Searching for Search Awards…look no further!
Emma Turnbull
Managing Consultant, Boost Awards
Search awards – Organic and paid search PPC
Search is an exciting arena, a true battleground for the soldiers of SEO, SEM and PPC, where everyone is constantly trying to improve their rankings and climb above the competition. Just try searching ‘Best SEO Agency’, for example, to see the unending war to win business being played out. As algorithms continue to be fed with richer and more diverse streams of data and content, search engines are becoming ever-more intelligent and complex, especially now with widespread AI integration about to change search forever. Similarly, the changing way that consumer use search, along with developments in technology and the increasing adoption of voice and mobile, all mean that innovation and fleet-footedness are critical to achieving success in the search industry.
The rapid increase in using voice recognition personal assistants and built-in mobile companions such as Siri or Alexa means that they are quickly becoming the search mode of choice. ComScore says that by 2020, 50 per cent of all searches will be voice searches.
Winning a search award really can put you ahead of the competition and win you business. Just as consumers rely upon reviews and ratings to choose a product, hotel or restaurant, buyers of business products and services want to spend their money with winners – and they do. In fact research shows that award winners have 37%* more sales growth than non-winners. Put simply, winning a search award puts you ahead of the competition and makes a measurable difference to sales conversion.
Whether you are looking for SEO, SEM, PPC or Paid Search awards, the overview I provide below will not only help you discover the most credible awards in search, but also simplify your decision-making process. There are, of course, SEO and PPC award categories in many marketing awards, and I have highlighted some of the more prestigious below as well.
The Search Engine Land Awards (The Landy Awards)
Google and Bing sponsor the Search Engine Land Awards, so it goes without saying that these are credible and probably deemed the highest honours in search marketing – therefore, the most important in terms of profile-raising for you!
Search Engine Land wanted to provide a meaningful way to ‘Celebrate the Power of Search’ within the search marketing community. The Search Engine Land Awards programme, a.k.a. The Landy Awards, is dedicated to honouring best practice in search marketing by recognising the consultants, agencies, in-house teams, search tools and platforms used by digital marketers to execute successful programmes encompassing organic, paid, local, mobile and social search tactics.
There are categories for SEO, SEM, individuals, agencies and internal teams, examples of which include ‘Best SEM Initiative’, ‘Best SEO Initiative’ and ‘Agency of the Year’.
Entrants will be judged by search experts, as well as representatives from Google and Bing. The Landys Awards have a strict scoring process that is weighted objectively to avoid bias and places an emphasis on verifiable results, innovation, and best practice.
Region: International – Deadline: September
Website: https://searchengineland.com/awards
“The Search Engine Land Awards recognise the consultants, agencies, in-house teams, search tools and platforms used by digital marketers to execute successful programmes, encompassing organic, paid, local, mobile and social search tactics.”
The Search Awards
Viewed as the premier celebration of SEO, PPC and content marketing, The Search Awards encompasses five region-specific schemes: UK, Europe, US, MENA, APAC and a Global edition. Each scheme is designed to celebrate and reward the most accomplished SEO and PPC campaigns, as well as the software, teams and individuals behind them.
The UK Search Awards came first and was established in 2011, with Europe, US, and MENA following shortly thereafter. By 2020, The Search Awards family had grown to include the Global Search Awards and APAC Search Awards, making it easily the most representative and far-reaching search award programme in existence.
Thankfully, each Search Award scheme sub-divides its categories by sector, thereby enabling entrants to gain recognition for the specific tactics and strategies they employed to stand out from the crowd and achieve their own or their client’s targets. In each of the sector-based categories, judges will expect to see the specific reasoning and methodology that were deployed to ensure the needs of the client (and their native sector) were met.
Equally, each Search Award scheme offers agency-specific categories. In this case, categories are available to celebrate all search-based agencies, irrespective of size or composition, with categories being based on employee count and service offering. Categories include: ‘Best PPC Campaign’, ‘Best SEO Campaign’, ‘Best Search Software Tool’, sector-specific ‘Best Use of Search’ campaigns and ‘Personality of the Year’, to name but a few.
Each of the regional award schemes attracts hundreds of entries from leading search and digital agencies.
The Search Award organisers, Don’t Panic Events, also host UK and European editions of the Paid Media Awards, which include 32 categories celebrating entries from leading biddable media agencies, publishers, technology providers and professionals.
Region: International + territory specific
Deadlines: March (European Search Awards) May (Global Search Awards) June (European Paid Media Awards) July (US Search Awards) September (UK Search Awards and MENA Search Awards) October (APAC Search Awards) December (UK Paid Media Awards)
Websites:
European Search Awards https://www.europeansearchawards.com/
Global Search Awards https://globalsearchawards.net/
UK Paid Media Awards https://ukpaidmediaawards.co.uk/
US Search Awards https://www.ussearchawards.com/
UK Search Awards https://www.searchawards.co.uk/
European Paid Media Awards https://europeanpaidmediaawards.com/
MENA Search Awards https://www.menasearchawards.com/
APAC Search Awards https://apacsearchawards.com/
The Drum Search Awards
Winning one of these coveted awards would contribute immeasurably to your company profile. The Drum is Europe’s largest marketing website, with 1.4m page views per month, making it one of the largest marketing platforms in the world.
If you win, then everyone will know about it. Significantly, the Drum’s expansive audience is always hungry for award news and information, anything to give them insight into the best practices, companies and marketing talent.
The Drum Global Search Awards (now part of the Drum Awards Festival format) celebrate the individuals and companies at the forefront of the search industry. Described by judges as ‘the one to win’, this award scheme provides the perfect opportunity for entrants to prove they are the best at what they do.
As well as hosting a truly global scheme, The Drum Search Awards has a fantastic range of categories into which entrants can submit their best work, teams and tech, including ‘Best SEO B2B Campaign’, ‘PPC B2C Campaign’, ‘SEO Most Effective Use of Data’, ‘PPC Most Effective Use of Paid Search’ and ‘Organic Team of the Year’, to highlight a few.
Region: International – Deadline: July
Website: https://www.thedrumsearchawards.com/
UK Digital Growth Awards
The UK Digital Growth Awards seeks to recognise and reward the exceptional agencies, tools, websites, campaigns and talent that can provide demonstrable evidence of their positive contribution to growth and sales.
A total of 30 categories are available, including ‘SEO Campaign’, ‘PPC Campaign’ and ‘Integrated Search Campaign of the Year’, plus dedicated awards for agencies and teams. They are run by the same team that run the Search Awards (outlined above), so you know that even though this is only their second year, they are a reputable, ethical and credible awards scheme.
An influential and respected judging panel will judge all categories. The judging is a robust, credible and transparent two-step process, involving pre-scoring and a judging session where the panel discusses each entry in detail.
Region: UK – Deadline: April
Website: https://ukdigitalgrowthawards.co.uk/
The DADIs (The Drum Awards for the Digital Industries)
The DADIs (The Drum Awards for the Digital Industries) is another well-established and respected awards scheme run by The Drum, meaning these awards will be marketed and promoted to their followers, giving entrants and sponsors access to their wide and captive audience. The DADIs have been recognising excellence for over a decade and are now part of the Drum Awards festival format.
Open internationally to agencies and brands producing exciting and innovative work, The DADIs offers categories including ‘Best Use of Organic Search’ and ‘Best Use of Paid Search’, plus agency, team and individual awards available.
The judging panel is filled with a ‘who’s who’ of marketing and creative heads, with previous panels including representatives of Red Bull Racing, Barclays, M&C Saatchi, BBC and British Airways.
Region: International (UK-based) – Deadline: July
Website: https://www.dadiawards.com/
“Winning a search award is a cost-effective way to show potential clients and employees that you can implement an excellent all-round digital strategy, as well as giving you a competitive edge over rivals. It’s great for team morale, too.”
The Performance Marketing Awards (UK and International)
Entering its 19th year, The UK Performance Marketing Awards aims to highlight the best and brightest within the performance marketing sector. In the UK edition of the PMAs, there are 30 awards up for grabs. They cover a wide range of activity across performance marketing, with awards including ‘Best Paid Search’, ‘Most Efficient Agency’ and ‘Best Use of Data’. The awards are open to advertisers, publishers, media owners, agencies, networks, start-ups, technology providers or individuals who operate in the performance marketing sector.
For the International scheme, now in its 8th year, there are also regional awards for LATAM, APAC, MENA and Europe.
Winning entries are profiled as case studies on leading global performance marketing publication PerformanceIN, with winners listed online for the following year and provided with official PMA winners’ collateral, enabling them to market their achievement to partners and prospects.
There is also a more recent US edition under the alternative branding ‘US Partnership Awards’.
Region: UK, US & International – Deadline: January (US) February (UK) & July (International)
Websites:
UK https://performancemarketingawards.co.uk/
US https://partnershipawards.com/
International https://performancemarketingawards.com/
The Drum Digital Advertising Awards (International)
The Drum Digital Advertising Awards seek to identify the very best in adtech and programmatic advertising. Back in 2013, The Drum joined forces with industry leaders to address the fact that many advertisers were shying away from programmatic trading for various reasons, including not fully understanding how it all works, lack of transparency and consequently not trusting the process. In order to increase awareness of companies which were overcoming issues of transparency and clarity, The Drum launched the Digital Advertising Awards. The programme has been running successfully for many years now and is open to global entry. It now comes under the umbrella of the Drum Awards festival format.
Judges will want to see: performance against set aims and objectives, a clear story, examples of creativity and innovation, evidence-based results and testimonials.
Region: International (July deadline)
Websites:
International https://www.digitaladvertisingawards.com/
Next steps?
This is just a selection of the search awards available to you – there are many more out there that we can help you find.
If any of these make you think ‘That’s us’ or ‘We could win that’, then I recommend you let us help with the creation of your written submission. We are the world’s first and largest award entry consultancy. We’ve been helping businesses enter tech awards and win them since 2006, and we are more experienced than any other agency in the world when it comes to these awards. Details of our award entry writing services can be found here.
I would be happy to give you a call to help you double-check your chances of success and explain our pricing options. You can contact Boost via our contact form or email me directly via emma.turnbull@boost-awards.co.uk
I look forward to hearing from you and helping you win awards.
Emma.
*Hendricks & Singhal of the University of Western Ontario and Georgia Institute of Technology.
Boost – a helping hand entering awards
Boost Awards is the world’s first and largest award entry consultancy, having helped clients – from SMEs to Multinationals – win over 2,000 credible business awards. Increase your chances of success significantly – call Boost on +44(0)1273 258703 today for a no-obligation chat about awards.
(C) This article was written by Emma Turnbull and is the intellectual property of award entry consultants Boost Awards.
Searching for Search Awards…look no further!
Emma Turnbull
Managing Consultant, Boost Awards
Search awards – Organic and paid search PPC
Search is an exciting arena, a true battleground for the soldiers of SEO, SEM and PPC, where everyone is constantly trying to improve their rankings and climb above the competition. Just try searching ‘Best SEO Agency’, for example, to see the unending war to win business being played out. As algorithms continue to be fed with richer and more diverse streams of data and content, search engines are becoming ever-more intelligent and complex, especially now with widespread AI integration about to change search forever. Similarly, the changing way that consumer use search, along with developments in technology and the increasing adoption of voice and mobile, all mean that innovation and fleet-footedness are critical to achieving success in the search industry.
The rapid increase in using voice recognition personal assistants and built-in mobile companions such as Siri or Alexa means that they are quickly becoming the search mode of choice. ComScore says that by 2020, 50 per cent of all searches will be voice searches.
Winning a search award really can put you ahead of the competition and win you business. Just as consumers rely upon reviews and ratings to choose a product, hotel or restaurant, buyers of business products and services want to spend their money with winners – and they do. In fact research shows that award winners have 37%* more sales growth than non-winners. Put simply, winning a search award puts you ahead of the competition and makes a measurable difference to sales conversion.
Whether you are looking for SEO, SEM, PPC or Paid Search awards, the overview I provide below will not only help you discover the most credible awards in search, but also simplify your decision-making process. There are, of course, SEO and PPC award categories in many marketing awards, and I have highlighted some of the more prestigious below as well.
The Search Engine Land Awards (The Landy Awards)
Google and Bing sponsor the Search Engine Land Awards, so it goes without saying that these are credible and probably deemed the highest honours in search marketing – therefore, the most important in terms of profile-raising for you!
Search Engine Land wanted to provide a meaningful way to ‘Celebrate the Power of Search’ within the search marketing community. The Search Engine Land Awards programme, a.k.a. The Landy Awards, is dedicated to honouring best practice in search marketing by recognising the consultants, agencies, in-house teams, search tools and platforms used by digital marketers to execute successful programmes encompassing organic, paid, local, mobile and social search tactics.
There are categories for SEO, SEM, individuals, agencies and internal teams, examples of which include ‘Best SEM Initiative’, ‘Best SEO Initiative’ and ‘Agency of the Year’.
Entrants will be judged by search experts, as well as representatives from Google and Bing. The Landys Awards have a strict scoring process that is weighted objectively to avoid bias and places an emphasis on verifiable results, innovation, and best practice.
Region: International – Deadline: September
Website: https://searchengineland.com/awards
“The Search Engine Land Awards recognise the consultants, agencies, in-house teams, search tools and platforms used by digital marketers to execute successful programmes, encompassing organic, paid, local, mobile and social search tactics.”
The Search Awards
Viewed as the premier celebration of SEO, PPC and content marketing, The Search Awards encompasses five region-specific schemes: UK, Europe, US, MENA, APAC and a Global edition. Each scheme is designed to celebrate and reward the most accomplished SEO and PPC campaigns, as well as the software, teams and individuals behind them.
The UK Search Awards came first and was established in 2011, with Europe, US, and MENA following shortly thereafter. By 2020, The Search Awards family had grown to include the Global Search Awards and APAC Search Awards, making it easily the most representative and far-reaching search award programme in existence.
Thankfully, each Search Award scheme sub-divides its categories by sector, thereby enabling entrants to gain recognition for the specific tactics and strategies they employed to stand out from the crowd and achieve their own or their client’s targets. In each of the sector-based categories, judges will expect to see the specific reasoning and methodology that were deployed to ensure the needs of the client (and their native sector) were met.
Equally, each Search Award scheme offers agency-specific categories. In this case, categories are available to celebrate all search-based agencies, irrespective of size or composition, with categories being based on employee count and service offering. Categories include: ‘Best PPC Campaign’, ‘Best SEO Campaign’, ‘Best Search Software Tool’, sector-specific ‘Best Use of Search’ campaigns and ‘Personality of the Year’, to name but a few.
Each of the regional award schemes attracts hundreds of entries from leading search and digital agencies.
The Search Award organisers, Don’t Panic Events, also host UK and European editions of the Paid Media Awards, which include 32 categories celebrating entries from leading biddable media agencies, publishers, technology providers and professionals.
Region: International + territory specific
Deadlines: March (European Search Awards) May (Global Search Awards) June (European Paid Media Awards) July (US Search Awards) September (UK Search Awards and MENA Search Awards) October (APAC Search Awards) December (UK Paid Media Awards)
Websites:
European Search Awards https://www.europeansearchawards.com/
Global Search Awards https://globalsearchawards.net/
UK Paid Media Awards https://ukpaidmediaawards.co.uk/
US Search Awards https://www.ussearchawards.com/
UK Search Awards https://www.searchawards.co.uk/
European Paid Media Awards https://europeanpaidmediaawards.com/
MENA Search Awards https://www.menasearchawards.com/
APAC Search Awards https://apacsearchawards.com/
The Drum Search Awards
Winning one of these coveted awards would contribute immeasurably to your company profile. The Drum is Europe’s largest marketing website, with 1.4m page views per month, making it one of the largest marketing platforms in the world.
If you win, then everyone will know about it. Significantly, the Drum’s expansive audience is always hungry for award news and information, anything to give them insight into the best practices, companies and marketing talent.
The Drum Global Search Awards (now part of the Drum Awards Festival format) celebrate the individuals and companies at the forefront of the search industry. Described by judges as ‘the one to win’, this award scheme provides the perfect opportunity for entrants to prove they are the best at what they do.
As well as hosting a truly global scheme, The Drum Search Awards has a fantastic range of categories into which entrants can submit their best work, teams and tech, including ‘Best SEO B2B Campaign’, ‘PPC B2C Campaign’, ‘SEO Most Effective Use of Data’, ‘PPC Most Effective Use of Paid Search’ and ‘Organic Team of the Year’, to highlight a few.
Region: International – Deadline: September
Website: https://www.thedrumsearchawards.com/
UK Digital Growth Awards
The UK Digital Growth Awards seeks to recognise and reward the exceptional agencies, tools, websites, campaigns and talent that can provide demonstrable evidence of their positive contribution to growth and sales.
A total of 30 categories are available, including ‘SEO Campaign’, ‘PPC Campaign’ and ‘Integrated Search Campaign of the Year’, plus dedicated awards for agencies and teams. They are run by the same team that run the Search Awards (outlined above), so you know that even though this is only their second year, they are a reputable, ethical and credible awards scheme.
An influential and respected judging panel will judge all categories. The judging is a robust, credible and transparent two-step process, involving pre-scoring and a judging session where the panel discusses each entry in detail.
Region: UK – Deadline: April
Website: https://ukdigitalgrowthawards.co.uk/
The DADIs (The Drum Awards for the Digital Industries)
The DADIs (The Drum Awards for the Digital Industries) is another well-established and respected awards scheme run by The Drum, meaning these awards will be marketed and promoted to their followers, giving entrants and sponsors access to their wide and captive audience. The DADIs have been recognising excellence for over a decade and are now part of the Drum Awards festival format.
Open internationally to agencies and brands producing exciting and innovative work, The DADIs offers categories including ‘Best Use of Organic Search’ and ‘Best Use of Paid Search’, plus agency, team and individual awards available.
The judging panel is filled with a ‘who’s who’ of marketing and creative heads, with previous panels including representatives of Red Bull Racing, Barclays, M&C Saatchi, BBC and British Airways.
Region: International (UK-based) – Deadline: July
Website: https://www.dadiawards.com/
“Winning a search award is a cost-effective way to show potential clients and employees that you can implement an excellent all-round digital strategy, as well as giving you a competitive edge over rivals. It’s great for team morale, too.”
The Performance Marketing Awards (UK and International)
Entering its 19th year, The UK Performance Marketing Awards aims to highlight the best and brightest within the performance marketing sector. In the UK edition of the PMAs, there are 30 awards up for grabs. They cover a wide range of activity across performance marketing, with awards including ‘Best Paid Search’, ‘Most Efficient Agency’ and ‘Best Use of Data’. The awards are open to advertisers, publishers, media owners, agencies, networks, start-ups, technology providers or individuals who operate in the performance marketing sector.
For the International scheme, now in its 8th year, there are also regional awards for LATAM, APAC, MENA and Europe.
Winning entries are profiled as case studies on leading global performance marketing publication PerformanceIN, with winners listed online for the following year and provided with official PMA winners’ collateral, enabling them to market their achievement to partners and prospects.
There is also a more recent US edition under the alternative branding ‘US Partnership Awards’.
Region: UK, US & International – Deadline: January (US) February (UK) & July (International)
Websites:
UK https://performancemarketingawards.co.uk/
US https://partnershipawards.com/
International https://performancemarketingawards.com/
The Drum Digital Advertising Awards (International)
The Drum Digital Advertising Awards seek to identify the very best in adtech and programmatic advertising. Back in 2013, The Drum joined forces with industry leaders to address the fact that many advertisers were shying away from programmatic trading for various reasons, including not fully understanding how it all works, lack of transparency and consequently not trusting the process. In order to increase awareness of companies which were overcoming issues of transparency and clarity, The Drum launched the Digital Advertising Awards. The programme has been running successfully for many years now and is open to global entry. It now comes under the umbrella of the Drum Awards festival format.
Judges will want to see: performance against set aims and objectives, a clear story, examples of creativity and innovation, evidence-based results and testimonials.
Region: International (September deadline)
Websites:
International https://www.digitaladvertisingawards.com/
Next steps?
This is just a selection of the search awards available to you – there are many more out there that we can help you find.
If any of these make you think ‘That’s us’ or ‘We could win that’, then I recommend you let us help with the creation of your written submission. We are the world’s first and largest award entry consultancy. We’ve been helping businesses enter tech awards and win them since 2006, and we are more experienced than any other agency in the world when it comes to these awards. Details of our award entry writing services can be found here.
I would be happy to give you a call to help you double-check your chances of success and explain our pricing options. You can contact Boost via our contact form or email me directly via emma.turnbull@boost-awards.co.uk
I look forward to hearing from you and helping you win awards.
Emma.
*Hendricks & Singhal of the University of Western Ontario and Georgia Institute of Technology.
Boost – a helping hand entering awards
Boost Awards is the world’s first and largest award entry consultancy, having helped clients – from SMEs to Multinationals – win over 2,000 credible business awards. Increase your chances of success significantly – call Boost on +44(0)1273 258703 today for a no-obligation chat about awards.
(C) This article was written by Emma Turnbull and is the intellectual property of award entry consultants Boost Awards.
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