Damon Lightley

Damon has been involved in the digital marketing sector since 1996 and can be classed as a bit of web geriatric! His first role involved working for a start-up developing Internet and IT solutions. He then spent time working for the Financial Times (FT.com) where he was responsible for developing the marketing strategies for several channels on the website before moving on to head up the web marketing department at the Energy Saving Trust. In 2003 he founded SiteVisibility, a top 20 search engine marketing & optimisation agency which he sold in 2011. His areas of expertise include developing web strategy, search engine marketing & optimization (SEO), email and social media marketing, web analytics and measuring ROI.

How to win in a recession

Don’t mention the 'R word', I hear you all say. Well, I thought a post on “Recession Challenges” would be a fairly topical one, bearing in mind the recent ‘credit crunch’ stories we’ve seen taking up more and more column inches and airtime each month.

by Damon Lightley 10 July 2008 09:30am 1 comment

Is a bad social media strategy worse than no strategy at all?

As a search engine marketing and social media (SMM) consultant, more firms are approaching me every week to help them develop integrated SMM strategies.

While in many ways social media is a completely different discipline to search; there are plenty of similarities when it comes to developing a strategy and many search experts are taking to social media marketing like ducks to water.

The one thing I am telling all these companies is you have to be careful as a bad SMM strategy can often do you more harm than good.

by Damon Lightley 03 May 2007 07:30am 0 comments

Will Yahoo!'s half-price sale click with advertisers?

In a largely unexpected move, Yahoo! Search has reduced its minimum cost per click from 10p to 5p in the UK, in a bold attempt to regain share in the search advertising market from Microsoft’s recently launched adCenter and Google’s AdWords.

by Damon Lightley 19 January 2007 12:32pm 0 comments

Xmas is coming, Google is getting fat and it's minus 30!

Call me a cynic but why is it that every time Christmas comes round, Google starts to do something out of the ordinary with its organic and PPC algorithms?!

by Damon Lightley 04 December 2006 09:48am 0 comments

Recruiters face new challenges with their search marketing strategy

A couple of weeks back I attended an Onrec Conference titled – ‘Recruitment Advertising is Moving Online’. As we all know online ad spend is increasing year on year and is quickly 'stealing' spend away from the more established offline channels.

However, in this mad rush marketers must keep a clear head and not lose sight of the new challenges they face in the Web 2.0 era.

by Damon Lightley 06 November 2006 14:41pm 0 comments

Google launches SearchMash.com

Google has recently released a new search site called SearchMash.com. Although there isn’t a Google logo in sight, a quick look at the privacy policy reveals that the site is well and truly owned by Google Inc.

by Damon Lightley 05 October 2006 17:51pm 0 comments

Google syndicated search on the horizon?

I came across an interesting post on the ZDNet.com blog written by Garett Rogers about Google registering many variations of a "syndicated search" domain on September 15th.

by Damon Lightley 20 September 2006 10:01am 0 comments

Danny Sullivan to leave Search Engine Watch

Well I got in the office early this morning to read that Danny Sullivan, the guy that set up Search Engine Watch back in 1996, has decided to leave both Search Engine Watch and Search Engine Strategies.

by Damon Lightley 07 September 2006 11:22am 1 comment

e-Recruitment 2.0: The changing face of online recruitment

Dropping 2.0 on to the end of words seems to be in vogue at the moment, so I thought I’d better jump on the bandwagon and start my commentary on “e-Recruitment 2.0” - the future of online recruiting.

So what’s in store for e-recruitment in the Web 2.0 era?

by Damon Lightley 25 August 2006 13:00pm 9 comments

PPC Management Software Firms – Feeling Nervous?

Over the last few days I have been learning about the new pay per click management tools that Yahoo! Search are soon to launch and the already live Google Adwords Editor in BETA.

by Damon Lightley 11 August 2006 15:49pm 2 comments