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There are few things we love more than getting our geek on with fellow search enthusiasts. Mediaworks search experts attend a number of key conferences throughout the year in order to do just that and we’d like to invite a few of you along to join us.

One of the first gatherings on the 2013 search circuit is Search Marketing Expo London (SMX), which takes place at Chelsea Football Club on May 15^th and 16^th. Top of the agenda is a talk telling us why ‘content remains King, Queen and Ace’ – a topic very close to our content-loving hearts.

As official blog partners of SMX we are able to share with you our exclusive discount code for the event, which nets you a fantastic 15% off the cost of a ticket. You can order yours and check out the agenda here.  To receive your discount simply enter the code MEDIAWORKS13 when you place your order.

We look forward to seeing you there and debating topics such as the finer points of Facebook’s new graph search with you.

Can’t make the show? Don’t forget to check back here on the Mediaworks blog for our own roundup of what was hot and happening at the SMX conference and remember our very own Claire Stokoe is speaking at another big search event – Linklove – next month. Read more about her forthcoming appearance here.

Our staff are supporting the Northumberland Conservatives’ “Buy One More Toy” Campaign, which aims to deliver toys to the region’s most poor children, who might otherwise receive no gifts at all.

We are calling on our extensive catalogue of clients and business partners to donate toys to the cause, and are hoping to transform the Mediaworks office into a Santa’s Grotto before we make the delivery to Northumberland Conservatives on Wednesday December 5.

Last year, the Social Action project gathered a total of 350 toys, giving the North East’s most destitute children a Christmas to remember.

This year we are hoping to reach out to these families on an even bigger scale, allowing countless more children feel the magic of Christmas this December 25^th.

If you would like to get involved, deliver your toys to SEO Santa at the new Mediaworks office on Princesway North before next Wednesday. You can also drop your presents off directly at the drop off points in Berwick, Alnwick, Hexham or Morpeth.

Remember… Nobody likes a Scrooge.

Blaydon Beer Festival 2012

mediaworks are pleased to announce they will be sponsoring ‘Workie Ticket‘, a tasty and complex 4.5% beer at the third annual Blaydon Beer Festival in aid of Marie Curie Cancer Care.

The event takes place at Blaydon RFC and due to the success of previous years, 2012’s event will feature a brand new layout including new catering facilities, more live music, a Wii challenge, Boot-Camp, wine lounge and a children’s entertainment tent.

A contribution of the proceeds as well as a number of fundraising events over the three day festival will be donated to the Marie Curie.

This year’s festival features a ‘Northern Beers’ theme and runs from Friday August 10^th – 12^th . If you’d like to join Mediaworks for a pint of ‘Workie Ticket’ why not buy a ticket for the Blaydon Beer Festival 2012.

Under a blue sky in 17 degree heat, Sunday, 25th March saw several members of the Mediaworks team complete a gruelling six mile run around the banks of the River Tyne all in aid of Sport Relief at the Newcastle/Gateshead Sainsbury’s Sport Relief Mile.

Raising Money For Charity

In the first charity-led event that Mediaworks have staged, several of our clients contributed by digging deep and donating to the Sport Relief cause as well as other donations including running t-shirts kindly donated from Northern Runner and water bottles from Leisure Lakes Bikes.

As a result of these charitable donations, we have raised over £1,000 for Sport Relief so far with several more donations still being made.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who donated for making this worthwhile, the amazing staff at Mediaworks who may not have ran but put just as much work into drumming up support and everyone else that made the pain worthwhile by supporting our team of runners.

We are delighted to announce that Mediaworks Online Marketing has been appointed by luxury men’s designer house Alfred Dunhill Ltd to provide a complete Online Marketing Campaign including Search Engine Optimisation and Pay Per Click management.

Established in 1893, Alfred Dunhill Ltd has a long history of providing luxury items for men including Leather, Menswear and accessories allowing Alfred Dunhill to become a leading international luxury brand for men.

Throughout the course of our campaign, we will be assisting dunhill through extensive search engine optimisation, a bespoke pay per click strategy and technical consultation to improve their brand exposure online as well as increasing online revenue.

We are pleased to announce that we have been nominated for two awards at the upcoming UK Search Awards to be held at the home of Arsenal Football Club, The Emirates Stadium, on Thursday, 3rd November 2011.

Featuring a judging panel comprising of some of the UK’s leading names in UK Search including Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and Hitwise, the UK Search Awards are deemed to be one of the highest recognised awards in the UK for the Digital sector.

Following the first judging session last week , Mediaworks Online Marketing have been shortlisted for both the “est Use Of Search (Retail)” category for our SEO campaign with Leisure Lakes Bikes as well as the “Best Agency” category for our overall performance as a leading digital marketing agency.

To reach the shortlist for the UK Search Awards’ Best Use of Search (Retail) category, we had to meet a stringent set of criteria, including:

• Campaign Objectives.
• Campaign Strategy &Target Audience.
• Creativity & Implementation throughout the Campaign.
• Results, Evaluation and Return on Investment for the Campaign.

As well as providing in-depth evidence of our success, the criteria for UK Search Awards’ Best Agency category also required:

• Agency Objectives
• Recent Campaign Examples
• Recent Achievements
• Challenges to the Business

By successfully meeting criteria for both of these categories, we are proud to be nominated by the UK Search Awards and it is testament to our hard work throughout the last 12 months by the team at Mediaworks Online Marketing and we hope to continue the high standard of success that both ourselves and our clients expect.

Wish us luck for the 3rd November 2011.

As part of this year’s 75th Anniversary Celebrations of Team Valley, a special charity fund-raising It’s A Knockout tournament was held on Sunday 21st August 2011.

Comprising of 10 local teams from the Team Valley Trading Estate, Mediaworks entered a team made up of our Managing Director Brett Jacobson, Business Development Director Phil Dedman and several members of our Customer Relationship, Online Marketing and Business Development departments to help raise money for FACT (Fighting All Cancers Together).

The famous It’s A Knockout assault course made up of several mini-games involving inflatables, water, an uneven wheelbarrow and a lot of foam ensured a fun-packed day for all. And to add to our continual success as a business we finished a very respectable 3rd place only two points behind eventual winners, The Homes and Communities Agency.

Photos from Team Valleys It’s A Knockout

Site Authority Links

Commonly known as sitelinks, Google would show 4 to 6 important sitelinks either inline or underneath a search engine result listing that was deemed to have authority on the keyphrase used; more commonly than not this was in relation to brand searches.

Mega Sitelinks

Over the past week, Google has been seen testing “Mega Sitelinks” – the same premise but now including up to 12 listings and taking up much more space than before .  Below you can see examples of our very own mega sitelinks.

What are the benefits of Mega Sitelinks?

From a brand perspective, mega sitelinks are a phenomenal change. Not only is it a dream ticket for online reputation management, but it acts as a massive advertising board for your brand. Not only are you ensuring that the user only sees your brand, but you are also showing important pages about your brand.  Obviously pages that you do not wish to show can be removed in Google Webmaster Tools.

Blended Mega Sitelinks

One further addition that we have seen is the transition of mega sitelinks to blended search results (aka Universal search results).

Below is a screenshot of one of our clients, Hayes Garden World, with blended mega sitelinks search results of:

• Mega Sitelinks
• Google Places Listing
• Google Places Photo Listings

This is a fantastic UI change from the client’s perspective and is the ultimate search result for a brand result. They have full 100% coverage within the search result pages ensuring maximum exposure to a user.

We also noticed that we experienced blended mega sitelinks later in the day:

Brands built on search phrases

Whilst non-brand searches remain unaffected there are several instances of brands who have built businesses on exact match domain names.  Again, a client of ours, Online Boilers, benefits hugely from these tests:

What this means for Non-brand searches

This is the question that most SEO companies and clients alike will want answered.  After all, imagine if this was triggered for generic searches?

As with all Google tests, this could be gone within the next few days and be forgotten about, but I suspect that this will be here to stay and make the #1 spot in an organic search a much more commercially viable target for a search engine optimisation campaign.

The changes required were to involve the option to browse websites without cookies – a text file that helps organise and store browsing information. However, many web development companies, IT consultants and specialists commented that this is simply too big a change within the timelines especially since the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) gave no examples of what would be deemed a legally sufficient alternative.

Deferred For a Year

Because of the confusion surrounding the legal requirements and alternatives, it was announced on the day of the deadline that the EU Cookie Directive was to be deferred for a year to allow businesses to come up with a sufficient solution to the problems voiced by professionals across many industries.

One such problem was the use of cookies that did collect personal user information, but were actually used to assist a user navigate a website.  Examples of such use include:

• Geo-Targeting
  Setting a cookie to store information on which country a user is best suited to/has chosen when visiting a multi-national website.
• Sessions
  Cookies are used by websites to allow users to remain “logged in” to websites. This includes single session and 30 day sessions.

The Impact to Online Marketing

The main concern for digital marketing agencies was the high usage of visitor tracking software including Google Analytics – software that is reliant on “tracking cookies”. Without the placement of tracking cookies, it hinders the gathering of information – anonymously – in order to improve the user experience. Such information is used to highlight problems such as:

• Exit Pages
• Bounce Rates
• Time On The Page

All of the above are used to improve websites thus creating a better user experience.

There have been many examples of how businesses have interpreted the law and their implemented solutions.  A common solution has involved the creation of a pop up box asking for consent to create the cookies on a user’s machine.  If the user chooses not to, then no cookies are created and programs such as Google Analytics are unable to track and collate useful user experience information.

As it stands, there is no fool-proof solution to limit the impact to both users and businesses, but the clock is counting down to 2012.