Meet The New Director, Search Engine Watch - Jonathan Allen.

Today I’m delighted to welcome the newly appointed Director, Search Engine Watch, Jonathan Allen. He joins the New York team from Incisive Media’s London office. I’m sure that many Search Engine Watch readers who have attended a Search Engine Strategies conference may have already met Jonathan. And for those who haven’t met him, I’m sure you may remember him from his ultra-viral video – 50 SEOs, one question!

As of today, Jonathan will be responsible for the day-to-day running of the searchenginewatch.com website and community. Having said that, both he and I are heads down working away on the brand new site we’ll be launching in 2010. As I’ve mentioned previously, there’s a huge investment going into developing an entirely new environment.

So, without further ado, Jonathan… It’s all yours!

Thanks for the intro Mike… hello Search Engine Watchers!

So there’s lots in store for SearchEngineWatch in 2010. As Mike said, we have a brand new site on the way that will be created in collaboration with industry leaders and an exemplar of best practices for search engine optimization and marketing techniques. As far as day-to-day running goes, as always, we’ll be covering the latest news that affects your jobs and your clients, whether you are in-house or at an agency, but the biggest change will reflect how the search marketing industry is operating within a different landscape from what it was only a few years ago. There is no longer a single strategy or set of answers to rule the engines and tactics for one country does not map to all. In essence, for one to succeed in this space, they have to draw inspiration and advice from everywhere in the industry.

Search has replaced webmail as the first action people take when going online, but now there are far more pretenders to the throne, from social networks and software as a service type applications which are busting open our understanding of where we even start measuring an online visit. In fact, search is no longer about being at your desk – with devices such as Apple iPhones and Netbooks we are pretty much always online now, and this connectivity is changing our search behaviors. Furthermore such a change is not just reflected at the cutting edge of society but at every corner of the world and it is these changes SearchEngineWatch wants to hear and talk about. Mike and I are listening and collaboration is our keyword.

So, if you have opinions, ideas, concepts or tools that are relevant to readers of SearchEngineWatch then drop me a line via the contact form or collar me at SES Chicago next week, or SES London in February 2010. That is, of course, if I don’t see you first…armed with camera and at least one question!