Semrush Australian Search Awards
Spent an evening at the Opera House last week dressed up to the nines and had the honour of being a judge at the SEMrush Australian Search Awards. The event was a great opportunity to mingle with the industry on a grand scale and celebrate the work of many newbies in the industry as well as share some ideas on future direction.
What I learned
- The SEMrush Search Awards are well worth entering
- Do you know the return for your efforts?
- Why excellence makes money
- Percentage growth isn’t real growth
- How to win a Search Award
Transcript
Hey, welcome back Rankers. What a week. The SEMrush Search Awards, the inaugural event of the year, and if you missed it, make sure you`re there next year, because it was a fantastic event at the Sydney Opera House. Look at these beautiful people. Well some of them are a little bit scary! And well done for SEMrush for putting on the event and Don`t Panic for organising everything, because it was the first time in the history of our industry locally where we`ve all pretty much come together as a group to celebrate our efforts and we need to do more of it.
What`s your return?
So a couple of weeks ago, I was at the US Search Awards and it celebrated, well some of the things that are celebrated … or one of the main things that`s celebrated is excellence. I know some people probably were a little bit miffed that they didn`t get an award or whatever else, but for me, as one of the judges, one of the key criteria that I was looking at … and I know a lot of the other judges were doing this as well because we were instructed to … Ha! What we were looking at this was, what`s the return? What is the client`s return on the investment that they have made with you as a search professional? Because at the end of the day, that`s what we`re trying to do, right? We`re trying to encourage excellence and excellence is making money for the clients. And that was a key criterion.
A lot of people came back with … There were a lot of entries, I should say … came back with, `Oh, we achieved x percent growth.` Well, that could mean anything. I`ve got a client here that we have achieved … I don`t know. Two hundred thousand percent growth or something. It`s a ridiculous number, and the reason for that is it`s a new site. So when I compare it month on month of course the numbers look awesome, but they`re just a bit ridiculous. And I`m not sucking people to death, but I`m saying that if you put a percentage growth in there, it`s hard for the judges to know what value that is for the client. You can double business, but you might go from one dollar to two dollars, all right? It`s not that great. And that was one of the main criteria.
I know for the bulk of them, we were just looking for the ones that just stood out as far as the accomplishments and what they did. And well done to Harry and Jason, Search Personalities of the Year. Really deserving winners, and some of the things that we`re seeing now with some of the youth that are entering into the industry … it`s just really encouraging. It`s just fantastic. So I would encourage everyone to enter.
How to win a search award
Now, here`s the thing: SEMrush and the head judge, Judith – hi, Judy! Judge Judy. Scared of spiders, huh? If you go here, Olga and Judith did an awesome webinar on telling you how to win a Search Award. Now, I attended Judith`s session at Pubcon last year. She wasn`t there this year because she was here in Australia. In that presentation, which surprised me because there was only about … geez, it would`ve been lucky to have been 10 of us in the room. Sorry, Judy. But it`s a true story. And it was such valuable content, and this webinar is no different.
Now, how many views has this thing had? Does it tell us? Ah, it`s not on. And now we`ve got a SlideShare. Oh, here we go: `How to win a Search Award.` We have to sign up. And it`s in German. SEMrush, fix that. But if you get to go and have a listen to that, or you`re going to enter before next year, go and have a listen to that because Judith basically just goes into everything that`s important. It`s got to be clear, it`s got to be concise, we`ve got to see what you`re trying to do. All those sorts of things. And the ones that were successful clearly showed that. They clearly demonstrated those things.
In some instances, it was a little bit hard because there were some cases of, say, internal SEOs using external agencies, and it wasn`t clear – for me, anyway – how much of a part the external agency had in getting the results for that SEO at their business. So please enter next year and encourage everyone else to, and go and have a look at Judith`s presentation on how to win an award because it really is … she just tells you how to do it. It`s great. So just go and do that.
All right, thank you very much, everyone. That is it for this week. Coming to you this week from the live studio and hope to bring you more live events and new setups. It`ll take us a little while to get sorted. Left the remote for the plasma at the other office. I have to go and get that. Anyway, we`ll see you next week. Thanks very much, everyone. Bye.
Jim’s been here for a while, you know who he is.
