The Drum Awards for Marketing - Extended Deadline

-d -h -min -sec

Trinity Mirror SEO SEO Rankings

Q&A: Rob Hammond, Head of SEO at Trinity Mirror Group

Author

By Stephen Lepitak, -

November 5, 2014 | 7 min read

Having joined the jury for The Drum Search Awards, Trinity Mirror's head of SEO answers some questions on his career and his views on the search marketing industry, offering his insight on Google's dominance over the sector and the impact that wearables and the Internet of Things will have too.

Rob Hammond Trinity Mirror

How did you get into working in search?

Like many in the industry, my route into search wasn't particularly linear. My degree was music related, and whilst looking for a job in the music industry I got a job working on improving the accessibility of a few small government websites. After that I joined a music publisher doing online marketing for a digital sheet music website.

I found search the most interesting element of my work there – SEO was a relatively new industry in 2005, and appeared to be a dynamic and creative area to work in. Search was also central to what I was reading at the time – John Battelle's "database of intentions", and Chris Anderson's "Long Tail" theories caught my imagination and helped to push me towards specialising in search.

Search has quickly become a crucial component to every marketer's brand strategy - but where do you feel it is still falling down generally?

In general search still fails a lot of the time - although SEO may be included in most online marketing strategies these days, it is still too often treated as a checkbox activity, to be tacked on at the end rather than something that is built into a campaign from its inception.

In my experience search specialists often end up spending too much time checking a final product against SEO best practices, rather than working on imaginative ways to build and promote a solid, search-friendly product.

Spend through search has become a normal approach over the years, are we near an end to seeing people truly attempts to game the SEO system or will that never go away?

Whenever there is significant financial gain to be made, there will always be attempts at gaming the system - SEO has been a popular target for so many years due to the low cost and high reward of doing so. I don't think this will be going away any time soon; you just need to look at the search results for [payday loans] to see that.

Google has put a lot of effort into making sure that gaming the system is more difficult, along with providing strong disincentives for brands and even agencies themselves to work against their rules. I think they've been more successful in doing this over the past few years, but there's still a very long way to go before 'cheating' in the search game is eradicated.

Google dominates the search landscape - in your opinion, how does this affect the sector?

As with any market, I'd argue it's unhealthy to have one company wielding a market share close to 90 per cent (in the UK). The search industry is weaker because of a lack of serious competition, and the huge barriers to entry of building a viable competitor.

The search sector is affected in every possible way by Google's dominance – it means that new 'features' such as link disavowal can significantly change how various elements within the sector work overnight.

It also means the decisions they take can affect the very fabric of the web – for example, many people jumped on the announcement of HTTPS as a ranking factor. Google then stated people wouldn't see any "visible change" in their rankings as a result of switching protocols.

Although on the surface it is a good thing to move to HTTPS, it's not always easy and some webmasters may have brought on more problems than benefits by switching prematurely, in the hope of a little extra Google traffic.

The emergence of niche search engines such as DuckDuckGo and Wolfram Alpha is encouraging, and the growth of in-app search and highly specialized app-based search engines such as Uber (in which Google invested $250m last year) means there may still be space for other, smaller players in the search market as mobile evolves - provided they don't get snapped up by Google first!

Will wearables or the Internet of Things impact the search sector and if so, how you see that evolving?

Absolutely. I think over time the effect on the sector will be profound. We're finally coming to a stage where mobile traffic is overtaking desktop, and that is just a warning shot of what's to come. Google's moves into wearables and technologies such as DropCam and Nest (along with patents on ranking results based on your TV viewing habits) show some indications of how important this will be for search.

Beyond that, what the term 'search' actually means is evolving. Google's Amit Singhal stated that "the destiny of search is to become that 'Star Trek' computer," that knows what you want before you ask for it. Wearables and the Internet of Things make that vision (more) possible; context will become a key focus in search over the coming years as a result.

What will you be looking for while judging The Drum Search Awards?

Entries that show innovation, process and results. Fully and concisely answering a brief is essential – producing work beyond the brief or ignoring the entry template is just as likely to kill an entry as make it stand out.

Clarity and transparency are other essential factors. Judges won't necessarily spend time trying to decipher what you mean if you aren't clear – however, don't assume that a judge won't double-check your claims of increased search visibility. If your entry gets hit by a penalty, has a spammy link profile, or otherwise has something that looks like it's being hidden, it's probably best to submit something else!

@robhammond

The Drum Search Awards launched this year to recognise and reward the most innovative, creative and effective search campaigns and strategies across PPC, SEO and performance. Entries for the awards will be accepted until 6 March 2015.

Entry registrations can be made through The Drum Search Awards website.

Trinity Mirror SEO SEO Rankings

More from Trinity Mirror

View all

Trending

Industry insights

View all
Add your own content +