The only session I’m liveblogging day one of SES San Francisco conference is this one, “Meaningful SEO Metrics: Going Beyond the Numbers” so the pressure is on the awesome panel including: Todd Friesen, Ray “Catfish” Comstock, Rob Garner and moderation duties handled by Richard Zwicky.
First up is Rob Garner, VP Strategy at iCrossing and a VP at SEMPO. Rob started things off with a description of the challenges that most often occur with measuring the search channel.
90% of search channel bugets go to paid media, but paid media supplies 20% of returns. Only 10% of budgets go to SEO but a huge percentage of search marketing performance can be attributed to SEO.
One of the most compelling challenges for companies entering the world of social business is 
In order for companies to realize the maximum benefit and impact from social media marketing, the pre requisite for goal setting must be a certain level of understanding about the nature of online communities, social media sharing web sites and applications. Unrealistic expectations based on a lack of knowledge about the social web is far too expensive to ignore.
The opening keynote presentation at SES Hong Kong featured none other than 
Web Analytics are a key indicator to the health and performance of any website, but online marketers often get lost in the complexities and details, forgetting how important analytics actually are and why.
Did you realize that search engines have gone full circle on URLs in variables? It used to be considered something to avoid, now search engines are saying variables in URLs are good, as long as you use the canonical meta tag. Google is pushing them with FeedBurner and if webmasters aren’t careful, they could fall victim to a new onslaught of duplicate content issues.
