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to the Show:
New Sessions, Sponsored
Parties, Algorithms and Google Site Maps
With 25 new sessions out of 78 this year, SES
San Jose was as dynamic as ever. Search algorithm
research was hot and so were the parties!
Video, Testing, Customer
Communication & Social Media Optimization
In the second segment Cindy and Brooke talk
about some of the newer sessions at SES. Cindy
mentioned the online video advertising session
and how Google is really focusing on video these
days.
Duplicate Content and Links
In the last segment, Cindy shared with listeners
what she learned from the “Duplicate Content
and Multiple Site issues” session. Answering
Brooke’s question regarding how you can
tell if you have duplicate content issues, Cindy
gave a number of techniques that can be used to
identify a duplicate content issue.
Summary of Search Engine Strategies (SES) San
Jose 2006 Review with
Cindy Turrietta & Brooke Schumacher
Cindy and Brooke thoroughly enjoyed the Search
Engine Strategies event held in San Jose and gathered
many new SEO tips. In the August 18th 2006 edition
of the e-Marketing Talk Show, they shared all
the exciting new things they saw and learned.
New Sessions, Sponsored Parties, Algorithms
and Google Site Maps
Since Search is such a dynamic industry, search
engine marketers have to keep abreast of the latest
developments, techniques and technologies. The
SES event continues to help marketers update their
knowledge on a regular basis. The 2006 SES event
held at San Jose was simply ‘awesome’
and out of a total of 78 sessions, 25 were brand
new. These new sessions covered topics such as
social search, online video and phone call tracking.
The segment started off on a light and entertaining
note talking about the various luncheons and the
different types of seating arrangements. Cindy
felt that the creative seating arrangements were
a great idea. There was one “birds of a
feather” type of seating where they set
tables with signs that read ‘analytics’,
‘pay per click’, ‘organic’,
‘social search’ and many more. This
allowed people to sit with others from the search
industry who were interested in the same fields
and led to interesting and enlightening discussions.
Another option available was to take their lunch
into a large room where Google was talking about
their new webmaster tool and interface and in
another room Yahoo was talking about their new
and upcoming ad platform.
Cindy and Brooke went on to entertain listeners
with descriptions of the Google and Ask Jeeves
parties. Google had their ‘infamous’
dance party at the sprawling Google complex. A
position at Google is really something to die
for, as they have every imaginable thing available
in their complex, from gourmet food to Laundromats.
Cindy stated that the “Ask Jeeves”
party was a great success. There was a photo booth
where all the guests could get free pictures taken
of themselves with their friends. Apart from this,
they had a lot of ladies dressed in the saloon
fifties styles, roaming around handing out candy
in lieu of cigarettes. Brooke mentioned that there
were some really scandalous photos on display
at the booth, but she insisted that she had to
keep the identity of the people involved under
wraps.
Brooke told listeners that she had attended the
search algorithm research session in which the
speaker discussed patents and algorithms. An important
point that was brought up in this session was
that just because a patent is out for searching
it doesn’t mean that the search engines
actually use it or measure information in that
way. The patent is basically something that they
might look at in the future or is used by them
to throw marketers off track. Another topic discussed
dealt with the importance of linking to authority
sites helping marketers show users and the search
engines that your site is an authority or expert
site.
Brooke also shared with the audience that she
had heard that certain types of URLs get crawled
more and ranked higher. She urged listeners to
do more research on this topic. She went on to
tell listeners that it is a great plus to have
an RSS feed because the content is considered
to be fresher and search engines are likely to
go back and index those pages more frequently.
At the end of the segment, Cindy informed listeners
that it would be a smart move to create a Google
site map and submit a new site map every time
new pages are added so that the new material gets
indexed.
Video, Testing, Customer Communication &
Social Media Optimization
In the second segment Cindy and Brooke continued
to talk about some of the newer sessions at SES.
Cindy mentioned the online video advertising session
and how Google is really focusing on video these
days.
Brooke mentioned that a lot of top interactive
agencies were present at the SES and went on to
discuss the different uses of video such as video
search, gaming devices, mobile TV, personal video
recorders and putting advertising into them, video
on demand for longer formatting video and “digital
OOH”, which means “Out Of Home”.
Brooke speculated that OOH probably refers to
digital screens used in outdoor billboards and
mobile digital TV e.g. having a TV on your mobile
phone.
Brooke also attended the ‘communicating
with customers’ sessions, in which marketers
were advised to win over customers by doing more
than what is expected from them e.g. by sending
out e-cards or sending something in the mail.
Brooke explained how important it is to show a
connection with the customers needs by answering
their questions, solving their problems and understanding
what their objectives are, instead of just trying
to draw them into a new campaign.
Many experts at the show emphasized the importance
of testing and encouraged marketers to spend 10-16%
of their marketing budget on discovering new and
innovative ways of marketing. A lot of new and
effective marketing techniques are actually inexpensive,
such as RSS feeds and click to call tracking etc.
Brooke mentioned some really good “cross
pollination” techniques such as using blog
content in your e-mail newsletter and posting
some of the feedback from your newsletter onto
your blog.
Cindy talked about the completely packed “Social
Search” session that she attended. According
to Cindy, Social Search is definitely the next
big thing in the world of Search Marketing. The
search engines claim that their goal is to provide
content that is specific and relevant to the user.
Social Search and Web 2.0 aim to provide content
that is not just relevant to people in general
but to “you” specifically, and they’ll
figure this out based on your search patterns.
This will result in much more targeted search
results.
Cindy went on to inform listeners of the different
social search sites such as ‘Dig It,’
“del.icio.us” (which is a collection
of favorites), “My Space” and “Magnolia”.
“Dig It” has user powered content
and is created by people submitting articles and
then the community votes on which articles are
good and should be posted on the site and which
articles should be discarded.
Brooke attended a session on Social Media Optimization
(SMO), a new niche in the market that is growing
rapidly. She also shared some SEM tactics with
listeners such as optimizing sites from bottom
up i.e. optimizing the product pages first and
the home page etc. later i.e. optimize from specific
to general because this will get you faster and
better conversions.
Brooke wrapped up the second segment with another
useful tip. Since research shows that people search
for seasonal gifts all year around, this could
prove to be another source of traffic for retailers.
Duplicate Content and Links
In the last segment, Cindy shared with listeners
what she learned from the “Duplicate Content
and Multiple Site issues” session. Answering
Brooke’s question regarding how you can
tell if you have duplicate content issues, Cindy
gave a number of techniques that can be used to
identify a duplicate content issue such as:
- If you have a lot of pages that are showing
up as supplemental results when you do a site
search in Google, it indicates that you might
have duplicate content
- If there is a message that reads ‘repeat
the search with omitted results included’
at the bottom of the Google search results page,
this shows you that Google thought that there
were pages that were very similar to the ones
listed on the results page
- If you generate a new URL but it has the
same information for dynamic websites as another
URL
Google told users that not only should they watch
out for duplicate content, they must also watch
out for content that seems very similar. It is
believed that articles, press releases and blogs
are “white listed” but you should
still use caution when posting them. The speakers
also talked about “shingles” on a
page and how duplicate shingles must be avoided
as well. Cindy explained that product shingles
are the little product descriptions that are like
a snippet of the product with the title and maybe
a one line description that could be in a little
box or could be a line across the page or table
data etc. Cindy feels that duplicate content has
become the next big thing since Big Daddy and
warned listeners that they must make sure that
they are redirecting their ‘non www’
to their “www’ or the other way around
because Google may be indexing both of making
the whole site seem to be a duplicate. The Google
representatives talked about the new Google webmaster
tool that Google has created which allows users
to go in and specify which address they want Google
to use.
Although buying links is not encouraged, if it
is something you feel you must do, the next tip
Cindy gave was related to the factors you must
consider when researching sites to buy links from
if that is something you must do. She advised
listeners to see how closely related the theme
of the chosen site is to the content on their
site or to the keyword phrase they are soliciting
the link from. She also pointed out that users
must make sure that the link in question is a
single link on a page and not site wide i.e. it
should not be a “run of site type link”.
She also said that users must make sure that it
is a text link and not being excluded with the
“no follow” tag or being ousted in
the robot.txt file or commented out. You want
the search engines to be able to see it and index
it.
Brooke informed listeners about what was discussed
at the “link building basics” session.
A good tip for searching for portals or link brokers
that she picked up was that when you are looking
for niche directories do a search for “submit
your site + topic you are looking for” or
use “add your site + topic”.
Cindy and Brooke tried their level best to cram
4 days of great material into this one hour long
show and managed quite well because Matt Van Wagner
(a guest at one of the previous e-Marketing talk
show sessions) called in to commend Cindy and
Brooke on the excellent service they were providing
to the marketing community by giving them these
valuable tips.
Be sure to watch the eMarketing Talk Show home
page for a Search Engine Strategy Conference and
Expo coming to an area near you!
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