Notes from Search Engine Strategies NY 2008Overview: Thousands of people, dozens of sessions, workshops, keynotes, parties, and impromptu encounters were jammed into the NY Hilton from last Monday through Friday. It's an information onslaught that leaves you feeling like a fully saturated sponge. But first, before it all began, yours truly hosted a pre-SES Guru dinner, which many of the presenters attended. There were the PPC gurus Andrew Goodman, Mona Elesseily (she works with Andrew at Page Zero Media and is author of the Yahoo! search marketing guide Mastering Panama) and Jon Myers of Mediavest in the UK. Andrew would later moderate an intense PPC panel that I will cover further down in this article.
ClickZ VP and Executive Editor Rebecca Lieb talked with eMarketer co-founder Sam Alfstad. Conversion expert Jeffrey Eisenberg held court and such phrases as "Persuasion Architecture," which he coined, were bandied about. Wordtracker's Ken McGaffin and Mike Mindel were in attendance. Ken would speak on linking matters at the conference later in the week. Also part of the British invasion was my dear friend Mike Grehan, who would co-host the most spirited session I would see on the following Wednesday. In that session on Universal SEO, Mike would describe how he made a video with a cheap camera about his SES London event. He posted it to YouTube and Metacafe plus other video venues. Then he linked and tagged from StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us, Digg, and other social-media sites. Within a few short hours, Google had found the video and featured it in search results. The lesson is this: Google and other search engines are hungry for topical video. Make your video now and link to it before everyone else gets on the video bandwagon. Dana Todd was there. She's with SiteLab and just launched NewsForce (a new tool that optimizes press releases for search engine crawlers). Larry Jaffee, managing editor of Promo, found that quite intriguing. Over appetizers, Eileen Shulock (managing editor for Web Digest for Marketers) and I worked out a media extension to Twitter, called Fritter (as in how to fritter your time away). While we say snarky things about Twitter, I heard in more than one session at the show to follow how Twitter is a very fast word-of-mouth medium because it is so easy to forward comments. In many ways it's a faster propagator than blogs or Facebook and the like. While little applets like Twitter may not easily fit ads per se, it might well be a good medium for getting the word out about events, content and the like. Also present at the party was SEO and social media guru Amanda Watlington. She would be a featured speaker on optimizing podcasts later in the week. Her advice: Feature at least a sample of your podcast on the landing page with an indication of how long the sample is and what is in it. Make sure that landing page is rich with the keywords mentioned in your podcast or video. Many people will just listen to the podcast right off that landing page and won't bother to download it to an MP3 player. Also, put lyrics from your songs into your tags. Makes sense because I have searched for songs using fragments of lyrics I remember without having any idea who the artist is or the name of the song itself. In that same session with Amanda, Webmaster Radio's Daron Babin would give good tips on how to optimize multi-media files. All the programs featured on Webmaster Radio have transcripts (which are not cheap to produce) but are very important to post next to the podcast or video file as it helps the crawlers.
Also at my Sunday dinner party was MarketingSherpa Research Director Stefan Tornquist. While talking to me about favorite authors we have in common (Patrick O'Brian, especially), he simultaneously counted the number of people who had arrived against the number of empty chairs at the long table because people were milling about and imbibing some Saint-Emilion wine. He noticed there weren't enough seats at the table for all the people standing, all while carrying on an impassioned conversation with me. What a guy. Later that evening, I noticed he was deep in conversation with software developer, raconteur and old friend Matt Lederman. These two seemed well matched to me: two brainiacs. While I didn't get a chance to talk much to Beyond Ink's Anne Kennedy, she, too, showed up and would present later in the week called "The Business Case for SEO Content Development: Turning Words Into Action!" Also attending was respected high-tech journalist John Verity and Acronym Media founder and CEO Anton Konikoff. I was honored to host so many people at the top of their game at one time in one room. What I also found fascinating is how so many of them opened up and talked about things other than SEO. These are real people with real lives and altogether likable, even lovable. If you get a chance to see or meet them, I encourage you to do so. These are deep people with rich, interesting lives. Show Notes Orion Panel: Universal Search Far and away, this was the most intriguing session I attended. First, what is universal search? It's important to define it because I find many in-the-know people in internet marketing but not search marketing don't know what it is. Universal search (sometimes called blended search) mixes into your results a lot more than just the usual 10 blue links with snippets of copy. You get video freezeframes you can play right on the search results page, pictures, audio files, news releases and more. Hosted by Kevin Ryan and Mike Grehan, it featured ComScore's James Lamberti; Google's product manager for Universal Search Jack Menzel; Lyndsay Menzies, managing director of Big Mouth Media; and Federated Media's John Battelle, author of "The Search." ComScore came out a couple weeks ago with a study showing that while search usage was up significantly at Google, paid search click-throughs were off. Why is this? Is it a reflection of the economy? Is it because of universal search affecting click-throughs on paid listings? Or both? This was a spirited exploration of what is happening at this early stage of USEO (Universal Search Engine Optimization). Top takeaways:
Next day, over lunch with a ChannelAdvisor executive: USEO won't harm paid search in the long run because, as often is the case with people who click on paid listings, they seek out paid listings specifically.
Ads in a Quality Score World: Hosted by Andrew Goodman; panelists David Miller, product manager for Yahoo's sponsored search; Joel Lapp, VP account services, Reprise Media; Jon Kelly, president, SureHits; and Frederick Vallaeys, with the great title of Google AdWords evangelist. I took more notes at this session than at any other, save for the USEO session mentioned above. This session was stuffed with intriguing insights and tactics for paid search. Below are my best takeaways from this session: Copy tips
Landing-page tips
Metrics tips
Ratings and scores
User experience tips:
Mobile Search: There were a couple of sessions concerning mobile search. My impression: It will hit like a house afire, but not just yet. This field is changing fast. Getting stats and trend lines for early usage is difficult. Here goes:
Searcher Behavior Research Update/Social Media Panelist Robert Murray of iProspect: His company did a JupiterResearch survey that showed 67% of all searches were inspired by offline messaging, such as TV commercials. Also: Some competitors observe what the competition is pushing via keywords and then optimize for that to pull away some of that traffic. Other takeaways:
Hitwise Sponsored Session: Do You Know the Breakdown of Your Competitors' Paid and Organic Traffic? Hitwise Does. Hosted by Research Director Heather Dougherty and GM for General Research Bill Tancer with Paul Hutton, Research Director, Interactive Research, Scripps Networks. Interesting factoids:
Interview with ComScore's Eli Goodman I had a 30-minute interview session with ComScore's Eli Goodman. His company has 2 million opt-in panelists, of which 1 million are US-based. Eli shared with me that his company research shows internet users typically want more media. To me this is why Google has embraced universal search; it's giving more media options return in results. On the Show Floor: At some trade shows, I find the show floor more interesting than the sessions. This show was the opposite. But the floor had its moments. I heard one paid search site say it filters out 33% of the traffic they send and charge you for because they identify it as click-fraud. Best of Show Swag: Orangesoda.com has a miniature beach chair that serves as a cell-phone cradle. Good show-floor branding. This agency for small and medium businesses also had a drawing for a spiffy 1940s one-speed bike with coaster brakes and chrome fenders, painted the company's orange color. Box Lunch with a side of URLs: I picked up three search tools that come in handy when you want to search forums to see what people are saying about your products: Boardreader: http://boardreader.com Wrap-up SES NYC 2008 was an intellectually stimulating and physically exhausting experience. If you've never been to such an event, make it your biz to go, at least once. I've been going to these since 1995, and I haven't been bored once. Much thanks to Editor Janet Roberts for her help on turning this report around quickly. I'm going to bed now. Good night. LC |
