The description for this session reads as follow: “The recent possibilities presented with a Microsoft/Yahoo world represent the culmination of the ongoing battle for mindshare in accessing the world’s information. We have front row seats to these events as they unfold. With an introduction from author and thought leader Nick Carr, search experts and analysts discuss the impact of these changes in an interactive format.”

After the introduction by Nic Carr, the speakers, Mike Grehan, Steven Kaufman, Bryan Eisenberg, Erica Schmidt and Paul Doleman, threw around their ideas about the Microsoft/Yahoo merger and after all the discussions only a few ideas popped up and no clear answers could be given on any of the questions.

One thing to mention was a comment made by Steven Kaufman who said that the merger is a much bigger deal than just search. It will be interesting to see how quickly companies will be able to mobilize and adapt into this new changing world.

Mike Grehan asked what it means to marketers and the consumer but it was unclear really to say what the answer to that was.

Another question raised was: “Has Yahoo given up on merger” – In short it sounded like all agreed that it was NO.

Someone else, I forget who, mentioned that Yahoo needs to focus on the delivering the best customer experience – better engagement for the consumer and higher customer experience.

Another comment was made suggesting that, should the merger take place, the Search Results might be integrated. The point is integration from a search perspective – so perhaps we’ll be moving into more of universal search.

Mike mentioned privacy issues and said that he is amazed at how easy it is to find private information out there. For example he mentioned searching for a business plan [ "business plan" filetype: xls ]

Another comment was that the strongest point of the deal is probably the “weak underbelly of google” which is their weak user database. Yahoo and MSN has huge user databases and that may put them way ahead of Google when the look at providing content to the searcher.

Finally, another question: “who will be the next search leader?” – Answer: we don’t know. no-one knows.

In this extra session I attended the team from Google Univarsity ran through the advantages of using Google Adwords and how to set it up.

To keep it short, here is the basic gist of the session:

Why advertise online? (UK stats)
60% of UK households have internet
10% growth in Internet households in last 3 years

• users spend +- 2 hours to shop online

• changing face of advertising: from outdoor > press > radio > tv > online display > seach ads > blogs
• from generic push to personalised pull
• 25 million Google search customers
• Google advertising network is the biggest advertising network in the UK – 1 million daily ad exposures
• you have full control over your ads
• you can target geographic locations
• relevant ads gain higher rankings
• key principle
  quality score = relevance
  higher ranked ads get more clicks
  Ranking = Max CPC x Quality score
• Good quality score leads to a low Minimum CPC
• the stronger the quality score, the more clicks for less
• when clicks count as most relevant, quality score goes up – the more relevant the ads, the more users will click and continue to click
• include strong call to action – book now fro instance.

During the “Orion Panel: All Star Analytics Team” session there was much talk around analytics and the provision of “free” analytics.

In essence the comments were that it is better to get good at free tools first before spending money on paid analytics tools.

From the panel, Brian Clifton from Google mentioned that they specifically provide a free solution as a way to get back to advertisers while it has to drive revenue back to the company.

Overall, the general feeling from everyone on the panel was that providing free tools is a good thing providing it is done transparenly.

The top key learning areas for measuring and tracking is to track more than web related media, we should track other media like mobile and such.

Another issue discussed was around privacy. It is getting harder for Analytics tools to track sites because of increasing security & privacy issues as well as the use of cookies.

In short, all agreed that Analytic tools should track visitor behaviour:

• where do users come from?
• what do they look at?
• what are they doing?
• do they sign up?

However, there seemd to be some disagreement in how various Analytics tools measure clicks and hits and it was unclear really what metrics were tracked correctly.

A few other mentions:
- Social Media – what is considered popular and how do we track it? – does it drive traffic?
- Behaviour, whether positive or negative. How do you track comments and mentions?

The future of Analytics:s

• more aware of conversion rates
• year of testing
• awareness of moving into metrics of measuring whether all my marketing is succesfful via my websites
• more awareness in culture of companies

This session, presented by Matthew Bailey, was a quick insight into effective site architecture. Matthew started off by saying that a successful strategy always rely on this best practice: to do SEO before development. He says that one should never patch a site – no band-aids. It is important to get involved in the design before re-design of an old site or development of a new site commences.

A few things he covered in this session:

Usable architecture
- As marketers, our #1 goal should be to get people to the site
- #2 is to get them to do what we want them to do

The secrect of Search Engines
Searh Engines want to provide most relevant results by accounting for humans factors – they mimick human factors. We need to keep in mind what the human factors are what search engines might be looking at.

Site building foundations
- Architecture – how well the SE can get through your site
- How many links within and to the site
- Content of your site

These 3 are inter-related.

Matthew says that the #1 problem in sites are that their architecture is wrong – sites need to be easy to read and it should be easy to find the rest of the information you are looking for. Search Engines are the dumbest user coming to your site and therefore we need to make our sites accessible for them as well as the human visitor.

He then moved on to several aspects of site architecture and covered the following:
- We should use Google Webmaster Guidelines and also the W3C guidelines as a standard for design – both are similar to each other and give a good direction
- Does your site ask the user something? This is called user dependant action (something like a dropdown list) – Rather than using that, give people an alternative way to enter your site
- The SERP’s is the first marketing message people will see – you need to control this space – write good page titles and meta descriptions
- Don’t use cluttered or unfriendly URL’s that are not rewritten
one “=” sign – you’re good
two “=” signs – mmm, maybe
three “=” signs – not good
- Do you use a favicon? Perhaps you should (your brand can be saved to the user browser)

CSS & Standards
1. Can validated code help you rank higher?
2. Do sites using CSS rank higher?

Matthew basically asnwered both questions in one sentence by focusing on CSS. He basically said that CSS focuses on content and used right, it defines the content of a page. All the design elements are external and CSS reduces page clutter. So his answer is a yes.

Standards & Validation
1. Validation uncovers coding erros
2. It also assures that spiders can index content

Validation does not increase rankings but does affect it.

He then went on to the topic of mobile browsing, explaining that it is “getting hot”, and that our sites should be accessible via mobile phones and PDA’s. The bottom line for all of us is to design a site to be accessed “at any time, through any device”…

Next he talked about keywords. The #1 rule of keywords is to call products what they are and to not try and define a new market. So, when people are searching for “nails” you should optimize for nails and not something you thought was quirky and new.

Brands are NOT top of mind to people searches – needs are.

Then Matthew continued about importance of Page Titles, descriptions and keyword tags. He said Page Title tags is priority #1, Meta Description tags priority #2 and Meta Keyword tags are a waste of time. Personally, yes and no, I’d say the best is to use it, but not spend too much time on it. It can still help.

Then he continued on page structure and how people read a page. the fact is people don’t read, they scan content – 79% of users scan and 16% read word for word.

People scan:
- headlines
- meaningful sub headings
- bulleted lists
- headers: one idea per paragraph

You content arrangement needs to have the most important info at the top and, as Matthew suggests, you should half the word count to double the retention.

MAKE PAGES EASY TO SCAN with links in content – links in context

Lasly he mentiond problem in usability
#1 – small text on sites
#2 – scrolling text
#3 – blinking text
#4 – rotating text
#5 – text on fire
#6 – low contrast

I thought I’d start with the basics and headed off to the main auditorium to follow the “fundamentals Track”. The first session was called “Introduction to Search Marketing”.

Before the sessions I met with Dr. Ralph Wilson who walked up to me and asked where I was from and asked what I hoped to learn. Dr. Wilson was the main speaker the first session, so I chose my response very carefully by saying that even though I have been in SEO a while now, it is always good to hone your own skills and this session should do just that, confirm what I already know.

The introduction was done by Kevin Ryan who introduced Dr Ralph Wilson. Dr Wilson mainly talked about the big picture of search marketing and mainly the two tracks of SEM namely SEO and Paid search.

Firstly, he talked SEO and said that even though SEO focuses on organic results which can be achieved on a “free” basis, search engine traffic is not free. It does take time and time is money. However, having said that, it is the lowest cost way to get traffic to your site.

After that he mentioned that Search engines have algorithms and generally don’t reveal their formulas, therefore the only way to rank is to continually guess and tweak by means of experimentation and reverse engineering. Why, because the SE results are constantly changing.

According to Dr. Wilson, there are two ways that affect ranking:
- the webpage itself – what’s on the page and
- incoming links – the quality and quantity of links

Here are a few SEO basics he mentioned in this session

1. Conduct keyword research – what are the main keywords people will use to search for
- Analyze keywords and phrases
- Keyword analysis – Use tools like Wordtracker, Yahoo Keyword Suggesstion Tool, Google Keyword Tool and also your own traffic logs
- Keyword competition – select a niche, focus on that

2. Determine current ranking – you can use tools like WebPosition

3. Onsite SEO – make page Search Engine friendly
Ranking is based on 2 factors – what is on your pages and links to your site

Here he went into the top things you should look at for onsite SEO:
- Page Titles : use 5 to 8 words – don’t use your brand name
- Meta Description tag – use 200 to 250 characters
- Meta Keyword tag – used by Yahoo, not so much Google
- Header tags – use H1, H2 tags
- keywords in bodt text – keyword must be in first paragraph, keyword in link text, keyword in link URL – ALT and comment tags not as important

4. Help Search Engnes index each page of the site
- Don’t use splash page, especially flash – use text links
- Don’t use frames
- Use text links and not JavaScript
- Use site maps – XML format used by Google, Yahoo and MSN

5. Get links to your site
- Link popularity is important: more links, more pagerank
- Google says a site is relevant if a lot of links is pointing to it.
- Getting links is hard work – it is building relationships
- Getting links
a) in directories, yahoo, dmoz, industry related sites.
b) reciprocal links
c) articles
d) press release
e) affiliate program
f) develop a free service
g) start a blog
h) build a online forum
i) content creation
j) soial networking

6. Optimize key webpages – add keyword based om page theme

7. Don’t get banned
- check that you don have duplicate content
- don’t use doorway pages
- best behavious required
- no spamming

After SEO he moved onto PPC, which was a quick overview not really mentioning. However, i though this was interesting. He said: “Yahoo started Pay per Click, but Google is king” and this I believe to be true.

Way back in 2004 only 38% of user knew the difference between organic and paid search, today it is totally different.

Lastly he mentioned that when doing any keyword research, you need to research for both the “head” and “long tail” keywords. The “head” being the best keywords that will give a quick return based on popularity and the “long tail” which is less popular keywords but deliver more visits over a long time period.

Well, here I am at SES London 2008. I managed to commute without any hitches and found the Business Design Centre easily. In the posts following this, I will do my best to compile a report on all that is said by the respective speakers of every session here at SES.

Stay tuned for more…

The day has finally arrived and I cannot wait! I am off to London on Saturday to attend the Search Engine Strategies London 2008 Conference and Expo – Yay! Did I mention I am really excited?

It’s not my first visit to London, but it is a first for me to attend an SES event or any similar event for that matter. As the name of the expo implies, the SES events cover topics like Search Engine Marketing & Optimization which is my area of expertise and I am going to catch up on the latest trends in eMarketing.

The event is organized and hosted by world-renowned search authorities Mike Grehan and Kevin Ryan who will be two of the main speakers as well. My aim is to get all the juicy information on how to grow a company’s digital strategy by using search engine marketing (SEM/SEO/PPC/SMO) and I also look forward to networking with other International marketers and search engine industry professionals to discuss the trends in search engine marketing.

So I am going to rub shoulders with the “Big Boys”… the you know who’s of the Industry.

When I return I would have cemented all the knowledge I already have but should also learn more. I am really going to be like a spunge and see:

• How search engines list Web sites for free and through paid placements
• How to get free “organic” traffic by building a site that pleases search engines and your visitors
• How to efficiently purchase listings guaranteed to rank your company at the top of search engine results
• How to calculate the ROI of your search marketing efforts by tracking your visitors from the time they hit your site until they buy—and get tips on improving conversion if they don’t!
• How to build links that generate traffic to your Web site, and how to avoid the penalties of “spamming” the search engines
• What’s coming next in the constantly evolving world of Web search, and how you can profit from it.

Don’t go to far, I plan to cover much of the whole event by regular blog posts. Watch this space!

Oh, wait a second. This just in (in my mailbox that is)…

Google University classes are FREE for expo and conference attendees.
Learn how to use Google to change the way you do business in acquiring, converting and retaining customers on your site. Basics and Masterclass sessions are tailored to your knowledge level. The Analytics session is designed to help you understand and optimise how users interact with your site, allowing you to track both online and offline campaigns.

Man, I am so going to attend every session! Valueable stuff indeed.

Yesterday Facebook made a hugely anticipated announcement regarding a new advertising system, but not about broadcasting messages, but about getting into the conversations between people. Facebook Ads includes three parts: a way for businesses to build pages on Facebook to connect with its audience; an ad system that facilitates the spread of brand messages virally through Facebook Social Ads™; and an interface to gather insights into people’s activity on Facebook that marketers care about.

In other words advertisers will now be able to build their own Facebook business pages and design them any way they like. You can add photo’s, videos, discussion boards and any flash content you want to bring to your page plus any application a third party developer has made.

The second part will consist of Social distribution, now this is interesting. When somebody engages with your page that is spread virally through the network. When someone says they are a fan of your brand that becomes a trusted referral. It goes right to their Mini feed. A strong trusted referral for your brand. You will be able to craft the types of social actions you want to spread across the social graph.

But probable the most important part of this announcement is regarding the third service – “Insights” which is geared toward marketers. Facebook will be able to track how much people are talking about your brand in public forums across Facebook. As you run ads on Facebook you will be able to see the exact mind share you are getting.

Has Facebook finally found a way to make themselves useful in the commercial and advertising market? I guess we will have to wait and see…