Emergency chairs! SearchNorwich 4 had record turnout of 71 people and a record in terms of the highest feedback ratings we have received so far!
The talks and speakers
Charity: Lorraine Bliss, MBE from Keeping Abreast
Mark Williams-Cook: Won’t somebody think of the robots?
- All resources: Won’t somebody think of the robots?
- Video of talk on YouTube
- Presentation on Slideshare
Key takeaways from Mark:
- Lots of important SEO changes have no direct impact on the user – so they can easily be overlooked
- Seemingly ‘simple’ things such as URL migrations are often more nuanced and complex than they seem
- Advice even from sources such as Google does not always reflect reality – listen to all sources
- Be aware some modern JS frameworks can cause crawling issues
- Googlebot doesn’t do javascript
- Dynamic rendering is a potential solution
- Schema is important
Video
Slides
Lukasz Zelezny: SEO tactics you can implement tonight
Key takeaways from Lukasz:
- Calculating traffic potential using tools such as SEMrush is a great way to get SEO buy-in
- Targeting keywords that already rank is the “low hanging fruit” to get quicker traffic gains
- You can link build by tracking brand mentions to get easy links
- Answer boxes can be a great tactic when you’re dealing with an established website or industry leader
- WordPress offers lots of great SEO plugins that can save time and leapfrog you in SERPs
- Easy moves such as cloud hosting can vastly improve website performance
Video
Slides
Your feedback
Our highest rated event yet!
While I will be pestering more of you to complete the feedback surveys, it was really encouraging to see that the average rating of our speakers is up-trending, so the bar has been set for SearchNorwich 5!
Again, I want to give a big thank you to Lukasz Zelezny, who despite train problems in London – still opted to take an Uber and then a train to get to Norwich on time, so as not to let us down. What a hero!
Venue, venue, venue.
I tried to get some sense on how everybody was feeling with the venue – and it is clear there is no big feeling one way or another. At the moment, the only issue we have experienced with the brilliant St. George’s Works is the size of the TV that the presentations are being done on. I’ve spoken to the venue about this and they are looking at the possibility of upgrading next week, so I will wait to hear back from then and partially base the decision on where to host on this.
There are other options – but St. George’s Works has been amazing for us in supporting and getting SearchNorwich off the ground, it’s a great venue and I personally think it would be a shame to leave unless attendance numbers made it necessary.
Thanks again to our speakers, attendees and sponsors
Our sponsors for January 2019 were Integro, R13 Recruitment and of course, MP Photography & Videography – thank you all so much!
To give you a chance to recover from the holidays, we’re putting SearchNorwich 4 back to the second Thursday, 10th January 2019, as usual at St. George’s Works and kicking off at 6:15pm!
What’s this one all about?
In January, we’re going to have international speaker, Lukasz Zelezny join us to talk about SEO tactics to implement tonight. Lukasz is Director of Organic Performance for Zoopla, uSwitch and PrimeLocation and has spoken all over the world at SEO conferences, so he’ll definitely have some exciting tactics to share!
We’re also join by Natalie Haydon from Affinity Agency, one of Norwich’s most established digital agencies. Natalie’s talk, Why paid search strategies are so important for organisations will dive into agency strategies and various platforms, looking at how to find a match for your business model.
Mark Williams-Cook will be standing in for Natalie, giving a “promptly prepared” talk on the important facets of SEO that commonly get looked over in the development cycle – Why won’t somebody think of the robots?
Lorraine Bliss, MBE will be taking the much-loved charity spotlight in January to tell us about St Edmunds Society, better known as St-Eds. St-Eds is a non-profit organisation that supports the young people of Norfolk to gain accredited training.
Never been before?
You should! It’s a really friendly bunch of people and everyone comes with an open mind to learn. In fact, there are loads of reasons to come (apart from the free food, drinks, wine beer and cool arcade machines).
You’ll find out how people are really doing search marketing in the front line and winning results. Apart from listening to the speakers, it’s a great place to network if you’re after a job or just looking to swap advice with someone.
Event information:
Date: Thursday 1oth January 2019(!)
Time: 6:15pm – 9:00pm
Location: 1st Floor Event Space, St. George’s Works, Norwich, NR3 1DD
Tickets: Attendance is free but you need to register on MeetUp
Event Schedule:
18:15-18:45: Meet new people
Grab a name badge and a drink, wear a smile and you’ll meet some lovely people who want to talk to you about search (and probably other stuff, too!).
18:45-19:00: Charity spotlight: St Edmunds Society with Lorraine Bliss, MBE
19:00-19:30: Mark Williams-Cook: Why won’t somebody think of the robots?
How to utilise paid strategies to cut through in an ever increasingly competitive marketplace.
19:30-20:00: Lukasz Zelezny: SEO tactics to implement tonight
Easy to implement and performance improving tactics that can be implemented on almost every website.
20:00-21:00: Networking and chats
Refill your glasses, share your thoughts on what you’ve just learned and meet some new people! Drinks and snacks are kindly provided by our November 2018 sponsors.
How to find the venue:
Never fear, it’s easy to find! Google Maps will take you straight to the front door of St. Georges Works off Colegate which looks like this:
Take a step in and go through the doors directly ahead of you and up the first stairs, turn left and you’ll see a sign for “First Floor” – you’re almost there! Go through the first door on your right and you’ll walk into the 1st Floor Event Space, congratulations, you made it! Grab a name badge, a drink and meet some of the friendliest search marketers in Norwich.
Where to park:
If you’re arriving by car, the nearest car park is St.Andrews Car park which is a mere 3 minute walk away from the St. Georges Works venue. You can check how many parking spaces are free in St. Andrews with ParkBot.
January 2019 Sponsors