Search Marketing Expo 2009 West Archives

Below is live coverage of the Productivity Tips For The Busy Search Marketer from SMX West 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by both Barry Schwartz, the editor of the Search Engine Roundtable and Keri Morgret of Morgret Designs.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed. In addition, you can interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog.

Productivity Tips For The Busy Search Marketer

(02/12/2009)  Powered by: CoveritLive

  

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2:47	Barry Schwartz:  Matt McGee mods up this panel

2:47	Barry Schwartz:  Thomas Schmitz is up first from Portent Interactive

2:48	Barry Schwartz:  Tools - Prepacked - Written by smart people - Save time - Avoid aggravation

2:49	Barry Schwartz:  Tools - Limited to program abilities and outputds - Stuck with programs faults - Can be expensive

2:50	Barry Schwartz:  Scripts - Save time - Save money - Avoid aggravation - Custom & targeted - Use anything you cfind and can gather on the net

2:50	Barry Schwartz:  Scripts - Limited to accessible data - Limited by scripting ability

2:51	Barry Schwartz:  Start with PHP or MySQL if your getting startted

2:52

2:53	Keri Morgret:  He's talking about brute force tools.

2:53	Keri Morgret:  Go into Word, replace characters with other characters so you can then dump it into Excel and run things without Excel choking on those first characters.

2:53	[Comment From Pedro Sttau] Looking foward to this. Hello Barry and Keri. :)

2:54	Keri Morgret:  Access is worth the learning curve, since it's relational.

2:54	Barry Schwartz:  KEyword research example will bring this all together...

2:55	Keri Morgret:  He uses iMacros, a firefox addon that automates repetitive tasks.

2:55	Barry Schwartz:  He shows a script to grab data, parses it and then adds a macro code to automate repetitive tasks

2:56	Keri Morgret:  He's showing a lot of great things, but I'm not able to write it down fast enough. This is why you should come to the conference. ;)

2:57	Keri Morgret:  You do need to do hand filtering, you can't automate everything.

2:57

2:58	Barry Schwartz:  David Wallace is next up, he is the picture above

2:58	Barry Schwartz:  David will share more of his routines to be productive

2:59	[Comment From Pedro Sttau] I used to use Macros on My Excel sheets to handle pretty much everything that needed calculations done, but today most of the "repetitive tasks" are repetitive but not so much "automizable", dont know if you have the same experience.

2:59	Keri Morgret:  Begins day with email, bloglines, and twitter.

2:59	[Comment From Prashant] can you give an example of what you would use these macros for? i'm a little confused

3:00	Barry Schwartz:  @prashant to help automate the clean up for the data grabbing tool

3:00

Keri Morgret:  - Take care of new emails that don't require a lot of time -- get it out of the way. - Categorize blog feeds, can sift through those based on current priorities - Open new posts in separate tab that I want to write a post about. - Click on TwitterFox icon and look for DMs or @ replies only.

3:01	Keri Morgret:  Writing New Posts: Creative or resourcevful posts can be scheduled anytime. Posts covering industry news need immediate attention Read, write, and publish.

3:01	Keri Morgret:  Everything else: can be client projects, RFPs, finances, etc.

3:02	[Comment From Prashant] sorry, which data grabbing tool? i feel like i'm missing a piece of information

3:02	Barry Schwartz:  @Parshant, he writes his own with scripts

3:02	Keri Morgret:  Managing email overload: Uses outlook express. Has extensive category structure Only keep "pending" emails. If it's done business, saves it to hard drive. Non-important, non-pending emails are discarded. Outlook Express Backup Genie

3:03	Barry Schwartz:  David's inbox slide looks like a post I wrote at my personal blog http://www.cartoonbarry.com/2007/05/i_have_email_ocd.html

3:05	Barry Schwartz:  He uses bloglines !!! ugh! why why why

3:05	[Comment From Pedro Sttau] OutlookExpress? Am a bit surprised there. Thunderbird is so superior at organizing email , prioritizing it and making it "actionable"

3:05	Keri Morgret:  He shows the multiple social bookmarking sites he uses.

3:05	Barry Schwartz:  His blog reader folders looks very similar to mine also :)

3:06	Keri Morgret:  He tries to be selective, avoids time wasters.

3:07	Barry Schwartz:  He uses TwiterFox, never uses the Twitter web page

3:08	[Comment From Prashant] i heart twitterfox. makes the whole "process" of twitter so much quicker

3:08	Keri Morgret:  Tries to make sure all scheduled work is done by the 20th of the month to make sure you have time for your stuff in addition to client stuff.

3:09	Barry Schwartz:  Next up is Jennifer Slegg, JenSense

3:09

3:10	Keri Morgret:  How to make non-desk time productive. COmmuting time, waiting time, kids' activities.

3:10	Barry Schwartz:  OMG! She uses notebooks and pens and paper!

3:11	Barry Schwartz:  I am the anti-paper, so this is weird

3:11	[Comment From Pedro Sttau] Getting client related tasks done 10 days before the month is over? Dear me I am definitely doing something wrong with my time here.

3:12	Keri Morgret:  This is a way to keep you on task -- if you just write something down on paper, you're not going to get on and check twitter and email and get your spouse to give you a nasty look when you want to write a quick reminder note to yourself.

3:12	Barry Schwartz:  She makes an excellent point, my wife won't yell at me if I open a small notebook, but when I open my laptop or my iPhone -- oh boy

3:12	Keri Morgret:  Personal voice recorder. New ones are great. You can dictate blog post ideas, reminders for yourself, etc. It's digital, so you can copy it to your computer.

3:13	Keri Morgret:  Dragon Naturally Speaking. Converts words to text, imports into word, dreamweaver, wordpress. Can either dictate directly into computer or use a digital voice recorder to convert your voice file into text that you can import.

3:14	Keri Morgret:  Buy the best rated recorder you can afford. Dragon rates many from expensive to top of the line. If you plan to dictate while driving, buy one of the better recorder / microphone options.

3:14	Keri Morgret:  Dragon's website is the one that rates the recorders.

3:14	Keri Morgret:  Dragon is trainable, so it can understand SEO, PPC, AdSense, etc.

3:15	Keri Morgret:  Netbooks and MiniLaptops. It's a fast bootup, easy to carry anywhere, can work on it during downtime. Can upload to webserver or thumdrive .Can't run World of Warcraft or anything, but most business things you need. You've got great battery life with it.

3:15	Keri Morgret:  BBs, iPhones, etc. She loves it, wonders how she got along without it (so do I! km).

3:16	Keri Morgret:  At Jott.com you can leave a phone message and it is sent in an email to yourself. It starts at $3.95 a month.

3:16	Keri Morgret:  She's never had a problem with the transcription. They can also go into your voicemail and transcribe your voicemail to text.

3:17	Barry Schwartz:  Stephan Spencer is the last speaker, here is a picture

3:17

3:19	Keri Morgret:  URL for downloading his powerpoint: http://www.netconcepts.com/learn/productivity-tips.ppt

3:20	Keri Morgret:  GTD-getting things done. Best thing that's ever happened.

3:20	Barry Schwartz:  http://www.davidco.com/

3:20	Barry Schwartz:  http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Things-Done-Stress-Free-Productivity/dp/0142000280

3:21

Keri Morgret:  Multiple action lists running concurrently in your brain? Ideas buried w/in files, folders, emails, Post-Its, to-do lists? Bad, bad, bad! GTD stands for Getting Things Done, the best-selling book by David Allen Get stuff out of your head & into a trusted system that also tracks the “open loops” you’re waiting on Reach a state of flow, i.e. “Mind like water”

3:21

3:21

Keri Morgret:  - Processing: For this project/idea, what is the “Next Action”? What is its context? - Contexts: @home, @office, @errand, @computer, @email, @blog, @tweet, @read/review, @agenda, ... - Review your Next Actions by context. Do in batches. - In addition to Next Actions, you can also have Projects, Someday/Maybes, Waiting For, Deferred, Agendas Project = anything requiring more than one action

3:22	Keri Morgret:  You get things into an in-tray of sorts, and you process it as you put it in. YOu process it and decide the context.

3:22	[Comment From Pedro Sttau] One of the best productivity sessions I have ever seen was done by Prof. Randy Pausch on Time Management. Changed my life. :) Anyone mention it so far?

3:22	Barry Schwartz:  @Pedro, not yet

3:23	Keri Morgret:  For contexts, this means you can do a task list that's just for your phone -- here's stuff I can do on my phone. You only have 15 things on this list, instead of trying to sort through 300 to dos.

3:24	Barry Schwartz:  Selling your home is an "actional item" it is not something you put on your "to do list"

3:25	Keri Morgret:  Project can be something like "buy a house", to do is "contact neighbor about the agent she used"

3:25

Keri Morgret:  - Horizons of focus: runway (next actions), 10000 ft view (projects, this yr), 20000 ft view (areas of focus), 30000 ft (1-2 yrs), 40000 ft (3-5 yrs), 50000 ft view (life goals) - Weekly review: a weekly appt with yourself. The key to successful GTD, though most neglected. 1-2 hrs long. -- "Process" your intray -- Revisit Someday/Maybes, Projects, Waiting For, Next Actions - Two minute rule: if the item can be completed in < 2 minutes, do it right then, rather than process it for later

3:25	[Comment From Prashant] @pedro where did you see/attend that productivity lecture?

3:26	Are you productive? Yes  ( 20% ) No  ( 80% )

3:26	Keri Morgret:  Horizons of focus is the big picture.

3:27

Keri Morgret:  Calendar: Only what must be done on a certain date. Tickler file: 43 folders, labeled 1-31 and January-December. Use it to park physical items like bills not yet due. Look at the current day’s file. On the new month, look at that month’s file and if necessary move those into the appropriate 1-31 folders. With GTD, easy to fall off the wagon. Also easy to fall back on.

3:27

[Comment From Pedro Sttau] So from what I understant its all about breaking things down into small little actions. I tried that aproach, but it seemed that my "actionable to do list" was so large and time consuming that it simply didn't work. I had to break those little tasks into actionable groups and then sort those groups by relevance. Sounds freaky, but it worked for me. Keri: "Horizons of focus is the big picture". Wont forget that one, nice. :)

3:27	[Comment From Prashant] you have to admit, that "are you productive" question was a bit funny...i am assuming everyone who is here reading this live blog isn't really being too productive :)

3:28	Keri Morgret:  Mac: Things, Journler, OmniFocus, iGTD PC: GTD Outlook Add-in, ClearContext for Outlook, MyLifeOrganized, TimeTo, Easy Task Manager, ThinkingRock Web-based: Tracks, GTD V2, Backpack, MonkeyGTD, ActiveCollab Paper: “Hipster PDA”

3:28	[Comment From Pedro Sttau] Prashant: Why not? Learning to be more productive is itself productive.

3:29	Keri Morgret:  He's showing us screenshots of the software he uses.

3:30	Keri Morgret:  Non-GTD productivity tools: ActionMethod.com RememberTheMilk.com Both of the above are web-based (SaaS)

3:30	[Comment From Prashant] @pedro because personally speaking, i could be working on a client's project but instead i am viewing this live blog which i could read later too when i know i have time ;)

3:30	[Comment From Pedro Sttau] Keri, can you post some of the software in the screenshots?

3:30	Barry Schwartz:  @Pedro you can download the PPT

3:30	Barry Schwartz:  URL for downloading his powerpoint: http://www.netconcepts.com/learn/productivity-tips.ppt

3:31

Keri Morgret:  Read The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss fourhourworkweek.com Your secret to success: Delegate everything! Let go! Tim even outsourced his online dating – successfully! Hire 1 or more “VAs” at < ½ what you earn per hour Calculate your hourly rate. Annual income is a very deceptive number that people use to justify unsustainable workloads. Repetitive task? Delegate it.

3:32	Keri Morgret:  Be sure to download his presention. There are lots of great things there, very well written.

3:33	Barry Schwartz:  That ends the speaker presentations, time for Q&A.

3:33	Barry Schwartz:  ~10 mins for Q&A

3:33

3:34	Barry Schwartz:  Someone asked David, how would Stephen's idea fit in his schedule?

3:35	Barry Schwartz:  David said he has to read the book first...

3:35

3:36	Barry Schwartz:  Matt talks about the difference between working at home vs in an office...

3:36	[Comment From Pedro Sttau] Any tips on managing constant client phone calls that you simply cant "filter"?

3:37	Barry Schwartz:  Stephen said he is more productive in an office, at least when he worked in NZ

3:38	Barry Schwartz:  Now he has his own office to get stuff done... So agree, you need to close the door.

3:38	Barry Schwartz:  Thomas said, set "busy" on your IM

3:39	Barry Schwartz:  Get yourself headphones, so you wont be distrubed

3:39	Barry Schwartz:  The bigger the better

3:39	Keri Morgret:  Get yourself BIG headphones so they don't come up to you.

3:40	[Comment From Prashant] i like using a separate computer all together for any chat/email. that way i can turn off the monitor/close the lid of the laptop and only check when i can instead of constantly seeing a flash/hearing new email sounds and being impelled to check out what's going on.

3:40	Barry Schwartz:  Check email only a few times per day (I cannot do that)

3:41	[Comment From ian] You can, of course, turn OFF your IM.

3:41	Keri Morgret:  Thomas: use the simplest form of whatever you're working on. Use a shared Google Docs document instead of passing around a Word document in email.

3:42	[Comment From Prashant] @ian well if you are using IM to communicate with clients/colleagues on a project then it becomes a little difficult to simply turn it off because then (at least for me) i get phone calls which become even more distracting overall.

3:44	Barry Schwartz:  That wraps up the SMX West Live Blogging coverage. Thank you so much for reading and particapting. Hoping on a plane to NY tonight. Check www.seroundtable.com daily for news and subscribe to our feeds. :)

3:45	Barry Schwartz:  Thank you Keri for everything!

3:45

Below is live coverage of the Ask The Search Engines from SMX West 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by both Barry Schwartz, the editor of the Search Engine Roundtable and Keri Morgret of Morgret Designs.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed. In addition, you can interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog.

Continue reading "Live Coverage of Ask The Search Engines at SMX West"

Below is live coverage of the Ask The SEOs from SMX West 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by both Barry Schwartz, the editor of the Search Engine Roundtable and Keri Morgret of Morgret Designs.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed. In addition, you can interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog.

Continue reading "Live Coverage of Ask The SEOs at SMX West"

Below is live coverage of the Ask The Link Builders from SMX West 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by both Barry Schwartz, the editor of the Search Engine Roundtable and Keri Morgret of Morgret Designs.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed. In addition, you can interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog.

Continue reading "Live Coverage of Ask The Link Builders at SMX West"

Below is live coverage of the Keynote: John Battelle from SMX West 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by both Barry Schwartz, the editor of the Search Engine Roundtable and Keri Morgret of Morgret Designs.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed. In addition, you can interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog.

Keynote: John Battelle

(02/12/2009)  Powered by: CoveritLive

  

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8:57	Barry Schwartz:  Starting in 3 minutes!

9:02	Barry Schwartz:  Danny starts off by saying how Google banned Google Japan http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/019409.html

9:03	Barry Schwartz:  He mentioned Darwin beat out Lincoln in the Google logo http://searchengineland.com/sorry-abraham-lincoln-charles-darwin-gets-the-google-logo-16550

9:03

9:03	Barry Schwartz:  He introduces John Battelle now

9:04

Barry Schwartz:  John Battelle is author of the outstanding book on how search engines developed, The Search, in which he also coined oft-repeated description of search engines as a “database of intentions.” A veteran journalist and entrepreneur, this keynote conversation will cover how John sees search developing, the challenges ahead and searches greater impact on the internet and society.

9:04

9:05	Barry Schwartz:  He starts off about the book and how it wasn't named "The Google" :)

9:05	Barry Schwartz:  They let him call the book "The Search" and they took the title and put it into Google fonts and Google colors

9:05	Barry Schwartz:  He said in some countries, it is named "The Google" this or that....

9:06	Barry Schwartz:  Fundamental changes in companies since the time of the book?

9:06	Keri Morgret:  He got the idea to write the book after a meeting with Eric Schmidt.

9:07	Keri Morgret:  Battelle thought that search was the largest intersection of media and technology that ever existed, but was hard to convince Schmidt of this back in the beginning.

9:08

9:08	Keri Morgret:  There were 900-1000 employees at the time Battelle left the Google offices from this meeting.

9:08	Barry Schwartz:  Apparently, Google is losing a couple employees here and there, he said.

9:09	Keri Morgret:  There isn't an ocean Google hasn't boiled, or has tried to boil.

9:10	Keri Morgret:  Music industry is good example of a shift from one presumptive model to another.

9:10

9:11	Barry Schwartz:  He compares this industry to the music industry...

9:12	Barry Schwartz:  The music industry is now adapting to this world

9:13

9:13	Keri Morgret:  It may be true that you want to pay for the Wall Street Journal, but your local paper may not be worth paying for.

9:13	Barry Schwartz:  He thinks the newspaper business model is broken

9:14	Barry Schwartz:  he thinks you can monetize papers just with ads, and he disagrees with Walt on his write up on this.

9:14	Keri Morgret:  All of the search engines have benefited by all of the traditional media that has been put in the web.

9:14	Barry Schwartz:  http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1877191,00.html is Walt's theory

9:15	Will the newspaper business survive? Yes  ( 60% ) No  ( 40% )

9:15	Keri Morgret:  Keeping our government honest and keeping citizens informed is one things newspapers will keep rpoviding.

9:16	Keri Morgret:  Successful models abroad have newspapers as public trusts.

9:17	Barry Schwartz:  "Google has been doing pretty well on the balance sheet"

9:17	Barry Schwartz:  At the end of the day, there is a certain part to journalism that is above pretty profit margin but it needs to be honored by our culture... we need to get to at least break even point...

9:17

9:18	Keri Morgret:  There will always be a market for certain types of journalism. Hard to make a profit in straight news though.

9:18	Keri Morgret:  Danny reminds us that Battelle has a blog and a Twitter account that we should all visit.

9:19	Keri Morgret:  http://battellemedia.com/ and http://twitter.com/johnbattelle

9:20	Barry Schwartz:  HE thinks MSFT will grow 5 points in search share because they will "Buy it" -- not necessary buy yahoo or aol but buy distribution deals

9:21

9:21	Barry Schwartz:  Just the other day, another Yahoo exec went to Microsoft http://searchengineland.com/microsoft-continues-peeling-off-yahoo-search-talent-16547

9:21	Barry Schwartz:  He thinks Google will lose some share to Microsoft

9:22	Barry Schwartz:  Q: Do you think Microsoft will bull past Google?

9:22	Barry Schwartz:  A: Battelle said not this year...

9:22	Do you think Microsoft will bull past Google? Yes  ( 33% ) No  ( 67% )

9:22

9:24	Keri Morgret:  He gives an example of Shazam as a way of search. It's an app for the iPhone where you can have it listen to some music playing and it will tell you what the music was. It's search, but not what we think of search.

9:24	Barry Schwartz:  http://www.shazam.com/iphone

9:24	Keri Morgret:  He talks about how he thought that having a search engine (hotbot) in 1995 was a bad idea. We already have seven. Why do we need any more? Laughter from the audience.

9:27

Keri Morgret:  "three bump theory of interface culture". What Battelle argues is that in the interface between man and machine, the first interface was a non-grammatical foreign language that made no sense to most people. Gives example of COBAL or FORTRAN programmers. Then we got Windows and Mac. We got to what he calls the "hunt and poke" interface. Being in a foreign country where you don't speak the language, but you can "hunt and poke" by clicking icons to figure out what's going on.

9:27	Keri Morgret:  Fairly full house here this morning.

9:28	Keri Morgret:  We have so much information now that the hunt and poke method just doesn't cut it. We needed a new interface, and he argues that this interface is search. Using natural language to talk to computer.

9:28	Keri Morgret:  Right now, search is still the command prompt and blinking cursor. He thinks we're about to shift into a new interface.

9:29	Barry Schwartz:  There are problems with voice search, but it will get better...

9:29	Barry Schwartz:  Language is going to be huge in the next search interface...

9:29	Barry Schwartz:  It doesnt have to talk back to you, but we are just getting started in this area.

9:31	Keri Morgret:  Danny offers Battelle a Twitter break. John doesn't have his phone, but Danny needs to feed his Twitter addiciton. They start talking about Twitter and where this is taking things.

9:32	Keri Morgret:  He asks how many people here Tweet. Nearly everyone raises their hand. He talks about how hard it is to explain Twitter to people that aren't familiar with it, like trying to explain that you used FORTRAN.

9:32	Keri Morgret:  Once you figure out Twitter it's insanely useful.

9:32

9:32	Keri Morgret:  When you get to a critical mass of people talking about what they're doing, eating for breakfast, etc. you have a database of intenions with what is happening right now.

9:33	Keri Morgret:  Can be insanely useful to be able to query this database of realtime information.

9:33	Keri Morgret:  Gives example of someone going to Twitter to start asking for recommendations of purchases like cars instead of going to a search engine.

9:33

9:34

9:35	Barry Schwartz:  John then talks about his question on AT&T's network, here is his blog post on that http://battellemedia.com/archives/004822.php

9:35	Barry Schwartz:  Best use case for Twitter to adopt it, is the comcast cares

9:35	Barry Schwartz:  http://twitter.com/comcastcares

9:36	Are you own Twitter? Yes  ( 80% ) No  ( 20% )

9:36	Keri Morgret:  He's telling people to join Twitter, even if you only use it for Comcast customer services. Tweet comcast sucks, you'll get help right away.

9:36	Barry Schwartz:  Is paid search and SEO gaining on traditional media?

9:37	Keri Morgret:  He's talking about big brands realizing they need to own their name space.

9:39

9:40	Barry Schwartz:  "Conversational Marketing"

9:40	Keri Morgret:  Marketing online was stuck in two modes -- billboard mode and demand harvesting.

9:42	Barry Schwartz:  we now know what engagement online means

9:43

Keri Morgret:  Conversational marketing -- You have to have a practice in figuring out how to create media that adds value to the conversation online. If someone runs in and yells that IBM servers are wonderful and runs out, it wouldn't work well. If you were from IBM and sitting there and answering a question and can talk about yes, I'm from IBM, and I think that x might work and here's why, that's much better.

9:44

9:44	Barry Schwartz:  Chris Silver Smith snapping pics right in front of me....

9:44	Barry Schwartz:  Last two questions...

9:45	Keri Morgret:  "The Conversation Economy" is the name of his next book.

9:47	Barry Schwartz:  Web 2.0 Expo coming this March

9:47	Barry Schwartz:  They don't have the theme, 100% for the next show

9:47

9:47	Barry Schwartz:  Lots of industries are being forced into being reborn, such as banking

9:48	Barry Schwartz:  People laughed there, did you?

9:48	Barry Schwartz:  That is all folks, in less then 15 minutes we will be covering Ask the Link Builders live... should be fun...!!!

9:49	Barry Schwartz:  That is all we got for this session. We will be ending the live blog session but you can reply or view the transcript immediately after I end this broadcast. Thanks for tuning in to the Search Engine Roundtable's Live Coverage!

9:49	Barry Schwartz:  More at http://www.seroundtable.com/

9:49

Below is live coverage of the 301 Redirect, How Do I Love You? Let Me Count The Ways from SMX West 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by Keri Morgret of Morgret Designs.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed. In addition, you can interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog.

301 Redirect, How Do I Love You? Let Me Count The Ways

(02/11/2009)  Powered by: CoveritLive

  

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4:35	Keri Morgret:  Carolyn Shelby is up first in this nice technical session that they saved for the last session of the d ay.

4:36	Keri Morgret:  She's giving a case study of a site that was written the wrong way, authority transfered to horrid URLs, and lots of nasty things.

4:36	Keri Morgret:  Their challenge was that you can't do 301s easily when you don't have consistent URL naming patterns.

4:38

Keri Morgret:  Review of what 301s are. - redirect users and bots from old URL to new URL - redirect users from old domain to new domain - redirects users from alternate tlds (.org to .com, for example) - fixes www vs non www - Keeps unauthorized users and bots from accessing live development environments, redirects them to main site. (IP specific delivery).

4:38	Keri Morgret:  For the last instance, this was used internally when you can't have a separate dev server. in-house IPs could see new site, but nobody else.

4:40

Keri Morgret:  A basic relaunch -- new frosting, but the cake is the original recipe. - Possibly moving to a new domain - URls changing file extensions - New pages, but few new pages are replacing old pages - Few of your old pages are disappearing - No significant changes to pre-existing information architecture or nomenclature

4:41	Keri Morgret:  Basic Relaunch and 301s Small number of redirects required The naming scheme from old site had consistent, easily defined patterns Get by with a simple htaccess file

4:41	Keri Morgret:  Complicated Relaunch. The frosting is all new and ethe cake is a different flavor, a different shape, and has jelly filling instead of bad peanut butter filling. And lots of other stuff that went by too quickly.

4:43

Keri Morgret:  Before you start: Spreadsheet: All current indexed pages and URLs All current indexed pages with backlinks Relationships/translations from the old to the new. You should also have an understanding of: - how your redirects will be added to your system - how you will be watching'/tracking your 404 - any weirdness or quirikiness unique to your CMS or web server

4:43	[Comment From Sunny D] if a site was 301ed to a new domain and after 4 months the 301 is taken off..how to get that domain indexed again? have tried submitting sitemaps, get new links to the domain as well

4:44	Keri Morgret:  Prep: Find a software package to do some of the reports for you Tracking 404 - learn to read some of the server logs, install software Other reports -- this is why God makes interns

4:45

Keri Morgret:  Why is the prep important? Because you want your site to not be a fail! Your lists will help you write the redirects The patterns (or lack of) determine the method you use -- either .htaccess or hash table If a URL isn't in yhour reports, skip it. Fewer redirects = faster response times

4:47	Keri Morgret:  What to expect when you're done: Major site overhauls will see anywhere from a 20% drop in traffic to being completely dropped from the index. Recovery time is generally 6-18 weeks The long tail traffic will suffer more than anythign else

4:48	Keri Morgret:  They had someone sitting looking at the logs, watching for incoming 404s. Soon as another one hit, he'd add another redirect in the file.

4:49	Keri Morgret:  Yes, it's a pain to do this, but it is worth it to get over a bad site.

4:50	Keri Morgret:  Stephan Spencer is up next with soem more technical details.

4:52	Keri Morgret:  Time to drink from the firehose! Look at the powerpoint URL www.netconcepts.com/learn/301-redirect.ppt

4:52	Keri Morgret:  km: i covered this one a year ago, he's got a lot of great stuff here. Pull up the PPT!!!

4:52	Keri Morgret:  He prefers rewrite rules as opposed to redirects

4:54	Keri Morgret:  Here's my coverage of this session from last year: http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/016390.html

4:57	[Comment From Susan Reed] What's the advantage of using a rewrite rule instead of a redirect?

4:58	[Comment From Susan Reed] No.. I don't "see that"

4:59	Keri Morgret:  He talks about greedy expressions -- basically he's trying to tighten up expressions so you're not rewriting things you odn't want to rewrite.

5:00	Keri Morgret:  As if that wasn't bad enough, we're going on to a more complex example!

5:01	Keri Morgret:  He's showing how to do non-www to www that is super geeky to do wonderful things.

5:03	Keri Morgret:  You can do great stuff with tracking parameters.

5:04	Keri Morgret:  Yet more fun with tracking parameters? You can do things with cookies before doing a 301. Invoke a script that cookies the user then 301s them to the canonical URL.

5:05	Keri Morgret:  See the powerpoint for the information. He sais to note the lack of a R=301 flag above. That's on purpose. No need to expose this script to the user. Use a rewrite and let the scdript send the 301 after it has done its work.

5:05	Keri Morgret:  You can 301 retired legacy URLs.

5:08	Keri Morgret:  This is great information, and it's stuff I (km) could really use, but I can't explain what he's saying well enough to have it make any sense in this liveblog.

5:11	Keri Morgret:  A common problem is https canonicalization. He has great fixes.

5:12	Keri Morgret:  You can optimize a bunch of post slugs without going to each page.

5:12	Keri Morgret:  If you're on microsoft IIS there's stuff you can do, including getting pity from everyone.

5:12	Keri Morgret:  It's risky to do conditional redirects. Read Stephan's search engine land article on redirects.

5:13	Keri Morgret:  There are almost always ways to do what you want to do without conditional redirects. Matt Cutts is talking about this topic tomorrow in Ask The Search Engines.

5:15	Keri Morgret:  You cancapture PageRank on Dead Pages. Look at this slide, cool stuff here.

5:17	Keri Morgret:  Now after Stephan we have Jordan Kasteler, Utah SEO Pro.

5:17	Keri Morgret:  He'll be covering the redirects from a social media aspect.

5:18	Keri Morgret:  Michael Gray did a case study at http://searchengineland.com/do-social-media-links-translate-in-organic-rankings-15745

5:19	Keri Morgret:  The case study is about social media links and organic rankings.

5:20	Keri Morgret:  Did a 301 so that a site submitted to Digg would go to the front page -- the destination URL was an SEO site, which wouldn't have gone to the front because Digg people hate SEOs. They did a 301 redirect, was all good.

5:20	Keri Morgret:  He's talking about internal redirects from overstock.com. I missed this.

5:21	Keri Morgret:  Some of these redirects can be considered gray hat.

5:21	Keri Morgret:  Whitehat 301 social media strategy Use multi-part story strategy consolidate all the parts into one larger story 301 redirect to transfer and consolidate all of the inboudn inks into that single location

5:22

Keri Morgret:  Example multi-part aarticles: Top Free SEO Tools Top Paid SEO Tools Top Free PPC Tools Top Paid PPC Tools What if each of those got on to the front page of Sphinn for a couple of days? Then put everything into a main article of Best Internet Marketing Tools, then redirect to that main article, get lots more links that way that you would have if you had submitted just one article.

5:23	Keri Morgret:  Choose your (linikbaiting) hook wisely. News hook contrary hook attack hook resource hook (can keep building links over a long period of time) humor hook ego hook incentive hook

5:23	Keri Morgret:  Wait for links to come to a stop before 301 redirecting

5:24	Keri Morgret:  Don't always use redirects as a solution to pass link value.

5:25	Keri Morgret:  Don't redirect to your home page -- anchor text does not seem to be passed to the home page when a page is deleted and moved to the home page.

5:25	Keri Morgret:  Use your keywords in your page and social media submission titles

5:27	Keri Morgret:  He goes over canonical domain issues and how people can mess up links to your site.

5:27	Keri Morgret:  Other resources: urlrewriter.net isapirewrite.com and more jordan@searchandsocial.com can answer your questions.

5:27	Keri Morgret:  Jonah Stein is up next.

5:28	Keri Morgret:  Here's here to tell us why teh answer isn't always a 301.

5:29	Keri Morgret:  Goes through a history of using redirects for spam.

5:30	Keri Morgret:  Focusing on redirects that are NOT 301 redirects.

5:31	Keri Morgret:  Legit uses of 302: Display user0friendly URL but the content lives deep inside within the information architecture. The vanity URL doesn't have to 301.

5:33	Keri Morgret:  A 302 could be good for matching a keyword in the URL.

5:33	Keri Morgret:  Geo-location redirection without changing the ranking for the underlying page.

5:34	[Comment From manfmnantucket] actually, that last one is questionable - goog will consider it cloaking

5:34	Keri Morgret:  I didn't include the comment about making sure the spiders and users saw the same page.

5:34	Keri Morgret:  He talked about it in such a way that it wouldn't be considered spamming.

5:34	[Comment From manfmnantucket] with geolocation you can't.

5:35	Keri Morgret:  Getting around IT Roadblocks. When you are calling legacy applications or have an application with parameters contained in the URL and you want to create search-friendly URLs.

5:35	[Comment From manfmnantucket] googles spiders all appear to simulate a user based in mountain view, which messes up geo sites big time

5:36	Keri Morgret:  @manfrmnantucket He gave a more complete explanation, but I missed it.

5:37	Keri Morgret:  Third party shopping carts. When you are calling a third-party shopping cart and don't want to display the URL in the code of the page.

5:37	Keri Morgret:  Pretty affiliate links. When you are calling an affiliate link within the target page. Warning: google quality raters have specific instructions to look for hidden/misleading redirects, so use with caution.

5:38	Keri Morgret:  307 might be the right answer. Might be a bit of a mythical beast, he hasn't seen one in the wild. He's going to try to give us a bit of clarification, and does treat it differently than a 302.

5:38	Keri Morgret:  302 defaults to a 303 get method while a 307 uses a post method. He hopes Stephan can explain that to him.

5:39	Keri Morgret:  In general, Jonah wants us to consider that 301 isn't always the perfect answer.

5:40	Keri Morgret:  Q&A time.

5:44	Keri Morgret:  Q: Is there a test site where we can go to test our rules before we go live with them. A: Stephan puts them on a site with very little traffic or a dev site and tests is there. Carolyn does this as well. Mess up, just change the htaccess file back.

5:44

Below is live coverage of the Search & The US Presidential Campaign from SMX West 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by Barry Schwartz, the editor of the Search Engine Roundtable.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed. In addition, you can interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog.

Search & The US Presidential Campaign

(02/11/2009)  Powered by: CoveritLive

  

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4:29	Sara Holoubek is introducing this panel

4:33	Jeff Lane appiled to be the SEO for Obama and got it, he saw the listing on CLickZ

4:34	Justine Lam for ROn Paul helped out for the campaign and did this

4:34	Bill Tancer is also on the panel, he is "the data guy"

4:34	How was the process different from a typical retailer?

4:35

4:35	Jeff said he didnt do much budgeting, but they were ROI focused on the PPC side

4:35	He was given an order and told to go

4:36	The guys above him decide to do X and he typically implements it

4:37	Justine's people were nervous to spend on SEM back then, so they did very little

4:37	She did what ever she could for free, relying on social media mostly, she said

4:37

4:38	Jeff came in by the general election, and they proved SEM would work to generate donations... so he was instructed to spend as much as he can

4:38	Jeff had issues with SEO, cause there was not enough time to get SEO going.

4:38

4:39	Bill what were the voter behaviors...

4:40	until general election, searches for ron paul were greater then obama, until Obama appeared on Opera

4:40	People visiting RonPaul.com were a spread of political loyalists

4:40	The success of RonPaul online was mostly due to early adopters

4:47	One of Obama's best donation days was when Sarah Palin was announced, interesting..

4:50	Bill said the search data he was seeing was very depressing, searches for how much obama weighs, etc, its not important.

4:51	Sorry this session isn't so "actionable" so hard to live blog it...

4:53	Obama negative keyworded "husain" type of keywords, so Obama wouldn't come up and other keywords like it.

4:53	Room is also not so full

4:53

4:54	Political candidates used geo targeting tools

4:55	Jeff said Obama geo targeted big time, between swing states and non swing states

4:56	Obama also used Google's custom geo targeting tool and drew out the exact area that had a higher density of specific type of voters

4:56	They also used DMAs

4:56	Sara asked if it made a difference, he said it did

4:56	Jeff said it got very targeted, espesially in Google

4:57	But mostly by state

4:57	Bill pulled data from November 2007, showing searches by candidate name by state...

4:58	You can see any given week, how searches change by week, after candidates visit states

4:58	They used Google Analytics and Website Optimizer, mostly free stuff

4:59	Worker hours were like 10 hours days, 6 days a week or so... people would be there until 2am every day

4:59	It is not all work Justine said, they are talking all night about nothingness sometimes

5:00	What was different?

5:00	Jeff said lots of similarities

5:01	You got to be careful with the ads you make and keywords you target

5:02	Competitive analysis?

5:03	Jeff said they often checked out blogs of competitors for insights, he isnt sure if it helped them

5:04	Did tons of testing on landing pages and had 8 guys to just do analytics for them, using mostly google optimizer, lots of AB testing

5:04	They have seen 50% increases in changes

5:05	Justine had zero AB stuff, no testing...

5:05	Obama said Blue buttons worked well

5:06	Q&A Time, I am so tired, I am not covering Q&A, sorry

5:06	Tune in tomorrow for more live coverage of SMX West 2009!

5:06	That is all we got for this session. We will be ending the live blog session but you can reply or view the transcript immediately after I end this broadcast. Thanks for tuning in to the Search Engine Roundtable's Live Coverage!

5:06

Below is live coverage of the Tapping Into Image Search from SMX West 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by both Barry Schwartz, the editor of the Search Engine Roundtable.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed. In addition, you can interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog.

Continue reading "Live Coverage of Tapping Into Image Search at SMX West"

Below is live coverage of the Just Behave, A Look At Searcher Behavior from SMX West 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by Keri Morgret of Morgret Designs.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed. In addition, you can interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog.

Just Behave, A Look At Searcher Behavior

(02/11/2009)  Powered by: CoveritLive

  

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3:04	Keri Morgret:  Jenni Tafoya, VP of comScore is up first.

3:05	Keri Morgret:  Overview of their methodology: Their qSearch share tracking universe reports on search activity observed from over 150 properties worldwide where search activity is observed. The have a lot of data.

3:06	Keri Morgret:  She's showing some statistics that are coming across the screen too fast to write down.

3:06	Keri Morgret:  Heavy searchers account for 63% of the volume of sarchers.

3:06	Keri Morgret:  Why is search in general up? More people online this year than last A larger percentage of them are searching.

3:07	Keri Morgret:  Consumers are being even more reliant on search than they used to be. they're on search two more days per month, and more searches per day.

3:07	Keri Morgret:  Both search engines and site search contributing to overall search growth

3:08	Keri Morgret:  Opportunities to expland search marketing campaigns outside of traditional search engines: Videos local image social networking

3:09	Keri Morgret:  Strong click growth, driven by organic click growth.

3:10	Keri Morgret:  Trying to hook up iPhone camera so I can upload pictures, which may put me briefly offline.

3:10	Keri Morgret:  When we look at just those searches wthat had a paid click, we find that peopla re clicking on fewer paid links -- maybe finding what they want the first time?

3:11	Keri Morgret:  What are consumers searching for? - top categories are directories and resources, retail, and entertainment.

3:12	Keri Morgret:  Where are they clicking? The most paid clicks occur on retail sites than in any other category.

3:12	Keri Morgret:  Other categories have a higher paid CTR, but retail has a higher monitization rate.

3:14	Keri Morgret:  She shows some demographic information for different types of searches.

3:16	Keri Morgret:  Takeaways: The search market remains strong marketers may want to consider moving some of their budget outside of the traditional engines, but engines still reign at driving traffic and quality leads.

3:17	Keri Morgret:  Gordon Hotchkiss is up next.

3:18	Keri Morgret:  We search, therefore we are. He shows trends for searches on foreclosures, recession, mortgages.

3:18	Keri Morgret:  It's a golden triangle slide!

3:20	Keri Morgret:  Small, Bookheimer, and Moody did a research study using fMRIs and searching.

3:20

3:22	Keri Morgret:  Looked at internet naive vs. Internet savvy. Had people read text, search internet. The internet naive had the same amount/place of brain activity when reading vs. searching, but internet savvy had a lot more brain activity when they were searching vs when reading text.

3:25	Keri Morgret:  He's giving us a brief lesson in neuranatomy, and giving me flashbacks to my anatomy and physiology classes.

3:26	Keri Morgret:  He's talking about peoples' brains get on autopilot when we do the same things over and over.

3:29	Keri Morgret:  Google did an eyetracking study four years after enquiro's classic golden triangle eyetracking study. Results look very much the same.

3:29	Keri Morgret:  He's showing a time-lapse of the heat map. Where do we look in first .5 seconds, next .5 seconds.

3:33	Keri Morgret:  Things to think about: - much of our search behavior is done on "auto pilot" - we search by habit - as we learn to do this, we free up our brain to more fully interact with the results we see - we become "fluent" in search - we may "pattern match" to determine relevancy

3:33	Keri Morgret:  @outofmygord is his twitter address.

3:33	Keri Morgret:  Larry Cornett of Yahoo is now up.

3:34	Keri Morgret:  Yahoo! has a large amount of aggregate data, but none of it substitutes for getting out into the field and talking to real users.

3:35	Keri Morgret:  talking to users: -explore issues users are having with current search experiences - get their responses to products we've launched

3:35	Keri Morgret:  Methodology of recent study. - Qualitative exploratory research - 150 consumers - Six cites in the US - Asked what they desire in their ideal search experience

3:36	Keri Morgret:  What they heard: - information overload - text overload - impresonal experiences

3:37	Keri Morgret:  Information overload: They're overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information returned. A user doesn't think w00t! when they see 2.4 million responses when searching for joe's restaurant in chinatown new york

3:37	Keri Morgret:  Text-heavy search results pages provide meager decision0making information

3:39	Keri Morgret:  Searchers are having to do a lot of work -- taking ntoes on paper for example. Search engine should be the one to do it.

3:39	Keri Morgret:  Impersonal experiences: the user repeatedly needs to introduce themselves to their search engine. If I say haircut I'm likely looking for a place to get a haircut, not a history of haircuts.

3:40	Keri Morgret:  What they need: - The internet supports their life activity and search needs to keep pace - understand their true intent - provider richer, more personally relevant experiences.

3:41	Keri Morgret:  Richer experiences is a good thing. This is where something like an image in a regular SERP can help people know if they've found what they're looking for.

3:42	Keri Morgret:  If you sign in, Yahoo can give you personalization, at least on a geolocation level.

3:42	Keri Morgret:  Yahoo! Search Blog, SearchMonkey, and BOSS are places to learn more information.

3:43	Keri Morgret:  Ramez Naam is up next. He's the group program manager.

3:43	Keri Morgret:  He's going to go home and ask for a promotion, considering he's on a panel with a president and two VPs.

3:44	Keri Morgret:  How can you use data about the customers you have, their visits with you, etc. to improve your business and so on.

3:45	Keri Morgret:  He's going to try to tie back some of this information back to what the audience can use.

3:46	Keri Morgret:  Research on image search. On web search, about 10% of queries lead to a click on next page. 50% of image queries lead to a click on the next page.

3:47	Keri Morgret:  For live image search, they don't force user to go to the next page at all. This works for image, but not for sure.

3:47	Keri Morgret:  Takeaway: understand what your users do, then use this knowledge to help improve your business.

3:48	Keri Morgret:  We have wrong impression of searchers. It's not just one individual query, but we're seeing: - most customer time is not on single-queries - definitely not on easy queries - customers engage in whole tasks - tasks involved -- trigger -- research --action

3:49	Keri Morgret:  An example is a search for merrell shoes.

3:50

3:53	Keri Morgret:  Possible lessons: Assume people will hunt around before they act. Help them hunt - good content - tools for hunting Draw them back - good content - stickiness of your product Look at conversion in a new light Thaink long term relationship and brand

3:55	Keri Morgret:  Q&A Time

3:56	Keri Morgret:  q: has there been a shift of the number of users who are more willing to go beyond the first page of results?

3:57	Keri Morgret:  Ramez: hard to quantify. When they improve relevance, number of people who click on next page drop. Larry: people are more likely to requery rather than go to next page

3:58	Keri Morgret:  Ramez and Gordon also say that other langauges have different behaviors. When it's hard to type queries, people are more likely to click through to the next page. People spend a lot longer looking at the search results page, too.

4:00	Keri Morgret:  Not too many pictures for this session, the iPhone doesn't have the best quality in this situation.

4:01	Keri Morgret:  Question about demographics. comScore does have a way to profile demographics for specific search terms. Ramez has tools on the backend, but nothing to public.

4:02	Keri Morgret:  Ramez suggests looking at the analytics tool on the site, as there is a lot of information there.

4:05	Keri Morgret:  Gordon asks the panel if they've noticed behavior differences by age, looking at digital natives. Larry has seen differences with clicking on sponsored ads, but can't share exact data.

4:05	Keri Morgret:  Younger demographic has less patience, clicks back and forth, rather than examine serp.

4:06	Keri Morgret:  Ramez hasn't looked at the data in that way, but does look at things like how they got to the site, what browser they're using, etc. This does make a big difference. Someone running IE8 beta vs. IE6 has a very different behavior.

4:09	Keri Morgret:  Gordon asks what panelists are seeing about mobile trends. Market in general is exploding, particularly outside of US. There is the advantage of more reliable geographic data of user. It's a lower volume of searches, but it's a great chance to enhance loyalty with your customers.

4:10	Keri Morgret:  Ramez has an Amazon app for his iPhone, with 1-click ordering. Amazon has a great thing here, making it more likely that he'll use Amazon when ordering from his mobile phone.

4:10	Keri Morgret:  For search engine use on mobiles, the bundle of the engine that came with the phone is a big determiner of the engine they use.

4:12	Keri Morgret:  Talk about privacy and personalization. In general, make it known to the user that there is personalization, let the user opt out (or choose to opt in). Be very transparent.

4:13	Keri Morgret:  People are starting to see the convinence of giving up some privacy, especially with mobile.

4:14	Keri Morgret:  They want the functionality and better user experience.

4:17	Keri Morgret:  There are a couple of more questions, but my battery is running low and I'm shutting down.

4:17	Keri Morgret:  This has been a great session.

4:17

Below is live coverage of the SEO Status Report Metrics from SMX West 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by both Barry Schwartz, the editor of the Search Engine Roundtable and Keri Morgret of Morgret Designs.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed. In addition, you can interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog.

SEO Status Report Metrics

(02/11/2009)  Powered by: CoveritLive

  

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1:19	Barry Schwartz:  Running late, Keri will get started.

1:19	Keri Morgret:  Seth from Conductor is up first and is giving a background about his company.

1:22	Keri Morgret:  Top four things we think are true - but aren't: - Every keyword is equally important - All potential keywords are accounted for and known. What was good last year is good this year. - Momvement outside the first page does not matter - Education = Buy In

1:23	Keri Morgret:  Does anyone use rankings to track SEO success he asks? Several hands raised.

1:24	Keri Morgret:  Need to move your rankings from a goal to a metric. Chasing the rankings isn't productive, but it's an insight provider.

1:25	Keri Morgret:  How to use your paid search data in improving your natural search performance.

1:26	Keri Morgret:  Call to Action Optimization / Snippet Optimization

1:27	Keri Morgret:  He explains a way to track snippets. Do one snippet for 30 days and record data. Do second snippet for 30 days, then compare data (ranking for that keyword and traffic for that keyword).

1:28

1:28	Keri Morgret:  Issue: We waste time trying to determine feasibility on keywords that can be easily tested. Solution: Use paid keywords / Natural traffic info.

1:29	Keri Morgret:  he shows a hypothetical ranking report for Lowe's, notes that it does not give you a complete picture.

1:30	Keri Morgret:  He's added a modifier -- multiply the ranking improvement by a certain number depending on the rank. Image to follow.

1:31

1:31	Keri Morgret:  This helps weight the information, so you're not placing a lot of value on keywords that have little traffic. If you've moved five places from 100 to 95, it's much less meaningful than moving five places from 10 to 5.

1:32

1:32	Keri Morgret:  Send him an email at seth@conductor.com for a copy of the spreadsheet.

1:33

1:33	Keri Morgret:  Rank from seomoz is up next, and promises to have a short slide deck.

1:34	Barry Schwartz:  Rand Fishkin says he is not a fan of guesswork

1:35

1:35	Keri Morgret:  They did a study so they didn't do guesswork. Methdology: - 30 Sites' traffic data collected via Quantcast "Quantified" - Comparison w/traffic estimates from Alexa and compete.com - Calculated Pearson's co-efficient Correctional. - Confidence ~95%

1:37	Barry Schwartz:  He said Alexa data is statistically relevant and worth using

1:38

1:39

Keri Morgret:  Another study methodology: - 109 Unique SERPs Analyzed - Top 30 results (~3300 URLs) - Google Search Results Only (for now) - Correlation between each single metric and ranking position - Two different data points: -- ability of metric to predict n +10 rankings -- ability of metric to preict n+1 rankings

1:40

1:40	Keri Morgret:  Number of domains linking to the URL was the bvest measure for the importance of SEO metrics in Google Search for n +10

1:41

1:42

Keri Morgret:  Take aways: - Don't use or trust a single metric to be the key when we're talking about rankings. - If all else is the same (Keyword usage, relevancy, etc) -- # of linking domain and # links report (page) -- # of linking domains and mozRank (position) -When metrics get mashed better data.

1:44	Keri Morgret:  Sneak Peek of preliminary results: What factors preduct google rankings. Link popularity is huge.

1:44

1:45	Keri Morgret:  ben@seomoz.org can give more preliminary data information.

1:45	Keri Morgret:  Next up: Kelly Kochert speaking on Using your own analytics wisely.

1:46	Keri Morgret:  Pull numbers from your own analytics, don't just look at rankings. Look at who, what, where, when, and why in examining what people are doing on your site.

1:46

1:47	Keri Morgret:  Two types of analytics: log file analysis, javascript files. Make sure you get the answers you need, it may take more than one solution. Can you separate paid search from organic search?

1:47

1:47	Keri Morgret:  What traffic? How much traffic are you getting? - month to month growth - seasonality - Year over Year From where? - Does it align with market share? Growing the slice of the pie - Larger share of overall traffic.

1:49	Do you agree with Rand on Alexa being statistically significant? Yes  ( 17% ) No  ( 83% )

1:49	Keri Morgret:  SEO Traffic: what moves the needle? Look at what you did and when. This helps tell you if link building, title tags, season, etc. were what affected your traffic.

1:49	[Comment From streko] alexa was significant in 1998

1:50	Keri Morgret:  Keywords: Align keyword traffic with ranking - opportunities, misses - New terms Branded vs. non-branded - Growth in non-branded

1:52	[Comment From Susan Reed] Alexa is significant if you're looking at total share for ALL internet users- otherwise the numbers are too big.

1:52	[Comment From JohnFairley] Use multiple sources of data to measure a website's traffic level. (compete.com, alexa.com, comScore, Quantcast, etc.)

1:52	Keri Morgret:  Site pages: Entry Pages - Alignment with keywords Top post-landing pages - Where did they go? - Opportunities Missed opportunities

1:53	Barry Schwartz:  Up comes the "Site Engagement" Slide

1:54	Keri Morgret:  Site engagement: How long do they stay? - Pages with traction How many pages are visited?" What is the abandonment rate? - Where do they leave the site? Where did they go? Is it different for people that came from search vs. refers? What leads to conversion?

1:54	Keri Morgret:  Referral Sites: What other sites drive traffic? - Links - Opportunity to change anchor text

1:55	[Comment From aj authoritydomais] Sorry just jumped on is he really talking about Alexa being significant? Is it a joike?

1:56	Keri Morgret:  Internal Search What are they searching for once they get to your site? gives you keyword optimization information.

1:56	Keri Morgret:  Where are they from? Geographic terms Localized terms Blocking traffic (if not nationally-focused)

1:56	Barry Schwartz:  Think, "Soda vs. Pop"

1:56

1:57	Keri Morgret:  Additional metrics: What are the engines doing? What happens when they visit your site? How long does it takes for a page to load? Are there error pages?

1:58	Keri Morgret:  Brian Klais from netconcepts is up next.

1:58	Keri Morgret:  We need a good framework to communicate our success, we need metrics that scream performance.

1:59	Barry Schwartz:  He used the word "incrementality"

1:59

1:59	Keri Morgret:  He shows a slide with stats about natural search opportunity.

1:59	Keri Morgret:  We need to stop talking about SEO tactics to our execs. They start tuning us out.

1:59	Barry Schwartz:  URL rewriting Titles Meta Tags H1s Link Building

2:00	Barry Schwartz:  Talk about improving business

2:00	Keri Morgret:  We need to start talking performance metrics: Market opportunity clickthrough rate acquisition costs keyword coverage and more

2:00	Barry Schwartz:  How do you communicate opp to the prospects? Let the data do the talking...

2:00	Keri Morgret:  Create a keyword list - Export your non0brand phreases from analytics or spider site to extract relevant onpage keywords

2:01	Keri Morgret:  Estimate the market demand. Feed into Google Adwords Keyword Tool Use 'exact match' on comparable time period Don't use WT or KD for this. Model opportunity using CTR

2:01	Barry Schwartz:  Word Tracker and Keyword Discovery are great tools but not useful "for this excerise"

2:02	Barry Schwartz:  Time to calculate your click through rate... Divide keyword market size by keyword traffic, compare CTR by SERP placement (P1 CTR is about 10%), model traffic and sales growth based on these metrics

2:03	Keri Morgret:  Traffic Acquisition Cost: Compare PPC cost vs. natural. - Use Google's average CPC for each phrase - Factor in your cost or resource time - $0.75 per click vs ....? Focus on reduced acquisition cost - increases transaction profitability.

2:04	Keri Morgret:  You can talk to client about that you may want to spend 75 cents for a paid click, but we can work on it organically for 15 cents a click.

2:04

[Be Right Back Countdown]

5 minutes

2:05	Keri Morgret:  Landing page yield. Landing pages are how we receive the mana from the search engine. How many pages do we have available? How many pages do the SE bots know about?

2:05	Keri Morgret:  Need to look at pages bots know about but aren't driving traffic.

2:05

2:06	Keri Morgret:  Landing Page Rankings is an additional metric. It's important to understand how the performance changes over time.

2:07	Keri Morgret:  Shows a picture of year-over-year ranking analysis.

2:07	Keri Morgret:  Focus on non-brand phrases. You want at least half of your traffic coming from non-brand keywords.

2:08	Keri Morgret:  Incremental Traffic and Revenue. This is huge he says. It's more than just "current" minus "previous". You can't presume that non-brand rankings are going to stay constant.

2:08	Barry Schwartz:  These chairs are interesting, for those that can't be here, here is a picture of a back of a chair... :)

2:08

2:09	Keri Morgret:  You need to win the incremental conversation with your boss. You'll set yourself up for a strong ROI or ROAS conversation.

2:09	Keri Morgret:  Big challenge in proper attribution of natural search sales.

2:10	Keri Morgret:  ROAS Return on Ad Spend metric.

2:10	Keri Morgret:  Incremental revenue over incremental cost. This is how you get resources allocated to you and get paid what you are worth.

2:11	Keri Morgret:  Conversion rate variance, acquisition profitability, new-to-file customers, and searcher lifetime value are also things to look at that are longer-term.

2:12	Keri Morgret:  Q&A Time now.

2:12

2:13	Barry Schwartz:  Got questions, we can submit them for you...

2:14

2:17	Barry Schwartz:  Next session at 3pm (PST) on "Tapping into Image Search" -- this one should be fun -- details at http://searchmarketingexpo.com/west/2009/full_agenda2#152

2:20	[Comment From Susan Reed] Love the chair photo - I noticed those as well.

2:21	Barry Schwartz:  Alright, see you all at 3pm. we will be covering two sessions at 3pm (PST)... One I told you about the other I will keep a secret until then!

2:22

Below is live coverage of the Google's SearchWiki, Customized & Personalized Results from SMX West 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by both Barry Schwartz, the editor of the Search Engine Roundtable and Keri Morgret of Morgret Designs.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed. In addition, you can interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog.

Continue reading "Live Coverage of Google's SearchWiki, Customized & Personalized Results at SMX West"

Below is live coverage of the Keynote Conversation: Vint Cerf, Google from SMX West 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by both Barry Schwartz, the editor of the Search Engine Roundtable and Keri Morgret of Morgret Designs.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed. In addition, you can interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog.

Keynote Conversation: Vint Cerf, Google

(02/11/2009)  Powered by: CoveritLive

  

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8:44	Barry Schwartz:  We got about 15 minutes until it starts

8:46	Barry Schwartz:  About 20 minutes ago, Vint Cerf was in the Speaker room, I snapped a picture

8:46

8:48	Barry Schwartz:  Vint Cerf entered the room, he is talking with Chris Sherman now, who will be sitting with Vint on the stage

8:50	Barry Schwartz:  Here is a picture of the stage...

8:50

8:55	Barry Schwartz:  Keri has joined, she will be helping with this coverage, so you will be able to get dual live blogging int his window.

8:55	Barry Schwartz:  5 minutes until we start

8:57	Barry Schwartz:  Danny just joined the stage

8:58	Barry Schwartz:  He mocks us

8:59	Barry Schwartz:  Danny then teases the people trying to get into the room

8:59

9:00	Barry Schwartz:  Disa (formerly Detlev) Johnson is having a talk tonight....

9:00	Barry Schwartz:  Danny now gets off the stage to allow the keynote to start

9:01	Barry Schwartz:  They launched a video on the screen

9:02	Barry Schwartz:  The video is basically a futuristic movie from the past about the Internet, trying to find the video on youtube

9:03	Keri Morgret:  Chris Sherman is up now.

9:03	Barry Schwartz:  Chris introduces Vint Cerf, the father of the internet

9:04	Barry Schwartz:  They talk about Arpnet and how it brought along the Internet

9:04

9:06	Barry Schwartz:  He did not envision that the Internet would happen from what he did

9:06	Barry Schwartz:  But it was interesting watching it be connected

9:07

9:07	Keri Morgret:  A year or two after arpnet started, networked email started. He's talking about how people find interesting new ways to use the technology.

9:08	Barry Schwartz:  They saw the potential but not the specifics

9:08	Barry Schwartz:  Chris asked, "what surprised you the most"?

9:09	Barry Schwartz:  Vint said, people's willingness to share this information on the Internet

9:09	Keri Morgret:  He also saide that he doesn't think it's as much knowledge as power as it is the sharing of knowledge is power.

9:09	[Comment From Discovery] Is this not where CerfNet came from?

9:09	Barry Schwartz:  @Discovery, not sure...

9:09

9:10	Barry Schwartz:  It is a wonderful social evolution of how the internet works

9:11	Barry Schwartz:  Chris asked, do you find that your title, chief internet evalgalist... do you find yourself needing to influence and create excitment for internet at Google?

9:11	Barry Schwartz:  Vint said, he didnt pick his title

9:11	[Comment From Discovery] Answered my own: May 20, 1992 Met Vint Cerf at my Job SDSC

9:11	Keri Morgret:  Only about 21% of people are online right now, so people do need to be persuaded.

9:11	Barry Schwartz:  We need to make investments to get the rest of the people online

9:12	Keri Morgret:  Part of his time is spent visiting the engineering offices of Google around the world.

9:12	Keri Morgret:  He spends some of that time on policy issues dealing with the internet.

9:13	Keri Morgret:  How do we establish norms for digital commerce, for example? What does a digital signature mean? Where is it accepted? What policy do we have around this?

9:14	Barry Schwartz:  Cloud community is built like there is no other cloud on the internet

9:14	Barry Schwartz:  How do you send info from one cloud to another

9:15	Barry Schwartz:  So there is a present issue with "inter cloud" communication

9:16	Barry Schwartz:  So this is an issue and he goes to universities to lay out this issue and hope they find a solution

9:16	Keri Morgret:  The students are too young to know that you can't solve x, so that's why he loves going to campuses.

9:16	Barry Schwartz:  Standing room only here... here are pictures:

9:16

9:16

9:16	Barry Schwartz:  Chris asks about the future of search

9:16	Barry Schwartz:  Vint said, we do well with text search, even multi-lingual

9:17	Barry Schwartz:  But we need help with video, images, etc

9:17	Keri Morgret:  We don't know what it is we are searching about. We can find strings and match them, but we don't necessarily understand the semantics of what we are looking for.

9:17	Barry Schwartz:  An intern told him, we navigate people to documents, but we should navigate them to answers. but we don't know what question is motivating a persons search

9:18	Barry Schwartz:  If you can explain to a search engine what you are trying to accomplish and the search engine could understand those semantics, then it is golden

9:18	Barry Schwartz:  Lots of room for improvements there.

9:18	Barry Schwartz:  Chris brings up YouTube and its dominance

9:19	Barry Schwartz:  Vint is impressed by YouTube and the effort being put into it by the community

9:19	Barry Schwartz:  YouTube has touched a nerve

9:20	Keri Morgret:  It's stunning how that has changed the tenor of debate. Very powerful in this latest election in the U.S.

9:20	[Comment From Bob Gladstein] "we navigate people to documents, but we should navigate them to answers". They've gotten a lot better at that in the past few years. Yesterday I searched for [current time gmt] and above the collection of pages where I could have gotten the answer was... the answer.

9:21	Barry Schwartz:  @Bob, yes, some times it is easy to know searcher's intent

9:21	Keri Morgret:  Instead of being locked into something as it's being transmitted, like the original model of TV, we can now store them and play them back later via things like TiVO and downloading. Time shifting has changed things.

9:22	Keri Morgret:  People don't treat advertising as annoying information if they're actually interested in the information.

9:22	Barry Schwartz:  Why not give the consumer control over their ads with video and that is what YouTube ads want to do.

9:24	Keri Morgret:  He's interested in seeing how we're going to be able to enable the consumer to have more control over the advertising they're seeing.

9:24	Do you like the idea of controlling the ads you see? Yes  ( 38% ) No  ( 13% ) Depends How Much Privacy Info I Give Up  ( 50% )

9:25	Keri Morgret:  In this user-controled world, you may not have to go to the same amount of trouble to get their attention, since they're already interested.

9:27	Barry Schwartz:  Chris asks, you said on google blog, about mobile ads and your phone...

9:27	Keri Morgret:  It will be easier to refine the type of advertising and know more about the customer when things are more interactive.

9:27	[Comment From Olivier Amar] Privacy is overrated. Give me control and I'll tell you everything you want to know :-)

9:27	Barry Schwartz:  Vint said mobile phones know where we are and it can help them answer Qs

9:27

9:28	Keri Morgret:  People asking questions from cell phones are very often geographically related, such as where is the nearest ATM.

9:29	Keri Morgret:  Vint didn't appreciate this as much until he went with his family to Arizona to go on a houseboat on the lake. No grocery stores at the lake, so they need to plan in advanced. Someone wanted to make paella, but they needed to find saffron to make this.

9:29	Keri Morgret:  He types in page arizona, saffron, grocery store. He gets three results. He calls the first result, they have it, uses the map to find the place, got what he wanted.

9:30	Keri Morgret:  We can add functionality to mobile devices by downloading software, and more software is being written all of the time.

9:31	Keri Morgret:  Chris brings up that we're really talking about privacy, and a search engine even turns into a confessional of sorts. He asks about Google and privacy.

9:32	Barry Schwartz:  Vint said passwords for authentication is way "Too weak", he wants something stronger.

9:32	Barry Schwartz:  He brings up medical records... Um, Google Health...

9:33	Barry Schwartz:  IF you have a medical issue, the last thing on your mind is privacy, first thing is to give them your medical records so they can fix your issue.

9:33	Barry Schwartz:  Controlling access to this information is important.

9:33	Keri Morgret:  You want a finite control over access to that type of information. You want them to have it then, but not forever.

9:34	Barry Schwartz:  Mobile phones can become our "remotes" that control all our information

9:34	Keri Morgret:  sidenote from keri: I'm guilty of picking up my phone and trying to use it as a remote.

9:35	Barry Schwartz:  We live in a world where "privacy" is hard to come by these days.

9:36	Keri Morgret:  There's a tension between maintaining privacy for individuals and protecting society from people who might want to damage it.

9:37	Keri Morgret:  Vint: Sometimes you need regulations to maintain openness and fairness. if there isn't sufficient competition to [missed this] you may need regulations.

9:38	Keri Morgret:  Regulation is only as good as its ability to be enforced (gives example of senator who wanted to delcare pi as 3 instead of 3.1415.....

9:39	Keri Morgret:  If we can't prevent something from happening technically, can we instead say if we catch you doing this there will be consequences?

9:39	Keri Morgret:  For example, drinking and driving -- if we catch you, we'll take away your license, etc.

9:40	Keri Morgret:  It could be that we deal with some of these problems not by regulations, but by common legal posture.

9:40	Keri Morgret:  Chris asks Vint about interplanetary extension of the internet. Vint says people thought he was joking, but he wasn't.

9:41	Keri Morgret:  Standard internet protocols didn't work -- 40 minute delays weren't good.

9:41	Barry Schwartz:  Last October, NASA gave Google the opp to upload data to something...

9:42	Barry Schwartz:  The space craft completed its mission of blowing up something

9:43	Keri Morgret:  They've tested protocols, and hope in August to upload it again. Will ideally have three nodes in the interplanetary system.

9:43	Barry Schwartz:  Good thing Keri is into this academic stuff

9:43	Keri Morgret:  Let's hear it for the interplanetary internet!

9:44	Keri Morgret:  Chris asks where Vint sees Google evolving in the next 10 years.

9:44	Keri Morgret:  Vint: continue to organize the world's information and make it useful. Hmm..should it be expanded to the universe's information now?

9:45	Barry Schwartz:  Google has complete trust in their employees, their only rule with 20% time is don't do something illegal with it

9:46	Barry Schwartz:  The "Bits we pour into the internet may become rotten" in the future

9:46	Keri Morgret:  We need software to interpret data. Software doesn't last forever. Bits in internet may become rotten at some point when we can no longer look at bits.

9:46	Keri Morgret:  Old jpg formats for example, you can't get access to them now with today's software.

9:47	Barry Schwartz:  How do we preserve our ability to interpret this data in the future.

9:47	Keri Morgret:  We need to preserve the application software, maybe even an emulation of the hardware.

9:47	Keri Morgret:  You just need to remember what your passwords were 100 years ago if you do this!

9:48	Barry Schwartz:  Our ancestors figured out a way to preserve their ideas and words hundreds of years later, we need to do the same.

9:48	Keri Morgret:  Will we be a big pile of rotten bits to our ancestors?

9:48	Barry Schwartz:  That is it, we are out of time

9:49	Barry Schwartz:  Next session on SearchWiki in 45 minutes

9:49

Below is live coverage of the Expert Technical Review of Your Website from SMX West 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by Keri Morget of Morgret Designs.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed. In addition, you can interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog.

Expert Technical Review of Your Website

(02/10/2009)  Powered by: CoveritLive

  

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4:33	Keri Morgret:  Site review panel is about to start. A lot of sites have been submitted, so we're going to go through things quickly.

4:34	Keri Morgret:  There won't be any pictures this session, as it broke the computer last time I tried.

4:34	Keri Morgret:  First site is motherearthnews.com.

4:35	Keri Morgret:  Magazine site, they want to sell subscriptions. Magazine about sustainable living, green things.

4:35	[Comment From @CoupDeGras] Thanks for the coverage, Keri.

4:35	Keri Morgret:  Types of queries they'd like to be found for: solar, sustainable living, diy.

4:35	Keri Morgret:  @coupdegras You're welcome!

4:36	Keri Morgret:  They're ranking decently well for the queries, but wanted to see if the panel could come up with anything.

4:36	Keri Morgret:  Vanessa sees they have a lot of video, but that they can't submit a video site map since they don't host the video.

4:37	Keri Morgret:  Vanessa puts the title of the video above the video in the text. Instead of "featured video" put title and short description, transcript would be great too.

4:38	Keri Morgret:  Nathan Buggia sees a lot of good things on the site, including sitemaps defined in robots.txt. He likes the URL structure, they have relevant words, separated by hyphens, has a date in there. Call to action on home page is good.

4:39	Keri Morgret:  With javascript off, the search engines might not be able to get to all of the content featured on the home page (top five featured stories on the left).

4:40	Keri Morgret:  Vanessa suggests branding the title tag, adding Mother Earth News at the end of the title tag.

4:40	Keri Morgret:  The popups on the page are annoying to people, especially since they are on other pages. They do get more conversions from popups than they do people leaving, according to their analytics. They do run a/b split testing.

4:40	[Comment From @CoupDeGras] Keri, are the tech panelists using specific tools to perform their analysis ?

4:41	Keri Morgret:  @coupdegras I think they're using secret search engine tools. =] Vanessa's using just the regular ones she talked about last session.

4:42	[Comment From @CoupDeGras] Secret !?!? I need to get back to the Convention Center to get the skinny. I love secrets...

4:43	Keri Morgret:  @CoupDeGras they're not showing any of the secret tools!

4:43	Keri Morgret:  Lots of compliments from the panel about the site.

4:44	[Comment From @CoupDeGras] I like the layout on motherearthnews.com.

4:45	Keri Morgret:  Panel is disappointed, since they can't find any spam or major errors or stupid things with the site.

4:45	[Comment From @CoupDeGras] It's a lot to absorb but the general layout looks pretty solid.

4:45	[Comment From @CoupDeGras] Hah !

4:45	[Comment From @CoupDeGras] Stump the panel!

4:46	Keri Morgret:  @CoupDeGras there are more sites to come, so I'm sure we'll see more fun.

4:47	Keri Morgret:  Vanessa reminds us that the robots.txt file contents is case sensitive. I've been bitten by this one. :(

4:48	Keri Morgret:  shoptoit.ca is the next site.

4:48	Keri Morgret:  Site is a canadian comparison search site.

4:48	[Comment From Robert Wright] Mother Earth News should try positioning their best block of text at the top of the source so bots don't have to crawl through 1000+ lines of code to get to it (starting with: Lighten the Strain on the Earth and Your Budget)

4:49	[Comment From @CoupDeGras] Did the panel speak to above the fold and below the fold positioning for content ?

4:50	Keri Morgret:  @CoupDeGras No, that hasn't been mentioned yet.

4:50	Keri Morgret:  Vanessa mentions that there are other versions of the site on different domains with more authority, and this may account for some of the indexing/ranking issues.

4:51	Keri Morgret:  Mocking Yahoo!

4:52	Keri Morgret:  They'd like their site to rank higher, so they earn more of the revenue, rather than the other sites rank, since they have to share revenue. But considering they're going up against places like Yahoo, it's going to be difficult. They need some more unique content.

4:53	Keri Morgret:  Blocking subdomains in robots may be a solution, but can also have problems. If you don't get the traffic, you might lose sales, if they don't come to your content instead of the blocked subdomain content.

4:53	Keri Morgret:  Maybe add some user generated content to their own site?

4:54	Keri Morgret:  It's on their list for this year to do user generated content, promotions on facebook, etc.

4:55	Keri Morgret:  With UGC, maybe start in small area instead of whole site.

4:55	Keri Morgret:  They're not always ranking the way they'd like for keywords.

4:55	[Comment From Robert Wright] How often do they change their homepage title? it looks like every holiday? Not sure how healthy it is to swap out a homepage title frequently.

4:57	Keri Morgret:  Maybe changing Home to be something more descriptive, to help with anchor text as well when other people link to you as well.

4:57	Keri Morgret:  Might also try ranking for landing pages, like categories.

4:57	Keri Morgret:  Images are missing alt attributes.

4:58	Keri Morgret:  Vanessa suggests looking at site checklist.

4:58	Keri Morgret:  Their product pages to have a lot more alt tags.

4:59	Keri Morgret:  try to make meta descriptions more unique, instead of just one word differences for the category pages.

5:00	[Comment From @CoupDeGras] Go Vanessa!

5:01	Keri Morgret:  His site has replaced ? and & with things like --. Search engines don't understand this, that it's actually dynamic. If they fix this, be sure to use redirects.

5:01	[Comment From Robert Wright] Very little text for "context." Almost all text on homepage is hypertext. Maybe a paragraph up top just to establish context would be helpful.

5:02	Keri Morgret:  Do be aware that there might be a drop after a big change like this with the URL structure, but it's worth it.

5:03	Keri Morgret:  Vanessa has noticed that french and english version have same URL and cookie chooses which to show. The search engines can't index both pages.

5:04	Keri Morgret:  The two Nathans at the front are snickering about something but not telling us what.

5:05	Keri Morgret:  Nathan Buggia is asking why they changed the title tag text to Valentine's Day. Answer: Might be because they're grabbing it from CMS. Lasts 4-5 weeks usually.

5:06	Keri Morgret:  Using a 302 redirect, which can make it hard for search engines. SEs want to know what they're going to show users, they're not sure where it's going to go. Maybe instead have part of home page be dynamic?

5:06	[Comment From Robert Wright] Why are all their product pages target=blank? how many times do they expect a visitor to close browsers (instances) after a visit? Bad for usability reputation?

5:07	[Comment From Benjamin] HI

5:07	Keri Morgret:  Status code is returning 200 Apple instead of 200 OK. It's an Apple thing. Doesn't matter, but got some laughter.

5:11	Keri Morgret:  Talk about geotargeting and language crawling. Missed this part of the discussion.

5:11	[Comment From Robert Wright] Is "English" and "USA" real keywords for them?

5:14	Keri Morgret:  talking about become.com now. They've had a bunch of pages disappear, and are also asking questions about their subdomain strategy.

5:14	Keri Morgret:  They use different subdomains for different categories, such as home-and-garden.become.com

5:16	Keri Morgret:  They don't have a html site map, but have a conceptual site map with the "similar queries" area. Vanessa says Google doesn't want to index search results pages.

5:17	Keri Morgret:  Vanessa notices it's confusing, because they have their own product page, and you can also go to an external site.

5:17	[Comment From @CoupDeGras] Small usability problem on top menu. Clicking 'Home and Garden' opens a sub-menu where you have to click on 'Home and Garden' again...?

5:18	Keri Morgret:  There are a lot of other pages indexed with the same description, 136 results for a long description for an individual item.

5:19	Keri Morgret:  Challenge that comparison shoping sites in general have is how to make them unique. Search engines want to show the best page to the user, why should your page show?

5:20	[Comment From @CoupDeGras] ignore that last comment... looks like they planned it that way...

5:28	Keri Morgret:  Apologies for no blogging, it was my work site we were looking at.

5:28	Keri Morgret:  Looking at bobscycle.com. Wondering if they have a Google penalty, as they rank OK in Yahoo.

5:29	Keri Morgret:  My site was http://www.oercommons.org, had questions specifically about URL structure for queries.

5:31	Keri Morgret:  Back to bobscycle. Vanessa mentions lot of canonicalization issues.

5:31	Keri Morgret:  Google Nathan says to double and triple check the back links.

5:33	Keri Morgret:  Vanessa: If the Google rep is suggesting to check out X versus Y..check out X. :)

5:34	Keri Morgret:  Suggestion to look at directory and article submission that had been done for the company that this person may not be aware of.

5:35	[Comment From @CoupDeGras] article submission ?

5:35	[Comment From Barry Schwartz] going into overtime, eh?

5:36	Keri Morgret:  @CoupDeGras I'm not sure the exact details about article submission -- may have been something with marketing department.

5:38	Keri Morgret:  There are vendors out there that deal with backlinks that can maybe help, too.

5:38	Keri Morgret:  We're over time and shutting down.

5:38

Below is live coverage of the Up Close With YouTube from SMX West 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by both Barry Schwartz, the editor of the Search Engine Roundtable.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed. In addition, you can interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog.

Up Close With YouTube

(02/10/2009)  Powered by: CoveritLive

  

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4:28	Starting any minute now

4:32

4:33	Working out some technical stuff now, I think... slides or something... running a few minutes late and this session is a short one (just an hour)

4:33	Here we go, session details at http://searchmarketingexpo.com/west/2009/full_agenda#139

4:34	Chris Sherman introduces the panel...

4:34	This is a new style for the panel, three speakers and a youtube rep

4:34	Matt Liu is up first, he is the product manager at YouTube, who works on the ad platform

4:34

4:35	YouTube is largest video site

4:36	They are the second largest search engine, behind Google 4th largest web property

4:36

4:36	hundreds of millions of videos viewed daily

4:37	Basic ways to improve your rankings in youtube

4:37	good descriptive titles

4:37	provide content that is descriptive and accurate and unique, use complete sentences, in your description...

4:37	include tags and avoid stuffing your tags

4:38	get the community to be involved in your video

4:38	share your video with members, annotate, embed your videos on web sites, be social and share

4:39

4:39	Allow other users to embed your video and embed your own videos on your own properties Google looks at those embeds, he said.

4:40	He then shows YouTube Insights, I covered that in detail over at http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/016704.html

4:41	Stats like sources, demographics, etc. really good data.

4:41	Case Study on Weezer

4:41	They saw most viewers were male

4:42	So they bought ads to target other users on third party sites

4:42

4:43	He then shows Sponsored Videos, I did a write up on that at http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/019197.html which goes through pretty much what he is saying, with screen caps

4:43	OfficeMax used these youtube ads and they found saw their videos were listed at top of Google for organic traffic

4:44	Zagg used youtube ads and saw it worked well

4:44	Matt Liu from Google is now done, next up...

4:44	JC Longbottom from Performics

4:46

4:46	He then shows clips on YouTube of Budd and Monster.com commercials from Super Bowl

4:47

4:47	but one ad stood out, Pepsi PepSuber the "MacGruber" ad

4:48

[Video file]

YouTube: cuW_T2vdFwc Play

4:49

[Video file]

YouTube: avjOMdl70MA Play

4:49	That is the video he showed

4:50	These videos showed up first, it paid its way to the top of Google and YouTube

4:52	Best part, you can watch the commercial on the branded page, they had a YouTube channel, they had an interactive competiton where others can upload videos and then people would vote on them

4:53	They gave tons of ways to embed the videos and tons of links there also.

4:54	Pepsi did great but there was one ad they might not have done 100% right

4:55	The free breakfast for Denny's was very popular

4:55

[Video file]

YouTube: 5OfMb90v4qg Play

4:55	But they didn't do the "After" the fact part that well

4:56	JC is now done.

4:56	Next up is Drew Hubbard

4:57	Videos he will use are at http://www.youtube.com/smxwest2009

4:57

4:57	End of the day, we want to show up in Google.com, the universal search results

4:58	There are two different opps to put a link in your YouTube profile: (1) Right under your profile picture (2) Your Web site URL

4:58	Always include keyword rich descriptions, titles and tags

4:59	Channel title is important, put a keyword in there

5:00	These links in your channel, are nofollowed but he said "google is looking at these" - yes he said that

5:00	Allow people to interact with your videos

5:01	He said, include the word "video" in your title

5:02	YouTube allows you to link to videos within videos, so link your part 1 to part 2

5:03	He made two videos, and he put a still image of famous actors in the middle of one video and that video has views than the other

5:03

[Video file]

YouTube: QyVRuxidn5k Play

5:04	YouTube's meta data is fairly simple title = meta title tag description = meta description tag tags = meta keywords tag

5:05	What does Google see of a video, he pulled the text only cache of this page (I personally do not see a cache link for this video)

5:05	Use captions and subtitles, makes sense that Google might use this down the road

5:05	100% put watermarks on your videos

5:06	YouTube has Google Maps integration and you can show up in Google Local results for it.

5:07	I have details on that at http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/014470.html

5:07	Jonathan Mendez is now up

5:07	He is addicted to YouTube

5:08

5:08	He also said, YouTube is #2 search engine, behind Google and just ahead of Yahoo

5:08	His nephew first searches YouTube, not even Google -- cute

5:09	This is big, Obama and whitehouse has a channel

5:09

5:10	He shows off the YouTube Live event, first streaming event YouTube held, it was back in November

5:10	Live Stream peak was 700,000 views

5:10	24 hours, 1.5 million views

5:10	48 hours, 4 million views

5:10	9 days, 11 million views

5:10	2 months, 17 million views

5:11	Monday night football has 11.8 million viewers on average for 2008... so this is big

5:11	YouTube put bid in for football broadcast in 2015

5:11	So Youtube is incredible

5:12	The data is great for the marketer, he shows insights again

5:12	Unbelievable data, including the hotspots

5:13	Videos that are popular are generally humerous

5:13	He mentions Blendtech :)

5:14	More about that over at http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/018700.html

5:14	Here is a sample video

5:14

[Video file]

YouTube: qg1ckCkm8YI Play

5:15	His client hired Gary Busey to talk about their product

5:15	Here is an example video from this campaign

5:15

[Video file]

YouTube: U_ycoN1xD8Y Play

5:16	Funny stuff, here are all of the videos http://www.youtube.com/garybuseyonbusiness

5:17	The value of the web is more about distribution of the content, not just the content itself

5:17	He built an app to watch the video in many places

5:17	He got some good press about it

5:18	He drove traffic it to it intially via search ads

5:19	The results were great and the data was awesome

5:19	Increased brand awareness by 39%

5:19	1 million views overall

5:19	400k views on youtube

5:20	That is all folks, good job! I'll skip the Q&A, only a few minutes left anyway

5:21