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SEO: Where to Next? at SES NY

By Brian Cosgrove

On Day 1 of SES New York, the Where to Next panel was among the first in the track portion of the show. As you will read, the session was a conversation that migrated from topic to topic in fairly nonlinear path.

Speakers for this session were as follows:
Moderator:

• Mike Grehan: SES Advisory Board, Global KDM Officer, Acronym Media

Speakers:

• Marcus Tandler: CEO, Creativity in Action
• Jill Whalen: CEO, High Rankings
• Bill Hunt: CEO, Global Strategies Intl, Director, Global Search Strategy, Neo@Ogilvy
• Duane Forrester: Senior Program Manager - SEO, Live Search, Microsoft
• Chris Boggs: Director, SEO, Rosetta

The session begins with some best practices. Hunt suggests working on page focus for Title Tags, Headline Tags, and the First Paragraph. This is nothing new and as Whalen points out, at some point no more “on page” work will help. Boggs talks about being consistent with tying the story to the landing page.

The next theme of conversation related to link building. Tandler states that people miss links they legitimately need for their business (while spending too much effort on ones they don’t). Forrestor suggests that the “cold call” approach of sending an email to the webmaster asking for a link still works. This is debated though since all webmasters receive a ton of these emails all the time. Boggs talks about the quality of these links mentioning that many of them include the anchor text of the brand name. For Hunt, these links should be linking to the most relevant internal page. Many link opportunities are sold short because they don’t send users to the right page.

Following this talk comes universal search. Forrester says that SEOs need to get the right mix within the results. It’s all part of a program, depending where your at in the results. Getting into Google News, for example, involves meeting a number of guidelines and applying to get in if you meet the criteria of a news source rather than a journalist who is blogging. Boggs tells us that universal results are very smart and it takes some care to get search traffic from your latest press release.

Since universal search changes the organization of the SERPs, Grehan asks the panel if rankings reports are dead. Tandler suggests scanning the results for the terms you’re targeting and noting which modules show up. Whalen notes that personalized and Geo-targeted results throw a wrench into the rankings report scenario; but Boggs follows that up by noting that they’re still illustrative of overall rankings trends and movement. Further, they can indicate certain categories, etc…. that are moving up. Forrestor says he only uses them internally and one panelist claimed that they aren’t a KPI (this stands for Key Performance Indicator. I am not in agreement with where he was going here. I think rankings can certainly be predictive/indicative of progress toward getting terms which don’t drive traffic closer to a place where they will, at least in aggregate. That being said, a ranking number is not a KPI but KPIs can certainly be derived from rankings, even if there is no traffic, yet, to be seen).

Next up is analytics. Whalen expresses her affinity for Google Analytics. Forrestor encourages the audience to set up conversion, set a goal for that conversion, put a number on it, and beat that number. Boggs offers that the full purchase cycle needs to be considered with analytics since there are often multiple touch points for customers. He mentions creating an attribution model. To this Grehan asks “Why does search get credit for everything?” Hunt quickly replies that it’s the only thing you can measure and people are too lazy to click on organic (this didn’t make much sense to me either but I believe he meant it’s more straight forward for tracking than some other online marketing tactics, or that clients don’t have tracking configured for other methods).

Grehan mentions term “engagement mapping” and Whalen offers that it takes multiple touch points to market effectively (that is, they are complementary, not competitive with each other). Tandler follows this up with a statement that users should not take anything for granted when it comes to looking at their numbers. As he asks, “Who said 2% is great?” He mentions that in the context of that particular situation, they may be able to get it up to 10%. Always Be Testing (incidentally, this is the name of Bryan Eisenberg’s book on Google Website Optimizer). He mentions to get the most out of a landing page (a theme that has been growing momentum as of late).

Forrestor offers the term “claiming the cookie” to describe his attribution. He offers a term (2 day theoretical?) to explain that people should be asking themselves, “How much is the customer worth to me when they are with me?” He says that every month, he feels he gets closer to understanding what is attributable to search.

Grehan talks about Digital Asset Optimization and calls analytics the new SEO. This speaks to the concept of universal search encompassing many forms of digital content that together form the clients assets for online marketing. For analytics to be the new SEO, he may mean that it is the optimization of this whole system, through analyzing each one’s particular value, that will lead companies to success.

At this point, we move into slides for each speaker. I’ll list some of the ones that stuck with me:

• Incompetent SEOs must stop wasting the time of companies
• Big brands have the upper hand which means that there definitely is not a level playing field.
• Developers need to bake in SEO
• Don’t just be satisfied with #1 rankings, get the most out of Social media
• Optimize your conversions
• Don’t buy links, buy whole sites (Tandler alluded to fake review sites which sounds like bad news to me).
• Create a deeper “real” integration between paid and organic search
• Flash, Flex, Ajax need to be search engine friendly
• Optimize your digital assets
• Match the right page with the intent of the searcher
• Speak the language of your audience (including from a business perspective
• “Be a webmaster” and look at search holistically, take on all the various roles to some extent
• Embrace in-house+agency SEO relationships
• Make organic entry pages unique to go with the keywords

On the topic of things not being level, Boggs offered that money means time and bigger brands have money so they can afford to put more time into SEO. Another person asked of auto-completion or auto-correction where decreasing the amount of long-tail terms that are searched but someone mentioned that those tools are not always accurate. Someone asked about Woopra and some other tools that are good for looking at your traffic but I don’t recall much of a response.

So there you have it: A collection of topics all covered in a one hour time slot that offer many thoughts and ideas about “What’s next in SEO?”

Matt Bailey on Advanced (Persuasive) SEO at SES NYC

By Kim (cre8pc)

One of the most dynamic speakers to grace Search Engine Strategies, year after year, is Site Logic Marketing's President, Matt Bailey.  His popularity earned him his own time slot, and not surprisingly, his session was packed and overflowing with attendees.  Despite stressed vocal chords, he presented what he claimed were over 200 sides...or else he was just kidding.  If it was that much, it certainly never felt that way during his one hour talk.

His topic was called "Advanced SEO Strategies: Integrating Analytics, Usability, Persuasion and Journalism.  Matt was introduced by Stewart Quealy, VP. Incisive Media.  I had the honor of sitting with Mrs. Bailey, which was fun because we could giggle together.  There is always something to laugh at with Matt's talks.

Matt has lots to wisdom to share.  Here are some highlights, most of which you can apply right away and see immediate improvements on your web pages.  The thrust of his talk is about on-page factors.  In others words, optimizing content out front and behind the curtain.

1. "Clean up your house before inviting people over". Get ready for  searchers.There is a sender of information and a receiver. Users have to decode our sites. Our job is to make pages easier to decode and understand.  Search engines will reward you with better rankings when your users are happy.

2. Words are the building blocks of information.  You want to communicate credibility and encourage users to take action.  We want action as a result.  Matt loves the "Power of words." Words are like  dynamite sticks in people's minds.  By finding words that resonate with searchers, this  will create a reaction in their mind. They can tell when a site has what they're looking for.

3. Absolutely NO generic navigation link labels. If it fits on someone else's web site, its generic. It must be specific to you!

4. Call things what they are.  Brand managers want to control the market and often create odd jargon. Users are looking for specifics and seek exact descriptions.  Remember that consumers may not talk the same way you do.  (He shows the now famous "butt paste" slide, for a diaper rash ointment page.)

5.  Search engines are machines that are trying to make humans happy.

6. Page titles - Make them unique and concise and specific to content on the page.  This will get you rankings and you will see immediate results.  You have  60 characters to get your marketing message in search results pages via the title tag. The title tag says, "This is what is on the page."  It is your promise to your users.  Do not use the same page titles on every page.

7. For content, make liberal use of headlines, sub-headings, bullet points, paragraph header and H1 tags. Watch text contrast and text size. Break up content.  Search engines can tell what text you put emphasis on.

8. How many keywords on a page?  This is the age-old question and the answer has always been - "Does the page make sense?"

9. Meta tags such as keywords are extinct, like the old library card catalog.  They're "pre-2000 DEO".  On page factors have more weight.  Make sure keywords are are unique and focused on each page. Remember, also, alt text behind images because you can't always control how your page is rendere.

10. Put descriptive text around images.

11. Use keywords in image and file names.

12. Optimize multi-media files, video, images, pdf, flash files, images..as these are shown in search engines and are rankable. Search is based on human factors and search engines use the same things. 

13. Users scan content.  79% of users scan a page, 16% read word for word.. Therefore, the most important information needs to be in the first paragraph.

14. Don't make links hard to see.  And more importantly navigation should show where you are, especially if it's a landing page.

15. Credibiliy is based on site's visual appeal. This includes layout, fonts, color scheme, how content is arranged, if consistent and if readable.  Readability  issues are things like small text, blinking, scrolling, rotating, low contrasts and often elements that work for print but not online.

16.  People refine searches by brand, by need and by want.  You want to hit the whole process.  Some products are seasonal. 

17. Don't forget regional words like hoagies, grinder, po-buy and sandwich.  There are different ways to say the same thing and people look for our stuff in vastly different ways.  Research what they call it.   

18. Be aware of everyone's own personalized search. Everyone's search results are different.  Don't forget different languages and spellings for words.

19. There are many different types of searchers...sharp shooters. shotgun, artillery searcher , planner,
browser, price shopper  (customer loyalty is for how long price lasts), last minute shopper.  Offer more than what you ask for.

20. For persuasion, make sure you have ready your elevator pitch, does it meet needs, benefits, build rapport, is it understandable...remember logic, emotion and credibility. Why should people do business with you? Because they NEED to do business with you.

Bravo Matt!

Make Money Per Conversion, Not Click: Search Engine Strategies, NYC

By Kim (cre8pc)

It is day one for sessions at the NYC Search Engine Strategies Conference being held this week at the NY Hilton. There are over 5000 attendees, and believe me, every session I've sat in on has been overflowing with people. There is strong interest in Advanced topics, with a keen eye on what the future holds for the Search Marketing industry.

 I'm delighted to report that although I'm not there in any official capacity as a usability speaker, the relationship of user experience, persuasive design and conversions is inching its way into many sessions and conversations.

The following is are my takeaways from a talk called "Pay Per Conversation" from today's sessions.

Moderator: Jeff Rohrs, ExactTarget

Speakers: Jeffrey Eisenberg, FutureNow
Sandra Cheng, Product Mgr, Google

Jeffrey is standing in for his brother, Bryan Eisenberg, because his wife just went into labor. This room is filled to capacity. Unlike the first session I attended this morning (SEO: Where to Next?"), where it was overflowing and I had to sit on the floor, this time I'm firmly planted in the front row.

Jeffrey leads off the session by having us consider the typical PPC (Pay per click) term and reworking it to "pay per conversation". The reason for this is that we don't want to make money per click. We make money per conversion. He also pondered that rather than "SEO", we view it as "search experience optimization". As he says, "There is a signal by the searcher and if we hear it right, we can get them to take action." So let's look at his ideas on how we can listen and meet user/searcher expectations:

 1. Web Analytics consulting can show you were the disconnects are. These are where our user expectations are not met. Did they search on a phrase and your page appear but not meet what they expected? Your goal here is to study your data to discover traffic patterns and unmet needs.

 2. There were several references to what we now called "information scent". While there are many different definitions, essentially "scent" are cues to your visitors to keep them interested. They'll stick around when pages are relevant and click paths are goal driven. Links, for example, should contain content that will promise to take your users where they want or need to go. Where there is scent, there is momentum. Study your drop off data and note where they have lost the scent of what put them on the trail to your site. Information Scent creates motivation. The objective is to avoid losing so many users up front. Pay attention to the signals users are looking for.

 3. Keywords don't fail to convert. Rather, how pages are relevant to keyword searches makes the difference.

4. Personas. There are simple vs robust" personalities, logical vs emotional, quick vs deliberate, methodical vs spontaneous. User behavior absolutely is taken into consideration when determining design, content, and tasks. Eye tracking studies have proved different patterns of page usage can be traced to different types of personalities. Some people will find something quickly and then move on. Motivation is where users will focus. Geico appeals to an emotional need with the use of its lizard, who promises to save you hundreds of dollars. However, if you have sold the idea and then present your visitor with a technical and complicated form to fill out, you risk losing your visitor.

 5. (I loved this!) "Plan, improve, measure and plan again, over and over...." Conversions are a continuous improvement process. Align customers with business objectives and consider their behavior patterns. By studying patterns, this changes what you add and enhance on your web pages. Don't throw anything against the wall and see what sticks.

 6. There is a White Paper on creating personas on FutureNow. Their Twitter account is twitter@thegrok Jeffrey had a great set of slides to compliment his talk and also showed several case studies from some big brand companies, where something as simple as changing the content on a call to action button increased conversions. He illustrated the value of testing several pages to see what converted best.

Sandra was next. She's an excellent speaker. Very clear and easy to follow. She strongly emphasized the value of using Google Analytics in her presentation but any testing is fine. She showed how testing can help you figure out what works best for your users. Some highlights from her talk include:

1. Not everybody who comes to your site will do what you want them to do (but lets try to nab what we can).

2. Try to avoid bounces and abandonment by making sure the directions are clear.

3. The best way to understand what's confusing is to watch a friend use your web site. You know where everything is already. Where did they get stuck?

4. Get analytics to get data. You need an idea where people are going on your site and what happens when they get there. Reports will prompt you to ask the right questions about your traffic. Data shows where they come from. You will ask questions, get answers and make fixes, all with the help of your reports. Look at landing pages. Where do they enter your site? Google Analytics shows bounce rates. Do they land and leave before clicking anywhere? Bounce rates represents opportunity. What changes can you make to help them to stay? Look at funnel reports. These are goal paths and show Where they come in and out/ Page leaks (where users leave) are also opportunities to patch leaks.

5. Internal site search are great sources that show customer intent. People type into your site what they are looking for. This is how they tell you what they want. Study where they go when the search and also investigate where they left. Look at search terms and un-met needs. Perhaps the search results page is too confusing. or you don't carry the product they're looking for. You can get a great picture of customer intent with on-site search.

6. Test page or ad copy. Look at non-paid keywords and bounce rates and compare with paid keyword strategies.

7. Let visitors design your pages for you. Compare page content by making and testing 3 variations of the page. Google will track responses and show you the winning combination. Run mulit-variate testing. Test an image vs without an image near a call to action prompt. It is not rare for 20-50% conversions improvement by making small changes that appear in this kind of testing

8. Remember that "best practices" aren't always the best for YOUR site.

Win a Free Ticket to Online Media Boot Camp on April 9, 2009

By Li Evans

We announced Online Media Boot Camp, a unique & exclusive online marketing training conference going on here in the Philadelphia area. Now I have some good news!  We're giving away three free tickets!  You have your shot at winning 1 of them, just get someone to nominate you.  Here's the rules to how it works:

The three lucky ticket winners will be picked on March 20th!

1. Want a chance at winning a free ticket to the Online Media Boot Camp (a value of $349 before 3/16 & $449 after 3/16), you have to be nominated by someone else.
2. A person can be nominated in one of four ways: a blog post, a video, on Twitter, via an e-mail sent to OMBC (beth [at] onlinemediabootcamp [dot] com). All four must include: Who you are nominating and why. You must include a link to the Online Media Boot Camp (www.onlinemediabootcamp.com) in your post. If you tweet it, use the #OMBC hashtag.
3. If you nominate someone, you can buy a ticket for $349 after 3/16. A savings of $100! (Code: OMBCFTW)
4. If you are nominated for OMBC and you want to go to OMBC, you must do one of the following to accept the nomination: a blog post, a video, or send an e-mail to OMBC accepting the nomination (beth [at] onlinemediabootcamp [dot] com).You must state that you will cover all travel costs, that you will attend and why you deserve to win. You must include a link to the Online Media Boot Camp (www.onlinemediabootcamp.com) in your post. If you tweet it, use the #OMBC hashtag.
5. All posts, videos and e-mails of those nominated will be posted to the OMBC blog too.
6. The three winners will be selected by the OMBC speakers. Criteria includes: creativity, passion, honesty, statement of how online marketing/social media will help you as a business owner or marketer/communicator/etc. and any other items that you think make your case to win a free ticket.
7. If you are nominated for a free ticket, but don’t win, you can buy a ticket for $349 after 3/16. A savings of $100! (Code: OMBCFTW)
8. If you win a free ticket and have already purchased a ticket, we’ll refund your money. Or, if you are feeling generous, you could give your purchased ticket to a friend…

It’s that simple! Have questions? Contact Online Media Boot Camp on Twitter: @onlinemediabc or e-mail us at beth [at] onlinemediabootcamp [dot] com.

Beth also explains that if you aren't creative, we just won't be that into you! :)

The Pirate's Dilemma - SES London Keynote by Matt Mason

By Li Evans

Matt Mason, author of the Pirate's Dilemma spoke at the opening keynote of SES London. Prior to him speaking I got a chance to speak to him a little and I was really impressed with what a down to earth person Matt really is. That carried through to his presentation as well.

Matt started out by giving the audience some big picture overviews about Piracy by asking the audience how many of us knowingly pirate things and how many don't? Matt went on to point out it's not the piracy laws that we know that we break, but the ones we don't know we break every day. The audience seemed a little bewildered until Matt went on to point out that singing happy birthday in public, forwarding emails and photocopying books are all examples of piracy. If you calculated it all, 4.65 billion a year would be owed by each person for violating laws around piracy.

In the past, information use to flow in one direction but with the changes in society, technology and advancement with the internet, information is now flowing in a lot of directions and decentralization is happening. Piracy is having a great impact on businesses such as fashion, pharmaceuticals, and movies just to name of few industries, and its only just getting started. With the advent of the 3d printer and the fact that these printers are getting extraordinarily cheaper each year( a few years ago they were 21k, this year 1,800) as well as smaller and faster, piracy is becoming more and more a big issues companies face.

SES London 2009 - Link Building Basics

By SEOidiot

This session is in the fundamentals track so a lot of the content may not be suited to people at a more advanced level already

Moderator:
Kevin Newcomb, Managing Editor, Search Engine Watch

Speakers:
Peter van der Graaf, Advanced Search Specialist, Netsociety
Debra Mastaler, President, Alliance-Link
Jonathan Stewart, Head of Natural Search, iCrossing UK
Brian Turner, Offpage Optimisation Specialist, Propero Digital

Debra Mastaler of Alliance Link:

Links are the soul of the web, sites that have a lot of links rank well.
Before we can do that we need to understand where this all came from.
Back in the 50's with the launch of sputnik the world realised that they needed a network that would survive if nuclear war happened and this eventually lead to the creation of the internet. Once the amount of pages on the net increased the search engines became the way to find information.

Google started with the view of course that the links between these sites were citations as sites voted for each other.

Link Popularity

Link quantity - Number of links
Link quality - The authority that is passed through the link
Anchor text - The text used in inbound links
Anchor text is most effective when these links point at pages optimised for that term.
Link relevance - establishes where your site is in the neighbourhood of links.

Authority sites
Sites that rank well and have strong positions within their niche and have quality inbound links that support that.

Avoid when link building: -

Try to build slow and steady to avoid sending a signal to the engines that this isnt normal
Repetitive anchor text - try to avoid just using one term and link deeply into the site rather than just to the homepage.
Reciprocal links - dont get stuck just using reciprocals
Links in the content rather than the navigation as these can appear to be potentially paid or out of full context.
Links that nofollow or are affected by robots.txt wont help you with your link popularity
Make sure the pages you are trying to get links from are indexed as a guide that it should pass at least some value.

Jonathan Stewart of iCrossing UK:

Links - its all about quality

• Trust
• Dofollow
• Age of links
• Page Rank
• Content
• Anchor text
• Position
• Relevance

Tools for link analysis

• Google webmaster tools
• Yahoo site explorer
• SEO Elite
• Linkscape

How to get links

• Directories
• Had a tough time of late (Google have even removed it from their guidlines)

Dont use to focus on big money terms (Better used for long tail)
Make sure the directory has good editorial and that the page you want is indexed and has a cache in google

Link reconfiguration

• Approach webmasters already identified as linking to you and ask them to change the link to something more optimised or even add further links to additional content.
• Agencies - use the clients email address to ask and be personal (phone, manual email etc)
• Identify sites linking to a 404 page on your site and ask them to correct

Press Releases

• PR Web
• Response Source
• Source Wire
• 27-7 Press release

Embed links in the release
Google only takes the anchor text from the first link. So if three links in your release all point to the home page the first found is the one that google uses.

Creating great content

• For a recent toyota blog campaign they looked at the fact that the car was aimed at people who are looking for fuel efficiency
• They decided to do some hypermiling where they tested how efficient you could get the car to act.
• Flickr photos
• Twitter
• Blog posts
• Picked up and linked from some highly valuable sites.

Peter van der Graaf of Netsociety

Just sending mass emails isn't that effective
Stages of link building

• What do i have and where do i want links from (Inc competitor link analysis)
• Link bait creation
• Distribution
• Continue the relationship with people who link to you

Preparation

• How natural and full is my current link profile
• Do i have good links?
• Do I have links that could appear paid
• How does this appear in relation to your competition
• Which possible link partners would help bridge that gap?
• Can these possible link partners be grouped into possible approaches ?

Link Bait Creation

• You have to match the content that you create that match the approaches that you identified in the previous stage. Do some research on a topic and create content based on that research.
• Contribute to websites, content, providing tools, guest post, reward their visitors (discounts perhaps?)
  Linker rewards - reviews, testimonials, link trades (knowing the down sides of that now)
  Must see - shocking, funny, hot topics

Distribution

• Email, as personally as possible. The more personal the better the results.
• Take personal control of the most important targets to ensure the best chance of success.
• Distribute through sites that already have some authority. Press releases, social, news etc
  Spread virally
• Continue relations
• Link value keeps building up so don't lose them.
• Makes it easier for ongoing projects.

Brian Turner of Propero Digital

A lot of people misunderstand link building as they often look at links in isolation as a way to manipulate the results rather than making it part of the overall marketing process.

• Link buying is a good example of an area that if focussed on getting links can cause you problems.
• Google is developing newer methods than just links as signals. Human traffic values for example.
• Link building therefore has to be part of a wider communications strategy.
• By entering into conversations with people in your industry you are naturally inviting links
• The internet is a social web run by people for people so engaging in conversations is a natural way to invite links as part of that conversation.

Q & A

1 link building tactic that works right now

• Jonathan - Link reconfiguration
• Peter - Reduce branding - people are far more likely to respond without a prominant brand
• Brian - be newsworthy

SES London - Orion Panel - SEO Where to Next?

By SEOidiot

Moderator: Mike Grehan

Speakers:
Kevin Ryan, SES Advisory Board Chair & CMO, WebVisible
Rand Fishkin, CEO, SEOmoz.org
Brett Tabke, CEO, WebmasterWorld.com
Chris Sherman, Executive Editor, Search Engine Land
Jill Whalen, CEO, High Rankings Where does

Where does SEO go next?
Why do we do SEO - why don't we expect the engines to do that work and fix their crawler?

Jill Whalen - We have to do it. The problem is often the developers who don't understand what they have to do to make life easy for the engines.

Chris Sherman - SEO is as much PR as it is tweaking pages.

Rand Fishkin - Linkbuilding is its own art and science, great linkbuilding isn't always tied to great marketing. Good marketers who find technical and psycological ways to make people want to link.

Mike Grehan - If you think about great ways to attract people and make good content its better than trying to set yourselves some number based target. One great link can outway a volume of poor links. Is it about quantity or quality?

All- quality

Should we spend more time on quality?

Jill Whalen - Natural links are best, getting that extra edge is a real science

Rand Fishkin - When you do a lot of site analysis you sometimes find that it isn't always quality. Yes in the long term quality counts but when you see weaknesses in the algo its hard not to take advantage of that.

Mike Grehan - The weakness of the link based method is that unless you have a website you don't get to vote

Rand Fishkin - Web 2.0 has partly addresses that and now the public does get to vote

Mike Grehan - Usergenerated content is now 5 times that of traditional content.

Rand - I think we may underestimate google. Is a crawler going to be the best way to gather all the information in the world? When you look at things like twitter for example.

Mike Grehan - What are some of the new things we should be doing now?

Chris Sherman - If we are doing some of the quality things we should be OK.

Brett - We are coming into a new era where search engines aren't the defacto way to get information. Social media is starting to take some share of that task.

Kevin Ryan - Getting access to the data isn't the only factor, local 2.0 has become the integration of usergenerated content into the mix.

Rand Fishkin - When you look at what has changed, local is one area. The new sources cant be manipulated in the same ways.

Mike Grehan - On doing a search for bed and breakfast new york all the work that people had done on organic rankings and getting backlinks is wasted by the fact that google puts a list of local listings before the first result.

Rand Fishkin - You have to do different things to manipulate your chances in local, you have to be aware that if you simply sit back and let it happen naturally then you aren't influencing the results.

Jill Whalen - We should be helping make the internet better and helping the search engines give good results

Rand Fishkin - Blackhats aren't ruining the web, they are pushing the envelope. They are one of the drivers that make google improve their systems.

Mike Grehan - If we did just stick to googles guidelines that would be hard

Rand Fishkin - Yes it would be hard but even now by leveraging the new user generated content and thinking differently you can still.

Mike Grehan - Lets talk about social media, should we be recommending that people use that? Should it be part of the mix?

Jill Whalen - It creates traffic and people are using it in addition to google

Rand Fishkin - I don't know how we couldn't recommend that

Chris Sherman - Depends on your goals, if you use it for areas that don't work for social media you may get a backlash.

Mike Grehan - How do we get the new signals from user generated content into the algo? Rand Fishkin - The goal of many of sites now is to be the defacto answer to the query so you dont rely on google. bt - When google did their recent ajax test it stripped off the referring keyword and if implemented would cause us to rethink our optimization strategy.

Mike Grehan - If google changes overnight we don't get a warning that they will change.

Jill Whalen - Thats why concentrating on making the pages you create the best that they can be and have made good use of social media then it shouldn't matter if google changes its algo.

Mike Grehan - Video? is optimizing video the SEO's job

All - Yes

 Chris Sherman - We are going to see more technologies like speech to text conversion that will make our job easier.

Mike Grehan - Again we are all talking about new signals

Chris Sherman - Content is king and will continue to be, the technical aspect of SEO will change but content remains king

Jill Whalen - The IT department and the marketing departments of businesses need to come together. they need to understand that SEO is a function of both

Kevin Ryan - Other than googles dominance the involvement of google in government now is a concern.

Q & A

With the advent of so many new ways to get to the web without having to go through google (Think Tweetdeck for Twitter and other applications) how are our jobs going to change?

Brett - If you focus on the user then the engines will follow
Rand Fishkin - Perhaps thats a different job than the job of an SEO?

When you are looking at applications that access the sites directly thats perhaps not search. Is Google now finished as we move away from a link based eco system?

Chris Sherman - In the early days the method of viewing value through citation that was a good way to look at the web, there will be new ways going forward.

Rand Fishkin - Link analysis still has some life in it for coming years but citations can evolve beyond just links.

SES London - Measuring Success in a 2.0 world

By SEOidiot

Moderator: Mike Grehan

• Richard Zwicky, Founder & CEO, Enquisite
• Miles Bennett, Director, Targetstone Limited
• John Marshall, CTO, Market Motive
• Neil Mason, Director of Analytical Consulting, Foviance

What do we need to track? 
Many years ago clients merely asked that we needed to simply track hits

Richard Zwicky - 2.0 is how user want to interact with the web.  Measure the value delivered rather than simple numbers

Miles Bennett - Usability towards growing registrations rather than simple traffic metrics.

John Marshall - Becoming tougher to measure the success of the business rather than simply the website. So much of the interaction with business now happens off the website (think RSS feeds etc)

Neil Mason - Define what you mean by success - time needs to be taken to make the client understand what success means. Analytics simply show behaviour rather than determine success in the visitor achieving what they came to achieve.

How does the client determine what the KPI's are ?

Richard Zwicky - Clients do need to be lead through the process

John Marshall - Its getting harder for the client to grasp the fact that a lot of the value happens away from the website. Email marketing for example can be difficult as so many of the savvy younger web users use mediums like social networking

Mike Grehan - In 2.0 there are so many additional factors (think user generated content video etc)

Miles Bennett - Trends, peaks and troughs as a method to show where the risks and value are. It doesn't matter what the historic numbers are if they get problems off site on things like Youtube it can still affect the brand.

Mike Grehan - How important is it to measure things like tagging - del.icio.us twitter hashtags etc

Neil Mason - The toolkits are sparse in that area so its difficult. researching using the newer tools helps large customers to start to understand the value from multi channel behaviour.

John Marshall - The analytics traditional tend to now give a more 2 dimensional view but don't tell us much about the intention and experience of the user. Surveys are an important tool as is competitive information. KPI referrals from search is better with a view of share of search as it gives a far more meaningful metric.

Richard Zwicky - Professional analytics give so much more than the basic tools like google analytics etc - we fall into that as its easier when some of the professional tools give so much more. Its like a professional photographer using a high end SLR verses the ease of use of something like a camera phone.

 

Mike Grehan - So how do we add value to our clients?
People give value too often to the last click rather than the whole picture

Neil Mason - To do a job you need a variety of tools. Google Analytics - good strong basic analytics tool but as you ask more questions you start to need more tools. Got to get the data in one place as you need to be able to see all the data across the different technologies and therefore be unable to understand the total picture which then in turn informs what decisions you make.

John Marshall - Admission of complexity is a first step in understanding that we need to change. Tools like Hitwise and other competitive data isn't a replacement for analytics but provides an additional layer.

Mike Grehan - tools that are out there ?

Neil Mason - Hitwise as competitive analysis
John Marshall - Compete

Many of the newer tools are expensive as we have been lulled into a sense that analytics data is free whereas many of the new services rely on work that costs a great deal to assemble.

Mike Grehan - what are the important KPI's?

Miles Bennett - its hard to give a one size fits all as they need to align with the customers objectives

Neil Mason - You have to first define what the goals of the business are and these have to be clear and confident. what does good look like (what would the indicators be of success). Then looking at how you can measure that, perhaps for an investment company good may be determined by phone call enquiries. Many of these metrics point to outcomes that manifest themselves in actions offline.

Richard Zwicky - The site isn't an island in the business and so you need to understand how to listen to those customers

Q & A

Measuring success
If the client doesn't have a clear idea of the 'value' of each lead what can you do to counter that?

John Marshall - There are tools that can help attach the real search query into the lead generation tool. this then gives the sales people the opportunity to see the types of leads and it gives them a way to value those leads. Think - if the referral from search was 'cheap widgets' that gives the client a better idea of the value of that lead versus other terms.

How much time do you suggest businesses devote to measuring success?

Miles Bennett - Web analytics and data analysis is a full time role and people need to give it the resource to get the value

Richard Zwicky - If you define the goals then you can define the amount of time that you need to spend with the data to achieve those goals

Neil Mason - The more the pressure of the current climate bites the amount of time between adjustment cycles will mirror the faster pace of changes within the client.

Search Engine Strategies London!

By Li Evans

It's hard to believe that it's been a year already, since Mike Grehan of Acronym Media put together one of the best Search Engine Strategies events I've been to, but, the calendar doesn't lie, it's been a year.  Last year Mike had one heck of a program put together, new sessions, great speakers and some awesome keynotes.

This year looks to be no different, in fact it looks to be able to top last year in content that addresses the subjects that are relevant to what's going on in the industry now, globally.  Take for example the opening keynote, it's Matt Mason who's the author of The Pirate's Dilemma.  Now as some of you know I've got thing for pirate lore, so the title of that book immediately caught my attention when friend Whitney Hoffman of LD Podcast (great podcast for parents with children who have learning disabilities) first mentioned it to me, now the author is a keynote speaker at SES London - and no I don't expect him to dress as a pirate although and eye patch might be a cool touch. :)

What's cool about this book is that it touches on how the youth are really driving and changing trends and fads in the online world.  With these changes, its creating havoc in our worlds of marketing and business because none of these trends follow the old "norms" that companies have established.  Companies and marketers have to stop and rethink how they approach marketing online because of this, because "piracy" has become a new business model.

Beyond the keynote by Matt Mason, there's a great lineup of sessions.  Some popular ones are returning from last year's lineup, and then there are new ones like one of the panels I'm speaking on with Greg Jarboe and Shari Thurow - Online Video Update - The Next Wave.  There's even a Orion Panel discussing where SEO goes next, and look who's on the panel - Brett Tabke, Jill Whalen and Chris Sherman, just to name a few.

Beyond speaking on the Video panel, I'm also speaking on Social Media and moderating the Podcast/Vodcast panel and a Site Clinic.  That site clinic will have Matt Bailey and Dave Naylor on it, I think that clinic is going to be fun, since you never know what site is going to be reviewed and what the panelists will help with.

So if you haven't signed up yet or you're on the fence, what are you waiting for?  Especially in today's economic recession, you need to get ahead of the curve, SES London can help you do just that!

Online Marketing Training in Philly at Online Media Boot Camp

By Li Evans

With the way the economy is going these days,companies are downsizing and looking for ways to cross train staff members to handle more responsibilities with online marketing strategies.  Trouble is that just because your online marketer handles your PPC doesn't mean they totally understand how to handle your PR online.  You're blogger may be great at creating catchy blog posts but might not know how to integrate a complete social media strategy.  Your very competent SEO can get you rankings for keywords, but might not have the knack for building a community.  Where can you find the cross training to help your team get up to date on all these different areas of online marketing at a reasonable rate? Well that's the question we attempt to answer by creating a great online marketing training conference called Online Media Boot Camp!  For under $500 you can get some great cross training in Online PR, Blogging, Social Media and Community Building.

Exclusive Online Marketing Training

It's also a pretty exclusive training, limited to just 65 attendees.  That gives the attendees more face time with the online marketing training speakers who do this stuff every day and know the ins and outs.  So who are the speakers?  Well check out this out.

• Mack Collier who writes at his own blog, the Viral Garden (and others as well) will be doing training on building communities.
• Shashi Bellamkonda from Network Solutions is going to be speaking on how you can sell online marketing and social media internally and get buy in from not just the higher ups but your whole company.
• Valeria Maltoni from the Conversation Agent is giving guidance on corporate and business blogging.  It's a lot different than just personal or hobby blogging and Valeria has got a lot to share.
• Beth Harte from The Harte of Marketing and SMG's most recent author edition is sharing her knowlege of Public Relations in a Web 2.0 world.
• Then there's me - Liana "Li" Evans - I kick the day off by giving attendees the basic fundamentals around social media and online marketing.

Now you're wondering where, when and how much really, right?  O.K., so here's the other important details.

• Where:  King of Prussia, PA - just north of downtown Philly, conveniently located off of the PA turnpike.
• When:  April 9th, 2009 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
• Cost:  Until Feb. 20th, 2009  just $349.00 (yes, that truly is under $500!)

So what is included?  Well the training of course, but breakfast, lunch with the speakers and snacks are included as well as a few "give mes" (swag) and free WiFi.  Not a bad deal for some excellent online marketing training, wouldn't you say?

What are you waiting for?  Sign up today, because after February 20th, 2009 the price goes up, and with only 65 slots available, they won't last long!