Hello Blizz-Readers and browsers!

We’re in NYC!  SearchEngineStrategies NY is going on and Mary Bowling and I are lucky enough to be here taking in the sights, the search news, and some other fun things - while still learning and absorbing new trends coming our way.

 I was hoping to post some funny video of our dinner last night -at a Benihana a few blocks away - but for some reason my laptop isn’t cooperating - so that will hopefully come later this week.

 Day one was interesting, and we learned some good stuff -but nothing earth shattering.  I’m hoping day two provides a few “aha” moments and some real actionable nuggets of information.

We attended 3 sessions on day 1.  The first session was the Organic Listings Forum.  Moderated with class and humor by Mike Grehan and staffed by Greg Boser, Dave Naylor and Jill Whalen.  This panel was a forum for audience members to ask any and all SEO/organic listing questions.  Good information here - They reiterated that “tool bar page rank” (the green “fairy dust” in the Google toolbar) is irrelevant but Greg Boser did state that “Juice” is relevant.  So each web page has a certain amount of “Juice” to pass around - but that watching and stressing over a site being a pr4, pr3, etc is pointless.  Worry more about rankings - less about “Tool Bar Page Rank” which is not updated and considered “old” information.  It IS a good indicator of where you may be - and how much “weight” you can support (in the form of pages indexed and delivered as search results.)

Next was Video Made the SMB Star - very very good information here -but unfortunately technical issues prohibit me from sharing videos - so that info will come later.  Basic jist of the panel was a variety of ways for small to medium sized business to get in the video game, without spending a small fortune on production.  One of my  mantras was to make sure whatever you buy - you own and can use as you like.  Some of the platforms we saw supported that - some did not.  I’ll be doing more research into the options and sharing what I find.

Most disappointing panel of the day was probably my fault - as I didn’t read the panel description closely - but it was the “Mobile Local Search: Finding the way” session that we attended last.  It was okay information - about the mobile platforms, what the “developers” are doing, etc.  Not really any “actionable” tips for us marketers though. 

We attended the “Orion Panel” on vertical search - was pretty good but was extremely disappointed not to see a panelist dedicated to the “travel” vertical.  Travel is so huge and competitive I thought they deserved a spot.  We saw Jason Finger from Seamless Web, Paul Forster from Indeed.com, Steven Krein from OrganizedWisdom.com and Joshua Stylman from Reprise Media.  Bill Tancer from Hitwise was also on the panel.  So we had representation from the health, job search, and online food ordering areas.  They may be big “verticals” in  NYC - certainly not where I come from - but Colorado is a very “travel-centric” state.  It was okay - but again, nothing really “actionable” that we could use to help our clients rank better other than “get in there” with regards to vertical search engines.  If we were starting our own vertical search engine -this would have been great - but not so much for a travel marketing firm.

 Email This Post |  Print This Post

Categories: SEM.
Comments RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a comment, or trackback.