Search Engine Strategies, San Jose 2004
Search Engine Strategies, Day 2 at San Jose 2004
After an evening of networking at various industry parties, Day 2 of the SES Conference started with one of the week's certain highlights: the opening keynote presented by Danny Sullivan, the Editor of Searchenginewatch.com. Danny's subject was "Problems Facing Search." In his speech, Danny presented what he found to be a "contextual pollution problem" facing search engines today, and also suggested some perceived improvements and solutions for the industry.
Using a sample search of "Radio Flyer San Jose," since he wanted to buy a Radio Flyer with large wheels in order to take his children to the beach, Danny provided an accurate glimpse into one of the major problems with current-day search. The search at various platforms from Yahoo to Google revealed that the top two to three sites would not actually enable Danny to find a Radio Flyer and physically purchase it in San Jose. The problem was that all the sites contained references to both Radio Flyer and San Jose; however they only provided shipping of the product to this town. The reason that they showed up was that both sites listed within their verbiage the words San Jose and Radio Flyer, and the crawler or "robots" at the search engines picked-up on these and, using this other ranking criteria, deemed the sites positive matches. Only from the fourth result did Danny find a listing of places to actually acquire a radio Flyer while on his visit.
Danny continued by discussing what he believes the responsibility that Search Engine Marketers (SEM's) face: the task of successfully branding organizations on the Internet without exaggerating their available products and services. He also described the efforts being made by major search engines to help SEM's with this task. Many search engines now provide representatives to specifically interface with SEM's in order to streamline online marketing methods. Danny accurately depicted SEM's as people that combined Search Engine Optimization (SEO) with various other Internet Marketing techniques to solve the problem of false search returns.
Danny finished his keynote with a "call to arms" for SEM's to adopt a code of conduct that would ensure that no unscrupulous methods are used to gain search engine ranking. Since SEM's are facing what he described as a "reputation problem," Danny reasoned that only by strict self-policing would the industry avoid further inaccurate results. He also briefly mentioned that the search engines could provide better "weather reports" to SEM describing future changes in ranking algorithms. Other suggestions included providing the industry with more efficient methods to report spam and to track the action taken to correct such problems. Danny clearly illustrated that industry problems are not clearly "white" or "black," instead describing them as "gray." The main proposed solution was that there should be a "partnership in attitude" between the organic and paid-placement SEM's, with a common goal of improving searchers' overall experience.
The rest of day two provided a variety of very effective panel discussion ranging from "Creating Compelling Ads and Landing Pages" to an "Advanced link Building Forum" held in the afternoon. Topics included various methods to ensure that websites were not only search engine friendly, but also user friendly. This includes ensuring that relevant information is placed near the top of pages, or "above the fold" (where most browsers require users to scroll down for further content). Also strongly encouraged were prominent "calls to action," urging surfers to pick up the phone or send an e-mail with requests for more information. Many other useful techniques for improving site usability were also described during the course of the day.
Marketing is a science that relies mostly on one technique in order to be effective: constant research. Many experts spoke of the need to continuously vary methods of performing such research in order to help websites succeed. Lee Mills, a veteran Internet marketer and former associate of Chris Boggs, made one of the best suggestions. He provided a model for testing an e-commerce page by having two options available for the landing page layouts as well as the text located within the page. Options "A" and "B" would then be interchanged on a weekly basis. The first week would use landing page "A" and text "A." The second would use landing page "A" and text "B," and so forth. This kind of research can most effectively measure a page's performance.
The afternoon link-building forum also provided outstanding guidelines for SEM's. Representatives from Google , AskJeeves and major web marketers discussed a variety of "do's" and "don'ts" to follow when creating and providing back-links to a website. Among things to avoid were "link farms," invisible links and anything that artificially boosts link popularity. Positive suggestions included ensuring that inbound links were from industry or at least subject-related sites, and that they be text links instead of images whenever possible. As always, website owners should consult a professional SEM before embarking on any link-improvement programs.
Inside the expo, Dave Carberry spent an exhausting day (with occasional support from Chris) extolling the virtues of Instant Position's new and improved SEODoc. Many website owners and marketers were very impressed by the technology of the software. A few visitors even came to the booth and reported that the company had been mentioned in panel discussions. It seems certain that Instant Position's reputation within the SEM industry will only grow as the week ensues. At the halfway point of the conference, month's worth of knowledge and experience has already been gained.
