Online Marketing Blog

WebmasterRadio.FM and their sponsors did not disappoint with the right of passage for new SES San Jose attendees known as “Search Bash“. Hula hoops, Jersey Girls, Marilyn Monroe, Sammy Davis, Dean Martin, Sumo wrestling, go go girls and an open bar all night. Tell me that’s not a formula for an evening you’ll likely not remember but really wish you could!

And now for a few photos:

Brandy and Daron Babin

Vivid Nightclub

Chris and Danielle Winfield

Ken Jurina and Mike McDonald

Sumo Search Bash Style

Dave Naylor and David Brown

Day 3 at SES San Jose found me assigned to cover the session “Link Baiting & Viral Search Success.”

Those who’ve read my previous posts should find it as no surprise that my level of excitement for this session superseded any residual aches and pains left over from last night’s “decadence based in relevance” superbash Google Dance.

(Personal Note: None of the stories you’ve heard regarding the TopRank team at this event are accurate. Except the one about how we met up with AC/DC’s tour bus afterwords and partied with them all night - that one’s true**)

In this session on Day 3 of SES San Jose 2007, there were no presentations. The floor was open to all questions anyone had on links and link building and how they affect PageRank and their importance in organic SEO. There were many questions asked, and even more great answers from the panel consisting of Mike Grehan (”My name is Mike Grehan, and I do links.”), Debra O’Neil-Mastaler (Link Building Chick), Jim Boykin and Greg Boser (”The White Hat Link Builder”), with Danny Sullivan moderating. Below, I thought I’d highlight the some of the questions and answers I thought were most interesting.

Test: How many geeks (and proud of it) in this picture?

Wow, what a day! With the changes that have happened with Search Engine Watch and the SES conference in recent months, there has been speculation on how the SES San Jose conference would turn out. So far, so good.

Whether it was the improvement in lunch fare from crusty boxed lunches to the hot food (fajitas I believe) or the exhibit hall, the sessions or the after conference activities, everything has been running smoothly.

Here’s a roundup of Day Two coverage of SES San Jose from the TopRank blogging team:

Google did it again last night with a cast of thousands partying their way from 7-11:30 pm at the Googleplex. The rock ‘n roll theme with tattoo inspired artwork set the stage for another festive post conference event. There was dancing and buffets both inside and out, chess, pool, karyoke, meet the engineers and many, many kegs of beer/bottles of wine. Nothing ran out this time except the very cool looking T-Shirts.

Always looking to shake things up, the TopRank blogging team convinced Google security to cough up a volleyball and promptly started a game in Google’s sandy volleyball court.

It can be incredibly laborious when deploying search engine optimization for an enterprise company with tens of divisions, thousands of products, and tens of thousands of web pages. Bill Macaitis, Marshall D. Simmonds, Melanie Mitchell, and Bill Hunt led the “In House: Big SEO” discussion providing insight into how to effectively manage SEO campaigns of tremendous magnitude.

Simmonds of the New York Times shared 5 items to ensure the success of a huge SEO campaign:

• Organization - The development and time frame of an SEO project plan
• Analysis - The collection of data describing a program’s current situation

Are Paid Links Evil? Optimus Prime versus Megatron.

As I attended “Are Paid Links Evil?” as my last session of Day 2 at SES San Jose 2007, I was glad to see that everyone there was still in high spirits after the long day of learning, blogging, networking and preparing for the Google Dance. However, I didn’t expect to see a battle of the Autobots against the Decepticons.

“Video is a compelling SEO channel,” said Sherwood Stranieri of Catalyst Online, “and social marketing and viral marketing are the driving forces behind video optimization.” We’re witnessing, with Google Universal, how digital assets are changing the landscape of search. Video, like audio files can drive unprecedented traffic as well result in a surge of inbound links. This is great- if you have entertaining video content, right? Wrong!

A trap I fell into early in my career as an SEM specialist was to ensure clients we would do our best to drive all the traffic we could to their site. Looking back, I’m glad I learned the obvious error of this statement before becoming involved in a client’s burgeoning PPC campaign.

The session “Creating Compelling Ads”, moderated by Allan Dick of Vintage Tub & Bath had at its core the powerfully obvious notion (in hindsight) that driving all traffic to your site is not only a fool’s mission, but in the realm of PPC, a costly mistake.

Day two of SES San Jose found me fighting for an outlet as I prepared to impart details to you on the session “Putting Search Into the Marketing Mix”.

The session, moderated by Free Agent Consultant Sara Holoubek included on its panel:

• Misty Locke, President & co-Founder, Range Online Media
• Curtis Dueck, Senior Account Manager, Epiar Inc.
• Bill Mungovan, Director of Search, Carat Fusion
• Bill Hunt, CEO, Global Strategies International

“Writing for Search Engines” is a long standing session by Heather Lloyd-Martin and Jill Whalen. It’s a great session covering the basics of SEO friendly copywriting and a good primer for those new to SEO.

Search Engines are constantly improving their ability to sniff out the spam and de-value irrelevant links such as those from link farms. They are making the same kinds of improvements to the indexing, categorization and sorting of web pages in the search results.
In order to make it easier for search engines to do their job, it’s important to incorporate the keywords for which you wish to be found in your site content, title tags and meta descriptions. Now when people search for those keywords, there’s a greater likelihood that search engines will rank the web site higher than a competitor site who doesn’t have relevant keywords in the content and links of their site.

Tuesday’s SES’s keynote was with Jim Lanzone of Ask. He talked briefly about the past, present and future of Ask.com.

Jim stated that they’ve seen great growth since launching Ask 3D. They feel that they are the fastest growing in their category. Ask is not as concerned with beating the others at market share, they are more concerned with getting satisfying results back to the searchers. After launching ask 3D they are finding that about 50% of their users are not clicking on the web results but rather on of the other offerings on the page. Jim also pointed out that they are trying to get as much information above the fold as possible. To do this theyare putting content where other search sites are putting ads.