Let's be honest the SEO industry doesn't have the best reputation but what can we do help our businesses and make the world a better place at the same time?
I don’t intend to give a deep Philosophical lecture (because I can’t). Let’s be honest, the SEO industry doesn't have the best reputation so, as most of the Industry is here at BrightonSEO, I wanted to explore and start a discussion about what we could do help our businesses and make the world a better place at the same time?
Well to kick off, let’s just relish the many reasons we’ve got to be cheerful, over and above the olympics
We can’t complain, we’re well paid; the average senior SEO Manager in an Agency is on £32.5k By the way, I’d just like to make it clear that I’m not the Brighton based agency owner on £200k, much as I’d like to be
Outside of SEO, you’d be waiting 10-19 years to earn that paypacket
BrightonSEO! Is great because of the open sharing of ideas and experiences together with the free training and networking and after party which I think is unique and something special. We’ve got Kelvin and his team and our generous sponsors to thank for that. I hope it goes from strength to strength.
But other people often see things differently
Marketing – we help businesses sell more stuff we don’t need which doesn’t generally help our little blue planets ecology
Our lovely people – apparently we’re all Cowboys who don’t deliver the results / dishonest / image of baby eater
We have no future, according to ourselves
The company we keep is sometimes questionable
And we’re the ones actually writing the bad news stories That’s not helping any of us so here are some thoughts, a conversation starter for how we can help each other to do better
We need to be a bit more grown up about how we talk about stuff – Antony’s talk about brand is a good example. We’re getting better at that, like the talks at BrightonSEO have moved on quite a bit over the past few years Lets do a great job and get recognised for it Our people aren’t cowboys
Help small businesses to get noticed Julie founded The Cambridge Satchel Company from her kitchen table in 2008 with just £600. When Julie discovered no one was producing traditional leather satchels she set about designing and producing them. Since then she has sold them online and created a global fashion craze. Her company is heading to a turnover of £10m this year.
Why not use our skills as an industry to help a charity (or charities) which cannot afford our SEO skills / needs help to raise funds and let’s make them rich so they can deliver their wildest dreams
In our own small way, we’ve focussed most of our CSR efforts on helping NSPCC with our brand new ABCs of SEO ebook launched today on Amazon to commemorate our 10 th birthday next month and with all profits going to NSPCC
What a great way to build your customer relationships; help them with their CSR campaigns BM realised when people move, they throw away loads of stuff which Scope would be pleased to sell in their shops. So our social media team promoted the campaign on a reduced fee basis and Up to July 2012, Bishop’s Move had provided the charity with over £23,000 worth of items
You can access great talent by investing in the UoB Placement programme which is so good, we’ve sponsored the digital media course for 8 years now
To put the potential collaboration into an SEO context, look at the way the search companies in Brighton cooperate when it is in their collective interest to do so and that Wired Sussex is an organisational example of that (with SV, whitehat and icrossing on its board). They do work (like getting faster broadband into Brighton) which any individual would not have the resource to make happen
Wired Sussex also created the SIP programme Sadly slowed down duer to gov’t cut backs We hired some of our best talent from the SIP programme and the sad thing is that if we had put our hands in our pockets as an industry, we probably could have kept it going If we as an i