Day 1 at SMX East ended with an evening forum with Danny Sullivan which had an overall focus on search and social.

  Some of the statements made by Danny Sullivan and which were shared on Twitter were:
  •  It’s a Google’s world. We just rank in it. Or not.
  •  The 4 Cs Of SEO Success: Code, Content, Connections (links) & Conversation (social).
  •  Link Earning instead of Link Building
  •  Is link building dead? Great question asked by audience member. Audience & @dannysullivan say no!
  •  Social media is the new link building
  •  Reminder to all: .Co is fine, .Com is always good, & .Co.CC was the pure evil that got obliterated.
  •  You rock as a brand if the CPC for your brand is pennies on the dollar and you have 8 sitelinks.
  •  Is there a way to know when you have arrived as brand? - Yes, when you have a Google ad rep
  •  If people leave the site because their info need was fulfilled it's not a bounce
  •  "If you have no Panda problems, don't fix things"
On Day 2 - 14th Sept. 2011 My Focus was on the Technical SEO Track Sessions. They were as follows: Duplication, Aggregation, Syndication, Affiliates, Scraping, and Information Architecture Presented By: · Brian Cosgrove, TPG · Vanessa Fox, Search Engine Land · Matt Heist, High Gear Media
  • Too much syndicated content dilutes the value of the original content.
  • THE CHALLENGES - Feeds from suppliers, Too many categories, Items are too similar
  • Writing unique content is the cost-of-entry for SEO
  • TOOLSET FOR SUCCESS - SEO Strategy, Keyword Mapping, Content Strategy,Work flow,Style Guide,Content Calendar, Creative Brief
  • If you have too many sites and the content is distributed and thin then it is not good
  • Have fewer but content rich sites with clear audience segments
  • Content resonates in search AND social.
  • With the evolution of Social (joining Search from a distribution perspective), premium content that is authoritative AND fresh will flourish
Schema.org, Rel=Author & Meta Tagging For 2012 Presented By: · Janet Driscoll Miller, Search Mojo · Topher Kohan, CNN · Jack Menzel, Google
  • Semantic (Structured Code) The semantic web is a “man made woven web of data” that facilitates machines to understand the semantics .
  • TYPES OF STRUCTURED DATA FOR SEO - Rich Snippets, Rel=Author, Schema.org
  • TYPES OF RICH SNIPPETS Reviews , People, Products, Businesses & Organizations, Recipes, Events, Music
  • REL=AUTHOR RESTRICTIONS - Doesn’t support multiple author blogs , Only works on same site (i.e. won’t work yet for syndicated content), Only works on self-hosted sites
  • SCHEMA.ORG - Created by Google, Bing and Yahoo! - Launched June 2, 2011 - Way for engines to easily identify types of content
  • Some Problems - Schema is a “New” mark-up, Standards not in place, Not a big ROI right now
  • But, it is the right time to implement as these are in all probability to be given importance by the search engine. Hence, when they will become a priority the site which already has these snippets and microformats in place will have a probability to be ahead .
  • Best Time to Implement is when - Moving to a new CMS, Launching new templates, Launching a new site, Site redesign, Down dev cycles
  • Some of our related blog posts on this topic are:
http://www.webpro.in/what-is-hcard-integration/ http://www.webpro.in/authorship-markup-and-the-rel-attribute Real Answers For Technical SEO Problems  Presented By: · Vanessa Fox, Search Engine Land· Todd Nemet, Nine By Blue The main discussion was on - How To Evaluate Site Architecture For Technical SEO Without Launching A Browser?
  • Look at things like… Network, Web access logs, HTTP response codes, HTTP response headers and talk to the network admins/developers
  • Checking load balancing
  • Checking server latency
  • Checking network latency
  • Checking for duplicate sites
  • Web access log analysis
  • Monitor and check crawling inefficiency
  • Identify Duplicate Content Problems
  • Have a proper error handling page
  • Make the site Cache friendly
Making Data From Google Webmaster Central & Bing Webmaster Tools Actionable 
Presented By: · Duane Forrester, Bing· Vanessa Fox, Search Engine Land· Tiffany Oberoi, Google· Myron Rosmarin, Rosmarin Search Marketing, Inc.
  • Stop Running Reports. Start Providing Analysis.
  • Reporting is Pulling data and plugging it into a spreadsheet - Analysis is: Making sense of data, providing  insights for improvement and providing explanations
  • The Webmaster Tools are valuable sources of “Diagnostic Data”that enable you to provide a more thorough analysis of problems your site may have so you can take action toward improvement
  • Numbers without something to compare to don’t mean much.
  • Everything is Relative
  • Pull data at appropriate time intervals
Eventually everyone has to accept the fact as Danny Sullivan said that it’s a Google’s world and we rank in it or not… The presentation’s last slide said:  🙂
God, grant me the serenity to accept 
 
the things I cannot change, 
 
Courage to change the things I can, 
 
And wisdom to know the difference. 
Day 3 Sept. 15th 2011 The conference on the third day was only for half a day till 3:00 p.m Link Building: Why You're Doing It Wrong 
Presented By
· Jenny Halasz, Nine by Blue· Byrne Hobart, Digital Due Diligence · Rae Hoffman-Dolan, Sugarrae SEO Firm
Link building is important. But,
  •  Try to build natural links. Go for quality over quantity
  •  Guest Post = Your Inbound Link Value
  •  When you write guest posts see that you put few links and make the post as informative as possible
  •  When you write a guest post or any blog post on any general topic try to correlate it with your niche industry so that it has a probability of going viral in both the fields
According to Rae Hoffman-Dolan  Points to consider…
  • Check for existing writer guidelines before contacting
  • Send personal and individual emails
  • Use names whenever possible
  • Prove you’re not a bot
  • Ask a genuine question
  • Never assume they know who you are
  • Include a potential topic idea and example post
  • DO NOT MENTION LINKS (but do mention edits)
Beyond Rankings: Actionable SEO Reports Your Boss Will Love 
Presented By: · Vanessa Fox, Search Engine Land· Max Thomas, Thunder SEO· Marty Weintraub, aimClear
  • Rankings as a metric is easy to understand hence the popularity but, Only looking at rankings does not give an idea about indexing and crawling
  • Measure the impact of changes made on the site
  • Monitor Errors Over time alongwith Google Page Not found errors
According to Vanessa Fox : Do not look at keyWords look at people use searcher personas to connect SEO to conversion  Personas > related pages for those personas > Keywords for those pages > Rankings for those pages
  • Cluster by category impressions, clicks, CTR, Avg. Position
  • Organic impressions = Technical SEO + Sematic SEO
  • The Title tags the main tag responsible for high CTR
  • If you have high rankings and If your CTR is bad then your title tags are probably bad.
  • People don’t pay for what they don’t understand.
  • Empower Your Primary Client
  • Make it easy for them to convey easily what’s happening Don’t wait for them to tell you. Figure it out. Ask questions.
Reports Should Demonstrate:
  •  What’s working
  •  What’s not
  •  Where to focus resources
  •  Connection of SEO/SMM to sales (or conversions)
  •  How to explain to key decision makers so they understand
Don’t highlight their LACK of digital knowledge. Instead chalk out the difference between goals and metrics very clearly in a layman’s language. Do not use digital jargon while conveying the importance of goals or explaining the metrics to the client. One size Report does not fit all. Reporting should be done as per the client’s understanding.

Author

  • Bharati Ahuja

    Bharati Ahuja is the Founder of WebPro Technologies LLP. She is also an SEO Trainer and Speaker, Blog Writer, and Web Presence Consultant, who first started optimizing websites in 2000. Since then, her knowledge about SEO has evolved along with the evolution of search on the web. Contributor to Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Watch, etc.

September 20, 2011