WebmasterWorld PubCon 2008 Las Vegas Archives

One of our most popular PubCon sessions, this event is also known as the Search Engine Smackdown.

Expect a "State of the Engines" address by the leading search engines of today. Yahoo, Google, Ask and Microsoft will all run down the current status, features, and fresh offerings of their respective search spaces.

Related blog entry from a few years back:
http://www.pubcon.com/blog/index.cgi?mode=viewone&blog=1156867200

Moderator: Brett Tabke
Speakers:
Matt Cutts, Software Engineer, Google Inc.
Sean Suchter, VP, Yahoo! Search Technology Engineering, Yahoo!
Nathan Buggia, Live Search Webmaster Central, Lead Program Manager, Microsoft

Nathan Buggia:
State of Live Search - what does it mean for publishers? We've talked about themes of live search - deliver best search results, simplify key tasks, and innovate in the business model.

Best search results: it's all about relevance. We've made a lot of progress. Does a query answer your question? We've been tracking this for 4 years. In the past year, we're in the same ballpark - not exactly like Yahoo/Google but very similar. Some queries we're better on but some aren't perfect. It's about freshness of content and depth of content.

Specific improvements: improving the crawling performance - compression and if-modified-since. We create less load on your server and do a more efficient job of crawling. If your resources are gzipped, we take less bandwidth.

Standardization of REP rules - these are a core set of rules for robots exclusion protocol. It's easier for publishers can specify the policies for searche engines. These rules are shared. MSNbot has adopted the common set of rules: now we support regular expressions.

We continue to invest in sitemaps. They can be hosted anywhere. There's a lot of flexibility for publishers. It also helps understand canonicalization issues.

There's a significant increase in crawling capacity.

We also realized that the best search results isn't about algorithmic improvements. It's also about providing tools: Webmaster Tools. We offer: troubleshooting tips. We took a list of the top issues that Live search encountered when crawling websites - 404 errors, too many parameters, blocked by robots, and unsupported content. There's reporting being provided around these and even filtering. Next week, we'll launch a new feature about malware. We scan every page and see what spawns a malicious process; those pages are flagged and cannot be clicked on in the user experience of Live search. Publishers can find their own links in the tools; they can also get a list of outbound links that are also infected.

We also provide a lot of tools around ranking. Information is provided on Static Rank, dynamic ranking within site, backlinks, and penalties.

There are also some issues on the community forums with a 3 day turnaround.

Another tool launched about a year ago is the adCenter Excel Keyword Research tool. It gives you access to an API that gives you keyword data for Live search - demographic and monetization information.

Simplify key tasks:
- The future of relevance? We found that there are many use cases for when people come to search engines. Sometimes they're doing navigational queries. Sometimes people come to search engines and don't know what they want. These are exploratory scenarios. We provide richer media in the search results in addition to 10 blue links. Also, deeper pages may not be related to the search experience but the topic. As a publisher, there's more surface area on how to reach customers with specific content. Some of this is video, structured content (products, reviews, and more information about your website). This is expanded into Hotmail and other properties as well.

Innovation in the business model:
We're talking about the Cashback/adCenter scenario.

We also have Project Silk Road that consolidates things to increase engagement (enhances the seite with Live search results/customizes 404 error pages with the error toolkit, and create rich user experience with Virtual Earth and silverlight), generate traffic (optimization of site with the tools, deep content partnerships that increase distribution, and enhanced ad format solutions), and drive insight (how your website performs and your customers. Rich site statistics, monitoring, and optimization)

Within that, there's the Live Search API. We asked a lot of our partners about what they needed in an API. Publishers wanted to be in control of the results of the API. Now, you can reorder the results, skin results and ads to match your website or application, and filter out 300 ad providers that don't make sense (competitors, aren't good for your audience, etc.)

The technical aspects of the API also needed to meet business needs:
- The query limit is removed - now unlimited
- Rich query language - site operators that you've seen in the past (e.g. site:). You can alter how dynamic ranking relevancy favors freshness, accuracy, or whatnot.
- Many types of content - web, news, images, encarta answers, spelling. Different corpuses in the backend are now accessible.
- Implements all standard protocols (REST, JSON, RSS, SOAP) - they can use the API any way that people develop.

Sean Suchter:

Yahoo is trying to get rid of the 10 blue links.

Limited choice: three players dominate the maket. Neither site owners or searcher can exert influence, so Yahoo is trying to address it.

Search Assist feature is being worked on to make the best possible search queries.

Right now, Yahoo is looking to move from "to do" to "done" - getting to the answer by reducing frustration, trying to structure information from the web directly, etc.

One example is the music player integration- "Play the web" in Yahoo Search

He shows a SERP that shows many initiatives: rich media modules (video and headlines), deep links, and news federation.

The other big area is about the ecosystem. We're really trying to create a community around search (think PubCon). We're trying to set up incentives for everyone - Yahoo and end users. A few ways to do that: opening search (SearchMonkey) - coming from outside in. What does this mean? Yahoo wants to move from a simple presentation to a more useful structured presentation when appropriate for the task the user is trying to accomplish (not uniformly, not for all queries, not for all users). For site owners, this helps the users get right to the answers. The traffic should increase in quality. It hasn't hurt clickthroughs to your site. It will increase loyalty and engagement.

There is a lot of success with the SearchMonkey ecosystem. A lot of properties, including People magazine, Wikipedia, Trulia, WebMD, and more are utilizing it.

Another innovation includes BOSS, a big initiative - build an open search service. The idea is to open the platform completely. Trying to be a principal search engine is a hard thing. You need hardware, data, and more. So the idea is to open it up completely so people can interact with the query handling and crawling and use it directly. The goal is to have high quality search experience to be relevant, comprehensive, fresh, and well-presented.

Some examples: 4 hoursearch - it was made in 4 hours by guy who said he paid $10 for pizza and beer. It's very straightforward and a different type of search presentation. Another one is PlayerSearch which is more specialized (like SportsCenter). NewsLine is another with a cool layout of how the news are presented. Finally, Tianamo is a 4th - it presents the data in this somewhat mountain format. It's a landscape of queries and things surrounding them in a visualization.

Matt Cutts: State of the Index.
What has happened in 2008 and what should we expect in 2009?
- Google Chrome is a wicked fast browser
- Google Android is an open source operating system

There's other stuff too - better machine translation, better voice recognition, Google Suggest, improving personalization and universal/blended search

There were a lot of small things: 2001 search index, video and voice chat in Gmail, ability to track the flu (by finding out who is searching for the flu/cough/cold symptoms on Google!) - it's really cool.
- Why is this interesting to webmasters? You don't have to do this with flu. You can look at Google trends in general and even check them for websites.

Google Ad Planner slices and dices by demographic.

Let's drill down: what have we done for the webmaster? We're taking PDFs that are images and are running OCR on them. We're crawling flash better - pulling out text of transitions of Flash files.

2008 Webmaster Launches. Look at pinkberry.com/mobile versus redmangousa.com/ on your iPhone. Only one works. Google is working to understand these flash files that aren't showing up on your phone.

Google has gotten better at keyword spam and gibberish. We have also provided some extra tools. For example, there's a tool that shows who is linking to you who is linking to a 404. You can also make your 404 better with 14 lines of JavaScript. This code by Google suggests pages that might be useful on that site.

There are a few other things:
- Adavanced segmentation of Google Analytics
- On demand indexing for Google Custom Search Engine - Google will reindex up to 10 pages within 24 hours.
- webmaster APIs for hosters and Gdata
- translation gadget for your website. If you have Chinese visitors and you write in English, the site can be translated into Chinese.

Webmaster Communication - it's huge so far. We've had 3 chats so far with 700 people dialing in on the most recent chat. We're blogging more, including more videos, and there are now blogs in different languages. If you register your site and you have malware or are caught for spam BEFORE you register, those messages will be waiting.
- Yesterday, Google came out with a 30 page guide on SEO 101. This means Google values SEO.

2009 Blackhat trends:
- jeevesretirement.com was bought by Ask.com. Ask forgot to renew it. Jeevesretirement.com was bought by porno people. People grab expired domain names and take advantage.
- Illegal hacking will become more common.
- Blackhat moves toward the outright illegal - DNS subdomain hijacking. Without getting DNS resolvers update, it can be hacked. Do we want to do stuff that gets people in jail?

Conclusions - blackhat SEOs will continue to veer toward the outright illegal, SEOs need to decide risk tolerance, Google will keep communicating efforts with webmasters, and Google will provide tools to help webmasters

Moderator: Brett Tabke
Speakers:
Chris Tolles, CEO, Topix
Lawrence Coburn, President, RateItAll, Inc.
Roger B. Dooley, VP of Online Community Development, Hobsons U.S.
Brett Tabke, CEO, WebmasterWorld.com

Chris Tolles of Topix begins:

Topix is a local news aggregator. Turned it into a community around news. 40,000 local forums, 150,000 comments a day. Only provider of ZIP code local news on the web. Largest local forum provider on the web. Participation from people in over 20,000 US localities monthly. 15 million uniques a month. Roughly the same traffic as Digg.

Two equally big problems
1) Getting participation
2) Dealing with it - running and managing it is a huge nightmare

Product management 101:

How do you build a community? Provide something people want to use. Build around the people you know. Build around what you know.
Build something no one else has. ODP was the first directory powered by people.

Has to be easy to use, easy to find. Obvious keyword optimization problems. Building a strategy for being found. Topix optimizes for news. Must be easy to understand. Some communities are not clear what the focus is. Easy to see the unique value. Are you another site talking about Toyotas? What is your unique value? Ease of participation. Maximizing engagement. Let people participate without registration. Make it easy for people to come back. Give them a reason to come back. Facebook is amazing that 15% of users come back daily. Let the audience virally build your business. Passion about your product / service is key.

Dealing with participation: Your users are all trying to "get you". Everyone on there is insane! Look for the attack on the system. A community is just another system. Assume people are out to get you. What's the experience like if they get your voicemail? Phone calls at 2am? Look for these issues, and build it to deal with this. Have functionality to deal with complaints. Ways of managing and moderating what potential problems are before they happen. Have to take a long view on things. Building tools and functionality with expected issues that will happen.

Security is policy. Topix powers the forums for a Hartford newspaper. Had an incident where someone was hit by a car. Lots of racist talk. Was there a policy on this? No. Hard to do anything with a community unless you've built a policy/rules and stick with it. Need policies! The efficiency of the organization depends on it.

Don't go down! If it's growing, it let it go down. Tech matters - have a solid setup. Think about the technology you use. Look at your growth. Look at other sites and look at their solutions. That's why Friendster probably went down.

Do as little as possible. If providing internet community services for free, limit your cost. If you are charging, people have expected value. Down drown in costs! But don't abandon your community.

Killing posts - need a balance. Have a policy, and enforce it.

Brett Tabke:

Talks about Steve Job's famous commencement address at Stanford. Main point is that you cannot connect the dots going forward, but can do it backwards. Brett is going to connect the dots in this presentation, of where he started, and where is today.

-WMW started in 1999. Before that, was SearchEngineWorld in 1997.
-Forum on ISP in 1996.
-Before that worked at Gateway 2000.
-In 85-89 was on BBSes.
-In 80's programmed in assembly. Very community oriented, all about speed.
-First BBS community went on in 1984.
-First computer was in 1976. First program was on a Commodore PET
-First computer owned was a Commodore 64 in college.
'
Grew up in the 60's - big Stark Trek fan. Dealt with social and cultural issues. If you run a forum, you must be culturally sensitive and must be PC. Built first search engine - JoeFarmer.com - an agriculture and farm search engine in '96. Went to lots of user groups, trade shows for Gateway.

Today, WMW focus is unique, easy to use. Required registration. No free email address registrations. Designed so that your words go high above the fold. Want members to feel important. Success = member on site time - member posts. More about relationships than content. Avoid visual distractions - visual noise. Avoided social networking stuff - but starting to add a few things this year. For WMW its all about the trust and long term relationship. Been the same site for 10 years. Standing on policy, even if meant losing friends. Subscription vs. advertisement model. Don't care about raw page views, clicks, or membership sign ups. Concern is quality, secondary is converting users to subscribers. Now, biggest day ever for WMW was 200,000 uniques and 1 million PV's during Florida update.

US accounts for about 46% of WMW. Big challenges are the spammers, link droppers, name droppers. #1 problem = rogue spiders and bots from cable modem ISP's.

One-offs - 4 days offline in 2005. Results? Uniques went up 15% and stayed up 15%.

Some problems in the blogosphere flat wrong about WMW and the bot issues.

3 rules of damage control 1) release early- tell your story. 2) release often - retell your story 3) tell the truth - never compound the problem. You can never correct and error that goes corrected and unchallenged.

Speed is key: When worked on a Commodore 64 speed was everything. WMW is consistently the fastest forum on the web.

Roger Dooley:

CollegeConfidential.com = A topical community - 1.7 million visits last month.

Why community? Nueromarketing - the intersection between brain science and marketing. Measurement of brain activity. Behavioral science. It's important because 95% of our behavior is subconscious. People need help and communities solve that. People looking for answers. Some communities are purely social.

Community participation. Why do people spend so much time helping others? Why answer questions? Why moderate? Human brain is programmed for altruism. We get a little reward for helping others. Helping makes you "hot". Members of the opposite sex rank helping others as a key desire.

Typical member cycle: Typically people start by needing help. Stumbled on the site perhaps on Google or through a friend. Then people start interacting. The same folks realize they can help others. Not everyone makes it that far, but very typical. With new arrivals - welcome if possible. Dumb questions are OK. Flaming is not away to build a strong community.

Long term members - recognize contributions, posting latitude, moderator status. Most important to community success.

Moderators - many thing of as TOS enforcers. In reality, they should be helpful, patient, tolerant, accepting.

Recruiting mods - long history in community. Mature behavior. Friendly, welcoming.

Rewarding volunteers - they are very important. Social norms vs. market norms. Market norms are doing a job for pay. Why do mods mod? They enjoy the community. Want to give something back. Experiments have shown that volunteers can be more productive.

Good rewards are anything that recognizes contributions.

Community death: Reasons for failure - emphasis on technology vs. members. Use of inexperienced community managers. Measuring the wrong metrics.

Last up is Lawrence Coburn, talking about "The social media river".

Definition: "A constantly updating news feed of content that be tuned and customized the by the user".

In the mid 90's there was the BBS. Mid 90's came the forum and message board. Still here to stay. 1999's blogs were the new format for growing communities. Then the profile via Friendster and Myspace became dominant for discovering content. The big leap forward was the concept of the river - don't have to go anywhere to find your content. Facebook was the big revolution in 2006. Aggregating friends activity. Twitter came along and took the concept of the river, and let people do it from any device. SMS, IM, etc. Reduced the concept to one single question. Friendfeed is the river for multiple sites - getting lots of buzz. Aggregates all the communities together.

Why the river works? Content comes to you. It's always fresh. You have control of what happens in the river. Relevant to you, and can adapt to changing tastes.

There are 3 primary sources of content:

1) People - you choose to follow people and see what they are up to.
2) Media type - photos, app activity, video, status updates. Total control. On Facebook, you can tune your feed - to get more relationship info, etc.
3) Topic - not subscribing to a person, but a topic. Want to hear all posts about social media for example.

River monetization - trying to find an ad format that works. Problem is making it relevant. Some revolutionary concepts emerging. Google doesn't have a format for this yet.

The river and widgets. This concept is a threat to widgets, because sidebar is becoming a distraction. Widgets need to find a way to get into the content.

Search vs. the river: MSN live is being revamped to go into the river. Yahoo! is working on this as well - called Yahoo! OS. If you are marketer, publisher, content provider - need to get it into the river.

Read more at sexywidget.com.

Live coverage provided by Avi A. Wilensky of Promediacorp, a Manhattan based online marketing agency.

Moderator: Jake Baillie

Speakers:
Lawrence Coburn, President, RateItAll, Inc.
Peter Adams, President, Matchpoint
Patrick Sexton, Search Engine Marketing Manager, We Build Pages
Will Price, CEO, Widgetbox
Peter Yared, CEO, iWidgets!

Description: With the Web 2.0 revolution, we have seen more and more sites offering widgets in all shapes and forms. Now, several years later, this session will examine how online publishers can take advantage of this trend to gain more distribution.

Session Notes:

First up is Lawrence Coburn...

Lawrence runs a blog called SexyWidget.com. He is going to talk about API strategies.

The four pillars of distributed web strategies:
1) Widgets but they are only downloaded one at a time
2) Toolbar extensions but the download is a barrier to success.
3) Platform Apps on Facebook, MySpace, etc actually a bit of a down turn in this sector
4) API like Yahoo Maps, Amazon AWS. This allow batch or mass distribution

He likes to think of APIs and widgets on steroids. It helps expand your footprint. Google rolled out the maps, got millions of downloads and now added ads to it for a great revenue model.

APIs can be used for branding, new business models, and internal content distribution.

Case Study: Netflix
Every single actor, movie, description, etc is available. Publishers are free to use this data as long as they use proper attribution. This is used to drive new subscribers to Netflix.

Case Study: RateItAll
Rolling out all content including ratings, reviews, etc. Using API to pull content back to home base. Using APi to spread brand, driver referrals, etc.

There are all sorts of business models for API launches. From free to pay per API call. You will need to decide what model meets your business goals.

Challenges and risks: limited number of developers, scaling, dupe content issues, fuel competitors, legal issues such as redistribution rights.

API resources include Mashery, Platform D, Swordfish and SexyWidget.com.

Next up is Patrick Sexton...

What are widgets? They are what is left when you remove all the headers, footers, sidebars and "phoophy stuff". For example just the YouTube video player.

Why use widgets?

Interaction. People must be pleased by what you are doing. Whether it movies, chat or even business applications.

Making money. Selling products, ad revenue and making things more efficient.

Traffic. Direct traffic is very important traffic (anything that does not come from a search engine). Widgets are not spread via search engines. They are spread by people. It is relativly easy to get ranked in major widget directories for keyword phrases.

SEO. Traffic and exposure can be big. Word of mouth communities will link to you. However his view on links is that links do not have credit cards, people do. Caution: your links need to be relevant!

Patrick believes in a cross platform approach to spreading your widgets. Your widgets should be tailored to the audience who will use it and the platform supporting it.

Put your widget in every widget directory possible. They will be found. Warning: viral installers do not not post your widget or brand in the directory. iGoogle has over 100 million users and most brands are not even listed.

Third presenter is Will Price...

Widgetbox is the #1 web widget provider with over 78 million uniques and 600 million widget views.

Web publishers are trying to reach new readers or visitors. They need to develop innovative content syndication programs. Widgets are ideal for this. Most sites offer content that can easily tranlate into a widget. RSS feeds, images, videos, slideshows, etc are all easy concepts to turn into a widget.

Widgets can be viral is you create galleries, use the invite feature or as feed updates on the social sites.

Next up is Peter Yared...

His first claim is that people are not going to websites any more. He gave a dozen example of major sites where the traffic is flat or decreasing. People are spending all of their time on social sites such as blogs, Facebook, MySpace, etc. So the new model is to put your content where the users are!

There has been a big move from just widgets to SOCIAL widgets. People like to interact with engaging, social widgets. Polls or other actionable widgets are very powerful right now. Think of widgets as a great tool to reach your fans.

Rich media (video & widgets) is by far the fastest growing ad spend. Widget creation can now be a drag and drop creation process, so the entry process is pretty easy.

Last speaker of the last session of the day is Peter Adams!

Advertising is an essential ingredient of any content web site or strategy. Widgets can help you do that.

Widgets can generate income via the widget itself being an ad, an ad can be embedded in the widget, or the ads can be initiated by the widget. If you think about it, even the Google Adsense ads are just widgets. Now all the major players, like Amazon, AllPosters, eBay offer widgets through their affiliate programs.

There are also some in-page examples such as Snap that display an ad widget when you roll over an incontent text link.

Peter warns that you need to make widgets a seemless part of your user experience, not an appendage. So you need to be able to customize, customize, customize.

These session notes were written by Arnie Kuenn from Vertical Measures a link building services and website publicity company. Please excuse any typos or grammar issues, the session notes are written live and meant to be posted as soon as the session is over.

Link-baiting is a topic that makes some people snicker when they hear it. However, the complexities and subtleties are a fascinating combination of clever copywriting and strategic placement. Did you know that there are 12 types of links? Moreover, there are eight types of link bait to get those 12 types of links? That means there are 96 different strategies to get links. This session will look at the eight and the twelve.

Moderator: Andy Beal
Speakers:
Todd Malicoat, Independent Marketing Consultant, Meta4creations, LLC
Ian Ring, Application Developer, IGLOO Inc.
Bill Hartzer, Search Engine Optimization Manager, Vizion Interactive
Jane Copland, Search Marketing Consultant, SEOMoz

Bill Hartzer:

Link baiting specific sectors: target a group in your sector/topic, tell them what they want and what they need to know. Point out the industry problem (e.g. my funniest PPC mistake)
- search for "keyword" at search engine. Find companies biddibng on word "keyword." Copy the list of keywords from the spreadsheet, paste into PPC program.

Target sites that link out - research those sites. Blogstorm tracker, Technorati, and more are good tools.

Find linkbait that worked. Don't always reinvent the wheel. Research your topic in social media, find URLs that have gone popular, create a unique twist for similar linkbait, write an update to the previous article (link to the previous with new developments), watch for press releases in your industy for studies, research, and other news. Set up Google and Yahoo alerts for news.

News works well as linkbait: be able to respond to breaking news (set up a blog or page ready for the article). Post quickly. Submit to social sites. Go back and edit/update Add pictures/photos/logos/screen captures. This strategy helps you get the market share of links and is good for organic search.

Linkbaiting Techniques: problogger.net - tools, quizzes, contests, be first, scoops, expose, awards, lists, humor, make someone famous, create belonging/community, design, rants, controvesy, attack, shock, research and statts, give something away, resourcefulness, cool factors

Social media, linkbait, and search are all coming together. Create new linkbait on your site consistently. Participation is key - daily voting, commenting, and submitting.
Linkbait + social media = market share of links and getting noticed
If you get links when being noticed, you'll be successful in organic search.

Jane Copland:

Everyone can publish content online. It's low cost, high visibility, and easily digestible content.
Blogs imitate familiar old media - the banner, the sidebar, and the lead article. Their success is partly a result of the familiar nature.

Different types of blogged content achieve different results: shes shows illustration for some sites that have 2500+ digs with 27 external links. One had 900 diggs and 131 external links. It varies.

These multiple types of blogged linkworthy content exists as:
- "The Gimmick" - it helps to be drunk
- Light content lists - footer post - it's easy
- The OMG ticket (URLs ending in 0 - see on seomoz.org) - it's harder, and it doesn't help to be drunk
- Heavier content lists - it doesn't help to be drunk
- In-depth articles and case studies - which shouldn't be launched on a blog.
It's not a good idea to decide which type you're working with before you start writing.

It's never a good idea to launch viral content that isn't in a visible area.

SEOmoz has rewritten blog posts and 301d past links over to the new page.

Enable comments, because sometimes your readers are more interesting than you are.
- However, disabling comments have its place where comments are inappropriate.

Link building achieves 3 main goals:
* it adheres to traditional ways that content is distributed
* it invites interaction
* it's easy to spread becasue people can subscribe to blogs.

Todd Malicoat: awareness, sales, and revenue

Quick Digg primer: a lot of people read Digg and they have the power to put links to your site. You can either get a consultant or build up your own account.
- Get an optimal name - alpha sort organization
- Adding the right friends - they digg upcoming a lot, submit a lot, digg your stories. But don't do more than 5-10 a day. You'll want to reevaluate your friends.
- Find good stories quickly
- Submit good stories and ask for help

Some linkbait will bomb!

Have a friend submit your story.

Linkbaiting hooks: attack, humor, contrarian, news, resource, etc.

When you launch, if it doesn't bomb and it hits Digg's frontpage, you don't want your server to melt. Cache your content, host images on another host, search for the Digg/slashdot effect (and fix your server). Email friends and allies. Use sites as "jump off" points for other sites.

Don't have 25 social media buttons on the bottom of your blog post.

Reddit is similar to Digg - gives you less traffic but it's valuable.
StumbleUpon has a toolbar and brings traffic.

Ian Ring: Optimizing Conversion using Genetics
CSS styling can affect the clickability of links. Testing and optimization will increase your site's reevenue. Do you know if your current stylesheet is eleiciting optimzal user behavior?

Optimization algorithms: trial and errots, multivariate testing, hill climbing, simulated annealing (e.g. making the font size bigger, smaller, incrementally changing things until optimized), genetic algorithms

Introduction to genetic algiorthms - some are more optiized for environments.
- Metaphor: the page is the ecosystem, the page elements are living organizsms, a hyperlink is a species, a well-adapted organism thrives in its ecosystem. A healthy ecosystem is comprised of fit organisms.

How do you do it? Survival of the fittest.
- What is fitness? It's anything you can measure: clicks, purchases, subscriptions, sales leads, registration - these are all measures of fitness.
- Fitness is easy to measure. It's the number of times something good happens.

In biology, chromosomes affect fitness. Brown eyes are better optimized than blue/green eyes. On your website, you probably want to optimize for brown eyes.
- The chromosome that determines this is the CSS stylesheet.

CSS is a link's DNA: it could be an image, a graph, a link.
You may have 3 bits for a font size or 24 bits - if you're testing another interface element, you may have another set of genes - hue/saturation/etc. Properties of CSS stylesheets can be turned into a binary string that can be stored, manipulated, and moved back into a CSS stylesheet.

CSS can be expressed as a binary string:
A chromosome is a string of 1s and 0s. Define the genome: it's the map of placement of the genes that appear in a chromosome. You'll need a table to assign positions of the DNA to the genes in the CSS.

Create a template: inject genetic values into the template. You need functions to transalte binary chromosomes into CSS. Replace variables in the template with values from the DNA.

onPageLoad(): choose an organism; convert into CSS; if user clicks, increase organism's fitness. Increment organism's age. Do this until the end. After that, it's time to mate, spawn, and die.

Genetic variance via mutation and crossover: flip from 0 to 1 or 1 to 0.

You need a lot of things - databases, web pages, server side languages, and more!

Conclusion: unpredictable successes, continuous optimization, and no maintenance.

Moderator: Michael Bonfils
Speakers:
Jeremy Wright, CEO, B5Media
Jeff Libert, CEO, DirectoryCompany.com
Grace Della, CEO, Ten Golden Rules
Victor Pitts, Vice President - Sales & Client Services, Moniker Online Services, LLC

Grace Della:

Strategy #1: Optimize sites for SEO. Select keyword rich domains. Develop a 5-10 page site at 250 words and build links.

Strategy #2: Buy domains with existing PR. Sometimes people are sitting on domains. Find one that fits your business strategy.

Aftermarket sites: Bido.com, Moniker, Snap Names, Grand Names, etc. Check trademark availability before buying an expensive domain.

Strategy #3: Domains as an investment. Investors are looking at domains for several reasons - a global commodity. Not based in debt. Internet is only growing.

Strategy #4: Develop a business on a domain. If you build it, they just wont come. Real value in domain is developing into a business, unless it has huge type in traffic. Build content, links, and functionality.

Strategy #5: Protect the domain by owning variations and the extensions. Countries, spellings, misspellings, etc.

Strategy #6: Stay current. DN Journal, ICANN, T.R.A.F.F.I.C, Domain Masters podcast on WebmasterRadio.fm.

Victor Pitts:

Why domains matter? Growing to 168 million worldwide. Aftermarket sales have been increasing by 20% year after year. Even in down markets, they are increasing in value.

Domains are both collectibles, and revenue producing. Unique - no two alike. Direct navigation traffic accounts for 10-15% revenue in Yahoo and Google. It's your first impression online. Primary way of locating your site. Tells customers what your business is about. Helps define and reposition brand promises. Improve SEO and SMO.

Protect your brand, register typos and other TLDs.

Case studies:

ToddlerToys.com = Fisher Price.

CreamCheese.com = Kraft.

Underwear.com = Calvin Klein.

All things going equal, your domain name can be the tie breaker in SEO. Case Study: TropicalBirds.com is a new site with less than 6 months uptime. Ranks above highly competitive sites.

Aftermarket domains offer additional benefits - Age, PR, Links. Properly redirected, can give strength to other domains.

Do your research. Check if they have shady links. Can get you hurt.

Domain does have an impact on your CTR in the SERPs. Expands your ad message.

More than 70% of internet users type in a domain to get to their destination. Study by WebSideStory. At more than 4%, direct navigation converts at 2x regular search traffic.

Ways to use direct navigation - redirection. Books.com is redirected to BN.com. Baby.com redirects to J&J. TennisShoes.com redirects to KSwiss.com.

Rebrand your business using a new domain.

Case Study: Stocks.com. Monthly visitors = 10k / mo. CPC on Google is $4.63 according to Spyfu on 11/3/08 for "stocks". The SEO traffic from the term pays off in long run. Would take 5 years for a + ROI.

Ways to acquire domains: Most single and 2 word domains are gone. Aftermarkets are the new primary market. Live auctions. Online sales platforms such as Snapnames, SEDO, or Afternic. Expired and deleting domain services. Private brokerages.

Jeffrey Libert: Moderator for domain forum and WMW.

"Domain Creation, Acquisition and Sales"

Started in domaining to increase law practice. Has got clients through domains, one converted at over $100,000k!

Strategy:

Step 1: Start in your own backyard by scraping your own website for keywords. The products and services - want to pull out all the keywords - usually 2 - 3 words generic phrases. Pull from navigational or topical links. Drop them into a bulk domain checker, and see if they are available. Avoid hyphening. Scrape competitors sites for keywords. Check in Adwords tool if there is search volume, and see if there are high volume related terms. Look in trade journals for hot trends, register keywords that are emerging as buzzwords.

Step 2: Once you have your list, do a SERPs analysis. See how popular the keyword phrase is. Check your log files for phrases.

Step 3: ROI analysis. Converted sales lead analysis. Estimating type in traffic- search the phrase in Google with quotes. Trend analysis - might not get traffic this year because it's emerging - huge opportunity. Read journals to find trends. Check PPC costs versus annual domain renewal fees. Reserved potential (microsite, resale, other). Rinse, repeat.

A quick case study:

Site subject: Glues, adhesive, sealants site. Jeffrey scraped the site and found the keyword "flexible adhesives". Domain flexibleadhesives.com was available. CPC price is $1.68. Volume is about 210 according to Google. Got it to rank, redirects to the main site. High ROI.

Aftermarket strategies:

Expiring domains. Telephoned people. Often the single best strategy, expiring or not. For sale or not, had incredible results. Get ahead of the bidders.

Every auction has undervalued gems. Now is a good time to buy because of the economy. Geo or local domains are getting hotter. City + Service, etc.

Jeremy Wright: "1001 Domain Buying Tips"

Secret formula for the PERFECT domain = SEO + Data (traffic, kw information, age, typability - no .orgs, misspellings, etc.) X branding and likability.

One hyphen rarely hurts, two isn't pretty, 3+ is evil. Consider buying entire sites, not just domains, for SEO value. If you are buying within an industry, look for a common footprint "Powered by WordPress", or use an older version # to find older blogs. Don't be afraid to buy a half a dozen secondary descriptive domains and either 301 them or push to them using in--context links.

Avoid double letters. Don't misspell unless it helps with branding. Domain age matters. Older is better. Don't change the subject of the site. Don't change the URL structure. Don't change the registration information. Put it in a trust.

Have 2 domain name options is a challenge. Use math to solve the problem.

Domain mailing lists. Big buyers and sellers have private mailing lists that they sell. Judge the quality of the domains before buying them. When negotiating - lowball, but don't offend. Counter, counter, counter! Sometimes it's a matter of patience. Have contracts and such ready for when you get a deal - don't allow cold feet to set in. When transferring domains, use a trust to avoid triggering engines that look at WHOIS data.

Find a domain you are happy with! Follow Jeremy on Twitter @jeremywright.

Live coverage provided by Avi A. Wilensky of Promediacorp, a Manhattan based online marketing agency.

This is a follow up to last year's highly popular linking session.

The panelists in this session are experts on linking and will take a critical look at linking strategies including outbound link optimization, outsourcing link building, old-fashioned linking via directories, and hiring an in-house link developer.

Moderator: Chris Tolles
Speakers:
Eric Enge, President, Stone Temple Consulting
Rebecca Kelley, Search Marketing Consultant, SEOmoz
Roger Montti, Founder and Owner, martinibuster.com
Greg Hartnett, President, Best of The Web

Eric Enge: some ways to use social media as a link building strategy

Think big! Companies can be like Blendtec.

Social News Sites: the opportunity includes tens of thousands of visitors but the traffic sucks -- but there's also the opportunity for links

Match the Digg demographic
13-28 year old males
They like Google, Apple, novel technical thing, open source, Gmail..

Some other tips:
- Study what has worked before
- Write a compelling title
- Write an interesting description
- Vote for posts in front of you on the upcoming pages
- Make sure you stand out!

Case study: a website that has a restroom photo.
Was it successful?
2/3 of a year later, it has 159 links. It's prominent in Google results.
- But ask: is it helpful or relevant?

Authoritative content can win: for example, how to solve a Rubiks cube that was posted on a howto website.
Why did it go hot? It was relevant to the audience - Rubiks cube had a resurgence a year ago among high school/college males. There were other great articles that predated it. It was authoritative and unique.

Was it a success? Yes.
- Fits theme of site, content was credible, still has 147 links 2/3 years later, does rank for Rubiks cube related search terms, term gets 40-50 searches a day.

One more example - 45 excellent blog designs on the front page of Digg.
It was more successful and here's why: fit the theme, credible content, 1160 links more than 1 year later, it's relevant, authoritative, high rankings, and there are 645 searches per day!

Doing this for yourself - interest the audience, be authoritive, reflect well on your business, use titles targeted at BIG search terms - it needs to be in the article title and the Digg submission title (those are in anchor text)

Another case study:
Sports stock market - fantasy players would buy/sell players and see trends. They became social media powerhounds - how?
- They created great apps primarily on Facebook targeted to sports fans
- March Madness app with 150k users, Fantasy Football app with 350k users - there are apps for every sports team - 6m-7m users!
- They also succeeded by integrating ads into the environment.

Why is this link building?
- Got a link from mlb.com, a PR7 page; ESPN, TechCrunch, Google, Battelle Media

Success story: They built content that built their reputation - authoritative, right image for company, related to business. They matched the demographic.

Rebecca Kelley:
Traditionally, link building sucks! It's repetitive, time consuming, risky, and there is low ROI.

But we need links - links are votes, they give you better rankings. You will want high quality links, not low quality links. Links bring traffic.

Strategy #1: Find brand mentions - find people talking about you who don't link to you. Ask them for a link. Go to Yahoo SiteExplorer; do a search like "etsy.com" linkdomain:etsy.com -site:etsy.com

Strategy #2: Identify broken inbound links. Use Google's Webmaster Tools Crawl Error Sources, COntact linkers and ask them to fix the link.

Strategy #3: Take advantage of broken links to your competitors.
- Search for things that are "no longer available," or "no longer offered [keyword]"
- If the product is discontinued, contact the site's owner and see if they're willing to link to you instead. Contact sites linking to the broken page.

Strategy #4: Find out who is linking to your competitors. Try Yahoo! Hubfinder.
- Find out who is linking to one site and who isn't linking to other sites. Ask for that link!

Strategy #5: Take advantage of confirmation emails. Customers who like you will comply. Links are editorial and relevant. It's a scalable strategy.

Strategy #6: Embed links in widgets, badges, and banners. Create a quiz, poll, shareable content. Offer embeddable tools and programs. Include a link back to your site.

Strategy #7: Create some linkbait - brainstorm content ideas and host it on your site. Promote the content via social media sites, forums, blogs, etc. Profit!
- Identify linkbait opportunities - research your sector's link worthiness; discover the big players in your firled; target social media/social news sites.
- Analyze current trends
- Don't neglect your own industry.

Handy resources
- linkhounds.com/hub-finder/hubfinder.php
- seomoz.org/linkscape
- seomoz.org/backlink-analysis
- quarkbase.com
- siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com
- google.com/webmasters/tools

Blog posts:
- seobook.com/art-pitching-email
- searchengineland.com/lands/link-week.php
- seomoz.org/blog/long-list-of-link-searches
- seomoz.org/blog/a-long-list-of-competitve-link-searches

Greg Hartnett: link building via directories
- A directory is not a paid link. A paid link successful transaction results in a link on the page. A successful transaction on a directory is a review.
- A directory is not just a link farm. Link farms are a collection of links that are on a page that are categorized haphazardly without editorial discretion. They're created to manipulate search results.
- How can I tell a directory from a "directory?" Good directories have a history, contain great resources, have populated categories, are designed for the user, add lots of sites and not paid submits.

What kind of traffic can you expect? Not the Digg effect.
Can I list my website multiple times? Yes, it's called deep linking.
Is the Yahoo Directory worth it? Yes - it's an aged, trusted domain and the primary hub for internet mapping.
Is the ODP corrupt? No.
Which directories are considered the most trustworthy? Yahoo, DMOZ, BOTW, Business.com, Librarians Internet Index

How do I ensure my site gets listed if I go and pay these review fees? Follow the rules. There's no guarantee of listing, read the direcotry guidelines, good titles and descriptions, and beef up your content.

Where can I submit my blog?
- Yahoo and DMOZ have categories
- BOTW blog directory - blogs.botw.org
- Search Engine Journal has a list
- Lee Odden has another list

Roger Montti:
- Traffic and links with pop.

.edu links are popular but they're not special.
- The page may not be authoritative, they may be link farms, and they may be poorly linked to.

Tips you can use:
- Industry heavyweight backlinks: check backlinks from the most important companies in your sector
linkdomain:example.com site:.edu [keyword]
- e.g. sponsors, donors, benefactors, events
Bronze sponsorships are cheaper than the diamond ones and you can get a good link regardless.

Use the following with your product/niche keywrods and .edu modifiers: hotlinks, bookmarks, links, directory, resources. Pay attention to what kind of sites the targets are linking to - if they're only liking to govs and edus, they may not want to link to a commercial site.

White Hat Black Hat strategies: almost every blackhat technique can be turned to white hat by using nofollow or rendering link with javascript. Blog widgets, counters, calculators, and wordpress themes.

Moderator: Joe Laratro President, Tandem Interactive

We are live blogging this session from Salon A @ the Las Vegas Convention Center, PubCon 2008. Good afternoon. Basic research tools, killer paid reports, (knowing how to read them) and off the beaten path secret-sauce game-changing ideas are always on the mind of every good webmaster. From staples to, well ...actual secrets, this panel was a "no lame-sauce" give it up.

Todd Malicoat asks: "what's in a competitive webmaster's toolbox?"
Browser tools:

• User Agent Switcher For Firefox.
• SearchStatus Firefox Plugin, great for showing backlinks and what is indexed. Check age of domain and backlinks
• Type "Header Checkers" into Google, recommends Espion, check for 301s and status and other information.
• Live headers is another
• Siteuptime is a nice free system to test every 5-10 minutes to see if your site is up or down.
• DomainTools bookmarklet, really has a nice tool set, both paid and free. This includes historical WHOis, which can be valuable. It will also tell you the IP address and nameservers. Run an MSN IP Query and see who else is hosted on the shared server. An average ping time query gives speed indications.
• Keyword information: WordTracker, Trellian, SEOBook KW tool for "pages and pages" of current information aggregated. "Really slick

Competitive Information

• SEOBOOK SEO for Firefox. Make sure you don't get the office band by limiting the number of queries. Very nice for competitive intelligence right within the search results. Check out the age of the site and Yahoo inbound links.
• SpyFu, though a little flaky of late, is the best of the tools. Tell what AdWords keywords the competitor is bidding on including cost metrics. Sort different ways.
• Compete.com is a subscription service. See who's winning the search results data. The tool measures enragement as well and is charged on a "credits" structure.

Rank Checker Tools

• Caphyon Advanced Web Ranking runs really nice automated reports to send your boss.

BackLink Checkers

• Link Harvester is a free tool with some good data.
• Hub Finder tells you links that your competitors have in common.
• Internet Marketing Ninjas tools that are very good. Strongest Sub page Tool shows where the link equity in a site. Rand thinks that this tool is the best. It shows both internal and internal link juice on a page by page level. Gain insight to redistribute link equity.
• SoloSEO Toolset is a $29.00 per month project management software.

Spidering Tools

• Xenu's broken link report is a very popular tool tells 404 and other errors.
• Productivity Tools
• Roboform, $40.00 for 2 copies, logs into every single tool from whatever tool you're on. It saves hours and hours.
• JingProjectScreenCapture , kind of a free version of Cantasia.
• CopyScape helps detect scrapers and copyright violations.
• DupeCop assigns a "percentage of Unique" in testing content.
  

Rand Fishkin CEO, SEOMoz is speaking on 6 Tools That Rock

• SEOAutomatic Tool for on page on site analysis. Easy to run and quite good for beginners to expert. Identify critical problems in tags, images, robots and give advice. It looks a lot like the old WebPosition Page Critic approach where "expert" advice is offered. Internal links, robots, etc...
• DaveN's Keyword Density Tool shows keyword analysis, geolocation and link ratio, which surfs as GoogleBot to "see as Google sees." It shows keyword header information.
• Blogpulse is a blogosphere search tool showing top blog posts, top videos and search results (URL or keyword) that reveal information from hundreds of thousands of feeds. The information is very fresh. View a "trend graph" to see the genesis of conversations by way of authority users.. This is someone I want to target from my campaigns. [Marty note: this seems priceless.] Rand expects that tools like this will be come more and more important.
• Linkfromdomain command @ Live shows shows outbound links from any site. This reveals a site's proclivity to provide certain sorts of outbound links.
• SEOmoz Historical PageRank Lookup is a free tool that shows PageRank History, which is valuable information to see the positive and negative progress of a site. Find out if Google has been devaluing a site you're considering "acquiring" links about.
• LinkScape is the flagship SEOmoz tool: mozRank (mR) is the PageRank-type result on both page and domain level, from their own independent crawl. It measures internal/external links and considers what external are Do/NoFollow. Compare top ranking pages, domains, anchor text distribution, and links that matter. It also shows 301s and 302s, what pages and when they're ranking based on the strength of the 301s. There is also an advanced link intelligence report

Andy Beal is a fill-in and does not have a .ppt Here are the tools he recommends:

• SEOresearchLabs.com offers very comprehensive keyword research for a very reasonable price. If you're an SEO firm, the cost is $90.00.
• Google "SEO Link Analysis" and the #1 tool offering anchor text and backlinks
• TouchGraph.com is a really cool visual way of looking at hubs and authorities. It's good for competitive analysis
• Don't underestimate the value of Google Webmaster Central. Verify your site and use it.
• Backlinkwatch.com calculates the URL of where links are coming from, anchor text, PageRank, other outbound links from the page and whether it's followed or not.
• Semcheck.com sets for site maps, ULR structure, header errors, unique page titles, automates it, outputs with branding and costs $12.00 per report.

Marty Weintraub is President of aimClear an Internet Focused Advertising Agency in Minnesota.

Moderator: Carolyn Shelby
Speakers:
Brett Tabke, CEO, WebmasterWorld.com
Marty Weintraub
Gary Kirk, Co-Founder, Technical Director, Rating Room Ltd

Gary Kirk - No cost local content - high value conversions

Most sales happen near the home

3 Basics for a Successful Site

- Good, relevant Linsk to your website

- No obstacles to search engine spiders

- Content that attracts and converts

Good content is available to all at $0 so well be concentrating on that.

Why is Cotnent King?

- google cant send valuable, relevant users to your site without it

- its a vital component in the decision making process for visitors

- you can get people to sites by writing content for people and the search engines.

- it doesnt have to cost a cent, but is always worth investing time into

You CAN win the content war

- Whoís your top 10 for your local searches? If you are in the local space you wil see yellowpages, google local, local businesses, review sites. Alot of the time, Google does favor the bigger sites on certain terms.  these sites dont rank for the longer tail terms.

- Content is the key to outperforming larker competitors in search engines but that tends to be alot easier on the long tail and when you pick the right searches.

A Provider or THE Provider

- good content on local subiness webistes will reassure the visitor ìThis is the right service provider for meî.  You should have the mind set to get them to think that when landing on your site.  Take testimonials a bit further and go over the top.  Take your content and expand on itÖ go over the process and if you target a dozen areas, you should link to the testimonial 2 ways. 1. Link to them with name/location and 2. Service/description.

- 750k visitors a day are from organic, 650k different phrases (stats for Garyís sites)

- you can target zip codes, town, county, neighborhoodÖ. Go after the bigger towns areas and the more common names that are used.

- Pick the right service descriptors.

Look at the combo of locales and service descriptors to cover as much as possible

Rewards from local content

- conversion from visitor to customer can be remarkable for specific searches like ìblocked toilet austin txî- targeting lots of well researched local phrases  can and often does work fast- better orfanic results, often combined with ppc, can reduce overall ad costs

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Marty Weintraub - Dirt Cheap SEO/social Hacks for Good Corporate Citizens

Case Study - no budget for link building, no ppc, little time, no budget for content

- Sourcing PR Feed Content without creating any new content & viral tactics

- fools gold link exchange

Set up to publish quick, clean and viral

- Primary cms = however you manage your site (ftp, stupid custom cms)

- secondary CMS(mashup) = blog

Publishing Correctly

- Existing content + fanatacial attitude + half a brain

Ask ìwhat do you already do?î

ìwhat if we could get billyís mom to talk about us? - getting things to go viral

Talk to:

- media relations

- investors

- community

- customer

- internal

- human interest

- crises management

Nuclear ìSend To Friendî - it is your friend

Vanity Bait with Business Feeds

- employee jelly of the month club

- requests for input

- stories of valor, tragedy and human condition

- product naming contests

- employee product recommendations

- customer, client or vendor features

What communications occur already?

- software updates

- human resources news

- weekly specials

- any press releases

- owners manul updates

Tips for content SEO Sourcing SEO Sucesses

- set up a schedule and stick to it

- these are your best friends in the world - they are finding you

Fools Gold Link Exchange

At the core is a reciprocal link exchange

- we no follow everything

2 Nodes of Link Value

1. Link Juice

2. Traffic/promotion

Google made me do it - do/nofollow sculpting

Trading partners perceive holistic reciprocal promtion and traffic

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Brett Tabke

What if there were no search engines? What are you going to do if you lose all of your traffic? Going to go over a list of all the little alternatives that we dont take time to go over.

Worst Case Scenario - What if you lose 80-90% of your traffic?

20-40% comes from search engines

60-80$ comes from trafictional means

- Recip Link Exchanges

- alterantive directories

- topic directories

- investigae the directory

Press releases - low cost alternatives (local paper) - national through internet press wires

Contests - do your homework first, legal issues, management issues, Can certainly be repeat traffic generators and good lost leaders.

Awards - they are old and tired but still work

Guest Books - use them properly. View the site, say something nice, include your url if offerend. egreeting carsds - we all thing they are a dead idea, its repeat traffic.  Article Submission - free content and links.

Affiliate Programs - viral and do your HW

Email Newsletters - huge amount of work, production costs, taking care of lists, boucnces and unsubscribes

E-a-friend - still great

KIDS! - ultimate viral promotion

Pete and RePeat - get people to resend your best material

Usenet & Forums - used properly, Usenet and forums can be excellent qualified traffic producers. Always check the TOS of sites to see what is acceptable. There is little that is more powerful that a good ole profile referral.

Building a community - (WMW)4 full time employees

Coupons - 60% that come to WMW used a coupon this year

Blogs

Traditional offliners - classifieds, trade mags, tv and radio. Got bodget to burn or a small market? radio can be quite affordable. (Brett sugests to stay away from radio right now)

Once you get people - do something with them.  Email, email, email, email. Follow up with any and all inquiries. Think viral, think repeat and recurring billing.

Coverage by Dave Rohrer

Moderator: Melanie Mitchell
Speakers:
Deborah Wilcox, Partner, Baker & Hostetler LLP
Clarke Walton, Founder, Walton Law Firm
David Naffziger, President & CEO, BrandVerity, Inc.

Clarke Walton starts the session.

Started out as an SEO before became a lawyer. Paid for law school through affiliate marketing.

Two most popular ways domain name disputes are resolved are through the UDRP and ACPA. Both enacted in 1999 to deal with cybersquatting. UDRP is like biding arbitration. Less formal. No hearing. ACPA on the other hand is more involved, it's actual litigation. Each of the two options has pros and cons. UDRP is fast, and works well against international registrars. Costs are fixed and easy to estimate. Attorney fees generally $3-$5k. Down side is that it's hard to get domain transferred if you win, can't recover damages, can't recover attorney fees.

ACPA: Benefits - can get domain name transferred to you if you win. Can get damages recovered. Up to $100k per domain. Can get emergency relief, and attorney fees. Expensive, difficult to estimate costs.

Brett asked Clarke to use a case study to prop up the central theme. Shares a story that everyone should identify with. The domain name is Pubcon.com. Was registered 9/22/03/ The original registrant was Clarke. Bought the domain name, and offered it to Brett.

Trademark strength: Trademark = source identifier. Anything that functions to identify the origin. Not all trademarks are created equal. 5 levels of trademark strength.

Fanciful is the most powerful, Xerox is an example. a word that has been made up.

Arbitrary is a strong one as well. Take a word that means one thing, and use it to mean something else - Apple is a great example. Apple is also an example of a generic or weak trademark. Between these types, are descriptive and subjective. Lines are fuzzy. Descriptive is relatively weak, American Airlines is an example. It's descriptive of the product. But over time AA spent money and time building the brand. You think of the brand nowadays. Suggestive - Microsoft is an example. Requires a bit of thought to decipher meaning.

Examples:

Fanciful: Zillow, Expedia - totally made up words.

Arbitrary: Kayak, Amazon.

Suggestive: - Youtube, Moviebuff, Gamespot, SeatGuru.

Descriptive: - IMDB, HomeLoanCenter.

Generic: - Hotels.com, Lawyers.com. Court said these are generic trademarks, few rights.

Who has priority? If two people are using the same mark - who has greater rights? In the US - the key is whomever uses it commerce first. Less to do with registration date - but rather date of use in business. Back to Pubcon example. Brett filed the trademark in 3/2004, but first use was in 2001. First common law rights. Pubcon is probably suggestive since it has the word "con" or conference.

Bad faith? Clarke registered the domain before registration of trademark. did not exercise bad faith, because he gave it to Brett. But if he bought it and sent it to SES, and took Affiliate commission - that is bad faith. The content on the domain name matters! What you do with the domain affects the right. Venetian is arbitrary. It's a hotel hear in Vegas, but also describes location. If publish content on Vegas casinos - bad faith. If publish content about Venice Italy, no worries - solid defense.

Next up is Deborah Wilcox.

Deborah reviews an interesting case study for us. Punch Clock Inc. v Smart Software Development. Came up in Florida courts earlier this year.

Plaintiff was Punchclock.com. Sells a computer program to record employee hours and pay. Generic name. Plaintiff did register the trademark covering the product. Was a supplemental register. There are 2 types, supplemental and principal. Supplemental is an admission that you don't have rights yet, but are on the books with the government and can use the trademark symbol - but have no rights. There are some benefits and drawbacks. Later, they filed as principal. When a term starts out weak, but brand strengthens. Need evidence of distinctiveness. Owner filed an affidavit.

The plaintiff described PunchClock.com as exactly what the name implies. A full featured punch clock software package.

The defendant owned Punch-Clock.com and was located in Canada. Also sold products to the US - time keeping software program. Plaintiff sent a cease and desist letter. A way to talk before going to court, to see if you can work things out. Was some email exchange, and Punch-clock.com felt safe up in Canada, and felt that the punchclock.com didn't have much weight. Maybe had stronger rights in Canada - rights go country by country.

The dispute: 6 years later. Lawsuit in 2007 in Federal Court. Why was there a delay? Courts usually have an issue with that. The other side builds up the business - latches is the term used as the defense. Usually there would have been a fight if there is a real trademark. The battle was happening in the organic results in Google, and translated into Alexa rankings. No evidence that other party was buying search terms. Defendant didn't end up showing to court. Shows lack of care. Not a good thing. Judge basically takes as true the allegations of the complaint. Canadian defendant defaulted.

The judgement for the plaintiff: Trademark infringement, cybersquatting, bad faith use, unfair competition. Likelihood of confusion.

What happened to the winner? Won the domain name. Awarded $100k which is the max damages. Awarded $30k in attorney's fees and costs, finding exceptional case. Judge ordered over $1m in corrective advertising damages.

Defendant bought PPC keywords from Google @ $136 / day. Time 7 years - total = $347k. 3X for willful nature of infringement = $1,042,440. Judge felt the $1m was too low because of this.

Unlikely that the plaintiff collected. Need to take the case to Canada, and even if you win - need to find assets. Now punchclock.com ranks #1. The defendant changed the name of the company and ranks lower. The plaintiff gloated the winnings of the court case on the homepage of the site.

Take-aways - Look for legal issues with competitors sites if not ranking high organically. Be creative in asking for corrective advertising. Show up to court! Find substantive experts. Attack casual assumptions on harm and money damages. Law protects consumers against confusion. To recoup funds, need to prove harm, such as lower rankings. Was the loss to plaintiff really a million dollars?

David Naffzigger wraps up the session:

Domain monitoring: Think like an abuser. Which domains to monitor register if you operate a website? Brand extensions, typos, alternative extensions.

Why would someone register a misspelling or variant? To make money on type in traffic, or SEO purposes, or to sell it to you. Maybe it's to defame or embarrass the company.

Tools to find typos - domaintools.com is great. will give you common errors and misspellings, and creates good lists of typos.

Find brand extensions: People aren't just typing "Virgin Atlantic" - typing in "Virgin Atlantic Mobile" or "Virgin Atlantic Phone". Adwords tool and KeywordDiscovery is great for finding variants of queries. Domainsearch.com is great for International registrations. Can be scary if brand is trademarked in Russia or places where trademarks are not strongly enforced.

Multiplex the three forms - combine typos and countries, brand extensions - virginatlanticmobile.co.uk, etc. Not great tools to do this - Excel can be useful. Figure out which ones you care about. Can't go after all of them. Find the ones that have traffic. Domains that are used by competitors. Domains that are offensive.

Tools to estimate traffic: Adwords keyword tool - plug the domain name in and the keyword phrase. KeywordTracker. Look at the registration date. Older registrations are more likely to have traffic. Buy Adwords for every typo in question.

Compete and Alexa can be useful.

PPC Trademark Abuse: Higher bar for PPC Abuse since it requires more investment to operate. Domain name registration is much cheaper, PPC abuse is costlier to operate. Abuse is conducted by organizations that compete with you, affiliates, or strongly dislike you.

How they hide from you? Reverse geo-targeting. Hide ads from where company headquarters are. Buy ads in every state where business does not have offices. Day-parting - run the ads at night when workers are asleep. Copy your ad text - and redirect it to affiliate link.

How they dodge Google filters? TM in display URL. Variations on TM (typos, spaces, etc.). Macy's for example does not have a trademark on "MacysStore".

Get your trademark registered in Google, Yahoo, MSN. Try to register your typos and extensions with Google. Make sure you use an email address from the domain you are protecting.

If that fails, trademark your most trafficked typos and then go back to Google.

Monitoring: Manual - Use Google translate or other translation tools. Use other proxies - AOL, or anything that gets your IP from a different location. Do the testing at off hours. Look at the page source.

Live coverage provided by Avi A. Wilensky of Promediacorp, a Manhattan based online marketing agency.

To buy or not to buy? That is the question in link building today. If you buy, what are the risks? If you don't buy, can you really make out just as well while exerting the same effort? This session examines the issues surrounding linkfluence.

Moderator: Todd Malicoat
Speakers:
Rand Fishkin, CEO, SEOMoz
John Lessnau, Founder, LinkAdage
Aaron Wall, Author, SEO Book

John Lessnau: How to buy links with maximum juice and minimum risk

A lot gets talked about link building but today I will tell you how to buy links. This is about link buying, not link building. We'll talk about my system for buying links. There are ways to buy safe, powerful, and relevant links that will work that will keep away from the link police which is your biggest danger.

Why do people buy links? Why should you? One thing is that you need much fewer links than doing a link building campaign which is a shotgun where you hope for links. You can get the anchor text you want, on the page you want, the location on the paege you want -- bottom line is that you can rank better.

Still, people are afraid to buy links.
- They are afraid of Google's lowering PR across the board -- a lot of people sold 1-2 links went down from a PR7 to a PR6 -- and they thought it was because of the links they were selling. There's a lot of paranoia.
- A lot of people really don't understand how to buy links. They know they need links, they want them, but they don't know which ones will help them. Further, in this economy, there's a lot of up-front cost for links. The cost will come down over time.
- A lot of people also want a wave of natural links. Some people realize that they're not ranking; their backlink footprint indicates that there are like 10 links.
- Buying takes time, salesmanship, and effort.

What is a safe paid link?
- The link should be in relevant text. People will find it hard to believe that those are paid links.
- Ideally you want to be hte only paid link on the page. There should be very few on that page, and if possible, even the site.
- You want a lot of variation of your anchor text. If you're an SEO company, all the links shouldn't only say SEO company. Someone can easily look at your backlinks and determine that link buying was practiced.
- We're talking about safe links and homepages are the most powerful links, but inside paes definitely are better for a safer link.
- Links should be long term. Don't go chasing PageRank. If it's a PR4 and then it's a PR3, don't cancel it; think more about the page you're on.
- Buy links in moderation - 50-100 links max on newer sites is recommended.

What's a powerful link?
- I want sites that rank well for a lot of different search terms.
- I want dofollow links that are relevant
- Host website should not be a major link seller
- Host website should have a lot of natural links

My Link Buying System:
- Search Google for various keyword phrases you want to rank for. I write down 50-100 keywords in a spreadsheet.
- Look through the results for websites and web pages where your link would fit
- Verify the potential Link Partner does not link to major link buyers
- Contact the webmaster and make a fair offer for text link you want.
- Your links should pass a hand check to avoid being reported by competitors looking for personal gain.
(Google "Embarrassment to Google" to learn more.)

Example: cuttingboards.biz - I searched for various keyword iterations - "clean cutting boards," "cutting boards," "large cutting board," "using a cutting board" -- I found a PR3 in the top 30 and I made that link to my site.

After you buy the links, you should monitor your link to make sure that they stay up and the host site stays clean. Use your rankings as a springboard to gain natural links. Keep making your site better. Know when to quit buying links. Don't keep buying and buying and buying!

Rand Fishkin: His presentation is entitled How to Buy Links without "Buying Links"

Event sponsorships: SEOmoz sponsored a Seattle Startup Weekend.
The process: locate events (geographic/industry relevant), get in touch and offer to sponsor, often, $1-500 = permanent link from a good page. Added benefits include networking, goodwill, and branding.

Charitable donations: FreeBSD. You offer to pay for a project and they'll contribute back.
The process: find nonprofits/charities online, locate their sponsorship page/links, check that the links pass juice/get in touch, don't use standard donation forms - make sure to personally check about being listed on the page. Added benefits include goodwill, branding, and helping people.

Website purchases: Conde Net's websites.
The process: find relevant websites to buy, negotiating ownership, create relevant links that help with your needs - either sitewides (good for law link juice) or targeted (for individual rankings)

Targeted: onlywentworth.org and Seattle's Buddy.TV - they have targeted purchases
The process; identify valuable well-linked-to content, negotiate purchase, 301 to your site and host (preferably subdirectory)

Viral/Linkerati Traffic Buying: Put your good content in front of the types of eyes that are likely to link to it.
Example: Farecast.com. When the right people went to Farecast, they got some great links. They bought StumbleUpon traffic for people who tagged things as "travel"
Process: Identify/create viral-worthy content on your site, find relevant viral traffic sources like SU, Techmeme/Memeorandum/WeSmirch, TechCrunch, buy traffic/ads, measure/improve link acquisition conversation rate.

Send free stuff
Process: meet blogger in person, through contacts, send bloggers free stuff, follow up with email, don't ask for a link; ask for a review, the smaller the blogger, the bigger the brand - more likely the review

In-feed link buying
Process: identify sources that can use your feed/content, get in touch and offer power for free, if you really wnat it, offer to pay for branding, and make sure that you get live link

Blog incubation:
Example: The John McCain campaign - his political party in 2007 did this really interesting thing - incubated blogs to pass out messages from the campaign.
Process: put out ads for bloggers, have them use existing sites or create new sites,

And then he stopped. But the slides are at seomoz.org/dp/pubcon2008

Aaron Wall: Low Risk Link Buying
Alternatives to buying links -
- Syndicate content - builds authority/reputation/traffic/PageRank
- Barter - give stuff away, discounts for certain sectors (big in education). Give away software for review.
- Buy competing websites - the more archaic and gross the website is, the cheaper you can get it for.
- Social interaction - everything from speaking at a conference to networking. Any social interaction online or off can garner links.
- Public relations and follow up publicity - build off PR. If you are featured in the WSJ and NYT, while you have name recognition, push the story so you can get more links. In a week or a month, nobody will care again; the endorsement can help you get more links.

Encouraging Organic Links
- Cumulative advantage: when you put people in social networks, if you don't know what others like, they randomly vote. But if they see what others are voting, there's self-reinforcement on the vote. People win by a larger margin. The site can look popular -- or if it's regularly updated, people will keep coming back. Make it so that people can comment on your site or reference you. That can build up perceived value.
- Regular editorial voice
- Community participation
- Show social proof
- Beautiful site design
- Signs of credibility - about us, etc.

Yahoo! Directory
- Pick the best cateogry that you have a chance of being listed on - want to be in the first 20 results. You can sponsor a category if you are not. Sometimes the paid sponsorship can pay for itself in the direct traffic.

Business.com
- They sell links with editorial review.
- Submit a guide to WOrk.com as an alternative. Instead of paying, you get recurring exposure.

The Directory Purge of 2007
- Google killed many directories
- Buy in if homepage PR is where you expect it, cache dates are recent, listing quality is decent
- I like niche directories, JoeAnt, and BOTW

AdWords Ads for LinkBait
- If you have a high authority topic that people write about and it's a seasonal thing (e.g. holiday shopping), a lot of people are looking for this information. If you buy this keyword on Google and there is related content, reporters may be looking - they may click. But it can help you get links and it's a cheap permanent link. It's entirely editorial.

Clean bought links:
- Any time you review people's products or partner with people, they often list the partners on their sites. Those links may not pass PageRank but sometimes they do.
- Blog about a new google product and wait for someone to blog about your blog post
- Google Checkout, designer portfolio
- Sponsor events and advertise
- Contest and award programs
- Donate and give stuff away (widgets/software)
- Affiliate programs - can pass PageRank but some are configured to use 302 redirects. If you host your own affiliate program, you can 301 those links.

If you have dirty links:
- Try to buy links in content or organic looking link lists - without disclosure

Link Location
- Yahoo's Piryank Garg said that irrelevant links on the bottom of the page don't count in the rankings. Microsoft also has its own BrowseRank research.

- The bigger your brand, the more aggressive you can be without being punished.
- Eric Schmidt says that the internet is a cesspool of false infomration. Brands are how you sort out the cesspool.

If you're building a brand, someone will see it. There are remote quality raters. Google encourages you to rat out competitors. Popuar SEOs like to out sites to cause controversy and gain attention.

Moderator: Rand Fishkin

Rahul Lahiri, Vice President of Search Product Management, Ask is a maybe...

Ben D'Angelo, Software Engineer, Google is kicking things off.

Duplicate content issues include multiple URLs pointing to the same page or very similar pages. Different countries with the same language. Duplicate content is also across other sites as syndicated content and scraped content.

The ideal situation is you want one URL for one piece of content.

Examples of duplicates include www vs no www, session IDs, URL parameters, print version pages, CNAMEs. Then you have similar content on different URLs. Using manufacturers database of pictures and content. Sites in different countries with same language.

How does Google handle duplicate content? General idea is that they cluster pages together and choose the "best" representation page. They have different types of filters for different types of duplicate content. This is not a penalty, just a filter.

What can you do about this?
- For exact dups use a 301 redirect
- Near duplicates noindex and robots.txt them out
- Domains by country, note a different language is not duplicate, use unique content specific to country and use different TLDs and webmaster tool's geo thing.
- Try not to put extraneous parameters in your URLs

There are also things like duplicate meta tags and titles.

What about other sites that cause duplicate content. What if you syndicate your content out. One tip, make sure to include a link back to the original article or content. Maybe also just give them a summary. If you syndicate other's content then flip the reverse.

Scrapers are likely not to impact you, it is possible, but rare. You can then file a DMCA and/or Spam Report.

Priyank Garg, Director Product Management, Yahoo! Search is going short with his presentation cause he lost his voice.

Yahoo does filter dups throughout all steps in the pipeline. He shows some examples... They classify most duplicate content "accidental." Soft 404 (not real 404s) is one of the largest source of duplicates. There are also abusive forms, like scrapers.

He then links to Yahoo Tools, like Site Explorer. The dynamic URL rewrite tool rocks, so does URL removal.

Derrick Wheeler, Senior Search Engine Optmization Architect, Microsoft is last up.

Duplicate content is his worse nightmare. CIRTA = crawl, index, rank, traffic, action. They have 180 million URLs in Live Search, 80 million in Google and a few in Yahoo, cause each engine filters them out differently.

- Consider you might need to detect when an engine is coming to your site, like cloak - in very specific considerations it is helpful, like session IDs
- Know your parameters
- Always link to your parameters in the same order
- Dig into the search results of your site and you can find things there
- Exclude dups using robots.txt or noindex, nofollow, etc.
- Don't assume engines cant find JavaScript
- Find a tool that will crawl your site, so you can see how an engine will look at your site
- Focus on your strong URLs first

These are his key points, heading out now, have a meeting.

Brett Tabke with Satya Nadella, Senior Vice President, Search, MSN Portal & Advertising Platform Group, Microsoft.

Brett welcomes everyone and does some quick house keeping.

Satya Nadella is now up, it seems like he will be speaking, no back and forth with Brett.

(1) Evolution of Search
(2) Services that Microsoft is providing for publishers

He starts with the web ecosystem, you have publishers and you have advertisers and then you have services; the ad platforms, audience platforms and infrastructure platforms.

Evolution of Search, he said how we had directories, to machine learn ranking algorithms. We had CPM/Paid inclusion, larger reach, and reactive customers, Consumers now query as oppose to browse.

The evolution is driven by the feedback loop of data. One of those data points is what are users doing on search engines. There are two things that are indicative of the next big shift in search. Close to 50% of time spent on search engines, about 50% is spent about 30 minutes on them. About 50% of queriers are returning.

50% of the time spent on a search engine, has behavior to look, find and then buying. Fundamental thing, is no one does queries in isolation, they do it in search for task completion.

Search engines have to get much better at understanding the queries, understanding the content and understanding the actions, in order to take search to the next level. Going forward then get better at getting to the action of search, making sure to take that click and finishing the task and then providing more visibility in that process to the advertiser. Better to bring a place, person or thing and bring them together to provide a better search experience.

That is the evolution of search, there is a lot of innovation to be done, a lot of test, etc.

Live Search is focused on (1) delivering the best search results, (2) Simplify the tasks and (3) innovate in the business model. Microsoft is "on pace" with the race on "core relevance." Microsoft is committed on this going forward. Core relevance improvements is to come up with new relevancy metrics and concepts. Powerset is an example of this. They also look at image search and video search and they have some of the industry leading in that. Microsoft wants to create more richer experiences that understand more user tasks in the commercial domain (product, travel, health, etc.) On the business model, live search cash back is a method for this. The next step is to introduce more efficiency in the CPC/CPM model.

Alexandra Mickel from the Live Search team takes the stage to show a demo. She shows off the home page and shows off the "hot spots." She then searches for "bellagio," which shows auto complete and then goes to images - they have integrated Virtual Earth. Plus they have "infinite scroll," so users don't have to hit next, you just scroll and it shows you more images and more.

She then showed a search result for flights from seattle to las vegas which shows details of Farecast, here are those details (I love Farecast).

She then shows a search for canon digital camera and how it shows product search results, and deeper links into Canon's web site. The product results have number of filters, rating, reviews, pricing comparison and Cash Back. Notice of the ad from eBay on the right has a Live Search cashback link (you can save a ton of money this way guys).

She then shows the updated Hotmail screen. Using their Live Search API, they integrated features on the right to insert details from Live Search.

Video Browse just started at Live Search Video. Hover over the images for a play back.

Satya Nadella is now back up.

150-200 relevancy improvements are made every quarter. They measure this stuff every month. If you have not used Live Search in a long time, give it a try and let him know your thoughts.

He now brings up Cash Back. A bigger criticism was that they didn't tie in the research mode into the buy mode with cash back. So they are bridging the two together more and more every day. They measured progress on three levels, consumer choice, advertiser ROI and query growth.

Consumer Choice: 30% increase in number of product offerings, 20 of top 50 US retailers and lot of merchants.

Advertiser ROI: eBay is shifting their spend to Microsoft. 50% better ROI because of the cash back model. Lots of these retailers are seeing great conversions. So give it a try.

Query Growth: User engagement is up in being more loyal and more click yields. They got a good unique growth. This is all substantiated by the comScore study coming out today.

Project Silk Road - Services for Developers and Publishers:

Lots of the technology they built up can be useful to developers and publishers. Project Silk Road is a broad project, all about opening up their data and technology more transparent. We care about: Increasing engagement, to generate traffic and drive insight (tools and analytics). It is all about boosting agility and control with turnkey solutions for storage, site management, merchandising and advertising.

They have Virtual Earth API, Webmaster Center, Video Syndication, Live Search API, adCenter for pubs, Custom Web Error Toolkit, Instant Answers, FAST ESP, adCenter API, Excel add in and so on. These are all bring brought together.

Live Search API 2.0, unlimited calls, easy integration, monetization methods and flexible:
Available today at search.live.com/developers/

Alexandra Mickel is back on stage to demo:

Fabrikam.com web site was put together in a single day from the Live Search API. It is a blog, with contextual ads, the ad in the top right is an interactive ad - this is a new concept to engage in the ads, the plan a trip link and it has many of Microsoft's APIs plugged in there. Maps, Images, silver light, encartra, and so on. She then goes to webmaster tools, she shows the crawl issues page, she then shows off the Excel add in tool for adCenter (pretty powerful add in for excel, in terms of keyword research, quickly).

Satya Nadella is now back up.

He then reinforces what she said. How important it is that they are opening up their data.

Overall they are excited about the progress they have made.

Danny has his write up on this at SELand with Silk Road and Cash Back.

Based on WebmasterWorld's most popular thread ever:
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/2010.htm

Brett Tabke's "26 Steps" has received nearly 25 million page views and 15 million unique visitors since it was first posted almost seven years ago, and has been used as a training manual by numerous Fortune 100 corporations.

Brett will look at the controversial issues the post raised and the potent strategy that so effectively builds Web sites.

Moderator: Brett Tabke
Speakers:
Brett Tabke, CEO, WebmasterWorld.com

In this session, Brett starts with the stats the post has received to date:

• 29 million page views
• 5 million uniques
• 200 copies on the web
• 290 cease and desists issued so far
• First chapter in Google Hacks - the post owned by O'reily now.
• Total income = $500 paid by O'reily for Google Hacks Book.
• 10,000 thousands back links.

Brett goes over a lot of the points he wrote about in 2002, while opening up the discussion to the audience:

Prep work: The initial document stated to start with 100 pages of content before you throw it online. Back then that was good. Now you need probably 5x that to get to a real site.

Says the posts is not really about SEO. More about content, traffic, building a successful sustainable site. Mainly a content play, not an SEO play.

Asks the audience- What are your experiences? Most of the audience's experience with less than 100 pages aren't doing well. One guy here has a niche sites that is an exception. Another guy with a niche site says he does OK too. Another guy sells memberships in the real estate vertical and makes just under $200k.

Domain name: Wrote back then you don't want "mykeyword.com". Based on Web 2.0 names today, (demos a site that's a Web 2.0 name generator, pretty funny, audience laughs), it supports the original claim. Domain name game is more complicated than ever. Now you can make up your own TLD. That game is changing fast.

One guy talks about the volume of leads he generates from browser based traffic, over many different sites. Owns sites like kentuckyhomemortgages.com, etc. and lots of tail end query domain names like that.

Site design: Back then, the rule of thumb the simpler the better. New wild-card is the iPhone which validates that. iPhone users use the phone 5X as much as other mobile devices. Get into mobile as quick as possible. That is part of the design. Adapt your current template to the iPhone.

Asks if anyone has static sites still? Thought they were extinct. Talks to one guy, very curious. Wants to know why people still have them. Static sites are becoming extinct. One person wants to know if you can build the site in HTML, what's the point?

Google is still proof the easy, retro look is cool.

Content: Content is a complex thing. Not such the case that content for the sake of content is such a good idea. Big believer in quality targeting content. Smart content.

Matt Tuens takes the mic. States that the original SEO was content. That's why search engines were created. Stickiness - people are too busy to go to 20 sites. Creating one site that is the "go to" site is key.

Brett talks about user generated content. Now suspect, there's a lot of noise out there. Asks if people relying the same on UCG these days? On trusted sites, like TripAdvisor its less of an issue.

Outbound links was a controversial topic back then. Sites should be generous. Back then, you were who you link to. Search engines know you by who you link to. Now people talk about sharing the wealth. Suggested cross linking to offer PR to lesser value pages. Goal is the right balance.

Hosting: Now you can't even think about shared hosting. Everyone's got their own servers, costs have dropped dramatically. Asks who still has their site on shared hosting?
Polls the audience regarding regular log tracking software anymore? Brett says they use one they built themselves and compares against other analytics package. Incredible to see the wide variation. Try different analytics packages, will get a whole different view of the site.

Spiders: Lots of CMS's these days are still not spider friendly.

Directories: Still favorite. Lots of them out today Look for ones you should be in.

Gimmicks. Still a million. People much more web savvy today.

Rounding out the offerings: Add options like email a friend. Still valuable today.

Back to content. Still important, not as hot as used to be. Hot on targeted content. Talks about the sandbox. Built a few sites that are still taking a year to rank. Used to think it was be all end all, now its about smart content.

Matt Tuens elaborates on "smart content". when you think about the content, realize that everyone is going to criticize your content. Judging what you put out there. If you help your demographic - info that people are looking for vs. garbage just to rank for, your going to lose credibility, sales, customer based, business in the foot - just for a ranking.

Moderator: Larry Mersman

Speakers:
David Klein, Electron Wrangler & SEO, Purpose Inc
Joe Laratro, President, Tandem Interactive
William Leake, CEO, Apogee Search
Justin Sanger, Founder & President,LocalLaunch!

Description: It is not just for brick-and-mortars anymore. Many Web sites have discovered the power of local targeting. This session will focus on the marketing aspects of local search.

Session Notes:

The first speaker is William Leake...

Most searches have local intent -- eventually. Online search influenced $471 Billion in OFFline sales, while they influenced only 1/3 that in Online purchases. More than 80% of all purchases happen witin 50 miles of the buyers home.

Google does not always show local results even when location is specified in the search string. Creates a new, unique keyword research issue. What does and does not show local search results (the Google map with 10 listings).

Important to register ALL of your addresses (even get clever about where you might get additional addresses). Customize for your largest geo city center. Google tends to like the larger city centers.

Add your info to yellow page type websites too. ie. SuperPages, YellowPages, Local.com, etc. as they act as information aggregators. He also feels customer reviews are important. Figure out where Google is getting the reviews, then ask customers to provide real reviews.

Do not forget video for local. Tag the video for local searches and you will be surprised at the results. Many online profiles also accept videos.

Next up is Joe Laratro...

Joe says local keyword research is critical. Not only do you focus on the obvious state & local phrases, but think about local slang like "tri-city" or "triad" or "Valley". Then combine them with your vertical market or area of specialty. You will most likely have a large list of phrases that you will then need to create content around them.

Geo-centric Content creation ideas: client testimonials, client case studies or stories, blog and work logs, pictures with captions, and local resources & information pages. But do not use form pages (search engines will catch this). Always think GEO when writing your copy and remember to optimize!

Brainstorm to come up with our areas of specialty and then incorporate local keywords. For one of his clients, he hired writers to come up with local content in 30 different locations. They combined with keywords and 1 year later the website had 7X the traffic using 5X the keywords used to find the site.

Even though individually these terms generate small amounts of traffic, it is quality traffic and they all add up to lots of site visitors.

Next up is Justin Sanger...

He truly believes local search is only for brick & mortar companies, not pure web plays. With that said, it is a $1 Trillion dollar market. People will search online for local purchases and will find it without ever hitting the company's website.

Justin notes that both Google and Yahoo have incorporated proximity, user generated content (reviews), content accuracy and a local score into their algorithms.

Searchers now view mobile search as an indespensible utility. There are literally hundreds of ways for a consumer to find a business. Every piece of incremental content is a new opportunity to be found.

To win, you need to have your core business data online with the big aggregators - make sure it is accurate. For the next tier, you must submit your profiles to every place that you can. You need to get references for your site by looking at who Google is pulling reviews from. Seed social media and other site with ratings and reviews. Build links from your local associations, trade partners, etc. These are authority local links.

Last presenter is David Klein...

For your site to be #1 in organic you need content and links. So Mike spent his portion of the session uniting people from similar industries so that they could discuss trading links. There are now groups of peole all around the room swapping business cards and trading links. A great ending to this session.

These session notes were written by Arnie Kuenn from Vertical Measures a link building services and website publicity company. Please excuse any typos or grammar issues, the session notes are written live and meant to be posted as soon as the session is over.

So get this, there is a break now. But the session also starts now, got that? The refreshments are until 3:30, but the session starts at 2:50. In any event, it is about 3pm and we have not started yet. This is an international track, so I suspect it is about URLs, subdomains, language issues, etc. I speak in the next session, Five Bloggers and a Microphone - What's The Worst That Can Happen? in Room C at 4:10, don't miss it. I doubt we will have coverage of it, since its an open panel.

Moderator: Dixon Jones

Andy Atkins-Krueger, Managing Director, Web Certain Europe Ltd is up first. He shows a chart at IP addresses used in the WWW excluding the US and you see UK, China, Japan, Germany, France, Canada, Korea, in that order... He then shows a similar chart in a tag cloud format.

The big forces in each area, i.e. how big is Google in UK, etc. Baidu in China, Yandex is Russia.

SEO Tips:
(10) UTF 8 encoding (unicode)
(9) Do not translate, use a native speaker
(8) Adopt a local PR strategy
(7) Manage 301s properly (big issue for some reason internationally)
(6) Keyword in URLs would help international SEO
(5) Links are important, local links
(4) Geo urself
(3) Use cit names in content
(2) Domain targeting with local domains or webmaster tool's geo tool
(1) Language and content presentation, manage duplicate content between multiple sites

Michael Bonfils, President, SEM International is up first and jokes about not making fun of his accent, which he doesnt have one. He is to talk about Asia.

Asia is important because 400 million users are in the Asia market place. He goes over the stats on why Asia is so important, trust me, he believes it is important.

E-commerce is Asia? Start with Japan, he suggests. Then move into Korea and then China. China is very under developed in e-commerce, so far.

Baidu: The average CPC is 20 cents, but it ranges. There is an implementation fee, like a deposit, and it is high. They dont take credit cards, they require wire. Baidu is very picky on the ads. Be aware of currency.

Google: It is easy to advertise in China. The CPCs and conversion rates are typically 2x higher than Baidu.

Yahoo: they have strong share in Asia. But they don't preform that well, 50% less effective than Baidu.

Chinese sound translations are hard.

Google looks mostly the same in China. Baidu is different, they mix paid and organic listings, but label them. The listings keep going dependent on advertisers.

Baidu SEO:
- Title and Meta Alt Tags
- Content, keyword density matters
- Linking, more quantity than quality
- Server and domain names, host in China and the domain is important for trust in searchers
- Localization and the market, use simplified Chinese
- Luck and connections matter

Yahoo is huge in Japan, followed by Google.

Korea has Naver, Daum (powered by Google) and Yahoo.

Competition: Your coming in from the US to compete locally. Monitor your local and global competitors.

Translation and Localization Tips:
- Use localized keywords, ad copy and landing pages
- Build trust in your ads and titles

Baidu has a very basic reporting system and they just added impression numbers, which he says don't work too well.

Ralf Schwoebel, Founder & CEO, Tradebit Inc. is next up. Might cut out soon, to go to the next session, where I speak in about 20 minutes.

He will focus on Germany and Europe. He first goes over basic SEO stuff. Translation is not enough. Ranking of a site is easier if it is locally hosted in that country.

Frank Watson, CEO, Kangamurra Media

Skipped out early, sorry, need to make it to my session and look somewhat awake.

We are live blogging, this session from Salon B @ the Las Vegas Convention Center, PubCon 2008. Because it is live, there is no editorial or proofing process. The moderator is Joe Laratro.

PDFs, DOCs and feeds each have idiosyncrasies for optimization which can help your site rank. This session is going to dive deep into these formats to pass along best practices.

George Aspland, Founder & President, eVision, LLC is presenting, "optimizing PDFs for search engines." He wants us to seek rankings and more click-throughs from search engine result listings for .pdfs. He suggests that you create active links within .pdfs to increase the number of readers who visit your website or contact you while viewing your .pdfs online. Give search engines paths to find content on your website, which may help for internal inking.

Use mostly formatable text because search engines can't read text in images. Google can not create a meaningful description from an image. Optimize text in a .pdf documents according to SEO best practices. Pay special attention to the first headline. Google creates listings from text contained in the .pdf and the words and phrase being in bold, just like it does with HTML web pages. Tip: Rebuild old .pdfs if needed. Above all, update the document title, which is as important as the classic HTML title tag is for SEO.

If you don't have a title, Google extracts text from the .pdf's to create the listing, which it won't help "entice" people to click-through .There are many applications to create .pdf titles. Take note that Word 2003 usually adds "Microsoft Word" to the document title. It's best practices to update .pdfs in Adobe Acrobat. The document title usually becomes the headline in the organic Google listing.

If the .pdf is hosted on your site, link from pages that are already indexed. Add active hyperlinks to improve the likelihood that a visitor will click-through to other areas of your site.

Highlight your URLs, export/print as a .pdf and open in Acrobat. Menu commands in Acrobat: Advanced>Links>Create Links. Turn any text or image into an active link using Acrobat tools. Just draw a rectangle around the text or image and assign a URL. By adding these links in .pdf's, you're also giving search engines paths to reach pages on the site and may "very well help" in Google rankings. Promote your .pdf by linking to it from pages on your site and think about ways to get other websites to link to it as well. Inbound Google juice seems to have the same effect on .pdf's as on regular HTML pages.

Greg Jarboe, President and co-founder, SEO-PR, seo-pr.com says the 30% of searches conducted on Google sites aren't web searches. He is going to discuss best tips, tools and techniques for non-traditional optimization that apply both to indexing and ranking support. He'll look at various file formats including DOCs, RSS feeds and video files.

GoogleNews examines recency, relevance and importance. If you're content is old, it's out after 30 days. Often corporate "news" is disseminated in a Word Doc. Greg is talking about optimizing a Word Doc. Newsforce offers an integrated suite of press release SEO tools. In the end, you export as an optimized Word document. He is showing five case studies of press releases that generated a measurable ROI including 88,00 entries into photo contents for "Parents," 200 million in CSAC leads for Symmetricon and $2.5 million in ticket sales for Southwest airlines.

GoogleBlogSearch examines a blog's title, content and popularity. Recency counts now. The older the ranking, the less important it is in Google Blog search. Try SEOSamba to optimize website and create RSS feeds. This can result in dramatic increases in visitors, visits and page views.

YouTube examines dozens of aspects, including hits and rating. YouTube's video view count is comparable to Yahoo! search count, which sheds light on the popularity of video search and YouTube. Comments are a part of the algorithm. "Once you start getting the views, you get the rankings. Once you start getting the rankings you get the views, but your must allow comments." Google's Universal search, means the presence of blog posts, videos and other channels in the SERPs. It takes up to 30% of the organic search results. It's crucial the SEOs optimize for that 30% or be left behind.

Stephan Spencer, Founder & President, Netconcepts is talking about his daughter's [famous] Neopets site. Here's the BIG SEO mistakes for bloggers.

• leaving title tags to be auto-generated from the post name.
• squander crawl equity by letting pages get indexed that don't deserve to be (email this,etc...)
• Having multiple homes for your blog (http and http://www.)
• not using unique "optional excerpt" WordPress feature to minimize duplicate content
• not using rel-nofollow to direct PageRank flow
• over-reliance on date base archives
• no stability in keyword focus on category and tag pages
• sub-optimal URLs (too long, too many words, too many directories)
• only one RSS feed and it's un-optimized
• hosting blog/feed URLs on a domain you don't own
• using suboptimal anchor text when linking internally

Re-jig internal linking structure. Use tag clouds, tag pages and tag conjunction pages. Use related posts, top 10 posts, next and previous pagination. SEO Title Tag plug in for WordPress allows you to override the title tag with a custom title tag. It also allows for "thin slicing, " which means making quick decisions and don't over think. If you're an SEO expert, you can do the same concept by using the mass edit capabilities of SEO Title Tag. "Crank through" the pages on your site to make them more keyword rich.

A common overlooked tactic is to simply name your blog with keywords in the title. Optimize URLs, because it's been proven that short URLs get clicked on 2X more than longer URLs. Further, long URLs appear to act as a deterrent to clicking, causing users to click on the listings below it. Use sub domains, subdirectories, new domains. Don't be www.metlife.com/blog. Rather, be StayingFitBlog.com. Using free blogspot.com or wordpress.com URL? You benefit from their domain authority, but you're forever wedded to them.

Optimize anchor text. Make the post's title a link to the permalink page. Use SEOMoz Backlink Anchor Text Analysis tool or tools.seobook.com/backlink-analyzer) to look for opportunities to request previous to anchor text to inbound links. Sculpt your PageRank to really decide where you're going to send juice and where not. Stephan is particular fond of nofollowing calendar archive links, trackbacks, comments and where the link would be reciprocal.

Minimize duplicate content. Code your main index template to display "optional excerpts" on everything but the permalink page. For each post, write unique content. Don't just use the first couple of paragraphs. Improve the keyword focus using heading tags, bold, strong, and sticky posts.

Optimize your RSS feeds

• full text, not summaries
• 20 or more items, not just 10
• multiple fees by category, latest comments, comments by post
• keyword rich item in the title
• your band name in the title
• your most important keyword in the title
• compelling site description
  
  

Marty Weintraub is President of aimClear, an Internet Focused advertising and public relations agency in Duluth, Minnesota.

Moderator: Joseph Morin said they changed the title to making search work on many levels.

Melanie Mitchell, Vice President of Marketing, Foliofn Investments, Inc. is up first. She first worked at AOL earlier this year and left.

The consumer is in control of your content, that is why search is so good. The power of search is it is the marketers holy grail. Search is one part of the whole mix. She shows examples of how offline drives online sales. She gives a few case studies.

I totally was distracted on this panelist, I am sorry. Focusing now...

Dave Roth, Director of Search Engine Marketing, Yahoo! Inc is now up. He is Yahoo the web side, not the search engine, i.e. he is an SEM.

They have tons of properties, and this is their main challenge, he will take you through it. Yahoo does SEM for the same reasons you and I do it, because it is a great marketing angle. They do paid, organic and affiliates across a lot of businesses. Specifically with SEO, they do talk to search product managers, they do benefit that search is part of their property, but they do not get to talk to the engineers, they don't know the algorithms, they don't know CTR by position algorithms.

They have a lot of properties. Lots of these businesses are different, some are subscriptions, some are downloads, some are e-commerce, some are lead gens and some are display ad revenue. To measure them all, they use a Life Time Value metric, what is the value a conversion for a subscription, referral, CPC/CPM? What is the net present value of that lifetime revenue stream? etc.

How much opportunity is there out there for me to get? What your trying to get is what is that opportunity that I can capture? They created a predictive model, based on click data, search data, etc. They want to figure out how they are doing against their competition. Then you can figure out how much a click is worth to me. Then you can do this for all businesses. They were able to see the competitive gap and they figured how much it is worth. Then they can show you the money, how much it is all worth, by business line using SEO/SEM.

Yahoo decided to stop fixing things that were broken. Instead, they try to make SEO part of the product development process (i.e. web site development process). You need to insert yourself into this process. They developed about 6 different check points.

Paid Search Execution is easier. The decisions he makes is to do it in house versus outsource, build or buy, leverage LTV model, measure everything, etc. They do both of everything.

They standardized a workflow document, which looked complex, but isnt.

Then they do a marketing scorecard for all their businesses. It helps them decide where to move money to and from. It helps them keep track of things and they do this weekly. They also do an SEO dashboard to keep track of things at the VP level.

Hit blog is IndustrialStrengthSEM.com, so check it out.

Derrick Wheeler, Senior Search Engine Optmization Architect, Microsoft is now up. He does SEO at the lowest possible level, but there should be involved throughout.

Microsoft.com is one web site, but they treat it as hundreds of individual web sites. There is windows, there are micro sites, there are directories (microsoft.com/australia) and even that is not consistent. Optimization has been done on a site by site basis, which causes issues. They have at least 9 CMSs to deal with.

They work every day to make their site better for search engines. They have 100 billion plus URLs or so, it is a huge challenge. He said how Live has a ton of pages, Google has a lot less and Yahoo has very few. This shows them they have structural issues they need to fix.

Three levels of SEO:
(1) Sitewide SEO initiative
(2) Then individual web sites need to do SEO (he cant do it all for all sites)
(3) Page level SEO, he doesn't focus much on this

He said, Microsoft does not know how much traffic Microsoft.com gets from organic versus paid search. Can you believe it?! They are working on fixing this. Plus they are trying to standardize the metrics they use throughout sites. They are also doing a lot of training and travel all over the world. Some of the out of the box SEO tools don't work for Microsoft, they don't scale for it. So they built internal tools to manage this.

SEO Initiatives:
- Duplicate and undesirable pages (big issue for Microsoft)
- Excessive use of redirects
- Improper error handling
- Structure of subsidiary content
- Low quality page titles and meta tags

Good SEO is about structure, content and authority.

They built their own spider, not from Live search. They are crawling their web site, to figure out what a search engine is experiencing. So they can fix issues.

Site Level SEO's 6 Steps:
(1) Business Outcomes and Metrics
(2) Keyword Research and Selection
(3) Structural and Technical Audit
(4) Content editing for keyword integration
(5) Link building strategies and tactics
(6) Outgoing optimization

Maile Ohye, Senior Support Engineer, Google is last up. Search is part of webmaster central and tools.

YouTube gives each video a unique URL, they have titles and a real description. It has easy search and great navigation. It has a social aspect and embed URL. It has great features...

Created an SEO starter guide, it is now live at over here. This is the guide they used internally for best practices, and it is now available to everyone.

If you have an image link, they will use the alt tag as the anchor text. Interesting...

Make sure to provide value, act responsibly (yes, large sites can be penalized), and have fun - they also did the halloween joke in the robots.txt file.

This session will look at methods for monitoring, managing, and influencing your reputation within the blogosphere and press. If you are not talking with your customer base, your customer base will be talking about you.

Moderator: Todd Friesen
Speakers:
Jessica Berlin, Social Media Manager, Cirque du Soleil
Andy Beal, Internet Marketing Consultant, Marketing Pilgrim LLC
Lee Odden, CEO, TopRank Online Marketing

First up is Lee Odden.

Why is online reputation management (ORM) important?
Your customers, prospects, and competitors are online. People pissed at you are online. The future of your company is online. There are comments, blogs, reviews, and more -- you need to be aware of this.

How important is knowing about dissatisfied customers, brand de-vangelists, brand champions and evangelists? You should know about these people -- brand evangelists can be armed with tools to talk more about you in a positive light.

How is it that your online reputation is influenced? One is through search. ORM is about "search engine results". Another influence is social media - you can ask people for advice and feedback about a particular location, business, or whatever. There's also mainstream media - are you getting press coverage that's positive and negative? Do you have a handle on the top people in these channels?

Search engines = reputation engines.

Lee shows several examples of PayPal, Walmart, and Target.

What's going on and how can you monitor your ORM?
- Free: Google Alerts, TweetBeep
- Small Biz: Trackur
- Enterprise: Radian6, BuzzLogic

Short term ORM: SEO and social media displace SERPs
- Make brand optimization a process in the organization
- Brand optimize all digital assets: text, images, audio, and video
- Optimize aross departments: PR, Marketing, HR, investor
- Result is more branded SERPs

Long term: identify, qualify, and engage dissenters
- Is there merit to the issue?
- If not, offer facts and ask for correction
- If yes, offer to discuss
- Be ready to respond via the blog
- Results can be loyal brand fans

Tactics:
- SEO
- Social media - listen to channels
- Encourage media relations results to get your company written about; online PR

Push messaging out - outreach via wire service, networking, pitching, RSS
Pull messaging - optimized via press release, newsroom, social media, and media coverage

91% of people use Google.com to get updates for subject matter experts. They also use social media.

Who is doing it right? eBay and Dell. Look at their results -- very clean. They're doing it with subdomains; blogs, Wikipedia, etc

Takeaways:
- Be proactive. Don't wait until it's too late. Monitor conversations, optimize content, do digital asset promotion, and watch analytics

"What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas
...until somebody writes about it on Twitter."

Andy Beal is up next.

There are many components of reputation management and most people are concerned about what shows up on Google. Even if you're not ready to engage, you should monitor of what's being said about you so that you can build a reputation to fix product flaws and be ahead of the competition.

He wrote "Radically Transparent," an awesome book on ORM.

Why monitor? Product ideas, keywords for your campaign, news, articles, blog sentiment, product recalls, scandals, client opportunities, industry trends, customer comments

What to monitor: company name, product name, executive names, CEO, competitors, partners, industry, news, product launches, stocks, patents, services, customers, press releases, reviews

List of tools:

Industry news: moreover.com/categories/category_list_rss.html, Yahoo news

Mainstream news: news.google.com

News Buzz: digg.com

Upcoming news: google.com/trends

Blog posts: Technorati.com, blogsearch.google.com

Blog comments: backtype.com

Blog conversations: blogpulse.com/conversation - note: if you see people talk about you, follow that blog and the conversation as well.

Blog trends: blogpulse.com/trends

Bookmarks: delicious.com/popular

Photos: flickr.com

Videos: video.google.com

Tags: keotag.com

Forum posts: boardtracker.com

Twitter: search.twitter.com

Changing information: wikipedia.org

Customer reviews: epinions.com

Email updates: google.com/alerts

The untrackable: compernic.com, $50/year

One stop shop: trackur.com, $18/month

Last up is Jessica Berlin who works with Cirque de Soleil. They are always listening to customer discussion. Cirque was founded in 1984 by street performers. The mission statement is to evoke the imagination, to evoke the senses, and to evoke the emotions of people. There are 40k employees from 40 countries, 17 shows around the world. 80 million people have seen the show and close to 10m of those saw it last year. In Vegas, there are 6 production shows.

Customers talk a lot about the show - from the purchase of tickets until they leave the theatre.

What are they looking for online? People writing about the experience -- it could be anything (ticket purchase, concession stands, etc.) What do they like, dislike, and is the information accurate? Who are the evangelists and influencers? What else do fans want -- how can they remain connected to the brand?

Influence ripples: bloggers who write can get blogged about again - mainstream media can pick it up.

Regular monitoring: Google Alerts, Trends, TEchnorati, blogpulse, trendpedia, wikio, twing, twitter search, tweetstats, buzzlogic, youtube, and social networking sites

They just launched Criss Angel: in 2.5 years, they realized that things are completely different. People start writing about the show instantaneously. One local paper came out with an article about people who hated the show. They employed deiworldwide to generate buzz about the show and to spread information about the ticket purchases.

Shifting PR practices: things have changed. Beforehand, embargoes were honored for critics/journalists. But now, they don't use embargoes - everyone is a content producer. Bloggers are treated like members of regular press. They have a smaller readership, but it's a targeted readership.
They have social media releases. Make it easy for people to share information, builds community by allowing feedbakc, and SEO is link building.
A two way conversation build trust.
Newsworthy things are happening daily: Twitter, Facebook, etc.
EAsing of PR guidelines
Brings us closer to the journalist
Trust in employees - they are brand ambassadors and can spread news.

How fans can help: there are fan sites. Beforehand, they were afraid of these fan sites. Not anymore.
MySpace works very well. Artists have fan pages with 30k friends. They work with the people who run the page and give them information - having those accounts building the reputation for Cirque.

Encourage conversation: they give journlists, blogers, and consumers tools they can use. There are also exclusive content on branded channels (Twitter, YouTube, Facebook). They also have quizzes, widgets, and games (for example, getcirqued.com/quiz - how do you know which show you want to see?)

Build a good reputation:
- Transparency: customers appreciate when brands are open and hnest
- The better the relationship is, the easier it is to communicate problems/handle a crisis
- Listening improves communication

Moderator: Gillian Muessig 
Speakers:
Heather Lloyd-Martin, President, North American Division, SuccessWorks
Matt Tuens, Founder & CEO,

Heather-LLoyd Martin:

• Today we will discuss SEO content through the sales cycle.
• Why build content?
• Why focus on content?
• Thinking about the budget.
• In House or Outsource?

Why should we care about content? The best SEO is good content. Not just enough to throw up articles. How text is written can have a tremendous impact on search positions and conversions. If you want links, has to be good content! Good brands don't want to link out to crap content. Good content helps get natural links.

A quote from 2006, that is still relevant, by DMNews: "Last year, marketers spent 8X more money on paid vs. organic search. In essence marketers spent $6 billion on a minority of their traffic while they nearly ignored the majority."

Case Study: AmsterdamEscape.com. Wanted to find a good hotel in Amsterdam. Company was banned from Google, and spent $4,000 a month on PPC. Hired a new SEO team and built out lots of content. Built around topics such as "do's and don'ts". Company ranks really well for many different key phrases, such as "Amsterdam apartments" and other high volume searches. Because they have so much good content, they get lots of long tail search traffic. Did really well, and saved them $48,000 a year in paid!

BusinessWeek is another case study. SuccessWorks helps with the titles, descriptions. Needed to push eyeballs to sell advertising. Goal was to increase page views, which = more ad revenue. Evangelize SEO concepts by optimizing templates, etc. After a few months, noticed huge spike in traffic. All they did was edit the copy - the title and key phrases.

Copywriting is about connecting with customers. Write in a tone that understands their pain. It's not about writing 250 words and shoving keywords in it. A lot of companies err by doing this.

Shows a slide with the sales cycle pyramid. Purchase, research, and awareness phases. The big opportunity - the research phases has huge opportunity. Use keyword research tools to help find topics / keyword phrases to write about. Build trust and confidence.

Use keywords in headlines and sub-headlines. In hyperlinks. Throughout the content. In the title. 2-3 key phrases per page. Longer copy.

Leveraging key phrase intelligence. Use site search to create new pages if search terms not represented. Create and/or edit new pages. Think of the buying cycle. Create pages around seasonal trends. "Ego" keywords. Be represented throughout the entire buying cycle.

A word about budget. Good content costs money. Can be most expensive part of SEO campaign. In house - need training. Can pay $100 - $1500 a page. Need to find the right balance. Get what you pay for. Don't fill in space with cheap content. Do your due diligence.

"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results" - Albert Einstein.

If your copywriter is writing sales related copy, look for direct response copywriting experience.
If your copywriter is writing informational copy, look for journalistic experience.

Companies that outsource, usually have no writing staff, no time, no editorial calendar, no clue. Solution: Outsource.

How to decide to keep it in house? Have existing writers on staff. The writing team has time for SEO content development and training. Or - writers create content, and outsource key-phrase editing.

Note: Some content may be missing or inaccurate due to the quick speed of this presentation.

Matt Tuens:

Focused on content side of online since 1997. Plan and implement full content solutions of all sizes. Develop entire information portals and content sites from the ground up.

Today:
• Changing perspective
• Building a helpful site that creates traffic
• Development in an ideal situation
• Development on a budget
• Measuring ROI

Goal is to tweak our perspective on how we think of content. Most people never take content far enough. Content is the original SEO. It's why search engines were built.

Wrong perspective #1:

Most people think of the minimum to just get buy. Do the least possible. You need to think the exact opposite to be successful.

The right perspective:

Become the ultimate resource - answer every question you can possibly have. Be that site. Lofty goals, but need to think this way. This is the right perspective.

Wrong perspective #2:

Making it all about you. Self promoting. If you sell Sony HDTV's - if you sound bias - people will smell a rat and you will lose credibility.

The right perspective:

Give the demographic what the want to know, not what YOU want them to know. Key is to think from their perspective at all times. Think of your site like a magazine. Every industry, no matter how obscure, has a magazine. Your site should be like that in your vertical. Editorial calendars, continuously updated.

Building a useful site that gets traffic:

Identify the segments in your demographic:
• single?
• married?
• young?
• old?
• working?
• retired?
• etc..

Write towards each demographic. For example - "mortgage refinance". Address the topic for each demographic. For each product type or product you have.

Identify the segments people are looking for:
• Why do people buy what you sell?
• What need are you filling?
• What are the main decision points?
• What will help inform them?
• What information will help them check off the points in their decision making process?
• What will help move them to action?

When people get deeper in research, looking for who to trust. Think about what will help move them to action.

After segment demographic, do your keyword research. No longer just terms and quantities. Different aspects, different demographics. Not term, but meaning. Especially important for content.

Keyword research: Primary terms should be broad and strong. Primary, secondary, tertiary, and long tail terms. Content topics at each level.

Primary level keyword: "refinance".
Secondary: "mortgage refinance".
Tertiary: "bad credit mortgage refinance".
Long tail: "getting mortgage refinancing in a bad market".

Content types:
• Articles?
• Blog posts?
• News?
• Video?
• Forums?

Structure:
• Like pages together - keep in same directories
• Structural categorization
• Virtual categorization

What happens when you have articles covering multiple topics? Pick one directory to classify. Keep a consistent structure.

Intelligent Structure:
• General theming
• Theme sculpting
• Internal linking
• PageRank sculpting - prevents diluting of categories

Types of content:
• Articles, blogs, news, video, UCG, forums, images, etc.
• What fits your situation?

Allocating content:
• Major keyword
• Secondary keyword
• Tertiary keyword
• Long tail keyword
• Topic based

Building on a budget:
• Better budget - close the ideal as possible
• Mid budget - try to follow Brett's rules - 100 articles before launch, and then one a day. 350 - 500 articles in first year - pretty healthy site.
• Less budget - At very least write one a day - easy to manage, but harder than appears. Tough to do it yourself. Easy to skip one day. Hard to keep up the momentum.

In-house: Cheap, control. But resources allocated elsewhere. Much more time and cost consuming.
Outsourcing: Conservative outsourcing more cost effective.

Writing must me managed. Editing is a must, but that is costly.

Measuring ROI:
• Set your goals - sales? downloads? page views? depends on business model.
• Set or note indirect metrics - page views, time on site, time on page, repeat visits.
• Points to watch for - increased numbers in your direct goals and indirect goals, entry pages, path, what pages are being viewed most, what is their exit page, analyze direct goal actions, analyze visitors

Conclusion:
• Planning
• Perspective
• Execution

Coverage provided by Avi A. Wilensky of Promediacorp, a Manhattan based online marketing agency. 

Moderator: Michael McDonald

Speakers:
Lisa Buyer, President/CEO, The Buyer Group
Robin Liss, Founder and President, CamcorderInfo.com
Greg Jarboe, President and Co-Founder, SEO-PR
Jiyan Wei, Product Manager,Vocus

Description: A well-seasoned panel of PR pros examine small and medium sized business campaigns.

Robin Liss will be talking about some of the PR work she has done over the past several years. As a veteran of CNN and dozens of other tech pieces on TV, Robin's real-world experience defies her youthful age.

Session Notes:

Lisa Buyer is the first presenter...

Lisa starts by highly recommending the book "PR Groundswell".

25% of Americans report reading a blog on a regular basis, 30%`watch user generated videos and 40% are using social media sites. Thus a huge PR groundswell.

You must need a strategy and be proactive. Can be very powerful in controlling your online reputation. The main tool is an online press release. However, you need to target journalists and editors to truly get exposure for your release.

Journalist have less and less time to hear pitches, instead they are looking online. 64% say they use Google news feeds and 75% say blogs are helpful in giving them story ideas. They are even looking for stories on Facebook and LinkedIn.

Journalist are looking for press releases that offer clarity, not those filled with jargon and keywords. They also use the web to research companies before calling them.

Another good source is people subscribing to Google Alerts so that releases are deliverd directly to them.

She recommends looking into newsforce.com as a good SEO friendly service. Lisa also recommends looking 12 months in advance for your PR campaign. Look at holidays and other events to see where you might fit with a good story.

Use online PR to own the search results.

Next up is Robin Liss...

She feel hiring a PR agency is not the best investment for all companies, especially small businesses. She feels small organizations should to it themselves.

She feels the press release for most journalists is dead, due to the oversaturation of press releases. It takes deep personal contact to get high quality pieces. They would rather hear directly from the business owner rather than the PR agency. You have the passion about your product or service and that will come through.

Pitches should be short (1 minute), easily understandable, have a hook or interesting angle, and be unique! A pitch should be a unique argument often tailored to a specific journalist. Look at local newspapers, business or trade magazineas, topical websites, etc. Use the phone - email just does not work! Practice with co-workers before making the calls.

Robin recommends taking the ego out of the PR plan and focus on ROI.

Third presenter is Jiyan Wei...

Jiyan is with PRWeb and his discussion is based on the framework they use with customers.

The make a distinction between a news release and a press release. Think about who is the target, is it the press or the consumer?

Craft a release geared towards your audience. Will it incorporate video, audio, images? Either way, quickly get to the point with an informal tone.

Optimize your release for the search engines. Standard SEO techniques based on keywords you have researched.

Then you want to propel you release. Once it is on the web, you want to push it even further with links, social media and bookmarking.

Lastly, evaluate the campaign, adjust and repeat.

Some ideas for good news releases: set up YouTube, Flickr, Delicious channels and use the content in the release. Once the release is out, work to get it Dugg, Stumbled, etc. Focusing a lot of attention on one release is better than shotgunning several releases.

Last presenter is Greg Jarboe...

Greg is going to go over a case study for a small business called Business Financial Publishing. Referring to him as "Ian the Publisher".

Ian has a dozen different websites and growing. They are optimizing releases and measuring all of the metrics. They measure how many people read the release, how many click through to the site, and once they are on the site are they converting.

One example was a release about the one year anniversary of the site smallcapinvestore.com. It was a me, me, me release. It got 1600 reads but only 1 registration on the website. They followed this up with a second release regarding a different site. It had 1400 reads, but managed to get 44 registrations.

The difference was the 2nd release was written about the customer rather than the company. Must provide a compelling offer or benefit to your customer. "We can tell you the top 5 companies to invest in".

Move beyond SEO copy and create a solid headline with a great story which is directed at your customer. Of course you will include links to your site for SEO, but what you need to focus on is selling right from the start.

Greg recommends looking at SEO Samba (seosamba.com) to make your release Google News compliant. The tool checks for compliant urls and sitemap XML creation. It even help place it in the right category.

These session notes were written by Arnie Kuenn from Vertical Measures a link building and website publicity company. Please excuse any typos or grammar issues, the session notes are written live and meant to be posted as soon as the session is over.

We are live blogging this session from Salon C @ the Las Vegas Convention Center, PubCon 2008. Because it is live, there is no editorial or proofing process.

The Internet allows marketers to gain unprecedented insight as to competitors' tactics and strategies. This panel is going to discuss competitive intelligence gathering tools and tactics. Bruce Clay is moderating. Andy Beal, Internet Marketing Consultant, Marketing Pilgrim LLC is speaking first this morning. Spying on your competitors? Here's Andy's tool kit:

domaintools.com takes the WHOis information to a whole new level of detail. Get information past who owns the site, to what other websites are owned. Find what directories they're in and other great "snapshot" information. ranks.nl/tools/spider.html spiders keyword density. siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com reveals, in order of importance, backlinks to a site.

SEOmoz tools seomoz.org/tools offers free and paid-premium tools, which Andy Beal values a lot. soloseo.com/tools/indexRank.html puts Google information for your site, on a grid to view. copernic.com is a tool that costs about $50.00 (watchthispage.com free alt) to watch a page constantly. Set it up to spy on your competition. Keep an eye on their products, clients or any kind of content by RSS, email or dashboard.

Use technorati.com to watch competition to instantly get updates anytime a blog or video (or anything) mentions you in the blog universe. If you prefer simple email, GoogleAlerts will contact you anytime your like, on the keywords of your choice. These alerts can also be set up as feeds.

searchanalytics.compete.com reveals keywords that bring traffic to competitors. Paying for the service gets a comprehensive list of referrals. touchgraphic.com shows a graphic representation of a site's authority constellation. If your competitor is a public company, spy on their SEC filings at google.brand.edgar-online.com. For patents, seekingalpha.com/transcripts, google.com/patents.

Oodle.com offers competitive intelligence surrounding job placements. Keep an eye on your competitors' employees. It's amazing how much information they will freely give, especially on Twitter. He's showing a clever picture of one Matt Cutts. He joked that getting people "drunk at parties," always works.

Larry Mersman, Vice President, Trellian.The definition of competitive intelligence can mean many things, depending on the channel we are dealing with. For the most part it's gathering information on competition. HitWise, Trellian and ComScore offer competitive solutions. Target relevant keywords and see who is optimizing around it. Find out who is sending traffic to your competitor and being clicked on to get the user to your competitor. Sources include search engines, banner ads, links on a website, affiliate partner links, blogs, etc ...Optimize your site around the data.

William Atchison, Founder, Crawl Wall says while you're looking at them, they're looking at you. "Techniques for protecting your SEO investment from prying competitive eyes." Why let competitors use your hard work and paid research, as low hanging fruit, to launch their business. Competitors want the path of least resistance to encroach on your online business. They want to make easy money helping competitors rank by leveraging your information. Tool vendors want to steal you data for a profit and help those competing against you.

Bad guys gather data from Google, Yahoo and MSN's cache pages, which don't reveal the visitor. Eliminate search engine cacheing to stop covert researchers from gathering data on your meta tags, internal anchor text and outbound links. Use the NOARCHIVE BANS Cache. Check out www.noarchive.net. archive.org is used to covertly gather both historical and recent site data.

Remove clues about you, your administrative and technical contacts and how many domains you have. The whois data is easily blocked using proxy commands. Use robots.txt to tell well behaved 'bots whether they're allowed to crawl or not. Robots.txt is the VIP list at the night club. Badly behaved crawlers that won't honor robts.txt to get stopped at the server with .htaccess. Make sure the search engines ARE who they are who they claim, using full trip reverse DNS checking, avoid spoofing. Go to .ppt for examples of all code. There will still be crawlers gathering competitive information that don't want to get caught and pretend to be human browsers. Tools such as robots.txt and .htaccess can't stop those.

Remove competitive vulnerabilities Eliminate search engine cache pages, opt out of archive .org, opt in only allowed spiders, 'bot blocker scripts to catch hidden threats. Tighter controls on copyrighted content, improve search engine ranking after thwarting unwanted competition and better ser performance for visitors and legit search engine crawls.

Jake Baillie,Managing Director, STN Labs thinks Google is still the one of the best tools out there for competitive information. Do you know who your ISP is and are they trustworthy? ISPs are very weak points in the competitive intelligence chain, and usually picked based on who's cheapest. ISPs can feign being Googlebot so it's much better to do IP lookups to see who owns what. Disgruntled employees and ex-spouses can be a weak point as well. Get those NDAs out there. Don't use Robots.txt to block development sites. It telegraphs the project. Use strong passwords.

Marty Weintraub is President of aimClear, an Internet Focused Advertising Agency and publisher of aimClear Blog.

Moderator: Roger B. Dooley

The room is empty, maybe 20 people here, max.

Alexander Barbara, CEO, ReidBrown Enterprises, Inc. is up first.

There is a tipping point, maybe your site is slow, your having a lot of down time, or your resources are low. What matters is fast, uptime, great support and room for growth.

Virtual private servers are a low cost way to move towards to a dedicated. They might take 50 people and put them on a single dedicated, but you do have root access.

Dedicated give your 100% resources, 100% control but your a 100% responsible.

Do a speed check, how many backbones they have, do a traceroute to see how many pass throughs and do a download test of a test file.

Factors to consider include are you serving static or dynamic pages, pageviews requirements and who else is on your server.

Alternatives to a new server is to cut down on page size, you can host images elsewhere and optimize HTML.

Dedicated servers are not always necessary. They are not always more reliable than shared, they are not always needed for high traffic and they are not better for SEO.

Questions to ask:
(1) Do they backup? How often, size limits?
(2) SLAs?
(3) Are they in the data center?
(4) Is there site monitoring
(5) Ask for references
(6) How old are the servers?
(7) Cost and availability of the IPs and C-Blocks?
(8) How many backbones do they have?

Questions for Virtual Private Servers:
(1) How many VPS instances are on a box?
(2) Guaranteed RAM?
(3) Separate DNS server (off this server)?
(4) Money back guarantee?

Questions for Managed Hosting?
(1) Will they compile and install custom software?
(2) Support hours?
(3) Phone Support?

No one can guarantee your site will be 100% up.

Jeremy Wright, CEO, B5Media is next up. He shows his growth map, in a network map. From $7 a month hosting a account to a very large system, about 60 servers. But he still does have down time.

Share hosting principles:
- Quality is more important than price
- Get referrals (all hosts have upset customers)
- Know what you need vs what you want
- Dont switch to dedicated too soon
- Go with a larger shop over a smaller one

His biggest mistakes are that he didn't plan their growth. He also moved to a dedicated hosting company too soon. He stayed with bad providers too long. They overpaid for managed hosting, instead of hiring a full time tech resource. They didn't use RFPs to get the best pricing.

Beyond a Dedicated Box. Don't buy unless you have to (I made this mistake). Use "lease to own". Find similar clients at their data center. Consider combining forces with another similar sized company to save money and share resources.

David Driskill, Senior Engineer, Verio doesn't seem to be here, nope, he is not here.

So Roger B. Dooley, the moderator, has a few notes. Page load time is critical to webmasterworld.com, and is due to the page design and resources. Faster pages keep people on your site. Another question to ask a shared hosting place is to ask what their internal migration policy is - upgrades, new technology, etc. Will your sites be live during this? What if they discontinue a product?

Now Q&A time...

This panel of content creation gurus will look at how to keep the creativity flowing while managing the content process. 

Moderator: Derrick Wheeler 
Speakers:
Rupali Shah, Organic Search Manager, GroupM
Robin Liss, Founder and President, Camcorderinfo.com
Ted Ulle, Partner, The MEWS Group

Ted Ulle, aka Tedster takes the floor. Tedster is an industry veteran since 1994, a WebmasterWorld administrator, and great guy to know.

What happens if you know that you are going to publish a lot of content? Don't build a "Frankensite". The main point is that business process or workflow must support your SEO. It must always be there.

Must be training for SEO in your content team. Must locate and educate everyone in the workflow. Can be a big pain, particularly in big enterprises. Pulls people from lots of channels, sometimes there's no communication. You need to locate and educate them. Should have analytics dedicated to each person in the workflow. Lets people know they are doing a good job. Makes a big difference to people. Hold regular team meetings to keep the team coordinated.

War story #1: Management must buy in. Major silicon valley firm. Had IT department, web designers, writers, and analytics people. Half of the team was reassigned, and the entire training went down the drain. Without exec level buy in, you have a big problem. The final product must support the business goal. It's always #1. Its at the top of the chain.

Marketing strategy: If you know your strategy, can rough out content on a conceptual level. If starting a new web site - need to look at CMS, server, back-end, analytics - folded in early. Start with the market strategy, then do keyword research. Next task is the IA, and menus. Most important part of the content. First shot at your site. Without this nailed down, your content will not get found well. At this point, after IA is set, you can pull in graphic designers and build your templates. Many companies do this right away. Happening less now. After you got your templates, you got your content. Point of the story is to take the business goal and make it penetrate the process. The most important thing to do is document each process. If team changes, can review the document. Need to document each decision.

War story #2: Beware of chasing trophy keywords. Niche market - "homeopathy software". Product was aimed at doctors. But the search term is the word a layman would use. B2C not B2B. This market had only one vendor. Tried to be the #2. Gained the number one and number two rankings. Launched lots of content. Sales went down. Got the trophy, and almost went under. Happy ending: web showed them what was wrong. Not just on the web but off the web. Marketed completely different. Content became easier to develop. Traffic became golden. Broke into the market, and became the leader. They don't rank anymore for their trophy term, and it doesn't matter.

Information Architecture: Before you make your menu decision - you need to find the right buckets to hold your content. This discipline is so intense, comes from library science. Often ignored, but so important. Recommends O'reilly's IA for the WWW. Not technical but incredible insightful.

Final web edit: Content interacts with layout. CSS is web typesetting. You can kill good content with bad layout and visa versa. Study print typography. You have centuries of learning about this subject. Study it. Read "Elements of Typographic Style" by Robert Bringherst.

Simple and Seamless goal: For the end user, for the search engines, and for maintenance. Websites are incredibly complex. Need to eat the complication all the time and digest it.

Showing off: Someone shows off on the team. Bad for business goals, good for them. Often the graphics designer, could be the programmers touting AJAX. Or could be your IT folks writing content. They write content on SERPs, error messages, write auto responders which are a big part of the user experience.

Code geeks should never write content! Ever! Yahoo! directory - if you make a mistake with a credit card, you get the message "Invalid Payment Instrument Data".

Despite all planning, things will go wrong. Data queries re too slow. Content breaks the template.

When time to fix, though shalt not kludge! Better late than lousy. Expect to make trade-offs. Keep all priorities straight. How? Go back to your document! Refresh yourself with the business goals. Don't build a "Frankensite".

Robin Liss, of Reviewed.com is up next. Robin is one of the foremost industry experts on producing top quality content, and is a brilliant businesswoman. She started her company when she was 13 years old. Her network of review sites generates well over 1 million unique visitors a month.

"Producing high value content - a guide to creating content for non-spammers."

Just like a car maker, you manufacture a product - the written word. What can we learn from car manufacturers to create efficient processes?

Mr. Ford's assembly line rocks! Shows a slide with a basic pipeline of how content is produced at Reviewed.com. Look at every step, and refine each process. Steps come together to create a content pipeline. Who takes responsibility for what steps? How much time is needed? What steps are needed or not needed depending on the content? What can you outsource? What can you bring in house? This pipeline can scale across 10, 20, or even 100 people.

Create a first draft. Supplement with photos, video, etc. That goes into an edit. Could be you, or an editor. Next is production - "HTMLization". Copy editing, SEO editing, and final edit. Then take it live. Market it, and push it out to blogs. Go back and adjust and fix if necessary.

The most basic content pipeline is a blog. Blogs are efficient because there is a lot of front line content production. A newspaper or magazine might have 10-20% of payroll producing original words. Blogs have limited editing. Almost everyone involved in a blog is creating editorial products. It's highly efficient and productive. Modified pipeline for blog is simpler. Lacks the editing and oversight.

Examples of modified pipeline. You might have an editor and a writer. Sometimes it might be more efficient to add a third person to the process. A more complicated pipeline might have 6 people. An editor-in-chief, an editor, the writer, a photographer, a product tester, and a copy editor. It might be more efficient, but not cheap. Bigger payroll. Lots of quality control in this example. Reviewed.com syndicates to the Washington Post, so quality is mandatory. Her staff is producing an equivalent of a novel a month in text, and high quality text.

Tools: Good tools save money. WSIWYG tools (FCK Editor) save production time and money. Dreamweaver. MT. Own your CMS. Investing money in your CMS will reduce editorial costs in the long term.

Workflow management tools. Google Calendar, lots of spreadsheets.

Specialization = economic efficiency. Find the right writer for the right task. Is this short form content or long form? Journalistic vs. opinionated? Edgy vs. straight? Switching takes time. When doing large projects, different parts of the article might go to different people.

Find an online copy editor, and pay per word. Find a basic HTML guru to "HTMLize" your stuff. Everyone needs an editor, even the best writers. Everything should be edited. Hard to spot your own errors. Mandatory. Allows your writers to improve content. Making one person do everything is inefficient.

Destroy bottlenecks! If you want to get scientific, measure and quantify your workflow. Make a consistent pattern. Heavy focus on patterns at Reviewed.com. One review per week, for example. Even flow. Make sure that you find your inefficiencies. Error free content = creditability. Whether its grammar, or information. Measure everything! Measure your editors. Measure word count, time, deadlines. Measure number of articles that are producing. Measure articles' traffic. Increase efficiency makes better content at less of a cost.

Final tips: Hire contributors, but make sure you own the rights in the contract. Don't want to get into a plagiarism argument. Don't want to get into that mess. Protect yourself in contracts. Be specific.

You get what you pay for. Be original. Google likes content. Writing good reviews ranks well. Contribute to the world's information. Blogs are good way to get into original content creation. And focus on quality!

Rupali Shah is next, and talks about mobile content.

With the advent of iPhones and Blackberries have to think about how to present your company on these devices. Will cover stats about mobile usage, mobile SEO, tops for creating mobile content, good and bad examples.

Stats show that in January, 08 by M:Metrics majority of iPhone and smartphone users are reading news via the browser, accessing web search. The iPhone actually ran out of inventory a few months back. There is high demand for these products. More efficient for many tasks. 7 million + iPhone users. Potential viewers of your website!

Technology is no longer a barrier. Research has shown that people are having an OK experience visiting the web with smart phones. UK users showed a poor experience, but US users were satisfied, according to her slide.

Have you looked at your website on an iPhone or iPhone emulator? Does it look OK? Is the load speed good?

Mobile SEO. Use valid XHTML code. W3C compliance. www.w3.org/mobile. Keywords, meta data, linking and site maps.

Accessibility: Make it uncluttered. Less is more. Make the page sizes small. Look at user agent, and serve tailored content. Have a simple design, rich in text. Use mobile style sheets. Minimize images. Use DIV tags, not tables. Optimize your images with ALT tags.

Look at a check list of all the different screen widths. Shows a slide with the most common sizes. Pay attention to image formats GIFs and JPEGs. Character encoding. Maximum total page weight - 20kb. Limit your colors to 256. Limit your scripting - many devices cannot understand heavy scripting. Avoid lots of scrolling - keep pages short. Use a good navigation structure.

Other tips: Use Google Mobile Sitemaps. Feed the content to the engine. Yahoo has a similar product. Google Webmaster Tools shows what keywords mobile users are finding you.

Coverage provided by Avi A. Wilensky of Promediacorp, a Manhattan based online marketing agency.

Good morning. We are live blogging, this session from Salon C @ the Las Vegas Convention Center, PubCon 2008. Because it is live, there is no editorial/proofing process and raw notes will be posted. Welcome to SEORoundTable's coverage.

Managing a brand on the Web can be a complicated rubrics cube of variables. It's a double edge sword. Factor in the peculiar Tao of social media, forums, blogs and chat--and your brand may be at risk or on the verge of massive success. These speakers are talking about migrating from the "traditional" brand management world, in this tricky marketing environment. The Moderator is Joe Laratro

Jessica L Bowman, Founder & President, SEOinhouse.com says you need a consistent customer experience. Physical stores, online customer support, local news, national news, Twitter, social media, Facebook, bloggers, user-generated content like YouTube and Flickr, branding is about controlling across all. messages.

Customers With Power and Knowledge
It's called a "halo" and traditional approaches don't deal with over half of the channels that comprise a customer's experience. Users are getting involved in your brand, like it or not. As an example, public complaints are now way too easy and customers' bad (and good) experiences reverberate all around the halo, banging off of every channel. With Yelp and a Blackberry, a public rant can now be posted real time, before a customer's anger has subsided.Virgin Atlantic fired 13 employees for using fake names on Facebook and indulging in (probably not malicious) "venting," which corporate obviously did not find acceptable.

Train all customer touch points on how to handle customers, especially those who will go post things online.
Establish the boundaries and rules by adding guidelines for online commenting and blogging to your employee handbook
Allow employees to access social media sites to monitor what's happening
Hate List For Really Pissed Off Consumers (if they had time and know-how) they could easily:

Make comments at Yahoo and Google
Comment at your blog
Twitter Updates, which push out to Facebook
Adwords ad with their complaint, where the primary purpose is to get the attention of a VP who can instill an actual change. If on a tight budget, they might geo-targeted the ad so it only appears in the city to executives of the company
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Lauren Vaccarello, Director of Publishing, Forex Capital Markets LLC, will give tips for maintaining and defending your brand

Defensive Tactics (Best offense is a good defense)
Get the best players. Buy domains around your target keywords and brand name. Make sure to own www.myBrandSucks.com and yourCEOsname.com. Register your brand name on social media platforms including Twitter, Facebook Groups and a naymz profile. Know what your competitors are doing and if anyone is bidding on your branded keywords.

Keep an eye on your key players by creating competitor alerts on brand name and key personel. She endorsed Andy Beal's TrackUr a reputation monitoring tool. Monitor everything, Tiwtter is great place for people to connect and interact. It is also a great place for people to complain. She recommends TweetPro as and advanced build out for Twitter.

Companies like Verizon are finding customer dissatisfaction "opportunities," by quickly responding to public complaints on Twitter. The experience has resulted, not only in avoiding a PR problem, but turning the customer who originally levied the complaint to an advocate in a blog post. Respond to negative mentions quickly

Brian Combs, Senior VP & Chief Futurist, Apogee Search is talking about how to "handle" a Yahoo or Google problem. Before you have a problem, dedicate resources to online customer service. Monitor online conversations and use consistent naming conventions. Create and propagate multiple sites. Upon finding a problem, engage and attempt to diffuse. It's always possible to turn a detractor into a fan. Don't be defensive or attempt to strong arm, as you'll only make it worse.

Don't engage with trolls and Internet tough guys. Take it offline if possible. If all else fails, block the user. Scrub listings by "taking up more shelf space" in the SERPs. Use sub domains, product sites, international domains, social media, articles on third party sites, blended search or microsites. The content MUST be unique and the sites may require link building

Wikipedia is a risky technique as it can backfire if you violate TOS by submitting yourself.
Don't recommend evil tactics like Google Bowling.
Reputation problems are easier to prevent than to fix
Customer service 101: engage and don't be defensive. If you must scrub the listings, take a diversified approach in multiple channels.

Tony Wright, CEO/Founder, WrightIMC
He is telling a story about Paris TX. It's about a gay elementary school Principal, a vindictive lover, hot-headed small town assistant District Attorney. Topix pulled the post down but could 't keep it down. The assistant DA was reprimanded for threatening violence and almost lost his job (probably should have). DA sought a reputation management specialist but didn't hire him because of cost. The post found a home on Topix and in the minds the voting public. The assistance DA lost her job.

Responding in an emotional way, can ruin an online reputation. Sometimes responding makes it worse. If you are an employer, you need to have policies in place to keep employees from responding inappropriately. Threatening violence on the Internet can be dangerous, but most of the time it makes you look like and idiot.

Reputation, Influence and Branding
Reputation, branding and influence are not the same thing, but are interconnected. Of the three, start working on reputation. The others will come if your reputation is good. Don't let good branding get in the way of a good reputation. Monitor your reputation. Create a formula for keeping your reputation solid. Deal with snags when they come.

Create a formula for online reputation. Consider, when evaluating threats, the reach of the venue, influence of the poster, tone of the content, follow-up on the post (watch for on-topic vs. off topic) and potential viral effects.

Marty Weintraub is President of aimClear, an Internet-focused advertising agency, specializing in reputation management.

Moderator: Andy Beal

Speakers:
Shailesh Bhat, Senior Product Manager, Yahoo! Local, Yahoo
Alex Porter, Vice President, Location3 Media
Bill Mongovan, VP SearchCenter, Omniture
Gregory Markel, Owner, InfuseCreative

Description: Local search now comes from a real convergence of local targeting and mobile device usage. It covers the entire spectrum from the desktop shopper to the casual "get-it-now" cellphone user. This panel will look at local search from the varying perspectives of search engines, wireless audiences, and SEO/SEM marketers.

Session Notes:
Andy's opening remarks include the fact the local and mobile has finally taken off. He believes in the future, these two topics will no longer be covered in the same session.

Shailesh Bhat is the first presenter...
Yahoo local has about 28 million visitors locally. Yahoo is working to provide instant answers regardless of the entry point whether it is local, the web, mobile, etc.

The find it critical to proactivly monitor listings information. They tend to get inaccurate very quickly. Looking for solid customer feedback to manage the vendors online reputation. Vendor descriptions must go beyond name & address.

Local searches are skyrocketing. Users are now educated in adding locality to their search queries. Search strings are getting longer and longer. For example "seattle coffee 24 hour wifi". So vendors need to build out their profiles accordingly.

Local search is evolving with web search. Yahoo has Search Monkey. Search MOnkey allows a publisher to structure the information that is being presented, providing a richer and more relevant experience for the searcher.

Local information and maps are in high demand on mobile devices. Grew almost 80% from 2007 to 2008. On mobile search people are usually looking for answers quickly - not web links. Yahoo is implementing oneSearch to meet this demand. Mobile search shows a high level of intent.

Next up is Alex Porter...

Campanies need to take advantage of the map listings for customers activley search for their business. ie. Yellow pages, search engines and even in-car GPS systems.

Nearly 50% of searchers who find the local vendor, reach out and interact with them.

Local is not just a 2 horse race. There are many local search providers from Yelp to Local to LocalSearch. Google is still the dominant player, so you need to be sure to show in the search results - the map listings.

Alex also recommends that you be very proactive to make sure your listing data is accurate. Go right to the sources and make your updates. Create a list of where you can be found and be sure to check it on a routine basis.

The main search engines often pull information from the local search engines like CitySearch, so this can help with your organic listings as well.

To measure this, he recommends call tracking, coupon tracking, in-store surveys and video views. Google Analytics has some data but you cannot track all local search. He also suggests implementing a KML sitemap.

To get ranked higher in Google and Yahoo you should create good content, link to your listings, get customer reviews, & place keywords in the title.

The third presenter is Bill Mongovan

He recommends creating individual landing pages for your local search results. Test content of the listing and landing page to increase conversations and conversions.

Mobile analytics are just starting to really evolve. Data available can be screen widths, device, image support, cookie support, device manufacturer, and so on. People are actually buying via their mobile devices... especially iPhones.

You may even consider creating specific apps for the mobile market. Many are available for you to take advantage of, but you might be able to brainstorm some ideas on how you can add value to mobile users.

The last presenter is Gregory Markel...

He will focus on the now and the future. He feels 3G and future tech are game changers. This includes apps, even location specific apps. GPS in these phones allow you to know exactly where the user is located.

Crital mass had finally arrived. All new devices have GPS, big screens and easy to use keypads. For example the iPhone uses three methods to determine where the user is located.

Google received 50X the number of iPhone searches compared with the 2nd highest device. The apps available and the browsing experience is making these devices mainstream. People are spending more time browsing on their devices.

Right now you have first mover advantage as these new devices are being adopted at a very fast pace. iPhone has the lead, but others are equally viable. The search engines are also starting to treat these devices seperately. An iPhone browser has its own, unique experience on Google.

He says that getting listed in Google, Yahoo and MSN local will help you address many of you optimization needs. The engines are good at using your listing to help the searcher.

PPC is also still found on mobile searches - right now it is just 2 listings at the top, but this is subject to change.

Gregory feel that traditional SEO keyword methods may no longer apply in the mobile world. Instead the smart apps, smart phone and location detector will find what the user is looking for with out keywords and clicking.

These session notes were written by Arnie Kuenn from Vertical Measures a link building services and website publicity company. Please excuse any typos or grammar issues, the session notes are written live and meant to be posted as soon as the session is over.

Moderator: Melanie Mitchell

Brett Crosby, Group Manager Google Analytics, Google is replaced by Matt at Google (not Cutts). He begins talking about core concepts to using web analytics. Waiting for any new stuff... I.e. talks about how to install Google Analytics, I'll assume most readers know how to do that. Google has added custom reporting, as we reported in the past.

ugh, this is so basic, I am sorry. Then my computer froze, I am sorry for not covering his presentation.

Jamie Smith, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Engine Ready is next up.

Web Analytics Vendors including Yahoo (IndexTools), Google Analytics (Urchin), WebTrends, Lyris, ClickTracks, Coremetrics, Unica, Omniture.

You first need to think about your site's goals and then you can track it with analytics. You need to know how much each goal is worth. KPI (key performance indicators) should be an action.

There are a lot other people who use analytics now, not just web developers, but also marketing, designers, etc. Each user uses different types of reports.

He then explains how analytics works and what it tells you...

Originally, web analytics was basically your log file and all we knew was a "hit." 3rd party analytics came along to fill this void.

Analytics is based on patterns.

6 Mistakes with Installing Analytics:
- Version control issues
- Not setting up your conversions or goals
- Forgetting to tag every page
- Each code snippet not having the right path in the JS file
- Putting the code at the bottom of the page (yea, you want it at the top)
- Multiple accounts using same code

Top 3 Mistakes When Setting up Campaigns
- Not setting up your goals
- Make sure everything has a unique tracking campaign
- Not testing destination URLs

You should know your conversion rate like you know your social security number. You can cross reference your conversion data with your analytics. Conversion tracking only tells you half the story, you need both.

Everyone should have campaign summary at the tip of their fingers. Get in the shoes of your editors, show them what is going on with the analytics. Assist tracking is important, but most tools dont do a great job tracking it. Call tracking, what he calls is the X factor.

Richard Zwicky, CEO, Enquisite who is a really good guy is now up. They focus on just SEARCH analytics, not global analytics, but search.

He is making everyone stand up!

He asks a bunch of questions and his point in this standing contest is to explain what segmentation is.

The market place is becoming more sophisticated. You need to leverage the tools so you can understand your customers better and market better to them.

Ecosystem: Collect, analyze, report, optimize, and monetize.

You need to track the life cycle of that user.

Will it blend? That is the question! George Wright is director and producer of the smash hit Will It Blend viral video series by BlendTec. It ranked as high as #3 for some time on YouTube's all time top viewed list with a staggering 5 million views in 3 days. The video series has increased BlendTec sales by over 500%. All this on a shoe string budget.

The Blendtec video marketing story is compelling and it stands in stark contrast to multimillion dollar ad budgets and corporate media buys.

The "Will It Blend" question also applies to Search Marketing today. We talk in terms of "universal search" or "blended results". Most SEO's know that you need a campaign that stretches accross all outlets from both organic and paid search to newsletters, video, and email marketing to make a large and long term impact on your bottom line results today.

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He's going to blend a rake!

How did they do it? This is the future and the way people are doing things from now on.

Brand awareness: he's been at Blendtec for 2.5/3 years. Blendtec back then had great products but not a good brand. The products have always been there but people didn't know about it. The idea is brand awareness through viral marketing.

He shows the video of "Will it Blend?" for the iPhone.

To understand how big of a deal it is, understand Blendtec: Back then, they made blenders in Utah in a small facility with 180 employees. They are awesome commercial products - high performance blending and dispencing equipment for restaurants, etc. The products are sold all over the world, but nobody knew about it -- it was a hidden brand.

They also make a home product - the Total Blender for the home. They took the same technology out of the commerical machines for a home machine.

Great products + weak branding = weak sales.

They realized that brand awareness was crucial. The big idea = will it blend? They didn't have a big budget for much (we're talking $50). So what do you do with $50? One day, they were walking through to the demo room where they show prospects the blenders. He saw a pile of sawdust on the floor. What was that? The owner of the company, Tom, tests the products by blending a 2x2 at full speed. The idea is to stress the blender.
- Video extreme blending - a common practice at blending unknown to the rest of the world.
They couldn't afford to make a commercial so they did it over social media sites - YouTube. They went out and bought willitblend.com, a lab coat, a six pack of coke, a rate, a rotisserie chicken, a bag of marbles -- and that was it. Three guys got together to blend marbles. The idea was to "just talk about it." They blended marbles first and then they distributed them. To date, 70-75 videos have been made. Every single experiment has blended. The only time there was something too tough for the blender to handle? They were blending Chuck Norris.

(He shows the video of these action figures. Chuck is blended but he then rose out of the ashes as part of the "cinematics.")

The idea is to make something part of social media that's fun and that people want to talk about.

What are the components to make a video viral? A lot of videos are posted but don't gain traction.
1. It has to be entertaining and worth watching. You have friends who have more friends. If the content is worth it, they'll cross the threshold and share with those people.
2. A lot of people light their cat on fire, put it on YouTube, and that's great. But what does that do? The idea here is corporate objective. For Blendtec, it was brand awareness. People needed to know about the product so that they could make a decision to buy it. If you blend marbles,
3. Sponsored by the manufacturer: sponsor your own work. Don't hire a company to do it for you. People will watch it if you sponsor it yourself.
4. Based on real people: put a lab coat on someone, keep them in their comfort zone, and let them be themselves. They have Tom in the videos -- and Tom in the video is the same as the Tom he knows. It's easy to reproduce -- Tom isn't acting.
5. Interactivity: interact with people. Look at comments and get suggestions of what to blend next.
On the first day, they had 5 videos - "try this at home" and "don't try this at home." They asked people to submit ideas of what to blend next -- and it went to George's Blackberry. He got so many requests at first that he had to shut down the forwarding service. Blendtec took advice from these people (30-40 people suggested the iPhone and once Blendtec listened, these people actively promoted the video. They became brand ambassadors.)
6. Simple user subscription - make sure people can subscribe.

Risks: The biggest risk is to not do it.
1. Surrender control of the message upon distribution, so you better be honest and accurate. Once upon a time, Blendtec blended the wrong magnets (ceramic magnets instead of neodininium magnets). Someone actually called them out.
2. Public scrutiny of content. It is free to put content out on the web and it's free for other people to combat it. To minimize that risk, just be honest.
3. Distribution is global - you cannot limit geographic location. It's called the World Wide Web for a reason.

Results:
65 million views on YouTube
120 million views on WillItBlend.com
200,000+ subscribers
Sales:
Total blender sales up 700%
Pull-through impact in commercial products - B2B and B2C
People now know who they are - brand awareness - retail and commercial

34th most subscribed channel of all time on YouTube

Media coverage:
- Lots of national TV including the Today show, iVillage Live, the History Channel, the Discovery Channel, The Big Idea, Food Network, Tonight Show
- Lots of local TV coverage
- Lots of print magazine like Internet Retailer Magazine, Wired, etc.
- Blogs: Engadget, Forbes, AdAge, NYTimes, WSJ, BusinessWeek
- Mention in Congress - someone said something about taking a bill and putting it in a Blendtec blender.
- International Buzz

Videos changed everything. Advertising has changed. Instead of making ads, think of making content.

The results continue to come in.

Wave of the future:
- Small companies can have a big presence. The rules have changed.
- Old school versus new school. It's not necessarily about taking out an ad in the newspaper. $83,000 ad - horse and buggy. It could be effective. They were able to take $50 and make a viral campaign that people talk about! The sky is the limit.

Moderator: Ken Jurina
Speakers:
Chris Knoch, Principal Search Consultant, Omniture
Jon Kelly, President, SureHits
Gerry Bavaro, Executive Chairman, Didit.com

Chris from Omniture:

Economy of Efforts - acknowledge your resources - determine key priorities and tactics.

Take a step back and understand what you are working with. Large scale keyword campaigns cause SEMers to consistently overestimate their resources and build unrealistic expectations.

Perform and honest review of your resources.

What kind of team do you have?

Internal, agency, engine?

Determine the true head count and capabilities. What is there expertise? What kind of tools do they have? Don't want to create an organizational structure without the ability to execute. Don't try to bite off more than you can chew.

What is most important to your campaign? What are the key priorities and tactics? Can't do everything at once. Do what gets you closest to your goal.

Targeting example: People thing more keywords is better. How much volume and cost savings are you getting from a massive build out? Sometimes the mentality is to do it as a badge of honor, or for pride. Think if it's actually going to improve performance.

Automate bidding: Most bid management systems look at click to conversion rates of keywords or portfolios of keywords. Most automated bid keywords would bid keywords downward. But is that the real priority?

Need to take a step back and dig into the numbers. Large keyword lists face resource constraints.

Make sure you are not following a new optimization trend because others are doing it.

Tactic: Organize your mess. Keyword classifications in bid management. All these people faced with campaign restructuring. What's the best way to do it? Do you want to organize by volume, performance, budget? Let financial performance be the key goal.

An example of how to do it in Omniture Search Center. Basically, labeling keywords with metadata such as "high volume". Find your keywords, and apply labels to them using Excel. Manage via these classifications. Keywords that are tagged as "high ROAS" are the ones to focus on first. Slice and dice data, and apply the right optimizations to them. Change the labels as necessary. Use different techniques for each classification. Set rules - such as position rule, performance rule, or portfolio rule. Create product families.

Focus on financial performance!

Gerry Bavaro from Did It:

Large Scale campaigns - beware more keywords doesn't necessarily mean more success. Don't forget, you pay for your keywords!

Your budget waste goes to the engines bottom line. Inventory may drive long tail, but what's the real gain?

Keyword additions reaches diminishing marginal returns fast.

Maximum returns at the top - the trick is affording it. Power terms get massive clicks, good conversion rates, and good CPC's. It's your go to list.

Segmentation - testing which keywords perform at the highest ROI.

Efficiency: Many companies and people spend more than they make. Efficiency is the new creativity. Creative people in marketing are the ones that know how to effectively pull the levers into the media buys and get the maximum output. With search, you have many levers. Lots to work with.

Most large campaigns are defined by how many keywords. Should ask how many segments you are running. A single keyword can break down into 5, 10, or 100 segments. Can have different values, desires, profitability. Recognizing the power keyword can have a geo overlay. Need to look at all the factors and figure out how to leverage them. Segmentation levers are there, more than ever, beyond keywords to marketing fundamentals.

Pick the clicks you want most and target to that human segment's predicted profitability. Your levers: Syndication, convents vs. search. Syndication site targeting in content networks (display ads?). Products purchased (keyword bid on vs. what was purchased). Age - (five age ranges on MSN). Gender (on MSN).

This data translates your business into search. Why do certain keywords get such high click through rates? Have to look past the keyword - you are buying audience - not just clicks.

Trend noticing is that average order value is going down. People are spending less, tightening the belt. How do you find the keywords that are giving you high order value and keep them running? You might have to drop your ROI. Where are people going on your site? Make sure tracking is in place, analytics is extremely important.

Segmentation drives better targeting. Breaking out the campaigns and figuring how to buy a higher value audience. Brings you closer to the holy grail. Want to maximize revenue per page. Tightening up the campaigns gives you inherent QS increases.

What's possible at large scale? Geographic segmentation is the easiest to do. The levers are there in front of you. A campaign running at a 3:1 aggregate ROI. Find out that NY, TX, and FL have 6:1 conversion rate. Can make better decisions based on this data.

Lifetime value segmentation: Crunch your customer file. Do certain geographies predict higher lifetime values?

Do certain initial purchases lead to latent revenue? Look at the full trail. When you segment - you can segment the segments. How do you tune the creative and landing pages?

In conclusion- It's the data from the high spend clicks that are the most valuable.

Jon Kelly, from SureHits wraps it up. Jon is one of the sharpest minds in the industry.

SureHits Manages large PPC accounts as an agency and for in-house products. Looks at 3 key areas:

1. Calculate: Click value

2. Reward: The user's choices

3. Watch: Your campaign data

Calculating click value: Profitability of conversion. Probability that a person will turn into lead, policy holder, or closed mortgage. Whenever starts a campaign, looks at a market model. Must think about the key drivers that drive probability of conversion in your market. In financial services - its geography, product, and request. Every market is different.

Wrong way, or old way - bucketing. Bucketing by geography, product, or request. The right way to manage the campaigns is by tagging keywords. Similar to a tag cloud on a blog. Tag them based on concepts of market model. Is it a state or city phrase? Mortgage product, refi product? Is it a request? What was it that the user was looking for?

Tags predict conversion of these keywords. In the mortgage market - a city phrase has negative value to them. It generally has a lower conversion rate than someone who doesn't. State has higher conversion rate. Someone who types in "rates" is less likely to convert than someone who types in "quote".

Reward the user choices. Search engine users give you a window into their brain. Searchers tell you what they are looking for. If you track that, and serve a page based on that, you'll do better converting. Need to serve back to the user what they are actually looking for.

Watching your data: City phrases don't work well in financial services market. Lots of brand phrases. "Tampa Bay Mortgage" might be a company name vs. the city modifier. If you are not that company, won't convert well. "Fake" tail phrases: Parked pages are a big part of search. We see in our campaign data lots of phrases that shouldn't have much traffic. The conversion rate will not be good.

Missed Geo-Targeting - lots of data at your disposal outside search engines. Does lots of geo-targeting. Compared two different states and noticed that TX conversion rate was abnormally low. Overlaid with US population. TX population is 30% greater than FL, but with roughly the same campaigns, 74% more traffic came from TX. That was strange. Investigated, and found that the traffic wasn't really from TX, and the conversion rate went up.

Another example, homonyms. "Mobile Alabama" is a classic example. "Mobile Homes" might refer to the noun (homes in Mobile AL) or the adjective (homes on wheels). Human looked at it and was easy to spot. You need automation for calculating keyword click value, day-parting, landing page testing and tuning. But the human intervention side you cannot overlook.

Exception analysis: Humans are much better at it than machines.

Follow Jon on Twitter - @jonkelly

Live coverage provided by Avi A. Wilensky of Promediacorp, a Manhattan based online marketing agency.

Moderator: Joe Laratro

Speakers:
Marshall D. Simmonds, Vice President of Enterprise Search Marketing, New York Times, on the web
Bill Hunt, Search Effectiveness Team Lead, IBM.com, Global Strategies
Ash Nallawalla, Traffic Manager, Yellow Online, Sensis Pty Ltd
Scott Polk, Sr. Manager of SEO Edmunds.com

Description: Do you have a large site with more than a million pages? This panel will look at the special issues surrounding mega-site SEO and SEM.

Session Notes:
Marshall is first up...
His perspective is both as an internal search specialist for New York Times, but they also consult with many major brands.

They spend a lot of time managing expectations. Must learn the different venaculars of the clients you are working with. Ask questions until you understand their business and their customers.

Find quick wins to get leverage and buy-in. Exlain the experience with metrics and dollars.

Like to approach each project with three different buckets: editorial, production and promotion. Little things like moving keywords to the front of the title tag, exposing the archives for additional content, and monthly network wided communications.

He also recommends having your site in a constant state of audit. Provide checklists to the staffs involved. For example the SEO team is constantly reviewing keywords and onsite basics. The people need to be empowered to make adjustments too.

For social media at TV Guide they established a social media person who became the brand embassador. This person was responsible for building online awareness.

Mistakes to avoid include walling off content, undercommunicating, not checking with IT/Production/Ad Team, not doing META tags, not talking to the people implementing the changes, and not setting proper expectations.

Bill Hunt is up next...

Monitor page level performance by breaking your keywords into tier 1,2 & 3 level phrases to help you focus on the task for getting them ranked.

Leverage your interconnected network by leveraging your large family of high quality relationships. If you are a major company you may have many sites to take advantage of... list your sites to see what servers they sit on. You may be able to find a lot of sites on differnt class C IP addresses and use them to help each other out from a content and link perspective.

When working with multiple SEM/SEO companies, make sure you are putting all the data together so that you can see the big picture and to allow you to focus on things that are working and things that are not. Compare PPC vs organic numbers to help you focus on terms that convert.

Feed the need for information and create compelling information consumers will pull and interact with.

Make sure you prepare for increase in traffic from offline marketing. Integrate them right from the planning process. Don't argue about who brought the traffic in, just convert it!

Next up is Scott Polk...

Scott is now with Bruce Clay, used to be with Edmunds.com. He is covering SEO friendly CMS and interanl projects.

Need to be able to customize and control the HTML output. SEO has to become part of the entire process from requirements gathering to project lifescycle to documentation.

SEOs must evangelize internally. Find SEO champions, offer training and education, make SEO part of the culture, develop relationships and then provide validation that what you did worked.

Ash Nallawalla is the final presenter...

SEO differs for very large sites:
- could be millions of pages, can just say "lets change our title tags"
- greater emphasis on site architecture and strategy
- web platform may not be search engine friendly
- duplicate content is pervasive
- often there are islands of information spread across a business
- you have to deal with trademark/copyright statements which may even discourage linking from others

Ash feels where the SEO sits in a company is often much lower than it should be. SEOs should be involved with senior management. SEOs need to spend a lot of time education sr. management to show them the importance of search.

URL length and parameters are critical. Smart site architecture will use good PR sculpting by properly implementing internal links.

Duplicate content can occure in multi-national sites, or where content is licensed from a special provider, or the company used muliple domain names to display the same website.

Ash was very careful about how they structured the title tags for deep pages. They made sure the tag was build based on the keyword or category used to get to the inner pages.

His suggested checklist:
- if you don't rank well consider hiring a 3rd party professional for review
- you may need internal SEO training
- may need a linking budget
- check your linking policy

These session notes were written by Arnie Kuenn from Vertical Measures a link building and website publicity company. Please excuse any typos or grammar issues, the session notes are written live and meant to be posted as soon as the session is over.

Brett Tabke, CEO, WebmasterWorld.com
Vanessa Zamora, Video Producer, SearchEngineWorld

They set up the scene with Vanessa sitting on a set up to do vlogging. Brett, basically talks about how their videos are going. Much of what he said, he said earlier in a session I covered. Here is a picture of the set up:

He goes on to talk about what they are doing, again, covered most of this in this session.

Brett then goes through the set up, gets a bit technical, I won't explain in detail because each set up will be different.

She is now doing a live vlog, reading off a teleprompter. She doesn't look nervous. She is good. He will post this to the home page of searchengineworld.com.

I think now she is going to edit the vlog live and then publish it. There are some issues getting her screen to show up on the live screen. There it goes. She opens up Sony Vegas and her clip.

I'll post these notes and add more later, if it will be helpful.

Tagging services have grown exponentially. Knowing which services to give attention too and which can be ignored is difficult without deep analysis and tracking. This session will look at the popular tagging services, how to get your visitors involved in tagging your stories and comments, and will explore the potential for increased traffic.

Moderator: Todd Malicoat
Speakers:
Dan Zarrella, Social Viral marketing Consultant, DanZarrella
Brian Breslin, CEO, Infinimedia, Inc.
Geoff Livingston, CEO, Author of "Now is Gone", Livingston Communications

Geoff is up first. Every (decent) social tool has tags. Think of the semantic web.
- Time moves quickly on the internet. Posts occur and they create conversations and memes.
- Tags track memes - think of the #pubcon hashtag.
- Social networks, bookmarking services, social search uses tags1

Inspiring tags:
- choose the right medium, bookmark your site to inspirate particiular tags, know what you want searched, campaigns can use specific hashtags, encourage the commuity to use a specific tag, have a hashtag/tag associated with the effort or content (calls to action)

Dan Zarrella is up next!
Twitter users are savvy social media users. They are the perfect audience. Twitter users share from blogs and social news sites.
* match avatars and names.
* Find social news Tweeters. Follow them (they'll probably follow you back). Follow their profiles.
* Make friends. It's called social media for a reason. People talk to you and you talk back.
* Listen and respond. Do something with what you hear.
* Link to Twitter. WWSGD plugin or a sidebar. Autoresponders are also good to leverage Twitter followers.
* Make it easy for users to share your content: Use a Tweet this button - it's like a mailto link: http://twitter.com/home?status=Title+of+post+http://example.com; TWitThis
* Post social links to Twitter - shorened URLs are blink links so give them a reason to click.
* Ask for the ReTweet but don't annoy your followers - save this for important links.

Brian Breslin talks about integration of these tags.
- Your objectives - build the community through the community, empower the community, and change your way of thinking
- The battle is for attention. How do you convert the attention into traffic? There are millions of users on social sites. Fish where the fish are. Then let the community take control.
It's only about community!

He gives a case study for theboasters.com - they were integrated into Facebook. Facebook has hundreds of millions of users and voting enthusiasts. They had a facebook app and it grew 20k users in 6 weeks!

How to get there: is your site a silo? Are you putting a gate around it or can people share/publish?
Implement Facebook connect - turn your site into a hybrid Facebook application.
- It can lower the barrier for entry for new users, they bring their freinds, it syndicates site interactions, distributes content to 160m users, low customer acquisition costs, create a facebook app so you own 100% of pageviews.
Distributed logins : OpenId, Social Graph API

Implementing it all: it's not trivial no matter what they tell you. A good programmer can tie your site into many platforms. Be sure to do this before starting a site.

Sharing is caring!

Moderated by Christine Churchill

We are live blogging this session from Salon B @ the Las Vegas Convention Center, PubCon 2008. Great ad copy is not enough in itself, absent effective conversion on the landing page. This panel discussed tips and tricks to "clean up" landing pages for enhanced performance, better conversion and great usability.

Brad Geddes, Director of Search Engine Marketing, LocalLaunch.com kicked things off. It's getting sweaty and serious her e @ PubCon as afternoon sets in. He's talking about "testing traffic, where to send the visitor."

Sometimes You Can Throw Out Conventional Wisdom
Informational queries are about the customer asking a question. He shows the example of "Candle burning times," sending the traffic to a comparison page vs. a product page. The comparison page is much more effective, which is different than many PPCs teach.

Local business queries, like kitchen remodeling, might offer choices like "about us" or a "kitchen remodeling page". Often the "about us" page converts better because validation of trust converts better than products. Again, that's not how we've always thought about things.

Narrow theme sites like "Chicago nanny services" returns better results for the homepage for the "nannies and families" site--as opposed to the "Chicago nanny page" where one can view Chicago resumes. Against conventional wisdom, the homepage converts better. Merchant accounts often end up on a form page. However, sending the traffic to a "compare options" page to showcase different programs, with information and links to forms might work better. All of these examples defy conventional wisdom and focus on the dialog with the customer.

Brad suggests that we continue the selling and branding process after the conversion. Re-market to the "thank you" page with loyalty programs, email sign up or suggested products.

The Total Consumer
Offline consumer behavior reflects online. Map out real life activities like "Monday before second payday." Nobody's buying things. Second payday of the month, that's when customers might be buying things. So at the beginning of the month, use a newsletter tactic offering a discount. Run the email right before people get paid. At the end of the month go for selling more expensive products, when customers have more disposable cash.

It's not just the page layout, however the layout is very important. Test where to send the traffic. Test changing conversion hook when necessary. Don 't forget to also test ad copy in conjunction with the landing page. As marketers we are all wired showcase benefits to the product user. It's highly effective to showcase benefits to the shopper, like gift cards and discounts.

Kate Morris, Search Engine Marketing Manager, RateGenius is speaking on the basics...landing page "necessities."
Call To Action! Do not have a landing page without a call to action. She flagged this as the most important takeaway and highlights several case studies that fall down in this area. Keep your forms as short as possible. The general rule is to not ask questions that don't need to be asked. She is showing a page that is very text heavy.

Your call to action should always be "above the fold." This means to place it on the page in the first line of site. Make the content relevant. Give them what they're searching for."Make the content relevant!" She shows example after example.

Be brief, people have short attention spans. Avoid "Back Button Buzz Kills." If users are looking for information, then give them the information. It's SO basic. The exception for the 'brief rule" is when detailed information is sought. White space can be your friend when used effectively for applied design. "If you have a button, then make it look like a button" and use pictures like a "roadmaps."

There are 2 schools of thought regarding navigation on a PPC landing page, keep them prisoner or let them roam the site. The correct answer is to test both scenarios to find out for sure what really works. And of course, never start a campaign without tracking. "You will lose SO much money if your don't track your campaigns." Benchmark conversion against other campaigns.

Watch the bounce rate and keep in mind that it's relative to the product. 30% is awesome, 50% OK and over 70%, it's time to test and revise. Use Google Analytics or the CrazyEgg overlay feature to see what links are followed on your site.

Lily Chiu, Senior Sales Engineer, Omniture is speaking. Her .ppt deck is called "Every Page Is a Landing Page." She gives the standard definition of optimization, "making the best of anything." Segmentation and relevance are the two key focuses for conversation optimization. Divide your audience to where it makes an impact and deliver relevance to foster engagement. "Deliver the right content to the right searcher at the right time."

Connect your on-site experience by trying to optimize the end to end customer experience. Think about the offsite experience (like an ad) being the "start" of the user experience. She's started to see a lot more of a siloed optimization approach, where various campaign nodes do not "talk" to each other.

She shows a McCain ad vs an Obama ad. One was a fundraising form, with a below the fold call to action, and the other a tax cut calculator. The calculator engaged users and the Obama landing page completely meets the visitor's intent of answering the ads promise. The tool helps the searcher find out how his/her taxes would be affected by giving personal information. The interesting fact here is that there is a wealth of information here provided by the user-- like income, dependents, zip code, email address, mortgage balances, saving for retirement. [Marty note: Obama totally smoked McCain on the Internet.]

A/B (Multivariate) testing is rapidly becoming the norm. A show of hands to Lily's poll indicated that most of the room does. She says to take action by uncovering problems, testing content, segmenting, and delivering relevant content. We need to do more with less. Tests and targets are tasty on their own, but together they become more powerful.

Fight Inertia, start simple, know your end goal and define your hypothesis. Test theories and create distinct alternatives. Lily is showing very compelling examples of multivariate testing patterns, drilled down into deep analytics for actionable insight. At the end of the day, proper landing page testing is all about a massive commitment to probing, asking deep questions, plugging into the placement of words and objects on the page.

Which combination of landing page and ads resulted in the highest margin? What can we try differently? How can we allocate different regions on the page to dedicate key placement of objects and words, to reinforce the intent and referral source of the user. She is showing landing page segmentation based on eHarmony (one of her clients). Because the client has a lot of information about the person seeing the page, they truly tailor the landing pages by demographics.

Start with tools and information about customers. Make sure that if someone starts a campaign on the acquisition side, make sure folks on the site side know about it. Stay ahead of the curve. "Hope is not a strategy."

Marty Weintraub is President of aimClear, an Internet Focused Advertising Agency in Duluth, Minnesota

Moderator: Joseph Morin

Angela Lauria, VP and General Manager, Commission Videos is first up. In short, they paid videos with advertisers. Publishers can earn CPMs up to $7. It can go live in minutes and it helps increase visitor page views and time spent on your web site. Advertisers can reach niche users within the long tail of the web. They can generate highly targeted impressions.

She then demos her site, so go to http://commissionvideos.com/ and check it out.

Bob Bahramipour, VP of Ad Operations, YuMe is up next, but it is not him, it is a sub in. They work with publishers in the video space as a technology partner for delivering ads. They are number 8 in comscore for ad focus rankings. They have developed relationships with many agencies.

Ad Formats that they support include in-stream video ads (pre rolls, mid rolls or post rolls), in banner video ads, companion banners, interactive overlays, branded player skins, real time text and logo creative customization and display and rich media ad placements. They sell 70% prerolls.

They do player integrations with SDKs for about 40 players. They can call in several ad networks to work within one video.

They work with your current ad sales team, then they sell through their own sales team, then they have exclusive ad partners and they have an ACE service (an optimization service for all your other ad networks) and finally they have a FeedMe service.

Now Joe starts asking questions, not sure if there is another presentation from this angle. If not, then we have 45 minutes of Q&A time, which I guess is good, but seems long.

Yup, seems like Mort Greenberg, Local Integrated Media VP Sales, NBC Universal didn't make it.

Is Social Media & Search a Love Story or a War Story?
Location: Salon C

Is the intersection of search and social media a train wreck waiting to happen or is it the "not search" based traffic we have long been seeking? This session will explore that intersection from the webmaster, site owner and publisher points of view.

Moderator: Lawrence Coburn
Speakers:
David Wallace, CEO, SearchRank
Chris Winfield, President, 10e20, LLC
Liana Evans, Director of Internet Marketing, KeyRelevance
Bill Hartzer, Search Engine Optimization Manager, Vizion Interactive

David Wallace is up first.

Excuses for not doing it:
1. Lack of control - within social media environments, people are afraid that people will talk about them or to them. It used to be one-way communication with no interaction. But they're already talking about you, so join in!
2. No one to monitor: having social media profiles is like having little websites that need constant monitoring. It's not an excuse: hire people!
3. No money: unless you're going to do a customized theme or develop a widget, it costs NOTHING to set up and get involved in social media.
4. Corporate red tape: when every decision requires multiple processes, it's no wonder why some people are slow.
5. Blogging excuses:
* we cannot afford to install a blog. There are thousands of templates so it's not costly. There are a lot of free blogging platforms.
* we have no one to write for us. There are a lot of writers out there that you can outsource to and you can get people doing things for $25/post (or even less).
* we have nothing to say. What can you say? Cover news in your specific industry, write opinionated posts related to news and events, announce new products and special offers, write indepth product reviews, highlight customer testimonials and praise, do a Q&A style of posts, and publish company news (the more personal, the better)

Benefits:
1. Branding opportunities - in the same manner that it is important for companies to make sure they have all the various domain names that relate to their brand, it is now equally important to make sure they secure their brand on social media sites.
2. Build link popularity: link bakc to your original website within original social sites, and once the profiles are indexed, they will count as inbound links to your main site.
3. Attracting traffic - depending on the industry, you may be able to get traffic. examples: entertianment industry on MySpace, Will It Blend series on YouTube
4. Interaction with the public: some people fear transitioning from "talking to" clients to interacting with customers, but this is a great opportunity to get into that.
5. Networking opportunities: trying to be the lone ranger of your industry is not always the most productive way of running your business.
6. Control the SERPs for your brand and product names: utilize your own web sites, social media properties, and blogs to literally control the first 3 pages of search results for your brand and product names.

Bottom line: don't let fear of the unknown keep you from being active. If you have a website, you should have a blog. If you don't see the benefits of link building/networking/branding/etc, at least get your brand before somebody else does.

Up next is Chris Winfield. His presentation is about Google and Digg.
Google is the leading search engine and Digg is the leading social site.
62.9% of searches are done via Google. Digg says that they have about 27 million uniques and 250m pageviews per month.

How do they work from a marketer's perspective?
- For Google, you choose keywords, optimize your site, get incoming links, rank #1, and it can take days to years.
- For Digg, you create viral content, submit it to Digg, get it on Digg's homepage, and it can take about 24 hours.

Algorithms: both sites have algorithms
- For Google, it's on-page factors, age/history of domain, inbound links
- For Digg, it's the submitter (power user vs. new user), voting pattern, buries, history of domain

Traffic:
- For Google, it depends on what you're ranking for, sustained traffic (you'll get traffic as long as you rank)
- For Digg, you can get between 10k and 50k visitors within a 24 hour period, and the first few hours are best (Digg effect)

Blogs:
Google:
- Sustained traffic - people who are interested in what you have written about
- Capturing attention - Aaron Wall
Digg:
- Get your content out to thousands of people quickly and will build out a following.

Commercial sites:
Google:
- Just in time marketing
- Get your products in fornt of people looking for them
Digg:
- (Caveat: It's hard to get it out there.)
- Get thousands of new people exposted to your brand the way they want to consume it.

Magazines:
Google:
- Hundreds of thousands of paes and opportunities for visitors
- Stronger trust and authority, easier to rank
Digg
- Traffic = pageviews= ad impressions
- First mover advantage
- Bloggers look at Digg. People read blogs. They share. It gets a lot of eyeballs.
- Create as many touchpoints as possible - let many people access your content from a variety of places.

In conclusion:
- Use a multipronged approach.
- View these sites as complmentary - not replacements of one another
- Don't forget to go niche

Li Evans is up next.

She shows the rise of social media in an image. It's a good image. I can't tell where it's from but it's creative commons licensed.
Social media used to be one-way communication and many wonder why they should care.

Here's what social media isn't: quick fix for marketing plans, substitute for SEO or PPC, silver bullet for failing strategies. It shouldn't be taken lightly. It shouldn't be done by interns.

Social media is huge. You can't hold it in your hand. You need to know where people are.

Another image is shown: video sharing is huge. Then you have social networks (linkedin, facebook, myspace), photo sharing, blogs, wikis, rating sites, and forums and message boards are still part of this picture.

Know who is in your audience and where they are. She shows a graph of what people are doing: how many people are watching and listening - it's increasing. She says that you should read Charlene Li's Groundswell.
She shows another graph:
- Creators - bloggers
- Critics - people that comment
- Collectors - Digg, delicious users
- Joiners - facebook and myspace users
- Spectators - feed reader users
- Inactives - they're on the Internet but aren't involved in social media
What people are doing: they're sharing videos and they're participating in forums. Forums are not dead!

How do I know if this social stuff really works? Fortune 1000 companies plan to invest in social media in 2009. 50% of those will be considered failures. Why? Goals aren't established. Establish and define goals!

She says that Barack Obama used social media to get the votes: he understood everyone - the women, independent voter, blue collar people, the young voters, etc. He held a conversation on my.barackobama.com. He had YouTube - 19 million channel views, 133,000 subscribers, 1800 videos. He utilized video like nobody else could. It inspired a video - "Yes we can". He even has a LinkedIn profile! He had 3million friends on Facebook. He used BlackPlanet to reach out to others.
Results: we know he won but what else - he got 56 females voting and 43% males. The African American community overwhelmingly voted for him (BlackPlanet, remember?). The young voters - 66% voted. He got the independent vote - 52%. He got 55% of the blue collar vote.

Takeaways: know your audience, goals, start a conversation and don't try to control it, encourage sharing, and be social

Last up is Bill Hartzer who will talk about marrying your organic results with social media.

Old style SEO versus new style SEO:
Old style - we created content on our site, did onsite optimization, got links from directories and reciprocal links, bought links for Google PageRank and to advertise. We wrote articles and submitted them to directories, and we created linkbait articles. The problem was that the link bait wasn't being noticed. Now we're in the age of "new social media SEO."
New style - create content on site, on page optimization, links = authority directories, but now we write articles on our own site. We can create unique articles on industry authorities. Linkbait is on our own site. We use social media to get noticed. Success in social media = getting noticed in search.

Keys to successful social media: regular participation, voting and commenting often, adding friends, putting your site in your profile, understanding that there are niche sites and submitting to the appropriate ones, using social media to get noticed and to get a market share of links.

Market share of links - as you get noticed, that will give you an organic boost. How do you get them? Example: news in your industry - watch for newsworthy content in your industry, react quickly/post or add content to site, quickly submit to sicial media for links, go back and edit/update as necessary

RSS feed promotion: promot the RSS feeds that will help in organic results. Take advantage of the RSS feed of your site, your social media submissions, and the feed of those who link to you. Promote sites, RSS feeds, articles of those who link to you. Remember: a link to you is more powerful if the page that link is on has more links.

Social Media and search: more social media gives you more opportunities to be found.

Moderator: Christine Churchill
Speakers:
Ken Jurina, President, Epiar Inc
Larry Mersman, Vice President, Trellian
Wil Reynolds, Founder, SEER Interactive
Stoney deGeyter, President, Pole Position Marketing

Wil Reynolds starts the session:

OPD: Other People's Data. Free ways to get other people's data.

Amazon is a great place to start. What's hot on Amazon might be a good area to look at. Helps determine top selling products in a category. If you have constraints in web content areas like drop downs, Amazon might help you out.

Google Trends: Doing work for a client that sells DVD. Noticed on Google Trends that Entourage and Flight of the Concords were hot. Used this spike to help sell DVDs. Trends gives times when keywords spike. Great for PPC day-parting. If you offer content that becomes popular due to news, you want to know what trends are hot, to put up on the site, and what to remove. Google Trends has an RSS feed. Allows you to parse out that data to get the content you want, without having to go to the Trends site to retrieve it.

Google Insights: Google Trends on crack. Can download the data in CSV format. Can get an intern or VA to take this data and spot trends. Can use Firefox macro plugins to create click macros to automate the process.

Google Suggest gives you keywords in the order you type them. Want to use multiple tools to eliminate the flaws. Based on timeframe, data changes.

Quintura: Very cool tool. Gives a graphical representation of keywords, and helps you get out of the typical "search box" bias. Gives you suggestions that you may not of thought of.

Delicious: Shows how people categorize information. How are people labeling things in different ways? Helps you get out of the box.

MSN Adlabs: Shows related queries and % breakdown.

Make sure you filter by region, otherwise the data might be biased.

Shopping.com: Has a consumer demand index. Mysimon.com does the same thing. Gives alot of information! Multiple categories, hundreds of keywords!

Query Google for "top searches" get lots of lists of keywords, across many verticals. Many online stores give "best sellers".

SEOMoz: Has a great keyword popularity cool that brings in data from top sources.

Queried Google for "powered by SLI" which powers internal searches. Lots of sites powered by SLI make public the internal search queries.

Ken Jurina takes the floor:

Presentation titled : "10,000 negative keywords - maximizing the positive effect of negative keywords."

Gives an example of silly query "drug rehab dead cats". Many adds show up. Doesn't matter because there are many examples. A serious one - "hosting tuperware". Many hosting companies come up! This exists out there. So much $ and quality score is being lost to lack of negative keywords.

Idea is to filter out irrelevant queries that ad should not be displayed on. Otherwise, lower your CTR and QS. What makes it negative? Not just the typical "cheap", "free" obvious examples. Look at your analytics. Look at what's not converting. Look at your click data.

There's a cycle. You start with reducing irrelevant impressions. Has an effect on CTR and QS. Affects bounce rate. Effects price. Conversion rate. Reduce wasted ad spend. Cost per sale drops. Results vary, but will always improve your ROI.

Shows how to set up negative keywords on Adwords, YSM, and MSN. Yahoo calls negative keywords "excluded words". Google gives you up to 10,000 NKW's per campaign. Yahoo gives 250. MSN has a 1024 character limit.

Are you really going to come up with every possible permutation? Exact match is great but its cumbersome and inadequate for reaching the long tail. Combined with phrase and broad match, negative KW's help capture the long tail you would never reach with exact match. Ultimately a combination of exact, phrase, broad and maximized NKW's is the best way to approach paid search.

Using dynamic keyword insertion in your ads landing pages? NKWs filter out bad ad impressions/traffic.

How do you create a list of NKW's? Use your intuition first. Use a thesaurus. Talk to consumers. Set goals in analytics - then split paid and organic traffic. Scan through past referring phrases for terms that did not convert, had high bounce rates , or were trash.

Google Search Query Performance Report is also very valuable. Make sure you enable the proper settings to create a usable report.

Use typical keyword tools: Google Suggest, Yahoo! or Ask. MSN Adlabs, Keyword Discovery, Wordtracker.

Shows case study of Vintage Tub and Bath. They have a complex ad campaign. After implementing a large NKW list, saw PPC spend decrease 20%.

Shows another case study of a company doing lead generation for satellite TV. Already had 11,000 NKWs. Increased the size of the list and saw a dramatic improvement.

Summary: Simple concept, but needs to be revisited. Should maximize the limit the engines give you for NKWs. It's a vital part of every PPC campaign. Find the low hanging fruit. It's a no brainer.

Stoney deGeyter:

Will talk about how to organize keyword research.

Broke the process down into 4 distinct phases:

Phase 1: Find the core terms. 1-3 words that accurately describe the content of any given page. Look at what each page is about. Any one page can have lots of core terms. A core term should not be too broad, and should reflect the intent of the searcher.

How do you find the core terms? Look at your Title Tags, Meta Tags, Description, and content. Look at navigation elements, product names, elements. After you comb through site - do some brainstorming. Look at your competitors. Look at their tags. Document them in spreadsheets. Next use tools such as Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery, and your own server logs. Look through all these data sources. Once you have your list, and it should be long - prioritize them. Sort by search volume. Check that your terms are relevant to your site and offer. What's your profit margin on each term? Sort by which terms make the most profit. Ability to meet demand - optimize for the products that you have in stock.

Phase 2: Once you have the core terms, create terms and add qualifiers. For example "school supply" can yield "discount school supplies". Expand core terms individually into long lists. Factor in finding search phrases is time. Don't rush through this. Start eliminating - look for negative words. Get rid of terms like "cheap" right away (if applicable). Take your core terms and split or combine them. If you have a core term, you might want to combine it with another core term. Group your most similar terms together. Avoid inconsistent spellings - separate them out (duffle bag vs. dufflebag). If your core term produces over 150 search phrases, split them out.

Phase 3: Analyze and Eliminate - Look at ways to figure out how they are going to work together. You start with single word phrases with high volume, but not targeted. There are exceptions, but overall single word phrases produce little ROI and are a lot more time consuming to optimize for. Put them at the bottom of the list. Multiple word phrases have lower search volume, 2-3-4 word phrases can be very good terms. Phrase variations - stemming - singular, plurals, -ings, etc. Add them to your terms if relevant and makes sense. Very little extra effort. Change word order can help. Sometimes can change meaning, sometimes it wont. As long as its relevant, it should take much extra time. Localized phrases - target areas geographically. Do you research as if you operate nationally, then add qualifiers - add zip codes, regions, counties, cities, etc. It's a good way to narrow down your traffic and target your audience. Convertibility - is that keyword truly relevant? Eliminate phrases that don't convert. Search volume is important, but sometimes you want to start with the low hanging fruit. Weigh the pros and cons. Want to make sure that overall targeting words that get traffic. Look at queries that are information based. Queries that ask questions. Usually good for branding or building audiences, or help produce content. Generally not best converting phrases, but as you build brand it will help increase traffic. Don't discount informational queries.

Phase 4: Organize for success - Segment the keywords into a) research words b) shop words c) buy words. Depending on which keyword you target, want to send to the right landing page. Researchers are looking for general info - don't know what they want - may never ever convert. So they might not be valuable - but again - can help branding. Shop keywords are those who have narrowed down what they want and are comparing features. Sony vs. Samsung, etc. Then you have the buy keywords. These people are looking for trust, credibility, price. Have the product in mind. Optimize specific product pages for buy terms. Each page can target 5-15 phrases. Group qualifiers with similar meaning, synonyms. Group qualifiers by relatedness. Let the content guide the keywords. Make sure the words fit together. Don't use up too much space - leave room for your message. Keep the message consistent. Distraction - don't let the keywords stand out and be overly obvious. Make sure the words flow. Don't stuff. Have good sentence structure. Adjust as necessary. Scrap keywords that don't work. Be creative with how you do that.

Conclusion: Don't rush. This is very valuable. Fewer mistakes in this stage, less time spent fixing them.

Lastly, Larry Mersman:

Keyword research is the most important part of SEO. Find the words that customers use to find your site! It's about gauging performance, and see how well they are working. Test. Test. Test.

Not about the words YOU want to be found for. The obvious may not be the best choices. The idea is that there are many options to draw traffic to site. Lots of keywords that you are not using = leaving money on the table.

Case Study: NeedMoreBeer.com - TITLE TAG = "the finest beer from Germany, online". "Beer from Germany" had few searches. "German Beer" has lots of search volume. A simple change, made a huge difference.

Keyword research lists: Brainstorming, Customer Feedback, Advertising Materials, Log Files, Competitors, Keyword Research Tools, Exhaustive Keyword Generators.

Use multiple tools. Not a single tool will give you the complete picture.

Combine your keyword lists. Use related search terms. Many tools will do this. Optimize around those.

Misspellings: Huge opportunity that people miss. Money left on the table.

Competitive Intelligence: Look for click through data. Look at what is working well for competitors.

In closing - whatever market you are in, you need to do your homework. You have to use the tools available. Need to look at the long tail. People are becoming savvier searchers. Build your list then TEST, TEST, TEST!

Live coverage provided by Avi A. Wilensky of Promediacorp, a Manhattan based online marketing agency.

Moderator: Jake Baillie

Speakers:
Brian Combs, Senior VP & Chief Futurist, Apogee Search
Greg Boser, President, WebGuerrilla LLC
Amanda Watlington, Ph.D., APR

Description: We have had over a year now with the changes to the stock SERP, and it is clear that the 10 little blue link SERP isn't what it used to be. Today's SERP is more complex than ever. This session will examine today's SERP with its images, videos, stock quotes, weather and other entities, and explore how this can radically change SEO.

Session Notes:

Up first is Brian Combs...
Blasting throught the first few slides in order to get to the meat of the presentation.

Google says universal search is the largest revision they have made in the last few years. Brians feels this was done to increase their inventory. Users are roughly twice as likely to click on a vertical/blended search.

Blended search is clearly a game changer. Not much competition on MSN or Yahoo. Google is displaying video and image results.

Blended search seems to be more appealing to the eye. The opportunity is there for website owners to capture more search real estate.

Some Best Practices:
- it is more complicated
- use your current digital inventory or create some new
- define the search landscape for your category
- start with your images, optimize them
- local should next area to target
- create and manage blog
- keep your messaging consistent across all your media

Next up is Amanda Watlington...
She started in 1995 and feels universal search it truly changing everything. Today it is all about marketing and IT.

The SEO must be the conductor, not the soloist. Video, images, maps go beyond the scope of most SEOs. Find people within the company that are knowledgable in these areas. Even items like news need to be included. Is there a PRF firm? With images, who owns them? Who will let you have access to them?

Submissions and rankings are long gone. Rankings have lost their meaning. Shopping results often appear in the first position now. Reviews are starting to appear in the results. News is also appearing high in results - even if on temporary basis.

In a recent survey more that 50% of searchers (out of 87 million) saw universal search results. Pictures draw you in and are often clicked on.

YouTube now exceeds the number of searches that Yahoo! gets. Need to consider sites like eBay, YouTube, Flikr, etc.

We must set new priorities and forge new relationships in order to maximize universal search results.

Inventory digital assets: Begin by assessing the site itself. Evaluate current optimization: CMS, meta, images, pdf's, and other elements. Identify gaps: look for low hanging fruit: products that have best ROI?, local search?, research PDFs? Then decide what makes the most sense to add. Build a plan of attack: create best practice documents to assist others not involved in process, develop templates, train support staff, set new KPI for new types of optimization like YouTube or news releases.

Build a plan that is appropriate for the business not for the search engines. Plan proof of concept indicators. Create baseline data to ascertain your current level of performance and then measure the results.

The rules have changed but the expectations have not!

Greg Boser is up next and does not use a PowerPoint presentation. Speaking from the panel he says...

He is not sold on the universal search yet. He feels the core of your focus today should still be organic search results. He feels too many companies are chasing the buzz and not the reality.

Not convinced the ROI is there yet. His strategy is to use the existance of universal search to help shape the planning of your SEO and marketing.

Local search is critical. It is something all of us can manage if you have a physical listing & location. However it is very difficult to compete against local search if you do not have a listing in the local results at the top of the page. It may be better to try other terms.

Get your organic search in order before attacking universal search as you can get lost and overwhelmed in all that could be done.

For bloggers, he warns against using Flikr to host images. He recommends that you take the time to download the images, give credit, tag them and host them on your own blog.

These session notes were written by Arnie Kuenn from Vertical Measures a link building services and website publicity company. Please excuse any typos or grammar issues, the session notes are written live and meant to be posted as soon as the session is over.

Moderated by Jon Kelly

We are live blogging this session from Salon D @ the Las Vegas Convention Center, PubCon 2008. PPC and affiliate marketing make amazing bedfellows, but present a number of classic challenges. This session presented "issues" facing campaign managers and affiliates from both points of view.

Adam Jewell, Search Engine Marketing Specialist, NetPlus Marketing Inc. calls his .ppt deck, "How to Work In Harmony With Your affiliates." He is talking about making campaigns as relevant as possible to create a really "nice conversation." The website's goal is singular: to make as much money as possible. The affiliate and merchants' needs converge in this respect.

Is your paid search program really that good?
Is the cost of marketing from PPC less than your affiliate program? Try moving dollars around. Do you have a traditional agency that puts up a few keywords and calls it a day? Test an affiliate network. [Marty note: and tell your agency to grow up!] Is the emphasis of your PPC program on managing bids or selling more stuff? Try thinking from the users's perspective and fix the site. Do you use different match types? Grow, be better...Do you have regulatory issues that dictate specific ad copy must be used? Do you have a strong brand? How in touch is your affiliate/merchant relationship with realities of these issues?

Why Affiliate Marketing
Because the economy is "in the tank," virtually everyone is concerned and cutting back on spending. Your budget may get cut. That said, it's hard to find talented and affordable search talent. Vendors understand that affiliate marketing can be a great way to get good search talent at a reasonable cost. You need to be able to trust affiliates and know that they adhere to bidding rules on brand terms and any restrictions on 3rd party terms. Focus should not be solely on bid management or creating a conversation with your customers.

As a merchant, stay tuned to the perspective of the affiliate: There's time and money to put in up front and no guaranteed payoff. The affiliate wants to be reasonably sure it will be a profitable endeavor. Affiliates are looking for consistency so, as a merchant, watch out for fast or frequent changes in program terms (lowering payout percentage, major site redesigns, change in cookie length) because they can cause problems. Both merchant and affiliate alike are invested in the ability of the site to convert traffic. Ask if consumers easily find exactly what they seek?

High return rates can be OK, so long as they are disclosed up front. This is a big deal because the affiliates can get bitten by high return of goods, cutting into the profit. Affiliates should ask merchants to disclose up front what the return rate is. Ask whether the first or last click gets credit for the sale in case of users who come back by different referral methods.

Adam is big on using ads to having a "conversation" with the user. Essentially, he's talking all about relevance. The fundamentals of search marketing remain timeless and true: greet the user with the answer to their questions. Follow up by solving their inquiries, in specificity and with great usability and straight up pitches, reflecting the true value of the product. He stressed that the Ad headline is much more important than it's location on an affiliates page or SERP.

Maximize Revenue and Minimize Heartaches
Do the math, PPC vs Affiliate. What generates sales at a lower total cost. Take brand terms out of that calculation. If the affiliate is lower, consider opening up use of your display URL to affiliates. If necessary, file trademark papers and work with a few affiliates for direct linking. Try giving the affiliate manager and the affiliates some respect in the organization. Test, test, test and get the website conversion rates up. Work towards consistent policies and payouts, because affiliates need to plan for their businesses too. Bonuses and tiers can result in less promotion of your program.

Consider the "reality of search." Affiliates have lots of choices. If your terms restrict how high they can bid with their sites, someone else's ad will show up on their site in the spot instead. Put politics aside, focus on the bottom line and take the steps that are most profitable for your business. Your affiliate investment should have no budget cap. You're buying money.

----
David Naffziger, President & CEO, BrandVerity, Inc.is speaking about "Proven Strategies for Managing Affiliate PPC." He says PPC is universal. As an ecommerce site, the question is not IF, but HOW you should manage affiliate PPC. He says Google Analytics doesn't cut it. It's important to understand the contribution of all channels to a sale. Successful merchants measure and value the steps in the purchase process including first click, intermediate clicks and the final click. "Bucket" affiliates by contribution share and reward those processes that contribute the most to the bottom line.

For merchants, best practices are to create clear policies that are simple and clear to foster lower rates of abuse. Make them easy to understand, communicate, work verbally and send email backup. There is no room for misinterpretation. Make it simple. David shows a number of examples of overly complicated policies. Put the policy on the website, affiliate newsletter and other marketing materials and strive for consistency through all channels. Carefully document any exceptions you allow.

Merchants should not expect to know the details of an affiliate's PPC campaign because affiliates invest significant time creating and managing their campaigns. Remember that, in some instances, your affiliates actually compete against your in-house PPC.

Keep a Clean Program
Dirty programs attract abusers, deter super-affiliates and cost money. That said, not all abuse is intentional. Respond quickly to discourage further abuse and, no, you cannot detect most abuse manually.

Marty Weintraub is President of aimClear, publisher of aimClear, a Minnesota, Duluth Blog.

It got the buzz - it got the press - and it got your attention. Everyone is loving talking and playing social media. However, you blog, you tweet, you Facebook – so now what? Social media is the new frontier with new rules and players. Skeptics don’t get social media because they don’t see how they can measure results. In today’s world a mention on a social media Web site is just as valuable as getting your name in The New York Times, but not all companies understand that. Many CEOs still believe that traditional media are the only media that matter, but think again. To convince these skeptics companies have been pulling their hair out trying to show them the value of a blog or tweet, but don’t know how to convince the non-believers. This session will look at the importance of social media hits and how to measure them, what you can do to convince non-believers, and what you can do to show them that social media is just as good as print media.

Moderator: Roger B. Dooley
Speakers:
Guillaume Bouchard, CEO, NVI
Kent Schoen, Facebook Product Manager, Facebook
Brian Carter, Director of Search Marketing, Fuel Interactive
Warren Whitlock, Social Media Strategist, BestSellerAuthors.com

Warren Whitlock is up first.

He says that everyone should be using Twitter or they should go home. (Early adopters like me wince at this call for "please use Twitter" 2 years too late.)

There are thousands of people on Twitter who watch what you are doing. Communicate with your customers, listen to what they say, and respond. Be authentic.

Three stages of Twitter acceptance:
- Denial: why would anyone care what I ate for breakfast?
- Relucant acceptance: I have a TWitter account but I don't see any traffic.
- Meaningful Connections: How did I ever live without Twitter?
- Last night, Twitter had 1 billion Tweets!

He equates this with a small-town shop. Would you shoplift from that store if it was the only one? No, then you'd be banned. In the 20th century, we had mass production followed by mass media and mass distribution. Everybody now has the same thing. Today there are more choices and we're all publishers. The more you give, the more others will want to help you. How do you get more followers? Give more. Share good new things with people.

Why should you be on Twitter? That's where your customers are and they control your market.

http://twittinsecrets.com - from the guy behind "The Secret".
http://twitterhandbook.com

Next up is Brian Carter. His presentation is on the Social Media Trifecta - the three pronged strategy to achieving online awesomenymity.

What is the Trifecta? It's a name for blog + bookmarking + Twitter. Why is that so effective? Optimization getting the results you want faster.
1. Identify your goal
2. Establish a measurement/measurement
3. Where are you at?
4. Plan route to goal - where you're at to where your goal is
5. Let results guide progress
In social media, if you want to succeed, you need a brand that is more powerful than your target market's brand. You need a goal that is more powerful.
For a route to your goal, you need to choose something that works.

Trifecta results: he was not public in this industry until the end of March, but since, he's spoken at 4 conferences. He has gotten regular columns in prestigious blogs. He has established good contacts with big brands.

Why does the trifecta work? Blog is authority, the bookmark is social proof, and Twitter is attention.
- Blogs are like guacamole, bookmarking is spicy, and Twitter is hot.

Twitter - you can crowdsource. Networking is like team building.

Next up is Guillaume Bouchard.

Catalyze natural link growth. The realistic role is that you should produce link worthy content and take luck out of the equation.

Digg - onsite voting, it's getting tough to succeed and you can get buried. Success: home page. (My note: Digg sucks.)
StumbleUpon: toolbar voting, not as tough to succeed, can get down-thumbed, lower total and more gradual spike. Success: recommendation surge.
Worth a look - propeller.com, Reddit.com, Mixx.com, and Buzz.Yahoo.com

Digg - then and now
- Way more votes required, less illegitimate content, hot in upcoming is not equal to homepage, and recommendation engine exists

StumbleUpon strategies
- Sending a page to a friend FORCES a view
- Should be tagged with popular categories
- Reviews increase chances of views exploding

5 factors to hit Digg's frontpage:
1. Content: give quality (they like to lack but will deried failed attempts at humor, they appreciate hard work but deried build-content quick schemes, they like learning, they follow the community's dis/approval, they do not like spam/SEO/marketing) and save time (they don't want too much text, they want to be able to skim and get the basic idea, they don't like having to click unnecessarily, they resent when your server can't handle their visits, and they like being able to vote right away)
- SEO concerns: keyword use (blog titles for backlink with great anchor text, page titles can have more keywords), interlinking (wait until after the push to interlink strategically, post regularly to dilute), 301 redirection (resist the temptation and let the content be)
2. Platform: both digg staff and users value trust. Unfortunately, trust isn't easy to learn.
The numbers- trusted domains account for 90% of the homepage stories. Of non trusted domains, 30% are images, 10% are videos. There are 100-125 stories that hit the homepage every day.
- Bottom line: Only 6-8 text articles with juicy text from non-trusted domains are likely to hit the front page of Digg PER day. This means you need to work for trusted domains are we should all coordinate ourselves to share a piece of the pie.

Platform options:
- blog - pros: direct domain links, established trust/PR, brand extension via community. Cons: content limited by brand, flaggable as spam
- Client owned external blog: pros - content freedom, not non-trusted, link exchange potential. Cons: wasted link juice, more involved development/new brand, optimization increasingly suspicious over time.
- SEO/SMO Company Owned External Blog: pros: ultimate content flexibility, content and link variety means less usspicion, subsidized asset building, new income stream. Cons: tough sell, develoment costs, zero client brand extension

3. Submitter: domains are trusted, but so are people. Less likely to be buried, immediate friend votes, strong accounts are natural to combine with shouts, 30% of home pages are from top submitters. Some top submitters eventually find out you work for a client as you ask them to submit or vote often on the same site - they can bypass your company and contact the sites directly.

Vote solicitation - do exchanges, Instant MEssanging, in-site communication services, vote on lots of stories. It takes 12-15 hours of work.
10% of the stories will frontpage with <50 votes. 200+ has 11%. (It depends on the submitter!)

Social media metrics: you can get between 100-300 links for minimal success or 1k-10k with strong success. This generally peaks between 1-3 months after the push.

And then he ran out of time.

Kent Schoen is up next. Facebook has 120 millin active users, 15 million mobile users, 1 billion profile details, 20 million daily status updates, 100 million pokes, and 20 million daily wall posts.

Word of mouth is what people are excited about, but people are being influenced by people who are passionate.

Get people to be engaged. They can become evangelists and spread the word.
- News feed

In our environment, there are marketing tools - they are really just regular features but you can use them in a marketing context: pages, events, application, share & connect

Measurement and analytics: passive measurement and active measurement
Some passive tools:
- Facebook Lexicon
- Ad tools

Moderator: Rand Fishkin

Speaker: Michael Gray – Atlas Web Service

Social Media is one of the hardest things to monetize. People aren’t coming in with an open wallet. Only try to monetize it once you really get social media.

Don’t Break Da Rules
understand the written and unwritten rules of the community
spend the time really getting involved

Create a Knowledge Resource
create valuable content that is helpful and solves a problem
gives example of software reviews and how to help people with them
offer free solutions

Use Social Media to Promote Reviews
compare similar products from different vendors
works best with now or leading edge products
keep reviews honest
be as in-depth but avoid TLDR (to long didn’t read)

Use social media to build membership
use blogs, twitter, email to create a group of loyal followers
feed them information with the occasional sales pitdch

Twitter – Deals with a sense of urgency
gives woot.com as an example
amazonmp3 – offers discounts

What worsks
informational resources
reviews

Check out http://www.Viralconversations.com

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Speaker: Alexander Barbara – ReidBrown Enterprises, Inc.

EasyTweets – http://twitter.com/easytweets

Scenario
new site
not typical dig
targeted campaign

- Shows some results -

Can you handle the traffic?
will they shut down your site?
Do you have a dynamic site? Do you have a plan?

Options
Redirect
Static pages
Google cache
Coral Cache – example.com.nyud.net/page/
WP “Super Cache” Plugin

Leveraging Other Resources
flickr
youtube
Amazon S3

Digg users hate Adsense
takes ads off for the first 2 days

Strategize
Direct
Targeted offers, adsense
Indirect
Subscribers, links, branding

Traffic Quality Varies
Digg – they wont do what you want them to do
SU
Niche (Hugg)
Twitter – is different. They are subscribing to your “mailing list”

What we learned
understand your audiences
choose wisely
be prepared(for the traffic)

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Speaker: Vanessa Fox – Ignition Partners
How to lose a lot of money with social media

How search impacts social media
first thing people do for an offline campaign is to serch for more information
2/3 of online search users are driven to perform searches based on…
Shows “got milk?” search results
Shows “easy button” search results
Shows “just do it” and the search results aren’t as good for Nike

Case Study – Coke’s Sue Zero campaign

due to to many users the video couldn’t be played
very successful according to Coke
If you do a search for “taste confusion” they don’t show up but they do show up for “sue zero”
Some comments on the site – its all images (bad bad bad – via Dave)
The videos don’t have unique URLs

Case Study – Will it Blend?
shows up for the tagline and the brand name
Increased Search Volume and rankings lift for tagline and brand
Showed rankings for 1 and 2 word terms
They have good URLs and link structure

Metrics and Engagement
What are your goals?
How can you measure success?
What are your adjustment plans?

Call to Action and compelling Value Prop
viral video by Wendys that gave a link at the end
the campaign’s page only had a page where it asked for your email. What were they using as the measure of success?
Measure so that you can find the possible failure points and adjust

Contributed by Dave Rohrer.

This room is packed, not sure what was going on in the session before, but this room is now packed.

Moderator: Robin Liss starts off about picking the right topic of your video, just like you would for writing content. Two routes are buzz route or the topic, search term specific route.

Viral Videos: Links, embeds, uniques, funny, newsworthy are all factors. Most of the time you can't plan on creating viral videos. Viral videos can be very risky. They don't generate money, not yet. It is hard to convert these viral video viewers, just like with Digg. They are number two for iphone unboxing, here is that video and it did well, cause they said the domain a lot. But the second video they did, didn't do anything for them.

Topic Specific Videos: These are very specific to short form videos that correlate to a specific topic. You can use traditional SEO techniques in these videos. If you are ranking for these terms, commerce may happen. An example is the canon hf 10 Google searc results. Do keyword research before hand. Relate that video around that keyword. Break your videos up into very specific content. Try to stay under 2 minutes. These are cheap to make. The goal of these videos is to get to your site. The topic gets 1/10th of the viewers, but viral is like 1/100th or 1/1000th. Use your company name in your username, add a constant graphic that is your logo, repeat your domain name as often as possible, tease additional information in the video that is on your web site, put domain name in the video description.

Edward Kim, CEO, Red Bricks Media is next up. We live in a visual world and we are going to see the videofication of the web happen in the next five years. As more rich media content hit the web, how do we as publishers/advertisers, etc, make sure our content is discoverable on the web. He will talk about the business strategies they use in this area.

He shows how Ikea has their own YouTube channel and they have only 340k views on all their videos, compared to a zero dollar budget video they made about nothing.

First strategy is "squeezing in the middle" or starting with keyword research. Find out what people are searching for. So for example, "extreme makeover" was high, so he made a video, "extreme photoshop makeover". He then shows more examples of this. The results are great, he said.

Content syndication and blogger outreach is strategy number two. Find these people, reach out to them, and let them know about your videos. They might add your videos to their sites. Results great.

Defining metrics is important. He uses TubeMogul, a great tool, he said. You get viewed minutes, viewer attention, per stream quality, syndication quality, region tracking, player tracking, demographics, etc. What are your goals for each video.

Mark Robertson, CEO, ReelSEO is next up. What is video SEO? A strategy to drive traffic to your video content. There is hosted web site video seo and posted (like youtube) video seo. He will focus on hosting video on your own web site. The goal is to drive traffic and conversions. The benefits of onsite video is complete control over the content, monetization and advertising. Dominating the search results may go away with duplicate content filters (same video on several sites). Google Video search sends links directly to your site. eMarketer says 39% find video in search engines. Video searching is increasing according to HitWise.

Why the shift to search? Videos are dominating Google search results. Video search engines include Google Video, Truveo, AOL Video, Yahoo Video, Live Search are first gens that look at your description. 2nd generation use speech recognition, facial recognition, like Blinx.

SEO Tips:
- Videos can get links for you
- Search engines cant read videos
- Optimizing for video is slightly different
- Before beginning, do some benchmarking first and do some test searches to see what is out there and then monitor behavior on your site.

SEO Tips:
- Video file should be in multiple formats, including FLVs, MOVs, MPGS, MP4
- Include important keywords in the file name, and include video
- The meta data should have keywords in title, description, etc.
- Have one video per URL
- Place all videos in a central directory
- Dont use popup flash players, use embeds
- Use navigational links to link to them
- Follow basic SEO principles
- Consider putting transcript of video on the page
- Include related articles on that page
- Encourage people to link to your video, let them interact with it, with embed code
- Use social bookmarking tools, allow them to subscribe via RSS, etc.

How do you get videos into search engines? Use a mRSS feed. So create an mRSS and submit it to the search engines. Google does not accept mRSS feeds, but they do have an XML Sitemap for Videos.

Grant Crowell, Owner, Grantastic Designs is next. He discusses the importance of site design in this approach. He also defines video SEO... Video SEO is related to search engines, site search, video search engines, social networks, viral, site links, and the control you have is under sitemap, video page and MRSS/Video sitemaps.

Your going to need to know how to do videos.

He then talks about himself, giving me a chance to sleep a bit, cause I am really tired.

What are the advantages of video SEO? It gives you more ways to optimize the same content, more search real estate. IT can be duplicated on 3rd party web sites without penalty. More text and pages to optimize around.

He now goes into Site Structure, but the session should be over now and we still have more speakers to go. Create a unique URL for each video. Include the word, video at the end of your file name or put them in a directory, or even in a subdomain. Maybe also consider the .TV domain extension.

Make sure to put text around the videos and what links are around the video. A good site navigation is www.bobvila.com. Also see Shelly Palmer's videos. Northwest Herald is a good example of what not to do.

Gregory Markel, owner, Infusecreative is last up, but im skipping out.

Moderator: Mark Jackson

Speakers:
Bruce Clay, President, Bruce Clay, Inc.
Bill Hunt, Search Effectiveness Team Lead, IBM.com, Global Strategies
Ash Nallawalla, Traffic Manager, Yellow Online, Sensis Pty Ltd
Jill Whalen, CEO,High Rankings

Description: This session covers mid-level to super-advanced organic SEO. Topics may include on-the-page items, titles, tags, and URLs. Of course, the modern engines are all about off-the-page criteria like directory links and reciprocal links.

Although this is a 101 session, do not let that fool you into thinking this is a newbie session. You have some real old-school pros on this panel that are bringing their A-game. So be sure to read some basic and mid-level SEO writing before dropping in on this session, or you may be utterly lost.

Session Notes:
Jill Whalen leads off the presentation with what SEO is and what it isn't.
SEO is NOT:
- submitting to search engines
- don't even need to use a sitemap to get you indexed faster
- tricking the search engines
- not even following Google's guidelines
- stuffing keywords
- optimizing for one keyword phrase
- optimizing for the long-tail
- creating validated XHTML with tableless design
- submitting to low quality directories
- an attempt to increase toolbar Pagerank
- placing a page in a specific position in SERP, can't we want to go form #8 to #3
- proprietary methods and automated tools

SEO really IS:
- Making your website the best it can be for your website visitors AND the search engines
- Have something remarkable
- Does your site stand out from the crowd?

Best Time for SEO:
- During the planning or redesign of your website

Basic SEO Strategies:
- Keyword research
- plan site architecture around those phrases
- map phrases to pages
- write compelling content with keyword-rich Title tags
- write descriptive, benefit laden copy
- get the word out

Next up is Ash Nallawalla speaking on content...
- The Challenge is to get visitors eye balls and convert them
- lack of content is bad for both visitors and search engines
- One strategy is to have multiple feeder sites providing content to pages
- After adding content, traffic actually dropped, then regained and surpassed past levels
- Articles need to have a call to action, including links to internal pages
- Make sure search box is above the fold, brought 10X as many searches

Outsourcing content:
- use professionals from niche you are targeting
- if using non-native writer, budget for editors to fix spelling, etc.
- have good contract in place that covers all issues including plagurism

PDF files:
- what a search engine sees, might not be what you intended

Next up is Bill Hunt...
- SEO is really about relevance
- Links are very important
- Title tags are important
- Keyword relevance is done via prominence on the page
- Bill suggests reverse engineering your clients' pages to see how you compare, look at all elements
- Flash can be indexed, leverage progressive degradation, ensure error traps are not blocking engines, ensure key text is available in XML layer

Internet relevancy:
- link authority, how many links go to this page?
- create thematic hubs, relevant pages link to you (tag cloud)
- sculpt internal linking to create internal authority
- not all about the quantity of links, it almost always the quality
- Ask yourself if your content is "linkable", is your content portable? (video, pdf, widget), Have you syndicated it if it is?

Last presenter is Bruce Clay, a look into the future...
- behavior-based search impact (or personalized search) will tailor results to the user and will change the perception of ranking in general
- intent-based search impact determines what your intent is based on the search phrase used (i.e. research, local or shopping)
- Local search impact targeted based on keywords on the site and the location of the searcher (IP)
- Univeral search impact is already in play. Bruce predicts first qtr of 2009 will see a much deeper use of the Universal search pieces of the algorithm. (i.e. video, audio, pdf, etc.) Need to have heavy engagement of the visitor on your site.
- Ranking is dead. Traffic is the ultimate measurement of success.

Take aways:
- understand your audience & their intent
- understand the intent of your site
- understand how to include engagement objects (images, video, pdf, etc.)

Q&A portion:
- How important are backlinks from syndicated content? Bruce does not feel it is a major factor in helping you get ranked.
- Is true that you can have 100 links on a page on your own site? Jill says just make sure the navigation is good for the user, don't worry to much about specific guidelines or counting links.
- How do you research "personal results" for clients? You can sign out of Google and use some FF extensions, but there are still products tracking where you go on the web. It's another reason you need to focus on traffic not rankings.
- How important is link relevancy? Bill says it is critical. It can make the difference when it comes to rankings and making your site an authority.
- Does Google treat 1, 2 & 3 spots differently than all others? Jill says generally that's because they are the authority sites and will hold their position. Newer sites may pop up and down as Google is analyzing them.
- Should video be on your site or hosted elsewhere? If you want to traffic and authority, you need to host the video. Bruce Clay is adding 100 videos to his site.
- How do you keep feeder sites from becoming a detriment to your site? You need to work hard at having unique content on those site and good links to core site.

These session notes were written by Arnie Kuenn from Vertical Measures a link building services and website publicity company. Please excuse any typos or grammar issues, the session notes are written live and meant to be posted as soon as the session is over.

We are live blogging this session from Salon C @ the Las Vegas Convention Center, PubCon 2008. I have the pleasure of sitting next to the lovely Lisa Barone. The rough and tumble affiliate marketing field presents quite a few options for cash and success. From PPC to in-house affiliate programs, this panel walked attendees through a range of strategies to apply. This panel promises to be wonderful.

The session is moderated by Aaron Shear. Elisabeth Archambault, Freelance Affiliate Marketer, Wedding-Resources, is the first speaker. She comes from a background as technical writing instructor. She discovered affiliate marketing and "never went back to the classroom and pays more in income tax then she used to earn as a teacher."

Her .ppt deck is called "The Possible Dream," which is about promoting other people's stuff and getting paid for results by:

• Sales commissions
• Lead/referral fees, this can be quite lucrative because the sale can come later
• Clickthroughs, which means pay per click, which is not as prevalent as in the past.

You can work anywhere, any time, no boss, no guarantees and there are not limits to success. The merchant handles inventory, fulfillment, customer service etc..the affiliate drives traffic. Focus, above all, is the most important attribute. It requires a great attention span. Find and join merchants, promote their products and send users and shoppers to their site.

Websites, newsletters, ads you set up and offline promotions work great. Social media shows good possibilities for the future as well. The reason to pay affiliates, if a merchant asks, is because the affiliate brings something "new to the party." Important skills are page design, site design, graphics, copywriting, usability and promotion. Any skill you can name, someone out there is succeeding without it. You don't need to be perfectly but you need to be good.

Balance the pursuit of quality without "paralyzing perfectionism." Something that is "second rate" but is up and running, will earn more money than something perfect on your hard drive. It's wise to diversify and don't spread yourself to thin, If you lose track of what you're managing, you can "lose your quality edge." The balance between diversify and spreading yourself to thin is different for every person.

Balance "doing things with getting things done." Don't be afraid to hire out for certain skills to "amplify your possibilities." Leverage other peoples' skills. There are a couple of ways to focus when promoting, either focus on the product or on reaching the demographic. There's more than one way to do that. If people are looking for a certain product and already know about it, it's ideal. Just show the product.

Different Promotional Models
"Spray and Pray" (LOL) is the "stick ads wherever you can and see what happens (spam)" Elisabeth teaches that the tighter you target, the better the result. Find merchants on affiliate networks like Commission Junction or, seek out independent merchants working outside of the CJ style networks. This, however is a mixed bag. Some don't know what they're doing at all, and others are cutting edge.

Look for independent merchants in search engines by searching "affiliate + keyword" or "product name." Check out forums for opportunities. When you're looking for products to promote, do some keyword research to determine if the product will have enough demand to justify your investment of time. Make sure that the opportunity lines up with your area of expertise, in terms of the demographic segment of traffic you personally know how to drive. The more relevant you make your merchant selections to the resources you can bring as an affiliate, the better. However, keep an open mind and take the opportunity to grow knowledgeable about other product-spaces.

Part Time Work at Home
This is a great "part time work at home" gig. Just watch out for conflict of interest with your day job. At first, look for affiliate opportunities surrounding something you already know. Pick a niche' that you will "stick with," because it can take months. If you stay with it, things will gradually grow.

There are 2 basic questions that an affiliate needs to know: will the product sell and will the merchant pay. Look at the commission rate but also look at the conversion rate. Both matter. Look deeper than the percentage. Merchants who do a much better job of closing the sales than the other guy vare better partners. Conversion is very valuable. Conversion puts money in both merchants' and affiliates' pockets. Don't just assume that the highest commission will put the most money in your pocket. Test, test and test again. Know the mind of your shopper. Targeting is not as obvious as it may seem at first look.

Seek out merchants who are committed to improving their own conversion. The quality of the merchant's site, your own "pre-sell" (product description) and the quality of the targeting are the most important qualities.

When Looking For a Merchant
Find the merchant, apply, get link codes (text or graphics) and "post those links." Nothing is going to happen for either the merchant or the affiliates if you don't actually post the links. As an affiliate look for a merchant who has good tools, informative stats, reliable tracking, effective communication, earnings potential, reliable payment reputation and are committed to "best practices. The best website is one that is making money while the affiliate is working on something else.
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Dixon Jones,Managing Director, Receptional LTD is up next. He's a bit tired from jet lag. :). He is speaking about effective affiliate strategies, actions and tactics. He quipped about is first affiliate deal in 1999. It came out of "audacity and arrogance." His first affiliate gig was woman's underwear. It crashed. I'm trying to figure out exactly what he's talking about. Oh... the point is that the project failed.

I think his point is that basic SEO interlinking, usability and traditional values are important. He's showing a successful affiliate site that has many pages indexed, zero obvious affiliate links, obvious added value. The point is that an affiliate site can't suck. It has to add value to the user. Hide the affiliate links, add value to the user, create unique content (especially if you want search traffic).

He recommends Redirection, a WordPress plug in to manage 301 redirections, keep track of 404 errors, and generally tidy up any loose ends your site may have. This is particularly useful if you are migrating pages from an old website or are changing the directory of your WordPress installation. Dixon echoed the advantages of "taking control" of the tracking system.

You can own the user. You don't need a network. Being the only affiliate for a product has some upsides. You can provide phone support where merchants often can't or won't. There's the added value. The client eventually learns that proper consultancy is way better in the long run. if it's a lead gen-site, use your own form to capture the user data. If it isn't lead-gen, use widgets if you can, to keep the user on your site for longer. If you can't, use i-frames to retain your "brand." Try and own the relationship with users, merchants, websites, and tracking. Then you'll have something worth selling.
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Jim Banks Chief Executive Officer,Global Direct Media is speaking about effective tactics, ineffective tactics, what to look out for-good, what to look out for-bad and will summarize. He is speaking from the "Network Viewpoint" which means being a little a little like a stock broker. Email affiliates, search/ppc affiliates, contextual/social media affiliates and display affiliates are the topics for the day.

Tips and Tricks
Don't burn your list on an untested offer, no matter how mice your affiliate manager is. Tell your friends if you get an offer to fly. Plan for seasonality like Christmas, Fathers' day, Valentines, Thanksgiving and other opportunities. For instance, promoting cigars on Father's day is a good tactic. Dare to be different. PPC is not just Google. Anticipate demand by "not waiting for demand to be there." Calculate a desired profit margin and work your strategy out on that basis.

When it comes to social, make sure that you are actually allowed by TOS to run this type of traffic in the community. Not every advertiser is OK with it. Expect your network to support with creatives. The network viewpoint on display: Now is a good time to be buying display Don't be suckered by poor media buys. Know your break even point and don't sign up for long term.

Effective tactics include day-parting, split-testing, pixel placement, payment negotiation (find merchants who pay on time), rate negotiation (don't settle for the first offer), bespoke creative and sharing information with your network partners. Don't hide what you are doing or attract suspicion of fraud. Don't be fickle and avoid emotional attachment to a network, offer or product.

A good network is proactive, flexible, pay quickly and consistently, creative, assertive, (better deals/better rates), generous and easily accessible by IM, phone, email, etc...

Marty Weintraub is President of aimClear, an Internet Focused Advertising Agency in Duluth, Minnesota

Is the PPC channel part of your online marketing campaign? Are you interested in advertising with Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing, Microsoft adCenter, or Ask? Do you want to see the latest and greatest from these PPC engines? Do you have any questions for the PPC engines? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then this session is for you.

Moderator: Brad Geddes
Speakers:
Patrizio Spagnoletto, Sr. Director of Marketing, Yahoo! Search Marketing
Frederick Vallaeys, SR. Product Specialist for AdWords, Google
Dustin Kwan, Senior Product Manager. Ask Sponsored Listings, Ask.com
Doug Stotland, Director, AdCenter, Microsoft Live Search

First up is Dustin from Ask.com:

The big question: Why should we advertise on multiple search networks, and why Ask?

Who are we: We provide paid search ads to 90+ premium partners. We are like the Prius of search. The focus is not to be the big luxury vehicle. We carry all the essentials - but focus our is to be the most economical and cost efficient.

In comparison to other players, we have the lowest average CPCs and CPAs. Big question often asked is why should we advertise on multiple networks? With small budgets and limited time - why advertise anywhere else but Google?

There is value in every top search network. Plenty of search volume. Because people switch from one engine to another - you get duplication, and that increases brand awareness.
Key feedback from Ask users - 25% of users came from another search engine. Many users use multiple search engines. 1/6 of Google users use another search engine.

Combined power of paid search: The more networks you generally use, the stronger your clicks will be, the better your ROI will be.

Not a lot of work to advertise across the engines. All have similar campaign structures - accounts, campaigns, ad groups, keywords, etc. Can easily import campaigns via bulk uploads / spreadsheets or use API. Or Ask.com will do the work for you.

Key takeaways - Ask can increase your reach and performance. Lot' of value in Tier 1 and even in Tier 2 engines. Make sure you use tools for easy management and optimizing campaigns.

Next is Frederick of Google, the Adwords Evangelist.

How do you respond to a bad economy? Want to continue marketing because you will find yourself behind when the market picks up again. The investments you make today will pay off down the road. Online marketing is the most measurable and typically the most profitable. Consumers are increasingly comparison shopping in tough times. Large retailer metrics have shown that in store sales have dropped, but online sales were up 21%. Consumers have less money, so they go online looking for bargains. Also, since gas prices went up, less people traveling to brick and mortar stores to make purchases.

Shows search volume chart for term "safe investments". Big spike when Lehman went under. Also, "fuel efficient cars" had a big spike when fuel was at an all time high. Google Insights for Search will give you this trend data for you to capitalize off these consumer queries. If nothing else, it's a fun tool to see what consumers are doing.

Focus on value proposition. Consumers want bargains. Highlight this. Focus on keywords that people are searching for today, vs. the past. Also, build trust. For example, there is a loss in trust for banks nowadays. Offer something for bargain hunters. Google product feeds is a great way to get products in front of comparison shoppers. Consumers are still buying, but doing more research. Capture emails to start relationships, because conversion cycle is longer.

Holiday season: Starts at black Friday - conversion rates go up. A few days before Christmas, sales drop because retailer can't ship in time for Xmas. Google Trends shows that people are shopping online earlier than in the past. More time spent comparison shopping.

New: First page bids. Most activity on page 1. Enhanced the Conversion Optimizer - lowered threshold of how many conversions in order to participate. More detailed metrics. Now can see where clicks are coming from - Geo-reports. Helps make campaigns more efficient. Broken up search stats between Google and partner networks. New display ad builder tool, new enhancements in analytics, and changes to optimizer tool.

Next up is Doug from Microsoft.

Launched adCenter about 3 years ago. Feedback has shown that quality of clicks converts well. Also hears that there is not enough inventory. At Microsoft, divided up tasks for improving adCenter into "sexy" and "non sexy" column. We will focus on the "non-sexy" column.

The "Non Sexy": More granular campaigns - when are ads inactive or active? Improved editorial review - speed and quality, and do whatever needs to be done to fix creatives and make it easier to act on. On content ads, want to be able to update bids quicker, and see how they perform in an easier format. Sat down with customers to figure out 150 things to improve the product. Examples included location based targeting - easier. Making the application quicker, peppier. Improved dashboard and reporting.

CPC's on the rise: Demand is higher than the supply. Offline dollars shifting to online. Plus you have people bidding blindly. And you have those excellent search marketers that are doing a great job achieving higher ROI. If just buying on Google and Yahoo, harder to create a mix of higher quality clicks.

MSN makes it easy to take the knowledge you have about your customers the demographics - men or women - age groups - the ability to target them is an example of technological innovation. If use that data, you can be more competitive. People that are thinking beyond the post click conversion - the cross sell, the up sell - are making their bids based on that additional revenue. Knowledge is your best tool. Good marketing is important. Knowing who your customers are. Ask yourself - which end of the big ROI gap are you on?

Finally, give your feedback to MSN. Easy to do so via Facebook and Twitter. Go to AdCenterCommunity.com to get into the conversation.

Last but not least is Patrizio from Yahoo!:

8 year veteran of Yahoo. Started in Goto/Overture days.

SEM has by far the highest growth rate of online spending. Most advertisers are still spending on traditional media, and there is still lots of opportunity online. Still plenty room for growth.

People come to Yahoo! for their many products (mail, finance, etc.) which gives the unique opportunity to understand the audience.

Yahoo!'s reach: Important to use all the major engines. Missed opportunities. Spread dollars across all the engines. American Idol - reaches 22 million Americans. Yahoo!'s reach is about twice that! Shows the immense size of Yahoo!'s reach.

One of the things he recommends for holiday advertisers is to use newly enhanced features - geo targeting is now down to the zip code level.

Need to balance quality of leads and quantity of leads. Over targeting - might not have enough volume.

Another newer feature is ad testing - single most powerful feature across all engines. Enables testing multiple descriptions at the same time. A/B testing - the listing that gets the most click through rate serves the most ads.

Reporting is only as good as how much action you take out of them. You need the data to support marketing decisions. Work with agencies that make this very easy if you don't have the time to spend looking at this data.

Content match: The ability to put the listing along articles, product reviews, etc. Very different product than search. Not an engaged user. Different experience - have a different campaign, bid differently, and monitor differently. If you have a limited budget, go for search - because the ROI is typically stronger. In this economy, SEM spending has stayed relatively strong because it works better than any other marketing vehicle. As we go into this holiday period - need to start now.

Coverage provided by Avi A. Wilensky of Promedia Corp, a Manhattan based online marketing agency.

Steven Baker is modding up this panel, the room seems pretty empty, but it is a very niche topic.

Robin Liss, Founder and President of Camcorderinfo.com is up first. For a few thousand, you can create quality videos that rival big media.

Picking a Camcorder... You can probably find a camera that will fit within any budget. If you are uploading the YouTube, you don't need to be that concerned about the quality, but that is changing. Low light performance is the most important thing to quality. The format you want to use is either hard drives or flash based media, go tapeless. Audio quality is very important. Manual control is important also and also handing and editing workflow are also important.

$500 to $700 is a fine budget. Low light performance is important. If your not editing, hard drive is fine, but tape and HDV is much better if you plan to edit. Audio is too often overlooked. Buy a camera with a mic port, most don't have it.

Stabilization, Bags and Batteries: A good tripod is the most important accessory. Plan to spend $150 - $300 on a tripod, it will last decades. Good brands are bogen.manfrotto, vitten, smith-victor, gitzo. Look for a "fluid head." A bag is important. Get lots of batteries, possibly a battery belt.

Audio Equipment: People will tolerate bad video but not bad audio. Do not buy a camcorder without a mic port. Camcorder shoe for mic mounting. Lavalier is $15 for wired, but wireless is $200. There is a boom mic, but you need a separate person to operate it. Conference hall video can have bad audio, use different channels to try to solve this issue.

Lighting and Sets: Make sure you have an interesting set, don't use white backgrounds. Get an on camera light for walking around shots. If it is on stage, then just buy a three point lighting solution - can be cheap.

Filming Tips. Don't put someone in the center of the camera, put on left side or right side. Two camcorders setups rock. Use B-Roll for illustrative or cutaway shots. The worst thing is having someone talk into the camera for a while (like I do in my videos). Only use video if your going to take advantage of the visual aspects. Keep panning and moving to a minimum.

Editing and Graphics: Software ranges from $50 to $1,000. Most software packages do all the basics, just be comfortable with it. Just cuts do not use wipe outs. Use the lower third for a banner. Do intros and "outros". Say the site name in the video and also use graphical site names. Music is great to add, but make sure you have rights. DigitalJuice has premade back drops. Make sure to spell your guests names right.

2008 Update: Videos do not make money, not through YouTube or direct sales. It is really hard to sell ads on video. Don't plan on making a business model around selling ads on video. It is just not ready, she said.

Videos are also very expensive to make. These video views translate into small a number of pageviews on your site. The only people making real money online is like Hulu.com, she said.

They now look at videos as photos. They do 30 to 90 second videos now. They are not abandoning video, but they will reduce the resources to put to it.

Just because everyone is talking about it, it doesn't mean it is right for you. But this is going to change, but be careful.

Brett Tabke, CEO of WebmasterWorld.com is next up with his "So You Want to Go To Hollywood."

SearchEngineWorld started in about 2007. Cameras between $500 and $5,000 or so. The web is forgiving to quality, very forgiving. Brett would underspend on cameras. Lighting, go as cheap as you can, such as a $200 system at Home Depot. He is not a fan of wireless mics. From lavaliers, handhelds, desk, boom, convertors, mixers, etc - it can get messy. Brett uses Sony Vegas, but there are lots of software apps. You will likely spend a lot more in software than you expected. Staging ha slots of options from virtual props, green screen and real studios. Finding talent is very hard, it is highly competitive, high turnover and expensive. Videoographers are also very expensive. 1 hour for editing a single minute of footage.

Brett spent a lot of money his first year on his video stuff.

The traps are underestimating your workflow, streamline that workflow. Getting into it is hard cause of the costs. Not having a business model is also typical.

Michael McDonald, Managing Editor of iEntry Inc is last up to talk about WebProNews. Now Mike makes the best videos in this industry. They have been doing it since 2006 and today, it is still even a work in progress. WebProNews has been around since late 90s. They added video not as a money making thing, but as a content enhancement tool. By years end, they will have done over a 1,000 videos.

They spend a lot on equipment. Sony PMW, HVRs and so on, their favorite is Sony EX HD, it costs almost $10,000. Tapeless saves them a lot of time.

Sound is incredibly important. The on board sound on cameras stink. They use Sennheiser equipment, both wireless and wired. For lightening they use Sony HVL LED light system. A Lowel DV creator kit. Kata camcorder pack. Sony tape deck and FS-4 Pro Firestore device.

Their studio is very cheap. They spent about $500 at home depot, on flooring, desk, etc. They use a green screen, but lightening is important.

They prefer Sony software. For compression they use Sorenson Squeeze, he loves it.

To introduce video into your existing content... Internet is a visual medium, so its a great place to start. Make sure to keep your viewers engaged in the video. Adding video to existing content. Videos at WPN is a value add.

Distribution methods include an online vide player, RSS and XML feeds, get your video into iTunes, plus brand awareness. Embedded code is a big deal. They don't care who watching the video, where they watch it or how. So give them embed code. And optimize for search engines, such as through Google universal search, feed content to search engines, and add meta data. They use TubeMogul to distribute their videos and it also shows tracking.

Video quality is something they are really big on. Broadcast quality, quality broll, and quality images.

This panel of SMO promotion experts will take you from mid-level to advanced in short order. Do your homework before you hit this session though. Study the basics of Reddit, Netscape, Delicious, Digg, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Remember, PubCon starts where other conferences end.

Moderator: Joe Laratro
Speakers:
Cameron Olthuis, CEO, Factive Media
Neil Patel, CTO, Advantage Consulting Services, Inc.
Michael Gray, President, Atlas Web Service
Rand Fishkin, CEO, SEOMoz

Rand is up first. He's wearing a suit and his shoes aren't yellow. He's going to do a social media verticals walkthrough - it's not a comprehensive list but it covers most of the big ones.

Democratized social news sites: digg, reddit, mename, propeller, mixx, newsvine, hacker news, care2news, nowpublic, folkd
What to do: Create profiles, connect with other users, vote on content, comment, submit your own content
It's high quality from a link building perspective - people own blogs, have forums, and bookmark. They spread content on the web.

Editor-powered social news sites: yahoo buzz, fark, metafilter, techmeme/memorandum
What to do: learn what editors like/use, submit relevant content, connect with other users, vote on content, comment
* Highest traffic day of DailyKos was from Yahoo Buzz feature. Potentially millions of visits.

Social networking sites: linkedin, facebook, myspace, incbiznet
What to do: create profiles, connect with other users, share links/news/photos/info, build a big network to grow your megaphone

Microblogging sites: twitter, plurk, friendfeed
What to do: create profiles, connect with other users, publish interesting stuff in <140 characters, build an instant megaphone
- You can follow the president elect on Twitter!

Social bookmarking sites: StumbleUpon, delicious, blinklist, clickmarks
What to do: create profiles, tag content/URLs, find out what others are tagging/sharing, encourage users to tag to drive traffic and links.

Social content sharing: youtube, flickr, yelp, metacafe, last.fm, deviantart
What to do: create profiles, create/upload content, build your brand's messaging, reach new and relevant audiences

Wikis: wikipedia, knol, wikihow
What to do: create profiles, create and edit content, reach wiki audiences, manipulate search results!

Social Q&A: yahoo answers, wikianswers, askville
What to do: Create profiles, ask and answer questions, gain reputation and authority, grow your brand megaphone

Niche social sites: why Rand likes them - they are lower but have a more relevant audience.
* easier to have an impact with less effort
* less wariness for marketers/SEOs
* many have live links
* great for data mining and market intelligence

Cameron Olthuis is up next. He shows 10 steps to social media success.

1. Use and understand social media. Don't jump in the pool before swimming.
- Which tools to use? All of them! Connect to your audience as often as possible.
2. Network and be social. It's called "social" for a reason.
3. Be genuine, authentic, and on target.
4. Turn down the marketing message. Social media is a two-way communication unlike traditional media. Let people participate.
5. Provide value to the community.
6. Remarkable content. e.g. Hershey had this party when they launched this Bliss chocolate. They just wanted people to share their pictures - and they got all this candy. 15,000 bloggers wrote about it and most said positive things about the chocolate.
7. Let people act naturally. Don't shove things down their throat.
8. Hustle. Work hard. It takes time to foster the connections.
9. Be flexible and experimental. Social media is always changing. e.g. Dell did Ideastorm - it's like Digg but it's specific to what people want from Dell. Dell then puts that into action.
10. Listen and respond. e.g. comcastcares on Twitter immediately responds to people's concerns.

Michael Gray talks about planning a social media campaign.

Background research:
Find out where your audience hangs out. What are they reading and submitting? What don't they like? Identify key players and key bloggers in your niche. Find thought leaders.

Community engagement: build your presence in the community. Start building a trusted profile or power account. Cultivate a reputation of trust, quality, and authority.

Brainstorm: figure out what works and what doesn't. Use them as a jumping off point. Don't be a copycat.

But you need to keep building that profile. Don't expect to become a power user overnight or to ignore afterwards.

Idea research:
Sometimes good ideas won't work. Look for ways to adapt. Don't force a bad idea.

Story production and formatting:
Viral content is different than regular content. Use pictures and videos where appropriate. Don't use your sales oriented web template.

You are still working on your community during this time, right?

Schedule and launch:
Know what the good times are for the audience. Use the calendar, holidays, and current events to your advantage. Beware of news, as it can affect you.

Outreach and management:
Take advantage of that community building. Reach out to your friends for help. Reach out to the bloggers in this space. Don't stick out with unusual voting patterns. Monitor comments.

Analysis:
Did your story work out better or worse than expected, and why? Use page tracking overlays (crazyegg, clicktracks, and google). Be aware that social media traffic effects overall site statistics.

Lather, rinse, and repeat:
Don't approach social media like a one shot deal. Small to moderate success can add up over time. Target different sites each time. Find a promotion frequency that works for you.

Up last is Neil Patel who talks about the dark side of social media.

1. Screwing people over. Submit content from your competition's website to a social site. Use adult related words within the submission text. Repeat 4-5 times.
2. Social media rings: the bigger the ring, the better. Join multiple rings. Don't vote right away. Don't vote on everything. Don't abuse the ring. Use hxxp instead of http.
3. Social media applications: Tube Increaser for YouTube, Twitter FriendAdder, Add my Buddies for MySpace, and Plaxo for email scrapers
4. Force actions: iframe votes
5. Blog links. Hack the blogs!

Brett Tabke introduces Shawn and says that he has been ahead of his search marketing game for years. He says this is his first keynote.

He asks: How many of you consider yourselves internet marketers for more than a couple of years? How many of you don't know what you do?

He talks about 1996 when he looked for a job. He got a job at a small business firm that did incorporations in the state of Nevada. His company wanted a website and he was tasked to do this. Back then, not many people were doing much, so he got Microsoft to send him Frontpage. He read the technical manual and he found that his website (at least at that time) brought his company success. He then learned HTML/Java over the next few years and built other websites. Eventually, he went to Cox Interactive Media, worked there, and then was picked up by MGM in Las Vegas. He survived the dot com bubble burst and is here to tell us about it. He grew the company from 3 people to 15. And now he's at Cirque de Soleil.

He's going to talk about where they are, where they've been, and where they're headed.

Looking at things from a global scale: availability/speed of information shows us where we're headed. Google's Mission Statement: organize the world's information and make it useful.
- PC World in 2003 says that the world's information doubles every 3 years. What's an exabite? A 1 with 18 zeroees behind it. It's 6 zeroes more than a terabyte. A "word ever spoken" by human beings would take up 5 exabytes of storage.
Let's say that the information progresses over time. It's called "exponential decay" or "half-life." He started looking at this formula - t = 1 / lambda

Cloud Computing: the information is going to be out there. The "place" where all this information is stored today. The "cloud" is a metapor for the internet derived from network diagrams. As we get closer to this cloud, there will be no more software titles at Best Bu. There will be nore more cables to your television, phone, or stereo. There will no longer be video stores, no more hard drives for storage, no more websites, and no more downloads!

How are we going to do display advertising and search in a world like that? The web is getting smarter. Instead of results, we get recommendations. Personalization is the future of the web.

We also have seen smaller search engines. Cuil, Blinx, etc. How do we evolve our marketing tactics? Look at where media spending is today. An eMarketer study says that it's in search, disiplay ads, classified, video, rich media, and email.

Imnagine advertising spending like this: social media search, search, mobile, virtual worlds, widgets/desktop apps, rich media RSS, and in-game advertising. There's a lot of emerging media.

The long tail is changing also. With the emerging media, the long tail gets thicker. Fragmentation of media - it's the result of increased population over time. It's also unevenly distributed.

Let's talk about population growth as a whole. The recent big jumps occurred in 2001 and 2003 especially. Now these people are 5-7 years mature about using the Internet.

Older tactics vs. newer tactics: he shows a photo of McCain and Obama. The recent presidentail campaigns are a perfect example about how interactive media is changing.

How did they differ?
McCain used: video sharing and blogs/social media
Obama used: video sharing, in game advertising, blogs, mobile/SMS campaigns, and viral campaigns.

He shows this really funny video of McCain winning against Obama with one vote. 5 million people have seen this viral video.

He shows how in a web site evaluation, Obama's web site won against McCain's. An estimated 2.9 million US mobile subscribers received a text message from the Obama campaign. (I didn't get it, but some people in the audience did.)

Why are new media tactics approached conservatively? Unproven application, non-applicable demographics (younger), we have old school thinking in our society. Most out there over 55 years of age aren't thinking like us. Average estimated board if directors is 55+. Old school existed in Enron, Friendster, Qwest, Xerox, etc. Once retirement hits, the new generation steps in.

Merging of Media: in 1995, two disciplines split - online and offline. 10 years later, they are coming back together. The merging is fostered by acquisitions and mergers happening all over the board. The offline companies want to be online, so they're buying online agencies. Online agencies are buying offline agencies because they want money.

Telemarketing -> mobile marketing, outdoor advertising -> in-game advertising, public relations -> social media, etc.

Halo Media is a new concept. It's media fragmentation and how we should look at it as marketers. Users decide when, how, and where they will consume media. It results in a cluttered environment. We need to think about strategies that give us the best ROI.

Example: 50% off ad - users click and buy. But our website doesn't have the linear click and buy procedure anymore. There may be a circle of presence around the website: social media, mobile, widgets, video, and more. People are experience, referencing, and discussing these purchases when they are ready.

Two key questions: where is my time best spent? Which new media gives me the biggest bang for my buck?
How do you answer this? Measurement is critical and alwyas will be, but not all opportunities are "applicable" for your organization. Forget the rules; there are none. Get closer to traditional media. Continue to be the expert. Don't be afraid to be too transparent. Educate and share insights. Play the budgets - remember, we're merging. (Offline budgets are often more expensive than the online budgets!)

Action items:
- Get closer to understanding traditional media - formats, metrics, etc.
- Attend new or emerging media conferences - don't spend money on what you already know. (Avoid the commercial shows and focus on the ones that are educating ones.)
- Ask lots of questions - interrogate salespeople (turn around the pitching)
- Join or start a local IMA
- Remember, you have the keys to the car
- Always put yourself in the user's shoes. You may not know all things. How would you react to things you put out as a company?

Trendsettsrs and Opinion Leaders: that's exactly what you are in this digital marketing age. We are at another pivotal point where emerging media is influencing audience. You're the innovators and evaluators. Question, test, defy, and implement!
- Discover, evaluate, and evolve!

Pubcon is a matter of days and Search Engine Roundtable is here to serve. Among guestbloggers Avi Wilensky of Promediacorp, Dave Rohrer, Arnie Kuenn of Vertical Measures, and Marty Weintraub of aimClear, plus with Barry and myself, we have over 50 sessions covered. Here's the tentative schedule:

Tuesday, November 11, 2008
9:00AM-9:45AM
Kickoff Keynote Address by Tamar Weinberg
10:00AM-11:20AM
Top-Shelf Organic SEO by Arnie Kuenn
PPC Engine Vendor Panel by Avi Wilensky
Understanding the Complex Social Marketing Playing Field by Tamar Weinberg
Effective Affiliate Strategies by Marty Weintraub
Game On: Rocking Your Video Startup by Barry Schwartz
11:30AM-12:45PM
Earning Big Bucks with Social Media Traffic by Dave Rohrer
Video Search Engine Optimization by Barry Schwartz
1:30PM-2:50PM
Universal and Personal Search: This Changes Everything by Arnie Kuenn
Social Media: The Big Sexy Buzz by Tamar Weinberg
Affiliate Based PPC Issues and Options by Marty Weintraub
Video Engines - New Kids Rocking the Web by Dave Rohrer
2:50PM-4:05PM
Organic Keyword Research and Selection by Avi Wilensky
Landing Page Optimization by Marty Weintraub
Is Social Media & Search a Love Story or a War Story? by Tamar Weinberg
Video and Multimedia Advertising - Show Me The Money! by Barry Schwartz
4:10PM-5:30PM
Discover Techniques Used by Enterprise-Level SEOs/SEMs by Arnie Kuenn
Large Scale Bid Management by Avi Wilensky
Tag, You're It! How To Leverage Your Visitors by Tamar Weinberg
Real World VodCasting and Vlogging byBarry Schwartz

Wednesday, November 12, 2008
9:00AM-9:45AM
Keynote Address by George Wright of Blendtec by Tamar Weinberg
10:15AM-11:30AM
Analytics Vendors and Package Implementation by Barry Schwartz
Local and Mobile Search by Arnie Kuenn
Brand Management by Marty Weintraub
Real-World Winning Tactics for Content Creation by Avi Wilensky
11:30AM-12:45PM
How SMBs Can Use PR Campaigns To Grow Traffic by Arnie Kuenn
Competitive Intelligence : Know Thy Competitor Well by Marty Weintraub
The Big Dedicated Server Payoff by Barry Schwartz
Ground-Up SEO Content Development as Pure Business Strategy by Avi Wilensky
1:30PM-2:45PM
SEO and Big Search by Barry Schwartz
Alternative Discovery and SEO - Feeds, PDFs, and Blog SEO by Marty Weintraub
Reputation Monitoring and Management by Tamar Weinberg
2:50PM-4:05PM
Local Search Optimization by Arnie Kuenn
Top Ten Techniques For Writing Headlines That Rock by Tamar Weinberg
4:10PM-5:30PM
Five Bloggers and a Microphone - What's The Worst That Can Happen? by Tamar Weinberg
26 Steps Revisited - 2008 by Avi Wilensky

Thursday, November 13, 2008
9:00AM-9:45AM
Keynote Address by Satya Nadella of Microsoft Live Search by Barry Schwartz
10:15AM-11:30AM
E-Commerce and Shopping Cart Optimization by Marty Weintraub
Getting Rid of Duplicate Content Issues Once and For All by Barry Schwartz
Domain Names and Trademarks - Legal Issues by Avi Wilensky
11:30AM-12:45AM
Podcasting and Podcast Optimization by Barry Schwartz
Linkfluence : How To Buy Links With Maximum Juice and Minimum Risk by Tamar Weinberg
Mostly Viral Top Traffic Alternatives, or SEO on a Shoestring Budget by Dave Rohrer
1:30PM-2:45PM
Top Secret Tools of the Trade by Barry Schwartz
Real-World Low-Risk, High-Reward Link Building Strategies by Tamar Weinberg
Effective Domaining Strategies by Avi Wilensky
2:50PM-4:05PM
Taking Your Analytics Data Beyond the Page View by Barry Schwartz
Community Hacking - 96 Baiting Strategies You Can Employ by Tamar Weinberg
The Wonderful World of Widgets by Arnie Kuenn
Forums and Communities : Building, Management, and Optimization by Avi Wilensky
4:10PM-5:30PM
Super Session: Search Engines and Webmasters - aka: The Search Engine Smackdown by Tamar Weinberg

We'll see you there!