Chicago, 2007

Top take-away's from the conference:

Universal Search is coming. Unlike 'mobile search is coming', this is actually happening. Seems that the smaller engines are providing a richer search experience and the 'old' search engines are beginning to work on it. (made me think of Ford vs. Honda) So, what is this new universal search? See it in action at www.ask.com
It's a good time to start optimizing all your blogs, forum posts and videos to take advantage of it.

Build the next chicken! Build the next chicken! This is the 21st century version of the 'killer app' utilizing new social media sites and technology with the speed of instant viral marketing.
 - a bit hard to explain, but vast riches await whoever 'builds the next chicken'.

Apparently, 65 million Americans read blog's..... so start writing one....... and optimize it.
  - the speaker from Google AdSense showed a few good ways to monetize your blog.

All the big SEO guys were raving about Facebook.com. Seems to be much potential for a smart optimizer to gain advantage in various ways.

Lot's of presentations on very cool analytics tools. The lesson that the big guys shared is that it's not just about the 'last click' on a paid or organic link. There's a lot of search activity that goes on and customers sometimes click around a few times before getting to that 'order confirmation' page.

FREE ADS! ask.com is offering a $50- coupon for free ads on their search engine. They are a great niche search engine and free is an excellent price. Sign up at www.sponsoredlistings.ask.com using promo code: SESCHI07  Expires 1/06/08
As always, base all your sponsored searches on solid keyword research.

New Widget tool! (and it's free) Build your own. The SWICKI is available at www.eurekster.com

Search Engine Panel:
Hey, sitemaps are still a good thing.

Another hot topic:
AJAX components on a website can be a challenge. Google and Yahoo both said that they can 'usually' read them but do have some issues. Also, if a browser had java script turned off then they will see nothing. The official recommendation is to just 'embellish' the site with AJAX and create a 'graceful degradation' path that can be seen by all. BUT, don;t get caught up in a duplicate content or cloaking issue. The search robots might flag the site.......(no clean, easy answer, yet)

Warning: Morning session: 'Don't buy links - paid links are bad'. Afternoon session; 'paid links are okay..... Google can't track them.....Heck, their whole business is based on selling paid links.....'
However, it IS true that Google has a webmaster tool to report websites that use paid links. If you can figure this out please let everyone know.

However, everyone does agree that direct reciprical links are discounted by the search engines. Don't buy into those direct reciprical link exchanges....it's a waste of time.

Google Gossip:

Google still does not get 'all the traffic'. Figures at this conference were 50 - 60% market share of all searches. (up from recent estimates of 40 - 50%) And there's a general agreement that Yahoo actually converts better. Again, everyone seems to just love ask.com.

The New Google Analytics Tool was released on December 5, 2007. They are recommending that the old analytics tools be REMOVED from all existing pages on all sites and replaced with the new code. (manually, of course) Also, they suggest that you filter out your company and home IP addresses to get more relevant data.

I completed a Google training class and was awarded the coveted Google Optimizer T-shirt.

A couple more pictures:
               

And Finally;
There will be an SES training conference in Denver in 2008. This will be an excellent class for experienced webmasters or new SEO consultants. It's a great program to build upon your existing SEO expertise.

Bob Costello
  
  (303) 791 - 7817