One of the earliest website for the SEO industry was Search Engine Watch. And Search Engine Watch has just brought in Jonathan Allen as its brand new Director. Jonathan Allen is one of the smartest viral marketing experts you would ever meet in the SEO industry and we were lucky enough to get this opportunity to chat with Jonathan Allen.

Watch our full interview with Jonathan Allen of Search Engine Watch below:

Search and Discovery

For those who have been watching and working with Search Engines from many number of years it is great to see how the simple process of finding information has changed so much. Search engines today are doing a lot more than simply spidering your web site for new content. As Jonathan puts it “Search is changing from finding things to discovering things process and broadcasting intentions which then become signals to the search engines.”
That was a very important statement as search has changed from simply finding information to discovering new things. At the same time, the human behavior on the web has changed too. With the exploding use of Social Media we are discovering new information, new places, new friends, new opportunities, etc. You name it. Before we went to the engines and typed in what we were looking for but now we are discovering things without even looking for things. As Jonathan explains that as users we are providing new signals to the search engines who in turn are building these User Generated Signals into their search algorithm. Mike Grehan, one of the SEO legends (and an all round great guy), did a great research paper last year on the new signals for search engines.
Jonathan further states his point by stating “Traditionally, creating links, page titles, anchor text, meta tags are like sending signals and optimizing for the search engines. Now we have mobile and social networks where we create signals for the search engines which in turn come and index that into their search rankings. You have new services where you take a picture of a location and it will automatically tell where the place is located. These are great signals to the engines and they are all user generated content.”

Search Engine Optimization in the UK

Since Jonathan Allen is originally from the UK I ask him how different the search market is in the UK as compared to the US. To that Jonathan answers “In the US there is a strong emphasis on PPC where everyone is doing PPC but it is not as big in the UK. SEO on the other hand is also very big in the UK just like in the US. Then there is local search which is huge in the US but not so in the UK.” These were indeed some great observations as sitting on this side of the pond we sometimes forget about the global nature of SEM.

Cool Content for Link Building

Not many of you may know but Jonathan Allen is an expert in creating some viral assets that are link worthy. Jonathan recently presented at Search Engine Strategies (SES) conference on a panel called “Developing Great Content” where his presentation revolved around developing viral content. Jonathan shares his insights on content by stating “You can create cool content for your website and not worry about whether they would link to me or not. By creating cool content you take the whole decision of linking completely out of their hand and give them something so cool that it is worth linking to.”
To get more insights please watch our full video interview above.

About Jonathan Allen:
Jonathan came on board as Director of Search Engine Watch with Incisive Media in December 2009. This newly created role will see him bring the spirit of collaboration back to Search Engine Watch and transform the site into a vibrant community of search and tech marketing professionals.
Before joining Search Engine Watch, Jonathan worked as Search Marketing Specialist for Incisive Media on leading B2B print/online publications and job boards in the legal, tech and finance sectors (websites such as Legal Week, TheInquirer.net, V3.co.uk, Accountancy Age Jobs & Computing Careers)
Before Incisive Media, Jonathan worked as a SEO consultant and also co-founded Moblog:tech, an award winning mobile social networking software provider and owner of the webby award winning mobile social network, Moblog. In 2008 Moblog:tech’s build of Channel 4′s The Big Art Mob won the community engagement award at MediaGuardian Awards for Innovation (MEGAS), The Royal Television Society’s “On The Move” award, and received 3 BAFTA nominations.
In 2009, Moblog won the Experimental & Innovation Webby award for a collaborative mapping project with Shozu. Convergence of the search, social, mobile and gaming industries is what is really inspiring Jonathan in 2010.

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