WorldWideSEO: Quality Rich Media Development and SEO

After attending the SES Conference in Chicago I could recap on the positive and negative experiences. I will start with the negatives because they are few:

1- Food. I strongly recommend all attendees to look for an alternative. We were there for the whole week, so after the first day/first sandwich we were done.

2- Getting the presentations from the guest speakers. In the SES Conference website you get a code for downloading most of them, but some of the key ones are not available or really difficult to get afterwards. In my case, I am still missing at least 10 that I requested personally to each of the speakers emails.

On the positive side, which are a lot, these are the main general learnings:

1- Get each speakers business cards. This will be helpful in the future, whether you want a consultant or for establishing a friendship/professional communication.

These are the main SEO learnings:

1- Content is king. Yes, forget the "sandbox", pagerank, etc. If you still think there is a "sandbox", please read. As an attendee at the Conference, and with all the explanations given by Google on how to rank in Google, and Yahoo on how to rank in Yahoo, it all comes to the basics: content. Provide searchers with the best, relevant, unique, fresh content and you will get listed. Maybe not tomorrow, but certainly faster than many others that do not comply with the simple prime directive: give searchers what they are searching for.

2- The secret to writing compelling ads... Vic Drabicky's from Range Search Marketing, had one of the best presentations in the whole conference, here he explains it very simple:

a) Use your keyword in your title. use Dynamic keyword insertion in Google and Customize titles per keyword in Yahoo. ALWAYS be grammatically correct. And again most important in SEO: Differentiate.

b) Use your description to weed out converters from non-converters: Customization per keyword is key, set up adgroups by creative, not keyword in Google and customize descriptions per keyword in Yahoo. Then you have to "tell your story": include your brand, while clearly indicating your value proposition (price, selection, etc.), and never forget the Call to Action. Many people forget this last part

c) Finally, while a tiny part of the creative process, display URLs can have a huge effect on your click through rate especially if the landing page URL is a brand users are unfamiliar with.

And remember to ALWAYS TEST! You would not imagine the benefits of testing your online campaigns. There are a lot of options available to maximize the effects of your online marketing campaign, but you MUST test to get to what the consumer likes.

He finished with a great quote:"Nobody's goal is to get every click but rather to get every profitable click."

3- Regarding Contextual Ads & Non-Search Ads: split your Search Campaigns from the Content Campaigns, Build Adgroups around consistent terms.

4- Online and Offline you must be consistent with your ads and strategy. Whether it is a company blog or an outside blog, a PR campaign, PPC campaign, etc., they all must go in the same direction.

5- Landing pagesThereer landing page has to call to action, and you have to test it. Scott Miller from Vertster recommends to run a clean test. Split testing is not going anywhere.

Why tune your landing pages? SiteTuners.com explains: to lower the CPA, that because CPA=CPC/CR.

The most common Design Tuning Elements are:
Headline
Page layout
Navigation
Color Scheme
Offer
Form layout
Button Text
Sales Copy
Special Offers
Call to Action

A/B Split Testing: where you test one variable at a time (with 2 or more values), send equal traffic to all versions, and it is very simple to implemenusuallytrack. ususally done for 1 to 10 recipes.
Multivariate Analysis allows you to test between 10 to 10,000 recipes. This method is also known as "Design of Experiments" & "Taguchi Method", it tests several variables at once, and tries to predict best setting for each variable, and their tool that has proprietary math for Internet marketing, it is designed for large tests, and handles variable interactions.

6- Link Building and Linking Strategies. Greg Boser from WebGuerrilla in his presentation gives us this SEO insight:

How do I develop an effective linking strategy?
-Identify the most visible sites within your space.
-Extract and analyze the backlinks from all three search engines. (anchor text, unique domains/IPs, PageRank, domain registration, etc.)
-Build a profile of each competitor that outlines the types of tactics being used.
-Evaluate the cost/benefits of the various tactics being used, and then emulate the ones that make sense.

Eric Ward gave a list of really cool places to look into. You can find them in his site www.EricWard.com

They emulate your site and compare it to a supermarket. In a supermarket the flow of store is scientific and placement of product is tested. They explain that the problem with main pages is that they usually have "Too many links" - over 50 on the page shown.

Imagine your customer.... he wants a product and it is your job to make it easy for him to find it in your site. So...

What Can You Do Online?
Leverage the Medium - The web is dynamic

Elements of a Good HomePage:
-Clearly state what users can do on your site
-Let your users self-identify
-Limit choices
-Create custom experiences post-choice

Once passed that point
Target Traffic Delivery: Direct Traffic to Specific Destinations, direct searchers to desired content, control how people navigate your site.
Implement Test-Analyze-Adjust Cycles: Test products, offers and promotions; test layouts, buttons, cart experiences.
Determine Best Click Paths: connect search phrases to conversions and drive people to best paths from search.

Finally they explained the use of the "Tail" for keywords

The best speakers at the SES Conference in Chicago 2005:

Greg Boser from WebGuerrilla
Dana Todd from Sitelab
Vic Drabicky from RangeOnlineMedia
Scott Miller from Vertster
Peter Hershbergh from RepriseMedia
Tim Ash from SiteTuners
Eric Ward from EricWard.com
Hollis Thomases from WebAdvantage
Tessa Wegert from Enlighten

The best tools presented at the SES Conference in Chicago 2005: Hitwise, ClickTracks Web Analytics, SEOelite,IndexTools, Wordtracker, OptiSpider, Optilink,, Xtreeme Search Studio, Xtreeme Site Expert,for domain buying eventhough a lot of people may disagree I like Godaddy.com. And regarding links strategy you can use LinkConnector, or Links Manager.

Finally I liked Danny Sullivan's keynote: The Search Marketing Community, in which he portrayed the future of SEO and showed us the site http://www.frappr.com/seos, in which ALL SEO's can registered and maps their location and info. At the end the speach came out with with the proposal of creating Search Engine Week, starting on February 26 at the SES Conference in New York 2006.

Hope all the credit are here. If not please contact me and I will gladly make the changes.

Enrique Gonzalez Nieto

"Embrace and manage online and offline as one
to become a complete Marketing Manager"

SES Conference Chicago 2005 - My Positive and Negative Experiences