Would you like to elevate your SEO work to the next level? Or do you feel that you‘re already doing great work, but going unnoticed? Join our guests as they give first-rate hints, tips and advice on How to Win an SEO Award.
On this episode of Old Guard vs New Blood we discuss how to win an SEO award with Montse Cano, Kevin Gibbons and Gus Pelogia, and as usual, our host will be Dixon Jones.
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Dixon Jones
Hi, welcome to Old Guard, New Blood, episode 33. And today we’re going to be talking about how to win an SEO award. So we’ve got a great group here. Actually, to be honest with you, when it comes to knowing how to win SEO awards, I don’t think that we can get much better than what we’ve got here. So welcome to everybody for coming along. Thank you ever so much. Why don’t you all introduce yourselves? Montse, why don’t you start? Hi.
Montse Cano
Hi. Hi, everyone. My name is Montserrat Cano. I’m Montse Cano on Twitter. And I am an international SEO and digital marketing consultant. And I have done a bit of judging for a few of the Don’t Panic Awards.
Dixon Jones
Yeah, a fair amount of judging as I recall. So I think you’ve plenty of judging for that. So yeah, it’s good to have a judge in the room, but it’s not the only judge I think that we’ve got. Gus, why don’t you introduce yourself?
Gus Pelogia
Hi everyone, my name is Gus Pelogia. I used to work in agency for many years, so I’ve been on the entering awards for a while. And as I moved in house, I moved positions on the award as well. So I’ve been judging awards for around two years. Hopefully though we’ll have a lot of interesting stuff to share with people that are entering awards in the future.
Dixon Jones
Fantastic. So winner and judge as well. And then on the winning side, I think one of the most prolific winners that I’ve seen at awards is Kevin. So Kevin, tell us about yourself and where do you come from and what have you won? So he’s there, but he’s frozen. Kevin.
Kevin Gibbons
Thanks, Dixon. So Kevin Gibbons, I run Resignal specialist SEO agency. So working with a lot of eCommerce brands. And definitely from the entry side. I have judged a number of awards before, but certainly more from the entry side. And we’ve done this for a long time. It’s a big part of how we work across various different events.
Dixon Jones
It seems to be core to your marketing, to your strategy, really, your business strategy. And also, I feel that myself and Majestic are not without some claim to be an expert on this particular occasion. We’re not usually, when I come in, I’ve got the experts with me. But I think Majestic has won a fair number of awards and has sponsored few as well. But I think the awards that I’m most proud of my time at Majestic were the two Queen’s Awards where we got to go down and see her majesty before she passed away down at Buckingham Palace a couple of times. So they were brilliant. And won a few myself as well. So it’s nice to have everybody here. And just before we dive into everything, I probably should just bring in my producer, David, to make sure I’ve covered the points that I need to do at the top of the show.
David Bain
Absolutely. No, we’re recording this, broadcasting this live just before the beginning of BrightonSEO. So I’m not sure if quite a few SEOs will be down there enjoying the social life in Brighton perhaps rather nicely, watching us live. If not, then hopefully you’re catching the replay, and of course, you can consume this content on Spotify, on Apple Podcast and Google Podcast, places like this. But if you can watch us live next time, sign up at majestic.com/webinars, and I’ll be telling you what we’re doing on next month’s production towards the end of this particular episode.
Dixon Jones
Brilliant. Guys, so thanks very much. Let’s get straight into it and start with the one tip that I tend to do before everybody dives off and so if they haven’t got 45 minutes to listen to all the insights that come through. What one tip might you give people for search boards? And I’ll go in the other order then Kevin, so why don’t you go first?
Kevin Gibbons
Okay, so I feel like this isn’t a silver bullet, it’s almost disappointing, but do great work. And the reason I say that is because there’s an art, and we’ll go into this in terms of there’s definitely fine art you can do in terms of how to write an award so that it stands out to judges and it appeals to what they’re going to do. But ultimately, the award events we’re talking about are quite mature in terms of how long they’ve been around. They’re very credible. There’s a lot of entries. If your work is average, you’re never going to win. So you have to make sure that your work is elite in terms of what you’re doing. And equally, it shouldn’t be about the award, it should be about actually how do you delight your clients? How do you do fantastic work? And how do you then take that into something that can be an award.
But my tip is, think about the award before you start working. So actually, when you pitch, we’ve actually done this before, sometimes we’ve pitched with award entries that have been written 12 months into the future. This was our objective, this is what we did, this is how it worked, these were the results, here’s our testimonial from our client that’s absolutely delighted. And then you work backwards and it’s kind of almost that way of visualizing success, and then working towards it. But I think if you don’t have that clear strategy and plan from the start and then you just think at the end of the year, “Oh I wonder what work we’ve done that’s been quite good this year?” It’s too late. You have to think about how do you make something a success from the beginning? And then work backwards.
Dixon Jones
Okay, interesting tip. Gus, what do you got for us?
Gus Pelogia
I think I take a continuation from what Kevin said. For me, a really good entry needs to have a good story. So sometimes people do so many different things, but if you cannot put that into a story that it’s a bit of a business story, but also an SEO story or a digital marketing story, well you need that to have a good flow. And then everything gets much easier, right? Judges will understand what they’re reading, they don’t need to read three times, they don’t need to go back and understand why you did this, or why you did that. So a good story, and knowing that you need to put a good story kind of relates to what Kevin said. You’ll keep thinking about this as you go. So I’ve done entries where, as I was doing something I thought, “This has to be in an entry.” The entry was months ahead, but I felt there was a story already. So I started building, in my head, months before I was actually putting that on the actual entry.
Dixon Jones
Okay, that’s interesting. So both of you do things a long way ahead of time. Montse, what’s your thoughts as you see all those awards? What’s your tip?
Montse Cano
My number one tip would be to submit a brilliant, an absolutely outstanding campaign in a way that we can actually see, as judges, that it is actually brilliant. Because if we can’t see it’s brilliant, it doesn’t really matter. I mean, I have seen some very good, some absolutely excellent campaigns during the time I have been judging, and I have not been able to actually back up in the actual discussions that we did afterwards, simply because I couldn’t say, “Oh well I don’t have this number, or I don’t have this data,” et cetera, et cetera. So if you actually make it very, very, very clear to us what the story is about, as Gus said, or the campaign, then it is easier for us to judge it.
Dixon Jones
Okay, brilliant. So you’ve all judged awards. So I want to just ask before I move on, what percentage of the time, when you’re in a category you’re judging a category, what potential of the time does one entry just stand out from the others? I mean, we always hear when, oh this was really tight and it was really hard to call and stuff like that. And the judges are always very happy to say that this was a tight category and you all did well, you’re all winners from being on the short list. But in truth, how often is it that one just stands out above the rest as a percentage of times? Gus?
Gus Pelogia
I would ballpark maybe 20, 30% of the entries do cause me a doubt. And I don’t know if people actually know how much of how this works? But we get into a platform and then we score each one of the entries based on certain criteria. And as I see some entries, maybe I judged one or two and then I see another one that is really good, I actually have to balance out and go back and say, “Oh this one is a lot better.” So I go back and adjust the numbers again, so I can reflect the best of them. And we end up discussing at the end, it’s not just the highest score wins, but the judges get together afterwards and they do debate on why this one’s better than the other. And sometimes the highest score doesn’t really win. If you hear different arguments and you learn about something that you haven’t considered, there might be a consensus that a different entry was better. It’s usually among the best ones. This discussion only happens with a couple of them. But I think that’s the direction it goes.
Dixon Jones
Okay. What about you Montse? Do you think one stands out often, or it’s similar sort of thing?
Montse Cano
It’s about similar sort of thing, I would say. It really is complicated sometimes because some categories are very tight in both ways. It can be very, very good, there can be very good entries, and there can be really bad entries. Kind of make me think whether we should really actually give them an award? Simply because they are there, they don’t have to win an award.
Dixon Jones
And I have to say I’ve seen times when people have said, “We didn’t find a winner for this category.” And I think that’s a really brave thing for the awards people to do, especially if someone’s in the room, it’s probably really bad. But yeah, got to be done, doesn’t it, to keep up the reputation of the awards. So let me just jump in then and ask before we talk about how to win an award, let’s start by asking why you might enter. And this is really aimed at Kevin, because your business seems to enter a lot of awards, as you say, and it’s a big part of your business strategy. So it’s Kevin and Gus. But Kevin, what’s your motivation for entering?
Kevin Gibbons
I think there’s three reasons I can think of. One is, your existing team, and I include the client with that as an extension or we’re an extension of them in, if you’ve done great work and you’ve worked really hard, it’s just a nice way to celebrate success together. And it’s just recognition that people feel really proud that they can say on their CV, “I did that.” And I think that’s really important, because for us, when we are looking to grow and recruit, one of the big things we want is, like questions we’re asking in interviews, what are you most proud of? And if you’ve done work that has been judged by industry peers as being leading and one of the best campaigns, or the best campaign within a sector, for example, for a given year, I think that’s really strong. But I think so number one is for the team, number two is for recruitment.
We’ve found off the back of when we’ve had awards events where we might have won say four or five awards in an evening. We’ve noticed straight away off the bat we’ve had a lot of people, whether they’re in the venue of the awards night or not, they’ve noticed us and they’ve applied for jobs. I think that’s almost a more immediate thing. I wouldn’t say we necessarily get new business inquiries immediately off the back of winning an award, but we certainly see it with recruitment and people that want to join the team.
And the third point is new business. So it’s great marketing, it’s scaling, word of mouth, that’s how as an agency we attract most of our leads. And if we can talk about our successes in a way that is being shared publicly and people are crediting our work, and again it’s very credible in terms of the judging, then that’s great for us. And we know people look at awards when they want to decide which agency they’re going to invite to pitch. And again, it might be a competitive pitch, we might be one of three or four that’s chosen, but it will get us on a list. And I think those three reasons, for us, would be how we justify, is this an award that we would look at entering? And if we do, then let’s try and obviously do our best to win it. But yeah, that’s a big thing for me.
Dixon Jones
Okay. They’re interesting ideas. Gus, are you the same sort of motivations?
Gus Pelogia
I think, yeah, pretty much those three points. I’ve seen leads coming through just because a company saw that we won an award. And I actually managed accounts that I only got it because we won a certain award or if the agency I worked at the time won. Personally, as an SEO, I just find it very exciting to have that external validation as well, get other people to say that your job is a good job. And having the team really excited, we get all together in the awards party and there’s this bonding moment that you have with your colleagues as well. So the reasons are the same. I think just the order for me would be different.
Dixon Jones
Because there’s this is backlash from probably the people that don’t win the awards, or don’t tend to the awards, or don’t care about the awards, that it’s just a vanity exercise and that it doesn’t really have value. But I think it really does. I agree, when Majestic wins Best Search Tool Award, and they’ve won for a fair few for years in the U.S., and the UK, and Europe as well before we started sponsoring events instead. And it was the team really got a kick out of it. They didn’t go to the event because they’re all very introverted, they’re all programmers and don’t want to actually go out to London.
Dixon Jones
But the pride of winning the awards was absolutely brilliant. But I think as well Kevin, another one that you didn’t mention, and I’ll mention it for you unless you disagree with me, is that you seem to do a really good job of involving your partners, your customers in the awards. So the awards, a lot of the awards that you go for, you’re celebrating your customers’ successes as much as anything. So it’s a very interesting tactic I think that you’re almost getting a link for your customer out there. I know that’s not the prime objective of getting a link, but engaging your customer and making them feel good about the work is probably not doing you any harm either. Correct?
Kevin Gibbons
I think celebrating that success together is really important. I’ve spoken to some people where their opinion has been, “Oh I don’t want to take a client to an award, because they’ll speak to other agencies and they might poach them.” It’s like that to me is so backwards. It should be, you’ve done great work to the point that you’re nominated for an award, let’s celebrate that success together. And that should count towards something when it comes to renewing and continuing to work together beyond that. So yeah, I think the more that you can have a fun night out together is a good thing, and if you can do that and celebrate a nice trophy at the end of it, that’s always good. But yeah, no I think if you’re shortlisted, I think it’s credible enough that it’s a good reason to take your clients out and get them involved.
Dixon Jones
And the dinner itself is a way to celebrate, is a way to say thank you to your clients as well, isn’t it? So it’s good. But Montse, I mean, sorry, feel free to carry on with that one, but I wanted to also bring in what awards are out there that people might work on? So what awards are there that people can go for? Because people don’t always know.
Montse Cano
Right. Yeah, I was going to add to everything that you have said so far on the previous question that having an award is not just a vanity exercise. I mean, it is just a true testimony of your own good work. But also it helps the industry to advance as well. So digital marketing and the SEO is compared to say finance or law, are a relatively new industry. And I think having these recognitions amongst ourselves helps to advance, to establish the industry as such I think.
Dixon Jones
So what words are there out there? I mean, there’s a UK Search Awards is the one that probably my audience knows, and I think we probably are all involved in either the UK Search Awards, the U.S. Search Awards, or the European Search Awards, or now the Global Search Awards. But there’s other ones, aren’t there.
Montse Cano
Yeah.
Dixon Jones
There’s the Drum, for example, do some digital marketing awards. And then SMX do something called the, they just did a thing called The Landies. I don’t know whether that’s got bigger, or smaller, or changed its name? Are there any others out there that you’ve gone into? What’s the difference between a good award, and a bad award I guess as well? Anyone want to jump in on… Montse, do you want to carry on with that?
Montse Cano
Yeah, I haven’t really judged any others apart from the European Search Awards and the UK Search Awards, Global Content Awards, and can’t remember the other one, the European, the eCommerce Search Awards.
Dixon Jones
That is a thing, isn’t it? So it’s the same organization behind those awards. So the interesting thing is that they’ve sliced and diced the market a little bit. So you’ve got the SEO awards and then you’ve got the Content awards, and then you’ve got the PPC awards, and then you’ve got the social media awards. And they seem to be slicing and dicing. Do you think that’s good, or a bad thing?
Montse Cano
It’s not a bad thing at all. I mean, it says just… I can only talk about the Don’t Panic Awards obviously, because those are the ones-
Dixon Jones
Yeah, sure.
Montse Cano
… that I have been involved with. And I know that the standards are very high. And our criteria is very, very, very strict. And there’s also discussion, as Gus said before, we don’t really give an award to the entry that has won the highest score. Simply because there might be something else that we haven’t seen, et cetera, et cetera. So it’s good to have a discussion afterwards. Now I know there are other organizations who also give awards. So I guess my guess is, if their standards are as high as the Don’t Panic ones, then fantastic. I think the search awards, I think they’ve got another set of awards too.
Dixon Jones
Yeah. No, I think so. Gus, Kevin, have you gone into any other awards apart from the Don’t Panic ones?
Gus Pelogia
Yeah, I think if you check locally on your market, you’re going to find other things. In Ireland, two famous ones are the DMAs, I think, the Digital Marketing Awards, and the Irish Content Marketing Awards. So I think if you search you can find the good ones. You might even see who won before, do you actually know these companies? Because you might get into a much smaller award, maybe you pay to become a winner or… I remember seeing back in Brazil all of this local businesses that had a, looked like a diploma on the wall that they won the best barber in the city. It’s like, “Well I’ve seen 10 of those.” Or the honor of something. Which if you can spot quickly that there’s not really a real criteria or judging behind it. So I think it’s up to you to do that filtering. See maybe a good way is-
Dixon Jones
I think that’s a good tip is to look at, see if you know the previous winners, I think that’s a great-
Gus Pelogia
… Do you want to be as good as the winners that are there, or are you better than them?
Dixon Jones
… Yeah.
Gus Pelogia
That’s a good way to measure it, right?
Dixon Jones
Yeah, no I think so. But don’t be scared of going into regional ones. I think I won something at the Silicon Canal Awards, which is Birmingham based and I’m very proud of that. It was a nice one to win. Not least because I didn’t actually enter, they just told me I had to be there on that day, so that was good. Kevin, do you want to, got any other awards that you’ve been in?
Kevin Gibbons
Can you actually hear me? Oh yeah, that’s good. Sorry, my internet is terrible so I’ve turned off my camera.
Dixon Jones
That’s fine.
Kevin Gibbons
In terms of awards, I think we ended up having to budget for this. I think what we did at first is we went for the UK Search Awards. Obviously, they’ve expanded in terms of different events, and for us, the ones that we qualify for, we enter. So European, Global. And there’s a number of others. The Drum one run a lot of awards, as mentioned. And I think you have to pick and choose the ones that are a good fit for you in terms of industries, sectors. And for us, I think we’ve done some of the other ones, like the Daddy Awards are a good example.
Some of the cultural awards if we’re, again, maybe on a bit of a recruitment drive, I think it’s a good thing. But we, I’d say in general have doubled down on the Search Awards and we would rather, from a budget perspective, we’d rather say, let’s put more entries into the Search Awards and let’s take our whole team along to the event. As opposed to, let’s put one or two in and spread that across a number of different award events. It’s more a case of the Search Awards feel like it’s where that there’s the most credibility in terms of search industry, and we’d rather do the best that we can in those events.
Dixon Jones
You don’t have to stick to SEO. I mean, as I say I mean, I’m incredibly proud of the Queen’s Award. I don’t know what that’s going to change and rebrand to now? And now whether it becomes a King’s Award, or whether it’s kept on in the memory of the Queen, I don’t know? I hope it carries on. But large organizations, to tiny organizations get to do that. And obviously, you got to be British to enter that one. But Montse, you’re saying in the chat there that actually there’s a bunch of ones in Spain as well, national ones in Spain, right?
Montse Cano
Yes, there are actually, there are some national ones. So apart from the regional ones that can be, I’m not too familiar with them, but as Gus said, you have to really look into the entering criteria, previous winners, et cetera, et cetera, just to judge that. But apart from those, there are some national commercial awards that are not too bad in terms of reputation and they are run every year.
Dixon Jones
All right. Let’s focus now on what makes up a good award entry. So you’ve got yourself there, you’ve got to the website and downloaded the Word file or started filling in the forms. I’ll start with one thing that annoys me. If you go in unprepared onto one of those and you try and fill it in on the forms, you’re not going to be able to get the graphs up to show them and the other bits and pieces. So don’t try and do it on-the-fly. Same for if you’re trying to become a speaker at a conference. I think you probably need to think about the presentation a little bit before you pitch. But what things make up a good award? Why don’t I start with you, Gus? What things do you think are important in a recipe for a good award? You’ve talked about a story. Any other bits?
Gus Pelogia
I think the story is the first thing. Second, good numbers, of course, but they come as part of the story. And keep it concise. Judges will look at 40, 50, or more entries and at some point you get tired. So I will do maybe 10 a day, and then take a break. But sometimes there’s some entries that I can read them in 10 minutes, and I get the story and I feel excited and I don’t even need to read it again. I go back to get some arguments and to do the scoring, but I understand what’s going on, on the first read. And some others, you just go on, and on and you’re like, “What did they mean by this? What did they mean by that?” And then you might be half an hour and you already know it’s not a winner at that stage, but you still need to do a proper scoring and leave a few comments. So, keep it concise. Try to follow the word count or the word limit. I think all judges will really appreciate that.
Dixon Jones
Okay, that’s good comments. Montse, what do you think stands out? What are the things that stand out for good awards?
Montse Cano
I think the best thing for me-
Dixon Jones
A good entry, sorry.
Montse Cano
… A good entry one. Yeah. Apart from clarity, my biggest tip would be to make sure that you connect the dots. And that, to me, is essential. Because I think we all like to see what exactly it is that you have done with your objectives, and the end result of that. And then anything in the middle is the story, becomes the story that Gus was talking about. I need to see, or I think we all need to see clearly what it is that you have done. Sometimes what happens is that some entries are very badly filled out, some entry forms are very badly filled out. So you learn about the objectives towards the end, and you learned about the results at the very beginning. And it is very curative if you want to actually do an intro of that.
But then tell me why you wanted to get to those results, or how it is that you actually got to those results. And that is very, very good. Another thing is that I don’t know absolutely every brand that goes into this awards. And it’s very good that you actually describe yourself, what you do. But you can do that in one or two sentences that comes up to a couple of lines, not half a paragraph, not a whole paragraph. And then tell me in just one line what you wanted to do with your website, because that is not an objective. People usually do this at the very beginning. Tell me who you are, fine. But everything else, get to the point.
Dixon Jones
Start with the objectives, and also don’t spend too long talking about yourself, as in, the background of your company. But because Kevin, I mean you potentially can enter 10 categories in one award night. So do you have a lot of repetition in there? Is there some obvious repetition in some of the entries? Do you have to accept that, given your prolific-
Kevin Gibbons
And there’s similarities in some of the categories as well. So you have say, eCommerce and B2C as a good example. And in my mind it’s very similar in terms of what you did. And I’d say there’s probably occasions like that where our entry forms may be identical, but if it’s a different entry for the same client and it’s asking a different exam question if you like, then you have to answer that in a different way. But I would say, for me, certainly I completely agree with the previous two points. But I think one thing I found really interesting is from the judging side, is that pre scoring, every category is scored equally. And this isn’t a secret, the entry, this is, I guess when you’re looking at the Search Awards. So I expect maybe some of the other events may be different. But certainly from a Search Awards’ perspective they’re completely transparent and upfront about this.
It says on the entry form, “This is scored out of 10.” But I, and I assume other people may do this, ignored that. I kind of just focused on, “Wow, we had amazing results, this should win.” And if you don’t tell that story about what was the objective, what was the budget, I’ve seen quite a lot where it’s like, this is an amazing campaign but you could have had a 10 million pound budget if you don’t give the context, you don’t know the ROI and the performance relative to the effort that was put in.
And I think actually it just goes back into giving your best answer to each of those questions in a way that the story flows. Because now, I used to write all of our entries, and I’ve brought it back in team in terms of get the data and let’s make sure it’s of that standard that we think we can win it. And now I just do the latter. I actually score our entries internally and I’ve started to do this-
Dixon Jones
… How interesting.
Kevin Gibbons
… our team have now done this recently so that they’ve done that as well. But from a judge’s perspective, it’s very time consuming to judge, let alone to write the thing. So I think actually now using that, it’s the team that’s produced the work. I can’t write an award entry for a client that I’m not the one that’s delivered the work on, they have to do it. But I can score it, and I can say, “This is a seven, this is what it needs to be, be a 10.” And look at it from the other side of the table. And I think, that’s really helped us to raise the bar a little bit in terms of the entries.
Dixon Jones
I think that that is a great tip. That is a great tip. Judge your own entry, or get somebody in your team to judge your entry before you put it in. That’s got to be the tip of the day. I think that’s something I haven’t heard before. And I’ve heard a lot of people talking about entries and stuff. So that’s a good one I think. Is that how you win so many Kevin? Is that your secret tip?
Kevin Gibbons
Yeah, I just annoy our team by throwing stuff back at them and saying, “This is a fault, improve it.”
Dixon Jones
“This is not good enough. Just imagine on the day when you don’t win.”
Montse Cano
And thanks for recognizing that we actually need to do hard work, because this is exactly what it is. And we are volunteers and everything, but we don’t really spend five minutes on each entry. We spend a lot more time. And something that we-
Dixon Jones
Well then that brings me to the next question, Montse, what keeps you being a judge? I’m interested. She’s hung up.
Montse Cano
… It’s very good to see all these entries, how they have gone around solving a problem for a client, the problem that they may have, how they have got to identify that problem and how they are telling their story. I really, really love that. You can learn so, so, so, so much. And sometimes it’s a confirmation that you have done the right thing before in some occasions. I think this is, and this a skill, it’s a skill as well, because it is like when you are a teacher, I used to be a teacher before, it is not so easy as just sitting down, judging an essay or some kind of work that somebody has done. There’s really a bit of a science before then really, but I think this has really developed.
Dixon Jones
So you like the way in which you see how people have solved problems and things, which I can understand that, you get to see those entries and see what people have done. I mean, Gus, you’re doing it as well. But let me ask the thorny question that comes from that, because one of the problems that I hear from people making entries is, well one of the recommendations is, make sure you show your numbers, make sure you show the story, and the story reveals itself in numbers and what the uplift is, what the impact was. But given that the judges are also within the industry, I hear customers saying, “I don’t want to share those numbers.” How do you square that round hole?
Gus Pelogia
I think every company will, some companies might be able to share, some not. And that’s just something you have to live with. If all the other entries are actually giving more detail, they’ll have a hard chance to win. There might be, maybe some companies might be very protective but the other judges maybe don’t really work directly with their competition. I worked a lot with Irish brands. I don’t think there’ll be a lot of other judges that will be doing the same. So even if they were, at the time when I was entering the awards, I don’t think there would always be a reason to keep that as a secret.
A lot of these things can be estimated as well. We do go back and check, are they saying this traffic really went up? We go and take a look at Majestic-
Dixon Jones
Some retrospect.
Gus Pelogia
… and a lot of different tools and see, is this actually the truth? And it’s not always perfect, but you look towards a trend to see if it’s believable. So I think there are ways to show some information that is believable, and let the judge do the judgment and look for ways to check if that is worth an award or not.
Montse Cano
And just adding to that, the fact that it’s best to add some numbers so that we know, for example, how much budget you have to do X, Y, Z. Because obviously creativity also varies as well. You can be very creative with lots of less budget, but then at the same time I think it’s a good indication of what we are reading. However, just to caveat that, if you can’t, because sometimes we have to sign NDAs and it’s just not possible to give in numbers. And sometimes I am not able to give any names. So, if you actually give a lot of detail about what you do, then I think that can be useful. It’s not a replacement for numbers, but it can help.
Dixon Jones
Okay. Kevin do you want to add anything there? You look like you do. Or maybe he’s just frozen. Okay. I think Kevin’s lost the sound on us a little bit so I’ll just carry on. But let’s just ask about the show itself. A big part of this, I mean the whole way in which these events monetize is really about people coming. I mean, you pay to enter the competition, but you also pay to go to the awards ceremony. And that’s not cheap dinner, I think it’s fair to say. And so, is there any tips that you might have for standing out, making an impact on the awards ceremony itself, or is that a really bad idea?
Kevin Gibbons
Yeah, there’s a couple of things, but I obviously had to justify this to clients before, and I think… Oh sorry, can you hear me?
Dixon Jones
Yeah, go on Kevin. Go on, Kevin. Yeah, go on.
Kevin Gibbons
Can you hear me if I… Sorry, does that help?
Dixon Jones
Yeah, turning that off is good. Yeah. So we’re going back a question, right? Okay. So the transparency of numbers. Go on.
David Bain
I think Kevin’s significantly behind us in terms of what he’s hearing. So I might remove him from the conversation and see if we can get him to rejoin and hopefully catch up with us.
Dixon Jones
Okay. All right. Well we’re nearly at the end of the event anyway, but it’d be nice to have Kevin’s input on that particular question, because I suspect, because he uses so many campaigns with customers, he might have some interesting insights. But on the day, the awards ceremony, on the day, is there any value in trying to make some kind of presence on the day, or is that just a big mistake? Is there anything that you can do, think of? Apart from maybe… All I ever do is offer an award, I suppose. So basically, I give an award. So they tend to ask a lot of people that have been in awards before to hand out awards. But do you do anything on the day to try and get noticed, Gus?
Gus Pelogia
Not really. I think maybe if you’re very confident, have a speech ready, I look forward to the pictures with the team, and if you go on stage or not and just have a good time. If you want, I don’t know maybe make some contact with people from other companies and something around that direction. But it’s not really a place that you’re going to really talk business too heavy. And actually know someone that got so much attention at award by doing stuff that that person shouldn’t be doing, that shortly after that person got fired because of that. So maybe you shouldn’t really try to get a lot of attention.
Dixon Jones
Okay, good tip. Kevin, I want to come back to you. And if you can, don’t say anything yet, but just that question of the problem with your Quest clients and sharing numbers and things, you had some stuff that you wanted to say.
Kevin Gibbons
Yeah, there’s a couple of things. And one is from the judges’ side. So I’ve justified this to clients before, and clients get a bit overwhelmed sometimes because they see 40 or 50 judges for an award event and it’s like, “Oh I don’t want to give all of these people my overall strategy.” And the reality is, not all judges will see all of the entries. They get divided into subgroups, and likely it’ll be less than 10 judges that will see your entry. So when you think, would you share this with 10 people, as opposed to 50? I think that’s a different question. And I think then it’s more of a trusted group. Everyone that judges, they have a certain level of respect in terms of why they’ve been chosen in the first place, and on the basis that this won’t be publicly shared, it’s private confidential information.
If you go against that as a judge, you’ll quite often, pretty sure this happens, will get kicked out from judging. So it’s something that is very strict. And I think for the clients to know that their information is kept confidential amongst a small group of judges is really important for them to know. And the other thing is, goes back to the earlier point, but make clients part of it. If it’s we want to do an award to celebrate our success for the work that we’ve done together, that’s not a compelling pitch. Whereas actually if it’s we want to celebrate our success together and this makes you look just as good as it makes us look good, we’ll take you to the award event.
We’ve had a client in the past, I won’t name them, but they’ve shared with us at the start of working with them, this is their personal objective, this is what they get bonused on. And I think that’s a good thing. And our objectives were aligned with that. We’ve hit and beat their target. They got a bonus, they got a pay rise, we won an award, they got a promotion.
Dixon Jones
All good. All good.
Kevin Gibbons
Make your client the champion, and if you can do that, then why shouldn’t you celebrate the success together and why shouldn’t they want to help you, because it helps them. But it’s got to be win-win. I think that’s the tip.
Dixon Jones
Okay, last question then guys, and a quick one, really. The award ceremony must have been, must’ve been hit by Covid. I mean it’s event focused really as an idea. And the dinner itself is where the money trail ends. So how much further can the awards industry develop around SEO? What do you think the future is for the industry? Do you think it’s got a sustainable future? Do you think it’s peaked? Or do you think it’s absolutely going to carry on and no recession on earth or interest rate rise is going to change things? Anyone got any thoughts on that? I know that’s crystal ball stuff.
Kevin Gibbons
I have one thought, which is I think going back to the UK Search Awards, it’s like one massive reunion and it just a really good buzz and feel of getting everyone back in a room together. And I think the more that you can do that, the more it happens. I always think in some ways I perhaps wouldn’t want it to get too much bigger, because I kind of like it how it is, but equally, it’s a business. But yeah, I don’t see that going away. I think if it’s virtual that loses something, you still get to celebrate your success. But there’s something about just being in a room together and having, win or lose, I don’t think it even matters. You can have a good night either way, but just getting everyone together I think is just a really nice feel.
Dixon Jones
So long may it continue for you, Kevin. What about you Montse and Gus? Gus?
Kevin Gibbons
Oh, absolutely.
Gus Pelogia
Yeah, I think similar to Kevin, I think there’s a bright future for awards. Perhaps some of them will kind of get filtered out if you have way too many. You could find arguments to have an entry that belongs to an SEO one, to a content one, and to a global one. And you could have the same entry in several different places and at some point there might just be too many and people won’t value them as much as if there were fewer ones. But getting together and celebrating with people, if you win or not, I think it’s a nice thing to do.
Dixon Jones
You feel the same Montse?
Montse Cano
Absolutely. With remote working, it is great to actually get together with other peers in the industry, because it’s not always that we get to go to BrightonSEO, for example, or to any other events or many other events as before. So I think celebrating success will actually continue I think.
Dixon Jones
So I guess awards season is back with a vengeance. So we’ll find out this year I suppose, if that’s true. So thanks very much for coming on guys, really do appreciate it. David, just before I ask you all to just give your Twitter profiles or whatever in case people want to contact you. Obviously to bribe you for an award or something like that, I don’t know? No, hopefully not. But David, tell us about what’s coming up next.
David Bain
Sure. Okay, well next episode is episode number 34. That will be on Wednesday the 2nd of November, 500 PM GMT, 100 PM Eastern Daylight Time. The episode’s content will be about how to train the AI machines. And we’ve already got three guests booked for that one, Jess Peck, Myriam Jessier, and Marco Giordano. If you want to sign up to watch that one live, go to majestic.com/webinars.
Dixon Jones
Oh cool. Was it how to train the AI machines?
David Bain
Indeed. Yes.
Dixon Jones
Nice. Oh good, I’ll enjoy that one. That’s going to be fun. Guys, I really do appreciate you guys coming on. If people want to get hold of you, if people want to follow up on anything, how do they get hold of you? Gus?
Gus Pelogia
Yep. Before we go, two tips of what not to put in your entry.
Dixon Jones
Oh yeah.
Gus Pelogia
Do not create large PowerPoints that go on and on that repeats the same stuff that you have on the main entry. And do follow the standards. They give you a Word document, do follow that. It’s so much easier to understand what’s going on and to score all of the different parts of the award. But yeah, that’s it. You can find me on LinkedIn, Gus Pelogia, or I’m mostly on Twitter @Pelogia. And I’m there almost every day. So let’s connect.
Dixon Jones
Okay. And since most people will hear all this on Apple or something like that, Pelogia is spelled P-E-L-O-G-I-A. Montse, how do they find you?
Montse Cano
My last one tip here is, as well as just following on what Gus has just said, if you are going to be using any graphics, any kind of a graphics or pictures, please make sure that we can actually see them. And if there are any numbers, please make sure that we can read them. Because it is rather difficult to actually judge so many entries. The word count sometimes goes over, and over, and over many times. And then you suddenly find a graphic or a picture you can’t really see. What’s the point? It really scores you down really.
Dixon Jones
Don’t put them in SVG format. Okay, good tip.
Montse Cano
And you can find me on Twitter @MontseCano, so M-O-N-T-S-E C-A-N-O. And on LinkedIn, Montserrat Cano.
Dixon Jones
Okay. And Montserrat is M-O-N-T-S-E-R-R-A-T. Cano is C-A-N-O. Kevin, how do they find you?
Kevin Gibbons
So for me it’s @KevGibbo on Twitter, or just add me on LinkedIn. And yeah, pretty active on both of those. So yeah, they’re probably the best ways.
Dixon Jones
And Gibbo is G-I-B-B-O, for those that are around there. So brilliant. Thanks very much guys for coming in.
Kevin Gibbons
Sorry, I think the internet is terrible.
Dixon Jones
It is, it’s all. It’ll be fixed on the… Now you’ve just messed up the edit at the end. So now we’ve got to keep that in there as well. So no, I’m sure it will be fine. Thanks very much for coming on. I really do appreciate it guys. And hopefully, see you soon in real life. Maybe at an award. Cheers.
Montse Cano
Maybe. Cheers.
Gus Pelogia
Cheers.
Dixon Jones
Bye everyone. Bye.
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