Building world-class Search Engine Optimization expertise

I’m at the Search Engine Watch Live! Columbus – May 9th, 2007 – The Premier Conference for Search Engine Marketing & Optimization conference in Columbus today. I thought I’d do a little coverage of the event.

The first hour session is: Organic Optimization Strategies
First off is Jennifer Laycock, speaking on: Common Sense SEO/SEM.

She says that it is no longer practical to continually study the changing algorithm of the engines.

She addresses the Sandbox effect (where sites are held for an undetermined time until they “grow up”.) She says that it does NOT exist and doesn’t make sense. If a new site that fills a niche that doesn’t already exist a new site can do well (Hurricane Katrina sites, for example). If there is a lot of content that already exists for a topic, it becomes harder for a new site to breakthrough.

She says that what is next for search engines could be: Tracking Click-thrus and Latent semantic Indexing.

Speak your customers language.

The most important rule for ppc is not about buying clicks, it’s about buying customers. PPC tracking without metrics will leave you totally guessing what works.

Link building is just like relationship building.

Next up: Jeff Rohrs, President, Optiem, LLC

“How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Content Creation”

He discusses a blog he runs: Six Degrees of Bacon. It’s all about bacon (the food). It discusses everything about bacon and bacon news. He uses this blog to test search engine marketing. He says that there is a “passionate” group of people who discuss bacon. He says that being passionate is key to the success of your content and community.

Third on the docket: James Golden, Vice President of Development, The Karcher Group. He’s speaking on Web Standards/Accessibility Issues in SEO.

He discusses the: The Web Standards Project- a group that is fighting for web standards. He says that standards allow spiders and many different platforms to access your site in a meaningful and easier way.

He suggests: Use scallable text, Have a good hierarchy,

Finally, Matt Bailey, President, Site Logic Marketing is speaking on Measuring Organic Success (in 10 minutes). Points are: You have to have clearly defined goals for your site. What do you want customers to do. He discusses that people are taking micro actions on their site that we have to guide a person through. He discusses Segmentation. He uses the Star Trek Red Shirt Phenomenon to discuss segmentation. He delves into it at his blog here: SiteLogic - Marketing Logic » Analytics According to Captain Kirk by Matt Bailey.

He says that you need to set your conversion rate by your separate segments of your site. You should understand your conversion rate by individual product groups instead of a single conversion rate for the site.

He says Google is going to be implementing the “Placement performance report” - shows all of the sites where your ads are appearing and how many clicks each site are giving you.

Laura Thieme, President and Founder, Biz Research is speaking on Measuring Ad Performance & KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).
She estimates that her customers are spending 10% of their budget on optimization. However, she finds that many people are not clicking on paid listings.

She says that ultimately you set goals of what is most important to you.

She suggests tracking calls back to the keyword.

She suggests using funnel reports to watch how people are moving through the site. And then segment organic from paid key phrases.

Next up: Wil Schroter, Go BIG Network. He’s talking about Re-investing ROI: A Case Study
He talks about how to use ppc when you are just starting out.
4 things you need to know:
Gross Value - what’s the dollar value of your goal. This breaks down when the conversion goes off line. This doesn’t have to be a sale. It could be a lead.
Cost per acquisition - How much does it cost me to get $1 in revenue.
Time to transaction - Time between click cost and click cost paid.
The Float - The time between a paid click and a sale.

OK… that’s it for my coverage. I’m speaking next and I can’t figure out a way to blog and speak at the same time.

Sage