Here at the closing panel discussion at SEM for SMB, I'm live blogging (and live-twittering!) the closing panel I'm attending with Lauren. She's live-twittering this as well.
Happy hour afterwards sponsored by Apogee Search Engine Marketing.
As part of this conference, the company San Antonio Replacement Windows actually bought their domain and launched their SEO'd website this morning!
Q: Will Google die in the next 10 years? Does it matter?
A1: There were no big players before Google. It resonated with people through it's simplicity. Now it's a 3 search engine world, doing all the same things. What's the next search innovation? Who will pioneer it first?
A2: Google's not going to go away. They do it the best right now.
Moderator: People don't know how to search. The #1 Google search is Yahoo and vice versa. Many search queries are actually people looking how to spell their keyword correctly.
Bill Leake: Google will still be #1 among search engines, but will will still need them? Google didn't invent the wheel, they have bought out or use other technologies that came before.
Q: Mobile search will outpace searches from desktops. Thoughts on mobile search?
A1: It's already happening. Asia is far ahead of us in terms of mobile internet use.
Bill: Phones are just smaller computers that are useful for some internet needs, but may not be the best investment for all companies. It's too painful to read a lot online.
-- Audience Q&A --
Q: SEO firms takes months to get results. This SA company took 12 hours to rank today. What's the catch?
A1: No rankings guarantee. Depends on small vs. large sites and what they look like. SEO at enterprise level helps their marketing team actually get something done! Get them updated, get their IT/dev teams involved.
A2: Small businesses are afraid to change, don't know what to do. The difference is commitment. Perceived small business hurdles can be overcome - it's worth it.
Bill: The new website is a new site targeting a long tail keyword. It's harder to rank in Austin than San Antonio. Fresh content will shoot up - if it's not maintained, the rankings will fall. Even large sites have problems getting indexed and ranking.
Q: Mobile platform - limited manpower and budget. What percentage of assets should they throw at mobile for a small company?
A: This is a local search issue.
Bill: Mobile-friendly microsite - quick and painless access.
Moderator: Mobile searchers look for 2 things - address and phone number.
Q: Semantic search viable? What's it mean for SEM?
A: Google's been talking semantic for forever. It's the holy grail. People don't know how to search. Getting at that is what semantic is all about. The Googlebot added it 5 years ago but nothing's really changed.
A: Web 3.0 - semantic web?
A: Don't forget the obvious! 99% of clients have too fat of a webpage. Page load time is important, especially now that we're talking about mobile. Do simple things that will make a big impact today.
Q: This conference is very tech-focused. What approaches do you have after optimization in terms of conversion? How do you convert all the traffic you drive?
A1: SEO early days: "here's your traffic". Now we want the right traffic that converts. "Add to Cart" converts better than "Buy Now". Look at the data to learn what's converting.
A2: A more basic question: "what should you be converting on?" Why rank for "furniture," when you can rank for a higher converting term like "leather ottoman"? Focus on high-opportunity keywords for things that will cause the person to convert. It's not always volume and general terms - imagine ranking for "windows"...
Bill: Attend conversion sessions at conferences (more affordable). Look at your real goals - not always converting a form on the website. Maybe you want to drive phone calls? What are you trying to drive? A bigger web conversion rate doesn't always equal money. Don't start with SEO for conversions -- lead with PPC. Use PPC to test keywords to prove which are making you money. You may be "better" at SEO, but if I've got the right keywords, I win. :)
Moderator: Who are the people involved? Talk to your customers! Make decisions based on what they want from you. It's not the tech, it's understanding the customer psychology.
A3: Best Practices -
E-commerce: shorten the shopping cart! Some are 14 pages long!! Consolidate to 3-4 pages.
Decrease size of pages. Cut down on large images and forms. Get them under 75-100K.
Tell them where they are in the shopping cart process - like "step 2 of 3".
A4: Look at the site in terms of usability and accessibility. Ex: Google added a footer to let people know when the page was done loading because visitors expected it!
A5: Keep it simple! Make it dumb-easy!!
Q: Google has lots of user data, more than the government. What's the risk in giving Google too much!
A1: I'd prefer a private company collecting data rather than the government.
A2: Microsoft actually has more data on specific people. Google's data is more behavioral. Google's trying to make the web better. I've given up - my life is online. What can you do?
Bill: Google's mission is to organize the web for you. We used to warn against Google Analytics. Google checkout is great for e-tailers, but provides lots of data to Google about click prices vs. their profit.
Q: Ideas on how to leverage SEM techniques for product research?
A1: Not a great tool for innovating products.
A2: You can look at Google Trends, etc, but that's based on today. At an extreme, you can build a website about a potential product, get PPC info and look at the data.
A3: Look into the social world - what's happening in the blogosphere? What are people talking about/looking forward to?
Bill: SEO not so much, look at social media and PPC.
Moderator: If Ford asked his audience what they wanted, he'd say "a faster horse".
Happy Hour moved up to 5pm! Woo!
Mr. and Mrs. Nutria Start Their Day
1 hour ago
5 comments:
my take on the closing panel:
http://adomatica.blogspot.com/2008/07/san-antonio-replacement-windows-just.html
Great post, Megan! I also like the fact that you were blog-reporting in real time. cool.
As for mobile search, my personal opinion is that it won't really rival laptop/desktop search. Though I admit, I don't have the best PDA, I get frustrated trying to surf the Web on my PDA; the screen's too small, load time too long, buttons too close together, etc. I don't think the 40 and over crowd will ever use mobile search that much.
As for semantic web - I'm researching it daily, like most other SEOs. Not sure how the advent of Semantic Web will change SEO practices and standards.
As for load time and simplifying "fat" websites...I'm trying to figure out how to do this with audio/video/image load time. Some of my client's sites have all three media on a page, and it takes too long to load. Any suggestions, I'd appreciate it.
Thanks again for an informative post!
Eric
Hi Megan,
I was at SEM for SMB and thought it was a great conference (disclosure: I was also speaking). One of the closing comments that you picked up on was that keyword research doesn't provide much value in the way of market research. I very much disagree with that comment.
In fact, I spoke on the keyword topic (brief video from presentation available on YouTube; search for "SEMforSMB - 3").
I think keyword research can be a powerful way to research niche areas. Granted, you do have to be careful with how you use the data, but that's true no matter how you amass the information. Even in Henry Ford's day, he had to assimilate lots of data to translate faster horses into combustion engine vehicles.
Great post Megan! I have been searching for feedback on this conference.
I was interested to see the case study that was done regarding the "San Antonio Replacement Windows".
Robert, since you blogged specifically about the case study I have to say that I believe you may have missed the point of the case study all together. From what I could tell it was merely a show of how a small business can get front page exposure on Google to a new website if they know what they are doing. As an SEO guy I don't think for one minute you really expected to see the domain to get first page ranking within 24hrs of registering the domain? It did infact appear on page 5 of Google briefly. I will be following it's progress over the coming weeks/months to see how it ranks.
Incidentally it's four days since the conference and the start of the case study and I can still see the two references to the site on the front page of Google.
If I where a small business owner I would be more than pleased with two organic front page references to my new website especially after 24hrs - although temporary it is "FREE" and still high ranking Google exposure whilst your main site rides up in the organic listings.
It would be interesting to see if another case study was performed replacing San Antonio for Austin only to see if some of the comments hold true about it being harder to rank for Austin terms than San Antonio terms...
Eric, I understand your frustration with surfing the web on your PDA, the biggest problem I feel is that web developers/designers are simply not accomodating or structuring the sites for mobile cell phones - even with the iPhone this is an issue. However some web developers/marketers do see the potential and are trying to address this by educating the client and/or by developing tools to cut out the "fluff" of the main site when its accessed via pda/mobile devices...
As for load times of your pages with video, perhaps try replacing the video with a screen shot, then load the video into a lightbox when the image is clicked... this maybe a suitable alternative...
Additionally you can also load in your main content higher in the source code using div tags - hope this makes sense!
www.redflamemedia.com - the guys who did the case study for the SEM for SMB with the term "San Antonio Replacement Windows" obviously are doing something right... although still hovering around page 5 on Google they have secured first page placement for the website www.sanantonioreplacementwindows.com on Yahoo for the above term in less than two weeks from registering it at the start of the conference...
Post a Comment