SEO Weekend Update 05/27/2008

Hi, Friends. I hope you all enjoyed your long weekend. Because now it’s over and it’s time to get back to work. IT also replaced my keyboard this morning which has completely confused my fingers. For every five words typed, I’m almost guaranteed to have one spelled correctly. Huzzah for productivity!

One Week ‘Til SMX Advanced!

I checked a calendar earlier and was shocked to realize that SMX Advanced is just one week away! If you waited until the last minute to purchase an All Access Pass, you’re now officially out of luck because they’re sold out! However, you can still purchase a Developer Day, Networking or Expo Only pass before the big show. You better hurry.

Of course we’ll be sending a Bruce Clay contingent to man the booth and take photos with babies provide demos of our SEOToolSet. Bruce will also be speaking on the Creating Value In Your SEM Businesses panel and we’ll be providing a double dose of liveblogging coverage of the event.

SMX Advanced will also be your first chance to meet two new Bruce Clay, Inc. employees. Our Associate Writer Virginia Nussey will help me on the liveblogging front while recording some new SEM Synergy episodes. You’ll also get to meet Chris Hart, the face running our new East Coast office! Chris will help Bruce Clay rock the Long Island pride (and patented accent) and help us bring our SEO training program to the other side of the States. We couldn’t be more excited to have him on board or to announce the new office. Look for a press release early next week for more information about Bruce Clay, Inc. East!

Why Do You Put Up With Twitter?

Twitter continues to be as unreliable as our posting schedule was back when Susan ran the blog, so why are you still using it? Loren Feldman says it all goes back to our need for attention and to feel that someone is listening to us. Unlike your blog, on Twitter you can offer up a 50 character message about your lunch and people will immediately respond and validate your existence. Is that all Twitter really is? Or is just habit at this point? I mean, if you left Twitter, for say, Friendfeed, you’d have to go through the whole “setting it up” hassle again. Who wants to do that?

It’s interesting, though. Because for as many posts as we see circulating Sphinn and beyond all talking about how unreliable Twitter is, we’re all still using it. [Often to complain about how annoying it is.–Susan] Why are you still staying Twitter-loyal? Listen to what Loren has to say and then offer up your own two cents.

Best Practices Aren’t Always Best

Nathania Johnson over at Search Engine Watch pointed me to a great post on the Google Website Optimizer blog that proves that best practices aren’t law. The post discusses a landing page case study that was done for a stair remodeling company. Two landing pages were tested — The “pretty” one that, by all accounts, should have come out on top and a landing page without the model or the visible menu. At the end of the test, it was revealed that the “inferior” page actually increased the company’s conversion rate by 144 percent and grew the average order size by 18 percent.

I’m not surprised. Having attended Jim Sterne’s eMetrics Summit earlier this month, that lesson was drilled into attendee’s heads. So many times marketers assume they know what’s best or what a customer wants when they couldn’t be more wrong.

The lesson of the day: Test everything. Even best practices can be wrong.

Fun Finds

ABI Research says that the Internet video audience will hit one billion viewers by the year 2013.
Mashable talks about the rumored Social Bookmarks site Microsoft is set to be releasing.

Lisa Barone is a writer, content marketer & VP of strategy at Overit Media. She's also a very active Twitterer, much to the dismay of the rest of the world.

See Lisa's author page for links to connect on social media.

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