotargeting signals to Google can be tricky. International SEO signals are often implemented inaccurately, so here we’ll explain what makes for good international SEO and how you can make sure the right version of your content ranks in the right country. 8. The Future of SEO We wrap up the workshop with a look at where search in general – and SEO in particular – is headed, and what technical developments you need to be aware of to prepare yourself for the future. Places are limited so grab your ticket on Eventbrite soon. And since you’ll be there anyway, might as well attend the State of Digital conference the day before! (Note that the conference requires a separate ticket from the masterclass).

Update: My technical SEO training course will now be delivered online, read more about it here. Over the years I’ve delivered dozens of SEO training sessions for all kinds of clients, from technical teams in big corporations to government agencies’ communication departments. These sessions have always been made bespoke for the client in question and specifically crafted to cater to their needs and requirements. Recently I’ve been contacted by many people asking if I also offer open classroom based courses that anyone can sign up to. These are ambitious individuals working on SEO challenges in their own organisations, and they want to improve their skills and knowledge to become better at their jobs. Up to now I haven’t been in a position to offer those sorts of courses. But, here’s the good news: I’ve partnered with the awesome people at Learn Inbound in Dublin and now offer my first SEO training course that anyone can sign up to. This is a Technical SEO Course for marketers from a non-technical background, developers that want to get better at building SEO-friendly websites, and anyone that wants to learn the foundational aspects of good search engine optimisation. My technical SEO course is made up of eight separate modules: 1. How Search Engines Work I will begin by explaining how search engines work, and what the three main processes of every search engine are. This module will show where technical SEO fits in to the overall SEO stack and how it relates to search engines. 2. Web Infrastructure Before I can start explaining technical SEO in detail, you first need to have an understanding of the web’s technical underpinnings. Here I will explain internet connectivity, client-server architecture, and basic coding principles. 3. Crawl Optimisation Optimising how search engine spiders crawl your website is the cornerstone of technical SEO. We will explain what crawl optimisation is, why it’s important, and how you can identify and fix crawl issues on your site. I will also discuss JavaScript and how it impacts on search engine crawling and indexing. 4. Load Speed & Mobile SEO Fast-loading websites perform better for every conceivable metric. Optimising your site for speed is an important SEO aspect as well. You will learn how to identify load speed issues and what the best ways are to improve your site’s performance. With more searches performed on mobile devices than on desktop, and Google switching to a mobile-first index, optimising your site for mobile usability is not optional. I’ll show you the various ways you can improve your site’s mobile SEO and achieve success on mobile search. 5. Structured Data Implementing structured data on your site will make your content machine-readable and unlocks a range of benefits. I’ll explain what structured data is, which snippets are most valuable, and how to implement it on your site. 6. JavaScript & SEO The prevalence of JavaScript frameworks presents a new challenge for SEO. In this module I’ll explain what to look for when analysing JavaScript-based websites for SEO and how to ensure such sites cna be properly crawled and indexed by Google. 7.International SEO Sending the right geo-targeting signals to Google can be tricky. International SEO signals are often implemented inaccurately, so here we’ll explain what makes for good international SEO and how you can make sure the right version of your content ranks in the right country. 8. The Future of SEO We wrap up the day with a look at where search in general – and SEO in particular – is headed, and what technical developments you need to be aware of to prepare yourself for the future After completing this training, you will be equipped with the knowledge, insight, and vocabulary to deal with technical SEO challenges. I guarantee that after taking this course you will be a more effective SEO and be able to tackle those technical challenges in your job head on. If you’ve any questions about this training or any of my other services, you should get in touch.

I wrote a post summarising my research into the SEO aspects of a site migration, and I feel the time has come to look back at the migration and the lessons we learned from it. The site migration was a two-step process – we updated the design and we added new sections with fresh content. We decided to follow the recommendations outlined in my site migration blog post pretty much to the letter: Content: We phased in the new content one batch of pages at a time. We put a couple of new pages live, linked to them from the homepage, and waited for them to be indexed & cached. Then we put the next batch of new pages online. Design: The design changes were implemented gradually as well. The old and new designs weren’t radically different, it was more a tweaked & modernised version of the old design, so we felt it would be fine to have the old and new designs co-exist on the site for a while. We first did a Google Website Optimiser A/B test to make sure the new design yielded at the very least a similar conversion rate. When this was confirmed, we migrated pages to the new design one at a time. The URLs all remained the same so we didn’t have to do any 301-redirects. We used the Duplicate Content tool to ensure the HTML code and content of our key pages with high SERP rankings matched at least 90% in the old and new designs, so we wouldn’t get hit with a ranking penalty when we put the new version up. When a page was updated with the new design, we waited for it to be indexed & cached in Google and checked how its SERP rankings were affected. The end result was a site with a fresh design and new sections added, with minimal impact on SERP rankings. We did see some fluctuations in rankings but these fell well within the normal daily and weekly ranking variations. We also noted that the new content started ranking fairly soon for relevant keywords, despite no direct links coming in to those pages. This is most likely due to the incoming link value generated across the rest of the site, spilling over to the new content. It was a long and labour-intensive process, and in hindsight I’m not sure it would have impacted the rankings massively if we just switched the site over in one go. But as organic search generates a significant portion of the sites traffic and revenue, it was definitely better to be safe.

The end of 2015 is in sight, so as is customary around this time of year the web is bombarded with articles predicting what will happen in 2016 in any given industry. SEO and digital marketing are no different – after all, it’s always fun to speculate and imagine what the future will look like. And it gives us something else to write about and fill blogs with. Rand Fishkin over at Moz has been doing predictions for a number of years, and he’s gotten pretty good at it – he seems to have a keen grasp of where the digital marketing industry is headed, so do keep an eye on his upcoming predictions for 2016 (update: here are Rand’s 2016 predictions). I’ve been contributing my opinions to predictions posts for years – see my predictions for 2013, 2014, and 2015 –  with varying degrees of success. Some of my predictions could generously be interpreted as accurate, while others have perhaps fallen a bit short of the mark. Despite my less than perfect track record, I’ve again been asked to contribute to a number of prediction posts this year. I’ve collected all my various foresights for 2016 in one article here. Barry’s Predictions for 2016 Contribution for State of Digital: Backlash against ad blockers There will be a backlash against ad blockers, with some websites blocking visitors that have ad blockers enabled. The deeper root causes that make ad blocking so popular will be left almost entirely unacknowledged, with publishers and advertisers instead preferring to use crude measures to protect their ad revenue rather than face up to the fact that they’ve been behaving like total pricks for years. Contribution for Momentology: Narrowing Search Space The search space will continue to narrow in focus in 2016, as mobile-first browsing habits will siphon traffic from search engines towards mobile apps – specifically YouTube, Facebook, and news apps. I suspect 2016 might be the first year to see a stagnation, if not decline, in search volumes on some of the major search engines. As a result of this narrowing search space, a brand’s total share of voice will become even more important. I expect a proliferation of brand-owned content channels – such as Momentology – in a wide range of industries, from DIY to retail, manufacturing, and medical technology. Brands will create and promote self-owned publication channels to build their own audiences, rather than rely on third-party platforms to deliver visitors to their commercial sites. Some of these brand-owned channels will be indistinguishable from independent channels. A few independent online publications will be bought by brands who can’t be bothered building their own audience from scratch. Altogether, 2016 will be the year where the fight for audience attention will reach a new peak, as organic search evolves in to a zero-sum game and social media becomes exclusively pay-to-play for corporate accounts. The limitations of our industry will start to materialize as consumer behavior changes, and the fight for consumer attention will be fiercer than ever. In order for SEO to survive and thrive in such an environment, SEO providers will need to focus more on highlighting their clients’ competitive edge and find increasingly provocative and attention-grabbing content angles. The future of online success will not be dependent on organic search. Instead I see an online brand’s growth rely on how successful they’ll be able to integrate with existing dominant platforms. News hosted on Facebook (Instant Articles) and Google (AMP), ecommerce through Twitter and Instagram, those will be the trends that will pave the way for online success in the coming years. Contribution for Search Engine People: App Streaming & Branded Channels We’re now firmly in the era of the mobile internet, so all your strategies need to start with mobile experiences and scale up from there. App Streaming New app streaming features will make creating your own app more attractive than ever – users won’t need to install your app to be able to enjoy the experience you’ve created, removing a large barrier for app adoption. It’s now more attractive than ever before to build an app experience that helps your customers in tangible ways and makes optimal use of mobile’s built-in advantages. When you enable it for streaming experiences through Google Android, you’ll be tapping in to an entirely new growth market. Apple will not be lagging far behind so be prepared for similar possibilities on iOS in the near future. Expect to see this take off in 2016, and it’ll pay to be an early adopter. Branded Content Channels As the fight for consumers’ attention becomes ever fiercer, you’ll need to be firing on multiple channels with a strong, unified brand message. For brands in competitive and saturated spaces, a potentially powerful option is to partner with or create a content marketing outlet that is partially or wholly independent – for example a magazine like Red Bulletin, an authoritive blog like Linkdex’s Momentology, or an event series like Intel’s Creators Project. By owning a separate content channel that you can develop in to a niche authority, you can build an engaged audience without having to overcome the usual resistance to corporate outlets, and create an audience community around shared ideas and interests. What do you think? Are my predictions way off, or do you see some merit in them? What are your predictions for SEO and digital marketing in 2016? Feel free to sound off in the comments.

Last year, we entered the UK Search Awards for the very first time in our existence. In a marketplace where award ceremonies are a dime a dozen, the UK Search Awards have always stood out as something special. The judging panel on these awards is second to none, and we knew that our work was going to be judged on merit alone – and not the size of our sponsorship budget. So in 2016, with two and a half years of business under our belt, we more or less wanted to see where we stood in the crowded SEO landscape in the UK. We submitted a few projects to the awards, and were delighted to find ourselves shortlisted in three award categories. We never expected to win that year. After all, we were just a small two-person business in Belfast, and we were competing against some of the UK’s biggest and most established agencies and brands. So when we ended up winning two awards, we were stunned and amazed. Polemic Digital’s 2016 UK Search Awards This year we decided to enter again. While the business has evolved somewhat this last year, focusing primarily in SEO audits, SEO training, and specialised SEO for news publishers, we had a few ongoing projects we were proud of and perhaps the judges might consider favourably. So when last week the shortlist was announced, we were eager to see if we’d made the cut. And indeed, we did! Polemic Digital is shortlisted in two categories: Best Use of Search – Retail Best Small SEO Agency While we won last year’s Best Small SEO Agency award, in which our tiny two-person agency went up against outfits that had up to 25 members of staff, we feel our chances to extend our winning streak are quite small; every year the competition gets tougher, with more companies submitting more projects to the awards. This year, the shortlist boasts a truly outstanding selection of agencies and projects. Still, even if we leave empty-handed, the awards night on November 30 in London will be another superb event celebrating all that is awesome about the search industry in the UK. Our local friends at Loud Mouth Media are once again on the shortlist, continuing their success as Northern Ireland’s finest PPC agency. And many of our agency friends in the UK, such as Marketing Signals, Branded3, Verve Search, MediaVision, BlueGlass, 10 Yetis, Screaming Frog, and many more are also shortlisted for awards. So it’ll be an amazing night, no matter what. Just to be shortlisted among the UK’s biggest and best is all we ever wanted, so we’re already considering this mission accomplished! Update: we didn’t win any awards but had a great night nonetheless. Congratulations to all the winners, well-deserved!

To say I’m  busy man would be a bit of an understatement. I’ve signed up a few more new clients recently which keep me very busy indeed, and on top of that I’ll be attending and speaking at a host of events the next few months. First there’s the big one: Pubcon in Las Vegas from October 5th to 8th. I was honoured to be accepted as a speaker and will be part of two sessions: a technical SEO session with Dave Rohrer and Michael Gray, and a live site review session with Derek Wheeler, Russ Jones, Kevin Lee, and Greg Boser. I’ve always wanted to go to Pubcon, and to go as a speaker is, well, pretty awesome for me. The wife and I are taking the opportunity to do a wee bit of sightseeing as well, but I can’t hang around too long as on October 15th I’ll be speaking at the Digital DNA conference in Belfast. There I’ll be part of a workshop together with Mark Haslam from Loudmouth Media. Mark will espouse the virtues of PPC advertising, while I will be waving the banner for SEO. Once the dust has settled from that one, I’m heading to Dublin to attend the next Learn Inbound event on October 21st, which will feature a truly awesome lineup including Rand Fishkin, Wil Reynolds, Gianluca Fiorelli, and my good friend Bas van den Beld. I’m positively giddy about that one – such a superb lineup, right here on the Emerald Isle! Recovering from the inevitable hangover will take a wee while, so I’m happy that my next event isn’t until November 12th, when I’ll be delivering a SEO workshop for the European Cancer Leagues and hopefully contribute a bit to making cancer charities more successful online. The following week I’m heading to Milan, which will be my first trip to Italy. Alas, the tourist sightseeing will have to wait as I’m there to present at Search Marketing Connect 2015, delivering a workshop on technical SEO. Joining me there are some of Europe’s top SEO speakers, including Jan-Willem Bobbink, Alex Moss, Aleyda Solis, and Gianluca Fiorelli, to name but a few. Closing the month will be TEDx Omagh back in Northern Ireland, which boasts a pretty interesting lineup including one of the SEO industry’s more notorious troublemakers, Josh Bachynski. That ought to be a fun event to attend. In between all of that I’ll be working on all my client projects – it is easy to forget that’s what it’s all about; delivering value for clients through effective SEO. The events are great, but the client work is what pays the bills so that must always come first. I think I’ve earned a wee bit of rest and holiday time in December, so no more events until 2016. For now, at least. Who knows what’s around the corner?