December 2009 Archives : 3/4 : Bruce Clay Blog
December 9, 2009PPC or SEO? The Ultimate Search Marketing Battle
Okay, so I had this awesome introduction written up but then Word locked and I had to start over. It’s pretty much par for the course since I don’t think any of the panelists have presentations (which in Fishkin’s case is a good thing — we don’t need 70 slides in 30 seconds, Rand).
Can’t tell the players without a program: Brian Lewis, Engine Ready, is moderating this motley crew of speakers. From left to right: Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz.org; Michael Gray, Atlas Web Service; David Naylor, Bronco; Christine Churchill, KeyRelevance; and Karen Weber, Irwin Union Bank.
They’ve promised a fair fight tonight, this morning, whatever. Look, I haven’t had any coffee or breakfast yet. [Hehe! You're funny when you're grumpy, Susan. --Virginia] Anyway, the dudes are SEO, the chicks are PPC. Everyone gets a couple seconds to introduce themselves.
Read more of PPC or SEO? The Ultimate Search Marketing Battle from SES Chicago 2009.
SES Chicago Morning Keynote by Dan Siroker
Welcome to Wednesday, day three of SES Chicago. We have been promised that never again will this happen in December. I checked my flight when I woke up and it’s already listed as delayed. It doesn’t take off for another 11 hours.
I’m going to try not to worry about it and just focus on the excellent keynote that we have today. Dan Siroker will be talking to us about the Obama team’s online strategy during the campaign, which is pretty awesome.
Dan wants to focus on five practical takeaways in his presentation.
He starts off by showing some clips from Obama’s visit to Google two years ago. Dan was then a product manager for Google Chrome. At the time, Obama said (in the interview) “I want you to help.” Dan took that to heart and moved to Chicago for a month to help and then later joined the campaign as the director of analytics.
Read more of the Morning Keynote by Dan Siroker from SES Chicago 2009.
December 8, 2009
Igniting Viral Campaigns: SES Chicago
The Wi-Fi has totally choked and it’s making everyone cranky. Also, I do not believe that most of the people sitting at the front “press only” table are actually press. (See, I told you there was cranky going on.)
It’s up to our panel to make things better. For that we turn to moderator… that’s not Tessa Wegert. I don’t know who it is. Oh, okay, here’s Tessa. Hi Tessa!
Anyway, our speakers are Greg Finn, 10e20; Denise Chudy, Google; and Jennifer Evans Laycock, Search Engine Guide.
[Randomly, it bothers me that the tagline for the San Diego viral conference is "Get out of the cold and into the know." Why not "Get out of the snow"?]
Greg Finn spent most of last night trying to convince me to go easy on him during his presentation. I don’t know where people get the idea that I’m the mean one. He’s up first.
Read more of Igniting Viral Campaigns from SES Chicago 2009.
Real Time SEO: No More Yesterday’s News
So lunch is over, or so I hear, and now we’re heading into the final three sessions of the day. First up, it’s time to talk news and we’ve got a good panel for it. Moderator Tim Ruder, PerfectMarket, and speakers Brent Payne, Tribune; Topher Kohan, CNN; Rochelle Sanchirico, Washington Post Digital; and Muhammed Saleem, ChicagoNow, will be giving us the ins and outs of keeping up with the world.
Brent Payne is going to start us off. He’s talking about breaking news opportunities as well as the flaws between Google News and Google search.
There are huge opportunities with breaking news events. The Tiger Woods story was more popular than sex or porn during its peak on December 3 and 4. Their traffic doubled on the weekend when the story broke. Then they got into Google News and then dipped again after they fell out of Google News.
Read more of Real Time SEO: No More Yesterday’s News from SES Chicago 2009.
Local Search Ranking Factors: Blended, Natural and Video
I’m taking a chance today on the Local Search Summit that’s going on. Who are the speakers? No clue. Is this going to be any good? No clue. But what’s life without a little unknown?
Having stopped at the Starbucks (where they’re only making straight up coffee, bother), I’ve found my way upstairs to the small local search room. There’s no mic, one of the speakers has lost his voice so he’s not staying, and they’re talking about turning it into a site clinic. Possibly this was a bad choice to liveblog. I can has nap?
Our speakers, as best as I can tell: Gib Olander, Localeze; David No Last Name!, Local Splash [She's lookin' at David Rodecker. The Local Search Summit could use some more speaker info on their site, and apparently in person, too. --Virginia]; and Mike Belasco, from somewhere in California. [I'm pretty sure she means Mike Belasco of seOverflow in Denver, Colorado. Locked in Chicago's snowy grip, the California girl is clearly pining for piece of home. --Virginia]
Read more of Local Search Ranking Factors from SES Chicago 2009.
Morning Keynote by Peter Morville — SES Chicago 2009
Good morning and welcome to day two of SES Chicago! It’s snowing outside and when I mentioned I have an 8 p.m. flight out of here tomorrow night all the locals sort of laughed at me. You don’t suppose they know something I don’t, do you?
Mike Grehan starts us off again with some housekeeping details and then introduces Shari Thurow to introduce Peter Morville who is our keynote speaker today. He’s the author of Ambient Findability and co-author of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web. We’re going to be talking about findability and usability. Good times.
Peter takes the stage and says he’s going to move pretty fast today. Bother, I knew I should have gotten a coffee.
What is information architecture?
- The structural design of information environments
- The combination of organization labeling, search, and navigation systems in Web sites and intranets
Read more of the Morning Keynote by Peter Morville from SES Chicago 2009.
December 7, 2009
Ghost Blogging, Tweeting, Content Production – Ethical? Does It Matter? — Blended Search Results Track
Last panel of the day and it couldn’t have come soon enough. Guys, I’m totally out of liveblogging shape, no joke. But this session is completely worth it even before we start because I’ve finally met Kim Krause-Berg in person. My life is complete.
Our moderator is Beth Harte, MarketingProfs, and our speakers are Liana Evans, Serengeti Communications, and Andy Beal, Trackur (who Virginia interviewed last week).
Li Evans is up first and she looks fantastic, by the way.
What’s the big deal about ghostwriting a blog? It’s done with books all the time, right? But the difference is that there’s not a personal connection there with the book. There’s no expectation that the reader is getting YOU.
Read more of Ghost Blogging, Tweeting, Content Production – Ethical? Does It Matter? from SES Chicago 2009.
The Quest for Perfect Information: How Network Intelligence is Transforming Search — Search on the Edge Track
I have absolutely no witty commentary to take us into this one so instead I’ll introduce our stars.
Our moderator is Ken Miller, Anchor Intelligence. The speakers are Stephen Scarr, Info.com; Bill Leake, Apogee Search; Ted West, LookSmart; and Craig Greenfield, Performics. Looking at that line up, I think I might be in over my head on this one. Why do I always pick the sessions that melt my brains?
Craig Greenfield starts off this session, which is rather under-attended.
In 1998, GoTo/Overture was really the start of this quest for perfect info. Then Google’s launch of AdWords and Yahoo!’s purchase of Overture continued to move it forward. The ability to value display and impression the way we do paid search is the next step toward figuring out ROI.
Read more of The Quest for Perfect Information: How Network Intelligence is Transforming Search from SES Chicago 2009.
Meaningful SEO Metrics: Going Beyond the Numbers
After a delicious lunch that makes all those years of boxed lunches look sad, I’ve run back downstairs to finish out the afternoon with three more sessions. The panelist here are already joking about starting cocktail hour. I think Zwicky started it. Gotta watch that guy every minute. Speaking of the panelists, let’s meet them:
Moderator Chris Boggs, Rosetta, is heading things up and we’ll be getting all the good information from speakers (left to right): Jeff Ferguson, Local.com; Dave Tan, Resolution Media; Linda Ramsey, Restaurant.com; and Richard Zwicky, Enquisite.
This is another Q&A heavy session. Why do I stumble into these things?
Each of the speakers does a little bit of an introduction of who they are and what they do but I’ve linked to their bios so I’ll just give you highlights.
Read more of Meaningful SEO Metrics from SES Chicago 2009.
YouTube & Video Optimization — Blended Search Results Track
During the last session, Anne F. Kennedy of Beyond Ink told us that it was time to move beyond ten blue links and start optimizing the rest of your digital content. Now she’s going to introduce a guy who will tell us all about that. How awesome is Greg Jarboe of SEO-PR? He’s the only one speaking this session and it’s going to rock.
He’s wearing a Buckeyes sweatshirt because he’s a University of Michigan alum. They lost again last night and he apparently is doing penance as a result. Sports are weird.
Greg starts off with the still excellent fact that there are 9 billion searches on Google a month. And there are 10 billion videos viewed on YouTube every month. So who is really the heavyweight in that relationship?
YouTube is the single most underutilized opportunity online.
The market is extremely diverse. It’s not just kids and college students (though it does skew younger) but you’re still getting 35 percent of the people over 35. There are more male users than female.
How do you get people to discover, watch and share YouTube videos?
To find out, read more of YouTube & Video Optimization from SES Chicago 2009.
