Welcome to the latest episode of the ClickZ Digital Marketing Podcast.

In this week’s edition, we interview search expert Nick Wilsdon on the current and future state of enterprise SEO and customer acquisition.

You’ll learn about the latest developments in search engine optimisation and what opportunities these present for marketers. Nick also shares some practical advice for getting started and what he thinks will be the main areas of growth over the coming months.

Nick Wilsdon started his online career in 1998 and is currently the SEO lead at Vodafone Group where he’s standardising and improving online performance across 22 markets and 55 partner markets.

You can listen to the full podcast here: ClickZ Digital Marketing Podcast Episode 6, but in the meantime are some of the highlights from his 40 minute chat:

09:34 – The move beyond links

Nick comments that the biggest change for SEOs in the last few years has been the move away from the siloed area of links and link acquisition into content and how content is used. “SEO has to be widely engaged with the other campaigns within a business.” It’s a broader discipline.

11:22 – Joining up TV campaigns with online behaviour

Marketers need to be much more savvy when it comes to building mini-campaigns around keywords used in broadcast advertising, as this drives much of viewers’ subsequent online behaviour.

13:39 – How important are links for SEO?

Despite recent pushes for social ranking signals to be acknowledged, Google is still a “link-graph and that’s the basis for the entire search engine.” However it’s the way we earn links that has fundamentally changed.

19:41 – The biggest changes for SEO over the next few years

Nick discusses SEO’s continued growth in importance within organisations, which is tied into the growth in traffic that SEO drives. But it needs to become “mobile-first” in order to keep up, and this extends to app-optimisation. Nick goes on to describe the fundamental differences between SEO and mobile SEO.

21:52 – Opportunities for local search

From the largest national chain to the smallest independent store, every retailer needs a good local search strategy and Google provides a variety of tools to help these businesses. Nick discusses a few of these recent developments.

24:09 – Major risks for brands not using SEO

“The biggest risk is not taking it seriously enough.” Nick expands upon this and further discusses the problems with not using data and using the “wrong people.”

25:30 – Practical tips for SEO

Nick rounds out the podcast with lots of helpful guidance on what you should be concentrating on when it comes to modern search marketing, including making sure your site is running on a secure protocol, as well as recommendations for tools you should be using.

Nick is speaking at Shift London, our new event aimed at the altered minds, business models, skill sets, buying habits and marketplaces driven by digital disruption – and the ensuing transformation imperative. Book your place today.