Defiantly a fast growing segment of the search industry. I see new presentations and products weekly. I dismiss many of them. Remember, first off, it's a demographics issue. Looking for a nearby restaurant? Defiant ely a candidate for mobile search optimization. Trying to research new software or buy a computer? That's usually done on a PC or laptop.
Bing - Gaining Market Share
Bing is good. The search results are clean. It's easy to optimize for. We not look at Bing / Yahoo as one search engine. Both use the new Microsoft algorithm so they both respond to the same optimization efforts. Together, these two major search engines get from 10% to 40% of available search traffic, depending on some unique demographic variables...... For the microsoft AdCenter we see a higher ROI than on Google AdWords. Lower traffic at much lower costs plus a good conversion rate makes a compelling business case for diversifying your ad spend.
Conversion Optimization
The latest trend for internet marketing pros is Conversion Optimization. Once your site is ranking well then you need to improve it's conversion rates. This is more of a presentation tune up. i.e.; is your marketing message compelling, or does it cause prospects to give up and return to the search results? This, in conjunction with landing page optimization will improve your closing rations.
HostingCON - San Diego 2011
More uptime, more value added services, and the endless hype about 'The Cloud'. However, the industry seems to be in a good place. The main players are profitable, sales numbers are growing and infrastructure costs are decreasing. Microsoft had a huge presence, and a major party at the Hard Rock Cafe. Some of the main topics this year (besides how to get a ticket for the Microsoft party) were automated tools for Wordpress hosting and additional SEO tools within hosting accounts.
For SEO Friendly Could Hosting we promote our own subsidiary, HostingDivision.com.
Google Panda Update
Another Google Algorithm update. But this one got some industry 'experts' all wound up, Seems like some common tactics were now getting penalized. Some sites lost rankings across the full range of their target keywords.
SMX - Toronto 2010
The Search Marketing Expo group puts on great conferences. This event was well attended by industry experts and marketing pros from major corporations.
Reputation Management
Now customers have a voice. They can post negative comments on all sorts of web portals, from Google to Yelp. We've done a few Reputation Management projects for some unfortunate companies. Step one: talk to them. Find a resolution. See a crazy story of how I trashed a company online until they resolved my complaint here.
The Website Clinic
This live event has become popular in the real estate industry. We've done this SEO presentation several times, always to packed rooms. We look at some online SEO tools and review various online marketing strategies. Lots of fun...
SES Conference - Chicago 2009
Another great conference, with a great blizzard to match. They promise to move this venerable conference to October, but in the world of conferences, apparently that is not so easily done.
HostingCON - Chicago 2008
More innovation in web hosting. New cloud hosting technologies are offering almost 100% uptime for websites. There was also a lot of discussion about how competitive it is now is to optimize web hosting sites. The toughest categories still remain the legal and real estate industries. It takes strong expertise to compete in these categories. One of my fellow SEO experts built their entire practice on SEO for law firms. They are complete experts and their clients usually see good results.
SES Conference - Chicago 2007
The excellent Search Engine Strategies - Chicago Conference wad held in December, again. There was an amazing presentation from Google's Manager of Universal Search. Very, very interesting. Facebook will be big in a few years, or not.This is the next generation of web search. Lots changing in the industry.
Analytics was a big topic. One main takeaway; it's not all about the last click. Prospects can find a website many ways - you should understand how they found you.
Google algorithm changes?
The latest changes to the Google algorithm have had some negative effects on some largest websites. It's difficult to guess exactly what is happening, but the consensus is that 'overly optimized' website are suffering the most. One of the big issues appears to be paid links. Suddenly, that's a bad thing. Being on link farm has always been a negative. (i.e.; paying for 500 automated submissions, all done in 5 minutes) That is definitely seen as link spam. However, more reasonable optimized websites don't seem to be getting penalized.
Local SEO Is Easy, Usually.....
We seem to have good success with 'most' local search projects. Part of that is the online competition is just not very strong. We can easily best their efforts with basic optimization techniques. Setting up a basic analytics report shows that an increasing amount of traffic comes from direct search. Our success id more of a factor of competitive websites having very little proper optimization. When we update a site it usually outranks most other sites for out targets.
HostingCON - Chicago 2005
This is the first national Hosting Industry conference ever. It was a smash hit - actually a bit overcrowded. Many of the major data centers have booths and lots of industry suppliers are showing off their latest tools. There are 30+ sessions including forums on hosting software, billing platforms, legal issues and valuations. Some of the presenters include Tom Snead, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and others. The happy hour parties are just over the top - Microsoft, ModernBill, cPanel and FastServers are having some of the biggest events. I'll formally predict this to become a major annual industry event in the future.
