We made our annual visit to the Online Marketing & Media Show this week at the Business Design Centre in London, to check out the latest developments in the world of SEO.

Dealing with our level of clientele it’s essential to stay ahead of the game in order to continually deliver the best results. At Greenmedia we invest a lot of development time into refining our SEO - it’s a constantly moving topic that’s always producing new opportunities - so the UK’s biggest industry gathering is naturally the best place to see the latest advancements on a national scale.

We spoke with some of the best people working in the industry today, and a fair few snake oil salesmen along the way. Seeing the latest and greatest SEO techniques in action and hearing explanations from global pioneers, we once again found that here at Greenmedia we’re at the forefront in terms of search potential. In fact, several of the ‘frontier’ search techniques that were discussed at the show were ideas that we’ve been using for some time to great effect. However, hearing fellow experts extolling the virtues of these methods justified where we’ve taken our SEO in the last year, and invigorated us for some exciting developments in the coming weeks and months.

Transparency is a crucial factor of SEO. If a company can’t - or won’t - tell you what they’re doing with your website then it’s entirely possible that they’re winging it or indulging in optimisation of the black hat variety, with neither being acceptable. With this in mind, it was great to hear SEO-guru GarytheScubaGuy openly delivering his top tips for 2008 at the show. Gary’s presentation has become one of the must-see talks at Online Marketing & Media, and it was once again a highlight.

All in all, this week’s show underlined that the world of search really is evolving faster than ever before, which means that if you (or your SEO provider) aren’t looking at the very latest techniques then you’re likely to be left behind.

The new websites for Beamish Wild haven’t taken long to get to the top of Google, hitting top spots for some prime keyterms in less than a week of going live - making the County Durham visitor attractions our latest SEO success stories.

With the official launch of the ropes activity and birds of prey conservation centres just weeks away, it was important to gain a foothold on search engines for what will become the most sought-after keyterms in the coming months. Both sites have achieved an immediately visible web presence and are already beating some established competitors on their main search terms.

We’re supporting our organic SEO work on the two sites with a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign, boosting awareness of the Beamish Wild brand across relevant searches and ensuring a healthy level of launch period click-throughs.

See the organic SEO results for yourself:

ropes activity centre - 1st - 220,000 competitor results

highwire ropes - 1st - 138,000 competitor results

ropes activity - 1st - 458,000 competitor results

birds conservation centre - 5th - 2.8m competitor results

birds of prey conservation centre - 2nd - 1.17m competitor results

We’re happy to announce the launch of two new websites today - the Beamish Wild Ropes Activity Centre and Birds of Prey Conservation Centre.

Based in the grounds of County Durham’s Beamish Hall, the two exciting new visitor attractions are officially opening this summer. The Ropes Activity Centre features a thrilling high-ropes course, zipline and power-fan, while the Birds of Prey Conservation Centre provides an engaging insight into Britain’s raptors with its resident collection of eagles, owls and falcons.

Both websites, designed and built in-house here at Greenmedia, look appropriately vibrant and contain some exciting features. We’re looking forward to seeing both websites and the centres develop over the coming weeks and months.