Digital Cream

I was lucky enough to go speak at Digital Cream yesterday.

It was a really good event. Speaking in the Natural Search track I was able to pick my own agenda and discuss SEO issues which face decision makers responsible for marketing big brands.

What did I cover? This was an audience who didn't need to be told what a meta tag was but I thought it would be a nice idea to pause and examine whether meta tags actually work these days. Of course they do, well, if you know how to use them right. Some meta tags are easy - like "y_key" or "noydir" - but others are a little tricky. One important phrase to use here is "quality signal" and that's a phrase Matt Cutts popped into his keynote speech at SES London this year.

One of my favourite "blue sky" discussions at sessions like this the future. What's coming next. There are some easy ones like Video Search and Radio advertising. I'm bias, of course, but also keen that the right people are there to help brands step into the world of Google/dmarc radio.

The old media way would have large, slow and traditional agencies plod forward with scripts and haggling for air time. In the future I hope that new media agencies are there to push the boundaries of technology and marketing.

New media agencies - like full search agencies - are right at home with Google's way of doing things (unlike dmarc's founders who quit - rumours say because they didn't like Google's 'new media' way of doing things) and are positioned to answer questions like "What was the ROI of that radio ad?". The challenge new media agencies face is that of resources. I can't think of many search agencies equipped to compose radio adverts! We're lucky in that we've a room decked out with recording gear in the Edinburgh headquarters for our experiments with podcasting.

Digital Cream disallows agencies from sitting in each others' presentations (though I think I recognised a few faces!) so I didn't get to see what other people wanted to talk about.

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