Tonight, the UnGagged team attends the biggest celebration of search, PPC and digital marketing in the UK – the UK Search Awards. This event which celebrates the expertise, talent and achievements of the search industry has been running for six years and attracts hundreds of applicants. This year the UK Search Awards will be hosted by one of the UK’s most popular comedians, Jason Manford, so you know you’re guaranteed a laugh!

Not only will UnGagged be attending but our CEO, Greg Hayman, will also be presenting the Best SEO Software Suite Award. Good luck to all the UK Search Awards nominees, we will be there to show our support. You can check out the 2016 UK Search Awards shortlist here.

We can’t wait to celebrate with the biggest names in UK search. Come along to support your friends in the industry, and say hello to the UnGagged team! We look forward to seeing you at The Bloomsbury Big Top!

UK Search Awards 2016

Before Michael Podolsky‘s session at UnGagged Las Vegas 2016 tomorrow, we sat down with him for an exclusive interview.

UnGagged: Tell us a bit about your background and how you got started in SEO.

Michael Podolsky: I received my CS degree many moons ago from Queens College, NY and have been working in different industries as a developer growing to the Director on one of the largest Wall Street firms.  I started with SEO a bit over 10 years ago and have been fascinated with the field since then.  Keeping track of Google, constantly changing its algo; Learning about human psychology; Improving User Experience designs…  I love it.

pissedconsumer.com is the project that I have dedicated past 10 years of my life and I love it.

Throughout my SEO career, I have survived and come out stronger with Google’s Zoo Pandas and Penguins…  We even survived a 9 month Google Ban.

I am HUGE fan of Freedom of Speech.  Ability to speak freely is the greatest Right, Responsibility and driving force behind Free Markets.

UnGagged: What will you be speaking about at UnGagged?

Michael: At UnGagged I will be talking about Wild Wild West.  Internet has been compared to Wild Wild West often and I will draw parallels between Cowboys and today’s Internet Marketers.   Lack or insufficiency of laws that existed in America back then can be drawn as a parallel line to the insufficiency of regulation on the internet today.  I am certainly not advocating for regulation of the internet.  I am certain that this eco-system, this is what allows for the Internet to innovate and grow.

Internet today is very little regulated and we live by certain set of rules that are not written anywhere, but understandable to people in SEO trade.   I will talk about bending of the rules and breaking them.

During my presentation, I will share my insights into US Legal system and how it affects internet.  I will draw on examples from PissedConsumer and other popular websites from the industry of Consumer Reviews.

UnGagged: In your niche sector, what’s the most annoying SEO misconception?

Michael: I get annoyed when people in SEO believe that “Competitor will never find out”…  I will speak about it at the conference.

UnGagged: What is your current favorite SEO tool or platform?

Michael: Google Analytics and Webmaster. I also like Yandex Webvisor.  You can learn a lot by understanding behavior of visitors to your site

Lance Bachmann founded 1SEO.com Digital Agency 7 years ago with a few ideas about how to help businesses build an online presence. Today, that business has grown into a global digital marketing firm with a team of more than 60 digital marketers. Prior to his  UnGagged Las Vegas 2016 session, Lance sat down for an exclusive interview with UnGagged

UnGagged: Tell us a bit about your background and how you got started in SEO.

Lance Bachmann: I’ve been in digital marketing for over a decade. I got my start as an employee at AT&T and eventually went on to become the first employee of YP.com, where I managed over 750 employees. As the first employee, I helped take the company from $0 to being worth over $150 million. During my time there, I saw how critical it was for businesses to have a strong web presence, because I witnessed consumers shift from print to digital up close.

I knew that business owners of all sizes would benefit from setting up a digital campaign, so I branched out to start my own firm in 2009, which began with a focus on SEO and has since evolved into a full-service digital agency that offers the gamut of online marketing solutions.

We’ve since rebranded from 1SEO.com to 1SEO.com Digital Agency, but SEO remains a large part of our business model. The only difference is that now we take an integrated approach to our clients’ marketing by incorporating paid advertising, social media, and content marketing. We laid the foundation with SEO strategies, reporting, and metrics – but now we’re building on that foundation with our other services.

Each year brings changes to the way we view SEO and search marketing, requiring a comprehensive understanding of algorithm changes and updates to the way search engines display results. The best part about this industry is that it’s always changing, and we have to stay on our toes to ensure our clients achieve success.

UnGagged: What will you be speaking about at UnGagged?

Lance: In order to win online, you have to be familiar with the updates and changes Google makes; so I’ll be speaking about how to keep up with the latest advances in order to not only stay relevant, but also increase brand awareness and ROI in the digital space.

Google is announcing a slew of new information and analytical options that help you hone in on your target audience, and I’ll be clueing the audience into these updates. You’ll learn about things like the impact of cross-device remarketing and demographic targeting for search ads.

Some of the other talking points include new forms of targeting and the updated reporting metrics available within AdWords and Analytics. For example, Analytics has included some new features that make it easier to collaborate and understand audience behavior, such as session quality score, which predicts the likelihood of a visitor making a purchase. I’ll dive into the effects of these updates and discuss how to take advantage of these features to hit the ground running in 2017.

UnGagged: In your niche sector, what’s the most annoying SEO misconception?

Lance: When I hear people say that rankings are everything and content is king, they couldn’t be more wrong. The internet is flooded with content. You can have the best blog, but if you don’t have any links pointing to the blog, domain authority to your site, or traffic, your audience won’t find that piece of content through search.

Likewise, with the constant algorithm updates like RankBrain and Hummingbird, Google is moving away from a focus on keywords and looking more at the relevance of the page. How are you answering or adding value to a particular query?

Going into 2017, SEO is all about intent and relevance, and Google will display your results based on these two factors. If you’re deemed a relevant website and appeal to user intent, you’ll see that your traffic and revenue will increase.

UnGagged What is your current favorite SEO tool or platform?

Lance: Google Analytics is the most useful and trusted tool that I use because the metrics don’t lie. I can see everything and get answers to all my questions based on the data in front of me. I’ll see how the site is performing based on previous periods, which pages are strongest, and how visitors are landing on my site.

Diving into the data allows me to see engagement and bounce rate, learn what is working and what should be adjusted, and how much ROI I’m receiving based on my marketing. It provides information about all digital marketing initiatives, including social, paid, and organic.

Plus, it’s free. Once you install the tracking code and a cookie is dropped to each user, the data will continue to update so you can see how users are interacting with your website.

UnGagged: What is the best thing about UnGagged?

Lance: UnGagged brings the best SEO professionals together into one room to discuss the latest news, techniques, and trends in digital marketing. You may think that you’re up to date, but there’s a very good chance you’ll learn multiple things from other speakers. The actionable items that are taken away allow me to bring back thoughts to my team, helping them progress and ensuring our clients progress by taking advantage of new trends learned at UnGagged.

Alex Moss has been working in Search since 2007 working in all aspects from in-house to agency employee to agency owner, and has had the opportunity to work with some big brands including Expedia and UNILAD. Prior to his session at UnGagged Las Vegas 2016 he granted UnGagged an interview.

UnGagged: Tell us a bit about your background and how you got started in SEO.

Alex Moss: I guess I could say that I was doing SEO before I even knew what it was. I started building websites in 1997 as a hobby. One I built, a South Park fan site, used to attract 1000’s of visits each day and even earned some money from it.

Throughout university I continued to design websites on a freelance basis. After graduating, I worked in television production but noticed the lack of security, career progression and freedom of creativity so went back into web design on a more professional level.

In 2008, I started working for a startup software company as their “webmaster” – handling anything from code issues on the website all the way to handling online customer support. Whilst there, I was asked what I knew about SEO. I knew nothing, so they invested on a course for me and it went from there!

UnGagged: What will you be speaking about at UnGagged?

Alex: I’ll be speaking about how you can improve your time management by sharing a number of tools and tips to help with your SEO strategy and development.

There are also loads of SEO tools out there that we all know of, but I want to share how some of these tools can be used in a better way to help you save time, stay focussed and produce better work for your client.

UnGagged: In your niche sector, what’s the most annoying SEO misconception?

Alex: I haven’t “owned” a niche sector as I have worked in many over the years. However, one large misconception that I have seen with clients is that they have been sold into having a bespoke CMS developed in order to help SEO when this is not necessarily true.

Yes, some out-of-the-box CMS platforms aren’t SEO friendly upon installation, but these issues can be solved. Bespoke CMS’s however fall under the arm of the company who developed it and can harm the visibility of a site more so than any other solution.

UnGagged: What is your current favorite SEO tool or platform?

Alex: Screaming Frog is obvious as it really provides a lot of information that is actually actionable immediately. However, myself and the team have been using SISTRIX more frequently at the moment as it provides a lot of useful data for a number of different tasks that you may carry out.

UnGagged: What is the best thing about UnGagged?

Alex: The audience, the networking, and of course the content and quality of the speakers! When people invest in attending conferences it’s great to know that when it comes to UnGagged that everyone is happy for the value they get from the conference and what they can do once they get back to the office.

Robert Hansen has been in computer security for more than 20 years and his passion is breaking web technologies to make them better. Ahead of his session at UnGagged Las Vegas 2016 we sat down with him for an interview to learn more about his background and his thoughts on returning to UnGagged.

UnGagged: Tell us a bit about your background and how you got started in SEO.

Robert Hansen: I’ve been working in computer security for well over 20 years. Along the way I got involved with affiliates (building and running early affiliate programs), SEO (specifically as it relates to hacking sites to get links) and SEM (as the 11th employee at ValueClick).  Over the years, I’ve cultivated a lot of knowledge about the technical aspects of SEO and online marketing as a whole.  These days I run a site called smartphoneexec.com where I discuss how to move from a laptop to smartphone, which has got me far more into influencer programs.

UnGagged: What will you be speaking about at UnGagged?

Robert: The title of the presentation is “Negative SEO – the dark arts”.  Without spoiling it, I’m going to go on a whirlwind tour of how guys like me think about negative SEO and how you should be too if you care about your site.

UnGagged: In your niche sector, what’s the most annoying SEO misconception?

Robert: I think people are cozying up way too much with Google Analytics.  For people like me, you will never, ever see me in your logs if you rely entirely on Google Analytics.  Raw logs are the only things that have a hope of telling the true story.

UnGagged: What is your current favorite SEO tool or platform?

Robert: I’ve really been enjoying Onpage.org’s recommendations.  It really brings it down to the extremely accessible.  And the best part is it’s free up to 1000 pages, so for all new sites, it’s a must.

UnGagged: What is the best thing about UnGagged?

Robert: The people of course.  Last year I had two great conversations that lead to incredible findings over the course of the following year.  I’m excited to be back.

Ahead of his Las Vegas 2016 session on measuring your website for site performance, Thom Craver gave an interview to UnGagged. From system administration to coding to marketing, few have the full 360-degree view of modern day digital marketing than Thom.

UnGagged: Tell us a bit about your background and how you got started in SEO.

Thom Craver: I had been building Web content for about 4 years and started my own design and hosting business. Pretty much every time I built website for a client, I’d get the inevitable question “So you built it. Now they’ll come, right?” and I always had that uneasy feeling in my gut as I sheepishly replied “uh.. yeaaaahh.” So I made it my business to learn how to get people to websites. So, naturally, I started reading everything I could find. Lo and behold, there were conferences and blogs and people discussing this all over. The business pivoted and I added SEO services. I later led a merger of my business with a local interactive agency and lead the SEO department for the merged company. That turned into measuring performance. It started as proof of the SEO we were doing, but quickly became a lesson in “well people are coming, staying, but not converting. Why?” Again, I pivoted. This time toward analytics and conversion optimization.

UnGagged: What will you be speaking about at UnGagged?

Thom: I’ll be discussing how to properly measure your website using quick, painless methods. I’ll get into tag managers and some neat hacks to go beyond simple pages and visitors and show quick and dirty hacks to measure all kinds of non-pageview events, and even individual users between devices, not simply anonymous, unconnected sessions.

UnGagged: In your niche sector, what’s the most annoying SEO misconception?

Thom: As sad as it sounds, I still find people who don’t believe meta tags are dead and who don’t think analytics is important, beyond the meaningless vanity metrics. While it’s “neat” and “cool,” there’s far too many companies that still prefer their gut reaction to the actual data.

UnGagged: What is your current favorite SEO tool or platform?

Thom: For SEO, I’m a big fan of Screaming Frog spider. They’ve advanced the product so much over the years and the new integrations are great. For analytics, the new Data Studio is incredible and will give Tableau a run for its money. Mostly because Google’s product is free. You can use it with Analytics, AdWords and other platforms and even raw MySQL.

UnGagged: What is the best thing about UnGagged?

Thom: The quality of the speakers and the lessons they share. These people live and breathe SEO and all the challenges that come with it. Agency or in-house, you’ll get the real life lessons – the stuff you only get from years of experience in the trenches. I’m honored to stand beside them.

Jono Alderson has over a decade of blended experience in digital marketing, with expertise in SEO, analytics, brand strategy, campaign strategy, lead generation, eCRM automation, conversation rate optimisation and web development. He’s also the man who had attendees at our UnGagged London 2016 event wearing hats made out of tin foil. We caught up with him for an exclusive interview ahead of his session at UnGagged Las Vegas 2016.

UnGagged: Tell us a bit about your background and how you got started in SEO.

Jono Alderson: I started out as a web developer, but I became a little obsessed about trying to perfect my coding techniques and outputs; and before I realised it, what I was doing had become more like technical SEO than site development. I was lucky enough to join an ambitious agency with a growing SEO team, which gave me the opportunity to work with some really big national and global brands, and to gain a broader digital marketing perspective and focus than just SEO – I learned about brands, politics, strategy, and so forth. From there, I’ve kept on broadening and learning, and now I’m primarily thinking about the future of our industry, and what that’ll mean to us as individuals.

UnGagged: What will you be speaking about at UnGagged?

Jono: I’ve spent the last 18 months observing, analysing and building an understanding of the strategies which the mega brands like Google, Apple and Samsung are employing to win in their space. I’ll be exploring the implications that their actions will have on us as brands, consultants and practitioners in the digital space. There are some big changes coming with things like personal assistants, machine learning systems, and next-generation tech – my session is a bit of a whirlwind through all of that and more.

UnGagged: In your niche sector, what’s the most annoying SEO misconception?

Jono: That ‘doing SEO’ is an alternative to having a brand which deserves to rank – that you can take an undifferentiated organisation with a weak proposition, poor reputation or bad customer relationships, and ‘do SEO’ to fill in the gaps. That positioning is why we struggle for budget, are misunderstood, and are stuck executing on tactical, commodified activity. If people pivoted their thinking, to consider that good SEO is (at least, in part) what happens naturally as an output of developing a meaningful brand which wins hearts and minds – rather than a band-aid – we might finally step out of the shadows and make some real change.

UnGagged: What is your current favorite SEO tool or platform?

Jono: Of course, I have to say Linkdex! We’re about to launch some really awesome new tech which we think will shake the industry up quite heavily, and solve a lot of people’s problems. I can’t say much more than that at the moment, but watch this space.

UnGagged: What is the best thing about UnGagged?

Jono: The calibre of content is high, the speakers are empowered to run the schedule without politics or restriction, and the attendees are hyper-engaged. Even as a speaker, I come to learn, and to make sure that I’m keeping an open mind – as a technical and strictly ‘white hat’ SEO, I find it all too easy to create a filter bubble and ignore what’s going on around me, so being thrown into a pool of people with very different perspectives is hugely valuable.

After speaking at UnGagged London 2015, Alexandra Tachalova is returning to speak at UnGagged Las Vegas on “how to turn black hat and forbidden techniques into an ethical and non-forbidden approach.” Prior to her session, we reconnected with Alexandra to discuss all things SEO and UnGagged.

UnGagged: Tell us a bit about your background and how you got started in SEO

Alexandra Tachalova: I started as a traditional marketer in the automobile business. At the very beginning of my career, I used to work at a company that specialized in selling tires. That was dark times, when I realized that my work was never ending… At some point I was lucky enough to find a job that was related to digital marketing. At that position I was working with Salesforce CRM, helping a marketing department better understand how effectively they deliver their campaigns. And starting from that moment I’ve never worked in a company with traditional marketing objectives. All this allure of ‘digital’ has got me hooked, and that’s where I found my true passion. Currently I have 5+ years of digital marketing experience and I am an active member of this professional community.

After giving a try to various activities in SEO, — working with technical side of things, doing keyword research, acquiring links and etc., — I figured out that my strongest suite is to work at the cross section of disciplines: for instance, where SEO and PR meets, or where SEO collides with content marketing. So, as for now, I have a solid understanding of SEO, and I can help businesses to get the desirable results as quickly as possible and to keep up with the pace of market.

UnGagged: What will you be speaking about at UnGagged?

Alexandra: I want to talk about the strategies that various sites are using in order to rank high in a short period of time. During my presentation you’ll learn how to turn black hat and forbidden techniques into an ethical and non-forbidden approach. Of course, it’s a bit harsh to label SEO strategies as ‘white’ or ‘black’. But that is exactly the point I’m going to make: I’m going to consider some extreme cases to show that, actually, everything you do in SEO depends on implementation.

UnGagged: In your niche sector, what’s the most annoying SEO misconception?

Alexandra: Since I’m mostly dealing with clients from the digital marketing niche, I thought that people from this field must have a knack for staying away from misleading stereotypes. Yet, there’s a bunch of surprising things that I’ve never expected to face. For instance, there’s a common ‘bad habit’ people can’t break for quite a long time: many of us like to write useless articles that don’t bring any value not only for site’s visitors, but also for SEO. The only reason this deadly sin is still very much with us is because many believe that their websites can rank well without links. Another funny fact I’ve noticed is that there are a lot of digital marketers that do their outreach by spamming in comments (even on Inbound.org people do that).

UnGagged: What is your current favorite SEO tool or platform?

Alexandra: Right now I mostly use SimilarWeb and SEMrush for analyzing competitive landscape. Also, I can’t live without BuzzSumo and Ahrefs. These tools help me learn more about how content is performing in terms of social shares and backlinks.

UnGagged: What is the best thing about UnGagged?

Alexandra: I believe the best thing about UnGagged is the diversity of speakers and topics, and the opportunity to share ideas with like-minded folks. Not for the first time I’ll be speaking at UnGagged, so I know for sure that the crowd you gathered together for this upcoming conference is going to be very supportive. What I also love is that UnGagged allows its speakers to raise any topic of professional interest you may have, even a highly controversial one. This is a unique opportunity as well, since several events are likely to classify matters of such kind as irrelevant for their audience. So, I believe there’s no better place to talk about how to make users click more on your page from SERPs in order to make it rank higher;)