Website Design, Search Engine Optimization

SMXWest 2008

These are my notes from SMXWest 2008. Much of it is in shorthand. But if I did not do it in this fashion I would never get it out. I compare it to when you are in school and you needed to borrow a classmates notes. If you feel I got something wrong or it needs more definition please comment.

During the conference they had an open WiFi (provided by SEOMoz.org) and many participants had their computers open and were taking notes, others were chatting on IM, some were surfing the web, checking email; I think they call it multi tasking. I made a conscious decision that during the sessions I would not have access to my computer and that I would write my notes. This could be a generational thing, but for me personally I get distracted and do not get the full benefit.

Day One

  Keynote Speech by Danny Sullivan

  Search 3.0, Search 4.0 & Beyond

What was/is Search 2.0?

• Click through
• Links – aka pagerank
• Context = link text

The keywords “miserable failure” – who pops up #1 and Google kills it.

What is Search 3.0?

  Vertical search (what does that mean)

  Blended search, universal search, invisible tabs

  Vertical results are blended together

  Local / Video / News

Ask.com now has a 3 pane or column SERP

  Microsoft – LiveSearch LiveScopes

  Yahoo – shortcuts to upcoming events now introducing Yahoo! SearchMonkey

Search 4.0

  All about what you do personally, this currently is mainly done by Google

  Tracking your search history and where you go on the internet to come up with better “personalized” results. Gone are the days when everyone sees the same site rankings

  Since, everyone sees things differently therefore it takes in the information from your personalize search page i.e. iGoogle, you can turn personalized search off by logging out of google. You can also add three characters to the end of your search and it will not use personalized tracking. (I have to look through my notes to find the actual characters but I think it was “&pws”. Please don’t quote me on that because I am not sure.

One thing personalized search is missing is the human factor and that is how you are feeling at the moment.

Types of Social Searching:

• Social Search “swickis”
• Social Sites and social bookmarking: Digg, Delicious …
• Social Networking: Facebook, MySpace

The joining of SMM and SEO (the WonderTwins as they were referred to at the conference)

  Social Media Marketing and SEO:

• Builds links back to your content
• Authority sites
• New site needs to make use of Digg
• Delicious – number of people that have clicked on a page, book marked it in Delicious
• Google Reader – ranks how many have subscribed to an RSS Feed

Time to understand all of this now.

Search 5.0

  Two examples:

• Mahalo.com
• Hakia.com

Regarding the merger of Yahoo and Microsoft:

• Yahoo is a credible search engine and Microsoft needs the traffic
• This may give ask.com the opportunity to rise up

Yahoo made a search announcement at the conference.

• The search is more enhanced, you create your own apps.
• Bringing in media, photos, video…
• Task links
• Structured data of ratings and price, hours with addresses
• User choice (remove a listing or report it is spam)

This is about giving the user more control, another form of personalization, add or turn off enhancements

  Learn more about it at http://tools.search.yahoo.com/newsearch/open.html

  This is what Yahoo! claims:

  Everyone Wins.Site Owners:
Boost site traffic quality and quantity with visibly differentiated search results through this free program.
Searchers:A more relevant and efficient search experience with deep links, product reviews, prices, photos and more from preferred sites.
Get more information from http://www.ysearchblog.com
Different sites will provide search information, they feel there will be an open playing field for everyone not jus the Yahoo! Properties

Next  I will share my notes from additional sessions. 

Hear I am dusting off my blog, and I really mean dust it off  (phewwwww) I am currently at  SMX West and  once again getting the shot in the arm (ouch) to get back to work with my blog. Once I get the itch I write, but then life gets in my way.

My review, SMX has done a great job of knowing what people want to hear. The keynote speaches so far have been right on.  Danny Sullivan spoke on the first day about where search is going (always a good topic) and he did have a lot of relevant information, web 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 …. infinity. What does it all mean. I think we are all struggling, and no one so far has the answer. The big buz is blended search, personalized search, yes just get noticed, (lift up your petti-coat). Mixing everything, from maps, images, videos, books, blogs condensed into one page and we don’t want to look like Costco.

One of the moderators Vannessa Fox, has a website VannessaFoxNude.com, having the word nude in her url you can imagine the ’great’ hits she must be getting. But truly that is what it is all about bearing our souls to each other, and doing in anonimously? 

Here I am with a new a shot in the arm, the orignial Google Addict once again learning how to position my search engine marketing. I am getting to old for this? Hopefully you will  read more, but wait I can’t stop now, I had a long conversation with a group of eBay boys (and they were cute) about how my experience with eBay has disolved. I started with eBay 8+ years ago when it was truly a community and I expressed to them how I feel eBay has lost that true communtiy feeling and that I miss it. There were a group of us with cottage industries that just got swallowed away by the “POWER SELLERS”.  ebay truly was one of the first social networks, that went wrong. What are your thoughts?